Joe said, “Just get me the bag.”
“All right. It’s your employee.” The moratorium owner started off down the hall.
“Was once,” Joe said. “Not any more.” It would have to be her first, he said to himself. But maybe, in a sense, that’s better. Wendy, he thought, I’m taking you with me, taking you home.
But not as he had planned.
To the other inertials seated around the massive genuine oak conference table Al Hammond said, breaking abruptly into the joint silence, “Joe should be back anytime now.” He looked at his wrist watch to make certain. It appeared to have stopped.
“Meanwhile,” Pat Conley said, “I suggest we watch the late afternoon news on TV to see if Hollis has leaked out the news of Runciter’s death.”
“It wasn’t in the ’pape today,” Edie Dorn said.
“The TV news is much more recent,” Pat said. She handed Al a fifty-cent piece with which to start up the TV set mounted behind curtains at the far end of the conference room, an impressive 3-D color polyphonic mechanism which had been a source of pride to Runciter.
“Want me to put it in the slot for you, Mr. Hammond?” Sammy Mundo asked eagerly.
“Okay,” Al said; broodingly, he tossed the coin to Mundo, who caught it and trotted toward the set.
Restlessly, Walter W. Wayles, Runciter’s attorney, shifted about in his chair, fiddled with his fine-veined, aristocratic hands at the clasp lock of his briefcase and said, “You people should not have left Mr. Chip in Zürich. We can do nothing until he arrives here, and it’s extremely vital that all matters pertaining to Mr. Runciter’s will be expedited.”
“You’ve read the will,” Al said. “And so has Joe Chip. We know who Runciter wanted to take over management of the firm.”
“But from a legal standpoint—” Wayles began.
“It won’t take much longer,” Al said brusquely. With his pen he scratched random lines along the borders of the list he had made; preoccupied, he embroidered the list, then read it once again.
stale cigarettes
out-of-date phone book
obsolete money
putrefied food
ad on matchfolder
“I’m going to pass this list around the table once more,” he said aloud. “And see if this time anyone can spot a connective link between these five occurrences…or whatever you want to call them. These five things that are—” He gestured.
“Are wrong,” Jon Ild said.
Pat Conley said, “It’s easy to see the connective between the first four. But not the matchfolder. That doesn’t fit in.”
“Let me see the matchfolder again,” Al said, reaching out his hand. Pat gave him the matchfolder and, once again, he read the ad.
AMAZING OPPORTUNITY FOR ADVANCEMENT
TO ALL WHO CAN QUALIFY!
Mr. Glen Runciter of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium of Zürich, Switzerland, doubled his income within a week of receiving our free shoe kit with detailed information as to how you also can sell our authentic simulated-leather loafers to friends, relatives, business associates. Mr. Runciter, although helplessly frozen in cold-pac, earned four hundred
Al stopped reading; he pondered, meanwhile picking at a lower tooth with his thumbnail. Yes, he thought; this is different, this ad. The others consist of obsolescence and decay. But not this.
“I wonder,” he said aloud, “what would happen if we answered this matchfolder ad. It gives a box number in Des Moines, Iowa.”
“We’d get a free shoe kit,” Pat Conley said. “With detailed information as to how we too can—”
“Maybe,” Al interrupted, “we’d find ourselves in contact with Glen Runciter.” Everyone at the table, including Walter W. Wayles, stared at him. “I mean it,” he said. “Here.” He handed the matchfolder to Tippy Jackson. “Write them ’stant mail.”
“And say what?” Tippy Jackson asked.
“Just fill out the coupon,” Al said. To Edie Dorn he said, “Are you absolutely sure you’ve had that matchfolder in your purse since late last week? Or could you have picked it up somewhere today?”
Edie Dorn said, “I put several matchfolders into my purse on Wednesday. As I told you, this morning on my way here I happened to notice this one as I was lighting a cigarette. It definitely has been in my purse from before we went to Luna. From several days before.”
“With that ad on it?” Jon Ild asked her.
