Halfway There

Back in 1971 Harlan Ellison purchased an option to publish this story in Last Dangerous Visions. But the last of the three Dangerous Visions series was never published. In 2019 I slightly rewrote the story and tried getting it published in a number of science fiction magazines without success. Here is the story pretty much as it was originally written. The only major change I made was to put New York City underwater.

Halfway There

By Stan Dryer

(January 7, 2018) Fred wants to get married. The four of us have lived together for over three years and he feels it would be good for Ted and Jamie to see their parents legally wed. It has been over five years since he lost his wife and I have left behind most of the anger over my divorce. We’ve had a few ups and downs, but I can say we are now definitely a total family. It is obvious the kids would love a wedding. So tonight when Fred brings up the subject, my answer is, “What are we waiting for?”

Wedger Blakes was reading his grandmother’s diary, a little hard-bound paper book filled with her neatly printed handwriting. It was a book that took him far away from the Ready Room filled with the restless energy of the other wedgers, the stale smell of nicosuck solvent and the rasping wheeze of the air filters. Her simple words carried him back those fifty years to a quiet life in a place where ordinary people lived in houses with lawns and worried about creating families and preserving marriages.

The diary was all he had kept of his grandmother’s belongings after her death a month before. Everything else had been sold to help pay for her cemetery plot.

“I want my ashes to be buried at home in Belmont,” she had whispered to him on the last day. “I want to be out of the stench of Megayork. Promise me?”

He had looked at the fading remains of a woman who had shown such courage over the years and had made his promise. The day after the funeral he had tubed up to Belmont in Megabos. But the tranquil suburban town of his grandmother’s youth had disappeared under the habiunits and zipways that sprawled fifteen miles north from the old city of Boston.

Only one tiny parody of a cemetery had plots available. It was about an acre of browning grass completely covered with solar panels. A three by three foot plot cost ten thousand bucks in perpetuity or could be rented for six hundred a year. There was no alternative. He had signed a contract and returned to Megayork.

The antique dealer who came to look at his grandmother’s possessions had eyed her genuine chrome kitchen table with obvious greed. It was one his grandmother had inherited from her mother, probably vintage 1960’s. Blakes had been able to bargain the dealer up to a good price for all of the furniture. With this money and what he got from a leaselegger for the apartment, he was able to buy seven years of sleep for his grandmother’s remains. It was, he consoled himself, reasonably quiet under the solar panels.

 (March 4, 2018) Ted and Jamie have totally taken over the wedding planning! Fred and I just stand around and watch in a kind of amazed delight. I have been told exactly what I am to wear. The wedding vows are being carefully vetted by the two of them. Fred and I have no idea where we are going on our honeymoon but we have been told there definitely is going to be one. I can’t wait …..

“Wedge call for Blakes,” rasped the speaker over his head. Blakes shut the diary and shoved it into his belt pouch as he stood up. Like all of the other men in the room he was tall and muscular. With a thirty percent male unemployment rate, the wedger agencies had their pick of talent.

Blakes hung his monox mask around his neck, pulled on his plex suit over his tunic and slipped on his communicator helmet. He tightened the lacings on his steel-toed sneakers and checked the pressure of his inflator cylinder. If he got caught in a sealeak, he could breath for at least an hour on the air in the cylinder. Or in a crushup, he could seal and inflate his plex suit to protect his body.

He stepped into the office, a tiny room with two thick pressure proof glass walls that looked out on the two rivers of people that swarmed down the main Northbound and Southbound corridors of Grand Central Level One.

Linda 449326 was waiting for him. Like most women, she had probably switched her last name to the trailing six digits of her socser number to avoid data base errors when getting married or divorced. He liked wedging for Linda. A saleswoman for a big male cosmetics house, she usually picked up a wedger at Grand Central when she tubed in from her home in Connecticut.

She was a trim little brunette in her early thirties who always dressed conservatively. Today she had on a tight business bikini under her transparent plex suit.

“Hi, Wedger,” she said, and punched him hard in the ribs with her fist.

“Hi Brainy,” He said, slapping her sharply on the rump. He had not wedged for her often enough so that he felt a less formal greeting was in order.

