In the Problem Pit Read online

  In essence science fiction reduces the entire continuum of human knowledge to a sort of board game, and by systematically changing the rules of the game one or a few at a time investigates] the possibility of alternate societies … Science fiction gives us a sort of catalogue of possible worlds. From the wish-book we can pick the ones we want…

  Some sf people are right-wingers and some are left; some are deeply religious, some not at all; some battle for women’s lib or black power or the freedom of the drug scene and some are firmly for the Establishment; and yet all of them are able to join in the game …

  Perhaps the Method can spread. Perhaps the world at large can learn from sf. And perhaps then the ants won’t have to replace us after all.

  In The Problem Pit

  FREDERIK POHL

  CORGI

  CORGI BOOKS

  DIVISION OF TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD

  Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd.,

  Century House,

  61-63 Uxbridge Road,

  Ealing, London, W.5.

  Made and printed in Great Britain by

  Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd.,

  Aylesbury,

  Bucks.

  IN THE PROBLEM PIT

  A CORGI BOOK

  0 552 10334 9 First publication in Great Britain

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Corgi edition published 1976

  Copyright © 1976 by Frederik Pohl

  ‘In the Problem Pit,' originally published in Tile Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, copyright © 1973 by Mercury Press, Inc.

  ‘Let the Ants Try,’ originally published in Planet Stories, copyright © 1949 by Love Romances Publishing Corporation.

  ‘To See Another Mountain originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, copyright © 1959 by Mercury Publications, Inc. ‘The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass,’ originally published in Galaxy (as ‘The Time Machine of Phineas Snodgrass’), copyright © 1962 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation.

  ‘Golden Ages Gone Away,’ originally published in Clarion II, copyright © 1972 by Robin Scott Wilson.

  ‘Rafferty’s Reasons,’ originally published in Fantastic Universe, copyright © 1955 by King-Size Publications, Inc.

  ‘I Remember a Winter,’ originally published in Orbit 11, copyright © 1972 by Damon Knight.

  ‘The Schematic Man,’ originally published in Playboy, copyright © 1968 by HMH Publishing Company, Inc.

  ‘What to Do Until the Analyst Comes,’ originally published in Imagination!, copyright © 1955 by Greenleaf Publishing Company.

  ‘Some Joys Under the Star,’ originally published in Galaxy, copyright © 1973 by UPD Publishing Corporation.

  ‘The Man Who Ate the World,’ originally published in Galaxy, copyright © 1956 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation.

  ‘SF: The Game-Playing Literature,’ originally published in Clarion (as ‘The Game-Playing Literature’), copyright © 1971 by Robin Scott Wilson.

  For Betsy, far out and fine

  Contents

  Introduction: Science-Fiction Games

  In the Problem Fit

  Let the Ants Try

  To See Another Mountain

  The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgra..

  Golden Ages Gone Away

  Rafferty’s Reasons

  I Remember a Winter

  The Schematic Man

  What to Do Until the Analyst Comes

  Some Joys under the Star

  The Man Who Ate the World

  SF: The Game-Playing Literature

  About the Author

  In The Problem Pit

  Introduction: Science-Fiction Games

  Choosing which stories to put in an anthology is a lot like being asked which two of my four children should go into a “best of the family” collection. Like most writers, I try to maintain a pose of public professionalism. Also like most writers, in fact I bleed and die with everything I write. The stories don’t always turn out to be masterpieces. I will go farther than that: I have written some stories that by anybody’s standards, including my own, are awful. (They comprise a thick wad of wastepaper in my file cabinet, or at least the ones that didn’t get published anyway do.) But in no case is it the story’s fault, it is only mine. And whatever I privately know, it gives me some kind of pain to admit to anyone that this child is in any way deficient, and almost as much pain to claim that this other child is better than the rest.

  So I have used several sets of criteria in picking out the contents of this volume: some are personal favorites, some are new, and some are that special kind of sf I call “science-fiction games.”

  And to make it possible for you to know what I mean by a science-fiction game, I am also including an essay on the subject at the end of the book. It may not explain all of these particular stories, but I hope it will go some way toward explaining why I, and a lot of other people like me, have considered science fiction not a bad thing to devote our lives to.

  Frederik Pohl

  Red Bank, New Jersey November, 1974

  In the Problem Fit

  Sometimes people ask me where I get the idea for a science-fiction story, and 1 never know how to answer that. There is seldom a single idea involved, is one reason. When I wrote “In the Problem Pit,” I had just come back from visiting the big radio telescope at Arecibo; not long before, I had spent a weekend with an encounter group in New Jersey; before that, I had taken part in a World Future Society discussion of group problem-solving methods in Washington … and all those things (plus a casual remark of my minister’s wife about why she preferred female gynecologists, and a friendly conversation with a young Canadian metalworker) came together in my head … and “In the Problem Pit” came out.

