Star Science Fiction 5 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Frederik Pohl

  There was plenty of reassurance in having a man like Calvin Boersma on your side.

  Albert declared mildly but firmly: “One single thought is uppermost in my mind.”

  Boersma inclined his ear. “What?”

  “Oxidase epsilon!” cried Albert.

  Cal Boersma clapped him on the shoulder and answered, like a fight manager rushing last-minute strategies to his boxer: “The one single thought that should be uppermost in your mind is selling oxidase epsilon. Nothing will be done unless The Corporation is sold on it. And when you deal with Corporation executives you’re dealing with experts.”

  LaRue thought that over, swaying to the motion of the car.

  “We do have something genuinely important to sell, don’t we?” he ventured. He had been studying oxidase epsilon for three years. Boersma, on the other hand, was involved in the matter only because he was LaRue’s lab-assistant’s brother-in-law, an assistant sales manager of a plastics firm . . . and the only businessman LaRue knew.

  Still, today—the big day—Cal Boersma was the expert. The promoter. The man who was right in the thick of the hard, practical world outside the University’s cloistered halls—the world that terrified J. Albert LaRue.

  Cal was all reassurance. “Oxidase epsilon is important, all right. That’s the only reason we have a chance.”

  Their subway car gave a long, loud whoosh, followed by a shrill hissing. They were at their station. J. Albert LaRue felt a twinge of apprehension. This, he told himself, was it! They joined the file of passengers leaving the car for the luxurious escalator.

  “Yes, Albert,” Cal rumbled, as they rode up side by side, “we have something big here, if we can reach the top men—say, the Regional Director. Why, Albert, this could get you an assistant section managership in The Corporation itself!”

  “Oh, thank you! But of course I wouldn’t want— I mean, my devotion to research—” Albert was flustered.

  “But of course I could take care of that end of it for you,” Boersma said reassuringly. “Well, here we are, Albert.”

  The escalator fed them into a sunlit square between twenty-story buildings. A blindlingly green mall crossed the square to the Regional Executive Building of The Corporation. Albert could not help being awed. It was a truly impressive structure—a block wide, only three stories high.

  Cal said, in a reverent growl: “Putting up a building like that in the most heavily taxed area of Detroit—you know what that symbolizes, Albert? Power. Power and salesmanship! That’s what you’re dealing with when you deal with The Corporation.”

  The building was the hub of the Lakes Region, and the architecture was appropriately monumental. Albert murmured a comment, impressed. Cal agreed. “Superbly styled,” he said solemnly.

  Glass doors extending the full height of the building opened smoothly at the touch of Albert’s hand. Straight ahead across the cool lobby another set of glass doors equally tall, were a showcase for dramatic exhibits of The Corporation’s activities. Soothing lights rippled through an enchanged twilight. Glowing letters said, “Museum of Progress.”

  Several families on holiday wandered delighted among the exhibits, basking in the highest salesmanship the race had produced.

  Albert started automatically in that direction. Cal’s hand on his arm stopped him. “This way, Albert. The corridor to the right.”

  “Huh? But—I thought you said you couldn’t get an appointment, and we’d have to follow the same channels as any member of the public.” Certainly the “public” was the delighted wanderer through those gorgeous glass doors.

  “Oh, sure, that’s what we’re doing. But I didn’t mean that public.”

  “Oh.” Apparently the Museum was only for the herd. Albert humbly followed Cal (not without a backward glance) to the relatively unobtrusive door at the end of the lobby—the initiate’s secret passage to power, he thought with deep reverence.

  But he noticed that three or four new people just entering the building were turning the same way.

  * * * *

  A waiting room. But it was not a disappointing one; evidently Cal had directed them right; they had passed to a higher circle. The room was large, yet it looked like a sanctum.

  Albert had never seen chairs like these. All of the twenty-five or so men and women who were there ahead of them were distinctly better dressed than Albert. On the other hand Cal’s suit—a one-piece wooly buff-colored outfit, fashionably loose at the elbows and knees—was a match for any of them. Albert took pride in that.

  Albert sat and fidgeted. Cal’s bass voice gently reminded him that fidgeting would be fatal, then rehearsed him in his approach. He was to be, basically, a professor of plant metabolism; it was a poor approach, Cal conceded regretfully, but the only one Albert was qualified to make. Salesmanship he was to leave to Cal; his own appeal was to be based on his position—such as it was—as a scientific expert; therefore he was to be, basically, himself. His success in projecting the role might possibly be decisive—although the main responsibility, Cal pointed out, was Cal’s.

  While Cal talked, Albert fidgeted and watched the room. The lush chairs, irregularly placed, still managed all to face one wall, and in that wall were three plain doors. From time to time an attendant would appear to call one of the waiting supplicants to one of the doors. The attendants were liveried young men with flowing black hair. Finally, one came their way! He summoned them with a bow—an eye-flashing, head-tossing, flourishing bow, like a dancer rather than a butler.

  Albert followed Cal to the door. “Will this be a junior executive? A personal secretary? A—”

  But Cal seemed not to hear.

  Albert followed Cal through the door and saw the most beautiful girl in the world.

