by John Sladek
The Shairp Family was one of his favorite programs. He preferred standing in the cold drizzle to see it, when he could be sitting in dry bleachers watching that faith-healer program across town, even if the action here was a little slow tonight. The writers were probably in a slump.
So Bob was going away on business, while Spot was not, for the time being, going to military school. Well, well. Not much to chew on. As for the business about the ‘window peeper’, that was all wrong, all wrong. The real drama ought to come from inside the family, and not be grafted on artificially. Mr Hines thought about complaining to the sponsors, whoever they might be.
What ought to happen is for Bob to get lost at sea in an air crash. Then Marge could remarry—or almost—and Bob could ‘return from the grave’. That would be bully realism. Whooping cough for Spot, but when Bob comes back, they all live happily…
As he shuffled away, leaning into the cold October wind, Mr Hines wondered about that window-peeper business. Who would the peeper turn out to be? Some long-lost relative? Someone in distress? Or someone who would help out the Shairps when—as inevitably it must—tragedy struck? He could hardly wait to see the mysterious stranger’s face.
Two
Bob came out of the dream sometime during breakfast, under the combined impact of coffee and headlines:
SCIENTIST DISAPPEARS
Müller-Fokker a possible defector
EVANGELIST BREAKS RECORD
10 MORE YEARS WAR? NO, SAYS ARMY CHIEF
Weimarauner predicts breakthrough
Something about…children? By the time he climbed in the car, his dream had dwindled to just two words, ‘Jelly Day.’ He had to stop off at the factory to turn in his badge, then on to Mud Flats, Nebraska. He forgot even the two words….
The guard took a look at his badge and grinned. ‘Just in time, Shairp. Another hour and we would of summoned the Industrial Security boys to come and get it. Anyways, we got to finalize your new badge for the other project. Are you leaving today?’
Bob nodded. Two workmen passed between them, carrying a computer console. It was his; he recognized the cigarette burns.
‘Okay,’ said the guard. ‘Okay. We’ll expedite the processing, if you’ll just organize yourself a chair over there in the visitors’ room. Your replacement’s waiting in there, by the way, if you want to meet him.’
As Bob opened the door, the occupants of the visitors’ room, a man and his dog, looked up. The man smiled, showing a rotten tooth. ‘Hiya.’
Behind Bob, the security guard began bawling out the information on his card to someone else. There were typing sounds.
‘I guess you’re my replacement,’ Bob shouted over the racket.
‘OUT I SHAIRP, ROBERT ETWALL! 77903! TECH WRITER, CAUCASIAN, MALE!’
‘What say? Can’t hear ya.’
‘I said, I guess you’re replacing me. As a tech writer.’
‘Me? Nawww. ’S old Bingo, here.’
Bob still didn’t get it, until the guard took up another badge and bawled: ‘IN! BINGO!’ The dog looked up at the sound of his name. ‘89474-a! tech writer, golden retriever, male!’
Bob tried to smile. ‘I’ll be damned.’
Rotten-tooth chuckled. ‘Amazin’, ain’t it? Ol’ Bingo here earns more’n me. Ya see, they trained him in one a them animal labs, so he knows how to tell a circle from a ellipse real close. That’s all it takes, I guess. They got the computer fixed up ta turn that inta writin’. Say hello ta the nice man, Bingo. Come on, boy.’
Bob took a silky paw and gazed into gentle stupid eyes. ‘Hello, Bingo,’ he said solemnly. Thinking, so much for the human element.
Wes Davis had his boots up on the desk and his hands clasped behind that elegant head of hair.
That hair. It rose a full four inches from his widow’s peak in front. The sides had been starved down to a pair of cuneiform sideburns even narrower than the space between Wes’s eyes.
But on top—a relief map of some dark planet, all greasy peaks and whorled valleys. It overwhelmed the other part of his head, the part equipped with a small but recognizable face.
Wes was thinking how just it was that there should be only one chair in the gas station office. It just wouldn’t be right for the Mud Flats Ramblers—Skeeter, Travis and Gus—to sit right down with him, their leader. Might give them the idea they were leader types, too.
