Turn Left at Thursday (1961) SSC

by Frederik Pohl

  Garrick called hoarsely: "Kathryn! If you hear me, answer me!"-

  It had seemed so simple. The fulcrum on which the weight of Trumie's neurosis might move was a teddybear. Give him a teddybear-or, perhaps, a teddybear suit, made by night in the factories of Fisherman's Island, with a girl named Kathryn Pender inside-and let him bear, from a source he could trust, the welcome news that it was no longer necessary to struggle, that compulsive consumption could have an end. Then Garrick or any other psychist would clear it all up, but only if Trumie would listen.

  "Kathryn!" roared Roger Garrick, racing through a room of mirrors and carved statues. Because, just in case Trumie didn't listen, just in case the folder was wrong and Teddy wasn't the key—

  Why, then, Teddy to Trumie would be only a robot. And Trumie destroyed them by the score.

  "Kathryn!" bellowed Roger Garrick, trotting through the silent palace, and at last he heard what might have been an answer. At least it was a voice-a girl's voice, at that. He was before a passage that led to a room with a fountain and silent female robots, standing and watching him. The voice came from a small room. He ran to the door.

  It was the right door.

  There was Trumie, four hundred pounds of lard, lying on a marble bench with a foam-rubber cushion, the jowled head in the small lap of

  Teddy. Or Kathryn Pender in the teddybear suit, the sticklike legs pointed straight out the sticklike arm s clumsily patting him. She was talking to him, gently and reassuringly. She was telling him what he needed to know-that he bad eaten enough, that be had used enough, that be bad consumed enough to win the respect of all, and an end to consuming.

  Garrick himself could not have done better.

  It was a sight from Mother Goose, the child being soothed by his toy. But it was not a sight that fitted in well with its surroundings, for the seraglio was upholstered in mauve and pink, and the paintings that hung about were wicked.

  Sonny Trumie rolled the pendulous bead and looked squarely at Garrick. The worry was gone from the fear-filled little eyes.

  Garrick stepped back.

  No need for him just at this moment. Let Trumie relax for a while, as he bad not been able to relax for a score of years. Then the psychist could pick up where the girl bad been unable to proceed, but in the meantime, Trumic was finally at rest.

  The Teddy looked up at Garrick and in its bright blue eyes, the eyes that belonged to the girl named Kathryn, he saw a queer tincture of triumph and compassion.

  Garrick nodded, and left, and went out to the robots of North Guardian, and started them clearing away the monstrous child's-eye conception of an empire.

  Sonny Trumie nestled his bead in the lap of the teddybear. It was talking to him nicely, so nicely. It was droning away: "Don't worry, Sonny. Don't worry. Everything's all right. Everything's all right." Why, it was almost as though it were real.

  It bad been, he calculated with the part of his mind that was razor-sharp and never relaxed, nearly two hours since be had eaten. Two hours! And he felt as though he could go another hour at least maybe two. Maybe-maybe even not cat at all again that day. Maybe even learn to live on three meals. Perhaps two. Perhaps

  He wriggled-as well as four hundred greasy pounds can wriggle-and pressed against the soft warm fur of the teddybear. It was so soothing.

  "You don't have to eat so much, Sonny. You don't have to drink so much. No one will mind. Your father won't mind, Sonny. Your mother won't mind. . ."

  It was very comfortable to bear the teddybear telling him those things. It made him drowsy. So deliciously drowsy! It wasn't like going to sleep, as Sonny Trumie had known going to sleep for a dozen or more years, the bitterly fought surrender to the anesthetic weariness. It was just drowsy.

  And he did want to go to sleep.

  And finally he slept All of him. Not just the four hundred pounds of blubber and the little tormented eyes, but even the razor-sharp-mind Trumie that lived in the sad, obedient bulk.

  It slept.

  It had not slept all these twenty years.

  The Martian in the Attic

  Dunlop was short and pudgy; his eyelashes were blond and his hair was gone. He looked like the sort of man you see sitting way off at the end of the stadium at the Big Game, clutching a hot dog and a pennant and sitting with his wife, who would be making him explain every play. Also he stuttered.

  The girl at the reception desk of LaFitte Enterprises was a blue-eyed former model. She had Dunlop catalogued. She looked up slowly. She said bleakly: "Yes?"

