In the Problem Pit Read online

  Forty thousand feet directly overhead, as the Presidential jet sped back from the Summer White House near Boothbay Harbor, Maine, the Secretary of State lifted eyes streaming with joy and said, “Dear Mr. President, let’s give the spies another chance. It’s too nice a night to be H-bombing Caracas.” And the President, flinging an arm around him, sobbed, “Danny, as a diplomat you’re not worth a bucket of warm snot, but I’ve always said you’ve got the biggest damn heart in the cabinet.”

  A great bubble of orange-yellow flame off on the western horizon disconcerted diem for a moment, but it did not seem relevant to their transcendental joy. They began singing all the good old favorites like “Down by the Old Mill Stream,” “Sweet Adeline,” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” and had so much fun doing it that the President quite forgot to radio the message that would cancel his strike order against Caracas. It did not matter very much. The B-52 ordnance crews had dumped the bombs from the fork lifts and were now giving each other rides on them, while the commanding general of the strike, Curtis T. “Vinegar Ass” Pinowitz, had decided he preferred going fishing to parachuting into Venezuela in support of the bombing. He was looking for his spinning reel, oblivious to the noise on the hardstand where the 101st Airborne was voting whether to fly to Disneyland or the Riviera. (In any event, the Venezuelans, or those members of the Venezuelan government who were bothering to answer their telephones, had just voted to give the Yankees all the oil they wanted and were seriously considering scenting it with jasmine.)

  The ball of flame on the horizon, however, was not without its importance.

  Arnold Novak had released the armlock he had got around the little brown-eyed stewardess’s neck and had begun to try to explain to her that his intention to blow up the jet meant nothing personal, but was only a way of inducing his mother to pay as much attention to him as she had, all through their lives, to his brother, Dick. Although he stammered so that he was almost incoherent, the stew understood him at once. She, too, had had both a mother and an older brother. Her pretty brown eyes filled with tears of sympathy and with a rush of love she flung her arms around him. “You poor boy,” she cried, covering his stubbly face with kisses. “Here, honey! Let me help you.” And she caught the cassette from his hand, careful not to pull the wires loose, and closed the switch that touched off the caps in all the 30 Baggies.

  One hundred and thirty-one men, women, and children simultaneously were converted into maltreated chunks of barbecued meat falling through the sky. Their roster included the pilot, the co-pilot, the third pilot, and 8 other members of the flight crew; plus, among the passengers, mothers, infants, honeymooning couples, nonhoneymooning but equally amorous couples who did not happen to be married to each other, a middle-aged grape picker returning home after a 5-days-4-nights all-expense tour of Sin City (which he had found disappointing), a defrocked priest, a disbarred lawyer, and a Congressman from Oregon who would never now achieve his dream of dismantling NASA and preventing the further waste of the taxpayer’s funds on space, which he held to be empty and uninteresting.

  Whoever they had been when whole, the pieces of barbecue all looked pretty much alike now. It did not matter. Not one of the passengers or crew had died unhappy, since they had all been touched by the comet.

  And deep inside the core of the comet Ujifusa-McGinnis, the device which was meant to display the wave forms signifying receipt of the destruction order for Earth remained blank. No signal was received. No one would have observed it if it had been, certainly not the watchers, but it was unprecedented that a response should not be received.

  The reason was quite simple. It was that that particular superdreadnaught of the Arrogating Ones, like most of the others in their galactic fleet, had long since been hurled against the fortresses of the insectoids of the core. There, like the others, it had been quickly destroyed, so that the message sent by the watchers had never reached its destination.

  It was, in a way, too bad, to think of all that strength and sagacity spent with no more tangible visible result than to give pleasure to a few billion advanced primates. Although this was regrettable, it did not much bother the Arrogating Ones. They had plenty of other regrets to work on. What remained of their collective intelligence was fully taken up with the problem of bare survival against the insectoid fleets —plus, to be sure, a good deal of attention given to mutual recrimination.

  The watchers did not mind; they had long since perished of acute terminal pleasure.

