Friends Come in Boxes Read online

  Friends Come in Boxes

  Michael G. Coney

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  I. Creche

  II. The Never Girl

  III. Menagerie

  IV. A Woman and Her Friend

  V. Charity Run

  Epilogue

  Website

  Also by Michael G. Coney

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  PHILLIP EWELL SUGGESTED it.

  He’s dead now, of course; he died happy at the age of seventy physical, although I think that in his last moments he almost regretted the impulse which had caused him to renounce his career as Transfer Surgeon some thirty-four years previously. This slight regret—and I’m sure it was slight—was not for selfish reasons. He did not personally crave immortality. But there was a certain wistfulness in his eyes as he spoke of the future, lying there in the neat grey stone cottage from the window of which he had a clear view across the village to the Moor, and Haytor Rock.

  “In twenty years’ time,” he said, his eyes bright despite the debilitating effects of his illness, “civilization as known by the cities will collapse. Compulsory Transfer will become a thing of the past. I know this will happen; the signs are all there. The System is self-destroying; it must be. Thank God…”

  “I wouldn’t trouble yourself with it, Phillip,” I said, concerned by the intensity with which he spoke. “When it happens, it happens; there’s no way we can accelerate events.” In fact, it happened much sooner than he had expected…

  He continued, ignoring my interruption: “We live a good life here, cut off from the rest of the world. But it’s my belief that we ought to concern ourselves with the cities to a greater extent than we do. They represent people, unhappy people dominated by the System. I’ve always felt that sometime, instead of just hiding out here, we should turn to the offensive. Hit out at the bastards who run things. And now, I don’t think I’m going to be around to help.”

  This was where he showed regret; this was Phillip Ewell’s private dilemma. He died fighting the System; had he supported the System, he might have lived forever… He was quieter again, now; his face was calm as he gazed out of the window at the Moor; his hands, pale and skeletal, lay motionless on the bed. The little scars were still there, those tell-tale scars between the fingers which are the mark of the android…

  “September twenty-eighth, in the year 2256,” he whispered. “Do you remember that day? Do you, Eric? Christ, was that a day…”

  I remembered the day, after his reminiscences of events had struck the chord in my memory. It was the day I first met Ewell; it was also the day when Ewell renounced civilization.

  “You were a cocky bastard, Eric,” he said, without offence, because it was true. “I can remember the events of that day pretty clearly, and one thing which stands out in my mind is your utter selfishness and your complete callousness with regard to other people’s misfortunes. That story you told me about … Anstead, wasn’t it?”

  “I hope I’ve changed for the better since I came to Bovey,” I said with mock humility.

  “You were a product of your environment, I don’t blame you for it. But it surprised me when you turned up here”—he chuckled faintly—”covered with shit and with all the stuffing knocked out of you.”

  “A customs offence,” I said with dignity. “They found smuggled whisky on the premises. Can’t think how it got there.”

  “No doubt. It’s all in the past, now. As for the future … There’s one last thing I’d like to do, with your help. Bovey is moving forward…” He held up a copy of the Valley Times, our weekly newspaper of local events and personalities. “I’d like to write a history book.”

  “About life as a Transfer Surgeon? Or a village doctor?”

  “Neither, precisely. Other people will do that sort of thing. In years to come, other people will write factual accounts of the years of Compulsory Transfer, too. That’s not what I’m thinking of. I visualize something more on the lines of an underground novel, I believe they’re called; based on fact. To be printed here, and distributed in the cities. That shouldn’t be much of a problem now, since the Code Card system broke down…”

  “We’re already delivering the Valley Times to Axminster. The authorities have made it a punishable offence to be in possession of the thing, which shows a measure of success for us, I suppose.”

  “Fine.” Ewell gazed at me thoughtfully, presumably trying to assess my response in advance. “Now, the novel. This is what I visualize. It will be propaganda for our way of life, but not obvious propaganda. By this I mean that the System will not be condemned except where such condemnation might occur naturally in the course of conversation. The story must be told in such a way that the reader will get involved in it from the point of view of the characters; and the characters will be ordinary people; mildly good, mildly bad. No melodramatic blacks and whites. Get me?”

  “It’s bound to be like that, if it’s based on fact,” I said.

  “Good. I think we speak the same language. So the city dweller, reading the book, will not feel he’s being preached to; mild good may triumph over mild evil or vice versa, but the ultimate evil, the System, will not lose out. The very way in which the characters’ actions are manipulated by the System should be enough, if the reader has any sense at all, to give him a satisfactory sensation of disgust…”

  I’m merely an ex-bartender editing a small newspaper. I began to wonder whether what Phillip was suggesting was maybe a little beyond me. I said so.