“I never noticed what the matchfolders said before; I only noticed this today. I can’t say anything about it before. Who can?”
“Nobody can,” Don Denny said. “What do you think, Al? A gag by Runciter? Did he have them printed up before his death? Or Hollis, maybe? As a sort of grotesque joke—knowing that he was going to kill Runciter? That by the time we noticed the matchfolder Runciter would be in cold-pac, in Zürich, like the matchfolder says?”
Tito Apostos said, “How would Hollis know we’d take Runciter to Zürich? And not to New York?”
“Because Ella’s there,” Don Denny answered.
At the TV set Sammy Mundo stood silently inspecting the fifty-cent piece which Al had given him. His underdeveloped, pale forehead had wrinkled up into a perplexed frown.
“What’s the matter, Sam?” Al said. He felt himself tense up inwardly; he foresaw another happening.
“Isn’t Walt Disney’s head supposed to be on the fifty-cent piece?” Sammy said.
“Either Disney’s,” Al said, “or if it’s an older one, then Fidel Castro’s. Let’s see it.”
“Another obsolete coin,” Pat Conley said, as Sammy carried the fifty-cent piece to Al.
“No,” Al said, examining the coin. “It’s last year’s; perfectly good datewise. Perfectly acceptable. Any machine in the world would take it. The TV set would take it.”
“Then, what’s the matter?” Edie Dorn asked timidly.
“Exactly what Sam said,” Al answered. “It has the wrong head on it.” He got up, carried the coin over to Edie, deposited it in her moist open hand. “Who does it look like to you?”
After a pause Edie said, “I—don’t know.”
“Sure, you know,” Al said.
“Okay,” Edie said sharply, goaded into replying against her will. She pushed the coin back at him, ridding herself of it with a shiver of aversion.
“It’s Runciter,” Al said to all of them seated around the big table.
After a pause Tippy Jackson said, “Add that to your list.” Her voice was barely audible.
“I see two processes at work,” Pat said presently, as Al reseated himself and began to make the addendum on his piece of paper. “One, a process of deterioration; that seems obvious. We agree on that.”
Raising his head, Al said to her, “What’s the other?”
“I’m not quite sure.” Pat hesitated. “Something to do with Runciter. I think we should look at all our other coins. And paper money too. Let me think a little longer.”
One by one, the people at the table got out their wallets, purses, rummaged in their pockets.
“I have a five-poscred note,” Jon Ild said, “with a beautiful steel-engraving portrait of Mr. Runciter. The rest—” He took a long look at what he held. “They’re normal; they’re okay. Do you want to see the five-poscred note, Mr. Hammond?”
Al said, “I’ve got two of them. Already. Who else?” He looked around the table. Six hands had gone up. “Eight of us,” he said, “have what I guess we should call Runciter money, now, to some extent. Probably by the end of the day all the money will be Runciter money. Or give it two days. Anyhow, Runciter money will work; it’ll start machines and appliances and we can pay our debts with it.”
“Maybe not,” Don Denny said. “Why do you think so? This, what you call Runciter money—” He tapped a bill he held. “Is there any reason why the banks should honor it? It’s not legitimate issue; the Government didn’t put it out. It’s funny money; it’s not real.”
“Okay,” Al said reasonably. “Maybe it’s
not real; maybe the banks will refuse it. But that’s not the real question.”
“The real question,” Pat Conley said, “is, What does this second process consist of, these manifestations of Runciter?”
“That’s what they are.” Don Denny nodded. “ ‘Manifestations of Runciter’—that’s the second process, along with the decay. Some coins get obsolete; others show up with Runciter’s portrait or bust on them. You know what I think? I think these processes are going in opposite directions. One is a going-away, so to speak. A going-out-of-existence. That’s process one. The second process is a coming-into-existence. But of something that’s never existed before.”
“Wish fulfillment,” Edie Dorn said faintly.
“Pardon?” Al said.
