Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “Uh-huh. Interplanet’s payin’.” The clerk had been suspicious; that knowledge made him more so. “Look,” he said, “if this is another scheme to break the franchise, you’re out of luck, see.”

  “Why I wouldn’t dream of anything like that. All I want is legal cargo transported—that’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. Sure.” The clerk glared at him. “Now look: you can tell us how your reefer is rigged and we’ll build one like it, or you can make us hire a bunch of experts to find out. It’ll cost more that way, but the results will be the same. If you can bring it here, we can take it down. We got resources. Lots of them.”

  “I’ll be glad to tell you.”

  “Fine—” The clerk paused and then said. “I thought for a minute—” He shrugged. “Never mind.” He reached for a special-ship form. “If you’ll estimate the cost—”

  “About half a million, I’d guess.”

  “O.K. How long did it take you to rig it up?”

  “Four months. But I was working practically alone.”

  “I see. Then we could do it in a month, probably.” He stopped. He was still a little bit suspicious. “You know we have a special clause: We have to be given a reasonable time to outfit a transfer ship?”

  “Sure. I’ll wait. I’ve got lots of time.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re being reasonable. But it don’t figure. What’s the angle? This will cost Interplanet almost a million bucks just to transport a ship load of pure swamp gas that ain’t worth six cents a barrel.” Huh-uh, Jackson. You’re wrong. It ain’t gonna cost Interplanet a cent. But it’ll shatter your franchise into about a million pieces.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Better think about it, Jackson. Call in a few of the legal wizards. Consider it a bit.” He snapped his fingers under the man’s nose. “Like that! This monopoly has gone for good.”

  He walked out.

  And from that day, for the first time in the history of man, competition ruled the Earth-Lunar shuttle.

  Betty, that was the secretary’s name, asked him, the first night he got back, how he did it.

  They were at the Starway Roof, dancing to the soft, dreamy music.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, ‘How did you do it?’ ”

  “Elementary, honey.” He went back to concentrating on his dancing.

  “Come on,” she insisted. “Give!”

  “Well. I just fought fire with fire. They had a monopoly, so I got one, too. I patented my process to store swamp gas. Now, a patent is a monopoly. And that puts E-L Lines in a hole. If they use my process, I can sue them and get every cent they have—the courts have just been itchin’ to hand down a judgment against ’em. If they don’t use my-process, they can’t haul my cargo: and, under Rule Seventeen, that means they lose their franchise.” He smiled, dreamily. “Either way, I make my million.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Betty murmured. “You wonderful man you.”

  They danced twice around the room. “I’ve been thinking,” she whispered. “About the Ozarks. And I’ll bet I can tell you what you’re thinking, too.”

  “ ’Sa bet.”

  “You’re thinking about asking me to marry you,” she said, very softly.

  “Uh-huh,” Carl Harrill agreed.

  THE END.

  CASTING OFFICE

  This is, quite frankly, a fantasy. But it’s such an intriguingly unpleasant little piece l thought it would be fun—

  There were, literally, millions of casting offices and millions of reception rooms and millions of casting clerks, and, of course, millions and millions of clients waiting for assignments.

  In one of the offices, there were five clients.

  When the clerk’s buzzer sounded, they hunched forward anxiously. If, after consulting his charts, he did not summon one of them, they settled back, their eyes still alertly following his every movement.

  The sixth client materialized from the stage. He stepped down from the exit platform.

  “Whew,” he said, “that was a rough one.” He walked over and signed the “Out” list which lay open on the clerk’s desk. The clerk checked the signature against his balance sheet, made an entry, and then laid his pencil aside.

  “No more like the last one,” the client said. “See if you can’t get me a better one next time.”

  The clerk said: “I’ll do my best. You want to go right out again?”

  “Yeah. Might as well.”

  “O.K.,” the clerk said. “There’s a waiting list today. Sit down, please.” The client walked across the room and sat down.

  “That was an awful role,” he said. One of the others, looking up, said, “Some bad, some good. Mostly bad, any more. It’s getting worse, I think.”

  “How can we take it, if it gets worse, I want to know? It’s ghastly enough, every living second of it, now.” He looked up at the company’s motto, The Show Must Go On.

  “It’s so bad, now,” someone else said, “they won’t even give us a script briefing, and that—”

  The clerk caught a buzz on his board. The clients stopped talking and bent forward.

  The clerk uncoded the request. He drew his list forward. He checked it quickly, running a pencil down the line of names.

  “I got a short one,” he told the waiting clients. “Anybody want it?” One client stood up before the rest. “Extra pay?” he asked hopefully as he crossed to the desk.

  “Routine. You want it?”

  “Can’t you give me a hint?”

  The clerk shook his head. “Sorry. Yes or no?”

  “I need the job.”

  “All right,” the clerk said. “Let’s see. I’ve got your pay record here, somewhere. Ah, yes. Here.” He pulled it forward and scribbled a coded entry. “There. You ready?”

  “Yes,” the client said. He stepped up on the stage entrance platform.

  The clerk watched the hands of his watch. His eyes narrowed intently. Then he pushed a button and the client vanished into the on-stage memory blackout.

  “We keep busy, at least,” one of the remaining clients said.

  Another laughed harshly. “We keep moving, you mean. I’ve had six short ones straight.”

  “It’s not fair,” another said. “They ought to have to tell us the roles. There’s a lot they couldn’t get me for, I bet.”

  “It’s the Author’s fault. Why don’t they write cheerful plays any more? What’s wrong with them—that’s what I’d like to know?”

  The buzzer sounded again, and they all hunched forward, holding their breath.

  The Author, smiling, entered the Director’s office.

  The Director looked up sternly from a stack of Critics’ reports that spread over his desk. He frowned in the direction of the Author.

  “Dear me,” he said, “you’ve really no occasion to be smiling.”

  The Author clucked his tongue. “I thrive on criticism,” he said. “And that I do not chose to heed it is a further testimonial to my already legendary and notorious artistic integrity.”

  The Director shook his head sadly.

  The Author laughed. “One of the basic canons of the fraternity: a hostile critic is an unmitigated ass. It’s a defensive reaction, and its pronouncement follows the criticism as the night, the day. But, on the other hand, the friendly critic, although usually a man of innate sensibilities and superb perspicacity, has, in the present instance, been so overcome with the over-all artistic effect that he cannot discern those numerous minor flaws with which the work abounds.”

  The Director cleared his throat. “Please. Be serious for once—this is apt to become very grave.”

  “Oh, hut I am serious. In fact, levity is unknown in my profession.”

  The Director sighed. “You have, of course, read the Critics. Haven’t you?”

  “Ahem. That. Universally unfavorable comments, I have heard, so I didn’t bother with them. An author quickly learns that any fool can find fault, so he only bothers with the except
ionally perceptive fool who can find virtue—Ah, but what can—indeed, what must—one expect? To cast pearls before swine—That, incidentally, is a line from the play. I have a certain facility, I pride myself, in turning a phrase; and in my career, I’ve turned a million of them, each equally as scintillating. But, to cast pearls, I say, before swine is the unfailing occupation of the artistically inspired.”

  “Really, I’m afraid—”

  “Ah ha. Afraid? Banish that ignoble substantive, fear, from your vocabulary. It, sir, is the hobgoblin of petty minds—to paraphrase one of my better comments upon life. Would you degenerate into a quivering mass of jelly at the first sarcastic comment of a myopic Critic?”

  “Well, I must say, in fairness, that there were some powerful objections—”

  “Objections? Ha! The play’s scarce begun. But I, too, in fairness, will admit that the quality of the acting leaves something of the subtlety out of my superb dialogue, and that several of the settings are a disgrace to an enlightened stage.

