The Robert Sheckley Megapack

by Robert Sheckley

The frown slid off his face, and the customary smile replaced it. “But enough of that! Let’s talk about you.”

  The smile widened as Pathis opened his briefcase. “Now, then, your account. You owe us two hundred and three thousand dollars and twenty-nine cents, Mr. Carrin, as of your last purchase. Right?”

  “Right,” Carrin said, remembering the amount from his own papers. “Here’s my installment.”

  He handed Pathis an envelope, which the man checked and put in his pocket.

  “Fine. Now you know, Mr. Carrin, that you won’t live long enough to pay us the full two hundred thousand, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t suppose I will,” Carrin said soberly.

  He was only thirty-nine, with a full hundred years of life before him, thanks to the marvels of medical science. But at a salary of three thousand a year, he still couldn’t pay it all off and have enough to support a family on at the same time.

  “Of course, we would not want to deprive you of necessities, which in any case is fully protected by the laws we helped formulate and pass. To say nothing of the terrific items that are coming out next year. Things you wouldn’t want to miss, sir!”

  Mr. Carrin nodded. Certainly he wanted new items.

  “Well, suppose we make the customary arrangement. If you will just sign over your son’s earnings for the first thirty years of his adult life, we can easily arrange credit for you.”

  * * * *

  Mr. Pathis whipped the papers out of his briefcase and spread them in front of Carrin.

  “If you’ll just sign here, sir.”

  “Well,” Carrin said, “I’m not sure. I’d like to give the boy a start in life, not saddle him with—”

  “But my dear sir,” Pathis interposed, “this is for your son as well. He lives here, doesn’t he? He has a right to enjoy the luxuries, the marvels of science.”

  “Sure,” Carrin said. “Only—”

  “Why, sir, today the average man is living like a king. A hundred years ago the richest man in the world couldn’t buy what any ordinary citizen possesses at present. You mustn’t look upon it as a debt. It’s an investment.”

  “That’s true,” Carrin said dubiously.

  He thought about his son and his rocket ship models, his star charts, his maps. Would it be right? he asked himself.

  “What’s wrong?” Pathis asked cheerfully.

  “Well, I was just wondering,” Carrin said. “Signing over my son’s earnings—you don’t think I’m getting in a little too deep, do you?”

  “Too deep? My dear sir!” Pathis exploded into laughter. “Do you know Mellon down the block? Well, don’t say I said it, but he’s already mortgaged his grandchildren’s salary for their full life-expectancy! And he doesn’t have half the goods he’s made up his mind to own! We’ll work out something for him. Service to the customer is our job and we know it well.”

  Carrin wavered visibly.

  “And after you’re gone, sir, they’ll all belong to your son.”

  That was true, Carrin thought. His son would have all the marvelous things that filled the house. And after all, it was only thirty years out of a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty.

  He signed with a flourish.

  “Excellent!” Pathis said. “And by the way, has your home got an A. E. Master-operator?”

  It hadn’t. Pathis explained that a Master-operator was new this year, a stupendous advance in scientific engineering. It was designed to take over all the functions of housecleaning and cooking, without its owner having to lift a finger.

  “Instead of running around all day, pushing half a dozen different buttons, with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!”

  Since it was only five hundred and thirty-five dollars, Carrin signed for one, having it added to his son’s debt.

  Right’s right, he thought, walking Pathis to the door. This house will be Billy’s some day. His and his wife’s. They certainly will want everything up-to-date.

  Just one button, he thought. That would be a time-saver!

  * * * *

  After Pathis left, Carrin sat back in an adjustable chair and turned on the solido. After twisting the Ezi-dial, he discovered that there was nothing he wanted to see. He tilted back the chair and took a nap.

  The something on his mind was still bothering him.

  “Hello, darling!” He awoke to find his wife was home. She kissed him on the ear. “Look.”

  She had bought an A. E. Sexitizer-negligee. He was pleasantly surprised that that was all she had bought. Usually, Leela returned from shopping laden down.

