By Any Other Name

by Spider Robinson

  “He took a gamble,” Finnegan went on, “a gamble that I would go just as far as he would to see that drug destroyed. Well, we missed you in Quebec and Ottawa and Toronto, and you fooled us when you went to Portland instead of your gig in Bangor, but I guess we’ve got you now.”

  “You’re wrong,” Jill said, turning to glare at Finnegan. “It’s too late. You’re both too late. You can kill us, but you can never recall the truth now.”

  “People forget headlines,” Sziller sneered confidently. “Even a month of headlines. Nothing.”

  “You’re still wrong,” Zack said, staring in confusion from Sziller to Jill to the gesticulating Finnegan. “We put about thirty tapes and TWT samples in the mail—”

  “Jerks,” Sziller said, shaking his head. “Outthought every step of the way. Look, sonny, if you want to move a lot of dope with minimum risk, where do you get a job?” He paused and grinned again. “The Post Office, dummy.”

  “No,” Zack and Jill said together, and Finnegan barked “Yes,” quite sharply. They both turned to look at him.

  “You can bug any room with a window in it, children,” he said wearily. “And that dressing room, of course, has always been bugged. Oh, look, dammit.”

  He held up a VidCaset Mailer pack with broken seals, and at last they both started forward involuntarily toward it, and as he cleared the dressing room doorway Zack finally caught on, and he reached behind him and an incredible thing happened.

  It must be borne in mind that both Zack and Jill had, as they had earlier recognized, been steadily raising the truth level between them for over a month, unconsciously attempting to soften the blow of their first TWT experience. The Tennessee preacher earlier noted had once said publicly that all people are born potentially telepathic—but that if we’re ever going to get any message-traffic capacity, we must first shovel the shit out of the Communications Room. This room, he said, was called by some the subconscious mind. Zack and Jill had almost certainly been exposed to at least threshold contamination with TWT, and they were, as it happens, the first subjects to be a couple and very much in love. They had lived together through a month that could have killed them at any time, and they were already beginning to display minor telepathic rapport.

  Whatever the reasons, for one fractionated instant their hands touched, glancingly, and—Jill who had seen none of Finnegan’s winking and almost nothing of his urgent gestures—knew all at once exactly what was about to happen and what to do, and Zack knew that she knew and that he didn’t have to worry about her. Sziller was close behind them; there was no time even for one last flickerglance at each other. They grinned and winked together at Finnegan and Zack dove left and Jill dove right and Sziller came into the doorway with the Colt extended, wondering why Finnegan hadn’t fired already, and there was just time for his face to register of course, he has no silencer before Finnegan shot him.

  A .357 Magnum throwing a 120-grain Supervel hollow-point can kill you if it hits you in the foot, from hydrostatic shock to the brain. Sziller took it in the solar plexus and slammed back into the dressing room to land with a wet, meaty thud.

  The echoes roared and crackled away like the treble thunder that comes sometimes with heat lightning.

  “I’m kind of more than your garden variety narc,” Finnegan said calmly. “Maybe you guessed.”

  “Yes,” Jill said for both of them. “A few seconds ago. To arrange that many convincingly bungled hits, you’ve got to be big. But you took a big chance with that cab driver.”

  “Hell, he wasn’t mine. The guy just happened to flip—happens all the time.”

  “I believe you,” she said, again for the two of them.

  “People will have heard that shot,” Zack suggested diffidently.

  “Nobody who wasn’t expecting it, son,” Finnegan said, and sighed. “Nobody who wasn’t expecting it.”

  Zack nodded. “Question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How come you’re still holding that gun out?”

  “Because both of you still have yours,” the government man said softly.

  No one moved for a long frozen moment. Zack was caught with his right hand under him; in attempting to conceal the gun he had lost the use of it. Jill’s was behind a crouching leg, but she left it there.

  “We don’t figure you, Ed,” she said softly. “That’s all. You see that, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” he said. “So lighten up on the iron and by and by we’ll all go get ham and eggs at my place. I’ll teach you that song about Bad-Eye Bill and the Eskimo gal.”

