Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut

  The Shah turned to stare at the group through the back window, and then spoke at length.

  Doctor Halyard smiled and nodded appreciatively, and awaited a translation.

  "The Shah," said Khashdrahr, "he would like, please, to know who owns these slaves we see all the way up from New York City."

  "Not slaves," said Halyard, chuckling patronizingly. "Citizens, employed by government. They have same rights as other citizens--free speech, freedom of worship, the right to vote. Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works, controlling machines, but now machines control themselves much better."

  "Aha!" said the Shah, after Khashdrahr had translated.

  "Less waste, much better products, cheaper products with automatic control."

  "Aha!"

  "And any man who cannot support himself by doing a job better than a machine is employed by the government, either in the Army or the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps."

  "Aha! Khabu bonanza-pak?"

  "Eh?"

  "He says, 'Where does the money come from to pay them?' " said Khashdrahr.

  "Oh. From taxes on the machines, and taxes on personal incomes. Then the Army and the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps people put their money back into the system for more products for better living."

  "Aha!"

  Doctor Halyard, a dutiful man with a bad conscience about the size of his expense accounts, went on explaining America, though he knew very little was getting through. He told the Shah that advances had been most profound in purely industrial communities, where the bulk of the population--as in Ilium--had made its living tending machines in one way or another. In New York City, for instance, there were many skills difficult or uneconomical to mechanize, and the advances hadn't liberated as high a percentage of people from production.

  "Kuppo!" said the Shah, shaking his head.

  Khashdrahr blushed, and translated uneasily, apologetically. "Shah says, 'Communism.' "

  "No Kuppo!" said Halyard vehemently. "The government does not own the machines. They simply tax that part of industry's income that once went into labor, and redistribute it. Industry is privately owned and managed, and co-ordinated--to prevent the waste of competition--by a committee of leaders from private industry, not politicians. By eliminating human error through machinery, and needless competition through organization, we've raised the standard of living of the average man immensely."

  Khashdrahr stopped translating and frowned perplexedly. "Please, this average man, there is no equivalent in our language, I'm afraid."

  "You know," said Halyard, "the ordinary man, like, well, anybody--those men working back on the bridge, the man in that old car we passed. The little man, not brilliant but a good-hearted, plain, ordinary, everyday kind of person."

  Khashdrahr translated.

  "Aha," said the Shah, nodding, "Takaru."

  "What did he say?"

  "Takaru," said Khashdrahr. "Slave."

  "No Takaru," said Halyard, speaking directly to the Shah. "Ci-ti-zen."

  "Ahhhhh," said the Shah. "Ci-ti-zen." He grinned happily. "Takaru--citizen. Citizen--Takaru."

  "No Takaru!" said Halyard.

  Khashdrahr shrugged. "In the Shah's land are only the Elite and the Takaru."

  Halyard's ulcer gave him a twinge, the ulcer that had grown in size and authority over the years of his career as an interpreter of America to provincial and ignorant notables from the backwaters of civilization.

  The limousine came to a stop again, and the driver honked his horn at a crew of Reconstruction and Reclamation Corpsmen. They had left their wheelbarrows blocking the road, and were throwing rocks at a squirrel on a branch a hundred feet overhead.

  Halyard rolled down his window. "Get these damn wheelbarrows out of the way!" he shouted.

  "Ci-ti-zen!" piped the Shah, smiling modestly at his newly acquired bilinguality.

  "Drop dead," called one of the rock throwers. Reluctantly, surlily, he came down to the road and moved two wheelbarrows very slowly, studying the car and its occupants as he did it. He stepped to one side.

  "Thanks! It's about time!" said Halyard as the limousine eased past the man.

  "You're welcome, Doc," said the man, and he spat in Halyard's face.

  Halyard sputtered, manfully regained his poise, and wiped his face. "Isolated incident," he said bitterly.

  "Takaru yamu brouha, pu dinka bu," said the Shah sympathetically.

  "The Shah," said Khashdrahr gravely, "he says it is the same with Takaru everywhere since the war."

  "No Takaru," said Halyard apathetically, and let it go.

