Collected fiction, p.774
Collected Fiction, page 774
WITH that rumor abroad, I thought Griswold would act. There is no way to check such news. A man seldom announces openly that he is going into the Park. It could even be the truth, for all I knew. And for all Griswold knew, his supremacy was in deadly peril before he had even enjoyed his Triumph. There would be danger, of course, if he went out to defend his victory. Lindman and Cowles are both good Hunters. But Griswold, if he did not suspect my trap, had a chance at one sure victory—myself, Honest Roger Bellamy, waiting in berserker fury at a known rendezvous and with a right hand useless for fighting. Did it seem too obvious? Ah, but you don’t know Griswold.
When it was dark, I put on my hunting clothes. They are bulletproof, black, close-fitting, but very easy with every motion. I blacked my face and hands. I took gun, knife and machete with me, the metal treated so that it would not catch or reflect the light. I like a machete especially—I have strong arms. I was careful not to use my bandaged hand at all, even when I thought no one watched me. And I remembered that I must seem on the verge of berserker rage, because I knew Griswold’s spies would be reporting every motion I made.
I went toward Central Park, the entrance nearest the carousel site. That far Griswold’s men could track me, but no farther.
At the gate I lingered for a moment—do you remember this, Bellamy within me? Do you remember the plastic monuments we passed on the edge of the Park? Falconer and Brennan and the others, forever immortal, standing proud and godlike in the clear, eternal blocks. All passion spent, all fighting done, their glory assured forever. Did you envy them, too, Bellamy?
I remember how old Falconer’s eyes seemed to look through me contemptuously. The number of heads he had taken is engraved on the base of his monument, and he was a very great man.
“Wait,” I thought. “I’ll stand in plastic, too. I’ll take more heads than even you, Falconer, and the day that I do, it will be the day I can lay this burden down . . .”
Just inside the gate, in the deep shadows, I slipped the bandage from my right hand. I drew my black knife and, close against the wall, I began to work my way rapidly toward the little gate which is nearest Griswold’s mansion. I had, of course, no intention of going anywhere near the carousel site. Griswold would be in a hurry to get to me and out again, and he might not stop to think. Griswold was not a thinker. I gambled on his taking the closest route.
I waited, feeling very solitary and liking the solitude. It was hard to stay angry. The trees whispered in the darkness. The moon was rising from the Atlantic beyond Long Island. I thought of it shining on the Sound and on the city. It would rise like this long after I was dead. It would glitter on the plastic of my monument and bathe my face with cold light long after you and I, Bellamy, are at peace, our long war with each other ended.
THEN I heard Griswold coming. I tried to empty my mind of everything except killing. It was for this that my body and mind had been trained so painfully ever since I was six years old. I breathed deeply a few times. As always, the deep, shrinking fear tried to rise in me, fear, and something more. Something within me—is it you, Bellamy?—that says I do not really want to kill.
Then Griswold came into sight, and the familiar, hungry hatred made everything all right again.
I do not remember very much about the fight. It all seemed to happen within a single timeless interval, though I suppose it went on for quite a long while. It was a hard, fast, skillful fight. We both wore bulletproof clothing, but we were both wounded before we got close enough to try for each other’s heads with steel. He favored a saber, which was longer than my machete. Still, it was an even battle. We had to fight fast, because the noise might draw other Hunters, if there were any in the Park tonight.
But in the end I killed him.
I took his head. The Moon was not yet clear of the high buildings on the other side of the Park and the night was young.
I summoned a taxi. Within minutes, I was back in my mansion, with my trophy. Before I would let the surgeons treat me, I saw to it that the head was taken to the laboratory for a quick treatment, a very quick preparation. And I sent out orders for a midnight Triumph.
While I lay on the table and the surgeons washed and dressed my wounds, the news was flashing through the city already. My servants were in Griswold’s mansion, transferring his collections to my reception hall, setting up extra cases that would hold all my trophies, all True Jonathan Hull’s and all of Griswold’s, too. I would be the most powerful man in New York, under such masters as old Murdoch and one or two more. All my age-group and the one above it would be wild with envy and hate. I thought of Lindman and Cowles and laughed with triumph.
