Pohlstars

by Frederik Pohl

  So Cowpersmith kept at it. The meditation didn't seem to be going well after the first hour, so he hired a new travel consultant and for a while things looked bright. Or bright enough. Maybe. He backpacked across the Trinity Mountains and flew to Naples for a swim in the Blue Grotto. He ate couscous and drank akvavit and smoked Acapulco gold, all in their native environment. Then he took a pack mule through the Montana hills, and flew back to Naples for four hours of clambering around the ruins of Pompeii, and hit Paris for nightclubs and Waikiki for surfing...

  ... But a couple of wipeouts at Diamond Head made his ear feel worse, and one nightclub turned out to be an awful lot like another, except that where the toilet jokes were in French he couldn't understand them. He knew the phone was going to ring again. He didn't need the little machine on his wrist to tell him he was down. He felt down.

  So he came to a decision, and just sat in his hotel room, sullenly waiting. He had already put eleven thousand dollars in a numbered bank account in Bern and paid off all his old debts, and if it was over it was over.

  But he didn't want it to be over.

  The more he thought about it, the more he didn't want it to be over.

  It was, after all, the finest fucking job in all the world, and everything Murray had said about it was true. No more headwaiters falling all over themselves? No more pretty women to take to the clubs, to the tracks, to bed? He ordered up a couple of bottles of brandy and worked himself up to a weeping drunk and when, the next morn- ing, it was inevitably followed by a dry-mouthed, burning- bellied hangover, he sat wallowing in the misery of his thousand-franc-a-day suite, shaking and enfeebled, barely moving to order up food, and more booze, and more food. The longer he sat, the worse he felt. And the next day. And the next day. And- And by the fifth day, after most of a week of solid, sullen misery, he realized that his phone had not rung. Why not? He certainly wasn't enjoying.

  He didn't understand why, but when it came through to his mind that it was so, he didn't really care why. Hope was back. The magic money machine had not turned itself off! So he cleaned himself up. He got himself dressed. He waved off the floor waiter and the major-domo and the concierge and went out for a walk, a perfectly dull, uninteresting, unexciting walk, up the Champs Elysees to the Lido Arcade. He ate a quiche and drank a beer and dropped in on a flick. It was an old Barbra Streisand with French subtitles; he had seen it before, and he didn't care. It bored the ears off him. He enjoyed being bored very much.

  But when he got back to the hotel, New York was on the line.

  "For homey pleasures, said Mr. Morris' small, distant voice, "you don't get paid this kind of money. You want a McDonald's hamburger, quit and come back.

  "I had this feeling you'd call, Cowpersmith acknowledged. "What can I say? I've had it with joy. It is no fun anymore.

  "So quit. This was your second warning anyhow, and you don't get but three.

  "All right, said Cowpersmith, after a moment of digesting that bit of information. "But tell me one thing. Last week I was really down; how come you didn't fire me then'?

  "Last week? Last week you were great. I thought you knew, pleasure isn't the only sensation they like.

  You mean you'll pay me for misery? "One of our best units, said the little voice in his ear, "was terminal stomach cancer. They paid him five grand a week plus full medical every week he didn't take painkillers.

  That took a moment to digest too, and it went down hard, but Cowpersmith began to see hope. "Well, I don't want to go that far—

  "Whatever you were doing last week was far enough, I'd say.

  Then maybe I could—

  "Sure, said Mr. Morris. "Nice talking to you. Third strike is out.