  And, as it turned out, they had not died entirely in vain.

  Because the Oregon congressman did not live to complete his plan to dismantle NASA, all his seniority and horse-trading power having perished with him, the projected comet-study mission was not canceled. To be sure, the bird did not fly on schedule. The effects of the joy beams from the comet did not begin to wear off for several days and the NASA technicians simply could not be bothered while their joy was in its manic phase.

  But gradually the world returned to—normal? No. It was definitely not normal for everyone to be feeling rather cheerful most of the time. But the world settled down, sweetly and fondly, to something not unlike its previous condition of work and play. So the astronauts found another launch window and made rendezvous with the comet; and what they found there made quite a difference in the history of both the human race and the galaxy. The watchers were gone, but they had left their weaponry behind.

  When the astronauts returned with the least and weakest of the weapons, all they could cram into their ship, the President of the United States gave up his shuffleboard game to fly to the deck of the Independence and stare at it. “Oh, boy!” he chortled, awed and thrilled. “If that’d turned up two months ago Brazil would’ve had a seaport on the Caribbean!” But Venezuela went about its business untouched. The President was tempted. Even cheerful and at peace with himself and the world, he was tempted—old habits die hard. But he had several thoughts and the longest and most persuasive of them was that weaponry like this meant that somewhere there was an enemy who had constructed and deployed it and someday might return to use it. So with some misgivings, but without any real freedom of choice, he flew back to Washington, summoned the ambassadors of Venezuela, Cuba, Canada, the U.S.S.R., the People’s Republic of China, and the United Irish Republics of Great Britain and laid everything before them.

  Although politicians, too, were residually cheerful still from the effect of the comet, they had not lost their intelligence. They quickly saw that there was an external foe—somewhere —which made each of them look like a very good friend. Nobody was in a mood to fool with little international wars. So treaties were signed, funds were appropriated, construction was begun.

  And the human race, newly armed and provided with excellent spaceships, went looking for the Arrogating Ones.

  They did not, of course, find them. By the time they were ready to make their move, the last of the Arrogating Ones had gone resentfully to his death. But a good many generations later, humans found the insectoids of the core instead and what then happened to the insectoids would have satisfied even the Arrogating Ones.

  The Man Who Ate the World

  During the presidential election of 1948 I was spending a lot of time with an enchantingly beautiful girl, all of five years old, named Merril Zissman. She knew what an election was, and she knew that Harry Truman was battling for survival against the favorite contender, Tom Dewey; but she had a little trouble remembering which was which. So she called them both “Trumie.” It wasn’t until I had actually written “The Man Who Ate the World,” and sold it, and seen it in print that I realized where the name of the lead character had come from, tucked away for years in my subconscious and emerging through my fingertips onto the typewriter paper with no intervention at all of the conscious mind.

  I

  He had a name but at home he was called “Sonny,” and he was almost always at home. He hated it. Other boys his age went to school. Sonny would have done anything to go to s
chool, but his family was, to put it mildly, not well off. It was not Sonny’s fault that his father was so unsuccessful. But it meant no school for Sonny, no boys of his own age for Sonny to play with. All childhoods are tragic (as all adults forget), but Sonny’s was misery all the way through.

  The worst time was at night, when the baby sister was asleep and the parents were grimly eating and reading and dancing and drinking, until they were ready to drop. And of all bad nights, the night before his twelfth birthday was perhaps Sonny’s worst. He was old enough to know what a birthday party was like.

  It would be cake and candy, shows and games. It would be presents, presents, presents.

  It would be a terrible, endless day.

  He switched off the color-D television and the recorded tapes of sea chanteys and, with an appearance of absentmindedness, walked toward the door of his playroom.

  Davey Crockett got up from beside the model rocket field and said, “Hold on thar, Sonny. Mought take a stroll with you.” Davey, with a face as serene and strong as a Tennessee crag, swung its long huntin’ rifle under one arm and put its other arm around Sonny’s shoulders. “Where you reckon the two of us ought to head?”

