“No, dear,” Nina said patiently. “He’s meeting us here—remember? You were thinking about something else, as usual. We’re supposed to wait for him; he doesn’t know where we live.”
The crowd was beginning to flow from the lobby outside onto the street. Gusts of frigid night air billowed in; coats were put on, furs slipped in place. The intimated odor of perfume and cigar smoke very soon dwindled as the remote, hostile vacuum of the outside world made its way in.
“Our little cosmos is breaking up,” Cussick observed morbidly. “The real world is on its way.”
“What’s that?” Nina asked vacantly, still critically studying the women around them. “Look what that girl is wearing. Over there, the one in blue.”
While Cussick was going through the motions of looking, a familiar figure came threading its way toward them. “Hi,” Kaminski said, as he reached them. “Sorry I’m late. I forgot all about it.”
The sight of Max Kaminski was a shock. He hadn’t seen his one-time Political Instructor in months. Kaminski was haggard and hunched over; his eyes were bloodshot, underscored with puffy black circles. His fingers trembled as he reached out to shake hands. Under one arm he clutched a bulky brown-wrapped package. Nodding slightly to Nina, aware of her for the first time, he murmured: “Evening, Nina. Good to see you again.”
“You weren’t at the opera,” Nina observed, with a distasteful glance at the man’s rumpled business suit and the messy package.
“No, I missed it.” Kaminski’s hand was wet and clammy; he drew it back and stood clumsily, focusing with an effort. “I can’t sit through long things. Well, are we ready to go?”
“Certainly,” Nina said, in an icy voice; her dismay was fast turning to outright aversion. Kaminski had evidently been working through a fifteen-hour double shift; fatigue and nervous exhaustion were written in every pore of his stooped body. “What’s that you have?” she asked, indicating the package.
“I’ll show you later,” Kaminski assured her noncommittally, tightening his grip.
“Let’s go, then,” Nina said briskly, taking her husband’s arm. “Where to?”
“This girl,” Kaminski muttered, shambling along after them. “We have to pick her up. You don’t know her . . . I forgot to tell you about her. Very nice kid. It’ll make us an even four-square.” He tried to laugh, but what came out sounded more like a death-rattle. “Don’t ask me to introduce her—I don’t know her last name. I sort of picked her up in one of the outer offices.”
Presently Nina said: “I’d like to go to the apartment, first. I want to see how Jackie is.”
“Jackie?” Puzzled, Kaminski hurried down the concrete steps behind them. “Who’s that?”
“Our son,” Nina said distantly.
“That’s right,” Kaminski admitted. “You have a child. I’ve never seen him.” His voice trailed off. . . . “With all this work, I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”
“Right now you’re going,” Nina said, standing on the curb, her body straight and disapproving, arms folded, waiting rigidly for a taxi. “Are you sure you feel up to this? It looks as if you’ve already had your share of celebrating.”
Cussick said sharply: “Cut it.”
The taxi came and Nina slipped gingerly inside. The two men followed, and the taxi shot off into the sky. Below them, the lights of Detroit sparkled and winked, evenly-spaced stars in a man-made firmament. Fresh night air swirled into the cabin of the taxi, a harsh but reviving wind that helped clear Cussick’s head. Presently Kaminski seemed to recover a trifle.
“Your husband and I haven’t been doing so well, lately,” he told Nina: a belated apology. “You’ve probably noticed.”
Nina nodded.
“We’re falling apart. The strain . . .” He grimaced. “It isn’t easy to watch everything you stand for falling apart piece by piece. One brick after another.”
“The graphs still going up?” Cussick asked.
“Straight up. Every region, every stratum. He’s getting through to everybody . . . a cross-section. How the hell can we isolate a thing like that? There’s gasoline frying on every street corner in the world.”
Nina said thoughtfully: “Does that surprise you?”
“It’s illegal,” Kaminski retorted, with childish venom. “They have no right to kill those things.”
The woman’s thin, penciled eyebrows went up. “Do you really care about those—lumps?”
“No,” Kaminski admitted. “Of course not. I wish they’d all sizzle into the sun. And neither does he; nobody cares about the drifters one way or another.”
