Collected Short Fiction, page 150
But the unhappy men were the ones who were already married before Candy came in on the bus from Kansas City. The others turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. Take me. I got me a job at the bank, worked hard, and now I’m first vice-president. Next year, when old Mr. Bailey retires, I’ll be president.
Jess Hall, who married Choo-Choo, worked his way through law school, and now he’s Neosho’s top attorney. Lije Simpson, who married Kim, is a U.S. Senator. And Byron George, who married Dallas, he owns a string of super-markets. I could go on. The girls kept coming after April and they kept getting married. All their husbands did well. The ones who died, their wives married again and made something of those men, too.
There was something about those husbands that made them succeed. They had the ambition and the energy to work harder than other men. Maybe it was because they knew what they had at home, and they never worried about it. That was the way it was with me.
Who I felt sorry for was the Neosho girls. There was nothing wrong with them. They just couldn’t stand up to the competition. None of them got married. Who’d marry a Neosho girl when he could get a girl like Candy—or April?
The only thing was—well, it happened like this.
Saturday night was poker night. We got together down at the hotel, Marv and Doc and me and Jess and Byron George and Lije when he was in town. This Saturday, Congress being in recess, he was.
April made no fuss when I left. She never does. But I felt a kind of premonition at the door, and I turned and said, “You sure you don’t mind me leaving you alone?”
She straightened my shirt collar with her gentle hands and kissed me, looking no older than she had twenty years before and even prettier. “Why should I?” she asked, not nasty like some women might, but simple and direct. “Six nights a week you’re home with me. You deserve a night out with the boys.” And she pushed me out the door.
It was during the hand I had aces over sevens, naturally, that Doc said, “It’s a funny thing—six of us here, happily married, and not a chick nor child among us.”
Lije chuckled. “Maybe that’s why we’re happily married. Folks I know with kids, they’re jumpy and snappy. Things get on their nerves. Little things.”
“What I mean,” Doc said, “not a solitary one of the girls had any kids.”
“That can’t be so,” said Byron, but we couldn’t think of a single one of the girls who had any children.
Doc went on slowly, “There are hardly any little ones around any more. For awhile I thought they were going to young Fisher or Johnson, but there aren’t any hardly.”
“Why?” Jess asked bluntly.
“In my own case,” Doc said, “Tracy is sterile.” He looked sober. “I wanted kids, so after awhile I checked up. “When I found out—” He shrugged. “I figured a man can’t have everything.”
“I thought it was me,” said Byron.
“So did I,” said Marv. “It seemed impossible that Candy—”
We all nodded. It did seem impossible. We sat there without talking for a minute. I even forgot my full house.
“Well—?” I said.
“Well what?” said Marv.
“What’s the explanation?”
“Maybe,” Doc said reluctantly, “they’re all sterile.”
“Why?” Jess asked again.
Doc shrugged.
I started not liking the conversation. “Let’s play poker.”
Jess took it up. He was always sharp, Jess was. Nobody wanted to stand up against him in court. “Where did they come from? Anybody ever ask?”
“I never had the nerve,” said Byron. “It might be unlucky, like counting your chips.”
We nodded. It was like that.
Then Marv spoke up. “Candy came from Passaic, New Jersey. It was on her baggage check.”
“So did Choo-Choo,” said Jess. He hesitated. “I asked her.”
We looked at him with the respect of sensible cowards for a fool with guts enough to play Russian roulette.
“What have they got at Passaic?” Byron said.
“A lot of beautiful mothers,” Doc said.
You’ve been around where someone will toss off an idea, casual like, and someone else will carry it on to something new and valuable? Well, Jess started running with the ball. “You ever heard any of the girls mention family? Father, mother, brothers, sisters?”
We all shook our heads.
Damn it! He was beginning to make me wonder.
Marv couldn’t stand it. “Well,” he demanded, “what have they got at Passaic?”
Jess shrugged. “A factory maybe?”
We laughed. Part of it was relief. It was a joke after all.
