The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (46 page)

Cherry's tears had stopped entirely and she was bowed
white-faced and dry-eyed by the time Morey had finished. He had spent himself;
there was no violence left in him.

He stared dismally at Cherry for a moment, then turned
wordlessly and stamped out of the house.

Marriage!
he thought as he left.

He walked for hours, blind to where he was going.

What brought him back to awareness was a sensation he had
not felt in a dozen years. It was not, Morey abruptly realized, the dying
traces of his hangover that made his stomach feel so queer. He was
hungry—actually hungry.

He looked about him. He was in the Old Town, miles from
home, jostled by crowds of lower-class people. The block he was on was as
atrocious a slum as Morey had ever seen—Chinese pagodas stood next to rococo
imitations of the chapels around Versailles; gingerbread marred every facade;
no building was without its brilliant signs and flarelights.

He saw a blindingly overdecorated eating establishment
called Billie's Budget Busy Bee and crossed the street toward it, dodging
through the unending streams of traflfic. It was a miserable excuse for a
restaurant, but Morey was in no mood to care. He found a seat under a potted
palm, as far from the tinkling fountains and robot string ensemble as he could
manage, and ordered recklessly, paying no attention to the ration prices. As
the waiter was gliding noiselessly away, Morey had a sickening realization:
He'd come out without his ration book. He groaned out loud; it was too late to
leave without causing a disturbance. But then, he thought rebelliously, what
difference did one more unrationed meal make, anyhow?

Food made him feel a little better. He finished the last of
his
profiterole an chocolate,
not even leaving on the plate the uneaten
one-third that tradition permitted, and paid his check. The robot cashier
reached automatically for his ration book. Morey had a moment of grandeur as he
said simply, "No ration stamps."

Robot cashiers are not equipped to display surprise, but
this one tried. The man behind Morey in line audibly caught his breath, and
less audibly mumbled something about
slummers.
Morey took it as a
compliment and strode outside feeling almost in good humor.

Good enough to go home to Cherry? Morey thought seriously of
it for a second; but he wasn't going to pretend he was wrong and certainly
Cherry wasn't going to be willing to admit that
she
was at fault.

Besides, Morey told himself grimly, she was undoubtedly
asleep. That was an annoying thing about Cherry at best: she never had any
trouble getting to sleep. Didn't even use her quota of sleeping tablets, though
Morey had spoken to her about it more than once. Of course, he reminded
himself, he had been so polite and tactful about it, as befits a newlywed, that
very likely she hadn't even understood that it was a complaint. Well,
that
would
stop!

Man's man Morey Fry, wearing no collar ruff but his own,
strode determinedly down the streets of the Old Town.

"Hey, Joe, want a good time?"

Morey took one unbelieving look. "You again!" he
roared.

The little man stared at him in genuine surprise. Then a
faint glimmer of recognition crossed his face. "Oh, yeah," he said.
"This morning, huh?" He clucked commiseratingly. "Too bad you
wouldn't deal with me. Your wife was a lot smarter. Of course, you got me a
little sore, Jack, so naturally I had to raise the price a little bit."

"You skunk, you cheated my poor wife blind! You and I
are going to the local station house and talk this over."

The little man pursed his lips. "We are, huh?"

Morey nodded vigorously. "Damn right! And let me tell
you—" He stopped in the middle of a threat as a large hand cupped around
his shoulder.

The equally large man who owned the hand said, in a mild and
cultured voice, "Is this gentleman disturbing you, Sam?"

"Not so far," the little man conceded. "He
might want to, though, so don't go away."

Morey wrenched his shoulder away. "Don't think you can
strong-arm me. I'm taking you to the police."

Sam shook his head unbelievingly. "You mean you're
going to call the law in on this?"

"I certainly am!"

Sam sighed regretfully. "What do you think of that,
Walter? Treating his wife like that. Such a nice lady, too."

"What are you talking about?" Morey demanded,
stung on a peculiarly sensitive spot.

