Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories

by Frederik Pohl

  When Nillie prayed she did not address any god. What religion she had she had picked up in the Women’s House of Detention, the last time she was there—the last time she ever would be there, she had vowed. It was just after the big riots in New York, and the first night in her cell she dropped off to sleep and found herself being touched by a big, strong woman with a hard, huge face. Nillie automatically assumed she was a bull-dyke. She was wrong. The woman was a missionary. She got herself arrested simply so she could preach to the inmates. Her religion was called “Temple I”—I am a temple, I myself, I am holy. It didn’t matter in her church what god you worshipped. You could worship any, or none at all; but you had to worship in, for and to yourself. You should not drug, whore or steal; above all, no matter what wickedness went on around you, you should not let them make you an accomplice…and so when Nillie got out she went to seek her pimp to tell him that she was through…

  And found Dandy in far worse shape than she. No more girls to run. No money left. And both kneecaps shattered, because he had made the mistake of getting in the middle of a power struggle in the mob. So she nursed him; and when she found out she was pregnant by him she kept it to herself until he was able to hobble around, and by then it was too late to think about a quick and easy abortion. It was a surprise to her that he married her. Dandy wasn’t really a bad man—for a pimp—though even for a pimp he damn sure wasn’t a specially good one; but he wanted a son, and it was joy for both of them when it turned out she was giving him one. Uneasy joy, sometimes—the boy was born small, caught every bug that was going around, missed half of every school year until he was eight. But that wasn’t a bad thing; in the hospitals were Gray Ladies and nurses to teach him to read and give him the habit; he was smarter than either of his parents right now, Nillie thought—

  If he was alive.

  She straightened up and rubbed the last dampness from the corners of her eyes. She recognized the streets fleeting by—they were in her own neighborhood now, only blocks from the candy store. But what had happened? The streets were littered with rain-smeared placards, and the smell of tear gas was strong. There was a distant bellow of bullhorns blaring something about evacuation and warning and nuclear accident—

  The police car nosed across the LIRR tracks, with a commuter special flashing away along the maglev lines as though it were running from something. As Nillie saw that the car was approaching the power plant, she thought that it was probably time to run, all right, if there was anywhere to run to.

  They parked at the end of the cul de sac, with barricades and police cars blocking off the road, and ran, dazzled by the spinning blue and white and red emergency lights, along one side of the street, across from the utility’s chainlink fence, into a storefront. And there were cops by the dozen, and not just cops. There was supercop, the commissioner himself, giving orders to half a dozen gray-haired police with gold braid on their caps; and there was a hospital stretcher, and out of a turban of white bandages looked eyes that Nillie instinctively recognized as her husband’s; and there was Mrs. Feigerman’s sullen elderly son, David Tisdale, looking both frightened and furious—

  And there, his scar pale and his lips compressed, staring at her with the cold consideration of a butcher about to put the mercy killer to the skull of a steer, was Henry Gambiage.

  The situation wasn’t only bad, it was worse than Nillie had dreamed possible. If Marc was alive—and he had been, at least, a few minutes earlier on the telephone—he was also a hostage. Not just any hostage. Captive of one of the maddest, meanest murderers in the New York prison system, Angelo Muzzi. And not just at the mercy of the mad dog’s weapons, but right at Ground Zero for what the convicts threatened would be the damnedest biggest explosion the much-bombed city had ever seen. The argument that was going on when Nillie came in had nothing to do with the hostages. It was among three people, two engineers from Con Ed and a professor from Brooklyn College’s physics department, and what they were arguing was whether it lay within the capacities of the escaped convicts merely to poison all of Bedford-Stuyvesant, or if they could take out the whole city and most of Long Island and the North Jersey coast. The Commissioner was having none of that. “Clear them out,” he ordered tersely. “The mayor’s going to be here in half an hour, and I want this settled before then.” But Nillie wasn’t listening. She was thinking of Marcus Garvey de Harcourt, age ten, in the middle of a nuclear explosion of any kind. Nothing else made much impression. She heard two of the police wrangling with each other over whether they had done the right thing by following Marcus with his bag of weapons to see where the escapees were, instead of simply preventing him from delivering them as soon as they realized the story of the candy-store holdup was a lie. She heard the commissioner roaring at Gambiage, and Gambiage stolidly, repetitiously, demanding to see his lawyer. She heard her husband whisper—even harder to understand than usual, because his lips were swollen like a Ubangi maiden’s—that Muzzi had made him get the boy to try to deliver weapons, had made him lie about the fake holdup and then had beaten him senseless to make the story more realistic. She gathered, vaguely, that the reason she and Dandy were there was to force Gambiage to get his criminals away from the powerplant by threatening to testify against him—David Tisdale the same—and none of it made any impression on her. She sat silent by the window, peering at the chainlink fence and the low, sullen building that lay behind it. “Listen, shithead,” the commissioner was roaring, “your lawyer wouldn’t come if I let him, because if you don’t get Muzzi out of that control room the whole city might go up!”