  "I want to see Mr. LaF-F-F—" said Dunlop, and paused to clear his throat. "I want to see Mr.LaFitte."

  The ex-model was startled enough to blink. Nobody saw Mr. LaFitte! Oh, John D. the Sixth might. Or President Brockenheimer might drop by, after phoning first. Nobody else. Mr. LaFitte was a very great man who had invented most of America's finest gadgets and sold them for some of America's finest money, and he was not available to casual callers. Particularly nobodies with suits that had come right off a rack.

  The ex-model was, however, a girl with a sympathetic heart—as was known only to her mother, her employer and the fourteen men who, one after another, had broken it. She was sorry for Dunlop. She decided to let the poor jerk down easy and said: "Who shall I say is calling, sir? Mr. Dunlop? Is that with an 'O,' sir? One moment." And she picked up the phone, trying to smile.

  The reception room was carpeted in real Oriental wool—none of your flimsy nylon or even LaFitton!—and all about it were the symbols of LaFitte's power and genius. In a floodlighted nook, stood an acrylic model of the LaFitte Solar Transformer, transparently gleaming. On a scarlet pedestal in the center of the room was the LaFitte Ion-Exchange Self-Powered Water Still, in the small or forty-gallon-a-second model. (Two of the larger size provided all of London with sparkling clear water from the muddy, silty, smelly Thames.)

  Dunlop said hoarsely: "Hold it a second. Tell him that he won't know my name, but we have a mutual friend."

  The ex-model hesitated, struggling with the new fact. That changed things. Even Mr. LaFitte might have a friend who might by chance be acquainted with a little blond nobody whose shoes needed shining. It wasn't likely, but it was a possibility. Especially when you consider that Mr. LaFitte himself sprang from quite humble origins: at one time he had taught at a university.

  "Yes, sir," she said, much more warmly. "May I have the friend's name?"

  "I d-don't know his name."

  "Oh!"

  "But Mr. LaFitte will know who I m-mean. Just say the friend is a M—is a M—is a M-Martian."

  The soft blue eyes turned bleak. The smooth, pure face shriveled into the hard Vogue lines that it had possessed before an unbearable interest in chocolate nougats had taken her from before the fashion cameras and put her behind this desk.

  "Get out!" she said. "That isn't a bit funny!"

  The chubby little man said cheerfully: "Don't forget the name, Dunlop. And I'm at 449 West 19th Street. It's a rooming house." And he left. She wouldn't give anyone the message, he knew, but he knew, comfortably, that it didn't matter. He'd seen the little goldplated microphone at the corner of her desk. The LaFitte Auto-Sec it was hooked up to would unfailingly remember, analyze and pass along every word.

  "Ho-hum," said Dunlop to the elevator operator, "they make you fellows work too hard in this kind of weather. I'll see that they put in air-conditioning."

  The operator looked at Dunlop as though he was some kind of a creep, but Dunlop didn't mind. Why should he? He was a creep. But he would soon be a very rich one.

  Hector Dunlop trotted out into the heat of Fifth Avenue, wheezing because of his asthma. But he was quite pleased with himself.

  He paused at the corner to turn and look up at the LaFitte Building, all copper and glass bands in the quaint period architecture that LaFitte liked. Let him enjoy it, thought Dunlop generously. It looks awful, but let LaFitte have his pleasures; it was only fair that LaFitte have the kind of building he wanted. Dunlop's own taste
went to more modern lines, but there would be nothing to stop him from putting up a hundred-and-fifty-two-story building across the street if he liked. LaFitte was entitled to everything he wanted—as long as he was willing to share with Hector Dunlop. As he certainly would be, and probably that very day.

  Musing cheerfully about the inevitable generosity of LaFitte, Dunlop dawdled down Fifth Avenue in the fierce, but unfelt, heat. He had plenty of time. It would take a little while for anything to happen.

  Of course, he thought patiently, it was possible that nothing would happen at all today. Whatever human the Auto-Sec reported to might forget. Anything might go wrong. But still he had time. All he had to do was try again, and try still more after that if necessary. Sooner or later the magic words would reach LaFitte. After eight years of getting ready for this moment it didn't much matter if it took an extra day or two.

  Dunlop caught his breath.

