The Space Merchants

by Frederik Pohl; C. M. Kornbluth

  "I'll come along with you if I may, Mitch."

  We gawked through the windows like tourists as the jet slid into the traffic pattern over San Diego and circled monotonously waiting for its calldown from the tower. Kathy had never been there before. I had been there once, but there's always something new to see because buildings are always falling down and new ones being put up. And what buildings! They're more like plastic tents on plastic skeletons than anything else. That kind of construction means they give and sway when a quake jiggles southern California instead of snapping and crumbling. And if the quake is bad enough and the skeleton does snap, what have you lost? Just some plastic sheeting that broke along the standard snap grooves and some plastic structural members that may or may not be salvageable.

  From a continental economic viewpoint, it's also a fine idea not to tie up too much fancy construction in southern California. Since the H-bomb tests did things to the San Andreas fault, there's been a pretty fair chance that the whole area would slide quietly into the Pacific some day—any day. But when we looked down out of the traffic pattern, it still was there and, like everybody else, we knew that it would probably stay there for the duration of our visit. Before my time there had been some panic when the quakes became daily, but I'd blame that on the old-style construction that fell hard and in jagged hunks. Eventually people got used to it and—as you'd expect in southern California—even proud of it. Natives could cite you reams of statistics to prove that you stand more chance of being struck by lightning or a meteorite than you do of getting killed in one of their quakes.

  We got a speedy three-man limousine to whisk us to the local branch of Fowler Schocken Associates. My faint uneasiness about Market Research extended to the possibility that Ham Harris might have a tipster at the airport to give him time to tidy up for a full-dress inspection. And that kind of thing is worse than useless.

  The receptionist gave me my first setback. She didn't recognize my face and she didn't recognize my name when I gave it to her. She said lazily: "I'll see if Mr. Harris is busy, Mr. Connelly."

  "Mr. Courtenay, young lady. And I'm Mr. Harris's boss." Kathy and I walked in on a scene of idleness and slackness that curled my hair.

  Harris, with his coat off, was playing cards with two young employees. Two more were gaping, glassy-eyed, before a hypnoteleset, obviously in trance state. Another man was lackadaisically punching a calculator, one-finger system.

  "Harris!" I thundered.

  Everybody except the two men in trance swiveled my way, open-mouthed. I walked to the hypnoteleset and snapped it off. They came to, groggily.

  "Mum-mum-mum-mister Courtenay," Harris stuttered. "We didn't expect—"

  "Obviously. The rest of you, carry on. Harris, let's go into your office." Unobtrusively, Kathy followed us.

  "Harris," I said, "good work excuses a lot. We've been getting damn good work out of you on this project. I'm disturbed, gravely disturbed, by the slovenly atmosphere I see here. But that can be corrected—"

  His phone rang, and I picked it up.

  A voice said excitedly: "Ham? He's here. Make it snappy; he took a limousine."

  "Thanks," I said and hung up. "Your tipster at the airport," I told Harris. He went white. "Show me your tally sheets," I said. "Your interview forms. Your punchcard codes. Your masters. Your sigma-progress charts. The works. Everything, in short, that you wouldn't expect me to ask to see. Get them out."

  He stood there a long, long time and finally said: "There aren't any."

  "What have you got to show me?"

  "Finalizations," he muttered. "Composites."

  "Fakes, you mean? Fiction, like the stuff you've been feeding us over the wire?"

  He nodded. His face was sick.

  "How could you do it, Harris?" I demanded. "How—could—you —do it?"

  He poured out a confused torrent of words. He hadn't meant to. It was his first independent job. Maybe he was just no damn good. He'd tried to keep the lower personnel up to snuff while he was dogging it himself but it couldn't be done; they sensed it and took liberties and you didn't dare check them up. His self-pitying note changed; he became weakly belligerent. What difference did it make anyway? It was just preliminary paperwork. One man's guess was as good as another's. And anyway the whole project might go down the drain. What if he had been taking it easy; he bet there were plenty of other people who took it easy and everything came out all right anyway.

  "No," I said. "You're wrong and you ought to know you're wrong. Advertising's an art, but it depends on the sciences of sampling, area-testing, and customer research. You've knocked the props from under our program. We'll salvage what we can and start again."

