The Merchants' War

  Along about the time they began nuking tectonic faults to make volcanos, he took time enough to get married and have Mitzi. That’s when he got promoted, and subsequently died. The whole idea of the volcanos, of course, was that they were the best way the Veenies had of getting the underground oxygen and water vapor out where they could use them. That’s where all the Earth’s oceans and air came from, but Venus couldn’t squander them the way the early Earth did because they couldn’t afford to wait four billion years for the results. So the volcanos had to be capped. “That was hard and dangerous work,” said Mitzi, “and when something went wrong and one of the caps blew, it blew my Daddy-san along with it. I was three years old.”

  Strung out, exhausted, worn as I was, she touched my heart. I reached out for her.

  She turned away. “That’s what love is,” she said into the pillow. “You love somebody and you get hurt. After Daddy-san died I used up all my love on Venus—I never wanted to love another person!”

  After a moment I got up unsteadily. She didn’t call me back.

  Dawn was breaking; might as well get into this next bad day. I put some of her “coffee” on and stared out the window at the smoggy, huge city, with its teeming hucks, and wondered what I was doing with my life? Physically the answer was easy; I was wrecking it. The faint reflection in the glass showed how every day my face got thinner, my eyes brighter and more hollow. From behind me she said, “Take a good look, Tenny. You look like hell.”

  Well, I was getting tired of hearing that. I turned. She was sitting up in bed, eyes fixed on me. She hadn’t put her contacts in yet. I said, “Mits, honey, I’m sorry—”

  “I’m getting tired of hearing that!” she snapped, as though she’d been reading my mind. “You’re sorry, all right. You’re about the sorriest specimen I’ve ever seen. Tenny! You’re going to die on me!”

  I looked out of the window to see if anybody in the dirty, old city was going to offer me an answer for that. Nobody did. Since what she said actually seemed like a likely possibility, the best plan appeared to be to let her remark alone.

  Mitzi wouldn’t let it alone. “You’re going to die of those damn pills,” she said furiously, “and then I’ll have goddam grief to go with my goddam worry and goddam fear.”

  I moved back to the bed to touch her bare shoulder soothingly. She wasn’t soothed. She glared up at me like a trapped feral cat.

  The anesthesia was wearing thin.

  I reached for my morning pill and popped it down, praying that this once it would give me a lift instead of a numbness, that it would give me the wisdom and com ission to answer her in a way that would ease her pain. Wisdom and compassion didn’t come. I did the best I could with what I had to work with; I said, placatingly, “Mits, maybe we better get dressed and go to work before we say something we shouldn’t. We’re both pretty ragged, maybe tonight we’ll get some sleep—”

  “Sleep!” she hissed. “Sleep! How can I sleep when every fifteen minutes I wake up thinking the Department of Fair Commercial Practices goons are breaking the door down!”

  I winced; I had had the same nightmares; I thought about brainburning a lot. I said, my voice unsteady, “Isn’t it worth it, Mits? We’re really getting to know each other—”

  “I know more than I want to, Tenny! You’re an addict. You’re a physical wreck. You’re not even good in bed—”

  And she stopped there, because she knew as well as I did what that meant. That was the mortal word. There was nothing to say after it but, “We’re through.” And in the special circumstances of our relationship there was only one way to terminate it.

  I waited for the next words, which had to be, “Get out of here! Get out of my life!” After she threw me out, I thought abstractedly, the best plan would be go straight to the jetport, fly as far as my money would take me, lose myself in the seething mass of consumers in Los Angeles or Dallas or even farther. Des Haseldyne might not find me. I might just sit out the next few months, while the coup either succeeded or didn’t. After that, of course, it got nasty— whichever side won, the winners would surely come looking for me …

  I noticed that she hadn’t said those words. She was sitting up in bed, listening intently to a faint sound from the door. “Oh, my God,” she said despairingly, “look at the time, they’re here!”

  Somebody was indeed at the door of Mitzi’s apartment. It wasn’t being broken down. It was being opened with a key, so it wasn’t the Fair Practices stormtroopers.