  David

  Before I left the apartment to meet my draft call I had packed up the last of Lara. She had left herself all over our home: perfumes, books, eye shadow, Tampax, ivory animals she had forgotten to take and letters from him that she had probably meant for me to read. I didn’t read them. I packed up the whole schmear and sent it off to her in Djakarta, with longing and hatred.

  Since I was traveling at government expense, I took the hyperjet and then a STOL to the nearest city and a cab from there. I paid for the whole thing with travel vouchers, even the cab, which enormously annoyed the driver; I didn’t tip him. He bounced off down the road muttering in Spanish, racing his motor and double-clutching on the switchbacks, and there I was in front of the pit facility, and I didn’t want to go on in. I wasn’t ready to talk to anybody about any problems, especially mine.

  There was an explosion of horns and gunned motors from down the road. Somebody else was arriving, and the drivers were fighting about which of them would pull over to let the other pass. I made up my mind to slope off. So I looked for a cubbyhole to hide my pack and sleeping bag in and found it behind a rock, and I left the stuff there and was gone before the next cab arrived. I didn’t know where I was going, exactly. I just wanted to walk up the trails around the mountains in the warm afternoon rain.

  It was late afternoon, which meant it was, I calculated, oh, something like six in the morning in Djakarta. I could visualize Lara sound asleep in the heat, sprawled with the covers kicked off, making that little ladylike whistle that served her in place of a snore. (I could not visualize the other half of the bed.)

  I was hurting. Lara and I had been married for six years, counting two separations. And the way trouble always does, it had screwed up my work. I’d had this commission from the library in St. Paul, a big, complicated piece for over the front foyer. Well, it hadn’t gone well, being more Brancusi and interior-decorator art than me, but still it had been a lot of work and just about finished. And then when
I had it in the vacuum chamber and was floating the aluminum plating onto it, I’d let the pressure go up, and air got in, and of course the whole thing burned. >

  So partly I was thinking about whether Lara would come back and partly whether there was any chance I could do a whole new sculpture and plate it and deliver it before the library purchasing commission got around to canceling my contract, and partly I wasn’t thinking at all, just huffing and puffing up those trails in the muggy mist. I could see morning glories growing. I picked up a couple and put them in my pocket. The long muscles in my thighs were beginning to burn, and I was fighting my breathing. So I slowed down, spending my concentration on pacing my steps and my breathing so that I could keep my head away from where the real pain was. And then I found myself almost tripping over a rusted, bent old sign that said Pericoloso in one language and Danger in another.

  The sign spoke truth.

  In front of me was a cliff and a catwalk stretching out over what looked like a quarter of a mile of space.

  I had blundered on to the old telescope. I could see the bowl way down below, all grown over with bushes and trees. And hanging in the air in front of me, suspended from three cables, was a thing like a rusty trolley car, with spikes sticking out of the lower part of it.

  No one was around; I guess they don’t use the telescope any more. I couldn’t go any farther unless I wanted to go out on the catwalk, which I didn’t, and so I sat down and breathed hard. As I began to get caught up on my oxygen debt, I began to think again; and since I didn’t want to do that, I pulled the crushed morning glories out of my pocket and chewed on a few seeds.

  Well, I had forgotten where I was. In Minneapolis you grow them in a window box. You have to pound them and crush them and soak them and squeeze them, hundreds of seeds at a time, before you get anything. But these had grown in a tropical climate.

  I wasn’t stoned or tripping, really. But I was—oh, I guess the word is “anesthetized.” Nothing hurt any more. It wasn’t just an absence of hurting, it was a positive not hurting, like when you’ve broken a tooth and you’ve finally got to the dentist’s office and he’s squirted in the novocaine and you can feel that not-hinting spread like a golden glow across your jaw, blotting up the ache as it goes.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but by the time I remembered I was supposed to report in at the pit the shadows were getting long.

  So I missed dinner, I missed signing in properly, I got there just in time for the VISTA guard to snap at me, “Why the hell can’t you be on time, Charlie?” and I was the last one down the elevators and into the pit. Everybody else was gathered there already in a big room that looked like it had been chopped out of rock, which I guess it had, with foam cushions scattered around the floor and, I guess, 12 or 14 people scattered around on the cushions, all with their bodies pointed toward an old lady in black slacks and a black turtleneck, but their faces pointed toward me.

  I flung down my sleeping bag and sat on it and said, “Sony.”

  She said, rather nicely, “Actually, we were just beginning.”

  And everybody looked at me begrudgingly, as though they had no choice but to wait while I blew my nose or built myself a nest out of straws or whatever I was going to do to delay them all still further, but I just sat there, trying not to look stoned, and after a while she began to talk.

  Tina’s Talk

  Hello. My name is Tina Wattridge, and I’m one of your resource people.

  I’m not the leader of this group. There isn’t any leader. If the group ever decides it has to have a leader, well, it can pick one. Or if you want to be a leader, you can pick yourself. See if anybody follows. But I’m not it, I’m only here to be available for answering questions or giving information.

  First, I will tell you what you already know. The reason you are all here is to solve problems.

