by John Brunner
So she’d come back in half an hour, having socialized, and show what she’d got, and say, “Darling, don’t worry, whatever’s the matter it’ll come right in the end, let’s turn on and relax, hm?”
Dennie, I love you terribly, and if you’re sweet and kind to me one more time tonight I shall scream.
Here was the phone. He dialed with shaking fingers, and shortly a woman replied. He said, “Dr. Clayford, please. It’s urgent.”
“Dr. Clayford will be in his office on Monday as usual,” the woman replied.
“This is Philip Mason. Area manager of—”
“Oh, Mr. Mason!” Abruptly cordial. Clayford was one of the physicians Philip sent Angel City’s clients to for examination prior to taking out a life policy; it behooved the doctor to be cooperative. “Just a second, I’ll see if my husband’s free.”
“Thank you.” Nervous, he fumbled out a cigarette. His smoking had nearly doubled since his trip to LA. He’d been trying to cut it down; instead, here he was getting through two packs a day.
“Yes?” A gruff voice. He started.
“Ah, doctor!” One didn’t say “doc” to Clayford, let alone call him by his first name. He was an old-fashioned family GP, who at sixty still affected the dark suits and white shirts that had marked out sober young men with “a great future ahead of them” when he was in college. Talking to him was a little like talking to a minister; one felt a sense of distance, an intangible barrier. But right now it had to be breached.
“Look, I need you advice, and—uh—help.”
“Well?”
Philip swallowed hard. “It’s like this. Just before Christmas I was called to LA, to the headquarters of my company, and because my wife doesn’t like planes—you know, pollution—I drove, and broke the trip in Vegas. And there I—uh—well, I got involved with a girl. Absolutely without meaning to. Time and opportunity, you know!”
“So?”
“So ... Well, I wasn’t certain until days later, but now I don’t think there’s any doubt. She left me with—uh—gonorrhea.”
Stained undershorts floating around him, like mocking bats.
“I see.” Clayford not in the least sympathetic. “Well, you should go to the clinic on Market, then. I believe they’re open Saturday mornings.”
Philip had seen it, in a depressed and depressing area: ashamed of its function, persecuted by the righteous majority, always full of young people pretending rebellious defiance.
“But surely, doctor—”
“Mr. Mason, that’s my professional advice, and there’s an end of it.”
“But my wife!”
“Have you had relations with her since this escapade of yours?”
“Well, on New Year’s—” Philip began, head full of all the reasons: can’t not, this is the day of the year, it’s kind of symbolic and we’ve made a tradition of it since we first met ...
“Then you’ll have to take her with you,” Clayford said, and didn’t even add a good-night.
The bastard! The filthy stuck-up stiff-necked—!
Oh, what’s the use?
He set down the phone, thinking of all the suggestions he’d had ready: a white lie, say about hepatitis which everyone knew to be endemic in California, anything that might require a short course of a suitable antibiotic ...
My God! All I have is the second commonest infectious disease after measles! It says so in the papers all the time.
Distraction. Anything. Switch on the TV. Maybe the doctor at the clinic will be more helpful and I’ll still be able to cover up. If I only had to confess about screwing Laura that’d be okay, Denise wouldn’t leave me over that. But telling her she’s been given the clap courtesy of a man-hungry stranger ...!
Transistorized, the sound came on quicker than the picture, and his ears suddenly stung with the sense of what was being said. It was the late news summary. He felt as though the earth had opened and he was falling, miles deep.
“—still coming in about the extent of tonight’s avalanche disaster at Towerhill.”
The picture jelled. Police cars. Searchlights. Helicopters. Fire trucks. Ambulances. Bulldozers. Snow-plows.
“The Apennine Lodge, which stood right here, is totally buried,” a voice said in doom-laden tones. A shapeless mass of snow with men digging. “Other nearby lodges and hotels were carried downhill, some for a quarter of a mile. Damage will certainly be in excess of fifteen million and may well run as high as fifty million dollars—”
“Phil, I’m back!” Denise called, having worked her way through the complex locks of the entrance door. “Say, I managed to score from Jed and Beryl, and—”
“There’s been an avalanche at Towerhill!” he shouted.
“What?” She advanced into the living-room, a slim girl with delicate bones, a graceful walk, an auburn wig that exactly matched her former mop of curls and completely hid her ringworm scars. Sometimes Philip thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“Oh, lord,” she said thinly. On the screen, a body being lifted out of dirty snow. “That’s where Bill and Tania are staying!” She sat down automatically on the arm of his chair. He clutched her fingers and spoke through terror, despair, nausea.
“They said fifteen million bucks’ worth of damage, maybe fifty. And you know who carries their insurance? We do!”
She looked at him, shocked. “Phil, think of the damage when you get back to the office! You should call up, find out if Bill and Tania are okay, and Anton too. Right now you ought to be worrying about people, not money!”
“I am. You and me.”
“Phil—”
“I haven’t finished reinsuring that place. I had so much new business to cope with. And not one of my staff has made it through the winter without falling sick. I only had about half the risk reinsured.”
Comprehension dawned, and a look of horror.
