Punktown Read online

  If he were a rapist, she would shoot him in the face. And if he were her husband, she would shoot him in the heart, and then she would shoot herself in the heart, because shinju meant “inside the heart”. And then she and her husband would be united, linked again forever in death. They would be whole.

  A shunt passed. A burst of sparks illuminated, for one second, the flesh scarecrow suspended from the window opposite...now barely recognizable, a bundle of tattered scraps, all but fallen away.

  UNION DICK

  The Earth colony Paxton—unaffectionately nicknamed Punktown by its citizenry—was a melting pot for the crimes and perversions of a thousand planets and a dozen dimensions, and the bar called The Lop-sided Grin was a vivid manifestation of that condition.

  The waitress who brought the two men their bulbs of anodyne gas through the smoky steam of that melting pot didn’t prove to be human until directly on top of them, due to the geometric implants under her skin, stretching her face into a multi-faceted gem of living flesh. Only her eyes retained some of nature’s symmetry. Oh well, give her some more time.

  She no doubt found the puffy, ravaged and spoiled handsomeness of Yolk’s face unimpressive, as his wounds were naturally acquired, not a selected artistic deformation. Yolk was a union dick, and had acquired most of his wounding—both physical and otherwise—during the riots that had become the Union War. Yolk had fought on the side of the workers, and was a decorated hero. His recruitment and training as a detective for the PLO—Paxton Labor Organization—had been a tribute. But that had been twenty years ago. Yolk wasn’t the hot-blooded and inspired angry young man he had been then. He was just angry...and even then, in a very tired way. Twenty years in Punktown could sap the enthusiasm of the strongest do-gooder, and Yolk had never been a saint; nothing more than a common worker with a natural sense of justice. Then again, maybe that wasn’t so common...any more than justice was natural.

  His table-mate was Scurf, an informer with the syndy. The rest of Yolk’s ravagedness had come from trying to keep the syndy out of the PLO as much as possible over the years. That had made Yolk a lot of enemies in the union, and kept him from any further tributes of career evolution. Yolk had no use for the syndy but for the type of function Scurf served him, and even then he felt no great love for the man.

  Yolk squirted a tiny spray of gas against the back of his throat, coughed softly and mumbled, “Proceed.”

  “Proceed,” Scurf mimicked. “All right; what it is, is...I heard some weird things are going on at Mangaudis Crystalens, down in Industrial Square. Ever visited?”

  “Six years ago; hazardous material threat to employees. We called the Health Agents in and they slapped a fine. Standard dung. Proceed.”

  “Well nobody has said anything too definite, but my ears tell me the employees aren’t really operating the processes. I think it’s a dildo plant, these days.”

  Yolk nodded; this was getting to be more common. Since the Union War, all Earth-operated colonies on Oasis were required to enforce the mandate that in every plant and factory, every institution of manufacture, the robots and fully automated processes did not out-number the amount of blue-collar workers, except where conditions were too dangerous.

  Well, manufacturers had found many ways around this sort of mandate. They saw to it that the conditions were too dangerous, sometimes. But a more frequent method was to make two or three processes appear like one process to union inspectors. Also, sometimes employees would appear to be operating machinery when in reality they were working at dummy machines—or at least, at bogus controls on actual machines—which did absolutely nothing...some workers aware of this, some laboring away in ignorance. In some plants, Yolk had even seen employees who sat and played cards, napped, watched VT; in essence, did nothing but fulfill the company’s organic quota. The reason for all this was that it was often more economical for plants to pay live workers to do little or nothing while still keeping processes mostly automated.

  It could be ethically tricky to prosecute or fine under such circumstances, but if proven, many of these tricks could be considered a defiance of union mandates. Many couldn’t, as when two or three processes were so ingeniously linked that they did, in the end, constitute one process. But hiring employees to sweep the floor of an automated plant for two hours and play cards for six was considered an “inappropriate application of workers, degrading to their contribution as individuals, as members of society and as members of the union”. So the plant would be fined, and those workers would sweep for eight hours instead, in effect. Now proud workers.

