Frederik Pohl - The Cool War

“I’m sorry, Curmudgeon. I got busy.”

“You don’t ever get that busy, Hake! Remember that. Now, I want you in New York tomorrow, two P.M., in the flesh.”

“But—I’ve got appointments—”

“Not any more, you don’t. Call them off. Take down this address and be there.” Curmudgeon spelled out the name of what sounded like a theatrical casting agency in the West Forties and signed off.

Thoughtfully, Hake used the toilet for its alternative purpose, and then shrugged. As with The Incredible Art, it seemed as easy to obey the command as to rebel against it. He put on his pajamas and a robe and walked out into the office to get Alys’s phone number.

To his surprise, the light was on. Jessie Tunman was there, writing rapidly in her shorthand notebook. “Oh, hello, Horny. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“You didn’t. That’s all right.” He looked up the Brant-Sturgis number and touched the number-buttons. It was answered at once, and by Alys. “Hello, Alys. Horny Hake here. I just realized that I have tomorrow free. I know it’s short notice, but would you like to do that library bit with me? You would? That’s great, Alys. All right, I’ll be ready at nine, and thanks.” He hung up, pleased with his cleverness. Using Alys as a front, no one would think that he was going to the city for some hidden reason; at most, they would think his hidden reason not hidden at all. He said benevolently to Jessie, “Working late, are you?”

“I just wanted to remind myself of some things I have to do tomorrow, Horny. And, to tell the truth, since we’ve got the air-conditioning and all—well, I like to be here. It’s pretty hot in my room.” Jessie lived in what had once been a beach motel, now more or less remodeled into one-room apartments. Its one significant advantage was that it was cheap. “Horny? I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but are you going to the library in New York tomorrow?”

“Yes. I’ve been promising myself that I would for a couple of months, and I just decided to do it.”

“Can I go along? There’s—” She hesitated. “I know you don’t believe in it, Horny, but there’s some new material on UFOs out, and I’d like to look into it. I won’t be in your way.”

Hake said, “Well, I’d certainly be glad to have you,

Jessie, but it’s not my car.”

“Oh, I’m sure Alys won’t mind. Matter of fact,” she said archly, “I bet she’ll be glad for a chaperone, you know, so Ted and Walter won’t be worried. That’s wonderful, Horny! I’m going home right this minute, so I can get in early and take care of everything before we go.”

As it turned out, Alys didn’t mind at all, or said she didn’t, and all the way into New York Jessie Tunman primly rode the motherin-law seat in the back of the little charcoal-generator. It was a two-hour ride, the three-wheeler barely crawling as it climbed the long bridge ascents and the occasional hills; but on the level it chugged along at the double-nickels, and downhill it took off at terrifying speed. As they whined down the ramp into the Lincoln Tunnel, Alys slipping wildly between the sectional buses and the fat tractor-trailer trucks that were inching along, Hake was glad they were almost there, prayerful that their luck would hold out a few minutes more.

It had been smuggy-hot all the way in, and the tunnel itself was a gas chamber. “Roll up your windows,” Alys gagged. It didn’t help. By the time they broke into open air, even the open air of midtown Manhattan, Hake’s head was pounding and Alys’s driving had become even more capricious. They drove down to the Village, parked the three-wheeler in the three-deck parking garage that surrounded the arch in Washington Square and walked over to the library. It was bloody hot.

A drama was being enacted in New York City that day; dressing while watching his TV news program, Hake had seen shots of a tank-trucker from Great Kills, perched over the discharge hose of his gasoline truck with a lighted Davy lamp in his hand, holding Rockefeller Center hostage in the cause of returning Staten Island to the state of New Jersey. Ringed by police sharpshooters who dared not fire, giddy in the fumes of the gas that vented up past the wire-screen around his candle, the man had been haranguing twenty terrified captives, as well as the millions beyond who listened safely through the networks’ parabolic microphones. Breathing shallowly of the hot, carbonized air, feeling the asphalt suck at his shoes, stepping around dog-turds and less identifiable gobbets of filth, Hake understood how the man had gone mad, how a thousand city-dwellers a year raped, crucified, leaped from windows or set fire to themselves. It was an environment to madden anyone, especially in weather like this.

And when they walked in through the double revolving doors of the library, it was into dry, sweet spring. A room five stories high, and air-conditioned to perfection! “Power-pigs,” snarled Hake, but Alys laid her hand on his arm.

“It isn’t just for people, Horny, dear, it’s for all the computers here which would break down if they didn’t keep the air just right. Come on, we sign in here, and then they’ll give us a terminal.”

The library gave them more than that. They gave them a room-to themselves, glass-walled on three sides, looking out into the five-floor atrium on the fourth, with comfortable chairs, a desk, ashtrays, a thermos flask of ice-water… and the one thing that made it all real: a computer terminal. Alys escorted Jessie Tunman to her own cubicle, a few doors down the corridor, then came back and closed the door. “Now I’ve got you, Horny,” she said, touching her palm to his cheek. And passed by him, and sat down before the terminal. Expertly she ptinched in her signature number, taken from the card issued at the desk, and a series of codes. “I’ve ordered a citation index search for starters, Horny, keyed to any three of six or more subject phrases. You’ll have to tell me what the phrases are. Did you know you’re a very sexy man, Horny?”

Starting to ask what she meant by the first part of what she had said, Hake jumped the tracks as he tried to switch to the second. “Alys,” he said, “please remember that I’m your marriage counselor, as well as, I hope, your friend.”

“Oh, I do, Horny, I do. Now, the kind of phrases we give the computer are whatever subjects interest you. For instance,” she tapped the keys, “some of the things you were talking about in your sermon, like so.” The screen on the terminal typed out the words:

1. Major strikes.

2. Exotic plant and animal pests.

3. Currency manipulations.

“Got it?” she asked. “What else?”

“I could answer that better if I knew what you were doing.”

“Sorry, Horny, I thought I explained all that. You were real cute at the magic show.”

“Please, Alys.”

“Well, you were. It’s a real kind of turn-on, being hypnotized, isn’t it? Back at college we all took the psych courses just for kickiness. My goodness, Horny, the fun we had hypnotizing each other!… Oh, you want to get on with this, don’t you? Well, it’s simple. Once we program searches for six or eight subjects, the computer selects some basic sources in each of them—say, a newspaper story about the bus strike in London, or the police in New York, and one on those water-lilies you were talking about, and so on. Then it starts searching for works that cite sources from any three of those subjects. If you find somebody’s written a book that includes material on three of the things you’re interested in, then the chances are pretty good you’ll be interested in the book, right? Funny thing. When we were in Europe, the way you were being Big Daddy to those kids, it turned me right off. Did you know that?”