  He couldn’t look at her, not by a long way. She was much too beautiful for that. But he knew exactly what she looked like. He could see in his mind her shining, ringleted hair falling gently to her naked shoulders, her dazzling bright expressionless face. He couldn’t even think about her body; it was terrifying.

  She sat behind a desk and looked at them.

  Cal struck a masterful pose, his arms folded. “We have come on a scientific matter,” he said haughtily, “not familiar to The Corporation, concerning several northern colonial areas.”

  She wrote deliberately on a small plain pad. Tonelessly, sweetly, she asked, “Your name?”

  “Calvin Boersma.”

  Her veiled eyes swung to Albert. He couldn’t possibly speak. His whole consciousness was occupied in not looking at her.

  Cal said sonorously: “This is J. Albert LaRue, Professor of Plant Metabolism.” Albert was positively proud of his name, the way Cal said it.

  The most beautiful girl in the world whispered meltingly: “Go out this door and down the corridor to Mr. Blick’s office. He’ll be expecting you.”

  Albert chose this moment to try to look at her. And she smiled! Albert, completely routed, rushed to the door. He was grateful she hadn’t done that before! Cal, with his greater experience and higher position in life, could linger a moment, leaning on the desk, to leer at her.

  But all the same, when they reached the corridor, he was sweating.

  Albert said carefully, “She wasn’t an executive, was she?”

  “No,” said Cal, a little scornfully. “She’s an Agency Model, what else? Of course, you probably don’t see them much at the University, except at the Corporation Representative’s Office and maybe the President’s Office.” Albert had never been near either. “She doesn’t have much to do except to impress visitors, and of course stop the ones that don’t belong here.”

  Albert hesitated. “She was impressive.”

  “She’s impressive, all right,” Cal agreed. “When you consider the Agency rates, and then realize that any member of the public who comes to the Regional Executive Building on business sees an Agency Model receptionist —then you know you’re dealing with power, Albert.”

  Albert had a sudden idea. He ventu
red: “Would we have done better to have brought an Agency Model with us?”

  Cal stared. “To go through the whole afternoon with us? Impossible, Albert! It’d cost you a year’s salary.”

  Albert said eagerly: “No, that’s the beauty of it, Cal! You see, I have a young cousin—I haven’t seen her recently, of course, but she was drafted by the Agency, and I might have been able to get her to—” He faltered. Boersma was looking scandalized.

  “Albert— excuse me. If your cousin had so much as walked into any business office with makeup on, she’d have had to collect Agency rates—or she’d have been out of the Agency likethat. And owing them plenty.” He finished consolingly, “A Model wouldn’t have done the trick anyway.”

  * * * *

  II

  Mr. Blick looked more like a scientist than a businessman, and his desk was a bit of a laboratory. At his left hand was an elaborate switchboard, curved so all parts would be in easy reach; most of the switches were in rows, the handles color-coded. As he nodded Cal to a seat his fingers flicked over three switches. The earphones and microphone clamped on his head had several switches too, and his right hand quivered beside a stenotype machine of unfamiliar complexity.

  He spoke in an undertone into his mike, then his hand whizzed almost invisibily over the stenotype.

  “Hello, Mr. Boersma,” he said, flicking one last switch but not removing the earphones. “Please excuse my idiosyncrasies, it seems I actually work better this way.” His voice was firm, resonant and persuasive.

  Cal took over again. He opened with a round compliment for Mr. Blick’s battery of gadgets, and then flowed smoothly on to an even more glowing series of compliments—which Albert realized with a qualm of embarrassment referred to him.

  After the first minute or so, though, Albert found the talk less interesting than the interruptions. Mr. Blick would raise a forefinger apologetically but fast; switches would tumble; he would listen to the earphones, whisper into the mike, and perform incredibly on the absolutely silent stenotype. Shifting lights touched his face, and Albert realized the desk top contained at least one TV screen, as well as a bank of blinking colored lights. The moment the interruption was disposed of, Mr. Blick’s faultless diction and pleasant voice would return Cal exactly to where he’d been. Albert was impressed.

  Cal’s peroration was an urgent appeal that Mr. Blick consider the importance to The Corporation, financially, of what he was about to learn. Then he turned to Albert, a little too abruptly.

  “One single thought is uppermost in my mind,” Albert stuttered, caught off guard. “Oxidase epsilon. I am resolved that The Corporation shall be made to see the importance—”

  “Just a moment, Professor LaRue,” came Mr. Blick’s smooth Corporation voice. “You’ll have to explain this to me. I don’t have the background or the brains that you people in the academic line have. Now in layman’s terms, just what is oxidase epsilon?” He grinned handsomely.

  “Oh, don’t feel bad,” said Albert hastily. “Lots of my colleagues haven’t heard of it, either.” This was only a half-truth. Every one of his colleagues that Albert met at the University in a normal working month had certainly heard of oxidase epsilon—from Albert. “It’s an enzyme found in many plants but recognized only recently. You see, many of the laboratory species created during the last few decades have been unable to produce ordinary oxidase, or oxidase alpha, but surprisingly enough some of these have survived. This is due to the presence of a series of related compounds, of which oxidases beta, gamma, delta, and epsilon have been isolated, and beta and epsilon have been prepared in the laboratory.”

