The Age of the p.u.s.s.yfoot.
by Frederik Pohl.
Foreword.
I have two conflicting opinions. One is that any story should stand on its own feet-which means that, generally speaking, anything a writer has to say about his own story is better left unsaid. If it"s worth saying, why didn"t he say it in the story itself?
The other opinion, however, is equally firmly fixed in my mind, and at this moment it is in direct conflict with the first. That is, I think that more people should read science fiction than appear to be willing to do so; and I think the reason for this is that many people regard it as crazy, fantastic stuff with no basis in the real world and no relevance to their own lives.
I would like to hope that some people will read this book who normally don"t read science fiction. If you are one of them, and if you begin to feel like those many others mentioned above, please pause in your reading and go on to look at the author"s note included in the back of the book.
It seems to me that science fiction can have relevance to the real world and, yes, to your own life. And some of my reasons for thinking so are set forth here. . . .
One.
Over everyone in the room, or perhaps it was a park, the lighting cast shapes and symbols of color. The girl in the filmy gown had at one moment glittering pink eyes and, at the next, an aura of silvery hair. The man next to Forrester had golden skin and a mask of shadow. Wisps of odor drifted past him, rosebuds following sage. There were s.n.a.t.c.hes of a crystalline, far-off music.
"I"m rich!" he yelled. "And alive!"
No one seemed to mind. Forrester plucked one of the colorless grapes Hara had recommended to him, rose, patted the girl in the filmy dress, and walked unsteadily down to the pool where the revelers splashed and swam in a naked tangle. In spite of the long post-revival indoctrination that had given him so many new things and removed so much trash that was old, Forrester had not lost the habit of being a little dirty minded, and he was interested in nakedness.
"It"s Forrester the rich man!" one of them shouted. Forrester smiled and waved. A girl cried, "Sing him a song! A song!" And they all splashed at him and sang: Oh, he died and he died and he died- (SPLASH!).
And he cried and he cried and he cried- (SPLASH!).
With his rages and his cholers he"s a puzzle to the scholars, And he"s got a quarter of a million dollars!
Forrester!
(SPLASH! SPLASH!).
Forrester ducked without thinking, then relaxed. He allowed them to drench him with the warm, scented water. "Enjoy, enjoy!" he cried, grinning at the bare bodies. Bronze and ivory, lean or soft, every body was beautiful. He knew that none of them would think the worse of him if he touched the two snaps at throat and waist and stepped out of his clothes to join them. But he also knew that his body would not compare well with those of the Adonises, would not impress the full-breasted Venuses, and so he stayed on the rim. "Drink and be merry, for yesterday we died," he called and squirted them at random with his joymaker. He didn"t mind that he was not as beautiful as they. At least, not at this moment. He was happy. Nothing was troubling him. Not worry, not weariness, not fear. Not even his conscience; for, although he was wasting time, he had a right to waste time.
Hara had said so. "Relax," advised Hara. "Get acclimated. Go slow. You"ve been dead a long time."
Forrester was well content to follow his advice. In the morning he would take things seriously. In the morning he would go out into this new world and make a place for himself. With una.s.suming pride he thought that he would do this not because he really needed to, for he had that quarter of a million dollars, all right, but because it was proper that he should work and earn joy. He would be a good citizen.
Experimentally he shouted what he thought of as a friendly obscene suggestion to one of the girls (although Hara had said that the talk of this time contained no obscenities). In return she made a charming gesture which Forrester tried to think of as an obscene one, and her companion, stretched out at the edge of the pool, drowsily lifted his joymaker and drenched Forrester with a tingling spray that, startlingly, brought him to an instant thrill of s.e.xual excitement and then left him replete and momentarily exhausted.
What a delightful way to live, Forrester thought. He turned and walked away, followed by more of the shouted song: And he slept and he slept and he slept, And he wept and he wept and he wept- Is he d.a.m.ning? Is he dooming?
For that matter, is he human?
Forrester!
But he was too far away for them to splash him now and he had seen someone he wanted to talk to.
It was a girl. She had just come in and was still rather sober. She was alone. And she was not quite as tall as Forrester himself.
Hara would introduce him to her if asked, Forrester knew, since this was more or less Hara"s party. But he did not at that moment see Hara. Didn"t need Hara, either, he decided. He walked up to the girl and touched her on the arm.
