Connoisseur's SF

by Tom Boardman

  The light was blinding—huge floods and spots bathed every square inch in yellow-white fire.

  Nola said, “You’ll get used to the light. After a few nights, you don’t even notice it.”

  “The lights never get turned off?”

  “Oh, dear, no!”

  Then I saw the plumbing—showers, tubs, sinks, and everything else. It was all lined up against one wall.

  Nola followed my eyes. “You get used to that, too. Better to have everything out in the open than to let the devil in for one secret second. That’s what the Lucilles say.”

  I dropped her duffel-bag and sat down on it. The only thing I could think of was, “Whose idea was all this? Where did it start?”

  “The Lucilles,” she said vaguely. Then, “Before them, I don’t know. People just started to realize. Somebody bought a warehouse—no, it was a hangar—I don’t know,” she said again, apparently trying hard to remember. She sat down next to me and said in a subdued voice, “Actually, some people didn’t take to it so well at first.” She looked around. “I didn’t. I mean it, I really didn’t. But you believed, or you had to act as if you believed, and one way or another everybody just came to this.” She waved a hand.

  “What happened to the ones who wouldn’t come to Centrals?”

  “People made fun of them. They lost their jobs, the schools wouldn’t take their children, the stores wouldn’t honour their ration cards. Then the police started to pick up soloists—like they did you.” She looked around again, a sort of contented familiarity in her gaze, “It didn’t take long.”

  I turned away from her, but found myself staring at all that plumbing again. I jumped up. “I have to go, Nola. Thanks for your help. Hey—how do I get back to the ship, if the cops are out to pick up any soloist they see?”

  “Oh, just tell the man at the gate. There’ll be people waiting to go your way. There’s always somebody waiting to go everywhere.”

  She came along with me. I spoke to the man at the gate, and she shook hands with me. I stood by the little table and watched her hesitate, then step up to a woman who was entering. They went in together. The doorman nudged me over towards a group of what appeared to be loungers.

  “North!” he bawled.

  I drew a pudgy little man with bad teeth, who said not one single word. We escorted each other two-thirds of the way to the spaceport, and he disappeared into a factory. I scuttled the rest of the way alone, feeling like a criminal, which I suppose I was. I swore I would never go into that crazy city again.

  And the next morning, who should come out for me, in an armoured car with six two-man prowlers as escort, but Mr Costello himself!

  It was pretty grand seeing him again. He was just like always, big and. handsome and good-natured. He was not alone. All spread out in the back corner of the car was the most beautiful blonde woman that ever struck me speechless. She didn’t say very much. She would just look at me every once in a while and sort of smile, and then she would look out of the car window and bite on her lower lip a little, and then look at Mr Costello and not smile at all.

  Mr Costello hadn’t forgotten me. He had a bottle of that same red cinnamon wine, and he talked over old times the same as ever, like he was a special uncle. We got a sort of guided tour. I told him about last night, about the visit to the Central, and he was pleased as could be. He said he knew I’d like it. I didn’t stop to think whether I liked it or not.

  “Think of it!” he said. “All humankind, a single unit. You know the principle of cooperation, Purser?”

  When I took too long to think it out, he said, “You know. Two men working together can produce more than two men working separately. Well, what happens when a thousand—a million—work, sleep, eat, think, breathe together?” The way he said it, it sounded fine.

  He looked out past my shoulder and his eyes widened just a little. He pressed a button and the chauffeur brought us to a sliding stop.

  “Get that one,” Mr Costello said into a microphone beside him.

  Two of the prowlers hurtled down the street and flanked a man. He dodged right, dodged left, and then a prowler hit him and knocked him down.

  “Poor chap,” said Mr Costello, pushing the Go button. “Some of ’em just won’t learn.”

  I think he regretted it very much. I don’t know if the blonde woman did. She didn’t even look.

  “Are you the mayor?” I asked him.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m a sort of broker. A little of this, a little of that. I’m able to help out a bit.”

