How to Make Friends, Jim Harmon [epub e ink reader .txt] 📗

one space.

The Red King advanced backwards to face the enemy.

The Black King shuffled sideways.

The Red King followed....

Uselessly.

"Tie game," Ronald said.

"Tie game," Manet said.

"Let's talk," Ronald said cheerfully. He was always cheerful.

Cheerfulness was a personality trait Manet had thumbed out for him. Cheerful. Submissive. Co-operative. Manet had selected these factors in order to make Ronald as different a person from himself as possible.

"The Korean-American War was the greatest of all wars," Ronald said pontifically.

"Only in the air," Manet corrected him.

Intelligence was one of the factors Manet had punched to suppress. Intelligence. Aggressiveness. Sense of perfection. Ronald couldn't know any more than Manet, but he could (and did) know less. He had seen to that when his own encephalograph matrix had programmed Ronald's feeder.

"There were no dogfights in Korea," Ronald said.

"I know."

"The dogfight was a combat of hundreds of planes in a tight area, the last of which took place near the end of the First World War. The aerial duel, sometimes inaccurately referred to as a 'dogfight' was not seen in Korea either. The pilots at supersonic speeds only had time for single passes at the enemy. Still, I believe, contrary to all experts, that this took greater skill, man more wedded to machine, than the leisurely combats of World War One."

"I know."

"Daniel Boone was still a crack shot at eight-five. He was said to be warm, sincere, modest, truthful, respected and rheumatic."

"I know."

Manet knew it all. He had heard it all before.

He was so damned sick of hearing about Korean air battles, Daniel Boone, the literary qualities of ancient sports fiction magazines, the painting of Norman Rockwell, New York swing, ad nauseum. What a narrow band of interests! With the whole universe to explore in thought and concept, why did he have to be trapped with such an unoriginal human being?

Of course, Ronald wasn't an original human being. He was a copy.

Manet had been interested in the Fabulous Forties—Lt. "Hoot" Gibson, Sam Merwin tennis stories, Saturday Evening Post covers—when he had first learned of them, and he had learned all about them. He had firm opinions on all these.

He yearned for someone to challenge him—to say that Dime Sports had been nothing but a cheap yellow rag and, why, Sewanee Review, there had been a magazine for you.

Manet's only consolidation was that Ronald's tastes were lower than his own. He patriotically insisted that the American Sabre Jet was superior to the Mig. He maintained with a straight face that Tommy Dorsey was a better band man than Benny Goodman. Ronald was a terrific jerk.

"Ronald," Manet said, "you are a terrific jerk."

Ronald leaped up immediately and led with his right.

Manet blocked it deftly and threw a right cross.

Ronald blocked it deftly, and drove in a right to the navel.

The two men separated and, puffing like steam locomotives passing the diesel works, closed again.

Ronald leaped forward and led with his right.

Manet stepped inside the swing and lifted an uppercut to the ledge of Ronald's jaw.

Ronald pinwheeled to the floor.

He lifted his bruised head from the deck and worked his reddened mouth. "Had enough?" he asked Manet.

Manet dropped his fists to his sides and turned away. "Yes."

Ronald hopped up lightly. "Another checkers, Billy Boy?"

"No."

"Okay. Anything you want, William, old conquerer."

Manet scrunched up inside himself in impotent fury.

Ronald was maddeningly co-operative and peaceful. He would even get in a fist fight to avoid trouble between them. He would do anything Manet wanted him to do. He was so utterly damned stupid.

Manet's eyes orbitted towards the checkerboard.

But if he were so much more stupid than he, Manet, why was it that their checker games always ended in a tie?

The calendar said it was Spring on Earth when the radio was activated for a high-speed information and entertainment transmission.

The buzzer-flasher activated in the solarium at the same time.

Manet lay stretched out on his back, naked, in front of the transparent wall.

By rolling his eyes back in his head, Manet could see over a hedge of eyebrows for several hundred flat miles of white sand.

And several hundred miles of desert could see him.

For a moment he gloried in the blatant display of his flabby muscles and patchy sunburn.

Then he sighed, rolled over to his feet and started trudging toward Communication.

He padded down the rib-ridged matted corridor, taking his usual small pleasure in the kaleidoscopic effect of the spiraling reflections on the walls of the tubeway.

As he passed the File Room, he caught the sound of the pounding vibrations against the stoppered plug of the hatch.

"Come on, Billy Buddy, let me out of this place!"

Manet padded on down the hall. He had, he recalled, shoved Ronald in there on Lincoln's Birthday, a minor ironic twist he appreciated quietly. He had been waiting in vain for Ronald to run down ever since.

In Communication, he took a seat and punched the slowed down playback of the transmission.

"Hello, Overseers," the Voice said. It was the Voice of the B.B.C. It irritated Manet. He never understood how the British had got the space transmissions assignment for the English language. He would have preferred an American disk-jockey himself, one who appreciated New York swing.

"We imagine that you are most interested in how long you shall be required to stay at your present stations," said the Voice of God's paternal uncle. "As you on Mars may know, there has been much discussion as to how long it will require to complete the present schedule—" there was of course no "K" sound in the word—"for atmosphere seeding.

"The original, non-binding estimate at the time of your departure was 18.2 years. However, determining how long it will take our stations properly to remake the air of Mars is a problem comparable to finding the age of the Earth. Estimates change as new factors are learned. You may recall that three years ago the official estimate was changed to thirty-one years. The recent estimate by certain reactionary sources of two hundred and seventy-four years is not an official government estimate. The news for you is good, if you are becoming nostalgic for home, or not particularly bad if you are counting on drawing your handsome salary for the time spent on Mars. We have every reason to believe our original estimate was substantially correct. The total time is, within limits of error, a flat 18 years."