  It was three people. One of them was a woman I had never seen before. The others were two people who, I would have bet everything I owned, would be the last possible people to come into Mitzi’s apartment in that way: Val Dambois and the Old Man.

  When I saw them I was only startled. They were thunderstruck and, besides, furious. “Damn it, Mits!” raged Dambois, “you’ve really torn it now! What’s that Moke-head doing here?”

  I could have told him I wasn’t a Moke-head, exactly, any more. I didn’t try. I was spending all my shocked and horrified thoughts on what their presence here meant. I wouldn’t have had a chance to tell him, anyway, because the Old Man held up a hand. His face was like granite. “You, Val,” he ordered. “Stay here and keep an eye on him. You others, come with me.”

  I watched them go, Mitzi and the Old Man and the woman with them—short, dumpy, and what she had muttered when she saw me seemed to have had an accent. “She’s RussCorp, isn’t she?” I asked Dambois, and he gave me the answer I expected. He snarled:

  “Shut up.”

  I nodded. He didn’t have to confirm it. Just the fact that he and the Old Man were sneaking into Mitzi’s apartment that way told me all I needed to know. The conspiracy was a lot bigger than Mitzi had admitted. And a lot older. How had the Old Man got his stake? From Venus. From a “lottery” that he had “happened” to win. How had Mitzi got hers? From a “damage settlement” for the “accident.” How had Dambois? From “trading profits.” All from Venus. All uncheckable by anyone on Earth.

  All used for the same purpose.

  And if RussCorp was in it, it wasn’t just America; I had to assume it was worldwide. I had to assume that for every little crumb of information Mitzi had so reluctantly leaked out there was a whole hidden loaf behind. “There’s some evidence you can trust me,” I mentioned to Dambois. “After all, I haven’t said a word to anybody so far.” And, of course, he only replied with:

  “Shut up.”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Well, do you mind if I get myself some more coffee?”

  “Sit still,” he snapped, then thought it over for a moment. Reluctantly he added, “I’ll get it for you, but you stay there.” He went over to the pot, but he never took his eyes off me—heaven knows what he expected. I didn’t move. I sat still, as ordered, listening to the rise and fall of furious voices from Mitzi’s bedroom. I couldn’t make out the words. On the other hand, I didn’t have to; I was pretty sure I knew what they were discussing.

  When they came out I searched their faces. They were all serious. Mitzi’s was impenetrable. “We’ve made a decision,” she said gloomily. “Sit down and drink your coffee and I’ll tell you about it.”

  Well, that was the first ray of hope in a sunless situation. I listened carefully. “In the first place,” she said slowly, “this is my fault. I should have got you out of here an hour ago. I knew they were coming for a meeting.”

  I nodded to show I was listening, glancing around to gauge their expressions. None of them were informative. “Yes?” I asked brightly.

  “So it would be wrong, morally wrong,” she said, every word coming out at spaced intervals, as though she were weighing each one, “to say that any of this is your fault.” She paused, as though looking for a response from me.

  “Thank you,” I said, nervously sipping my coffee. But she didn’t go on. She just went on watching me and, funny thing, the expression on her face didn’t change, but her face did. It blurred. The features ran together. The whole room
darkened and seemed to shrink … It took me all that time to realize that the coffee had tasted just a tiny bit odd.

  And, oh, how I wished I had never written that suicide note. I wished it hard and with all my being, right up to the point where my wishes stopped functioning entirely and so did my eyes, and so did my ears, and so—in the middle of a silent scream of terror, pleading for one more chance, begging to live one more day—so did my brain.

  The world had gone away and left me.

  II

  Even then Mitzi must have fought hard for me. What they slipped into my coffee hadn’t been lethal after all. It had only put me to sleep, deeply and helplessly asleep for a long time.

  In my dream somebody was shouting, “First call—five minutes!” and I woke up.

  I wasn’t in Mitzi’s apartment any more. I was in a tiny, Spartan cell with a single door and a single window, and outside the window it was dark.

