The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Friml said relaxedly: “Just give ’em the high spots. About fifteen minutes. And don’t go by what Clifton did. Some times he used to just get up and joke. Other times he used to be ’way over their heads with math and electronics.”

  “That sounds like him. I was wondering about visual aids. Do you think I ought to have some easel cards made up? I think the whole trouble is, I don’t know whether the membership report is just a formality or whether they really pay attention. If it’s just a noise I’m supposed to make so everybody will feel he’s getting his money’s worth from the Ph.D., then I won’t bother with the cards. If they really listen and learn, I ought to have them.”

  “You ought to just suit yourself, Novak,” Friml said rather expansively. “They like you and that’s the main thing. How’d you like my job, with everybody calling you a son of a bitch?” He took a deep swallow from his drink. He was having blended rye and ginger ale, the drink of a man who doesn’t like to taste his liquor.

  Novak excused himself and went to the phone booth. He called Lilly Clifton.

  “Mike?” she asked. “Ain’t you gonna come ’round tonight like you said?”

  “Later, I think,” he told her. “Listen, Lilly. I think I’ve found out something about the death of—of your husband.” It was an awkward thing to say.

  “So? Tell me.” Her voice was unexpectedly grim.

  It didn’t sound like much in the telling, but she was impressed.

  “You got somet’ing,” she said. “See if you can bring him around here later. I t’ink he goes for me.”

  He told her about Friml’s memory. She said dryly: “I see. I guess maybe he was a liddle bit queer for Cliff. It drived him nuts the time he was out here, the way Cliff played around vit’ me affectionate. Every time Cliff gimme a kiss or somet’ing, Friml took a bigger drink. I guess I was flatt’ring myself. You bring him anyway if you can.”

  He said he’d try, and went back to the table. Friml was a drink ahead of him by then, and said: “No more for me, Mike,” when Novak tried to order. He sounded as though he could be talked into it. The pianist, a little black man at a little black piano on a platform behind the bar, was playing a slow, rippling vamp between numbers. “Coffee Blues!” Friml yelled unexpectedly at him, and Novak started.

  The vamp rippled into a dragging blues, and Friml listened bleakly with his chin propped in his hand. He signaled their waiter after a few bars and drank his shot of blended rye without mixing or chasing it. “Great number,” he said. “I like my coffee—sweet, black, and hot… I like my coffee—sweet, black and hot… won’t let no body fool… with my coffee pot… I always liked that number, Mike. You like it?”

  “Sure. Great number.”

  Friml beamed. “Some folks like—their coffee tan and strong… You ever know any coloured girls, Mike?”

  “There were a few from Chicago in my classes at Urbana.”

  “Good-looking?” Friml wouldn’t meet his eye; he was turning over in his hands the pack of matches from the table ash tray.

  “Some of them yes, some of them no.”

  Friml gulped his drink. “Could I borrow a cigarette?” he asked. Novak tapped one out of his pack and held the match for the accountant. Friml got his cigarette wet, but didn’t cough. From behind a cloud of smoke he asked: “Did any of the white fellows at the university go around with the coloured girls?”

  “Maybe some in Liberal Arts College. None that I remember in Engineering.”

  “I bet,” Friml said broodingly, “I bet a fellow could really let himself go with a colored girl. But if a fellow’s trying to build up a good solid record and get some place it wouldn’t look good if it got out, would it?”

  Novak let him have it. “It wouldn’t make much difference if a fellow was just fooling away his time on one bush-league job after another.”

  Friml quivered and stubbed out his cigarette, bursting the paper. “I really ought to be getting out of here,” he said. “One more and then let’s beat it, okay?”

  “Okay.” He signaled and told the waiter: “Double shots.” And inquiringly to Friml: “All right, isn’t it?”

  The secretary-treasurer nodded glumly. “Guess so, ’scuse me.” He got to his feet and headed for the men’s room. He was weaving. Novak thoughtfully poured his own double shot into Friml’s ginger ale.

  A sad little man, he thought, who didn’t have any fun. Maybe a sad little man who had slunk out of the auditorium of Slovak Sokol Hall during the movie and put a bullet through Clifton’s head for an obscure reason that had to do with the Stuarts.

