Arkwright Page 3

  Sunday morning church bells were still echoing through midtown Manhattan when Nat strolled down West Fifty-ninth Street. He didn’t know exactly where Caravan Hall was, but that was where the piece in Astounding had said the convention was being held. As it turned out, it was a couple of blocks from the Hudson River waterfront, and he didn’t have to look hard to find it. A handful of young men standing out front holding copies of the latest issues of Amazing, Astounding, and Thrilling Wonder told him that he’d come to the right place.

  Oddly, two police officers stood beside the steps leading to the front door. They were eyeing everyone who walked in, and Nat couldn’t help but notice that one of them was tapping his nightstick against his leg. This didn’t look good. Nat decided that he’d better make sure he was in the right place, so he approached three guys standing across the street from the hall. One of them, a skinny fellow with a row of protuberant front teeth, gazed at Nat as he stepped up to them.

  “Excuse me, but—” Nat began.

  “You’re looking for the World’s Science Fiction Convention?”

  Nat nodded.

  “Upstairs. Second floor.” He nodded toward the door. “Who are you?”

  “Nat Arkwright, from Brooklyn.”

  “Fred Pohl, from Queens.” He offered a handshake as he nodded to the others. “Don Wollheim and Cyril Kornbluth.”

  Nat shook hands with each of them, trying not to show his nervousness. He recognized Wollheim and Pohl as bylines from stories he’d read; they weren’t major writers, to be sure, but he was envious to meet fellows not much older than himself who’d succeeded in selling stories to the pulps. But it wasn’t just that. Nat had never before met anyone else who shared his passion for science fiction; no one else at Brooklyn High had the slightest bit of interest in this sort of thing, and he found himself anxious to fit in.

  “How did you find out about this?” Cyril asked. He was a big, broad-shouldered fellow whose sharp eyes peered at Nat from behind horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Saw a bit about it in that magazine.” Nat pointed to the copy of Astounding tucked under Cyril’s arm. It was the new issue, with a cover story, “Black Destroyer,” by someone he’d never heard of, A. E. van Vogt. “Close enough to where I live, so I decided to drop in.”

  “Oh, so you’re new to this,” Don said. “Lucky for you. They’re banning the Futurians.”

  Nat gave him a baffled look. “What’s a Futurian?”

  The other three were already chuckling over this. “Maybe it’s better you don’t know,” Fred said. “But you may want to move on. If someone sees you with us, they might not let you in.”

  Putting two and two together, Nat determined that these three fellows were Futurians, whoever they might be. He looked across the street at the cops. “Is that why they’re here?”

  “Uh-huh.” Cyril followed Nat’s gaze; one of the cops stared back, and neither the cop nor Cyril dropped his eyes. “Sam … that’s Sam Moskowitz, the convention chairman … saw us coming and wouldn’t let us in. We tried to rush the door, and he called the cops—”

  “You rushed the door,” Fred said pointedly. “I was still at the dentist.”

  “Yeah, you got here late and missed everything.” Don was grinning like the proverbial cat. “That, and Cyril punching Forry Ackerman in the stomach—”

  “He had it coming.” Cyril smiled at Nat and then suddenly balled a fist and feigned a lunge at him.

  It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to fake him out this way; Nat didn’t flinch but simply glared at him instead. Disappointed, Cyril relaxed, and Nat turned to Fred again. “What does Sam have against you that makes him want to—”

  “Never mind. Long story.” Fred shook his head. “Go on up and have fun. Just don’t let anyone know you’ve met us, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Nat hesitated and then turned and walked across the street. The two cops watched him, and sure enough, before he set foot on the stairs, one of them moved to block his way. But then a kid about Nat’s age who’d been standing behind tapped the policeman on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear. The cop nodded and without a word stepped away, swinging his nightstick to let Nat know that it was okay to proceed. Letting go of his breath, Nat walked upstairs and through the door.

