Someday, he said to himself, I’ll live like Leo Bulero; instead of being stuck in New York City in 180 degree heat–
Beneath him now a throbbing began; the floor shook. The building’s cooling system had come on. Day had begun.
Outside the kitchen window the hot, hostile sun took shape beyond the other conapt buildings visible to him; he shut his eyes against it. Going to be another scorcher, all right, probably up to the twenty Wagner mark. He did not need to be a precog to foresee this.
In the miserably high-number conapt building 492 on the outskirts of Marilyn Monroe, New Jersey, Richard Hnatt ate breakfast indifferently while, with something greater than indifference, he glanced over the morning homeopape’s weather-syndrome readings of the previous day.
The key glacier, Ol’ Skintop, had retreated 4.62 Grables during the last twenty-four-hour period. And the temperature, at noon in New York, had exceeded the previous day’s by 1.46 Wagners. In addition the humidity, as the oceans evaporated, had increased by 16 Selkirks. So things were hotter and wetter; the great procession of nature clanked on, and toward what? Hnatt pushed the ’pape away, and picked up the mail which had been delivered before dawn… it had been some time since mailmen had crept out in daylight hours.
The first bill which caught his eye was the apt’s cooling pro-rated swindle; he owed Conapt 492 exactly ten and a half skins for the last month–a rise of three-fourths of a skin over April. Someday, he said to himself, it’ll be so hot that nothing will keep this place from melting; he recalled the day his l-p record collection had fused together in a lump, back around ’04, due to a momentary failure of the building’s cooling network. Now he owned iron oxide tapes; they did not melt. And at the same moment every parakeet and Venusian ming bird in the building had dropped dead. And his neighbor’s turtle had been boiled dry. Of course this had been during the day and everyone–at least the men–had been at work. The wives, however, had huddled at the lowest subsurface level, thinking (he remembered Emily telling him this) that the fatal moment had at last arrived. And not a century from now, but now. The Caltech predictions had been wrong… only of course they hadn’t been; it had just been a broken power-lead from the N.Y. utility people. Robot workmen had quickly shown up and repaired it.
In the living room his wife sat in her blue smock, painstakingly painting an unfired ceramic piece with glaze; her tongue protruded and her eyes glowed… the brush moved expertly and he could see already that this was going to be a good one. The sight of Emily at work recalled to him the task that lay before him, today: one which he did not relish.
He said, peevishly, “Maybe we ought to wait before we approach him.”
Without looking up, Emily said, “We’ll never have a better display to present to him than we have now.”
What if he says no?”
“We’ll go on. What did you expect, that we’d give up just because my one-time husband can’t foresee–or won’t foresee–how successful these new pieces will eventually be in terms of the market?”
Richard Hnatt said, “You know him; I don’t. He’s not vengeful, is he? He wouldn’t carry a grudge?” And anyhow what sort of grudge could Emily’s former husband be carrying? No one had done him any harm; if anything it had gone the other way, or so he understood from what Emily had related.
It was strange, hearing about Barney Mayerson all the time and never having met him, never having direct contact with the man. Now that would end, because he had an appointment to see Mayerson at nine this morning in the man’s office at P. P. Layouts. Mayerson of course would hold the whip hand; he could take one brief glance at the display of ceramics and decline ad hoc. No, he would say, P. P. Layouts is not interested in a min of this. Believe my precog ability, my Pre-Fash marketing talent and skill. And–out would go Richard Hnatt, the collection of pots under his arm, with absolutely no other place to go.
Looking out the window he saw with aversion that already it had become too hot for human endurance; the footer runnels were abruptly empty as everyone ducked for cover. The time was eight-thirty and he now had to leave; rising, he went to the hall closet to get his pith helmet and his mandatory cooling-unit; by law one had to be strapped to every commuter’s back until nightfall.
“Goodbye,” he said to his wife, pausing at the front door.