“Gotta buncha biz calls,” she said. “But first gotta get unhitched. Willya co for me?”

“Shuah,” he said. “I’ll getta route. Gimmie a lowline pub-booth,” he said to his wristpad.

Instantly the route map popped up in the holospace in his helmet. The best booth was two levels down and a hundred feet north with only a five minute estimated wait at the booth.

He set Linda’s helmet communicator to match his channel. Once in the noise of the tunnels, they would be able to talk only by gab-link. He checked the saturation level of her monox mask and her inflator cylinder pressure. He took a quick look at the air quality display out in the tunnel. It was 1.3 so no need to go onto monox masks.

“Aokay,” he said. “Let’s tred.”

Outside the office door, the noise of the blowers assailed them even through their helmet padding. Linda slipped her hand through the strap at the back of his suit. Blakes waited behind the ped baffle until a little gap appeared in the rushing mob and he could pivot them into the stream. Instantly his body melted into the motion of the crowd. That was the art of wedging. You moved with the ped mob, never fighting it, letting the energy of the other peds carry you along. It was tough enough in a one-way tunnel. He sometimes wondered how anyone survived in the days when most of the tunnels were two-way.

Linda followed him smoothly and in step, with hardly any tension on the wedge strap. Having a customer moving with you made all of the difference. Some women never caught on; wedging for them was like dragging a sack of wet algae paste through the city.

He pulled them out of the ped stream at the down shaft shown on his holo. There were only a couple of people waiting. When their turn came, he pushed Linda into the first empty slot and jumped in after her, banging the “Three” button with the back of his hand. With a hiss of the pneumatics they dropped the hundred feet to Level 3.

Blakes felt more relaxed in a Level 3 tunnel. The traffic was lighter and there was, of course, little danger of a sealeak. When Blakes pulled them into the ped baffle at the pub booth, there were only a couple of people waiting. Fortunately it was not a Monday. A lot of couples got unhitched on Mondays after having to spend a weekend alone together.

They entered the booth and shut the door. Blakes waved his wristpad in the air to check the booth air quality. “One point four,” said the pleasant man’s voice of the pad. “Safe to breath.”

“This is an authorized public legal action booth. Will all occupants please present their left eye to the identity scanner,” came the voice from the wall speaker. They both removed their helmets and, in turn, showed their left eyes to the scan lens.

The wall speaker spoke again. “Linda 449326, doyah swearta telltha wholtruth anuthin buttha truth sohelp yagod?”

 “Shuah,” said Linda.

“Do you wish a divorce?”

“Shuah.”

“While a file check is made, both parties should strip to the waist for a correspondent photo,” said the speaker.

Blakes removed his plex suit and tunic. Linda had her suit off and now pulled off her bikini top. Her firm little breasts were made up with conservative taste, light pink nipple-stick and just a touch of cleft shadowing.

“A check of your file indicates that there are no marriage lien flags present,” said the speaker. “Stand close together for your photo and place your arms about each other. Do not smile.”

Blakes put his arm around Linda’s soft shoulders and felt her arm encircle him. Even though he had coed for customers many times before, the practice still made him uncomfortable. He could see no reason for it, although he knew that a co-photo was a legal requirement based on the old twentieth century adultery laws.

“Linda 449326, you are now officially divorced under the laws of Megayork,” said the speaker. “Your new alimony payments as defined under the Single Standard Act of 2035 have been calculated and are available on your cloud account. Crediting of payments to the accounts of your ex-husbands will be performed automatically. Any claims concerning alimony adjustment should be directed to Gooblemarry. If you plan to marry your correspondent, the ceremony may be performed at this time.”

 “Hey, Wedger, that sounds like a lotta fun,” said Linda. “Wanta givit a whirl?”

Blakes was tempted. Linda was attractive and obviously had a good income. A lot of men would have jumped at the chance, if only for their future alimony cut. But his grandmother’s voice came to him suddenly, and what she had said when she had seen her first couple getting a divorce in a booth.

