Selected Stories of Alfred Bester

by Alfred Bester

  “Oh yes, there’s been a hitch. Miss Sibyl was negotiating with BBDO for you, but she had to fly to Sheol. I’ve taken over for her.”

  I called April 1. Miss Sibyl said: “Oh yes, there’s been a slight delay. Mrs. Sphinx had to go to Salem for a try-out. A witchburning. She’ll be back next week.”

  I called April 15. Miss Sibyl’s bright young secretary told me that there was some delay getting the contracts typed. It seemed that BBDO was re-organizing its legal department. On May 1, Sibyl & Sphinx told me that the contracts had arrived and that their legal department was looking them over.

  I had to take a menial job in June to keep body and soul together. I worked in the stencil department of a network. At least once a week a script would come in about a bargain with the Devil which was signed, sealed and delivered before the opening commercial. I used to laugh at them. After four months of negotiation I was still threadbare.

  I saw the Devil once, bustling down Park Avenue. He was running for Congress and was very busy being jolly and hearty with the electorate. He addressed every cop and doorman by first name. When I spoke to him he got a little frightened; thinking I was a Communist or worse. He didn’t remember me at all.

  In July, all negotiations stopped; everybody was away on vacation. In August everybody was overseas for some Black Mass Festival. In September Sibyl & Sphinx called me to their office to sign the contract. It was thirty-seven pages long, and fluttered with pasted-in corrections and additions. There were half a dozen tiny boxes stamped on the margin of every page.

  “If you only knew the work that went into this contract,” Sibyl & Sphinx told me with satisfaction.

  “It’s kind of long, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the short contracts that make all the trouble. Initial every box, and sign on the last page. All six copies.”

  I initialed and signed. When I was finished I didn’t feel any different. I’d expected to start tingling with money, success and happiness.

  “Is it a deal now?” I asked.

  “Not until he’s signed it.”

  “I can’t hold out much longer.”

  “We’ll send it over by messenger.” I waited a week and then called.

  “You forgot to initial one of the boxes,” they told me.

  I went to the office and initialed. After another week I called. “He forgot to initial one of the boxes,” they told me that time. On October 1st I received a special delivery parcel. I also received a registered letter. The parcel contained the signed, sealed and delivered contract between me and the Devil. I could at last be rich, successful and happy. The registered letter was from BBDO and informed me that in view of my failure to comply with Clause 27-A of the contract, it was considered terminated, and I was due for collection at their convenience. I rushed down to Sibyl & Sphinx.

  “What’s Clause 27-A?” they asked.

  We looked it up. It was the clause that required me to use the services of the Devil at least once every six months.

  “What’s the date of the contract?” Sibyl & Sphinx asked.

  We looked it up. The contract was dated March ist, the day I’d had my first talk with the Devil in his office.

  “March, April, May . . .” Miss Sibyl counted on her fingers. “That’s right. Seven months have elapsed. Are you sure you didn’t ask for any service?”

  “How could I? I didn’t have a contract.”

  “We’ll see about this,” Mrs. Sphinx said grimly. She called BBDO and had a spirited argument with the Devil and his legal department. Then she hung up. “He says you shook hands on the deal March 1st,” she reported. “He was prepared in good faith to go ahead with his side of the bargain.”

  “How could I know? I didn’t have a contract.”

  “Didn’t you ask for anything?”

  “No. I was waiting for the contract.”

  Sibyl & Sphinx called in their legal department and presented the case.

  “You’ll have to arbitrate,” the legal department said, and explained that agents are forbidden to act as their client’s attorney.

  I hired the legal firm of Wizard, Warlock, Voodoo, Dowser & Hag (99 Watt Street, Exchange 3-1900) to represent me before the Arbitration Board (479 Madison Avenue, Lexington 5-1900). They asked for a $200 retainer plus twenty percent of the contract’s benefits. I’d managed to save $34 during the four months I was working in the stencil department. They waived the retainer and went ahead with the Arbitration preliminaries.

  On November 15 the network demoted me to the mail room, and I seriously contemplated suicide.