  “You’re not relaxing us worth a shit, Finnegan,” Zack grated. “Talk. How big are you?”

  Finnegan pursed his lips, blew a tiny bubble between them. “Big. Bigger than narcotics. Bifederality leaves a lot of gaps. I guess you could say I’m The Man, Zaccur old son. For our purposes, anyway. Oh, I have superiors, including the President and the Prime Minister. I’m so clever and nimble none of them is even afraid of me. I think the PM rather likes me. It’s important that you know how heavy I am—it’ll help you believe the rest.”

  He paused there, and Zack said “Try us,” in a gentler tone of voice.

  Finnegan looked around him at the darkened music room, at shadowy formica-toadstool tables bristling with chair legs, at the great hovering-buzzard blot that was the high spotlight, at a stage full of amplifiers and a piano like stolid dwarves and a troll come to sit in judgment on him, at the mocking red glow of the sign over the door that claimed it was an exit. He took a deep breath, and spoke very carefully.

  “Did you ever wonder why a man takes on a job like mine?” He wet his lips. “He takes it on because it’s a job that someone has to do, and he sees that the man doing it is a bloody bungling butcher playing James Bond with the fate of the world. Can you see that? I hated his job as much as I hated him, but I understood that in a world like this one, somebody has to do that job. Somebody just plain has to do that job, and I decided that no one in sight could do a better job than me. So I forced him to retire and I took his job. It is a filthy pig fucker of a job, and it has damaged me to do it—but somebody had to. Look, I have done things that horrify me, things that diminish me, but I did good things, too, and I have been striving every minute toward a world in which my job didn’t exist, in which nobody had to shoulder that load. I’ve been working to put myself out of a job, without the faintest shred of hope, for over ten years—and now it’s Christmas and I’m free, I’m fucking FREE. That makes me so happy that I could go down to the cemetery and dig up Wes and kiss him on the moldy lips, so happy I’ll feel just terrible if I can’t talk you two out of killing me.

  “My job is finished, now—nobody knows it but you and me, but it’s all over but the shouting. And in gratitude to you and Wes I intend to use my last gasp of power and influence to try and keep you two alive when the shit hits the fan.”

  “Huh?”

  “I kind of liked your idea, so I let your VidCaset packs go through. But first I erased ’em and rerecorded. Audio only, voice out of a voder, nothing identifying you two. That won’t fool a computer for long, they’re all friends of yours, but it buys us time.”

  “For what?” Jill asked.

  “Time to get you two underground, of course. How would you like to be, oh, say, a writer and her husband in Colorado for six months or so? You’d look good as a blond.”

  “Finnegan,” Zack said with great weariness, “this all has a certain compelling inner consistency to it, but you surely understand our position. Unless you can prove any of this, we’re going to have to shoot it out.”

  “Why you damned fools,” Finnegan blazed, “what’re you wasting time for? You’ve got some of the stuff with you—give me a taste.”

  There was a pause while the pair thought that over. “How do we do this?” Jill asked at last.

  “Put your guns on me,” Finnegan said.

  They stared.

  “Come on, dammit. For now that’s the only way we can tru
st each other. Just like the world out there—guns at each other’s heads because we fear lies and treachery, the sneak attack. Put your fucking guns on me, and in an hour that world will be on its way out. Come on!” he roared.

  Hesitantly, the two brought up their guns, until all three weapons threatened life. Jill’s other hand brought a tiny stoppered vial from her pants. Slowly, carefully, she advanced toward Finnegan, holding out the truth, and when she was three feet away she saw Finnegan grin and heard Zack chuckle, and then she was giggling helplessly at the thought of three solemn faces above pistol sights, and all at once all three of them were convulsed with great racking whoops of laughter at themselves, and they threw away their guns as one. They held their sides and roared and roared with laughter until all three had fallen to the floor, and then they pounded weakly on the floor and laughed some more.

