The Space Merchants

by Frederik Pohl; C. M. Kornbluth

  "Random," he said with professional coldness. He was right. There were more slight head movements and a nervous flutter of the eyelids, which were working independently. He kept trying with questions. "Who—are—you?" brought a wrinkle between her eyes, and a tremor of the lip, but no more. Except for a minute, ambiguous residue, she was gone.

  Gently enough, the doctor began to explain to me: "I'm going to turn it off. You mustn't think there's any hope left. Evidently irreversible clinical death has occurred. It's often hard for a person with emotional ties to believe—"

  I watched her eyelids flutter, one with a two-four beat, the other with a three-four beat. "Turn it off," I said hoarsely. By "it" I meant Hester and not the machine. He cut the current and withdrew the needle.

  "There was nausea?" he asked. I nodded. "Her first space flight?" I nodded. "Abdominal pain?" I nodded. "No previous distress?" I shook my head. "History of vertigo?" I nodded, though I didn't know. He was driving at something. He kept asking, and the answers he wanted were as obvious as a magician's forced card. Allergies, easy bleeding, headaches, painful menses, afternoon fatigue—at last he said decisively: "I believe it's Fleischman's Disease. We don't know much about it. It stems from some derangement of function in the adrenocorticotropic bodies under free flight, we think. It kicks off a chain reaction of tissue-incompatibilities which affects the cerebrospinal fluid—"

  He looked at me and his tone changed. "I have some alcohol in the locker," he said. "Would you like—"

  I reached for the bulb and then remembered. "Have one with me," I said.

  He nodded and, with no stalling, drank from one of the nipples of a twin-valve social flask. I saw his Adam's apple work. "Not too much," he cautioned me. "Touchdown's soon."

  I stalled with conversation for a few minutes, watching him, and then swallowed half a pint of hundred proof. I could hardly tow myself back to the compartment.

  Hangover, grief, fear, and the maddening red tape of Moon debarkation. I must have acted pretty stupidly. A couple of times I heard crewmen say to port officials something like: "Take it easy on the guy. He lost his girl in flight."

  The line I took in the cramped receiving room of the endless questionnaires was that I didn't know anything about the mission. I was Groby, a 6, and the best thing to do would be to send me to Fowler Schocken. I understood that we had been supposed to report to him. They pooh-poohed that possibility and set me to wait on a bench while queries were sent to the Schocken branch in Luna City.

  I waited and watched and tried to think. It wasn't easy. The busy crowds in Receiving were made up of people going from one place to another place to do specified things. I didn't fit in the pattern; I was a sore thumb. They were going to get me ...

  A tube popped and blinked at the desk yards away. I read between half-closed eyes: S-C-H-O-C-K-E-N T-O R-E-C-E-I-V-I-N-G R-E Q-U-E-R-Y N-O M-I-S-S-I-O-N D-U-E T-H-I-S F-L-I-G-H-T N-O G-R-O-B-Y E-M-P-L-O-Y-E-D B-Y U-S F-O-W-L-E-R S-C-H-O-C-K-E-N U-N-Q.-U-E-R-I-E-D B-U-T I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E A-N-Y U-N-D-E-R S-T-A-R-C-L-A-S-S P-E-R-S-O-N-N-E-L A-S-S-I-G-N-E-D R-E-P-O-R-T H-I-M A-C-T D-I-S-C-R-E-T-I-O-N O-B-V-I-O-U-S-L-Y N-O-T O-U-R B-A-B-Y E-N-D.

  End indeed. They were glancing at me from the desk, and talkingin low tones. In only a moment they would be beckoning the Burns Detective guards standing here and there.

  I got up from the bench and sauntered into the crowd, with only one alternative left and that a frightening one. I made the casual gestures that, by their order and timing, constitute the Grand Hailing Sign of Distress of the Consies.

  A Burns guard shouldered his way through the crowd and put the arm on me. "Are you going to make trouble?" he demanded.

  "No," I said thickly. "Lead the way."

  He waved confidently at the desk and they waved back, with grins. He marched me, with his nightstick in the small of my back, through the startled crowd. Numbly I let him take me from the receiving dome down a tunnel-like shopping street.

