Age Of The Pussyfoot Part 10

"All right. In a minute. Just let me finish what I'm doing."

There was no answer. Forrester shrugged and returned to the viewer. The Luddites appeared to have taken themselves a great deal more seriously when they first started: where Taiko postured and coaxed, his predecessors had done the Carrie Nation bit with the axes, chopping up computing machines with the war cry, "Men for men's jobs! Machines for bookkeeping!"

As he read he forgot about the call from his employer. Then- "Man Forrester!" cried his joymaker. "I have two urgent notices of intention for you!"

It was the master computing center this time, not the deep, remote, echoless voice of the Sirian. Forrester groaned. "Not again!"

"Heinzlichen Jura de Syrtis Major-"

"I knew it," Forrester muttered.

"-states that he has reactivated his hunting permit. You are notified, Man Forrester, so please be guided accordingly."

"I'm guided, I'm guided. What's the other one?"

"Man Forrester, it is from Alphard Four Zero-zero Trimate," said the joymaker; then, unbending slightly, "or, as you call him, Sirian Four. A notice to terminate employment. Guarantees are met, and notice paid. Reason: failure to comply with reasonable request of employer, to wit, research questions concerning early U.S. and U.S.S.R. s.p.a.ce probe motivation."

Forrester squawked, "Wait a minute! That sounds like-you mean-hey! I'm fired!"

"Man Forrester," said the joymaker, "that is correct. You are fired."

After the first shock had worn off, Forrester was not particularly sorry, although his feelings were hurt. He had thought he was doing as good a job as could be done. Considering the job. Considering the employer.

Nevertheless, it had had its disadvantages, including the barely polite remarks Adne and the children had been pa.s.sing about working for the enemy. So with a light heart Forrester dismissed the Sirian from his mind and informed the joymaker he wanted another job.

Quite rapidly he had one: standby machine monitor for the great sublake fusion generating station under Lake Michigan. It paid very well, and the work was easy.

Not for twenty-four hours did Forrester discover that the premium pay was due to the fact that, at unpredictable intervals, severe radiation damage was encountered. His predecessor in the job-in fact, all of his predecessors-were now blocks of low-temperature matter in the great lakeside freezers, awaiting discovery of a better technique for flus.h.i.+ng the radioactive poisons out of their cells; and the joymaker candidly informed him that their probable wait for thawing and restoration, which depended on the pace at which certain basic biophysical discoveries were likely to be made, was estimated to be of the order of magnitude of two thousand years.

Forrester blew his top. "Thanks!" he grated. "I quit! What the devil do they need a human being down here for anyway?"

"In the event of cybernetic failure," said the machine promptly, "an organic overseer may retain the potential of voice connection with the central computing facility, providing an emergency capability-"

"It was only a rhetorical question. Forget it. Say," said Forrester, punching the elevator b.u.t.ton that would bring him up to the breather platform at the lake's surface and thence back to the city, "why didn't you tell me this job would kill me?"

"Man Forrester," said the machine gravely, "you did not ask me. Excuse me, Man Forrester, but you have summoned an elevator. Your relief is not due for three hours. You should not leave your station unattended."

"No, I shouldn't. But I'm going to."

"Man Forrester! I must warn you-"

"Look. If I read the plaque on the surface right, this particular installation has been in service for like a hundred and eighty years. I bet the cybernetic controls haven't failed once in all that time. Right?"

"You are quite correct, Man Forrester. Nevertheless-"

"Nevertheless my foot. I'm going." The elevator door opened; he entered; it closed behind him.

"Man Forrester! You are endangering-"

"Oh, shut up. There's no danger. Worst that would happen would be that it might stop working for a while. So power from the city would come from the other generators until it got fixed, right?"

"Yes, Man Forrester, but the danger-"

"You argue too much. Over and out," said Forrester. "Oh, except one thing. Find me another job."

But the joymaker didn't.

Time pa.s.sed, and it still didn't. It didn't speak to him at all.

Back in his room, Forrester demanded of the joymaker, "Come on, what's the matter? You computers don't have human emotions, do you? If I hurt your feelings I'm sorry."

But there was no answer. The joymaker did not speak. The view-walls would not light up. The dinner he ordered did not appear.

