Collected Short Fiction, page 487
Staples raked a worried hand through his hair. He started to say something, thought better of it, and began nervously snapping and opening the catch of his brief case. The inspector paralyzed him with an annoyed steel glance.
Platt suddenly wanted to sit down. He looked uneasily about for a chair, and found none. Above the desk he discovered a sign which exhorted. Don’t Delay Eternity. He waited uncomfortably. Ballantine read from the blue card, in his restrained velvet voice:
“The first charge dates from nearly twenty years ago, when the petitioner had just begun his law practice in Clifton. In one of his first cases—a civil action involving the ownership of forty rods of fence—he was opposed by another young attorney. He lost the case, through perjury. But he was later able to prove that his legal opponent had suborned the witnesses in the case, and be caused him to be suspended from the bar.
“The other lawyer was a young and able man. He might otherwise have enjoyed a distinguished and useful career. That suspension, however, denied to him for several years his right to the honorable practice of his chosen profession, and he was driven into crooked politics. Arthur Tanner is now a man whose clearance will be difficult.”
“Tanner?” Platt suddenly found an indignant voice. “Why, inspector, that man’s a worthless and conscienceless crook. I’ve fought him for twenty years. Why, he broke up my first marriage. And it was another dirty dishonest trick that caused my . . . er, calling.”
The steel eyes were ruthless. “Nevertheless, the petitioner is responsible.”
“My client is overwrought.” Staples was hovering uneasily. “Please overlook this outburst.”
“Here is a second damaging act.” Ballantine consulted his blue card again. “Ten years ago, the petitioner employed an office girl. He soon discovered that she had taken a small sum of money from the office cash. He discharged her. and reported her error to a business bureau in the city.
“This girl was attractive and intelligent and she might otherwise have found a successful business career. Because of the petitioner’s act, however, she was unable to obtain other honest employment and she became a criminal. At our latest report, Ysobel Pickens was on trial for murder. She will be very hard to clear.”
“I remember—I thought she looked familiar.” Platt caught his breath. “Her name was Ann Pickens, then. She took seven dollars to buy a party dress. She was frightened when I accused her. She cried and promised to put the money back on pay day.” He looked into Ballantine’s steel eyes and his voice rose protestingly. “But that was such a small thing, inspector—and it happened so long ago.”
“The consequences were not small,” Ballantine said softly. “The petitioner is responsible.”
He picked up the blue card again.
“The third charge is still more grave,” he went on ominously. “Some nine years ago, the petitioner married. His wife was younger than he. She had tastes and whims of which he disapproved. Eventually—and that as a result of his severe and uncompromising attitude—she was guilty of an act for which he divorced her.
“This woman was beautiful and gifted and she might otherwise have been a loyal wife and a noble mother. As a consequence of the petitioner’s acts, however, Stella Flanders has by now accumulated charges against her record which make her clearance very doubtful.”
“Stella?” Platt swallowed an angry breath. “She tried to blackmail me out of a thousand dollars, just today. And she cooked up a malicious libel about me for Tanner’s yellow newspaper.”
“But you are responsible.” Inspector Ballantine’s velvet voice had become inexorable. “Now you have heard the charges against you. You have the right to speak. William Platt, is there any reason why you should not be remanded to Hell, so that you may atone for these acts?”
Platt started. Cold sweat sprang out on his forehead. His voice was gone again and he could find no answer. He looked to his advocate in mute appeal. But Staples made a nervous shrug, as if to show that he could do nothing, and began to gather up his papers. Ballantine cleared his throat and said heavily: “The petitioner fails to answer. Clearance suspended.”
Platt wasn’t sure just what the words implied, but their ominous ring made him feel a little ill. He clutched the edge of the desk, with weak, clammy fingers, and helplessly watched Staples replace the papers in his brief case.
Inspector Ballantine banged a rubber stamp down on the blue card and tossed it into another tray. He nodded impatiently at the sign over his head and picked up another card and boomed at the door:
“Next case. Eternity vs. Martha Potts.”