  He took a feeble stand: "You're wasting your time if you do that, Mr. Courtenay. I've been working closely with Mr. Runstead for a long time. I know what he thinks, and he's as big a shot as you are. He thinks this paperwork is just a lot of expensive nonsense."

  I knew Matt Runstead better than that. I knew he was sound and so did everybody else. "What," I asked sharply, "have you got to back that statement up with? Letters? Memos? Taped calls?"

  "I must have something like that," he said, and dived into his desk. He flipped through letters and memos, and played snatches of tape for minutes while the look of fear and frustration on his face deepened. At last he said in bewilderment: "I can't seem to find anything—but I'm sure—"

  Sure he was sure. The highest form of our art is to convince the customer without letting him know he's being convinced. This weak sister had been indoctrinated by Runstead with the unrealistic approach and then sent in on my project, to do a good job of bitching it up.

  "You're fired, Harris," I said. "Get out and don't come back. And I wouldn't advise you to try for a job in the advertising profession after this."

  I went out into the office and announced: "You're through. All of you. Collect your personal stuff and leave the office. You'll get your checks by mail."

  They gaped. Beside me, Kathy murmured: "Mitch, is that really necessary?"

  "You're damned right it's necessary. Did one of them tip off the home office on what was going on? No; they just relaxed and drifted. I said it was an infection, didn't I? This is it." Ham Harris drifted past us toward the door, hurt bewilderment on his face. He had been so sure Runstead would back him up. He had his crammed briefcase in one hand and his raincoat in the other. He didn't look at me.

  I went into his vacated office and picked up the direct wire to New York. "Hester? This is Mr. Courtenay. I've just fired the entire San Diego branch. Notify Personnel and have them do whatever's necessary about their pay. And get me Mr. Runstead on the line."

  I drummed my fingers impatiently for a long minute, and then Hester said: "Mr. Courtenay, I'm sorry to keep you waiting. Mr. Runstead's secretary says he's left for Little America on one of those tours. She says he cleaned up the A.I.G. thing and felt like a rest."

  "Felt like a rest. Good God almighty. Hester, get me a New York to Little America reservation. I'm shooting right back on the next jet. I want to just barely touch ground before I zip off to the Pole. Got it?"

  "Yes, Mr. Courtenay."

  I hung up and found that Kathy was staring at me. "You know, Mitch," she said, "I've been uncharitable to you in my time. Kicking about your bad temper. I can see where you got it if this has been a typical operation."

  "It's not typical," I said. "It's the worst case of flagrant obstructionism I've ever seen. But there's a lot of it. Everybody trying to make everybody else look bad. Darling, I've got to get to the field now and bull my way onto the next eastbound. Do you want to come too?"

  She hesitated. "You won't mind if I stay and do a little tourist stuff by myself?"

  "No, of course not. You have a good time and when you get back to New York I'll be there."

  We kissed, and I raced out. The office was clear by then and I told the building manager to lock it until further notice when Kathy left.

  I looked up from the stree
t and she waved at me from the strange, flimsy building.

  six

  I swung off the ramp at New York, and Hester was right there. "Good girl," I told her. "When's the Pole rocket shoot off?"

  "Twelve minutes, from Strip Six, Mr. Courtenay. Here are your ticket and the reservation. And some lunch in case—"

  "Fine. I did miss a meal." We headed for Strip Six, with me chewing a regenerated cheese sandwich as I walked. "What's up at the office?" I asked indistinctly.

  "Big excitement about you firing the San Diego people. Personnel sent up a complaint to Mr. Schocken and he upheld you— approximately Force Four."

  That wasn't too good. Force Twelve—hurricane—would have been a blast from his office on the order of: "How dare you housekeepers question the decision of a Board man working on his own project? Never let me catch you—" and so on. Force Four—rising gale, small craft make for harbor—was something like: "Gentlemen, I'm sure Mr. Courtenay had perfectly good reasons for doing what he did. Often the Big Picture is lost to the purely routine workers in our organization—"

  I asked Hester: "Is Runstead's secretary just a hired hand or one of his—" I was going to say "stooges" but smoothly reversed my field "—one of his confidants?"

