Welcome to the Writer's Library, dedicated to the classic short stories, novels, poetry and books on writing. Learn to write by studying the classics. The collection provides readers with a perspective of the world from some of the 18th and 19th century's most talented writers.
"You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money’s in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed." – Larry Niven
Read Like A Writer
There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five Tags: america, disgrace, inequality, love, poor
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels.[1] In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death. Wikipedia Kurt Vonnegut Books at Amazon
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life and experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years, with Billy occasionally traveling through time. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience which Vonnegut himself lived through as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most enduring antiwar novels of all time". Wikipedia
About the Author
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works, with further collections being published after his death. Wikipedia
If it was good enough for your grandfather, forget it ... it is
much too good for anyone else!
Gramps Ford, his chin
resting on his hands, his
hands on the crook of his
cane, was staring irascibly at the
five-foot television screen that
dominated the room. On the
screen, a news commentator was
summarizing the day's happenings.
Every thirty seconds or so,
Gramps would jab the floor with
his cane-tip and shout, "Hell, we
did that a hundred years ago!"
Emerald and Lou, coming in
from the balcony, where they had
been seeking that 2185 A.D. rarity—privacy—were
obliged to take
seats in the back row, behind
Lou's father and mother, brother
and sister-in-law, son and daughter-in-law,
grandson and wife,
granddaughter and husband,
great-grandson and wife, nephew
and wife, grandnephew and wife,
great-grandniece and husband,
great-grandnephew and wife—and,
of course, Gramps, who was
in front of everybody. All save
Gramps, who was somewhat
withered and bent, seemed, by
pre-anti-gerasone standards, to
be about the same age—somewhere
in their late twenties or
early thirties. Gramps looked older
because he had already reached
70 when anti-gerasone was invented.
He had not aged in the
102 years since.
"Meanwhile," the commentator
was saying, "Council Bluffs,
Iowa, was still threatened by
stark tragedy. But 200 weary
rescue workers have refused to
give up hope, and continue to
dig in an effort to save Elbert
Haggedorn, 183, who has been
wedged for two days in a ..."
"I wish he'd get something
more cheerful," Emerald whispered
to Lou.
"Silence!" cried Gramps.
"Next one shoots off his big
bazoo while the TV's on is gonna
find hisself cut off without a dollar—"
his voice suddenly softened
and sweetened—"when they
wave that checkered flag at the
Indianapolis Speedway, and old
Gramps gets ready for the Big
Trip Up Yonder."
He sniffed sentimentally, while
his heirs concentrated desperately
on not making the slightest
sound. For them, the poignancy
of the prospective Big Trip had
been dulled somewhat, through
having been mentioned by
Gramps about once a day for
fifty years.
"Dr. Brainard Keyes Bullard,"
continued the commentator,
"President of Wyandotte College,
said in an address tonight that
most of the world's ills can be
traced to the fact that Man's
knowledge of himself has not
kept pace with his knowledge of
the physical world."
"Hell!" snorted Gramps. "We
said that a hundred years ago!"
"In Chicago tonight," the commentator
went on, "a special
celebration is taking place in the
Chicago Lying-in Hospital. The
guest of honor is Lowell W. Hitz,
age zero. Hitz, born this morning,
is the twenty-five-millionth child
to be born in the hospital." The
commentator faded, and was replaced
on the screen by young
Hitz, who squalled furiously.
"Hell!" whispered Lou to
Emerald. "We said that a hundred
years ago."
"I heard that!" shouted
Gramps. He snapped off the television
set and his petrified descendants
stared silently at the
screen. "You, there, boy—"
"I didn't mean anything by it,
sir," said Lou, aged 103.
"Get me my will. You know
where it is. You kids all know
where it is. Fetch, boy!" Gramps
snapped his gnarled fingers
sharply.
Lou nodded dully and found
himself going down the hall,
picking his way over bedding to
Gramps' room, the only private
room in the Ford apartment.
The other rooms were the bathroom,
the living room and the
wide windowless hallway, which
was originally intended to serve
as a dining area, and which had
a kitchenette in one end. Six
mattresses and four sleeping bags
were dispersed in the hallway and
living room, and the daybed, in
the living room, accommodated
the eleventh couple, the favorites
of the moment.
