Alfred Bester - Hobson' s Choiche

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Hobson’s Choice

This is a warning to accomplices like you, me and Addyer.

Can you spare price of one cup coffee, honoTable sir? I am indigent organism which are hungering.

By day, Addyer was a statistician. He concerned himself with such matters as statistical

tables, averages and dispersions, groups that are not homogeneous and random sampling. At night,

Addyer plunged into an elaborate escape fantasy divided into two parts. Either he imagined himself

moved back in time a hundred years with a double armful of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, best-

sellers, hit plays and gambling records; or else he imagined himself transported forward in time a

thousand years to the Golden Age of perfection.

There were other fantasies which Addyer entertained on odd Thursdays, such as (by a fluke)

becoming the only man left on earth with a world of passionate beauties to fecundate; such as

acquiring the power of invisibility which would enable him to rob banks and right wrongs with

impunity; such as possessing the mysterious power of working miracles.

Up to this point you and I and Addyer are identical. Where we part company is in the fact

that Addyer was a statistician.

Can you spare cost of one cup coffee, honorable miss? For blessed charitability? I am beholden.

On Monday, Addyer rushed into his chief’s office, waving a sheaf of papers. “Look here,

Mr. Grande,” Addyer sputtered. “I’ve found something fishy. Extremely fishy . . . In the

statistical sense, that is.”

“Oh, hell,” Grande answered. “You’re not supposed to be finding anything. We’re in between

statistics until the war’s over.”

“I was leafing through the Interior Department’s reports. D’you know our popu’ation’s up?”

“Not after the atom bomb it isn’t,” said Grande. “We’ve lost double what our birthrate can

replace.” He pointed out the window to the twenty-five-foot stub of the Washington Monument.

“There’s your documentation.”

“But our population’s up 3.0915 percent.” Addyer displayed his figures. “What about that,

Mr. Grande?”

“Must be a mistake somewhere,” Grande muttered after a moment’s inspection. “You’d better

check.”

“Yes, sir,” said Adclyer scurrying out of the office. “I knew you’d be interested, sir.

You’re the ideal statistician, sir.” He was gone.

“Poop,” said Grande and once again began computing the quantity of bored respirations left

to him. It was his personalized anesthesia.

On Tuesday, Addyer discovered that there was no correlation between the

mortality/birthrate ratio and the population increase. The war was multiplying mortality and

reducing births; yet the population was minutely increasing. Addyer displayed his discovery to

Grande, received a pat on the back and went home to a new fantasy in which he woke up a million

years in the future, learned the answer to the enigma and decided to remain amid snow-capped

mountains and snow-capped bosoms, safe under the aegis of a culture saner than Aureomycin.

On Wednesday, Addyer requisitioned the comptometer and file and ran a test check on

Washington, D.C. To his dismay he discovered that the population of the former capital was down

0.0029 percent. This was distressing, and Addyer went home to escape into a dream about Queen

Victoria’s Golden Age where he amazed and confounded the world with his brilliant output of

novels, plays and poetry, all cribbed from Shaw, Galsworthy and Wilde.

Can you spare price of one coffee, honorable sir? I am distTessed individual needful of chariting.

On Thursday, Addyer tried another check, this time on the city of Philadelphia. He

discovered that Philadelphia’s population was up 0.095 9 percent. Very encouraging. He tried a

rundown on Little Rock. Population up 1.1329 percent. He tested St. Louis. Population up 2.0924

percent. . . and this despite the complete extinction of Jefferson County owing to one of those

military mistakes of an excessive nature.

“My God!” Addyer exclaimed, trembling with excitement. “The closer I get to the center of

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the country, the greater the increase. But it was the center of the country that took the heaviest

punishment in the buz-raid. What’s the answer?”

That night he shuttled back and forth between the future and the past in his ferment, and

he was down at the shop by AM. He put a twenty-four-hour claim on the compo and files. He followed

up his hunch and he came up with a fantastic discovery which he graphed in approved form. On the

map of the remains of the United States he drew concentric circles in colors illustrating the

areas of population increase. The red, orange, yellow, green and blue circles formed a perfect

target around Finney County, Kansas.

