William Tenn Firewater

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States Cavalry-routs-the-redskins type of rescue, stuffed my dripping psyche
back into my subcon-scious and hauled me up into some sort of
never-never-ship. I've been in this inter-stellar version of Mohammed's
coffin, suspended between Heaven and Earth, for three days, while he
alternately bargained with me and consulted the home office about
developments.
"We dickered the way I do with Primeys by running down a list of what each of
us could offer and comparing it with what we wanted; each of us trying to get
a little more than we gave to the other guy, in our own terms, of course.
Buying and selling are intrinsically simple processes; I don't imagine our
discussions were very much different from those between a couple of Phoenician
sailors and the blue-painted Celtic inhabitants of early Britain."
"And this...this business-Alien never suggested the possibility of taking what
they wanted "
"By force? No, Braganza, not once. Might be they're too civilized for such
she-nanigans. Personally, I think the big reason is that they don't have any
idea of what it is they do want from us. We represent a fantastic enigma to
them a species which uses matter to alter matter, producing objects which,
while intended for similar func-tions, differ enormously from each other. You
might say that we ask the question 'how?' about their activities; and they
want to know the 'why?' about ours. Their investiga-tors have compulsions even
greater than ours. As I understand it, the intelligent races they've
encountered up to this point are all comprehensible to them since they de-rive
from parallel evolutionary paths. Every time one of their researchers gets
close to the answer of why we wear various colored clothes even in climates
where clothing is unnecessary, he slips over the edges and splashes.
"Of course, that's why this opposite number of mine was so worried. I don't
know his exact status he maybe anything from the bookkeeper to the
business-manager of the expedition but it's his neck, or should I say
bottleneck, if the outfit contin-ues to be uneconomic. And I gathered that not
only has his occupation kind of barred him from doing the investigation his
unstable pals were limping back from into the asylums he's constructed here in
the deserts, but those of them who've managed to retain their sanity
constantly exhibit a healthy contempt for him. They feel, you see, that their
function is that of the expedition. He's strictly supercargo. Do you think it
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bothers them one bit," Hebster snorted, "that he has a report to prepare, to
show how his expedition stood up in terms of a balance sheet "
"Well, you did manage to communicate on that point, at least," Braganza
grinned. "Maybe traders using the simple, earnestly chiseling approach will be
the answer. You've certainly supplied us with more basic data already than
years of heavily sub-sidized research. Hebster, I want you to go on the air
with this story you told me and show a couple of Primey Aliens to the video
public."
"Uh-uh. You tell 'em. You can use the prestige. I'll think a message to my
Alien buddy along the private channel he's keeping open for me, and he'll send
you a couple of human-happy dots-in-bottles for the telecast. I've got to whip
back to New York and get my entire outfit to work on a really encyclopedic
job."
"Encyclopedic?"
The executive pulled his belt tight and reached for a tie. "Well, what else
would you call the first edition of the Hebster Interstellar Catalogue of All
Human Activity and Available Artifacts, prices available upon request with the
understanding that they are subject to change without notice?"
Afterword
Actually, I wrote this short novel over the course of five or six years,
finishing it only in 1951. Braganza was the protagonist I started with, and
his attitudes and beliefs my chief reason for writing the piece in the first
place. Hebster, with whom I disagreed utterly and whom I disliked utterly, was
a minor comic-nasty character I inserted in the story only for satiric
purposes.
But somehow the story didn't work. I kept writing it and rewriting it, and it
kept falling apart. I finally concluded that there was something about the
story in which I absolutely did not believe, and I put it aside to let the
back of my mind work on it.
Then, one day late in 1951, I picked up the manuscript, reread it, and began
wondering how it would work from the point of view of a man I despised and
hated Algernon Hebster, the simon-pure businessman.
It worked wonderfully, I found. Apparently I could think and feel and justify
like Hebster. He, too, was a large part of me. I finished the piece in two
sleepless days.
My then agent didn't like it at all. He said it was pulp junk, worthy only of
the bottom of the market at one-half cent or a quarter of a cent a word. I
disagreed and sent it out on my own to John W. Campbell, Jr., at Astounding
Science Fiction.
John liked it and told me it was worth a bonus rate. He wanted only a small
bit of rewrite, the first time he had asked me for such a thing. His request
seemed reasonable, and I agreed to do it.
When he got the finished manuscript, he was still somewhat dissatisfied. He
asked for another small rewrite, and I did that too. Then he wanted yet
another, which I couldn't see as anything which would genuinely help the
story. I wrote him an angry note, to which he replied with one of his
seven-page, single-spaced ones, questioning my basic philoso-phy of life, art,
and politics. I asked him to send the story back, and he telephoned me and
told me he liked it far too much to let it go; as a matter of fact, he was
planning to use it as the cover story for an issue (I had never yet had the
cover for Astounding). All he wanted was just one more teensy rewrite which he
was sure I could do and wouldn't find objectionable.
I did find it objectionable, yet I wanted the cover and the high rate he had
promised. And I was not yet at the point where I could be comfortable while in
disagreement with John Campbell, whom I regarded as my intellectual father. I
sought out Ted Sturgeon who had once been my agent, but was still my mentor in
science fiction and asked for help.
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Ted read "Firewater" and liked it enormously. He then went off to have a long
and long-winded lunch with Campbell. He came back and had an early
ambassadorial supper with me.
The problem that he said he had slowly discovered had nothing to do with the
rewrites John had requested. It had to do with the fact that I had made the
aliens totally superior intellectually to mankind and John Campbell could not
bring himself to accept that.
He reminded me of what had happened when I played chess with Campbell. I had
beaten him easily because he was very much a sometime player while I, in those
days, was a habitu� of the chess corner at Washington Square Park and of the
Marshall Chess Club. I had even once beaten the chess champion of New York [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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