And Now the News (6 page)

Zeitgeist burst out laughing, and in Joe fury passed, shame passed, and he found himself laughing, too. He held out his glass and Zeitgeist clinked with him. “You're a … a—luck.”

“Luck,” said Zeitgeist. They drank. It was whiskey, the old gentle muscular whiskey that lines the throat with velvet and instantly heats the ear lobes. “How did you make out?”

Joe drank again and smiled. “I walked into that office almost an hour late,” he began, and told what had happened. Then, “And all day it was like that. I didn't know a job … people … I didn't know things could be like that. Look, I told you I'd pay you. I said I'd pay you anything you—”

“Never mind that just now. What else happened? The suit and all?”

“That. Oh, I guess I was kind of—” Joe looked into the friendly amber in his glass, “well, intoxicated. Lunchtime I just walked into King's and got the suit. Two suits. I haven't had a new suit in four years, and then it didn't come from King's. I just signed for 'em,” he added, a reflective wonderment creeping into his voice. “They didn't mind. Shirts,” he said, closing his eyes.

“It'll pay off.”

“It did pay off,” said Joe, bouncing on his soft chair to sit upright on the edge, shoulders back, head up. His voice drummed and his eyes were bright. He set his glass down on the carpet and swatted his hands gleefully together. “There was this liaison meeting, they call it, this morning. I don't know what got into me. Well, I do; but anyway, like every other copywriter I have a project tucked away; you know—I like it but maybe no one else will. I had it in my own roughs, up to yesterday. So I got this bee in my bonnet and went in to the Art Department and started in on them, and you know, they caught fire, they worked almost all
night?
And at the meeting this morning, the usual once-a-month kind of thing, the brass from the main office looking over us step-children and wondering why they don't fold us up and go to an outside agency. It was so easy!” he chortled.

“I just sat there, shy like always, and there was old Barnes as usual trying to head off product advertising and go into institutionals, because he likes to write that stuff himself. Thinks it makes the brass think he loves the company. So soon as he said ‘institutionals' I jumped up and agreed with him and said let me show you one of Mr. Barnes' ideas. Yeah! I went and got it and you should
see
that presentation; you could eat it! So here's two VPs and a board secretary with their eyes bugging out and old Barnes not daring to deny anything, and everybody in the place knew I was lying and thought what a nice fellow I was to do it that way. And there sat that brass, looking at my haircut and my tie and my suit and me, and
buying
it piece by piece, and Barnes, old Barnes sweating it out.”

“What did they offer you?”

“They haven't exactly. I'm supposed to go see the chairman Monday.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Say no. Whatever it is, I'll say no. I have lots of ideas piled up—nobody would
listen
before! Word'll get around soon enough; I'll get my big raise the only smart way a man can get a really big one—just before he goes to work for a new company. Meanwhile I'll stay and work hard and be nice to Barnes, who'll die a thousand deaths.”

Zeitgeist chuckled. “You're a stinker. What happened when you went home?”

Joe sank back into his chair and turned toward the flames; whatever his thoughts were, they suffused him with firelight and old amber, strength through curing, through waiting. His voice was just that mellow as he murmured, “That wasn't you at all. That was me.”

“Oh, sorry. I wasn't prying.”

“Don't get me wrong!” said Joe. “I want to tell you.” He laughed softly. “We had veal cutlets.”

A log fell and Joe watched the sparks shooting upward while Zeitgeist waited. Suddenly Joe looked across at him with a most peculiar expression on his face. “The one thing I never thought of till the time came. I couldn't wear that thing all night, could I now? I don't want her to know. I'll be … you said I'd grow to … that if I put my back into it, maybe some day I wouldn't need it.” He touched his collarbone.

“That's right,” said Zeitgeist.

“So I couldn't wear it. And then I couldn't talk. Not a word.” Again, the soft laugh. “She wouldn't sleep, not for the longest time. ‘Joe?' she'd say, and I'd know she was going to ask where I'd been that night. I'd say,
‘Shh.'
and put my hand on her face. She'd hold on to it. Funny. Funny, how you know the difference,” he said in a near whisper, looking at the fire again. “She said, ‘Joe?' just like before, and I knew she was going to say she was sorry for being … well, all the trouble we've had. But I said
‘Shh
.' ” He watched the fire silently, and Zeitgeist seemed to know that he was finished.

