The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth Page 13

  It was another of the “J. MacI” jobs, with the same date as the too-specific drawings for the throat liner and chamber. Novak wondered crazily whether MacIlheny or Friml had a gun in his pocket, whether the wrong reaction meant he’d be shot down on the spot. He studied the sheet and decided on his role. The “fuel tank” was a fantastic thing. It filled almost the rear two-thirds of the Prototype and made no sense whatever.

  There was one section forward that consisted of stainless steel. A section aft, much smaller, was quartz-lined lead, with a concrete jacket. Atomic. There was a lead wall indicated between the stainless-steel tank and the Proto’s aft bulkhead. Atomic. This was a tank for a fuel that burned with atomic fire.

  He told them, businesslike: “It’s going to cost a hell of a lot of money but that’s your business. I can install it. Just don’t blame me if it has to be ripped out again when A.E.C. comes out with an atomic fuel that doesn’t fit it.”

  MacIlheny said into the air, slowly and with burning emphasis: “Can’t people understand that Proto’s not a moon ship? Can’t they get it through their heads that she’s just a dummy to study construction problems? What the hell difference does it make if the fuel A.E.C. comes up with doesn’t fit her system? All we’re after is the experience we’ll need to build a system that does fit.”

  Novak said hastily: “Of course you’re right.” Lord, but MacIlheny was convincing! “But it gets a grip on you. Half the kids think it’s a moon ship—”

  “All right for kids,” said MacIlheny grimly. “But we’re all adults here. I’m sick of being ribbed for doing something I’m not doing at all. Good—and—sick.” He stared at the engineer challengingly, and then his grimness vanished as he added: “I wish it was a moon ship, Novak. I wish it very much. But—” He shrugged.

  “Well,” said Novak uncertainly, “maybe I’ll feel that way about it after a year or so of the ribbing. By the way, can you tell me where Miss Stuart lives? I ought to go and see Mrs. Clifton if I can be spared today, and I suppose things are still in a state of flux.”

  “Thirty-seven twenty-four Rochedale,” said Friml, and he jotted it down.

  “I suppose it’s all right,” said MacIlheny. “God, what a headache. Just when things were going smoothly. Suppose you check in tomorrow morning and we may have some plans made for you.”

  “Won’t the membership have to—”

  “The membership,” said MacIlheny impatiently, “will do as it’s told.”

  X.

  Novak thought he should phone the Wilson Stuart residence before he tried to pay a call. He couldn’t find the number in the book and naively asked Information. Information sharply told him that the number was unlisted.

  Well, he tried.

  He got a downtown cab and enjoyed a long ride into the rolling country lying north of Los Angeles. “Pretty classy,” he said.

  “I should know?” asked the cabby blandly, and added in a mutter something that sounded like: “Stinking rich.”

  A mile farther on, the cab stopped. “Check point,” the driver said. Novak saw a roadside booth, all chrome and glass, with two cops in beautifully fitting uniforms. One of them came out to the car, the driver gave him the address, and they rolled on.

  “What was that about?” Novak asked.

  “A trifling violation of our civil liberties,” the cabby said. “Nothing to get upset about. At night, now, they take your name, and phone on ahead if they don’t know you.”

  “California!”

  “All over,” the cabby corrected him. “Grosse Pointe, Mobile, Sun Valley—all over. I guess this is it.”

  Thirty-seven twenty-four Rochedale was extreme California modern: a great white albatross of a house that spread its wings over a hilltop. “Well, go on up the driveway,” Novak said.

  “Nope. If you had any business with folks like that you’d have your own limousine. You go in and get arrested for trespassing. These people don’t fool around.” He turned down the meter flag and Novak paid him.

  “I hope you’re wrong,” the engineer said, adding a half dollar. He started up the driveway.

  It was a confusing house. He couldn’t seem to find a place where it began, or a doorbell to ring. Before he knew it, he seemed to be inside the Stuart home, unannounced, after walking through a row of pylons into a patio—or was it a living room? They didn’t build like that in Brooklyn or Urbana.

