Stories Complete, page 15
“We’ll appeal, Mr. Stubbs,” Claude said angrily. “After all, this mess is the government’s fault. Not ours! It’s up to them to straighten it out.”
“That’s up to you,” Leon Stubbs said. “Although I’m sure you realize that in the meantime you’ll have to make some temporary arrangements.”
“Temporary arrangements?”
“Yes, Mr. Marshall. Even assuming the government decides in your favor—which I doubt—you’ll have to live somewhere while the case is being processed . . . And that will take some time.”
“How long?”
Leon Stubbs shuffled through the papers again.
“You know about the time-lag, don’t you?”
“No. What about the time-lag?”
The Director met his stare. “I thought you knew. Actually the only communication we have with Terra short of space travel, is by short wave radio, and radio waves as you may know travel at approximately the speed of light. Since we are approximately 4.4 light-years away from Earth, a round trip message to Washington would take about nine years. This of course does not take into consideration the time needed to process your case.”
Claude kept watching the Director’s face while he spoke. He looked like an honest man. To all intents and purposes he was simply a public servant performing a distasteful duty. Yet there was something about his voice that had an all-too-familiar ring . . . Something that hinted he was leading up to an offer.
Claude cleared his throat. “All right, Mr. Stubbs. So you’ve convinced me of the futility of appealing the claim. What now?”
Leon Stubbs bit off the end of a cigar and lit it before answering.
“I’ve arranged to give you and your family an alternate claim, Mr. Marshall. Of course it isn’t quite as desirable as the original one. But under the circumstances—” He let the sentence trail off.
“I see,” Claude said. “And where is this alternate claim?”
Stubbs examined the end of his cigar.
“It’s on the other side of the planet, Mr. Marshall. I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”
At his elbow, Claude caught the sharp intake of his wife’s breath.
“It really isn’t too bad,” the Director went on. “Many of the reports about the cold-side have been exaggerated.”
“I’m sure they have,” Claude said bitterly. “I’m sure it’s just the place to bring up a nine-year-old boy.”
“Please Mr. Marshall. Don’t be bitter. It isn’t my fault.”
Claude got up placing his palms on the edge of the metal desk. He leaned forward till his face was only inches away from the Director’s cigar, and said: “Isn’t it?”
The Director didn’t answer. Instead he got up and walked over to the open window. For ten full seconds he stared out at the lush valley that flanked the spaceport. Then he turned.
“You want my advice, Mr. Marshall?”
Claude shrugged his shoulders.
“Go home,” Leon Stubbs said. “You can’t bring up a boy on the cold-side. It just wouldn’t work.”
“But we just got here,” Joan said. “We sold everything we had to come here!”
Stubbs nodded. “I know,” he said. He indicated the folders. “It’s all there in your records. Six years ago you left Terra with six-thousand credits. But surely with that kind of money you could get a fresh start almost anywhere.”
“But we want to stay here, Mr. Stubbs.”
Stubbs took a drag out of the cigar.
“I know,” he said woodenly.
Claude remained silent, regarding the conversation carefully. A pattern was beginning to form now—a familiar pattern. He walked over to where the Director was standing.
“Perhaps you could make a suggestion, Mr. Stubbs. Surely there must be opportunities on this side of the planet for a man with six-thousand credits?”
“I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at,” Leon Stubbs said.
“I think you do, Mr. Stubbs,” Claude retorted. “I think we’re both getting at the same thing. Suppose we dispense with the subtleties and get down to cases.”
The Director sat down at the desk pyramiding his fingertips.
“Very well, Mr. Marshall,” he said. “I’ll be blunt. It’s occurred to me that if the date on your claim were changed, the land would naturally be yours. The difficulty of course lies in the fact that there are duplicate records on Terra and we’d have to take care of the man who handles them. Otherwise the discrepancy would show up eventually. Actually, I want nothing for myself but these people in Washington—”
“Yeah, I know,” Claude interrupted. “It’s someone else who’s getting the money. It’s always someone else who’s getting the money.”
“It would take quite a bit, I’m afraid,” the Director said ignoring the sarcasm.
“How much?”
The Director stubbed out the end of his cigar. “About five thousand,” he said. “Yes. Five thousand ought to do it.”
Claude looked at his wife.
And she looked back at him.
Outside, Billy had tired of the seven-year-old magazine and was hammering on the door for admittance.
“Can we have a few minutes to think it over?” Claude said.
“Certainly,” Stubbs said amiably. “And I want to make it quite clear, Mr. Marshall, that this money is not for me. There’s this fellow—”
“Yeah, I know. There’s this fellow in Washington. Come on Joan. Let’s step outside a moment.”
TEN minutes later, Leon Stubbs answered their knock and ushered them to the desk chairs. After they were seated, he said: “I take it you’ve talked it over.”
Claude nodded. “Yes, Mr. Stubbs. My wife and I talked it over and we came to a decision.”
“I’m glad,” the Director said. “And may I say I think you’re doing a wise thing. Centifor’s a beautiful place. Simply beautiful . . .”
“Yes it is,” Claude agreed. “It is beautiful. That’s why we’d like to see it stay that way.”
