Read Online The Merchant's War by Frederik Pohl - Free Book Online Page B

gone. After the years on Venus I just wasn’t used to civilized ways. There was a twelve-pusher pedibus here, three cabs competing for one gap in the flow there, pedestrians leaping desperately between the vehicles all over—the streets were jammed, the sidewalks were packed, every building pumped a few hundred more people in and out as I passed—oh, it was marvelous! For me, I mean. For the people I was bumping into or tripped or made dodge around me, it might not have been so delightful, I suppose. I didn’t care! They yelled after me, and I don’t doubt what they yelled were insults, but I was floating in sooty, choky, chilly bliss. Advertising slogans flickered in liquid-crystal display on every wall, the newest ones bright as sunrise, the older ones muddied and finally buried by graffiti. Samplers stood along the curbs to pass out free hits of Glee-Smoke and Coffiest, and discount coupons for a thousand products. There were hologram images in the smoggy air of miraculous kitchen appliances and fantastically exotic three-day tours, and sales jingles ringing from everywhere—I was home. I loved it! But it was, admittedly, a little difficult to make my way through the streets, and when I saw a miraculously clear stretch of sidewalk I took it.
    I wondered at the time why the elderly man I pushed aside getting to the sidewalk gave me such a strange look. “Watch it, buster!” he called. He was waving at a signpost, but of course it was graffiti-covered. I wasn’t in a mood to worry about some minor civil ordinance. I walked past—
    And WOWP a blast of sound shook my skull and FLOOP a great supernova flare of light burned my eyes, and I went staggering and reeling as tiny, tiny elf voices shouted like needles in my ears Mokie-Koke, Mokie-Koke, MokieMokieMokie-Koke! And went on doing it, with variations, for what seemed like a hundred years or more. Stenches smote my nose. Subsonic shivers shook my body. And— a couple of centuries later—while my ears were still ringing and my eyes still stinging with that awful blast of sound and light, I picked myself up from where I lay sprawled on the ground.
    “I warned ya,” yelled the little old man from a safe distance.
    It hadn’t been centuries at all. He was still standing there, still with the same peculiar expression—half-eagerness, half-pity. “I warned ya! Ya wooden listen, but I warned ya!”
    He was still waving at the signpost, so I staggered closer and blearily managed to decipher the legend under the graffiti:
    Warning!
    COMMERCIAL ZONE
    Enter at Own Risk
    Evidently there had been some changes while I was away, after all. The man reached cautiously past the sign and tugged me away. He wasn’t all that old, I realized; mostly he was used. “What’s a ‘Mokie-Koke’?” I asked.
    He said promptly, “Mokie-Koke is a refreshing, taste-tingling blend of the finest chocolate-type flavoring, synthetic coffee extract and selected cocaine analogues. You want some?” I did. “You got money on you?” I had —a little, anyway—the change left over from the cash dispenser I’d finally located. “Would you tip me one if I showed you where to score some?” he wheedled.
    Well, who needed him for that? But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woebegone little guy, so I let him lead me around the corner. There was a vending machine, just like all the other Mokie-Koke machines I’d been seeing all along, on the Moon, in the spaceport, along the city streets. “Don’t fool with the singles,” he advised anxiously. “Go for the six-pack, okay?” And when I gave him the first bottle out of the batch he pulled the tab and raised it to his lips and swigged it down where he stood. Then he exhaled loudly. “Name’s Ernie, mister,” he said. “Welcome to the club!”
    I had been drinking my own Mokie-Koke curiously. It seemed pleasant enough, but nothing special, so that I wondered what the fuss was all about. “What club are you talking about?” I asked,