  “Help out?”

  “Purser,” he said confidentially, “I’m a citizen of Borinquen now. This is my adopted land and I love it. I mean to do everything in my power to help it. I don’t care about the cost. This is a people that has found the truth, Purser. It awes me. It makes me humble.”

  “I…”

  “Speak up, man. I’m your friend.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr Costello, Well, what I was going to say, I saw that Central and all. I just haven’t made up my mind. I mean whether it’s good or not.”

  “Take your time, take your time,” lie said in the big soft voice. “Nobody has to make a man see a truth, am I right? A real truth? A man just sees it all by himself.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Yeah, I guess so.” Sometimes it was hard to find an answer to give Mr Costello.

  The car pulled up beside a building. The blonde woman pulled herself together. Mr Costello opened the door for her with his own hands. She got out. Mr Costello rapped the trideo screen in front of him.

  He said, “Make it a real good one, Lucille, real good. Ill be watching.”

  . She looked at him. She gave me a small smile. A man came down the steps and she went with him up into the building.

  We moved off.

  I said, “She’s the prettiest woman I ever saw.”

  He said, “She likes you fine, Purser.”

  I thought about that. It was too much.

  He asked, “How would you like to have her for your very own?”

  “Oh,” I said, “she wouldn’t.”

  “Purser, I owe you a big favour. I’d like to pay it back.”

  “You don’t owe me a thing, Mr Costello!”

  We drank some of the wine. The big car slid silently along. It went slowly now, headed back out to the spaceport.

  “I need some help,” he said after a time. “I know you, Purser. You’re just the kind of man I can use. They say you’re a mathematical genius.”

  “Not mathematics exactly, Mr Costello, just numbers—statistics—conversion tables and like that. I couldn’t do astrogation or theoretical physics and such. I got the best job I could have right now.”

  “No, you haven’t. I’ll be frank with you. I don’t want any more responsibility on Borinquen than I’ve got, you understand, but the people are forcing it on me. They want order, peace and order—tidiness. They want to be as nice and tidy as one of your multiple manifests. Now I could organize them, all right, but I need a tidy brain like yours to keep them organized. I want full birth- and death-rate statistics, and then I want them projected so we can get policy. I want calorie-counts and rationing, so we can use the food supply the best way. I want—well, you see what I mean. Once the devil is routed—”

  “What devil?”

  “The trappers,” he said gravely.

  “Are the trappers really harming the city people?”

  He looked at me, shocked. “They go out and spend weeks alone by themselves, with their own evil thoughts. They are wandering cells, wild cells in the body of humanity. They must be destroyed.”

  I couldn’t help but think of my consignments. “What about the fur trade, though?”

  He looked at me as if I had made a pretty grubby little mistake. “My dear Purser,” he said patiently, “would you set the price of a few pelts above the immortal soul of a race?”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  He said urgently, “This is just the begi
nning, Purser. Borinquen is only a start. The unity of that great being, Humanity, will become known throughout the Universe,” He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the organ tone was gone. He. said in his old, friendly voice, “And you and I, we’ll show ’em how to do it, hey, boy?”

  I leaned forward to look up to the top of the shining spire of the spaceship. “I sort of like the job I’ve got. But—my contract is up four months from now…”

  The car turned into the spaceport and hummed across the slag area.

  “I think I can count on you,” he said vibrantly. He laughed. “Remember this little joke. Purser?”

  He clicked a switch, and suddenly my own voice filled the tonneau. “I take bribes from passengers.”

  “Oh, that,” I said, and let loose one ha of a ha-ha before I understood what he was driving at. “Mr Costello, you wouldn’t use that against me.”

  “What do you take me for?” he demanded, in wonderment.

  Then we were at the ramp. He got out with me. He gave me his hand. It was warm and hearty.