The Director raised an eyebrow.
“My wife and I talked it over,” Claude went on, “and we decided that taking someone else’s land whether it’s done by theft, force, or bribery is wrong. We thought of this place as something fresh and clean. We thought all those tests we took were designed to keep people like you out of here. Now it appears we were mistaken. We’ve talked it over, Mr. Stubbs, and we’ve decided to go back to Earth and expose you.”
“But you can’t,” the Director said. “You’ve—”
“Yes we can,” Claude said. “The ships go back practically empty. A return berth will be no trouble at all. We’re returning on the first ship out.”
“Perhaps we could make a better deal,” Stubbs said. “Perhaps five thousand is too much. Perhaps—”
“No. No deals! Let’s go Joan.”
They went outside, into the fresh warm sunshine, staring at the torpedo shaped spaceship standing in the clearance area half-a-mile away.
They’d just started toward it, when a jeep squealed up alongside them. Bruce Whiting was at the wheel.
“Hi,” he said. “Hop in. I’ll give you a lift.”
“Thanks,” Claude said without bitterness. He helped his wife and son into the rear seat and climbed in beside the driver.
“I suppose congratulations are in order,” he said as the other man threw the vehicle into gear. “Stubbs tells me the land is yours now.”
The driver nodded, inching down on the accelerator. The vehicle leaped forward. At seventy miles an hour, they swooped past the spaceship and the knot of people standing in the shadow of the rudder stanchions.
“Hey. Slow up!” Claude yelled. “We’re getting off here. We’re booking return passage on that ship!”
Whiting didn’t answer.
The low slung buildings of the clearance area leaped up at them and passed into the background. They were heading into open country now.
“Whiting! Turn around. We’re staying here in the clearance area!”
Whiting’s foot slacked off the accelerator. The speedometer dropped to fifty. But the vehicle kept moving into open country. The man at the wheel flicked a look at Claude and smiled.
“Congratulations, Mr. Marshall,” he said. “You’ve passed the final test.”
“Test? I don’t understand.”
“Let me explain then,” Bruce Whiting said. “In the first place my name isn’t Whiting . . . It’s Reed—Paul Reed. I work for the government. This final test—the one you just went through—was designed to weed out any undesirables who might have slipped through our screening processes back on Earth.”
“You mean this whole build up was just a test?”
The other man nodded. “We give it to every new arrival here. Now that you’ve passed, I’m driving you out to your homestead site.”
Claude looked back at the newly-arrived spaceship and the tiny figures who were huddled at its base.
“All those people,” he said. “You mean they still have to go through what we did?”
The driver shook his head.
“No. Those people are going back to Earth. You see, Mr. Marshall, those are the people who offered Leon Stubbs the bribe.”
The Students
He remembered the strong hands that pulled him away—the uniform men who’d seized and hustled him away.
Ex-New Yorker Jack Lewis, now living in Kansas City, a SF reader since the days of Gernsback, reports that a visiting New York school teacher, who’d read this story in manuscript, predicted that the day the story appeared “The School Teachers Union will commence work on a Jack Lewis status in the middle of Central Park.” We shall see . . .
THE boy according to school records was: Stephen Davis; age nine; entrance I.Q. 61.7; psychological deviant probability .006. He was a thin lad with a triangular jaw and very bright skin. He snapped his fingers impatiently.
“Attendant! Attendant!”
Ted Rowland flicked the off-switch on the daylight projector which had been depicting an arithmetic lesson through the use of animated cartoons.
“Something wrong, Mr. Davis?” he inquired.
The boy frowned. “I’ll say there is. Where’s the attendant?”
Rowland’s eyes travelled past the thirty-eight students to a bald, mild-eyed man who was engaged at the Serve-All dispenser at the rear of the classroom.
“I’m sure he’ll be with you in a moment, Mr. Davis,” he said. “As you can see, he’s taking care of Miss Reed at the moment.”
The boy called Stephen Davis squirmed in the deskchair assembly which was constructed along the general lines of a mid-twentieth century contour lounge, while the attendant exchanged a look with the teacher and topped the ice cream soda he was preparing, with a cherry treated with a tasteless decal depicting the scene of Pearl Harbor and the date 1941. He set the glass—an ornate affair etched with multiplication tables-in front of a girls of about ten, and hurried to the boy’s side.
“Yes, Mr. Davis.”
Stephen Davis looked up contemptously. “Took you long enough,” he sulked.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Davis,” the bald-headed man said, “but I was catering to the needs of Miss Reed.”
Stephen Davis pushed out his lower lip. “Bring me an orangeade,” he said. “A big one.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And try not to be all day about it.”
The attendant exchanged another glance with the teacher.
Ted Rowland coughed. “Please,” he said, “may we go on with the lesson?”
“How about my orangeade?” the boy said.
“Paul will serve you while we’re viewing the lesson,” Rowland said mildly. “Now please try to refrain from further interruption.”