“Who ever heard,” Byron said, “of a factory making things to give away?”
“Ever hear of installment payments?” Jess asked, his eyes slitted thoughtfully. “Do you keep track of every penny you give Dallas? Or maybe, like me, you hand over five dollars here, ten dollars there. Nothing down and twenty dollars a week for the rest of your life. Or more. They could make anything pay.”
I mused softly, “There never seems half as much stuff around as April asks money to buy.”
Byron shrugged impatiently. “We can afford it. Besides, if it weren’t for Dallas, I wouldn’t have it to give her—I’ll swear to that. A good wife is worth whatever you. have to pay.”
“Maybe so,” Doc said, “but can we afford the other thing? The sterility? Sure, as individuals. But how about as a town, as a nation, as a race?” He looked thoughtful. “It don’t matter if there are no more Winslows. But Neosho’s dying. So is the U.S. The birthrate is dropping. The experts say it’s a natural swing from the abnormally high rates of the forties and fifties, but match the percentage of ‘Passaic girls’ in Neosho against the falling birthrate, and I bet it would fit like Tracy’s bathing suit. Yes, sir!”
“That’s stupid!” Marv objected. “A business can’t wipe out its own market.”
“It can,” Jess said, “if that’s its business.”
“The Reds?” Byron tried on himself. “Nahhh! We haven’t had any trouble with them in a long time. They’ve got their own problems.”
“One of which,” Doc said grimly, “is the same one we’ve got—the falling birthrate.”
“Besides,” I said, trying to cool off everybody’s imaginations, “anything we could figure out here, the F.B.I. would have uncovered years ago.”
“Exactly,” Jess said.
“What do you mean by that?” Marv complained.
“He means,” Doc said slowly, “maybe It’s a scheme by our own government to cut the birthrate.”
Jess shook his head. “Too drastic. Looks to me like this is for keeps. I bet there hasn’t been anyone but a Passaic girl married in Neosho in twenty years. And I don’t think there’s been a child born here in five years—you know, to the McDaniels, and she was almost forty.”
Byron looked hard at Jess. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”
Jess rubbed his sweaty hands on a balled-up handkerchief. “I’m scared.” You could tell from his voice—he really was.
Marv said in a thin, nervous voice, “Well, you’re scaring us, too. Go on. You can’t stop now. I ain’t gonna sleep anyhow.”
Jess swallowed hard and said, “Seems to me somebody is eliminating—people.”
“How’d they do that?” Marv complained querulously.
Doc answered instead of Jess. “Ever hear of the screwworm?” We all shook our heads. “Of course not. They’re all gone. But they used to be a serious warm-country cattle pest. The adult females—ordinary looking flies—laid eggs on wounds or scratches in the hide of cattle. When the larvae hatched out, they burrowed into the flesh, sometimes eating the poor beasts alive.”
“What’s a dead screwworm got to do with this?” Marv asked impatiently.
Jess held up his hand for time, like he held it up to a jury just as a witness was about to make the point that would swing the case. Then he nodded at Doc.
Doc went on. “Science wiped out the screw-worm. The female, it seems, mated only once. So entomologists raised flocks of males, sterilized them with gamma rays, and let them loose. The females laid infertile eggs for the rest of their lives, and the screw-worm was extinct.”
“I don’t see—” Marv began.
Jess cut him off. “Instead of sterile males, somebody is making sterile females, and making them so good that nobody wants to marry anything else. Look at it this way—the paternal instinct is an acquired reflex. It’s practically non-existent before marriage. To a bachelor, somebody’s kid is just a pest. Then he gets married. If he wants kids, it’s just because he thinks it’s the thing to do. Not because he needs them.”
Doc nodded reluctantly. So did the rest of us.
Jess spread his hands wide. “So? We’re being eliminated.”
“By who?” I asked.