  Only the fact that my soul was in jeopardy in an arbitration stopped me.

  The case came up December 12th. It was tried before a panel of three impartial Arbitrators and took all day. I was told they’d mail me their decision. I waited a week and called Wizard, Warlock, Voodoo, Dowser & Hag.

  “They’ve recessed for the Christmas holidays,” they told me.

  I called January 2.

  “One of them’s out of town.”

  I called January 10.

  “He’s back, but the other two are out of town.”

  “When will I get a decision?” “It could take months.”

  “How do you think my chances look?”

  “Well, we’ve never lost an arbitration.”

  “That sounds pretty good.”

  “But there can always be a first time.”

  That sounded pretty bad. I got scared and figured I’d better copper my bets. I did the sensible thing and hunted through the telephone directory until I found Seraphim, Cherubim and Angel, 666 Fifth Avenue, Templeton 4-1900. I called them. A bright young woman answered.

  “Seraphim, Cherubim and Angel. Good morning.”

  “May I speak to Mr. Angel, please?”

  “He’s on another line. Will you wait?”

  I’m still waiting.

  * * *

  The Four-Hour Fugue

  By now, of course, the Northeast Corridor was the Northeast slum, stretching from Canada to the Carolinas and as far west as Pittsburgh . It was a fantastic jungle of rancid violence inhabited by a steaming, restless population with no visible means of support and no fixed residence, so vast that census-takers , birth-control supervisors and the social services had given up all hope. It was a gigantic raree-show that everyone denounced and enjoyed. Even the privileged few who could afford to live highly-protected lives in highly-expensive Oases and could live anywhere else they pleased never thought of leaving. The jungle grabbed you.

  There were thousands of everyday survival problems but one of the most exasperating was the shortage of fresh water. Most of the available potable water had long since been impounded by progressive industries for the sake of a better tomorrow and there was very little left to go around. Rainwater tanks on the roofs, of course. A black market, naturally. That was about all. So the jungle stank. It stank worse than the court of Queen Elizabeth, which could have bathed but didn’t believe in it. The Corridor just couldn’t bathe, wash clothes or clean house, and you could smell its noxious effluvium from ten miles out at sea. Welcome to the Fun Corridor.

  Sufferers near the shore would have been happy to clean up in salt water, but the Corridor beaches had been polluted by so much crude oil seepage for so many generations that they were all owned by deserving oil reclamation companies. Keep Out! No Trespassing! And armed guards. The rivers and lakes were electrically fenced; no need for guards, just skull-and-crossbones signs and if you didn’t know what they were telling you, tough.

  Not to believe that everybody minded stinking as they skipped merrily over the rotting corpses in the streets, but a lot did and their only remedy was perfumery. There were dozens of competing companies producing perfumes but the leader, far and away, was the Continental Can Company, which hadn’t manufactured cans in two centuries. They’d switched to plastics and had the good fortune about a hundred stockholders meetings back to make the mistake of signing a sales contract with and delivering to
some cockamamie perfume brewer an enormous quantity of glowing neon containers. The corporation went bust and CCC took it over in hopes of getting some of their money back. That take-over proved to be their salvation when the perfume explosion took place; it gave them entree to the most profitable industry of the times.

  But it was neck-and-neck with the rivals until Blaise Skiaki joined CCC; then it turned into a runaway. Blaise Skiaki. Origins: French, Japanese, Black African, and Irish. Education: BA, Princeton; M.E., MIT; PhD. Dow Chemical. (It was Dow that had secretly tipped CCC that Skiaki was a winner and lawsuits brought by the completion were still pending before the ethics board.) Blaise Skiaki; age, thirty-one; unmarried, straight, genius.

  His sense of scent was his genius, and he was privately, referred to at CCC as “The Nose.” He knew everything about perfumery; the animal products, ambergris, castor, civet, musk; the essential oils distilled from plants and flowers; the balsams extruded by tree and shrub wounds, benzoin, opopanax, Peru, Talu, storax, myrrh; the synthetics created from the combination of natural and chemical scents, the latter mostly the esters of fatty acids.

