Читать книгу The Naked Storm - C.M. Kornbluth - Страница 6

IV

The torn corpse in the snow; the doomed, calm betrayer; the happy adulterers who could make a motel chambermaid smile—we must go back one week to begin their story.

WEATHER I

It’s Longitude 155 degrees, Latitude 83 degrees north. It’s the Arctic Ocean, a vast plain of grinding, shifting sheets of ice under a twilight gloom. It’s almost the exact middle of the six-month polar night.

There is no sound under the lead-colored sky except the booming and grinding of the ice floes. The usual howling winds of this godforsaken place have dropped to a dead calm. This is noticed by a strange little machine half-buried in a floe.

The machine is a product of the cold—here very cold—war. Of the Edison Effect, noticed and described long ago by Thomas A., who was working at the time on the problem of a practical electric light. Of a Navy-minded senator who wangled a cut in the Air Force budget, forcing generals to decide: “Since we won’t have the planes or crews for patrols we’ll have to do it some other way, maybe by machine.” Of a huge building in New Jersey where a thousand-odd happily quarrelsome men, most of them possible geniuses and a few about whom there is no doubt whatsoever, daily turn out fundamental research and practical solutions to whatever happens to be bothering communications companies. Of a young man with a Ph.D. in mathematics who got the bright idea that finally cracked the power-lead problem; it got him a raise from $115 to $125 a week, a Class C gate pass instead of a D, and a very important note of commendation from Dr. Kelly. He valued most highly the new gate pass; it meant that he could now drop in at odd hours to tinker at his projects if he got any more bright ideas late at night or over the weekend.

The machine looks like a foot-locker and on its side, under a crust of ice, the words are stenciled: “BAROMETRIC TELEMETERING DEVICE, U.S.A.F. M-51. PROPERTY OF U. S. GOVERNMENT. DO NOT TAMPER OR DISTURB.” The warning is generous. The machine is booby-trapped with an explosive charge calculated to blow up the machine and any wandering airmen or explorers who might try to pry it open and see what makes it tick.

It cost 32,000 dollars to build the machine and another 20,000-odd dollars in gasoline, salaries and overhead to parachute it to this spot from a B-50. There are hundreds like it dotted over the huge desolate plains of ice which are more or less American property.

All this money was spent so the machine could do what it’s doing now. It’s noticing the dead calm that has fallen on this latitude and longitude and is beeping this information southward on a tight radio beam to three airmen in a smelly little weather station on Point Anxiety, which rises from the northern coastline of Alaska.

CHAPTER III

PASSENGER JOAN LUNDBERG

“Madame Chairlady!” said Joan Lundberg.

Mrs. Quist winced and mumbled shyly: “Chair recognizes Miss Lundberg.” The ladies of the Scandia Women’s Democratic Club settled down or twisted uncomfortably, according as they thought Joan Lundberg was a capable and zealous party worker or a humorless fanatic.

Joan rose and said deliberately: “It seems to me that there’s been a certain amount of mismanagement and last-minute maneuvering here. It’s a simple question of electing one delegate to the National Conference of Democratic Women’s Clubs in San Francisco. Three names have been put in nomination and we’re deadlocked. Well and good; that’s the American way of doing things.

“What I don’t like, and I’m sure the majority of clear-thinking ladies present are with me on this point, is the way grave issues are being slurred over. We’ve got to send somebody to San Francisco who will make the voice of the midwest Democratic woman voter heard on such vital issues as me-tooism, squandermania, realistic curbs on the power of the labor bosses—oh, I could go on for hours!

“And what are we debating instead of these vital issues? We are debating over who will put up the better appearance. Over who will impress the ladies in San Francisco not by her determination to put a Democrat in the White House but by her clothes. Through this debate is running an ugly undertone of mink-coatism!”

They gasped at the words. The reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times drowsing in the back abruptly jerked to life and began scribbling.

“In all humbleness,” said Miss Lundberg, “I ask that some friend who puts devotion to principle above appearance place my name in nomination as delegate to the National Conference of Democratic Women’s Clubs. And I want to add that I’ll back up my stand by paying full expenses for the trip myself and will not expect to be reimbursed by one penny for my service to the party.”

There was a relieved sigh.

Mrs. Quist, too shy to run a meeting properly but serving traditionally because Mr. Quist was First Deputy Chief of the Cook County Sheriff’s Police, asked timidly: “Do I hear such a nomination?”