On Gramps' bureau was his
will, smeared, dog-eared, perforated
and blotched with hundreds
of additions, deletions, accusations,
conditions, warnings,
advice and homely philosophy.
The document was, Lou reflected,
a fifty-year diary, all jammed
onto two sheets—a garbled, illegible
log of day after day of
strife. This day, Lou would be
disinherited for the eleventh time,
and it would take him perhaps six
months of impeccable behavior
to regain the promise of a share
in the estate. To say nothing of
the daybed in the living room for
Em and himself.
"Boy!" called Gramps.
"Coming, sir." Lou hurried
back into the living room and
handed Gramps the will.
"Pen!" said Gramps.
He was instantly offered eleven
pens, one from each couple.
"Not that leaky thing," he said,
brushing Lou's pen aside. "Ah,
there's a nice one. Good boy,
Willy." He accepted Willy's pen.
That was the tip they had all
been waiting for. Willy, then—Lou's
father—was the new favorite.
Willy, who looked almost as
young as Lou, though he was 142,
did a poor job of concealing his
pleasure. He glanced shyly at the
daybed, which would become his,
and from which Lou and Emerald
would have to move back
into the hall, back to the worst
spot of all by the bathroom door.
Gramps missed none of the
high drama he had authored and
he gave his own familiar role
everything he had. Frowning and
running his finger along each line,
as though he were seeing the
will for the first time, he read
aloud in a deep portentous monotone,
like a bass note on a cathedral
organ.
"I, Harold D. Ford, residing
in Building 257 of Alden Village,
New York City, Connecticut, do
hereby make, publish and declare
this to be my last Will and Testament,
revoking any and all former
wills and codicils by me at
any time heretofore made." He
blew his nose importantly and
went on, not missing a word, and
repeating many for emphasis—repeating
in particular his ever-more-elaborate
specifications for
a funeral.
At the end of these specifications,
Gramps was so choked
with emotion that Lou thought
he might have forgotten why he'd
brought out the will in the first
place. But Gramps heroically
brought his powerful emotions
under control and, after erasing
for a full minute, began to write
and speak at the same time. Lou
could have spoken his lines for
him, he had heard them so often.
"I have had many heartbreaks
ere leaving this vale of tears for
a better land," Gramps said and
wrote. "But the deepest hurt of
all has been dealt me by—" He
looked around the group, trying
to remember who the malefactor
was.
Everyone looked helpfully at
Lou, who held up his hand resignedly.
Gramps nodded, remembering,
and completed the sentence—"my
great-grandson, Louis J. Ford."
"Grandson, sir," said Lou.
"Don't quibble. You're in deep
enough now, young man," said
Gramps, but he made the change.
And, from there, he went without
a misstep through the phrasing of
the disinheritance, causes for
which were disrespectfulness and
quibbling.
In the paragraph following, the
paragraph that had belonged
to everyone in the room at one
time or another, Lou's name was
scratched out and Willy's substituted
as heir to the apartment
and, the biggest plum of all, the
double bed in the private bedroom.
"So!" said Gramps, beaming.
He erased the date at the foot of
the will and substituted a new
one, including the time of day.
"Well—time to watch the McGarvey
Family." The McGarvey
Family was a television serial
that Gramps had been following
since he was 60, or for a total of
112 years. "I can't wait to see
what's going to happen next,"
he said.
Lou detached himself from the
group and lay down on his bed
of pain by the bathroom door.
Wishing Em would join him, he
wondered where she was.
He dozed for a few moments,
until he was disturbed by someone
stepping over him to get into
the bathroom. A moment later, he
heard a faint gurgling sound, as
though something were being
poured down the washbasin
drain. Suddenly, it entered his
mind that Em had cracked up,
that she was in there doing something
drastic about Gramps.
"Em?" he whispered through
the panel. There was no reply,
and Lou pressed against the door.
The worn lock, whose bolt barely
engaged its socket, held for a
second, then let the door swing
inward.
"Morty!" gasped Lou.