I thought it was triumph—then.
I STAND now at the head of the staircase, looking down at the lights and the brilliance, the row upon row of trophies, my wives in all their jewels. Servants are moving to the great bronze doors to swing them ponderously open. What will be revealed? The throng of guests, the great Hunters coming to give homage to a greater Hunter? Or—suppose no one has come to my Triumph, after all?
The bronze doors are beginning to open. And I’m afraid. The fear that never leaves a Hunter, except in his last and greatest Triumph, is with me now. Suppose, while I stalked Griswold tonight, some other Hunter ambushed even bigger game—what if, for example, someone has taken old Murdoch’s head? Then someone else would be having a Triumph in New York tonight, a greater Triumph than mine!
The fear is choking me. I’ve failed. Some other Hunter has beaten me. I’m no good . . .
No. Listen. Listen to them shouting my name! Look, look at them pouring in through the opened doors, all the great Hunters and their jewel-flashing women, thronging in to fill the bright hall beneath me. I feared too soon. I was the only Hunter in the Park tonight, after all. So I have won, and this is my Triumph.
There’s Lindman. There’s Cowles. I can read their expressions very, very easily. They can’t wait to get me alone tonight and challenge me to a duel in the Park.
They all raise their arms toward me in salute. They shout my name.
I beckon to a servant. He hands me the filled glass that is ready. Now I look down at the Hunters of New York—I look down from the height of my Triumph—and I raise my glass to them.
I drink.
Hunters, you cannot rob me now.
I shall stand proud in plastic, godlike in the eternal block that holds me, all passion spent, all fighting done, my glory assured forever.
The poison works quickly.
This is the real Triumph!
YEAR DAY
IRENE CAME BACK on Year Day. It’s a lost day for those of us who were born before 1980. The calendar day that comes between the end of the old year and the start of the new, the day when the lid’s off. New York was noisy. Beamed commercials followed me right along, even when I swung over onto the fast roadway. I’d forgotten my earplugs, too.
Irene’s voice spoke to me out of the little round grid above the windshield. It was funny how clearly I could hear it, even above all the noise.
“Bill,” the voice said. “Where are you, Bill?”
It had been six years since I heard the voice. For a minute everything else blanked out and it was as if I were driving along in silence, hearing nothing but Irene. Then I all but sideswiped a police car and the noise, the commercials, the tumult were normal again.
“Let me in, Bill,” Irene’s voice said out of the little grid. For just a second I almost thought I could. Her voice sounded so small and clear I thought I could reach up my hand and open the grid and take her down, tiny and perfect in my palm, standing there with her high heels denting my hand like little needles. Year Day gives me ideas like that. Anything goes.
I pulled myself together. “Hello, Irene.” My voice was perfectly calm. “I’m on my way home. Be there in fifteen minutes. The super will let you in.”
“I’ll wait, Bill,” the small, clear voice told me.
Then I heard the faraway click of the mike on my apartment door, and I was alone in the car again, feeling strange, feeling afraid, not sure if I wanted to see her but automatically pulling into the high-speed lane so I could get home quicker.
New York is noisy all the time. On Year Day the pace doubles. Everybody off work, out for a good time, in a spending mood if they ever are. The commercials went crazy. The air bounced and shivered with them. Once or twice the roadway passed through an area lined with special mikes and amplifiers to pick up sound and send out reactions enough out of phase to add up to silence. There were a couple of five-minute drifts like that, like driving in a dream after all the noise, but every minute on the minute a caressing voice told me, “This silence is coming to you by courtesy of Paradise Homes. Freddi Lester speaking.”
I don’t know if Freddi Lester exists. Maybe he’s a filmstrip composite. Maybe he isn’t. Certainly he’s too perfect to be real. A lot of men bleach their hair now and wear it in curls over the forehead, like Freddi. I’ve seen his face, projected ten feet high, sliding along the sides of buildings on the street in a circle of light, gliding and molding itself to every projection, and women reaching up to touch it as if it were real. “Breakfast time with Freddi. Hypnolearn while you sleep—with Freddi’s voice. Buy into Paradise Homes.” Yeah.
