Frederik Pohl Best of Frederik Pohl

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in the strong currents of her life. You don't think progress goes in a
straight line, do you? Do you recognize that it is an ascending, accelerating,
maybe even exponential curve? It takes hell's own time to get started, but
when it goes it goes like a bomb. And you, you Scotch-drinking steak-eater in
your Relaxacizer chair, you've just barely lighted the primftcord of the fuse.
What is it now, the six or seven hundred thousandth day after Christ? Dora
lives in Day Million. A thousand years from now. Her body fats are
polyunsaturated, like Crisco. Her wastes are hemodialyzed out of her
bloodstream while she sleeps-that means she doesn't have to go to the
bathroom. On whim, to pass a slow half-hour, she can command more energy than
the entire nation of Portugal can spend today, and use it to launch a weekend
satellite or remold a crater on the Moon. She loves Don very much. She keeps
his every gesture, mannerism, nuance, touch of hand, thrill of intercourse,
passion of kiss stored in symbolic-mathematical form. And when she wants him,
all she has to do is turn the machine on and she has him.
And Don, of course, has Dora. Adrift on a sponson city a few hundred yards
over her head or orbiting Arcturus, fifty light-years away, Don has only to
command his own symbol-manipulator to rescue Dora from the ferrite files and
bring her to life for him, and there she is; and rapturously, tirelessly they
ball all night. Not in the flesh, of course; but then his flesh has been
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extensively altered and it wouldn't really be much fun. He doesn't need the
flesh for pleasure. Genital organs feel nothing. Neither do hands, nor
breasts, nor lips; they are only receptors, accepting and transmitting
impulses. It is the brain that feels, it is the interpretation of those
impulses that makes agony or orgasm; and Don's symbol-manipulator gives him
the analogue of cuddling, the analogue of kissing, the analogue of wildest,
most ardent hours with the eternal, exquisite and incorruptible analogue of
Dora. Or Diane. Or sweet Rose, or laughing Alicia; for to be sure, they have
each of them exchanged analogues before, and will again.
Balls, you say, it looks crazy to me. And you-with your aftershave lotion and
your little red car, pushing papers across a desk all day and chasing tail all
night-tell me, just how the hell do you think you would look to
Tiglath-Pileser, say, or Attila the Hun?
Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus
IT WAS THE CRAZIEST Christmas I ever spent. Partly it was Heinemann's fault-he
came up with a new wrinkle in gift-wrapping that looked good but like every
other idea that comes out of the front office meant plenty of headaches for
the rest of us. But what really messed up Christmas for me was the girl.
Personnel sent her down-after I'd gone up there myself three times and banged
my fist on the table. It was the height of the season and when she told me
that she had had her application in three weeks before they called her, I
excused myself and got Personnel on the store phone from my private office.
"Martin here," I said. "What the devil's the matter with you people? This girl
is the Emporium type if I ever saw one, and you've been letting her sit around
nearly a month while--"
Crawford, the Personnel head, interrupted me. "Have you talked to her very
much?" he wanted to know.
"\Vell, no. But-"
"Call me back when you do," he advised, and clicked off.
I went back to the stockroom where she was standing patiently, and looked her
over a little thoughtfully. But she looked all right to me. She was
blond-haired and blue-eyed and not very big; she had a sweet, slow smile. She
wasn't exactly beautiful, but she looked like a girl you'd want to know. She
wasn't bold, and she wasn't too shy; and that's a perfect description of what
we call "The Emporium Type."
So what in the world was the matter with Personnel?
Her name was Lilymary Hargreave. I put her to work on the giftwrap spraying
machine while I got busy with my paper work. I have a hundred forty-
one persons in the department and at the height of the Christmas season I
could use twice as many. But we do get the work done. For instance, Saul &
Capell, the next biggest store in town, has a hundred and sixty in their gift
and counseling department, and their sales run easily twenty-five per cent
less than ours. And in the four years that I've headed the department we've
yet to fail to get an order delivered when it was promised.
All through that morning I kept getting glimpses of the new girl. She
was a quick learner-smart, too smart to be stuck with the sprayer for very
long. I needed someone like her around, and right there on the spot I made up
my mind that if she was as good as she looked I'd put her in a counseling
booth within a week, and the devil with what Personnel thought.
The store was packed with last-minute shoppers. I suppose I'm sentimental, but
I love to watch the thousands of people bustling in and out, with all the
displays going at once, and the lights on the trees, and the loudspeakers
playing White Christmas and The Eighth Candle and Jingle Bells and all the
other traditional old favorites. Christmas is more than a mere seffing season
of the year to me; it means something.
The girl called me over near closing time. She looked distressed and with some
reason. There was a dolly ifiled with gift-wrapped packages, and a man from
Shipping looking annoyed. She said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Martin, but I
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seem to have done something wrong."
The Shipping man snorted. "Look for yourself, Mr. Martin," he said, handing me
one of the packages.
I looked. It was wrong, all right. Heinemann's new wrinkle that year was a
special attached gift card-a simple Yule scene and the printed message:
The very Merriest of Season's Greetings
From
To
$8.50
The price varied with the item, of course. Heinemann's idea was for the
customer to fill it out and mail it, ahead of time, to the person it was
intended for. That way, the person who got it would know just about how much
he ought to spend on a present for the first person. It was smart, I admit,
and maybe the smartest thing about it was rounding the price off to the
nearest fifty cents instead of giving it exactly. Heinemann said it was bad-
mannered to be too precise-and the way the customers were going for the idea,
it had to be right.
But the trouble was that the gift-wrapping machines were geared to only a
plain card; it was necessary for the operator to put the price in by hand.
I said, "That's all right, Joe; I'll take care of it." As Joe went satisfled
back to Shipping, I told the girl: "It's my fault. I should have explained to
you, but I guess I've just been a little too rushed."
She looked downcast. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Nothing to be sorry about." I showed her the routing slip attached to each
one, which the Shipping Department kept for its records once the package was
on its way. "All we have to do is go through these; the price is on every one.
We'll just fill out the cards and get them out. I guess-" I looked at my
watch-"I guess you'll be a little late tonight, but I'll see that you get
overtime and dinner money for it. It wasn't your mistake, after all."
She said hesitantly, "Mr. Martin, couldn't it-well, can I let it go for
tonight? It isn't that I mind working, but I keep house for my f ather and if
I don't get there on time he just won't remember to eat dinner. Please?"
I suppose I frowned a little, because her expression was a little worried.
But, after all, it was her first day. I said, "Miss Hargreave, don't give it a
thought. I'll take care of it."
The way I took care of it, it turned out, was to do it myself; it was late
when I got through, and I ate quickly and went home to bed. But I didn't mind, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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