  And Gambiage spread his hands. “You think I don’t care about the city? Jesus. I own half of it. But there’s nothing I can do with Muzzi.” And then he went flying, looking more surprised than angry, as Nillie pushed past him. “There’s something I can do,” she cried. “I can talk to my little boy! Where’s that phone?”

  Marcus H. Garvey de Harcourt, king of the jungle, strong and fearless—Marcus who faced up every day to the threat of Dandy’s cat-o’-nine-tails and the menace of bigger kids willing to beat him bloody for the dimes in his pocket and the peril of pederasts who carried switchblade knives to convince their victims, and stray dogs, and mean-hearted cops, and raunchy winos—that dauntless Marcus was scared out of his tree. Dead people, sure. You couldn’t live a decade in Bed-Stuy without coming across an occasional stiff. Not often stiffs you had known. Not often seeing them die. Julius had not been any friend of his—at best, a piece of the furniture of Marcus’s life—but seeing him sob and bubble his life away had been terrifying. It was all terrifying. There was old Mr. Feigerman, his seeing gear crushed and broken; the blind man was really blind, now, and it seemed to cost him his speech and hearing as well, for he just lay against a wall of the power-station control center, unmoving. There was his soi-disant father, Johnny Harvey, not jovial now, not even paying attention to him; he was standing by the window with a stitch-gun in his hand, and Marcus feared for the life of anyone who showed in Harvey’s field of fire. There were the power-station engineers, bound and gagged, not to mention beaten up, lying in the doorway so if anyone started shooting from outside they would be the first to get it. There was that loopy little guy with the crazy eyes, La Croy, screaming rage and obscenities, shrieking as though he were being skinned alive, although he didn’t have a mark on him. And there was—

  There was Muzzi. Marcus swallowed and looked away, for Muzzi had looked at him a time or two in a fashion that scared him most of all. Marcus was profoundly grateful that Muzzi was more interested in the telephone to the outside world than in himself. There he was, looking like Pancho Villa with his holstered guns and the twin bandoliers crossed over his steel-ribbed flak jacket, yelling at the unseen, but not unheard, Mr. Gambiage. “Out!” he roared, “what we want ith fuckin out, and fuckin damn thoon!”

  “Now, Moots,” soothed the voice over the speakerphone.

  “Now thit! We had a fuckin deal! I keep my fuckin mouth thut about MacReady and
you get me out of the fuckin joint!”

  “I didn’t kill MacReady—”

  “You wath fuckin right there watchin when I gave him the fuckin ithe pick, tho get fuckin movin!”

  Gambiage’s self-control was considerable, but there was an edge to his voice as he said, placatingly, “I’m doing what I can, Moots. The Mayor’s on his way, and he’s agreed to be a hostage while you get on the plane—”

  “Not jutht the Mayor, I want the fuckin Governor and the fuckin Governor’th fuckin kid! All three of them, and right away, or I blow up the whole fuckin thity!”

  Just to hear the words made icy little mice run up and down Marcus’s spine. Blow up the city! It was one thing to listen to Mrs. Spiegel tell about it in the third grade, and a whole other, far worse thing to imagine it really happening. Could it happen? Marcus shrank back into his corner, looking at the men around him. Muzzi certainly wouldn’t have the brains to make it happen, neither would La Croy. The engineers and Mr. Feigerman might know how, but Marcus couldn’t imagine anything the convicts could do that would make them do it.