  Yolk squirted his gas twice more before grumbling his thanks to Scurf, and transferring Scurf’s fee of fifty munits from his union-issued credit card to Scurf’s. That was what the union had provided the card to him for, primarily. Let them pay their money to the syndy.

  On his way to the steps leading up to the street Yolk passed a booth crammed with teenagers who were laughing and babbling loudly, incomprehensibly. If more aware of their surroundings they might have taunted him as he passed, smug in their youth—smug until Yolk jerked one of them up from his seat and cuffed him back into it. They were lighting the spray from their gas bulbs and using them as mini-torches, seeing who could endure the pain of flame on the inner arm longest. The loser would have to empty the remainder of his bulb down his throat in one shot. Could they be considered masochists when they were too wasted to really feel the pain?

  They were urinating in their pants and didn’t even know it; Yolk could tell by their stink. The girlfriends with them were most impressed with the entire display: it demonstrated the seriousness of the boys’ commitment to pleasure.

  “Idiots,” Yolk mumbled to himself as he trudged up the steps.

  * * *

  Yolk needed no warrant to proceed; as a union affiliated operation, Mangaudis Crystalens had to be prepared to invite union technical inspectors and investigators without a moment’s notice. This way no time was allowed for the speedy alteration of unethical practices. So Yolk met his wife Vita for lunch in the lounge of the office block she worked at on Corporation Avenue in the business district, then drove straight toward Industrial Square, further from the center of town. His acidulous grumbling unrest, nurtured in The Lop-sided Grin, had been somewhat soothed away by the hour spent with his wife. She was his closest friend and greatest security in life. Pretty, sexier than pretty, and sweeter than both. Hard to believe anyone in the business district could be considered sweet, or even truly sexy, but she was a jewel, and he was grateful for her beyond expression. Three years married already. She had even dug up the fossil remains of his soul, he felt, over the past four years that he’d known her. She’ll be struck by a hovercar some day, he thought, driven by some gassed-up punk. She was too good a thing to last.

  The Mangaudis building was no sprawling affair, and pretty standard in design from the outside; it looked like a giant art deco radio. Yolk announced himself and showed his badge at the desk. The head of personnel came to meet him within a minute. She shook his hand, presented herself as Nancy More.

  Miss More was young and attractive, but the tightness of her smile made her prettiness as unpleasant to Yolk as the feigned hospitality and interest in her voice. On a woman like this, her long black-nyloned legs were merely emblematic, about as sexy to Yolk as the perfect suit a man in her position would have been wearing. Yolk despised personnel directors.

  “I received an anonymous tip today regarding possible labor violations, so I’d like a tour of your company. Can you summon your shop steward?”

  “Mr. Cobb is on vacation these next two weeks, Mr. Yolk, I’m sorry.”

  Cobb—Yolk remembered him now from six years ago. A corrupt little alcoholic bastard who thought everyone he dealt with was too stupid to see through his transparent lies and cheating—in other words, a stupid man himself. Bad union reps paved the way for the tricks of unethical manufacturers.

  “Please summon Mr. Mangaudis, then...if he isn’t on vay-kay,
too.”

  “He isn’t,” Miss More said with a dab of chilly disapproval for his insolence. “I’ll go buzz him.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Yolk. No sense taking the chance that they might stall him while an alert was sounded to alter the state of things, order nappers back to phony stations.

  Mangaudis appeared promptly. He wore a beautiful charcoal gray suit, was as good-looking as Yolk remembered him. Attractive graying at the temples. His pale skin, however, looked like chalk against all the gray—bloodless. His immaculate neatness and softness of tone made him seem like a robot mannequin to Yolk. Yolk couldn’t imagine color on the man, or even inside him. He gave the detective a firm friendly hand squeeze and a creepy smile. His eyes were flat.

  “Wherever did you hear that we were betraying the union’s trust, Mr. Yolk? Our plant has a fine shop steward who...”