Numb and shaken, Platt followed his advocate out of the inspector’s tiny office as Martha Potts came in. She was a large colored woman, still smelling faintly of laundry soap, accompanied by a dapper Negro advocate in gray. Her chocolate face was beaming, and she greeted him with a joyous:
“Hallelujah, brother!”
Platt looked despondently across the immense waiting room. Beyond the guarded gates, the elect were still streaming up into that mighty refulgent ship. He caught a distant, haunting chord of celestial music. Slowly, with a cold, sick feeling in his middle, he turned to follow Staples back toward the stair.
“What happens to me now?” he inquired uneasily.
Staples made a sympathetic clucking sound.
“I know how you feel, William. It’s depressing to be turned back, I know. But you’ll soon find your niche in our organization. Clients will be assigned to you. If you manage to clear them, your own clearance will be issued at once. If you fail, the contract provides for earning credit by office work, but that’s a rather tedious process.” He chuckled with a hollow cheer. “They say the first thousand years are the longest.”
As a joke, that was not successful.
“Of course”—Staples tried to be encouraging—“it is possible to appeal, if you aren’t satisfied with the ruling. But you must consider that the motion might be denied. Then some of your own clients might come up before Ballantine in the future—and he is inclined to be nasty about appeals.”
Platt couldn’t think of anything worth saying. He turned back for a final hopeless look at the long shining ship beyond the gates. Staples waited impatiently and at last he came on with dragging feet.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I mean . . . I suppose it would have counted toward your own clearance, if I had got through?”
“Never mind.” Staples made a wry, one-sided grin. “You did very well, for a lawyer.” He looked at his watch, and raked worried fingers through his hair. “Come along—we’re already overdue at the office.”
They had come back upon the broad marble steps, golden under the floodlights, that dropped into that bright mysterious ocean of moonlit cloud. Staples touched the little golden broom on his lapel, and once more took Platt’s arm.
Then they were standing on a sharp volcanic spur in the midst of a bleak landscape that fitted Platt’s idea of Death Valley. The high moon shimmered on white lakes of salt. Dark eroded mountains rose jagged and treeless beyond. Grotesque lava shapes were black with the stain of fire, but Platt shivered a little from a penetrating chill in the air.
“I’ll take a moment to show you our new office building.” Staples pointed, and his voice had a ring of pride. “Just completed. You’ll find it the last word in modern business efficiency.”
Platt turned to look, and his mouth fell slack. A tremendous gray skyscraper towered startlingly out of a black lava flow. Lighted windows drew his eyes up, floor on floor, to a red torch that burned luridly on a lofty tower. Tall crimson letters, along the cornice, flashed, SATAN SAVES.
Staples touched the golden broom again, and they were upon a wide, crowded sidewalk outside the building—only now, strangely enough, the skyscraper was somehow squeezed into the heart of Clifton. For he recognized the Chronicle office, across the dusky street; and he could read a familiar sign in flaking gold letters on a second-story window:
Staples & Platt
Attorneys at Law
Staples was already tugging at his sleeve. But he paused again, for a glimpse of the deep-carved inscription on the tower’s massive cornerstone:
Erected, 1941
Central Office, American Division,
HADES
(High Administration of
Development, Education, and
Salvation)
A. Lucifer, Manager
Staples pulled him into a torrent of worried, hurried men and women, all burdened with heavy brief cases, and they were swept into a foyer of coldlooking chromium and glass, surrounding a huge illuminated terrestrial globe. They were fighting toward the elevators, when Staples stopped with a gasp of awe.
“There’s the manager!” he whispered. “I heard that he was coming today, but I didn’t hope to see him. He is going to address a convention of vice presidents.”
A tall man in black hurried across the lobby in front of them, flanked by two or three nervous subordinates in identical gray. His sleek-combed hair was gray at the temples, and thinning. He wore the overconfident, extravert smile of a good bond salesman or a successful evangelist. Platt heard one of the subordinates murmur, too heartily:
“Yes, Mr. Lucifer. Yes, sir!”
