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

by C. M. Kornbluth

  * * * *

  Halvorsen awoke in his bed on the second floor of the building. His fingers and toes buzzed electrically and he felt very clear-headed. The girl and a man, unmistakably a doctor, were watching him.

  “You don’t seem to belong to any Medical Plans, Halvorsen,” the doctor said irritably. “There weren’t any cards on you at all. No Red, no Blue, no Green, no Brown.”

  “I used to be on the Green Plan, but I let it lapse,” the artist said defensively.

  “And look what happened!”

  “Stop nagging him!” the girl said. “I’ll pay you your fee.”

  “It’s supposed to come through a Plan,” the doctor fretted.

  “We won’t tell anybody,” the girl promised. “Here’s five dollars. Just stop nagging him.”

  “Malnutrition,” said the doctor. “Normally I’d send him to a hospital, but I don’t see how I could manage it. He isn’t on any Plan at all. Look, I’ll take the money and leave some vitamins. That’s what he needs—vitamins. And food.”

  “I’ll see that he eats,” the girl said, and the doctor left.

  “How long since you’ve had anything?” she asked Halvorsen.

  “I had some coffee today,” he answered, thinking back. “I’d been working on detail drawings for a commission and it fell through. I told you that. It was a shock.”

  “I’m Lucretia Grumman,” she said, and went out.

  He dozed until she came back with an armful of groceries.

  “It’s hard to get around down here,” she complained.

  “It was Labuerre’s studio,” he told her defiantly. “He left it to me when he died. Things weren’t so rundown in his time. I studied under him; he was one of the last. He had a joke—‘They don’t really want my stuff, but they’re ashamed to let me starve.’ He warned me that they wouldn’t be ashamed to let me starve, but I insisted and he took me in.”

  Halvorsen drank some milk and ate some bread. He thought of the change from the ten dollars in his pocket and decided not to mention it. Then he remembered that the doctor had gone through his pockets.

  “I can pay you for this,” he said. “It’s very kind of you, but you mustn’t think I’m penniless. I’ve just been too preoccupied to take care of myself.”

  “Sure,” said the girl. “But we can call this an advance. I want to sign up for some classes.”

  “Be happy to have you.”

  “Am I bothering you?” asked the girl. “You said something odd when you fainted—‘Orpheus.’”

  “Did I say that? I must have been thinking of Milles’ Orpheus Fountain in Copenhagen. I’ve seen photos, but I’ve never been there.”

  “Germany? But there’s nothing left of Germany.”

  “Copenhagen’s in Denmark. There’s quite a lot of Denmark left. It was only on the fringes. Heavily radiated, but still there.”

  “I want to travel, too,” she said. “I work at La Guardia and I’ve never been off, except for an orbiting excursion. I want to go to the Moon on my vacation. They give us a bonus in travel vouchers. It must be wonderful dancing under the low gravity.” Spaceport? Off? Low gravity? Terms belonging to the detested electronic world of the stereo-pantograph in which he had no place.

  “Be very interesting,” he said, closing his eyes to conceal disgust.

  “I am bothering you. I’ll go away now, but I’ll be back Tuesday night for the class. What time do I come and what should I bring?”

  “Eight. It’s charcoal—I sell you the sticks and paper. Just bring a smock.”

  “All right. And I want to take the oils class, too. And I want to bring some people I know to see your work. I’m sure they’ll see something they like. Austin Malone’s in from Venus—he’s a special friend of mine.”

  “Lucretia,” he said. “Or do some people call you Lucy?”

  “Lucy.”

  “Will you take that little bronze you liked? As a thank you?”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Please. I’d feel much better about this. I really mean it.”

  She nodded abruptly, flushing, and almost ran from the room.

  Now why did I do that? he asked himself. He hoped it was because he liked Lucy Grumman very much. He hoped it wasn’t a cold-blooded investment of a piece of sculpture that would never be sold, anyway, just to make sure she’d be back with class fees and more groceries.