  Ensued some of the most depressing weeks of Cowpersmith's life. Not miserable. At least not reliably miserable; he could not even be sure, from day to day, that he was quite bugged enough to register a decent misery on his wristband, and that in itself was discouraging. He tried everything he could think of. Inspiration struck, and he made a quick list of all the things he had been putting off because they were awful: went to the dentist, had a barium enema, got tattooed. That took care of three days, and, looking back at them honestly, he had to admit they were not memorably bad, merely lousy. He flew back to Washington and spent two afternoons in the Senate gallery-merely tedious; after the first half hour he stopped hearing what was being said and caught himself drowsing off. He flanged together two stereo systems and poured thirty watts of acid rock into one earpiece and Mahler into the other and came out with only a headache. He invented excuses to go in and out of Kennedy airport, with special emphasis on the Customs line and the hack- stands, but after a while even that anger diminished. Food. Remembering all the enjoyment he had had from good food, he looked for dyspepsia and displeasure from bad. He ate a haggis in Glasgow, flew to Heathrow and had brawn for dinner, caught a commuter flight to Paris and had an American breakfast at Orly. None of it worked very well. It proved to be harder to make oneself unhappy than to find joy, which had, after all, lasted for the best part of a year. The other thing was that deliberately making oneself unhappy made one, well, unhappy. It was not a way he liked to live. He discovered that twenty cups of coffee a day, sixty cigarettes, and a maximum of three hours of sleep gave him a perpetual headachy feeling that made everything an annoyance, but the other side of the coin was that nothing was much more than an annoyance; he was simply too beat to care. In desperation he returned to the States and delved into copies of the underground press, answering all the ads he could find for "instruction, "discipline, and so on, but that mostly got him a large number of FBI men and postal inspectors, and the S-M experiences were basically, he thought, pretty God- awful anyway. So he was not all that surprised when, less than five weeks from the second warning, his phone rang again. He was in Waikiki, where he had been nerving himself up to trying to get his ear hurting again in the surf, and he was frankly grateful to be spared it.

  "Third time's the charm, said the little voice. "Come home, come home for debriefing.

  "I'm fired, right?

  "Well, said distant Mr. Morris judiciously, "you stop working for us as soon as you're debriefed. But you get a year's severance pay, which comes to, let's see, twenty- six K.

  "Wow! cried Cowpersmith. And then, "Uh. Say. Was that, you know, just to give me a high?

  "No, although you did register a beaut. No, it's real. You just have to turn over the recording, and you're on your own.

  "Well, said Cowpersmith, picking up the phone and walking out onto the lanai. "Well, he said, surrendering a dream, "I guess that's about it, then. Isn't it? I'll catch the first plane tomorrow-

  "No, said Mr. Morris, "you won't do that, you'll catch the next plane right now. We've arranged for your tickets; they'll be at the desk when you check out. Which should be in fifteen minutes.

  And five minutes after he hung up, the Uikai bellman was at the door, eager for Cowpersmith's one beaten bag. Mr. Morris had been very thorough. They not only had Cowpersmith's ticket at the desk, they had an envelope with two twenty-dollar bills and ten singles, for tips and miscellaneous. And they also had their instructions about his credit card. "I'm very sorry, said the clerk politely, "but as of the time you settle your account with us your card is canceled. And we have to pick it up. It's part of our contract with the company- "Well, fine, said Cowpersmith. "Tell you what. I forgot to pick up a couple little things in the shops, so let me have the card for a minute before I finish settling up.

  "So sorry, said the clerk. "You already have.

  And now, when it was all over, Cowpersmith spent his time in the taxi to the airport thinking of things he could have done but had not. He got onto the plane in a daze of missed menus and untried wines, and had to be prodded sharply by the stewardess before he realized he was in the wrong part of the airplane. "Sorry, he mumbled, allowing himself to be led aft. He glanced around with some wonder. He had almost forgotten that there were parts of a 707 where people sat three abrea
st.

  At Kennedy he was met: Shirley.

  He stared at her through gummed eyelids. By the sun it was late afternoon, but by the clock of his body it was eight in the morning after a night with no more sleep than a man can get sitting in a coach seat between a fat plumber on a group tour and a small boy who alternated snoring and leaping about. "Had fun? she asked, steering him toward a chauffeur-driven Bentley.

  "You know better than I, he said bitterly, trying to take the wristband off and slap it in her palm. The gesture failed, because it still would not come open.

  "You'll feel better when we get going, she said. "I've got a Thermos of coffee. It's about an hour's drive.

  "I know, I know, grumped Cowpersmith, who had, after all, been in and out on the Kennedy-Manhattan run more times than he could count. But when the chauffeur took a right-hand turn where there had always been a left, he realized he did not know. It did not seem important, and he drowsed until the car stopped, doors opened- "Here's your boy, Morrie.

  "Looks like we'll have to carry him in.

  -and he opened his eyes to see Mr. Morris and the chauffeur tugging at him.

  "Em all right, he said with dignity, and halfway up the pebbled walk looked around and said. "Where is this place, anyway? Porticoed porch, ivied walls, he had not seen it before.

  "Where you get debriefed, said Shirley, pausing at the door. "So long, Tud.