So here was Skeeter, shaking up a Pepsi and spraying it down his throat; Gus, leaning on the pop cooler; Travis, pretending to study the Stagman calendar on the wall; here they were, waiting for Wes to tell them what to do.
‘Yes sir,’ he said. ‘Yes sir. When your wife takes some clothes down to the laundromat, she has to se-par-ate the colored ones from the white ones. Am I right?’
He was right.
‘Why? Because they run. That’s right. Take a nice perty little pair of lace drawers…’
‘Where?’ That was Skeeter, trying for a laugh. Wes stared him down.
‘Take them nice little white nylong lace drawers, throw ‘em in with a dirty, stinking, black old pair of socks, and what have you got? What happens?
‘I’ll tell you what don’t. Them socks sure as hell ain’t gonna come out white! No, it’s the pure white little drawers gets mint, ever time. They come out all black and gray and dirty. Not just them, everything in the whole wash gets ruint! And all by one little old harmless nigger sock!’
Travis scratched his crotch. ‘What happen to the othern?’
‘What?’
‘The other sock. They was two before, and now you just got one. Where’s the othern?’
Wes opened a desk drawer and spat into it. ‘Jesus Christ, Travis, you didn’t hear a thing I said. I’m talking about NIGRAS! It’s just the same. You mix the two races, it’s the white gets ruint.’
He jumped up and slapped the desk. ‘That is a fact of science!’
While the fact of science soaked in, Wes went outside and groomed the windshield of a tourist’s car. Tucking a rag in his pocket, he resumed his leadership position.
‘Now everybody knows the Army is full of nigger-lovers. And everbody knows the National Arsenamid Corporation is run by Jeeews, right? An Equal Opportunity Employer, they call it.
‘So what do you spose the Army and the National Arsenamid Corporation are hatching up together over on the edge of town? Over in that Biomedical Research Project.’
They didn’t know, Wes.
‘You know what biomedical research is? Makin babies in test tubes!’
‘Naw! Can’t be!’
‘Yes sir, and not white babies. Nigra babies!’
‘But in test tubes!’ Travis scratched furiously. ‘Christ! How do they get out?’
‘I’m comin to that. They just start the babies off in test tubes. Then they ship them to hospitals all over the US of A, and they stick them up white women!’
‘Aw, Christ!’
‘It’s true. I know it for a fact. Ever notice how all them hospitals got lots of nigra orderlies and nurses?’
‘Yeah, that’s right, Wes.’
‘Yer fuckin’ A, that’s right. The nigra conspiracy is on the move, right here in Mud Flats! They’ll populate the whole world with black bastards—unless we stop ’em!’
‘That’s right, Shairp. I know they told you it would be “retraining”, but that was just to keep a security blanket over this.’ Major Fouts, Project Security Officer, looked at his watch for the sixth time in as many minutes.
‘But I—didn’t I come down here for retraining?’
‘Look, I don’t care, buster. If you don’t like the job, skip it. We sure as hell don’t need you. I mean, just about any warm body will do for this experiment.’
Bob cleared his throat and gazed at the barred windows. ‘Is it dangerous? I mean, just what will they do to me?’
‘No, it isn’t dangerous, and I can’t tell you anything about the project until you’re cleared. So are you in or out? Hurry up.’
‘Will I—
be all right afterwards?’
‘YAS, YAS, YAS! NOW HURRY UP!’
‘I’m—in?’
‘Fine now go see Donagon research head for your papers then go down for your physical and then come back up here for clearance here don’t forget to fill out all the copies and sign them you’re restricted to base until the clearance comes through sign this and take it up to 4B today they want a blood sample this is your V-5 form and that’s your waiver if you need anything else see Donagon.’
As soon as Bob was gone, Major Fouts pulled the blinds and locked his office door. Then he worked the combination on his desk drawer and removed three almond Hershey bars. Two he slid under the blotter, the third he peeled and folded lovingly into his elastic mouth.
