Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” Ge-Ge sobbed. “You’re so fair and generous.” Outside his office she took a deep breath, crossed her fingers and went home to revise her speech. She had only expected sixty.

  Ge-Ge arrived at the studio well in advance and was handed over to the makeup department. With deft skill they converted her youth to age and contrived to instill in her face weariness and defeat. Her protests were ignored.

  “This is the way you make up for TV,” she was told.

  They clucked collective tongues in disapproval when they were finished and sent her on her way to a brief chat with the M.C.

  The M.C. assured her that she looked divine and hastily scanned her prepared remarks, which had been heavily edited by some anonymous hand in the news department. The M.C. incorporated a few pointless revisions and dispatched the message to the department handling idiot-board material. It was explained that Ge-Ge was to read, word for word, from the electronic prompter.

  Ge-Ge watched the program from the wings. When she heard a commercial message in favor of the consumption of a particular variety of candy, her heart ran away with itself. Her courage faltered. But Shamar’s face brought it back.

  The signal came. She walked into the terrible glare which held up every imperfection to microscopic inspection. She shook hands, turned, and the camera closed in, full face. Beyond the camera lay the largest daytime TV audience on Itra. She felt they were examining her pores with minute and critical attention.

  She blinked nervously and began to read. “I am here to tell you about Shamar the Worker.” That was as far as she went with the prepared text. Before the horrified ears of the auditors in the studio, she plunged into remarks of another kind entirely.

  “If you want to do something to help Shamar the Worker, stop buying candy! Don’t buy any more candy. If you want to help Shamar the Worker, don’t buy any candy until he’s free. If you want to help Shamar, please, please, don’t buy—”

  At this point the technicians cut Ge-Ge out and, with profound mistiming, faded in an oleogenous taped message from the candy manufacturer which began, “Friends, everybody likes Red Block candy, and millions buy it every day. Here’s why—”

  Ge-Ge surveyed the surrounding confusion and walked unmolested from the studio.

  When she arrived home, an angry Counselor Freemason was waiting on her doorstep. Inside, she allowed the Counselor to present his case.

  This new move, he explained, would have terrible consequences. Shamar’s good faith would be prejudiced. One simply did not, with impunity, go outside the law in such matters. There were rules you absolutely must play the game by. He washed his hands of all responsibility for her conduct. “I hope to God nothing comes of it,” he concluded. “I’m having the Committee prepare a denial of—”

  The phone rang at this point, and without asking permission, Counselor Freemason answered it. “Yes? This is Counselor Freemason, go ahead.” He listened a moment, said, “They did,” in a weary voice and cradled the phone.

  He turned to Ge-Ge. “Now we’re in for it. That was Pete Freedle from the Committee.”

  “Well,” said Ge-Ge, “I think we’ll just wait a few days and see what happens.”

  A week later, Ge-Ge was still waiting. Counselor Freemason, deprived of finances, was powerless to move. He saw everything crashing in shambles at their feet.

  “But are they selling candy?” Ge-Ge asked.

  “That’s beside the point!” Counselor Freemason cried. “Look here, every crackpot on the planet will get into the act. They don’t care about Shamar. All you’re going to prove now is that the Party is unpopular. Everyone already knows that.” He struck his forehead in exasperation.

  For two weeks, all was quiet. There were no more rallies for Shamar the Worker. Signs were torn down and destroyed. No bulletins were printed. No word passed over the electronic communications network. The Committee, bankrupt, dissolved in mutual recriminations and bickering, convinced that the cause of civil liberties had been set back one hundred years.

  But candy was not selling.

  It clogged the distribution channels. It piled up in warehouses. It lay untouched in stores. It grew rancid. Mechanically the factories continued to turn it out.

  The Party denied the boycott was having any effect. This did not appease the distributors of candy and the sellers of candy and the producers of candy. Their jobs were at stake. They had payrolls to meet.

  The Party stopped production of candy. People suddenly found themselves with no jobs to go to.