“About thirty years ago,” Jess said, “in the fifties, lots of people swore they saw flying saucers in the air. In the last twenty years there hasn’t been much of that. My guess is that somebody—call them Martians, or maybe Venusians would be better, although they’re probably from outside this solar system entirely—somebody built that factory in Passaic. And maybe another in Leningrad, one in Nanking, and so forth. And now they’re letting us commit suicide.”
“Why would anybody—anything,” Byron corrected, “want to do that?”
Jess said, “Earth is a pretty choice piece of real estate in the galactic neighborhood—running water, a good breeze, central heating. . . . So the Venusians built their factories—letting the victims subsidize them to keep the places growing—and waited for time to do their work for them. In a century or less, they can come back and take possession; the former tenants will be gone for good. Simple, effective, and cheap. Nothing messy like armed invasion.”
“If we’re being conquered,” Marv argued, “why doesn’t the government do something about it?”
We all looked at Lije. Up to now, he hadn’t said hardly anything.
“Suppose we were being conquered in that way,” Lije said quietly. “What could the government do? Suppose they told you, Marv, that Candy was an invasion weapon. You’d either laugh at them or get mad and vote somebody in there who wasn’t such a damn fool. Suppose they told you to get rid of her. Good-bye, Washington.”
“Well, sure—” Marv said vigorously.
“Another thing,” Lije said. “Suppose the government stopped that factory in Passaic from turning out girls like Candy and Kim and Choo-Choo and Dallas and April and Tracy—and that would be pretty close to sacrilege—chances are 99 to 1 that somebody or something would get a warning to Venus: plan number one has failed; start plan number two. And number two might be the messy kind. Any race that knows enough about science to make a woman—and by golly! they are women, all except for the babies—and knows enough about me to make a woman like Kim, I don’t want to tangle with.”
We just sat there, no more objections in us, trying to get used to the idea. Intellectually, we were convinced. But we couldn’t face the consequences.
“Wait a fraction,” said Byron. “Lije, you talked real certain for a man who was just supposing.”
“I ought to,” Lije said. “It’s all true. Maybe I shouldn’t be letting it out, but the government’s been going around with this thing for years now. Maybe you fellows can figure out an answer. We can’t. If it gets out for good it would start a panic and the Venusians wouldn’t have to wait a century.”
Suddenly Marv blurted out, “I won’t give up Candy. I don’t care what she is, I couldn’t ask for anything more in a woman. And anyone who tries to take her away had better come armed and with friends.”
“I guess we know how you feel,” Jess said, “because we all feel the same way.” We nodded. “Nevertheless, we have to make a real sacrifice. The way I look at it, we’re soldiers now, and soldiers have to face hardship.”
We all nodded, grimly. I never did get to bet those aces over sevens.
Well, we’ve done it. The Venusians, when they come back next century, are in for a nasty surprise.
Life is a mite different now. Take yesterday, for instance. I locked up my bank—I’m president now—and walked a few blocks to a little cottage with a white fence around it. The kids came tumbling out the door: Kit, 5; Kevin, 4; Laurie, 3; Linda, 2; and Karl, 1. They swarmed over me like ants over a crumb, holding my legs, tugging at my arms. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” they shouted, all except Karl, who doesn’t talk yet, but he clings as hard as anybody.
I dragged them to the front door, feeling only half my 44 years. There I peeled them away, one by one, and smacked them, once on the face, once on the bottom.
“Well,” Jane says nastily, “did you decide you could spend a few minutes with your family?”
I grunted something and pecked at her sweaty cheek. She’d been bending over the stove, fixing supper.
“You’re sure you can spare the time?” she asked sarcastically.
I went and sat down in my favorite chair, not answering. It’s better not to answer. Jane is large and round again, eight months along, and they are worse then. But I could tell she was glad to see me.
“Goodness knows,” she snarled, “it isn’t as if we need you. You can leave any time you feel like it.
“Just because you pay the bills—”
You see how it is? The Venusians made one big mistake: they forgot the basic mating peculiarity of the human species—the female is naturally monogamous, and the male, polygamous.