“How strange,” Nina said, in a carefully modulated voice. “Millions of people are resentful, willing to break the law to show their resentment, and you say nobody cares.”
“Nobody that counts,” Kaminski said, losing all sense of what he was saying: “Just the dupes care, the idiots. Jones knows and we know—the drifters are a means, not an end. They’re a rallying point, a pretext. We’re playing a game, a big elaborate game.” Wearily, he muttered: “God, I hate it.”
“Then,” Nina said practically, “stop playing it.”
Kaminski brooded. “Maybe you’re right. Sometimes I think that; times when I’m working away, buried in graphs and reports. It’s an idea.”
“Let them burn the drifters,” Cussick said, “and then what? Is that the end of it?”
“No.” Kaminski nodded reluctantly. “Of course not. Then the real business begins. Because the drifters aren’t here; only a few of them are in our system. They come from somewhere; they have a point of origin.”
“Beyond the dead eight,” Nina said enigmatically.
Aroused from his lethargy, Kaminski pulled himself around to peer at the woman. Shrewd, wrinkled face dark with suspicion, he was still studying her when the taxi began to lower. Nina opened her purse and found a fifty-dollar bill.
“Here we are,” she said shortly. “You can come inside if you want. Or you can wait here—it’ll only take a second.”
“I’ll come inside,” Kaminski said, visibly not wanting to be left alone. “I’d like to see your child . . . I’ve never seen him.” As he fumbled for the door he muttered uncertainly: “Have I?”
“No,” Cussick answered, deeply struck by his aging instructor’s deterioration. Carefully, he reached past Kaminski and opened the taxi door. “Come on inside and get warm.”
The living room of the apartment lit up in anticipation as Nina pushed open the front door. From the bedroom came a bubbling, aggravated wail; Jackie was awake and cross.
“Is he all right?” Cussick asked anxiously. “Isn’t that thing working?”
“He’s probably hungry,” Nina answered, taking off her coat and tossing it over a chair. “I’ll go heat up his bottle.” Skirt swirling around her ankles, she disappeared down the hall into the kitchen.
“Sit down,” Cussick said.
Kaminski seated himself gratefully. He laid his package down beside him on the couch. “Nice little place you have here. Clean, fresh, everything new.”
“We redecorated it when we moved in.”
Kaminski looked around uneasily. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Help?” Cussick laughed. “No, unless you’re an expert in baby-feeding.”
“I’m not.” Unhappily, Kaminski picked at the sleeve of his coat. “Never had anything to do with that.” He glanced around at the living room, a wan hunger rising to his face. “You know, I sure as hell envy you.”
“This?” The living room was well-furnished and tidy. A small, rigorously-maintained apartment, showing a woman’s taste in furnishings and decoration. “I suppose so,” Cussick admitted. “Nina keeps it nice. But it’s only four rooms.” He added dryly: “As Nina occasionally reminds me.”
Fretfully, Kaminski said: “Your wife feels a lot of hostility toward me. I’m sorry—it bothers me. Why does she feel that way?”
“Police.”
“She resents the service?�
�� Kaminski nodded. “I thought that was it. It’s not popular, now. And it’s getting less popular. As Jones goes up, we go down.”
“She never did like it,” Cussick said, his voice soft; he could hear the distant sounds of Nina stirring around in the kitchen, warming the baby’s formula, her heels clicking as she hurried into the bedroom, faint murmurs as she talked to the baby. “She came from an information agency. Relativism never sank very deeply into the communication media; they’re still tied up with the old slogans of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. The police aren’t beautiful, certainly . . . and she wonders if they’re good.” Sardonically, he went on: “After all, to admit the necessity of the secret police would be to admit the existence of fanatical absolutist cults.”
“But she’s heard about Jones.”
“Sometimes I think women are totally passive receptors, like pieces of litmus paper.”
“Some women.” Kaminski shook his head. “Not all.”
“What the public thinks of Jones she thinks. I can tell what they believe by talking to her. She seems to get it intuitively, by some sort of psychic osmosis.” Presently he added: “One day she stole some little glasses from a store. I couldn’t figure it out at the time. Later I understood it . . . but it took two more times to make it clear.”