“Maybe these are things Runciter wished for,” Edie said. “To have his portrait on legal tender, on all our money, including metal coins. It’s grandiose.”
Tito Apostos said, “But matchfolders?”
“I guess not,” Edie agreed. “That’s not very grandiose.”
“The firm already advertises on matchfolders,” Don Denny said. “And on TV, and in the ’papes and mags. And with junk mail. Our PR department handles all that. Generally, Runciter didn’t give a damn about that end of the business, and he certainly didn’t give a damn about matchfolders. If this were some sort of materialization of his psyche you’d expect his face to appear on TV, not on money or matchfolders.”
“Maybe it is on TV,” Al said.
“That’s right,” Pat Conley said. “We haven’t tried it. None of us have had time to watch TV.”
“Sammy,” Al said, handing him back the fifty-cent piece, “go turn the TV set on.”
“I don’t know if I want to look,” Edie said, as Sammy Mundo dropped the coin into the slot and stood off to one side, jiggling the tuning knobs.
The door of the room opened. Joe Chip stood there, and Al saw his face.
“Shut the TV set off,” Al said and got to his feet. Everyone in the room watched as he walked toward Joe. “What happened, Joe?” he said. He waited. Joe said nothing. “What’s the matter?”
“I chartered a ship to bring me back here,” Joe said huskily.
“You and Wendy?”
Joe said, “Write out a check for the ship. It’s on the roof. I don’t have enough money for it.”
To Walter W. Wayles, Al said, “Are you able to disburse funds?”
“For something like that I can. I’ll go settle with the ship.” Taking his briefcase with him, Wayles left the room. Joe remained in the doorway, again silent. He looked a hundred years older than when Al had last seen him.
“In my office.” Joe turned away from the table; he blinked, hesitated. “I—don’t think you should see. The man from the moratorium was with me when I found her. He said he couldn’t do anything; it had been too long. Years.”
“ ‘Years’?” Al said, chilled.
Joe said, “We’ll go down to my office.” He led Al out of the conference room, into the hall, to the elevator. “On the trip back here the ship fed me tranquilizers. That’s part of the bill. Actually, I feel a lot better. In a sense, I don’t feel anything. It must be the tranquilizers. I guess when they wear off I’ll feel it again.”
The elevator came. Together they descended, neither of them saying anything until they reached the third floor, where Joe had his office.
“I don’t advise you to look.” Joe unlocked his office, led Al inside. “It’s up to you. If I got over it, you probably will.” He switched on the overhead lighting.
After a pause Al said, “Lord god.”
“Don’t open it,” Joe said.
“I’m not going to open it. This morning or last night?”
“Evidently, it happened early, before she even reached my room. We—that moratorium owner and I—found bits of cloth in the corridor. Leading to my door. But she must have been all right, or nearly all right, when she crossed the lobby; anyhow, nobody noticed anything. And in a big hotel like that they keep somebody watching. And the fact that she managed to reach my room—”
“Yeah, that indicates she must have been at least able to walk. That seems probable, anyhow.”
Joe said, “I’m thinking about the rest of us.”
“In what way?”
“The same thing. Happening to us.”
“How could it?”
“How could it happen to her? Because of the blast. We’re going to die like that one after another. One by one. Until none of us are left. Until each of us is ten pounds of skin and hair in a plastic bag, with a few dried-up bones thrown in.”
“All right,” Al said. “There’s some force at work producing rapid decay. It’s been at work since—or started with—the blast there on Luna. We already knew that. We also know, or think we know, that another force, a contraforce, is at work, moving things in an opposite direction. Something connected with Runciter. Our money is beginning to have his picture on it. A matchfolder—”
“He was on my vidphone,” Joe said. “At the hotel.”
“On it? How?”
“I don’t know; he just was. Not on the screen, not the video part. Only his voice.”
“What’d he say?”
“Nothing in particular.”
Al studied him. “Could he hear you?” he asked finally.
“No. I tried to get through. It was one-way entirely; I was listening in, and that was all.”