  (She paused for a moment, scratching her nose and smiling, and then went on.)

  Thank you. A lot of groups start complaining and making jokes right there, and you didn’t. That’s nice, because I didn’t organize this group, and although I must say I think the groups work out well, it isn’t my fault that you’re here. And I appreciate your not blaming it on me.

  Still, you are here, and we are expected to state some problems and solve them, and we will stay right here until we do that, or enough of it so that whoever’s watching us is satisfied enough to let us go. That might be a couple of weeks. I had a group once that got out in 72 hours, but don’t expect that. Anyway, you won’t know how long it Ls. The reason we are in these caves is to minimize contact with the external world, including all sorts of times cues. And if any of you have managed to smuggle watches past the VISTA people, please give them to me now. They’re not allowed here.

  I saw some of you look interested when I talked about who is watching us, and so I ought to say right now I don’t know how they watch or when, and I don’t care. They do watch. But they don’t interfere. The first word we will get from them is when the VISTA duty people unlock the elevator and come down and tell us we can go home.

  Food. You can eat whenever you want to, on demand.

  If you want to establish meal hours, any group of you can do so. If you want to eat singly, whenever you want to, fine. Either way you simply sign in in the dining room— “sign in” means you type your names on the monitor; they’ll know who you are; just the last name will do—and order what you want to eat. Your choices are four: “Breakfast,” “snack,” “light meal” and “full meal.” It doesn’t matter what order you eat them in or when you want them. When you put in your order, they make them and put them in the dumbwaiter. Dirty dishes go back in the dumbwaiter except for the disposable ones, which go in the trash chute. You can ask for certain special dishes—the way you want your eggs, for instance—but in general you take what they give you. It’s all explained on the menu.

  Sleep. You sleep when you want to, where you want to. In these three rooms—this one, the problem pit and the eating room, as well as the pool and showers—the lights are permanently on. In the two small rooms out past the bathrooms and laundry the lights can be controlled, and whoever is in the room can turn them on or off any way you like. If you can’t agree, you’ll just have to work it out.

  (She could see them building walls between themselves and her, and quickly she tried to reduce them.)

  Listen, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I always hate this part because it sounds like I’m giving you orders, but I’m not; those are just the ground rules and they bind me too. And, honestly, you won’t all hate it, or not all of it. I’ve done this 15 times now, and I look forward to coming back!

  All right, let’s see. Showers, toilets and all are over there. Washer-dryers are next to them. I assume you all did what you were told and brought wash-and-wear clothes, as well as sleeping bags and so on; if you didn’t, you’ll have to figure out what to do about it yourselves. When you want to wash your clothes, put your stuff in one of the net bags and put it in the machine. If there’s something already in the machine, just take it out and leave it on the table. The owner will pick it up when he wants it, no doubt. You can do three or four people’s wash in a single cycle without any trouble. They’re big machines. And there’s plenty of water—you people who come from the Southwest and the Plains States don’t have to worry. Incidentally, the sequenced water-supply system that you use there to conserve potable water was figured out right in this 2 cave. The research and development people had to work it over hard, to get the fluidic controls responsive enough, but the basic idea came from here; so, you see, there’s a point to all this.

  (She lit a cigarette and looked cheerfully around at the group, pleased that they were not resisting, less pleased that they were passive. She was a tall and elderly red-headed woman, who usually managed to look cheerful without smiling-)

  That brings me to computation facilities, for those of you who want to work on something that needs mathematical analysis or data access. I will d
o a certain amount of keyboarding for you, and I’ll be there to help—that's basically my job, I guess. There are two terminals in the pit room. They are on-line, real-time, shared-time programs, and those of you who are familiar with ALGOL, COBOL, and so on can use them direct. If you can’t write a program in computer language, you can either bring it to me—up to a point—or you can just type out what you want in clear. First, you type the words HELP ME; then you say what you want; then you type THAT’S ALL. The message will be relayed to a programmer, and he will help you if I can’t, or if you don’t want me to. You can blind-type your queries if you don’t want me looking over your shoulder. And sign your last name to everything. And, as always, if more of you want to use the terminals than we have terminals, you’ll have to work it out among you. I don’t care how.

  Incidentally, the problem pit is there because some groups like to sit face to face in formal surroundings. Sometimes it helps. Use it or not, as you like. You can solve problems anywhere in these chambers. Or outside, if you want to go outside. You can’t leave through the elevator, of course, because that’s locked now. Where you can go is into the rest of the cave system. But if you do that, it’s entirely your own responsibility. These caves run for at least 80 miles and maybe more, right down under the sea. We’re at least ten miles by the shortest route from the public ones where the tourists come. I doubt you could find your way there. They aren’t lighted, and you can very easily get lost. And there are no, repeat no, communications facilities or food available there. Three people have got lost and died in the past year, although most people do manage to find their way back—or are found. But don’t count on being found. No one will even start looking for you until we’re all released, and then it can take a long time.