Frederik Pohl - The Coming of the Quantum Cats

Meanwhile, it's still interesting, I say for at least the third time, and it also gives me time to myself when I want it. The time when I want time to myself is usually when I can spend it with Greta. The company has a rule that every one of us salesmen must put in five hours a week "floor time"—that's being there, on the floor of the agency, for drop-in or phone-in customers. Outside of that I make my own hours. So when Greta is on a run—she's a stewardess—I put in long days. When she's between assignments I try to make time to be with her. I'm really pleased she has the job she has. . . . No, that's a lie. I'm not. I worry about all the guys she meets, back and forth between Chicago and New York, and where she stays when she overnights in New York. Of course all the stews are chaperoned by the Little Fatimas, but chaperons can be evaded. We know all about that, Greta and I. I really hate the idea that I'm teaching her how to do that in Chicago, and she's using those skills with somebody else in New York. I hate to think that.

So I try not to think it.

And I did get to go swimming with her that night, after all. As soon as I got home I skinned down to my underwear, pulled down the shades, locked the doors, and took a bottle of beer out of the secret under-the-stairs cupboard. While it was chilling in the freezer compartment I tried again to check out my mysterious phone call. By then it was hopeless, of course. My call slip was well buried under hours of accumulation of others. But then I sat down with that luscious cold bottle, sweat glistening along its sides. The phone rang. Greta. "Nicky, honey? You in the mood for a late swim?"

I was, of course. I swallowed the beer so fast it made my teeth crackle as it went past, put on my suit, was already in the water by the time she got there and dove in beside me.

There weren't many people in the pool at that hour, but all the male eyes were aimed at her as she came off the diving board. Greta is a pretty sight. She is five feet eight, blonde, green-eyed, very slim waisted. Men look at her a lot. In a bathing suit, even in the skirted, thigh-length kind of suit our pool guards made mandatory, men sometimes drooled. I know. I did it myself.

I swam her down to the dark end of the pool to kiss her. They'd put the lights out to save electricity, and only the bathing pavilion was still bright. We stood in water about shoulder high on me, chin high on Greta, sort of bouncing on the tips of our toes the way you do in the water, and I kissed her thoroughly, and then pulled her close to kiss her again.

She kissed me back. For quite a long time. Then she pulled away and let some of the cold water get between us, sort of giggling. When I reached out again she said, "Uh-uh, honey. You're getting me real steamed up."

I said, "I wish—" and she stopped me.

"I know what you wish. Maybe I do, too, but we can't."

"There's nobody around this part of the pool

"Oh, Nicky, you know that's not it. What if I, you know, got, well, caught?"

"That's not very likely." No response to that. "Anyway, there are things that can be done."

"No, they can't, Nicky dear. Not if you mean the 'A' word. I could never destroy my child's life. Anyway, those places aren't easy to find, and then who knows if they'll kill you or spoil you for life?"

The trouble was that she was right and we both knew it. There wasn't a day that went by without some police raid on a back-door abortionist, with the criminal dragged away by the police and all the patients trying to hide their faces from the news cameras. We certainly didn't want that.

There was hardly anyone left in the pool now. No one seemed to notice that we weren't swimming. Greta eased back closer to me, did not resist when I kissed her again.

"Nicky?" she whispered in my ear.

"What, honey?"

Faint giggle, then a whisper so low I could hardly hear the words: "What about going topless now?"

I looked around. Apart from a couple of elderly men in bathing suits and robes, finishing out a checker game, the only person left in the pool area was the lifeguard. He was reading a newspaper under the exit light.

"Why not?" I said.

And I reached down between us and slowly, slowly unzipped the top part of my bathing suit.

Now, you have to remember that going topless is not really some big crime. In the city code it's called a Class 3 misdemeanor— that means they never arrest you for it, just give you a ticket, as for parking in the wrong place. The fine is never more than five or ten dollars and the judges hardly ever give a jail sentence. Often when a man goes topless they'll let him off with just a warning, if it's a first offense.

So I did not expect what happened.

I did not expect that all the pool lights would come on at once. The checker players yawped in surprise as someone came running right through them, sending the board flying. That was only one someone, and there were others coming from all directions— through the men's dressing room, through the ladies', even over the fence; and they all converged on me. Two large men jumped right in the pool, clothes and all, to grab me and drag me out.

Greta stood staring; chin-deep in the water—terrified and bewildered, and no more so than I.

The world whirled, and didn't stop whirling until they had me bent over the hood of a car, just outside the pool fence. The metal was hot; the car had just got here, and it felt as though it had been driven hard. They made me spread my feet wide apart, while a nastily unfriendly cop's hand ran over the wet seat of my bathing suit—searching for weapons, for God's sake? There were two other cars, headlights on and pointed straight at me, at least half a dozen men—and they were pointed straight at me too; I was the center of it all.

And the only thing I could think of to say was, "Listen! All I did was take my damn top off!"

The queerness that developed—the questions that were unanswered!

Why should the residents of Los Angeles suddenly complain that their sweet, orange-scented air was being invaded by gusts of poison gas?

What made twenty thousand peaceable subjects of the czar suddenly march through downtown Kiev chanting revolutionary slogans?

Why were so many persons being admitted to mental institutions with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, characterized by a terrified conviction that they were being watched by unseen eyes?

Why were things suddenly so strange?

17 August 1983

1:18 A.M. Nicky DeSota

I've taken the Daley Expressway down into the city a thousand times. Never like this before. Never with sirens going and overhead lights flashing off the hood ornament of the big Cadillac. At that hour of the morning there were not that many other cars on the road, but the ones that were scooted out of our way as soon as they saw the flashers of the Chicago Police Department cruiser that ran interference for us. We made it in twenty-one minutes. Faster than the train; but it was the longest twenty-one minutes of my life.

No one would tell me a thing. "What are you pulling me in for?" "Shut up, Dominic." "What did I do?" "You'll find out." "Can't you tell me anything?" "Listen, son, for the last time, shut up. Chief Agent Christophe will tell you all you want to know—a lot more, even!"

"Son" he called me. That was the gorilla on my right—dripping wet from coming into the pool after me, at least two years younger than I. But there was a big difference between us. I was the prisoner, and he was the one who knew the answers he wouldn't tell.

There wasn't any sign on the office building on Wabash, but the night watchman let us in at once. There was no name on the door of the suite on the twentieth floor. There was no one in the anteroom of the suite. No one would tell me anything still; but at least one question got answered. I saw the portrait on the wall over the receptionist's desk. I recognized that hallowed old face at once— anybody would—stern as a snapping turtle, determined as an avalanche.