  "She's pretty close to him," Hester said cautiously.

  "What was her reaction to the San Diego business?"

  "Somebody told me she laughed her head off, Mr. Courtenay."

  I didn't push it any harder. Finding out where I stood with respect to the big guns was legitimate. Asking about the help was asking her to rat on them. Not that there weren't girls who did. "I expect to be right back," I told her. "All I want to do is straighten something out with Runstead."

  "Your wife won't be along?" she asked.

  "No. She's a doctor. I'm going to tear Runstead into five or six pieces; if Dr. Nevin were along she might try to put them back together again."

  Hester laughed politely and said: "Have a pleasant trip, Mr. Courtenay." We were at the ramp on Strip Six.

  It wasn't a pleasant trip; it was a miserable trip on a miserable, undersized tourist rocket. We flew low, and there were prism windows at all seats, which never fail to make me airsick. You turn your head and look out and you're looking straight down. Worse, all the ads were Taunton Associates jobs. You look out the window and just as you convince your stomach that everything's all right and yourself that it's interesting country below, wham: a sleazy, over-sexed Taunton ad for some crummy product opaques the window and one of their nagging, stupid jingles drills into your ear.

  Over the Amazon valley we were running into some very interesting stuff, and I was inspecting Electric Three, which happens to be the world's biggest power dam, when, wham:

  BolsterBra, BolsterBra,

  Bolsters all the way;

  Don't you crumple, don't you slumple;

  Keep them up to slay!

  The accompanying before-and-after live pix were in the worst possible taste, and I found myself thanking God again that I worked for Fowler Schocken Associates.

  It was the same off Tierra del Fuego. We went off the great circle course for a look at the whale fisheries, vast sea areas enclosed by booms that let the plankton in and didn't let the whales out. I was watching with fascination as a cow whale gave suck to her calf—it looked something like an aerial refueling operation—when the window opaqued again for another dose of Taunton shock treatment:

  Sister, do you smell like this to your mister?

  The olfactory went on, and it was the very last straw. I had to use my carton while the ad chirped:

  No wonder he's hard to get! Use Swett! and one of those heavenly-harmony trios caroled in waltz time:

  Perspire, perspire, perspire, But don't—kill off his desire—

  and then a gruff, prose, medical pitch:

  DON'T TRY TO STOP PERSPIRATION.

  IT'S SUICIDE. DOCTORS ADVISE

  A DEODORANT AND NOT AN ASTRINGENT.

  and then back to the first line and the olfactory. This time it made no difference; I had nothing more to give.

  Taunton's was great on the gruff medical pitch; you'd think they invented it.

  My seatmate, a nondescript customer in Universal apparel, watched with a little amusement as I retched. "Too much for you, friend?" he asked, showing the maddening superiority people who suffer from motion-sickness know too well.

  "Uh," I said.

  "Some of those ads are enough to make anybody sick," he said, greatly encouraged by my brilliant riposte.

  Well, I couldn't let that get by. "Exactly what do you mean by that remark?" I asked evenly.

  It frightened him. "I only meant that it smelled a little strong," he said hastily. "Just that particular ad. I didn't mean ads in general. There's nothing wrong with me, my friend!"

  "Good for you," I said, and turned away.

  He was still worried, and told me: "I'm perfectly sound, friend. I come from a good family, I went to a good school. I'm in the production end myself—die-maker in Philly—but I know the stuffs got to be sold. Channels of distribution. Building markets. Vertical integration. See? I'm perfectly sound!"

  "Okay," I grunted. "Then watch your mouth."

  He shriveled into his half of the seat. I hadn't enjoyed squelching him, but it was a matter of principle. He should have known better.

  We were held up over Little America while a couple of other tourist craft touched down. One of them was Indian and I mellowed at the sight. That ship, from nose to tail, was Indiastry-built. The crewmen were Indiastry-trained and Indiastry-employed. The passengers, waking and sleeping, paid tribute minute by minute to Indiastry. And Indiastry paid tribute to Fowler Schocken Associates.

