Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  Roger smiled. “That’s right. This is my own personal secretary, Miss Zean.”

  “Well . . . I mean. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have . . . I mean . . .”

  Roger chuckled. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, waving his hand.

  “Well, I know, but . . .”

  Sela reached over and handed him back his drink.

  He took it.

  “He’s all right,” she said, smiling. “He won’t bite you. See, I’m not afraid of him.”

  Jack tasted the drink. “You must be awfully busy,” he said, “running such a big corporation as that.”

  Roger Croy shrugged. “Not as busy as I like to pretend. I’m practically on a vacation right now: one little deal in Yuma, and then Sela and I are going to the Riviera for a month.”

  Jack drained his glass. He twisted uncomfortably on the seat. Suddenly he stood up. “I just thought of something,” he lied. “I’ve got to go down to my cabin. I hope you’ll excuse me for taking up your time this way.” Roger gave him a friendly smile. “We’ll see you at dinner.”

  After he was gone, Roger settled back and sighed. “You can’t help but like that kid, can you?”

  “I think he was terrified at meeting Mr. R. J. Croy in person,” Sela said.

  Roger nodded his head in amusement. “He looked like a nice sort. You know what I think?”

  “No. What?”

  “I think he wanted to meet you when he came over here. He’s been watching you. I’ve noticed. I’m not so sure that he’s not about halfway in love with you already.”

  Sela raised her eyebrows. “He’s such a boy,” she said. “He’s hardly as old as I am.”

  Roger bent toward his drink. “I think,” he said, “you’ve been watching him, too.” He turned to study her face. “What do you say about that?”

  “And I think you’re jealous,” she said teasingly.

  “No. I mean, really. You know how it is with us. I just wouldn’t want to see you get tangled up with a kid like that. You could be pretty unhappy. Remember, he’s an Earth man.”

  “So are you,” she said flippantly. “But we’re not—in love—are we?” he asked. “It makes a lot of difference.”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” she said seriously. “I’ve only just seen the boy these last couple of days, and here you’ve almost got us married.”

  He held his glass up to the light. “I think I know you pretty well,” he said. “But you’re a funny one, and I don’t ever know quite what to make of you.”

  CHAPTER II

  “YARP,” SAID THE representative, bobbing his head happily. “Yarp.”

  The Service Section man, Fred, picked up a key. He held it up for Representative Filch’s inspection. “Now, you insert this in the slot and turn.” Bending forward, he demonstrated on the model that rested on the representative’s desk. The model was plugged into a wall socket, and when the key turned, the model panel lit up. “This blank space here, that’s lit now,” Fred went on, “will contain a televised picture of the legislation under consideration.”

  “Yarp,” said Representative Filch.

  Fred’s assistant, Long Tom Johnny, bent across the model and pointed to the focusing dial. “You focus with this thing,” he said. “Each box will have a picture tube adjusted to the individual’s eyes for whom it is intended, so you won’t have much need of it, but there’s where it is.”

  The representative smiled and nodded. “Yarp,” he said, “Plain’s day.”

  “Good,” Fred said. “Will you come around here, now, sir?”

  The representative stood up and ambled around the desk. He assumed a position behind Fred and stood squinting over the Service Section man’s shoulder. His hands hung uselessly at his sides.

  “You see these two little buttons?”

  “Yarp.”

  “Well, when you turn your box on with your own special key, you are now ready to vote. You simply push one of these.” He pointed.

  The representative licked his lips. “One says ‘Yes’ and the other says ‘No’.”

  “Oh, yeah. They do, don’t they? Which is which?”

  The Service Section man remained impassive. “The one on your right is ’Yes’.”

  The representative studied the board blankly for a moment, struggling. “Then t’other one’s ‘No’, huh?”

  “That’s right, sir. Now let’s review it. Which button did I say was which?”

  “Uh . . .” The Honorable Mr. Filch wrinkled his brow in concentration. “Le’s see, now, uh, the one one my right is ‘Yes’, the one on my left, ‘No’. Yarp, that’s it.” He shook his head. “But I can’t say’s how I don’t mistrust that gadget.”

