The Aluminum Man

by G. C. Edmondson

“Please,” Rudolf said. “A man has to have some secrets.”

  Lillith’s look made Rudolf suddenly wonder if he had looked at the golden horde with the same expression. “All right,” he said. “Tomorrow you can get a picture of me doing it.”

  Next morning they rode out in the dump truck. Rudolf got a satchel out of the back. “Something I have to do in the clean room,” he said, heading for Flaherty’s lab. “Be out in a minute.”

  “What’s a clean room?” Lillith asked.

  Flaherty was still improvising explanations about special clothing and precautions not to introduce contamination when Rudolf came out again. Flaherty stared but said nothing.

  Rudolf wore a loin cloth improvised from an old bleeding madras jacket. Around his head, wrists and ankles he wore the mortal remains of a feather duster. He had painted his face and body in stripes and designs half remembered from cowboy and Indian movies. He carried a baton with feathered knobs at each end. Staring, Lillith asked, “Is that a coup stick?”

  Rudolf shook his head angrily and put a finger to his lips. “The power has descended upon him,” Flaherty extemporized. “If he spoke t’you now you might come to harm.”

  Lillith looked sharply at the Irishman. Rudolf went out to the gravel pit. He began jumping and howling what he could remember of the disaster-to-enemy curse. Scampering up and down the pit, squeezing the incubator in one end of the coup stick, he added codicils for the Mohawk, Mr. St. Audrey, and the rest of the golden horde.

  Lillith recovered enough to whip out cameras and go to work. It was turning into work for Rudolf too, jumping and prancing up and down the pit until the incubator had sprayed every portion. Finally, sweating and trembling, he was finished. Too out of breath to speak, he hurried past Flaherty and Lillith into the lab where he discovered the paint wouldn’t wash off.

  Feeling stickier by the minute, he got back into his clothes.

  “Can you talk now?” Lillith asked when he came out.

  “As soon as I get my breath.”

  “What were you doing out there?”

  “Magic.”

  “Praying to some god?”

  Rudolf was making up an answer when Flaherty interrupted. “No, darling girl, there’s a difference between a wizard and a priest.”

  Rudolf wished he had a cup of coffee.

  “What’s the difference?” Lillith asked.

  “A priest traffics with his gods — begging, bribing, making covenants, sucking around for blessings or favors.”

  “So what does a magician do?”

  “He compels the gods and other natural forces to do his bidding. ‘Tis a very different attitude, the business of finding the right words, the magical spell that makes nature do what you want.”

  “What’s so different?”

  Flaherty grinned. “The primitive magician evolved into the scientist. The priest evolved into the welfare worker.”

  “Do you actually believe all that hokum out there?”

  “It works,” Rudolf said.

  “But—”

  “True,” Flaherty improvised, “It’s mostly hokum. But somewhere amid all that hokum the dear boy is doing something right. We’re experimenting, eliminating one thing after another to find out just what it is that really makes aluminum.”

  “But dancing and feathers—?”

  “Try growing aluminum without them,” Rudolf said. Mentally he added, or with them.

  “Can I see inside the clean room?”

  Rudolf looked at Flaherty. Flaherty looked back. “Why not?” Rudolf said.

  While she was photographing Flaherty’s workbench and some slant cultures and petri dishes he had set up Rudolf quietly removed the incubator from the feathered coup stick and substituted a bag of salt, ashes, and various pollens to confuse whoever might steal the coup stick and wonder about the hollow. Properly his medicine bag should have been made from a buffalo scrotum but, this being New York State, Rudolf had used a baggie.

  He flipped a switch and started the machinery they had adapted for the flotation process. At the other end of the building smoke billowed as Flaherty demonstrated the press where they separated metallic ooze into aluminum and wax. Rudolf caught himself looking as Lillith, in shiny black hotpants, draped herself over a girder for an angle shot. “You don’t look Jewish,” he said when she returned to his end of the building. He never did figure out what she was laughing at.

  Finally the day’s work was over and they were driving back to the house. “Any progress?” Rudolf asked.

  “The high tolerance yeast looks more promising,” Flaherty said, “but not our other problem.”

