Player Piano (Utopia 14)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"FROM Blue Cayuga," piped the young voices in the autumn evening -

Doctor Harold Roseberry, PE-002, laid two documents side by side on the naked, waxy expanse of the top of his rosewood desk. The desk, big enough for a helicopter to land on, was a gift from the Cornell alumni, and a silver plate on one corner said so. Justification of the lavish gift was inlaid in precious woods on the desk top: the football scores run up by the Big Red during the past five seasons. The why and wherefore of this object, at least, would leave no questions in the minds of future archæologists.

"From East and West the crashing echoes answering call," cried the young voices, and Doctor Roseberry found it extremely difficult to concentrate on the two documents before him: a memo from the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, a quaint, antique man in a quaint, antique part of the university; and a five-year-old letter from a carping alumnus who objected to the deportment of the team when off the playing field. The memo from the dean said that a Mr. Ewing J. Halyard had arrived in town in order to show the university to the Shah of Bratpuhr, and, incidentally, to make up a seventeen-year-old credit deficiency in physical education. The memo asked that Doctor Roseberry assign one of his staff to the chore of giving Halyard the final physical-education tests the next morning.

came the voices.

Doctor Roseberry was inclined to react ironically to the last line of the song. "Certainly, victorious last year, four years afore that," he muttered in his pregnant solitude. But here was another year that might not look so hot inlaid in rosewood. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," he said wearily. Every coach in the Ivy League was out to knock him down to a PE-003 again, and two losses would do it. Yale and Penn were loaded. Yale had floated a bond to buy the whole Texas A&M backfield, and Penn had bought Breslaw from Wisconsin for $43,000.

Roseberry groaned. "How the hell long they think a man can play college football?" he wanted to know. Six years before, Cornell had bought him from Wabash College, and asked him to list his idea of a dream team. Then, by God they'd bought it for him.

"But what the hell they think they bought?" he asked himself. "Sumpin' made outa steel and see-ment? Supposed to last a lifetime, is it?" They hadn't bought him so much as a water boy since, and the average age of the Big Red was now close to thirty-one.

came the voices.

"Certainly it's glorious," said Doctor Roseberry. "Who the hell you figure paid for it?" In its first two years the football team had paid for itself. In the next three, it had paid for a new chemistry building, a heat and power laboratory, a new administration building for the Agricultural Engineering Department, and four new professorial chairs: the Philosophy of Creative Engineering, Creative Engineering History, Creative Public Relations for Engineers, and Creative Engineering and the Captive Consumer.

Roseberry, who wasn't expected to pay any attention to the academic side of the university, had nonetheless kept a careful accounting of all these improvements, glorious to view, that had been added since he and his football team had arrived far above Cayuga's waters. In anticipation of a poor season, he was roughing out in his mind a polemic letter to the alumni, in which the academic expenditures would figure prominently. He had the first line of the letter, following the salutation, "Sportsmen," already perfected, and enjoyed imagining it written out in capitals:

"IS THE FOOTBALL BUSINESS AT CORNELL GOING TO BE RUN ON A BUSINESS­LIKE BASIS, OR IS THE BIG RED GOING TO BE BLED WHITE?"

And then the next sentence sprang inspirationally to mind: "IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS, NOT ONE CENT HAS BEEN REINVESTED IN THE BUSINESS, NOT ONE CENT LAID ASIDE FOR DEPRECIATION!"

He saw now that the whole thing would have to be in caps. The situation called for a letter with real punch.

The telephone rang.

"Doctor Roseberry speakin'."

"This is Buck Young, Doc. Note here says you wanted me to call." The husky voice was tinged with uneasiness, just as Roseberry had hoped it would be. He could imagine that Buck had sat by the phone with the note in his hand for several minutes before he'd dialed. Now that Buck had gone this far, Roseberry told himself, he'd go the rest of the way too.

"Yeah, yeah," said Roseberry, smiling captivatingly. "Bucky boy, how are you?"

"Fine. What's on your mind?"

"Maybe I should ask what's on yours."

