John D. MacDonald

Appointment for Tomorrow

He had heard the hush, the sudden silence, in the large outer office and he had frowned, wondering at the cause. For the past year he had been working with an increasing sense of urgency, and on the backing of his loyal staff depended much of his efficiency. And so the silence annoyed him.

His secretary, Martha Hood, came into his office, closed the door behind her. She said, hesitantly, “There — are some men to see you, Mr. Larkin.”

This was no example of Miss Hood’s usual crisp efficiency.

With irritation firmly under check, he said evenly, “Why didn’t you use the intercom? And who are these men?”

Miss Hood looked very strange. Her face was pale. Her lips trembled. Suddenly he knew the answer.

He had been checking a column of figures. The long yellow pencil snapped in his fingers and he looked at the broken piece dully as it rolled across the desk, dropped to the floor with a tiny clatter. “So soon!” he said softly. “So soon.”

Her voice was thick with tears. “Mr. Larkin, I...”

“Send them in, Miss Hood.”

She turned and left the office and he saw that, tear-blinded, she missed the door handle the first time.

There were three of them. The last one carried a thick portfolio. They wore the traditional dull gray of the Future Bureau, the gray with crimson piping that had been caricatured so often in the public press — a grim form of humor.

“Mr. Samuel Larkin?” the first one asked. Traditional and pointless question.

He nodded.

They stood in front of his big desk. “As field agents of the Future Bureau, Mr. Larkin, it is our unpleasant duty to advise you that—”

“Skip the standard routine.” Samuel Larkin said heavily. “Are you sure of your charts?”

The spokesman said, “We would hardly take this step unless all the figures had been checked many times. Over a year ago, according to our records, you were sent Form 89 A, advising you of a potential approaching danger period in your personal probability chart, and suggesting the standard series of habit and routine alterations to eliminate that danger. You made no such alterations.”

“My work at that time was too important,” Larkin said.

“Six months ago we substantiated our first prognosis and advised you in Form 89 B that only major and thorough alterations would have a chance of altering the extrapolation of your master chart.”

“It would have meant giving up my work,” Larkin said. “And I consider my work important.”

For the first time the cold official manner was dropped. “Evidently,” the spokesman said drily. “Get out the charts, Rogers.”

The man opened the portfolio, spread the neat master chart on Larkin’s desk. The spokesman said, “You will note the cyclical tendency of the past, your recurring periods of personal danger and serious illness. You will note that the present time is high on the curve of the extrapolated cycle.”

Rogers took a transparent overlay, fitted it onto the master chart. “This overlay,” said the spokesman, “shows the cyclical characteristics of your personality, the degree of emotional flux. Note that the line subtends the accident line very shortly in the future. This next overlay is over-all mortality and accident factors in your specific profession. Again there is subtending of the line in the immediate future. This last sheet is the calculation wherein there has been set up your personal mortality factor, multiplied by the standard indices. You will note that the final figure is exceptionally high.”

Larkin studied the charts, then pushed them across the desk. He said, “What chance have I got?”

“We are always asked that question, Mr. Larkin, even by men whose technical training is equivalent to yours. The answer is, of course, none.”

Larkin’s lips felt numbed. He asked softly, “How much time have I got?”

“Until tomorrow.”

He felt the dull anger. “Why not more time? Why not more?”

“You received the warning thirty days ago. You are fortunate to have an index of stability sufficiently high so that we can give you the exact day. Others do not receive this last notice. The law requires me to ask you if your affairs are in order.”

“They are,” Samuel Larkin said.

“Are there any questions?”

“I have the right to elect the usual — alternative?”

“Everyone has that right, Mr. Larkin. No more questions?”

The three trooped out. The last one closed the door behind him. Samuel Larkin sat at his desk, more alone than he had ever been in his life. Mechanically he picked up the papers on his desk, aligned the edges, put them in the desk basket.

The usual sounds from the outer office were subdued.

Larkin was a big man. His shoulders were heavy and there was a fullness under his chin, but he had kept his waistline down, kept his big body hard throughout the years of executive work. He was forty-seven years old, his dark hair liberally touched with gray at the temples.