  He hesitated. "You're not coming in? Will I see you again?

  "I'll see you, she said, patted his shoulderblade and returned to the car.

  Sensory impressions smote him: An entrance hall, with a staircase winding up under a huge canvas-shrouded painting in a gilt frame. A library of glassed-in shelves, mostly empty, with drop-clothed chairs around a cold and swept fireplace. A dining hall, and beyond it a closed door.

  "Does he live in this place, whoever he is? asked Cowpersmith, staring about.

  Mr. Morris sighed. "There is no he, ' he said patiently. "There are they.' They are here, some of them ... This is the part I hate, he added morosely.

  "Why ?"

  "Well, you're going to ask a lot of questions again. You all do. And you're going to figure you've done your bit, now you have a right to know. Right? And maybe in a sense you do, although it's pretty pointless. . . Anyway. What we do now, we take the recordings from you, and when we've got enough to make a shipment, we send them off. I don't know where, exactly. I don't know what they do with them, exactly. But it's a big business with them.

  "Big business? Misconceptions and erroneous as- sumptions were splintering in Cowpersmith's brain.

  "Well, like a TV network. I mean, I think they kind of broadcast them, sort of like a National Geographic television special: sensory impressions from all over, strange pleasures of the aborigines-

  "I never, said Cowpersrnith positively, apprehensions dissolving the sleep from his mind, "heard any broadcast like that.

  "No. Not on this planet, no.

  Cowpersmith swallowed, choking on apprehensions and the splinters of former certainties.

  "The mistake you made, said Mr. Morris sympathetically, "is that you assumed the people who hired you were human beings. They're not. No. You wouldn't think so if you'd seen one. They, uh. . . Well, they look a little bit like fish and a little bit like the devil. All red, you see. And not very big-

  "But Murray said-

  "Oh, Christ, said Mr. Morris, "how could Murray know? If it's any consolation to you, when he was debriefed he was as surprised as you are. It gets everybody the same way.

  "Bloody charming, said Cowpersmith bitterly. "Now I'm an agent of a foreign power. I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI picks me up about this.

  "I would, said Mr. Morris. "In there, go on.

  "Where?

  "There. Through the door.

  "What do we do in there? Cowpersmith demanded, truculent because the only alternative was being terrified.

  "You turn over the recording to them and that's that." said Mr. Morris.

  Cowperstnith swallowed again, choking this time on plain panic. He wished that the car hadn't gone away. Still, he thought, they had to be somewhere on Long Island. Maybe Sands Point'? Maybe Patchogue. And he still had most of the fifty dollars, plus whatever had been left in his coat, plus, of course, that Swiss bank account. There would be a taxi...

  "Okay, he said, tugging at the wristband. "Let's get it over with and I'll get out of here.

  "Oh, said Mr. Morris, annoyed, "what are you doing? That's not the recording. That's only the monitor, so we could tell how you were doing and where you were. You turn over the recording in there.

  And he opened the door behind the dining hall.

  Two men in white stepped through. They were not smiling. They were without expression, like saloon bouncers or dog catchers.

  The room behind them looked like an operating chamber: bright lights over a flat white table. Rows of transparent jars lined the shelves around the room. They came in two sizes:

  In the large (there were two of them) red and hideous things stirred uneasily, looking out toward Cowpersmith with great pale eyes.

  In the smaller jars, of which there were more than a dozen- Were the floating objects in them really human heads?

  And that one there, next to the brighter of the two red creatures, the one with the wild red eyebrows-wasn't it very familiar?

  It was too late to turn; the men were reaching out for him as Mr. Morris said from behind him, sadly, disclaimingly, "What better recording could they have than the one in your own brain?

  GROWING UP IN EDGE CITY

  Among the closest friends I had in the thirty years I lived in Red Bank, New Jersey, was a family named Waterman. Bob and Dorothy and their offspring, who were much of an age with my own. It was a great loss when they moved nearly a hundred miles away, to the antique New Jersey resort city of Cape May, which is about as far south as you can get in The state without swimming. So, when I could, I drove down to visit them with as much of my family as could be collected for the purpose. All the way down the Garden State Parkway, on one visit, a story was nibbling at my mind-not just a set of characters and situations but a particular way of telling the story that I had just invented and wanted to try out. After we'd all caught up on old times over lunch, and the kids had none off to the boats or the shopping centers or the boardwalk and beach, I mentioned to Dorothy Waterman that I had just realized the right place to set the story was right in Cape May. "Well, she said, "I've got a typewriter I'm not using- And so, sitting on the Watermans' porch, between lunch and our dinner date at one of the best seafood restaurants in the world, this came out.

