|
CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON |
|
TWO With scarcely a glance around the old conapt with its cracked sheet-rock walls, recessed lighting that probably no longer worked, archaic picture window and shabby, out-of-date pre-Korean War tile floors, Chuck Rittersdorf said, "It'll do." He got out his checkbook, wincing at the sight of the central wrought-iron fireplace; he had not seen one of these since 1970, since his childhood. The owner of this deteriorating building, however, frowned in suspicion as she received Chuck's identification papers. "According to this you're married, Mr. Rittersdorf, and you have children. You're not going to bring in a wife and children to this conapt; this was listed in the homeopape ad as 'for bachelor, employed, nondrinker,' and --" Wearily Chuck said, "That's the point." The fat, middle-aged landlady in her Venusian whistle-cricket hide dress and wubfur slippers repelled him; already this had become a grim experience. "I've separated from my wife. She's keeping the children. That's why I need this conapt." "But they'll be visiting." Her purple tinted eyebrows rose. Chuck said, "You don't know my wife." "Oh they will; I know these new Federal divorce laws. Not like the old days of state divorces. Been to court, yet? Got your first papers? "No," he admitted. It was just beginning for him. Late last night he had gone to a hotel and the night before that -- it had been his final night of struggling to achieve the impossible, to keep on living with Mary. He gave the landlady the check; she returned his ID form and departed; at once he shut the door, walked to the window of the conapt and gazed out at the street below, the wheels, jet-hoppers, ramps and runnels of footers. Soon he would have to call his attorney, Nat Wilder. Very soon. The irony of their marital breakup was too much. For his wife's profession -- and she was good at it -- was marriage counseling. In fact she had a reputation here in Marin County, California, where she maintained her office, as being the best. God knew how many fracturing human relationships she had healed. And yet, by a masterstroke of injustice, this very talent and skill on her part had helped drive him to this dismal conapt. Because, by being so successful in her own career, Mary could not resist feeling contempt, which had grown over the years, for him. The fact was -- and he had to face it -- that in his career he had not been nearly as successful as Mary. His job, and he personally enjoyed it very much, was the programming of simulacra from the Cheyenne government's intelligence agency for its unending propaganda programs, its agitation against the ring of Communist states which surrounded the USA. He personally believed deeply in his work, but by no rationalization could it be called either a high-paying calling or a noble one; the programming which he concocted -- to say the least -- was infantile, spurious and biased. The main appeal was to school children both in the USA and in the neighboring Communist states, and to the great masses of adults of low educational background. He was, in fact, a hack. And Mary had pointed this out many, many times. Hack or not, he continued in this job, although others had been offered him during the six-year course of his marriage. Perhaps it was because he enjoyed hearing his words uttered by the human-like simulacra; perhaps it was because he felt the overall cause was vital: the US was on the defensive, politically and economically, and had to protect itself. It needed persons o work for the government at admittedly low salaries: and at jobs lacking heroic or splendid qualities. Someone had to program the propaganda simulacra, who were deposited all over the world to do their job as reps of the Counter Intelligence Authority, to agitate, convince, influence. But -- Three years ago the crisis had come. One of Mary's clients -- who had been involved in incredibly complex marital difficulties including three mistresses at once -- was a TV producer; Gerald Feld had produced the famous, the one and only Bunny Hentman TV show, and owned a major piece of the popular TV comic. In a little side-dealing Mary had passed onto Feld several of the programming scripts which Chuck had written for the CIA's local branch in San Francisco. Feld had read them with interest because these -- and this explained Mary's selection -- contained a good deal of humor. That was Chuck's talent; he programmed something other than the usual pompous, solemn stuff ... it was said to be alive with wit; it sparkled. And -- Feld agreed. And had asked Mary to arrange a meeting between him and Chuck. Now, standing at the window of the small, drab, old conapt, into which he had not moved so much as one article of clothing, gazing down at the street below, Chuck recalled the conversation with Mary which had erupted. It had been an especially vicious one, certainly classic; it had epitomized the breach between the two of them. To Mary the issue had been clear: here was a job possibility; it had to be poked thoroughly into. Feld would pay well and the job would carry enormous prestige; each week, at the end of the Bunny Hentman show, Chuck's name, as one of the script writers, would appear on the screen for all the nonCom world to see. Mary would -- and here was the key phrase -- take pride in his work; it was conspicuously creative. And to Mary creativity was the open sesame to life; working for the CIA, programming propaganda simulacra who gabbled a message for uneducated Africans and Latin Americans and Asians, was not creative; the messages tended always to be the same and anyhow the CIA was in bad repute in the liberal, monied, sophisticated circles which Mary inhabited. "You're like a-leaf-raker in a satellite park," Mary had said, infuriated, "on some kind of civil service deal. It's easy security; it's the way out of having to struggle. Here you are thirty-three years old and already you've given up trying. Given up wanting to make something of yourself." "Listen," he said futilely. "Are you my mother or just my wife? I mean, is it your job to keep goading me on? Do I have to keep rising? Is it becoming TERPLAN President, is that what you want?" Outside of the