Pohl, Frederik - The Age of the Pussyfoot

Forrester said, reorienting his thinking very quickly, “All right. Then what about that drink?”

“I’m not thirsty, you fool. Sit down.” She lifted her joymaker, looked him over with narrowed eyes, kissed the soft spot at the base of his throat, and touched it with the joymaker.

Forrester felt a sudden surge inside him. It was like a mild electric shock, like a whiff of mingled oxygen and musk.

Adne studied him critically, then leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

A moment later he said, “Do that again.”

She did. Then she lay back against him with her head on his shoulder.

“Dear Charles,” she said, “you’re such a nut.”

He stroked her and kissed her hair. The parallel-strand fabric did not feel coarse or wiry; he could hardly tell it was there.

“I don’t know if you did the right thing with Heinzie,” she said meditatively. “It’s kind of—you know. Almost chicken . . .” Then she turned inside his arm and kissed his ear. “I know it embarrasses you when I talk biology, but—well, the reason I’m natural-flow, you see, is that I’m a natural type of girl. Do you understand?”

“Sure,” he lied, only vaguely hearing her.

“I mean, if you want to you can take the pills and use the chemosimulants, and it’s just about the same. But I don’t do that, because, if you’re going to do that, you might just as well go all the way and use the joy machine.”

“I can see that, all right,” he said, but she fended him off and added, “Still, one doesn’t have to be rigid. Sometimes you’re at a low point, and something special happens, and you’d like to be at a high point. Then you can take a pill if you want to, do you see?”

“Oh, yes! Say!” said Forrester, pleasantly excited, “I wonder! How would you feel about taking a pill now?”

She sat up, stretched, and put her arms around him. “Don’t have to,” she said, resting her cheek against his. “I took one when you let Heinzie in.”

With two victories in one day, thought Forrester in a mood of pleasant triumph and lassitude, this world had come pretty close to his first hopes for it, after all. After the girl had gone, he slept for ten good hours and woke with the conviction that everything would turn out right. The father of a President and the lover of Adne Bensen was, at least in his own eyes, a figure of much mana. There were problems. But he would cope with them.

He ordered breakfast and added, “Machine! How do I go about getting a job?”

“If you will state parameters, Man Forrester, I will inform you as to openings that may be suitable.”

“You mean, what kind of job? I don’t know what kind. Just so it pays—” he coughed before he could get the figure out—“around ten million bucks a year.”

But the joymaker took it in stride. “Yes, Man Forrester. Please inform me further as to working conditions: home or external; mode of payment—straight cash or fringed; if fringe, nature permitted—profit-sharing, stock issue, allocated earnings bonus, or other; categories not to be considered; religious, moral or political objections, not stated in your record profile, which may debar classes of employ—”

“Slow down a minute, machine. Let me think.”

“Certainly, Man Forrester. Will you receive your messages now?”

“No. I mean,” he added cautiously, “not unless there are some life-or-death ones, like that Martian being out to kill me again.” But there weren’t. That, too, thought Forrester with pleasure, set this day off from other days.

He ate thoughtfully and economically, bathed, put on clean clothes, and allowed himself an extremely expensive cigarette before he tackled the joymaker again. Then he said, “Tell you what you do, machine. Just give me an idea of what jobs are open.”

“I cannot sort them unless you give me parameters, Man Forrester.”

“That’s right. Don’t sort them. Just give me an idea of what’s going.”

“Very well, Man Forrester. I will give you direct crude readout of new listings as received in real time. Marking. Mark! Item, curvilinear phase-analysis major, seventy-five hundred. Item, chef, full manual, Cordon Bleu experience, eighteen thousand. Item, poll subjects, detergents and stress-control appliances, no experience required, six thousand. Item, childcare domestics—but, Man Forrester,” the joymaker broke in on itself, “that clearly specifies female employment. Shall I eliminate the obviously inappropriate listings?”

“No. I mean, yes. Eliminate the whole thing for now. I get the idea.” But it was confusing, thought Forrester uncomfortably; the salaries mentioned were hardly higher than twentieth-century scale. They would not support a Pekingese pup in this era of joyful extravagance. “I think I’ll go see Adne,” he said suddenly, and aloud.

The joymaker chose to reply. “Very well, Man Forrester, but I must inform you as to a Class Gamma alert. Transit outside your own dwelling will be interrupted for drill purposes.”

“Oh, God. You mean like an air raid.”

“A drill, Man Forrester.”

“Sure. Well, how long is that going to go on?”

“Perhaps five minutes, Man Forrester.”

“Oh, well, that’s not so bad. I tell you what, why don’t you give me my messages while I’m waiting.”

“Yes, Man Forrester. There are one personal and nine commercial. The personal message is from Adne Bensen and follows.” Forrester felt the light touch of Adne’s hand, then the soft sound of Adne’s voice. “Dear Charles,” her voice whispered, “see me again soon, you dragon! And you know we have to think about something, don’t you? We have to decide on a name.”

Eight

When he reached Adne’s apartment, the children let him in. “Hello, Tunt,” he said. “Hello, Mim.”

They stared at him curiously, then at each other. Blew it again, he thought in resignation; it must be the girl that’s Tunt, the boy that’s Mim. But he had long since decided that if he tried to track down all his little errors he would have time for nothing else, and he was determined not to be derailed. “Where’s your mother?” he asked.

“Out.”

“Do you know where?”

“Uh-huh.”

Forrester said patiently, “Would you like to tell me where?”

The boy and girl looked at each other thoughtfully. Then the boy said, “Well, not particularly, Charles. We’re kind of busy.”

Forrester had always thought of himself as a man who liked children, but, although he smiled at these two, the smile was becoming forced. “I guess I can call her up on the joymaker,” he said.

The boy looked scandalized. “Now? While she’s crawling?”

Forrester sighed. “Look, fellows, I want to talk to your mother about something. How do you recommend I go about it?”

“You could wait here, I guess,” the boy said reluctantly.

“If you have to,” added the girl.

“I get the impression you don’t want me around. What are you kids doing?”

“Well—” The boy overruled his sister with a look and said sheepishly, “We’re having a meeting.”

“But please don’t tell Taiko!” cried the girl.

“He doesn’t like our club,” the boy finished.

“Just the two of you?”

“Sweet sweat, no!” laughed the boy. “Let’s see. There are eleven of us.”

“Twelve!” the girl crowed. “I bet you forgot the robot again.”

“Maybe I did. You and me, Tunt. Four boys. Three girls. A grown-up. A Martian . . . and the robot. Yeah, twelve.”

“You mean a Martian like Heinzlichen what’s-his-name?”

“Oh, no, Charles! Heinzie’s a dope, but he’s people. This is one of the big green ones with four arms.”

Forrester did a double take, then said, “You mean like in Edgar Rice Burroughs? But—but I didn’t think those were real.”