“You may think me old fashioned, but in my day divorces took place in courts and marriages in churches or at least in front of a real human being. You didn’t dash into a booth when the going got a little tough. You made a try to stick together.”

“That sounds neatoh,” he said to Linda, “but I’d liketa think about it a bit. Guess 1’m justa bit old fashioned.” He did not wish to insult her and lose her wedging business.

“Shuah,” she said, “but this is something special.” She punched up her divorce count on her zpad screen and showed it to him. “Look there, this is number fifty. Halfway there!”

“Halfway where?”

“I’m going for The Century Club. One hundred times unhitched.”

“But why?”

“Yano there are only two thousand Century Clubbers in the whole    U. S. A.?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

,”Well I’m halfway there,” said Linda, “and that calls fora celebration.“Whatya say we whack the town tonight?”

“Shuah” Blakes said. It was all gravy for him. After five he got double time.

“Evict this booth immediately,” said the wall speaker. “This is not a public conversation booth. In one minute an overstay charge of five bucks a minute will begin to be assessed against the accounts of all occupants.”

They pulled on their plex suits and helmets and left.

{June: 27, 2018) Who would believe it? All four of us on our second honeymoon! And back at Wanderers Beach where Fred and I first met. How did those crafty kids find that out? I don’t remember telling them but I suspect that my best friend (Kathy) may have spilled the beans…

Blakes glanced up from the diary at the sterile walls of the waiting room. It was the eighth buyer’s office they had visited. He could hear Linda’s voice through the thin partition pushing the items she was displaying with her holo projector. It was becoming more and more painful to move the fifty years from the distant and beautiful world of his grandmother’s youth to the reality of the ped mob and the next sales call.

They had been using Level 1 tunnels as that level gave the best access to most of the building elevators. The strain of the heavy Level 1 ped rush was getting to him. He knew he worried too much about the six to eight feet of sea water over his head and the chance of a sealeak and resulting crushups. 

He told himself not to worry so much. As soon as a leak was detected, waterproof doors in the tunnel slammed shut and sealed off the section with the leak. That section was then pressurized slowing the leakage. Within minutes the Megayork Public Works helicopter would be over the leak to dump a quick-plug into the hole. So usually you didn’t get more than 2 or 3 feet of water in the tunnel before the pumps quickly sucked it away.  

The real danger was that a crushup might occur due to the sudden blocking of the tunnel when the doors slammed shut. There were warnings and traffic control messages in all the tunnels, but the people close to a suddenly closed door might get jammed into the door by the pressure of the mass of still moving peds behind.

There was a burst of harsh laughter in the inner office. Linda was finishing up with an off-color woman-to-woman story.

She smiled at him as she came out. “That’s it, Wedger. Whatta day! Lezgo surface and graba gondo to my sharepad.”

A gondola was expensive but Blakes did not object. They took the elevator down to the first floor and walked out to the gondola dock.  With their first floors hopelessly flooded, most building owners now devoted the space to public gondola docks and parking for executives’ private gondos. As the old joke put it, they’d run out of climate change deniers who would rent first floor space.

They climbed down into the first gondo waiting at the dock and sank back into the seats. He pulled the plexicover down over them. Linda swept her wristpad past the sensor. “Welcome aboard Linda,” came the always pleasant male voice of the servodolier. “Where may we take you?”

Linda gave the address of her sharepad and the gondo swung out into the traffic on Broadwater. Their pace was slow, perhaps twenty mile per hour. Blakes knew that gondos were capable of much higher speeds but were regulated due to the effects of their wash on other gondos and the adjacent buildings. The slow speed did not bother him. It was nice to just relax in the softness of the padded seats and let someone else, or rather something else, worry about fighting the water traffic.

 Linda’s sharepad was a one room apartment on the tenth floor of the Venetian Paradise Hotel. It was conservatively furnished in early 20th century repros. It was difficult for Blakes to realize that it was simply a hotel room into which a few of Linda’s possessions had been moved for the night. He took off his helmet and stepped out of his plex suit. He didn’t worry about the air quality. In high class hotels like this the air was always double filtered, 1.8 at the very least.