  The economic system was so tightly controlled and organized that the effect was immediate. There was too little money available to purchase the supplies normally purchased. Suppliers cut back on their factory orders. This further reduced the need for supplies.

  At this point, the Party decided that the people would, by heaven, eat candy. The Party Leader himself went on TV to appeal to the patriotism of the people and to order them to resume buying candy. This was a tactical error. But being the idea of the Party Leader himself, who had always crashed headlong into obstacles, none opposed it.

  The issue was directly joined. People resented being told that it was their patriotic duty to eat something that all medical opinion held was harmful. Furthermore, people realized that they had somehow stumbled on a fatal flaw in the system, which they could exploit without immediate danger.

  They responded by refusing to buy soap.

  The people were now in open revolt. At last they had a method for disapproving of things in general.

  The economy plummeted. The computers were in a frenzy. Effects of corrective actions were no longer predictable. The Party frantically tried to buy soap and dump it. The people turned to other commodities.

  Pressure now mounted from within the Party itself. The Supervisor of PAMDEN saw his carefully nurtured empire begin to disintegrate. A massive layoff in Consumer Plastics (badly hit by a running boycott) took with it valuable key personnel. The Supervisor of PAMDEN told the Party Leader himself that he damned well better do something about the situation, and damned soon, too.

  The Party Leader himself ordered the release of Shamar the Worker.

  But by then no one was interested in Shamar the Worker.

  The man came and unlocked Shamar’s cell door. Shamar stood up. The guard tossed in Shamar’s clothing. “Get dressed.” Shamar got dressed. “Come along.” Shamar came along.

  Shamar had had no word from outside for nearly two months, and it was not until he saw Ge-Ge’s face, radiant with joy, that he realized he had won.

  “You’re free!” she cried excitedly.

  Shamar was given back his belt and possessions. As they waited for the Judge to make it official, Shamar asked, “I wonder what will happen now?”

  “Nobody knows. Everybody says the Party’s out for sure. Individual Party members will try to form a new government, but it’s going to have to be radically different. They’ll try to keep all they can, but the people will wring them dry for every last concession. Maybe now when they build the factories, they’ll stay built and actually produce something.”

  “For a little while,” Shamar said.

  “Longer than a little while,” Ge-Ge said. “We’ve got a way to vote now, when things get too bad.”

  The Judge, in his red robe, came in. They stood respectfully. He looked at them for a long time and said nothing. Finally, he spoke:

  “Well, Shamar the Worker, I guess you’ve got what you want. You pulled down a whole civilization. I hope you’re satisfied. What Dream will you give us to replace the Dream you have taken from us?”

  His face hardened.

  “Shamar the Worker,” he said, “the Party Leader himself has asked us to dismiss the pending charges against you. This I now do. You are free to go.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Shamar said respectfully.

  “Shamar the Worker, for your own sake, you better hope that I never see you in my court. You better not get yourself arrested for
anything. I will show you no mercy, but justice will be swift and summary. So that you may not rest easily at night, I am having some of my very skillful and competent friends check through your background thoroughly. You should hope, very sincerely, that they find nothing. You may go.”

  Ge-Ge and Shamar stood. They turned in silence. When they were at the door, the Judge called, “Oh, Shamar the Worker!”

  He turned, “Yes, sir?”

  “Shamar the Worker, I do not like your accent.”

  Shamar could feel Ge-Ge trembling uncontrollably at his side.

  But when they reached the street, they were greeted by headlines announcing that a delegation from the planet Earth had arrived.

  VII

  The Earth delegation had taken over a suite in the Party Hotel, grandest and most expensive on Itra. Usually it was reserved for high Party members.

  Shamar and Ge-Ge presented themselves at the desk. Shamar wrote out a note in English. “Deliver this to the Earthmen,” he instructed.

  Shamar and Ge-Ge retired to await results. Less than five minutes passed; the bell hop returned. “Sir and Madam,” he said respectfully, “come with me.”