  A shock-haired old man rolled into the living room—or patio—in a wheel chair pushed by a burly, Irish-looking fellow in a chauffeur’s dark uniform. “I’m sorry,” Novak exploded jumpily. “I couldn’t find—”

  “Who the devil are you?” demanded the old man, and the chauffeur took his hands from the chair, standing exactly like a boxer about to put up his fists.

  “My name’s Novak. I’m a friend of Mrs. Clifton’s. I understand she’s here—if this is the Wilson Stuart residence.”

  “I’m Wilson Stuart. Do you know my daughter?”

  “We’ve met.”

  “I suppose that means she didn’t invite you. Did she give you the address?”

  “No—she’s a member of the A.S.F.S.F., the space-flight society. I got it from the secretary.”

  The old man swore. “Keep it to yourself. A person has no damned privacy in one of these places and I can’t build a wall because of the zoning laws or covenants or whatever they are. Grady, get Miss Amelia.” The chauffeur gave Novak a no-funny-business look and left.

  “Uh, how is Mrs. Clifton?” Novak asked.

  “I don’t know; I haven’t seen her. I’m not surprised by any of this, though. I thought Clifton’s mind was giving way when he took that job with the rocket cranks. Not that I’d keep him on my pay roll. He told my V.P. for Engineering that he didn’t know enough to build an outhouse on wheels. That tore it.” The old man chuckled. “He could really ram things through, though. Didn’t give a damn whose floor space he muscled in on, whose men he gave orders to, whose material he swiped for his own projects. Where are they going to find another lunatic like that to build their rocket?”

  “I’m taking it over, Mr. Stuart.” What a callous old beast he was!

  “You are? Well, be sure you have nothing to lose, Novak. What are they paying you?”

  “Rather not say.”

  It made Wilson Stuart angry. “Well, isn’t that too bad! I can tell you one thing. Whatever it is, you’re putting a blot on your record that no responsible firm can afford to ignore.” He spun the chair to present his back to Novak and scowled through the pylons that formed one wall of the ambiguous room.

  Novak was startled by the burst of rage, and resentful. But you didn’t tell off a cardiac patient at will—or a multi-millionaire.

  The chauffeur and Amy Stuart came in. “Hello, Dr. Novak,” she said. The old man silently beckoned over his shoulder to the chauffeur and was wheeled out.

  “How’s Mrs. Clifton?” Novak asked.

  “Father’s doctor says she should rest for a day or two. He’s given her some sedatives. After that—I don’t know. She’s talking about going back to her family in Denmark.”

  “May I see her?”

  “I think so. Dr. Morris didn’t say anything about it, but it should do her good. Come this way.”

  Crossing large, glass-walled rooms he said: “I don’t think I should have come at all. Your father was upset by my knowing the address. Mr. Friml gave it to me.”

  “Mr. Friml should have known better,” she said coolly. “My father has no reserves of energy for anything beyond his business and necessary recreation. It’s cruel discipline for him… he’s held speed and altitude records, you know.”

  Novak uttered a respectful mumble.

  The girl asked: “What are they going to do about a replacement for Cliff?”

  “I think I get the job. I’ve done some aero-engineering and there’s very
little structural work left to be done. I suppose if there’s anything I simply can’t handle, they’ll hire a consultant. But I can probably swing the load.”

  “You can if you’re checked out by MacIlheny. The man’s a—” She started to say “fanatic” and then interrupted herself. “That’s the wrong word. I admire him, really. He’s like—not Columbus. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal. Henry stuck close to his desk and never went to sea, but he raised the money and did the paperwork.”

  “Um. Yes. Has Lilly—Mrs. Clifton—been asking for a biomathematicist, I wonder? She has such faith in them that it might do her good at a time like this, when it’s a matter of psychological strain.”

  The girl looked startled. “That’s very odd,” she said. “As a matter of fact she hasn’t. I suppose recreations like that show up in their true light when the pressure is on. Not that it would do her any good to ask for one. Dr. Morris would break the neck of any biomathematicist who showed up here.”

  She pushed open a flush door of blonde wood and Novak saw Clifton’s widow in the middle of a great modern bed with sickroom paraphernalia on a side table. “Visitor, Lilly,” Amy Stuart said.