  There was a pause for panting and catching of breath and a few tapering giggles, and then Jill unstoppered the vial and upended it against each proffered fingertip and her own. Each licked their finger eagerly, and from about that time on everything began to be all right. Literally.

  An ending is the beginning of something, always.

  APOGEE

  He sat on plush leather in the finest, most opulent office in town, surveying a desk on which even a careless pilot could have landed a helicopter. Flicking an entirely imaginary speck of lint from the lapel of his newest four-hundred-dollar suit, he yawned for perhaps the twentieth time since his secretaries had gone home for the day, and stifled the yawn with an exquisitely manicured hand. His countenance was that of a man with perfect health, job security, much money, and considerable prestige—with a paradoxical frown overlaid.

  “Hell,” he said succinctly and most uncharacteristically.

  “Yeah?” said the demon which appeared flaming beyond the desk.

  The temperature in the room rose sharply, but the seated man did not (as a matter of fact, could not) sweat. He squinted at the blazing horned creature and automatically moved his Moroccan leather cigar box away from it. “You want to tone that down a bit?” he said, scowling.

  “Listen,” it told him, “with the price of a watt these days, you should turn out the lights and put a mirror behind me.” But its fiery brilliance moderated to a cheery glow, and the carpet stopped smelling bad. It sat down on thin air, tail coiled, and blew a perfect smoke ring. “Now, what’s on your mind?”

  He hesitated; took the plunge. “I’m not satisfied.”

  The demon sneered. “A beef, huh? You guys gimme a pain. You want the Moon for a soul like yours?”

  “Now wait a minute,” he said indignantly, with just a touch of fear. “We’ve got a contract.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” it sighed. “And you want to talk fine print. You guys read too many stories. All right, let’s haul out the contract and get this over with.”

  A large piece of foolscap appeared between them on the desk, smoldering around the edges. It was covered with minuscule type, and one of the signatures glistened red.

  “Standard issue contract, with bonus provisions contingent on your promise to deliver a large consignment of souls other than your own, as described in appended schedule A-2…” The appendix materialized beside the contract, and the demon looked it over. “Seems to be in order. What’s the beef?”

  “I’m not satisfied,” he repeated, and glared uncomfortably at the demon.

  “Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” it burst out, “what do you want from my life? You got everything you asked for. I honor my service contracts, I supplied everything requested, and I mean everything. I worked for you, baby.”

  “I don’t care,” he said petulantly. “I’m not happy. It’s right there in the appendix, the Lifetime Approval Option. I’ve got to enjoy all that you give me. And I don’t.”

  “Look,” the demon said angrily, “I did my best for you pal—you’ve got all I can give you. Unbelievable riches, total health, raw power, the job you always wanted and complete autonomy. You can say any dumb thing that comes into your head—and believe me, you’ve said some lulus—and people agree with you. You can make the wildest bonehead decisions and they work out okay. You couldn’t louse up if you tried, and believe you me it’s taken some doing. So what’s not to enjoy?”

  He glared at it, his jowls quivering. “I’m bored, dammit. There’s nothing left to achieve.”

  “It’s your own fault,” said the demon. “You insisted on having everything right away, and so you ran out of dreams too fast.” It sneered at him. “Greedy.”

  “I don’t care,” he snapped. “You made a deal and I want satisfaction. Literally.”

  The demon stood and began pacing the floor, trailing wisps of blue smoke. “Look,” it said irritably, “there’s nothing more I can do. You’ve got the whole works.”

  “It’s not enough. I’m bored.”

  The demon looked harassed, then thoughtful. “Maybe there’s a way,” it said slowly.

  “Yes,” he prodded eagerly.

  “It’s a way-out idea, but it just might work. The only thing you haven’t tried. I’ll turn you into a woman, and…”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  It grimaced. “Worth a try. Well, I guess there’s only one possibility, then.”

  “Well, come on, come on. Out with it.”

  “I’ll turn you into a masochist, and let the whole job come down around your ears.” The demon smiled. “Take a big bite out of my work load.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” he exploded.

