*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78749 ***




                             Coffin for Two

                          by Winston K. Marks




  He returned to Earth after three years, with stars in his eyes and
  Gwen in his heart. But Gwen had no heart--and a star on her brow!




When I saw the lights of Albany Field below me I just about cried.
It takes guts to live anywhere by yourself for three years, but that
itchy, stinking garden of hell out on Venus does things to you that
aren’t worth money. Not even the kind of money I’d get for the two tons
of refined uranium concentrate I prospected out of Callispo Valley.

Well, that was all over, and I just sat there at the controls trying
not to bawl. I set her down, gunned up to the Import Shed, checked in
my cargo by short-wave--God, but that first voice sounded good,--and
turned the 40-ton crate over to the Port Receiver. And then the first
human eyes in three years watched me shake out fourteen inches of beard
and climb down on good old U. S. A., Earth, dirt.

He was the surface jockey, a blond young man in a black jumper, and I
almost hugged him I was so glad to see flesh and blood again. I was
especially glad, although a little surprised they hadn’t sent out one
of those gangly robot jockeys they were beginning to use at the ports
when I left for Venus. It would have been a hell of a homecoming,
staring into those fish eyes for a welcoming committee.

I pumped his hand and said, “Boy, do you look good to me! How come no
robots on duty around here? And what’s the red star on your forehead
for?”

“Welcome home, mister,” he said. “You must have been out there for
quite a while. You’ll find things changed, I imagine. If you want I’ll
take over now.”

Sure. Things were bound to be changed after three years. But not
certain people, not Tommy and Alec and Forest and--and maybe not even
Gwendolyn. I didn’t dare to expect that Gwen was still waiting for me,
but I couldn’t help hoping.

I knocked the glass out of a phone booth getting in and started
punching coins into the slot. Tommy was out, but Alec answered and
swore a grand welcome. He’d have the gang rounded up at his flat in two
hours.

“I’ll be there soon as I get my lawn mowed,” I told him. “And say, how
about, uh, is Gwen still around?”

“Of course. She’ll be there.” Just like that.

I noticed everyone on the taxi ramp wore red stars, five-pointed
affairs about an inch across, right smack in the middle of their
foreheads. Funny kind of a fad, I thought. Nobody had paid much
attention to me around the Port, but when I got out of the cab at the
Vilt Hotel I got long goings-over. The driver wore a red star. So did
the hotel clerk, and a woman in an ermine wrap, and about nine-tenths
of the people in the lobby. I stared as hard at them as they did at me.

I got a room and took a bath. Then, feeling self-conscious in my
out-of-date clothes, I went down to the barbershop. Here I got a real
surprise. The barbers were barbers! The shoe-shine boy and the porter
were amiable looking darkies!

He no more got the bib under my chin than I asked, “What happened to
all the robots? Not that I prefer them, you understand. But what’s the
score? I’ve been away, and I thought--”

The barber grinned. “You must have been away. I suppose you mean those
animated junk piles three or four years ago. They’re gone. Nothing on
the hoof but Government issue now.” Without any comment he clapped a
rubber something over my nose and I took a dive.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I woke up my beard was on the floor, I was trimmed, shaved,
manicured and shined. That being my first brush with barbershop
anaesthetic, now I understood the sign on the mirror: WE FEATURE THE
NEW DREAM SERVICE. This new wrinkle made me forget about the robots.
But one thing I did notice. In this barbershop there were only five
chairs where they used to have them strung out as far as you could see.
And there was something else that should have tipped me off to the
situation. All the other four chairs were occupied by fellows without
red stars on their faces.

But me, I was space-happy about then with the prospect of seeing Gwen
and the gang, so I didn’t think any more of it at the time. I caught
an interurban Hedge-Hopper for New York and spent the time wondering a
game of she-loves-me, she-loves-me-not.

Alec had done pretty well in two hours. Almost everybody I knew in New
York State was jammed into his apartment when I got there. I looked
around for Gwen. Forest said she’d be along pretty soon. She came in
on Tommy’s arm looking about as sweet as the girl you’re still in love
with can look. She held out her arms and kissed me, but there was a
little too much “Welcome home” in that hug, and not enough “Gee, Bill,
but I’ve missed you!” to suit me. Tommy didn’t approve too much of what
she did give me, but he seemed cordial enough at first.

