A Day in the Life Read online

  Very soon he would lose that first fortune of the evening. The secret of Basil Bagelbaker was that he enjoyed losing money spectacularly after he was full of it to the bursting point.

  * * *

  A thoughtful-man named Maxwell Mouser had just produced a work of actinic philosophy. It took him seven minutes to write it. To write works of philosophy one used the flexible outlines and the idea indexes; one set the activator for such a wordage in each subsection; an adept would use the paradox, feed-in, and the striking-analogy blender; one calibrated the particular-slant and the personality-signature. It had to come out a good work, for excellence had become the automatic minimum for such productions.

  “I will scatter a few nuts on the frosting,” said Maxwell, and he pushed the lever for that. This sifted handfuls of words like chthonic and heuristic and prozymeides through the thing so that nobody could doubt it was a work of philosophy.

  Maxwell Mouser sent the work out to publishers, and received it back each time in about three minutes. An analysis of it and reason for rejection were always given—mostly that the thing had been done before and better. Maxwell received it back ten times in thirty minutes, and was discouraged. Then there was a break.

  Ladion’s work had become a hit within the last ten minutes, and it was now recognized that Mouser’s monograph was both an answer and a supplement to it. It was accepted and published in less than a minute after this break. The reviews of the first five minutes were cautious ones; then real enthusiasm was shown. This was truly one of the greatest works of philosophy to appear during the early and medium hours of the night. There were those who said it might be one of the enduring works and even have a holdover appeal to the Dawners the next morning.

  Naturally Maxwell became very rich, and naturally Ildefonsa came to see him about midnight. Being a revolutionary philosopher, Maxwell thought that they might make some free arrangement, but Ildefonsa insisted it must be marriage. So Maxwell divorced Judy Mouser in Small Claims Court and went off with Ildefonsa.

  This Judy herself, though not so beautiful as Ildefonsa, was the fastest taker in the city. She only wanted the men of the moment for a moment, and she was always there before even Ildefonsa. Ildefonsa believed that she took the men away from Judy; Judy said that Ildy had her leavings and nothing else.

  “I had him first,” Judy would always mock as she raced through Small Claims Court.

  “Oh that damned urchin!” Ildefonsa would moan. “She wears my very hair before I do.”

  * * *

  Maxwell Mouser and Ildefonsa Impala went honeymooning to Musicbox Mountain, a resort. It was wonderful. The peaks were done with green snow by Dunbar and Fittle. (Back at Money Market Basil Bagelbaker was putting together his third and greatest fortune of the night, which might surpass in magnitude even his fourth fortune of the Thursday before.) The chalets were Switzier than the real Swiss and had live goats in every room. (And Stanley Skuldugger was emerging as the top actor-imago of the middle hours of the night.) The popular drink for that middle part of the night was Glotzenglubber, ewe cheese and Rhine wine over pink ice. (And back in the city the leading Nyctalops were taking their midnight break at the Toppers’ Club.)

  Of course it was wonderful, as were all of Ildefonsa’s—but she had never been really up on philosophy so she had scheduled only the special thirty-five-minute honeymoon. She looked at the trend indicator to be sure. She found that her current husband had been obsoleted, and his opus was now referred to sneeringly as Mouser’s Mouse. They went back to the city and were divorced in Small Claims Court.

  The membership of the Toppers’ Club varied. Success was the requisite of membership. Basil Bagelbaker might be accepted as a member, elevated to the presidency and expelled from it as a dirty pauper from three to six times a night. But only important persons could belong to it, or those enjoying brief moments of importance.

  “I believe I will sleep during the Dawner period in the morning,” Overcall said. “I may go up to this new place, Koimopolis, for an hour of it. They’re said to be good. Where will you sleep, Basil?”

  “Flophouse.”

  “I believe I will sleep an hour by the Midian Method,” said Bumbanner. “They have a fine new clinic. And perhaps I’ll sleep an hour by the Prasenka Process, and an hour by the Dormidio.”

  “Crackle has been sleeping an hour every period by the natural method,” said Overcall.

  “I did that for half an hour not long since,” said Bumbanner. “I believe an hour is too long to give it. Have you tried the natural method, Basil?”

  “Always. Natural method and a bottle of red-eye.”

  Stanley Skuldugger had become the most meteoric actor-imago for a week. Naturally he became very rich, and Ildefonsa Impala went to see him about 3 A.M.

