Gateways (65 page)

“Four hours and seventeen minutes and I’ll be as good as new,” said
Quartermain. “Then we’ll travel to the Marisula Delta and explore an entirely different ecosystem.”

“Let’s just travel back to the safari office,” said Tarica. “I’ve had enough.”

“Me, too,” added Donahue.

“You want to end your safari four days early?” asked Quatermain.

“You got it.”

“I am afraid I cannot accommodate you, sirs,” said Quatermain.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your company paid for five full days,” explained Quatermain. “If you do not experience all five days, we could be sued for breach of contract.”

“We’ve experienced five days’ worth,” said Tarica. “We just want to go home.”

“Clearly your travel has left you mentally confused, sir. You have actually experienced only twenty-one hours and forty-nine minutes. I am not aware of confusion taking this form before, but I suppose it can happen.”

“I know how long we’ve been here, and I’m
not
confused,” said Donahue. “Take us back.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

“As soon as the safari is over. My tire will be ready in four hours and thirteen minutes, and then we will proceed to the Marisula Delta.”

Tarica tried the door. “Let me out!”

“I am afraid I cannot, sir,” said Quatermain. “You might try to find your way back to the spaceport. If you do, there is a 97.328 percent likelihood that you will be killed and eaten, and should you make it back intact, there is a 95.673 percent chance that a breach of contract suit will be brought against my owners. Therefore, I feel I must fulfill our contract. Sit back and try to relax, sir.”

“We’ll starve.”

“Not to worry, sir. I will be able to feed you right where you are.”

“We can’t sleep in this thing,” complained Donahue.

“My understanding of human physiology, which I should note is encyclopedic, is that when you get tired enough you can sleep anywhere.” A brief pause. “All your needs will be provided for, sir. I even have a one-month supply of plastic bags.”

It was five days later that Quatermain pulled up to the spaceport.

“Serving you has been a true pleasure, sirs,” it intoned as Tarica and
Donahue wearily opened the door, raced around to the back, and grabbed their luggage. “I hope to see you again in the near future.”

“In your dreams!” growled Tarica.

“I do not dream, sir.”

“
I
do,” muttered Donahue. “And I’m going to have nightmares about this safari for the rest of my life.”

A squat robot, looking for all the world like a fire hydrant on wheels, rolled up, took their bags from them, and led them to a small waiting spaceship.

“This isn’t the same spaceliner we took here,” said Tarica dubiously. “It looks like a small private ship.”

“Your Stellar Voyages ship is not available, sir,” said the robot, as it placed their luggage in the cargo hold “This ship was supplied, gratis, by the safari company as a sign of their appreciation.”

“And to dissuade us from suing?” asked Donahue.

“That, too,” agreed the robot.

The two men climbed into the ship and strapped themselves into the only two seats provided.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” said the ship as the hatch closed and it began elevating. “I trust you enjoyed your once-in-a-lifetime safari experience on the planet Selous. I will be returning you to Earth. I come equipped with all creature comforts except sexual consorts”—it uttered an emotionless mechanical chuckle—“and have a gourmet kitchen at your disposal.”

“What happened to the ship we were supposed to be on?” asked Tarica.

“I regret to inform you that it was destroyed in an ion storm just as it was entering the system,” answered the ship.

“Uh . . . we’re not going through that same storm on the way out, are we?” asked Donahue.

“Yes, sir,” said the ship. “But there is no need for concern, sir. I am a new model, equipped with every conceivable safety device. I am far more maneuverable than a—” The ship shuddered for just an instant. “Just some minor space debris. Nothing to worry about. As I was saying, I am far more maneuverable than a spaceliner, and besides, this is my home system. Every ion storm during the past ten years has been charted and placed in my data banks.”

“So you’ve flown through them before?” said Tarica.

“Actually, no,” said the ship. “This is my first flight. But as I say, I am fully equipped and programmed. What
could
go wrong?”

Tarica cursed under his breath. Donahue merely checked to make sure there was a small paper bag near his seat.

“I am sure we’re going to get along splendidly together,” continued the ship. “You are Mr. Tarica and Mr. Donahue, am I correct?”

“Right,” said Tarica.

“And my name was clearly discernible in bold letters on my nose as you entered me,” said the ship proudly.

“I must have missed it,” said Tarica. “What was it?”

“I am the
Pequod
.”

Donahue reached for the bag.

Fred Pohl was editing
Astonishing Stories
a year before I was born. He was a giant in the field by the time I started reading science fiction. He won a shelf of Hugos for editing, and another shelf for writing.

I’ve probably read 80 percent of the words he’s written, which is one hell of a lot, and I subscribed to
Galaxy
and
If
, and I read most of the Bantam books he edited, plus those early
Star
anthologies. But when I think of Fred, those aren’t the memories that pop to mind first.

I think of Fred, and I instantly smell cigarette smoke. I was a heavy smoker when we were both hitting a lot of Midwestern conventions, so was he, and we seemed to always find ourselves in each other’s company, sneaking out of some boring banquet for a smoke, sitting in splendid and befogged isolation in the smoking suite, or otherwise polluting the convention.

