The Aluminum Man

by G. C. Edmondson

  “When they reach traveling age. Of course, I’ll have to construct a larger ship.”

  Rudolf had a sudden sinking feeling. “Uh, how long will that take?”

  There was an instant’s delay while Tuchi converted into Earth units. “One hundred forty-four years,” she said.

  Rudolf sat down.

  “Don’t take it so hard,” St. Audrey comforted when Tuchi had disappeared down the john without revealing how the superhard, superductile crystals were made.

  “Why not?” Rudolf asked.

  “I see interesting times ahead but, like me, you’re a professional survivor.”

  Rudolf gave his arch-enemy a thoughtful glance. Turning to Flaherty and the lawyer, he said, “We’re through here, aren’t we?”

  The lawyer nodded. Rudolf, after the faintest hesitation, shook hands with St. Audrey and they boarded the helicopter for the half hour’s flight back to the village.

  “I don’t know why you hang out in a dump like this,” the lawyer said when they were inside the small white house again. “You’re not hiding any more.”

  Rudolf guessed he wasn’t. What the hell was he hanging around here for?

  “She won’t be back,” Flaherty said.

  Rudolf gave a guilty start. “Who?”

  “Pamela.”

  To his surprise, Rudolf realized he hadn’t been thinking about Pamela. He guessed she was one of those unattainable goals. Having attained her several times… Remembering how he had turned his back on his own people, Rudolf wondered if that was what he had really seen in Pamela. To shut off further discussion, he turned on the TV and hunted for the news.

  It was the wrong time of day. Flaherty poured himself a drink from a plastic jug. He silently offered one to Rudolf. Rudolf shuddered. The lawyer took one and, after a single sip for politeness, became busy with his papers. “If I can trust you to stay out of trouble for twenty-four hours,” he said, “I have things to do in the city.”

  “Other clients?”

  “Four of them below the age of consent. My wife gets bent out of shape if I don’t drop in once a week.”

  Rudolf saw him to the door, then went back to the TV. This time he caught himself playing wild Indian while the golden horde solemnly scribbled graffiti on St. Audrey’s final girder.

  “Reruns yet,” he said.

  Flaherty grinned. “I thought Lillith would have a heart attack. Tell me, dear boy, was it dangerous up there?”

  “You’d have to ask somebody else. I wasn’t there at the time.”

  “By the way,” Flaherty continued, “I wonder where she is?”

  The news cut to Lillith, still in hot pants and baggy sweater. “Now Miss Lasky,” the interviewer said, “you first broke the story about the young Indian who was playing medicine man in a deserted gravel pit. In your opinion, is there any connection between that story and the sudden porosity that seems to be dissolving concrete on the Hartford thru-way?”

  Lillith stirred, affording the cameraman another angle of her underpinning. Giving the lens a look of the kind of innocence Rudolf knew could never again exist in the world, she said, “Well, if somebody wants to prosecute for witchcraft…”

  The commentator laughed.

  Rudolf looked at Flaherty. Suddenly they were both on their feet. Rudolf led the way out to the decrepit auto Old John had left in exchange for their new one. They drove silently all the way to the gravel pit. Rudolf unlocked and they hurried into Flaherty’s laboratory.

  The concrete floor had turned into muck. One wall was crumbling and a corner of the roof had started to sag. Looking at Flaherty, Rudolf realized the Irishman knew what was going to happen even better than he did.

  “But I don’t get it,” Rudolf protested. “Aluminum is such a small percentage of concrete.”

  “Aye,” Flaherty agreed. “And glue’s a small part of furniture if you want to put it that way.”

  “Is there any way to stop it?”

  Flaherty sighed. “As long as there’s alumina, some’s bound to be poor enough to keep part of the culture asexual. That’s why Tuchi warned us not to open the incubator. But tell me, dear boy, how did it get all over the thru-way?”

  “I tossed the empty flask into the back of the truck. All that rain must’ve diluted it and dribbled it down onto the road.”

  “You’re not going to be too popular once people realize what you’ve turned loose.” Flaherty sighed again. “‘Tis like a seanachie story. The little people give you three wishes and, no matter what the language, what the culture, what the people, the wisher aways ends up with the skatotropic touch. ‘Tis a universal human trait.”

  “The skatotropic touch?”

  “Yes, dear boy. Men work so hard and then it all turns into—”

  “Assuming it’s that bad,” Rudolf said, “do you want to be on the winning side?”

  “Not necessarily,” Flaherty said. “But it beats losing.”

  “Then let’s go home and answer our mail.”

  Riding back to the house, Rudolf dwelt on St. Audrey’s analysis. He wondered if, subconsciously, he had already been angling for the main chance when he gave Flaherty’s car to the Indians.

  Blame it on Freud. He wondered if other generations had ever really believed in simple things like goodness and kindness. Probably not, if Indian treaties were any indicator. How would St. Audrey make out? In the catastrophes to come nobody would notice the collapse of his building. Rudolf thought back to the first time he had seen that matinee idol facade being interviewed on TV.

  “We hear of the Iron Age. Actually we live in the Ferroconcrete Age. Dams, buildings, roads, airstrips, missile silos — everything is made of steel covered with concrete.”

  Rudolf knew he was going to miss it all.

  Flaherty brought him out of it with a brisk, “Well, let’s get to work.”

  They went into the house and started opening and sorting mail. Rudolf began writing checks. Hours later Lillith arrived. She took one look at their frantic activity, saw where the money was going, and gasped. “Like that?” she asked.

  Rudolf nodded.

  “Am I dark enough to pass?”

  “You’ll do quite nicely. All we have to do is find you and Flaherty totem animals.”

