Pohlstars (25 page)

In all of the hour and forty-odd minutes in which Charlie, husband of Harriet, father of Florence and Chuck, searched his responses to a wide range of offerings, he performed something over five thousand million separate operations, including parity checks and internal verifications. He faithfully reflected the customs and tastes of the average of a sample of some 4 million American males as they pertained to the purchase of tobacco, beer, gasoline, automotive accessories, soft drinks, airline tickets, motion picture admissions, sporting goods, hi-fl equipment, toilet articles, and power tools. When his final magnetic report was on the tape, he signaled by ringing a bell. That was the end of Charlie's working day. In a sense it was the end of his life.

The girl in the light-gray dress was in the assistant division chief's office when Charlie's bell rang, and so she didn't react at once. Charlie waited like a man on a benzedrine high, his mind clear and capable, but disengaged. It was nearly 1100 when the girl got back to her desk.

She took the spool of tape that held all his opinions and threaded it into a printer, where it began typing out plain copy at a rate of 350 words a minute. She replaced it with a blank spool, consulted her work sheet, and began to change Charlie with switch, with patch-cord, and with dial.

As she worked whole banks of memories dropped out of circuit. Chuck and Florence fell out of his personality without leaving a mark. His wife disappeared, his house, his car; the Los Angeles Dodgers went, with the Little League and the dunning letters from the bank.

She then checked the programming sheet and, following its instructions, selected new personality ingredients for Charlie: an economic level, an age, a set of buying habits, a profile of interests. She began to charge Able Charlie with the sum of these habits and biases. He was not yet aware of what he was, since he had not yet received the command to learn himself. For that matter, he was no longer "he. Now Able Charlie was a teenage girl, her principal interests cosmetics, soft drinks, clothes, records, and boys.

When all the patches were complete and the new tapes were ready to roll, the girl in the gray dress double- checked, and pressed the "execute button. Able Charlie, AC-770, began to take up his-her-its new life.

The girl in the gray dress idly examined the polish on her nails. Her mind was not far from standby mode, either; until the first readout came, or a trouble signal, she had nothing to do but wait for lunch.

Inside the AC-770 Charlie, or Charlotte, was swiftly sniffing colognes whose fragrance was only the simulation of magnetic patterns on iron-oxide tape and comparing shades of lipstick whose colors were only a point on a hypothetical scale. The girl programmer was comparing colors, too. She wished idly that she had a friend to chat with-Rose Pink, after all? Or Catalina Coral ?-but when she thought she heard a low contralto sigh she dismissed it at once. She knew that she was alone.

This is the third kiss of death story in this volume. This one I was maneuvered into by that secret master of us all, Harlan Ellison. He called me up one day to tell me there was a new magazine to be published by Bob Guccione-not
Omni;
it was long before
Omni-
whose editor, he said, was slavering to have a short article on the future written by me. Well, short articles on the future I sneeze out at the slightest request, and the money was good; when the editor called a little later, I told her I'd be glad to do it. We talked a little bit about subject matter, and I sat down to write it. I was typing happily along when the phone rang again. Had I understood, she wanted to know, that by "piece' she meant
fiction
piece-specifically, not an article but a short story? I had not. I wouldn't have started on the thing if I had. Still, in the course of thinking about the themes I wanted to touch on in the article I had dreamed up what seemed to me a brand-new aspect of a long considered subject. So I said, all right, I'll do a story.. . and did.. and then, what do you know, the new magazine died stillborn. The story languished in Bob Guccione's files for a year or two until he started another new magazine. This one was called
Viva,
and my story appeared in its first issue. But this time the Pharaoh's curse had not yet finished its work.
Viva's
first issue was also its last, and this time I had slain not one but
two
magazines with a single story.

This is the way it was with Stan and Evanie: they fell in love. When Stan came out of the waking-up room at Blue Balls, Evanie was there, pretty and new on the job and a little flustered, to give him his check and see that everything was all right. One thing led to another. An hour later they were lying in the long grass at the foot of a waterfall, gently stoned, skin bare on the warm, soft turf, listening to Rorschach Rock while sweet bunnies and gentle chipmunks peered at them from the edges of the lawn.

