«I don’t understand,» Tobias told him weakly.
«He’ll set up an office, a very proper office for an alert young business man. Insurance and real estate and property management and anything else where he can earn a dollar. He’ll skin them blind, but legal. He’ll be very sanctimonious, but there’s no friendship in him. He’ll gyp them one by one and he’ll smile most prettily and sincerely while he robs them by the letter of the law. There’ll be no trick so low he’ll not employ it, no subterfuge so vile that he’ll hesitate to use it.»
«But it’s unfair,» Tobias cried. «At least I was an honest bum.»
«We must,» Andy told him unctuously, «act for the good of all humanity. Surely it would be a shame for Millville to ever have an actual human such as he.»
«All right, then,» Tobias said. «I wash my hands of it. How about myself?»
«Why, nothing at the moment,» Andy told him. «You go back to Herman’s place and let nature take its course. Take the job he hunts up for you and be a decent citizen.»
Tobias got cold all over. «You mean you’re ditching me entirely? You mean you have no further use for me at all? I only did my best. There was nothing else I could have done tonight. You can’t just throw me out!»
Andy shook his head. «There’s something I should tell you. It’s just a little early to be saying anything—but there’s quiet talk in the village of sending out a colony.»
Tobias stood stiff and straight and hope went pounding through him, then the hope died out.
«But me,» he said. «Not me. Not a bum like me!»
«Worse than a bum,» said Andy. «Much worse than a bum. As a bum you were a known quantity. They knew what to expect from you. They could sit down at any time and plot a behavior curve for you. As a reformed bum, you’ll be something else again. You’ll be unpredictable. They’ll be watching you, wondering what will happen next. You’ll make them nervous and uneasy. They’ll be wondering all the time if what they did was right. You’ll be a burden on their conscience and a rasp across their nerves and they’ll be afraid that you’ll somehow prove some day that they were awfully stupid.»
«Feeling that way,» Tobias said, with no final shred of hope, «they’d never let me go out to the colony.»
«I think you’re wrong,» said Andy. «I am sure that you will go. The good and nervous people of this village couldn’t pass up a chance like that of getting rid of you.»
Lobby
If, having recognized that this was one of several science fiction stories that made use of the concept of atomic bombs before one had ever been exploded («Lobby» was sold to John W. Campbell, Jr., in August of 1943, and was published in Astounding Science Fiction ’s April 1944 issue), you wonder why the story was named «Lobby,» the answer may be found in the fact that the real villain, the real danger that Cliff Simak was pointing out in this story, was the danger humanity faced from the perfidy of big business.
In that, Cliff was, in this story, reprising some of the attitude that informed his «City» stories, which also began from a vision of the way greed and power had led the world into the biggest war ever.
As it happened, Cliff got some details about atomic explosions wrong. But he got the people right—and all this in a story for which he was paid only $60.
—dww
The lettering on the door read:
ATOMIC POWER, INC.
Felix Jones, reporter for the Daily Messenger, opened it.
«Hi,» he said to the stenographer-receptionist. «Cobb in?»
«Not to you,» she told him.
«I’ll see him, anyhow.»
Miss Joyce Lane shrugged her eyebrows. «I shall hold the door open,» she said, «when he throws you out.»
«Tsk, tsk,» commented Felix. «What a temper!»
He moved toward the inner door.
«Do you bounce easy?» asked Miss Lane.
«I’m an expert at it,» he assured her.
«So is Mr. Cobb,» she said.
He opened the door and Bill Cobb looked up from his desk.
«It’s you again,» he said, unenthusiastically.
«You heard about Walker this afternoon?» asked Felix.
«I heard Walker,» said Cobb. «I turned on the ’visor and there he was. Senator Walker is a doddering old fool and a rascally politician. You can quote me.»
Felix walked across the room and perched on the desk. «You going to take it lying down?» he asked.
«I’m not taking it any way,» said Cobb. «I didn’t even think about it until you came in. You’re wasting your time.»
«You’re not talking?» asked Felix, trying to sound surprised but not doing very well.
«Why should I?» Cobb demanded. «Would you give me a break? Not in a million years. But you’ll print all the lies Walker and the power lobby and the Primitives shout against atomic power. If you want to take the words of a foul-ball politician and a half-baked sect, that’s O.K. with me. go ahead and make a fool out of your paper. Couple of years from now I’ll come in and cram all those lousy stories down Mann’s neck. You can tell him that.»
«But Walker said atomics were dangerous—»
«Sure he said they were dangerous. He’s been saying it for a year now. And he’s right. They are dangerous. That’s why we’re not offering anything for sale. If some of the pure and holy power outfits that are fighting us had half as good a set-up as we have, they’d be selling right and left. Maybe a few people would get hurt, but what would they care.»
He rapped the desk viciously with his pencil.
«When we have means to control atomic power, we’ll put it on the market. Not before then. What do you think we put our experimental plant out in Montana for? Simply so that if it should blow fewer people would get killed.»
«You’re bitter,» Felix said.
«Not bitter,» Cobb told him. «Just astounded at what fools the people are. For years they’ve dreamed about atomic power. Reams of speculation have been written about it. Men have planned for it and banked on it, built future worlds on it. And now that it’s within their grasp, what do people do? Now that they can practically reach out and touch power so ridiculously cheap it would be almost free, what do they say and think? They allow a power lobby and a bunch of crooked politicians to scare them silly with bogey stories about the terrible menace of atomics. They listen to yelping preachers on the street corner who tell them it’s sacrilege to destroy God-created matter, that it’s tempting Providence, asking the lightning to strike.»
Felix hoisted himself off the desk.
«Scram,» said Cobb.
«Now I know why Walker hates you,» Felix said.
«So do I,» said Cobb. «A million bucks a year.»
He watched the reporter walk toward the door, called to him as he reached it. Felix swung around.
«Just one thing,» warned Cobb. «If you write a line with my name in it … ever again … I’ll come down to your office, personally, and break your neck.»
«You’re vicious,» Felix told him and went out, shutting the door behind him.
Cobb tapped his teeth with the pencil, eyes still on the door.
«I should have plastered him,» he told himself.
Through the open window came the droning of the New York sky lanes, the mutter of bank teller and shoe clerk and café waitress going home.
Rousing himself, he walked to the wall safe, twirled the combination and swung out the door. From a small box he took a sheet of paper, and carried it back to the desk. There he ran his finger down the left-hand margin, stopped at the notation—3 to 6 p.m. September 6th. Opposite it was a short-wave logging.