The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  Darlin’, she’d say, how wonderful you remembered. And you called me, too. Well, now my day is complete. I’ve been remembered by my boyfriend… I didn’t want to hear it. Not again. I’d wait and tell her about it later.

  I came home this night determined not to fail. In fact I’d about made up my mind that if the poison wasn’t going to work, I’d do anything, anything, regardless of the consequences. It would be worth any punishment to tighten my fingers around that flabby neck, to watch the eyes bulge, to have them look pleadingly at me, really pleadingly, not pretend. At me, her murderer!

  I opened the front door that evening, but there was no sound of television. Instead, Susie called me from upstairs as I came in.

  “Come up, darlin’, and see what I’ve been doing. Look, I’m making my sewing room into a guest room. I made this pink satin spread for the couch today. Now if you would just do one thing for me it will be all fixed up.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “Now isn’t that just like a man? Why nobody. I just decided that since I don’t sew much any more, what with television and everything taking up so much of my time, that I’d make this into a more elegant room. I always like to have things nice. You know that, darlin’. I like everything just right, and this guest room is going to be real elegant when I finish with it, don’t you think? It’s exactly what we’ve been needing for a long time, and now we’ve got it. Just take this old sewing machine down in the basement for me and then everything will be about all finished.”

  The sewing machine was heavy and awkward. The cellar stairs were steep and I didn’t want to slip on that third step. I took the first and second and then I stepped over the third and came down hard on the fourth. But it was the fourth that wobbled. Just like the third always did. In fact worse; it was loose altogether and slid out sideways.

  The sewing machine’s weight was too much for me. I saw the steep steps below me and the gray cement floor. Then things happened too fast, and we were on the floor, the sewing machine and I, tangled together.

  I felt no pain, just a numbing shock. And then it seemed as if my legs were pinned under something heavy, but I could see they weren’t. I tried to move them, but nothing at all happened. Something was very wrong.

  Then I saw Susie at the top step looking down at me. She appraised the situation with the masculine forthrightness that never appeared in her words. I stared back at her into those black, beady eyes, and then I knew that she knew, and that she had somehow planned all this. A packet of poison carefully placed under a pan to seem so casual, and the new guest room, the sewing machine.

  I should have suspected. I’d always known that, underneath, Susie was much cleverer than I was. I should have guessed.

  “Darlin’,” she said, “you look all twisted, lover. Now don’t you move; not at all. I heard on television that you mustn’t move. It’s the worst thing in your state. I’ll run call the Doctor. Oh, I wish the man had come to fix the steps today instead of tomorrow. But don’t you worry; you know I’ll look after you no matter what. You can always count on your Susie. You know that. And I have a feeling things will turn out for the best in the long run. And you know, darlin’, my feelings are usually right.”

  I had misjudged Susie’s heaven. This was it. She had me now just where she wanted me, and she was already making the most of it.

  “Your Susie will look after you,” she said again as she turned to go to the phone.

  Smashing Detective,Vol. 4, No. 2, September 1955

  This Thing Called Love

  TODAY I STOPPED loving Allen. It happened real suddenly. I came down to breakfast, which Mike had dialed for me on the Meel-O-Mat. (He’s rather nice that way.) I sat down beside Mike and all of a sudden I thought to myself, Allen stinks. Just like that, and it was over. So I said it out loud, “Allen stinks.”

  Mike gave this sigh of relief. “So it’s over at last,” he said; and I said, “It sure is.”

  Then he got a very serious look on his face. “Janie,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for this to happen; I’ve been wanting to talk to you about us.”

  “Mmmm?” I hate people to talk about serious things when I’m eating. How can you enjoy your food when you have to concentrate on something else? The Meel-O-Mat had just served an omelet and hot rolls, so I didn’t listen till I’d finished all I wanted. Then I said, “Will you please repeat. I was eating.”

  That’s when he told me he was in love with me. Me! I’m glad I didn’t listen till I’d finished my breakfast because it made me laugh so I wouldn’t have been able to eat half so much. You see, we’ve been married five years, and, after all, we’re human beings. There’s no doubt about that. I admit I’m pretty much on the plump side and my hair couldn’t be any straighter. And, believe me, it’s not hard to see that Mike is human, too. He’s almost bald, and his nose—well, you’d never see one like that on TV. Not in a million years.

  So a bald-headed, hook-nosed, very human, human being says he’s in love with a straight haired fatty. Now I ask you, does that make sense? Why, we didn’t even think of loving each other when we got married.

  Mike didn’t think it was a joke, though. He’s been getting pretty unrealistic lately, if you ask me.

  “Will you stop laughing and listen just once till I finish?” he said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this and it’s important even if it isn’t being broadcast over TV. Listen, I do love you. I don’t know how I can convince you, but I do.”

  He was looking at me with those big, earnest eyes of his. So I said to myself, If you want to play it serious, I can play it serious as well as any. But I sure saved up a lot of laughs for later, and I kept thinking, Wait till Betty hears this.

  Anyway, I stopped laughing, and he went on with the “I love you” business for a while; then he said that the way people love nowadays is unnatural and that our whole life is unnatural. He even said that people, real people, were beautiful just like the TV stars. Better, he said. As I said, he was getting very unrealistic.

