Robert Sheckley - Options

"As a matter of fact, there is," Mishkin said. "Have you got a pencil and a piece of paper?"

"You know me, Tom, I'm never without them."

"Then write down Engine Part L-1223A. I need it very badly."

"I got it written down. Don't they have a Sears, Roebuck where you are?"

"No, Uncle Arnold, they haven't got anything like that. Harmonia is a sort of undeveloped place."

"Like Tobago?"

"Even worse. Uncle Arnold, I need that engine part right now, by the fastest shipping service available."

"Tom, it's as good as done. You remember Seymour Gulstein, the son of your Aunt Rachel's best friend, Gertie? Well, Seymour is a field expeditor for F. B. Crowley Interplanetary Delivery Systems. I'll get the engine part this afternoon and put it in his hands and he'll get it to you in a couple of hours, a day at the most."

"That's great, Uncle Arnold. Will it really be that fast?"

"You can count on it, Tom. When has your Uncle Arnold ever failed you?"

"I don't know how to thank you, Uncle Arnold."

"Think nothing of it, Tom. Stay well. Give me a call when you get home."

Mishkin hung up, leaned back, and relaxed. If his Uncle Arnold said it would be done.

Governments might promise more than they could deliver, scientists might be overoptimistic about what they could accomplish, robots might have exaggerated ideas of their power; but Uncle Arnold actually made the world run while everyone else stood around trying to get it together. Uncle Arnold was maybe a little dull but absolutely irreplaceable. The turtle upon whose back Hercules stood when he held the Earth on his shoulders — that turtle was also called Arnold.

Mishkin and the robot came to a tree. At the end of its branches there were blue eyes with thick eyebrows. All of the eyes swivelled to stare at Mishkin.

"I thought you would come by this way," the tree said, speaking from a speaker in its trunk. "I hope that you will not deny that you are Thomas Mishkin?"

"That's who I am," Mishkin said. "Who are you?"

"I am a bill collector disguised as a tree," said the bill collector disguised as a tree.

"For Chrissakes," Mishkin said. "Did you follow me all the way to Harmonia?"

"Indeed, I did. It's rather a curious story. Mr Oppenheimer, head of the Ne Plus Ultra Collection Agency for which I work, got an inspiration while stoned on acid at his local Tai Chi Chuan class. It suddenly occurred to Oppenheimer that the essence of life lies in completions, and a man can only judge his life in reference to the thoroughness with which he has played his life role. Hitherto, Oppenheimer had been an easygoing fellow who followed the usual practice of collecting the easily collectable debts and making a few ominous noises on the difficult ones, but ultimately saying to hell with them. Then Oppenheimer achieved his satori. To hell with mediocrity, he decided, if I'm head of a bill-collecting agency, then I'm going to make an ethic and a goal out of bill collecting.

The world may very well never understand me; but perhaps future generations will be able to judge the terrible purity of my motives.

"And so Oppenheimer embarked upon the poignant and quixotic course that will probably bankrupt him within a year. He called all of us collectors into the Ready Room.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this time we're going to get it all together. To hell with half measures! Our goal now is 100 per cent enforceability, and let the paranoia fall where it may. Go after those debts be they one dollar or a million. Go to San Sebastian or Samoa or Sambal V, if need be, and don't worry about the costs. We're following a principle now, and principles are always impractical. Boys, we're overthrowing the reality principle. So get out there and collect all of those debts and groove on completions."

"His speech is definitely late 1960s," said the robot. "Whereas this is the year 2138, or thereabouts. Somebody is conning somebody."

"Fuck off," snarled the author.

"That was the call to arms," the bill collector disguised as a tree said. "And that is why I am in Harmonia, Mr Mishkin. I have come here, as the result of one man's vision, to collect your debts regardless of time, trouble, and expense."

"I still can't believe this," Mishkin said.

"And, yet, there it is. I have a consolidation statement here for everything, Mr Mishkin.

Would you care to pay without fuss, or do you want me to get nasty?"

"What debts are you talking about?" Mishkin asked.

"To begin with, there is the matter of your back taxes, Federal, State, and City. Didn't quite get around to paying them last year, did you, Mr Mishkin?"

"It was a tough year."

"You owe eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-three dollars and fifty-one cents to your Uncle Sammy. Then there is the matter of child support. Sorta passed up on that for a year or so, didn't you, Mishkin? Well, it's a neat four-figure bundle that you owe to poor, abandoned Marcia and little Zelda. Marcia has a new boyfriend, by the way, and little Zelda just flunked out of the Little Red School House. Marcia asked me to tell you that she is well, having the best time of her life, and wants every cent you owe her, right now, or she'll have you into The Tombs so fast it'll make your teeth spin. She adds that, through psychoanalysis, she finally has the ego strength to tell you that you were always a lousy lay and that everybody breaks up when she relates how diffidently you tried to pursue perversions."

"That sounds like Marcia," Mishkin said.

"Next, you owe Marty Bargenfield a thousand dollars. He's your best friend, in case you don't remember. Or he was. I mean, he still feels the same, but you've unaccountably cooled off. One might even say that you are avoiding him. Yet, his only crime was to loan you money in a moment of need when you were breaking up with Marcia and had to buy an abortion for Monique."

"How is Monique?" Mishkin asked.

"She's doing very nicely without you. She is back in Paris, working as a salesgirl in Galeries Lafayette. She still treasures the eighty-cent string of wooden beads that was your only present to her during a tumultuous four-month romance that you have described as "the most moving of my life"."

"I was broke," Mishkin said. "And, anyhow, she always said she hated gifts."

"But you knew better, hey, Mishkie? Never mind, I am not standing in judgement over you. The fact that your conduct, judged by any system of ethics you care to name, makes me want to puke is entirely a personal matter with me and need not concern you at all. Now we come to the Bauhaus Drugstore, at 31 Barrow Street, run by fat, friendly Charlie Ducks, who sold you Dexamyl spansules, Dexadrine tablets, Librium, Carbitol, Nembutal, Seconal, Doriden, and so on, in astonishing quantities during your drug years, all of them on the basis of one non-refillable prescription for phenobarbital — who continued to do so until two years ago when the heat got too hot and he went back to selling Excedrin and lipsticks, and whom you ripped off for one hundred and eighty-six dollars."

"He cleaned up on me," Mishkin said. "He charged me double for everything."

"You always knew that. Did you ever complain about it?"

"Anyhow, I'm going to pay him as soon as I have some money."

"But there's never enough money for last year's drugs, eh, Mish? We've all been down that road, baby; but it is loathsome, isn't it?"

"I can explain everything," Mishkin said. "I have a statement that I would like to read into the record. The facts are capable of various interpretations. I only need a moment to pull my self together."

The robot extruded an axe from his left hand. He stepped forward and briskly chopped down the bill collector, who perished miserably.