The Space Merchants (10 page)

It was the front page of the
New York Times.
The first column contained the obituary of Mitchell Courtenay, head of Fowler Schocken Associates Venus Section. I had been found frozen to death on Starrzelius Glacier near Little America. I had been tampering with my power pack, and it had failed. I read on long after the lieutenant had lost interest. Matt Runstead was taking over Venus Section. I was a loss to my profession. My wife, Dr. Nevin, had refused to be interviewed. Fowler Schocken was quoted in a ripe eulogy of me. I was a personal friend of Venus Pioneer Jack O'Shea, who had expressed shock and grief at the news.

The purser said: "I picked that up in Capetown. Lieutenant, get this silly son of a bitch back between decks, will you please?"

The guard had arrived. He slapped and kicked me all the way back to Number Six Hold.

I caromed off somebody as the guard shoved me through the door into the red darkness. After the relatively clear air of the outside, the sunk was horrible.

"What did you do?" the human cushion asked amiably, picking himself up.

"I tried to tell them who I am ..."That wasn't going to get me anywhere. "What happens next?" I asked.

"We land. We get quarters. We get to work. What contract are you on?"

"Labor contract B, they said."

He whistled. "I guess they really had you, huh?"

"What do you mean? What's it all about?"

"Oh—you were blind, were you? Too bad. B contract's five years. For refugees, morons, and anybody else they can swindle into signing up. There's a conduct clause. I got offered the B, but I told them if that was the best they could do I'd just go out and give myself up to the Brink's Express. I talked them into an F contract— they must have needed help real bad. It's one year and I can buy outside the company stores and things like that."

I held my head to keep it from exploding. "It can't be such a bad place to work," I said. "Country life—farming—fresh air and sunshine."

"Um," said the man in an embarrassed way. "It's better than chemicals, I guess. Maybe not so good as mining. You'll find out soon enough."

He moved away, and I fell into a light doze when I should have been making plans.

There wasn't any landing-ready signal. We just hit, and hit hard. A discharge port opened, letting in blinding tropical sunlight. It was agony after the murky hold. What swept in with it was not country air but a gush of disinfectant aerosol. I untangled myself from a knot of cursing laborers and flowed with the stream toward the port.

"Hold it, stupid!" said a hard-faced man wearing a plant-protection badge. He threw a number plaque on a cord around my neck. Everybody got one and lined up at a table outside the ship. It was in the shadow of the Chlorella plantation, a towering eighty-story structure, like office. "In-and-Out" baskets stacked up to the sky. There were mirrored louvers at each tier. Surrounding the big building were acres of eye-stabbing glare. I realized that this was more mirrored louvers to catch the sun, bounce it off more mirrors inside the tiers and onto the photosynthesis tanks. It was a spectacular, though not uncommon, sight from the air. On the ground it was plain hell. I should have been planning, planning. But the channels of my mind were choked by: "From the sun-drenched plantations of Costa Rica, tended by the deft hands of independent farmers with pride in their work, comes the juicyripe goodness of Chlorella Proteins . . ." Yes; I had written those words.

"Keep moving!" a plant-protection man bawled. "Keep it moving, you God-damned scum-skimmers! Keep it moving!" I shaded my eyes and shuffled ahead as the line moved past the table. A dark-glassed man at the table was asking me: "Name?"

"Mitchell Court—"

"That's the one I told you about," said the purser's voice.

"Okay; thanks." To me: "Groby, we've had men try to bug out of a B Contract before this, you know. They're always sorry they tried. Do you know what the annual budget of Costa Rica is, by any chance?"

"No," I mumbled.

"It's about a hundred and eighty-three billion dollars. And do you happen to know what the annual taxes of Chlorella Corporation are?"

"No. Damn it, man—"

He broke in: "About a hundred and eighty billion dollars. From that, a bright fellow like you will conclude that the government—
and courts—
of Costa Rica do just about what Chlorella wants done. If we want to make an example of a contract-breaker they'll do it for us. Bet your life. Now, what's your name, Groby?"

"Groby," I said hoarsely.

"First name? Educational level? H-H balance?"

"I don't remember. But if you'll give them to me on a piece of paper I'll memorize them."

I heard the purser laugh and say: "He'll do."

"All right, Groby," the man in dark glasses said genially. "No harm done. Here's your profile and assignment. We'll make a skimmer out of you yet. Move on."