  Caravan Hall was a single large room with a bare wooden floor and walls painted in a pseudo-Egyptian art-deco style, the sort of second-floor loft usually rented out for lodge meetings and private dances. Although the balcony doors were open, the room was stuffy with the trapped heat of a summer day; the only concession was a watercooler off to one side, with a coin dispenser that sold paper cups for a nickel. One look at it, and Nat decided that he’d rather go thirsty; the dollar he’d coughed up at the folding paper near the door represented half of what he’d earned last week in commissions from the part-time job he had at his family’s shoe store, and he’d need the pocket change he had left for a meal and the subway ride back home.

  The room was filled with young men—mainly in their teens and twenties, most of them wearing jackets and ties—but, so far as Nat could tell, only two or three girls. They chatted with one another, leafed through the hectographed fan publications set out on display tables, studied the garish cover paintings from pulp magazines that had been placed on easels. A projection screen had been set up at the far end of the room, and the program sheet he’d been handed told him that Metropolis would be shown that evening.

  Nat had heard of the movie but had never seen it; he wondered if his father would mind too much if he stayed late to catch it. Probably. His father wasn’t crazy about his son’s fascination with trashy pulps, let alone his aspiration to write for them. This might be the only day he’d be able to spend at the convention, and only because the store was closed on Sunday. Nat wandered through the crowd, determined to make the best of it but still at a loss as to how.

  He noticed a small group standing off toward one side of the room and walked over to see what was going on. He discovered that they were all looking at a tall guy with a goofy smile who had shown up wearing a fin-shouldered outfit that looked as if it had come straight out of a Buck Rogers strip; the crowd was both admiring and laughing at his costume, and the chap wearing it was basking in the attention. As he moved closer to get a better look, Nat bumped shoulders with a teenager just a year or two younger than himself.

  “Sorry,” Nat said, and the other youngster smiled forgivingly. “Will you get a load of that?” he added, trying to strike up a conversation.

  “Yeah, it’s something, isn’t it?” The boy wore an open-collar shirt and no tie; his casual attire and midwestern accent told Nat that he wasn’t a New Yorker. “Forry made it all by himself. He wanted to wear it on the bus, but I wouldn’t let him.”

  Nat figured that this must the same Forry whom Cyril Kornbluth had punched earlier. He wondered if it was because of the costume or simply because Cyril liked punching people. Whatever the reason, he decided not to mention it. “Where did you come from?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “You took the bus all the way from California?” Nat was incredulous. The boy nodded happily. “How long did it take you to—?”

  “Just who the hell do you think you are?” a voice demanded.

  At first, Nat thought someone was addressing him. When he looked around, though, he saw that the voice belonged to someone standing directly behind him and the guy from California. Another teenager, he was directing his anger at a man in his late twenties.

  “The convention chair, that’s who,” the older man replied, just as angry as the kid. “And if you’re going to be passing out those things”—he pointed to a bunch of red pamphlets in the youngster’s hand—“then I reserve the right to tell you to take a hike.”

  “Me? What are you coming at me for?” Stocky and a head shorter than the man who’d confronted him, with a peach-fuzz mustache grown in an obvious attempt to make himself look older, the kid had the pugnacious attitude of som
eone who’d grown up on the street; Nathan’s ear picked up a Philly accent. “They’re not mine, pal. I just found them stashed under the radiator and thought—”

  “You’d be a good guy and hand ’em out?” The convention chairman—this must be the Sam Moskowitz, Nat figured, whom Cyril Kornbluth said had called the cops—reached to take them away. “Fat chance I’m letting you Futurians pass around your commie filth. Give ’em here!”

  The kid backed away, and as he did, one of the pamphlets fell from his hands. Curious, Nat bent down to pick it up. He barely had a chance to read the headline—BEWARE THE DICTATORSHIP!—before Sam snatched it away from him.

  “Hey!” Nat exclaimed. “I was looking at that!”

  Sam ignored him. By then, several people who’d been admiring the man in the futuristic costume had turned their attention to the argument. From the corner of his eye, Nat noticed that one of them was a pretty girl about his own age, one of the few females in the room. Nat hoped that he wasn’t embarrassing himself.