"Thermodynamics. Stress analysis. Fluid flow. Differential equations."

"Aaah," said Roseberry, "why'n't you loosen up and have a beer with me down at The Dutch? You hear the news I got, I think maybe you'll get something else on your mind."

sang the voices, and Doctor Roseberry waited impatiently for the racket to stop. If they had to have a football rally, he wished they'd hold it somewhere where it wouldn't bother him and his team. That was another thing: Cornell was so cheap, they quartered their athletes on the campus rather than setting up a separate establishment away from all the student racket. "Wait'll they shut up, Bucky boy, and I can hear myself think."

Either Cornell was going to get progressive, or they could find themselves another coach, Roseberry told himself. Now, Tennessee - there was a progressive setup. They kept their team in Miami Beach, and no wonder Milankowitz went there for $35,000, after he turned down Chicago for $40,000. "O.K., Bucky, I can hear again. What about I meet you down at The Dutch for a couple of quick ones in fifteen minutes?"

The voice was faint, reluctant. "Just for half an hour."

Doctor Roseberry climbed into his black convertible in the team parking lot, and drove over to the Delta Upsilon fraternity house, on whose lawn he'd first spotted Buck Young playing interfraternity football. There, Young had done things for Delta Upsilon for nothing that any college in the country would have considered a steal at $50,000 a year.

That had been last fall, and D.U. had eked out the interfraternity football championship with 450 points to their opponents' six. Young had scored 390 of the points, and had thrown the passes for the other 54, the remaining touchdown being accounted for by a George Ward, whose name had somehow burned itself into Roseberry's memory along with all of the other statistics.

But Young had said firmly, when Roseberry had approached him, that he played football for fun, and that he wanted to be an engineer. A year ago, with the Big Red by far the biggest thing in the East, with the Yale and Penn alumni still to mobilize their economic resources, Roseberry could afford to be amused by Young's preference for a career in engineering. Now nothing was amusing, and Roseberry saw Young as his one chance to remain a PE-002 under the fouled-up Cornell football economics. He would sell a couple of supernatural linemen to Harvard, who would buy anything that was cheap, and use the proceeds to buy himself the services of Young at far below their value on the open market.

The Dutch, its paneling antiqued by the condensation from breaths of generations of adolescent alcoholics, was packed and noisy, and in almost every hand was the drink fashionable that season, benedictine and Pluto water, with a sprig of mint.

Doctor Roseberry was cheered and toasted by the children as he entered. He grinned, and colored becomingly, and inwardly demanded of himself and history, "What the hell these baby engineers got to do'th me, for chrissakes?" He pushed his way through the crowd, which claimed him for reasons not at all clear, to a dark corner booth, where Purdy and McCloud, the linemen whom he intended to sell to Harvard, were nursing the one beer a night apiece permitted during training. They were talking quietly, but darkly, and, as Doctor Roseberry approached, they looked up, but didn't smile.

"Evenin' boys," said Doctor Roseberry, sitting down on the small ledge not occupied by McCloud's backside, and keeping his eyes on the door through which Buck Young would be coming.

They nodded, and went on with their conversation. "No reason," said McCloud, "why a man can't play college ball till he's forty, if he takes good care of hisself." McCloud was thirty-six.

"Sure," said Purdy gravely, "a older man's got a certain matoority you don't find in the young ones." Purdy was thirty-seven.

"Look at Moskowitz," said McCloud.

"Yup. Forty-three, and still goin' strong. No reason why he shou'n't keep goin' until he's fifty. No reason why most men shou'n't."

"Bet I could go to the Reeks and Wrecks now and put together a Ivy League championship team out of guys past forty who're s'posed to be through."

"Planck," said Purdy. "Poznitsky."

"McCarren," said McCloud, "Mirro, Mellon. Ain't that right, Doc?" McCloud asked Roseberry the question casually.

"Yup, guess so. Hope so. Better. Kind of outfit I've got to work with."

"Um," said McCloud. He stared down into his beer, finished it off with a flourish, and looked plaintively at Roseberry. "O.K. if I have one more short one tonight?"