  In the evenings after school Chandlie played private games. He was permitted to do so. His overall index of gregariousness was high enough to allow him to choose his own companions, or no companion at all but a Pal, when he wanted it that way. On Tueday and Fourthday he generally spent his time with a seven-year-old female named Marda, quick and bright, with a chiseled, demure little face that would have beseemed pretty woman of twenty, apt at mathematical intuitions and the stringing of beads. The proctors logged in their private games under the heading of "sensuality sensitivity training, but they called them "You Show Me Yours and I'll Show You Mine. The proctors, in their abstract and deterministic way, approved of what Chandlie did. Even then he was marked for special challenge, having been evaluated as Councilman potential. and when on most other evenings Chandlie went down to the machine rooms and checked out a Pal, no objections were raised, no questions were asked, and no follow-up warnings were flagged in the magnetic cores of his record-fiche. He went off freely and openly, wherever he chose. This was so even though there was a repeating anomaly in his log. Almost every evening for an hour or two, Chandlie's personal transponder stopped broadcasting his location fix. They could not tell where he was in Edge City. They accepted this because of their own limitations. It was recorded in the proctors basic memory file that there were certain areas of the City in which old electromag
netic effects interfered with the radio direction finding signals. They were not strategically important areas. The records showed nothing dangerous or forbidden there. The proctors noted the gap in the log but attached no importance to it. As a matter of routine they opened up the Pal's chrome-steel tamper-proof course-plot tapes from time to time, but it was only spot-checking. They did the same for everyone's Pal. They never found anything significantly wrong in Chandue's. If they had been less limited, they might have inquired further. A truly good program would have cross- referenced Chandlie's personality profile, learned from it that he was gifted in man-machine interactions, and deduced from this the possibility that he had bugged the Pal. If they had then checked the Pal's permanent record of instructions, they would have learned that it was so. They did not do that. The proctors were not particularly sophisticated computer programs. They saw in their inputs no reason to be suspicious. Chandlie's father and mother could have told the programs all about him, but they had been Dropouts since he was three.

  At the edge of Edge City, past the school sections, near the hospital and body-disposal units, there was a dark and odorous place. Ancient steel beams showed scarred and discolored. They bore lingering radioactivity, souvenir of an old direct hit from a scrambler missile. It was no longer a dangerous place, but it was not an attractive one, either, and on the master location charts it was designated for storage. It was neither very useful nor very much used. What could be stored there was only what was not very much valued, and there were few such things kept in Edge City. If they were remembered. The air was dank. Spots of mildew and rust appeared and swelled on whatever was there. However often the Handys came in to scrub and burn and polish, the surfaces were never clean. It was environmentally interesting, in a city where there was no such thing as environment, for at times it was pervaded by a sound like a distant grumbling roar, and at times it grew quite cold or quite hot. These were the things that had first interested Chardlie in it. What capped his interest was discovering by accident, one evening when he had just returned from wandering in the strange smells and sounds, that the proctors had not known where he was. He determined to spend more time there. The thought of doing something the proctors did not know all about was both scary and irresistible. His personal independence index had always been very high, almost to the point of remedial action. On his second visit, or third, he discovered the interesting fact that some of the closed doors were not locked on a need-to-enter basis. They were merely closed and snapped. Turning a knob would open them. Anyone could do it. He opened every door he passed. Most of them led only to empty rooms, or to chambers that might as well be empty for all he could make of the gray metal cylinders or yellowed fiber cartons that were stacked forgotten inside them. Some of the doors, however, led to other places, and some of the places were not even marked on the city charts. With his Pal romping and humming its shrill electronic note by his side, Chandlie penetrated the passages and stairways he found right up to the point at which he became certain he was not permitted to be there. A buckled guide rail that gouged at his flesh told him that. These areas were dangerous. Having reached that conclusion, he returned to his studies and spent a week learning how to reprogram the Pal to go into sleep mode on voice command from himself. He then returned to the dangerous area, left the Pal curled up inside one of the uninteresting doors, and went on into the unknown, down a broad and dusty flight of stairs.