The roadway rushed out of a silent zone and the blare and roar of Manhattan hit me. BUY—BUY—BUY! over and over again, in a million different ways, with light and sound and rhythm.
She stood up when I came in. She didn’t say anything. She was wearing her hair a new way, and her make-up was different, but I’d have known her anywhere, in a fog, in pitch dark, with my eyes shut. Then she smiled, and I saw that the six years had maybe changed her a little after all, and I hesitated for a second, feeling afraid again. I remembered how right after our divorce a TV call had come from a woman made up to look exactly like Irene. She wanted to sell me advertising insurance.
But today, on this day that doesn’t really exist, it didn’t matter. Only cash sales are legal on Year Day, anyhow. Of course there aren’t any laws to protect a man against the thing I was afraid of, but that wouldn’t mean much to Irene. It never had. I doubt if she ever quite grasped the principle that I am real. Not basically, essentially grasped it. Irene is a product of her world. And so, of course, am I.
“This is going to be a tough conversation to start,” I said.
“Does today count?” she asked.
“Maybe it does,” I said. I went over to the server. “Drink?”
“Seven-Twelve-Jay,” she told me, and I dialed it. A pink drink came out. I dialed myself a Scotch and soda.
“Where have you been?” I asked her. “Happy?”
“I’ve been—somewhere. I think I’ve learned some things. Yes, very happy. Are you?”
I took a quick drink. “Oh, sure. Happy as a lark. Happy as Freddi Lester.”
She smiled faintly and sipped the pink drink. “You used to be jealous of Jerome Foret, when he had the Lester spot,” she said. “You used to wear a Foret double part in your hair, remember?”
“I learn,” I said. “You notice—no bleach? No curls? I’m not imitating anybody now. You used to be jealous too. I think you’re wearing a Niobe Gai hair job.”
She shrugged. “It was easier than an argument with the hairdresser. Maybe I thought you’d like it. Do you?”
“I like it on you. I try not to look at Niobe Gai. Or Freddi Lester.”
“Even their names are horrible, aren’t they?” she said. I was surprised.
“You’ve changed,” I told her. “Where have you been?”
She wouldn’t look at me. All this time we had been standing about ten feet apart, each a little afraid of the other. She gazed out the window and said, “Bill. For the last five years I’ve been living at Paradise Homes.”
I didn’t move for a while. Finally I lifted my glass and drank. Only then did I look at her. Now I knew why she seemed different. I’d seen women before who’d lived at Paradise Homes.
“Evicted?” I asked.
But she shook her head.
“Five years was enough. I got a full dose of what I thought I wanted. The—ultimate. I found out I’d been wrong, Bill. That wasn’t it.”
“All I know about Paradise Homes,” I said, “is the commercials. I didn’t think it would work, though.”
“You always were ahead of me, Bill,” she said humbly. “I know that too now. But it sounded good.”
“Nothing’s that easy. The real problems can’t be solved for us by hiring somebody else to do the work.”
“I know. Now. I suppose I’ve matured a little. But it’s hard. There’s so damned much conditioning so early nowadays.”
“How do you expect people to keep alive?” I asked her. “Total demand’s away down to whatever it is today, and production’s probably dropped since yesterday. We’ve got to take in each other’s washing to keep going. You need good strong advertising to make money. And by God, you’d better have money! There just isn’t enough to go around, that’s all.”
“Do you—are you doing all right?” Irene asked hesitantly.
“Is that an offer or a request?”
“Oh, an offer,” she said. “I’ve got enough.”
“Paradise Homes aren’t cheap.”
“I bought stock in the Lunar Servile Corporation five years ago, so I’m fairly rich now.”
“That’s nice. I’m all right too, thanks. Though I sank a lot in advertising protection insurance. The premiums run high, but it’s worth it. I can walk through Times Square now without feeling worried even when the Joysmoke Feelies are running.”
“There isn’t any advertising allowed in Paradise Homes,” she said.
