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diff --git a/29619.txt b/29619.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1a6e98 --- /dev/null +++ b/29619.txt @@ -0,0 +1,745 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Altar at Midnight, by Cyril M. Kornbluth + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Altar at Midnight + +Author: Cyril M. Kornbluth + +Illustrator: William Ashman + +Release Date: August 5, 2009 [EBook #29619] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + _The Altar + at Midnight_ + + By C. M. KORNBLUTH + + [Illustration: Illustrated by ASHMAN] + + + _Doing something for humanity + may be fine--for humanity--but + rough on the individual!_ + + +He had quite a rum-blossom on him for a kid, I thought at first. But +when he moved closer to the light by the cash register to ask the +bartender for a match or something, I saw it wasn't that. Not just the +nose. Broken veins on his cheeks, too, and the funny eyes. He must have +seen me look, because he slid back away from the light. + +The bartender shook my bottle of ale in front of me like a Swiss +bell-ringer so it foamed inside the green glass. + +"You ready for another, sir?" he asked. + +I shook my head. Down the bar, he tried it on the kid--he was drinking +scotch and water or something like that--and found out he could push him +around. He sold him three scotch and waters in ten minutes. + +When he tried for number four, the kid had his courage up and said, +"I'll tell _you_ when I'm ready for another, Jack." But there wasn't any +trouble. + +It was almost nine and the place began to fill up. The manager, a real +hood type, stationed himself by the door to screen out the high-school +kids and give the big hello to conventioneers. The girls came hurrying +in, too, with their little makeup cases and their fancy hair piled up +and their frozen faces with the perfect mouths drawn on them. One of +them stopped to say something to the manager, some excuse about +something, and he said: "That's aw ri'; get inna dressing room." + +A three-piece band behind the drapes at the back of the stage began to +make warm-up noises and there were two bartenders keeping busy. Mostly +it was beer--a midweek crowd. I finished my ale and had to wait a couple +of minutes before I could get another bottle. The bar filled up from the +end near the stage because all the customers wanted a good, close look +at the strippers for their fifty-cent bottles of beer. But I noticed +that nobody sat down next to the kid, or, if anybody did, he didn't stay +long--you go out for some fun and the bartender pushes you around and +nobody wants to sit next to you. I picked up my bottle and glass and +went down on the stool to his left. + +He turned to me right away and said: "What kind of a place is this, +anyway?" The broken veins were all over his face, little ones, but so +many, so close, that they made his face look something like marbled +rubber. The funny look in his eyes was it--the trick contact lenses. But +I tried not to stare and not to look away. + +"It's okay," I said. "It's a good show if you don't mind a lot of noise +from--" + +He stuck a cigarette into his mouth and poked the pack at me. "I'm a +spacer," he said, interrupting. + +I took one of his cigarettes and said: "Oh." + +He snapped a lighter for the cigarettes and said: "Venus." + + * * * * * + +I was noticing that his pack of cigarettes on the bar had some kind of +yellow sticker instead of the blue tax stamp. + +"Ain't that a crock?" he asked. "You can't smoke and they give you +lighters for a souvenir. But it's a good lighter. On Mars last week, +they gave us all some cheap pen-and-pencil sets." + +"You get something every trip, hah?" I took a good, long drink of ale +and he finished his scotch and water. + +"Shoot. You call a trip a 'shoot'." + +One of the girls was working her way down the bar. She was going to +slide onto the empty stool at his right and give him the business, but +she looked at him first and decided not to. She curled around me and +asked if I'd buy her a li'l ole drink. I said no and she moved on to the +next. I could kind of feel the young fellow quivering. When I looked at +him, he stood up. I followed him out of the dump. The manager grinned +without thinking and said, "G'night, boys," to us. + +The kid stopped in the street and said to me: "You don't have to follow +me around, Pappy." He sounded like one wrong word and I would get socked +in the teeth. + +"Take it easy. I know a place where they won't spit in your eye." + +He pulled himself together and made a joke of it. "This I have to see," +he said. "Near here?" + +"A few blocks." + +We started walking. It was a nice night. + +"I don't know this city at all," he said. "I'm from Covington, Kentucky. +You do your drinking at home there. We don't have places like this." He +meant the whole Skid Row area. + +"It's not so bad," I said. "I spend a lot of time here." + +"Is that a fact? I mean, down