  "Sumklish," sighed the Shah.

  Khashdrahr handed him the flask of sacred liquor.

  3

  DOCTOR PAUL PROTEUS, the man with the highest income in Ilium, drove his cheap and old Plymouth across the bridge to Homestead. He had had the car at the time of the riots, and among the bits of junk in the glove compartment--match cards, registration, flashlight, and face tissues--was the rusty pistol he had been issued then. Having a pistol where some unauthorized person might get at it was very much against the law. Even members of the huge standing army did without firearms until they'd disembarked for occupation duty overseas. Only the police and plant guards were armed. Paul didn't want the pistol but was forever forgetting to turn it in. Over the years, as it had accumulated a patina of rust, he'd come to regard it as a harmless antique. The glove compartment wouldn't lock, so Paul covered the pistol with tissues.

  The engine wasn't working properly, now and then hesitating, catching again, slowing suddenly, catching again. His other cars, a new station wagon and a very expensive sedan, were at home, as he put it, for Anita. Neither of the good cars had ever been in Homestead, and neither had Anita for many years. Anita never needled him about his devotion to the old car, though she did seem to think some sort of explanation to others was in order. He had overheard her telling visitors that he had had it rebuilt in such a way that it was far better mechanically than what was coming off the automatic assembly lines at Detroit--which simply wasn't true. Nor was it logical that a man with so special a car would put off and put off having the broken left headlamp fixed. And he wondered how she might have explained, had she known, that he kept a leather jacket in the trunk, and that he exchanged his coat for this and took off his necktie before crossing the Iroquois. It was a trip he made only when he had to--for, say, a bottle of Irish whisky for one of the few persons he had ever felt close to.

  He came to a stop at the Homestead end of the bridge. About forty men, leaning on crowbars, picks, and shovels, blocked the way, smoking, talking, milling about something in the middle of the pavement. They looked around at Paul with an air of sheepishness and, as though there were nothing but time in the world, they moved slowly to the sides of the bridge, leaving an alley barely wide enough for Paul's car. As they separated, Paul saw what it was they had been standing around. A small man was kneeling beside a chuckhole perhaps two feet in diameter, patting a fresh fill of tar and gravel with the flat of his shovel.

  Importantly, the man waved for Paul to go around the patch, not over it. The others fell silent, and watched to make sure that Paul did go around it.

  "Hey, Mac, your headlamp's busted," shouted one of the men. The others joined in, chorusing the message earnestly.

  Paul nodded his thanks. His skin began to itch, as though he had suddenly become unclean. These were members of the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps, in their own estimate the "Reeks and Wrecks." Those who couldn't compete economically with machines had their choice, if they had no source of income, of the Army or the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. The soldiers, with their hollowness hidden beneath twinkling buttons and buckles, crisp serge, and glossy leather, didn't depress Paul nearly as much as the Reeks and Wrecks did.

  He eased through the work crew, past a black government limousine, and into Homestead.

  A saloon was close to the end of the bridge. Paul had to park his car a half-bl
ock away, for another crew was flushing out the storm sewers with an opened fire hydrant. This seemed to be a favorite undertaking. Whenever he had come to Homestead when the temperature had been above freezing, he'd found a hydrant going.

  One big man, with an air of proprietorship, kept his hands on the wrench that controlled the flow. Another stood by as second-in-command of the water. All around them, and along the course of the water to the sewer mouth, a crowd stood watching. A dirty little boy caught a scrap of paper skittering along the sidewalk, fashioned it into a crude boat, and launched it in the gutter. All eyes followed the craft with interest, seeming to wish it luck as it shot perilous rapids, as it snagged on a twig, spun free, shot into the swift, deep main flow, mounted a crest for a triumphant instant, and plunged into the sewer.

  "Uh!" grunted a man standing by Paul, as though he had been aboard the boat.

  Paul worked his way through the crowd, which was continuous with the clientele of the saloon, and got to within one rank of the bar. His back was against an old player piano. No one seemed to have recognized him. It would have been surprising if someone had, for, in line with policy, he kept pretty much to his own side of the river and never permitted his name or picture to appear in the Ilium Star-Tribune.

