Frederik Pohl - The Cool War

He could not remember a time when he was not sick. When he began turning blue every time he got tired, he was only four. The first open-heart operation was when he was seven, and it was a disaster; it led almost immediately to the second one, which saved his life but did not strengthen it. By the time he was in his teens the prognosis for another operation was no longer as risky, but young Hake simply did not want to go through that again. Not just the risk. The pain. Pain that anesthesia hadn’t removed, hypnosis hadn’t removed, even both together had made barely survivable. No. No more operations. So in his wheelchair he rolled up to receive his B.A. in psychology, and his master’s in social science. At the seminary he got his doctorate after two years of being carried to some of the classes—it was an old seminary, and a poor one, and they had not been able to afford compliance with the regulations for the handicapped. But he got it. And got a ministry after it, and held it to everybody’s satisfaction until, in his mid-thirties, he began turning blue again—and the third operation not only worked, it took him out of the wheelchair for good. Oh, he was lucky, all right! A whole new life when he had least expected it.

But, all the same, it was confusing.

Allen T. Haversford met him in person at the gate to old Fort Monmouth, all smiles and welcome. Haversford had a face like a toy bulldog’s. It seemed small for the size of his head, and the reedy Franklin D. Roosevelt tenor voice that came out through the wattles of flesh around the mouth made him seem like a bulldog breathing helium. “So nice of you to come, Reverend Hake,” he shrilled. “We’ve arranged a little luncheon for our trustees, but that’s not for half an hour. Let me show you around.”

The Fort had been mothballed decades earlier, but it was springing to life. Hake had heard rumors of building, but this was his first chance to see what was going on. Plenty was. Backhoes and bulldozers were scouring out a complicated pattern of trenches, and a pre-mix truck was lining them with concrete as fast as they were dug. “You’re really making progress,” he said.

“Indeed, indeed! These are going to be our fish tanks,” sang Haversford jovially. “Salt-water, fresh-water. Big and small. We’ll have the largest fish-fancier operation on the East Coast here. Ornamentals, tropicals, even food-fish for those who want to put in their own pools. And those will be the kennels, and over there the breeding pens. This is almost a closed-ecology system, Reverend Hake. We’ll bring in livestock on the hoof; then we’ll have our own abattoir, you can’t see it because we haven’t started construction yet, and we’ll dress food for almost all the pets. Nothing will go to waste, I assure you. Meat and cereal mix for the dogs. Tilapia for the cats—we’ll raise most of them ourselves.

Entrails dried and pulverized for the fish.” He winked. “We’ll even use the, ah, sewage, Reverend. Yes, dung has plenty of nutritive value! Some gets dried and processed and fed to the stock. Some—and that includes sewage from visitors and the staff—gets settled and filtered and we grow algae on it; algae feed shrimp, shrimp feed fish. And the effluent goes into our hydroponics system.”

“It really sounds efficient, Mr. Haversford.”

“Indeed, indeed! And so it is. Over here—” He led Hake to a sturdy plastic bubble. “Our first greenhouse. Step inside this chamber, yes, thank you, and let me close the outer door, here we are. We don’t want to waste heat, after all.”

It was uncomfortably warm in the bubble. Hake loosened his collar as he looked around. Rows of elevated trays of seedlings, some of them already a foot tall and in leaf, some even in blossom. He did not recognize any of the flowers; surely those could not be morning glories, nor those sunflowers. Haversford was proudly nipping the end off a cigar as he watched Hake looking around. “No power-piggery here,” he boasted. “All this is solar energy! Not a calorie of fossil fuel burned, except a little bit for the lighting. And even that we hope to generate ourselves in time, if we can get priorities for a photovoltaic installation on the road surfaces.”

“You’re doing a fine job,” said Hake, watching the man light up. Curiously, some of the nearer flowers seemed to turn toward his lighter.

“No, no, no! Not ‘you,’ Reverend Hake, please! ‘We!’ You are very much a part of this, you know. Now, this section will be orchids, plus a few tropical ornamentals that like the damp and heat. And some experimental varieties— we will do quite a lot of hybridizing and development here.”

“I suppose you’ll feed the ones that don’t work out to rabbits or something, and then feed those to the animals?”

“What? Rabbits? Why, what an excellent idea, Reverend Hake! I’ll get our technical people to look into that right away. You see, I knew you’d be a great asset! And now, I think, it’s about time for us to join the others for our luncheon meeting…”

The “others” were seven persons, two department heads from IPF and the other five directors like Hake himself. He did not catch most of the names, and he had not seen most of the others before. One he recognized. The black man with the nearly bald head was a member of the Board of Chosen Freeholders. But who was the other, younger black with the cutoffs and worry beads? Or the very young girl with long, blonde hair? And how many of them were on the board because the Team was paying them off?

Haversford took his place at the head of the long table— linen cloth, linen napkins, crystal and silver at the place settings. On each plate there was a cup of fresh fruit— “From our own South Carolina orchards,” Haversford pointed out—but what was under the cup was what interested Hake. It was an envelope with his name on it, and it contained a check. When he peeked inside the amount sent an electric shock through him. They hadn’t been kidding.

The lunch was cold meats and salads, and when it was over and the coffee was served Haversford rapped his water tumbler with his spoon. “I want to thank you all for coming today on such short notice,” he said. “There are only two items before this special meeting. The first is to welcome our new trustee, Reverend Hake, which I perceive you have all been doing already. The second is to take action on the proposal of our Public Relations Committee in regard to the marmosets. Ms. de la Padua?”

The dark, athletic-looking woman at his left rose and went to a sideboard. She pulled the cloth away from a tall cage, reached in and lifted out a tiny woolly monkey. “As most of you remember,” said Haversford, “at our last meeting we talked of plans to increase our exports of some of our pet lines, including the marmosets, by selecting a group of young people to go abroad and present gift specimens to other children in several countries. Subject to your concurrence—” mysteriously, he twinkled toward Hake— “subject to all of your concurrence, a program has been prepared. The group of children will be students from local junior high and high schools, chosen on recommendation of their teachers. They will spend three weeks abroad, traveling in France, Germany and Denmark, during which time they will give away twenty-two pairs of marmosets to schools and youth groups in nine cities. Ms. de la Padua has a detailed itinerary plus the budget for the trip and will be glad to answer any questions. And in charge of the group—and I do hope you will accept?—will be our own Reverend Hake.”

“What?”

Haversford nodded, beaming. “Yes, indeed, indeed, Reverend,” he shrilled. “Of course, there is a suitable stipend included in the budget. I know it’s quite an imposition—”