"Sure - why the hell not?" said Roseberry. "I'll even buy it."

McCloud and Purdy looked distressed at this, and both, on second thought, figured they'd better keep in good shape for the important Big Red season ahead.

Roseberry offered no reply to this clumsy gambit.

"Better not hit that stuff too hard," said a leering student, pointing to the two bottles of beer. "Not if Cornell's going to go on ruling the Ivy League, you better not, boys."

Purdy glowered at him, and the youngster retreated into the crowd. "One minute, they ask you should go out and bust both arms and legs so's they can say how tough Cornell is. Then the next minute, they want you should live like a goddam missionary," said Purdy bitterly.

"Like in the Army," said McCloud.

The subject reminded Doctor Roseberry of the letter and the memo he'd been reading in his office, and he patted his breast pocket to make sure he still had them.

"Like in the Army," said Purdy, "only no pension."

"Sure, give the best years of your life to some college, and what the hell they do when you're through? Toss you right into the Reeks and Wrecks. The hell with you, buddy."

"Look at Kisco," said Purdy.

"Died for dear old Rutgers, and his widow's got what?"

"Nuttin'! Nuttin' but a chenille R she can use as a bath mat, and a government pension."

"Shoulda saved his money!" said Doctor Roseberry impatiently. "He was makin' more'n the college president. How come he was so poor? Whose fault that?"

Purdy and McCloud looked down at their big hands and fidgeted. Both of them, in their prime, had made as much as the late Buddy Kisco, who had actually died for Rutgers. But both were likewise broke - forever broke, building flamboyant mansions in Cayuga Heights, buying new cars every six months, dressing expensively. . . .

"That's the thing," said McCloud plaintively. "A athalete has to keep up appearances. Sure, people think a athalete makes plenty, and he do on paper. But people never stop to think he's allus gotta keep up a expensive front."

Purdy leaned forward in excited agreement. "For who?" he demanded rhetorically. "For the athalete?"

"For Cornell!" said McCloud.

"Damn right!" said Purdy, leaning back, satisfied.

Buck Young, tall, massive, shy, appeared in the doorway and looked around the room. Doctor Roseberry stood and waved, and left Purdy and McCloud to join him at the door.

"Bucky boy!"

"Doc." Buck seemed somewhat ashamed to be seen with the coach, and looked hopefully at a vacant booth. He was behaving as though he were keeping an appointment with a dope peddler, and, in a way, Doctor Roseberry reflected cheerfully, he was.

"Buck, I'm not going to waste any words, because there isn't much time. This offer won't be open many more days. Maybe it'll be off tomorrow. It's all up to the alumni," he lied.

"Uh-huh," said Buck.

"I'm prepared to offer you thirty thousand, Buck, six hundred a week, all year round, startin' tomorrow. What do you say?"

Young's Adam's apple bobbed. He cleared his throat. "Every week?" he asked faintly.

"That's how much we think of you, boy. Don't sell yourself short."

"And I could study, too? You'd give me time off for classes and study?"

Roseberry frowned. "Well - there's some pretty stiff rulings about that. You can't play college football, and go to school. They tried that once, and you know what a silly mess that was."

Buck ran his blunt fingers through his hair. "Golly, I dunno. That's a lot of money, but my family'd be awful surprised and disappointed. I mean -"

"I'm not askin' it for me, Buck! Think of your schoolmates. You want them to lose a game this year?"

"No," he murmured.

"Thirty-five grand, Buck."

"Jesus, I -"

"I have heard every word you've said," said a young redhead thickly. He wasn't drinking benedictine and Pluto water, but sloshed instead a puddle of whisky and water on the table as he sat down by Buck, facing Doctor Roseberry, uninvited. Beneath his open-necked shirt the red of a Meadows T-shirt showed plainly. "Heard it all," he said, and he laid his hand on Buck's shoulder gravely. "Here you are at a crossroads, my boy. You're lucky. Not many crossroads left for people. Nothing but one-way streets with cliffs on both sides."

