The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth
Page 72
Hollywood would love me for this, he thought sourly. The cliché of the newspaperman-drunk. The liquor began to take hold after an alarming moment when he thought he was going to lose it. He lit a cigarette and found his electric shaver. If there was an outlet in his compartment, he couldn’t find it. Foreman got into his shirt and pants and stumped down the swaying aisle to the men’s room.
The morning rush was on. The three outlets labeled “110-volt DC” were occupied, and he got a hostile glare or two from men carrying electric razors of their own and waiting their turn. Everybody was bitching about the unscheduled stop. The unwashed smell was bad, and one fat character in an undershirt who could have used a brassiere was carefully perforating a pre-breakfast cigar with a wooden match. With concentration he put it in his mouth and drew experimentally. All was well. He struck the wooden match, let the sulfur burn out and lit the cigar, sucking wetly on it, turning it in his mouth to the tip of flame, puffing grey clouds of smoke.
Foreman’s stomach churned in him and he fled from the room, caroming into Dr. Groves. The medical missionary was looking healthy and handsome in a fresh white shirt. “Good morning, Mr. Foreman,” he said cheerfully.
“Morning, doctor. Excuse the body-block. I thought I was going to throw up in there. Oh, that cigar-smoke.”
“Medically speaking, you’ll feel better if you do throw up.” The doctor’s clear eyes were assessing his red-rimmed ones and undoubtedly he smelled the sour stomach of last night’s drinking and the reek of the morning bracer on his breath. “I can give you some tartar emetic.”
“Ooh.” Foreman passed his hand across his greasy, clammy brow. “Maybe you’d better, doctor. Oh, that cigar …”
“Be right back.” The doctor disappeared and Foreman counted the contractions of his stomach until he came back. After eleven flip-flops the doctor was handing him a quarter of a five-grain tablet. “Dissolve it in a little water and drink it. It’s very fast and thorough.”
“Thanks a lot. How’s the girl?”
“A false alarm. Her contractions tapered off into nothing. But it’s going to be soon. I wish we could have her taken off the train.”
Automatically, they both glanced at the white-shrouded country outside, like a ghost-land. You could see conical white humps that were drifted-in pine trees. The doctor shrugged and went into the men’s room.
Foreman drew a paper cup of water and took it into his compartment. The emetic fizzed for a moment as he dropped it in. It was the bitterest stuff he had ever tasted—a kind of super-quinine. The doctor was right. It was very fast. He barely had time to raise the lid of the dinky little toilet before it hit. And the doctor was right again. It was very thorough. After three very long minutes Foreman flopped onto his cot feeling much weaker and much better. He mopped his brow and decided that life was worth living.
There was a feel of immense effort trembling through the fabric of the train. Its twin-unit diesel electric locomotive, a city block long and crammed with power, should be whipping the immensely heavy train along at an average fifty miles per hour. But it was stopped dead.
These were the mountains, and they were tough babies. Not so long ago, in the early Victorian era when ladies and gentlemen in Europe were dancing the schottische and the new-fangled waltz, not far from here at right about this time of year the Donner party was stranded by snow. Before it was spring, men had killed and eaten other men to survive.
And snow made you think of other things: serving an 81-millimeter mortar in Hürtgen Forest, the lovely, balsam-scented natural tank-trap planted on the German frontier. All the pine trees were Christmas trees, trimmed with strips of tinsel…anti-radar “window” dropped by bombers on their way to the Ruhr or Berlin. Any of the pine trees might be a mantrap, crashing onto you and crushing you at a puff of wind that took it the right way. Hürtgen Forest had been fought over three times, and shell fragments riddled and weakened the trees almost invisibly. And, as in all forests, you had to be very, very careful about a clear field of fire for your mortar. Crews were wiped out when the ascending shell hit a stray branch on the way up and exploded.
