Part 1

Bart Sponsor was a Top Competitor and he pitied those who were not. But one small error made him seek retirement. Yet, he could only--

COMPETE OR DIE!

By Mark Rainsberg

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1957 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I slammed the aircar door and fumbled in my pocket for the key. I cast a quick backward glance at the policeman a hundred feet away.

He wheeled about at the sound.

My trembling fingers tried to fit the key into the ignition.

"Halt!" the policeman yelled unlimbering his gun and breaking into a run.

My fingers failed to coordinate. I heard a shot and nervously dropped the key. I bent over frantically to scoop it up.

There was another shot. Pieces of glass trickled down my neck. I straightened up and saw a hole in the windshield, level with my eyes.

"Hands up!" The cop had slowed down to take careful aim. He was so close now he could hardly miss.

"Don't shoot!" I shouted. "I surrender!"

I inserted the key in the ignition with desperate precision, gunning the engines so hard that the ship spun halfway around. The policeman leaped out of the way as my Cad Super roared past him and lurched into the air.

I heard a tattoo of shots from the ground and then we were out of range.

I swore as the acceleration crushed me deep into the seat. My forehead was pounding.

"Bart Sponsor, fugitive," I thought bitterly. "And only a half-hour ago I was a pillar of society. Worst thing I had to worry about was a speeding ticket...."

* * * * *

... I had been griping to my wife as usual about the rush-hour morning traffic above Chicago.

"Look at this. Just look at this," I said disgustedly.

Below us, the lanes were choked with ponderous, slow-moving commuter copters. Around us, flivver-jets clogged the expressway like millions of migrating birds. We couldn't make more than three hundred miles an hour.

"The stupid shlubs," I muttered resentfully. "They ought to ride the pneumatic tubes to work."

"The airlanes should be reserved for Top Competitors only," said Celia teasingly. "Like you, dear."

I ignored her sarcasm and scanned the empty lane overhead. All that blue sky set aside for outgoing traffic, and nothing in sight. A shameful waste.

I gunned our Cad Super, joyfully, defiantly, and scooted up over the assigned traffic stream at a thousand per. Celia gave me an alarmed look.

"Bart! You'll get a ticket."

I grinned and kicked our speed up an additional two hundred.

Illegal, of course, but I made terrific time crossing the Iowa-Illinois border where Chicagoland begins. I didn't squeeze back into the expressway until mighty Municipal Tower came into view through the dense industrial haze above Lake Michigan. There atop the building stood a gigantic sign revolving on a pivot with the wind. It bore the seal of Chicago and the stunning legend: I WILL COMPETE. Most inspiring motto in the world, I think.

Celia touched my hand. "We'll have to stop at the bank first."

"No time," I said. "We're due at the school at nine-thirty."

"It won't hurt to be a few minutes late. This is important, Bart."

We have a good marriage, and I don't quarrel with Celia's wishes. But this meant another delay, and I could already see half the morning shot, what with the meeting in the principal's office, and afterwards perhaps taking Freddie out for a soda or something to make him feel secure and loved. What a lot of trouble that boy was getting into lately.

I wheeled out of traffic and feathered down to the roof of the 1st National. A conveyer belt carried our ship toward the teller's window.

Celia opened her purse and withdrew a bank form. "Here, I think you'll have to sign this, darling."

I voiced my irritation. "Withdraw it in your own name. It's a joint account. Personally, I don't understand how you can need more money when I just gave you four hundred yesterday."

"This is a very large amount," said Celia softly. "Bank requires it."

"How much?" I asked suspiciously.

"Ten thousand." She was staring at me intently with her almond-shaded eyes. Her full red lips were parted in the faintest trace of a smile, as her neat brown-pencilled eyebrows arched slightly in amused defiance.

She was daring me to ask the obvious question. Hell, I thought, I can afford it. I signed the form and passed it back to her.

We were at the teller window. She scribbled on the sheet and handed it to the clerk.

"Now," I said, feeling that I'd fulfilled the code of gallantry, "may I ask what you need it for?"

"Certainly, dear. I'm giving it to the Mendelsohns as a going-away present. Tonight at their farewell party."

