Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  There were other changes.

  Quay brought in efficiency report after efficiency report, and by the end of three months, they had hit eighteen and seven-tenths percent increase. The administrative office was no longer the dull, listless place it had been; now it thrived and hummed like the shop below. Cutter could see the difference with his own eyes, and he could particularly see the differences in certain individuals.

  Brown and Kennedy showed remarkable improvement, but it was really Harry Linden who astonished Cutter. An individual check showed a sixty-percent increase by Linden, and there was a definite change in the man's looks. He walked differently, with a quick, virile step, and the look of his face and eyes had become strong and alive. He began appearing early in the morning, ahead of the starting hour, and working late, and the only time he missed any work hours, was one afternoon, during which, Lucile informed Cutter, he had appeared in court for his divorce trial.

  Within a month, Cutter had fired Stole and Lackter and Grant, as department heads, and replaced them with Brown, Kennedy, and Linden. He had formulated plans for installation of the Confidets in the drafting department and the supply department, and already the profits of increased efficiency were beginning to show in the records. Cutter was full of new enthusiasm and ambition, and there was only one thorn in the entire development.

  Quay had resigned.

  Cutter had been startled and extremely angry, but Quay had been unperturbed and stubborn. "I've enjoyed working with you immensely, George, but my mind is made up. No hard feelings?"

  Cutter had not even shaken his hand.

  It had bothered him for days, and he checked every industrial company in the area, to see where Quay had found a better position. He was highly surprised, when he learned, finally, that Quay had purchased a small boat and was earning his living by carrying fishermen out onto the Bay. Quay had also married, four days after his resignation, and Cutter pushed the entire thing out of his mind, checking it off to partial insanity.

  By February of the next year, he had promoted Harry Linden to Quay's old job, gotten rid of the deadwood that showed up so plainly on the individual checks, and the total efficiency average had reached thirty-three percent. His and Mary's anniversary was on the fourth of March, and when that day arrived, he was certain that he had reached that point where he could expand to another plant.

  He was about to order her a mink stole in celebration, but it was also that day that he was informed that she was suing him for divorce. He rushed home, furious, but she was gone. She had taken her clothes and jewelry and the second Cadillac. In fact, all that she had left of her personal possessions were the antique desk and chair. When the trial was over, months later, she had won enough support to take her to France, where, he learned, she purchased a chateau at Cannes.

  He tried to lose himself in his work, but for the first time in his life, he had begun to get faintly worried. It was only a sliver of worry, but it kept him from going on with the expansion. Stocks in the company had turned over at an amazingly rapid rate, and while it was still nothing more than intuition on his part, he began to tighten up, readying himself to meet anything.

  The explosion came in July.

  Drindor Products had picked up forty-nine percent of the stock on the market, by using secondary buyers. There had been a leak somewhere, Cutter realized, that had told his competitor, Drindor, the kind of profit he was making. He knew who it had been instantly, but before he could fire Harry Linden, all of his walls crashed down. Four months before, to put more esprit de corps into Linden, he had allowed Linden eight shares of his own stock, intending to pick it up later from the market. Linden had coerced with Drindor. Cutter lost control.

  A board of directors was elected by Drindor, and Drindor assumed the presidency by proxy. Harry Linden took over Cutter's office, as Vice President In Charge.

  Cutter had wildly ordered Edward Bolen to remove the Confidets one week before, but even then he had known that it was too late, and the smiling, knowing look on Bolen's face had infuriated him to a screaming rage. Bolen remained undisturbed, and quietly carried the disks away. Cutter, when he left his office that final day, moved slowly, very slowly.

  * * * * *

  He brooded for many long days after that, searching his mind for a way to counterattack. He still had enough stock to keep him comfortable if he lived another hundred years. But he no longer had the power, and he thirsted for that. He turned it around and around in his brain, trying to figure out how he could do it, and the one thing he finally knew, the one certain thing, was that if he used enough drive, enough strength, then he would regain control of the company he had built with his own hands and mind.

  He paced the library and the long living room and the dining room, and his eyes were lost, until he saw, through the doorway of the sewing room, that desk and that chair, and he remembered he hadn't done anything about that.

  He paused only briefly, because he had not lost an ounce of his ability to make a sudden decision, and then he removed that disk and carried it to the library and fitted it under the cushion of the large, worn, leather chair.

  By fall, he had done nothing to regain control, and he was less certain of how he should act than he had been months before. He kept driving by the plant and looking at it, but he did so carefully, so that no one would see him, and he was surprised to find that, above all, he didn't want to face Harry Linden. The memory of the man's firm look, the sharp, bold eyes, frightened him, and the knowledge of his fright crushed him inside. He wished desperately that Mary were back with him, and he even wrote her letters, pleading letters, but they came back, unopened.

  Finally he went to see Robert Quay, because Quay was the only man in his memory whom he somehow didn't fear talking to. He found Quay in a small cottage near the beach. There was a six-day old infant in a crib in the bedroom, and Quay's wife was a sparkling-eyed girl with a smile that made Cutter feel relatively at ease for the first time in weeks.