The party went by. Staples broke out of his awed paralysis, and dragged Platt into a crowded automatic elevator. It shot them to the ninety-eighth floor. Staples pushed through a door lettered
District V-913
and stopped to punch a time clock.
They came into a long immense room, flooded with a merciless glare from fluorescent bulbs. An endless corridor separated two rows of fenced-in desks. Gray-clad men and uniformed girls were furiously busy, and the din of their activities made Platt want to cover his ears.
Typewriters clattered and telephones jangled. Teletypes, card sorters, dictographs, bookkeeping machines, all added their bit to the general pandemonium. Tense-faced men in gray shouted at flustered stenographers. Office boys darted here and there.
Platt bravely tried to grin, and called at Staples:
“Well, this isn’t Heaven!”
But Staples didn’t hear. He ran to touch the elbow of a hastening man with a white carnation in his buttonhole.
Platt recognized him: Justice Bonafax, a former member of the State supreme bench, notorious for the undeviating uprightness of his decisions.
“Chief, Mr. Platt,” Staples gasped hastily. “He’s with us, from today. Mr. Bonafax is nine-hundred-and-thirteenth vice president, in charge of our district office.”
“Glad to have you, Mr. Platt.” Bonafax hastily pumped his hand. “Hades needs more men like you. I want you to feel that our whole organization is just one big, happy family, Mr. Platt. The staff will make you feel at home. And don’t forget our district slogan, Service First.”
He turned quickly to Staples.
“Oh, Mr. Staples, I have good news for you. I understand that you are going to continue with the organization indefinitely, now. Of course, that means that you will be transferred to office work—although you will be allowed time to carry on the necessary field work in behalf of your remaining clients. You will be glad to know that we have an unusual opening ready for you. Mr. Bishop got his clearance today, and you will take his place as manager of Section R. Mr. Platt will begin under you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bonafax.” Staples’ voice was too warmly grateful. “This is a splendid opportunity, and I’m going to try to make the most of it.”
Bonafax slapped his back.
“You see, Mr. Platt,” he beamed, “we’re all just one great big happy family. Mr. Staples, see that you don’t neglect our service slogan.” He jerked out a watch. “Now I’ve got to run, to catch the convention. The manager’s here, himself, to give us a pep talk.”
He hurried on toward the elevators and Staples guided Platt down the busy aisle, through the pandemonium of strained voices and clattering machines. Near the end of the immense room, a low barrier surrounded Section R—which was one large desk, facing a dozen smaller ones.
Two or three girls were typing furiously, at the smaller desks. A teletype machine clanked and whirred. A man in gray was frowning in baffled concentration over a bulky mimeographed document, which looked to Platt as if it might have been compiled for the regulation of something or other by one of the alphabetical agencies in Washington.
“Here we are, William.”
Staples pointed to one of the smaller desks. A little bronze plaque on it was already neatly lettered:
WILLIAM PLATT
DEPUTY ADVOCATE
Paper, pencils, clips, and erasers were arranged in neat little stacks. The letter tray held a new brief case, with his name stamped on it.
“That’s efficiency.” Staples had seen his surprise. “Our employees have no time to waste.” He pinned a little golden broom into Platt’s gray lapel. “This is your badge of ‘Service First’ and your means of transportation about your strictly business duties—you are not permitted to use it for joyriding.”
Against the endless rush of sound, he shouted at the nearest busy girl, a thin peroxide blonde abstractedly chewing gum.
“Miss Hamlett! This is our new Mr. Platt.” She looked up briefly, with a vague dreamy nod—as if her inner mind still dwelt upon the robust charms of Clark Gable. “Miss Hamlett will take your reports.”
“Call me Mattel.” Her voice was a listless nasal drawl. She looked back at her propped-up notebook, and her red-nailed fingers never paused or faltered in their furious tattoo upon her keyboard.
“Your assignment should be here, William,” Staples said. “I’ll check the teletype.”