  “It’s lovely,” he said.

  She bent over for a kiss, then giggled—a habit he knew she had picked up from the latest popular solido star. He wished she hadn’t.

  “Going to dial supper,” she said, and went to the kitchen. Carrin smiled, thinking that soon she would be able to dial the meals without moving out of the living room. He settled back in his chair, and his son walked in.

  “How’s it going, Son?” he asked heartily.

  “All right,” Billy answered listlessly.

  “What’sa matter, Son?” The boy stared at his feet, not answering. “Come on, tell Dad what’s the trouble.”

  Billy sat down on a packing case and put his chin in his hands. He looked thoughtfully at his father.

  “Dad, could I be a Master Repairman if I wanted to be?”

  Mr. Carrin smiled at the question. Billy alternated between wanting to be a Master Repairman and a rocket pilot. The repairmen were the elite. It was their job to fix the automatic repair machines. The repair machines could fix just about anything, but you couldn’t have a machine fix the machine that fixed the machine. That was where the Master Repairmen came in.

  But it was a highly competitive field and only a very few of the best brains were able to get their degrees. And, although the boy was bright, he didn’t seem to have an engineering bent.

  “It’s possible, Son. Anything is possible.”

  “But is it possible for me?”

  “I don’t know,” Carrin answered, as honestly as he could.

  “Well, I don’t want to be a Master Repairman anyway,” the boy said, seeing that the answer was no. “I want to be a space pilot.”

  “A space pilot, Billy?” Leela asked, coming in to the room. “But there aren’t any.”

  “Yes, there are,” Billy argued. “We were told in school that the government is going to send some men to Mars.”

  “They’ve been saying that for a hundred years,” Carrin said, “and they still haven’t gotten around to doing it.”

  “They will this time.”

  “Why would you want to go to Mars?” Leela asked, winking at Carrin. “There are no pretty girls on Mars.”

  “I’m not interested in girls. I just want to go to Mars.”

  “You wouldn’t like it, honey,” Leela said. “It’s a nasty old place with no air.”

  “It’s got some air. I’d like to go there,” the boy insisted sullenly. “I don’t like it here.”

  “What’s that?” Carrin asked, sitting up straight. “Is there anything you haven’t got? Anything you want?”

  “No, sir. I’ve got everything I want.” Whenever his son called him ‘sir,’ Carrin knew that something was wrong.

  “Look, Son, when I was your age I wanted to go to Mars, too. I wanted to do romantic things. I even wanted to be a Master Repairman.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “Well, I grew up. I realized that there were more important things. First I had to pay off the debt my father had left me, and then I met your mother—”

  Leela giggled.

  “—and I wanted a home of my own. It’ll be the same with you. You’ll pay off your debt and get married, the same as the rest of us.”

  * * * *

  Billy was silent for a while, then he brushed his dark hair—straight, like his father’s—back from his forehead and wet his lips.
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  “How come I have debts, sir?”

  Carrin explained carefully. About the things a family needed for civilized living, and the cost of those items. How they had to be paid. How it was customary for a son to take on a part of his parent’s debt, when he came of age.

  Billy’s silence annoyed him. It was almost as if the boy were reproaching him. After he had slaved for years to give the ungrateful whelp every luxury!

  “Son,” he said harshly, “have you studied history in school? Good. Then you know how it was in the past. Wars. How would you like to get blown up in a war?”

  The boy didn’t answer.

  “Or how would you like to break your back for eight hours a day, doing work a machine should handle? Or be hungry all the time? Or cold, with the rain beating down on you, and no place to sleep?”

  He paused for a response, got none and went on. “You live in the most fortunate age mankind has ever known. You are surrounded by every wonder of art and science. The finest music, the greatest books and art, all at your fingertips. All you have to do is push a button.” He shifted to a kindlier tone. “Well, what are you thinking?”

  “I was just wondering how I could go to Mars,” the boy said. “With the debt, I mean. I don’t suppose I could get away from that.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Unless I stowed away on a rocket.”

  “But you wouldn’t do that.”

