The Midas Plague

The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl

And so they were married.

The bride and groom made a beautiful couple, she in her twenty-yard frill of immaculate white, he in his formal gray ruffled blouse and pleated pantaloons.

It was a small wedding—the best he could afford. For guests, they had only the immediate family and a few close friends. And when the minister had performed the ceremony, Morey Fry kissed his bride and they drove off to the reception. There were twenty-eight limousines in all (though it is true that twenty of them contained only the caterer’s robots) and three flower cars.

“Bless you both,” said old man Elon sentimentally. “You’ve got a fine girl in our Cherry, Morey.” He blew his nose on a ragged square of cambric.

The old folks behaved very well, Morey thought. At the reception, surrounded by the enormous stacks of wedding gifts, they drank the champagne and ate a great many of the tiny, delicious canapes. They listened politely to the fifteen-piece orchestra, and Cherry’s mother even danced one dance with Morey for sentiment’s sake, though it was clear that dancing was far from the usual pattern of her life. They tried as hard as they could to blend into the gathering, but all the same, the two elderly figures in severely simple and probably rented garments were dismayingly conspicuous in the quarter-acre of tapestries and tinkling fountains that was the main ballroom of Morey’s country home.

When it was time for the guests to go home and let the newlyweds begin their life together Cherry’s father shook Morey by the hand and Cherry’s mother kissed him. But as they drove away in their tiny runabout their faces were full of foreboding.

It was nothing against Morey as a person, of course. But poor people should not marry wealth.

Morey and Cherry loved each other, certainly. That helped. They told each other so, a dozen times an hour, all of the long hours they were together, for all of the first months of their marriage. Morey even took time off to go shopping with his bride, which endeared him to her enormously. They drove their shopping carts through the immense vaulted corridors of the supermarket, Morey checking off the items on the shopping list as Cherry picked out the goods. It was fun.

For a while.

Their first fight started in the supermarket, between Breakfast Foods and Floor Furnishings, just where the new Precious Stones department was being opened.

Morey called off from the list, “Diamond lavaliere, costume rings, earbobs.”

Cherry said rebelliously, “Morey, I have a lavaliere. Please, dear!”

Morey folded back the pages of the list uncertainly. The lavaliere was on there, all right, and no alternative selection was shown.

“How about a bracelet?” he coaxed. “Look, they have some nice ruby ones there. See how beautifully they go with your hair, darling!” He beckoned a robot clerk, who bustled up and handed Cherry the bracelet tray. “Lovely,” Morey exclaimed as Cherry slipped the largest of the lot on her wrist.

“And I don’t have to have a lavaliere?” Cherry asked.

“Of course not.” He peeked at the tag. “Same number of ration points exactly!” Since Cherry looked only dubious, not convinced, he said briskly, “And now we’d better be getting along to the shoe department. I’ve got to pick up some dancing pumps.”

Cherry made no objection, neither then nor throughout the rest of their shopping tour. At the end, while they were sitting in the supermarket’s ground-floor lounge waiting for the robot accountants to tote up their bill and the robot cashiers to stamp their ration books, Morey remembered to have the shipping department save out the bracelet.

“I don’t want that sent with the other stuff, darling,” he explained. “I want you to wear it right now. Honestly, I don’t think I ever saw anything looking so right for you.”

Cherry looked flustered and pleased. Morey was delighted with himself; it wasn’t everybody who knew how to handle these little domestic problems just right!

He stayed self-satisfied all the way home, while Henry, their companion-robot, regaled them with funny stories of the factory in which it had been built and trained. Cherry wasn’t used to Henry by a long shot, but it was hard not to like the robot. Jokes and funny stories when you needed amusement, sympathy when you were depressed, a never-failing supply of news and information on any subject you cared to name—Henry was easy enough to take. Cherry even made a special point of asking Henry to keep them company through dinner, and she laughed as thoroughly as Morey himself at its droll anecdotes.

But later, in the conservatory, when Henry had considerately left them alone, the laughter dried up.

Morey didn’t notice. He was very conscientiously making the rounds: turning on the tri-D, selecting their after-dinner liqueurs, scanning the evening newspapers.

Cherry cleared her throat self-consciously, and Morey stopped what he was doing. “Dear,” she said tentatively, “I’m feeling kind of restless tonight. Could we—I mean do you think we could just sort of stay home and—well, relax?”

Morey looked at her with a touch of concern. She lay back wearily, eyes half closed. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

“Perfectly. I just don’t want to go out tonight, dear. I don’t feel up to it.”

He sat down and automatically lit a cigarette. “I see,” he said. The tri-D was beginning a comedy show; he got up to turn it oflf, snapping on the tape-player. Muted strings filled the room.

“We had reservations at the club tonight,” he reminded her.

Cherry shifted uncomfortably. “I know.”

“And we have the opera tickets that I turned last week’s in for. I hate to nag, darling, but we haven’t used any of our opera tickets.”

“We can see them right here on the tri-D,” she said in a small voice.

“That has nothing to do with it, sweetheart. I—I didn’t want to tell you about it, but Wainwright, down at the office, said something to me yesterday. He told me he would be at the circus last night and as much as said he’d be looking to see if we were there, too. Well, we weren’t there. Heaven knows what I’ll tell him next week.”

He waited for Cherry to answer, but she was silent.

He went on reasonably, “So if you could see your way clear to going out tonight —”

He stopped, slack-jawed. Cherry was crying, silently and in quantity.

“Darling!” he said inarticulately.

He hurried to her, but she fended him off. He stood helpless over her, watching her cry.

“Dear, what’s the matter?” he asked.

She turned her head away.

Morey rocked back on his heels. It wasn’t exactly the first time he’d seen Cherry cry—there had been that poignant scene when they Gave Each Other Up, realizing that their backgrounds were too far apart for happiness, before the realization that they had to have each other, no matter what… But it was the first time her tears had made him feel guilty.

And he did feel guilty. He stood there staring at her.

Then he turned his back on her and walked over to the bar. He ignored the ready liqueurs and poured two stiff highballs, brought them back to her. He set one down beside her, took a long drink from the other.

In quite a different tone, he said, “Dear, what’s the matter?”

No answer.

“Come on. What is it?”

She looked up at him and rubbed at her eyes. Almost sullenly, she said, “Sorry.”

“I know you’re sorry. Look, we love each other. Let’s talk this thing out.”

She picked up her drink and held it for a moment, before setting it down untasted. “What’s the use, Morey?”