  Fred cleared his throat. “Now show me the ‘No’ button.”

  Representative Filch advanced his right hand tentatively. It fluttered out toward the ‘Yes’ button, but just before he touched it, he noticed the expression on Long Tom Johnny’s face. He jerked his hand to the other button.

  “Yarp,” he said happily. “That’s her.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The representative straightened up. “Well,” he said, “Thanks for coming around and showing me this here now votin’ machine. Can’t say I favor ’em. But I suppose I’ll have to learn to use one. Well, I gotta rush off, now, to a meetin’ of the Committee on Research in the Natural Sciences. I’m the Chairman. Yarp, I’m the Chairman.”

  After he was gone, the two Service Section men began to disconnect the demonstration model. Long Tom Johnny, after he had coiled up the electric cord, straightened up and said, “In some respects, sometimes, I just don’t know.”

  Fred dropped the model in the carrying case. “Say what you will, Representative Filch is a fine politician.”

  The two men walked out of the office carrying a demonstration voting unit of the voting-tote. It was said to be fool-proof.

  THE SNOWBIRD WAS ten days along on its thirteen day crossing from Venus to Earth.

  Sela Zean sat in her cabin waiting for Roger. Every few minutes, she brushed nervously at her silken, purple hair. It was long hair, cascading over her bare shoulders, tumbling half way down her back. Her hands were slender and delicate, the nails closely trimmed and well cared for. Her eyes shifted to the door and then away from it: the round, doll blue eyes of Venusians. She was wearing a white formal, low cut, that set off her figure, attracting the eye to this and this and this excellence. After a while, she stood up and went to the cabinet. She poured herself a drink. As she tasted it, the cabin door opened.

  “Roger,” she said. “I was just having a drink. Would you care for one?”

  “Thanks. Not right now.” He closed the door softly and crossed to the bed, where he sat down. “Boy,” he said, “my cabin’s a mess: papers all over it.” Sela carried her drink over to a lounge chair. She moved a stack of papers from it to the floor and then sank into it. She stretched. “I finished up what you wanted me to do hours ago.” She sipped at the drink, inspecting him closely over the rim of the glass.

  He lit a long, Vegan cigarette. “We’re most caught up, now. Pretty soon we can start to enjoy ourselves.” She did not answer. He blew a lung full of the faintly greenish smoke toward the air grill. “You were up ’til all hours—ship time—with Jack again last night, weren’t you? That makes three nights straight, doesn’t it? You weren’t in here when I came by.”

  “I was in his cabin. We were talking.”

  Roger Croy studied his cigarette. Sela remained silent and motionless. Finally, he inhaled deeply.

  “You have a streak of . . . I don’t quite know the word to use . . . not exactly idealism, but something like that, if you know what I mean?”

  “I think I know,” Sela said.

  “Maybe what I mean, you have a sort of reservoir of affection, waiting for somebody to come along and tap it. It’s pretty hard to get at.” He blew smoke. “I never could.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Roger.”

  He smiled.
“You know what I mean.” He turned to face her. “Look.

  I think I’ll take the drink, if you don’t mind. The two of us look like we might sit here and start to sound like a soap opera.”

  “I’ll do the honors,” she said. She walked to the cabinet and mixed the drink: two and a third jiggers of zeno, three drops of lemon, two cubes of sugar, a splash of soda.

  “You know just how I like it,” he said, sipping at it. “You’re a very handy girl to have around . . . I think I’m going to feel happy, tonight. Mind?”

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “I was thinking about the month vacation. I’ve got a lot of things to show you. There’s the—hey, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Go on.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, crushing out the cigarette. “Come on. Tell all to father Croy.”

  “He asked me to marry him last night.”

  “Well, now, I will be damned.” He took a swallow of the zeno cocktail. “And what did you tell him?”

  “I . . . nothing.”

  He narrowed his eyes. He expelled his breath forcefully. “Well!”