I moved on. A plant protection man grabbed my assignment and bawled at me: "Skimmers that way."

"That way" was under the bottom tier of the building, into light even more blinding, down a corridor between evil-smelling, shallow tanks, and at last through a door into the central pylon of the structure. There was a well-lit room which seemed twilit after the triply reflected tropical sun outside.

"Skimmer?" said a man. I blinked and nodded at him. "I'm Mullane—shift assignment. I got a question to ask you, Groby." He peered at my profile card. "We need a skimmer on the sixty-seventh tier and we need a skimmer on the forty-first tier. Your bunk's going to be on the forty-third tier of the pylon. Frankly, which would you rather work on? I ought to mention that we don't have elevators for skimmers and the other Class 2 people."

"The forty-first-tier job," I told him, trying to make out his face.

"That's very sensible," he told me. "Very, very sensible." And then he just stood there, with seconds ticking away. At last he added: "I like to see a sensible man act sensible." There was another long pause.

"I haven't got any money on me," I told him.

"That's all right," he said. "I'll lend you some. Just sign this note and we can settle up on payday without any fuss. It's just a simple assignment of five dollars."

I read the note and signed it. I had to look at my profile card again; I had forgotten my first name. Mullane briskly scrawled "41" and his initials on my assignment, and hurried off without lending me five dollars. I didn't chase him.

"I'm Mrs. Horrocks, the housing officer," a woman said sweetly to me. "Welcome to the Chlorella family, Mr. Groby. I hope you'll spend many happy years with us. And now to work. Mr. Mullane told you this draft of crumbs—that is, the present group of contractees— will be housed on the forty-third tier, I think. It's my job to see that you're located with a congenial group of fellow-employees."

Her face reminded me faintly of a tarantula as she went on: "We have one vacant bunk in Dorm Seven. Lots of
nice, young
men in Dorm Seven. Perhaps you'd like it there. It means so much to be among one's
own kind
of people."

I got what she was driving at and told her I didn't want to be in Dorm Seven.

She went on brightly: "Then there's Dorm Twelve. It's a rather rough crowd, I'm afraid, but beggars can't be choosers, can they? They'd like to get a nice young man like you in Dorm Twelve. My, yes! But you could carry a knife or something. Shall I put you down for Dorm Twelve, Mr. Groby?"

"No, " I said. "What else have you got? And by the way, I wonder if you could lend me five dollars until payday?"

"I'll put you down for Dorm Ten," she said, scribbling. "And of course I'll lend you some money. Ten dollars? Just sign and thumb-print this assignment, Mr. Groby. Thank you." She hurried off in search of the next sucker.

A red-faced fat man gripped my hand and said hoarsely: "Brother, I want to welcome you to the ranks of the United Slime-Mold Protein Workers of Panamerica, Unaffiliated, Chlorella Costa Rica Local. This pamphlet will explain how the U.S.M.P.W.P. protects workers in the field from the innumable petty rackets and abuses that useta plague the innustry. Yer inishiashun and dues are checked off automatically but this valuable pamphlet is an extra."

I asked him: "Brother, what's the worst that can happen to me if I don't buy it?"

"It's a long drop," he said simply.

He lent me five dollars to buy the pamphlet.

I didn't have to climb to Dorm Ten on the forty-third tier. There were no elevators for Class 2 people, but there was an endless cargo net we could grab hold of. It took a little daring to jump on and off, and clearance was negligible. If your rump stuck out you were likely to lose it.

The dorm was jammed with about sixty bunks, three high. Since production went on only during the daylight hours, the hotbed system wasn't in use. My bunk was all mine, twenty-four hours a day. Big deal.

A sour-faced old man was sweeping the central aisle lackadaisically when I came in. "You a new crumb?" he asked, and looked at my ticket. "There's your bunk. I'm Pine. Room orderly. You know how to skim?"

"No," I said. "Look, Mr. Pine, how do I make a phone call out of here?"

"Dayroom," he said, jerking his thumb. I went to the dayroom adjoining. There was a phone and a biggish hypnoteleset and readers and spools and magazines. I ground my teeth as the cover of
Taunton 's Weekly
sparkled at me from the rack. The phone was a pay phone, of course.

I dashed back into the dorm. "Mr. Pine," I said, "can you lend me about twenty dollars in coin? I have to make a long-distance call."

"Twenty-five for twenty?" he asked shrewdly.

"Sure. Anything you say."