"I am Charles D. Forrester," he said. "I am five hundred and ninety-six years old. I have a quarter of a million dollars. This is my first day out of the sleep-freeze, and I would appreciate it if you would sit down and talk to me for a while, or kiss me."
"Certainly," she said, taking his hand. "Let"s lie down here on the violets. Careful of my joymaker; it"s loaded with something special."
Half an hour later Hara came by and found them, lying on their backs, each with an arm under the other, heads inclined toward each other.
Forrester noticed him at once, but went on talking to the girl. They had been plucking and eating the gla.s.s-clear grapes from a vine over their heads. The intoxicating fruit, the occasion, and his general sense of well-being combined to erase social obligations from his mind. Anyway, Hara would understand and forgive any offense. "Don"t mind him, dear," Forrester said to the girl. "You were telling me not to sign up as a donor."
"Or as game. A lot of greenhorns fall for that, because the money"s good. But the way they get you is that you don"t figure what it will cost in the long run."
"That"s very interesting," said Forrester, then sighed, looked away from the girl, and nodded up at Hara. "You know, Hara," he said, "you"re a drag."
"And you"re a drunk," said Hara. "h.e.l.lo, Tip. You two seem to be getting on well enough."
"He"s nice," the girl said. "Of course, you"re nice too, Tip. Is it time for the champagne wine yet?"
"Well past. That"s why I came looking for you. I went to a lot of trouble to get this champagne wine for the party, and Forrester will d.a.m.n well get up and drink some to show the rest of us how it"s done."
"You tilt," said Forrester, "and you pour."
Hara looked at him more carefully, then shook his head and fingered his joymaker. "Don"t you remember anything I tell you?" he chided, spraying Forrester with what felt for a moment like an invigorating, and not at all shocking, ice-cold shower. "Not too drunk tonight. Get adjusted. Don"t forget you were dead. Do what I tell you, will you? And now let"s see about this champagne wine."
Forrester got up like an obedient child and trailed after Hara toward the dispensing tables, one arm around the girl. She had pale hair, up in a fluffy crown, and the tricks of the lighting made it look as though fireflies nested in it.
In the event that he ever saw his once and potentially future wife Dorothy again, Forrester thought, he might have to give this sort of thing up. But for the time being it was very pleasant. And rea.s.suring. It was hard for him to remember, when he had an arm around a pretty girl, that ninety days before his body had been a cryogenic crystal in an ambience of liquid helium, with his heart stopped and his brain still and his lungs a clot of destroyed scar tissue.
He popped the cork of the champagne like a good fellow, toasted, and drank. He had never seen the label before, but it was champagne, all right. At Hara"s request he roared the verses of "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d King of England," amid much applause, and would not let anyone sober him although he knew he was beginning again to reel and stammer. "You decadent sods," he bellowed amiably, "you know so much! But you don"t know how to get drunk."
They were dancing, a linked circle of all twenty-odd of them, with foot-stamping and sudden changes of direction, a little like a morris dance, a little like a Paul Jones, to music like pizzicato cello and the piping of flutes. The girl cried, "Oh, Charles! Charles Forrester! You almost make an Arcadian of me!" He nodded and grinned, clinging to her on his right and to a huge creature in orange tights on his left, a man who, someone said, had just returned from Mars and was stumbling and straining in Earth"s gravity. But he was laughing. Everyone was laughing. A lot of them seemed to be laughing at Forrester, perhaps at his clumsy attempts to follow the step, but no one laughed louder than he.
That was almost the last he remembered. There was some shouting about what to do with him, a proposal to sober him up, a veto, a long giggling debate while he nodded and nodded happily like a pottery head on a spring. He did not know when the party ended. He had a dreamlike memory of the girl leading him across an empty way between tall dark structures like monuments, while he shouted and sang to the echoes. He remembered kissing the girl, and that some vagrant aphrodisiac wisp from her joymaker had filled him with a confused emotion of mingled desire and fear. But he did not remember returning to his room or going to sleep.
And when he awoke in the morning he was buoyant, rested, vigorous, and alone.
Two.
The bed in which Forrester awoke was oval, springy, and gently warm. It woke him by purring faintly at him, soothingly and cheerfully. Then as he began to stir the purring sound stopped, and the surface beneath his body gently began to knead his muscles. Lights came on. There was a distant sound of lively music, like a Gypsy trio. Forrester stretched, yawned, explored his teeth with his tongue, and sat up.