“Don’t believe it. Now there’s a tight-beam sonic that can pierce walls and whisper hypnotism in your ear while you sleep. Even earplugs don’t help. It works through bone conductivity.”
“If you live in Paradise Homes, you’re protected.”
“You’re not now,” I said. “Why did you leave your nunnery?”
“Maybe I grew up.”
“Maybe.”
“Bill,” she said. “Bill—have you married?”
I didn’t answer, because something tapped at the window, and there was a little imitation bird fluttering around, trying to flatten itself against the glass. It had some kind of sucker-disk diaphragm on its breast. It must have been a beam transmitter, for suddenly a clear, brisk, unbirdlike voice said, “—so you must taste Creamies, you must——” Then the window automatically polarized and kicked the advertibird into space.
“No,” I said. “I’m not married, Irene.” I looked at her a moment. “Come out on the balcony,” I said.
The door spun us both out, and the Safeties went on. They’re expensive, but they’re included in my insurance premiums.
Here it was quiet. The special mikes picked up the yells of the city screaming its commercials to the sky and neutralized them to dead silence. The ultrasonic shook the air enough so that the blazing advertising of New York ran together in a blurred, melting waterfall of meaningless colors.
“What’s the matter, Irene?” I asked.
“This,” she said, and put her arms around my neck and kissed me.
After that she drew back and waited. I said again, “What’s the matter, Irene?”
“Nothing left, Bill?” she asked me softly. “All gone?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “My God, I don’t know. I’m afraid to know.” Afraid was the word. I couldn’t be sure. We grew up in a commercial world and how can we tell what’s real, now? Suddenly I moved my hand over the switchplate and the Safeties shut themselves off.
Instantly the flowing colors knotted into shouting signals in nucolor, as bright by day as by night. EAT DRINK PLAY SLEEP they blazed, screaming in silence for an instant, until the sonic barrier went down and the shout was no longer silent. EAT DRINK PLAY SLEEP! EAT DRINK PLAY SLEEP!
BE BEAUTIFUL!
BE HEALTHY!
BE ADMIRED BE TOPDOG BE RICH-ADMIRED-FAMOUS!
JOYSMOKE! CREAMIES! MARSFOOD!
HURRYHURRYHURRYHURRYHURRY!
NIOBE GAI SAYS-FREDDI LESTER PRESENTS-PARADISE HOMES FOR HAPPY ADJUSTMENT!
EAT DRINK PLAY SLEEP EAT DRINK PLAY SLEEP BUY BUY BUY!
I didn’t even realize Irene was screaming until I felt her shaking me and saw her white face swimming out from that pushing, driving, hypnotic whirl of colors, superadvertising planned by the best psychologists on earth, twisting everybody’s arm to squeeze out of them their last cent because there wasn’t enough dough to go around any more.
I turned the Safeties on again with one hand. With the other I held on to Irene. We were both a little punch-drunk. The advertising isn’t really quite as overwhelming as all that. It just isn’t safe to let it hit you suddenly when you’re emotionally imbalanced. The commercials work on emotion. They find out your weak spots. They aim at your basic drives.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right, as right as it ever will be. Look. The Safeties are on. The damned stuff can’t get in. It’s only when you’re a kid that it’s really bad. You don’t know enough to protect yourself. You get conditioned. Stop crying, Irene. Come inside.”
I dialed us another drink. She kept on crying and I kept on talking.
“It’s that damned conditioning,” I said. “Drummed into your head as soon as you’re old enough to know what words mean. Movies, TV, magazines, bookreels, every medium of communication there is. Aimed at just one thing—to make you buy. And doing it by trickery. Building up artificial needs and fears until you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. Nothing’s real—not even your breathing. It stinks. Use Kine-breath Chlorophyll Dulces. Damn it, Irene, I know why things went wrong with us.”
“Why?” she asked, muffled through her handkerchief.
“You thought I was Freddi Lester. Maybe I thought you were Niobe Gai. Not real people, changing and reacting all the time. No wonder marriage doesn’t work any more. Don’t you think I’ve ever wished it had been different?”