home a man your age would likely have a +wife and children." + +"I do. The hell with them." + +He laughed like a real youngster and I figured he couldn't even be +twenty-five. He didn't have any trouble with the broken curbstones in +spite of his scotch and waters. I asked him about it. + +"Sense of balance," he said. "You have to be tops for balance to be a +spacer--you spend so much time outside in a suit. People don't know how +much. Punctures. And you aren't worth a damn if you lose your point." + +"What's that mean?" + +"Oh. Well, it's hard to describe. When you're outside and you lose your +point, it means you're all mixed up, you don't know which way the +can--that's the ship--which way the can is. It's having all that room +around you. But if you have a good balance, you feel a little tugging to +the ship, or maybe you just _know_ which way the ship is without feeling +it. Then you have your point and you can get the work done." + +"There must be a lot that's hard to describe." + +He thought that might be a crack and he clammed up on me. + +"You call this Gandytown," I said after a while. "It's where the +stove-up old railroad men hang out. This is the place." + + * * * * * + +It was the second week of the month, before everybody's pension check +was all gone. Oswiak's was jumping. The Grandsons of the Pioneers were +on the juke singing the _Man from Mars Yodel_ and old Paddy Shea was +jigging in the middle of the floor. He had a full seidel of beer in his +right hand and his empty left sleeve was flapping. + +The kid balked at the screen door. "Too damn bright," he said. + +I shrugged and went on in and he followed. We sat down at a table. At +Oswiak's you can drink at the bar if you want to, but none of the +regulars do. + +Paddy jigged over and said: "Welcome home, Doc." He's a Liverpool +Irishman; they talk like Scots, some say, but they sound almost like +Brooklyn to me. + +"Hello, Paddy. I brought somebody uglier than you. Now what do you say?" + +Paddy jigged around the kid in a half-circle with his sleeve flapping +and then flopped into a chair when the record stopped. He took a big +drink from the seidel and said: "Can he do this?" Paddy stretched his +face into an awful grin that showed his teeth. He has three of them. The +kid laughed and asked me: "What the hell did you drag me into here for?" + +"Paddy says he'll buy drinks for the house the day anybody uglier than +he is comes in." + +Oswiak's wife waddled over for the order and the kid asked us what we'd +have. I figured I could start drinking, so it was three double scotches. + +After the second round, Paddy started blowing about how they took his +arm off without any anesthetics except a bottle of gin because the +red-ball freight he was tangled up in couldn't wait. + +That brought some of the other old gimps over to the table with their +stories. + +Blackie Bauer had been sitting in a boxcar with his legs sticking +through the door when the train started with a jerk. Wham, the door +closed. Everybody laughed at Blackie for being that dumb in the first +place, and he got mad. + +Sam Fireman has palsy. This week he was claiming he used to be a +watchmaker before he began to shake. The week before, he'd said he was a +brain surgeon. A woman I didn't know, a real old Boxcar Bertha, dragged +herself over and began some kind of story about how her sister married a +Greek, but she passed out before we found out what happened. + +Somebody wanted to know what was wrong with the kid's face--Bauer, I +think it was, after he came back to the table. + +"Compression and decompression," the kid said. "You're all the time +climbing into your suit and out of your suit. Inboard air's thin to +start with. You get a few redlines--that's these ruptured blood +vessels--and you say the hell with the money; all you'll make is just +one more trip. But, God, it's a lot of money for anybody my age! You +keep saying that until you can't be anything but a spacer. The eyes are +hard-radiation scars." + +"You like dot all ofer?" asked Oswiak's wife politely. + +"All over, ma'am," the kid told her in a miserable voice. "But I'm going +to quit before I get a Bowman Head." + +"I don't care," said Maggie Rorty. "I think he's cute." + +"Compared with--" Paddy began, but I kicked him under the table. + + * * * * * + +We sang for a while, and then we told gags and recited limericks for a +while, and I noticed that the kid and Maggie had wandered into the back +room--the one with the latch on the door. + +Oswiak's wife asked me, very puzzled: "Doc, w'y dey do dot flyink by +planyets?" + +"It's the damn govermint," Sam Fireman said. + +"Why not?" I said. "They got the Bowman Drive, why the hell shouldn't +they use it? Serves 'em right." I had a double scotch and added: "Twenty +years of it and they found out a few things they didn't know. Redlines +are only one of them. Twenty years more, maybe they'll find out a few +more things they didn't know. Maybe by the time there's