  When he entered the suite, he felt the personality of Shamar the Worker drop from him into memory.

  “Captain Shaeffer! Captain Shaeffer! Oh, what a magnificent job! I’m Gene Gibson from the new Department of Extra-Terrestrial Affairs. Who’s this?”

  “This is my fiancee.”

  “Good heavens, man, you intend to marry a native?” The man stepped back, shocked.

  Capt. Shaeffer turned to Ge-Ge and performed bilingual introductions.

  They moved from the hallway to the sitting room and arranged themselves on the furniture.

  “I must say, Captain Shaeffer, that your success on Itra has surpassed our wildest expectations. The first inkling we had was when, out of the blue, as it were, there was your face looking out at us from the TV screen! You should have been there for our celebration that night! You’d been on Itra just a little over two months! You’re going down in history as one of the greatest heroes of all time!”

  Capt. Shaeffer said, “I think it would be best if Ge-Ge and I were to board your ship immediately. Her life may be in danger. Some old-line Party men might resent her role in the revolution. Actually, she had more to do with it than I did.”

  “Oh, now, I’m sure you must be exaggerating a bit on that, Captain Shaeffer. Her life in danger? Surely, now! Speaking frankly, Captain—and mind you, I have no personal objection at all; this is none of my business. But she is, after all, an Itraian. You know these mixed marriages—”

  “I don’t give a damn what you personally think,” Capt. Shaeffer said. “Is that understood once and for all? She goes.”

  “Of course. I was just—now don’t get huffy. Of course she goes. Just as you wish, Captain.”

  The angry exchange over an unknown but fearfully expected issue caused Ge-Ge to blink back tears.

  A week later, Gene Gibson came for the first time to visit them. Capt. Shaeffer inquired as to progress.

  “Well, Captain, things are progressing. We are establishing a government which will be more responsive to the will of the people of Itra. We’ve had several very pleasant, informal chats with the Party Leader, himself. Really a wonderful man. Once he got all the facts—which were kept from him the first time we landed—he strikes me as being quite responsible. I think we may have misjudged him. I’m not too sure but what he isn’t just the exact man to head up the new government. We’ve discussed a few details on trade agreements and, I must say, he’s been very reasonable.”

  Capt. Shaeffer said nothing.

  “Yes,” Gene Gibson said, “he’s really an exceptional individual. A wealth of administrative experience. A fine grasp of practical politics. I don’t regard him as a typical Itraian at all. He feels that, with us backing him, we can get this whole mess straightened out in a few months.”

  “Mess?”

  “Well, you must admit, I think, Captain Shaeffer, that you did—well—make negotiations extremely difficult, in view of the, ah, present temper of the populace.

  “You see, Earth would like to have a stable and responsible government. A government, that is, which can see larger issues in perspective. Not one which must devote its full time to coping with a group of unpatriotic anarchists running loose in the streets.”

  “What’s he saying?” Ge-Ge asked.

  “As it is now,” Gene Gibson continued, “we do have several rather difficult problems. I think we’ll probably have to quarantine Itra for a few months until the Party Leader himself can form a stable organizational structure. Somehow news of our trade discussions have leaked out and for some reason has resulted in a general work stoppage. So you see? By God, I’ll just come right out and say it: Shaeffer, you’ve left us one hell of a mess!”

  With that, Gene Gibson departed.

  “What did he say?” Ge-Ge asked meekly. But Shaeffer only shook his head.

  The following day, the ship’s captain came to pay a courtesy call.

  “A very neat piece of work, Merle. Your new assignment just came in, by the way, on the space radio.”

  “New assignment? Ge-Ge and I are on our way back to Earth.”

  “No, you’re not. We’re to drop you off at Midway for transhipment to Folger’s Hill. It’s a new planet. You’re to be Earth representative to the people of Folger’s Hill. The first shipload of colonists arrived about a month ago.”

  “I see,” Capt. Shaeffer said.