  Friml came drifting back across the floor and plopped into his chair. “Don’t do this often,” he said clearly and gulped his double shot, chasing it with the ginger ale. He put a half dollar on the table with a click and said: “Let’s go. Been a very pleasant evening. I like that piano man.”

  The cool night air did it. He sagged foolishly against Novak and a cruising taxi instantly drew up. The engineer loaded him into it. “You can’t go to the Y in this shape,” he said. “How about some coffee some place? I have an invitation to Mrs. Clifton’s. You can get some coffee there and take a nap.”

  Friml nodded vaguely and then his head slumped on his chest. Novak gave the cabby the Clifton address and rolled down the windows to let a breeze through.

  Friml muttered during the ride, but nothing intelligible.

  Novak and the cabby got Friml to the small front porch of the Clifton bungalow, and Novak and Lilly got him inside and onto a couch. The engineer noticed uncomfortably that she was wearing the strapless, almost topless, black dinner dress she’d had on the night Cliff died. He wondered, with a faint and surprising touch of anger, if she thought it would excite him because of that. The bungalow inside had been cleared of its crazy welter of junk, and proved to be ordinary without it. One lingering touch: on spread newspapers stood a sketch box and an easel with a half-finished oil portrait of Lilly, full face and somber with green.

  She caught his glance. “I make that. Somet’ing to do.” She looked down at Friml and asked cheerfully: “How you feeling, boy? You want a drink?”

  Incredibly, he sat up and blinked. “Yeah,” he said. “Hell with the job.”

  “The yob will keep,” she said, and poured him two fingers from a tall bottle of cognac that stood on a coffee table. He tossed it down in one gulp.

  “Don’t do this often,” he said sardonically. “Not good for the c’reer. The ol’ man wouldn’t like it.”

  Wilson Stuart. It had to be. Fighting a tremor in his voice, Novak said: “It’s a shame to see a trained man like you tied up with a crackpot outfit like the Society.”

  “That so?” asked Friml belligerently, “’m doing a better job than anybody thinks. And they all call me a son of a bitch for it. So do you. But I’m the guy that sees he gets dollar for dollar. I mean dollar’s value for a dollar spent.” Friml looked cunning. “I got a c’reer, all right. You may not think so, but I’m gonna be com’troller of a certain big aircraft company one of these days. Not at liberty to tell you which. How’s that for a c’reer? I’m only twenny-six, but I’m steady, ’at’s what counts.” He fell back on the couch, his eyes still open and glassy, with a little smile on his lips. “Where’s ’at drink?” he muttered.

  Lilly poured another and put it by his hand. “Here y’are, feller,” she said. He didn’t move or change expression. She jerked her head at Novak and he followed her to the bedroom.

  “What you t’ink?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Wilson Stuart and Western Air,” he said flatly. “They are the famous ‘industrial backers.’ Friml is Stuart’s man in the A.S.F.S.F. to watch Stuart’s money. Stuart gives orders to MacIlheny and Friml’s right there to see that they get carried out.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Old Stuart don’t hire such punks, Mike. Cliff told me.”

  “He se
ems to have been hired right out of his graduating class for the sake of secrecy,” Novak said. “And he must look like a fireball on paper. Straight A’s, no doubt. He’s a screwed-up kid, but the pressure has to be right before you realize it.” He told her about “Coffee Blues.” “Maybe he should be factored by a biomat’ematicist,” he said, straight-faced.

  She flicked him on the jaw with her fingertips. “Don’ tease me,” she said crossly. “I’m t’rough vit’ them. All they want is you’ money. You so smart, tell me what old Stuart wants vit’ a moon ship and where he got atomic fuel for it.”

  “There’s no answer,” he said. “It’s got to be a government working through him. What countries does he sell big orders to? What small countries with atomic energy programmes and dense populations? I guess that narrows the field down a little. And it makes the thing harder than ever to swallow. Wilson Stuart of Western Air a foreign agent.” He thought of what Anheier would say to that, and almost laughed. The thing was now completely beyond the realm of credibility. And it was in their laps.

