Pollony Undiverted, Sydney J. Van Scyoc [best books to read fiction .txt] 📗
- Author: Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Book online «Pollony Undiverted, Sydney J. Van Scyoc [best books to read fiction .txt] 📗». Author Sydney J. Van Scyoc
By SYDNEY VAN SCYOC
Illustrated by R. D. Francis
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With the whole world at her doorstep, what
she wanted was completely out of reach!
Pollony's dream formed around a glare of light, a tang of men's lotion. Then she was awake to Brendel poking her.
"I'm hungry."
She struggled to burrow back into sleep.
"I'm starving, kid. I can't sleep."
She bleared at the timespot. It was three a.m. "Go 'way."
"Aw, gimme an omelette." Brendel ate a lot lately. His features were coarsening from it; his body was plumpening.
She argued and protested and whined, and he hit her. But it didn't make her feel good any more when he hit her.
Kitchen Central was inop for the night. She punched Storage. Dried ingredients materialized on the cookgrid, a flat metal sheet set into the countertop.
Later, as she took the omelette up, she heard Brendel setting the opera tapes. She scowled. But when opera shattered their live she dropped the skillet and cried, "Oh! Do we have to listen to that trash?" Her voice was more weary than shrill. The opera routine was getting old.
"What you calling trash?" He twitched his plump shoulders.
"It makes me sick!"
He spat profanity.
It wasn't a good fight. He knew something was wrong and he hit her too hard. She slugged back, hurt her hand, cursed, ran and locked herself into the sleep.
She was asleep when he came pounding. She woke and pointed the lock open. She glared.
He said nothing. He ordered his smaller collections—his miniature horses, his ballpoint pens and his old-time cereal box missiles—on to his storeshelf before mounting his sleepshelf and pointing out the light.
She could hear him not sleeping.
Finally he muttered, "Too damn much cheese but it was okay."
She said nothing. She didn't almost cry as she might have a month before.
Brendel had appeared on their grid a year before, a dark, pugnacious young man, jittering and nervous. "Clare Webster around?"
"Mother isn't here." Her mother collected men. She met them at drinking clubs or collector meets. She gave them her grid card and took theirs, making them promise to come see her. If a man came, she tacked his card on her bulletin board. If he came twice or three times, she marked his card with colored pencil.
Brendel twitched his shoulders. "I got the evening. Wanta have dinner, kid?"
She was seventeen and tired of collecting china roosters and peach-can labels. She was tired of seeing the same stupid people every day. Somewhere there was someone handsome and perfect, and she had to find him and become perfect too. She couldn't waste all her life being stupid like her mother.
It took her two hours to see that Brendel was the perfect person. He was handsome, aggressive, easy to be with. He quarreled all the time and he even had a full-time job.
She married him. She dropped her little-girl collections and diversions. She was no longer a formless adolescent. She was very solid, very adult.
But the solidness had gone. She had found that Brendel's aggressiveness masked fear; his quarrelsomeness masked insecurity. Worst, he had no imagination. He plodded.
It had begun two weeks before. Brendel had come home from work tight and tense. He tried eating, he tried opera and quarreling, he tried exercises. Finally he said, "I'm gonna go see Latsker Smith. Wanta come?"
"Who the hell's Latsker Smith?" Already she was sick of the opera routine—and a little sick of Brendel.
"Drives a car. From Boston. Fella at the plant told me he's in centercity."
Minutes later they gridded out of the suburban maze. They materialized on a corner grid in centercity. There was no one on the dusty street. There was no car near the gaunt brick building where Latsker Smith was staying. They plopped on the doorstep.
Brendel fidgeted and talked. Latsker Smith was the son of a rich industrialist. His father wouldn't support him unless he worked, and Latsker wouldn't work. So he had to live on government non-employment allowance. His pre-grid automobile and airplane were his only diversions. Since he couldn't leave Boston by automobile, Boston being walled up like any city by the streetless suburbs, he saved his allowance until he could commercial-grid his car to another city. There he raced and squealed and spun through the deserted streets of centercity until he had saved enough to commercial-grid the car elsewhere.
A throbbing split the air. A red splinter of car hurtled around the corner and squealed to the curb. A tall, lank man unfolded, ignoring them.
Brendel sprang to overwhelm him. He pulled him to the steps to make introductions. But Latsker Smith peered absently at Pollony and she was embarrassed that Brendel acted like an eager child confronting some heroic figure from a dream.
"Latsker's pop got money." Brendel launched into his story again.
When the story fizzled she said, "Why couldn't you get a job?"
Smith held his head tilted. "Don't want a job."
"If you had a job you wouldn't have to stay one place so long."
"No use being anyplace if I have to leave my car."
She pursed her lips. Inside the car she could see seats, straps, a wheel. It was incomprehensible that he strapped himself in and hurtled through the streets. "It's a stupid thing to do," she said. "You'll get killed."
"No," he said.
"If you hit something you will. I've heard those atrocity stories. There were more people killed in automobiles from—"
"Nothing to hit," he said.
She flung out her arms. "Buildings! Poles!" His lack of response offended her.
"No need to hit them."
"I've seen the films!" She had seen the crumpled metal, the severed limbs, the spreading blood.
"Driver error. No drivers left. Too expensive on government allowance."
"No one stupid enough left, you mean!" But it was stupid to glare when he wouldn't frown. "Okay, what's it feel like?" she demanded.
He lifted his shoulders and dropped them.
"It must feel some way." She peered down into the machine, trying to imagine herself hurtling in it. "You fly an airplane too," she accused.
He nodded.
"I bet it feels just like gridding. And it takes longer."
"Gridding." He snorted, mildly. "There's no sensation at all to gridding."
"Then how does it feel to fly?" she prodded.
Brendel moved restlessly, bored. "Let's get going."