“Oh,” Kaminski said. “Yes, of course. You’re a cop. She resents you. So she breaks the law . . . she asserts herself against cops.” He glanced up. “Does she understand it?”
“Not exactly. She knows she feels moral indignation at me. I like to think it’s nothing but outworn slogan-idealism. But maybe it’s more. Nina’s ambitious; she came from a good family. Socially, she’d like to be sitting up in the boxes, not down on the main floor. Being married to a cop has never been socially useful. There’s a stigma. She can’t get over that.”
Kaminski said thoughtfully: “You say that. But I know you’re completely in love with her.”
“Well, I hope I can keep her.”
“Would you leave Security to keep her? If it was a choice?”
“I can’t say. I hope I never have to make the choice. Probably it depends on where this Jones thing goes. And nobody can see that—except Jones.”
Nina appeared in the doorway. “He’s fine, now. We can go.”
Rising to his feet, Cussick asked: “You feel like going out?”
“I certainly do,” Nina said emphatically. “I’m not going to sit around here; I can tell you that much.”
As the woman collected her things, Kaminski asked hesitantly, “Nina, could I see Jack before we leave?”
Nina smiled; her face softened. “Sure, Max. Come on in the bedroom.” She put down her things. “Only don’t make too much noise.”
Kaminski gathered up his package and the two men obediently followed her. The bedroom was dark and warm. In his bassinet the baby lay soundly sleeping, one hand raised to his mouth, knees drawn up. Kaminski stood for a time, hands on the railing of the bassinet. The only sound was the baby’s muted rasp and the continual click of the robot watcher.
“He wasn’t really hungry,” Nina said. “It had fed him.” She indicated the watcher. “He just missed me.”
Kaminski started to reach down toward the baby, then changed his mind. “He’s healthy-looking,” he said awkwardly. “Looks a lot like you, Doug. He has your forehead. But he’s got Nina’s hair.”
“Yes,” Cussick agreed. “He’s going to have nice hair.”
“What color eyes?”
“Blue. Like Nina. The perfect human being: my powerful intellect and her beauty.” He put his arm around his wife and held her tight.
Chewing his lip, Kaminski said half aloud: “I wonder what the world’s going to be like, when he grows up. I wonder if he’ll be running through ruins with a gun and an armband . . . chanting a slogan.”
Abruptly, Nina turned and left the bedroom. When they followed they found her standing at the living room door, her coat on, purse under her arm, pulling on her gloves with rapid, jerky motions.
“Ready?” she demanded, in a clipped voice. With her sharp toe she kicked open the hall door. “Then let’s go. We’ll pick up this girl of Max’s, and get under way.”
9
THE GIRL WAS waiting demurely at the Security annex. Kaminski ordered the taxi to pull up at the darkened runway; he leaped out and strode up the gloomy walk, toward the long concrete building. After a short interval he returned with a small, solemn figure. By now he had managed to get her name.
“Tyler,” he muttered, helping her into the taxi, “this is Doug and Nina Cussick.” Indicating the girl, he finished: “Tyler Fleming.”
“Hello,” Tyler said huskily, tossing her head back and smiling shyly around at them. She had large dark eyes and short-cropped jet-black hair. Her skin was smooth and faintly tanned. She was slender, almost thin, body very young and unformed under her simple evening dress.
Nina examined her critically and said: “I’ve seen you around. Aren’t you a Security employee?”
“I’m in research,” Tyler answered, in an almost inaudible whisper. “I’ve only been with Security a few months.”
“You’ll get along,” Nina observed, signaling the taxi to rise. In a moment they were on their way up. Irritably, Nina stabbed down on the high-velocity stud mounted by her arm-rest. “It’s almost one o’clock,” she explained. “If we don’t hurry, we won’t see anything.”
“See?” Cussick echoed apprehensively.