“I'm glad,” said Zeitgeist.

“Yeah.”

They shared some quiet. Then Zeitgeist said, waving his glass at the mantel, “Still think the bill's out of line?”

Joe looked at it, at the man. “It's not a question of how much it's worth,” he said with some difficulty. “It's how much I can pay. When I left here I wanted to pay you whatever you asked—five dollars or five hundred, I didn't care what I had to sacrifice. But I never thought it would be five
thousand!
” He sat up. “I'll level with you; I don't
have that kind of money. I never did have. Maybe I never will have.”

“What do you think I fixed you up for?” Zeitgeist's voice cracked like a target-gun. “What do you think I'm in business for? I don't gamble.”

Joe stood up slowly. “I guess I just don't understand you,” he said coldly. “Well, at those prices I guess I can ask you to service this thing so I can get out of here.”

“Sure.” Zeitgeist rose and led the way out of the room and down the hall to the laboratory. His face was absolutely expressionless, but not fixed; only relaxed.

Joe shucked out of his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. He unclipped the elastics and pulled the amplifier off over his head. Zeitgeist took it and tossed it on the bench. “All right,” he said, “get dressed.”

Joe went white. “What, you want to haggle? Three thousand then, when I get it,” he said shrilly.

Zeitgeist sighed. “Get dressed.”

Joe turned and snatched at his shirt. “Blackmail. Lousy blackmail.”

Zeitgeist said, “You know better than that.”

There is a quality of permanence about the phrase that precedes a silence. It bridges the gap between speech and speech, hanging in midair to be stared at. Joe pulled on his shirt, glaring defiantly at the other man. He buttoned it up, he tucked in the tails, he put on his tie and knotted it, and replaced his tie clasp. He picked up his coat. And all the while the words hung there.

He said, miserably, “I want to know better than that.”

Zeitgeist's breath hissed out; Joe wondered how long he had been holding it. “Come here, Joe,” he said gently.

Joe went to the bench. Zeitgeist pulled the amplifier front and center. “Remember what I told you about this thing—a mike here to pick up chest tones, band-passes to cut down on what you have too much of, and the amplifier here to blow up those low resonances? And this?” he pointed.

“The power supply.”

“The power supply,” Zeitgeist nodded. “Well, look; there's nothing wrong with the theory. Some day someone will design a rig this compact that will do the job, and it'll work just as I said.” His pale gaze flicked across Joe's perplexed face and he laughed. “You're sort of impressed with all this, aren't you?” He indicated the whole lab and its contents.

“Who wouldn't be?”

“That's the mythos of science, Joe. The layman is as willing to believe in the superpowers of science as he once did in witches. Now, I told you once that I believe in the ability of science to save our souls … our
selves
, if you like that any better. I believe that it's legitimate to use any and all parts of science for this purpose. And I believe the mythos of science is as much one of its parts as Avogadro's Law or the conservation of energy. Any layman who's seen the size of a modern hearing-aid, who knows what it can do, will accept with ease the idea of a band-passing amplifier with five watts output powered by a couple of penlite cells. Well, we just can't do it. We will, but we haven't yet.”

“Then what's this thing? What's all this gobbledegook you've been feeding me? You give me something, you take it away. You make it work, you tell me it can't work. I mean, what are you trying to pull?”

“You're squeaking. And you're saying ‘I mean,' ” said Zeitgeist.

“Cut it out,” Joe said desperately.

The pale eyes twinkled at him, but Zeitgeist made a large effort and went back to his subject. “All this is, this thing you've been wearing, is the mike here, which triggers these two diaphragm vibrators here, powered by these little dry cells. No amplifier, no speaker, no nothing but this junk and the mythos.”

“But it worked; I heard it right here on your tape machine!”

“With the help of half a ton of components.”

“But at the office, the liaison meeting, I … I—Oh—”

“For the first time in your life you walked around with your chest out. You faced people with your shoulders back and you looked 'em smack in the eye. You dredged up what resonance you had in that flattened-out chest of yours and flung it in people's faces. I didn't lie
to you when I said they
had
to listen to you. They had to as long as you believed they had to.”

“Did you have to drag out all this junk to make me believe that?”

“I most certainly did! Just picture it: you come to me here all covered with bruises and guilt, suicidal, cowed, and without any realizable ambition. I tell you all you need to do is stand up straight and spit in their eye. How much good would that have done you?”