  He had created for CCC their most successful sellers: “Vulva,” “Assuage,” “Oxter” (a much more attractive brand name than “Armpitto”), “Preparation F,” “Tongue War,” et cetera. He was treasured by CCC, paid a salary generous enough to enable him to live in an Oasis and, best of all, granted unlimited supplies of fresh water. No girl in the Corridor could resist the offer of taking a shower with him.

  But he paid a high price for these advantages. He could never use scented soaps, shaving creams, pomades or depilatories. He could never eat seasoned foods. He could drink nothing but pure water. All this, you understand, to keep The Nose pure and uncontaminated so that he could smell around in his sterile laboratory and devise new creations. He was presently composing a rather promising unguent provisionally named “Correctum,” but he’d been on it for six months without any positive results and CCC was alarmed by the delay. His genius had never before taken so long. There was a meeting of the top-level executives, names withheld on the grounds of corporate privilege.

  “What’s the matter with him anyway?”

  “Has he lost his touch?”

  “It hardly seems likely;”

  “Maybe he needs a rest.”

  “Why, he had a week’s holiday last month:”

  “What did he do?”

  “Ate up a storm, he told me.”

  “Could that be it?”

  “No. He said he purged himself before he came back to work.”

  “Is he having trouble here at CCC? Difficulties with middle management ?”

  “Absolutely not, Mr. Chairman. They wouldn’t dare touch him.”

  “Maybe he wants a raise.”

  “No. He can’t spend the money he makes now.”

  “Has our competition got to him?”

  “They get to him all the time. General, and he laughs them off.”

  “Then it must be something personal.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Woman-trouble?”

  “My God! We should have such trouble.”

  “Family-trouble?”

  “He’s an orphan, Mr. Chairman.”

  “Ambition? Incentive? Should we make him an officer of CCC?”

  “I offered that to him the first of the year, sir, and he turned me down. He just wants to play in his laboratory.”

  “Then why isn’t he playing?”

  “Apparently he’s got some kind of creative block.”

  “What the hell is the matter with him anyway?”

  “Which is how you started this meeting.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did.”

  “Not.”

  “Governor, will you play back the bug.”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please! Obviously Dr.Skiaki has personal problems which are blocking his genius. We must solve that for him. Suggestions?”

  “Psychiatry?”

  “That won’t work without voluntary cooperation. I doubt whether he’d cooperate. He’s an obstinate gook.”

  “Senator, I beg you! Such expressions must not be used with reference to one of our most valuable assets.”

  “Mr. Chairman, the problem is to discover the source of Dr. Skiaki’s block.”

  “Agreed. Suggestions?”

  “Why, the first step should be to maintain twenty-four-hour surveillance. All the gook’s—excuse me—the good doctor’s activities, associates, contacts.”

  “By CCC?”

  “I would suggest not. There are bound to be leaks which would only antagonize the good gook—doctor!”

  “Outside surveillance?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good. Agreed. Meeting adjourned.”

  Skip-Tracer Associates were perfectly furious. After one month they threw the case back into CCC’s lap, asking for nothing more than their expenses.

  “Why in hell didn’t you tell us that we were assigned to a pro, Mr. Chairman, sir? Our tracers aren’t trained for that:”

  “What a minute, please. What d’you mean , `pro?”

  “A professional Rip:”

  “A what?”

  “Rip, Gorill, Gimpster, Crook .”

  “Dr. Skiaki a crook? Preposterous.”

  “Look, Mr. Chairman, I’ll frame it for you and you draw your own conclusions. Yes?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It’s all detailed in this report anyway. We put double tails on Skiaki every day to and from your shop. When he left they followed him home. He always went home. They staked in double shifts. He had dinner sent in from the Organic Nursery every night. They checked the messengers bringing the dinners. Legit. They checked the dinners; sometimes for one, sometimes for two. They traced some of the girls who left his penthouse. All clean. So far, all clean, yes?”

  “And?”

