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

by C. M. Kornbluth

  That was my darling, with her incurable weakness for quote leads and the unspeakable “so says.” Ellie Masters, I thought, you’re a lousy writer, but I love you and I’d like to wring your neck for helping McGillicuddy con me into this. “Dig up all sorts of cute feature stories,” you told me, and you made it sound sensible. Better I should be under the table at Blogri’s with a hangover and sawdust in my hair than writing little byliners about seventeen tasty recipes for yak manure, which is all that’s ever going to come out of this Godforsaken planet.

  Rat-Face barged in without knocking; a moronic-looking boy was with him toting the box of ethertype spare parts.

  “Just set it anywhere,” I said. “Thanks for getting it right over here. Uh, Joe, isn’t it?—Joe, where could I get me a parka like that? I like those lines. Real mink?”

  It was the one way to his heart. “You betcha. Only the best mink lining on Frostbite. Ya notice the lapels? Look!” He turned them forward and showed me useless little hidden pockets with zippers that looked like gold.

  “I can see you’re a man with taste.”

  “Yeah. Not like some of these bums. If a man’s Collector of the Port, he’s got a position to live up to. Look, I hope ya didn’t get me wrong there, at the field. Nobody told me you were coming. If you’re right with the Phoenix, you’re right with the Organization. If you’re right with the Organization, you’re right with Joe Downing. I’m regular.”

  He said that last word the way a new bishop might say, “I am consecrated.”

  “Glad to hear that. Joe, when could I get a chance to meet some of the other regular boys?”

  “Ya wanna get in, huh?” he asked shrewdly. “There’s been guys here a lot longer than you, Spencer.”

  “In, out,” I shrugged. “I want to play it smart. It won’t do me any harm.”

  He barked with laughter. “Not a bit,” he said. “Old man Kennedy didn’t see it that way. You’ll get along here. Keep ya nose clean and we’ll see about The Boys.” He beckoned the loutish porter and left me to my musings.

  That little rat had killed his man, I thought—but where, why, and for whom?

  I went out into the little corridor and walked into the “ride-up-and-save” parka emporium that shared the second floor with me. Leon Portwanger, said the sign on the door. He was a fat old man sitting cross-legged, peering through bulging shell-rimmed glasses at his needle as it flashed through fur.

  “Mr. Portwanger? I’m the new ISN man, Sam Spencer.”

  “So?” he grunted, not looking up.

  “I guess you knew Kennedy pretty well.”

  “Never. Never.”

  “But he was right in front there—”

  “Never,” grunted the old man. He stuck himself with the needle, swore, and put his finger in his mouth. “Now see what you made me do?” he said angrily and indistinctly around the finger. “You shouldn’t bother me when I’m working. Can’t you see when a man’s working?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said and went back into the newsroom. A man as old as Leon, tailoring as long as Leon, didn’t stick himself. He didn’t even wear a thimble—the forefinger was calloused enough to be a thimble itself. He didn’t stick himself unless he was very, very excited—or unless he wanted to get rid of somebody. I began to wish I hadn’t fired those bottles of Kennedy’s home brew down to the incinerator so quickly.

  At that point, I began a thorough shakedown of the bureau. I found memos torn from the machine concerning overfiling or failure to file, clippings from the Phoenix, laundry lists, style memos from ISN, paid bills, blacksheets of letters to Marsbuo requesting a transfer to practically anywhere but Frostbite, a list of phone numbers, and a nasty space-mailed memo from McGillicuddy.

  It said: “Re worldshaker, wll blv whn see. Meanwhile sggst keep closer sked avoid wastage costly wiretime. Reminder guppy’s firstest job offhead orchid bitches three which bypassed u yestermonth. How? McG”

  It was typical of McGillicuddy to memo in cablese. Since news bureaus began—as “wire services”; see his archaic “wiretime”—their executives have been memoing underlings in cablese as part of one-of-the-working-press-Jones-boys act that they affect. They also type badly so they can slash up their memo with copyreader symbols. This McGillicuddy did too, of course. The cablese, the bad typing, and the copy-reading made it just about unintelligible to an outsider.