"We just got here, stupid," she protested.
He was already pulling her to the corner grid. "I'm getting hungry."
She tried to jerk her arm free but couldn't. "How long will you be here?" she called back, swatting Brendel's arm.
He lifted his shoulders and dropped them.
"If I come—" But Brendel had given their number. They were outside their own door, and she hadn't felt a thing. Today she resented not feeling a thing.
"These weird-o's, they talk too much. I'm hungry."
She resented punching his food and didn't even want to quarrel.
She drowsed back into sleep, remembering. Everything was empty. She ate, she slept, she quarreled, she gridded around seeing friends. What else was there? She couldn't get a job; there weren't that many jobs. And with the government allowance for not working, who needed a job? Who needed anything? A time of plenty, her school machine had called it. You just gridded around collecting and arguing to make it interesting. There were so many people moving so fast that you had to quarrel and push or you'd get stepped on.
It was all stupid. Brendel didn't help a bit. He was stupid too.
She tried to imagine Latsker Smith echoing through the empty streets in his scarlet splinter of car. Latsker Smith couldn't be stupid.
She slept three hours before the gridbell rang.
Elka, her cousin, stood on the grid, loose-haired, big-toothed. She swung a hatbox. "I didn't get you up?"
"No," Pollony said hopelessly.
"I'm gridding to NYC hatting and—"
"It's not even seven."
"Poll, I'm contritest but you weren't sleeping and—"
"I don't need hats."
"You haven't seen the darling I got in Paris. I gridded over with Sella Kyle and, honestly, there was a shop that—"
She convinced Elka that she was not going hatting. Elka took her toll in coffee and gridded after her Paris hat. Pollony barely admired it and Elka left.
Before she could dial Brendel's breakfast her mother was on the grid, fluffy, fleecy, thrusting a wad of bills at her.
"Just on my way to Mexico, toodle. Punch me some coffee?" Breathless moments later she was gone.
"What took so long?" Brendel demanded when she woke him.
"Momma stopped." She hated him like this, his face creased and puffy from sleep. She had never thought he would get fat.
He gulped his breakfast and left. Sometimes she hated him for just being.
The gridbell rang. It was a salesman. He insinuated she didn't have the money to buy his product. She said his merchandise stank. He left grinning but she didn't feel better.
The bell rang. A young man muttered, "Mis-grid," and disappeared.
She had gotten to the dress when she heard the door open. She eyed the hall reflector and saw Ferren, her mother's brother, slip into the cook. She dressed hastily. Ferren would order breakfast and keep the silver to turn in from his own grid for the deposit.
He was plumped up to the counter, a wooly haired man, attacking a stack of eggcakes.
"Let me have them."
He purred, taking spoon and knife from a pocket. "The government allowance is hardly sufficient for a man of my tastes. Shielded by your father's fortune as you are—"
"You could get a job." She punched coffee. She wished he would go away. He was always watching, smiling, spinning together soft words.
"And add to the work shortage?" He wagged his wooly head.
"Then don't complain. There should be a syrup pitcher too."
He produced it, purring.
The gridbell rang. Two pig-faced men in black Gridco uniforms blocked the doorway. "You got Ferren Carmichaels inside, lady."
"No." You always lied to Gridco collectors.
"We traced him here from Dallas."
"Well, he isn't here now."
"How come we heard him talking?"
"He isn't here." Gridco could not remove a grid even though the subscriber refused to pay his quarterly bill. The grid was held by law to be essential to human existence in the twisting, walled alleys of suburbia. Gridco could only send collectors to follow until their quarry fell or was pushed into their hands. And a man who had once fallen into Gridco hands paid eagerly forever after.
"We can pull another trace."
"Do that!" She slammed the door.
She had time for a quick swallow of coffee before the bell rang.
"He didn't go no farther."
She sighed. "Well, he won't come out. I can't make him."
"He'll come sometime." They leaned back against nothing, waiting.
"You're blocking my grid."
Dutifully they stepped into the narrow corridor.
She slammed the door. "They are going to stand there until you go out."
Ferren drained his coffee cup. "I'll settle here, then."
"If you—"
He tutted. "Thank you for the lunch invitation."
"I—" She bit her tongue. She would not get mad.
He wagged his head. "I'll peruse Brendel's books. Fine collection for a young man, books."
Gritting her teeth, she hurtled back to the dress.
The collectors rang every five minutes after that. They kept ringing until she went and told them Ferren would not come out.
It wasn't the way she had imagined it would be when she was married. What with punching Brendel's meals, sending out his clothes, going collecting with him and quarreling, she hardly had a minute. And the same stupid people, Elka, Ferren, her mother and father, were always there.
The bell rang. Her father scowled, seeing Ferren on Brendel's best sitshelf. "Where?" he said grimly.
"Mexico," she said.
"Pottery," he said, going.
The bell rang. A heavy-jawed youth said, "Miss Webster gave me—"
"My mother has gone to Mexico." She slammed the door.
Minutes later Sella Kyle gridded in, crisp, prim, blonde. "I haven't seen you in such a time, Poll. Coffee?"
She entertained Sella and wished she would go and knew Ferren knew she wanted Sella to go and found it amusing.
Every five minutes the collectors rang.
She had just talked Sella out the door when Lukia Collins gridded in. Lukia had never been Pollony's close friend in school. But now Lukia was always near, pushing, prodding at Pollony, smiling too brightly at Brendel.
"You two are coming to lunch with me."
"I've already asked Ferren to lunch."
"Silly, he can punch his own."
"Oh, no," Pollony said.
"I take the silver." Ferren smiled comfortably.
Lukia flipped her hand at him. "Atrocious man. Now, Pollony—"
It ended with Lukia inviting herself to come back to lunch. She had hardly vacated the grid when
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