prestige and money there was something more involved. Evidently Mary wanted him to be another person. She, the one who knew him best in all the world, was ashamed of him. If he took the job writing for Bunny Hentman he would become different -- or so her logic went. He could not deny the logic. And yet he persisted; he did not quit his job, did not change. Something in him was just too inertial. For better or worse. There was a hysteresis to one's essence; he did not put by that essence easily. Outside, on the street, a white Chevrolet deluxe wheel, a shiny new six-door model, dropped to the curb and landed. He watched idly and then he realized with a start of incredulity that -- impossible but true -- it was his ex-own; here was Mary. She had already found him. His wife, Dr. Mary Rittersdorf, was about to pay him a visit. *** He felt fright, and a sense of increased failure; he had not even been able to pull off this -- find a conapt in which to live where Mary couldn't locate him. In a few more days, Nat Wilder could arrange legal protection, but now, at this point, he was helpless; he had to admit her. It was easy to see how she had traced him; moderate detection devices were available and cheap. Mary had probably gone to a pry-vye, a robot detection agency, obtained use of a sniffer, presented it his cephalic pattern; it had gone to work, followed him to every place he had been since leaving her. Nowadays, finding someone was an exact science. So a woman determined to locate you, he reflected, can. There probably was a law governing it; perhaps he could call it Rittersdorf's Law. In proportion to one's desire to escape, to hide, detection devices -- A rap sounded on the hollow-core door of the conapt. As he walked stiff-legged, unwillingly, to the door he thought, She will make a speech which will embody every known reasonable appeal. I, of course, will have no argument, just my feeling that we can't go on, that her contempt for me indicates a failure between us too profound to admit any future intimacy. He opened the door. There she stood, dark-haired, wispy, in her expensive (her best) natural-wool coat, without makeup; a calm, competent, educated woman who was his superior in a flock of ways. "Listen, Chuck," she said, "I won't stand for this. I've arranged for a moving company to pick up all your things and put them in storage. What I'm here for is a check; I want all the money in your checking account. I need it for bills." So he had been wrong; there was no speech of sweet reasonability. On the contrary; his wife was making this final. He was absolutely stunned and all he could do was gape at her. "I've talked to Bob Alfson, my attorney," Mary said. "I've had him file for a quitclaim deed on the house." "What?" he said. "Why?" "So you can sign over your share of the house to me." "Why?" "So I can put it on the market. I've decided I don't need such a large house and I can use the money. I'm putting Debby in that boarding school back East we were discussing." Deborah was their oldest, but still only six, years too young to be sent away from home. Good grief. "Let me talk to Nat Wilder first," he said feebly. "I want the check now." Mary made no move to come in; she simply stood there. And he felt desperate, despairing panic, the panic of defeat and suffering; he had lost already: she could make him do anything. As he went to get his checkbook, Mary walked a few steps into the conapt. Her aversion for it was beyond words; she said nothing. He shrank from it, could not face it; he busied himself scratching out the check. "By the way," Mary said in a conversational tone of voice, "now that you've left for good I'm free to accept that government offer." "What government offer?" "They want consulting psychologists for an interplan project; I told you about it." She did not intend to burden herself with enlightening him. "Oh yes." He had a dim memory. "Charity work." An outgrowth of the Terran-Alphane clash of ten years ago. An isolated moon in the Alphane system settled by Terrans which had been cut off two generations ago because of the war; a rookery of such meager enclaves existed in the Alph' system, which had dozens of moons as well as twenty-two planets. She accepted the check, put it folded into her coat pocket. "Would you get paid?" he asked. "No," Mary said, remotely. Then she would live -- support the children as well -- on his salary alone. It came to him: she expected a court settlement which would force him to do the very thing his refusal of which had pulled down their six-year marriage. She would, through her vast influence in Marin County courts, obtain such a judgment that he would have to give up his job with the San Francisco branch of the CIA and seek other work entirely. "How -- long will you be gone?" he asked. It was obvious that she intended to make good use of this interval of reorganization of their lives; she would do all the things denied her -- allegedly, anyhow -- by his presence. "About six months. It depends. Don't expect me to keep in touch. I'll be represented in court by Alison; I won't appear." She added, "I've started the suit for separate maintenance so you won't have to do that." The initiative, even there, was gone from his hands. He had as always been too slow. "You can have everything," he told Mary, all at once. Her look said, But what you can give isn't enough. "Everything" was merely nothing, as far as his achievements were concerned. "I can't give you what I don't have," he said quietly. "Yes you can," Mary said, without a smile. "Because the judge is going to recognize what I've always recognized about you. If you have to, if someone makes you, you can meet the customary standards applied to grown men with the responsibility of a wife and children." He said, "But -- I have to retain some kind of life of my own." "Your first obligation is to us," Mary said. For that he had no answer; he could only nod. *** Later, after Mary had left with the check, he looked for and found a stack of old homeopapes in the closet of the apt; he sat on the ancient, Danish-style sofa in the living room, rooting through them for the articles on the interplan project which Mary intended to become involved in. Her new life, he said