  “No, of course not,” the boy said, but his tone lacked conviction.

  “You’ll stay here and marry a very nice girl,” Leela told him.

  “Sure I will,” Billy said. “Sure.” He grinned suddenly. “I didn’t mean any of that stuff about going to Mars. I really didn’t.”

  “I’m glad of that,” Leela answered.

  “Just forget I mentioned it,” Billy said, smiling stiffly. He stood up and raced upstairs.

  “Probably gone to play with his rockets,” Leela said. “He’s such a little devil.”

  * * * *

  The Carrins ate a quiet supper, and then it was time for Mr. Carrin to go to work. He was on night shift this month. He kissed his wife good-by, climbed into his Jet-lash and roared to the factory. The automatic gates recognized him and opened. He parked and walked in.

  Automatic lathes, automatic presses—everything was automatic. The factory was huge and bright, and the machines hummed softly to themselves, doing their job and doing it well.

  Carrin walked to the end of the automatic washing machine assembly line, to relieve the man there.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Sure,” the man said. “Haven’t had a bad one all year. These new models here have built-in voices. They don’t light up like the old ones.”

  Carrin sat down where the man had sat and waited for the first washing machine to come through. His job was the soul of simplicity. He just sat there and the machines went by him. He pressed a button on them and found out if they were all right. They always were. After passing him, the washing machines went to the packaging section.

  The first one slid by on the long slide of rollers. He pressed the starting button on the side.

  “Ready for the wash,” the washing machine said.

  Carrin pressed the release and let it go by.

  That boy of his, Carrin thought. Would he grow up and face his responsibilities? Would he mature and take his place in society? Carrin doubted it. The boy was a born rebel. If anyone got to Mars, it would be his kid.

  But the thought didn’t especially disturb him.

  “Ready for the wash.” Another machine went by.

  Carrin remembered something about Miller. The jovial man had always been talking about the planets, always kidding about going off somewhere and roughing it. He hadn’t, though. He’d committed suicide.

  “Ready for the wash.”

  Carrin had eight hours in front of him, and he loosened his belt to prepare for it. Eight hours of pushing buttons and listening to a machine announce its readiness.

  “Ready for the wash.”

  He pressed the release.

  “Ready for the wash.”

  Carrin’s mind strayed from the job, which didn’t need much attention in any case. He wished he had done what he had longed to do as a youngster.

  It would have been great to be a rocket pilot, to push a button and go to Mars.

  BAD MEDICINE

  On May 2, 2103, Elwood Caswell walked rapidly down Broadway with a loaded revolver hidden in his coat pocket. He didn’t want to use the weapon, but feared he might anyhow. This was a justifiable assumption, for Caswell was a homicidal maniac.

  It was a gentle, misty spring day and the air held the smell of rain and blossoming dogwood. Caswell gripped the revolver in his sweaty right hand and tried to think of a single valid reason why he should not kill a man named Magnessen, who, the other day, had commented on how well Caswell looked.

  What business was it of Magnessen’s how he looked? Damned busybodies, always spoiling things for everybody.…

  Caswell was a choleric little man with fierce red eyes, bulldog jowls and ginger-red hair. He was the sort you would expect to find perched on a detergent box, orating to a crowd of lunching businessmen and amused students, shouting, “Mars for the Martians, Venus for the Venusians!”

  But in truth, Caswell was uninterested in the deplorable social conditions of extraterrestrials. He was a jetbus conductor for the New York Rapid Transit Corporation. He minded his own business. And he was quite mad.

  Fortunately, he knew this at least part of the time, with at least half of his mind.

  * * * *

  Perspiring freely, Caswell continued down Broadway toward the 43rd Street branch of Home Therapy Appliances, Inc. His friend Magnessen would be finishing work soon, returning to his little apartment less than a block from Caswell’s. How easy it would be, how pleasant, to saunter in, exchange a few words and.…

  No! Caswell took a deep gulp of air and reminded himself that he didn’t really want to kill anyone. It was not right to kill people. The authorities would lock him up, his friends wouldn’t understand, his mother would never have approved.