A very flat 18 years, Manet thought as he palmed off the recorder.

He sat there thinking about eighteen years.

He did not switch to video for some freshly taped westerns.

Finally, Manet went back to the solarium and dragged the big box out. There was a lot left inside.

One of those parts, one of those bones or struts of flesh sprayers, one of them, he now knew, was the Modifier.

The Modifier was what he needed to change Ronald. Or to shut him off.

If only the Master Chart hadn't been lost, so he would know what the Modifier looked like! He hoped the Modifier itself wasn't lost. He hated to think of Ronald locked in the Usher tomb of the File Room for 18 flat years. Long before that, he would have worn his fists away hammering at the hatch. Then he might start pounding with his head. Perhaps before the time was up he would have worn himself down to nothing whatsoever.

Manet selected the ripple-finished gray-covered manual from the hodgepodge, and thought: eighteen years.

Perhaps I should have begun here, he told himself. But I really don't have as much interest in that sort of thing as the earthier types. Simple companionship was all I wanted. And, he thought on, even an insipid personality like Ronald's would be bearable with certain compensations.

Manet opened the book to the chapter headed: The Making of a Girl.

Veronica crept up behind Manet and slithered her hands up his back and over his shoulders. She leaned forward and breathed a moist warmth into his ear, and worried the lobe with her even white teeth.

"Daniel Boone," she sighed huskily, "only killed three Indians in his life."

"I know."

Manet folded his arms stoically and added: "Please don't talk."

She sighed her instant agreement and moved her expressive hands over his chest and up to the hollows of his throat.

"I need a shave," he observed.

Her hands instantly caressed his face to prove that she liked a rather bristly, masculine countenance.

Manet elbowed Veronica away in a gentlemanly fashion.

She made her return.

"Not now," he instructed her.

"Whenever you say."

He stood up and began pacing off the dimensions of the compartment. There was no doubt about it: he had been missing his regular exercise.

"Now?" she asked.

"I'll tell you."

"If you were a jet pilot," Veronica said wistfully, "you would be romantic. You would grab love when you could. You would never know which moment would be last. You would make the most of each one."

"I'm not a jet pilot," Manet said. "There are no jet pilots. There haven't been any for generations."

"Don't be silly," Veronica said. "Who else would stop those vile North Koreans and Red China 'volunteers'?"

"Veronica," he said carefully, "the Korean War is over. It was finished even before the last of the jet pilots."

"Don't be silly," she snapped. "If it were over, I'd know about it, wouldn't I?"

She would, except that somehow she had turned out even less bright, less equipped with Manet's own store of information, than Ronald. Whoever had built the Lifo kit must have had ancient ideas about what constituted appropriate "feminine" characteristics.

"I suppose," he said heavily, "that you would like me to take you back to Earth and introduce you to Daniel Boone?"

"Oh, yes."

"Veronica, your stupidity is hideous."

She lowered her long blonde lashes on her pink cheeks. "That is a mean thing to say to me. But I forgive you."

An invisible hand began pressing down steadily on the top of his head until it forced a sound out of him. "Aaaawrraagggh! Must you be so cloyingly sweet? Do you have to keep taking that? Isn't there any fight in you at all?"

He stepped forward and back-handed her across the jaw.

It was the first time he had ever struck a woman, he realized regretfully. He now knew he should have been doing it long ago.

Veronica sprang forward and led with a right.

Ronald's cries grew louder as Manet marched Veronica through the corridor.

"Hear that?" he inquired, smiling with clenched teeth.

"No, darling."

Well, that was all right. He remembered he had once told her to ignore the noise. She was still following orders.

"Come on, Bill, open up the hatch for old Ronald," the voice carried through sepulchrally.

"Shut up!" Manet yelled.

The voice dwindled stubbornly, then cut off.

A silence with a whisper of metallic ring to it.

Why hadn't he thought of that before? Maybe because he secretly took comfort in the sound of an almost human voice echoing through the station.

Manet threw back the bolt and wheeled back the hatch.

Ronald looked just the same as had when Manet had seen him last. His hands didn't seem to have been worn away in the least. Ronald's lips seemed a trifle chapped. But that probably came not from all the shouting but from having nothing to drink for some months.

Ronald didn't say anything to Manet.

But he looked offended.

"You," Manet said to Veronica with a shove in the small of the back, "inside, inside."

Ronald sidestepped the lurching girl.

"Do you know what I'm going to do with you?" Manet demanded. "I'm going to lock you up in here, and leave you for a day, a month, a year, forever! Now what do you think about that?"

"If you think it's the right thing, dear," Veronica said hesitantly.

"You know best, Willy," Ronald said uncertainly.

Manet slammed the hatch in disgust.

Manet walked carefully down the corridor, watching streamers of his reflection corkscrewing into the curved walls. He had to walk carefully, else the artery would roll up tight and squash him. But he walked too carefully for this to happen.

As he passed the File Room, Ronald's voice said: "In my opinion, William, you should let us out."

"I," Veronica said, "honestly feel that you should let me out, Bill, dearest."

Manet giggled. "What? What was that? Do you suggest that I take you back after you've been behind a locked door with my best friend?"

He went down the corridor, giggling.

He giggled and thought: This will never do.

Pouring and tumbling through the Lifo kit, consulting the manual diligently, Manet concluded that there weren't enough parts left in the box to go around.

The book gave instructions for The Model Mother, The Model Father, The Model Sibling and others. Yet there weren't parts enough in the kit.

He would have to take parts from Ronald or Veronica in order to make any one of the others. And he could not do that without the Modifier.

He wished Trader Tom would return and extract