Killdozer! (32 page)

He took her hand off his arm. “I got a date,” he said.

His head hurt.

He went straight to Sara Nell’s house, thinking about what he should say when he saw her. He thought up plenty, but when he stood in the light of her opened door, he forgot it all and said only, “I got the money. They had it, all right.”

“Joe! You’re hurt!”

“I feel fine.” How she got into his arms he couldn’t imagine. He held her close and stroked her hair. She didn’t turn her face away. His eyes were hot. He said, “You’re so
little!
You’re no bigger’n a little old mouse. I oughta call you Mousie.”

She said, “All right, Joe.”

He held her close, but he was careful, because his arms were so strong he didn’t want to hurt her.

I
N SPITE OF
the resilient walls and acoustabsorbing floors, Jay Scanlon’s startled
“What?”
carried through four different offices, causing three typing errors, one inadvertent subtotal and two cases of mild profanity. The erg-per-worker meter on his desk, wired to every business machine in the place, chalked up eighteen man-minutes lost time, divided that by the number of office employees, and advanced the quitting-time gong relays by two-tenths of a second.

“I’m sorry, Jay,” said Pellit. He unfolded out of his chair and helped himself to a cigarette, which he struck on his thumbnail. “We’ve got to have the guy, and on his terms. There isn’t any other way out.”

Jay’s contorted features relaxed into their usual expression of undershot wistfulness. “It’s not right. It’s—sacreligious, practically. The man’s an iconoclast. This is a technological culture and has been for the past three thousand years. I’ll admit the necessity for going back to techniques that were in use practically in the dawn of time, but I don’t see where we can’t get along without a crackpot who says right out loud that he’d rather live in the past.”

“Yeah, he talks too much. But he’s a topnotch researcher. Universal Synthetics has come a long way by its policy of buying, making, and hiring the best. And he’s the best there is.”

Jay snorted. He pointed at his unlovely but appealing head and said, “See that face? That’s the best I’ve got too. For the same reason. Sure he’s the best. There’s no other human on the three planets who is crazy enough to have wasted his whole life in digging up useless information. It’s—it’s—” he searched for the strongest word he could find, lowered his voice to be sure the stenos couldn’t hear him, and said, “It’s
inefficient!”

Pellit started. “Please, Jay. It doesn’t call for foul language. The
trend of events has proved that his work is of some use, or we wouldn’t be seeing him this afternoon.”

Jay sighed. “I know. I know. But he couldn’t have known of that. Not thirty years ago when he started burrowing in the Archives. It’s
unplanned
, don’t you see? It’s
sinful!
What’s funny?”

Pellit turned loose the smile that had been puckering his cheeks. “I can’t help it, Jay. The beautiful paradox! The complete stasis of progress! Onward and Upward—that’s what we’ve been fed since we were children, and ninety generations before us. We’ve lived by it and worked by it, and we have progressed. We’re moving onward and upward all right, but at such a uniform rate that we’re completely hidebound. As a unit we progress; within the unit we’re in complete and utter stasis. By going backward to the Metal Age techniques in this thing, our social unit takes a big jump upward, but within it violates all our conventions, and we throw up our hands in holy horror like a pack of Monday-school teachers finding a steam-engine on the Altar at Willow Run Sanctuary.”

“It isn’t funny. And you’re almost as bad as Mauritius the Drip … why does he call himself that, anyway?”

“Oh, some idea of his that he feels identifies him with his work. ‘Drip’ was a widely used term back there somewhere in the umpteenth century, so he says; a widely used descriptive term of a typical period in which he considers himself an expert. Ask him about it.”

“What’d it describe?”

“He claims that all the great men of the pre- Fourth and Last era were called drips at one time or another—the peace-making statesmen, the theoretical scientists, the advanced artists, and so on. So he figures he’s a drip too.”

“The guy should have a number,” Jay said glumly. “All right; send him in.”

The Anson dilator in the wall opposite opened, adding a cubicle of the waiting compartment to Jay’s office. Mauritius the Drip was not sitting in the luxurious chair provided but was on the floor with his feet on the seat and his back to the wall. “In protest,” he explained, indicating his pose, “as I must protest all of the artificialities of this effeminate culture.”