to himself, to replace that of being married. In a 'pape one week old he found a more or less complete article; he lit a cigarette and read carefully. Psychologists were needed, it was anticipated by the US Interplan Health & Welfare Service, because the moon had originally been a hospital area, a psychiatric care-center for Terran immigrants to the Alphane system who had cracked under the abnormal, excessive pressures of inter-system colonization. The Alphanes had left it alone, except for their traders. What was known of the moon's current status came from these Alphane traders. According to them a civilization of sorts had arisen during the decades in which the hospital had been severed from Terra's authority. However, they could not evaluate it because their knowledge of Terran mores was inadequate. In any case local commodities were produced, traded; domestic industry existed, too, and he wondered why the Terran government felt the necessity of meddling. He could imagine Mary there so well; she was precisely the sort which TERPLAN, the international agency, would select. People of Mary's type would always succeed. Going to the ancient picture window he stood for a time once more, gazing down. And then, stealthily, he felt rise up within him the familiar urge. The sense that it was pointless to go on; suicide, whatever the law and the church said, was for him the only real answer at this instant. He found a smaller side window that opened; raising it, he listened to the buzz of a jet-hopper as it landed on a rooftop on the far side of the street. Its sound died. He waited, and then he climbed part way over the edge of the window, dangling above the traffic which moved below ... From inside him a voice, but not his own, said, "Please tell me your name. Regardless of whether you intend or do not intend to jump." Turning, Chuck saw a yellow Ganymedean slime mold that had silently flowed under the door of the conapt and was gathering itself into the heap of small globes which comprised its physical being. "I rent the conapt across the hall," the slime mold declared. Chuck said, " Among Terrans it's customary to knock." "I possess nothing to knock with. In any case I wished to enter before you -- departed." "It's my personal business whether I jump or not." "'No Terran is an island,'" the slime mold more or less quoted. "Welcome to the building which we who rent apts here have humorously dubbed 'Discarded Arms Conapts.' There are others here whom you should meet. Several Terrans -- like yourself -- plus a number of non-Ts of assorted physiognomy, some which will repel you, some which no doubt will attract. I had planned to borrow a cup of yogurt culture from you, but in view of your preoccupation it seems an insulting request." "I haven't moved in anything. As yet." He swung his leg back over the sill, stepped back into the room, away from the window. He was not surprised to see the Ganymedean slime mold; a ghetto situation existed with non-Ts: no matter how influential and highly-placed in their own societies on Terra they were forced to inhabit substandard housing such as this. "Could I carry a business card," the slime mold said, "I would now present it to you. I am an importer of uncut gems, a dealer in secondhand gold, and, under the right circumstances, a fanatic buyer of philatelic collections. As a matter of fact I have in my apt at the moment a choice collection of early US, with special emphasis on mint blocks of four of the Columbus set; would you --" It broke off. "I see you would not. In any case the desire to destroy yourself has at least temporarily abated from your mind. That is good. In addition to my announced commercial --" "Aren't you required by law to curb your telepathic ability while on Terra?" Chuck said. "Yes, but your situation seemed to be exceptional. Mr. Rittersdorf, I cannot personally employ you, since I require no propagandistic services. But I have a number of contacts among the nine moons; given time --" "No thanks," Chuck said roughly. "I just want to be left alone." He had already endured enough assistance in job acquisition to last him a lifetime. "But, on my part, quite unlike your wife, I have no ulterior motive." The slime mold ebbed closer. "Like most Terran males your sense of self-respect is bound up in your wage-earning capabilities, an area in which you have grave doubts as well as extreme guilts. I can do something for you ... but it will take time. Presently I leave Terra and start back to my own moon. Suppose I pay you five hundred skins -- US, of course -- to come with me. Consider it a loan, if you want." "What would I do on Ganymede?" Irritably, Chuck said, "Don't you believe me either? I have a job; one I consider adequate -- I don't want to leave it." "Subconsciously --" "Don't read my subconscious back to me. And get out of here and leave me alone." He turned his back on the slime mold. "I am afraid your suicidal drive will return -- perhaps even before tonight." "Let it." The slime mold said, "There is only one thing that can help you, and my miserable job-offer is not it." "What is it, then?" "A woman to replace your wife." "Now you're acting as a --" "Not at all. This is neither physically base nor ethereal; it is simply practical. You must find a woman who can accept you, love you, as you are; otherwise you'll perish. Let me ponder this. And in the meantime, control yourself. Give me five hours. And remain here." The slime mold flowed slowly under the door, through the crack and outside into the hall. Its thoughts dimmed. "As an importer, buyer and dealer I have many contacts with Terrans of all walks of life ..." Then it was gone. Shakily, Chuck lit a cigarette. And walked away -- a long distance away -- from the window, to seat himself on the ancient Danish-style sofa. And wait. It was hard to know how to react to the slime mold's charitable offer; he was both angered and touched -- and, in addition, puzzled. Could the slime mold actually help him? It seemed impossible. He waited one hour. A knock sounded on the door of the conapt. It could not be the Ganymedean returning because a slime mold did not -- could not -- knock. Rising, Chuck went to the door and opened it. A Terran girl stood there. |