So things were like that. Old Pal, Old Gal, and Absence Makes the
Heart Go Wander.

Gwen wasn’t wearing a diamond, so I said to myself, nuts, Tommy’s a
nice guy, but he wasted too much time. After awhile I got her alone out
on Alec’s little balcony. It developed that Tommy had made more headway
than I figured. She was pretty stand-offish at first.

I was just beginning to get somewhere when the door jerked open behind
us. Tommy saw me with my arm around Gwen’s shoulder. He looked mean,
and that red star on his forehead made him look meaner.

“What’s up, Tommy!” I asked.

“Your number’s up if you don’t lay off Gwen. She’s my girl now.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “This is still America.”

“Come on, Gwen.” He took her arm and jerked. I was in no mood for that.
I lined out a left jab across his bow. Somehow a fist got in my way. It
was Tommy’s fist, and I could feel a couple of bones in my hand crack
when our knuckles met.

He said, “Go away!” giving me a little shove that almost dumped me over
the railing for a six-story glide. By the time I got untangled Tommy
had towed Gwen out of the flat.

I went back to the party almost as mad as I was curious. I collared
Alec and asked him, “Since when did Tommy become an ironman? I used to
toss him around like a sparrow. And incidentally what’s all this red
star business? It looks pretty silly to me.”

Alec looked at me kind of funny. “You don’t--know what the red star
signifies?” I shook my head, and he frowned. “Look,” he said, “let’s
have a party tonight, and I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

That was all right with me. This crowded flat was getting on my nerves,
so I invited the whole mob into a fleet of cabs and went searching for
some night life.

       *       *       *       *       *

We were barely out in the lights when a snubby little vehicle whammed
out of a sidepass and just about pulverized our lead cab.

“Oh, that’s too bad!” Alec said. “I think Forest and Kelly were in that
one. They’ll hate to miss this party.”

“Too bad?” I shouted. “My God, is that all it is when a couple of your
buddies get ground into a pudding? Look at that mess.”

That’s all our driver did, was to glance at the two smoking, half-fused
lumps of machinery then swing out around them and back into traffic.
Alec caught my arm.

“Take it easy, Bill. They’re not hurt. That’s all part of this new
set-up. I guess I’d better tell you now.”

I guessed he better had. My stomach was rising and about to shine. I
said, “None of your supersurgery is going to do those boys any good.
They’re pulp!”

“Bill, there isn’t a spot of real flesh and blood back there on the
pavement, unless the cab driver was _fleshing it_, and damned few of
them do.” Just then the cab stopped. Alec shouted to the rest that we’d
be back pretty soon. He turned on the dome-light and told the driver to
cruise around.

Tapping his red star solemnly he said, “Bill, have you ever thought
about _not dying_--ever?” He stuck out a bare hand. He cramped his
fingers, wiggled them, pressed each against his thumb then grabbed my
hand and gave it a squeeze. It felt warm and human until he put the
pressure on. I got the sensation of being caught in a hydraulic vise.
There was inhuman power in those slender fingers.

“Jab it and it’ll jump. Cut it and it’ll bleed. Freeze it and it would
rot off if you didn’t replace it. It’s fifty per cent stronger and
reacts with greater sensitivity and coordination than the hand I was
born with.”

I didn’t understand yet, but I was getting disgusted already. Alec
said, “Now keep your mind open a minute, Bill. Here, I’ll show you some
more.” He bared the right half of his upper torso. Touching a spot
in his armpit he laid open a flap of skin over his right breast. In
a four-inch cubic cavity snuggled a red rubber lump with two tubular
outlets that buried their opposite ends in his body. “That’s the power
pick-up. The sympathetic mechanism is in the skull.”

I watched him rearrange his clothing. I said, “So the red star
signifies a robot? So I’ve been on a party with a bunch of pretty
synthetics? Okay, Mister Rubber-Liver, now tell me what happened to
Alec. Where is he? DON’T tell me they cut his heart and brain out and
stuck it in that phony flesh-pot. I don’t believe it, and if you don’t
tell me where Alec is I’ll scramble your cogs.”