“So that’s why I couldn’t get through to you.”
“That’s why.” Joe nodded.
“We were trying the TV when you showed up. You realize there’s nothing in the ’papes about his death. What a mess.” He did not like the way Joe Chip looked. Old, small and tired, he reflected. Is this how it begins? We’ve got to establish contact with Runciter, he said to himself. Being able to hear him isn’t enough; evidently, he’s trying to reach us, but—
If we’re going to live through this we’ll have to reach him.
Joe said, “Picking him up on TV isn’t going to do us any good. It’ll just be like the phone all over again. Unless he can tell us how to communicate back. Maybe he can tell us; maybe he knows. Maybe he understands what’s happened.”
“He would have to understand what’s happened to himself. Which is something we don’t know.” In some sense, Al thought, he must be alive, even though the moratorium failed to rouse him. Obviously, the moratorium owner did his best with a client of this much importance. “Did von Vogelsang hear him on the phone?” he asked Joe.
“He tried to hear him. But all he got was silence and then static, apparently from a long way off. I heard it too. Nothing. The sound of absolute nothing. A very strange sound.”
“I don’t like that,” Al said. He was not sure why. “I’d feel better about it if von Vogelsang had heard it too. At least that way we could be sure it was there, that it wasn’t an hallucination on your part.” Or, for that matter, he thought, on all our parts. As in the case of the matchfolder.
But some of the happenings had definitely not been hallucinations; machines had rejected antiquated coins—objective machines geared to react only to physical properties. No psychological elements came into play there. Machines could not imagine.
“I’m leaving this building for a while,” Al said. “Think of a city or a town at random, one that none of us have anything to do with, one where none of us ever go or have ever gone.”
“Baltimore,” Joe said.
“Okay, I’m going to Baltimore. I’m going to see if a store picked at random will accept Runciter currency.”
“Buy me some new cigarettes,” Joe said.
“Okay. I’ll do that too; I’ll see if cigarettes in a random store in Baltimore have been affected. I’ll check other products as well; I’ll make random samplings. Do you want to come with me, or do you want to go upstairs and tell them about Wendy?”
Joe said, “I’ll go with you.”
“Maybe we should never tell them about her.”
&
nbsp; “I think we should,” Joe said. “Since it’s going to happen again. It may happen before we get back. It may be happening now.”
“Then we better get our trip to Baltimore over as quickly as possible,” Al said. He started out of the office. Joe Chip followed.
NINE
* * *
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They selected the Lucky People Supermarket on the periphery of Baltimore.
At the counter Al said to the autonomic, computerized checker, “Give me a pack of Pall Malls.”
“Wings are cheaper,” Joe said.
Irritated, Al said, “They don’t make Wings any more. They haven’t for years.”
“They make them,” Joe said, “but they don’t advertise. It’s an honest cigarette that claims nothing.” To the checker he said, “Change that from Pall Malls to Wings.”
The pack of cigarettes slid from the chute and onto the counter. “Ninety-five cents,” the checker said.
“Here’s a ten-poscred bill.” Al fed the bill to the checker, whose circuits at once whirred as it scrutinized the bill. “Your change, sir,” the checker said; it deposited a neat heap of coins and bills before Al. “Please move along now.”
So Runciter money is acceptable, Al said to himself as he and Joe got out of the way of the next customer, a heavyset old lady wearing a blueberry-colored cloth coat and carrying a Mexican rope shopping bag. Cautiously, he opened the pack of cigarettes.
The cigarettes crumbled between his fingers.
“It would have proved something,” Al said, “if this had been a pack of Pall Malls. I’m getting back in line.” He started to do so—and then discovered that the heavy-set old lady in the dark coat was arguing violently with the autonomic checker.
“It was dead,” she asserted shrilly, “by the time I got it home. Here; you can have it back.” She set a pot on the counter; it contained, Al saw, a lifeless plant, perhaps an azalea—in its moribund state it showed few features.
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