  To me it said that McGillicuddy doubted Kennedy’s promise to file a worldshaking story, that he was sore about Kennedy missing his scheduled times for filing on the ether-type, and that he was plenty sore about Kennedy failing to intercept complaints from the client Phoenix, three of which McGillicuddy had been bothered by during the last month.

  So old Kennedy had dreamed of filing a worldshaker. I dug further into the bureau files and the desk drawers, finding only an out of date “WHO’S WHO IN THE GALAXY.” No notes, no plans, no lists of interviewees, no tipsters—no blacksheet, I realized, of the letter to which McGillicuddy’s cutting memo was a reply.

  God only knew what it all meant.

  I was hungry, sleepy, and sick at heart. I looked up the number of the Hamilton House and found that helpful little Chenery had got me a reservation, and that my luggage had arrived from the field. I headed for a square meal and my first night in bed for a week without yaks blatting at me through a thin bulkhead.

  * * * *

  It wasn’t hard to fit in. Frostbite was a swell place to lose your ambition and acquire a permanent thirst. The sardonic sked posted on the bureau wall—I had been planning to tear it down for a month, but the inclination became weaker and weaker. It was so true to life.

  I would wake up the Hamilton House, have a skimpy breakfast, and get down to the bureau. Then there’d be a phone conversation with Weems during which he’d nag me for more and better Frostbite-slant stories. In an hour of “wire-time” I’d check in with Marsbuo. At first I risked trying to sneak a chat with Ellie, but the jokers around Marsbuo cured me of that. One of them pretended he was Ellie on the other end of the wire and before I caught on had me believing that she was six months pregnant with a child by McGillicuddy and was going to kill herself for betraying me. Good clean fun, and after that I stuck to spacemail for my happy talk.

  After lunch, at the Hamilton House or more often in a tavern, I’d tear up the copy from the printer into neat sheets and deliver them to the Phoenix building on the better end of Main Street. (If anything big had come up, I would have phoned them to hold the front page open. If not, local items filled it, and ISN copy padded out the rest of their sheet.) As in Kennedy’s sked, I gabbed with Chenery or watched the compositors or proof pullers or transmittermen at work and then went back to the office to clip my copy rolling out of the faxer. On a good day, I’d get four or five items—maybe a human interester about a yak mothering an orphaned baby goat, a new wrinkle on barn insulation with native materials that the other cold-farming planets we served could use, a municipal election or a murder trial verdict to be filed just for the record.

  Evenings I spent at a tavern talking and sopping up home brew, or at one of the two-a-day vaudeville houses, or at the Clubhouse. I once worked on the Philadelphia Bulletin, so the political setup was nothing new to me. After Joe Downing decided I wouldn’t get pushy, he took me around to meet The Boys.

  The Clubhouse was across the street from the three-story capitol building of Frostbite’s World Government. It was a little bigger than the capitol and in much better repair. Officially, it was the headquarters of the Frostbite Benevolent Society, a charitable, hence tax-free, organization. Actually it was the headquarters of the Frostbite Planetary Party, a standard gang of brigands. Down on the wrong end of Main Street somewhere was an upper room where the Frostbite Interplanetary Party, made up of liberals, screwballs, and disgruntled ex-members of the Organization but actually run by stooges of that Organization, hung out.

  The Boy
s observed an orderly rotation of officers based on seniority. If you got in at the age of 18, didn’t bolt and didn’t drop dead, you’d be president someday. To the party you had to bring loyalty, hard work—not on your payroll job, naturally, but on your electioneering—and cash. You kept bringing cash all your life; salary kickbacks, graft kickbacks, contributions for gold dinner services, tickets to testimonial banquets, campaign chest assignments, widows’ and orphans’ fund contributions, burial insurance, and dues, dues, dues.