It was like the first time for both of them, only better, because they each knew every move the other was going to make and leapt to meet each other; there was never skin softer or smoother than Evanie's, never a breast as firm. Stan stayed hard inside her for fifty-four minutes, never impatient, bringing her with joy through gasps and shudders until both of them had had it all and they lay spent and contented among the violets. It was like the first time, because it was always like the first time; and, as always, the first they knew that it was over was when the waterfall stopped and the bunnies froze in midhop.

"Oh," said Evanie drowsily, "shit. She sat up and leaned away from him, scratching the inside of her thigh. "I guess I better get back to work, Sam.

"Stan.

"It was really nice, though, Stan.

"Yeah. Now that the breezes had stopped, too, Stan became aware of the way they smelled. In the city outside this room he would never have noticed it, but after the perfumed flowers it was a bring-down, and now that the soft sunlight was off, the lawn was only CelloTurf again and it itched.

The next couple was already waiting in the entry room. Stan and Evanie nodded to them and pushed their checks into the locker slots. As they got dressed Stan said, "I'd really like to do this again some time.

"Zip me up, will you?

"No, I mean it, Evanie.

She patted his shoulder absently and pushed the door open. They walked out into the city, and the heat and the stink smote them. Behind them the liquid-crystal sign glowed its message:

Harry's Place 30 Studsy Sex Spectaculars 30

The colors flowed into Super-Stud embracing the tenderest blond beauty who ever lived, with waving palms dissolving into mirrored walls behind them.

"Thanks, Stan. I'll see you.

He put out his hand to stop her. "I seriously mean I want to do it again, Evanie.

"But it's so expensive!

"I've got a thousand dollars a week, he said proudly. "I can afford it now, what the hell?

She was suddenly blinded with tears. "And how do you get it'? she sobbed. No! Let go of my arm, Stan. I've got to go.

He called after her, sweet little rump jouncing under the hem of the work-mini as she hurried away. but she didn't look back. Perplexed-and, he realized, hungry- he pushed his way through the crowded hall to a fast- food. "Fuck her," he said to the cashier as he pushed his credit card into its slot, but it was only a money machine and did not reply.

Two hours later he was still sitting at the same table in the fast-food, but he had switched from food to drink. "I don't have to eat in a joint like this, he told the man across from him. The man had been sitting there for ten minutes, nursing a cup of imitation coffee and eying Stan's collection of empty glasses. He brightened up.

"Yeah. I could tell that by looking at you. You're used to better places, right, Mac?

"I damn am.

"You can always tell somebody with, you know, some kind of status. It's the way you sit there, even.

"Right, said Stan. "Want a drink?

The man looked at the flickering digits on the wall clock. "Well, he said, "I really ought to be getting along- Which was doubtful; he was Welfare from clipped head to fabric shoes, nothing to do but wait for Thursday (payday), just the way Stan had been most of his life. Stan's face must have showed what he was thinking; the man said quickly, "Still, I wouldn't mind a beer.

Stan pushed his card into the cashier and read out the total glumly; after the beer, the readout showed he had $766.22 left in his account. Harry's Place wasn't cheap. "I just came from Harry's, he said. "You ever been there? Nice little screwery, if the company's right.

"I bet she was, huh?

"You won that bet. Prettiest little thing you ever saw. I met her at... I met her where we both work.

"I had a job, the man said enviously. "What kind of work do you do'?

"Parts. What about your job?

"Well, it was in personal service. I worked up in the penthouse areas when I was younger. Sort of general handyman. I used to go to places like Harry's all the time. Stud farms, casinos, travel-I've been skiing, two or three times. He knocked back the rest of his beer and pushed the empty container absentmindedly into the middle of the table. "Yeah, you can have a pretty good life, when you have a job. What kind of parts do you mean?