Platt sat down at the neat new desk, and began to chew the eraser off a freshly sharpened pencil. He felt bewildered and despondent. The noise and hurry and tension of these vast offices gave him a bitter nostalgia for the small-town quiet of Clifton.
“I know it ain’t Heaven, Mr. Platt.” The nasal blonde laid a small yellow card on his desk. “But keep your chin up. You ain’t the only one. Look at me—a five-strike, all over a no-good palooka that didn’t care two cents about me.”
“Thanks, Miss . . . Mabel.”
Platt tried to smile. After all, the activities of a deputy advocate might prove to have a certain interest. And, if he had good luck with his clients, he might soon be out of this altogether. He remembered that bright mysterious ship, with a dull ache of longing.
“Here’s your assignment, Mr. Platt, just off the teletype.”
Platt took up the card, and read the names of his new clients. He shivered. The yellow oblong blurred. He couldn’t breathe. The office din broke over him, in overwhelming waves of sound.
“What’s the matter?” Hovering sympathetically, Mabel forgot her gum. “D’they hand you tough ones?”
“I’m afraid they did.” Platt’s voice came shaken and husky. “I couldn’t get these people past Inspector Ballantine, in a thousand years.” He looked hopefully toward the section manager’s desk, where Staples was now surrounded with madly clamoring telephones. “Is there . . . can I get the assignments changed?”
“Not a chance.” Mabel shook her thin peroxide locks. “They hand you a line about efficiency and office discipline. No, Mr. Platt, you just gotta take what they give you.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders, philosophically. “After all, this ain’t Heaven.”
“I see it isn’t,” Platt said heavily. He read the yellow card again:
OFFICE MEMO
TO: William Platt, Deputy Advocate
CLIENTS ASSIGNED; Ysobel Pickens, Stella Flanders, and Arthur Tanner
THE END.
1947
The Equalizer
There are two ways of overthrowing a dictatorship. One involves mighty weapons, mighty armies, and vast destruction. The other involves little weapons—
I.
Interstellar Task Force One was Earthward bound, from twenty years at space, Operation Tyler was complete. We had circled Barstow’s Dark Star, nearly a light-year from the Sun. The six enormous cruisers were burdened, now, with a precious and deadly cargo—on the frigid planets of the Dark Star we had toiled eight years, mining raw uranium, building atomic piles, filling the cadmium safety drums with terrible plutonium.
Jim Cameron and I, on the Great Director, spent the last months of our homeward flight in the ship’s prison. Held on suspicion of mutinous conspiracy, we underwent that efficient, antiseptic SBI equivalent of torture—intensive interrogation. Our release, like the arrest, was stunningly unexpected.
“O.K., you guys.” In the prison hospital, a bored guard shook us out of exhausted sleep. “Come alive, now. You’re sprung. Better get yourselves cleaned up—’cause Hudd wants to see you.”
Me returned our clean laboratory whites, and unlocked the shower room. The prison barber shaved us. We signed a receipt for our personal belongings, and finally stumbled out of the soundproof cell block where I had expected to die. There were no explanations and no regrets—the Special Bureau of Investigation was not emotional.
An MP sergeant was waiting.
“Come along, you guys.” He pointed his stick at the officers’ elevator. “Mr. Hudd wants to see you.”
“Surprising,” murmured Cameron. “But lead on.”
Mr. Julian Hudd was not an officer. He had no formal connection with either the SBI or the Atomic Service. He was merely a special secretary of the Squaredeal Machine. As such, however, he gave orders to the admiral-generals.
Hudd, the rumors said, was the illegitimate son of Director Tyler—and Tyler, the rumors added, had sent him out to the Dark Star because he was getting too dangerous at home. He had enlivened the flight, the envious rumors repeated, with a secret harem installed on his private deck.
The brisk MP herded us out of the elevator. Another guard patted us for weapons, and then let us through an armored door. Hudd’s aide, an Atomic Service commander, greeted us with astonishing civility.
“Go in, gentlemen.” He opened a chrome-and-mahogany door. “Mr. Hudd will see you at once.”