Lou's great-grandnephew, Mortimer,
who had just married and
brought his wife home to the
Ford menage, looked at Lou with
consternation and surprise. Morty
kicked the door shut, but not before
Lou had glimpsed what was
in his hand—Gramps' enormous
economy-size bottle of anti-gerasone,
which had apparently
been half-emptied, and which
Morty was refilling with tap
water.
A moment later, Morty came
out, glared defiantly at Lou and
brushed past him wordlessly to
rejoin his pretty bride.
Shocked, Lou didn't know
what to do. He couldn't let
Gramps take the mousetrapped
anti-gerasone—but, if he warned
Gramps about it, Gramps would
certainly make life in the apartment,
which was merely insufferable
now, harrowing.
Lou glanced into the living
room and saw that the Fords,
Emerald among them, were momentarily
at rest, relishing the
botches that the McGarveys had
made of their lives. Stealthily, he
went into the bathroom, locked
the door as well as he could
and began to pour the contents
of Gramps' bottle down the drain.
He was going to refill it with
full-strength anti-gerasone from
the 22 smaller bottles on the
shelf.
The bottle contained a half-gallon,
and its neck was small,
so it seemed to Lou that the
emptying would take forever.
And the almost imperceptible
smell of anti-gerasone, like
Worcestershire sauce, now seemed
to Lou, in his nervousness, to be
pouring out into the rest of the
apartment, through the keyhole
and under the door.
The bottle gurgled monotonously.
Suddenly, up came the
sound of music from the living
room and there were murmurs
and the scraping of chair-legs on
the floor. "Thus ends," said the
television announcer, "the 29,121st
chapter in the life of your
neighbors and mine, the McGarveys."
Footsteps were coming
down the hall. There was a knock
on the bathroom door.
"Just a sec," Lou cheerily called
out. Desperately, he shook the
big bottle, trying to speed up
the flow. His palms slipped on
the wet glass, and the heavy
bottle smashed on the tile floor.
The door was pushed open,
and Gramps, dumbfounded, stared
at the incriminating mess.
Lou felt a hideous prickling
sensation on his scalp and the
back of his neck. He grinned
engagingly through his nausea
and, for want of anything remotely
resembling a thought,
waited for Gramps to speak.
"Well, boy," said Gramps at
last, "looks like you've got a
little tidying up to do."
And that was all he said. He
turned around, elbowed his way
through the crowd and locked
himself in his bedroom.
The Fords contemplated Lou
in incredulous silence a moment
longer, and then hurried back to
the living room, as though some
of his horrible guilt would taint
them, too, if they looked too
long. Morty stayed behind long
enough to give Lou a quizzical,
annoyed glance. Then he also
went into the living room, leaving
only Emerald standing in the
doorway.
Tears streamed over her
cheeks. "Oh, you poor lamb—please
don't look so awful! It
was my fault. I put you up to
this with my nagging about
Gramps."
"No," said Lou, finding his
voice, "really you didn't. Honest,
Em, I was just—"
"You don't have to explain
anything to me, hon. I'm on your
side, no matter what." She kissed
him on one cheek and whispered
in his ear, "It wouldn't have been
murder, hon. It wouldn't have
killed him. It wasn't such a terrible
thing to do. It just would
have fixed him up so he'd be
able to go any time God decided
He wanted him."
"What's going to happen next,
Em?" said Lou hollowly. "What's
he going to do?"
Lou and Emerald stayed fearfully
awake almost all night,
waiting to see what Gramps was
going to do. But not a sound
came from the sacred bedroom.
Two hours before dawn, they
finally dropped off to sleep.
At six o'clock, they arose again,
for it was time for their generation
to eat breakfast in the kitchenette.
No one spoke to them.
They had twenty minutes in
which to eat, but their reflexes
were so dulled by the bad night
that they had hardly swallowed
two mouthfuls of egg-type processed
seaweed before it was time
to surrender their places to their
son's generation.
Then, as was the custom for
whoever had been most recently
disinherited, they began preparing
Gramps' breakfast, which
would presently be served to him
in bed, on a tray. They tried to
be cheerful about it. The toughest
part of the job was having
to handle the honest-to-God eggs
and bacon and oleomargarine,
on which Gramps spent so much
of the income from his fortune.