  Once I had come to believe in the odd fact that I was alive I looked around. I wasn’t tied up, I found to my surprise, nor did I appear to have been recently beaten. I was lying quite comfortably on a narrow cot, with a pillow and a light sheet thrown over my somehow undressed body. Next to the bed was a table. On the table was a tray with some kind of cereal and a glass of Vita-Froot, and between them was an envelope like the tricky kind you use for top-secret Agency messages. I opened it and read it fast, working against the time limit. It said:

  Tenny, dear, you’re no good to yourself or us as an addict. If you live through the detox we’ll talk again. Good luck!

  There wasn’t any signature, but there was a P.S.:

  We’ve got people in the center to report on how you’re doing. I ought to tell you that they’re authorized to take independent action.

  I mulled over what the words “independent action” might mean for a moment—a moment too long, because the trick paper scorched my fingers as it did what it was supposed to do and began to self-destruct. I dropped the smoldering ash hastily and glanced around the room.

  There wasn’t much information there. The door was locked. The window was shatterproof glass, and sealed. Evidently this center didn’t want me walking away from this detox thing. It was all pretty ominous, and there wasn’t any long green pill to numb the feelings. Still, there was food and I was starving. Evidently I had been asleep past a couple of mealtimes. I reached for the Vita-Froot just as all hell broke loose. The screaming voice from my dream was no dream. Now it was yelling, “Last call—everybody out!” It wasn’t alone. There were sirens and klaxons to make sure I heard; the door lock snicked open, and running feet in the corridors accompanied a banging on every door. “Out!” yelled some individual live human being, glaring in and jerking a huge thumb.

  I saw no reason to argue with him about it, since he was at least two sizes bigger than Des Haseldyne.

  He was wearing a blue jogging suit. So were about a dozen others, the ones doing all the yelling. I had found a pair of shorts and grabbed them at the last minute, feeling desperately underdressed—but not alone; besides the jogging-suit tyrants there were a couple dozen other human beings streaming out of the building, all as inadequately clothed as myself and looking at least as unhappy. They chased us out into the sweaty, smoggy air, still dark although now there was a discouraging reddish glow in one corner of the sky, and we huddled there, waiting to be told what to do. It was, I thought, like the worst of basic training.

  That was wrong. It was a lot worse than any basic training. Basic training at least usually starts with fairly healthy raw meat for its processing. There was nothing like that in sight among my compeers. They came in all shapes and sizes but good. There was one woman who had to weigh over three hundred pounds, and a couple of others, both sexes, who probably weighed less but made up for it by being a lot shorter, so that they billowed grossly over their belts. There were scarecrows skinnier than me and at least as frazzled. There were elderly men and women who looked not hopelessly inhuman except that they had tics they couldn’t control—hand to the mouth, hand to the mouth, over and over in endlessly repeated gestures of smoking, eating, drinking. But they had nothing in their hands. And, oh, yes, it was raining.

  The joggers shoved and nagged us into a disorderly sort of clump in the middle of a wide cement quadrangle, surrounded by low barrackslike buildings. Over the door to the building we had just come out of was a sign:

  Acute Addiction Facility

  Detox Effort Division

  One of the instructors blew a whistle close by my right ear. When the sound had stopped bouncing around inside my skull I saw that an Amazon in the same jogging suit as the others, but with a gold badge sewn to the jacket, was strutting toward us. She looked at us with revulsion. “God,” she observed to the lunatic with the whistle, “every month they get worse. All right, you!” she bawled, climbing on a box to see us better and emphasizing her orders with a blast on her own whistle that neatly severed the top of my head and sent it spinning off over the barracks. “Pay attention! See that sign? ‘Detox Effort Division.’ The crucial word is effort. We’ll make the effort. You’ll make the effort, too, I promise you that. But in spite of all of our best efforts we’re usually going to fail. The stats tell the story. Out of ten of you four will go out clean—and then readdict themselves within a month. Three will develop incapacitating physical or psychoneurotic symptoms and require extended treatment—extended has been known to mean the rest of your lives, which are often short. And two of you won’t make it through the course.” She grinned kindly—I guess she thought it was kindly. I was six hours behind my last pill and the Madonna wouldn’t have looked kind to me just then.