"I'm talking about your wife," Sam explained.
"Of course, I'm not married myself. But it seems to me that if I was, I
wouldn't call the police when my wife was engaged in some kind of criminal
activity or other. No, sir, I'd try to settle it myself. Tell you what,"
he advised, "why don't you talk this over with her? Make her see the error
of—"

"Wait a minute," Morey interrupted. "You mean
you'd involve my wife in this thing?"

The man spread his hands helplessly. "It's not me that
would involve her, Buster," he said. "She already involved her own
self. It takes two to make a crime, you know. I sell, maybe; I won't deny it.
But after all, I can't sell unless somebody buys, can I?"

Morey stared at him glumly. He glanced in quick speculation
at the large-sized Walter; but Walter was just as big as he'd remembered, so
that took care of that. Violence was out; the police were out; that left no
really attractive way of capitalizing on the good luck of running into the man
again.

Sam said, "Well, I'm glad to see that's off your mind.
Now, returning to my original question, Mac, how would you like a good time?
You look like a smart fellow to me; you look like you'd be kind of interested
in a place I happen to know of down the block."

Morey said bitterly, "So you're a dive-steerer, too. A
real talented man."

"I admit it," Sam agreed. "Stamp business is
slow at night, in my experience. People have their minds more on a good time.
And, believe me, a good time is what I can show 'em. Take this place I'm
talking about, Uncle Piggotty's is the name of it, it's what I would call an
unusual kind of place. Wouldn't you say so, Walter?"

"Oh, I agree with you entirely," Walter rumbled.

But Morey was hardly listening. He said, "Uncle
Piggotty's, you say?"

"That's right," said Sam.

Morey frowned for a moment, digesting an idea. Uncle
Piggotty's sounded like the place Howland had been talking about back at the
plant; it might be interesting, at that.

While he was making up his mind, Sam slipped an arm through
his on one side and Walter amiably wrapped a big hand around the other. Morey
found himself walking.

"You'll like it," Sam promised comfortably.
"No hard feelings about this morning, sport? Of course not. Once you get a
look at Piggotty's, you'll get over your mad, anyhow. It's something special. I
swear, on what they pay me for bringing in customers, I wouldn't do it unless I
believed
in it."

"Dance, Jack?" the hostess yelled over the noise
at the bar. She stepped back, lifted her flounced skirts to ankle height and
executed a tricky nine-step.

"My name is Morey," Morey yelled back. "And I
don't want to dance, thanks."

The hostess shrugged, frowned meaningfully at Sam and danced
away.

Sam flagged the bartender. "First round's on us,"
he explained to Morey. "Then we won't bother you any more. Unless you want
us to, of course. Like the place?" Morey hesitated, but Sam didn't wait.
"Fine place," he yelled, and picked up the drink the bartender left
him. "See you around."

He and the big man were gone. Morey stared after them
uncertainly, then gave it up. He was here, anyhow; might as well at least have
a drink. He ordered and looked around.

Uncle Piggotty's was a third-rate dive disguised to look, in
parts of it at least, like one of the exclusive upper-class country clubs. The
bar, for instance, was treated to resemble the clean lines of nailed wood; but
underneath the surface treatment, Morey could detect the intricate laminations
of plyplastic. What at first glance appeared to be burlap hangings were in
actuality elaborately textured synthetics. And all through the bar the motif
was carried out.

A floor show of sorts was going on, but nobody seemed to be
paying much attention to it. Morey, straining briefly to hear the master of
ceremonies, gathered that the unit was on a more than mildly vulgar level.
There was a dispirited string of chorus beauties in long ruffled pantaloons and
diaphanous tops; one of them, Morey was almost sure, was the hostess who had
talked to him just a few moments before.

Next to him a man was declaiming to a middle-aged woman:

Smote I the monstrous rock, yahoot Smote I the turgid
tube, Bully Boy! Smote I the cankered hill—

"Why, Morey!" he interrupted himself. "What
are you doing here?"

He turned farther around and Morey recognized him.
"Hello, How-land," he said. "I—uh—I happened to be free tonight,
so I thought—"

Howland sniggered. "Well, guess your wife is more
liberal than mine was. Order a drink, boy."

"Thanks, I've got one," said Morey.