  “Surely, just reading the material isn’t grounds for expulsion.” This from another bystander, a tall chap with a beak nose and ears like pitcher handles. He gestured to the pamphlet Sam had taken away from Nat. “If you don’t want to be accused of being a dictator, perhaps you shouldn’t behave like one.”

  The convention chairman cast him an angry glare, and in that moment of distraction, the girl moved in. “May I have one of those, please?” she asked the kid, politely holding out her hand. “I’d like to see what it says.”

  The kid grinned and started to give her a pamphlet, but Sam blocked him. “Oh no, you don’t! Try that again, and I’m throwing you out with the rest of the Futurians!”

  “Oh yeah? Then how come you let Asimov in?” He pointed to a fellow wearing a bow tie who stood nearby. “He’s one of them too, y’know.”

  “Hey, leave me out of this,” Asimov said.

  “He agreed to behave himself and not bring politics into the convention.”

  “Politics, or just politics you don’t like?” The kid gave him a look of contempt. “You’re about as bad as Herr Schicklgruber, you know that?”

  Sam’s face went red, his lips pulling back from his teeth. Nat saw his hands start to curl into fists, and he knew that a punch was coming.

  “Hey, now, wait a sec,” he began, stepping forward to place himself between the two combatants.

  But Sam was already in motion, and all Nat managed to do was get in the way. Caught off balance, he fell to the floor; a second later, he found himself at the young lady’s feet. She had nice legs. He looked up to find her staring down at him, both aghast and amused, and he was trying to find something clever to say—how would Cary Grant handle this?—when another guy rushed forward to push the chairman and the kid away from each other.

  “Okay, break it up!” he demanded. “No fighting in here!”

  “Get ’em out of here, Willie!” Sam snapped, pointing to both the kid and Nat. “Throw ’em out, both of ’em!”

  Nat stared at him. “Now just a minute! I didn’t—”

  “No, he did not.” The girl stepped over Nat to confront Willie. “He was trying to stop a fight, that’s all. Your friend—”

  “Her too!” Sam snapped his fingers toward the door. “Out! Now!”

  Willie started to reach for the girl, but she slapped the back of his wrist. “Mitts off, buster!” He winced and yanked his hand back, and she turned to Sam. “If this is the way you intend to run this convention, then I’ll be happy to leave.”

  By then, Nat was beginning to sit up. “And even if you were giving me a choice in the matter, I’d join her, anyway.”

  She glanced down at him and gave him a lovely smile. Yeah, that was the right thing to say. Nat started to struggle up from the floor and found himself being helped to his feet by the kid. Now it was the three of them against the convention chairman and his friend. This wasn’t the way Nat intended to make friends here, but there was no backing down now.

  “I’m not a Futurian,” Nat said to Sam, “but could you point them out to me so I can ask to join?” Not waiting for an answer, he patted the kid’s shoulder. “C’mon, friend. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “I’ll buy you both lunch,” the girl said. “There’s a place across the street. Let’s go.”

  Nat and the kid shared a surprised glance. A free lunch from a swell-looking girl was an offer they couldn’t refuse.

  “After you, madam,” the kid said, giving her a gallant bow.

  “Thank you, kind sir.” She fell in step with them as they walked away. Ignoring the stares and scattered applause of those who’d witnessed the altercation, they made their way through the crowded hall and down the steps, but it wasn’t until they reached the sidewalk that they discovered a fourth person had joined them, the tall fellow who’d tried to defend them.

  “What are you doing here?” Nat asked. “They didn’t throw you out.”

  “No, they didn’t.” The tall man reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a briar pipe. “But hanging around with the three of you looks like more fun.”

  * * *

  The restaurant across the street from Caravan Hall was an Automat, appropriately futuristic for the World’s Science Fiction Convention. Vending machines with little glass doors dispensed sandwiches and pie slices for a nickel apiece, leaving the waiter with only the job of coming around to pour coffee. For Sunday noon, the place was crowded; all the tables were taken.