He switched on the projector and once more the barnyard actors went into their routine. There was a rabbit, two dogs, a cat, and a horse. The problem was to split thirty apples between the five of them. In the first try, distribution of the fruit was attempted through the snatch and grab method; while the second time the division was accomplished by a one-for-you and one-for-me method, as distributor. In both cases the project ended in a barnyard fight with the horse getting most of the apples and the rabbit none.
Only after the second dog—a c t i n g as mediator—applied the principle of division to the problem, was the division of the apples accomplished in an equitable manner, wherupon the five animals faded happily off the screen with six apples apiece.
Rowland managed a smile. “Any questions?” he inquired.
A flurry of conversation danced across the classroom. Over it a sandy-haired boy said: “Why did the animals get five apples each. A horse is bigger thana rabbit why shouldn’t he have more to eat?”
Rowland swallowed hard. The symbolism of the situation did not escape him. “The pictures were simply to illustrate a principle of arithmetic,” he said. “Naturally, in real-life a horse would require more to eat than a rabbit.”
“What would a rabbit do with apples in the first place?” another boy said. “I like it better the way they divided them the first time.”
Abruptly, Stephen Davis began to snap his fingers again. Rowland ignored him as long as he could, then crooked as index finger at him. “Yes, Mr. Davis?”
Stephen Davis squirmed in in the contour chair till he’d maneuvered into a half-sitting position. “I think it was a stupid picture,” he announced.
A ripple of laughter floated across the room.
Encouraged the boy said: “It’s stupid. And you’re stupid!”
The class roared.
Rowland tried to ignore the bedlam by opening a book which lay on the desk. The volume was entitled: BEHAVIOUR PATTERNS OF OUR JUNIOR CITIZENS AND HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM.
Quite by accident he opened the book to Chapter Six-The Encouragement of Normal Instincts. He didn’t have to read the neat rows of fine print. Like everything else in the book, Chapter Six had been ingrained into his mind with indelible clarity. Without looking at the text he pretended to read while the words marched around in his mind:
“Irreparable damage may be done to the minds and authority and unwarranted personalities of our Junior Citizens by the use of excess discipline. The teacher should at all times remember that revolt against adult authority is a normal behavior pattern and should be encouraged, rather than suppressed.”
With considerably more emphasis than he’d intended. Rowland slammed it shut.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Stephen Davis screamed.
Rowland laid the book on the desk. “If you’ve quite finished summing up your opinions, Mr. Davis,” he said. “I’d suggest that we get back to the lesson.”
The monorail that served Long Island’s south shore was late that afternoon. Furthermore the evening paper advised him that the Board of Estimate had—for the fourth time—kicked back into committee the long-overdue legislation for teacher’s pay raises.
Because of these, and other factors, Ted Rowland arrived at the fifty-year-old splitlevel house where he lived with his Sister, in a state of thinly-veiled annoyance.
Alice was waiting for him at the door. She greeted him pleasantly, made a note of his smoqldering irritation, then tactfully withdrew into the kitchen, while Rowland sank wearily into the arm chair and reread for the third time how the powers-that-be had scuttled his pay bill.
He’d needed the raise-needed it bad. Lord knows, Alice had been swell. That was the trouble. What with her working a full-time-job and acting as homemaker at the same time, she’d had little time left for any life of her own. Right from the beginning Rowland had suspected that his Sister’s breakup with that young lawyer, Bill Nelson, had been due—at least partly—to her complete and utter devotion to domestic matters. “Dinner,” Alice said.
Ted Rowland got up. He was more than a little annoyed at himself for allowing his sourness to rub off on Alice and made a note to make it up to her.
He waited till the meal was almost over and said: “How’d it go at the office today, Sis?”
“All right, Ted.”
“Seen Bill Nelson lately?”
“Now Ted. That’s over and done with. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay. What would you like to talk about?”
“Let’s talk about you, Ted. How did things go at school today?”
“Not bad. About the same.”
“No they didn’t, Ted. Something’s wrong. What is it—that Davis child again?”
“No, Sis. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that I’ve been preoccupied. What with the fall faculty tests coming up next week I’ll have to do some heavy cramming.”
“You go ahead, Ted. I’ll clear the dishes.”
Rowland reentered the living room where he removed a textbook from between a pair of bookends which were moulded into the bust of Horace Mann. The title of the book was BRYANT’S GUIDE TO SUCCESSFUL TEACHING. Since Alvin Bryant—the author of the book—was current president of the Board of Education, Rowland was reasonably sure that the Fall faculty exams would consist primarily of matters contained in Bryant’s own volume. That was how it had worked in the past.
He sat down, thumbed open the dog-eared pages and began reading:
“Ever since the introduction of progressive education in the mid-twentieth century, teaching methods have followed a steady trend toward a more liberal curriculum.
“This new era in student-teacher relationship has resulted in a general age of enlightenment, until now, in the early years of the twenty-first century we have reached a point where faculty members as well as society in general can look back in shocked amazement to the “dark ages” when “teaching” consisted chiefly of brow beating our Junior Citizens.” Rowland flipped some pages:
“For nearly a century now, psychologists have recognized the fact that excess authority and iron-fisted discipline, do little more than to create a feeling of insecurity in the minds of our Junior Citizens.
However it was not until this present era of enlightenment that—”
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