  “But, again in fairness, I must admit mitigating circumstances, and I duly appreciate them, and they cannot be wholly ameliorated, due to a certain decadence in stage craft and stage conventions. For instance, to take only one of many: It is a trifle sordid sort of a play—but would you for a moment consider circumscribing art by petty moral judgments? And you know that in this day and age sordidness demands sacrifices that competent actors do not need to make, being, in fact, financially independent of the stage, you might say, although, by depriving that subject area, from which all great Art arises, of their histrionics, they do the stage a disservice. Still, I say, one should not cavil at prostitutes; they freely chose their profession. Or again: the usury of our backers severely limits the fertility of imagination—but again, I shall suffer in silence.

  “But even so, you will see, as the play soars to its compelling climax, these minor criticisms will be engulfed by the universal shouts of approbation acclaiming your foresight and courage in directing this extravaganza of passion. Every day you must observe the increasing emotional impact of my writing. And the gradual unfolding of awe inspiring and cataclysmic events will leave the beholders breathless. Can you doubt?”

  “Well—”

  “But it was, precisely, the level of acting that I came to see you about today. In an endeavor to raise, in my humble fashion, the general level of performance, I have written in a part for myself. Besides, I need a vacation. And, in addition, I have written the script sufficiently far ahead that, barring unusual exigencies, you will have no need for consulting me while I’m on stage.”

  “This part of yours—?”

  “Oh, a little thing. Not much. A happy part, you might say. Perhaps, indeed, the happiest part in the whole play.”

  “That’s what I thought,” the Director said. “How are you going to fit a happy part into that play? It’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

  “What a silly question. I’ll tie it right in—as soon as I get back.” The Director waved his hand feebly. “That’s already a criticism: they say you leave too many loose ends, as it is. That there are already enough glaring inconsistencies—”

  “Please!” The Author shielded his eyes. “Do not dignify the babblings of morons by repeating them, sir! I shall refuse to listen to such vile canards, sir!”

  The Director shrugged. “O.K. If you won’t listen, you won’t. But I warned you. Now, this part of yours. Are you going to be a writer in the play, too?”

  “No! Whatever gave you that absurd thought? I’m going to be a happy man.”

  Now the technical effects staff of the Play was no more happy with it than were its most severe Critics.

  The Actors—“lean, hungry things,” as one Critic sagely observed—were sufficiently exasperating to occupy, exclusively, the complete attention and undivided resources of twice as many technical effects men as the budget provided for the whole production.

  Chiefly through wanton carelessness, they were damaging props almost as fast as repair units could hustle, unobtrusively, about to fix them up. That, indeed, coupled with other factors, had made the situation so urgent, recently, due to the need for quick action, that the Actors themselves were spotting the repair teams in the sky and wondering at them in spite of numerous revisions by the Author to explain them away in terms of natural laws of the Play.

  Those very laws, too, caused grave concern to the technical effects staff, being, as they most certainly were, shot through with absurdities, contradictions, and inconsistencies, and causing the Chief of the staff finally to scribble a protest: “It appears to me that the Author, whatever else he may he, is neither a logical thinker nor a man well versed in the physical systems practical for and available to the Stage.”

  Too, as the Play progressed, the Actors became increasingly restive-many of them, doubtless, being forced, from financial need, to continue working long after their nerves were unsuited to their profession. And few if any of them possessed the requisite ability to carry through the Blackout the sense of loyalty to the theater, the play-must-go-on loyalty, and consequently, in their free-will periods, when they were not directly involved in the main or sub plots, their spirits animated the life props in most curious and unsatisfactory fashions. They had continually to he watched, and they necessitated frequent hasty revisions in the script and no end of other trouble. Several times it had been necessary to remove, physically and summarily, a recalcitrant Actor from the Stage altogether. And this, of course, the Critics were disinclined to approve.