"What! Ten thousand credits? Are you insane! The Mendelsohns mean nothing to me." I was so upset that I kicked the degravity pedal and we started to rise from the roof. I brought us down with a thud.

"They mean a lot to me," said Celia calmly. "They used to mean a lot to you too."

"But ten thousand!" I protested. "What do you think I am, a millionaire philanthropist?"

"It is a lot of money," Celia agreed placatingly. "But the Mendelsohns are leaving tomorrow for Primus Gladus. We'll never see them again."

"So what!" I said heatedly. "Thousands of people go to the stars as colonists. Thousands of failures like the Mendelsohns think their luck will change on another planet. Does this mean that--"

"Bart, consider," said Celia. "If they had remained here on Earth as our friends, there would have been many occasions in a lifetime when I would have sent them remembrances. The birth of children. Anniversaries. Graduations. Confirmations, bar mitzvahs, wedding presents. Funeral wreaths. All I've done now is roll up all those gifts of a lifetime into one farewell present, of a size that will help them a little on their new world."

"I've cut off a lot of heads for that money. Grain brokerage is a brutal profession, what with thirty billion mouths clamoring for food, and the government keeping speculation in a straight-jacket, and that insurrection on Venus, the granary of the solar system, making wheat futures a nightmare. This kind of generosity leaves me cold. I had more to say on the subject, but the bank teller spoke up to Celia.

"Your identification, please?"

Celia showed him her wrist plate.

"Ah, Mrs. Sponsor, I'm sorry to inconvenience you, but this is such a large amount that we'll need your husband's personal verification. Bank rules, you know."

"This is my husband."

My irritation mounted. "I'm Sponsor," I said to the teller, flourishing my wrist band. "What's the difficulty?"

"Ah, Mr. Sponsor, would you like to step in a moment and speak to our chief cashier?"

"I haven't time," I blurted sharply. "Give my wife the money!" We were already ten minutes late to our school appointment.

The teller looked abashed and hesitant.

"Look here," I demanded, "if we don't get better service around here I'll take my account elsewhere!"

That did it. He fussed around and finally handed Celia the bundle which she had some trouble fitting into her purse. "Small denominations," she explained. I gunned our car peevishly, I must admit, and the acceleration shoved her back into the seat rest. We were ten minutes late already. I should have called my office.

We soared into air above old Chicago, the part rebuilt after World War III. The lake claimed a good share of the blast area, of course, but that's what makes our city so unusually beautiful now. Four hundred tiny islands dot the lakefront, some connected by causeways, others reachable only by aircar or boat.

"Why are you so cross?" said Celia, taking the offensive the way women do when they've pulled some outrageous stunt.

"Look, you can't have it both ways. You can give them the money, but you can't get me to say I like the idea."

"Solly Mendelsohn was once your closest friend."

"Solly is a poor competitor, Celia. Let's face up to it. He has brains. He once showed signs of being a brilliant soil chemist, but he washed out of school. And then he became a fertilizer salesman, and he couldn't make a go of that. And after that he took up hydroponic farming, but he wasn't a success at that either. No wonder he wants to try another planet!"

"Solly has had a lot of personal misfortunes."

"That's an excuse all the shlubs use. No. The fact is, he just can't compete. And unless you compete in this world, you're dead."

Below on its own crescent-shaped island lay Chicago Classical School. I put our ship into a fast elevator dive. "My sympathies," I added, "go to Dolores. She's a bright, attractive kid. Keen competitor. She didn't deserve a shlub for a husband." I paused. "And about that party they're giving tonight. I'm not going."

* * * * *

Chicago Classical was frankly a boarding school for privileged kids. It taught the first six years, and no better I'm sure than the public schools of Chicago. But there was social distinction. The contacts would be good for Freddie later on. Freddie boarded there five days a week and came home to us on weekends, uncommunicative about his experiences, but happy to go romping with me in the woods and ravine adjoining our estate near Mason City. Unfortunately, that wasn't too often. Competitive pressure kept me in Chicago sometimes three or four weeks at a stretch.