"Well," said Emerald, "I'm not
going to get all panicky until I'm
sure there's something to be panicky
about."
"Maybe he doesn't know what
it was I busted," Lou said hopefully.
"Probably thinks it was your
watch crystal," offered Eddie,
their son, who was toying apathetically
with his buckwheat-type
processed sawdust cakes.
"Don't get sarcastic with your
father," said Em, "and don't talk
with your mouth full, either."
"I'd like to see anybody take
a mouthful of this stuff and not
say something," complained Eddie,
who was 73. He glanced at
the clock. "It's time to take
Gramps his breakfast, you
know."
"Yeah, it is, isn't it?" said Lou
weakly. He shrugged. "Let's have
the tray, Em."
"We'll both go."
Walking slowly, smiling bravely,
they found a large semi-circle
of long-faced Fords standing
around the bedroom door.
Em knocked. "Gramps," she
called brightly, "break-fast is
rea-dy."
There was no reply and she
knocked again, harder.
The door swung open before
her fist. In the middle of the
room, the soft, deep, wide, canopied
bed, the symbol of the sweet
by-and-by to every Ford, was
empty.
A sense of death, as unfamiliar
to the Fords as Zoroastrianism or
the causes of the Sepoy Mutiny,
stilled every voice, slowed every
heart. Awed, the heirs began to
search gingerly, under the furniture
and behind the drapes, for
all that was mortal of Gramps,
father of the clan.
But Gramps had left not his
Earthly husk but a note,
which Lou finally found on the
dresser, under a paperweight
which was a treasured souvenir
from the World's Fair of 2000.
Unsteadily, Lou read it aloud:
"'Somebody who I have sheltered
and protected and taught
the best I know how all these
years last night turned on me
like a mad dog and diluted my
anti-gerasone, or tried to. I am no
longer a young man. I can no
longer bear the crushing burden
of life as I once could. So, after
last night's bitter experience, I
say good-by. The cares of this
world will soon drop away like
a cloak of thorns and I shall
know peace. By the time you find
this, I will be gone.'"
"Gosh," said Willy brokenly,
"he didn't even get to see how
the 5000-mile Speedway Race
was going to come out."
"Or the Solar Series," Eddie
said, with large mournful eyes.
"Or whether Mrs. McGarvey
got her eyesight back," added
Morty.
"There's more," said Lou, and
he began reading aloud again:
"'I, Harold D. Ford, etc., do
hereby make, publish and declare
this to be my last Will and Testament,
revoking any and all former
wills and codicils by me at
any time heretofore made.'"
"No!" cried Willy. "Not another
one!"
"'I do stipulate,'" read Lou,
"'that all of my property, of
whatsoever kind and nature, not
be divided, but do devise and bequeath
it to be held in common
by my issue, without regard for
generation, equally, share and
share alike.'"
"Issue?" said Emerald.
Lou included the multitude in
a sweep of his hand. "It means
we all own the whole damn
shootin' match."
Each eye turned instantly to
the bed.
"Share and share alike?" asked
Morty.
"Actually," said Willy, who
was the oldest one present, "it's
just like the old system, where
the oldest people head up things
with their headquarters in here
and—"
"I like that!" exclaimed Em.
"Lou owns as much of it as you
do, and I say it ought to be for
the oldest one who's still working.
You can snooze around here
all day, waiting for your pension
check, while poor Lou stumbles
in here after work, all tuckered
out, and—"
"How about letting somebody
who's never had any privacy get
a little crack at it?" Eddie demanded
hotly. "Hell, you old
people had plenty of privacy
back when you were kids. I was
born and raised in the middle of
that goddamn barracks in the
hall! How about—"
"Yeah?" challenged Morty.
"Sure, you've all had it pretty
tough, and my heart bleeds for
you. But try honeymooning in
the hall for a real kick."
"Silence!" shouted Willy imperiously.
"The next person who
opens his mouth spends the next
sixth months by the bathroom.
Now clear out of my room. I
want to think."
A vase shattered against the
wall, inches above his head.
In the next moment, a free-for-all
was under way, with
each couple battling to eject
every other couple from the room.
Fighting coalitions formed and
dissolved with the lightning
changes of the tactical situation.