And death made you think of other things: the man with crabs eating his face that might be you if you failed in Frisco or if you talked out of turn to the red-faced, prosy, short-of-breath businessmen whose business was gambling, pimping, dope-running and, whenever necessary, murder.
Why had he not feared death in the Hürtgen Forest, but feared it now, so bitterly that he was abjectly taking orders from men who were not different in any essential way from the Nazis he had fought?
He tried not to answer the question, but the answer came: because you’re corrupted now by a few years of lying to yourself every minute of the day; because you took their money and pretended it wasn’t theirs; because you pretended you were Larry Foreman of World Wireless instead of Larry Foreman the Syndicate Stooge. Now you know? Like hell. You knew it all along. The shrimp cocktails, the steaks, the good suits, the pretty girls, the good apartment… they were paid for with the housewife’s dollar bet at the horse-room, the patched-pants Negro porter’s nickel hopefully invested in a policy number that will never come up, the high-school junkie’s stolen five-dollar bill for a cap of well-cut heroin, the out-of-town buyer’s fifty dollars for an infected call girl who will be methodically beaten up if she tries to quit the life.
And what comes next? None of your goddamned business, fella. You’re not paid to think. You’re paid to go to Frisco and set up a chain of what the newspapers will call “nerve centers of gambling” quickly, economically and efficiently. You’re paid to set up a smooth-running machine to siphon money from the pockets of San Francisco residents and visitors into the pockets of the prosy, short-of-breath businessmen who will do with it God knows what. Buy yachts? Real estate? Diamonds and furs for their wives and women?
He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about it.
“Hollywood, I salute you,” he said slowly, and took a long, burning drink from the Scotch bottle.
So he had problems. Who didn’t? Boyce and the blonde had problems. La Greer had problems… or would in a few years.
A discreet tap on the door. “Make up your berth, suh?”
“Okay,” he called. Might as well try to shave again. He collected his gear and went to the washroom feeling light-headed. The liquor had hit his empty stomach hard and fast. He shaved and washed and went back to his compartment, where he had another drink and finished dressing for breakfast.
In the crowded vestibule of the diner he was jammed up against the lieutenant and his red-headed lady. Being jammed up against the lady was not disagreeable, but he disengaged himself with a mumbled apology.
“Morning,” the lieutenant said. “How’s the lady writer? Is it safe for me to show my face in public?”
“Matter of fact, lieutenant, I’d hide if I were you. The last time I saw her she was oiling a .38 and asking what car you were in.”
The red-headed girl laughed sharply and said to her husband: “How terrible for you, darling. You’re going to be shot by a celebrity in a streamliner instead of being cut down by the first invasion wave.”
“Zip it up,” he said to her quickly.
“Sorry, darling. Security’s involved, isn’t it? Darling—if the lady writer shoots you, do I get a Purple Heart anyway?”
“Nope. Non-service-connected when you get shot by a lady writer,” the lieutenant said, cheerful again. “But you get the insurance. That’ll be nice, won’t it?”
“Yum-yum. I’ll say it is. I can’t wait to get my hands on that ten grand and make a clean sweep through Carson, Pirie and Scott. They’ll adore you on State Street for making the supreme sacrifice, dear.”
The lieutenant looked alarmed at her wild, loud talk—more so when the man in front of them turned around and looked blankly at them both. He was fat and middle-aged and mournful. “You
’re being very witty about Purple Hearts and insurance, young lady,” he told the lieutenant’s wife in a wondering voice. “I lost my boy in Korea myself, at Inchon, so I can really appreciate your humor. Excuse me.” He pushed past them and through the crowd.
The lieutenant turned to his wife and said hesitantly: “That kind of talk, Joyce. I’ve asked you before—”
The red-head said chattily to Foreman: “We’re service people so we have to watch our step, you know. Conduct detrimental to discipline and efficiency. Death or such other punishment as a court martial may inflict.”
“Are you drunk?” Foreman asked, really interested.
“Look, mister,” said the lieutenant to him.
