Stepping Stone

II

By the time that most of the world's population was very displeased indeed, Chesley's wife was saying—or screeching:

"Stepping stone! Now you've done it, Arthur, you've stepped your stepping stone right out of a job entirely! How are we going to face my mother, Arthur? How? I ask you, how can I go to see her in her new thirty-five-thousand dollar house and tell her the man I married over her objections is fired? And what about these taxes? We can't pay them, you know that! If you were half a man you'd go to work in the V.G. like Elsie Morgenstern's husband down the block. They don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from and— And what about those people that were blown up yesterday? They were out of a job. The Viceroy just killed them all, killed them, and I'd like to know what would happen to me if— Arthur! Now, come back here!"

Harry swabbed a damp cloth over the bar and looked up morosely. "What'll it be, Arthur? Reeky-Cola, lemon fizz, a shot of ginger ale?"

"I'll take milk," said Chesley, sliding onto a stool. It wasn't the same, of course. Taking one consideration with another, Chesley thought judiciously, the Viceroy hadn't done a bad job of reorganizing the Earth in five weeks, even if his most recent step was to abolish the production of certain synthetic rubber articles which, in turn, abolished Chesley's job. But he shouldn't have prohibited beer.

Harry poured the milk glumly and leaned on the bar, watching Chesley sip it. "You know Flaherty?" he asked. "Well, he was one of them that got it yesterday."

"Flaherty? Ronald Flaherty?" Chesley was shocked. "You mean he was in that bunch of out-of-work people that the Viceroy ki—"

"They was misled by corrupt agitators," Harry interrupted.

"Oh, no, Harry. I mean, Flaherty wasn't—"

"They was misled by corrupt agitators," Harry repeated with great emphasis, and he nodded his head toward the back of the bar. Where stacks of bottles once had been, now there was a floral display around a placard that read:

Loyalty to the Viceroy is every Earthling's first duty.

-THE VICEROY

And under the placard, a microphone.

"I see what you mean," Chesley said quickly. "Yeah, they certainly were misled by corrupt agitators."

He tasted his milk, and the milk wasn't sour—no, no milk was sour, not after the Viceroy had made a few examples of persons dealing in spoiled foodstuffs. But Chesley's thoughts were. Those fifty persons had been picketing the Viceregal Deputy Zone Commander's Headquarters, asking for jobs. And, bam, a violet flare; and they were all dead.

It didn't pay to be unemployed, that was the first conclusion he reached.

But what could he do about it? Dr. Pebrick, Chief Managing Chemist of the synthetic rubber works, had made it very clear that he was lucky to hang onto his job, and there was no possibility whatever that Chesley would be rehired.

He would have to get a job somewhere else. That was the second conclusion.

Chesley sighed and finished his milk. "Say, Harry," he called. "Got a New York Times?"

"Yeah." The barkeep pulled a folded paper out of the otherwise empty bar-tools rack under the counter. "Here."

"Thanks," said Chesley, opening it to the Help Wanted section. "And let me have a be—"

"You mean," interrupted Harry, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the placard and the mike, "you would like another glass of delicious, invigorating, one-hundred-per-cent pure milk, which the Viceroy recommends above all other beverages for human consumption?"

"Yes," sighed Chesley. "Another milk."

The agency was crowded, but since it was the only one in the paper that had listed in its ad, Man, chmcl trng, admstv pos, sal open, he had no choice but to wait out the line. It took nearly half a day, which Chesley passed, as best he could, by conversation with the others in line—guarded at first, then more and more open, until the man ahead of him happened to glance up at the picture of the Viceroy that hung on the wall over his head. He turned white; sweat broke out on his forehead; he slumped, caught himself, started to speak, and then burst out of his place in line and raced back through the long hall to the elevators.

There was a microphone under the picture.

Chesley shook his head ruefully and kept silent for the rest of the time. It didn't pay to talk too much. The Viceroy wasn't everywhere—though, being far from human, he was in an astonishing number of places at astonishing times. But his Guard, the V.G., was in even more places all the time. Chesley had passed one just outside the door—a man in a blinding blue uniform, who parked blatantly near a fire hydrant and strolled away. In a matter of seconds a traffic cop caught sight of the car and charged toward it, fire in his eye and one hand dragging his summons pad out of his pocket. But then the cop caught sight of the magic letters V.G. on the place where the license plate would have been—if the Viceregal Guard bothered with license plates—and he turned pale and staggered away as though he had had a narrow escape.