"Who the hell are you?" said Doctor Roseberry irritably.

"Doctor, Doctor, mind you, Edmond L. Harrison of the Ithaca Works. Call me Ed, or pay me five dollars."

"Let's get away from this lush," said Doctor Roseberry.

Harrison banged on the table with his fist. "Hear me out!" He appealed to Buck, whose exit he blocked. "The eminent Doctor Roseberry represents one road, and I the other. I am you, if you continue on your present course, five years from now."

His eyes were half closed, and after the fashion of benign drunks he seemed on the verge of tears, so powerfully was he compelled to love and help others. "If you are good," he said, "and if you are thoughtful, a fractured pelvis on the gridiron will pain you less than a life of engineering and management. In that life, believe me, the thoughtful, the sensitive, those who can recognize the ridiculous, die a thousand deaths."

Doctor Roseberry leaned back and folded his hands across his flat, hard belly. If he'd thought of it, he would have hired a professional actor to do what Doctor Harrison was doing for nothing. "How do you mean?" he asked helpfully.

"The best man I knew at the Meadows - "

"The Meadows?" said Buck in awe.

"The Meadows," said Harrison, "where the men at the head of the procession of civilization demonstrate in private that they are ten-year-olds at heart, that they haven't the vaguest notion of what they're doing to the world."

"They're opening new doors at the head of the procession!" said Buck hotly, shocked by the blunt, near-sabotage talk, and now fighting it, like the good citizen he was. He'd learned the resounding phrase about opening doors in a freshman orientation program, at which a Doctor Kroner had been the impressive chief speaker.

"Slamming doors in everybody's face," said Harrison. "That's what they're doing."

"Keep your voice down," warned Doctor Roseberry.

"I don't care," said Harrison stridently, "not after what they did to the only grownup there. They gave Proteus the sack, that's what they did."

"Proteus has been dead for years," said Buck, sure Harrison was a fake.

"His son, his son, Paul," said Harrison. "So let me say, my boy, go out and make your money on the gridiron, with blood and sweat and sinew. There's honor and glory in that - a little, anyway - and you'll never hate yourself. But keep the hell away from the head of the procession, where you'll get it in the neck if you can't get a lump in your throat over the ups and downs of a bunch of factories." He attempted to rise, failed once, made it the next time. "And now, goodbye."

"Where are you going?" said Doctor Roseberry. "Stick around, stick around."

"Where? First to shut off that part of the Ithaca works for which I am responsible, and then to an island, perhaps, a cabin in the north woods, a shack in the Everglades."

"And do what?" said Buck, baffled.

"Do?" said Harrison. "Do? That's just it, my boy. All of the doors have been closed. There's nothing to do but to find a womb suitable for an adult, and crawl into it. One without machines would suit me particularly."

"What have you got against machines?" said Buck.

"They're slaves."

"Well, what the heck," said Buck. "I mean, they aren't people. They don't suffer. They don't mind working."

"No. But they compete with people."

"That's a pretty good thing, isn't it - considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?"

"Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave," said Harrison thickly, and he left.

A dark man, dressed like a student, but much older-looking, set down his untouched benedictine and Pluto water on the bar, studied the faces of Roseberry and Young as though memorizing them, and followed Harrison out of the building.

"Let's go out in the lobby, where we can talk," said Roseberry, as a cycle of songs began.

"Cheer, cheer, here we are again," cried the young voices, and Young and Roseberry moved into the lobby.

"Well?" said Doctor Roseberry.

"I -"

"Doctor Roseberry, I believe?"

Roseberry looked up at the intruder, a sandy-mustached gentleman, in a violet shirt, matching boutonniere, and a gay waistcoat contrasting with his dark suit. "Yes?"

"My name is Halyard, E. J., of the State Department. And these gentlemen here are the Shah of Bratpuhr, and his interpreter, Khashdrahr Miasma. We were just leaving for the president's house, and I happened to spot you."

"Charmed," said Doctor Roseberry.