Grinning, Edith Larsen rose and proposed Miss Lundberg as delegate. Mary Holm glared at her. Mary Holm was one of the three deadlocked candidates and knew perfectly well why Edith Larsen was spoiling her party. Edith thought Mary was making a play for her fat slob of a husband just because she’d been decently polite to him. Well, her duty was clear. Mary Holm got up, withdrew her candidacy and warmly seconded the candidacy of Joan Lundberg (the blonde frump).

Joan was elected by a comfortable margin over the required two-thirds. Most of the ladies were relieved that the treasury had been spared the burden. Joan herself was mightily relieved. Not only would she be able to show the ladies in San Francisco what a real fighting midwest Democratic clubwoman was like, but she wouldn’t have to undergo the embarrassment of returning her ticket and canceling her reservation aboard the Golden Gate. Leaving nothing to chance, she had picked up the reservation that morning at Union Station. Wait too long and there might be no room left, she had sternly told herself. Take a chance—that was how our republic grew great.

The meeting adjourned for coffee and coffee-cake, and Joan was surrounded by a buzz of congratulations. Blonde, petite Mrs. Holm said gently: “I was so glad I could withdraw in favor of some really responsible person, Joan dear. You know what a burden the trip would have been for me—baby sitters, the place in a mess when I got back—Joe’s a darling, but he’s a bear in a den about picking up and dusting …”

(Translation: “You may have stolen my ’Frisco joy-ride from me, you blonde frump, but I’ve got a husband and children and you haven’t.”)

“I’ve got to pack,” Joan said abruptly. “Excuse me, girls.” She found her good cloth coat among the minks and leopards, and an unseen sneer curled her lip.

The reporter—he was unbelievably young—caught her at the door. “Congratulations,” he said cheerily. “I’d just like to check the spelling.”

She spelled her name and he put it down in block letters on a long Western Union press message form. “Do you think they’ll put it on the wire?” she asked.

“Well, probably not, Miss Lundberg. We just grab a handful of these when we go out on assignment…age?”

“Thirty-two,” she said.

“That was swell about mink-coatism,” he said. “I’m going to put it in my lead.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “They’ll take it out. Advertisers.”

“Oh,” said the young man. “I never thought of that. Are you on a paper, Miss Lundberg?”

“Excuse me,” she said. “I have to pack. My train leaves at 9:05 tomorrow morning. Good-bye.”

She walked from the church basement into the icy wind from the Lake, and breathed deeply. She tied on a bright, flapping babushka that softened the grim lines of her hair-do, and the wind brightened her face. Joan strode off confidently down the street. The neighborhood, unfortunately, was Republican—the staid, Scandinavian northwest side—but a woman could walk at night without being accosted. She thought of the Loop (Democratic and dangerous for women), the dreary Polish and Bohemian acres of the west side (Republican machine and dangerous) and the polyglot, pinko south side, with a shudder.

Five minutes bucking the wind brought her, flushed and panting, to the square, stark-white, red-roofed Nilsen home, no different from the other square, stark-white, red-roofed homes on both sides of the gentle-curving suburban street. She went down the little flight of concrete steps, fumbled out her key and stepped into the smothering warmth of the basement flat. They’d been closing windows again, slipping in while she was gone.

She snapped on the light and strode from one casement window to another, swinging each open a precise two inches.

Her apartment occupied half the basement. The other half contained the furnace, coal bin, a ping-pong table and usually a Nilsen or two, breathing heavily and rattling the pages of the Chicago Tribune loudly enough to be heard through the beaverboard and oak veneer of the partition.

A mumbling dialogue went on as she took off her coat, babushka, scarf and gloves.

“So she’s home now, so what should I do?”

“So go tell her, lazy lump.”

“So whose idea it was somebody should tell her?”

“It isn’t enough I wash and cook and scrub and make over clothes for myself I have to collect the rent?”

Stertorous breathing and the rattling of the Chicago Tribune answered that. After a pause there was a firm rapping on the door between the apartment and the Nilsen commons-room.

Joan Lundberg unlocked it—the lock was a farce; Nilsen had keys both to this door and the front door, and used them whenever her back was turned—and jerked the door open viciously. “Yes, Mrs. Nilsen?” she asked.

“Please,” said Mrs. Nilsen. “The rent?”