Jay stared open-mouthed at the lanky apparition, with its rough beard-stubble, its anachronistic clothes, its long bony face on which was mounted an antediluvian pair of eye-lenses in thick mottled-amber frames. “What,” said Jay with something like horror in his voice, “is that?”

“Mauritius the Drip,” said Pellit. “This is Jay Scanlon.”

“No, no,” said Jay. “I mean all that—on his face.”

Mauritius ran the edge of a thumbnail raspingly down his cheek. “That,” he said hollowly, “is a beer. Every normal male would have one were it not for the effect of your ridiculous Rites of pubertescence, where the skin of the face is irradiated in the name of efficiency.”

“Oh yes,” said Pellit suddenly. “I seem to have heard of a legend to that effect. In the pre- Fourth and Last era that facial pilosity was cultivated by scratching with a sharp blade, wasn’t it? they called it ‘raising with a shaver,’ didn’t they?”

“You have been studious,” said Mauritius loftily, “but careless. Your sources were at fault. It wasn’t ‘raising with a shaver,’ but ‘shaving with a razor.’ A razor was the instrument used, and must have been the object meant by repeated references in the contemporary press to ‘a check for a short beer.’ ”

“An expert was what I asked for,” mourned Jay, “and an expert was what I got. Is there any possibility that we can get down to business?”

“Yes,” said the Drip. “What is it that caused you irreverent progressives to summon me?”

“Irreverent,” wailed Jay. The customary pathos in his face dissolved into a grieved sort of numbness. “Irreverent! And who’s talking?”

Mauritius the Drip uncoiled and stood up, startlingly tall. “Yes, irreverent!” he said, stalking across to Jay’s desk. “Look at me! What am I, besides the greatest antiquarian on the three planets?” He flung out a bony forefinger. “A true representative of a race, and faithful to it—all of it. What are you? A piddling example of a passing phase. Who, presented to an impartial interstellar being, would be the truest example of our genus—you, who glance lightly at today and
concentrate forever on tomorrow and tomorrow—or I—” (every time the Drip used the nominative pronoun he got a quarter of an inch taller) “who live and think and work in everything humanity is and has been in seven thousand years? You, who base your faith on logic—does this logic tell you you have seven thousand years of
future
to back up your faith?”

“You spit when you talk,” said Jay.

Pellit raised his fists to his temples and pounded softly. “Business, for heaven’s sake, business.… Jay, whittle that stuff away and let’s get down to it.”

Mauritius the Drip turned to Pellit. “That,” he said, “is a very interesting phrase. Would you like to know its origin?”

“No.”

“It is derived from the name of the man who first developed jet propulsion for aircraft, a Captain George Whittle; the colloquial phrase referred to ‘whittling down distances’ because of the vast increase in speed that was then possible. Date, about nineteen sixty, toward the close of the Second War. The phrase, like everything else, has been corrupted since those noble days.”

“Fascinating,” mourned Jay Scanlon. “I find this whole conversation unproductive, to say the very least. I am sorry to say that we need your services. Would you care to have me say something further about it?”

“Jay,” said Pellit frantically, reading the signs, “Don’t throw him out!”

“I can’t,” moaned Jay, his eyes fixed on the erg-per-worker meter as if it were some sort of triptych. “Mauritius, we need your advices on a matter concerning which you just might be able to help us.”

“That is self-evident, or I wouldn’t be here. You’re wasting time,” said the Drip.

“Your fault,” said Jay. “I never saw anything like it. You radiate procrastination.” He drew a deep breath, and, rocking sideways in his chair, sat on his hands. Pellit grinned at him sympathetically.

“We are building a ship,” said Jay, his sad voice quivering with enforced gentleness. “Interstellar, but big. The biggest thing that man has ever built. The keel is being laid in mile-long sections in Chicago
Center and is being floated out into Lake Michigan as each deadrise bilge-plate is fitted. Floating it saves us thousands of cradling operations. The superstructures are being added to the floating section. Except for electrical, electronic, and magnetronic installations, the ship will be entirely built of synthetics.”