“Goodbye and lots of luck.” She had become even more involved in her elaborate glazing and he realized all at once that this showed how vast her tension was; she could not afford to pause even a moment. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall, feeling the cool wind of the portable unit as it chugged from behind him. “Oh,” Emily said, as he began to shut the door; now she raised her head, brushing her long brown hair back from her eyes. “Vid me as soon as you’re out of Barney’s office, as soon as you know one way or another.”
“Okay,” he said, and shut the door behind him.
Downramp, at the building’s bank, he unlocked their safety deposit box and carried it to a privacy room; there he lifted out the display case containing the spread of ceramic ware which he was to show Mayerson.
Shortly, he was aboard a thermosealed interbuilding commute car, on his way to downtown New York City and P. P. Layouts, the great pale synthetic-cement building from which Perky Pat and all the units of her miniature world originated. The doll, he reflected, which had conquered man as man at the same time had conquered the planets of the Sol system. Perky Pat, the obsession of the colonists. What a commentary on colonial life… what more did one need to know about those unfortunates who, under the selective service laws of the UN, had been kicked off Earth, required to begin new, alien, lives on Mars or Venus or Ganymede or wherever else the UN bureaucrats happened to imagine they could be deposited… and after a fashion survive.
And we think we’ve got it bad here, he said to himself.
The individual in the seat next to him, a middle-aged man wearing the gray pith helmet, sleeveless shirt, and shorts of bright red popular with the businessman class, remarked, “It’s going to be another hot one.”
“Yes.”
“What you got there in that great big carton? A picnic lunch for a hovel of Martian colonists?”
“Ceramics,” Hnatt said.
“I’ll bet you fire them just by sticking them outdoors at high noon.” The businessman chuckled, then picked up his morning ’pape, opened it to the front page. “Ship from outside the Sol system reported crash-landed on Pluto,” he said. “Team being sent to find it. You suppose it’s things? I can’t stand those things from other star systems.”
“It’s more likely one of our own ships reporting back,” Hnatt said.
“Ever seen a Proxima thing?”
“Only pics.”
“Grisly,” the businessman said. “If they find that wrecked ship on Pluto and it is a thing I hope they laser it out of existence; after all we do have a law against them coming into our system.”
“Right.”
“Can I see your ceramics? I’m in neckties, myself. The Werner simulated-handwrought living tie in a variety of Titanian colors–I have one on, see? The colors are actually a primitive life form that we import and then grow in cultures here on Terra. Just how we induce them to reproduce is our trade secret, you know, like the formula for Coca-Cola.”
Hnatt said, “For a similar reason I can’t show you these ceramics, much as I’d like to. They’re new. I’m taking them to a Pre-Fash precog at P. P. Layouts; if he wants to miniaturize them for the Perky Pat layouts then we’re in: it’s just a question of flashing the info to the P.P. disc jockey–what’s his name?–circing Mars. And so on.”
“Werner handwrought ties are part of the Perky Pat layouts,” the man informed him. “Her boyfriend Walt has a closetful of them.” He beamed. “When P. P. Layouts decided to min our ties–”
“It was Barney Mayerson you talked to?”
“I didn’t talk to him; it was our regional sales manager. They say Mayerson is difficult. Goes on what seems like impulse and once he’s decided it’s irreversible.”
“Is he ever wrong? Declines items that become fash?”
“Sure. He may be a precog but he’s only human. I’ll tell you one thing that might help. He’s very suspicious of women. His marriage broke up a couple of years ago and he never got over it. See, his wife became pregnant twice, and the board of directors of his conapt building, I think it’s 33, met and voted to expel him and his wife because they had violated the building code. Well, you know 33; you know how hard it is to get into any of the buildings in that low range. So instead of giving up his apt he elected to divorce his wife and let her move, taking their child. And then later on apparently he decided he made a mistake and he got embittered; he blamed himself, naturally, for making a mistake like that. A natural mistake, though; for God’s sake, what wouldn’t you and I give to have an apt in 33 or even 34? He never remarried; maybe he’s a Neo-Christian. But anyhow when you go to try to sell him on your ceramics, be very careful about how you deal with the feminine angle; don’t say ‘these will appeal to the ladies’ or anything like that. Most retail items are purchased–”