  He reassured me. “Everybody in the city is accustomed to the System,” he said, “and human dramas occur as a result of it. Don’t worry about that part, Eric. I can supply you with all the background detail you require, even down to the names of the characters you will use. You will have to do a certain amount of research in the city, but I’m aware that you go to Axminster from time to time to transact private business. You can work this project in wi
th your visits; an interview here, a quiet talk there, well out of earshot of the authorities.”

  “You mean enough things will happen to fill a book?” I asked doubtfully. “In Axminster alone?” It had always seemed a dull, regimented place to me.

  “Enough things happen in one day to fill a book,” he informed me. “I can tell you the stories—true stories—in so far as I know them; and thanks to the System, many of the people concerned are still alive, still immortal. All you have to do is fill them out from your research, polish them up, and get them into print.”

  I was becoming interested. “Over what period do these events take place?”

  “I said one day. In fact, I was thinking of September twenty-eighth, 2256.”

  So Phillip Ewell suggested this novel, or dossier, as I came to think of it, and he told me the stories in his thin voice, lying there in the grey cottage under the hills of Dartmoor. Before he died, he was able to supply enough detail for me to commence research; and once I started this I became interested in the production for its own sake. I accumulated thick files dealing with the characters, my impressions of them, the words they spoke to me in the secret places of the city. Then I changed the names to protect both innocent and guilty—in the city, the distinction is slight—and I began to write.

  I immediately came up against a problem; in order to describe the later days of a way of life which has degenerated since its inception, a certain amount of background history is necessary. This I will deal with as briefly as possible, right now.

  In the year 2050 the world population amounted to fifteen billion and the Euthanasia Act (as amended) had been thrown out for the second time. It seemed that the over-sixties still wanted to live, none more so than the representatives of the World Government. The population was almost entirely crowded into the cities; the smaller towns and villages having been ploughed under in the struggle for food. The coastal fish farms were not doing so well as had been hoped, due to pollution problems; and stringent rationing schemes were introduced.

  In the year 2053 the city of Manila in the Philippines starved to death. Quite simply, the ration of food per capita fell below the subsistence level. Help was not forthcoming—nobody was in a position to help—and the inhabitants died, in such numbers that organization of supplies for the more hardy survivors could not be maintained, so they died also, apart from the few who had the strength, wit, and enthusiasm to move into the fields and eat the mutated root vegetables.

  There is nothing like a good honest panic for promoting swift action. The man came with the hour; one Theo Kleinmaker, persuasive representative for the north-east states, who put forward his scheme for Compulsory Transfer. It was accepted without amendment. Its advantages, so it seemed at the time, were numerous.

  Today, they may seem amusing in a sick way; but we have the benefit of hindsight. Kleinmaker was sincere; this is what he thought:

  1. Too many children are being born.

  2. A person, once he passes the age of forty, becomes progressively a burden on the community.

  3. Despite this, his mental ability may be unimpaired, and his death could be a loss to the community as a whole.

  4. And significantly, brain surgery has reached a high level of efficiency.

  He was right, of course; Kleinmaker was right in all his basics; all these things were true…

  Unfortunately he had a tidy mind and was a persuasive speaker. He produced one solution for items 1 to 3 above, just one single neat solution, involving item 4.

  He put across the idea of Compulsory Transfer.

  Compulsory Transfer: on his fortieth birthday every person must attend a Transfer Centre, where his brain will be removed and his body destroyed. The brain will then be placed in the adapted cranium of a six-month-old child. The person, in the form of a brain in a host body, will then go through a second physical childhood, physical maturity, and eventually, at the physical age of forty, the Transfer process will be repeated. Ad infinitum.

  Immortality!

  The magic word which swung the deal. The advantages, according to Kleinmaker:

  1. The birthrate will fall naturally, as every prospective parent knows that his child will be taken away at age six months, to be used as a host. The point of having children—the basic egotistical idea of reproducing oneself—will become null.

  2. Nobody will be physically too old for useful work.

  3. Valuable intelligence will not be lost through death.

  There were other measures, of course. A Code Card was introduced, a combination identity and credit card. This would guard against the possibility of births being concealed by unduly sentimental parents. Various other technicalities were involved which I do not need to dwell on here, as they will become clear in the later portion of the dossier.