"All different ones. The forget-it shots were wearing off, the selective proteins that numbed the sense of boredom and made everything seem fresh and exciting, even sex, and Stan was rapidly tiring of his company. Funnily, he wasn't tiring of Evanie. In his not particularly adventurous life she was probably the five- or six-hundredth girl he'd screwed, and the fourth or fifth he had taken to Harry's, after he found out how to get a thousand dollars a week for practically nothing, but there was something about her that stuck in his mind. No, not in his mind; he could feel a crawling between his thighs when he thought of her, even with the forget-it wearing off and being in this crummy joint.

The Welfare man saw his next free beer wriggling off the hook. "Let me tell you what it's like, up in the high- rent district, he said. "You know they've got swimming pools bigger than this whole restaurant, water so clean you'd think it was perfume? Dances, with live orchestras?

"I heard.

"It isn't the same, just hearing it or seeing it on the tube; you have to be there. Friend, the happiest days of my life were when I was up there. The women wore clothes that lit up, and turned peekaboo, and just hugged their little butts like skin. Just to look at them was enough! Almost enough. And half of them were just begging to get balled by the hired help, beds you wouldn't believe, all the grass and fine wine you could handle-

"You talked me into it, Stan said cruelly. "I think I'll head up there for a visit now.

It wasn't exactly a lie, he told himself. He really could go up there, at least long enough to spend the rest of his thousand dollars in one of the restaurants looking out into the clouds over the ocean; and maybe he would.

* * *

Plenty of money in the balance, nothing to do Stan wandered through the midlevel streets of the city, reminding himself that anything he saw he could buy if he wanted to. This was all Welfare country; not a soul in sight that had had a dime in capital or a dollar's pay in ten years. He wasted a few dollars in a game parlor. bought himself a new wristlet because it looked like something Evanie would appreciate. stopped to buy some popsoy to give to a couple of nice-looking, hungry-looking kids but decided against it-you never knew when they might threaten to call the fuzz for molesting them if you didn't pay off. That wasn't his style; all he wanted to molest was a pretty lady. There was plenty of that around. too, and he cased the available material carefully without seeing anything that took his fancy.

What took his fancy was Evanie.

But what was the use of that, when she let him spend two and a half big bills in Harry's Place and then took off without even saying she'd see him again? Most girls appreciated that kind of thing a little more. That was half the best part of it, not just the fucking but taking her to a place your average working man couldn't afford more than twice a year and your Welfare stiff couldn't get inside the door of.

He found he was near an observation gallery, and pushed his card into the admissions turnstile-five dollars to look out the window!-and strolled out. Even there it was crowded, mostly couples and cops, the couples to make out in some place other than their dormitories and the cops to keep them from it.

He stood looking over Lower New York Bay through the smoggy clouds, without seeing much that interested him. The high walls of Jersey City were lighting up as it got dark, and far out past Sandy Hook he could see the lights of the offshore oil condominiums, It was the third time he had been there in three days. and it wasn't worth it. It was only worth it when you couldn't afford it; the reality was a waste of time.

All the things they used to talk about in the dorms, they were true enough. Having a job wasn't just getting a paycheck. Having a job was a thing to organize your life around. It was something to do. Having a job was thirty-two hours a week when you felt it mattered, some way or another, whether you were in one place or some different place.

Having ajob was a lot better than being in parts, even though the pay there was all you could want.

Shortly before the end of the shift he went up to the Blue Balls office. The sign didn't say that, the sign said:

Associated Medical Services
of Greater New York
TransParts Division

but everyone knew it by the other name. Usually he didn't like to hang around there, but apart from being where he got his money, it was also where Evanie worked. The trouble with that was that he hadn't caught her last name.

Stan walked in through the door as though he had never been there before, and a receptionist smiled and said, "Good evening, sir. One of our account executives will be with you right away.

"I just wanted to ask you-

"Yes, sir. It's company policy that our account executives give out all information. Here you are, Mr. Medway is ready to see you.