What I had been calling “Alec” laughed nervously and realistically.
“You give me the same chills we all had when we first tried these
_proxies_ out. It does seem a bit ghastly at first, but it’s all
so perfect that you can’t argue it down. Bill, I’m in two places
at once. Right now my real body is back at my apartment in an
indestructible--well, you won’t like the word, but we call them
coffins. Oh, very well, don’t believe me. I’ll show you, by heaven!”

We drove back to his apartment. I was so befuddled it didn’t even seem
strange when he told me to wait beside him while he stretched out full
length in front of a closed door leading out of his kitchenette. He
relaxed and then sagged even more, until he was motionless at my feet.
The door clicked an inch ajar behind me. Alec’s voice yelled out _from
the room_. “Wait a minute, Bill.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I wasn’t waiting. I was finding out. I kicked the door open and
found myself in a five-by-eight cell with just enough room for the
narrow door to swing in and miss a sure-enough coffin. Only it was
transparent, and the body in it was just lying down making itself
comfortable. A white arm was reaching up to close the lid when the head
turned and saw me.

It was Alec, all right, naked and looking kind of annoyed. “Dammit,
Bill, I told you--well, it’s no longer sterile in here, so come in.” He
shoved back the lid, got out and took a robe off a hook.

“Are you convinced now?” He grinned and stuck out his hand. I was
convinced, but I wasn’t happy about it.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” I admitted, “but now that I’m here, how does it
work?”

He put on the robe and reached down inside the coffin. “These two
levers control the whole business. This one,” he pressed it, “cuts
in the proxy. When my head is between those electrode plates I’m in
perfect rapport. Watch.”

He bent into the coffin. I heard a shuffle on the kitchen floor, and
in walked another Alec. I looked from one to the other. It wasn’t a
healthy sensation. I said, “Cut it out. One of you guys is enough at a
time.” The proxy lay down carefully, and Alec withdrew his head.

“This other lever controls the lamps and the gas.” He moved it, and
the glass box filled with a smoky blue light from tubes that ran the
length of the inside edges. “That fog is an organic gas that seeps in
at specific rate. It’s mixed with oxygen, and when you inhale it your
lungs absorb it directly into the blood stream. In the presence of this
ultra-violet H-light your body can utilize the stuff by photosynthesis.
A shot of synthetic porphyrins once a month keeps up an abnormal
sensitivity to light, and your blood stream manufactures enough
carbohydrates to supply the minimum energy you use up lying prone and
in your hour’s exercise a day.”

“Exercise?”

“Of course. There would be general atrophy of the whole body if
you didn’t flex your muscles once in awhile. This short-wave light
keeps your organs toned up and inhibits infection. The whole room
is sterilized once a day or whenever the door is opened. The door,
incidentally, locks only on the inside.”

“What,” I asked, “would happen if I lay down in there?”

“Nothing. You’ll have to have your own proxy molded and synchronized.
They’re one-man affairs.”

“Whatever made you think I’d have one of those blasted things around
impersonating me,” I grouched.

“Hell, you’re impossible. Get out of here. I’m going to sterilize this
room.”

I slammed out of the apartment before Alec’s proxy came to life.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning I got Gwen on the phone. She was still a little cool,
but she apologized. “It wasn’t fair for Tommy to push you around while
you were _fleshing it_. If you reported him he’d stand a stiff fine.”

“He’ll stand a carbon knock in his carburetor if he crosses me again,”
I promised her. “How about you and me at the Vilt Ballroom tonight--in
the flesh?” I added. There was a little silence.

“You don’t understand, Bill. We don’t flesh it unless something serious
happens to our proxies, and then only until they’re repaired. Besides,
you’d better stay away from me until your proxy is completed. Tommy has
taken certain proprietary rights in me these days, and he’s terribly
jealous.”

In my Sunday vocabulary I told her what the Government Health Bureau
could do with their proxies. She took this as a reflection upon
herself, which it more or less was, I guess. Anyway, she hung up on me.

The first thing, I decided, was to teach Tommy the Open Door Policy. I
didn’t want him butting in when I got in the swing with Gwen. I found
his proxy at his office behind a lucite door labeled, ASSISTANT TRAFFIC
MANAGER, Stratas Five.

“Tommy,” I said, “for the sake of old times I won’t pop you. But get
this straight, next time you shove that plastic nose into my business
your proxy’ll be crying for a proxy. Incidentally, if you ever have
guts enough to play paddy-cake for keeps, leave that super-stand-in at
home and come see me.”