  “I had him first!” rang the mocking voice of Judy Skuldugger as she skipped through her divorce in Small Claims Court. And Ildefonsa and Stanley boy went off honeymooning. It is always fun to finish up a period with an actor-imago who is the hottest property in the business. There is something so adolescent and boorish about them.

  Besides, there was the publicity, and Ildefonsa liked that. The rumor mills ground. Would it last ten minutes? Thirty? An hour? Would it be one of those rare Nyctalops marriages that lasted through the rest of the night and into the daylight off-hours? Would it even last into the next night as some had been known to do?

  Actually it lasted nearly forty minutes, which was almost to the end of the period.

  It had been a slow Tuesday night. A few hundred new products had run their course on the markets. There had been a score of dramatic hits, three-minute and five-minute capsule dramas, and several of the six-minute long-play affairs. Night Street Nine—a solidly sordid offering—seemed to be in as the drama of the night unless there should be a late hit.

  Hundred-story buildings had been erected, occupied, obsoleted and demolished again to make room for more contemporary structures. Only the mediocre would use a building that had been left over from the Day Flies or the Dawners, or even the Nyctalops of the night before. The city was rebuilt pretty completely at least three times during an eight-hour period.

  The period drew near its end. Basil Bagelbaker, the richest man in the world, the reigning president of the Toppers’ Club, was enjoying himself with his cronies. His fourth fortune of the night was a paper pyramid that had risen to incredible heights; but Basil laughed to himself as he savored the manipulation it was founded on.

  Three ushers of the Toppers’ Club came in with firm step.

  “Get out of here, you dirty bum!” they told Basil savagely. They tore the tycoon’s toga off him and then tossed him his seedy panhandler’s rags with a three-man sneer.

  “All gone?” Basil asked. “I gave it another five minutes.”

  “All gone,” said a messenger from Money Market. “Nine billion gone in five minutes, and it really pulled some others down with it.”

  “Pitch the busted bum out!” howled Overcall and Bumbanner and the other cronies.

  “Wait, Basil,” said Overcall. “Turn in the President’s Crosier before we kick you downstairs. After all, you’ll have it several times again tomorrow night.”

  The period was over. The Nyctalops drifted off to sleep clinics or leisure-hour hideouts to pass their ebb time. The Auroreans, the Dawners, took over the vital stuff.

  Now you would see some action! Those Dawners really made fast decisions. You wouldn’t catch them wasting a full minute setting up a business.

  A sleepy panhandler met Ildefonsa Impala on the way. “Preserve us this morning, Ildy,” he said, “and will you marry me the coming night?”

  “Likely I will, Basil,” she told him. “Did you marry Judy during the night past?”

  “I’m not sure. Could you let me have two dollars, Ildy?”

  “Out of the question. I believe a Judy Bagelbaker was named one of the ten best-dressed women during the frou-frou fashion period about two o’clock. Why do you need two d
ollars?”

  “A dollar for a bed and a dollar for red-eye. After all, I sent you two million out of my second.”

  “I keep my two sorts of accounts separate. Here’s a dollar, Basil. Now be off! I can’t be seen talking to a dirty panhandler.”

  “Thank you, Ildy. I’ll get the red-eye and sleep in an alley. Preserve us this morning.”

  Bagelbaker shuffled off whistling “Slow Tuesday Night.” And already the Dawners had set Wednesday morning to jumping.

  THE LADY MARGARET

  Keith Roberts

  * * *

  Unless you are the scion of a rich family, independently wealthy, a recluse, retired, under five, an invalid, on the lam or on the bum, work probably takes up a good percentage of your life. Probably it does even if you are one or all of the above. Sometimes they call it survival, sometimes they call it school, sometimes they call it job. Sometimes they call it art—which may mean that you’re lucky enough to get paid for doing what you’re driven to do anyway. Whatever they call it, it means work. Add all the seconds, minutes, hours and days together, and you’ll come up with a staggering total of time spent doing whatever it is you do to keep yourself alive. Unfortunately, too many people today despise the work that they do, or at least regard it with dull apathy. Which means that they spend a huge portion of their time on earth locked in a gray prison of circumstance, spend it with their minds and senses switched off, turned into clockwork golems functioning by rote, idling and fretting through endless days with one eye on the clock. And as the song says, life is just too short for that kind of thing.

