The Second Science Fiction MEGAPACK®. Robert Silverberg
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he told the man from the past, “this is Tinny-Peete. He’s going to take care of you and help you make lots of money.” The psychist stayed for a cup of the coffee whose preparation had delighted Barlow, and then conducted the real estate man down the corduroy road to his car, leaving the potter to speculate on whether he could at last crack his kilns. Hawkins, abruptly dismissing Barlow and The Problem, happily picked the chinking from around the door of the number two kiln, prying it open a trifle. A blast of heat and the heady, smoky scent of the reduction fire delighted him. He peered and saw a corner of a shelf glowing cherry red, becoming obscured by wavering black areas as it lost heat through the opened door. He slipped a charred wood paddle under a mug on the shelf and pulled it out as a sample, the hairs on the back of his hand curling and scorching. The mug crackled and pinged and Hawkins sighed happily. The bismuth resinate luster had fired to perfection, a haunting film of silvery-black metal with strange bluish lights in it as it turned before the eyes, and the Problem of Population seemed very far away to Hawkins then. Barlow and Tinny-Peete arrived at the concrete highway where the psychist’s car was parked in a safety bay.
“What-a-boat!” gasped the man from the past.
“Boat? No, that’s my car.”
Barlow surveyed it with awe. Swept-back lines, deep-drawn compound curves, kilograms of chrome. He ran his hands over the door—or was it the door?—in a futile search for a handle, and asked respectfully, “How fast does it go?”
The psychist gave him a keen look and said slowly, “Two hundred and fifty. You can tell by the speedometer.”
“Wow! My old Chevy could hit a hundred on a straightaway, but you’re out of my class, mister!” Tinny-Peete somehow got a huge, low door open and Barlow descended three steps into immense cushions, floundering over to the right. He was too fascinated to pay serious attention to his flayed dermis. The dashboard was a lovely wilderness of dials, plugs, indicators, lights, scales and switches. The psychist climbed down into the driver’s seat and did something with his feet. The motor started like lighting a blowtorch as big as a silo. Wallowing around in the cushions, Barlow saw through a rearview mirror a tremendous exhaust filled with brilliant white sparkles.
“Do you like it?” yelled the psychist.
“It’s terrific!” Barlow yelled back. “It’s—”
He was shut up as the car pulled out from the bay into the road with a great voo-ooo-ooom! A gale roared past Barlow’s head, though the windows seemed to be closed; the impression of speed was terrific. He located the speedometer on the dashboard and saw it climb past 90, 100, 150, 200.
“Fast enough for me,” yelled the psychist, noting that Barlow’s face fell in response. “Radio?” He passed over a surprisingly light object like a football helmet, with no trailing wires, and pointed to a row of buttons. Barlow put on the helmet, glad to have the roar of air stilled, and pushed a pushbutton. It lit up satisfyingly, and Barlow settled back even farther for a sample of the brave new world’s super-modern taste in ingenious entertainment.
“TAKE IT AND STICK IT!” a voice roared in his ears.
He snatched off the helmet and gave the psychist an injured look. Tinny-Peete grinned and turned a dial associated with the pushbutton layout. The man from the past donned the helmet again and found the voice had lowered to normal.
“The show of shows! The supershow! The super-duper show! The quiz of quizzes! Take It and Stick It!” There were shrieks of laughter in the background. “Here we got the contes-tants all ready to go. You know how we work it. I hand a contestant a triangle-shaped cutout and like that down the line. Now we got these here boards, they got cutout places the same shape as the triangles and things, only they’re all different shapes, and the first contestant that sticks the cutouts into the boards, he wins. “Now I’m gonna innaview the first contestant. Right here, honey. What’s your name?”
“Name? Uh—”
“Hoddaya like that, folks? She don’t remember her name! Hah? Would you buy that for a quarter?”
The question was spoken with arch significance, and the audience shrieked, howled and whistled its appreciation. It was dull listening when you didn’t know the punch lines and catch lines. Barlow pushed another button, with his free hand ready at the volume control.
“—latest from Washington. It’s about Senator Hull-Mendoza. He is still attacking the Bureau of Fisheries. The North California Syndicalist says he got affydavits that John Kingsley-Schultz is a bluenose from way back. He didn’t publistat the affydavits, but he says they say that Kingsley-Schultz was saw at bluenose meetings in Oregon State College and later at Florida University. Kingsley-Schultz says he gotta confess he did major in fly casting at Oregon and got his Ph.D. in game-fish at Florida.
“And here is a quote from Kingsley-Schultz: ‘Hull-Mendoza don’t know what he’s talking about. He should drop dead.’ Unquote. Hull-Mendoza says he won’t publistat the affydavits to pertect his sources. He says they was sworn by three former employees of the Bureau which was fired for in-competence and in-com-pat-ibility by Kingsley-Schultz.
“Elsewhere they was the usual run of traffic accidents. A three-way pileup of cars on Route 66 going outta Chicago took twelve lives. The Chicago-Los Angeles morning rocket crashed and exploded in the Mo-have-Mo-javvy-whatever-you-call-it Desert. All the 94 people aboard got killed. A Civil Aeronautics Authority investigator on the scene says that the pilot was buzzing herds of sheep and didn’t pull out in time.
“Hey! Here’s a hot one from New York! A diesel tug run wild in the harbor while the crew was below and shoved in the port bow of the luck-shury liner S. S. Placentia. It says the ship filled and sank taking the lives of an es-ti-mated 180 passengers and 50 crew members. Six divers was sent down to study the wreckage, but they died, too, when their suits turned out to be fulla little holes.
“And here is a bulletin I just got from Denver. It seems—”
Barlow took off the headset uncomprehendingly. “He seemed so callous,” he yelled at the driver. “I was listening to a newscast—”
Tinny-Peete shook his head and pointed at his ears. The roar of air was deafening. Barlow frowned baffledly and stared out of the window. A glowing sign said: MOOGS! WOULD YOU BUY IT FOR A QUARTER? He didn’t know what Moogs was or were; the illustration showed an incredibly proportioned girl, 99.9 percent naked, writhing passionately in animated full color. The roadside jingle was still with him, but with a new feature. Radar or something spotted the car and alerted the lines of the jingle. Each in turn sped along a roadside track, even with the car, so it could be read before the next line was alerted.
IF THERE’S A GIRL YOU WANT TO GET
DEFLOCCULIZE UNROMANTIC SWEAT.
“A*R*M*P*I*T*T*O”
Another animated job, in two panels, the familiar “Before and After.” The first said, “Just Any Cigar?” and was illustrated with a two-person domestic tragedy of a wife holding her nose while her coarse and red-faced husband puffed a slimy-looking rope. The second panel glowed, “Or a VUELTA ABAJO?” and was illustrated with—Barlow blushed and looked at his feet until they had passed the sign.
“Coming into Chicago!” bawled Tinny-Peete. Other cars were showing up, all of them dreamboats. Watching them, Barlow began to wonder if he knew what a kilometer was, exactly. They seemed to be traveling so slowly, if you ignored the roaring air past your ears and didn’t let the speedy lines of the dreamboats fool you. He would have sworn they were really crawling along at twenty-five, with occasional spurts up to thirty. How much was a kilometer, anyway? The city loomed ahead, and it was just what it ought to be: towering skyscrapers, overhead ramps, landing platforms for helicopters—
He clutched at the cushions. Those two copters. They were going to—they were going to—they—
He didn’t see what happened because their apparent collision courses took them behind a giant building. Screamingly sweet blasts of sound surrounded them as they stopped for a red light.
“What