  “Think about it,” it said reasonably. “There’s nowhere to go from here but back downhill, and you could enjoy that as much as the ride up. Don’t you understand? You’d be a masochist. You’ll lose everything I’ve ever given you with just as much joy as you experienced in receiving it, only this time you’ll be doing it all yourself, through your own natural ineptitude. All I’ll do is help you appreciate it.”

  He started to say that it was the craziest thing he’d ever heard, and paused. He was silent for a long time, rubbing his five o’clock shadow, and the demon waited. At last he cleared his throat.

  “Do you really think it’s feasible?” he asked.

  “Thought so,” said the demon with sly satisfaction. “You’ve been kidding yourself all these years; this is what you really wanted all along.” He began an angry retort, but paused. All at once he experienced a flash of nostalgia for his ulcer. It might be nice to whimper again…

  “All right,” he said suddenly. “Do it.”

  “It’s done.”

  The demon disappeared, leaving behind it the traditional smell of brimstone (with added petroleum derivatives) and a scorched carpet.

  He discovered that his feet hurt, and realized with what was now the closest thing to glee that he could experience that he was sweating profusely. The demon was right—this was what he had really craved all along, this was what he had been born for. The fall would be more spectacular than the rise. His head began to ache dully.

  Picking up the special phone, he made two calls, then dialed his unlisted home number. “Hello, Pat? Dick. Sorry I’m late, dear. I’ll be sleeping here tonight. I have to meet early tomorrow with Ron and Gordon about some plumbers. Yes, I’ll see you tomorrow night. What? No, dear, nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine. Everything is just fine. Good night, dear.”

  He hung up and looked across the room at the presidential seal over the door. He began to laugh, and then he cried, and continued to cry for months thereafter.

  NO RENEWAL

  Douglas Bent Jr. sits in his kitchen, waiting for his tea to heat. It is May twelfth, his birthday, and he has prepared wintergreen tea. Douglas allows himself this extravagance because he knows he will receive no birthday present from anyone but himself. By a trick of Time and timing, he has outlived all his friends, all his relatives. The concept of neighborliness, too, has predeceased him; not because he has none, but because he has too many.

  His may be, for all he knows, the last
small farm in Nova Scotia, and it is bordered on three sides by vast mined-out clay pits, gaping concentric cavities whose insides were scraped out and eaten long ago, their husk thrown away to rot. On the remaining perimeter is an apartment-hive, packed with antlike swarms of people. Douglas knows none of them as individuals; at times, he doubts the trick is possible.

  Once Douglas’s family owned hundreds of acres along what was then called simply the Shore Road; once the Bent spread ran from the Bay of Fundy itself back over the peak of the great North Mountain, included a sawmill, rushing streams, hundreds of thousands of trees, and acre after acre of pasture and hay and rich farmland; once the Bents were one of the best-known families from Annapolis Royal to Bridgetown, their livestock the envy of the entire Annapolis Valley.

  Then the petrochemical industry died of thirst. With it, of course, went the plastics industry. Clay suddenly became an essential substitute—and the Annapolis Valley is mostly clay.

  Now the Shore Road is the Fundy Trail, six lanes of high-speed traffic; the Bent spread is fourteen acres on the most inaccessible part of the Mountain; the sawmill has been replaced by the industrial park that ate the clay; the pasture and the streams and the farmland have been disemboweled or paved over; all the Bents save Douglas Jr. are dead or moved to the cities; and perhaps no one now living in the Valley has ever seen a live cow, pig, duck, goat or chicken, let alone eaten them. Agribusiness has destroyed agriculture, and synthoprotein feeds (some of) the world. Douglas grows only what crops replenish themselves, feeds only himself.

  He sits waiting for the water to boil, curses for the millionth time the solar-powered electric stove that supplanted the family’s woodburner when firewood became impossible to obtain. Electric stoves take too long to heat, call for no tending, perform their task with impersonal callousness. They do not warm a room.