1
HIS HEAD UNNATURALLY aching, Barney Mayerson woke to find himself in an unfamiliar bedroom in an unfamiliar conapt building. Beside him, the covers up to her bare, smooth shoulders, an unfamiliar girl slept on, breathing lightly through her mouth, her hair a tumble of cottonlike white.
Iâll bet Iâm late for work, he said to himself, slid from the bed, and tottered to a standing position with eyes shut, keeping himself from being sick. For all he knew he was several hoursâ drive from his office; perhaps he was not even in the United States. However he was on Earth; the gravity that made him sway was familiar and normal.
And there in the next room by the sofa a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.
Barefoot, he padded into the living room, and seated himself by the suitcase; he opened it, clicked switches, and turned on Dr. Smile. Meters began to register and the mechanism hummed. âWhere am I?â Barney asked it. âAnd how far am I from New York?â That was the main point. He saw now a clock on the wall of the aptâs kitchen; the time was 7:30 A.M. Not late at all.
The mechanism which was the portable extension of Dr. Smile, connected by micro-relay to the computer itself in the basement level of Barneyâs own conapt building in New York, the Renown 33, tinnily declared, âAh, Mr. Bayerson.â âMayerson,â Barney corrected, smoothing his hair with fingers that shook. âWhat do you remember about last night?â Now he saw, with intense physical aversion, half-empty bottles of bourbon and sparkling water, lemons, bitters, and ice cube trays on the sideboard in the kitchen. âWho is this girl?â Dr. Smile said, âThis girl in the bed is Miss Rondinella Fugate. Roni, as she asked you to call her.â
It sounded vaguely familiar, and oddly, in some manner, tied up with his job. âListen,â he said to the suitcase, but then in the bedroom the girl began to stir; at once he shut off Dr. Smile and stood up, feeling humble and awkward in only his underpants.
âAre you up?â the girl asked sleepily. She thrashed about, and sat facing him; quite pretty, he decided, with lovely, large eyes. âWhat time is it and did you put on the coffee pot?â
He tramped into the kitchen and punched the stove into life; it began to heat water for coffee. Meanwhile he heard the shutting of a door; she had gone into the bathroom. Water ran. Roni was taking a shower.
Again in the living room he switched Dr. Smile back on. âWhatâs she got to do with P.P. Layouts?â he asked.
âMiss Fugate is your new assistant; she arrived yesterday from Peopleâs China where she worked for P.P. Layouts as their Pre-Fash consultant for that region. However, Miss Fugate, although talented, is highly inexperienced, and Mr. Bulero decided that a short period as your assistant, I would say âunder you,â but that might be misconstrued, consideringââ
âGreat,â Barney said. He entered the bedroom, found his clothesâthey had been deposited, no doubt by him, in a heap on the floorâand began with care to dress; he still felt terrible, and it remained an effort not to give up and be violently sick. âThatâs right,â he said to Dr. Smile as he came back to the living room buttoning his shirt. âI remember the memo from Friday about Miss Fugate. Sheâs erratic in her talent. Picked wrong on that U.S. Civil War Picture Window item . . . if you can imagine it, she thought itâd be a smash hit in Peopleâs China.â He laughed.
The bathroom door opened a crack; he caught a glimpse of Roni, pink and rubbery and clean, drying herself. âDid you call me, dear?â
âNo,â he said. âI was talking to my doctor.â
âEveryone makes errors,â Dr. Smile said, a trifle vacuously.
Barney said, âHowâd she and I happen toââ He gestured toward the bedroom. âAfter so short a time.â
âChemistry,â Dr. Smile said.
âCome on.â
âWell, youâre both precogs. You previewed that youâd eventually hit it off, become erotically involved. So you both decidedâafter a few drinksâthat why should you wait? âLife is short, art isâââ The suitcase ceased speaking, because Roni Fugate had appeared from the bathroom, naked, to pad past it and Barney back once more into the bedroom. She had a narrow, erect body, a truly superb carriage, Barney noted, and small, up-jutting breasts with nipples no larger than matched pink peas. Or rather matched pink pearls, he corrected himself.
Roni Fugate said, âI meant to ask you last nightâwhy are you consulting a psychiatrist? And my lord, you carry it around everywhere with you; not once did you set it downâand you had it turned on right up untilââ She raised an eyebrow and glanced at him searchingly.
âAt least I did turn it off then,â Barney pointed out.
âDo you think Iâm pretty?â Rising on her toes she all at once stretched, reached above her head, then, to his amazement, began to do a brisk series of exercises, hopping and leaping, her breasts bobbing.
âI certainly do,â he murmured, taken aback.
âIâd weigh a ton,â Roni Fugate panted, âif I didnât do these UN Weapons Wing exercises every morning. Go pour the coffee, will you, dear?â
Barney said, âAre you really my new assistant at P.P. Layouts?â
âYes, of course; you mean you donât remember? But I guess youâre like a lot of really topnotch precogs: you see the future so well that you have only a hazy recollection of the past. Exactly what do you recall about last night?â She paused in her exercises, gasping for breath.