  “Hallo, Mike. It was good of you to come. Amy, you mind if I speak alone vit’ Mike?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Sit down,” she said with an unhappy smile as the girl closed the door. “Mike, what’s gonna happen now? You don’ think Cliff kill himself, do you?” She was fighting back tears with a heartbreaking effort. “He act cra-a-azy. But that was just because he enjoy life and didn’t give a damn for nobody. He wasn’t no crazy man to kill himself, was he, Mike?”

  “No, Lilly,” Novak said. “I don’t think he killed himself.” And he bit his lip for saying it. The woman was under sedation, she might babble anything to anybody—

  “Mike,” she said, “I’m glad you say so.” She sniffed and dried her brimming eyes, as a child would do, on the hem of her bed sheet.

  “How’re you fixed for money, Lilly?” he asked. “I thought you might need a little ready cash for—expenses and things.”

  “T’anks, Mike, no need. We had a yoint bank account vit’ couple t’ousand dollars in. Mike, honestly you don’t believe Cliff kill himself?”

  He thought it over. “Have you taken any medicine?”

  “Last night the doc gave me couple pink pills and he tol’ me to take couple more today—but I don’t. You know I don’t t’ink much of doctors.”

  “I don’t want to tell you what I think about Cliff’s death if you’re full of medicine or if you’re going to be. You might talk to somebody about what I tell you. It might mean my life too.” It was her business, he told himself silently.

  After a stupefied pause, Lilly slowly asked: “Please tell me all about it, Mike. Who’d kill Cliff? Who’d kill you? Those few crazy kids in the Society, they don’ like Cliff ever, but they wouldn’t kill him. You tell me what it’s all about, Mike. Even if somebody tear the eyes out of my head I don’ talk.”

  He pulled his chair to the bedside and lowered his voice. “Yesterday Cliff and I thought we found something fishy about one of the A.S.F.S.F. blue prints. I thought it meant that a foreign country was using the Society to build it a rocket ship. Maybe with Friml or MacIlheny or both fronting, and nobody else in on it. We went to the A.E.C. Security office downtown and saw that man Anheier. He brushed us off—didn’t believe a word of it. Last night Cliff got killed and it looked like suicide. But it could have been murder by anybody who could have sneaked into the washroom when he was there—and that’s anybody off the street and practically anybody who was at the meeting.

  “I don’t know how—whoever did it—got wise to his visit to Security or why nobody’s taken a shot at me that I know of. Maybe spies keep a twenty-four-hour watch on the Security office to see who visits it. Maybe Cliff’s visit was the signal for his death. Maybe I wasn’t identified because I’m new in town.

  “But none of that matters right now. What matters is that Anheier wouldn’t let me tell the police about my idea. He tried to convince me that I was a paranoid. When that didn’t work, he threatened to ruin me for life and jail me for perjury if I talk, now or ever.”

  “You not gonna tell the po-lice, Mike?”

  “No, I’m afraid of the smear and—it probably wouldn’t do any good. The A.E.C. would make countercharges and any foreign agents would escape in the fuss. I told Anheier the hell with him, I’d nail them alone.”

  “No,” she said, pale-faced. “Not alone, Mike. Vit’ me.”

  “Thanks, Lilly,” he said softly, and she was crying at last.

  “Don’ mind me,” she said. “T’anks for coming to see me and now you please go. I cry better by myself …”

  He left in silence. She was with him—it felt better. The morning with MacIlheny and Friml, every question a step on a tightrope over the abyss, had told on him.

  Amy Stuart laid down a magazine and got up from a blocky chair. “How is she, Dr. Novak?”

  “I’m afraid I made her cry.”

  “It’s good for a woman to cry at a time like this. Have you a car?”

  “No; I came in a taxi. If I could phone for one—”

  “You’re downtown, aren’t you? I’ll drive you; I have some shopping.”

  Her car was a two-seater English sports job. It looked like a toy in the garage between the big Lincoln and a suburban wagon.