"Good morning, Man Forrester," said the bed. "It is eight-fifty hours, and you have an appointment at nine seventy-five. Would you like me to tell you your calls?"
"Not now," said Forrester at once. Hara had told him about the talking bed. It did not startle him. It was a convenience, not a threat. It was one more comfortable part of this very amiable world.
Forrester, who had been thirty-seven years old when he was burned to death and still considered that to be his age, lit a cigarette, considered his situation carefully, and decided that it was a state unmatched by any other thirty-seven-year-old man in the history of the world. He had it made. Life. Health. Good company. And a quarter of a million dollars.
He was not, of course, as unique as he thought. But as he had not yet fully accepted the fact that he had himself been dead and was now returned to life, much less that there were millions upon millions like him, it felt unique. It felt very good.
"I have just received another message for you, Man Forrester," said the bed.
"Save it," said Forrester. "After I have a cup of coffee."
"Do you wish me to send you a cup of coffee, Man Forrester?"
"You"re a nag, you know that? I"ll tell you what I want and when I want it."
What Forrester really wanted, although he had not articulated it even to himself, was to go on enjoying for a moment the sensation of being uncommitted. It was like a liberation. It was like that first week of basic training, in the Army, when he realized that there was a hard way to get through his. .h.i.tch and an easy one, and that the easy one, which entailed making no decisions of his own and taking no initiative, but merely doing what he was told, was like nothing so much as a rather prolonged holiday in a somewhat poorly equipped summer camp for adults.
Here the accommodations were in fact sumptuous. But the principle was the same. He did not have to concern himself with obligations. He had no obligations. He didn"t have to worry about making sure the kids got up for school, because he no longer had any children. He didn"t have to think about whether his wife had enough money to get through the day, because he didn"t now have a wife. If he wanted to, he could now lie back, pull the covers over his head, and go to sleep. No one would stop him, no one would be aggrieved. If he chose, he could get drunk, attempt the seduction of a girl, or write a poem. All of his debts were paid-or forgiven, centuries since. Every promise was redeemed-or had pa.s.sed beyond the chance of redemption. The lie he had told Dorothy about that weekend in 1962 need trouble him no longer. If the truth now came out, no one would care; and it was all but impossible that the truth should ever come out.
He had, in short, a blank check on life.
More than that, he had a pretty substantially underwritten guarantee of continuing life itself. He wasn"t sick. He wasn"t even threatened; even the lump on his leg, which he had once or twice gazed on with some worry in the days before his death, could not be malignant or threatening; if it had been, the doctors at the dormer would have fixed it. He need not even worry about being run over by a car-if there were cars-since at worst that might mean only another few centuries in the bath of liquid helium, and then back to life-better than ever!
He had, in fact, everything he had ever wished for.
The only things he didn"t have were those he had not wished for because he already had them. . . . Family. Friends. Position in the community.
In this life of the year 2527 A.D., Charles Forrester was entirely free. But he was not so joyous as to be blinded to the fact that this coin of his treasure had two sides. Another way of looking at it was that he was entirely superfluous.
"Man Forrester," said the bed, "I must insist. I have both an urgent-cla.s.s message and a personal-visit notice." And the mattress curled under him, humped itself, and deposited him on the floor of the room.
Staggering, Forrester growled, "What"s urgent?"
"A hunting license has been taken out on you, Man Forrester. The licensee is Heinzlichen Jura de Syrtis Major, male, dipara-Zen, Utopian, eighty-six elapsed, six feet four inches, import-export. He is extraterrestrial-human. No reason declared. Bonds and guaranties have been posted. Would you like your coffee now?"
While the bed was speaking it had been rolling itself into the wall. It disappeared into a sphincter that closed and left no trace. This was disconcerting, but Forrester remembered Hara"s instructions, searched for and found his joymaker, and said to it, "I would like my breakfast now. Ham and eggs. Toast and orange juice. Coffee. And a pack of cigarettes."
"They will be delivered in five minutes, Man Forrester," said the joymaker. "May I give you the rest of your messages?"
"Wait a minute. I thought it was the bed that was giving me messages."
"We are all the same, Man Forrester. Your messages follow. Notice of personal visit: Taiko Hironibi will join you for breakfast. Dr. Hara has prescribed a euphoric in case of need, which will be delivered with your breakfast. Adne Bensen sends you a kiss. First Merchants Audit and Trust invites your patronage. Society of Ancients states you have been approved for membership and relocation benefits. Ziegler, Durant and Colfax, Attornies-"
"You can skip the commercials. What was that about a hunting license?"