  “If you change your mind about the Purser’s job when your contract’s up, son, just buzz me through the field phone. They’ll connect me. Think it over until you get back here. Take your time.” His hand clamped down on my biceps so hard I winced. “But you’re not going to take any longer than that, are you, my boy?”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  He got into the front, by the chauffeur, and zoomed away.

  I stood looking after him and, when the car was just a dark spot on the slag area, I sort of came to myself. I was standing alone on the foot of the ramp. I felt very exposed.

  I turned and ran up to the airlock, hurrying, hurrying to get near people.

  That was the trip we shipped the crazy man. His name was Hynes. He was United Earth Consul at Borinquen and he was going back to report. He was no trouble at first, because diplomatic passports are easy to process. He knocked on my door the fifth watch out from Borinquen. I was glad to see him. My room was making me uneasy and I appreciated his company.

  Not that he was really company. He was crazy. That first time, he came bursting in and said, “I hope you don’t mind. Purser, but if I don’t talk to somebody about this, I’ll go out of my mind.” Then he sat down on the end of my bunk and put his head in his hands and rocked back and forth for a long time, without saying anything. Next thing he said was, “Sorry,” and out he went. Crazy, I tell you.

  But he was back in again before long. And then you never heard such ravings.

  “Do you know what’s happened to Borinquen?” he’d demand. But he didn’t want any answers. He had the answers. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with Borinquen—Borinquen’s gone mad!” he’d say.

  I went on with my work, though there wasn’t much of it in space, but that Hynes just couldn’t get Borinquen out of his mind.

  He said, “You wouldn’t believe it if you hadn’t seen it done. First the little wedge, driven in the one place it might exist—between the urbans and the trappers. There was never any conflict between them—never! All of a sudden, the trapper was a menace. How it happened, why, God only knows. First, these laughable attempts to show that they were an unhealthy influence. Yes, laughable—how could you take it seriously?

  “And then the changes. You didn’t have to prove that a trapper had done anything. You only had to prove he was a trapper. That was enough. And the next thing—how could you anticipate anything as mad as this?”—he almost screamed—“the next thing was to take anyone who wanted to be alone and lump him with the trappers. It all happened so fast—it happened in our sleep. And all of a sudden you were afraid to be alone in a room for a second. They left their homes. They built barracks. Everyone afraid of everyone else, afraid, afraid…

  “Do you know what they did?” he roared. “They burned the paintings, every painting on Borinquen they could find that had been done by one artist. And the few artists who survived as artists—I’ve seen them. By twos and threes, they work together on the one canvas.”

  He cried. He actually sat there and cried.

  He said, “There’s food in the stores. The crops come in. Trucks run, planes fly, the schools are in session. Bellies get full, cars get washed, people get rich. I know a man called Costello, just in from Earth a few months, maybe a year or so, and already owns half the city.”

  “Oh, I know Mr Costello,” I said.

  “Do you now! How’s that?”

  I told him about the trip out with Mr Costello. He sort of backed off from me. “You’re the one!”

  “The one what?” I asked in puzzlement.

  “You’re the man who testified against your Captain, broke him, made him resign.”

  “I did no such a thing.”

  “I’m the Consul. It was my hearing, man! I was there! A recording of the Captain’s voice, admitting to insanity, declaring he’d take a gun to his crew if they overrode him. Then your recorded testimony that it was his voice, that you were present when he made the statement. And the Third Officer’s recorded statement that all was not well on the bridge. The man denied it, but it was his voice.”

  “Wait, wait,” I said. “I don’t believe it. That would need a trial. There was no trial. I wasn’t called to any trial.”

  “There would have been a trial, you idiot! But the Captain started raving about draw poker without a draw, about the crew fearing poisoning from the cook, about the men wanting witnesses even to change the bridge-watch. Maddest thing I ever heard. He realized it suddenly, the Captain did. He was old, sick, tired, beaten. He blamed the whole thing on Costello, and Costello said he got the recordings from you.”

