“A space pilot, Billy?” Leela asked, coming in to the room. “But there aren’t any.”
“Yes, there are,” Billy argued. “We were told in school that the government is going to send some men to Mars.”
“They’ve been saying that for a hundred years,” Carrin said, “and they still haven’t gotten around to doing it.”
“They will this time.”
“Why would you want to go to Mars?” Leela asked, winking at Carrin. “There are no pretty girls on Mars.”
“I’m not interested in girls. I just want to go to Mars.”
“You wouldn’t like it, honey,” Leela said. “It’s a nasty old place with no air.”
“It’s got some air. I’d like to go there,” the boy insisted sullenly. “I don’t like it here.”
“What’s that?” Carrin asked, sitting up straight. “Is there anything you haven’t got? Anything you want?”
“No, sir. I’ve got everything I want.” Whenever his son called him ‘sir,’ Carrin knew that something was wrong.
“Look, Son, when I was your age I wanted to go to Mars, too. I wanted to do romantic things. I even wanted to be a Master Repairman.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Well, I grew up. I realized that there were more important things. First I had to pay off the debt my father had left me, and then I met your mother—”
Leela giggled.
“—and I wanted a home of my own. It’ll be the same with you. You’ll pay off your debt and get married, the same as the rest of us.”
BILLY was silent for a while, then he brushed his dark hair—straight, like his father’s—back from his forehead and wet his lips.
“How come I have debts, sir?”
Carrin explained carefully. About the things a family needed for civilized living, and the cost of those items. How they had to be paid. How it was customary for a son to take on a part of his parent’s debt, when he came of age.
Billy’s silence annoyed him. It was almost as if the boy were reproaching him. After he had slaved for years to give the ungrateful whelp every luxury!
“Son,” he said harshly, “have you studied history in school? Good. Then you know how it was in the past. Wars. How would you like to get blown up in a war?”
The boy didn’t answer.
“Or how would you like to break your back for eight hours a day, doing work a machine should handle? Or be hungry all the time? Or cold, with the rain beating down on you, and no place to sleep?”
He paused for a response, got none and went on. “You live in the most fortunate age mankind has ever known. You are surrounded by every wonder of art and science. The finest music, the greatest books and art, all at your fingertips. All you have to do is push a button.” He shifted to a kindlier tone. “Well, what are you thinking?”
“I was just wondering how I could go to Mars,” the boy said. “With the debt, I mean. I don’t suppose I could get away from that.”
“Of course not.”
“Unless I stowed away on a rocket.”
“But you wouldn’t do that.”
“No, of course not,” the boy said, but his tone lacked conviction.
“You’ll stay here and marry a very nice girl,” Leela told him.
“Sure I will,” Billy said. “Sure.” He grinned suddenly. “I didn’t mean any of that stuff about going to Mars. I really didn’t.”
“I’m glad of that,” Leela answered.
“Just forget I mentioned it,” Billy said, smiling stiffly. He stood up and raced upstairs.
“Probably gone to play with his rockets,” Leela said. “He’s such a little devil.”
THE Carrins ate a quiet supper, and then it was time for Mr. Carrin to go to work. He was on night shift this month. He kissed his wife good-by, climbed into his Jet-lash and roared to the factory. The automatic gates recognized him and opened. He parked and walked in.
Automatic lathes, automatic presses—everything was automatic. The factory was huge and bright, and the machines hummed softly to themselves, doing their job and doing it well.
Carrin walked to the end of the automatic washing machine assembly line, to relieve the man there.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Sure,” the man said. “Haven’t had a bad one all year. These new models here have built-in voices. They don’t light up like the old ones.”
Carrin sat down where the man had sat and waited for the first washing machine to come through. His job was the soul of simplicity. He just sat there and the machines went by him. He pressed a button on them and found out if they were all right. They always were. After passing him, the washing machines went to the packaging section.
The first one slid by on the long slide of rollers. He pressed the starting button on the side.
“Ready for the wash,” the washing machine said.
Carrin pressed the release and let it go by.
That boy of his, Carrin thought. Would he grow up and face his responsibilities? Would he mature and take his place in society? Carrin doubted it. The boy was a born rebel. If anyone got to Mars, it would be his kid.
But the thought didn’t especially disturb him.
“Ready for the wash.” Another machine went by.
Carrin remembered something about Miller. The jovial man had always been talking about the planets, always kidding about going off somewhere and roughing it. He hadn’t, though. He’d committed suicide.
“Ready for the wash.”
Carrin had eight hours in front of him, and he loosened his belt to prepare for it. Eight hours of pushing buttons and listening to a machine announce its readiness.
“Ready for the wash.”
He pressed the release.
“Ready for the wash.”
Carrin’s mind strayed from the job, which didn’t need much attention in any case. He wished he had done what he had longed to do as a youngster.
It would have been great to be a rocket pilot, to push a button and go to Mars.
Aloys, by R.A. Lafferty
He had flared up more brightly than anyone in memory. And then he was gone. Yet there was ironic laughter where he had been; and his ghost still walked. That was the oddest thing: to encounter his ghost.
It was like coming suddenly on Haley’s Comet drinking beer at the Plugged Nickel Bar, and having it deny that it was a celestial phenomenon at all, that it had ever been beyond the sun. For he could have been the man of the century, and now it was not even known if he was alive. And if he were alive, it would be very odd if he would be hanging around places like the Plugged Nickel Bar.
This all begins with the award. But before that it begins with the man.
Professor Aloys Foulcault-Oeg was acutely embarrassed and in a state of dread.
“These I have to speak to, all these great men. Is even glory worth the price when it must be paid in such coin?”
Aloys did not have the amenities, the polish, the tact. A child