  Rudolf glanced at him, wondering if Flaherty would have more to say if they were ever alone again. How long was Lillith Lasky of Life going to hang around? Watching her climb down from the dump truck he realized it was, in a way of speaking, nice to see her go. He found himself comparing her dark competence with Pamela St. Audrey’s elegant unproductivity.

  Lillith had spent the entire day watching them work, taking pictures, trying to understand a process so simple that she intuited there had to be something she was not being shown. They were pulling into the driveway when she said, “Did you know somebody’s out there with a Big Bertha?”

  “How do you know?” Flaherty asked.

  “My own telephoto lenses make excellent telescopes.”

  “What’s a Big Bertha?” Rudolf asked.

  “It’s an obsolete telephoto complex — looks like a length of stovepipe. They used to put them on a Graf-lex to cover football games.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  “Yesterday at Northumber. He’s a sour bulldog in a pepper-and-salt suit.”

  “Riordan!” Flaherty growled.

  “Tomorrow I’ll dance some rain onto him,” Rudolf promised.

  Lillith was still regarding him in thoughtful silence when they went into the house. The toothpick Rudolf had propped up was knocked over. He sighed and pointed. Flaherty raised his brows in shaggy acknowledgement as he began peeling potatoes. Rudolf checked the freezer and wondered what else they were going to eat. It was silly to waste time cooking but this village was too small to support a restaurant and he gagged at the prospect of TV dinners.

  Lillith disappeared into her camper and came out with an apron and a load of groceries. “Everybody out of the kitchen!” she warned.

  “Is this kosher?” Flaherty wondered as he inhaled clam chowder.

  “Like ham on Friday,” Lillith said.

  “My people used to eat no kind of fish,” Rudolf remembered. “They belong to the Underwater People.”

  Lillith gave a malicious smile. “Aren’t you afraid this’ll spoil your dancing?” She was nonplussed when Rudolf suddenly appeared worried.

  Fish reminded Rudolf of what might be waiting upstairs in the bathroom. He looked at Flaherty. The Irishman glanced at the stairway and Rudolf knew they were thinking the same thing.

  He was beginning to like Lillith Lasky. She was intelligent, competent, and very neatly packaged. But he wished most devoutly she would go away — at least until he could decide what to do about Tuchi. Watching Flaherty perform sleight of mouth tricks with boiled scrod, Rudolf concluded that Lillith was also a very competent cook. He wondered if Pamela could cook. Somehow, when he was with Pamela the subject never seemed to come up.

  “How many days does it usually take you to get a story like this?” he asked.

  “I’ll be out of your feathers in another day or two,” Lillith said. “What are your plans, assuming you don’t let St. Audrey gobble you up?”

  “Like Dr. Flaherty says, every time we make money, we make air.”

  “So you’ll go it alone?”

  “We have little choice.” Rudolf looked at Flaherty. “Should we tell her about the cab last night?”

  “They’ve served notice on us. We may as well reciprocate,” the Irishman said.

  When Lillith had heard about the cab windows getting shot out she asked, “Wou
ldn’t it be nobler in the mind not to let the secret die when you do? It might prolong your lives if somebody knew killing you couldn’t stop it.”

  “I’ve been poor long enough,” Rudolf said. “Besides, we have to find what the process is. I can just see the golden horde dancing a spell.”

  Once more Lillith gave him that look that made Rudolf suspect he was fooling nobody but himself. He tried not to yawn and made a botch of it.

  “Me too,” Lillith said, and got up.

  Still yawning, Rudolf went upstairs to the bathroom. There was a man stretched out on the floor. Finally Rudolf recognized the would-be bandit Lillith had taken the gun away from last night. He had thought the short-cropped hippie was dead when he had first seen him stretched on the seat of the dump truck. This time there was no doubt in Rudolfs mind. Their bodyguard was as dead as it is possible for two halves of a body with a missing mid-section to be.

  Rudolf stood for an instant in frozen horror. The halves were seared so neatly the body had not bled. He remembered the reports of fish kills. Then abruptly he realized what had killed this unfortunate young man had probably been intended for… He slammed the door and rushed down just as Lillith, once more in her blue robe and with her hair in curlers was starting upstairs. They landed in a tangled heap at the bottom.

