"Skip it," he said.
"That sure is a beautiful picture," she said. "Looks just like heaven or something."
"Or something," said the painter. He took a list of names from his smock pocket. "Duncan, Duncan, Duncan," he said, scanning the list. "Yes--here you are. You"re ent.i.tled to be immortalized. See any faceless body here you"d like me to stick your head on? We"ve got a few choice ones left."
She studied the mural bleakly. "Gee," she said, "they"re all the same to me. I don"t know anything about art."
"A body"s a body, eh?" he said, "All righty. As a master of fine art, I recommend this body here." He indicated a faceless figure of a woman who was carrying dried stalks to a trash-burner.
"Well," said Leora Duncan, "that"s more the disposal people, isn"t it? I mean, I"m in service. I don"t do any disposing."
The painter clapped his hands in mock delight. "You say you don"t know anything about art, and then you prove in the next breath that you know more about it than I do! Of course the sheave-carrier is wrong for a hostess! A snipper, a pruner--that"s more your line." He pointed to a figure in purple who was sawing a dead branch from an apple tree. "How about her?" he said. "You like her at all?"
"Gosh--" she said, and she blushed and became humble--"that--that puts me right next to Dr. Hitz."
"That upsets you?" he said.
"Good gravy, no!" she said. "It"s--it"s just such an honor."
"Ah, You admire him, eh?" he said.
"Who doesn"t admire him?" she said, worshiping the portrait of Hitz. It was the portrait of a tanned, white-haired, omnipotent Zeus, two hundred and forty years old. "Who doesn"t admire him?" she said again. "He was responsible for setting up the very first gas chamber in Chicago."
"Nothing would please me more," said the painter, "than to put you next to him for all time. Sawing off a limb--that strikes you as appropriate?"
"That is kind of like what I do," she said. She was demure about what she did. What she did was make people comfortable while she killed them.
And, while Leora Duncan was posing for her portrait, into the waitingroom bounded Dr. Hitz himself. He was seven feet tall, and he boomed with importance, accomplishments, and the joy of living.
"Well, Miss Duncan! Miss Duncan!" he said, and he made a joke. "What are you doing here?" he said. "This isn"t where the people leave. This is where they come in!"
"We"re going to be in the same picture together," she said shyly.
"Good!" said Dr. Hitz heartily. "And, say, isn"t that some picture?"
"I sure am honored to be in it with you," she said.
"Let me tell you," he said, "I"m honored to be in it with you. Without women like you, this wonderful world we"ve got wouldn"t be possible."
He saluted her and moved toward the door that led to the delivery rooms. "Guess what was just born," he said.
"I can"t," she said.
"Triplets!" he said.
"Triplets!" she said. She was exclaiming over the legal implications of triplets.
The law said that no newborn child could survive unless the parents of the child could find someone who would volunteer to die. Triplets, if they were all to live, called for three volunteers.
"Do the parents have three volunteers?" said Leora Duncan.
"Last I heard," said Dr. Hitz, "they had one, and were trying to sc.r.a.pe another two up."
"I don"t think they made it," she said. "n.o.body made three appointments with us. Nothing but singles going through today, unless somebody called in after I left. What"s the name?"
"Wehling," said the waiting father, sitting up, red-eyed and frowzy. "Edward K. Wehling, Jr., is the name of the happy father-to-be."
He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on the wall, gave a hoa.r.s.ely wretched chuckle. "Present," he said.
"Oh, Mr. Wehling," said Dr. Hitz, "I didn"t see you."
"The invisible man," said Wehling.
"They just phoned me that your triplets have been born," said Dr. Hitz. "They"re all fine, and so is the mother. I"m on my way in to see them now."
"Hooray," said Wehling emptily.
"You don"t sound very happy," said Dr. Hitz.
"What man in my shoes wouldn"t be happy?" said Wehling. He gestured with his hands to symbolize care-free simplicity. "All I have to do is pick out which one of the triplets is going to live, then deliver my maternal grandfather to the Happy Hooligan, and come back here with a receipt."
Dr. Hitz became rather severe with Wehling, towered over him. "You don"t believe in population control, Mr. Wehling?" he said.
"I think it"s perfectly keen," said Wehling tautly.
"Would you like to go back to the good old days, when the population of the Earth was twenty billion--about to become forty billion, then eighty billion, then one hundred and sixty billion? Do you know what a drupelet is, Mr. Wehling?" said Hitz.
"Nope," said Wehling sulkily.
"A drupelet, Mr. Wehling, is one of the little k.n.o.bs, one of the little pulpy grains of a blackberry," said Dr. Hitz. "Without population control, human beings would now be packed on this surface of this old planet like drupelets on a blackberry! Think of it!"
Wehling continued to stare at the same spot on the wall.
"In the year 2000," said Dr. Hitz, "before scientists stepped in and laid down the law, there wasn"t even enough drinking water to go around, and nothing to eat but sea-weed--and still people insisted on their right to reproduce like jackrabbits. And their right, if possible, to live forever."