  “I can’t convince you by talking,” he said, “but maybe I can show you, if you can just drag yourself away from that TV set for a while.”

  “Not me,” I said. “Do you think I like not being in love? I’m going to find myself another TV star just as soon as I can.”

  “Look,” Mike said, “just give me a couple of days.”

  “No, sir!”

  “Listen, I’ll tell you what it’s all about. You heard about the pioneer rocket ships on the TV news, didn’t you?”

  I had heard about them, all right, and I could see right away what he was driving at. He’d got some crazy idea he wanted to go with them, off pioneering, and the rules were, nobody could go without their wife. And not only that, you had to sign a statement you’d have children. Not just one, which was the legal limit on earth, but three or four. You can see how primitive life would be. And I don’t think they were taking any TV robots, either; there wasn’t going to be room for anything but ordinary human beings.

  “Janie,” Mike said, “I want you to see the rockets as I’ve seen them, and what the people are doing; and I want you to see some of the history shows at the museum. You might understand more. Please. Just give me a couple of days.”

  “You want me to take two whole days out of my life to go traipsing off to dead exhibits! Why, those museum shows don’t even have background music. Don’t think I’m a complete ignoramus. I saw one once.”

  “Please.”

  “Besides, I haven’t been away from the TV set that long since I was a year and a half. Mother always said I was a precocious listener. Really. Only a year and a half and I was listening regularly. Of course I couldn’t understand all…”

  “Janie. If you have any feelings about our marriage at all, you could grant me a couple of days.”

  “Oh, all right; don’t make a fuss, for heaven’s sake. I’ll let you have a day or so.”

  So, before I knew it, I found myself in the museum.

  O
f course there was nobody there but us. Oh, there were two old men who could read, but everybody knows anyone that reads is a crackpot, so I don’t count them.

  Anyway, we played some shows and it was all old stuff as far as I could see. I hadn’t seen any of them before, but things get spread around—by the grapevine, I guess. I mean, we all know that before people were civilized they used actual human beings as actors on their TV shows. And we know what sort of human beings they were, too.

  Mike is still pretty naïve about things even when it comes to history, which, I must say, he loves. I asked him right then. I said, “Did they use ordinary, everyday human beings as actors?”

  Of course I knew they hadn’t, and Mike had to admit they picked the ones that looked the most like robots, and made them up to seem even more so. Sometimes they used false teeth and false hair and stuff to cover skin blemishes. If they couldn’t be robots, they sure tried hard to be like them. Some of them came awfully close, too; they were almost pretty.

  Finally I told Mike this was all old stuff, and asked him why, in heaven’s name, was he making em look at it?

  “I thought you might get a new perspective on things if you saw a sequence of how they developed,” he said. “At least I hoped.”

  “Well, I can see even better than I could before,” I told him, “how people were trying to get just what we have right now.”

  Mike looked kind of shocked; then he said, “Come on. Let’s go see the ships.” And that was the end of the museum trip.

  The rockets were pretty interesting. I was surprised. Of course I’ve seen things like this on TV lots of times—better, in fact—but seeing the real thing had a different feel. I could almost understand why Mike wanted to go. Of course he was letting his emotions carry him away, but it was exciting—the ships so big, and all that bustle around them.

  The first one was going to leave the very next day even though it didn’t have its full quota. These days it’s pretty hard to get people to volunteer for this sort of things, which isn’t surprising.

  Mike was pretty excited, too. “Look at those men,” he said. “We could be like that. It doesn’t take long to harden up and to slim down; we could look a lot more like the actors than we do, if we tried.”

  “They may have better looking figures than most people,” I said, “but they’re still a long way from the robots.”

  “I’m damn glad they are; they’re human beings and that means a lot.”

  I was shocked. I’ve never heard that kind of talk before. I’m glad there was nobody near us to hear it.

  “You’ve already got such odd ideas, what hill happen if you go off with these people?” I said. “I don’t see how we can go. I mean, if you had ordinary ideas there would be so much danger, and maybe we could go then. But as it is, you’ll be completely uncivilized out there in the wilds, just where it’s most necessary to keep our values. What about art and beauty, too? No TV, no actors. Are they just going down the drain? No; you can’t do it—you’re already too far gone.”

  “But Janie, this isn’t the only way to be civilized, or the only art.”

  “It is to me, and that museum trip proved it. We’re right at the point where people long ago wanted to be. No, you can’t go; I won’t go—so you can’t go either.”

  “Look, you promised me one more day. Please don’t decide till then.”

  “Well, if you can change my mind—which I doubt—you’re welcome to try.”

  So, that was the end of day number one, and hardly a pleasant day, at that. Not being in love was making me awfully jumpy, too; I wasn’t sure I could hold out a whole day more.

  The next day when I came down, Mike had punched the Meel-O-Mat buttons again and ordered me a nice breakfast, as usual, but he wasn’t there. He must have gotten up early and gone for a walk again. It’s a bad habit which I’ve told him and told him I dislike—especially when the neighbors can see, and everything. But he does it occasionally, anyway; I guess it’s some kind of a phobia.