  Lillith got on the phone and by morning they had a secretarial staff opening and sorting mail. Within a week the millions Rudolf had extorted from St. Audrey were gone. Flaherty contributed his own fortune to the most colossal potlatch since the elder Rockefeller learned he too was mortal.

  They began giving away the foreign bank deposits, doing their best to distribute everything equally among the North American tribes. With each check went a mimeographed suggestion that it be promptly negotiated.

  “Don’t you think you ought to advise them to insert it in survival equipment?” Lillith asked.

  “No!” Rudolf said firmly and discovered Flaherty was in emphatic agreement. He let the Irishman explain it.

  “We’ll have panic soon enough,” Flaherty said, “once people get it through their heads that it’s all over — that from now on Earth can never support the cancerous overgrowth of population that’s blighted our century.”

  “But you’re trying to save the Indians,” Lillith protested.

  “Not at all,” Rudolf said. “The Indians will save themselves. People who’ve never gotten much benefit from civilization aren’t going to be too choked up over its passing.”

  “Then what are you giving all this money away for?”

  “It’s going out of style. I’m buying every Indian on this continent one grand glorious splurge — a chance to overeat, overdress, to blow his mind with all the tawdry junk he’s never been able to afford.”

  “But what do you get out of it?”

  Rudolf smiled. “Have you considered sanctuary?”

  “Continually. Once people realize what’s happening to the world you’re not going to be a culture hero.”

  Rudolf looked at Flaherty. “How much ti
me do we have?”

  “How should I know?” the Irishman wondered. “This’s the first time I’ve ever destroyed civilization.”

  “But I thought your knowledge of genetics…”

  “From what I see on the tube some people’re worried already. You can bet your coup stick St. Audrey’s bought himself an island and stocked up a yacht. It’ll spread from New York but it’s anybody’s guess how long it’ll take.”

  “If people are walking New York streets and then tracking mud onto the planes at Kennedy…”

  “Are we going to an island?” Lillith asked.

  “No, and I’ll bet St. Audrey isn’t either,” Rudolf said, remembering the millionaire’s equanimity in accepting an extraterrestrial in his bathroom. “A professional survivor wouldn’t want to be away from the action.”

  “Where are we going?” Flaherty asked.

  “Where cement never grew. There’ll be ‘interesting times’ down here but mobs like warm weather.”

  “You see, dear boy, liberal arts didn’t ruin you after all!”

  It took a week but when their float plane lifted off for the north woods the three of them were prepared for housewarming. They settled in and held another potlatch for their new neighbors, after which they owned nothing worth envying or stealing.

  EPILOGUE

  Rudolf was mildly surprised to realize that his oldest son was exactly the age he had been on what they now called “I” Day, the day Rudolf had given it all back to the Indians.

  Paddling in the shallows where the going was easier, he finally rounded a point and could relax. One of the nice things about being fifty, Rudolf decided, was that he was no longer pained to admit that his sons were all better paddlers. It was only natural, outboards and gasoline having become increasingly scarce.

  For a while, he remembered, it had looked like Whitey might do it all over again. But in the long run those who survived were the marginals who had never reaped much benefit from ferro-concrete civilization.

  Back when Flaherty still fiddled nostalgically with outboards, occasionally coaxing one to sputter along on the output of his high tolerance yeasts, the Irishman had been fond of quoting Voltaire — that history was the sound of silk slippers coming downstairs while hobnailed boots raced up. But, relaxed atop a cargo of wild rice in the big canoe while his boys rigged the sail for the long downwind run, Rudolf was wearing moccasins.

  It had all happened so suddenly. People had joked about giving it back to the Indians. Later when every dam, building, road, sidewalk, and freeway had released its oxygen and turned into a fertile muck that sprouted ragweed, then grasses, and finally trees — by then it had been too late. Those whose lives depended on pacemakers or insulin or tranquilizers or electricity or gasoline were no longer cluttering up the gene pool.

  He often wondered what had become of St. Audrey. Probably the same thing that had happened to nine out of every ten people in the highly industrialized countries. The day he had lost a molar via a pair of pliers and a cupful of Flaherty’s garbage juice, Rudolf had remembered the old days with some nostalgia. Even breathing clean air and drinking the limpid waters of Lake Erie, Rudolf was sure he was not going to live as many years as he might have survived under smog but at least he was living them.

  Straight ahead in the clear blue distance he could make out their evening landfall. The canoe was dancing along in the fresh breeze, eldest son dozing in the bow while Number Two Boy steered. Rudolf roused himself to put a lure over the side. Within seconds he had a two-foot pike. He tossed it back and switched lures, hoping for a couple of the salmon that had begun spawning above the rapids that remained after Niagara Falls’ concrete patchwork had collapsed.

  There was another jerk. Rudolf began overhanding the line and discovered… “Tuchi!” he growled, “do you have to do that?”

  The alien surfaced on both sides of the canoe, frolicking like a sea serpent. “Keep your shirt on,” she said. “I’ll herd some fish your way.”

  Rudolf smiled and guessed he could have made a worse choice of totem animal. He hauled in his salmon a few minutes later, stretched, and took a deep breath of pure air. Damn, was it ever nice to go out trading this time of year!

  When he awoke a couple of hours later the sun was still high and the other canoes were converging on the landfall. Amidships of the large one, old Flaherty snoozed atop the load of skins he had acquired for the product of a high tolerance yeast.

  They landed and began making camp. While the younger children yelled and skylarked, hunting firewood, Rudolf studied the sky and decided not to bother with a tent. Down by the shore a lean, dark-haired woman was cleaning the salmon Tuchi had herded toward his lure. She glanced up at his approach. “Hello, lover,” Lillith said. “Have a nice day?”

  “So-so,” Rudolf answered. “They’re getting better all the time.”