  As they went winding through the scrubbed-clean roads he broke the silence. “To me it’s just an interesting job, you know. I’m not a Prince Henry like MacIlheny is and maybe Cliff was. Or—what was her name? The girl who raised sand at the meeting. The one you stepped on.”

  “Gingrich?” Amy Stuart said dispassionately. “She’s not particularly interested in space flight and she’s a bloody fool besides. If Gingrich and her friends had their way, there’d be a full-dress membership vote by secret ballot on where to put each rivet in the Prototype.”

  The little two-seater rolled past the police sentry box and Amy Stuart waved pleasantly to the two policemen. They saluted with broad smiles and Novak abandoned himself to bitter thoughts for a moment.

  “Jeffersonians, they think they are,” the girl brooded. “But wouldn’t Jefferson be the first man to admit that things have changed since his day? That there’s a need for something beyond sheer self-regulating agrarian democracy?” The question was put with an intensity that startled him. It was overlaid with a portentous air that made him think of nothing so much as a doctor’s oral where, literally, your career is made or unmade by a few score words spoken in a minute or two. What was the girl driving at.

  “People are always accusing engineers of not thinking about social problems,” he said carefully. “In my case, I’m afraid they’re right. I’ve been a busy man for a long time. But I wonder—are you by any chance flirting with fascism or Communism?”

  “No,” she said scornfully, and fell silent.

  It was some minutes before she spoke again. “You were in A.E.C. Did you ever read anything by Daniel Holland? He’s a friend of father’s. And mine.”

  There was something he could talk about. “I didn’t know he wrote, but your friend runs a hell of a silly organization. You know what my field is. Believe me or not, but I swear I was transferred out of it and into a highly specialized branch of mathematical physics. I was absolutely helpless, I was absolutely unable to get back to my own work. Finally I—I had to resign.”

  She said patiently: “That’s exactly the sort of thing Holland fights. In his books he analyzed the warped growth of modern public administration under the influence of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian mistrust of professionals. He calls it the ‘cincinnatus complex.’”

  He recognized the allusion and felt pleased about it. Cincinnatus was the Roman citizen who left his plowing to lead the army to victory and then returned to his plow, turning d
own glory and rewards. “Interesting concept,” he said. “What does he suggest?”

  The girl frowned. “If you’d thought about it, you’d know that’s damn-all he could suggest. His books were only analytical and exploratory, and he nearly got booted out of public service for daring to raise the problem—challenging the whole structure of bureaucracy. He thought he could do more good in than out, so he stopped publishing. But he’d stepped on some toes. In Red Tape Empires he cited a case from the Nevada civil service. The Senator from Nevada on the joint A.E.C. Committee badgered him from then on. Wonderful irony. He was a master of all the parliamentary tricks that were originally supposed to carry out the majority will without infringing on minority rights.”

  He was worried about Lilly and getting shot and future long, precarious talks with MacIlheny. “I suppose,” he said absently, “you’re bound to have a rotten apple in every barrel.”

  Amy Stuart said flatly but emphatically, with her eyes on the road: “You scientists deserve exactly what you got.” And she said nothing more until she dropped him off at his hotel and proceeded to her shopping. Novak had a queasy, unreal feeling that he’d just failed his doctor’s oral.

  XI.

  The high-temperature lab was built, and its equipment installed by the able construction firm that had done the field layout. During this time Novak worked on the manhole problem, and licked it. Studebaker had ungreased its titanic boring mill and for a price had cheerfully put a super finish on the manhole and its seating. In an agony of nervousness for the two priceless chunks of metal, Novak had clocked their slow progress by freight car across the country from South Bend to Barstow.

  It was one of those moments when Lilly Clifton or Amy Stuart was helpfully by his side, and this time it happened to be Amy. They stood outside the machine-shop prefab, squinting into the glare of the Prototype’s steel skin, and at an intenser, bluer glare that was being juggled by a hooded welder on the gantry-crane platform, twenty feet up. The manhole cover and seating assembly were being beadlessly welded into the gap in the ninth tier of plates. It was a moment of emotional importance. Proto externally was an unbroken whole.