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  PROVE YOU WERE HERE

  Warren Astron, D.P.S. Readings by Appointment Only

  blinked and twinkled at me from the shopfronts as new arrivals sauntered up and down, gaping.

  "Hold it," growled the guard. We stopped in front of the Warren Astron sign. He muttered: "Twist the nightstick away from me. Hit me a good lick over the head with it. Fire one charge at the streetlight. Duck into Astron's and give him the grip. Good luck—and try not to break my skull."

  "You're—you're—" I stammered.

  "Yeah," he said wryly. "I wish I hadn't seen the hailing sign. This is going to cost me two stripes and a raise. Get moving."

  I did. He surrendered the nightstick, and I tried not to make it too easy or too hard when I clouted him. The buckshot charge boomed out of the stick's muzzle, shattered the light overhead, and brought forth shrieks of dismay from the strollers. It was thunderous in the vaulted street. I darted through the chaste white Adam door of Astron's in the sudden darkness and blinked at a tall, thin man with a goatee.

  "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. "I read by appointment—" I took his arm in the grip. "Refuge?" he asked, abruptly shedding a fussy professional manner.

  "Yes. Fast."

  He led me through his parlor into a small, high observatory with a transparent dome, a refracting telescope, Hindu star maps, clocks and desks. One of these desks he heaved on mightily, and it turned back on hinges. There was a pit and handholds. "Down you go," he said.

  Down I went, into darkness.

  It was some six feet deep and six by four in area. It had a rough, unfinished feel to it. There was a pick and shovel leaning against one wall, and a couple of buckets filled with moonrock. Obviously a work in progress.

  I inverted one of the buckets and sat on it in the dark. After five hundred and seventy-six counted pulse-beats I sat on the floor and stopped counting. After that got too rugged I tried to brush moon-rock out of the way and lie down. After going through this cycle five times I heard voices directly overhead. One was the fussy, professional voice of Astron. The other was the globby, petulant voice of a fat woman. They seemed to be seated at the desk which sealed my hidey-hole.

  "—really seems excessive, my dear doctor."

  "As Madam wishes. If you will excuse me, I shall return to my ephemeris—"

  "But Dr. Astron, I wasn't implying—"

  "Madam will forgive me for jumping to the conclusion that shewas unwilling to grant me my customary honorarium . . . that is correct. Now, please, the birth date and hour?"

  She mumbled them, and I wondered briefly about the problem Astron must have with women who shaded their years.

  "So . . . Venus in the house of Mars . . . Mercury ascendant in the trine . . ."

  "What's that?" she asked with shrill suspicion. "I know quite a bit about the Great Art and I never heard that before."

  Blandly: "Madam must realize that a Moon observatory makes possible many things of which she has never heard before. It is possible by lunar observation to refine the Great Art to a point unattainable in the days when observations were made perforce through the thick and muddled air of Earth."

  "Oh—oh, of course. I've heard that, of course. Please go on, Dr. Astron. Will I be able to look through your telescope and see my planets?"

  "Later, madam. So ... Mercury ascendant in the trine, the planet of strife and chicanery, yet quartered with Jupiter, the giver of fortune, so . . ."

  The "reading" lasted perhaps half an hour, and there were two more like it that followed, and then there was silence. I actually dozed off until a voice called me. The desk had been heaved back again and Astron's head was silhouetted against the rectangular opening. "Come on out," he said. "It's safe for
twelve hours."

  I climbed out stiffly and noted that the observatory dome had been opaqued.

  "You're Groby," he stated.

  "Yes," I said, dead-pan.

  "We got a report on you by courier aboard the Ricardo. God knows what you're up to; it's too much for me." I noticed that his hand was in his pocket. "You turn up in Chlorella, you're a natural-born copysmith, you're transferred to New York, you get kidnaped in front of the Met—in earnest or by prearrangement—you kill a girl and disappear—and now you're on the Moon. God knows what you're up to. It's too much for me. A Central Committee member will be here shortly to try and figure you out. Is there anything you'd care to say? Like confessing that you're an agent provocateur? Or subject to manic-depressive psychosis?"

  I said nothing.

  "Very well," he said. Somewhere a door opened and closed. "That will be she," he told me.

  And my wife Kathy walked into the observatory.

  thirteen

  "Mitch," she said dazedly. "My God, Mitch." She laughed, with a note of hysteria. "You wouldn't wait, would you? You wouldn't stay on ice."