Tommy smiled with a set of perfect, of course, teeth. “The trouble with
you, Bill, is that you’re in my office. Your flesh is stinking up the
place. Get out.”

“Tommy, stand up and defend yourself.”

Tommy not only stood up but he slapped down my special one-two punch
like an Oreus Bug-eater spanking flies. Then he threw me out.

This was getting not only monotonous but kind of painful. Now both
hands ached, and I bled from minor lacerations I won’t identify.

       *       *       *       *       *

I got pretty interested watching them put my first proxy together
that afternoon. It was much more complicated than I had thought. Only
the skeletal structure was inanimate when brought into short-wave
rapport. There was a heart and a regular bloodstream. They explained
that a nervous system operates under more influences than afferent
and efferent control impulses, and in order to give sensation and
emotional reaction they had to include synthetic glands to release
real secretions like adrenalin. Hence, they needed a bloodstream,
which distributed the various juices and produced authentic reactions
and adjustments to the emotional stimuli of the real body and the
environmental conditions of the proxy.

It wasn’t a bad experience at all. They even warmed the mud for the
moulage cast, and it felt kind of good mushing around in it until I
got told to lie still. The first proof of the matrix showed every mole
and hair on me, even the tiny insect scars I collected on Venus.

I was sitting there admiring the finished product--it’s a funny
sensation getting the first good look at the back of your neck--when a
guy stepped up with a short-handled hammer and potted my poor proxy on
the forehead. The damned indelible red star! It reminded me of certain
aspects of second-hand living that had slipped my mind.

This ghoulish feeling got even stronger that night when I lay down
in my new apartment, in my new cell, in my new coffin. Following
directions, I had locked the door from the inside, stripped, sterilized
the cell and pulled the transparent coffin lid down over me. The two
levers jutted conveniently by my hand. I pushed the first one and had
to close my eyes against the sharp H-light. A warm draft of sweetish
gas drifted in, smelling like grass right after it’s cut. The deadly
silence and this smell reminded me of a cemetery. I noted my heart
slow down, then I didn’t seem to need such deep breaths. This was
approaching the state of semi-suspended animation they had explained
would lengthen a man’s life span almost indefinitely.

When I pulled the second lever something seemed to jar my brain into
a long tunnel full of mercury. At one end was this coffin affair and
my earthly clay. The other end let out through the eyes of my proxy in
the white laboratory of the Government Health Bureau eight miles away.
After a few minutes of this mental ice-skating I decided to take over
my understudy, which just required, apparently, a curious feeling as to
what was going on at the other end of the line.

I stood my new container up on its feet and did a little experimental
shadow-boxing. After a few minutes a blonde, red-star female came
in and tossed me a towel to wipe off the salty scum of synthetic
perspiration and said, “Nothing wrong with that build. It’ll get you
there and back. If you want to leave now, your clothes are in there.”

The long mirror in the dressing room showed the one flaw in my proxy. I
was _supposed_ to be blushing.

       *       *       *       *       *

Back at the apartment I smeared some makeup over the red star. My
Venusian complexion, which was still about the color of an old soccer
ball, and which they had refused to improve in my proxy, made it easy
to disguise the mark. It was a penitentiary offense I’d been told, but
I wanted to find out something about Tommy.

Knowing that Gwen had a date with Tommy, I got there early. She let me
in and then invited me to get out. “Tommy’ll be here any minute,” she
told me, avoiding her star with a powder puff.

I said, “You almost look human in that purple outfit.”

“Well, I don’t want blood spattered all over it,” she said. “Oh Bill,
why didn’t you get a proxy. I--I think a great deal of both of you.
You’re no match for Tommy’s proxy. Tommy will kill you, then he’ll be
executed, then I’ll throw away my proxy and let myself dry up to be an
old maid.”

“I don’t quite get this Gwen. You’ve changed a lot. The Gwen I used to
know hated a bully. You stand there and tell me that Tommy will use his
proxy to mash me up in my skin, and still you’re sweet on him.”

She looked just a little embarrassed. “You aren’t used to things yet,
Bill. The ethics are changed. If you stay you’ll be leering at Tommy
and baiting him. You know what a temper he has.”