  That left Johnny Harvey.

  Ah, shit, Marcus thought to himself, sure. Johnny Harvey could figure out how to do it if anybody could. Would he?

  The more Marcus thought about it, the more he thought that Harvey just might. What little Marcus had seen of Nathanael Greene made him think that living there must be pretty lousy, lousy enough so that even dying in a mushroom cloud might be better than spending the rest of your life in a place like that. Or a worse one…But it wouldn’t be better for Marcus. Marcus didn’t want to die. And the only thing he could think of that might keep him from it, if Muzzi blew his stack terminally and Harvey carried out the bluff, would be for him to kill Harvey first—“Hey, kid!”

  Marcus stiffened and saw that Muzzi was glowering at him, holding the phone in his hand. “Wh-what?” he got out.

  Muzzi studied him carefully, and the scowl became what Muzzi might have thought an ingratiating grin. “It’th your mom, thweetie. Wantth to talk to you.”

  The question of how it had all gone to hell no longer interested Johnny Harvey, the question of what, if anything, there was left to hope for was taking up all his attention. He sat before the winking signal lights and dials of the power controls, wolfing down his third hamburger and carton of cold coffee, wondering what Marcus had been wondering. Would he do it? Was there a point in blowing up a city out of rage and revenge? Or was there a point in not doing it, if that meant going back to Nathanael Greene?—or some worse place. He reached for another hamburger, and then pushed the cardboard tray away in disgust. Trust Muzzi to demand food that a decent palate couldn’t stand! But those two words, “trust” and “Muzzi,” didn’t belong in the same sentence.

  Trusting Muzzi had got him this far. It wasn’t far enough. There was Muzzi, stroking the nigger kid’s arm as the boy talked to his mother, on the ragged edge of hysteria; Muzzi with his jaw broken and one hand just about ruined, and still filled with enough rage and enough lust for a dozen ordinary human beings. You could forget about Feigerman and the engineers, they were just about out of it; there was Muzzi and that asshole La Croy, and the boy and himself, and how were they going to get out of here? Assume the governor gave in. Assume there really was a jet waiting for them at Kennedy. The first thing they had to do was get out of this place and into a car—not here in this street, where there could be a thousand boobytraps that would wreck any plan, but out in the open, say on the other side of the railroad tracks, where there would be a clear shot down the avenue toward the airport. It was almost like one of those cannibals and missionaries puzzles of his boyhood. Johnny Harvey had been really good at those puzzles. Was there a way to solve this one? Let the first missionary take the first cannibal across the river in the boat—only this time it was across the railroad tracks—then come back by himself to where the other missionaries and cannibals were waiting—

  Only this time he was one of the cannibals, and the game was for keeps.

  The boy was still on the phone, weeping now, and Muzzi had evidently got some kind of crazed idea in his head, because he had moved over to the corner where Feigerman was lying. Callously he wrenched the remains of the harness off Feigerman’s unprotesting body. The old man wasn’t dead, but he made no sound as Muzzi began straightening out the bent metal and twisted crown. Then he got up and walked toward Johnny Harvey.

  Who got up and moved cautiously away; you never knew what Muzzi was going to do.

  And then he saw that Muzzi, glowering over the power-station controls, was reaching his hand out toward them; and then Johnny Harvey was really scared.

  When Nillie got off the phone she just sat. She didn’t weep. Nillie de Harcourt had had much practice restraining tears in her life. They were a luxury she couldn’t afford, not now, not while Marcus was in that place with those men—with that one particular man, for she had known Muzzi by reputation and gossip and by personal pain, and she knew what particular perils her son was in. So she sat dry-eyed and alert, and watched and waited. When she heard Johnny Harvey on the phone, warning that Muzzi was getting ready to explode, demanding better food than the crap they’d been given, she looked thoughtful for a moment. But she didn’t say anything, even when the mayor and Mr. Gambiage retreated to another room for a while. Whatever they were cooking up, it satisfied neither of them. When they came out the mayor was scowling and Mr. Gambiage was shaking his head. “Do not underestimate Moots,” he warned. “He’s an animal, but he knows a trap when he sees one.”