“I apologize,” Foreman said, meaning it. The poor guy appeared to have troubles enough. “As a matter of fact, I’ve had a couple of drinks myself. I’m a newspaperman and of course you’ve been to the movies so you know how we are.”
“No,” said the lieutenant. “I don’t know how newspapermen are but I can smell your breath and it makes me sick.”
“Lieutenant, I apologized,” Foreman said gently. “Or I tried to. Maybe the apology was a little uncouth, but that’s because I was only a staff sergeant.”
The red-head put in helpfully: “I’ve been to the movies. I know how staff sergeants are.”
Foreman saw suddenly that her eyes were odd: the pupils contracted to pin-points, even in the meager light of the vestibule. My God, he thought. A junkie. The poor guy. He didn’t say anything, the lieutenant didn’t say anything, and after her crack the red-head didn’t say anything.
The little diner attendant shuffled up and said to him: “Yes, sir. Room for one. Seat you in a moment, sir. With the gentleman you had lunch with,” he beamed, as if asking: won’t that be nice?
Oh, God. Little Boyce and his troubles. But he’d be nice to him. He was drunker than he thought. The last thing he’d wanted was a spat with anybody.
Boyce was moodily eating scrambled eggs. “Good morning,” he said to Foreman.
“Good morning.” To the waiter: “I’ll have the same.” To Boyce: “Look, I’m sorry if I talked out of turn last night. I seem to remember being loaded.”
“It’s all right. Things look different in the morning, don’t they? ‘The cold light of dawn.’ Late at night you get a couple of drinks into you and you think you can lick the world, do what you want, have everything your own way. Comes the dawn. And you realize you were acting like a jerk and nothin’s going to be changed, ever.”
The poor little guy. Change the subject before he starts to bawl. “That girl who was going to have the baby. She isn’t. The doctor said it was a false alarm this time. But he’s sweating bullets about getting her off the train.”
“Into that?” Boyce gestured half-heartedly at the window, at the white-robed landscape of rocks, drifts and pine trees.
Foreman’s coffee, eggs and toast arrived. He drank the coffee and played with the food. “How’s Miss Lundberg?” he asked at last.
Uncontrollably, a spasm of pain went over the little man’s face. In a flat, precise tone he said: “I saw her for a little while this morning. She said she thought she’d say hello to Mona and perhaps have breakfast with her.”
“Something happened.”
“Yes, something happened. I tried to make love to her last night. This isn’t kissing-and-telling because nothing happened. Nothing happened because I did a poor damn bungling job of it. I said the wrong things and I did the wrong things and if I did any right things I didn’t do them well enough…
“I don’t know. Excuse me.” He dropped a bill on the cardboard check and hurried off.
Foreman chewed a corner of toast slowly. Corruption knows corruption. The same seduction that the Syndicate business had practiced on him was being practiced on Joan Lundberg. They had found his weak spot and worked on it. Mona Greer had found Joan Lundberg’s weak spot and was working on it overtime. He, sitting there, was by now a tool of despicable men who, like the Nazis, wanted the world with a fence around it and did not care one damn how they got it or who got hurt in the getting. Joan soon might be a tool of a despicable woman who wanted kicks and did not care one damn how she got them or who got hurt in the getting.
The attendant seated across the table from him the fat, mournful man who had told off the lieutenant’s junkie wife. Apparently remembered grief had not kept him away from the pleasures of eating very long. “Morning,” he said to Foreman, without recognition. He briskly checked a great many items on the menu and said to the newsman: “Great day for penguins, huh?”
“Sure is.”
“What’s your line, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I’m a news man.”
“I’ll be darned. I used to be a newspaperman myself. On the old Wichita Beacon.”
Sure. Everybody used to be a newspaperman himself. Two weeks as a bookkeeper for the Pismo Beach Shopping News and for the rest of your life you used to be a newspaperman yourself, boring and annoying the man with a real title to the name.