  A girl in needle-pointed heels came clicking by, the hot breeze plastering her skirt against her legs. She glanced casually at the volume of space which Hector Dunlop thought he was occupying and found it empty. Dunlop snarled out of habit; she was not the only hormone-pumping girl who had seen nothing where he stood. But he regained his calm. To hell with you, my dear, he said good-humoredly to himself. I will have you later if I like. I will have twenty like you, or twenty a day if I wish—starting very soon.

  He sprinted across Forty-second Street, and there was the gray familiar old-fashioned bulk of the Library.

  On a sentimental impulse he climbed the steps and went inside.

  The elevator operator nodded. "Good afternoon, Mr. Dunlop. Three?"

  "That's right, Charley. As usual." They all liked him here. It was the only place in the world where that was true, he realized, but then he had spent more time here than anywhere else in the world.

  Dunlop got out of the slow elevator as it creaked to an approximate halt on the third floor. He walked reminiscently down the wide, warm hall between the rows of exhibits. Just beyond the drinking fountain there—that was the door to the Fortescue Collection. Flanking it were the glass cabinets that housed some of Fortescue's own Martian photographs, along with the unexplained relics of a previous race that had built the canals.

  Dunlop looked at the prints and could hardly keep from giggling. The Martians were seedy, slime-skinned creatures with snaky arms and no heads at all. Worse, according to Updyke's The Martian Adventure, Fortescue's own First to Land and Wilbert, Shevelsen and Buchbinder's Survey of Indigenous Martian Semi-Fauna (in the Proceedings of the Astro-Biological Institute for Winter, 2011), they smelled like rotting fish. Their mean intelligence was given by Fortescue, Burlutski and Stanko as roughly equivalent to the Felidae (though Gaffney placed it higher, say about that of the lower primates). They possessed no language. They did not have the use of fire. Their most advanced tool was a hand-axe. In short, the Martians were the dopes of the Solar System, and it was not surprising that LaFitte's receptionist had viewed describing a Martian as her employer's friend as a gross insult.

  "Why, it's Mr. Dunlop," called the librarian, peering out through the wire grating on the door. She got up and came toward him to unlock the door to the Fortescue Collection.

  "No, thanks," he said hastily. "I'm not coming in today, Miss Reidy. Warm weather, isn't it? Well, I must be getting along,"

  When hell freezes over I'll come in, he added to himself as he turned away, although Miss Reidy had been extremely helpful to him for eight years; she had turned the Library's archives over to him, not only in the extraterrestrial collections but wherever his researching nose led him. Without her, he would have found it much more difficult to establish what he now knew about LaFitte. On the other hand, she wore glasses. Her skin was sallow. One of her front teeth was chipped. Dunlop would see only TV stars and the society debutantes, he vowed solemnly, and decided that even those he would treat like dirt.

  The Library was pressing down on him; it was too much a reminder of the eight grub-like years that were now past. He left it and took a bus home.

  Less than two hours had elapsed since leaving LaFitte's office.

  That wasn't enough. Not even the great LaFitte's organization would have been quite sure to deliver and act on the message yet, and Dunlop was suddenly wildly anxious to spend no time waiting in his rooming house. He stopped in front of a cheap restaurant, paused, smiled broadly and walked across the street to a small, cozy, expensive place with potted palms in the window. It would just about clean out what cash he had left, but what of it?

  Dunlop ate the best lunch he had had in ten years, taking his time. When some fumbling chemical message told him that enough minutes had elapsed, he walked down the block to his rooming house, and the men were already there.

  The landlady peered out of her window from behind a curtain, looking frightened.

  Dunlop laughed out loud and waved to her as they closed in. They were two tall men with featureless faces. The heavier one smelled of chlorophyll chewing gum. The leaner one smelled of death.

  Dunlop linked arms with them, grinning broadly, and turned his back on his landlady. "What did you tell her you w-were, boys? Internal Revenue? The F.B.I?"

  They didn't answer, but it didn't matter. Let her think what she liked; he would never, never, never see her again. She was welcome to the few pitiful possessions in his cheap suitcase. Very soon now Hector Dunlop would have only the best.

  "You don't know your boss's secret, eh?" Dunlop prodded the men during the car ride. "But I do. It took me eight years to find it out. Treat me with a little respect or I m-might have you fired."