I can stand Jane all right. In a way it’s kind of refreshing. It’s only one night a week, and if I get fed up I can get up and leave any time I feel like it. I can get up and go home to April. THE END
When the Shoe Fits
Alyn knew that what she saw was an illusion. But who was to decide what was real—the natives, or the Earthmen?
JAMES E. GUNN first appeared in science-fiction in 1949 under a pseudonym, but in recent years the pen-name seems to have gone into semi-retirement. A prolific writer of short stories, Gunn is also the author of a novel, “This Fortress World” (Gnome Press).
ALYN WAS A XENOLOGIST. She was also a woman. The xenologist was worried. The woman was scared. The natives were throwing a ball, and she had a horrid suspicion that her teammates would insist she go.
She slipped through the market place, unnoticed in the blaze of noon, and damned private enterprise. . . .
Private enterprise made ET exploration possible. Government could do it, but Government wouldn’t. That had been proved. Space was fantastically big, and ET exploration was fantastically expensive. ET exploration was also vital: humanity needed a frontier for the good of its soul; for the good of its body it needed that frontier as far as possible from Earth.
Laws were drafted to make exploration profitable, and humanity was unleashed upon the galaxy. Jonathan Craddock, Exploiters and Importers, was born—along with one hundred competitors, more or less.
The Bureau of Extraterrestrial Affairs was born at the same time to enforce the laws and regulate the profit.
If an exploration team located an uninhabited world or a Level 6 culture—stringently defined by BETA regulations as one ready for terrestrial contact—the company received an exclusive franchise to exploit that world. In actual practice only the Level 6 discovery was worthwhile. Exploitation of an uninhabited world was theoretically possible, but at this stage of Earth’s technological development, the capital outlay was prohibitive. A company could wait five years for a profit; it couldn’t wait a hundred.
On the other hand, one Level 6 discovery recouped a thousand failures. Virgin trade territory was fabulously profitable.
Exploration teams had two assets: the Fairfax field, that subtle electronic gadget which persuades those creatures within its range that they see what they are expecting to see; and the quality of their members, who were motivated by that most reliable of incentives—greed. Their rewards were graduated sharply according to achievements up to a Level 6 plateau which made each team member independently wealthy for life.
Labor unions objected to the incentive system; idealists objected to the motives. Both worked. The persons who signed company contracts sought not security but adventure, not ends but means. They were neither morally better nor worse than the ordinary run of humanity, but they were more determined, more persistent, more ingenious, and more trustworthy.
The teams had an equal number of debits: since the companies could not wait centuries, the teams had to move fast; and speed means mistakes through lack of understanding. Like idioms. The Translators were good, but only experience can translate idioms. . . .
That thought bothered Alyn most as she threaded her way through the crowded street back toward the ship. A native turned sharply and looked at her with surprised violet eyes. Then she drew closer, and his eyes went blank. Alyn shivered, although Meissner’s Star was hot, and drew her cloak closer around her.
“When there’s dirty work to be done,” she thought rebelliously, “I’m the one who has to do it.”
Her lips moved silently, she damned them: Davis, Pip, and the Skipper—her teammates, her men, her children, her lovers. . . . Long ago Earth’s voyagers had found the ideal spaceship complement: three men and a woman. Carefully selected, a woman could easily be all things to three men, and three men, if they tried hard, could be all things to a woman.
But they imposed on her, as men do upon a woman who loves them. They expected her to slave for them all night and all day, too, while they lolled at home. . . .
She focused her desires on reaching the spaceship that towered tall and iridescent in the distance. Home. They would be waiting for her. Her face softened, grew feminine and lovely. Quiet, loyal Davis—the methodical scientist, at home with things, asea in human relations, never expecting anything, always grateful for whatever he received. Little, effervescent Pip—the sure-fingered technician, shrewd, impertinent, and easily hurt. The Skipper—big, blond, self-sufficient, monosyllabic, avuncular. . . .