  England’s Keith Roberts here takes us to a world sideways in time for a starkly beautiful and intensely personal look at a man whose life is centered around the fulfillment of his work, around the open road and the high steel, the cold hush of an engine shed at dusk, the rolling belch and bellow of black spark-shot smoke, the pounding of massive engines, the thrilling of a wheel held steady by competent hands, the frost and bitter winter wind, the lonely huddled houses on the sweep of the heath, the sudden lantern gleam in the darkness that means the routiers.

  G.D.

  * * *

  Dumovaria, England. 1968.

  The appointed morning came, and they buried Eli Strange. The coffin, black and purple drapes twitched aside, eased down into the grave; the white webbings slid through the hands of the bearers in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti . The earth took back her own. And miles away Iron Margaret cried cold and wreathed with steam, drove her great sea voice across the hills.

  At three in the afternoon the engine sheds were already gloomy with the coming night. Light, blue and vague, filtered through the long strips of the skylights, showing the roof ties stark like angular metal bones. Beneath, the locomotives waited brooding, hulks twice the height of a man, their canopies brushing the rafters. The light gleamed in dull spindle shapes, here from the strappings of a boiler, there from the starred boss of a flywheel. The massive road wheels stood in pools of shadow.

  Through the half-dark a man came walking. He moved steadily, whistling between his teeth, boot studs rasping on the worn brick floor. He wore the jeans and heavy reefer jacket of a hauler; the collar of the jacket was turned up against the cold. On his head was a woolen cap, once red, stained now with dirt and oil. The hair that showed beneath it was thickly black. A lamp swung in his hand, sending cusps of light flicking across the maroon livery of the engines.

  He stopped by the last locomotive in line and reached up to hang the lamp from her hornplate. He stood a moment gazing at the big shapes of the engines, chafing his hands unconsciously, sensing the faint ever-present stink of smoke and oil. Then he swung onto the footplate of the loco and opened the firebox doors. He crouched, working methodically. The rake scraped against the fire bars; his breath jetted from him, rising in wisps over his shoulder. He laid the fire carefully, wadding paper, adding a crisscrossing of sticks, shoveling coal from the tender with rhythmic swings of his arms. Not too much fire to begin with, not under a cold boiler. Sudden heat meant sudden expansion and that meant cracking, leaks round the fire-tube joints, endless trouble. For all their power, the locos had to be cosseted like children, coaxed and persuaded to give of their best.

  The hauler laid the shovel aside and reached into the firebox mouth to sprinkle paraffin from a can. Then a soaked rag, a match . . . The lucifer flared brightly, sputtering. The oil caught with a faint whoomph. He closed the doors, opened the damper handles for draft. He straightened up, wiped his hands on cotton waste, then dropped from the footplate and began mechanically rubbing the brightwork of the engine. Over his head, long name-boards carried the style of the firm in swaggering, curlicued letters: Strange and Sons of Dorset, Haulers. Lower, on the side of the great boiler, was the name of the engine herself. The Lady Margaret. The hulk of rag paused when it reached the brass plate; then it polished it slowly, with loving care.

  The Margaret hissed softly to herself, cracks of flame light showing round her ash pan. The shed foreman had filled her boiler and the belly and tender tanks that afternoon; her train was linked up across the yard, waiting by the warehouse loading bays. The hauler added more fuel to the fire, watched the pressure building slowly toward working head; lifted the heavy oak wheel scotches, stowed them in the steamer alongside the packaged water-gauge glasses. The barrel of the loco was warming now, giving out a faint heat that radiated toward the cab.

  The driver looked above him broodingly at the skylights. Mid-December; and it seemed as always God was stinting the light itself so the days came and vanished like the blinking of a dim gray eye. The frost would come down hard as well, later on. It was freezing already; in the yard the puddles had crashed and tinkled under his boots, the skin of ice from the night before barely thinned. Bad weather for the haulers; many of them had packed up already. This was the time for the wolves to leave their shelter, what wolves there were left. And the routiers . . . this was their season right enough, ideal for quick raids and swoopings, rich hauls from the last road trains of the winter. The man shrugged under his coat. This would be the last run to the coast for a month or so at least, unless that old goat Serjeantson across the way tried a quick dash with his vaunted Fowler triple compound. In that case the Margaret would go out again; because Strange and Sons made the last run to the coast. Always had, always would. . . .

