Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by G. C. Edmondson

  “Not drunk—crazy,” Vorshak muttered.

  “Hmmmm,” the Old Man hmmmmed.

  Vorshak looked sideways at the Old Man and began hedging his bets. Jones waited for the Old Man to come to and shout, “You’re fired!”

  IN A MOMENT the Old Man hummmmed again and looked speculatively at Tones. “It’s your baby,” he said. “Let me see a rough layout tomorrow morning.” He harrummhed and walked out of the room.

  Vorshak rounded the table. “Congratulations, Jones,” he said; “count on me for any help you need.”

  “You’ve helped enough already,” Jones said. “Come on, Cromleigh, I’ll buy you some lunch”

  Cromleigh looked nervously from one to the other, mumbled something about ulcers, and pointed apologetically to his carton of milk. Jones walked down the hall to his office. “Don’t clear my things out just yet,” he said.

  “Why, Mr. Jones, were you thinking of leaving?” the girl asked.

  “Silly girl don’t you read the grapevine?”

  He worked most of the night on the rough layout and the next day, to his infinite surprise, the Old Man liked it. He rushed the layout to the magazines, and spent the intervening time working up TV and radio coverage. Vorshak kept a distance nicely calculated to permit him to jump on or off the bandwagon as circumstances dictated. Meanwhile, the Old Man initialed roughs with a speed and lack of meddlesome suggestions which was positively amazing.

  A MONTH passed. Hints dribbled out via radio and TV. After a month of hinting, which had the public (theoretically) frantic to be let in on the secret, came broader hints. Former Miss Americas predicted a new day in the kitchen. Three months from its conception, the outrage was perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.

  The reaction was, as usual, shocked silence then uproarious laughter. They laughed at Columbus, and they laughed at Maidenform. But on Madison Avenue nobody was laughing at Jones—they were too busy imitating him. Two weeks after D-day, the Old Man was jubilant.

  “Biggest thing since Davy Crockett,” he announced gleefully.

  “Yes, sir, Chief, we certainly put that one over” Vorshak said; he had finally decided which way to jump.

  “Oh, did you work on it too?” the Old Man asked.

  “His greatest contribution was keeping out of my way,” Jones put in.

  Vorshak’s mouth snapped shut, and he began scribbling in his notebook.

  “I’ve been thinking of branching out a little,” Jones continued.

  “Fine! What did you have in mind?”

  “I’ve been thinking. Couldn’t we have somebody develop a recipe for an all-day pudding? Flow about something that has to cook eight hours over a double boiler? Ought to be stirred constantly, too; have it lump if you leave it alone for a minute.”

  “By the wav, Jones,” the Old Man said, “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about a partnership.”

  “It it’s all the same to you, Mr. Klein-Schmidt, I’ll settle for a cash bonus.”

  THE KLEIN-SCHMIDT agency prospered for four months; meanwhile, every other agency hastened to get into the act. The five hour cake mix was followed by three day fudge. Jones’ all day pudding was a smashing success. Some unsung genius revived an angel food recipe, where the eggs had to be beaten by hand; and before people knew it things were out of control.

  The Federated Women’s Clubs of America slowly collapsed. A cadre of the Parent Teacher Association was preserved only by the persistence of a few fathers who continued attending meetings. Queen for a Day fizzled and was ultimately revived as King for a Day. The women were in the kitchen and too busy to be bothered.

  NEAR THE end of the fourth month, the Old Man began to worry. At the morning conference he said, “Boys, we’ve milked the slowdown movement about to the end of its course. Now’s the time to get on the ball with something new. Got to keep ahead of the competition, you know.” He essayed a chuckle which didn’t quite go over.

  “Yes sir, Chief,” Vorshak said eagerly.

  Cromleigh hemmed a noncommittal haw.

  Carson Jones said nothing.

  At that very moment, a bill was getting its first reading in the lower house. It was introduced very quietly, and not too many people were on hand to listen. At the second reading, a bored reporter heard it through and did a double take. He rushed to a phone with the scoop of the century, and was somewhat miffed when he finally found it on page 16B, between the sports page and the want ads in the evening edition. The morning edition didn’t carry it at all.