  The girl—whose name was Margaret Krough, although she insisted that they call her Maggie—made good her promise to buy lunch for Nat and the kid. His name was Harry Skinner, and it was clear that, although he seemed to be just as poor as Nat was, he was perfectly willing to take advantage of her generosity; he let Maggie plug nickels into the machines until he had a submarine sandwich, a Boston cream pie, and a carton of milk on his tray. Nat settled for a chicken salad sandwich and told Maggie that he’d repay her later. The tall chap, whose name was George Hallahan, bought his own lunch; Maggie’s offer hadn’t been extended to him, but he didn’t seem to mind. A little older than the rest of them, he was also the most reserved, yet Nat detected a keen and swift intelligence behind his quiet, perpetual smile.

  Once they’d collected their food, they waited a few minutes for a group to vacate a table so they could take their place. “I think half the convention has moved over here,” Nat said, looking around as they settled into chrome-frame chairs. Everyone in the room appeared to be the same sort of young men whom they’d left behind.

  “Not surprised,” said Harry. “There’s a feud going on among the fans who organized the convention. The Futurians are the guys who lost, so the other guys voted in an exclusion act to bar them from coming in.” He motioned toward a large group who’d pulled together several tables; Nat recognized among them Fred, Cyril, and Don. “But they showed up, anyway, and that’s got the people inside hot under the collar.”

  “So what is it about them that’s upset the other guys?”

  “The Futurians believe that science fiction can change the world,” Harry said. “They think it should do more than just entertain people and instead present ways in which science and technology can solve social problems. The other guys—the so-called New Fandom, although most of them are just diehards from the old Science Fiction League—only want monsters and mad scientists and claim that the Futurians are nothing but a bunch of communists.” A lopsided grin. “They’re half-right, really. Some of the Futurians are reds … or at least they used to be.”

  Nat nodded. Although he wasn’t interested in joining the Communist Party, he had to agree that science fiction needed to get past its adolescent tendencies. “And the leaflet you were handing out?”

  “Dave Kyle wrote it. It’s a statement of the Futurian position.” Harry bit into his sandwich. “He must have tried to ditch ’em under the radiator,” he added, speaking around a mouthful of food. “I found ’em and decided to hand ’em out, anyway.
” An unhappy shrug. “Fat lot of good that did me.”

  Nat frowned but said nothing. He was beginning to regret his decision to step up for Harry. Wasting a dollar was bad enough; it now appeared that he’d made enemies with the convention chairman, as well. He hoped that incident wouldn’t hurt his goals of becoming a writer, but it appeared that he might have picked the wrong side.

  “Sounds like you know a lot,” Maggie said. From her accent, Nat pegged her as another New Yorker, but it wasn’t hard to tell that her neighborhood wasn’t in any of the boroughs. From the nice outfit she wore and the casual way she pulled lunch money from her purse, it wasn’t hard to guess that she lived somewhere on the Upper East Side. “You know these people?”

  “Some of ’em. I’ve been coming to meetings of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society for about a year now; that’s where this whole thing was hatched.” Harry put aside the sandwich and reached for the carton of milk. “What about you? Why are you here?”

  “I like science fiction, that’s all.” There was a hint of defensiveness in her tone.

  Nat opened his sandwich, inspected the wilted lettuce leaf on top, and decided that it hadn’t turned bad enough to make him sick. “I guess what he means is, y’know, I didn’t see many girls in there. I didn’t think any of them read this stuff until I met you.”

  Maggie gave him a sharp look but then cooled down a little when she saw the smile on his face. “I suppose not many do,” she admitted. “But I’ll read anything that looks interesting, and there are some good stories in those magazines, particularly Astounding, ever since it got a new editor.”

  “John Campbell.” Nat nodded in agreement. “Yes, he’s changed the magazine quite a bit since he’s come aboard. I’d like to—”

  He stopped himself before he could finish what he was about to say: I’d like to send him one of my stories. He was reluctant to identify himself as a would-be writer, particularly not with three people whom he’d just met.