a bathtub in +every American home and an alcoholism clinic in every American town, +they'll find out a whole _lot_ of things they didn't know. And every +American boy will be a pop-eyed, blood-raddled wreck, like our friend +here, from riding the Bowman Drive." + +"It's the damn govermint," Sam Fireman repeated. + +"And what the hell did you mean by that remark about alcoholism?" Paddy +said, real sore. "Personally, I can take it or leave it alone." + +So we got to talking about that and everybody there turned out to be +people who could take it or leave it alone. + + * * * * * + +It was maybe midnight when the kid showed at the table again, looking +kind of dazed. I was drunker than I ought to be by midnight, so I said I +was going for a walk. He tagged along and we wound up on a bench at +Screwball Square. The soap-boxers were still going strong. Like I said, +it was a nice night. After a while, a pot-bellied old auntie who didn't +give a damn about the face sat down and tried to talk the kid into going +to see some etchings. The kid didn't get it and I led him over to hear +the soap-boxers before there was trouble. + +One of the orators was a mush-mouthed evangelist. "And, oh, my friends," +he said, "when I looked through the porthole of the spaceship and beheld +the wonder of the Firmament--" + +"You're a stinkin' Yankee liar!" the kid yelled at him. "You say one +damn more word about can-shootin' and I'll ram your spaceship down your +lyin' throat! Wheah's your redlines if you're such a hot spacer?" + +The crowd didn't know what he was talking about, but "wheah's your +redlines" sounded good to them, so they heckled mush-mouth off his box +with it. + +I got the kid to a bench. The liquor was working in him all of a sudden. +He simmered down after a while and asked: "Doc, should I've given Miz +Rorty some money? I asked her afterward and she said she'd admire to +have something to remember me by, so I gave her my lighter. She seem' to +be real pleased with it. But I was wondering if maybe I embarrassed her +by asking her right out. Like I tol' you, back in Covington, Kentucky, +we don't have places like that. Or maybe we did and I just didn't know +about them. But what do you think I should've done about Miz Rorty?" + +"Just what you did," I told him. "If they want money, they ask you for +it first. Where you staying?" + +"Y.M.C.A.," he said, almost asleep. "Back in Covington, Kentucky, I was +a member of the Y and I kept up my membership. They have to let me in +because I'm a member. Spacers have all kinds of trouble, Doc. Woman +trouble. Hotel trouble. Fam'ly trouble. Religious trouble. I was raised +a Southern Baptist, but wheah's Heaven, anyway? I ask' Doctor Chitwood +las' time home before the redlines got so thick--Doc, you aren't a +minister of the Gospel, are you? I hope I di'n' say anything to offend +you." + +"No offense, son," I said. "No offense." + +I walked him to the avenue and waited for a fleet cab. It was almost +five minutes. The independents that roll drunks dent the fenders of +fleet cabs if they show up in Skid Row and then the fleet drivers have +to make reports on their own time to the company. It keeps them away. +But I got one and dumped the kid in. + +"The Y Hotel," I told the driver. "Here's five. Help him in when you get +there." + + * * * * * + +When I walked through Screwball Square again, some college kids were +yelling "wheah's your redlines" at old Charlie, the last of the +Wobblies. + +Old Charlie kept roaring: "The hell with your breadlines! I'm talking +about atomic bombs. _Right--up--there!_" And he pointed at the Moon. + +It was a nice night, but the liquor was dying in me. + +There was a joint around the corner, so I went in and had a drink to +carry me to the club; I had a bottle there. I got into the first cab +that came. + +"Athletic Club," I said. + +"Inna dawghouse, harh?" the driver said, and he gave me a big +personality smile. + +I didn't say anything and he started the car. + +He was right, of course. I was in everybody's doghouse. Some day I'd +scare hell out of Tom and Lise by going home and showing them what their +daddy looked like. + +Down at the Institute, I was in the doghouse. + +"Oh, dear," everybody at the Institute said to everybody, "I'm sure I +don't know what ails the man. A lovely wife and two lovely grown +children and she had to tell him 'either you go or I go.' And +_drinking_! And this is rather subtle, but it's a well-known fact that +neurotics seek out low company to compensate for their guilt-feelings. +The _places_ he frequents. Doctor Francis Bowman, the man who made +space-flight a reality. The man who put the Bomb Base on the Moon! +Really, I'm sure I don't know what ails him." + +The hell with them all. + + --C. M. KORNBLUTH + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ November 1952. + 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Altar at Midnight, by Cyril M. 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