Em and Lou were thrown into
the hall, where they organized
others in the same situation, and
stormed back into the room.
After two hours of struggle,
with nothing like a decision in
sight, the cops broke in, followed
by television cameramen from
mobile units.
For the next half-hour, patrol
wagons and ambulances hauled
away Fords, and then the apartment
was still and spacious.
An hour later, films of the last
stages of the riot were being televised
to 500,000,000 delighted
viewers on the Eastern Seaboard.
In the stillness of the three-room
Ford apartment on the 76th
floor of Building 257, the television
set had been left on. Once
more the air was filled with the
cries and grunts and crashes of
the fray, coming harmlessly now
from the loudspeaker.
The battle also appeared on
the screen of the television set in
the police station, where the
Fords and their captors watched
with professional interest.
Em and Lou, in adjacent four-by-eight
cells, were stretched out
peacefully on their cots.
"Em," called Lou through the
partition, "you got a washbasin
all your own, too?"
"Sure. Washbasin, bed, light—the
works. And we thought
Gramps' room was something.
How long has this been going
on?" She held out her hand.
"For the first time in forty years,
hon, I haven't got the shakes—look
at me!"
"Cross your fingers," said Lou.
"The lawyer's going to try to
get us a year."
"Gee!" Em said dreamily. "I
wonder what kind of wires you'd
have to pull to get put away in
solitary?"
"All right, pipe down," said
the turnkey, "or I'll toss the
whole kit and caboodle of you
right out. And first one who lets
on to anybody outside how good
jail is ain't never getting back
in!"
The prisoners instantly fell
silent.
The living room of the apartment
darkened for a moment
as the riot scenes faded on the
television screen, and then the
face of the announcer appeared,
like the Sun coming from behind
a cloud. "And now, friends," he
said, "I have a special message
from the makers of anti-gerasone,
a message for all you folks over
150. Are you hampered socially
by wrinkles, by stiffness of joints
and discoloration or loss of hair,
all because these things came
upon you before anti-gerasone
was developed? Well, if you are,
you need no longer suffer, need
no longer feel different and out
of things.
"After years of research, medical
science has now developed
Super-anti-gerasone! In weeks—yes,
weeks—you can look, feel
and act as young as your great-great-grandchildren!
Wouldn't
you pay $5,000 to be indistinguishable
from everybody else?
Well, you don't have to. Safe,
tested Super-anti-gerasone costs
you only a few dollars a day.
"Write now for your free trial
carton. Just put your name and
address on a dollar postcard, and
mail it to 'Super,' Box 500,000,
Schenectady, N. Y. Have you got
that? I'll repeat it. 'Super,' Box
500,000 ..."
Underlining the announcer's
words was the scratching of
Gramps' pen, the one Willy had
given him the night before. He
had come in, a few minutes
earlier, from the Idle Hour Tavern,
which commanded a view of
Building 257 from across the
square of asphalt known as the
Alden Village Green. He had
called a cleaning woman to come
straighten the place up, then had
hired the best lawyer in town to
get his descendants a conviction,
a genius who had never gotten a
client less than a year and a day.
Gramps had then moved the daybed
before the television screen,
so that he could watch from a
reclining position. It was something
he'd dreamed of doing for
years.
"Schen-ec-ta-dy," murmured
Gramps. "Got it!" His face had
changed remarkably. His facial
muscles seemed to have relaxed,
revealing kindness and equanimity
under what had been taut
lines of bad temper. It was almost
as though his trial package
of Super-anti-gerasone had already
arrived. When something
amused him on television, he
smiled easily, rather than barely
managing to lengthen the thin
line of his mouth a millimeter.
Life was good. He could hardly
wait to see what was going to
happen next.
—KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Transcriber's note. This etext was produced from Worlds of If, January 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
Got a problem? Just pick up the phone. It solved them all—and all the
same way!
2
B
R
0
2
B
by KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Everything was perfectly swell.
There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no
poverty, no wars.
All diseases were conquered. So was old age.
Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.
The population of the United States was stabilized at forty-million
souls.
One bright morning in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, a man named Edward
K. Wehling, Jr., waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only man
waiting. Not many people were born a day any more.
