Silverberg, Robert - Company Store

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ROBERT SILVERBERG

Company Store

The entrepreneurial spirit does find expression in . contemporary science fiction. This

interesting story conveys an important message: to be in debt is to be a slave. In an earlier era

of America's history entire towns were controlled by business enterprises which rented the houses

the workers lived in, owned the retail outlets that sold them the staples of life and buried them

(for a price) when they

died. These company towns-and the workers' dilemma-have been immortalized in song by Tennessee

Ernie Ford in "Sixteen Tons."

The salesman in Silverberg's tale has a compulsive drive to sell. In fact, the salesman must sell

or face destruction, a fate that does not occur in the real world, unless one considers

unemployment to be a form of destruction. The law in the story is on the side of the seller-it is

strictly "buyer beware." Although written before the consumer movement, "Company Store" vividly

portrays the feeling of entrapment present in the buyer-seller relationship.

Robert Silverberg is one of the finest contemporary science fiction writers. The excellence and

the poetry of his recent work has overshadowed his creative social criticism, exemplified by

stories like "Going Down Smooth," "Black Is Beautiful," and the present story.

Colonist Roy Wingert gripped his blaster with shaky hands. He took dead aim at the slimy

wormlike creatures wriggling behind his newly deposited pile of crates.

They told me this planet was uninhabited, he thought. Hah I

He yanked back the firing stud. A spurt of violet light leaped out.

His nostrils caught the smell of roasting alien flesh. Shuddering, Wingert turned away from the

mess before him, in time to see four more of the wormlike beings writhing toward him from the

rear.

He ashed those. Two more dangled invitingly from a thick-boled tree at his left.

Getting into the spirit of the thing now, Wingert turned the beam on

them, too. The clearing was beginning to look like the vestibule of an abattoir. Sweat ran down

Wingert's face. His stomach was starting to get queasy, and his skin was cold at the prospect of

spending his three year tour on Quellac doing nothing but fighting off these overgrown night

crawlers.

Two more of them were wriggling out of a decaying log near his feet. They were nearly six feet

long, with saw-edged teeth glistening in Quellac's bright sunlight. Nothing very dangerous,

Wingert thought grimly. Ho! He recharged the blaster and roasted the two newcomers.

Loud noises back of him persuaded him to turn. Something very

much like a large gray toad, seven or eight feet high and mostly mouth, was hopping toward him

through the forest. It was about thirty yards away now. It looked very hungry.

Squaring his shoulders, Wingert prepared to defend himself against this new assault. But just as

he started to depress the firing stud a motion to his far right registered in the corner of his

eye. Another of the things-approaching rapidly from the opposite direction.

"Pardon me, sir," a sharp crackling voice said suddenly. "You seem to be in serious straits. May I

offer you the use of this Duarm Pocket Force-Field Generator in this emergency? The cost is only-"

Wingert gasped. "Damn the cost! Turn the thing on! Those toads are only twenty feet away!"

"Of course, sir."

Wingert heard a click, and abruptly a shimmering blue bubble of force sprang up around them. The

two onrushing pseudotoads cracked soundly into it and were thrown back.

Wingert staggered over to one of the packing cases and sat down limply. He was soaked with sweat

from head to foot.

"Thanks," he said. "You saved my life. But who the hell are you, and where'd you come from?"

"Permit me to introduce myself. I am XL-ad4l, a new-model Vending and Distributing Robot

manufactured on Densobol II. 1 arrived here not long ago, and, perceiving your plight-"

Wingert saw now that the creature was indeed a robot, roughly humanoid except for a heavy pair of

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Silverberg, Robert - Company Store

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