He slowly scrawled out an assignment slip and I signed and printed it. Then he carefully counted out the money from his baggy pockets.

I wanted to call Kathy, but didn't dare. She might be at her apartment, she might be at the hospital. I might miss her. I dialed the fifteen digits of the Fowler Schocken Associates number after I deposited a clanging stream of coins. I waited for the switchboard to say: "Fowler Schocken Associates; good afternoon; it's
always
a good afternoon for Fowler Schocken Associates and their clients. May I help you?"

But that isn't what I heard. The phone said:
"Su numero de pri-ondad, par favor?"

Priority number for long-distance calls. I didn't have one. A firm had to be rated a billion and fast pay before it could get a long-distance priority number in four figures. So jammed were the world's long lines that an individual priority in any number of figures was unthinkable. Naturally all that had never worried me when I made long-distance calls from Fowler Schocken, on the Fowler Schocken priority number. A priority number was one of the little luxuries I'd have to learn to live without.

I hung up slowly. The coins were not returned.

I could write to everybody, I thought. Write to Kathy and Jack O'Shea and Fowler and Collier and Hester and Tildy. Leave no stone unturned. Dear Wife (or Boss): This is to advise you that your husband (or employee) who you know quite well is dead is not really dead but inexplicably a contract laborer for Costa Rican Chlorella and please drop everything and get him out. Signed, your loving husband (or employee), Mitchell Courtenay.

But there was the company censor to think of.

I wandered blankly back into the dorm. The rest of the Dorm Ten people were beginning to drift in.

"A crumb!" one of them yelled, sighting me.

"Court's called to order!" another one trumpeted.

I don't hold what followed against any of them. It was traditional, a break in the monotony, a chance to lord it over somebody more miserable than themselves, something they had all gone through too. I presume that in Dorm Seven it would have been a memorably nasty experience, and in Dorm Twelve I might not have lived through it. Dorm Ten was just high-spirited. I paid my "fine" —more pay vouchers—and took my lumps and recited the blasphemous oath and then I was a full-fledged member of the dorm.

I didn't troop with them to the mess hall for dinner. I just lay on my bunk and wished I were as dead as the rest of the world thought I was.

Scum-skimming wasn't hard to learn. You got up at dawn. You gulped a breakfast sliced not long ago from Chicken Little and washed it down with Contest. You put on your coveralls and took the cargo net up to your tier. In blazing noon from sunrise to sunset you walked your acres of shallow tanks crusted with algae. If you walked slowly, every thirty seconds or so you spotted a patch at maturity, bursting with yummy carbohydrates. You skimmed the patch with your skimmer and slung it down the well, where it would be baled, or processed into glucose to feed Chicken Little, who would be sliced and packed to feed people from Baffinland to Little America. Every hour you could drink from your canteen and take a salt tablet. Every two hours you could take five minutes. At sunset you turned in your coveralls and went to dinner—more slices from Chicken Little —and then you were on your own. You could talk, you could read, you could go into a trance before the dayroom hypnoteleset, you could shop, you could pick fights, you could drive yourself crazy thinking of what might have been, you could go to sleep.

Mostly you went to sleep.

I wrote a lot of letters and tried to sleep a lot. Payday came as a surprise. I didn't know two weeks had slipped by. It left me owing Chlorella Proteins only eighty-odd dollars and a few cents. Besides the various assignments I had made, there were the Employee Welfare Fund (as closely as I could figure that one out, it meant that I was paying Chlorella's taxes); union dues and installment on the initiation fee; withholding tax (this time my own taxes); hospitalization (but try and get it, the older men said) and old age insurance.

One of the things I faintheartedly consoled myself with was thethought that when—
when,
I always said firmly—I got out I'd be closer to the consumers than any ad man in the profession. Of course at Fowler Schocken we'd had our boys up from the ranks: scholarship kids. I knew now that they had been too snobbish to give me the straight facts on consumers' lives and thoughts. Or they hadn't cared to admit even to themselves what they had been like. I think I learned that ads work more strongly on the unconscious than even we in the profession had thought. I was shocked repeatedly to hear advertising referred to as "that crap." I was at first puzzled and then gratified to see it sink in and take effect anyway. The Venus-rocket response was, of course, my greatest interest. For one week I listened when I could to enthusiasm growing among these men who would never go to Venus, who knew nobody who would ever go to Venus. I heard the limericks we had launched from Fowler Schocken Associates chuckled over: