The Frederick Pohl Omnibus (1966) SSC

by Frederik Pohl

  "Probably someone dull," she shrugged. "I won't answer. Now, do be a good boy and-"

  "Tandy! How could you?" My mind raced; there was only one conclusion. "Tandy, do you have Ittel du Bois coming here tonight? Don't lie to me!"

  "Howard, what a terrible thing to say. Ittel was last year."

  "Tell me the truth!"

  "I do not!" And she was angry. I'd hurt her, no doubt of it.

  "Then it must be Jeffrey. I won't stand for it. I won the toss fair and square. Why can't we wait until next year? It isn't decent. I-"

  She stood up, her blue eyes smoldering. "Howard McGuiness, you'

  d better go before you say something I won't be able to forgive."

  I stood my ground. "Then who is it?"

  "Oh, darn it," she said, and kicked viciously at the shrub by her left foot, "see for yourself. Answer the door."

  • • • •

  So I did.

  Now, I know Ittel du Bois's Bug-it's a Buick-and I know Jeff Otis's. It wasn't either one of them. The vehicle outside Tandy's door parked next to mine was a very strange looking Bug indeed. For one thing, it was only about eight feet long.

  A bank of infrared lamps glowed on, bathing it in heat; the caked ice that forms in the dead spots along the hull, behind the treads and so on, melted, plopped off, turned into water and ran into the drain grille. You know how a Bug will crack and twang when it's being warmed up? They all do.

  This one didn't.

  It didn't make a sound. It was so silent that I could hear the snipsnip of Tandy's automatic load adjuster, throwing another heatpump into circuit to meet the drain of the infrared lamps. But no sound from the Bug outside.

  Also it didn't have caterpillar treads. Also it had-well, you can believe this or not-it had windows.

  "You see?" said Tandy, in a voice colder than the four miles of ice overhead. "Now would you like to apologize to me?"

  "I apologize," I said in a voice that hardly got past my lips. "I-" I stopped and swallowed. I begged, "Please, Tandy, what is it?"

  She lit a cigarette unsteadily. "Well, I don't rightly know. I'm kind of glad you're here, Howard," she confessed. "Maybe I shouldn't have tried to get rid of you."

  "Tell me!"

  She glanced at the Bug. "All right. I'll make it fast. I got a call from this, uh, fellow. I couldn't understand him very well. But. . . ."

  She looked at me sidewise.

  "I understand," I said. "You thought he might be a mark."

  She nodded.

  "And you wouldn't cut me in!" I cried angrily. "Tandy, that's mean!

  When I found old Buchmayr dead, didn't I cut you in on looting his place?

  Didn't I give you first pick of everything you wanted-except heatpumps and machine patterns, of course."

  "I know, dear," she said miserably, "but-hush! He's coming out."

  She was looking out the window. I looked too.

  And then we looked at each other. That fellow out of the strange Bug, he was as strange as his vehicle. He might be a mark or he might not; but of one thing I was pretty sure, and that was that he wasn't human.

  No. Not with huge white eyes and a serpentine frill of orange tendrils instead of hair.

  At once all my lethargy and weariness vanished.

  "Tandy," I cried, "he isn't human!"

  "I know," she whispered.

  "But don't you know what this means? He's an alien! He must come from another planet-perhaps from another star. Tandy, this is the most important thing that ever happened to us." I thought fast. "Tell you what," I said, "you let him in while I get around the side shaft-it's defrosted, isn't it?

  Good." I hurried. At the side door I stopped and looked at her affectionately. "Dear Tandy," I said. "And you thought this was just an ordinary mark. You see? You need me." And I was off, leaving her that thought to chew on as she welcomed her visitor.

  • • • •

  I took a good long time in the stranger's Bug. Human or monster, I could rely on Tandy to keep him occupied, so I was very thorough and didn't rush, and came out with a splendid supply of what seemed to be storage batteries. I couldn't quite make them out, but I was sure that power was in them somehow or other; and if there was power, the heatpump would find a way to suck it out. Those I took the opportunity of tucking away in my own Bug before I went back in Tandy's place. No use bothering her about them.

  She was sitting in the wing chair, and the stranger was nowhere in sight. I raised my brows. She nodded. "Well," I said, "he was your guest. I won't interfere."