  But these arguments seemed pallid, over-intellectual and entirely without force. The simple fact remained—he wanted to kill Magnessen.

  Could so strong a desire be wrong? Or even unhealthy?

  Yes, it could! With an agonized groan, Caswell sprinted the last few steps into the Home Therapy Appliances Store.

  Just being within such a place gave him an immediate sense of relief. The lighting was discreet, the draperies were neutral, the displays of glittering therapy machines were neither too bland nor obstreperous. It was the kind of place where a man could happily lie down on the carpet in the shadow of the therapy machines, secure in the knowledge that help for any sort of trouble was at hand.

  A clerk with fair hair and a long, supercilious nose glided up softly, but not too softly, and murmured, “May one help?”

  “Therapy!” said Caswell.

  “Of course, sir,” the clerk answered, smoothing his lapels and smiling winningly. “That is what we are here for.” He gave Caswell a searching look, performed an instant mental diagnosis, and tapped a gleaming white-and-copper machine.

  “Now this,” the clerk said, “is the new Alcoholic Reliever, built by IBM and advertised in the leading magazines. A handsome piece of furniture, I think you will agree, and not out of place in any home. It opens into a television set.”

  With a flick of his narrow wrist, the clerk opened the Alcoholic Reliever, revealing a 52-inch screen.

  “I need—” Caswell began.

  “Therapy,” the clerk finished for him. “Of course. I just wanted to point out that this model need never cause embarrassment for yourself, your friends or loved ones. Notice, if you will, the recessed dial which controls the desired degree of drinking. See? If you do not wish total abstinence, you can set it to heavy, moderate, social or light. That is a new feature, unique in mechan
otherapy.”

  “I am not an alcoholic,” Caswell said, with considerable dignity. “The New York Rapid Transit Corporation does not hire alcoholics.”

  “Oh,” said the clerk, glancing distrustfully at Caswell’s bloodshot eyes. “You seem a little nervous. Perhaps the portable Bendix Anxiety Reducer—”

  “Anxiety’s not my ticket, either. What have you got for homicidal mania?”

  The clerk pursed his lips. “Schizophrenic or manic-depressive origins?”

  “I don’t know,” Caswell admitted, somewhat taken aback.

  “It really doesn’t matter,” the clerk told him. “Just a private theory of my own. From my experience in the store, redheads and blonds are prone to schizophrenia, while brunettes incline toward the manic-depressive.”

  “That’s interesting. Have you worked here long?”

  “A week. Now then, here is just what you need, sir.” He put his hand affectionately on a squat black machine with chrome trim.

  “What’s that?”

  “That, sir, is the Rex Regenerator, built by General Motors. Isn’t it handsome? It can go with any decor and opens up into a well-stocked bar. Your friends, family, loved ones need never know—”

  “Will it cure a homicidal urge?” Caswell asked. “A strong one?”

  “Absolutely. Don’t confuse this with the little ten amp neurosis models. This is a hefty, heavy-duty, twenty-five amp machine for a really deep-rooted major condition.”

  “That’s what I’ve got,” said Caswell, with pardonable pride.

  “This baby’ll jolt it out of you. Big, heavy-duty thrust bearings! Oversize heat absorbers! Completely insulated! Sensitivity range of over—”

  “I’ll take it,” Caswell said. “Right now. I’ll pay cash.”

  “Fine! I’ll just telephone Storage and—”

  “This one’ll do,” Caswell said, pulling out his billfold. “I’m in a hurry to use it. I want to kill my friend Magnessen, you know.”

  The clerk clucked sympathetically. “You wouldn’t want to do that… Plus five percent sales tax. Thank you, sir. Full instructions are inside.”

  Caswell thanked him, lifted the Regenerator in both arms and hurried out.

  After figuring his commission, the clerk smiled to himself and lighted a cigarette. His enjoyment was spoiled when the manager, a large man impressively equipped with pince-nez, marched out of his office.