  “Shut up,” said the mayor, for once careless of a major campaign contributor. The mayor was looking truly scared. He listened irritably to some distant sound, then turned to Gambiage. “They’re still shouting out there. I thought you said you’d call off the demonstration.”

  “It is called off,” said Gambiage heavily. “It takes time. It is easier to start things than to stop them.” And Nillie was listening alertly, one hand in the hand of her husband. Only when two policemen came in with a room-service rolling hotel tray of food did she let go and move forward.

  “It’s all ready,” one of them said, and the mayor nodded, and Nillie de Harcourt put her hand on the cart.

  “I’m taking it over there,” she said.

  The mayor looked actually startled—maybe even frightened, for reasons Nillie did not try to guess. “No chance, Mrs. de Harcourt. You don’t know what kind of men they are.”

  “I do know,” Nillie said steadily. “Who better? And I’m taking this food over so I can be with my son.”

  The mayor opened his mouth angrily, but Mr. Gambiage put a hand on his shoulder. “Why not?” he said softly.

  “Why not? Don’t be an idiot, Gambiage—” And then the mayor had second thoughts. He paused, irresolute, then shrugged. “If you insist in front of witnesses,” he said, “I do not feel I have the right to stop you.”

  Nillie was moving toward the door with the cart before he could change his mind. A train flashed underneath the bridge, but she didn’t even look at it. She was absolutely certain that something was going on that she didn’t understand, something very wrong—something that would make the mayor of the city and the city’s boss of all boss criminals whisper together in front of witnesses; but what it was she did not know, and did not consider that it mattered. She went steadily across the tracks and did not falter even when she saw crazy La Croy shouting out the window at her, with his gun pointed at her head. She didn’t speak, and she didn’t stop. She pushed right in through the door, kicking the powerplant engineers out of the way.

  There they were, crazy Muzzi and crazy La Croy, both swearing at her, and sane but treacherous Johnny Harvey with his hand on a gun, moving uncertainly toward the food; and there was old Mr. Feigerman looking like death days past—

  And there was Marcus, looking scared but almost unharmed. “Honey, honey!” she cried, and abandoned the food and ran to take him in her arms.

  “Leave him alone, bitch!” shout
ed La Croy, and Muzzi thundered behind him:

  “Fuckin handth up, you! Who knowth what you’ve got there—”

  She turned to face them calmly. “I’ve got nothing but me,” she said; and waited for them to do whatever they were going to do.

  But what they did was nothing. Johnny Harvey, not very interested in her or his companions, was moving on the cart of food, the big dish with the silver dome; he lifted the dome—

  Bright bursts of light flared from under it, thunder roared, and something picked Nillie de Harcourt up and threw her against the wall.

  A shard of metal had caught La Croy in the back of the head; he probably had never felt it. What there was left of Johnny Harvey was almost nothing at all. Muzzi struggled to his feet, the terrible pain in his jaw worse than ever, and stared furiously around the battered room. He could hardly see. It had not just been a bomb—they wouldn’t have risked a bomb big enough to do the job, in that place; there was something like tear gas in with it, and Muzzi was choking and gasping. But, blurrily, he could see young Marcus trying to help his half-conscious mother out the door, and he bawled, “Thtop or I blow your fuckin headth off!” And the kid turned at him, and his face was a hundred years older than his age, and for a moment even Muzzi felt an unaccustomed tingle of fright. If that kid had had a gun—

  But he didn’t. “Move your fuckin atheth back in here!” roared Muzzi and slowly, hopelessly, they came back into the choking air.

  But not for long.

  Two minutes later they were going out again, but there had been a change. Nillie de Harcourt stumbled ahead, barely conscious. Marcus Garvey de Harcourt pushed the wheelchair, and the occupant of the wheelchair, crown on his head, muffled in a turned-up jacket…was Muzzi.

  And Marcus was the most frightened he had ever been in his life, because he could not see a way to live to the other side of the bridge. He could see the governor coming toward them, with a flanking line of police, all their guns drawn; and he knew what was in Muzzi’s mind. The man had gone ape. If he couldn’t get away and couldn’t blow up the city, the next best thing was to kill the governor.