  Tandy was looking quiet, relaxed and happy. "What about the Bug?"

  "Oh, lots of things," I said. "Plenty of metal! And food-a lot of food, Tandy. Of course, we'll have to go easy on it, till we find out if we can digest it, but it smells delicious. And-"

  "Pumps?" she demanded.

  "Funny," I said. "They don't seem to use them." She scowled. "

  Honestly, dearest! You can see for yourself-everything I found is piled right outside the door."

  "What isn't in your Bug, you mean."

  "Tandy!"

  She glowered a moment longer, then smiled like the sun bursting through clouds on an old video tape. "No matter, Howard," she said tenderly, "we've got plenty. Let's have another Martini, shall we?"

  "Of course." I waited and took the glass. "To love," I toasted. "And to crime. By the way, did you talk to him first?"

  "Oh, for hours," she said crossly. "Yap, yap. He's as bad as the feds."

  I got up and idly walked across the room to the light switch. "Did he say anything interesting?"

  "Not very. He spoke a very poor grade of English, to begin with.

  Said he learned it off old radio broadcasts, of all things. They float around forever out in space, it seems."

  I switched off the lights. "That better?"

  She nodded drowsily, got up to refill her glass, and sat down again in the love seat. "He was awfully interested in the heatpumps," she said drowsily.

  I put a tape on the player-Tchaikovsky. Tandy is a fool for violins. "

  He liked them?"

  "Oh, in a way. He thought they were clever. But dangerous, he said."

  "Him and the feds," I murmured, sitting down next to her. Clickclick, and our individual body armor went on stand-by alert. At the first hostile move it would block us off, set up a force field-well, I think it's called a force field. "The feds are always yapping about the pumps too. Did I tell you? They're even cutting in on the RDF channels now."

  "Oh, Howard! That's too much." She sat up and got another drink-and sat, this time, on the wide, low sofa. She giggled.

  "What's the matter, dear?" I asked, coming over beside her.

  "He was so funny. Ya-ta-ta-ta, ya-ta-ta-ta, all about how the heatpumps were ruining the world."

  "Just like the feds." Clickclick some more, as I put my arm around her shoulders.

  "Just like," she agreed. "He said it was evidently extremely high technology that produced a device that took heat out of its surrounding ambient environment, but had we ever thought of what would happen when all the heat was gone?"

  "Crazy," I murmured into the base of her throat.

  "Absolutely. As though all the heat could ever be gone! Absolute zero, he called it; said we're only eight or ten degrees from it now. That's why the snow, he said." I made a sound of polite disgust. "Yes, that's what he said. He said it wasn't just snow, it was frozen air-oxygen and nitrogen and all those things. We've frozen the Earth solid, he says, and now it's so shiny that its libido is nearly perfect."

  I sat up sharply, then relaxed. "Oh. Not libido, dear. Albedo. That means it's shiny."

  "That's what he said. He said the feds were right. . . . Howard.

  Howard, dear. Listen to me."

  "Ssh," I murmured. "Did he say anything else?"

  "But Howard! Please. You're-"

  She relaxed, and then in a moment giggled again. "Howard, wait. I forgot to tell you the funniest part."


  It was irritating, but I could afford to be patient. "What was that, dearest?"

  "He didn't have any personal armor!"

  I sat up. I couldn't help it. "What?"

  "None at all! Naked as a baby. So that proves he isn't human, doesn 't it? I mean, if he can't take the simplest care of himself, he's only a kind of animal, right?"

  I thought. "Well, I suppose so," I said. Really, the concept was hard to swallow.

  "Good," she said, "because he's, well, in the freezer. I didn't want to waste him, Howard. And it isn't as if he was human."

  I thought for a second. Well, why not? You get tired of rabbits and mice, and since there hasn't been any open sky for pasturing for nearly fifty years, that's about all there is. Now that I thought back on it, he was kind of plump and appetizing at that.

  And, in any case, that was a problem for later on. I reached out idly and touched the button that controlled the last light in the room, the electric fireplace itself. "Oh," I said, pausing. "Where did he come from?"

  "Sorry," her muffled voice came. "I forgot to ask."