  That was how women were disenfranchised. When they heard about it the general reaction was, so what? They went back to kneading bread dough. Even the authors of the bill were amazed at the way women ignored the fact that they’d just lost the vote.

  WHEN THE old man heard about it he didn’t take it so quietly. “This’ll ruin us,” he said.

  “How so, Chief?” Vorshak asked.

  Carson Jones stroked a newly-started mustache. “Can’t you guess? What’s the backbone of this business?”

  “Sales, of course,” Vorshak explained, as if to a child.

  The Old Man shook his head sadly.

  “And who controls the money?” Jones persisted. “Who squanders the family pay-check on the idiotic fripperies we dream up from week to week?”

  Vorshak was beginning to get it.

  “We put them back in the kitchen,” Jones said. “And now they haven’t time to read ads or watch TV.”

  “What can we do?” Vorshak asked.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’ve already done it.”

  “What?” the Old Man asked.

  Jones pointed enigmatically at his mustache. “Have you noticed how many of these there are on the streets lately?”

  “Of course!” the Old Man exclaimed. “It’s obvious. Man blossoms out in whiskers whenever he gets the upper hand. Gad, what a name you could have made for yourself in this business!” he said regretfully.

  “Still room for anybody who wants in,” Jones said. “Cromleigh’s with me.”

  “Thanks,” the Old Man said. “I’m a little too old to change. Guess I’ll pull out and go fishing. If I’m quick, I might even sell the business yet,” he added with a smirk.

  “I don’t get it,” Vorshak said.

  “Cromleigh and I are in the comb and brush business; thinking of branching out in mustache cups soon.”

  THE GREYING little man stroked his beard and muckatooed at the pigeons. “And that’s about all there is to it?” he said.

  “One more thing,” his companion asked, “What ever happened to Vorshak?”

  “Ah, Vorshak,” the old man said sadly. “Never did adjust; poor fellow was killed in a riot at a suffragette parade.”

  “Suffragette parade?”

  “Oh we had a few in the first year or two. I understand that Vorshak was one of the leaders. The movement never gained much headway though. Most of the advertising men died of broken hearts when they called protest meetings, and no women showed up.”

  “Do you think women will ever vote again, sir?” the young man asked.

  “Not a chance,” Jones laughed. “We’re back in the driver’s seat. We won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  Rescue

  With his accustomed dry realism, Mr. Edmonson shows that few events necessarily work out as is expected in fiction—certainly not the triumphant colonization of Mars, nor the well-publicized heroism of a1z interplanetary

  JASON DID NOT PANIC, LIKE ANY miner, he considered the explosion a normal hazard of the trade. Most of the colony was underground at the time. Those on the surface pitched in to dig out the rest. When time dragged beyond known limits of air supplies there was no point in further digging. Corpses don’t care whether they’re buried in one part of Mars or another. But Jason did.

  He was one of those tall, craggy men who even in youth have an imperishable quality. Unlike most of the miners who were lured by high hopes of adventure, he came only for the money. With enough of it he could
continue the solitary aimless course which life had led him since an overloaded school bus’s inability to float had liberated Jason from his eldest-son’s promise to a worn, dying widow. Even before that he’d never been much of a talker. The other miners liked him but they didn’t quite understand the taciturn crawler driver.

  For the company it was the final straw. The first Martian expedition had gotten a bigger welcome home than Columbus did. Few people read through the reams of romantic slush to know it had been a bust. Mars wasn’t worth exploring. The second expedition blasted off on the momentum of a wave of popular sentiment, adroitly whipped up by a news syndicate manager. What did he care if another megabuck of the taxpayer’s money went down the drain, or rather, up in smoke? It wasn’t costing him anything and it did sell papers.

  The second expedition found one radioactive deposit of doubtful value. A Wall Street wonder boy organized a shaky company and that was how the mine came to be. For five years it had continued a precarious existence, metallic fuels production barely paying the truly colossal cost of equipment supply.