I’m through,” Philip said. “God, I wish I were dead.”
AHEAD OF THE NEWS
“Globe Relief? Mr. Thorne, please,” said the State Department expert in Central American affairs, and then: “Morning, Gerry—Dirk here. Say, how’s your eye? ... That’s good ... Me? I’m fine. Touch of mono is all. Well, why I’m calling up, I thought you’d like to be among the first to know they found your boy Ross. Washed up on a rock alongside that river that runs through San Pablo ... No, no sign of the English doctor yet ... Well, they say his head was battered in. It could have been on the rocks of the river, but they’re doing an autopsy to confirm ... Yes, with luck. Those stinking Tupas have had it all their own way for far too long. We finally have the excuse to hit back. I’ll keep you posted.”
IT FIGURES
The armed guards who patrolled the headquarters of Angel City Interstate Mutual over the dead ten-day period of the holiday were surprised to find one of the corporation’s senior executives keeping them company.
But not surprised that the man in question should be Dr. Thomas Grey. From him they were used to eccentricity.
“Crazy!” people said, and were happy to assume that because he was so devoted to his profession he had never even married he must necessarily be a crank.
In fact, that was extremely unfair to him. He was probably among the most rational men alive.
“To the editor of The Christian Science Monitor: Sir ...
His typing was, as always, impeccable, the envy of professional secretaries. He sat in the near-silence of the fourth floor, surrounded by the metal carcasses of computers.
“One is dismayed to find a journal with an international reputation echoing the cries of what I have no hesitation in calling scare-mongers—people who apparently would have us revert to the wild state without even the caveman’s privilege of wearing furs.”
He glanced around to confirm that no malfunction lamps were shining, and took the opportunity to scratch himself. He had a slight but nagging dermatitis due to washing-powder ymes.[??]
“Admittedly, we alter the order of things b
y the way we live. But the same can be said of any organism. How many of those who cry out for vast sums to be spent on preserving coral reefs from starfish realize that the reefs are themselves the result of a living species’ impact on the ecology of the planet? Grass completely revolutionized the ‘balance of nature’; so did the evolution of trees. Every plant, every animal, every fish—one might safely say every humble micro-organism, too—has a discernible influence on the world.”
A light winked at him. He broke off, went to change a spool of tape, returned to his chair. Having read once more through the editorial in the Monitor which had so offended him—it might, in his view, have been written by that bigot Austin Train himself—he sharpened the next barb of his reply.
“If the extremists had their way, we would sit and mope, resigned to having four out of five children die because the nuts and berries within walking distance had been frosted.”
He was only passing time by writing this letter; he did not expect it to do any good. What he was chiefly here for was to add a few more tiny bricks to the monumental structure of a private undertaking he had been engaged on for years. Having begun as a hobby, it had developed into something approaching an obsession, and constituted the main reason why he was still working for Angel City. The company had a lot of spare computer capacity; right now, there was a nationwide glut of it. Accordingly no one objected when he made use of it on evenings and weekends. He had been well paid for most of his working life, and thanks to having simple tastes he was now rich. But hiring the computer capacity he currently needed would wipe out his fortune in a month.
Of course he scrupulously reimbursed the firm for the materials he used, the tape, the paper and the power.
His project stemmed from the fact that, being a very rational man indeed, he could become nearly as angry as a dedicated Trainite when the most spectacular fruit of some promising new human achievement turned out to be a disaster. Computers, he maintained, had made it possible for virtually every advance to be studied beforehand in enough model situations to allow of sober, constructive exploitation. Of course, renting them was expensive—but so was hiring lawyers to defend you if you were charged with infringing the Environment Acts: so was fighting an FDA ban; so was a suit from some injured nobody with a strong pressure-group at his back. And when you added money spent on vain attempts to shut the stable door by such organizations as Earth Community Chest, Globe Relief or the “Save the Med” Fund, the total cost became heartbreaking. What a waste!
When, at thirty-three, he had abandoned his former career as a freelance R&D consultant and decided to train as an actuary, he had vaguely hoped that an insurance company, being concerned with the effects of human shortsightedness, might set up a special department to foster his project and pay for proper staff. That hadn’t worked out. It had had to remain effectively a one-man show.
So he was a long, long way from his ultimate goal: nothing less than a world-simulation program.
But he was a patient man, and the shock of such catastrophes as the creation of the Mekong Desert had brought more and more people around to the conclusion he had reached long ago. Whether or not it could be done, it absolutely must be done.
Of course, he was in the same predicament as weather forecasters had been before computers, continually overwhelmed by fresh data that required slow, piecemeal processing. But he had already worked out many trial-and-error techniques for automatically updating his program, and in another twenty years ... He enjoyed good health, and watched his diet carefully.
Besides, he wasn’t after perfect accuracy. Something about as precise as weather forecasting would suit admirably. Just so long as it permitted men who were neither reckless nor cowardly to monitor human progress. (He often used the word in conversation. Many of his acquaintances regarded him as old-fashioned because of it.)