  The over-all difficulties of staging were augmented by the complicated plot vagaries of an Author noted not only for his erratic genius but also for his slipshod workmanship and frequent addlepatedness. Currently the technical staff was being driven almost to distraction by his advance script—which called for extending the acting stage to encompass not only the one, but several, planets in the system.

  Of late, the Chief of the staff had a full-time scribe whose only job was to catalogue the mistakes. Every time the Chief so much as glanced at the volume, he moaned a weak moan.

  One whole section of it was headed: “Casting Office, Fiascoes.” That section contained an embarrassing chronicle of objects necessary to the plot being born dead, the Office having failed to provide Actors on time. Since a recent change in Casting personnel, the number of incidents had multiplied alarmingly.

  Further, on several occasions, when the terrarium showed signs of becoming unbalanced, in an excess of enthusiasm Casting had poured in a plethora of the missing element. One entry read: “Bugs—1869—summer-land mass: England—arrival of flies, ladybugs, fireflies, et cetera, in excess of requirements.” Casting had sent in wave after wave of them, millions upon millions of them—even going so far as to borrow some, of completely different makeup, from another Play.

  The technical effects staff, only peripherally responsible, nonetheless had to rectify those blunders in addition to more of their own making.

  The entry read: “Ashes—1863-summer—land mass: Africa—rectified explanation, Krakatoa.”

  On that occasion, the ashes had descended over a large area, drifting in from an explosion on a nearby planet. The explosion, itself, had been the consequence of canal digging on the surface. At first the Author had been contented merely to cause various astronomers in the Play to report the canals; but later, for some as yet unexplained reason, long after the Play had begun, he insisted upon their physical presence. The technical effects staff had inadvertently permitted the ashes to drift over the acting stage, and, in order to explain them, the Author was forced to divert his plot to permit a semitorpid volcano to be exploded. The Critics chuckled. And even many of the Actors insisted upon noting that the facts were inconsistent with the explanation: the ashes having begun to appear some time before the eruption of the volcano. The Author continued, however, to deliver the explanation through the most noted authorities in the Play, and it was eventually accepted by the Actors. But it had been a bad time, and the Chi
ef of the staff caught all kinds of remarks from the Director.

  There were thousands of other entries of like but less startling and universal nature.

  But the most pressing problem of all—indeed, the most appalling problem—was that of the stage machinery itself.

  The settings had been, by and large, jerry-built, and they were beginning to come apart at the seams. The Critics were sneering whenever objects fell upon the acting stage that could not—by any stretch of the imagination—be explained by the Author’s system of laws. They had increasing occasion for sneers; and it depressed the morale of the technical effects staff.

  One day the Chief said to his assistant, quite matter of factly, “I won’t be able to get another job after this one. Let’s face it.”

  “Oh, come now, Chief, things ain’t that bad.”

  The Chief shook his head. “Optimism is for youth. I’m too world weary for it. Do you realize that my overtime pay roll alone is almost as much as they take in at the ticket office? Something’s got to be done. I don’t care any more, for myself, but something’s got to be done. I’ve got all my repair units out with orders to keep the Stage from falling to pieces—I’ve told them, if they have to, let the Actors watch them work. What else can I do? And it’s still coming apart. I’m afraid to ask the Director to increase the staff—I’m too far over budget as it is. Something’s got to be done.”

  “You ought to see him, anyhow, Chief. Maybe he’ll think of something.”

  The Chief had a faraway look in his eyes.

  “Chief! Answer me!”

  “Uh? Oh. Yes, yes. It’s a very good idea. I must do that very thing, this very day.”

  What were the Critics saying?

  The Critics were saying very unkind things.

  Or—that is to say—after the Leading Critic had issued an opinion, the Lesser Critics echoed it.

  “Discerning no other purpose, this Critic is forced to assume that the Author is aiming at utter boredom, and from what we remember of his last attempt, we are encouraged to note that lie has elevated his aim considerably.”