There was no excuse for it, he knew, none but tedium and despair. Fouts had done everything the Army could expect of him, and more. In his first year here, he had cleaned out a dozen lab assistants of questionable background. He had tightened up all security procedures. He had blacked out news releases. And he had fixed up the computer with an auto-destruct mechanism using only four charges, a model of efficiency. And then—nothing. Nothing but deadly routine, the daily dossiers, the loathsome tight uniform. The candy bars.
His mouth full of melted heaven, he damned Mud Flats. A city post would have been all right. Algernon Fouts could have managed that…mingling nightly with theater crowds…unescorted at a ballroom…bars.…Even hidden away in remotest Arcady, fine, but this! In damned, damned Mud Flats, where one was never alone. Official secrecy was easy enough, but any other kind was impossible.
So a part of him lay shut away in his footlocker, under the pile of uniforms his misery had outgrown. Eating, a permitted indiscretion, dulled the pain a little, just as it dulled his features.
There came an unmilitary knock at the door. ‘Algie? Can I see you a minute?’
Fouts snatched up the wrapper and stuffed it through the slotted lid of his security wastebasket. He swallowed the last of the sweetness and unlocked the door to Dr Donagon.
‘What do you want? I’m busy here, you know. Got to check the dossier of this new guy, Shairp…’
‘Please, Algie, you’ve got to let me publish. Anything. Just some little hooker, something to get my name on it.’
Fouts swam back to the desk through his own liquid layers.
‘Not my responsibility. Both the Army and National Arse have their reasons for keeping this under wraps. If it was up to me, I’d let all you boobologists print all you wanted in your boobology journals.’
‘Major!’ Donagon flung back a lock of his thin, khaki-colored hair. It fell forward again. ‘I am a bi-o-physicist, and I am also head of research here. I know I’m young, but I think that, urn.’ He brushed back the stray lock. Fouts could see white scars on the man’s wrist. ‘I think: that I am due some respect in that, urn, respect.’
‘Yas, yas. Anyway, things are looking up, kid. The press is going to be invited in on zero-day. You’ll get all the publicity you can eat.’
‘If only I could be sure—that it was the right kind of publicity, Algie. This could mean the Nobel if I handle it right. But I still ought to have published something. Others are at work on it. Otis Korner at Attica, Flaken of Illinois. O God! If they get a man on tape before I do…’
‘If you spent less time iffing…’
Donagon blushed. ‘I’m afraid, if you must know. The press…they garble things…’
‘All right, all right. Make up a prepared handout.’
Donagon brightened noticeably. He left, and Fouts went back to work. On the second Hershey bar.
Billy Koch, breakfasting at his desk on a glass of Slimmix (90 calories), shook out his morning paper and got down to work, marking sermonizable stories.
He circled an article on the current Asian conflict and swiveled around to the typewriter to hunt out: ‘I offer mnt prayer (sil?) for our boys who have won vict, w/ many trag. losses, in (place). But wht vict can compare &c.’
He put a question mark near MAN SUES GOD FORLOCUST DAMAGE and turned a page. Pickings were poor: CONGRESS APPROVES BUDGET CUTS; SERIA TOTRY FOR 3½ MIN MILE; ROAD TOLL.…
He caught himself humming a pop tune, ‘Ice Cream Blues’, switched to a hymn, then caught his breath again. A small item, buried in the back pages:
COMPUTERIZED MAN?
Washington (AP)—A Pentagon spokesman announced today a joint research project between the Army and National Arsenamid Corporation to ‘investigate the possibility of partly or even completely digitalizing a living man, using genetic, physiological and neurological data’. Further details were not forthcoming, but a reliable source states that a subject has already been selected, and the experiment is said to be under way.
Billy circled this item twice, and doubly exclaimed on the typewriter: ‘You can compute a man—but nt immtl soul!!’
So much for the sermon. He was about to check the financial pages for the inevitable rise of BK Industries, when his secretary announced the arrival of his architect, Ögivaal.
