Pohl Frederik: The Midas Plague

“You skunk, you cheated my poor wife blind! You and I are going to the local station house and talk this over.”

The little man pursed his lips. “We are, huh?”

Morey nodded vigorously. “Damn right! And let me tell you—” He stopped in the middle of a threat as a large hand cupped around his shoulder.

The equally large man who owned the hand said, in a mild and cultured voice, “Is this gentleman disturbing you, Sam?”

“Not so far,” the little man conceded. “He might want to, though, so don’t go away.”

Morey wrenched his shoulder away. “Don’t think you can strong-arm me. I’m taking you to the police.”

Sam shook his head unbelievingly. “You mean you’re going to call the law in on this?”

“I certainly am!”

Sam sighed regretfully. “What do you think of that, Walter? Treating his wife like that. Such a nice lady, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Morey demanded, stung on a peculiarly sensitive spot.

“I’m talking about your wife,” Sam explained. “Of course, I’m not married myself. But it seems to me that if I was, I wouldn’t call the police when my wife was engaged in some kind of criminal activity or other. No, sir, I’d try to settle it myself. Tell you what,” he advised, “why don’t you talk this over with her? Make her see the error of—”

“Wait a minute,” Morey interrupted. “You mean you’d involve my wife in this thing?”

The man spread his hands helplessly. “It’s not me that would involve her, Buster,” he said. “She already involved her own self. It takes two to make a crime, you know. I sell, maybe; I won’t deny it. But after all, I can’t sell unless somebody buys, can I?”

Morey stared at him glumly. He glanced in quick speculation at the large-sized Walter; but Walter was just as big as he’d remembered, so that took care of that. Violence was out; the police were out; that left no really attractive way of capitalizing on the good luck of running into the man again.

Sam said, “Well, I’m glad to see that’s off your mind. Now, returning to my original question, Mac, how would you like a good time? You look like a smart fellow to me; you look like you’d be kind of interested in a place I happen to know of down the block.”

Morey said bitterly, “So you’re a dive-steerer, too. A real talented man.”

“I admit it,” Sam agreed. “Stamp business is slow at night, in my experience. People have their minds more on a good time. And, believe me, a good time is what I can show ’em. Take this place I’m talking about, Uncle Piggotty’s is the name of it, it’s what I would call an unusual kind of place. Wouldn’t you say so, Walter?”

“Oh, I agree with you entirely,” Walter rumbled.

But Morey was hardly listening. He said, “Uncle Piggotty’s, you say?”

“That’s right,” said Sam.

Morey frowned for a moment, digesting an idea. Uncle Piggotty’s sounded like the place Howland had been talking about back at the plant; it might be interesting, at that.

While he was making up his mind, Sam slipped an arm through his on one side and Walter amiably wrapped a big hand around the other. Morey found himself walking.

“You’ll like it,” Sam promised comfortably. “No hard feelings about this morning, sport? Of course not. Once you get a look at Piggotty’s, you’ll get over your mad, anyhow. It’s something special. I swear, on what they pay me for bringing in customers, I wouldn’t do it unless I believed in it.”

“Dance, Jack?” the hostess yelled over the noise at the bar. She stepped back, lifted her flounced skirts to ankle height and executed a tricky nine-step.

“My name is Morey,” Morey yelled back. “And I don’t want to dance, thanks.”

The hostess shrugged, frowned meaningfully at Sam and danced away.

Sam flagged the bartender. “First round’s on us,” he explained to Morey. “Then we won’t bother you any more. Unless you want us to, of course. Like the place?” Morey hesitated, but Sam didn’t wait. “Fine place,” he yelled, and picked up the drink the bartender left him. “See you around.”

He and the big man were gone. Morey stared after them uncertainly, then gave it up. He was here, anyhow; might as well at least have a drink. He ordered and looked around.

Uncle Piggotty’s was a third-rate dive disguised to look, in parts of it at least, like one of the exclusive upper-class country clubs. The bar, for instance, was treated to resemble the clean lines of nailed wood; but underneath the surface treatment, Morey could detect the intricate laminations of plyplastic. What at first glance appeared to be burlap hangings were in actuality elaborately textured synthetics. And all through the bar the motif was carried out.

A floor show of sorts was going on, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention to it. Morey, straining briefly to hear the master of ceremonies, gathered that the unit was on a more than mildly vulgar level. There was a dispirited string of chorus beauties in long ruffled pantaloons and diaphanous tops; one of them, Morey was almost sure, was the hostess who had talked to him just a few moments before.

Next to him a man was declaiming to a middle-aged woman:

Smote I the monstrous rock, yahoot Smote I the turgid tube, Bully Boy! Smote I the cankered hill—

“Why, Morey!” he interrupted himself. “What are you doing here?”

He turned farther around and Morey recognized him. “Hello, How-land,” he said. “I—uh—I happened to be free tonight, so I thought—”

Howland sniggered. “Well, guess your wife is more liberal than mine was. Order a drink, boy.”

“Thanks, I’ve got one,” said Morey.

The woman, with a tigerish look at Morey, said, “Don’t stop, Everett. That was one of your most beautiful things.”

“Oh, Morey’s heard my poetry,” Howland said. “Morey, I’d like you to meet a very lovely and talented young lady, Tanaquil Bigelow. Morey works in the office with me, Tan.”

“Obviously,” said Tanaquil Bigelow in a frozen voice, and Morey hastily withdrew the hand he had begun to put out.

The conversation stuck there, impaled, the woman cold, Howland relaxed and abstracted, Morey wondering if, after all, this had been such a good idea. He caught the eye-cell of the robot bartender and ordered a round of drinks for the three of them, politely putting them on Howland’s ration book. By the time the drinks had come and Morey had just got around to deciding that it wasn’t a very good idea, the woman had all of a sudden become thawed.

She said abruptly, “You look like the kind of man who thinks, Morey, and I like to talk to that kind of man. Frankly, Morey, I just don’t have any patience at all with the stupid, stodgy men who just work in their offices all day and eat all their dinners every night, and gad about and consume like mad and where does it all get them, anyhow? That’s right, I can see you understand. Just one crazy rush of consume, consume from the day you’re born plop to the day you’re buried pop! And who’s to blame if not the robots?”

Faintly, a tinge of worry began to appear on the surface of How-land’s relaxed calm. “Tan,” he chided, “Morey may not be very interested in politics.”

Politics, Morey thought; well, at least that was a clue. He’d had the dizzying feeling, while the woman was talking, that he himself was the ball in the games machine he had designed for the shop earlier that day. Following the woman’s conversation might, at that, give his next design some valuable pointers in swoops, curves and obstacles.

He said, with more than half truth, “No, please go on, Miss Bige-low. I’m very much interested.”