  “. . . What made you say you thought I was in love with him, a few days ago?”

  “I know you, Sela. It’s the sort of . . . of . . . well, romantic thing you’d be likely to do. It’s just like you, somehow. I really don’t know how serious I was the other night when I said that.” She moved uneasily in the chair. She bit her lip with even, white teeth. “I don’t know whether I am or not. I honestly don’t know. I try to think, and somehow everything goes blurry. I guess it’s kind of silly, isn’t it, Roger?”

  “What kind of a guy is he?”

  “I really don’t even know that. A lonely kid. He needs somebody. He seemed almost half afraid of me. You should have seen his proposal: like a schoolboy saying something he might get whipped for.”

  “I meant what kind of a future? What kind of a business man is he?” She looked up into his eyes. “I don’t care. You know I never cared about that.”

  He glanced away from her face.

  “If you mean money—I have a little. Enough for a while, I guess. He’s a chemist or something. He could earn enough for us to live on.”

  Roger Croy cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Sela, I’m very fond of you. You’re a damn’ good secretary, and a damn’ good—well—girl friend.

  I wouldn’t want to see you hurt. Listen, I’ve seen these mixed marriages, I’m dead serious: they’re no good.”

  She reached out for her drink again. “I don’t see that that would matter, if we were really in love.”

  Roger Croy shrugged. “It’s hard. I mean, after the . . . well, love sort of dies, the marriage has to depend on something stronger.” He took out another cigarette.

  “You’re smoking too much,” she said almost automatically. “You just put one out.”

  He laughed. “I’ll miss you. I can see that. We would have had a wonderful time on the vacation . . .”

  She shook her head slowly, her eyes serious.

  “Yes, I guess that did sound a little like a bribe, didn’t it?”

  “I know you didn’t really mean it like that. You know me well enough to know that things like that don’t matter. They’re not important.”

  “I know,” he said. He lit the cigarette. “I don’t guess there’s any sense trying to tell you I feel like hell about this. It’s no play for sympathy: it’s simply fact.”

  “I haven’t said, yet, I’d accept.”

  He leaned forward, and the bed creaked under him. “No. But I was watching you. When I told you a mixed marriage wouldn’t work, I could see that little streak of stubbornness on your face. You felt that little desire of yours to prove everybody else is wrong. And the devil of it is, you’re usually right, too.”

  She stood up and crossed the room to him. She smiled wryly, raising her eyebrows. “You know me pretty well.”

  He reached toward her hair; he stroked it gently, letting the strands flow like water through his hands. “Not well enough. If I did, I’d know some way to make—make you feel about me the way you do about him.”

  “You’re a wonderful guy,” she said.

  “I mean it. But . . . you don’t need me, do you?”

  He sighed. “Will you live in Meizque? I’ll get him a job there, if you want me to.”

  “We’re going to live on Earth. He can’t live on Venus any more.”

  “Oh? . . . It’s worse there,” Roger Croy said. “You’ll have to get permission to marry. That’s pretty hard. Their legislature has to pass a bill.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Roger said.

  “If I can get him some sort of a job there. He’s a chemist, yon say? Honest to God, I wish . . . Never mind. I suppose you’ve told him about us?”

  “Good Lord,” she said lightly, “I hardly know him!” She bent forward and kissed Roger on the forehead. “Yet!” she added emphatically.

  He stood up. “Well, I guess I better say good night.”

  At the door, he turned. He stared at her for a long moment. Then he looked around the room.

  “I mean this,” he said slowly. “All the luck in the world.”

  “You sound so morbid. I’m still your secretary. I’ll be eating breakfast with you. You make it sound like I’ll never see you again.”

  “Well, in a way, it is goodby, isn’t it?”

  She swallowed. “I know. Goodby . . . dear.”

  When the door closed, she was surprised to find herself crying.

  CHAPTER III

  “OF COURSE, HYSTERIA is best,” the lobbyist admitted, “But when we can’t use it, we can’t use it. We’re looking forward to that day. We have a new technique. The blind stampede.”