  “Don’t go up there!” Rudolf said.

  “Why?”

  “I, uh — there’s, uh—”

  Flaherty came to the rescue. “Toilet plugs up sometimes,” he said. “Makes an awful mess. You’d better not count on using it for a while. Doesn’t your camper have—?”

  “You think I’m going to panic at a little raw sewage?” Lillith asked. “Let’s unplug it.” She marched determinedly upstairs. Rudolf scrambled to his feet and chased her. “Don’t! It could be dangerous!” By the time he was within grabbing distance Lillith had opened the door.

  She gasped, then turned to face them. “Who was he?” she asked.

  “Out!” Rudolf yelled. “Close the door!” He pulled her back and slammed it. With Flaherty in front and Rudolf behind they rushed her downstairs.

  Flaherty produced Irish Tranquilizer from some hidden reserve and poured three glasses. Sipping hers neat Lillith said, “From the flap he must be as big a surprise to you as he was to me. Do you have any idea who?”

  “You took his gun away last night,” Flaherty said.

  Suddenly Lillith’s calm cracked. “Then I — if he’d had his gun…”

  “It wouldn’t have helped,” Rudolf said.

  Though primarily a photographer, Lillith was no novice at interviewing. By half truths and bland assumptions that she knew more than she did, it took her ten minutes to get the whole story. Belatedly Rudolf remembered the bugs. He turned on the TV.

  “So the feathers and dancing are just window dressing?” she persisted.

  “For Riordan out there with his Big Bertha or whatever you called it.”

  “And this — this Thing that gave you the incubator is what’s been making all the bangs and killing fish?”

  “She’s learned to kill something besides fish now,” Flaherty said. “I wonder what that poor sod was doing up there.”

  “When Miss Lasky here fired him as bodyguard,” Rudolf speculated, “he must’ve decided to pick up whatever he could and split.”

  Flaherty checked desk drawers. “You’re right,” he said.

  “Anything missing?”

  “Nothing worth taking. Just mussed up again. Poor sod never did anything right in his life.”

  “Including dying in our bathroom,” Rudolf said. “What’ll we do with him?”

  “Call the police,” Lillith said, then frowned. “No, of course not. The golden horde would see that we never got out.”

  “We?”

  “I’m an accessory after the fact unless I call the police right now.”

  “Maybe you’d better,” Flaherty said.

  “Not on your life,” Lillith snapped. “My poor relations are addicted to breathing too. And I’m poorer than they are.”

  “Where do we dump the body?” Rudolf wondered.

  They lapsed into a profound silence, each thinking his own thoughts. Flaherty reached for the whiskey again. “No way,” Rudolf said firmly. “We need all the brainpower we can get.”

  “I’ll make coffee,” Lillith said. Still in her blue robe and with her hair in curlers, she went into the kitchen.

  Rudolf and Flaherty were staring disconsolately at one another when they heard a knock. Suddenly Rudolf remembered the house was probably still bugged. “That’ll be the fuzz,” he said.

  “They’ll have the back covered too,” Flaherty said. “No use prolonging it.” He got up and opened the door. It was Pamela St. Audrey.

  Rudolf didn’t know enough about women’s clothing to be able to describe what she was wearing but the effect on his glandular system was instant and overwhelming. “Rudy,” she began, “I don’t know what happened yesterday but you can’t just… Rudy please, can’t I come in?”

  So overpowering was the effect of this red-haired vision that for an instant Rudolf actually forgot about the corpse upstairs in the bathroom. He tried to remember why he had thrown her over — something to do with a hollowed-out lipstick and stolen culture samples, hadn’t it been? But surely nothing so purely and seductively virginal as Pamela St. Audrey could be beyond forgiveness…

  Sinking into a bottomless pit of gonadial gullibility, Rudolf suddenly remembered. Why, he wondered, had he ever bought that car and gotten mixed up with those hippies in the first place?

  “Pamela,” he muttered, “I’m sorry. I can’t see you now. I’m — something important has come up.”