  Surface air was deficient in oxygen and too thin to make compression practicable. Had it not been for huge gas pockets which a lesser gravity had formed with a prodigality unknown on Earth, the mine would have been bankrupt long ago.

  Albert Jason was subconsciously aware of all these facts but he hadn’t been thinking of them at the moment of the explosion. He had been dragging a string of cars through “A” tunnel on the western side of the mountain. The seasonal rush at opposition had left a small mountain of supplies on the field. The last ship of the season was still unloading and Jason was in a hurry to get things underground before a sandstorm complicated the job.

  When the first shock wave spattered a mitrailleusade of gravel over his pressurized tractor cab he slipped his breathing mask on automatically. The second, third and fourth shock waves passed through tunnel “A” in a succession of rapid flutters but Jason didn’t feel them. When he came to he had a splitting headache and the tractor was still running, its treads biting vainly at the dusty air of the tunnel.

  He dazedly shut off the drive and sat on the cab ceiling. The dust made visibility poor as he listened in the sudden silence of the stopped motor for falling rock. There was a grinding crunch as a piece the size of a small house hit the tractor a glancing blow and rolled away with the sedate motion peculiar to Martian gravity. He waited a few minutes but nothing else happened. The cabin was still pressurized. He radared a random pattern and discovered that he was blocked in both directions. No telling what a movement would do to the precarious balance in the tunnel. He decided to wait.

  There was apparatus in the mine to analyze geological strains. He had supplies of food, water, and air on the battered cars. They’d have him out in less than a week. Meanwhile, the batteries would operate more efficiently in an upright position. After a look at the inverted bed and galley Jason decided he would too. Legs extended from the tractor and it righted like an agile scarab. He listened anxiously for falling rock but nothing happened.

  Six men stood at the mouth of tunnel “B”. One was the pilot of the last rocket. “Not exactly a triumphal return,” he said glumly.

  “Five out of fifty,” one of the miners replied. “You won’t find me sentimental about leaving. What’d the microwave have to say?”

  “The company’s tossing in the sponge. We’ll be paid off. Their families will collect for the full term of their contracts.” He gestured at the blocked tunnel.

  Better get a move on,” the pilot said. “We’re eight days past opposition already.”

  A miner pulled the crystals and power pack from the microwave transmitter. “Only things light enough to be worth the freight back home,” he explained. They packed small bags of personal belongings and climbed into a tractor for the trip around the mountain to tunnel “A” where the ship was waiting.

  Nobody looked back.

  Blastoff dropped another slow-motion shower of rubble on Jason’s tractor but he was asleep and didn’t hear it. The air got a little ripe as he slept and his fogginess made him slipshod about adjusting it. It was nearly a week before he realized what was happening and took a benzedrine pill. When the air was working properly he sat down and took stock of the situation.

  He wasn’t sure of the time. That was one of the minor inconveniences of life on Mars. He had revamped his own calendar watch, putting in a slightly longer hairspring and running the slow adjustment to the peg. Still, it didn’t work very well. Radar and seismograph recordings showed no signs of activity. He waited another day then, with a cautious eye on the overhead, he began digging.

  Digging out wasn’t as easy as it looked. First, he had to pass the string of eighteen cars over, under, or around the tractor before he could get at the face of the blockage. It took a day to dig a chamber large enough to do this. He wished he’d had the luck to be caught in a digger. The supply tractor had digging tools on its face as did all Martian vehicles but they were not designed for heavy digging, only to dig out after sandstorms.

  The total length of tunnel “A” was one thousand meters. He had been about two-thirds of the way in when the explosion occurred. Radar and seismograph had no way of telling how far the tunnel was blocked. At worst he’d have to dig through six hundred meters of rubble. He started digging, hoping the tractor would outlast the blockage.

  Two days and a hundred meters farther he broke into a free section. The tractor raced ahead at its ten kilometer top speed until he was within a hundred meters of the entrance. There the tunnel was blocked again. He weighed the air capacity of the tractor cab against the remaining distance and went back for the abandoned train. It was another day before he had his supply train with him again. Thus prepared, he started digging. In thirty minutes he saw a faint gegenschein of daylight ahead.