  “Mr Costello wouldn’t do such a thing!” I guess I got mad at Mr Hynes then. I told him a whole lot about Mr Costello, what a big man he was. He started to tell me how Mr Costello was forced off the Triumverate for making trouble in the high court, but they were lies and I wouldn’t listen. I told him about the poker, how Mr Costello saved us from the cheaters, how he saved us from poisoning, how he made the ship safe for us all.

  I remember how he looked at me then. He sort of whispered, “What has happened to human beings? What have we done to ourselves with these centuries of peace, with confidence and cooperation and no conflict? Here’s distrust by man for man, waiting under a thin skin to be punctured by just the right vampire, waiting to hate itself and kill itself all over again…

  “My God!” he suddenly screamed at me. “Do you know what I’ve been hanging onto? The idea that, for all its error, for all its stupidity, this One Humanity idea on Borinquen was a principle? I bated it, but because it was a principle, I could respect it. It’s Costello—Costello, who doesn’t gamble, but who uses fear to change the poker rules—Costello, who doesn’t eat your food, but makes you fear poison—Costello, who can see three hundred years of safe interstellar flight, but who through fear makes the watch officers doubt themselves without a witness—Costello, who runs things without being seen!

  “My God, Costello doesn’t care! It isn’t a principle at all. It’s just Costello spreading fear anywhere, everywhere, to make himself strong!”

  He rushed out, crying with rage and hate. I have to admit I was sort of jolted. I guess I might even have thought about the things he said, only he killed himself before we reached Earth. He was crazy.

  We made the rounds, same as ever, scheduled like an inter-urban line: Load, discharge, blastoff, fly and planetfall. Refuel, clearance, manifest. Eat, sleep, work. There was a hearing about Hynes. Mr Costello sent a spacegram with his regrets when he heard the news. I didn’t say anything at the hearing, just that Mr Hynes was upset, that’s all, and it was about as true as anything could be, We shipped a second engineer who played real good accordion. One of the inboard men got left on Caranho. All the usual things, except I wrote up my termination with no options, ready to file.

  So in its turn we made Borinquen again, and what do you know, there was the space fleet of United Earth. I never guessed they had
that many ships. They sheered us off, real Navy: all orders and no information. Borinquen was buttoned up tight; there was some kind of fighting going on down there. We couldn’t get or give a word of news through the quarantine. It made the skipper mad and he had to use part of the cargo for fuel, which messed up my records six ways from the middle. I stashed my termination papers away for the time being.

  And in its tum, Sigma, where we lay over a couple of days to get back in the rut, and, same as always, Nightingale, right on schedule again.

  And who should be waiting for me at Nightingale but Barney Roteel, who was medic on my first ship, years back when I was fresh from the Academy. He had a pot belly now and looked real successful. We got the jollity out of the way and he settled down and looked me over, real sober. I said it’s a small Universe—I’d known he had a big job on Nightingale, but imagine him showing up at the spaceport just when I blew in!

  “I showed up because you blew in, Purser,” he answered.

  Then before I could take that apart, he started asking me questions. Like how was I doing, what did I plan to do.

  I said, “I’ve been a purser for years and years. What makes you think I want to do anything different?”

  “Just wondered.”

  I wondered, too. “Well,” I said, “I haven’t exactly made up my mind, you might say—and a couple of things have got in the way—but I did have a kind of offer.” I told him just in a general way about how big a man Mr Costello was on Borinquen now, and how he wanted me to come in with him, “It’ll have to wait, though. The whole damn Space Navy has a cordon around Borinquen. They wouldn’t say why. But whatever it is, Mr Costello’ll come out on top. You’ll see.”

  Barney gave me a sort of puckered-up look. I never saw a man look so weird. Yes, I did, too. It was the old Iron Man, the day he got off the ship and resigned.

  “Barney, what’s the matter?” I asked.

  He got up and pointed through the glass door-lights to a white monowheel that stood poised in front of the receiving station. “Come on,” he said.