  Another shattering blast on the whistle. She had paused for a moment, and she didn’t want us daydreaming. “Your treatment,” she said, “comes in two phases. The first phase is the unpleasant one. That’s when we cut you back to minimum dose, feed you up to build resistance, exercise you to develop muscle tone, teach you new behaviors to break up your body-movement patterns that reinforce your habit—and a few other things—and that starts right now. Down on your bellies, everybody, for fifty push-ups—and then it’s clothes off and into the showers!”

  Fifty push-ups! We stared at each other incredulously in that dark, sultry dawn. I had never in my life done fifty push-ups, and I didn’t think it was possible … until I found out that there were no showers, no breakfast, no leaving the drill ground—above all, no pills— until they were done.

  It became possible, even for the three-hundred-pounders.

  The lady hadn’t lied. Phase One was unpleasant, all right. The only way I could force myself through every miserable hour was by thinking about the blessed green pill that would come at the end of the day. They didn’t take the pills away; they only made me earn them. And the horror was that the better I got at earning, the less the reward; by the third day they had begun to shave the end of the pills; by the sixth they were cutting them in half. Three of us had pill habits from Moke addiction. The others had every imaginable addiction. The fat lady, whose name turned out to be Marie, was junk-food; she wheezed like a calliope going over the obstacle course but she always went, because there was no other way to the mess hall. A dark little man named Jimmy Paleologue had been a Campbellian technician himself, borrowed from his Agency by the services to help teach the New Zealand Maoris civilized ways. He was far too sophisticated to be caught by Campbellian stimuli himself, but had inexplicably fallen for a free trial sample of Coffiest. “It was a lottery-ticket tie-in,” he explained sheepishly as we lay on the muddy ground, panting between knee-bends and rope-climbing. “First prize was a three-room apartment, and I was thinking of getting married …” Palsied and pitiful, barely dragging himself at the tail end of the three-mile runs, he wasn’t thinking of it any more.

  The center was in one of the outer suburbs, a place called Rochester, and it had once been a college campus. The buildings still had the old lettering carved into the cement walls— Psychology Department, Economic
s Section, Applied Physics and so on. There was a sludgy body of liquid lapping at the foot of the campus, and as far as physical surroundings were concerned that was the worst part. They called it Lake Ontario. When the wind was from the north the stench would knock you down. Some of the old buildings were barracks, some therapy rooms, a mess hall, offices; but there were a couple at the edge of the campus that we were not allowed in. They weren’t empty. Now and then we would catch glimpses of creatures as miserable as ourselves being shepherded in and out, but whoever they were, we did not mix. “Tenny,” gasped Marie, leaning on me as we headed past them toward afternoon therapy, “what do you suppose they do in there?” A woman in a pink jogging suit—even their instructors were separate from ours—leaned out the door of one of the buildings to glare at us as she tossed something in the refuse bin. When she went back inside I tugged Marie over.

  “Let’s take a look,” I said, glancing around to see that no blue suit was near. I didn’t think there would be any discarded green pills among the trash, and I’m sure Marie didn’t expect to dig up any extra morsels of food. Disappointingly, we were right. All we came up with was a couple of gold-colored booties and a cracked pseudoivory-handled toy gun. They meant nothing to me, but Marie let out a sudden squawk.

  “Oh, my gosh, Tenny, they’re collectibles! My sister had these! Those are from the Miniature Authentic Replicas of Bronzed Baby Shoes of Twentieth Century Gangsters—that one’s Bugs Moran, I think—and I’m nearly sure the other is from the Lone Star Scrimshaw Handgun Collection. That’s aversion therapy they’re doing in there—where first they make you stop needing it, then they make you hate it! Could that be Phase Two?”

  And then the instructor’s bellow from behind us: “All right, you two goof-offs, if you’ve got time to stand around and gossip you’ve got time for a few extra push-ups. Let’s have fifty, now! And make it quick, because you know what happens if you’re late for therapy!”