âOh,â he said vaguely, âI guess everything.â
âListen. The only reason why youâd be carrying a psychiatrist around with you is that you must have gotten your draft notice. Right?â
After a pause he nodded. That he remembered. The familiar elongated blue-green envelope had arrived one week ago; next Wednesday he would be taking his mental at the UN military hospital in the Bronx.
âHas it helped? Has heââ She gestured at the suitcase. ââMade you sick enough?â
Turning to the portable extension of Dr. Smile, Barney said, âHave you?â
The suitcase answered, âUnfortunately youâre still quite viable, Mr. Mayerson; you can handle ten Freuds of stress. Sorry. But we still have several days; weâve just begun.â
Going into the bedroom, Roni Fugate picked up her underwear, and began to step into it. âJust think,â she said reflectively. âIf youâre drafted, Mr. Mayerson, and youâre sent to the colonies . . . maybe Iâll find myself with your job.â She smiled, showing superb, even teeth.
It was a gloomy possibility and his precog ability did not assist him: the outcome hung nicely, at perfect balance on the scales of cause-and-effect to be.
âYou canât handle my job,â he said. âYou couldnât even handle it in Peopleâs China and thatâs a relatively simple situation in terms of factoring out pre-elements.â But someday she could; without difficulty he foresaw that. She was young and overflowing with innate talent: all she required to equal himâand he was the best in the tradeâwas a few yearsâ experience. Now he became fully awake as awareness of his situation filtered back to him. He stood a good chance of being drafted, and even if he was not, Roni Fugate might well snatch his fine, desirable job from him, a job up to which he had worked by slow stages over a thirteen-year period.
A peculiar solution to the grimness of the situation, this going to bed with her; he wondered how he had arrived at it.
Bending over the suitcase, he said in a low voice to Dr. Smile, âI wish youâd tell me why the hell with everything so dire I decided toââ
âI can answer that,â Roni Fugate called from the bedroom; she had now put on a somewhat tight pale green sweater and was buttoning it before the mirror of her vanity table. âYou informed me last night, after your fifth bourbon and water. You saidââ She paused, eyes sparkling. âItâs inelegant. What you said was this. âIf you canât lick âem, join âem.â Only the verb you used, I regret to say, wasnât âjoin.ââ
âHmm,â Barney said, and went into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. Anyhow, he was not far from New York; obviously if Miss Fugate was a fellow employee at P.P. Layouts he was within commute distance of his job. They could ride in together. Charming. He wondered if their employer Leo Bulero would approve of this if he knew. Was there an official company policy about employees sleeping together? There was about almost everything else . . . although how a man who spent all his time at the resort beaches of Antarctica or in German E Therapy clinics could find time to devise dogma on every topic eluded him.
Someday, he said to himself, Iâll live like Leo Bulero; instead of being stuck in New York City in 180 degree heatâ
Beneath him now a throbbing began; the floor shook. The buildingâs cooling system had come on. Day had begun.
Outside the kitchen window the hot, hostile sun took shape beyond the other conapt buildings visible to him; he shut his eyes against it. Going to be another scorcher, all right, probably up to the twenty Wagner mark. He did not need to be a precog to foresee this.
In the miserably high-number conapt building 492 on the outskirts of Marilyn Monroe, New Jersey, Richard Hnatt ate breakfast indifferently while, with something greater than indifference, he glanced over the morning homeopapeâs weather-syndrome readings of the previous day.
The key glacier, Olâ Skintop, had retreated 4.62 Grables during the last twenty-four-hour period. And the temperature, at noon in New York, had exceeded the previous dayâs by 1.46 Wagners. In addition the humidity, as the oceans evaporated, had increased by 16 Selkirks. So things were hotter and wetter; the great procession of nature clanked on, and toward what? Hnatt pushed the âpape away, and picked up the mail which had been delivered before dawn . . . it had been some time since mailmen had crept out in daylight hours.
The first bill which caught his eye was the aptâs cooling pro-rated swindle; he owed Conapt 492 exactly ten and a half skins for the last monthâa rise of three-fourths of a skin over April. Someday, he said to himself, itâll be so hot that nothing will keep this place from melting; he recalled the day his l-p record collection had fused together in a lump, back around â04, due to a momentary failure of the buildingâs cooling network. Now he owned iron oxide tapes; they did not melt. And at the same moment every parakeet and Venusian ming bird in the building had dropped dead. And his neighborâs turtle had been boiled dry. Of course this had been during the day and everyoneâat least the menâhad been at work. The wives, however, had huddled at the lowest subsurface level, thinking (he remembered Emily telling him this) that the fatal moment had at last arrived. And not a century from now but now. The Caltech predictions had been wrong . . . only of course they hadnât been; it had just been a broken power-lead from the N.Y. utility people. Robot workmen had quickly shown up and repaired it.
