He said, “My future may be decided. I got a draft notice.”
“Good grief. You on Mars; I can’t picture it.”
“I can chew Can-D,” he said. “Only—” Instead of having a Perky Pat layout, he thought, maybe I’ll have an Emily layout. And spend time, in fantasy, back with you, back to the life I deliberately, moronically, turned my back on. The only really good period of my life, when I was genuinely happy. But of course I didn’t know it, because I had nothing to compare it to… as I have now. “Is there any chance,” he said, “that you’d like to come?”
She stared at him and he stared back, both of them dumfounded by what he had proposed.
“I mean it,” he said.
“When did you decide that?”
“It doesn’t matter when I decided it,” he said. “All that matters is that that’s how I feel.”
“It also matters how I feel,” Emily said quietly; she then resumed potting. “And I’m perfectly happy married to Richard. We get along just swell.” Her face was placid; beyond doubt she meant every word of it. He was damned, doomed, consigned to the void which he had hollowed out for himself. And he deserved it. They both knew that, without either saying it.
“I guess I’ll go,” he said.
Emily didn’t protest that, either. She merely nodded.
“I hope in the name of God,” he said, “that you’re not devolving. I think you are, personally. I can see it, in your face for instance. Look in the mirror.” With that he departed; the door shut after him. Instantly he regretted what he had said, and yet it might be a good thing… It might help her, he thought. Because I could see it. And I don’t want that; nobody does. Not even that jackass of a husband of hers that she prefers over me… for reasons I’ll never know, except perhaps that marriage to him has the aspect of destiny. She’s fated to live with Richard Hnatt, fated never to be my wife again; you can’t reverse the flow of time.
You can when you chew Can-D, he thought. Or the new product, Chew-Z. All the colonists do. It’s not available on Earth but it is on Mars or Venus or Ganymede, any of the frontier colonies.
If everything else fails, there’s that.
And perhaps it already had failed. Because—
In the last analysis he could not go to Palmer Eldritch. Not after what the man had done—or tried to do—to Leo. He realized this as he stood outdoors waiting for a cab. Beyond him the midday street shimmered and he thought, Maybe I’ll step out there. Would anyone find me before I died? Probably not. It would be as good a way as any…
So there goes my last hope of employment. It would amuse Leo that I’d balk here. He’d be surprised and probably pleased.
Just for the hell of it, he decided, I’ll call Eldritch, ask him, see if he would give me a job.
He found a vidphone booth and put through a call to Eldritch’s demesne on Luna.
“This is Barney Mayerson,” he explained. “Previously top Pre-Fash consultant to Leo Bulero; as a matter of fact I was second in command at P. P. Layouts.”
Eldritch’s personnel manager frowned and said, “Well? What do you want?”
“I’d like to see about a job with you.”
“We’re not hiring any Pre-Fash consultants. Sorry.”
“Would you ask Mr. Eldritch, please?”
“Mr. Eldritch has already expressed himself on the matter.”
Barney hung up. He left the vidphone booth.
He was not really surprised.
If they had said, Come to Luna for an interview, would I have gone? Yes, he realized. I’d have gone but at some point I’d have pulled out. Once I had firmly established that they’d give me the job.
Returning to the vidphone booth he called his UN selective service board. “This is Mr. Barney Mayerson.” He gave them his official code-ident number. “I received my notice the other day. I’d like to waive the formalities and go right in. I’m anxious to emigrate.”
“The physical can’t be bypassed,” the UN bureaucrat informed him. “Nor can the mental. But if you choose you may come by any time, right now if you wish, and take both.”
“Okay,” he said. “I will.”
“And since you are volunteering, Mr. Mayerson, you get to pick—”
“Any planet or moon is fine with me,” he said. He rang off, left the booth, found a cab, and gave it the address of the selective service board near his conapt building.
As the cab hummed above downtown New York another cab rose and zipped ahead of it, wig-wagging its side fins in a rocking motion.
“They are trying to contact us,” the autonomic circuit of his own cab informed him. “Do you wish to respond?”
“No,” Barney said. “Speed up.” And then he changed his mind. “Can you ask them who they are?”
“By radio, perhaps.” The cab was silent a moment and then it stated, “They claim to have a message for you from Palmer Eldritch; he wants to tell you that he will accept you as an employee and for you not to—”
“Let’s have that again,” Barney said.
“Mr. Palmer Eldritch, whom they represent, will employ you as you recently requested. Although they have a general rule—”
“Let me talk to them,” Barney said.
A mike was presented to him.
“Who is this?” Barney said into it.
An unfamiliar man’s voice said, “This is Icholtz. From Chew-Z Manufacturers of Boston. May we land and discuss the matter of your employment with our firm?”
“I’m on my way to the draft board. To give myself up.”
“There’s nothing in writing, is there? You haven’t signed.”
“No.”
“Good. Then it’s not too late.”
Barney said, “But on Mars I can chew Can-D.”
“Why do you want to do that, for godssake?”
“Then I can be back with Emily.”
“Who’s Emily?”
“My previous wife. Who I kicked out because she became pregnant. Now I realize it was the only happy time of my life. In fact I love her more now than I ever did; it’s grown instead of faded.”
“Look,” Icholtz said. “We can supply you with all the Chew-Z you want and it’s superior; you can live forever in an eternal unchanging perfect now with your ex-wife. So there’s no problem.”
“But maybe I don’t want to work for Palmer Eldritch.”
“You applied!”
“I’ve got doubts,” Barney said. “Grave ones, I tell you; don’t call me, I’ll call you. If I don’t go into the service.” He handed the mike back to the cab. “Here. Thanks.”
“It’s patriotic to go into the service,” the cab said.
“Mind your own business,” Barney said.
“I think you’re doing the right thing,” the cab said, anyhow.
“If only I had gone to Sigma 14-B to save Leo,” he said. “Or was it Luna? Wherever he was; I can’t even remember now. It all seems like a disfigured dream. Anyhow if I had I’d still be working for him and everything would be all right.”
“We all make mistakes,” the cab said piously.
“But some of us,” Barney said, “make fatal ones.” First about our loved ones, our wife and children, and then about our employer, he said to himself.
The cab hummed on.
And then, he said to himself, we make one last one. About our whole life, summing it all up. Whether to take a job with Eldritch or go into the service. And whichever we choose we can know this:
It was the wrong alternative.
An hour later he had taken his physical; he had passed and thereupon the mental was administered by something not unlike Dr. Smile.
He passed that, too.
In a daze he took the oath (“I swear to look upon Earth as the mother and leader,” etc.) and then, with a folio of greetings!–type information, was ejected to go back to his conapt and pack. He had twenty-four hours before his ship left for – wherever they were sending him. They had not as yet uttered this. The notification of destination, he conjectured, probably began, “Mene, mene, tekel.” At least it should, considering the possible choices to which it was limited.