  The astrologer took the gun out of his pocket and asked her: "Is there—?"

  "No, Warren. It's all right. I know him. You can leave us alone. Please."

  He left us alone. Kathy dropped into a chair, trembling. I couldn't move. My wife was a kingpin Consie. I had thought I'd known her, and I'd been wrong. She had lied to me continuously and I had never known it.

  "Aren't you going to say anything?" I asked flatly.

  She visibly took hold of herself. "Shocked?" she asked. "You, a star-class copysmith consorting with a Consie? Afraid it'll get out and do you no good businesswise?" She forced a mocking smile that broke down as I looked at her. "Damn it," she flared, "all I ever asked from you after I came to my senses was for you to get out of my life and stay out. The biggest mistake I ever made was keeping Taunton from killing you."

  "You had Runstead shanghai me?"

  "Like a fool. What in God's name are you doing here? What are these wild-man stunts of yours? Why can't you leave me alone?" She was screaming by then.

  Kathy a Consie. Runstead a Consie. Deciding what was best for poor Mitch and doing it. Taunton deciding what was best for poor Mitch and doing it. Moving me this way and that across the chessboard.

  "Pawn queens," I said, and picked her up and slapped her. The staring intensity left her eyes and she looked merely surprised. "Get what's-his-name in here," I said.

  "Mitch, what are you up to?" She sounded like herself. "Get him in here." "You can't order me—"

  "You!" I yelled. "The witch-doctor!"

  He came running, right into my fist. Kathy was on my back, a clawing wildcat, as I went through his pockets. I found the gun—a wicked .25 UHV machine pistol—and shoved her to the floor. She looked up at me in astonishment, mechanically rubbing a bruised hip. "You're a mean son of a bitch," she said wonderingly.

  "All of a sudden," I agreed. "Does Fowler Schocken know you're on the Moon?"

  "No," she said, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together.

  "You're lying."

  "My little lie-detector," she crooned jeeringly. "My little fire-eating copysmith—"

  "Level with me," I said, "or you get this thing across the face."

  "Good God," she said. "You mean it." She put her hand to her face slowly, looking at the gun.

  "I'm glad that's settled. Does Fowler Schocken know you're on the Moon?"

  "Not exactly," she said, still watching the gun. "He did advise me to make the trip—to help me get over my bereavement."

  "Call him. Get him here." She didn't say anything or move to the phone. "Listen," I said. "This is Groby talking. Groby's been slugged, knifed, robbed, and kidnaped. He saw the only friend he had in the world poisoned a few hours ago. He's been played with by a lady sadist who knew her anatomy lessons. He killed her for it and he was glad of it. He's so deep in hock to Chlorella that he'll never get out. He's wanted for femicide and CB. The woman he thought he was in love with turned out to be a lying fanatic and a bitch. Groby has nothing to lose. I can put a burst through the dome up there and we'll all suck space. I can walk out into the street, give myself up, and tell exactly what I know. They won't believe me but they'll investigate to make sure, and sooner or later they'll get corroboration— after I've been brainburned, but that doesn't matter. I've nothing to lose."

  "And," she asked flatly, "what have you got to gain?"

  "Stop stalling. Call Schocken."

  "Not without one more try, Mitch. One word hurt specially— 'fanatic.' There were two reasons why I begged Runstead to shanghai you. I wanted you out of the way of Taunton's killers. And I wanted you to get a taste of the consumer's life. I thought—I don't know. I thought you'd see how fouled-up things have become. It's hard to see when you're star class. From the bottom it's easier to see. I thought I'd be able to talk sense to you after we brought you back to life, and we'd be able to work together on the only job worth doing. So it didn't work. That damned brain of yours—so good and so warped. All you want is to be star class again and eat and drink and sleep a little better than anybody else. It's too bad you're not a fanatic too. Same old Mitch. Well, I tried.

  "Go ahead and do whatever you think you have to do. Don't fret about it hurting me. It's not going to hurt worse than the nights we used to spend screaming at each other. Or the times I was out on Consie business and couldn't tell you and had to watch you being jealous. Or shipping you to Chlorella to try and make you a whole sane man in spite of what copysmithing's done to you. Or never being able to love you all the way, never being able to give myself to you entirely, mind or body, because there was this secret. I've been hurt. Pistol-whipping's a joke compared to the way I've been hurt."