  She politely left them alone, and Cutter sat there, embarrassed faintly, but glad to be in Quay's home and presence. They talked of how it had been, when Quay was with the company, and finally Cutter pushed himself into asking about it:

  "I've often wondered, Bob, why you left?"

  Quay blushed slightly, then grinned. "I might as well admit it. I got one of those things from Bolen, and had it installed in my own chair."

  Cutter thought about it, surprised. He cleared his throat. "And then you quit?"

  "Sure," Quay said. "All my life, I'd wanted to do just what I'm doing. But things just came easy to me, and the opportunities were always there, and I just never had the guts to pass anything by. Finally I did."

  Quay smiled at him, and Cutter shifted in his chair. "The Confidet did that."

  Cutter nodded.

  It came to him suddenly, something he'd never suspected until that moment. There was something very definitely wrong with what had happened to him. The Confidet had affected everyone but him; there must have been something wrong with the one he had been using. It had worked with Mary, but hadn't Bolen said something about the energy being used in proportion to the demand? Mary had certainly created a demand. Bolen said the life of it was indefinite, but couldn't the energy have been used up?

  "Ah," he said carefully, smiling, to Quay. "You wouldn't have it around, would you? That Confidet of yours?"

  "Oh, hell, no," Quay said. "I gave it to Bolen a long time ago. He came around for it, in fact. Said he had to keep track of all of them."

  Cutter left hurriedly, with Quay and his wife following him to his car. He drove straight to Bolen's house.

  Fury built inside of him. All this time, Bolen had kept track of his Confidet, the one that Mary had used, and all this time, he had known Cutter still had it. Cutter was furious over the realization that Bolen had been using him for experimentation, and also because the Confidet that he had tried to use had turned worthless.

  All his hatred, all his anger churned insi
de of him like the heat from shaken coals, but when he walked up the path to Bolen's small house, he did so quietly, with extreme care.

  When he saw Bolen's face in the doorway, he wanted to strike the man, but he kept his hands quietly at his sides; and though he hated himself for it, he even smiled a little at the man.

  "Come in," Bolen smiled, and he spoke softly, and at the same time he examined Cutter with quick, penetrating eyes. "Come in, Mr. Cutter."

  Cutter wanted to stand there and demand another Confidet, a good one, and not walk inside, politely, like he did. And he wished that his voice would come out, quickly, with the power and hate in it that he had once been capable of. But for some reason, he couldn't say a word.

  Bolen was extremely polite. "You've been using that Confidet, haven't you?" He spoke gently, almost as though he were speaking to a frightened child.

  "Yes," Cutter managed to say.

  "And what you expected to happen, didn't. That's what you want to tell me, isn't it?"

  Cutter's insides quivered with rage, but he was able only to nod.

  "Would you like to know why?" Bolen said.

  Cutter rubbed his damp palms over his knees. He nodded.

  Bolen smiled, his eyes sparkling. "Very simple really. It wasn't the fault of the Confidet so much, Mr. Cutter, as you. You see, you are a rare exception. What you are, or possibly I should say, what you were, was a complete super ego. There are very few of those, Mr. Cutter, in this world, but you happened to be one of them. A really absolute, complete super ego, and the Confidet's effect was simply the reverse of what it would have been with anyone else." Bolen shook his head, sympathetically, but he didn't stop smiling, and his eyes didn't stop their infuriating exploration of Cutter's face and eyes and hands. "It's really a shame, because I was almost certain you were a super ego, Mr. Cutter. And when you didn't return that last Confidet, I somehow felt that you might use it, after all that nasty business at the company and all.

  "But while I was fairly certain of the effects, Mr. Cutter, I wasn't absolutely sure, you see, and so like the rest of the experiments, I had to forget my conscience. I'm really very sorry."

  The anger was a wild thing inside Cutter now, and it made his hands tremble and sweat, and his mouth quiver, and he hated the man in front of him, the man who was responsible for what had happened to him, the smiling man with the soft voice and exploring eyes. But he didn't say anything, not a word. He didn't show his anger or his frustration or his resentment. He didn't indicate to Bolen a particle of his inner wildness.

  He didn't have the nerve.

  * * *

  Contents

  GEORGE LOVES GISTLA

  By James McKimmey, Jr.

  "Why don't you find yourself some nice little American girl," his father had often repeated. But George was on Venus ... and he loved pale green skin ... and globular heads and most of all, George loved Gistla.

  George Kenington was sixteen, and, as he told himself, someone who was sixteen knew more about love than someone who was, say, forty-two. Like his father, for instance. A whole lot more probably. When you were forty-two, you got narrow-minded and nervous and angry. You said this is this, and that is that, and there is nothing else. When someone thought and felt and talked that way, George thought bitterly, there was not enough room inside that person to know what it was like, loving a Venusian.

  But George knew. He knew very well.

  Her name was Gistla. She was not pretty in standards of American colonists. She had the pale greenish Venusian skin, and she was too short and rather thick. Her face, of course, was not an American face. It was the face of native Venus. Round and smooth, with the large lidless eyes. There were no visible ears and a lack of hair strengthened the globular look of her head.