  “Yeah, real fine. I’m surprised my people didn’t kick his sodden ass into the gutter after that business six years ago...”

  “A small spill, Mr. Yolk...it happens every day.”

  “So do rape and murder. You remember an employee of yours named, ah...Clora...ah...” Yolk forgot her last name. “Anyway, she was there when you had that little spill. I ran into her in a theater lobby last year. I can’t forget a face, especially when half of it is burned off and the victim doesn’t win enough restitution for full reconstruction...”

  “Mr. Yolk, I hardly sprayed that individual in the face myself, and you can take up the matter of her settlement with our former insurance company. We don’t deal with them any more. Now please, the matter at hand...what is it?”

  Yolk liked the man a whole lot better now without that creepy robot smile. “You tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I’ll take a tour of the entire premises with you, then.”

  “As you like. No doubt you’ll find something to fine me for. The union has to make its money, after all, to keep ex-heroes like yourself employed.”

  Yolk definitely preferred Mangaudis this way: openly hostile, no more fake friendliness. Perhaps he was a human being after all, deep down inside. “Maybe if you’d bribed the Health Agents more last time you wouldn’t have had such a big fine. But then money lost is lost, no matter which way it blows, right?”

  “I suggest you watch your accusations, Mr. Yolk...they aren’t very professional. And I am recording this conversation for legal purposes.”

  “Fine—except that you can’t use any of what I said before you notified me of that fact. So, shall we get on with it?”

  “Of course. This way.” They moved down a corridor.

  Yolk thought he remembered some of the plant, but he saw so many places it was hard to recollect what he’d seen six years ago. White-garbed middle-aged women with hair coverings like cafeteria workers inspected lenses with the aid of computer-enhancement screens. Living workers were not necessary here, but where were they really irreplaceable? This entire plant could have been automated, if not for the Union War. Yolk watched the women for several minutes, keenly trained eyes absorbing the process. He had warned Mangaudis not to describe the way machines and their operators functioned here unless he asked him, so that his perceptions could be less easily distracted and misled. If necessary, technological inspectors would be called in later under Yolk’s command and direction.

  Shipping and receiving offered little that required close scrutiny, as was always the case. In fact, it was in this area that most live employees were situated in such plants.

  “How many employees?” Yolk asked, leaning his head into a cafeteria. Empty; no card players.

  “Seventy-five,” the company president replied proudly. Then he gave the amount of work space in the plant in terms of square feet, plus the number of individual mechanical processes as defined under the codes of the union.

  Yolk turned to smile at the man crookedly. “And how many of those are office workers, sir?”

  Mangaudis narrowed his eyes ever so slightly. “Fifteen. But that still leaves sixty live plant employees.”

  “Well that was what I was asking you about, not about paper pushers. Of that sixty, how many are in shipping-receiving, and how many mop the floors and change the toilet paper?”

  “Eight in shipping, and two non-tech maintenance people.”

  “So you have fifty machine operators...actual plant staff.”

  “Still within union ordinance, Inspector Yolk. We have an even hundred union-defined mechanical processes...therefore, half of those require live operation as dictated.” Mangaudis had stressed the word “dictated”.

  Yolk held his hand out to indicate they go on. “Proceed.”

  They passed two gliding robots in a broad hallway. These were the primary technical maintenance team. Seeing to the needs of their brothers. The one with a head nodded to Yolk but he didn’t nod back. Its feelings wouldn’t be hurt.

  “Ah, we have some innovative processes up ahead, Mr. Yolk. Something new. My own idea...realized, of course, by my fantastic technical designers, and some I brought in just for this job...”

  Sounded to Yolk like Mangaudis was trying to smooth him in advance for something he was going to see. Prepare him.

  The hall gave into a large circular chamber Yolk instantly recalled as being the site of the hazardous waste leak six years ago. Only now it had become a mad circus.

  It didn’t present live beings operating machinery so much as it seemed a weird symbiotic relationship between machine and organism.

  “What the hell is this?” Yolk hissed.