  There was a pause that seemed to go on forever.

  "Call Schocken," I said unsteadily. "Tell him to come here. Then get out and take the stargazer with you. I—I don't know what I'm going to tell him. But I'm going to give you and your friends a couple of days' grace. Time to change headquarters and hailing signs and the rest of your insane rigmarole. Call Schocken and get out of here. I don't ever want to see you again."

  I couldn't read the look on her face as she picked up the phone and punched a number.

  "Mr. Schocken's sec8, please," she said. "This is Dr. Nevin— widow of Mr. Courtenay. You'll find me on the through list, I believe . . . thank you. Mr. Schocken's sec2, please. This is Dr. Nevin, Mr. Courtenay's widow. May I speak to Mr. Schocken's secretary? I'm listed . . . thank you . . . Hello, Miss Grice; this is Dr. Nevin. May I speak to Mr. Schocken? . . . Certainly . . . thank you . . ." She turned to me and said: "I'll have to wait a few moments." They passed in silence, and then she said: "Hello, Mr. Schocken . . .

  Well, thank you. I wonder if you could come and see me about a matter of importance . . . business and personal . . . the sooner the better, I'm afraid . . . Shopping One, off Receiving—Dr. Astron's . . . no, nothing like that. It's just a convenient meeting place. Thank you very much, Mr. Schocken."

  I wrenched the phone from her and heard Fowler Schocken's voice say: "Quite all right, my dear. The mystery is intriguing. Good-by." Click. She was quite clever enough to have faked a onesided conversation, but had not. The voice was unmistakable. The memories it brought back of Board mornings with their brilliance of dialectic interplay, hard and satisfying hours of work climaxed with a "Well done!" and shrewd guidance through the intricacies of the calling overwhelmed me with nostalgia. I was almost home.

  Silently and efficiently Kathy was shouldering the stargazer's limp body. Without a word she walked from the observatory. A door opened and closed.

  The hell with her. . . .

  It was minutes before there was a jovial halloo in the voice of Fowler Schocken: "Kathy! Anybody home?"

  "In here," I called.

  Two of our Brink's men and Fowler Schocken came in. His face went mottled purple. "Where's—" he began. And then: "You look
like—you are! Mitch!" He grabbed me and waltzed me hilariously around the circular room while the guards dropped their jaws. "What kind of a trick was that to play on an old man? What's the story, boy? Where's Kathy?" He stopped, puffing even under moon-weight.

  "I've been doing some undercover work," I said. "I'm afraid I've got myself into some trouble. Would you call for more guards? We may have to stand off Luna City Inc.'s Burns men." Our Brink's men, who took an artisan's pride in their work, grinned happily atthe thought.

  "Sure, Mitch. Get it done," he said sidewise to the sergeant, who went happily to the phone. "Now what's all this about?"

  "For the present," I said, "let's say it's been a field trip that went sour. Let's say I downgraded myself temporarily and voluntarily to assess Venus Section sentiment among the consumers—and I got stuck. Fowler, please let me beg off any more details. I'm in a bad way. Hungry, tired, scared, dirty."

  "All right, Mitch. You know my policy. Find a good horse, givehim his head, and back him to the limit. You've never let me down— and God knows I'm glad to see you around again. Venus Section can use you. Nothing's going right. The indices are down to 3.77 composite for North America when they should be 4.0 and rising. And turnover? God! I'm here recruiting, you know: a little raid on Luna City Inc., Moonmines, and the other outfits for some space-seasoned executives."

  It was good to be home. "Who's heading it up?" I asked.

  "I am. We rotated a few Board men through the spot and there wasn't any pickup. In spite of my other jobs I had to take over Venus Section direct. Am I glad to see you!"

  "Runstead?"

  "He's vice-ing for me, poor man. What's this jam you're in with the guards? Where's Kathy?"

  "Please, later . . . I'm wanted for femicide and CB on Earth. Here I'm a suspicious character without clearance. Also I resisted arrest, clouted a guard, and damaged Luna City property."

  He looked grave. "You know, I don't like the sound of CB," he said. "I assume there was a flaw in the contract?"

  "Several," I assured him.