Martha Hood came in timidly and he saw on her sensitive face an uncertainty, a tiny flicker of hope. “Did they—”

“It’s true, Miss Hood,” he said deliberately.

She gave a small stifled cry, turned her back to him. He went quickly around the desk, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. As he did so he realized wryly that it was the first time in the seven years she had worked for him that he had ever touched her. She had reported to him on her twenty-second birthday, selected from the stenographic pool on the basis of intelligence, beauty and breeding.

She did not look up at him. He put his big knuckles gently under her soft chin, lifted her face. She looked at him with streaming eyes. “It isn’t fair!” she said. “It isn’t fair!”

“Fate isn’t a very fair thing, my dear. Come now. There’s a lot to do. Last-minute things.” His voice choked strangely on the last phrase.

She dried her eyes, went and got her notebook.

It was automatic. His subconscious mind had been planning what he would do. First he dictated a note to Farnum who was in London on a business trip. He told Farnum that from now on the venture was in his hands, that he had been lucky to have as effective and devoted an assistant as Farnum, and that the Board of Directors, in secret meeting three weeks before, had approved Farnum as his successor. He appended a power of attorney to facilitate Farnum’s cleaning up any last details.

He also appended a memorandum to Farnum in outline form, suggesting the methods of handling certain pending business matters.

Martha Hood took the dictation, and once he saw a tear drop onto the sheet as she wrote.

The chair creaked as he leaned back. “Miss Hood, get my personal folder out of the safe file. I do not wish to be disturbed for the rest of the afternoon. Get me some writing paper and envelopes, please. Tell the rest of the staff that I will expect to see them, one at a time, at closing time.”

She said, “That will be — hard for you, Mr. Larkin.”

“I want to see each one of them one more time, Miss Hood.”

She brought back the items he had requested. He read over his will. For the first time in his life he was glad that his invalid wife had died six years before. He remembered how he had debated whether or not to tell her how long the Future Bureau gave her to live. And he had decided against it, had made her last days as happy as he could possibly make them. There had been, of course, no alternative for her.

He thought of his son, in school a thousand miles away, as he read over the will. It was adequate. There would be a generous allowance until school was finished, then enough for a year of travel. The rest of the estate would then be paid in a lump sum. He wrote the letter quickly in his large, sprawling hand, avoiding sticky sentiment, saying, at the end of the letter, that he was glad to have had such a son. Glad and proud.

He carried current funds in a checking account. He examined the balance, then made out nine checks to the nine oldest employees, grading them in order of years of service. He made out a larger check to Miss Hood, attached a note asking her to see that the employees received any portion she thought proper.

After that, he sealed the envelopes. There was a half hour remaining in which to write notes to a few good friends, friends who had outlasted the years.

At five Miss Hood opened the door and asked, “Are you ready, Mr. Larkin?”

He nodded and they came in, one at a time. He stood in front of his desk and shook hands with each of them. They mumbled the proper phrases, memorized a few moments before they had entered his office. He thanked each one of them for their work and their loyalty.

After the last one had gone he sat behind his desk once more. He sat without moving, and the lowering sun cast his gigantic shadow on the far wall. The shadow faded and the office was filled with the gray-pink glow of dusk. The glow faded and the office furniture turned to dark shadows in the room. He sat with his hands knotted on the desk top and thought of the good years. He reviewed the decision he had made when he received the first form letter from the Future Bureau. It was still a good decision. To have stepped out at that time would have meant work undone, work that related directly to the happiness of thousands. At that time Farnum wasn’t well enough trained to take over. If he had made an error, it had been that. He had made himself too indispensible to the operations.

But knowing the decision was just did nothing to eliminate the fear that seemed to crouch like a patient beast in the deeper shadows in the corners of the big office.

The lights of the city were on and a distant display sign made a dim pulsing of blue against the office ceiling, like the slow beat of an eternal heart.

The door opened and he blinked against the light, seeing the silhouette of Miss Hood in the doorway. He had almost forgotten her. It was as though, in the fresh knowledge of what had happened to him, he was moving further away from every human contact.