  “The crunch. Couple of nights a week he leaves the house and goes into the city. He leaves around midnight and doesn’t come back until four, more or less.”

  “Where does he go?”

  “We don’t know because he shakes his tails like the pro that he is. He weaves through the Corridor like a whore or a fag cruising for trade—excuse me—and he always loses our men. I’m not taking anything away from him. He’s smart, shifty, quick and a real pro. He has to be; and he’s too much for Skip-Tracers to handle.”

  “Then you have no idea of what he does or who he meets between midnight and four?”

  “No, sir. We’ve got nothing and you’ve got a problem. Not ours any more:”

  “Thank you. Contrary to the popular impression, corporations are not altogether idiotic. CCC understands that negatives are also results. You’ll receive your expenses and the agreed upon fee.”

  “Mr. Chairman, I—”

  “No, no, please. You’ve narrowed it down to those missing four hours. Now, as you say, they’re our problem.”

  CCC summoned Salem Burne. Mr. Burne always insisted that he was neither a physician nor a psychiatrist; he did not care to be associated with what he considered to be the dreck of the professions. Salem Burne was a witch doctor; more precisely, a warlock. He made the most remarkable and penetrating analyses of disturbed people, not so much through his coven rituals of pentagons, incantations, incense and the like as through his remarkable sensitivity to Body English and his acute interpretation of it. And this might be witchcraft after all.

  Mr. Burne entered Blaise Skiaki’s immaculate laboratory with a winning smile and Dr. Skiaki let out a rending howl of anguish.

  “I told you to sterilize before you came.”

  “But I did, Doctor. Faithfully.”

  “You did not. You reek of anise, ilang-ilang, and methylanthranilate. You’ve polluted my day. Why?”

  “Dr. Skiaki . I assure you that I—” Suddenly Salem Burne stopped. “Oh my God!” he groaned. “I used my wife’s towel this morning.”

  Skiaki laughed and turned up t
he ventilators to full force. “I understand. No hard feelings. Now let’s get your wife out of here. I have an office about half a mile down the hall. We can talk there.”

  They sat down in the vacant office and looked at each other. Mr. Burne saw a pleasant, youngish man with cropped black hair, small expressive ears, high telltale cheekbones, slitty eyes that would need careful watching and graceful hands that would be a dead giveaway.

  “Now, Mr. Burne , how can I help you?” Skiaki said while his hands asked, “Why the hell have you come pestering me?”

  “Dr. Skiaki, I’m a colleague in a sense; I’m a professional witch doctor. One crucial part of my ceremonies is the burning of various forms of incense, but they’re all rather conventional. I was hoping that your expertise might suggest something different with which I could experiment”

  “I see. Interesting. You’ve been burning stacte, onycha, galbanum, frankincense… that sort of thing?”

  “Yes. All quite conventional.”

  “Most interesting. I could, of course, make many suggestions for new experiments, and yet—” Here Skiaki stopped and stared into space.

  After a long pause the warlock asked, “Is anything wrong, Doctor?”

  “Look here,” Skiaki burst out. “You’re on the wrong track. It’s the burning of incense that’s conventional and old-fashioned, and trying different scents won’t solve your problem. Why not experiment with an altogether different approach?”

  “And what would that be?”

  “The Odophone principle.”

  “Odophone?”

  “Yes. There’s a scale that exists among scents as among sounds. Sharp smells correspond to high notes and heavy smells with low notes. For example, ambergris is in the treble clef while violet is in the bass. I could draw up a scent scale for you, running perhaps two octaves. Then it would be up to you to compose the music.”

  “This is positively brilliant, Dr. Skiaki.”

  “Isn’t it?” Skiaki beamed. “But in all honesty I should point out that we’re collaborators in brilliance. I could never have come up with the idea if you hadn’t presented me with a most original challenge.”

  They made contact on this friendly note and talked shop enthusiastically, lunched together, told each other about themselves and made plans for the withcraft experiments in which Skiaki volunteered to participate despite the fact that he was no believer in diabolism.