  “Go on,” said the employer. “Please go on.”

  “You are familiar with the new voting machine?”

  “Familiar with it? Didn’t I spend 300,000 credits fighting it?”

  The lobbyist pursed his lips and clicked his tongue consolingly. “Don’t take it so hard. We can oppose progress only so long. A few hundred years. Then there comes a time . . .”

  The employer looked down-cast. “But perhaps it will turn out for the best,” the lobbyist said.

  Slowly, very slowly, the employer shook his head. “The Golden Age is gone. Now, every representative will have his every vote registered. His every vote. It’s—it’s undemocratic. It’s a violation of conscience. It’s a violation of the Australian Ballot. It’s a . . .”

  “Easy, easy . . .”

  “How can we tie up the legislature for weeks with roll calls? How can we paralyze them for months in parliamentary niceties? How can we kill bills year after year by honest, democratic subterfuge?”

  “We’ll find new ways,” the lobbyist said.

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Now, listen. We can usually whip up hysteria, can’t we?”

  “It’s getting harder,” the employer said. He had a sudden, horrible thought. “Maybe the people are getting smarter!”

  “No. That’s absurd. The theory of genetic drag, of the gene pool, proves we’re safe there.”

  “Oh.”

  “In big issues, we’ll continue with hysteria, fabrication, smear, innuendo, and bribes. But in little, everyday issues, our psychologists have developed the psychology of the voting tote.”

  “Tell—me—more.”

  Roger Croy had a suite in a down town hotel. The telephone, at his elbow, purred. He flicked on a “Vision-screen”, and, in the base square, he picked up the picture of the caller: an operator. “I have your party in Yuma, now,” she said musically. Roger glanced across the room at his secretary and Jack. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll phone back. I’m busy right now.” He replaced the receiver.

  “Please don’t let me keep you away from business,” Jack said, thrusting his head forward nervously. “I’ve really got to leave anyway. I’m trying to get
an appointment with my representative. I should be half way to the capital now.” He stood up. He moved his hands awkwardly. “Thanks for everything, Mr. Croy. You take care of Sela while I’m gone, won’t you?” He turned to the girl. “I’ll try to get through in a week. My lawyer said, if I was lucky, it shouldn’t take more than that.” He walked to the door.

  She crossed the room to him, kissed him lightly. “Hurry back,” she said.

  “I will,” he promised. He let himself out.

  “Damn it, I still like the kid,” Roger said after the door had closed. “I wish you’d gone on with him to the capital.”

  “No,” she said. “I’d be a fine secretary to run off and leave you until after this week. Then I’ll join him.”

  “Thanks, Sela, you’re square. I’ve got a hunch this marriage is going to work out. I hope it does. You’re the kind that just falls one time.”

  “I know it will,” she said.

  She crossed to her improvised desk at the far side of the room, next to the window. Glancing out the window, she could see air taxis flashing by on the six lanes above the roof tops. Several family helicopters fluttered like pieces of torn paper in the sky. “It’s a different world, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yeah . . .” Roger said. “And the world’s all right. The natives on the other hand . . .”

  “You’re one,” she said. “Jack’s one.”

  “We’re more Venusian. We’re more like you, really.”

  She laughed. “Honestly—it’s not as bad on Venusians now as it was twenty years ago: they seem to treat me fine.”

  Roger Croy nodded. “Still. It would be better if you could live on Venus. Not nearly so much antagonism. Look, Sela . . .”

  “No, I’m sorry, Roger.”

  “. . . I’d like to get you a wedding present.”

  “Oh!” Sela turned from the window. She looked at him with a half teasing smile. “If it’s something useful and inexpensive.”

  He laughed explosively. “In good taste, you mean? Did you expect I’d send you a diamond bracelet?”

  “Touché,” she said.

  Roger crossed to her desk and stood looking down at her. “What I had in mind was something valuable but inexpensive. I thought I might be able to get your marriage bill before the Elected for you.”