  III

  She was back on Tuesday, a half-hour early and carrying a smock. He introduced her formally to the others as they arrived: a dozen or so bored young women who, he suspected, talked a great deal about their art lessons outside, but in class used any excuse to stop sketching.

  He didn’t dare show Lucy any particular consideration. There were fierce little miniature cliques in the class. Halvorsen knew they laughed at him and his line among themselves, and yet, strangely, were fiercely jealous of their seniority and right to individual attention.

  The lesson was an ordeal, as usual. The model, a muscle-bound young graduate of the barbell gyms and figure-photography studios, was stupid and argumentative about ten-minute poses. Two of the girls came near a hair-pulling brawl over the rights to a preferred sketching location. A third girl had discovered Picasso’s cubist period during the past week and proudly announced that she didn’t feel perspective in art.

  But the two interminable hours finally ticked by. He nagged them into cleaning up—not as bad as the Saturdays with oils—and stood by the open door. Otherwise they would have stayed all night, cackling about absent students and snarling sulkily among themselves. His well-laid plans went sour, though. A large and flashy car drove up as the girls were leaving.

  “That’s Austin Malone,” said Lucy. “He came to pick me up and look at your work.”

  That was all the wedge her fellow-pupils needed.

  “Aus-tin Ma-lone! Well!”

  “Lucy, darling, I’d love to meet a real spaceman.”

  “Roald, darling, would you mind very much if I stayed a moment?”

  “I’m certainly not going to miss this and I don’t care if you mind or not, Roald, darling!”

  Malone was an impressive figure. Halvorsen thought: he looks as though he’s been run through an esthetikon set for ‘brawny’ and ‘determined.’ Lucy made a hash of the introductions and the spaceman didn’t rise to conversational bait dangled enticingly by the girls.

  In a clear voice, he said to Halvorsen: “I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Lucy tells me you have some things for sale. Is there any place we can look at them where it’s quiet?”

  The students made sulky exits.

  “Back here,” said the artist.

  The girl and Malone followed him through the curtains. The spaceman made a slow circuit of the studio, seeming to repel questions.

  He sat down at last and said: “I don’t know what to think, Halvorsen. This place stuns me. Do you know you’re in the Dark Ages?”

  People who never have given a thought to Chartres and Mont St. Michel usually call it the Dark Ages, Halvorsen thought wryly. He asked, “Technologically, you mean? No, not at all. My plaster’s better, my colors are better, my metal is better—tool metal, not casting metal, that is.”

  “I mean hand work,” said the spaceman. “Actually working by hand.”

  The artist shrugged. “There have been crazes for the techniques of the boiler works and the machine shop,” he admitted. “Some interesting things were done, but they didn’t stand up well. Is there anything here that takes your eye?”

  “I like those dolphins,” said the spaceman, pointing to a perforated terra-cotta relief on the wall. They had been commissioned by an architect, then later refused for reasons of economy when the house had run way over estimate. “They’d look bully over the fireplace in my town apartment. Like them, Lucy?”

 
; “I think they’re wonderful,” said the girl.

  Roald saw the spaceman go rigid with the effort not to turn and stare at her. He loved her and he was jealous.

  Roald told the story of the dolphins and said: “The price that the architect thought was too high was three hundred and sixty dollars.”

  Malone grunted. “Doesn’t seem unreasonable—if you set a high store on inspiration.”

  “I don’t know about inspiration,” the artist said evenly. “But I was awake for two days and two nights shoveling coal and adjusting drafts to fire that thing in my kiln.”

  The spaceman looked contemptuous. “I’ll take it,” he said. “Be something to talk about during those awkward pauses. Tell me, Halvorsen, how’s Lucy’s work? Do you think she ought to stick with it?”

  “Austin,” objected the girl, “don’t be so blunt. How can he possibly know after one day?”

  “She can’t draw yet,” the artist said cautiously. “It’s all coordination, you know—thousands of hours of practice, training your eye and hand to work together until you can put a line on paper where you want it. Lucy, if you’re really interested in it, you’ll learn to draw well. I don’t think any of the other students will. They’re in it because of boredom or snobbery, and they’ll stop before they have their eye-hand coordination.”