  "Shut up," said chlorophyll-breath pleasantly, and Dunlop politely obeyed. It didn't matter, like everything else that happened now. In a short time he would see LaFitte and then—

  "Don't p-p-push!" he said irritably, staggering before them out of the car.

  They caught him, one at each elbow, Chlorophyll opening the iron gate at the end of the walk and Death pushing him through. Dunlop's glasses came off one ear and he grabbed for them.

  They were well out of the city, having crossed the Hudson. Dunlop had only the haziest sense of geography, having devoted all his last eight years to more profitable pursuits, but he guessed they were somewhere in the hills back of Kingston. They went into a great stone house and saw no one. It was a Frankenstein house, but it cheered Dunlop greatly, for it was just the sort of house he had imagined LaFitte would need to keep his secret.

  They shoved Dunlop through a door into a room with a fireplace. In a leather chair before a fire (though the day was hot) was a man who had to be Quincy LaFitte.

  "Hello," said Dunlop with poise, strutting toward him. "I suppose y-you know why I—Hey! What are you d-doing?"

  Chlorophyll was putting one gray glove on one hand. He walked to a desk, opened it, took out something—a gun! In his gloved hand he raised it and fired at the wall. Splat. It was a small flat sound, but a great chip of plaster flew.

  "Hey!" said Dunlop again.

  Mr. LaFitte watched him with polite interest. Chlorophyll walked briskly toward him, and abruptly Death reached for—for—

  Chlorophyll handed Dunlop the gun he had fired. Dunlop instinctively grasped it, while Death took out another, larger, more dangerous-looking one.

  Dunlop abruptly jumped, dropped the gun, beginning to understand. "Wait!" he cried in sudden panic. "I've g-g—" He swallowed and dropped to his knees. "Don't shoot! I've g-got everything written d-down in my luh—in my luh—"

  LaFitte said softly: "Just a moment, boys."

  Chlorophyll just stopped where he was and waited. Death held his gun competently on Dunlop and waited.

  Dunlop managed to stammer: "In my lawyer's office. I've got the whole th-thing written down. If anything happens to me he ruh—he ruh—he reads it."

  LaFitte sighed. "Well," he said mildly, "that was the chance we took. All right, boys. Leave us alone." Chlorophyll and Death took their scent and their menace out the door.


  Dunlop was breathing very hard. He had just come very close to dying, he realized; one man handed him the gun, and the other was about to shoot him dead. Then they would call the police to deliver the body of an unsuccessful assassin. Too bad, officer, but he certainly fooled us! Look, there's where the bullet went. I only tried to wing the poor nut, but. . . . A shrug.

  Dunlop swallowed. "Too bad," he said in a cracked voice. "But naturally I had to take p-precautions. Say. Can I have a drink?"

  Mr. LaFitte pointed to a tray. He had all the time there was. He merely waited, with patience and very little concern. He was a tall old man with a very bald head, but he moved quickly when he wanted to, Dunlop noticed. Funny, he hadn't expected LaFitte to be bald.

  But everything else was going strictly according to plan!

  He poured himself a stiff shot of twelve-year-old bourbon and downed it from a glass that was Steuben's best hand-etched crystal.

  He said: "I've got you, LaFitte! You know it, don't you?"

  LaFitte gave him a warm, forgiving look.

  "Oh, that's the boy," Dunlop enthused. "B-Be a good loser. But you know I've found out what your fortune is based on." He swallowed another quick one and felt the burning tingle spread. "Well. To b-begin with, eight years ago I was an undergrad at the university you taught at. I came across a reference to a thesis called Certain Observations on the Ontogenesis of the Martian P-Paraprimates. By somebody named Quincy A. W. L-LaFitte, B.S."

  LaFitte nodded faintly, still smiling. His eyes were tricky, Dunlop decided; they were the eyes of a man who had grown quite accustomed to success. You couldn't read much into eyes like those. You had to watch yourself.

  Still, he reassured himself, he had all the cards. "So I l-looked for the paper and I couldn't f-find it. But I guess you know that!" Couldn't find it? No, not in the stacks, not in the Dean's file, not even in the archives. It was very fortunate that Dunlop was a persistent man. He had found the printer who had done the thesis in the first place, and there it was, still attached to the old dusty bill.