When they gave the first graders a word-picture test, Celia once told me, Freddie had represented the word _father_ by the symbols of a bald head, pipe and briefcase. After that, whenever I couldn't get home on Saturday or Sunday, I made an effort to have lunch with the boy in Chicago at least once during the week. But of course you can't get to know your son very well that way.

"Just what is this trouble Freddie's involved in?" I asked as we descended. "Why don't you keep me better informed on the boy?"

"I try to, but when have you had time to listen? I usually see you at our cocktail parties for clients, or else at three in the morning when you drop into bed too exhausted to get into pajamas."

"Well, this matter with the principal. Are you sure it's so serious?"

"They never ask for both parents unless it is," Celia assured me, glancing soberly at the school buildings as we came to earth.

We parked, I noticed, alongside a dark blue official car, with the municipal seal, and the initials S.T.A.R.S. "Never heard of that one," I told Celia as we walked to the main dormitory and administration building.

The place was a gloomy gray, vine-covered neo-gothic structure which ignored almost a thousand years of architectural progress. An old-fashioned electric eye opened the door. Inside, the building smelled like stale bread, musty linen and floor varnish, combined with a dash of urine. The interior lighting was unnaturally bright, it seemed to me, like in a surgical arena. The only harmonious note was struck by the mural in the vestibule. One entire wall was covered by an allegorical painting of sports, professions, and industry, with the phrase COMPETE OR PERISH emblazoned boldly across the top.

Celia nudged me. "A little raw for school kids, don't you think?"

This was an old, unhealed grievance between us. "Those are the twenty-fourth century facts of life," I replied evenly.

We reported to the receptionist robot in an alcove controlling the inner set of doors.

"You are fifteen minutes late," said the machine. "I will announce you. Be seated please."

We remained standing. I spied a public wall phone and jerked into awareness. "Excuse me, honey. I have to call the office!"

I hastily dialed our number and got the busy signal. Wow! All nine lines were tied up, including our human and our robot receptionists. I immediately dialed our unlisted private number, and somebody answered with a curse, and I knew it was my partner Charlie Spacker.

"Compete, man! Compete!" he shouted. "Where the hell are you?"

"Chicago Classical School. Personal problem. I told you about it."

"Well, get over here quick! That Venus situation is about to blow up, and we're tied up to the tune of three hundred million in wheat and soybeans!"

"I'll be over within a half hour. Meanwhile, have Claire book passage on the next Venus rocket. One of us has got to go there."

"Willco," said Claire. She always monitored our calls.

"All right," stormed Charlie, "that may help us a month from now. But what about now? Do I buy or sell? These customers are drowning me!"

Charlie was a great bluff man who inspired the clients' confidence, but he quailed at policy decisions. I thought fast. I'd go there and make a deal with the insurrectionists. Help finance the rebellion in exchange for exclusive first option. If they won, good. If they lost, status quo anyway.

Celia was gesturing urgently as the inner door opened.

"Buy!" I said and I slammed down the receiver.

* * * * *

It was hard to adjust to the dim lighting in the principal's office. His room was loaded with antique fiberglass furniture of the twenty-first century. He sat behind, or rather within, a donut-shaped desk, a moon-faced man with short, monk-like haircut, and bulbous nose.

"You are the parents of Edmund Sponsor?" We nodded. He pressed a button. "Very well. We will send for the boy."

He swivelled around to face a wall of slanting glass which overlooked the children's playground. We could see two ranks of boys in a tug-of-war, and some little girls playing red-rover.

"Scott," he said into a tiny microphone on his desk top. A playground instructor looked up.

"Yes, sir?"

"Please send Edmund Sponsor to my office."

"He's not here, sir. I believe he's in the dormitory."

"How does that happen?" demanded the principal. "This is game time."

"He declined to join in the competition, sir."

"I see. Thank you."

I felt a hot flush of embarrassment. My son non-competitive? That seemed impossible. He must be ill. It was an insulting accusation.

The principal flicked on the wall visa-screen. It showed a lean, rather formally-attired man seated on a lounge in the anteroom, next to a uniformed policeman.