  Sonny shook Davey Crockett’s arm off. “Get lost,” he said petulantly. “Who wants you around?”

  Long John Silver came out of the closet, hobbling on its wooden leg, crouched over its knobby cane. “Ah, young master,” it said reproachfully, “you shouldn’t ought to talk to old Davey like that! He’s a good friend to you, Davey is. Many’s the weary day Davey and me has been a-keepin’ of your company. I asks you this, young master: Is it fair and square that you should be a-tellin’ him to get lost? Is it fair, young master? Is it square?”

  Sonny looked at the floor stubbornly and didn’t answer. What was the use of answering dummies like them? He stood rebelliously silent and still until he just felt like saying something. And then he said: “You go in the closet, both of you. I don’t want to play with you. I’m going to play witii my trains.”

  Long John said unctuously: “Now there’s a good idea, that is! You just be a-havin’ of a good time with your trains and old Davey and me’ll—”

  “Go ahead!” shouted Sonny. He kept stamping his foot until they were out of sight.

  His fire truck was in the middle of the floor; he kicked at it, but it rolled quickly out of reach and slid into its little garage under the tanks of tropical fish.

  He scuffed over to the model railroad layout and glared at it. As he approached, the Twentieth Century Limited came roaring out of a tunnel, sparks flying from its stack. It crossed a bridge, whistled at a grade crossing, steamed into the Union Station. The roof of the station glowed and suddenly became transparent, and through it Sonny saw the bustling crowds of redcaps and travelers—

  “I don’t want that,” he said. “Casey, crack up old Number Ninety-Nine again.”

  Obediently the layout quivered and revolved a half-turn. Old Casey Jones, one and an eighth inches tall, leaned out of the cab of the S.P. locomotive and waved good-bye to Sonny. The locomotive whistled shrilly twice and picked up speed—

  It was a good crackup. Little old Casey’s body, thrown completely free, developed real blisters from the steam and bled real blood. But Sonny turned his back on it. He had liked that crackup for a long time—longer than he liked almost any other toy he owned. But he was tired of it.

  He looked around the room.

  Tarzan of the Apes, leaning against a foot-thick tree trunk, one hand on a vine, lifted its head and looked at him; but Tarzan was clear across the room. The others were in the closet.

  Sonny ran out and slammed the door. He saw Tarzan start to come after him, but even before Sonny was out of the room, Tarzan slumped and stood stockstill.

  It wasn’t fair, Sonny thought angrily. They wouldn’t even chase him, so that at least he could have some kind of chance to get away by himself. They’d just talk to each other on their little radios, and in a minute one of the tutors, or one of the maids, or whatever else happened to be handy would vector in on him—

  But, for the moment, he was free.

  He slowed down and walked along the Great Hall toward his baby sister’s room. The fountains began to splash as he entered the hall; the mosaics on the wall began to tinkle music and sparkle with moving colors.

  “Now, chile, whut you up to?”

  He turned around, but he knew it was Mammy coming toward him. It was slapping toward him on big, flat feet, its pink-palmed hands lifted to its shoulders. The face under the red bandanna was frowning, its gold tooth sparkling as Mammy scolded: “Chile, you is got usns so worried, we’s fit to die! How you ‘speck us to take good keer of you efn you run off lak that? Now you jes come on back to your nice room with Mammy an’ we’ll see if there ain’t some real nice program on the TV.”

  Sonny stopped and waited for it, but he wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of looking at it. Slap-slap, the big feet waddled cumbersomely toward him; but he didn’t have any illusions. Waddle, big feet, 300 pounds and all, Mammy could catch him in 20 yards with a ten-yard start. Any of them could.

  He said in his best icily indignant voice: “I was just going in to look at my baby sister.”

  Pause. “You was?” The plump black face looked suspicious.

  “Yes, I was. Doris is my own sister and I love her.”

  Pause—long pause. “Dat’s nice,” said Mammy, but its voice was still doubtful. “I ‘speck I better come ‘long with you. You wouldn’t want to wake your lil baby sister up. Ef I come, I’ll he’p you keep real quiet.”