Wehling was fifty-six, a mere stripling in a population whose average
age was one hundred and twenty-nine.
X-rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets. The
children would be his first.
Young Wehling was hunched in his chair, his head in his hand. He was so
rumpled, so still and colorless as to be virtually invisible. His
camouflage was perfect, since the waiting room had a disorderly and
demoralized air, too. Chairs and ashtrays had been moved away from the
walls. The floor was paved with spattered dropcloths.
The room was being redecorated. It was being redecorated as a memorial
to a man who had volunteered to die.
A sardonic old man, about two hundred years old, sat on a stepladder,
painting a mural he did not like. Back in the days when people aged
visibly, his age would have been guessed at thirty-five or so. Aging had
touched him that much before the cure for aging was found.
The mural he was working on depicted a very neat garden. Men and women
in white, doctors and nurses, turned the soil, planted seedlings,
sprayed bugs, spread fertilizer.
Men and women in purple uniforms pulled up weeds, cut down plants that
were old and sickly, raked leaves, carried refuse to trash-burners.
Never, never, never—not even in medieval Holland nor old Japan—had a
garden been more formal, been better tended. Every plant had all the
loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use.
A hospital orderly came down the corridor, singing under his breath a
popular song:
If you don't like my kisses, honey, Here's what I will do: I'll go see a girl in purple, Kiss this sad world toodle-oo. If you don't want my lovin', Why should I take up all this space? I'll get off this old planet, Let some sweet baby have my place.
The orderly looked in at the mural and the muralist. "Looks so real,"
he said, "I can practically imagine I'm standing in the middle of it."
"What makes you think you're not in it?" said the painter. He gave a
satiric smile. "It's called 'The Happy Garden of Life,' you know."
"That's good of Dr. Hitz," said the orderly.
He was referring to one of the male figures in white, whose head was a
portrait of Dr. Benjamin Hitz, the hospital's Chief Obstetrician. Hitz
was a blindingly handsome man.
"Lot of faces still to fill in," said the orderly. He meant that the
faces of many of the figures in the mural were still blank. All blanks
were to be filled with portraits of important people on either the
hospital staff or from the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of
Termination.
"Must be nice to be able to make pictures that look like something,"
said the orderly.
The painter's face curdled with scorn. "You think I'm proud of this
daub?" he said. "You think this is my idea of what life really looks
like?"
"What's your idea of what life looks like?" said the orderly.
The painter gestured at a foul dropcloth. "There's a good picture of
it," he said. "Frame that, and you'll have a picture a damn sight more
honest than this one."
"You're a gloomy old duck, aren't you?" said the orderly.
"Is that a crime?" said the painter.
The orderly shrugged. "If you don't like it here, Grandpa—" he said,
and he finished the thought with the trick telephone number that people
who didn't want to live any more were supposed to call. The zero in the
telephone number he pronounced "naught."
The number was: "2 B R 0 2 B."
It was the telephone number of an institution whose fanciful sobriquets
included: "Automat," "Birdland," "Cannery," "Catbox," "De-louser,"
"Easy-go," "Good-by, Mother," "Happy Hooligan," "Kiss-me-quick," "Lucky
Pierre," "Sheepdip," "Waring Blendor," "Weep-no-more" and "Why Worry?"
"To be or not to be" was the telephone number of the municipal gas
chambers of the Federal Bureau of Termination.
The painter thumbed his nose at the orderly. "When I decide it's time to
go," he said, "it won't be at the Sheepdip."
"A do-it-yourselfer, eh?" said the orderly. "Messy business, Grandpa.
Why don't you have a little consideration for the people who have to
clean up after you?"
The painter expressed with an obscenity his lack of concern for the
tribulations of his survivors. "The world could do with a good deal more
mess, if you ask me," he said.
The orderly laughed and moved on.
Wehling, the waiting father, mumbled something without raising his head.
And then he fell silent again.
A coarse, formidable woman strode into the waiting room on spike heels.
Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag and overseas cap were all purple,
the purple the painter called "the color of grapes on Judgment Day."
The medallion on her purple musette bag was the seal of the Service
Division of the Federal Bureau of Termination, an eagle perched on a
turnstile.