“When someone next complains that the use of insecticides has resulted in an orchard-bred pest eating his magnolias, remind him that but for the improved diet made possible when the orchards were cleared of maggots he might not own a garden to plant magnolias in. Verb. sap.
Yours, etc.,
T.M. Grey,
Ph.D., M.Sc.”
COME CLEAN
One thing you can tell right away about the owner of a Hailey. He has a healthy respect for other people.
A Hailey takes up no more of the road than is necessary.
The noise a Hailey makes is only a gentle hum.
And it leaves the air far cleaner than gas-driven cars.
Even if they are filter-tipped.
So the driver of a Hailey can get close enough to other people to see their smiles and hear their murmurs of approval.
What’s your car doing for interpersonal relations?
YOU DIG
The shovel bit in, carried away another cubic foot or so of snow—and there wasn’t anywhere to put it except on top of more snow.
Still, at least he hadn’t hit a body when he plunged it in.
Pete Goddard ached. Or rather, what he could feel of himself ached. It had started in his soles when he’d been in the snow for half an hour. Then it had crept up to his ankles. Around the time the pain infected his calves he’d lost contact with his feet. He had to take it for granted they were still inside his boots.
Also his hands were tender and assured of blisters despite his gloves. It was down to twenty with a vicious wind; his eyes were sore and if the tears that leaked from them hadn’t been salty he believed they would have frozen on his cheeks.
This was a foretaste of hell. Stark lights, harsh as curses, had been dragged up treacherous snow-mounds, coupled to emergency generators whose complaints at overload filled the air with a noise like grinding teeth. All the time there were shouts: “Here, quick!” And every shout meant another victim, most likely dead, but sometimes with a broken back, broken leg, broken pelvis. The avalanche had operated like a press. It had condensed the buildings closest to Mount Hawes into a state akin to fiberboard: human remains, structural timbers, cars, winter-sports gear, food, liquor, furniture, carpets, more human remains, had been squashed together until they could be crushed no further, and then the whole horrible disgusting mass had been forced downhill to transfer the shock to more distant locations.
Red among the snow here. He burrowed with his fingers for fear his shovel might hurt someone, and discovered a side of beef.
“Hey! Mister policeman!”
A kid’s voice. For an instant he was haunted by the fear of standing on a buried child. But the call was from here on the surface, loud to overcome the drone of a helicopter. He glanced up. Facing him, balanced on a broken wall, a light-colored boy of eleven or twelve, wearing dark woolen pants and a parka and offering a tin cup that steamed like a geyser.
“Like some soup?”
Pete’s stomach reminded him suddenly that he’d been on the point of eating when he left home. He dropped his shovel.
“Sure would,” he agreed. This was no place for a kid—no telling what horrors he might see—but getting food down him was a good idea. It was bound to be a long job. He took the cup and made to sip, but the soup was hotter even than it looked. The kid was carrying a big vacuum-jug behind him on a strap. Must be efficient.
“You found many dead people?” the boy inquired.
“A few,” Pete muttered.
“I never saw anybody dead before. Now I’ve seen maybe a dozen.”
His tone was matter-of-fact, but Pete was shocked. After a pause he said, “Uh—I guess your mom knows you’re here?”
“Sure, that’s her soup. When she heard about the accident she put on a big pan of it and told us all to wrap up warm and come and help.”
Well, okay; you don’t tell other people what’s good and what’s bad for their kids. And it was kind of a constructive action. Pete tried the soup again, found it had cooled quickly in the bitter wind, and swallowed greedily. It was delicious, with big chunks of vegetables in it and strong-scented herbs.
&n
bsp; “I was interested to see the dead people,” the kid said suddenly. “My father was killed the other day.”
Pete blinked at him.
“Not my real father. I called him that because he adopted me. And my two sisters. It was in the papers, and they even put his picture on TV.”
“What does your mom use for this soup?” Pete said, thinking to change a ghoulish subject. “It’s great.”
“I’ll tell her you said so. It’s like yeast extract, and any vegetables around, and”—the boy gave a strangely adult shrug—“water, boiled up with marjoram and stuff... Finished?”
“Not quite.”
“I only have this one cup, you see, so after it’s been drunk from I have to clean it in the snow to kill the germs and go find someone else.” The boy’s tone was virtuous. “Did you see my dad’s picture on TV?”
“Ah ...” Pete’s mind raced. “Well, I don’t get to watch it too much, you know. I’m pretty tied up with my job.”
“Yeah, sure. Just thought you might have seen him.” A hint of unhappiness tinged the words. “I miss him a lot ... Finished now?”
Pete drained the mug and gave it back. “You tell your mom she makes great soup, okay?” he said, and clapped the boy’s shoulder. At the back of his mind he was thinking about Jeannie; she being so much lighter than he, their kids ought to come out just about the same shade as this boy here. If only they were equally bright, equally healthy ...
“Sure will,” the boy said, and added, struck by a thought, “Say, you need anyone else up here? You’re working pretty much on your own, aren’t you?”
“Well, we have to spread out because there are so many places to dig,” Pete said. He was never at ease talking to children, having had problems when he was a kid himself. His father hadn’t died and made the papers, but simply vanished.