  On paper, a neat and tidy solution to the problem of over-population by a neat and tidy man.

  Unfortunately, no one spotted the snag…

  Nobody could have foreseen the dramatic manner in which the birthrate would fall—resulting in a growing waiting list for host bodies, the creation of Friendship Boxes to house the essential brains of those who waited, and the introduction of the Preferred Trade concept in order that politicians and other influential persons might legally jump the queue.

  Nobody could have foreseen the necessity to create androids for use as host bodies—or the failure of this experiment due to the human dislike of a body differing, however slightly, from the norm.

  And so the Friendship Boxes proliferated, a waiting, grumbling, immobile but vocal section of the community, a constant source of embarrassment to every politician.

  So the Total Death Act of 2176 was introduced and passed without amendment. Simply, it stated that, as from the date of enactment, no person with a criminal record, or who was proven insane, would be eligible for Transfer. In order to ensure the success of the measure the Criminal Law was extended to embrace almost every possible type of malfeasance.

  The thinking behind this was, for a change, logically correct. Up to the age of forty a person might have children; it would be foolish to hang him, electrocute him or whatever for his minor crime. And an outright death sentence for shoplifting seemed a little drastic… So let him live, but take careful note of his offence. Sooner or later his fortieth birthday will arrive. And when it does, there will be no Friendship Box available for him. If he has so much as double-parked his hovercar during his life, that life will end at forty…

  And the graphs straightened out, and the crime-rate dropped, and the authorities breathed again.

  So much for history. In the year 2256, the year in which the events described in the following pages took place, things had not changed very much. The waiting list had become longer, but not frighteningly so. The androids had become more numerous and the culture vats had been closed down; they were breeding freely by natural means and had become an accepted, if sometimes resented, part of the community. Their birthrate greatly exceeded the rate at which they became liable for Transfer, so many of their children were allowed to progress to adulthood.

  The following dossier is about people; Phillip Ewell wanted it that way. People includes androids: if a factual account can be said to have a hero, then Phillip is that hero—and Phillip was an android.

  There is a heroine too, or perhaps an anti-heroine. Her name is Alice Lander. She is human…

  CRECHE

  being the dossier on:

  NURSE ELEANOR JONES

  SISTER NANCY BLACKETT

  NURSING SISTER NANCY BLACKETT was ideally suited to her job.

  Nurse Eleanor Jones had realized this almost from the first moment she had taken up her appointment at the Axminster Creche for infant children and adults; there had been something almost military in the way the Sister had greeted her. Thin-lipped and square-framed, the Sister strode the wards like a colonel; uttering a terse command here, an acid criticism there, all the while making clear her belief that glittering polish and geometrical pr
ecision of furniture arrangement were more important than health and mental well-being. Eleanor Jones admitted that Sister Blackett had the knack of commanding respect—that vague word with its connotations of abject fear. She was able, even, to maintain discipline—another word disliked by Eleanor—in the infant adults’ ward, where the recent Transferees gave Eleanor herself a difficult time.

  All of which amounts to the fact that Eleanor cordially hated the very ground that Sister Blackett walked upon. Her favourite daydream, and she indulged in many, concerned the Sister’s next transfer. The Sister was thirty-eight physical years old and therefore only had her present body for another two years. Wouldn’t it be great, thought Eleanor maliciously, if Sister Blackett’s next body was undersized, puny, and subject to asthma or haemorrhoids or some other inconvenient disease; nothing too serious nothing which might warrant Sister Blackett applying for a Premature Transfer on the grounds of the death risk—just a mild, permanent disease which would cut the woman down to size. Unfortunately, Eleanor was quite certain that the Sister’s indomitable will would triumph over such trifles…

  She walked to the window and looked down at the deserted dawn streets of Axminster. The building opposite had a large indicator board fixed to its wall and, as she watched, a test symbol appeared on the screen. Police Headquarters was preparing for action; shortly the names of wanted criminals would be flashed on to the screen together with their Code Numbers, while at the same time every cash/credit register in the area would be alerted; on presentation of a wanted Card a bell would ring and a message would be flashed back to Police Headquarters…

  Eleanor watched idly as a young girl appeared around a corner, followed by a large carrier dog. The girl trod furtively, the dog padded stealthily behind; the demeanour of the odd couple implied “criminal” as flamboyantly as if the girl had shouted confessions at the echoing streets. Eleanor felt sorry for her. She knew what it was like to contravene the law; what it was like to walk in fear, glancing at every indicator board for the appearance of one’s own name…