  The trip around to the bubble at the entrance of tunnel “B” took another half hour. He noted the absence of ships at the field but that was natural. The season had been ending when he was trapped. The first jolt came when he opened the Bubbletown airlock and found nobody home. For an instant Jason stood riveted, remembering the time he’d led brothers and sister from the ceremony whose barbarism was heightened by his knowledge that the casket’s sleazy lining ended just beyond view. He remembered the wide-eyed way the kids had looked from empty kitchen to him and back to empty rocking chair.

  Jason decided everybody had been in the mine. Must have happened just after the supply ship blasted off or the crew would have made some attempt at rescue. Or would they? With opposition season ending he wondered. Anyhow Jason was stuck for an Earth year, more or less, until next opposition. He went back to the bubble and began storing supplies. One year’s supplies for fifty men. Or fifty years for one man.

  The first month he was busy. Winter was due in this hemisphere and winter on Mars entailed much more preparation than it had in Wisconsin. Jason thought fleetingly of the lonely farm on Earth but he was too busy for morbid nostalgia.

  In time everything was put away. He checked the dome for leaks and patched a couple of doubtful spots where sandstorms had eroded the plastic. The wear was slight. Aside from meteors—only slightly more probable here than on Earth—he was safe.

  During the long Martian winter he began checking other less urgent things. Up to now he had avoided the other men’s quarters from some sense of impropriety. Now he began to get their effects in order for the day when the ship came. Forty-five cubicles were as their occupants had left them to spend twelve hours in the mine. The other five weren’t. Hurried departure was evident in the things that were missing.

  With a prickliness about the neck and shoulders he entertained a new idea. When he saw the missing crystals and power pack in the uninspected microwave transmitter his suspicions were verified. He rummaged through the library for spools on electronics.

  In time he repaired the transmitter, clumsily replacing the crystals with more primitive stabilizing devices. Power was available from the la
rge pack which maintained the bubble but when he tried it something was lacking. After a week of transmitting and receiving no reply he gave up. He had better luck with the PA. system. No parts had been pirated from it. He spent several months working out small improvements on a stereophonic sound system. His thirtieth birthday passed unnoticed as he listened to a tape of Berlioz while puttering around with the hydroponic tanks, trying to improve the lettuce.

  At times he wished for a dog or a cat but in the end decided it was better this way. There was no worry about what would happen to a pet when something happened to Jason.

  Days passed swiftly. His calendar watch gave up the ghost and he was too busy to fix it. The roses weren’t doing well in the Martian soil he had brought from outside the bubble. By, the time they were transplanted to where they’d catch the anemic morning sunlight he’d lost track of time and there wasn’t much point in fixing the watch. Besides, there was the model railroad he wanted to set up in the area where living quarters used to be.

  The hydroponic tanks had yielded a small harvest of wheat and rye and he was busy firing brick. Jason hoped to duplicate the loaves he had eaten on Earth as a boy. First he had to make a mill and an oven. He noticed in an offhand way that his hairline was receding and the curly golden mat on his chest was showing tinges of gray.

  On Earth economics boomed and busted. Wars grew hot, cold and lukewarm. News went through its hot seasons, its silly seasons and its doldrums. It was during the latter that the manager of a news syndicate, the same one who used to tub-thump about Martian exploitation, called in his star reporter.

  “Rawson, how’d you like to take a trip?” he asked.

  ‘Expense account?”

  The chief nodded. “It’s been nearly seven years since Mars was abandoned. How’d you like to do something on the ghost town?”

  “But chief,” the reporter protested, “you know how much it costs to land on Mars.”

  “Who said anything about landing? You’ll take a moonshot and another ship from there. Orbit once or twice around Mars, shoot a few hundred feet of film over Bubbletown, and you’re back in six months. It won’t cost half as much for the trip from Luna to Mars as it does from here to Luna.”