“The first successful synthetics, or plastics, as they were then known,” said the Drip didactically, “were bakelite (so called because as a thermosetting plastic it was baked, and it was light) and celluloid. They were inv—”

“THE REASON WE—” shouted Jay over this local interference, “—called you in is that we have run into a logistic problem. We can synthesize any element—most in commercial quantities—and with them we can compound any synthetic. But almost without exception, our transmutatory processes are exothermic. Theoretically we can absorb a good part of this excess heat in compounding and treating our thermosetting materials; but even under ideal conditions—are you listening?”

“No,” said the Drip. “I was, but I can’t see the bearing of all this on my work. If you’ll excuse me, and give me another appointment, I’ll come back when you’ve gotten to the point.”

Jay puckered up slowly and completely like a two-year-old just realizing that mother meant it when she said no dessert. “Pellit,” he whispered, “why does he
do
that?”

“That,” beamed the Drip, “is rudeness. It was the basic tone of the entire pre- Fourth and Last age. Men were men in those days. Friction between ego and ego, between nation and nation—that was a holy tradition. In those golden days, ‘the common weal’ could not be presented as an unanswerable argument to the desired action of man or state, as it is among you pantywaists. The man who earned the respect of the people was the man who forcibly bent the public mind to his own will. I will not freely co-operate with the internal stasis of this effeminately harmonious culture. I must be bludgeoned and forced into it against my will. I
will
uphold my position as a social misfit. I am the most offensive man in the known universe, and I hold my offensiveness as a sacred trust.” He leaned over and smashed his fist down on the yielding synthetic of Jay’s desktop.
“What your forebears had during their glorious history, the one constant in the ebb and flow of their social evolution was the ‘underdog.’ The underdog was the minority group, the constant author of change through strife, the source of the magnificently gruesome virility of the age. I am the underdog. I
will
be exploited. I
will
be oppressed, whether you like it or not. See?”

“This,” said Jay Scanlon faintly, “is not reasonable.”

“A strong term to use,” said Pellit. “Remember, ‘That which exists is reasonable.’ Second Book, G.E. Schenectady.”

“Thank you, Pellit. The Scriptures help.”

“G.E. Schenectady,” said the Drip gratuitously, “was, it may surprise you to learn, merely a pseudonym for the pamphleteer who composed your precious Edicts of Efficiency. The name originally applied to a corporation organized for private profit, circa—”

“Stop it!”
Jay screamed. “I will not have another word of your iconoclastic semanticism in my office!”

“The Basic Tenet,” said Mauritius suavely. “ ‘Freedom of utterance in gatherings of three or more.’ ”

“I yield,” said Jay, with the traditional conditioned reflex. “I ask that you restate and contin—”

“No, No!” cried the Drip eagerly. “Don’t retract! Stop that uncerebrated mouthing! Don’t you see that at last you are oppressing me? I’m persecuted. I’m ground under your heel. What was it you were saying about heat?”

Feeling that the enemy had encircled him only to reinforce his lines of supply, Jay sat and gaped. Pellit grabbed the opportunity.

“What Jay was getting at,” he said, “was that although it is perfectly possible for us to transmute and synthesize all of our raw materials for this project, most of the processes involved are exothermic. What are we going to do with all the excess heat we can’t use? We could circulate lake water, up to a point; but what to do when the lake warms up? In this one job alone we will release enough heat to raise
all
of the Great Lakes over 90°C—let alone just Lake Michigan.”

“You’ll kill all the fish.”

“Fish? That’s the least of it! Have you any idea of how long it would take for those bodies of water to cool? Fifty-eight trillion cubic
meters of water at 90°? Over ten years. I think we could hypothesize an annual average loss of a possible 6.5°. It would be anyway twelve, possibly fifteen years. That’s pasteurization with a vengeance! The lakes would be completely sterile. All of the bacteria of decomposition, all of the algae necessary to the carbon-oxygen cycle would perish. Can you imagine the windstorms, the rain, over those millions of square kilometers of hot area?” He shook his head. “And I’m just fooling with theory. All that would be true if we could distribute the heat evenly all over all of the lakes simultaneously. We can’t. We couldn’t hope to construct circulators which would do more than concentrate our surplus heat over more than the southern half of Lake Michigan. And then what would we have? In two months, a steaming swamp around Chicago Center, with a constant holocaust going on two hundred miles north as the cold water rushed in to compensate for our vaporization loss. Where is our advantage then, of floating the hull? What of the men who will have to work on it?”