The room was dead.

Forrester conquered his pride and went to Adne Bensen's apartment. She was not there, but the children let him in. He said, "Kids, I've got a problem. I seem to have blown a fuse or something in my joymaker."

They were staring at him, bemused. After a moment Forrester realized he had blundered in on something. "What is it, Tunt? Another club meeting? How about it, Mim?"

They burst out laughing. Forrester said angrily, "All right. I didn't come here for laughs, but what's the joke?"

"You called me Tunt!" the boy laughed.

His sister giggled with him. "And that's not the worst, Tunt. He called me Mim! Charles, don't you know anything?"

"I know I'm in trouble," Forrester said stiffly. "My joymaker doesn't work any more."

Now their stares were round-eyed and open-mouthed. "Oh, Charles!" Obviously the magnitude of the catastrophe had overwhelmed their defenses. Whatever it was that had been occupying their minds when he came in, they were giving him their whole attention now.

He said uncomfortably, "So what I want to know is, what went wrong?"

"Find out!" cried Mim. "Hurry, Tunt! Poor Charles!" She gazed at him with a compa.s.sion and horror, as at a leper.

The boy knew what practical steps to take-at least, he knew enough to be able to find out what Forrester had done wrong. Through his pedagogical joymaker, the boy queried the central computing facilities, listening with eyes wide to the inaudible response, and turned to stare again at Forrester.

"Charles! Great sweat! You quit your job without notice!"

"Well, sure I did," said Forrester. He s.h.i.+fted uneasily in his seat. "All right," he said, to break the silence. "I did the wrong thing, huh? I guess I was hasty."

"Hasty!"

"Stupid," Forrester amended. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry!"

"If you just keep repeating everything I say," said Forrester, "you might drive me crazy, but you won't be exactly helping me. I goofed. All right. I admit it."

The boy said, "Yes, Charles, but didn't you know you forfeited your salary? And you didn't have anything much else, you know. A couple K-bucks sequestrated for the freezers, but not much loose cash. And so you're-" The boy hesitated, forming the words with his lips. "You're broke," he whispered.

If those were not the most frightening words Forrester had ever heard, they certainly were well up in the running. Broke? In this age of incredible plenty and high-velocity spending? He might as well be dead, again. He sank back in his chair, and the little girl sprang helpfully forward and ordered him a drink. Forrester took a grateful swallow and waited for it to hit him.

It didn't hit him. It was, of course, the best the girl could get for him on her own joymaker, but it had about as much kick as lemon pop.

He put it down carefully and said, "See if I've got this straight. I didn't pay my bills, so they turned off the joymaker. Right?"

"Well, I guess you could say that."

"All right." Forrester nodded. "So the first thing I have to do is reestablish my credit. Get some money."

"Right, Charles!" cried the girl. "That'll fix everything up!"

"So how do I do that?"

The two children looked at each other helplessly.

"Isn't there anything I can do?"

"Well, sure, Charles. Sweat, there's got to be! Get another job, I guess."

"But the joymaker wouldn't get me one."

"Sweat!" The boy gazed thoughtfully at his joymaker, picked it up, shook it, then put it down again. "That's bad. Maybe when Mim comes home she can help you."

"Really? Do you think she'll help?"

"Well, no. I mean, I don't think she'd know how."

"Then what do I do?"

The boy looked worried and a little scared. Forrester was pretty sure he looked the same way himself. Certainly that was how he felt.

Of course, he told himself, Hara might help him once more; certainly he'd had the practice. Or Taiko might be sportsman enough to get over his snub and reopen the invitation to work for the Luddites.

But he was pretty sure that neither of these possibilities represented any very hopeful facts.

The little girl wandered thoughtfully away, not looking at Forrester, and began muttering into her joymaker-back to the game he had interrupted, Forrester thought with totally unjustified bitterness. He knew it was unjustified. These were only children, and he had no right to expect them to handle adult problems that at least one adult-himself-couldn't handle at all. The boy said suddenly, "Oh, one other thing, Charles. Mim says Heinzie's out after you again."

"Don't I know it." But it didn't seem such a threat, compared with the disaster of insolvency.