  Around the bar were old men, pensioners, too old for the Army or the Reeks and Wrecks. Each had before him a headless beer in a glass whose rim was opaqued by hours of slow, thoughtful sipping. These oldsters probably arrived early and left late, and any other business had to be done over their heads. On the screen of the television set behind the bar, a large earth mother of a woman, her voice shut off by the volume knob, beamed, moved her lips excitedly, and broke eggs into a mixing bowl. The old men watched, occasionally clicking their dentures or licking their lips.

  "Excuse me," said Paul self-consciously.

  No one made a move to let him get to the bar. A fat, whitening collie, curled beneath the barstool of an old man blocking Paul's way, showed its toothless gums and growled fuzzily.

  Futilely, Paul waved his hand for the bartender's attention. As he shifted from one foot to the other, he recalled the fully mechanized saloon he, Finnerty, and Shepherd had designed when they'd been playful young engineers. To their surprise, the owner of a restaurant chain had been interested enough to give the idea a try. They'd set up the experimental unit about five doors down from where Paul now stood, with coin machines and endless belts to do the serving, with germicidal lamps cleaning the air, with uniform, healthful light, with continuous soft music from a tape recorder, with seats scientifically designed by an anthropologist to give the average man the absolute maximum in comfort.

  The first day had been a sensation, with a waiting line extending blocks. Within a week of the opening, curiosity had been satisfied, and it was a boom day when five customers stopped in. Then this place had opened up almost next door, with a dust-and-germ trap of a Victorian bar, bad light, poor ventilation, and an unsanitary, inefficient, and probably dishonest bartender. It was an immediate and unflagging success.

  He caught the bartender's eye at last. When the bartender saw Paul, he dropped his role of high-handed supervisor of morals and settler of arguments and became an obsequious host, like the bartender at the Country Club. Paul was afraid for a moment that he'd been recognized. But when the bartender failed to call him by name, he supposed that only his class had been recognized.

  There were a few men in Homestead--like this bartender, the police and firemen, professional athletes, cab drivers, specially skilled artisans--who hadn't been displaced by machines. They lived among those who had been displaced, but they were aloof and often rude and overbearing with the mass. They felt a camaraderie with the engineers and managers across the river, a feeling that wasn't, incidentally, reciprocated. The general feeling across the river was that these persons weren't too bright to be replaced by machines; they were simply in activities where machines weren't economical. In short, their feelings of superiority were unjustified.

  Now, the bartender had sensed that Paul was a personage, and he made a show of letting everyone else go to hell while he gave service to Paul. The others noticed, and turned to stare at the privileged newcomer.

  Paul ordered the bottle of Irish in a quiet voice, and tried to become inconspicuous by bending over and petting the aged collie. The dog barked, and its owner turned on his barstool to confront Paul. The old man was as toothless as the dog. Paul's first impression was of red gums and huge hands--as though everything were sapped of color and strength but these.

  "He wouldn't hurt nobody," said the old man apologetically. "Just kind of edgy about being old and blind, and never sure of what's going on, is all." He ran his big hands along the dog's fat sides. "He's a good old dog." He looked thoughtfully at Paul. "Say, I bet I know you."

  Paul looked anxiously after the bartender, who had disappeared into the cellar after the whisky. "Really? I've been in here once or twice before."

  "No, not here," said the old man loudly. "The plant, the plant. You're young Doctor Proteus."

  A lot of people heard, and those closest to the two studied Paul with disturbing candor, and fell silent in order to hear whatever was being said.

  The old man was apparently quite deaf, for his voice was erratically loud, then soft. "Don't recognize my face, Doctor?" He wasn't mocking, he was frankly admiring, and proud that he could prove himself on speaking terms with this distinguished man.

  Paul colored. "I can't say I remember. The old welding shop, was it?"

  The old man swept his hand over his face deprecatingly. "Aaaah, not enough left of the old face for my best friend to recognize," he said good-humoredly. He thrust out his hands, palms up. "But look at those, Doctor. Good as ever, and there's not two like them anywhere. You said so yourself."

