Pohl, Frederik - The Age of the Pussyfoot

“But the joymaker wouldn’t get me one.”

“Sweat!” The boy gazed thoughtfully at his joymaker, picked it up, shook it, then put it down again. “That’s bad. Maybe when Mim comes home she can help you.”

“Really? Do you think she’ll help?”

“Well, no. I mean, I don’t think she’d know how.”

“Then what do I do?”

The boy looked worried and a little scared. Forrester was pretty sure he looked the same way himself. Certainly that was how he felt.

Of course, he told himself, Hara might help him once more; certainly he’d had the practice. Or Taiko might be sportsman enough to get over his snub and reopen the invitation to work for the Luddites.

But he was pretty sure that neither of these possibilities represented any very hopeful facts.

The little girl wandered thoughtfully away, not looking at Forrester, and began muttering into her joymaker—back to the game he had interrupted, Forrester thought with totally unjustified bitterness. He knew it was unjustified. These were only children, and he had no right to expect them to handle adult problems that at least one adult—himself—couldn’t handle at all. The boy said suddenly, “Oh, one other thing, Charles. Mim says Heinzie’s out after you again.”

“Don’t I know it.” But it didn’t seem such a threat, compared with the disaster of insolvency.

“Well, you see, you’ve got a problem there,” the boy said. “If you don’t have your joymaker you won’t have any warning when he’s around. And also there’s something about the DR equipment you might not know. You have to have some credit rating or they won’t freeze you at all if you’re killed. You know. There’s always the chance that you’ll do something that annuls the bonds, so Heinzie, or whoever, might protest payment—then they’d be in trouble. I mean, they don’t want to get stuck with a stiff that can’t pay up.

“I appreciate their difficulty.”

“I just thought you’d like to know.”

“Oh, you were right.” Forrester’s glance wandered. “Mim—whatever your name is. You! What are you doing?”

The girl looked up from her joymaker, her face flushed with excitement. “Me, Charles?”

“Yeah. Didn’t I hear you mention my name just now?”

“Sure, Charles. I was proposing you for membership in our club. You know, we told you about it.”

“Nice of you,” said Forrester bitterly. “Has it got a dining room?”

“Oh, it’s not that kind of a club, Charles. You don’t understand. The club will help you. Already they’ve made a suggestion.”

He looked skeptical. “Is that going to help?”

“Sweat, yes! Listen. Tars Tarkas just said, ‘Let him seek in the dead sea bottoms and the ancient cities. Let him join the haunted hosts of old Jasoom.’ ”

Forrester puzzled over the message drearily. “It doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said.

“Of course it does! Clear as the crawlers on the Farside coconut, don’t you see? He thinks you ought to hide out with the Forgotten Men!”

Eleven

It was only ten minutes walking from the children’s home to the great underbuilding plazas and warrens where the Forgotten Men lived. But Forrester had no guide this time, nor was there a joymaker to display green arrows to guide him, and it took him an hour. He dodged across an avenue of grass between roaring hovercraft, his life in his hands, and emerged under a hundred-story tower where a man came humbly toward him. He looked vaguely familiar.

“Stranger,” the man said, softly pleading, “Ah’ve had a turrible lahf. It all started when the mahns closed and my wahf Murry got sick—”

“Buddy,” said Forrester, “have you got a wrong number.”

The man stepped back a pace and looked him up and down. He was tall, lean, and dark, his face patient and intelligent. “Aren’t you the fellah Ah panhandled with those two little kids?” he said accusingly. “Gave me fifty bucks, Ah think.”

“You remember good. But that was when I had money; now I’m broke.” Forrester looked around at the tall buildings and the greensward. They did not seem hospitable. “I’d be obliged to you,” he added, “if you’d tell me where I can sleep tonight.”

The man glanced warily around, as if suspicious of some kind of a trick, then grinned and stuck his hand out. “Welcome to the club,” he said. “Name’s Whitlow. Jurry Whitlow. What happened?”

“I got fired,” said Forrester simply, introducing himself.

Jerry Whitlow commiserated. “Could happen to anybody, Ah guess. You know, Ah noticed you didn’t have a joymaker, but Ah didn’t think much about it. Figured, sweat, he’s just a damn greenhorn, prob’ly forgot to take it with him. But you got to get yourself one raht away.”

“Why?”

“Whah? Sweat, man! Don’t you know you’re fur game for anybody on the hunt? They come down here, take one look around, and they see you’re busted—hell, man, you wouldn’t last out the day.” He unclipped his own joymaker—or what Forrester had taken to be a joymaker—and proudly handed it over. “Fake, see? But it looks lahk the real thing. Fool anybody. Fooled you, Ah bet.”

It had, as a matter of fact. But actually, Forrester saw with surprise, it wouldn’t fool anyone at all, not at close range. It was far too light to be a joymaker, apparently whittled out of some organic plastic and painted in the pale patterns of a joymaker. “Of course, it don’t work,” Whitlow grinned. “But on the other hand Ah don’t have to pay rent on it. Keeps ‘em off pretty good. Didn’t have that, one of these preverts that get they kicks from total death’d come down here and tag me first thing.”

Gently he pulled it out of Forrester’s hand and looked at him calculatingly. “Now, you got to get one just lahk it and, damn, you hit lucky first tahm. Theah’s a fellow two houses over makes them to sell. Friend o’ mahn. Ah bet he’ll give you one for—hell! Maybe little as a hundred dollars!” Forrester started to open his mouth. “Maybe even eighty! . . . Seventy-fahv?”

“Whit,” said Forrester simply, “I haven’t got a dime.”

“Sweat!” Whitlow was awed. Then he shrugged. “Well, hell, Ah guess we can’t let you get killed for a lousy fifteen bucks. Ah’ll get you fixed up on spec.”

“Fifteen?”

Whitlow grinned. “That’s without mah commission. Come on with me, boy. You got some ropes to learn!”

The Forgotten Men lived on the castoffs of the great world overhead, but it did not seem to Forrester that they lived badly. Jerry Whitlow was not fat, but he was obviously not starving, either. His clothes were clean and in good repair, his attitude relaxed. Why, thought Forrester, it might even turn out that I’ll like it here, once I learn my way around. . . .

Whitlow was a first-rate teacher, even though he never stopped talking. He conducted Forrester through underbuilding mazes and footbridges Forrester had not even seen, his mouth going all the while. Mostly it was the story of his life.

“. . . Laid off at the mahns when Ah was sixteen. Out of work, Chuck, and me with a family to support. Well, we made out, kahnd of, until mah wahf Murry got sick and we had to go on the relief. So a gov’ment man came around and put me on the Aydult Retraining and gave me tests and, Chrahst, Chuck, you know Ah scored so hah Ah just about broke the scales. So then Ah went back to school and—”

He stopped and glanced apprehensively overhead. They were between buildings, under a tiny square of open sky. He grabbed Forrester and dragged him swiftly back into the cellar where the joymaker-maker had kept his shop.

“Watch out!” he whispered fiercely. “They’s a reporter up there!”