  As usual, it was hard to learn who was who. The President of Frostbite was a simple-minded old boy named Witherspoon, so far gone in senile decay that he had come to believe the testimonial-banquet platitudes he uttered. You could check him off as a wheelhorse. He was serving the second and last year of his second and last term, and there was a mild battle going on between his Vice-President and the Speaker of the House as to who would succeed him. It was a traditional battle and didn’t mean much; whoever lost would be next in line. When one of the contestants was so old or ill that he might not live to claim his term if he lost, the scrap would be waived in a spirit of good sportsmanship that the voters would probably admire if they ever heard of it.

  Joe Downing was a comer. His sponsorship of me meant more than the friendship of Witherspoon would have. He was Chenery’s ally; they were the leadership of the younger, sportier element. Chenery’s boss Weems was with the older crowd that ate more, talked more, and drank less.

  I had to join a committee before I heard of George, though. That’s the way those things work.

  It was a special committee for organizing a testimonial banquet for Witherspoon on his 40th year in the party. I wound up in the subcommittee to determine a testimonial gift for the old guffer. I knew damned well that we’d be expected to start the subscription for the gift rolling, so I suggested a handsome—and—inexpensive—illuminated scroll with a sentiment lettered on it. The others were scandalized. One fat old woman called me “cheap” and a fat male pay-roller came close to accusing me of irregularity, at which I was supposed to tremble and withdraw my suggestion. I stood on my rights, and wrote a minority report standing up for the scroll while the majority of the subcommittee agreed on an inscribed sterling tea service.

  At the next full committee meeting, we delivered our reports and I thought it would come to a vote right away. But it seemed they weren’t used to there being two opinions about anything. They were flustered, and the secretary slipped out with both reports during a five-minute adjournment. He came back and told me, beaming, “Chenery says George liked your idea.” The committee was reconvened, and because George liked my idea, my report was adopted and I was appointed a subcommittee of one to procure the scroll.

  I didn’t learn any more about George after the meeting except that some people who liked me were glad I’d been favorably noticed, and others were envious about the triumph of the Johnny-come-lately.

  I asked Chenery in the bar. He laughed at my ignorance and said, “George Parsons.”

  “Publisher of the Phoenix? I thought he was an absentee owner.”

  “He doesn’t spend a lot of time on Frostbite. At least, I don’t think he does. As a matter of fact, I don’t know a lot about his comings and goings. Maybe Weems does.”

  “He swings a lot of weight in the Organization.”

  Chenery looked puzzled. “I guess he does at that. Every once in a while he does speak up, and you generally do what he says. It’s the paper, I suppose. He could wreck any of the boys.”

  Chenery wasn’t being irregular: newsmen are always in a special position.

  I went back to the office and, late as it was, sent a note to the desk to get the one man subcommittee job cleaned up:

  ATTN MCGILLICUDDY RE CLIENT RELATIONS NEED SOONEST ILLUMINATED SCROLL PRESENT HOMER WITHERSPOON PRESIDENT FROSTBITE HONORING HIM 40 YEARS MEMBERSHIP FROSTBITE PLANETARY PARTY USUAL SENTIMENTS NOTE MUST BE TERRESTRIAL STYLE ART IF NOT ACTUAL WORK EARTHER ACCOUNT ANTIBEM PREJUDICE HERE FRBBUO END.

  That happened on one of those Sundays which, according to Kennedy’s sardonic sked, was to be devoted to writing and filing enterprisers.

  The scroll came through with a memo from McGillicuddy: “Fyi ckng with clnt et if this gag wll hv ur hide. Reminder guppy’s firstest job offheading orchid bitches one which bypassed u yesterweek. How? McG”

  There was a sadly sweet letter from Ellie aboard the same rust-bucket. She wanted me to come back to her, but not a broken man. She wanted me to do something really big on Frostbite to show what I had in me. She was sure that if I really looked there’d be something more to file than the copy I’d been sending in. Yeah.

  Well, the big news that week would be the arrival of a loaded immigrant ship from Thetis of Procyon, a planet whose ecology had been wrecked beyond repair in a few short generations by DDT, hydraulic mining, unrestricted logging, introduction of rabbits and house cats, and the use of poison bait to kill varmints. In a few thousand years maybe the planet would have topsoil, cover crops, forests, and a balanced animal population again, but Thetis as of now was a ruin whose population was streaming away to whatever havens it could find.