  Working head, a hundred and fifty pounds to the inch. The driver hooked the hand lamp over the push-pole bracket on the front of the smokebox, climbed back to the footplate, checked gear for neutral, opened the cylinder cocks, inched the regulator across. The Lady Margaret woke up, pistons thumping, crossheads sliding in their guides, exhaust beating sudden thunder under the low roof. Steam whirled back and smoke, thick and cindery, catching at the throat. The driver grinned faintly and without humor. The starting drill was a part of him, burned on his mind. Gear check, cylinder cocks, regulator . . . He’d missed out just once, years back when he was a boy; opened up a four-horse Roby traction with her cocks shut, let the condensed water in front of the piston knock the end out of the bore. His heart had broken with the cracking iron; but old Eli had still taken a studded belt and whipped him till he thought he was going to die.

  He closed the cocks, moved the reversing lever to forward full, and opened the regulator again. Old Dickon, the yard foreman, had materialized in the gloom of the shed; he hauled back on the heavy doors as the Margaret, jetting steam, rumbled into the open air, swung across the yard to where her train was parked.

  Dickon, coatless despite the cold, snapped the linkage onto the Lady Margaret’s drawbar, clicked the brake unions into place. Three freight cars and the water tender; a light enough haul this time. The foreman stood, hands on hips, in breeches and grubby, ruffed shirt, grizzled hair curling over his collar. “Best let I come with ‘ee, Master Jesse. . . .”

  Jesse shook his head somberly, jaw set. They’d been through this before. His father had never believed in overstaffing; he’d worked his few men h
ard for the wages he paid, and got his money’s worth out of them. Though how long that would go on was anybody’s guess with the Guild of Mechanics stiffening its attitude all the time. Eli had stayed on the road himself up until a few days before his death; Jesse had steered for him not much more than a week before, taking the Margaret round the hill villages topside of Bridport to pick up serge and worsted from the combers there; part of the load that was now outward bound for Poole. There’d been no sitting back in an office chair for old Strange, and his death had left the firm badly shorthanded; pointless taking on fresh drivers now, with the end of the season only days away. Jesse gripped Dickon’s shoulder. “We can’t spare thee, Dick. Run the yard, see my mother’s all right. That’s what he’d have wanted.” He grimaced briefly. “If I can’t take Margaret out by now, ‘tis time I learned.”

  He walked back along the train pulling at the lashings of the tarps. The tender and numbers one and two were shipshape, all fast. No need to check the trail load; he’d packed it himself the day before, taken hours over it. He checked it all the same, saw the taillights and number-plate lamp were burning before taking the cargo manifest from Dickon. He climbed back to the footplate, working his hands into the heavy driver’s mitts with their leather-padded palms.

  The foreman watched him stolidly. “Take care for the routiers. Norman bastards . . .”

  Jesse grunted. “Let ‘em take care for themselves. See to things, Dickon. Expect me tomorrow.”

  “God be with ‘ee. . . .”

  Jesse eased the regulator forward, raised an arm as the stocky figure fell behind. The Margaret and her train clattered under the arch of the yard gate and into the rutted streets of Durnovaria. Jesse had a lot to occupy his mind as he steered his load into the town; for the moment, the routiers were the least of his worries. Now, with the first keen grief just starting to lose its edge, he was beginning to realize how much they’d all miss Eli. The firm was a heavy weight to have hung around his neck without warning; and it could be there were awkward times ahead. With the Church openly backing the clamor of the guilds for shorter hours and higher pay, it looked as if the haulage companies were going to have to tighten their belts again, though God knew profit margins were thin enough already. And there were rumors of more restrictions on the road trains themselves; a maximum of six trailers it would be this time, and a water cart. Reason given had been the increasing congestion round the big towns. That, and the state of the roads; but what else could you expect, Jesse asked himself sourly, when half the tax levied in the country went to buy gold plate for its churches? Maybe, though, this was just the start of a new trade recession like the one engineered a couple of centuries back by Gisevius. The memory of that still rankled in the West at least. The economy of England was stable now, for the first time in years; stability meant wealth, gold reserves. And gold, stacked anywhere but in the half-legendary coffers of the Vatican, meant danger. . .