  "Hertz," said Paul. "You're Rudy Hertz."

  Rudy laughed, and looked about the room triumphantly, as though to say, "See, by God, Rudy Hertz does know Doctor Proteus, and Proteus knows Hertz! How many of you can say that?"

  "And this is the dog you were telling me about--ten, fifteen years ago?"

  "Son of the dog, Doctor." He laughed. "I wasn't no pup then, though, was I?"

  "You were a damn fine machinist, Rudy."

  "I say so myself. Knowing that, knowing smart men like you say that about Rudy, that means a lot. It's about all I got, you know, Doctor? That and the dog." Rudy shook the arm of the man next to him, a short, heavy, seemingly soft man, middle-aged, with a homely, round face. His eyes were magnified and fogged by extremely thick glasses. "Hear what Doctor Proteus here said about me?" Rudy gestured at Paul. "Smartest man in Ilium says that about Rudy. Maybe he's the smartest man in the country."

  Paul wished to God the bartender would hurry up. The man Rudy had shaken was now studying Paul sullenly. Paul glanced quickly about the room and saw hostility all around him.

  Addled Rudy Hertz thought he was doing a handsome thing by Paul, showing him off to the crowd. Rudy was senile, remembering only his prime, incapable of remembering or understanding what had followed his retirement....

  But these others, these men in their thirties, forties, and fifties--they knew. The youngsters in the booth, the two soldiers and three girls, they were like Katharine Finch. They couldn't remember when things had been different, could hardly make sense of what had been, though they didn't necessarily like what was. But these others who stared now, they remembered. They had been the rioters, the smashers of machines. There was no threat of violence in their looks now, but there was resentment, a wish to let him know that he had intruded where he was not liked.

  And still the bartender did not return. Paul limited his field of vision to Rudy, ignoring the rest. The man with thick glasses, whom Rudy had invited to admire Paul, continued to stare.

  Paul talked inanely now about the dog, about Rudy's remarkable state of preservation. He was helplessly aware that he was hamming it up, proving to anyone who might still have doubts that he was indeed an insincere a
ss.

  "Let's drink to old times!" said Rudy, raising his glass. He didn't seem to notice that silence greeted his proposal, and that he drank alone. He made clucking noises with his tongue, and winked in fond reminiscence, and drained his glass with a flourish. He banged it on the bar.

  Paul, smiling glassily, decided to say nothing more, since anything more would be the wrong thing. He folded his arms and leaned against the keyboard of the player piano. In the silence of the saloon, a faint discord came from the piano, hummed to nothingness.

  "Let's drink to our sons," said the man with thick glasses suddenly. His voice was surprisingly high for so resonant-looking a man. Several glasses were raised this time. When the toast was done, the man turned to Paul with the friendliest of smiles and said, "My boy's just turned eighteen, Doctor."

  "That's nice."

  "He's got his whole life ahead of him. Wonderful age, eighteen." He paused, as though his remark demanded a response.

  "I'd like to be eighteen again," said Paul lamely.

  "He's a good boy, Doctor. He isn't what you'd call real bright. Like his old man--his heart's in the right place, and he wants to do the most he can with what he's got." Again the waitful pause.

  "That's all any of us can do," said Paul.

  "Well, as long as such a smart man as you is here, maybe I could get you to give me some advice for the boy. He just finished his National General Classification Tests. He just about killed himself studying up for them, but it wasn't any use. He didn't do nearly well enough for college. There were only twenty-seven openings, and six hundred kids trying for them." He shrugged. "I can't afford to send him to a private school, so now he's got to decide what he's going to do with his life, Doctor: what's it going to be, the Army or the Reeks and Wrecks?"

  "I suppose there's a lot to be said for both," said Paul uncomfortably. "I really don't know much about either one. Somebody else, like Matheson, maybe, would ..." His sentence trailed off. Matheson was Ilium's manager in charge of testing and placement. Paul knew him slightly, didn't like him very well. Matheson was a powerful bureaucrat who went about his job with the air of a high priest. "I'll call Matheson, if you like, and ask him, and let you know what he says."