  But she was a person. The beauty was inside of her. Did you have to point to a girl's face and say, "Here is where the nose should be, here is where the ears should be?" Did you have to measure the width between eyes and test the color of the skin? Did you have to check the size of the teeth and the existence of hair? Was all of this necessary to understand what was inside someone?

  George snapped a leaf from an overhanging vine and threw it angrily to the ground. He was walking along a thin path that led from the colony to the tangled hills beyond, where hues of red and yellow and purple reflected like bold sweeps of watercolor. In a moment he would see Gistla, and with the color before his eyes and the sweet perfume of the flowers in his lungs, he felt again the familiar rise of excitement.

  George had not always lived on Venus. The Colony was very new. By 2022, most of the Earth countries had sent colonizers to Mars. But as yet, in June of that year, Venus had been touched by only the sparsest invasion of American civilization. George had arrived just three years ago, when his father had been appointed Secretary of the colonizing unit.

  And that was the whole trouble, really. Father was the Secretary, Mother was the Secretary's wife, Sister was the daughter of the Secretary. Everybody was wrapped up in it. Except George.

  George loved Gistla.

  "Why don't you find yourself some nice little American girl?" his father had said. "Say like Henry Farrel's little daughter?"

  Henry Farrel's little daughter was a sweet sickening girl with a nasty temper and a nasty tongue. Her father was Governor of the Colony. She told you about it all the time.

  "Or," his father had told him, "why not little what's-her-name, Doug Brentwood's daughter?"

  Little what's-her-name's father was the President of the Council. "My father is President of the Council," she said. Over and over, as though in a settlement the size of the Colony, there would be anyone who wouldn't know her father was the President of the Council.

  It was all a very tight and careful circle, chosen on Earth with a great deal of "common sense."

  There were the ordinary settlers, of course. They had daughters. Some of them were very pretty and long-limbed. And George had thought about that.

  Certainly there wasn't a decent-looking girl in the whole Governing circle, and the sight of a girl with flashing eyes and a nice red mouth, who was shaped a little like something besides a tree stump, was indeed an exciting sight.

  But there were limitations to the settler girls.

  They had no background to speak of, and though that didn't make any difference, George assured himself, they knew nothing about art, music, poetry, or anything really worth while. And, too, while George's father had said, "Now, George, we're all one here. Each of us is as good as another. Joe Finch, who cares for the flowers outside, is every bit as good a man as I am"--still George knew, if he told his parents he was going to marry Joe Finch's daughter someday, there would be hell to pay.

  So as long as the restrictions had been bound around him, there was no reason to go just half-way. George was not an ordinary boy. He did things in extreme. He was now in love with a Venusian girl, and his family was already starting to make him pay.

  * * * * *

  George turned off the path, just beyond an arch of thick purple-green vines that always reminded him of a gate to a garden. There was a quiet simplicity to this small clearing where he and Gistla met. There was an aloneness to it, and only the sound of the flat shiny leaves sliding together and the high, trilling sound of the small Venusian birds broke the peaceful silence. They had always met here, nowhere else.

  Now, as George found himself in the clearing, he began to wonder what Gistla would say or do when he told her he was taking her home to meet his family. It had been a sudden decision, brought out of anger and indignation.

  George sat down upon the flat hollow of a large vine. The sky was murky as usual, but the soft warm feel and smell of the growth around him, with its color and brightness, made up for a sunless sky.

  As he waited, he remembered what his mother had said:

  "Oh, George, you're really not serious about bringing a Venusian into our home!"

  And his sister, Mari, had said, "My God!" Mari, who was eighteen, said t
his to most anything.

  But his father, eyes bright and alert, had said, "No, now if George wants to bring one of these, ah, Venusians home with him, that's his privilege. I think it would be very interesting."

  George knew what his father meant by interesting.

  Exposing Gistla to his family would result in deliberate sarcasm and eye-squinting and barely hidden smiles. There would be pointed remarks and direct insults. And when it was over, George knew, he would be expected to see the error of his ways. He would then be expected to forget about this odd creature and find himself a nice ignorant little Colony girl, whose father was a member of the Governing circle.

  "And to hell with that, too," George said.

  "What?" George heard Gistla say. He turned quickly. She was standing at the edge of the clearing, her round green eyes looking soft and serious. She wore the usual gray cape that reached her ankles. Her voice was a deep round sound, and there was hardly any accent in the words she had learned so quickly since the Colony had begun.

  "Talking to myself," George grinned. The old excitement was inside of him. There was a kind of exotic quality in meeting Gistla that never disappeared.

  She crossed the clearing, not too gracefully, and touched her fingers against his hand. This had been the extent of their physical expression of love.

  "It is nice to see you, George."

  He noticed his feeling of pleasure when he heard her speak his name. There was something about his own name being spoken by Gistla that had always seemed even more strange than anything else.

  She sat down beside him, and they looked at each other while the leaves whispered around them and the birds fluttered and chirped. He discovered again the feeling of rightness, sitting beside Gistla. There was a solidity about her, a quiet maturity that he seemed able to feel in himself only when he was with her. And that too was strange, because in American terms of age, she was much younger than he.