In the living room his wife sat in her blue smock, painstakingly painting an unfired ceramic piece with glaze; her tongue protruded and her eyes glowed . . . the brush moved expertly and he could see already that this was going to be a good one. The sight of Emily at work recalled to him the task that lay before him, today: one which he did not relish.
He said, peevishly, âMaybe we ought to wait before we approach him.â
Without looking up, Emily said, âWeâll never have a better display to present to him than we have now.â
âWhat if he says no?â
âWeâll go on. What did you expect, that weâd give up just because my onetime husband canât foreseeâor wonât foreseeâhow successful these new pieces will eventually be in terms of the market?â
Richard Hnatt said, âYou know him; I donât. Heâs not vengeful, is he? He wouldnât carry a grudge?â And anyhow what sort of grudge could Emilyâs former husband be carrying? No one had done him any harm; if anything it had gone the other way, or so he understood from what Emily had related.
It was strange, hearing about Barney Mayerson all the time and never having met him, never having direct contact with the man. Now that would end, because he had an appointment to see Mayerson at nine this morning in the manâs office at P.P. Layouts. Mayerson of course would hold the whip hand; he could take one brief glance at the display of ceramics and decline ad hoc. No, he would say, P.P. Layouts is not interested in a min of this. Believe my precog ability, my Pre-Fash marketing talent and skill. Andâout would go Richard Hnatt, the collection of pots under his arm, with absolutely no other place to go.
Looking out the window he saw with aversion that already it had become too hot for human endurance; the footer runnels were abruptly empty as everyone ducked for cover. The time was eight-thirty and he now had to leave; rising, he went to the hall closet to get his pith helmet and his mandatory cooling-unit; by law one had to be strapped to every commuterâs back until nightfall.
âGoodbye,â he said to his wife, pausing at the front door.
âGoodbye and lots of luck.â She had become even more involved in her elaborate glazing and he realized all at once that this showed how vast her tension was; she could not afford to pause even a moment. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall, feeling the cool wind of the portable unit as it chugged from behind him. âOh,â Emily said, as he began to shut the door; now she raised her head, brushing her long brown hair back from her eyes. âVid me as soon as youâre out of Barneyâs office, as soon as you know one way or another.â
âOkay,â he said, and shut the door behind him.
Downramp, at the buildingâs bank, he unlocked their safety deposit box and carried it to a privacy room; there he lifted out the display case containing the spread of ceramic ware which he was to show Mayerson.
Shortly, he was aboard a thermosealed interbuilding commute car, on his way to downtown New York City and P.P. Layouts, the great pale synthetic-cement building from which Perky Pat and all the units of her miniature world originated. The doll, he reflected, which had conquered man as man at the same time had conquered the planets of the Sol system. Perky Pat, the obsession of the colonists. What a commentary on colonial life . . . what more did one need to know about those unfortunates who, under the selective service laws of the UN, had been kicked off Earth, required to begin new, alien lives on Mars or Venus or Ganymede or wherever else the UN bureaucrats happened to imagine they could be deposited . . . and after a fashion survive.
And we think weâve got it bad here, he said to himself.
The individual in the seat next to him, a middle-aged man wearing the gray pith helmet, sleeveless shirt, and shorts of bright red popular with the businessman class, remarked, âItâs going to be another hot one.â
âYes.â
âWhat you got there in that great big carton? A picnic lunch for a hovel of Martian colonists?â
âCeramics,â Hnatt said.
âIâll bet you fire them just by sticking them outdoors at high noon.â The businessman chuckled, then picked up his morning âpape, opened it to the front page. âShip from outside the Sol system reported crash-landed on Pluto,â he said. âTeam being sent to find it. You suppose itâs things? I canât stand those things from other star systems.â
âItâs more likely one of our own ships reporting back,â Hnatt said.
âEver seen a Proxima thing?â
âOnly pics.â
âGrisly,â the businessman said. âIf they find that wrecked ship on Pluto and it is a thing I hope they laser it out of existence; after all we do have a law against them coming into our system.â
âRight.â
âCan I see your ceramics? Iâm in neckties, myself. The Werner simulated-handwrought living tie in a variety of Titanian colorsâI have one on, see? The colors are actually a primitive life form that we import and then grow in cultures here on Terra. Just how we induce them to reproduce is our trade secret, you know, like the formula for Coca-Cola.â
Hnatt said, âFor a similar reason I canât show you these ceramics, much as Iâd like to. Theyâre new. Iâm taking them to a Pre-Fash precog at P.P. Layouts; if he wants to miniaturize them for the Perky Pat layouts then weâre in: itâs just a question of flashing the info to the P.P. disc jockeyâwhatâs his name?âcircling Mars. And so on.â
âWerner handwrought ties are part of the Perky Pat layouts,â the man informed him. âHer boyfriend Walt has a closetful of them.â He beamed. âWhen P.P....