"I want those kids," said Wehling quietly. "I want all three of them."
"Of course you do," said Dr. Hitz. "That"s only human."
"I don"t want my grandfather to die, either," said Wehling.
"n.o.body"s really happy about taking a close relative to the Catbox," said Dr. Hitz gently, sympathetically.
"I wish people wouldn"t call it that," said Leora Duncan.
"What?" said Dr. Hitz.
"I wish people wouldn"t call it "the Catbox," and things like that," she said. "It gives people the wrong impression."
"You"re absolutely right," said Dr. Hitz. "Forgive me." He corrected himself, gave the munic.i.p.al gas chambers their official t.i.tle, a t.i.tle no one ever used in conversation. "I should have said, "Ethical Suicide Studios,"" he said.
"That sounds so much better," said Leora Duncan.
"This child of yours--whichever one you decide to keep, Mr. Wehling," said Dr. Hitz. "He or she is going to live on a happy, roomy, clean, rich planet, thanks to population control. In a garden like that mural there." He shook his head. "Two centuries ago, when I was a young man, it was a h.e.l.l that n.o.body thought could last another twenty years. Now centuries of peace and plenty stretch before us as far as the imagination cares to travel."
He smiled luminously.
The smile faded as he saw that Wehling had just drawn a revolver.
Wehling shot Dr. Hitz dead. "There"s room for one--a great big one," he said.
And then he shot Leora Duncan. "It"s only death," he said to her as she fell. "There! Room for two."
And then he shot himself, making room for all three of his children.
n.o.body came running. n.o.body, seemingly, heard the shots.
The painter sat on the top of his stepladder, looking down reflectively on the sorry scene.
The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born, demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as long as possible--to do all that on a very small planet that would have to last forever.
All the answers that the painter could think of were grim. Even grimmer, surely, than a Catbox, a Happy Hooligan, an Easy Go. He thought of war. He thought of plague. He thought of starvation.
He knew that he would never paint again. He let his paintbrush fall to the dropcloths below. And then he decided he had had about enough of life in the Happy Garden of Life, too, and he came slowly down from the ladder.
He took Wehling"s pistol, really intending to shoot himself.
But he didn"t have the nerve.
And then he saw the telephone booth in the corner of the room. He went to it, dialed the well-remembered number: "2 B R 0 2 B."
"Federal Bureau of Termination," said the very warm voice of a hostess.
"How soon could I get an appointment?" he asked, speaking very carefully.
"We could probably fit you in late this afternoon, sir," she said. "It might even be earlier, if we get a cancellation."
"All right," said the painter, "fit me in, if you please." And he gave her his name, spelling it out.
"Thank you, sir," said the hostess. "Your city thanks you; your country thanks you; your planet thanks you. But the deepest thanks of all is from future generations."
END.
Contents
THE PYGMY PLANET.
By Jack Williamson
"Nothing ever happens to me!" Larry Manahan grumbled under his breath, sitting behind his desk at the advertising agency which employed his services in return for the consideration of fifty a week. "All the adventure I know is what I see in the movies, or read about in magazines. What wouldn"t I give for a slice of real life!"
Unconsciously, he tensed the muscles of his six feet of lean, hard body. His crisp, flame-colored hair seemed to bristle; his blue eyes blazed. He clenched a brown hammer of a fist.
Larry felt himself an energetic, red-blooded square peg, badly afflicted with the urge for adventure, miserably wedged in a round hole. It is one of the misfortunes of our civilization that a young man who, for example, might have been an excellent pirate a couple of centuries ago, must be kept chained to a desk. And that seemed to be Larry"s fate.
"Things happen to other people," he muttered. "Why couldn"t an adventure come to me?"
He sat, staring wistfully at a picture of a majestic mountain landscape, soon to be used in the advertising of a railway company whose publicity was handled by his agency, when the jangle of the telephone roused him with a start.
"Oh, Larry--" came a breathless, quivering voice.
Then, with a click, the connection was broken.
The voice had been feminine and had carried a familiar ring. Larry tried to place it, as he listened at the receiver and attempted to get the broken connection restored.
"Your party hung up, and won"t answer," the operator informed him.
He replaced the receiver on the hook, still seeking to follow the thin thread of memory given him by the familiar note in that eager excited voice. If only the girl had spoken a few more words!
Then it came to him.
"Agnes Sterling!" he exclaimed aloud.
Agnes Sterling was a slender, elfish, dark-haired girl--lovely, he had thought her, on the occasions of their few brief meetings. Larry knew her as the secretary and laboratory a.s.sistant of Dr. Travis Whiting, a retired college professor known for his work on the structure of the atom. Larry had called at the home-laboratory of the savant, months before, to check certain statistics to be used for advertising purposes and had met the girl there. Only a few times since had he seen her.
Now she had called him in a voice that fairly trembled with excitement--and, he thought, dread! And she had been interrupted before she had time to give him any message.
For a few seconds Larry stared at the telephone. Then he rose abruptly to his feet, crammed his hat on his head, and started for the door.