  “Rudy, you’re not going to get away from me that easy. If I have to chase you and make a fool of myself, then I’ll just have to do it.”

  Hair still in curlers and wearing her blue robe, Lillith Lasky stuck her head through a doorway. “Some honeymoon!” she said in a raucous squawk. “You gonna stand there gabbin’ all night?”

  Pamela stiffened, staring in disbelief. Then abruptly the starch went out of her. “I’m sorry, Rudy,” she said. “I wish you the best of everything. I’ll never bother you again.” She turned and walked off into the darkness, leaving Rudolf with the numb realization that he had actually seen tears in her eyes.

  He was still staring into the darkness when Lillith came and closed the door. “Sorry, lover,” she said, “but we had to get rid of her somehow.”

  Rudolf guessed the dark-haired girl was right. But he also knew he would never forgive her.

  CHAPTER 9

  How, he wondered, had he ever imagined Lillith attractive?

  “Well,” she said briskly, “we’ve got to get rid of a body.”

  “With the house bugged and infra-red cameras every time we open the door?”

  “It does present a problem.” Lillith wiggled her fingers until Rudolf realized she wanted a typewriter. He got his portable out of its battered case.

  “Camper may be bugged too,” she typed while Rudolf and Flaherty peered over her shoulder . “Help carry things. Act like they’re heavy.”

  They followed her out into the dark and began emptying cameras and recording equipment out of a trunk-sized chest. Grunting and heaving, they got the empty chest inside the house. Ten minutes later they carried it out again, grunting in earnest this time. “I’ll see how these come out,” Lillith said loudly. “If I need more I’ll be back in the morning.” They watched her drive away.

  Back inside the house Rudolf began having fidgety second thoughts as he reviewed how easily Lillith had insinuated herself into their operation. And she had disarmed their “bodyguard” with much less flap than he and Flaherty had managed, doing the same job. Could she and the bodyguard be… That, Rudolf guessed, didn’t make sense unless the golden horde’s own employees were expendable too. But… He wondered if the whole thing had been a charade to get her in their house and in their confidence. After an hour he typed, “I
s she on our side?”

  Flaherty shrugged. Rudolf took the note and the one Lillith had written and shredded them. He looked for some place to dispose of the shreds and found none. Dithering about with a handful of shredded paper he remembered something else he had neglected to do. He stuffed the paper in his pocket and got a broom. With Flaherty behind him, he went upstairs and poked the broom cautiously through the bathroom door.

  “Tuchi,” he called, “are you there?” He advanced another step, waving the broom in front of him. Whatever had cut the would-be bandit in two didn’t chop up the broom. Rudolf wished he knew something about Tuchi’s weapon. Maybe it only affected living matter.

  There was no alien in the bathroom. Nor was there any blood. But Rudolf suspected it would be a long time before he sat on anything connected with a sewer system again. Tuchi had fit inside that bathtub-sized hole Flaherty had excavated around the spring. But with an infinitely stretchable body… He wondered if the alien could stretch thread-thin and miles-long to monitor them both here and at the gravel pit. There was no sewer out there but there was a sometime creek that flowed down the valley toward town and only the gods and the country board of supervisors knew what cross connections might exist.

  How, Rudolf wondered, had the alien found them? The incubator must be emitting some signal. Rudolf suddenly had a new worry. If the incubator was transmitting on any recognizable frequency, the FCC snoopers would soon be out to see what was polluting the airwaves. Downstairs again, he typed out his worries to Flaherty. The Irishman raised his shaggy brows in acknowledgement but offered no solution.

  “Oi’d give thirty percent of me immortal soul for a drink,” he said. Rudolf sighed and handed him the bottle.

  Flaherty was pouring himself a drink when they heard a car pull up. Moments later Lillith Lasky walked in. “Pictures didn’t come out,” she said. “I’ll have to take them all over again.” She went to the typewriter and wrote, “Followed all the way. No chance.”

  The Irishman put down his glass without drinking. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “Sunlight sheens off that muck till a light meter goes crazy. We may’s well go back now and you can do them all with artificial light.”