  I reached out thoughtfully and found my glass. There was a little bit left; I drained it off. Funny that the creature should bother to come down. In the old days, yes; back when Earth was open to the sky, you might expect aliens to come skyrocketing down from the stars and all that. But he'd come all the way from-well, from wherever-and for what? Just to make a little soup for the pot, to donate a little metal and power. It was funny, in a way. I couldn't help thinking that the feds would have liked to have met him.

  Not only because he agreed with them about the pumps and so on, but because they're interested in things like that. They're very earnest types, that's why they're always issuing warnings and so on. Of course, nobody pays any attention.

  Still. . .

  Well, there was no sense bothering my small brain about that sort of stuff, was there? If the heatpumps were dangerous, nobody would have bothered to invent them, would they?

  I set down my glass and switched off the fireplace. Tandy was still and warm beside me; motionless but, believe me, by no means asleep.

  The Wizards of Pung's Corners

  1

  This is the way it happened in the old days. Pay attention now. I'm not going to repeat myself.

  There was this old man. A wicked one. Coglan was his name, and he came into Pung's Corners in a solid-lead car. He was six feet seven inches tall. He attracted a lot of attention.

  Why? Why, because nobody had ever seen a solid-lead car before.

  Nobody much had ever seen a stranger. It wasn't usual. That was how Pung's Corners was in the old days, a little pocket in the middle of the desert, and nobody came there. There weren't even planes overhead, or not for a long time; but there had been planes just before old man Coglan showed up. It made people nervous.

  Old man Coglan had snapping black eyes and a loose and limber step. He got out of his car and slammed the door closed. It didn't go tchik like a Volkswagen or perclack like a Buick. It went woomp. It was heavy, since, as I mentioned, it was solid lead.

  'Boy!' he bellowed, standing in front of Pung's Inn. 'Come get my bags!'

  Charley Frink was the bellboy at that time--yes, the Senator. Of course, he was only fifteen years old then. He came out for Coglan's bags and he had to make four trips. There was a lot of space in the back of that car, with its truck tyres and double-thick glass, and all of it was full of baggage.

  While Charley was hustling the bags in, Coglan was parading back and forth on Front Street. He winked at Mrs. Churchwood and ogled young Kathy Flint. He nodded to the boys in front of the barber shop. He was a character, making himself at home like that.

  In front of Andy Grammis's grocery store, Andy tipped his chair back.

  Considerately, he moved his feet so his yellow dog could get out the door.

  'He seems like a nice feller,' he said to Jack Tighe. (Yes, that Jack Tighe.) Jack Tighe stood in the shelter of the door and he was frowning. He knew more than any of the rest of them, though it wasn't time to say anything yet. But he said: 'We don't get any strangers.'

  Andy shrugged. He leaned back in his chair. It was warm in the sun.

  'Pshaw, Jack,' he said. 'Maybe we ought to get a few more. Town's going to sleep.' He yawned drowsily.

  And Jack Tighe left him there, left him and started down the street for home, because he knew what he knew.

  Anyway, Coglan didn't hear them. If he had heard, he wouldn't have cared. It was old man Coglan's great talent that he didn't care what people had to say about him, and the others like him. He couldn't have been what he was if that hadn't been so.

  So he checked in at Pung's Inn. 'A suite, boy!' he boomed. 'The best.

  A place where I can be comfortable, real comfortable.'

  'Yes, sir, Mister--'

  'Coglan, boy! Edsel T. Coglan. A proud name at both ends, and I'm proud to wear it!'

  'Yes, sir, Mr. Coglan. Right away. Now let's see.' He pored over his room ledgers, although, except for the Willmans and Mr. Carpenter when his wife got mad at him, there weren't any guests, as he certainly knew. He pursed his lips. He said: 'Ah, good! The bridal suite's vacant, Mr. Coglan.

  I'm sure you'll be very comfortable there. Of course, it's eight-fifty a day.'

  'The bridal suite it is, boy!' Coglan chucked the pen into its holder with a fencer's thrust. He grinned like a fine old Bengal tiger with white crewcut hair.

  And there was something to grin about, in a way, wasn't there? The bridal suite. That was funny.

  Hardly anybody ever took the bridal suite at Pung's Inn, unless they had a bride. You only had to look at Coglan to know that he was a long way from taking a bride--a long way, and in the wrong direction. Tall as he was, snapping-eyed and straight-backed as he was, he was clearly on the far side of marrying. He was at least eighty. You could see it in his crepey skin and his gnarled hands.