  * * * *

  Mr. Blick shifted uncertainly in his seat. Albert hurried on so he would see how simple it all was. “I have been studying the reactions catalyzed by oxidase epsilon in several species of Triticum. I found quite unexpectedly that none of them produce the enzyme themselves. Amazing, isn’t it? All the oxidase epsilon in those plants comes from a fungus, Puccinia triticina, which infects them. This, of course, explains the failure of Hinshaw’s group to produce viable Triticum kaci following—”

  Mr. Blick smiled handsomely again. “Well now, Professor LaRue, you’ll have to tell me what this means. Inmy terms—you understand.”

  Cal boomed portentously, “It may mean the saving of the economies of three of The Corporation’s richest colonies.” Rather dramatic, Albert thought.

  Mr. Blick said appreciatively, “Very good. Very good. Tell me more. Which colonies—and why?” His right hand left its crouch to spring restlessly to the stenotype.

  Albert resumed, buoyed by this flattering show of interest. “West Lapland in Europe, and Great Slave and Churchill on this continent. They’re all Corporation colonies, recently opened up for wheat-growing by Triticum witti, and I’ve been told they’re extremely productive.”

  “Who is Triticum Witti? One of our vice-presidents?”

  Albert, shocked, explained patiently, “Triticum witti is one of the new species of wheat which depend on oxidase epsilon. And if the fungus Puccinia triticina on that wheat becomes a pest, sprays may be used to get rid of it. And a whole year’s wheat crop in those colonies may be destroyed.”

  “Destroyed,” Mr. Blick repeated wonderingly. His forefinger silenced Albert like a conductor’s baton; then both his hands danced over keys and switches, and he was muttering into his microphone again.

  Another interruption, thought Albert. He felt proper reverence for the undoubted importance of whatever Mr. Blick was settling, still he was bothered a little, too. Actually (he remembered suddenly) he had a reason to be so presumptuous: oxidase epsilon was important, too. Over five hundred million dollars had gone into those three colonies already, and no doubt a good many people.

  However, it turned out this particular interruption must have been devoted to West Lapland, Great Slave, and Churchill after all. Mr. Blick abandoned his instrument panel and announced his congratulations to them: “Mr. Boersma, the decision has been made to assign an expediter to your case!” And he smiled heartily.

  * * * *

  This was a high point for Albert.

  He wasn’t sure he knew what an expediter was, but he was sure from Mr. Blick’s manner that an unparalleled honor had been given him. It almost made him dizzy to think of all this glittering building, all the attendants and Models and executives, bowing tohim, as Mr. Blick’s manner implied they must.

  A red light flicked on and off on Mr. Blick’s desk. As he turned to it he said, “Excuse me, gentlemen.” Of course, Albert pardoned him mentally, you have to work.

  He whispered to Cal, “Well, I guess we’re doing pretty well.”

  “Huh? Oh, yes, very well,” Cal whispered back. “So far.”

  “So far? Doesn’t Mr. Blick understand the problem? All we have to do is give him the details now.”

  “Oh, no, Albert! I’m sure he can’t make the decision. He’ll have to send us to someone higher up.”

  Higher up? “Why? Do we have to explain it all over again?”

  Cal turned in his chair so he could whisper to Albert less conspicuously. “Albert, an enterprise the size of The Corporation can’t give consideration to every crackpot suggestion anyone tries to sell it. There have to be regular channels. Now the Plant Metabolism Department doesn’t have any connections here (maybe we can do something about that), so we have to run a sort of obstacle course. It’s survival of the fittest, Albert! Only the most worthwhile survive to see the Regional Director. Of course the Regional Director selects which of those to accept, but he doesn’t have to sift through a lot of crackpot propositions.”

  Albert could see the analogy to natural selection. Still, he asked humbly: “How do you know the best suggestions get through? Doesn’t it depend a lot on how good a salesman is handling them?”

  “Very much so. Naturally!”

  “But then— Suppose, for instance, I hadn’t happened to know you. My good idea wouldn’t have got past Mr. Blick.”

 
“It wouldn’t have got past the Model,” Cal corrected. “Maybe not that far. But you see in that case it wouldn’t have been a very important idea, because it wouldn’t have been put into effect.” He said it with a very firm, practical jawline. “Unless of course someone else had had the initiative and resourcefulness to present the same idea better. Do you see now? Really important ideas attract the sales talent to put them across.”

  * * * *

  Albert didn’t understand the reasoning, he had to admit. It was such an important point, and he was missing it. He reminded himself humbly that a scientist is no expert outside his own field.

  So all Mr. Blick had been telling them was that they had not yet been turned down. Albert’s disappointment was sharp.

  Still, he was curious. How had such a trivial announcement given him such euphoria? Could you produce that kind of effect just by your delivery? Mr. Blick could, apparently. The architecture, the Model, and all the rest had been build-up for him; and certainly they had helped the effect; but they didn’t explain it.