  A tow truck hauled us into the great double-walled plastic doughnut that is Little America. There was only one check point. Little America is an invisible export—a dollar trap for the tourists of the world, with no military aspects. (There are Polar military bases, but they are small, scattered, and far under the ice.) A small thorium reactor heats and powers the place. Even if some nation desperate for fissionable material were to try and get it, they wouldn't have anything of military value. Windmills eke out the thorium reactor, and there's some "heat pump" arrangement that I don't understand which ekes out the windmills.

  At the check point I asked about Runstead. The officer looked him up and said: "He's on the two-day tour out of New York. Thomas Cook and Son. His quarters are III-C-2205." He pulled out a map of the place and showed me that this meant third ring in, third floor up, fifth sector, twenty-second room. "You can't miss it. I can accommodate you with a nearby room, Mr. Courtenay—"

  "Thanks. Later." I shoved off and elbowed my way through crowds chattering in a dozen languages to III-C-2205 and rang the bell. No answer.

  A pleasant young man said to me: "I'm Mr. Cameron, the tour director. Can I help you?"

  "Where's Mr. Runstead? I want to see him on business."

  "Dear me. We try to get away from all that—I'll look in my register if you'll just wait a moment."

  He took me to his office-bedroom-bath up the sector a way and pawed through a register. "The Starrzelius Glacier climb," he said. "Dear me. He went alone. Left at 0700, checked out in electric suit with R.D.F. and rations. He should be back in five hours or so. Have you arranged for quarters yet, Mr.—?"

  "Not yet. I want to go after Runstead. It's urgent." And it was. I was going to burst a blood vessel if I didn't get my hands on him.

  The slightly fluttery tour director spent about five minutes convincing me that the best thing for me to do was sign on for his tour and he'd arrange everything. Otherwise I'd be shifted from pillar to post buying and renting necessary equipment from concessionaires and then as like as not be turned back at checkout and not be able to find the concessionaires again while my vacation was ticking away. I signed on and he beamed. He gave me a room in the sector—plenty of luxury. It would have been twelve by eighteen if it hadn't been slightly wedge-shaped.

&nbs
p; In five minutes he was dealing out equipment to me. "Power pack—strap it on so. That's the only thing that can go wrong; if you have a power failure take a sleepy pill and don't worry. You'll freeze, but we'll pick you up before there's tissue damage. Boots. Plug them in so. Gloves. Plug them in. Coveralls. Hood. Snowglasses. Radio direction finder. Just tell the checkout guard 'Starrzelius Glacier' and he'll set it. Two simple switches plainly labeled 'Out' and 'In.' Outward bound it goes 'beep-beep'—ascending. Inward bound it goes 'beep-beep'—descending. Just remember, going up the glacier, the tone goes up. Going down the glacier, the tone goes down. Distress signal—a big red handle. You just pull and immediately you start broadcasting. The planes will be out in fifteen minutes. You have to pay expenses for the search and rescue, so I wouldn't yank the handle just for a ride back. It's always possible to rest, have a sip of Coffiest, and keep on going. Route-marked map. Snowshoes. Gyrocompass. And rations. Mr. Courteney, you are equipped. I'll lead you to checkout."

  The outfit wasn't as bad as it sounded. I've been more heavily bundled up against the lakeside winds in a Chicago winter. The lumpy items, like the power pack, the R.D.F., and the rations, were well distributed. The snowshoes folded into a pair of staffs with steel points for ice climbing, and went into a quiver on my back.

  Checkout was very thorough. They started with my heart and worked through my equipment, with particular emphasis on the power pack. I passed, and they set the R.D.F. for Starrzelius Glacier, with many more warnings not to overdo it.

  It wasn't cold, not inside the suit. For a moment only I opened the face flap. Wham! 1 closed it again. Forty below, they had told me —a foolish-sounding figure until my nose felt it for a split second. I didn't need the snow shoes at the base of the towering plastic doughnut; it was crust ice that my spike-soled shoes bit into. I oriented the map with the little gyrocompass and trudged off into the vast whiteness along the proper bearing. From time to time I pressed my left sleeve, squeezing the molded R.D.F. switch, and heard inside my hood a cheerful, reassuring "Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Keep-beep."