“Mr. Larkin, you shouldn’t sit here in the dark.”

“Come and sit with me, Martha.” he said.

She shut the door against the light and came over to the desk. She sat in the chair beside the desk, in the place where, for seven years, she had taken his dictation, cool and efficient.

He was glad that she knew the value of silence. And suddenly she was dearer to him than any of those to whom he had written the notes. As dear as his son.

Her hand was a moving paleness in the gloom. She reached out and placed her hand over his. She squeezed hard.

He laughed then. A small laugh, hoarse and embarrassed. He said, “This is almost completely ridiculous, Martha. You’ve been here every day, and yet I never knew. You’re so much younger than I. Now it’s as if I’m meeting you for the first time. And finding suddenly that I love you.”

“I hoped you’d say that, Sam,” she said. “It’s been one-sided for so long.”

“But I’m so much older than—”

“I don’t feel that way. I never have. Not from the first day.”

He leaned toward her, found her mouth in the darkness, and kissed her. It was not a kiss of promise, for he had no future. It was, in a sense, a dedication and an acknowledgment. He could smell the fragrance of her hair.

“So much wasted time,” he said heavily.

Her fingers touched his lips. “Don’t say that, Sam. Don’t say it. It has been good. Every minute of it. You see, I knew, even if you didn’t.”

He sat in the darkness and held her smooth hand and felt once again as he had when he was small, when the darkness was peopled with things of horror and fear came with the night.

They sat together and heard the distant small sounds of the city. They sat with a heightened consciousness of each other.

He left her without quite daring to go through the formality of saying good-by. He left her inside the office and he shut the door, leaned weakly against it, knowing that not only was the closed office door a symbol of twenty years of his work, but that the girl beyond the closed door was a symbol of wasted years, of tenderness that could have been his.

Hearing the small, resigned sound of her weeping, he straightened his heavy shoulders, walked with determined tread through the outer office, down the corridor.

The city was alive with those who tasted the night, alive with the laughter of women, the brittle sound of ice in tall glasses, the raw molten brass of the trumpet note, held long beyond belief. The tires made soft whispers on the silken asphalt and, on a corner, a boy held a girl in the crook of his arm and laughed down into her upraised face.

Samuel Larkin walked heavily down through the city, and though he looked neither to right nor left, he absorbed the sounds of the city, the life of the city, and it was an acid taste in his heart. He felt jealousy, and often it was necessary to think back over the years, the good years, deriving from those thoughts a certain stolid satisfaction. He remembered the look on Thomason’s face when Thomason heard from the Future Bureau what fate held in store for Thomason’s twin daughters. Yes, he had led a full life and a good life, here on Earth.

He walked down to the area where he was born. The tenements were gone, of course, and where they stood, tall apartment towers held their white shoulders against the silhouette of the distant stars. He stood alone, his big hands shoved deep in his pockets. He thought of the distant years, of the dreams and the hopes.

Walking the night streets of the city, he forgot time. The after-theater crowd swarmed the streets, vanished quickly away. The bars had the sultry brazen sound of late hours. On one street a piano chord was endlessly repeated, drumming into the blood like the beat of ancient drums of war. Or death.

It was his last night on Earth.

He walked without haste, his heels striking the pavement in heavy stolid rhythm, a tall man, heavy through the shoulders, head slightly bent, walking deep in thought, deep in memory.

At the first promise of dawn, the first gray of the east, he stood at the river bank. The running lights of the tugs looked watery and pale in the new promise of day. The river ran sure and swift and deep. He lit a cigarette and sat on an iron bench and watched the deepening color in the east.

When it was time, he walked back out to the boulevard, hailed a cruising cab, settled back in the seat and said, “Space Three.”

The cabby gave him a quick look, half shrugged, spun the cab in a wide U turn and went back out the boulevard. The canyons of the streets were still cloaked in night, waiting for the red touch of dawn. A milk horse clopped slowly across the boulevard, unexcited by the wide sweep of the cab around it.

“Farz I can go, Doc,” the driver said as he pulled up to the gates.

From habit, Larkin glanced at the meter. Then he smiled wryly, gave the driver all the money he had.