  “I am interested,” she said firmly.

  Malone’s determined restraint broke. “Damned right you are. In—” He recovered himself and demanded of Halvorsen: “I understand your point about coordination. But thousands of hours when you can buy a camera? It’s absurd.”

  “I was talking about drawing, not art,” replied Halvorsen. “Drawing is putting a line on paper where you want it, I said.” He took a deep breath and hoped the great distinction wouldn’t sound ludicrous and trivial. “So let’s say that art is knowing how to put the line in the right place.”

  “Be practical. There isn’t any art. Not any more. I get around quite a bit and I never see anything but photos and S.P.G.s. A few heirlooms, yes, but nobody’s painting or carving any more.”

  “There’s some art, Malone. My students—a couple of them in the still-life class—are quite good. There are more across the country. Art for occupational therapy, or a hobby, or something to do with the hands. There’s trade in their work. They sell them to each other, they give them to their friends, they hang them on their walls. There are even some sculptors like that. Sculpture is prescribed by doctors. The occupational therapists say it’s even better than drawing and painting, so some of these people work in plasticene and soft stone, and some of them get to be good.”

  “Maybe so. I’m an engineer, Halvorsen. We glory in doing things the easy way. Doing things the easy way got me to Mars and Venus and it’s going to get me to Ganymede. You’re doing things the hard way, and your inefficiency has no place in this world. Look at you! You’ve lost a fingertip—some accident, I suppose.”

  “I never noticed—” said Lucy, and then let out a faint, “Oh!”

  Halvorsen curled the middle finger of his left hand into the palm, where he usually carried it to hide the missing first joint.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “An accident.”

  “Accidents are a sign of inadequate mastery of material and equipment,” said Malone sententiously. “While you stick to your methods and I stick to mine, you can’t compete with me.”

  His tone made it clear that he was talking about more than engineering.

  “Shall we go now, Lucy? Here’s my card, Halvorsen. Send those dolphins along and I’ll mail you a check.”

  IV

  The artist walked the half-dozen blocks to Mr. Krehbeil’s place the next day. He found the old man in the basement shop of his fussy house, hunched over his bench with a powerful light overhead. He was trying to file a saw.

  “Mr. Krehbeil!” Halvorsen called over the shriek of metal.

  The carpenter turned around and peered with watery eyes. “I can’t see like I used to,” he said querulously. “I go over the same teeth on this damn saw, I skip teeth, I can’t see the light shine off it when I got one set. The glare.” He banged down his three-cornered file petulantly. “Well, what can I do for you?”

  “I need some crating stock. Anything. I’ll trade you a couple of my maple four-by-fours.”

  The old face became cunning. “And will you set my saw? My saws, I mean. It’s nothing to you—an hour’s work. You have the eyes.”

  Halvorsen said bitterly, “All right.” The old man had to drive his bargain, even though he might never use his saws again. And then the artist promptly repented of his bitterness, offering up a quick prayer that his own failure to conform didn’t make him as much of a nuisance to the world as Krehbeil was.

  The carpenter was pleased as they went through his small stock of wood and chose boards to crate the dolphin relief. He was pleased enough to give Halvorsen coffee and cake before the artist buckled down to filing the saws.

  Over the kitchen table, Halvorsen tried to probe. “Things pretty slow now?”

  It would be hard to spoil Krehbeil’s day now. “People are always fools. They don’t know good hand work. Some day,” he said apocalyptically, “I laugh on the other side of my face when their foolish machine-buildings go falling down in a strong wind, all of them, all over the country. Even my boy—I used to beat him good, almost every day—he works a foolish concrete machine and his house should fall on his head like the rest.”

  Halvorsen knew it was Krehbeil’s son who supported him by mail, and changed the subject. “You get some cabinet work?”

  “Stupid women! What they call antiques—they don’t know Meissen, they don’t know Biedermeier. They bring me trash to repair sometimes. I make them pay; I swindle them good.”