  Mangaudis gave his creepy bloodless smile. He wasn’t just proud—he was gloating.

  A man walked a tread mill attached to the side of one machine like a mouse in a wheel, this action causing huge gears to turn. The machine was covered in colored lights and computer screens. It was a bizarre mating of high tech and the Industrial Revolution. And there were others that were similar. A rowing machine connected up to one process, a bicycle to another. Two teenage boys in white sleeveless undershirts, muscular and sweaty, pushed up and down on a see-sawing bar as if driving an old railroad handcart. One man stood turning what looked like the arms of a clock face as tall as he was.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Yolk snarled at his host. “These are the most blatant dildo operations I’ve ever seen!”

  “Ahh, that’s the beauty of it, Mr. Yolk. They do appear fake, don’t they? But they aren’t. I heartily invite your finest engineers to come down here and inspect these processes. They are all generated by live labor. Without it they won’t even function.”

  Yolk looked again, coming deeper into the room. A young Choom woman, native humanoid to the planet, smiled her huge dolphin-like grin at him. She was reclining in a rowing apparatus, watching a VT set mounted to the side of her machine. She removed her headphones at Yolk’s gesture. “Don’t you get tired?” he demanded.

  “It doesn’t take much pressure. And we rotate every fifteen minutes. We stay in good shape. It’s a great new idea, huh? We call this the Gym.”

  Yolk glanced about. He counted twenty-two people in the vast silo of a room. A buzzer sounded. Most of the workers rotated to the next set-up. Some rested altogether in a small adjoining caf. While they worked, many were watching VTs, or listening to music, or chatting. Some processes required a bit of strain, but most very little. One device was like a fixed pogo-stick, another was a plush rocking chair. Yolk realized he was wagging his head. Mangaudis came up beside him.

  “They’re happy workers, Mr. Yolk. Fair pay. Good benefits. And look...video, music, social interaction, hard work and physical exercise, all in one package. Very innovative, wouldn’t you say?”

  Yolk gritted his teeth at the man. “It’s a farce, Mangaudis. It’s a blatant bloody farce, and you’re flaunting it right in my face. You probably couldn’t wait for a union dick to come see this madness. You’re making fools of us and these people.”

  “These people are quite content.”
r />   “How long has this been going on? I’m gonna have that bastard Cobb’s rocks for this!”

  “Shh, Mr. Yolk.” Mangaudis tried to take the detective’s elbow but he jerked it away. “Mr. Yolk , there are no violations here. I had trouble with your people once before. Believe me, when this was designed I was most careful to see that there would be no conflict with union mandates.”

  “This is your revenge on us, isn’t it, Mangaudis? That’s what this is. A very imaginative...and very contemptuous...revenge on all the offices that dare to tell you how to run your business, and spend your money. Am I right? And worse than that, it’s revenge on the people we force you to hire, isn’t it? Isn’t it? You’re mocking us, and humiliating them. And you love it.”

  “These are contented workers, Mr. Yolk. You heard what Eti over there said. She likes it in the Gym. This is the ultimate in the life of live workers. It’s work and play at the same time.”

  “It’s a sick joke, and I’m going to bring it down.” Yolk strode back toward the door, his long coat billowing out behind him. But he spun around again, and spoke so loudly that workers at their stations glanced up at him. “This isn’t a gym, it’s a torture chamber!”

  “I don’t see that at all, Mr. Yolk. Honestly.”

  “It’s a torture chamber of the spirit! You’re killing the dignity of life in here!”

  “You accuse me of warped fanaticism, Inspector, but I contend that it’s you who are the fanatic. Listen to yourself. Torture of the spirit. You missed your calling; you should have been a priest, or a poet. Face it, Mr. Yolk, you’re simply a tech-hater.”

  “I don’t hate technology, slime-wad...I just hate the bastards who use it against us.” And on that note, the union dick stormed off into the plant unescorted. Mangaudis didn’t pursue him to show him out; Yolk was a fanatic, and worse, an armed one.