The woman had a lot of facial hair—an unmistakable mustache, in fact. A
curious thing about gas-chamber hostesses was that, no matter how lovely
and feminine they were when recruited, they all sprouted mustaches
within five years or so.
"Is this where I'm supposed to come?" she said to the painter.
"A lot would depend on what your business was," he said. "You aren't
about to have a baby, are you?"
"They told me I was supposed to pose for some picture," she said. "My
name's Leora Duncan." She waited.
"And you dunk people," he said.
"What?" she said.
"Skip it," he said.
"That sure is a beautiful picture," she said. "Looks just like heaven or
something."
"Or something," said the painter. He took a list of names from his smock
pocket. "Duncan, Duncan, Duncan," he said, scanning the list. "Yes—here
you are. You're entitled to be immortalized. See any faceless body here
you'd like me to stick your head on? We've got a few choice ones left."
She studied the mural bleakly. "Gee," she said, "they're all the same to
me. I don't know anything about art."
"A body's a body, eh?" he said, "All righty. As a master of fine art, I
recommend this body here." He indicated a faceless figure of a woman who
was carrying dried stalks to a trash-burner.
"Well," said Leora Duncan, "that's more the disposal people, isn't it? I
mean, I'm in service. I don't do any disposing."
The painter clapped his hands in mock delight. "You say you don't know
anything about art, and then you prove in the next breath that you know
more about it than I do! Of course the sheave-carrier is wrong for a
hostess! A snipper, a pruner—that's more your line." He pointed to a
figure in purple who was sawing a dead branch from an apple tree. "How about
her?" he said. "You like her at all?"
"Gosh—" she said, and she blushed and became humble—"that—that puts
me right next to Dr. Hitz."
"That upsets you?" he said.
"Good gravy, no!" she said. "It's—it's just such an honor."
"Ah, You admire him, eh?" he said.
"Who doesn't admire him?" she said, worshiping the portrait of Hitz. It
was the portrait of a tanned, white-haired, omnipotent Zeus, two hundred
and forty years old. "Who doesn't admire him?" she said again. "He was
responsible for setting up the very first gas chamber in Chicago."
"Nothing would please me more," said the painter, "than to put you next
to him for all time. Sawing off a limb—that strikes you as
appropriate?"
"That is kind of like what I do," she said. She was demure about what
she did. What she did was make people comfortable while she killed them.
And, while Leora Duncan was posing for her portrait, into the
waitingroom bounded Dr. Hitz himself. He was seven feet tall, and he
boomed with importance, accomplishments, and the joy of living.
"Well, Miss Duncan! Miss Duncan!" he said, and he made a joke. "What
are you doing here?" he said. "This isn't where the people leave. This
is where they come in!"
"We're going to be in the same picture together," she said shyly.
"Good!" said Dr. Hitz heartily. "And, say, isn't that some picture?"
"I sure am honored to be in it with you," she said.
"Let me tell you," he said, "I'm honored to be in it with you. Without
women like you, this wonderful world we've got wouldn't be possible."
He saluted her and moved toward the door that led to the delivery rooms.
"Guess what was just born," he said.
"I can't," she said.
"Triplets!" he said.
"Triplets!" she said. She was exclaiming over the legal implications of
triplets.
The law said that no newborn child could survive unless the parents of
the child could find someone who would volunteer to die. Triplets, if
they were all to live, called for three volunteers.
"Do the parents have three volunteers?" said Leora Duncan.
"Last I heard," said Dr. Hitz, "they had one, and were trying to scrape
another two up."
"I don't think they made it," she said. "Nobody made three appointments
with us. Nothing but singles going through today, unless somebody
called in after I left. What's the name?"
"Wehling," said the waiting father, sitting up, red-eyed and frowzy.
"Edward K. Wehling, Jr., is the name of the happy father-to-be."
He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on the wall, gave a hoarsely
wretched chuckle. "Present," he said.
"Oh, Mr. Wehling," said Dr. Hitz, "I didn't see you."
"The invisible man," said Wehling.
"They just phoned me that your triplets have been born," said Dr. Hitz.
"They're all fine, and so is the mother. I'm on my way in to see them
now."