  Sonny shook free of it—they were always putting their hands on kids! “I don’t want you to come with me, Mammy!”

  “Aw, now, honey! Mammy ain’t gwine bother nothin’, you knows that!”

  Sonny turned his back on it and marched grimly toward his sister’s room. If only they would leave him alone! But they never did.

  It was always that way, always one darn old robot—yes, robot, he thought, savagely tasting the naughty word. Always one dam robot after another. Why couldn’t Daddy be like other daddies, so they could live in a decent little house and get rid of those dam robots—so he could go to a real school and be in a class with other boys, instead of being taught at home by Miss Brooks and Mr. Chips and all those other robots?

  They spoiled everything. And they would spoil what he wanted to do now. But he was going to do it all the same, because there was something in Doris’s room that he wanted very much.

  It was probably the only tangible thing he wanted in the world.

  As he and Mammy passed the imitation tumbled rocks of the Bear Cave, Mama Bear poked its head out and growled: “Hello, Sonny. Don’t you think you ought to be in bed? It’s nice and warm in our hear bed, Sonny.”

  He didn’t even look at it. Time was when he had liked that sort of thing, too, but he wasn’t a four-year-old like Doris any more. All the same, there was one thing a four-year-old had—

  He stopped at the door of her room. “Doris?” he whispered.

  Mammy scolded: “Now, chile, you knows that lil baby is asleep! How come you tryin’ to wake her up?”

  “I won’t wake her up.” The furthest thing from Sonny’s mind was to wake his sister up. He tiptoed into the room and stood beside the little girl’s bed. Lucky kid! he thought enviously. Being four, she was allowed to have a tiny little room and a tiny bed—while Sonny had to wallow around in a 40-foot bedchamber and a bed eight feet long.

  He looked down at his sister. Behind him, Mammy clucked approvingly. “Dat’s nice when chilluns loves each other lak you an’ that lil baby,” it whispered.

  Doris was sound asleep, clutching her teddy bear. It wriggled slighdy and opened an eye to look at Sonny, but it didn’t say anything.

  Sonny took a deep breath, leaned forward and gently slipped the teddy bear out of the bed.

  It scrambled pathetically, trying to get free.

  Mammy whispered urgently: “Sonny! Now you let dat o
ld teddy bear alone, you heah me?”

  Sonny whispered: “I’m not hurting anything. Leave me alone, will you?”

  “Sonny!”

  He clutched the little furry robot desperately around its middle. The stubby arms pawed at him, the furred feet scratched against his arms. It growled a tiny doll-bear growl, and whined, and suddenly his hands were wet with its real salt tears.

  “Sonny! Come on now, honey, you knows that’s Doris’s Teddy. Aw, chile!”

  He said: “It’s mine!” It wasn’t his. He knew it wasn’t. His was long gone, taken away from him when he was six because it was old, and because he had been six, and six-year-olds had to have bigger, more elaborate companion-robots. It wasn’t even the same color as his—it was brown and his had been black and white. But it was cuddly and gently warm and he had heard it whispering litde bedtime stories to Doris. And he wanted it very much.

  Footsteps in the hall outside. A low-pitched pleading voice from the door: “Sonny, you must not interfere with your sister’s toys. One has obligations.”

  He stood forlornly, holding the teddy bear. “Go away, Mr. Chips!”

  “Really, Sonny! This isn’t proper behavior. Please return the toy.”

  “I won’t!”

  Mammy, dark face pleading in the shadowed room, leaned toward him and tried to take it away from him. “Aw, honey, now you know that’s not—”

  “Leave me alone!” he shouted. There was a gasp and a little whimper from the bed, and Doris sat up and began to cry.

  The little girl’s bedroom was suddenly filled with robots— and not only robots, for in a moment the butler appeared, leading Sonny’s actual flesh-and-blood mother and father.

  Sonny made a terrible scene. He cried, and he swore at them childishly for being the unsuccessful clods they were, and they nearly wept, too, because they were aware that their lack of standing was bad for the children. But he couldn’t keep Teddy.