At Nina’s direction, the taxi let them off in the North-beach section of San Francisco. Cussick satisfied the robot meter with ninety dollars in change, and the taxi shot off. To their right was Columbus Avenue and its notorious rows of bars and dives and cabarets and blackmarket restaurants. People were out roaming the streets in great numbers; the sky overhead was choked with inter-city taxis setting down and taking off. Multicolored signs winked; on every side glared chattering, flickering displays.
Seeing where Nina had brought them, Cussick felt a pang of dismay. He knew she had been going to San Francisco; police reports had mentioned her presence in the Northbeach surveillance area. But he had assumed it was clandestine, a covert protest; he hadn’t expected her to bring him along. Nina was already heading purposefully toward the descending stairs of a subsurface bar; she seemed to know exactly where she was going.
Catching up with her, he demanded: “You sure you want to do this?”
Nina halted. “Do what?”
“This is one area I wish they had demolished. Too bad the bombs didn’t finish it once and for all.”
“We’ll be all right,” she assured him primly. “I know people here.”
“My God,” Kaminski exclaimed, seeing for the first time where they were. “We’re close to them!”
“To whom?” Cussick asked, puzzled.
Kaminski’s sagging face snapped oblique. He said nothing more; placing his hand on Tyler’s shoulder, he guided her toward the stairs. Nina had already started down; reluctantly, Cussick followed after her. Kaminski came last, in a dark world of his own, thinking and muttering about esoteric matters known only in the gnawing doubt of his own consciousness, Tyler, serious and sedate, descended willingly, without resistance. Young as she was, she seemed totally self-possessed; there was no sign of wonder on her face.
The underground level was jammed with people, a densely-packed mass that stirred and undulated like a single organism. A constant blare of tinny noise roared up deafeningly; the air was translucent with a shimmer of smoke, perspiration, and the steady shouting of human beings. Robot servants, suspended from the ceiling, wheeled here and there, serving drinks and collecting glasses.
“Over here,” Nina called, leading the way. Cussick and Kaminski exchanged glances; these places were not strictly illegal, of course, but Security would have preferred to close them. The San Francisco Northbeach region was the bête noire of the vice squads, a last remnant of the prewar red-light stratum.
Nina seated herself at a tiny wooden tab
le crammed against the wall. Overhead, an imitation candle flickered fitfully. Cussick pulled up a packing crate and settled himself uncomfortably; Kaminski went through the mechanical ritual of finding Tyler a chair, and then one for himself. Bending over, he laid his package on the floor, propped against a table leg. The four people sat pressed tightly together, elbows and feet touching, facing one another across the square water-logged surface of the table.
“Well,” Nina said gaily, “here we are.”
Her voice was barely audible above the din. Cussick hunched over and tried to shut out the constant clamor. The close air, the frenetic motion of people, made him vaguely ill. Nina’s good time had a grim, deliberate quality about it; he wondered what Tyler thought. She didn’t seem to think anything; pretty, competent, she sat unfastening her coat, an agreeable expression on her face.
“This is the price we pay,” Kaminski’s voice came in Cussick’s ear. “We have Relativism; everybody to his own tastes.”
Some of his words reached Nina. “Oh yes,” she agreed, with a tight smile. “You have to let people do as they want.”
The robot waiter dropped like a metal spider from the ceiling, and Nina turned her attention to ordering. From the bill-of-fare she selected an oral preparation of heroin, then passed the punch sheet to her husband.
Petrified, Cussick watched the robot bring forth a cellophane packet of white capsules. “You’re taking those?” he demanded.
“Now and then,” Nina answered noncommittally, tearing open the packet with her sharp nails.
Numbly, Cussick ordered marijuana for himself; Kaminski did the same. Tyler examined the bill-of-fare with interest, and finally chose a liqueur built around the drug artemisia. Cussick paid the bill, and the waiter, after delivering the orders, accepted the money and sailed off.
His wife, already under the influence of the heroin, sat glassy-eyed, breathing shallowly, hands clenched together. A faint sheen of perspiration had risen to her throat; drop by drop it trickled down to her collarbone and evaporated in the warmth of the room. The drug, he knew, had been severely cut by police order; but it was still a powerful narcotic. He could sense an almost invisible rhythmic motion to her body; she was swaying back and forth to some auditory disturbance unheard by others.
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