  The room clerk whistled for Charley Frink. 'Glad to have you with us, Mr. Coglan,' he said. 'Charley'Il have your bags up in a jiffy. Will you be staying with us long?'

  Coglan laughed out loud. It was the laugh of a relaxed and confident man. 'Yes,' he said. 'Quite long.'

  Now what did Coglan do when he was all alone in the bridal suite?

  Well, first he paid off the bellboy with a ten-dollar bill. That surprised Charley Frink, all right. He wasn't used to that kind of tipping. He went out and Coglan closed the door behind him in a very great good humour.

  Coglan was happy.

  So he peered around, grinning a wolf's grin. He looked at the bathroom, with its stall shower and bright white porcelain. 'Quaint,' he murmured. He amused himself with the electric lights, switching them on and off. 'Delicious,' he said. 'So manual.' In the living room of the suite, the main light was from an overhead six-point chandelier, best Grand Rapids glass. Two of the pendants were missing. 'Ridiculous,' chuckled old Mr.

  Coglan, 'but very, very sweet.'

  Of course, you know what he was thinking. He was thinking of the big caverns and the big machines. He was thinking of the design wobblators and the bomb-shielded power sources, the self-contained raw material lodes and the unitized distribution pipe-lines. But I'm getting ahead of the story. It isn't time to talk about those things yet. So don't ask.

  Anyway, after old man Coglan had a good look around, he opened one of his bags.

  He sat down in front of the desk.

  He took a Kleenex out of his pocket and with a fastidious expression picked up the blotter with it, and dumped it on the floor.

  He lifted the bag onto the bare desk top and propped it, open, against the wall.

  You never saw a bag like that! It looked like a kind of electronic tool kit, I swear. Its back was a panel of pastel lucite with sparks embedded in it.

  It glittered. There was a cathode screen. There was a scanner, a microphone, a speaker. All those things and lots more. How do I know this?

  Why, it's all written down in a book called My Eighteen Y
ears at Pung's Hall, by Senator C. T. Frink. Because Charley was in the room next door and there was a keyhole.

  So then what happened was that a little tinkly chime sounded distantly within the speaker, and the cathode screen flickered and lit up.

  'Coglan,' boomed the tall old man. 'Reporting in. Let me speak to V. P. Maffity.'

  • • • •

  2

  Now you have to know what Pung's Corners was like in those days.

  Everybody knows what it is now, but then it was small. Very small. It sat on the bank of the Delaware River like a fat old lady on the edge of a spindly chair.

  General 'Retreating Johnnie' Estabrook wintered there before the Battle of Monmouth and wrote pettishly to General Washington : 'I can obtain no Provision here, as the inhabitants are so averse to our Cause, that I cannot get a Man to come near me.'

  During the Civil War, a small draft riot took place in its main square in which a recruiting colonel of the IXth Volunteer Pennsylvania Zouaves was chased out of town and the son of the town's leading banker suffered superficial scalp wounds. (He fell off his horse. He was drunk.) These were only little wars, you know. They had left only little scars.

  Pung's Corners missed all the big ones.

  For instance, when the biggest of all got going, why, Pung's Corners had a ticket on the fifty-yard line but never had to carry the ball.

  The cobalt bomb that annihilated New Jersey stopped short at the bank of the Delaware, checked by a persistent easterly wind.

  The radio-dust that demolished Philadelphia went forty-some miles up the river. Then the drone that was spreading it was rammed down by a suicide pilot in a shaky jet. (Pung's Corners was one mile farther on.) The H-bombs that scattered around the New York megalopolis bracketed Pung's Corners, but it lay unscathed between.

  You see how it was? They never laid a glove on us. But after the war, we were marooned.

  Now that wasn't a bad way to be, you know? Read some of the old books, you'll see. The way Pung's Corners felt, there was a lot to be said for being marooned. People in Pung's Corners were genuinely sorry about the war, with so many people getting killed and all. (Although we won it. It was worse for the other side.) But every cloud has its silver lining and so on, and being surrounded at every point of the compass by badlands that no one could cross had a few compensating features.