“Hava butt,” said Linda, indicating a box on the coffee table.

Blakes opened the box. Inside were a dozen Cuban baccosucks. Made from real tobacco, they went for thirty plus bucks each. He took out two of them, gave one to Linda and took a deep drag on the other. Ambrosia. Would he ever be able to stomach a nicosuck again?

“Well, whatya think?” Linda said. “Go with me and yago first class.”

It sounded to Blakes as if the subject of getting wed was coming up again. “Hava good day?” he said quickly. He knew that women liked to talk about their work.

“Shuah,” said Linda. “Eleven kilobucks of geegaw orders. What men see in that junk, I’11 nevano.” She went on to describe her big sale of the day and Blakes sat, half listening, but nodding appreciatively.

“Timeta feed” said Linda suddenly. “I’11 be justa minute.”

Ten minutes later she came out of the bathroom wearing a baggy and unadorned brown dress with half sleeves and knee length skirt.

“Wow, sexy,” said Blakes. The dress was obviously just within the limits set by the anti-provocation laws.

“We’re gonna do it up tonight,” said Linda. “Whatya say we eat untimed?”

That was splurging. Most restaurants, even the best, set an absolute limit of thirty minutes per meal. But there were still a few places where, for a stiff time charge, you could eat at leisure.

But habit was too strong. Even without a timer ticking on their table, they bolted their food and had to force themselves to drink their coffee slowly. It was less than forty minutes after they had entered the restaurant when Linda got to her feet. “Common, Wedger, I wanta make this town jump. There’s a put-on downtown I gotta see.”

It was a little dive, just off Times Pool and three levels down. Everyone stood, drinks in hand; there was no room for tables or chairs. The room was hot, the air barely 1.1 breathable. The crowd was mostly doe, overdressed women who looked Blakes over in a way he did not relish.

The lights dimmed; a spotlight focused on the tiny stage. A girl in

formal panties and heavily made-up breasts came out and told several off-color stories. There was only one, about a travelling saleswoman and an algae raker’s son, that Blakes had not heard before.

Then a brassy recording started and the girl shouted into the microphone, “And now by popular demand, it’s that man of motion, Mr. Put-On himself, Sammy Garb!” The spotlight swung to the wings and out into its glare came a thin little fellow, not more than eighteen and stark naked. For a minute he vibrated his body more or less in time to the music and then began to dress himself with clothes thrown to him from the wings.

The crowd stormed their approval. “Put it on, Sammy! Put it on!” Blakes heard Linda shouting beside him.

The act ended when Sammy, fully dressed in an ornate tuxedo, was tossed a huge woolen overcoat. The crowd screamed with desire. Sammy slipped an arm into a sleeve and then the lights went out. There was wild applause.

The whole performance left Blakes with a slightly dirty feeling, but Linda had been visibly moved. “Letzgo bacta my place,” she said.

She was in too much of a hurry to take a gondo. Blakes could tell what she had in mind by the way she leaned against him in the tube car. But there was nothing he could do. As a contracted wedger, it was his job to stick with a client to her destination.

As soon as they got back to her sharepad and had their plex suits off, she threw herself at him. “Howsaboutit?” she demanded. “We’ve been together all day. Letsus get hitched.”

He removed her arms gently from around his neck. “No,” he said, “I wanta be surer.”

“How often yabeen hitched, anyway?”

“Once.”

“Ida never knownya for a singly. Whendya get unspliced?”

“I didn’t. She waza pilot, got killed in a re-entry crumple.”

“Goshimsorry. How long ago wazit?”

“Six years.”

“You gotta forget. Six years! Why I’ve been married thirty times since then.”

“I think a wed otta be more,” Blakes said. “I wanta wife who’ll take care of the kids.”

“You wanta marry some old maid in a state nursery?”

“I wanta wife who’ll have my children and then help me raise them.”

“You been scanning throwback stuff?” she demanded. “That’s twentieth century junk.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He’started to zip up his plex suit.

She came up close to him. “You like me, dontcha?”

“Yes.” Blakes felt the desire pounding within him.

She pulled the sleeve of her dress provocatively down over her elbow. “Howdya likta dress me?”