“The hell you were,” he said to the man.
The man completely ignored the remark, as though it had not been made. “Those were the days,” he chuckled.
Foreman tried again. He asked nastily: “Were you on the news side or the business side, mister?”
“Business side, as a matter of fact. I was a space salesman. But my heart was always with the reporter. I was always hanging around the city room. They lead a fascinating life. Dangerous, too. Fires, accidents, highballing through the red lights if a story breaks—I wonder if you’ve ever thought of the advantages of special accident coverage to a newsman? I happen to be in the insurance line, here’s my card, William (Bill) Loober, Professional Building, Wichita, like it says there, Mister—what did you say your name was?”
Foreman took the card and told him and the spiel flowed on. Loober was a very good salesman, he noted impersonally. He liked the man; he radiated warmth; he made you like him. He interested you.
But he should not be likeable, warm and interesting now. A wound in him had been opened and salt rubbed in it by the lady junkie’s vicious joke. Bill Looper minutes after that had happened should still be smarting and morose, wishing vainly that the Red sniper had missed or the U.N. artillery shell had not been a short or that the Mig pilot had not pressed the firing button.
Who, Foreman wondered impersonally, had corrupted Bill Looper and to what end?
Who had emptied Looper of grief over a dead son and filled him with the lust to make a buck and spend it on television sets, show seats, convertibles, watches, deep freezers that would never bring back his son?
Chapter XIX
SNOW
The conductor and the engineer are conferring worriedly in the cabin of the diesel-electric locomotive.
Daniel Manafee, close to hysteria, says: “I don’t give a Goddamn how many people you have aboard. We’re snowbound and we’re not going anywheres until the plows come and dig us out. And Christ knows when that’s going to be.”
The elderly, peppery conductor snaps: “A hell of a railroad man you turned out to be. What about later in the day? Won’t the sun soften it up some? What about that?”
“My God, man, it’s forty-fifty below out there. If the sun softens it up it’ll just freeze rock-hard again. We’re stuck, I tell you. Stuck.”
“How about light and heat?”
The engineer studies his fuel-oil gauges. “Maybe a dozen of both. I ought to cut out the lighting circuits so we’ll have heat longer—”
“No you don’t! Turn off the lights and well have a panic aboard like you never saw.”
Nothing is solved, and the conductor stumps angrily back through the block-long diesels into the passenger cars, scowling and getting ready to lie like a man.
Chapter XX
PRECAUTIONS
Joan rapped timidly on the door of the fat girl’s compartment. Unexpected result: the next door down opened and a dark little woman wearing no makeup popped out to demand: “What do you want?”
“Why, I’d spoken to, uh, the patient and I thought I might pay a visit—”
“She’s asleep,” the little woman snapped. “I’m Mrs. Groves. I’m a nurse. The conductor was kind enough to move out her neighbor so I could keep an eye on her.”
“Oh, that’s splendid. How is she?”
“Her pains have stopped and she’s sleeping without sedation. That’s all anyone could wish for.”
“I’m very glad.” She saw suddenly that the little woman was dog-tired, almost out on her feet. “Mrs. Groves, you haven’t slept, have you? Couldn’t I stand by while you catch a nap? I could call you if anything happened—”
“Any nursing experience?”
“No.”
“Then I’m afraid not. But thank you for the offer. We’ve had a lot of morbidly curious would-be visitors this morning. You’re the first who wanted to do anything. Don’t worry; my husband will relieve me after a while. He’s a doctor.”
“Oh, you’re the missionaries. I met him. Mrs. Groves, when—when your patient wakes up—” She was going to ask her to give the fat girl a cheery message from her, but the girl didn’t know her name. “I’m sorry to have troubled you,” she said to the nurse and turned back to her car.
This time she knocked on Mona Greer’s door.
The writer was patrician in an ice-blue hostess coat, and perfectly groomed. “Well, little one,” she smiled.