“We’ve been over this once, Mrs. Nilsen,” Joan said. “I don’t see how I could have put it plainer. I’m going to be two weeks behind in the rent because I have a fixed income and a sudden expense came up which I can’t avoid. In two weeks I’ll catch up and until then there’s no use talking about it. Do you want me to get out?”

“I thought maybe something would come up,” Mrs. Nilsen said vaguely. “What for’s the expense? Maybe I can find it cheaper if it’s buying.”

There was a snort and a rattle of newsprint offstage.

“Nothing like that, thanks,” Joan said. “I’m going on a little trip tomorrow morning and I’ll be back in five days. That’s all there is to it.” She felt oddly reluctant to invoke politics in connection with the rent.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Nilsen, looking at her middle, and retreated.

Joan closed the door and leaned tiredly against it. “She’s having an abortion!” she heard Mrs. Nilsen hiss to Mr. Nilsen, who grunted and shifted in his chair, creaking.

Joan began to chuckle, and the chuckling got out of control. It grew to whoops of laughter that racked her like sobs. There was an alarmed thundering on the stairs behind the partition. The Nilsens were in full retreat from trouble. They didn’t want to get involved; it was their religion. All they wanted was seventeen-fifty a week for the nicely-furnished room with bath and kitchenette, eavesdropping privileges while she was home and rights of visitation while she was gone. But they didn’t want to get involved as they had often said when she was drumming up a meeting or circulating a petition.

She threw herself on the prim daybed, whooping at how wrong they were and how very, very funny it was. When the spasm passed she lay there, relaxed and sniffing occasionally, feeling light and disembodied. It had been so very, very funny, the idea of her having or needing an abortion. It was an off-color joke, but it was a joke.

Slowly she rose and went into the bathroom to undress. Dress, knitted slip moulding her, 32 bra, B cup—she squared her shoulders and squinted in the too-high medicine chest mirror. They were quite all right, she assured herself grimly even if she didn’t wear indecent uplift bras like the kept wives at the Club. If what you wanted was to do your bit to save the nation from its enemies foreign and domestic, a sound grasp of parliamentary law was more to the point.

She unhooked the garter belt, incongruous satin over faded, tired, thigh-length snuggies going into their third Chicago winter, and peeled off her stockings. The snuggies were bulky. Of course that was where Mrs. Nilsen had got her brilliant idea. You try to keep sensibly warm in a Chicago winter and dirty-minded old so-and-so’s conclude that you’re a loose woman. As if she had the time for such nonsense!

Under the snuggies her belly was flat. Perhaps not good enough to win any prizes, but certainly not bad enough to get her kicked out of bed by a reasonable man—

Startled at the trend of her thoughts, she snatched her dressing gown from the hook on the door and belted it firmly around her. That was that. Cover the body and forget about it.

Virtuously she washed her underwear in the bathroom sink and draped it to dry along the shower-curtain rod, dropped a little-girl printed flannel nightgown over her head and went to bed.

She couldn’t sleep.

The old fool’s hissed accusation still rang in her ears. Twisting on the narrow bed she thought: if I went in for that kind of thing I wouldn’t have an abortion. If I got caught I’d go someplace in the southwest where they don’t make a fuss about legitimacy on the birth certificates and I’d have the baby and bring him up. We could live on the income and maybe get one of those adobe houses in Taos cheaper than this place and I could brush up on my piano and try painting again. Of course party work would be out, so the whole thing’s out of the question. First things first; there aren’t enough of us to squander our time.

She thought of her father for the first time in weeks and clearly saw in the dark the thin, cynical face which had been so attractive to so many women; she heard in the silence the thin, cynical voice that charmed them with its cruel wit and grace. What fools they were! she thought violently. If they’d lived with him as long as I had to they would have known better. But they never did. They came and went, and she was always there and he was always graceful and brilliant and mocking until she wanted to scream: Be dull for an hour, can’t you? Be kind and normal for just a little while or I’ll go crazy! I can’t keep up with it!

Well, she brooded, her wish had come true. Throat cancer, inoperable, had made him quite dull for eighteen months, and then he was gone, following the mysterious figure of her mother into limbo.

Thank God there had been hard work and Americanism to fight for after that. Thank God she had inherited some of his diabolical word-brilliance and none of his twisted ethics. Thank God there was work for her to do in the world.

She fell comfortably asleep at last.

Upstairs the Nilsens buzzed and muttered, wondering who the man was.