Downstairs from Billy in the Crusade headquarters mail room the first three bags were dumped on the sorting table and the sorters went to it. They dealt first with packages. A box of birdseed addressed to ‘H. Spirit’ went to one of the staff whose mother had a budgerigar. An odiferous box bearing the suspect palindrome ‘A Mr Oops laminates set animal spoor, Ma’ went into the wastebasket unopened, joining a bedspread embroidered by loving hands with all of the Psalms. A musical revolving crucifix from some novelty company was set aside for the market analysis department, while an ‘electric rosary’ went into the large carton destined for a Roman Catholic charity.
Using thumb-knives, the sorters disemboweled envelopes and discarded the frivolous, the illegible, and the hopelessly insane:
‘Dear Billy, I am the Messiah, He who is not sent. The Messiah shall command, it shall be his command. The Messiah commands you according to the commandments of the same to use My name in vain, while you are knowing My wife…’
‘Dear Billy: Last night I woke up and you were standing at the foot of my bed and there was something wrong with your face. Billy, I thought you were going to kill me with a ax. I don’t know. Maybe the devil sent this vision to confuse me when I’m having headaches…’
The answerable letters were passed on to the Replies table. Marilyn Temblor closed her magazine, keeping for a moment the after image of one perfume advertisement—it seemed so darned unfair that Crusade workers weren’t allowed to—and made her mind blank for business.
The first letter, from a cancer patient, was easy. Marilyn carried it to the row of automated typewriters and ran one unvarnished nail down the list of items posted on the wall:
Afraid of dying, then. She punched 363 on the control panel, rolled a sheet of letterhead in the typewriter and carefully typed the salutation:
‘Dear Mrs Dale:’
From there on it was simply a matter of switching from MAN to AUTO. The letter was typed in just under six seconds.
Dear Mrs Dale:
I received and read, your letter, and I was deeply touched by it. You seem to be afraid of dying. This is only natural, for no creature on God’s earth wants to die. For the humble animals, death is an end.
But not for you. FOR YOU, DEATH IS THE VERY BEGINNING.
When Columbus set sail, he didn’t know…
And so it went, right on down to the PS about remembering God in your will. A marvelous machine. Marilyn didn’t understand how the signers could refer to it as a ‘tripewriter’.
The signers were young bible students who saw no conflict between afternoons reading theology and mornings falsifying Billy’s signature to thousands of letters. They were a flippant, cynical bunch, and Marilyn hated taking letters in to them. One in particular, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, disgustingly handsome boy named Jim.
‘I understand perfectly,’ said the architect. ‘Everything modern but nothing extreme.’ He and Billy were looking at a sketch entitled South Elev
ation: Bibleland. ‘Now, about the mechanical figures and so on?’
Billy flipped through his desk diary. ‘I’ve got my computer man, Jerry, coming in Wednesday—let’s all have lunch. How much do you need to know?’
‘Everything, sir, everything. Each pavilion must be a container for the thing contained, neither more nor less. For less is more, and function designs its form. There must be balance, adaptability, total harmony and standardization…’
‘Now what about the site?’
‘I prefer to pick a flat, undistinguished piece of land and landscape it, Mr Koch.’
‘Okay, but keep the estimate in mind, Archy. And I wish you’d just call me Billy.’
‘Very well—Billy. I will not exceed the estimate, you can be sure. And I leave no detail to chance.
‘That’s something I learned at architecture school in my homeland. My mathematics master used to mark a problem completely wrong if there were even the slightest error. I asked him why I should lose all credit for a simple misplaced decimal point.
‘He said, “Wrong is wrong, Ögivaal. When you will be an architect, and your building collapses, it will not matter the reason. You cannot then say ‘This thirty should be a three.’ ” I never forgot his words.’
‘This site…’
‘Ah yes. I have one tentative site located, quite ideal but for the fact that it is a small Indian reservation.’
Billy’s pale blue eyes flicked up, then back to the plan. ‘If it’s worth it, we can probably get them moved off. Is it?’
‘Yes, yes, it is perfect. Quite near that place—what is the name? Death Valley.’
On the wall above Donagon’s desk was a histogram showing who was where in the Nobel race:
The one who really worried him was Muller-Fokker, who might have done it already. If he had really defected—no one seemed to know for sure—he might have the entire resources of Soviet research at his disposal.