“Mr. Grande,” Addyer shouted in a high statistical passion, “Finney County has got to

explain this.”

“You go out there and get that explanation,” Grande replied, and Addyer departed.

“Poop,” muttered Grande and began integrating his pulse rate with his eye-blink.

Can you spare price of one coffee, dearly madam? I am starveling organism requiring

nutritiousment.

Now, travel in those days was hazardous. Addyer took ship to Charleston (there were no

rail connections remaining in the North Atlantic states) and was wrecked off Hatteras by a rogue

mine. He drifted in the icy waters for seventeen hours, muttering through his teeth: “Oh, Christ!

If only I’d been born a hundred years ago.”

Apparently this form of prayer was potent. He was picked up by a navy sweeper and shipped

to Charleston where he arrived just in time to acquire a subcritical radiation burn from a raid

which fortunately left the railroad unharmed. He was treated for the burn from Charleston to Macon

(change) from Birmingham to Memphis (bubonic plague) to Little Rock (polluted water) to Tulsa

(fallout quarantine) to Kansas City (the O.K. Bus Co. Accepts No Liability for Lives Lost through

Acts of War) to Lyonesse, Finney County, Kansas.

And there he was in Finney County with its great magma pits and scars and radiation

streaks; whole farms blackened and razed; whole highways so blasted they looked like dotted lines;

whole population 4-F. Clouds of soot and fallout neutralizers hung over Finney County by day,

turning it into a Pittsburgh on a still afternoon. Auras of radiation glowed at night, highlighted

by the blinking red warning beacons, turning the county into one of those overexposed night

photographs, all blurred and cross-hatched by deadly slashes of light.

After a restless night in the Lyonesse Hotel, Addyer went over to the county seat for a

check on their birth records. He was armed with the proper credentials, but the county seat was

not armed with the statistics. That excessive military mistake again. It had extinguished the

seat.

A little annoyed, Addyer marched off to the County Medical Association office. His idea

was to poll the local doctors on births. There was an office and one attendant who had been a

practical nurse. He informed Addyer that Finney County had lost its last doctor to the army eight

months previous. Midwives might be the answer to the birth enigma but there was no record of

midwives. Addyer would simply have to canvass from door to door, asking if any lady within

practiced that ancient profession.

Further piqued, Addyer returned to the Lyonesse Hotel and wrote on a slip of tissue paper:

HAVING DATA DIFFICULTIES. WILL REPORT AS SOON AS INFORMATION AVAILABLE. He slipped the message

into an aluminum capsule, attached it to his sole surviving carrier pigeon and dispatched it to

Washington with a prayer. Then he sat down at his window and brooded.

He was aroused by a curious sight. In the street below, the O.K. Bus Co. had just arrived

from Kansas City. The old coach wheezed to a stop, opened its door with some difficulty and

permitted a one-legged farmer to emerge. His burned face was freshly bandaged. Evidently this was

a well-to-do burgess who could afford to travel for medical treatment. The bus backed up for the

return trip to Kansas City and honked a warning horn. That was when the curious sight began.

From nowhere. . . absolutely nowhere. . . a horde of people appeared. They skipped from

back alleys, from behind rubble piles; they popped out of stores, they filled the street. They

were all jolly, healthy, brisk, happy. They laughed and chatted as they climbed into the bus. They

looked like hikers and tourists, carrying knapsacks, carpetbags, box lunches and even babies. In

two minutes the bus was filled. It lurched off down the road, and as it disappeared Addyer heard

happy singing break out and echo from the walls of rubble.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

He hadn’t heard spontaneous singing in over two years. He hadn’t seen a

carefree smile in over three years. He felt like a color-blind man who was seeing the full

spectrum for the first time. It was uncanny. It was also a little blasphemous.

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file:///G|/rah/Alfred%20Bester%20-%20Hobsons%20%20Choice.txtHobson’sChoiceThisisawarningtoaccompliceslikeyou,meandAddyer.Canyousparepriceofonecupcoffee,honoTablesir?Iamindigentorga\nismwhicharehungering.Byday,Addyerwasastatistician.Heconcernedhimselfwithsuc\hmattersasstatisticaltables,averagesanddis...

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