I also remember a Windycon where there was a Fred Pohl roast, and the committee asked me to be the roastmaster because no one else would say anything nasty/funny about him. I pored through his wonderful autobiography,
The Way the Future Was
, and found a most interesting fact hidden away in the middle of it. Once, when (like so many writers) Fred needed a little salaried income, he took a job at a racetrack as the guy who irritates the winning horse’s genitalia with an electric prod to get urine samples for the track vet. I built an entire routine about how after years of causing the same reaction in editors and readers, he’d finally found his calling. Just before the roast a couple of panelists insisted I couldn’t say those things about an icon, but I did—and no one laughed louder than Fred.

When our mutual friend Algis Budrys died, it was Fred who contacted me and suggested we put together a collection of his very best works before they were forgotten—but only on the condition that we take, at most, an absolutely minimal fee, and that the bulk of the advance and all of the royalties go to Ajay’s widow. I accepted instantly. Why? Partially because Ajay was a friend. . . but my main reason was that after well over half a century of reading him, and smoking with him, and appearing on panels with him, and roasting him, I was finally offered the opportunity to work with one of my heroes. Health considerations have slowed the project down, but it’ll still come to fruition one of these days.

Everyone knows what a fine writer and editor Fred is, but he also has some accomplishments that have gone relatively unheralded. For example: a lot of writers have found one teammate and turned out a series of fine collaborations. L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt come to mind, or Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, or Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. But no one’s ever been part of two long-lived, stellar, wildly successful teams—except Fred, who did it with Cyril Kornbluth, and then, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, did it all over again with Jack Williamson.

He also wrote the single best article on self-promotion to appear in the past fifty years: “The Science Fiction Professional,” which appeared in Reginald Bretnor’s
The Craft of Science Fiction
back in 1976, and so impressed me that when I collected seven years of my “how-to” columns from
Speculations
in book form, I titled it
The Science Fiction Professional
. (Holster that lawsuit, Fred; the statute of limitations ran out in 2007.)

Science fiction doesn’t have many renaissance men, no matter how much we like to believe we do. Fred’s been an authentic one for damned near three-quarters of a century, and has improved his art with almost every passing decade. We’re not going to see too many men like that, and I’m proud to know him.

—M
IKE
R
ESNICK

The first lesson Leon learned at the ad agency was: nobody is your friend at the ad agency.

Take today: Brautigan was going to see an actual vat, at an actual clinic, which housed an actual target consumer, and he wasn’t taking Leon.

“Don’t sulk, it’s unbecoming,” Brautigan said, giving him one of those tight-lipped smiles where he barely got his mouth over those big, horsey, comical teeth of his. They were disarming, those pearly whites. “It’s out of the question. Getting clearance to visit a vat in person, that’s a one-month, two-month process. Background checks. Biometrics. Interviews with their psych staff. The physicals: they have to take a census of your microbial nation. It takes time, Leon. You might be a mayfly in a mayfly hurry, but the man in the vat, he’s got a lot of time on his hands. No skin off his dick if you get held up for a month or two.”

“Bullshit,” Leon said. “It’s all a show. They’ve got a brick wall a hundred miles high around the front, and a sliding door around the back. There’s always an exception in these protocols. There has to be.”

“When you’re 180 years old and confined to a vat, you don’t make exceptions. Not if you want to go on to 181.”

“You’re telling me that if the old monster suddenly developed a rare, fast-moving liver cancer and there was only one oncologist in the whole goddamned world who could make it better, you’re telling me that guy would be sent home to France or whatever, ‘No thanks, we’re OK, you don’t have clearance to see the patient’?”

“I’m telling you the monster
doesn’t have a liver
. What that man has, he has
machines
and
nutrients
and
systems
.”

“And if a machine breaks down?”

“The man who invented that machine works for the monster. He lives on the monster’s private estate, with his family.
Their
microbial nations are identical to the monster’s. He is not only the emperor of their lives, he
is the emperor of the lives of their intestinal flora. If the machine that man invented stopped working, he would be standing by the vat in less than two minutes, with his staff, all in disposable, sterile bunny suits, murmuring reassuring noises as he calmly, expertly fitted one of the ten replacements he has standing by, the ten replacements he checks,
personally
, every single day, to make sure that they are working.”

Leon opened his mouth, closed it. He couldn’t help himself, he snorted a laugh. “Really?”

Brautigan nodded.

“And what if none of the machines worked?”

“If that man couldn’t do it, then his rival, who
also
lives on the monster’s estate, who has developed the second-most-exciting liver replacement technology in the history of the world, who burns to try it on the man in the vat—
that
man would be there in ten minutes, and the first man, and his family—”

“Executed?”

Brautigan made a disappointed noise. “Come on, he’s a quadrillionaire, not a Bond villain. No, that man would be demoted to nearly nothing, but given one tiny chance to redeem himself: invent a technology better than the one that’s currently running in place of the vat-man’s liver, and you will be restored to your fine place with your fine clothes and your wealth and your privilege.”

“And if he fails?”