  Frostbite had agreed to take 500 couples, provided they were of terrestrial descent and could pass a means test—that is, provided they had money to be fleeced of. They were arriving on a bottom called Esmeralda. According to my year-old Lloyds’ Shipping Index—“exclusive accurate and up-to-date, being the result of daily advices from every part of the galaxy”—Esmeralda was owned by the Frimstedt Atomic Astrogation Company, Gammadion, gross tonnage 830,000, net tonnage 800,000, class GX—“freighter/steerage passengers”—insurance rating: hull A, atomics A. The tonnage difference meant real room for only about 850. If she took the full thousand, she’d be jammed. She was due to arrive at Frostbite in the very early morning. Normally I would have kept a deathwatch, but the AA rating lulled me, and I went to the Hamilton House to sleep.

  * * * *

  At 4:30, the bedside phone chimed.

  “This Willie Egan,” a frightened voice said. “You remember—on the desk at the Phoenix.”

  Desk, hell—he was a 17-year-old copyboy I’d tipped to alert me on any hot breaks.

  “There’s some kind of trouble with the Esmeralda,” he said. That big immigrant ship. They had a welcoming committee out, but the ship’s overdue. I thought there might be a story in it. You got my home address? You better send the check there. Mr. Weems doesn’t like us to do string work. How much do I get?”

  “Depends,” I said, waking up abruptly. “Thanks, kid.”

  I was into my clothes and down the street in five minutes. It looked good, mighty good. The ship was overcrowded, the AA insurance rating I had was a year old—maybe it had gone to pot since then and we’d have a major disaster on our hands. I snapped on the newsroom lights and grabbed the desk phone, knocked down one toggle on the key box, and demanded: “Space operator! Space operator!”

  “Yes, sir. Let me have your call, please?”

  “Gimme the bridge of the Esmeralda, due to dock at the Frostbite spaceport today. While you’re setting up the call, gimme interplanetary and break in when you get the Etmeralda.”

  “Yes, sir.” Click-click-click. “Interplanetary operator.”

  “Gimme Planet Gammadion. Person-to-person, to the public relations officer of the Frimstedt Atomic Astrogation Company. No, I don’t know his name. No, I don’t know the Gammadion routing. While you’re setting up the call, gimme the local operator and break in when you get my party.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Click-click-click.

  “Your call, please.”

  “Person-to-person, captain of the spaceport”

  “Yes, sir.” Click-click-click. “Here is Esmeralda, sir.”

  “Who’s calling?” yelled a voice. “This is the purser’s office, who’s calling?”

  “Interstellar
News, Frostbite Bureau. What’s up about the ship being late?”

  “I can’t talk now! Oh, my God! I can’t talk now! They’re going crazy in the steerage—”

  He hung up, and I swore a little.

  “Space operator!” I yelled. “Get me Esmeralda again—if you can’t get the bridge, get the radio shack, the captain’s cabin, anything in-board!”

  “Yes, sir.” Click-click-click. “Here is your party, sir.”

  “Captain of the port’s office,” said the phone.

  “This is Interstellar News. What’s up about Esmeralda? I just talked to the purser in space, and there’s some trouble aboard.”

  “I don’t know anything more about it than you boys,” said the captain of the port. But his voice didn’t sound right.

  “How about those safety-standard stories?” I fired into the dark.

  “That’s a tomfool rumor!” he exploded. “Her atomics are perfectly safe!”

  “Still,” I told him, fishing, “it was an engineer’s report—”

  “Eh? What was? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He realized he’d been had. “Other ships have been an hour late before and there are always rumors about shipping. That’s absolutely all I have to say—absolutely all!”

  He hung up.

  Click-click-click. “Interplanetary operator. I am trying to place your call, sir.” She must be too excited to plug in the right hole on her switchboard. A Frostbite-Gammadion call probably cost more than her annual salary, and it was a gamble at that on the feeble and mysteriously erratic sub-radiation that carried voices across segments of the galaxy.

  But there came a faint harrumph from the phone.