The woman, with a tigerish look at Morey, said, "Don't
stop, Everett. That was one of your most beautiful things."

"Oh, Morey's heard my poetry," Howland said.
"Morey, I'd like you to meet a very lovely and talented young lady,
Tanaquil Bigelow. Morey works in the office with me, Tan."

"Obviously," said Tanaquil Bigelow in a frozen
voice, and Morey hastily withdrew the hand he had begun to put out.

The conversation stuck there, impaled, the woman cold,
Howland relaxed and abstracted, Morey wondering if, after all, this had been
such a good idea. He caught the eye-cell of the robot bartender and ordered a
round of drinks for the three of them, politely putting them on Howland's
ration book. By the time the drinks had come and Morey had just got around to
deciding that it wasn't a very good idea, the woman had all of a sudden become
thawed.

She said abruptly, "You look like the kind of man who
thinks,
Morey, and I like to talk to that kind of man. Frankly, Morey, I just don't
have any patience at all with the stupid, stodgy men who just work in their
offices all day and eat all their dinners every night, and gad about and
consume like mad and where does it all get them, anyhow? That's right, I can
see you understand. Just one crazy rush of consume, consume from the day you're
born
plop
to the day you're buried
pop!
And who's to blame if not
the robots?"

Faintly, a tinge of worry began to appear on the surface of
How-land's relaxed calm. "Tan," he chided, "Morey may not be
very interested in politics."

Politics, Morey thought; well, at least that was a clue.
He'd had the dizzying feeling, while the woman was talking, that he himself was
the ball in the games machine he had designed for the shop earlier that day.
Following the woman's conversation might, at that, give his next design some
valuable pointers in swoops, curves and obstacles.

He said, with more than half truth, "No, please go on,
Miss Bige-low. I'm very much interested."

She smiled; then abruptly her face changed to a frightening
scowl. Morey flinched, but evidently the scowl wasn't meant for him.
"Robots!" she hissed. "Supposed to work for us, aren't they?
Hah! We're their slaves, slaves for every moment of every miserable day of our
lives. Slaves! Wouldn't you like to join us and be free, Morey?"

Morey took cover in his drink. He made an expressive gesture
with his free hand—expressive of exactly what, he didn't truly know, for he was
lost. But it seemed to satisfy the woman.

She said accusingly, "Did you know that more than
three-quarters of the people in this country have had a nervous breakdown in
the past five years and four months? That more than half of them are under the
constant care of psychiatrists for psychosis—not just plain ordinary neurosis
like my husband's got and Howland here has got and you've got, but psychosis.
Like I've got. Did you know that? Did you know that forty per cent of the
population are essentially manic depressive, thirty-one per cent are schizoid,
thirty-eight per cent have an assortment of other unfixed psychogenic
disturbances and twenty-four-"

"Hold it a minute, Tan," Howland interrupted
critically. "You've got too many per cents there. Start over again."

"Oh, the hell with it," the woman said moodily.
"I wish my husband were here. He expresses it so much better than I
do." She swallowed her drink. "Since you've wriggled off the
hook," she said nastily to Morey, "how about setting up another
round—on my ration book this time?"

Morey did; it was the simplest thing to do in his confusion.
When that was gone, they had another on Howland's book.

As near as he could figure out, the woman, her husband and
quite possibly Howland as well belonged to some kind of anti-robot group. Morey
had heard of such things; they had a quasi-legal status, neither approved nor
prohibited, but he had never come into contact with them before. Remembering
the hatred he had so painfully relived at the psychodrama session, he thought
anxiously that perhaps he belonged with them. But, question them though he
might, he couldn't seem to get the principles of the organization firmly in
mind.

The woman finally gave up trying to explain it, and went off
to find her husband while Morey and Howland had another drink and listened to
two drunks squabble over who bought the next round. They were at the
Alphonse-Gaston stage of inebriation; they would regret it in the morning; for
each was bending over backward to permit the other to pay the ration points.
Morey wondered uneasily about his own points; Howland was certainly getting
credit for a lot of Morey's drinking tonight. Served him right for forgetting
his book, of course.