"Hooray," said Wehling emptily.
"You don't sound very happy," said Dr. Hitz.
"What man in my shoes wouldn't be happy?" said Wehling. He gestured with
his hands to symbolize care-free simplicity. "All I have to do is pick
out which one of the triplets is going to live, then deliver my maternal
grandfather to the Happy Hooligan, and come back here with a receipt."
Dr. Hitz became rather severe with Wehling, towered over him. "You don't
believe in population control, Mr. Wehling?" he said.
"I think it's perfectly keen," said Wehling tautly.
"Would you like to go back to the good old days, when the population of
the Earth was twenty billion—about to become forty billion, then eighty
billion, then one hundred and sixty billion? Do you know what a drupelet
is, Mr. Wehling?" said Hitz.
"Nope," said Wehling sulkily.
"A drupelet, Mr. Wehling, is one of the little knobs, one of the little
pulpy grains of a blackberry," said Dr. Hitz. "Without population
control, human beings would now be packed on this surface of this old
planet like drupelets on a blackberry! Think of it!"
Wehling continued to stare at the same spot on the wall.
"In the year 2000," said Dr. Hitz, "before scientists stepped in and
laid down the law, there wasn't even enough drinking water to go around,
and nothing to eat but sea-weed—and still people insisted on their
right to reproduce like jackrabbits. And their right, if possible, to
live forever."
"I want those kids," said Wehling quietly. "I want all three of them."
"Of course you do," said Dr. Hitz. "That's only human."
"I don't want my grandfather to die, either," said Wehling.
"Nobody's really happy about taking a close relative to the Catbox,"
said Dr. Hitz gently, sympathetically.
"I wish people wouldn't call it that," said Leora Duncan.
"What?" said Dr. Hitz.
"I wish people wouldn't call it 'the Catbox,' and things like that," she
said. "It gives people the wrong impression."
"You're absolutely right," said Dr. Hitz. "Forgive me." He corrected
himself, gave the municipal gas chambers their official title, a title
no one ever used in conversation. "I should have said, 'Ethical Suicide
Studios,'" he said.
"That sounds so much better," said Leora Duncan.
"This child of yours—whichever one you decide to keep, Mr. Wehling,"
said Dr. Hitz. "He or she is going to live on a happy, roomy, clean,
rich planet, thanks to population control. In a garden like that mural
there." He shook his head. "Two centuries ago, when I was a young man,
it was a hell that nobody thought could last another twenty years. Now
centuries of peace and plenty stretch before us as far as the
imagination cares to travel."
He smiled luminously.
The smile faded as he saw that Wehling had just drawn a revolver.
Wehling shot Dr. Hitz dead. "There's room for one—a great big one," he
said.
And then he shot Leora Duncan. "It's only death," he said to her as she
fell. "There! Room for two."
And then he shot himself, making room for all three of his children.
Nobody came running. Nobody, seemingly, heard the shots.
The painter sat on the top of his stepladder, looking down reflectively
on the sorry scene.
The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born
and, once born, demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as
long as possible—to do all that on a very small planet that would have
to last forever.
All the answers that the painter could think of were grim. Even grimmer,
surely, than a Catbox, a Happy Hooligan, an Easy Go. He thought of war.
He thought of plague. He thought of starvation.
He knew that he would never paint again. He let his paintbrush fall to
the drop-cloths below. And then he decided he had had about enough of
life in the Happy Garden of Life, too, and he came slowly down from the
ladder.
He took Wehling's pistol, really intending to shoot himself.
But he didn't have the nerve.
And then he saw the telephone booth in the corner of the room. He went
to it, dialed the well-remembered number: "2 B R 0 2 B."
"Federal Bureau of Termination," said the very warm voice of a hostess.
"How soon could I get an appointment?" he asked, speaking very
carefully.
"We could probably fit you in late this afternoon, sir," she said. "It
might even be earlier, if we get a cancellation."
"All right," said the painter, "fit me in, if you please." And he gave
her his name, spelling it out.
"Thank you, sir," said the hostess. "Your city thanks you; your country
thanks you; your planet thanks you. But the deepest thanks of all is
from future generations."