Which he had.

Chesley shook his head again. It was hard to reconcile the idea of old Iry Morgenstern down-the-block with the total and awful powers of a member of the V.G. But there were too many things these days that couldn't be reconciled, he wasn't going to bother his head about them. The Viceregal Guard served a function, he supposed. That is, if the Viceroy served a function, well, then the Guard was pretty necessary. The Viceroy could reach down and strike any human, anywhere; but apparently he couldn't find the human who was thwarting his efforts without a little on-the-spot help from the V.G. He was perfectly capable of wiping out a whole city if it angered him—witness Omaha, in the second week of his reign—but it happened that Omaha was not the site of any of his own special projects. Most every other city in the world did have a high-priority Viceroy's Project going—increasing the rate of births, building up human health, building cryptic objects for unknown purposes—oh, there was no limit to the things the Viceroy wanted Earth to do in preparation for the landing of his own extra-solar race. And it was the Viceregal Guard that was charged with seeing that they were done. From the moment he arrived he had been recruiting, and paying well. It was his first human helpers who had turned up at the offices of the radio and television networks with fabulous bundles of cash in their pockets, who had rented Yankee Stadium for a fantastic price; and those human helpers were now the colonels and generals and marshals and generalissimos of the V.G.

The V.G. seldom killed anybody, but they had power of life and death all the same. For—annoyingly—people kept trying to take advantage of the Viceroy. They knew it meant death to be discovered, but there were persons who complained because they couldn't afford the taxes and because they were thrown out of jobs they'd held for decades and because their homes were ripped down to make room for Viceroy's Projects. Some of the Projects didn't make all the sense in the world, Chesley thought—for example, did the Viceroy really need the four-acre swimming pool he was putting up on the lots that Rockefeller Center had once inhabited? But there was no questioning them; those who questioned were punished. Others sold impure foods—the Viceroy was vehement about human health, apparently because his people were going to want plenty of good, strong servants. Others insanely sold inferior or incorrect materials to the Projects themselves. Others did forbidden research—there was a long, long list of prohibited topics. And the Viceregal Guards tracked them down, and then, as soon as the busy Viceroy could get it onto his schedule, somewhere on the Earth's face there was a bam and a violet flare, and another sinner had met his fate. All it took was one word from a member of the V.G., and . . . bam.

So it didn't pay to tangle with the V.G., because—

Chesley stopped in mid-thought, disconcerted. "What?" Somebody was saying impatiently, "You, there! Come on, you're holding up the whole line. Next!"

"Sorry," mumbled Chesley. He had been waiting so long that it was a shock to realize he had finally gained the threshold of one of the employment agency's interviewers. He stumbled in, laid his hat on the desk, hastily picked it up again, put it on his lap and said: "I'm here about that ad in this morning's N. Y. Times—"

"So," sighed the red-headed, weary-eyed girl behind the desk, "are six hundred others. But wait a minute—you're a chemist? Oh. Well—"

Chesley listened in growing consternation. Chemical training, the ad had said, administrative position. He had thought, naturally, that it would be checking over some manufacturing company's crude materials supply orders, or maybe, at the most daring, a little routine analysis. It turned out to be anything but those. It was, in fact, so different from what he had expected that it terrified him.

He stammered, "I'm s-sorry, sir —I mean, ma'am, but I don't th-think I'm qualified."

"We're the best judges of that," the interviewer told him sternly. She paused significantly. "Of course," she added, "we're not forcing the work on you. You're free to take the job or leave it, as you choose. However, if you leave it—"

She stopped there.

Chelsey thought about what would happen if he refused: the loyalty investigation, the arrest, the disgrace, the report to the Viceroy, the violet flare and the bam.

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am," he said timidly. "You're right, ma'am. I'll take it, of course."

It seemed that there was a uniform that went with the work—a blinding blue uniform, and on every bright chromium button were stamped the letters: V.G.