"Brahous brahouna, bouna saki," said the Shah, bowing slightly.

Halyard laughed nervously. "Guess we have a little business tomorrow morning, eh?"

"Oh," said Roseberry, "you're the one - the one for the phys. ed. finals."

"Yes, yes indeed. Haven't had a cigarette in two weeks. Will it take long?"

"No, I don't think so. Fifteen minutes ought to do the trick."

"Oh? That short a time, eh? Well, well." The tennis shoes and shorts he'd bought that afternoon wouldn't get much wear in that time.

"Oh, 'scuse me, gents," said Roseberry. "This here's Buck Young. Student just now."

"Lakki-ti Takaru?" the Shah asked Buck.

" 'Like it here?' " translated Khashdrahr.

"Yessir. Very much, sir, your highness."

"A lot different from my day," said Halyard. "By gosh, we had to get up every morning bright and early, climb the hill in all kinds of weather, and sit there and listen to some of the dullest lectures you ever heard of. And, of course, some poor fish would have to get up in front of us and talk every day of the week, and chances are he wasn't much of a speaker, and anyway no showman."

"Yes, the professional actors and the television circuits are a big improvement, sir," said Buck.

"And the exams!" said Halyard. "Pretty cute, you know, punching out the answers, and then finding out right off if you passed or flunked. Boy, believe me, we used to have to write our arms off, and then we'd have to wait weeks for a prof to grade the exams. And plenty of times they made bad mistakes on the grades."

"Yessir," said Buck politely.

"Well, I'll see one of your assistants tomorrow, eh?" said Halyard to Roseberry.

"I intend I should give you the tests personal," said Roseberry.

"Well! I guess that's an honor, with the season just beginning."

"Sure," said Roseberry. He reached into his breast pocket and produced the letter and the memo. He handed the letter to Halyard. "Here's something you should oughta read before you come."

"Fine, thanks." Halyard took it, supposing it was a list of the things he would have to do. He smiled warmly at Roseberry, who had given every indication that Halyard would be given an exceedingly simple and short series of tests. A mere fifteen minutes, he'd said. That would do it.

Halyard glanced at the letter, and couldn't imagine what it was all about at first. It was addressed to the president of Cornell, Doctor Albert Herpers, not to him. Moreover, the date on it indicated that it was five years old.

Dear Doctor Herpers: he read -

The letter went on to describe the bacchanal that followed, with particular emphasis on the crudities of Roseberry's behavior -

"Oh," said Halyard, his poise gone, suddenly looking ridiculous in the clothes that had been high fashion a moment before. "Saw this, did you?"

"Doctor Herpers thought I'd be interested."

A sickly grin framed Halyard's white teeth. "Long time ago, wasn't it, Doctor? Seems like a hundred years."

"Like yesterday."

"Ha ha. Lot of water under the dam since those days, eh?"

The Shah looked questioningly at Khashdrahr for an explanation of what made Halyard so gray suddenly. Khashdrahr shrugged.

"Over the dam," said Buck Young, filling the grim void in the conversation. "Or under the bridge."

"Yes. Quite so," said Halyard hollowly. "Well, best we should go. See you in the morning."

"Wouldn't miss it for the world."

Doctor Roseberry turned back to Buck Young, as Halyard, his face somber, shepherded the Shah and Khashdrahr into the Ithaca night. The Shah was sneezing violently.

"Well, kid," said Roseberry. "What say to thirty-five grand? Yes or no?"

"I -"

"Thirty-six."

"Yes," whispered Buck. "Hell yes."

When the two went back into The Dutch to drink to the deal, Purdy and McCloud were still talking gloomily in their dark corner.

"Sure," said Purdy, "Roseberry's a tough guy to work for, but thank God you ain't workin' for Harvard."

McCloud nodded. "Yeah, work there, and 'ey won't letch wear nothin' but dark-gray flannels in the winter, and seersucker in the summer."

They both shuddered, and furtively refilled their glasses from a half-case hidden under the table.

"Wit'out shoulders," said Purdy.