The driver said, “Look, Doc, I don’t—” He paused. “I get it. Thanks, Doc. Uh... best of luck.”

Larkin walked from the gate to the administration building. The waiting room was clotted with frightened people. When his turn came he went to the desk.

The clerk leafed the register. “Larkin. Samuel B. Right here. Area Eight, Ship CV22, Room Thirty-eight. Got that?”

Larkin nodded.

At Area Eight he walked along the line until he found CV22. The weary attendant at the top of the portable ramp checked the list, made a mark opposite his name. The attendant was a young freckled man with buck teeth and a faint odor of acid perspiration.

He yawned and said, “Lot of suckers still out there in town pretending they can hide.”

“Which way is my room?” Larkin asked.

The attendant said, “They ought to know better. You can’t beat the percentage. This is the only way out of it.”

With sudden fury Larkin grabbed the young man’s shoulder, spun him around. “I don’t want philosophy. I want to find my room.”

“Don’t get in a sweat, Pop. Right down that corridor and second turn to your left. Room thirty-eight’ll be on the right-hand side.”

As Larkin walked away the attendant called, “Charlie Bliss’ll check you into the room, Pop.”

There was no sign of Bliss. Samuel Larkin went down to his room, stripped off his coat, lay at full length on the bunk. He fingered the wide web straps with idle curiosity. He left the door to the tiny room open.

It must have been an hour later when Bliss came in, a clerical-looking man who carried a thick pad of forms on a clip board.

“Mmmm. Thirty-eight,” he said. “Larkin? Got to rush this, mister. Lots of last-minute detail this time. Read this form and sign it.”

Samuel Larkin sat on the edge of his bunk and skimmed through the form. “Having been advised by the Future Bureau... realizing that death on Earth is the only other possible outcome, agree to participate as a passenger and colonist on an experimental space voyage to a destination to be later designated by the ship’s crew... untold hardship... but such a complete alteration of all earthly variables that it is the only chance of escaping the death which has been postulated as inevitable should the undersigned remain on Earth... no possibility of return to Earth... should be understood by all concerned...”

He signed it quickly. At the man’s request he stood up, raised his right hand, repeated the oath that deprived him of free will, that committed him to the long years of voyage, the hardship of colonization, that made him subject to the orders of ColBu, even though those orders meant death.

Bliss said, “Okay, you can sit down.” He glanced at his watch. “Blowoff in eight minutes. I got to get off this tub. Strap yourself into the bunk. After acceleration slows to two G’s, the medic will come and check you and the exec will give you your duties. I got to go check on a freevee. We don’t get many of them.”

For a moment Larkin forgot his personal torment. He knew the ColBu slang. A freevee was a volunteer of free will, one who elected to board one of the ships of the doomed, to join those who left Earth only because in staying they would guarantee the death that had been statistically ascertained.

As Bliss went out the door Larkin heard him grumble, “Waste of talent, shooting a dish like that into space.”

And Sam Larkin suspected. He reached the door in time to see Bliss, far down the corridor, turn into another room.

He hurried after Bliss, stood in the doorway, his heart thudding, and saw Martha Hood, pale and hollow-eyed, sign her name on the bottom of the form.

“You can’t, Martha 1” he said hoarsely. “You can’t do it!”

She looked up at him and her eyes were glowing. “Why not, Sam?”

“You have everything here on Earth to five for. A normal life, Martha. A good life.”

She smiled, as though humoring a child. “With you gone, Sam, there wouldn’t be anything left here for me. I decided after you left me in the office.”

Larkin turned to Bliss. “Take her off this ship!”

Bliss glared. “Maybe you could push people around yesterday, mister. But you’re signed on and you take orders. So does this girl. Get back to your room.”

Martha said, “I’ll see you later, darling.”

The deep-toned bell began to toll, a heavy cadence, a sound of dull warning. Like a man in a dream Sam Larkin went back to his room. He tightened the heavy web straps. He lay on his back, looking toward the invisible stars. And suddenly his heart was full of peace — and a strange new hope.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Appointment for Tomorrow