Joe laughed shakily. “I feel like one of those characters in the old animated cartoons. They'd walk off the edge of a cliff and hang there in midair, and there they'd stay, grinning and twirling their canes, until they looked down. Then—boom!” He tried another laugh, and failed with it. “I just looked down,” he said hoarsely.

“You've got it a little backwards,” said Zeitgeist. “Remember how you looked forward to graduating—to the time when you could discard that monkey-puzzle and stand on your own feet? Well, son, you just made it. Come on; this calls for a drink!”

Joe jammed his arms into his jacket. “Thanks, but I just found out I can talk to my wife.”

They started up the hall. “What do you do this for, Zeitgeist?”

“It's a living.”

“Is that streamlined mousetrap out there the only bait you use?”

Zeitgeist smiled and shook his head.

For the second time in fifteen minutes Joe said, “I guess I just don't understand you,” but there was a world of difference. Suddenly he broke away from the old man and went into the room with the fireplace. He came back, jamming the envelope into his pocket. “I can handle this,” he said. He went out.

Zeitgeist leaned in the doorway, watching him go. He'd have offered him a ride, but he wanted to see him walk like that, with his head up.

JOHN: We wanted to tell you a story this morning … a New York story but something special … something different and so we asked a special, different sort of writer to send us one. His name is Theodore Sturgeon … and he's the winner of the International Fantasy Award for the best science fiction novel of 1954—a beautiful and enchanted novel called … “MORE THAN HUMAN.” In just a few days, you'll be able to see Ted's award, a gleaming chromium spaceship, in the window of Brentano's Fifth Avenue shop. We're really not altogether certain whether Ted's written us a story or not … but I'll read you his letter. It begins—Dear “PULSE”:

MUSIC: OPENING CURTAIN … NICE, NORMAL … BRIGHT. UNDER FOR:

JOHN: When I got your note, I was delighted at the idea of doing a story for you. I went straight to the typewriter, unwound the typewriter ribbon from the neck and ears of my baby daughter, Tandy, sat down on my son Robin's plastic automobile, got up again, picked the pieces of plastic out of myself and the chair, dried Robin's tears, handed Tandy to her mother for a bath, rewound the ribbon, put some paper in the machine, and nothing happened. You see, what you did is ask for a story at one of those times when a writer can't write and nothing can make him write. I tried, honestly I did. I played all the tricks on myself I ever learned. I drank two cups of strong, black coffee, I did some knee-bends, I filed my nails, read the morning paper all the way through, ate a stale bagel and a handful of raisins, sniffed at a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia to clear my head, and lit my pipe. I don't like a pipe but it makes me feel like an author. I even had a small quarrel with my wife, which sometimes
works wonders. Still no story.

There was nothing for it but to go out and wander. They say New York has something for everyone—you just have to know where to look. I went looking first on Rockefeller Plaza, which never fails to do something to me. I hung over the rail and watched the skaters moving like moths and mayflies to music that came from nowhere, everywhere … anyone who can pass them by without a glance has lost his sense of wonder, and I'm sorry for him. I looked for sunlight high on the clean, clever buildings reaching into the morning and found it. I listened to the whisper of blades on ice, tires on asphalt, of a hundred thousand heels on paving all blended like a great breathing. But it was only magic, its own special kind of magic; it didn't give me a story idea for you.

So I left and walked west past the place where Dave Garroway holds forth in the early, early hours, towards the Avenue of the Americas, where stores and theaters were beginning to wake, where men can make keys for you and you can buy crepes suzettes and cameras and luggage and lingerie; and I slowly became aware of a neat pair of shoulders and a smooth neat hat. I must have been following the man for minutes without quite realizing it. The coat was one of those banker's specials—you know, flat and formal and with a smooth narrow collar that might be velvet and might be fur. And the hat was what some people call a bowler and some a derby. Hat and collar were not black, but of the darkest possible brown, and the whole aspect was—well,
neat
. He was strolling along, turning his head a little from time to time, and though I couldn't see his face I somehow knew he was smiling at storefronts, automobiles, marquees, people—smiling at the whole, wide world. I wondered what he was smiling about. I wondered, too, what kind of a smile it might be. Was he smiling
at?
or smiling
with?