"Masefield? I believe it would expedite matters if you would find Edmund Sponsor in the dormitory and bring him here. Would you do that, please?"

Masefield nodded and the screen darkened. The principal turned to us.

"This incident on the playground which you just witnessed may perhaps spare us all an overly long explanation. Mr. Sponsor, I have been in touch with your wife from time to time, and I assume she has kept you informed on your boy's progress. Or should we say, lack of progress?"

I felt a sense of numb shock. Celia had told me nothing. I managed to control my outward signs of surprise. "Yes, she has," I said calmly, crossing my legs. "But of course we have a fiercely competitive line, and I haven't been able to follow the situation as well as one might wish.

"Would you tell me, in brief, what it all amounts to, and what you suggest as a remedy? Both Mrs. Sponsor and I are willing and eager to cooperate."

"I hope," said the principal, "that you will remember what you have just said when I propose the remedy. As to the problem itself, I must put it bluntly--your son Edmund refuses to compete."

If any other man had said this to me I would have smashed his face in. Celia looked at me warningly. Again I masked my feelings.

"This is a terrible thing to hear," I said sweetly. "But surely it can't be as stark and simple as that. Freddie must be ill or emotionally disturbed. Have your doctors given him a checkup? Have your psychoanalysts examined him?"

"Long ago and continually, Mr. Sponsor. That was your wife's original suggestion. Your boy was completely uncooperative with the analysts. Resistant. Negatively competitive, if you know what I mean. In fact, I will repeat what one of our doctors said. If your boy could reverse his attitude, and put all the energy he uses to fight the system into battling his future economic opponents, he'd become a Top Competitor. However, a year has gone by, and we have not been able to bring about the slightest change. Now, in fact, the situation has gotten out of hand."

"But," I said, trying to sound detached and clinical, "how does this non-competitiveness, as you say, manifest itself in our son?" The prefix _non_ had a bitter taste in my mouth.

"In every way," said the principal. "He won't play competitive games with the other children. Intellectually, he won't exert himself against his classmates. Financially, he refuses to earn bonus points selling magazine subscriptions in his leisure time. This, as you know, goes against the very principles on which our democracy is based. It's subversive in its influence on the other children. If he were not so young, if he did not come from a well-known competitive family, one would almost be tempted to think Edmund an Australian spy!"

"Come now!" said Celia indignantly. "Expel Freddie from your school if you wish, but don't slander him."

The door buzzed softly, then slid open. Freddie entered, followed closely by Masefield.

Freddie had been crying. His eyes opened wide and an expression of joy hit his face as he saw us.

"Mother!" he exclaimed, rushing to Celia's arms. She hugged him fervently. I patted him manfully on the shoulder, but I felt shy and a little inept. "Dad!" he added, running the back of one hand across his tear-stained cheeks.

"How are you, son?" I said inadequately.

Freddie looked up at me imploringly. "Take me away from here, dad. _Please_ take me away from here!" He buried his head on Celia's breast and started to sob.

"We will, darling," said Celia. We exchanged swift glances.

"We certainly will, son, if you're unhappy here," I said rather mechanically. I was, to tell the truth, rather shocked by the emotional display. Freddie had always been such a self-contained little boy, so beyond his years in control and understanding, so undemonstrative.

"I think," said the principal portentously, "that matters would be best served if Edmund waited outside."

"I agree." There was no reason for Freddie to hear whatever remained to be said.

The kid made quite a fuss about leaving us, even for a few minutes, but in the end Masefield escorted him out with friendly firmness.

"We are all in accord then, that your son is to leave Chicago Classical School?"

"I think so," said Celia, with unconcealed hostility.

"What steps do we take now?" I asked more civilly. "Do we enroll him in the second grade of public school? I mean, is his work here fully transferable?"

* * * * *

The principal seemed to reach very carefully for his next words. He seemed in fact faintly apprehensive. "Mr. Sponsor, under normal circumstances a child's credits from Chicago Classical are acceptable at more than par in the public school system. But this is a case in which the authorities are obliged to exercise jurisdiction."

"Just what do you mean by that?" Celia said angrily.