  They went silently back into the living room. The brandy glass was empty again and Friml’s eyes were closed at last. He was completely out.

  “Mike,” she said, “I guess you better leave him here.”

  “But what about—”

  “You a sveet boy, but some other time. This yerk depresses me.”

  She gave him a cool good-night kiss, and he hiked down the road to a shopping street and taxi stand.

  * * * *

  Novak saw, with a pang, that Lilly was not on the field. He asked casually around whether she had phoned or left word with anybody. She hadn’t. After last night’s fiasco with the drunken secretary-treasurer, he supposed, she felt shy…

  Amy Stuart was there, reporting for assignment, and he savored the mild irony of the situation. Her father, board chairman of Western Air, was funneling money into the A.S.F.S.F. and dictating its policies. And his daughter was reporting for assignment to a hired hand of the Stuart funds. He toyed for a moment with the notion of assigning her to make the lunch sandwiches and dismissed it as silly. She had training and keen intelligence that he needed for Proto, whatever Proto’s destiny was to be.

  “Help me in the refractories lab?” he asked.

  She said a little woodenly: “I thought that was Lilly’s job.”

  “She didn’t show up today. You’re not afraid of hot stuff, are you?”

  “Hot-radioactive or hot-centigrade?”

  He laughed with an effort. She was very boldly playing dumb. “Hot-centigrade. Two thousand degrees of it and up. Tongs, gauntlets, masks, and aprons are furnished. But some people get trembly anyway and drop things.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Not if Lilly didn’t.”

  He taught her routine for an hour and then set her to compounding six more boron carbides by rote. “Call me if there’s any doubt at all about a procedure,” he said. “And I hope you have a conscience. If you make a mistake, start all over again. A cover-up of a mistake at this stage would introduce a hidden variable in my paper work and wreck everything I’m doing from now on.”

  “You don’t have to impress me with a wild exaggeration like that, Mike. I know my way around a chemistry lab.”

  The arrogance of the amateur was suddenly too much for him. “Get out,” he said. “Right now. I’ll get by somehow without you.”

  She stared at him, open-mouthed, and her face became very red. And she left without a word.

  Novak strode to the compounding area. His hands deftly did their work with the great precision balance while his mind raged at her insolent assurance. He was letting the beam of the balance down onto the agate knife-edge fulcrum for the sixteenth time when she spoke behind him: “Mike.”

  His hand, slowly turning a knurled bronze knob, did not twitch. “Minute,” he growled, and continued to turn the knob until he felt the contact and the long pointer began to oscillate on the scale. He turned and asked her: “What is it?”

  “What the devil do you think it is?” she flared. “I’m sorry I got you sore and in the future I’ll keep my mouth shut. Is that satisfactory?”

  He studied her indignant face. “Do you still think I was trying to impress you with a wild exaggeration?”

  She set her mouth grimly and was silent for a long moment. Then she stubbornly said: “Yes.”

  Novak sighed. “Come with me,” he said, and took her into the small private office. He pulled out yesterday’s work sheets and asked: “Know any maths?”

  “Up to differential calculus,” she said cautiously.

  That was a little better than he expected. If she could follow him all the way it would be better for her work—far better than her taking him on faith.

  In a concentrated one-hour session he told her about the method of least squares and how it would predictably cut his research time in half, about matrix equations and how they would pin down the properties of the boron carbides, about n-dimensional geometry and how it would help him build a theory of boron carbides, about the virtues of convergent series and the vices of divergent series, and about the way sloppy work at this stage would riddle the theory end of it with divergent series.

  “Also,” he concluded, “you made me mad as hell.”

  Laughter broke suddenly through her solemn absorption. “I’m convinced,” she said. “Will you trust me to carry on?”

  “With all my heart,” he grinned. “Call me when the batches are ready for solution.”

  Cheerfully he tackled yesterday’s data and speedily set up the equations that had defied him yesterday.

  Amy Stuart called him and he guided her through the rest of the programme on the six new carbides. She was a neat, fast worker who inked her notes in engineer’s lettering. She wasn’t jittery about handling “hot-centigrade” material. A spy? A handy one to have around. Lilly didn’t have her cool sureness of touch.