"A hunting license has been taken out on you, Man Forrester. The licensee is Heinzlichen Jura de-"
"You said that. Wait a minute." Forrester regarded his joymaker thoughtfully. The principle of it was clear enough. It was a remote input-output station for a shared-time computer program, with certain attachments that functioned as pocket flask, first-aid kit, cosmetic bag, and so on. It looked something like a mace or a jester"s scepter. Forrester told himself that it was really no less natural to talk to something like a mace than it was to talk into something like a telephone. But at the other end of a telephone had been a human being . . . or at least, he reminded himself, the taped voice of what at one time had been a human being. . . . Anyway, it didn"t feel natural. He said guardedly, "I don"t understand all this. I don"t know who these people are who are calling me up, either."
"Man Forrester, the personal callers are as follows. Taiko Hironibi: male, dendritic Confucian, Arcadian, fifty-one elapsed, six feet one inch, organizer, business political. He will bring his own breakfast. Adne Bensen: female, Universalist, Arcadian-Trimmer, twenty-three declared, five feet seven inches, experiencer-homeswoman, no business stated. Her kiss follows."
Forrester did not know what to expect but was pleasantly ready for anything.
What he got was indeed a kiss. It was disconcerting. No kissing lips were visible. There was a hint of perfumed breath, then a pressure on his lips-warm and soft, moist and sweet.
Startled, he touched his mouth. "How the devil did you do that?" he shouted.
"Sensory stimulation through the tactile net, Man Forrester. Will you receive Taiko Hironibi?"
"Well," said Forrester, "frankly, I don"t know. Oh, h.e.l.l. I guess so. Send him in. . . . Wait a minute. Shouldn"t I get dressed first?"
"Do you wish other clothing, Man Forrester?"
"Don"t confuse me. Just hold on a minute," he said, rattled and angry. He thought for a minute. "I don"t know who this Hirowatsis is-"
"Taiko Hironibi, Man Forrester. Male, dendritic Confucian-"
"Cut that out!" Forrester was breathing hard. Abruptly the joymaker in his hand hissed and sprayed him with something that felt damp for a second, then dissipated.
Forrester felt himself relaxing. He appreciated the tranquilizing spray, without quite liking the idea of having a machine prescribe and dispense it.
"Oh, G.o.d," he said, "what do I care who he is? Go ahead. Send him in. And get a move on with my breakfast, will you?"
"You"ll do!" cried Taiko Hironibi. "The greatest! What a cranial index! You look-cripes, I don"t know what to call it-you look like a brain. But a swinger."
Charles Forrester, gravely and cheerfully, indicated a seat with his hand. "Sit down. I don"t know what you want but I"m willing to talk about it. You"re the d.a.m.nedest looking j.a.panese I ever saw."
"Really?" The man looked disconcerted. He also looked quite non-j.a.panese: crew-cut golden hair, blue eyes. "They change you around so," he said apologetically. "Maybe I used to look different. Say! Did I get here first?"
"You got here before my breakfast, even."
"Great! That"s really great. Now, here"s the thing. We"re all messed up here, you have to get that straight right away. The people are sheep. They know they"re being expropriated, but do they do anything about it? Sweat, no, they sit back and enjoy it. That"s what we"re for in the Ned Lud Society. I don"t know your politics, Charley-"
"I used to be a Democrat, mostly."
"-Well, you can forget that. It doesn"t matter. I"m registered Arcadian myself, of course, but a lot of the guys are Trimmers, maybe-" he winked- "maybe even something a little worse, you know? We"re all in this together. Affects everybody. If you raise your kids with machines you"re bound to have machine-lovers growing up, right? Now-"
"Hey!" said Forrester, looking at his wall. At a point as near as he could remember to be just about where the bed had disappeared, a sphincter was opening again. It disgorged a table set for two, one side bearing his breakfast, the other a complete setting but no food.
"Ah, breakfast," said Taiko Hironibi. He opened a pouch in the kiltlike affair he wore and took out a small capped bowl, a plastic box that turned out to contain something like crackers, and a globe, which, when squeezed, poured a hot, watery, greenish tea into the cup at his place. "Care for a pickled plum?" he asked politely, removing the cap from the bowl.