  I finished breakfast and then I was stuck. I had promised not to look at the TV today, but what was there to do?

  Finally I decided to call my neighbor, Betty, and I told her the whole story about Mike and the rocket ships and history and everything. We had a good laugh over it, and I felt even more that I was right not to go. I mean…well…what other decision is there?

  Anyway, the phone call didn’t really take so very long, and afterwards I tried to think of someone else to call. But everyone I know, except Betty, would be mad as anything if I interrupted a TV show. So I sat around a few minutes wondering, and then I went into the TV room. After all, Mike had gone for a walk, and I don’t like that, so how could he kick about this? Besides, I said, a day or so, when I promised—not two days exactly.

  I’m certainly awfully glad I did turn the set on right then, otherwise I might have missed Jerry. He looked handsomer than any robot I’d ever seen, and especially so when I thought of how generations and generations of human beings had been striving all through the ages for just such artistic perfection. He had a smooth and perfect face, and such silky hair, and large, blue eyes. Bluer than real eyes could ever be. His shirt was open to the waist and his chest was shiny and hairless underneath.

  I was in love again, and it was wonderful.

  The program was over by the time Mike got home, but Jerry would be on again tonight at eight. I had already signed up for Jerry’s fan club, too.

  Mike didn’t say anything when he came in. I guess anybody could see I was in love again, and Mike knew there was no sense in talking. He was right; there wasn’t.

  He went up to our room, to mope a while, I guess, and then he came downstairs and went out again. I saw him from the TV room window. I supposed he was going for another walk, but he didn’t come back for lunch and not for supper, either. Of course this didn’t worry me too much. I was caught up in the programs for the day and hardly had time to think about anything but Jerry now and then.

  I began to wonder a little after Jerry’s night program was over and I had ordered a case of Jay’s Jet action soap. (Jerry said it was best to get it by the case.) I guessed Mike was really put out about not getting to go on one of those ships. But, after all, it had been out of the question all along, as far as I was concerned—and that meant for him, too.

  At nine I watched a news program of the launching of the first pioneer rocket ship. The quota, surprisingly, was almost filled. Much closer than expected, it seems.

  At nine thirty, Jack—Betty’s husband—knocked on the door. As soon as I opened it I could see he was mad. “Do you know what they’ve done,” he shouted.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Your husband and my wife; they’ve left on the rocket ship together.”

  “Why, that’s illegal; they’re not even married.”

  “Well, they’ve done it, and they’ve left us.”

  Then I got pretty mad, too, and we shouted at each other for about a half an hour. And then Jack asked if it was close to ten yet; it was, so he left in a hurry. He’s in love with Grace Glenn; she’s always on at ten.

  I calmed down pretty soon, what with some nice music on TV. After all, I thought, I had Jerry. And then I got to thinking about Jack, upstairs. He’s not so bad, a nice steady type without any fancy ideas. I wouldn’t want to stay unmarried very long. I wonder…

  Future Science Fiction, no. 28, December 1955

  Love Me Again

  CHARLEY said, “What you need is a new wife.”

  “Look,” I started, but he waved his hand and went on.

  “I know you’ve only been married three months,” he said, “but, believe me, I know the signs. Look at the way you mope around. You’re restless; you can’t keep your mind on your hobbies any more. Take some advice from someone who knows. You need a new wife.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t exactly feel like it to me. But just supposing, for argument’s sake, that I do. What would I do about it? Wives aren’t
made with a hobby kit; they cost money, plenty, and I’m fresh out after buying Claire. You know that. On my salary I have to make do with the same wife for, at the least, about a year, even with Claire as a trade-in. Besides, she’s a good girl. I like her; I really do. We’re getting along fine.”

  “‘Like’ and ‘love’ aren’t the same things at all, Dan boy, and I know what you need. I can read the signs all over you.”

  “I don’t know; I’d really hate to get rid of Claire already.”

  “Why don’t you keep her around and get a new wife, too?”

  “Are you crazy! You know I’m broke. I’d need her for the trade-in even if I did have the money for the payments on a new one.”

  “Listen, Dan. I’ve got a wonderful idea; I’ve even been thinking of doing it myself, and you know what shape my finances are in. Listen now, and try not to be shocked. At least not till I finish.”

  “I don’t now if I’m particularly interested in any more of your schemes, Charley.”

  “Now don’t interrupt me. This is a real good idea. Look. There are a lot of girls, real girls I mean, in the same boat as we are. They make the same salaries, and husbands are just as expensive as wives. What I’m thinking is, why can’t we get together some way?”

  “Charley, you mean… ”

  “I mean just that. Why don’t we team up with real women for a change.”

  “But… ”

  “No, don’t say it. I know it sounds preposterous, population laws and all that, but just think about it calmly for a minute. There are plenty of real women as broke as we are who are dying for new husbands. Some of them are bound to be pretty decent-looking, too. I think it would be a pretty exciting thing to do. New experience and all that. A real adventure.”

  He put his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. “Primitive love,” he said, “wild, passionate, wicked. The way love ought to be.”