  They worked through the morning, finishing the batch, had sandwiches, and ran another batch in the afternoon. She left at five with the machine-shop gang and Novak put a third batch through himself. He wrote his weekly cumulative report during the four hours it sat aging. The report included a request for Friml to reserve sufficient time with I.B.M.’s EBIC in New York to integrate 132 partial differential equations, sample enclosed, and to post bond on their estimate at $100 per hour, the commercial rate. With this out of the way he ran tests on the third batch and phoned Barstow for a cab. The gate guard’s farewell was awed. Night hitches were unusual.

  Novak had dinner in the desert town while waiting for the Los Angeles bus. He asked at his hotel’s desk whether there had been any calls. There had been no calls. Phone her? No, by God! He wanted to be alone tonight and think through his math.

  In ten days of dawn-to-dusk labour, he had his 132 partial differential equations. The acceleration couches got finished and installed. He ordered the enigmatic “fuel tanks” and left the fabrication to the vendor, a big Buena Vista machine shop. He was no aero-engineer; all he felt competent to do was give them the drawings and specify that the tanks must arrive sufficiently disassembled to pass through Proto’s open end for final assembly in place.

  Amy Stuart continued to be his right bower; Lilly did not reappear at the field. She phoned him once and he phoned her. Astonishingly, they were on a we-must-get-together-some-time-basis. He asked about Friml and Lilly said vaguely: “He’s not such a bad kid, Mike. I t’ink you don’t do him justice.” Novak wondered fleetingly whether Friml was wearing a belt or suspenders these days, and realized that he didn’t care a great deal. Amy Stuart asked after Lilly regularly, and he never had anything to tell her.

  On a Friday afternoon he zipped a leather brief case around twenty-two ledger sheets on which were lettered in Amy’s best engineer style the 132 equations that EBIC would chew into.

  “Drive me to town?” he said to her. “
I’d like to get to the office before they close up.”

  “With—the Papers,” she said melodramatically, and they laughed. It came to him with a faint shock that it should be no laughing matter, but for the moment he couldn’t persuade himself that there was anything sinister about this pretty girl with the sure, cool hands. The shared research, a common drain on them in progress and a mutual triumph at its end, was too big a thing to be spoiled by suspicion—for the moment. But depression stole over him on the desert road to Los Angeles, as he rode by Amy’s side in the little English sportster.

  She dropped him in front of the run-down building at 4.30.

  He hadn’t seen Friml since the secretary-treasurer’s brannigan had broken up his plans for an evening. Without a blush, Friml laced into him. He seemed to be trying out a new manner for size: bullying instead of nagging; Friml the Perfect Master instead of Friml the Perfect Servant. “I’m very glad to see you again, Dr. Novak. I’ve tried several times to advise you that you should report regularly, at least once a week, in person, or by telephone if unavoidable.”

  Nuts. Let him have his fun. “Been pretty busy.” He tossed the brief case on Friml’s desk. “This is the stuff to send I.B.M. When’s our reservation?”

  “That’s just what I wanted to see you about. Your request—it was fantastic. Who—who—is this Mr. Ebic whom you wish to call in as a consultant at one hundred dollars an hour?” His voice was a sort of low, horrified shriek.

  Novak stared at him in amazement. “Didn’t you check to see what it was if you had doubts?”

  “Certainly not. It’s insane on the face of it. Just what do you think you’re up to?”

  CONCLUSION

  FOREWORD

  With Prototype completed the American Society for Space Flight only requires the fuel to make the ship ready for takeoff. But time has just about run out for Novak and his assistants as power politics and pressure groups close in for the kill.

  Michael Novak, ceramic engineer, working in the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA), Division of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, is inexplicably transferred to the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago where his particular talents are entirely wasted in the field of pure nuclear theory. Attempting in vain to get a suitable transfer he forcibly resigns and attempts to get a job elsewhere. The fact that he had struck the Research Director when handing in his resignation goes against him wherever he applies, and he is getting more than despondent when he receives a curious letter from a Los Angeles office offering him full-time work in refractories research and development with high-altitude jet aircraft.