You can when you chew Can-D, he thought. Or the new product, Chew-Z. All the colonists do. It’s not available on Earth but it is on Mars or Venus or Ganymede, any of the frontier colonies.
If everything else fails, there’s that.
And perhaps it already had failed. Because–
In the last analysis he could not go to Palmer Eldritch. Not after what the man had done–or tried to do–to Leo. He realized this as he stood outdoors waiting for a cab. Beyond him the midday street shimmered and he thought, Maybe I’ll step out there. Would anyone find me before I died? Probably not. It would be as good a way as any…
So there goes my last hope of employment. It would amuse Leo that I’d balk here. He’d be surprised and probably pleased.
Just for the hell of it, he decided, I’ll call Eldritch, ask him, see if he would give me a job.
He found a vidphone booth and put through a call to Eldritch’s demesne on Luna.
“This is Barney Mayerson,” he explained. “Previously top Pre-Fash consultant to Leo Bulero; as a matter of fact I was second in command at P. P. Layouts.”
Eldritch’s personnel manager frowned and said, “Well? What do you want?”
“I’d like to see about a job with you.”
“We’re not hiring any Pre-Fash consultants. Sorry.”
“Would you ask Mr. Eldritch, please?”
“Mr. Eldritch has already expressed himself on the matter.”
Barney hung up. He left the vidphone booth.
He was not really surprised.
If they had said, Come to Luna for an interview, would I have gone? Yes, he realized. I’d have gone but at some point I’d have pulled out. Once I had firmly established that they’d give me the job.
Returning to the vidphone booth he called his UN selective service board. “This is Mr. Barney Mayerson.” He gave them his official code-ident number. “I received my notice the other day. I’d like to waive the formalities and go right in. I’m anxious to emigrate.”
“The physical can’t be bypassed,” the UN bureaucrat informed him. “Nor can the mental. But if you choose you may come by any time, right now if you wish, and take both.”
“Okay,” he said. “I will.”
“And since you are volunteering, Mr. Mayerson, you get to pick–”
“Any planet or moon is fine with me,” he said. He rang off, left the booth, found a cab, and gave it the address of the selective service board near his conapt building.
As the cab hummed above downtown New York another cab rose and zipped ahead of it, wig-wagging its side fins in a rocking motion.
“They are trying to contact us,” the autonomic circuit of his own cab informed him. “Do you wish to respond?”
“No,” Barney said. “Speed up.” And then he changed his mind. “Can you ask them who they are?”
“By radio, perhaps.” The cab was silent a moment and then it stated, “They claim to have a message for you from Palmer Eldritch; he wants to tell you that he will accept you as an employee and for you not to–”
“Let’s have that again,” Barney said.
“Mr. Palmer Eldritch, whom they represent, will employ you as you recently requested. Although they have a general rule–”
“Let me talk to them,” Barney said.
A mike was presented to him.
“Who is this?” Barney said into it.
An unfamiliar man’s voice said, “This is Icholtz. From Chew-Z Manufacturers of Boston. May we land and discuss the matter of your employment with our firm?”
“I’m on my way to the draft board. To give myself up.”
“There’s nothing in writing, is there? You haven’t signed.”
“No.”
“Good. Then it’s not too late.”
Barney said, “But on Mars I can chew Can-D.”
“Why do you want to do that, for godssake?”
“Then I can be back with Emily.”
“Who’s Emily?”
“My previous wife. Who I kicked out because she became pregnant. Now I realize it was the only happy time of my life. In fact I love her more now than I ever did; it’s grown instead of faded.”
“Look,” Icholtz said. “We can supply you with all the Chew-Z you want and it’s superior; you can live forever in an eternal unchanging perfect now with your ex-wife. So there’s no problem.”
“But maybe I don’t want to work for Palmer Eldritch.”
“You applied!”
“I’ve got doubts,” Barney said. “Grave ones, I tell you; don’t call me, I’ll call you. If I don’t go into the service.” He handed the mike back to the cab. “Here. Thanks.”
“It’s patriotic to go into the service,” the cab said.
“Mind your own business,” Barney said.
“I think you’re doing the right thing,” the cab said, anyhow.
“If only I had gone to Sigma 14-B to save Leo,” he said. “Or was it Luna? Wherever he was; I can’t even remember now. It all seems like a disfigured dream. Anyhow if I had I’d still be working for him and everything would be all right.”
“We all make mistakes,” the cab said piously.
“But some of us,” Barney said, “make fatal ones.” First about our loved ones, our wife and children, and then about our employer, he said to himself.
The cab hummed on.
And then, he said to himself, we make one last one. About our whole life, summing it all up. Whether to take a job with Eldritch or go into the service. And whichever we choose we can know this:
It was the wrong alternative.
An hour later he had taken his physical; he had passed and thereupon the mental was administered by something not unlike Dr. Smile.
He passed that, too.
In a daze he took the oath (“I swear to look upon Earth as the mother and leader,” etc.) and then, with a folio of greetings!-type information, was ejected to go back to his conapt and pack. He had twenty-four hours before his ship left for – wherever they were sending him. They had not as yet uttered this. The notification of destination, he conjectured, probably began, “Mene, mene, tekel.” At least it should, considering the possible choices to which it was limited.
I’m in, he said to himself with every sort of reaction: gladness, relief, terror, and then the melancholy that came with an overwhelming sense of defeat. Anyhow, he thought as he rode back to his conapt, this beats stepping out into the midday sun, becoming, as they say, a mad dog or an Englishman.
Or did it?
Anyhow, this was slower. It took longer to die this way, possibly fifty years, and that appealed to him more. But why, he did not know.
However, he reflected, I can always decide to speed it up. On the colony world there are undoubtedly as many opportunities for that as there are here, perhaps even more.
While he was packing his possessions, ensconced for the last time in his beloved, worked-for conapt, the vidphone rang.
“Mr. Bayerson–” A girl, some minor official of some sub-front-office department of the UN’s colonizing apparatus. Smiling.
“Mayerson.”
“Yes. What I called for, you see, is to tell you your destination, and–lucky you, Mr. Mayerson!–it will be the fertile area of Mars known as Fineburg Crescent. I know you’ll enjoy it there. Well, so goodbye, sir, and good luck.” She kept right on smiling, even up until he had cut off the image. It was the smile of someone who was not going.
“Good luck to you, too,” he said.
Fineburg Crescent. He had heard of it; relatively, it actually was fertile. Anyhow the colonists there had gardens: it was not, like some areas, a waste of frozen methane crystals and gas descending in violent, ceaseless storms year in, year out. Believe it or not he could go up to the surface from time to time, step out of his hovel.
In the corner of the living room of his conapt rested the suitcase containing Dr. Smile; he switched it on and said, “Doctor, you’ll have a bit of trouble believing this, but I have no further need of your services. Goodbye and good luck, as the girl who isn’t going said.” He added by way of explanation, “I volunteered.”
“Cdryxxxxx,” Dr. Smile blared, slipping a cog down below in the conapt building’s basement. “But for your type–that’s virtually impossible. What was the reason, Mr. Mayerson?”
“The death wish,” he said, and shut the psychiatrist off; he resumed his packing in silence. God, he thought. And a little while ago Roni and I had such big plans; we were going to sell out Leo on a grand scale, go over to Eldritch with an enormous splash. What happened to all that? I’ll tell you what happened, he said to himself; Leo acted first.
And now Roni has my job. Exactly what she wanted.
The more he thought of it the angrier it made him, in a baffled sort of way. But there was nothing he could do about it, at least not in this world. Maybe when he chewed Can-D or Chew-Z he could inhabit a universe where–