“Well, my ethics haven’t changed any,” I said. “And personally, I doubt
that you’re right about Tommy. I like Tommy. We were pals. Sure he’s
got a temper, but if it’s changed him into an adolescent maniac, then
maybe you shouldn’t be running around with him. Anyhow, we’ll find out
pretty soon.”

“The hard way.” She looked so bleak and concerned I knew she wasn’t
just feeling sorry for herself. The trouble was I couldn’t be sure if
it was Tommy or me she was really worried about. I finally figured
there was one way of finding out, but I got only half way to her when
Tommy busted in. Very sweet he looked until he saw me.

I led off, “Hello, Pinocchio. Do you look smooth! Who takes the dents
out of your fenders these days?” I was surprised to notice Gwen sit
back in her chair, interested but not so fearful looking any more.
Tommy glared for a second, then he said, “You!”

“Right,” I admitted. “I see your headlights are adjusted, too. Well, if
you people are going out for the evening, I guess I’ll go home and rest
up. See you tomorrow, Gwen.”

Science is wonderful. They’ve even improved on a man’s sneer. Tommy’s
lips twisted into something like what a pretzel-maker would dream
about. Deep down in his rubber throat he said, “This is what you asked
for.”

I dived over the sofa and yelled, “Take it easy, you lug. What are you
going to do?”

       *       *       *       *       *

I let him catch me the third time around the sofa. He knocked down the
few feeble cracks I took at him, then he got ahold of my throat. I
wilted and waited. Here was the answer.

[Illustration]

A proxy breathes, but only for the purpose of talking. All the vital
arteries and nerve threads being buried good and deep, it was easy to
let his fingers gouge in. All I felt was the surface pain which there
was plenty of.

Just when my eyes were supposed to come popping out of my head I quit
play-acting. I reached up and scrubbed my red star clean for Tommy to
look at. “Leggo my tie,” I commanded, and he did.

“That’s--illegal!” he gagged. It was surprising how fast he cooled off.
Of course he’d been meaning to break a rule or two himself, and it was
only my Trojan Horse in reverse that had stopped him.

He turned on Gwen and shouted, “That’s a fine sweetheart you are! Why
didn’t you warn me?”

“Why Tommy, against what?” she asked innocently. “Besides, I didn’t
know for sure. I only guessed.”

“I don’t know what you can see in a Venusian mud mucker, but if you
want him take him.”

“Thank you,” Gwen said. “Maybe it’s his ethics I like. Don’t bother
dropping in at the wedding.”

For a second I thought Tommy was going to throw his proxy into battle,
but I guess he reconsidered the fact that with my proxy I had gotten
back my old muscle ratio in proportion to his somewhat puny one.
Knowing how hard he was going to take this jilt, I wouldn’t even have
kicked him in the pants if he hadn’t used a dirty word on the way out.

Gwen shut the door after him and said, “He meant to kill you.”

I asked her, “Were you serious about that wedding?”

“You just ruined the self-respect of my only other prospect. Do I have
to get down on my hands and knees?”

“I guess that does leave me a clear field, doesn’t it?”

She looked at me half smiling and half not smiling. “Well, Bill, what
have I done to deserve all that enthusiasm? Come to think of it, this
was my idea, wasn’t it?”

Right here I was supposed to say something and put it all right, but
the something wouldn’t come. Gwen came over and turned up her face. If
those had been her real eyes they’d have had tears in them.

She said, “It looks like I stuck my neck out. Maybe I’ll learn not to
take a proxy for granted.”

“That’s just it,” I managed to say. “I really wanted to marry you three
years ago, and I still feel that way about the real--you. But I just
can’t get feeling like that about a rubber doll even if it does look
like you.”

“Oh,” she said and looked down so I couldn’t see her face.

“Look, Gwen,” I hesitated, then I blurted out, “How do these proxy
people go about getting married?”

“Same as always. Hunt up a minister and take the vows.”

“And--then what?” I insisted, and at that instant I made a discovery:
_Lady_ proxies can blush!

“And then you go out and buy a coffin for two,” she murmured into my
mangled necktie.




Transcriber’s Note:


 This etext was produced from Imaginative Tales, September 1955 (Vol. 2,
No. 1). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

 Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor
inconsistencies have been retained as printed.

 The illustration has been moved to better fit the story.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78749 ***