His feet would not move. She opened a wall fold-out and took out a pair of baggy slacks. “Howdya likta put these on me?”

He could not stop himself. He grabbed the pants and pushing her roughly onto the bed forced the pants onto her willing legs.

Then she was on her feet. She grabbed a large sweater from the bin and forced it over his head, her breath coming in panting gasps. In a frenzy of lust they pulled clothes from the fold-out and covered each other until only their faces remained exposed.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the bed, but she pulled away. “Easy there, Wedger. We needta get hitched first.”

“Whyzat?” he said. “I gotta haveya. Why can’t we just…”

“What kinda girl doya think I am?”

“Okay, okay, let’s get wed.”

“Get my zpad.”

He found it on the bedside table and handed it to her. She swiped and tapped her way into a wed app.

“Thank you for using Autohitch,” said a man’s voice, “will each party scan his or her left eye.

Linda held the zpad up to her eye and when it beeped, handed it to Blakes who did the same.

“Do you have a guest list?” said the voice. A guest list, Blakes knew, was a retrograde holdover from an old custom where your friends and relations were actually present at a wed. If you used a guest list, the app would holo the ceremony live to all the addresses on that list.

“Noway”, said Linda. “No holos.” It was obvious she did not want anyone seeing her dressed way beyond the limits of the anti-provocation laws.

“Aokay, no holos,” said the voice.

There was a short pause, the interval filled with a jazzed up version of Mendelssohn’s wedding march. Then the voice said, “Our records show that both Linda 449326 and Wedger Blakes are single with no matrimonial liens on their accounts. Please join hands.”

Blakes reached out and clasped Linda’s hand. The voice went on. “Sadly beleaguered, we are gathered here today in the presence of all humanity to join these two persons of different or similar sexual identities in secular or holy matrimony. If any person knows cause why these two people should not be wed, message Gooblemarry ASAP.

“Do each of you take the other to be your wed partner to have and to hold until legally divorced or separated by cessation of vitality?”

“Shuah,” said Linda.

“Shuah,” said Blakes.

The voice went on. “Under license authorization 342567 by the Megaborough of York, I now pronounce you legally wed. Let no unauthorized individual or agency put you asunder.”

“Come on, Wedger,” said Linda, throwing the zpad on the bedside table, “let’s consummate this hitch job.”

Blakes awoke the next morning to the sound of Linda’s laughter. She was sitting in bed beside him reading his grandmother’s diary which she must have found in his pouch. “Oh, this is so funny, Wedger,” she said when she saw he was awake. “Listen. Tonight when I said goodnight to Janie she gave me this giant hug and whispered in my ear, ‘thanks for getting married, mother’ What a beautiful word to hear from such a wonderful new daughter.

“Isn’t that wild, Wedger? Where did you get this crazy throwback stuff?”

Blakes said nothing. He no longer remembered his grandmother as a shrunken woman dying in a room full of fading photographs. In his mind she now lived young and filled with laughter, reflecting all the joys of an age when there was time for real love and real families.

He sat up suddenly. “What time is it?”

“Don’t worry,” said Linda, “I calldya agency and toldem you wouldn’t be back.”

“You what?”

“On my salary,” said Linda, “you don’t hafta work. Youcen wedge full time for me.”

Blakes started to protest. Then he stopped. No sense in starting a wed with a quarrel. Linda was probably being thoughtful and protective, the way a good wife should be. This wed was going to be different. He would show her what a real marriage could be like.

Linda was thawing breakfast on the mini-chef and singing unconsciously to herself. The warmth of his happiness froze within him when he heard the words. It was Marriage Countup, a song that had become something of a popular national anthem.

“Then I ditched old forty-eight,

When forty-nine-oh grabbed the bait,

Fifty wasn’t too much fun,

Not compared with fifty-one.”

She hummed the next line and turned to him. “What’s fifty-two? I can’t ever remember.”

“Now with that the song is thru,” he said, “Cause there never will be fifty-two.”

She laughed. “Oh, thatso funny. For a wedger, you hava real sensa humor.”