"Darling," I said patting her hand, "control yourself. Let's try to hear this thing objectively."

"Yes, Mrs. Sponsor, as your husband has said, this is a matter which requires considerable detachment. We two have had a number of conversations in the past year, and I must say candidly that you did not seem to realize the delicacy and seriousness of Edmund's problem. By authorities I mean, of course, the juvenile delinquency courts."

"Now I'm the one who doesn't understand," I said very mildly.

"You are aware, Mr. Sponsor, that aggressive non-competitiveness is carried on the statute books as a misdemeanor."

Scorn and ridicule were in Celia's voice. "But Freddie is a seven-year-old!"

"Quite. But our concern as educators is with the future adult. And unless the child's habits of thought are corrected in the early, formative years, all of his aberrations are magnified by maturity. Would you want your son to grow up a criminal, a seditionist?"

"You need not worry about that," I answered firmly. "I'll take Freddie in hand. He'll learn the value of competition if I have to beat it into him!"

"I'm afraid it's a little too late for that," said the educator. "School is a powerful influence, but home is the decisive influence in the molding of a child's character and outlook. The plain and simple fact is that your home--Edmund's home--has been an _anti_-competitive influence! No school can counterbalance it."

"That's absurd! Do you realize what line of business I'm engaged in?"

"I'm fully aware of that. However, how much time do you actually spend with your son, teaching him the precepts of our democracy?"

"What are you driving at?"

He had made up his mind to say it. He leaned forward across his donut-shaped desk and said very deliberately: "When the home fails in its duty, the state must step in and do the job. We have recommended that Edmund be placed in our city's Special Training and Re-Education School, and that he be isolated from all parental influence for a period of five years. Or until such time as his attitude shall have displayed a fundamental change."

Celia was on her feet. "What! You mean we can't see him for five years!"

I was leaning over his desk, almost yelling. "You are not going to take our boy away from us. We'll fight it in the courts."

The principal likewise stood up. He stared at us, disdainful in his power. "The court has already decided that point. I thought you were sensible, cooperative people who were willing to fight and sacrifice for the preservation of Competition. I thought I was doing you a special favor in giving you a last moment or two with your son. That, you must understand, went against all rules. I'm sorry now that I extended you the favor."

Celia was tearfully, bitterly sarcastic. "You extended us the favor--"

I was trembling with rage. "We are taking Freddie with us."

"You can't."

"You just try to stop me."

The principal smiled, again disdainfully. "He has already left with the STARS officer. There is nothing you can do. Except leave my office."

I was stunned. That blue car we parked next to. I was paralyzed. I wanted to smash the principal's face--even if it meant going to jail.

His desk buzzer sounded. He flicked a switch.

"Yes?"

It was the intercom to the receptionist.

"Mr. Masefield."

"Tell him to wait a moment."

Masefield's voice broke in. "It can't wait. That kid has gotten away from us! He's locked himself in an aircar. Who owns that Cad Super?"

I staggered the principal with a straight hard punch in the mouth. I threw another to his jaw and another in his solar plexus. I leaped onto his desk and seized him by the throat and battered his head against the desk top. Then I drove my fist into his face again and again until he lost consciousness.

Celia had had the presence of mind to turn off the microphone. I flicked it on.

"Masefield?" I was trusting the phone to depersonalize my voice.

"Yes."

"The owner will be right out to open it. Is there anyone by the car now?"

"Officer Fegerty."

"Good. Then the boy can't get away. Come to my office for a minute."

I kicked at the control panel and ripped out all the wires in sight, then socked the principal three or four more times for good measure. We exited as casually as we could, nodding pleasantly as we passed Masefield in the hall. Then we broke into a frantic run, through the inner and outer doors, pausing only long enough for Celia to smash the electric eye mechanism with her purse as the outer door swung shut. Nicely competitive of her.

We raced out to the parking lot. The cop was standing beside our car, and I could see Freddie cowering in the back seat, behind closed windows and locked doors.

"Officer Fegerty!" I said breathlessly. "Mr. Masefield says for you to come to the principal's office immediately! Something's happened."

He hesitated. "What about the kid?"