  “I wonder if things would be different if there were anything left over in Europe.…”

  “People will still be fools, Mr. Halvorsen,” said the carpenter positively. “Didn’t you say you were going to file those saws today?”

  So the artist spent two noisy hours filing before he carried his crating stock to the studio.

  * * * *

  Lucy was there. She had brought some things to eat. He dumped the lumber with a bang and demanded: “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “We get days off,” she said vaguely. “Austin thought he’d give me the cash for the terra-cotta and I could give it to you.”

  She held out an envelope while he studied her silently. The farce was beginning again. But this time he dreaded it.

  It would not be the first time that a lonesome, discontented girl chose to see him as a combination of romantic rebel and lost pup, with the consequences you’d expect.

  He knew from books, experience and Labuerre’s conversation in the old days that there was nothing novel about the comedy—that there had even been artists, lots of them, who had counted on endless repetitions of it for their livelihood.

  The girl drops in with groceries and the artist is pleasantly surprised; the girl admires this little thing or that after payday and buys it and the artist is pleasantly surprised; the girl brings her friends to take lessons or make little purchases and the artist is pleasantly surprised. The girl may be seduced by the artist or vice versa, which shortens the comedy, or they get married, which lengthens it somewhat.

  It had been three years since Halvorsen had last played out the farce with a manic-depressive divorcee from Elmira: three years during which he had crossed the mid-point between thirty and forty; three more years to get beaten down by being unwanted and working too much and eating too little.

  Also, he knew, he was in love with this girl.

  He took the envelope, counted three hundred and twenty dollars and crammed it into his pocket. “That was your idea,” he said. “Thanks. Now get out, will you? I’ve got work to do.”

  She stood there, shocked.

/>   “I said get out. I have work to do.”

  “Austin was right,” she told him miserably. “You don’t care how people feel. You just want to get things out of them.”

  She ran from the studio, and Halvorsen fought with himself not to run after her.

  He walked slowly into his workshop and studied his array of tools, though he paid little attention to his finished pieces. It would be nice to spend about half of this money on open-hearth steel rod and bar stock to forge into chisels; he thought he knew where he could get some—but she would be back, or he would break and go to her and be forgiven and the comedy would be played out, after all.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  V

  Aalesund, on the Atlantic side of the Dourefeld mountains of Norway, was in the lee of the blasted continent. One more archeologist there made no difference, as long as he had the sense to recognize the propellor-like international signposts that said with their three blades, Radiation Hazard, and knew what every schoolboy knew about protective clothing and reading a personal Geiger counter.

  The car Halvorsen rented was for a brief trip over the mountains to study contaminated Oslo. Well-muffled, he could make it and back in a dozen hours and no harm done.

  But he took the car past Oslo, Wennersborg and Goteborg, along the Kattegat coast to Helsingborg, and abandoned it there, among the three-bladed polyglot signs, crossing to Denmark. Danes were as unlike Prussians as they could be, but their unfortunate little peninsula was a sprout off Prussia which radio-cobalt dust couldn’t tell from the real thing. The three-bladed signs were most specific.

  With a long way to walk along the rubble-littered highways, he stripped off the impregnated coveralls and boots. He had long since shed the noisy counter and the uncomfortable gloves and mask.

  The silence was eerie as he limped into Copenhagen at noon. He didn’t know whether the radiation was getting to him or whether he was tired and hungry and no more. As though thinking of a stranger, he liked what he was doing.

  I’ll be my own audience, he thought. God knows I learned there isn’t any other, not any more. You have to know when to stop. Rodin, the dirty old, wonderful old man, knew that. He taught us not to slick it and polish it and smooth it until it looked like liquid instead of bronze and stone. Van Gogh was crazy as a loon, but he knew when to stop and varnish it, and he didn’t care if the paint looked like paint instead of looking like sunset clouds or moonbeams. Up in Hartford, Browne and Sharpe stop when they’ve got a turret lathe; they don’t put caryatids on it. I’ll stop while my life is a life, before it becomes a thing with distracting embellishments such as a wife who will come to despise me, a succession of gradually less worthwhile pieces that nobody will look at.