"Well, you see, you've got a problem there," the boy said. "If you don't have your joymaker you won't have any warning when he's around. And also there's something about the DR equipment you might not know. You have to have some credit rating or they won't freeze you at all if you're killed. You know. There's always the chance that you'll do something that annuls the bonds, so Heinzie, or whoever, might protest payment-then they'd be in trouble. I mean, they don't want to get stuck with a stiff that can't pay up.

"I appreciate their difficulty."

"I just thought you'd like to know."

"Oh, you were right." Forrester's glance wandered. "Mim-whatever your name is. You! What are you doing?"

The girl looked up from her joymaker, her face flushed with excitement. "Me, Charles?"

"Yeah. Didn't I hear you mention my name just now?"

"Sure, Charles. I was proposing you for members.h.i.+p in our club. You know, we told you about it."

"Nice of you," said Forrester bitterly. "Has it got a dining room?"

"Oh, it's not that kind of a club, Charles. You don't understand. The club will help you. Already they've made a suggestion."

He looked skeptical. "Is that going to help?"

"Sweat, yes! Listen. Tars Tarkas just said, 'Let him seek in the dead sea bottoms and the ancient cities. Let him join the haunted hosts of old Jasoom.' "

Forrester puzzled over the message drearily. "It doesn't mean anything to me," he said.

"Of course it does! Clear as the crawlers on the Farside coconut, don't you see? He thinks you ought to hide out with the Forgotten Men!"

Eleven.

It was only ten minutes walking from the children's home to the great underbuilding plazas and warrens where the Forgotten Men lived. But Forrester had no guide this time, nor was there a joymaker to display green arrows to guide him, and it took him an hour. He dodged across an avenue of gra.s.s between roaring hovercraft, his life in his hands, and emerged under a hundred-story tower where a man came humbly toward him. He looked vaguely familiar.

"Stranger," the man said, softly pleading, "Ah've had a turrible lahf. It all started when the mahns closed and my wahf Murry got sick-"

"Buddy," said Forrester, "have you got a wrong number."

The man stepped back a pace and looked him up and down. He was tall, lean, and dark, his face patient and intelligent. "Aren't you the fellah Ah panhandled with those two little kids?" he said accusingly. "Gave me fifty bucks, Ah think."

"You remember good. But that was when I had money; now I'm broke." Forrester looked around at the tall buildings and the greensward. They did not seem hospitable. "I'd be obliged to you," he added, "if you'd tell me where I can sleep tonight."

The man glanced warily around, as if suspicious of some kind of a trick, then grinned and stuck his hand out. "Welcome to the club," he said. "Name's Whitlow. Jurry Whitlow. What happened?"

"I got fired," said Forrester simply, introducing himself.

Jerry Whitlow commiserated. "Could happen to anybody, Ah guess. You know, Ah noticed you didn't have a joymaker, but Ah didn't think much about it. Figured, sweat, he's just a d.a.m.n greenhorn, prob'ly forgot to take it with him. But you got to get yourself one raht away."

"Why?"

"Whah? Sweat, man! Don't you know you're fur game for anybody on the hunt? They come down here, take one look around, and they see you're busted-h.e.l.l, man, you wouldn't last out the day." He unclipped his own joymaker-or what Forrester had taken to be a joymaker-and proudly handed it over. "Fake, see? But it looks lahk the real thing. Fool anybody. Fooled you, Ah bet."

It had, as a matter of fact. But actually, Forrester saw with surprise, it wouldn't fool anyone at all, not at close range. It was far too light to be a joymaker, apparently whittled out of some organic plastic and painted in the pale patterns of a joymaker. "Of course, it don't work," Whitlow grinned. "But on the other hand Ah don't have to pay rent on it. Keeps 'em off pretty good. Didn't have that, one of these preverts that get they kicks from total death'd come down here and tag me first thing."

Gently he pulled it out of Forrester's hand and looked at him calculatingly. "Now, you got to get one just lahk it and, d.a.m.n, you hit lucky first tahm. Theah's a fellow two houses over makes them to sell. Friend o' mahn. Ah bet he'll give you one for-h.e.l.l! Maybe little as a hundred dollars!" Forrester started to open his mouth. "Maybe even eighty! . . . Seventy-fahv?"

"Whit," said Forrester simply, "I haven't got a dime."