  “The salary’s good,” the ship’s captain said.

  “Suppose I don’t want to go?”

  “I’ve got orders to leave you at Midway. I’d want to go if I were you. They want you out of the way for a little while. You can’t fight it. You’ve been appointed a General in the Defense Forces, so you’re now under military law—and it’s an order.”

  At this point, Ge-Ge broke in to say, “How are things going in Xxla?”

  General Shaeffer choked back his anger and presented the question.

  “They don’t tell us anything. The crew is confined to the ship.”

  Shamar the Worker turned to Ge-Ge. “It’s going about the same,” he said.

  A year later, General Merle S. Shaeffer’s card popped out of the computer.

  “General Shaeffer’s up for re-assignment.”

  “Who in hell is General Shaeffer?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  The card passed upward.

  “Merle Shaeffer is due for re-assignment,” a man who knew the name told the Secretary of the Over Council at lunch the following day. “There’s a new planet opened up even further away than Folger’s Hill.”

  “He’s the one who butchered the Itra assignment? Send him there. Anything new from Itra recently, by the way?”

  “Same as usual. I understand the anarchists have formed some kind of government.”

  “Terrible. Terrible. Well, the less said about that the better.”

  A week later, again over lunch, the Secretary was told:

  “I guess we needn’t worry about Merle Shaeffer any more. Disappeared from his post, he and that Itraian woman of his, a couple of weeks after they arrived on Folger’s Hill. Probably a hunting accident got them both. Their bodies were never found. These things happen on wild new planets.”

  The Secretary was silent for a long time. Then he said: “Shaeffer dead, eh? I guess it’s better that way. Well, a genius has passed, and we’ll not see his like again. Perverted, perhaps, but a genius none the less.”

  They drank solemnly.

  “To Merle Shaeffer. You could call him a hero, so let’s you and I drink to that. No one else ever will.”

  They drank again.

  Nothing further served to stir the Secretary’s memory of Merle Shaeffer, and he retired six months later at the end of his term. The new Secretary was not familiar with the Itraian affair.

  He had been in office just a few days less than
a year when, one morning, he arrived at his office in a furious rage. “Get me the Head of the Defense Forces!”

  “I’m sorry, sir, all the phones are tied up,” his secretary said.

  “What in hell do you mean, all the phones are tied up?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe all at once everybody just left their phones off the hook or something.”

  “Why would they do that? That’s ridiculous! Get a runner over after him.”

  Half an hour later, the Head of the Defense Forces arrived.

  “Do you know,” the new Secretary demanded, “that yesterday all the pennies went out of circulation? People apparently have been saving them for the last couple of months. It finally showed up. All at once, there aren’t any pennies. You can’t make change. Damn it, why would those crazy idiots all decide to save their pennies at the same time? It’s not rational. Why did they do it?”

  The Head of the Defense Forces said nothing.

  The Secretary raved at him in anger, but the Head of the Defense Forces did not have the heart to tell him that a hero had returned home.

  THE OUTCASTS

  East Fifth Street in Los Angeles is the street of derelicts. Passed by time, transcended by obscure events, the forgotten people shuffle with bowed heads into a lonely and nameless eternity.

  Often the women there, old and brittle, dress in a finery of time gone by. They rouge their cheeks and paint their lips and dye their hair. Beneath red the ravage shows.

  The girls there, too, are old. Childhood is the lost memory of a sighs a place that can neither be forgotten nor remembered. Often the girls dress in gay formals at noon.

  The formals are stained with perspiration and are without flowers. They rouge their cheeks and paint their lips and bleach their hair. But rather than being brittle, as are the women, the girls are merely mechanical.

  The men, old and young, dress in cast-off clothing or in clothing that has been worn too long and washed or cleaned until the vitality has been removed. There are few beards, but fewer still are smooth shaven. The complexion of the Caucasians is an all-pervasive sallow; their exposed parts are sallow and their covered parts are sallow. Darker skins are ashen.