“Except the outrages,” Gretchen added.
“And the danger. That alien Golem ‘it’ may be anywhere doing Christ knows what, and—and this is what tears me—it might be coming through that safed door anytime… even now.”
Gretchen nodded quietly. “Yes. If it came once, it may return again… after you or me or both of us or Mr. Wish.”
“You mean that alien something may have been tailing Mr. Wish?”
“It’s possible. Anything’s possible. We don’t know. We’re Ground Zero in the nightmare.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Find the Golem, and zap.”
“D’you really think the danger is that close?”
Gretchen looked hard at Shima. “I do, Blaise. Every nerve in my bod is tingling; not only for us, but for others. Subadar Ind’dni kept harping on the danger. There’s something new and diabolical loose in the Guff.”
Shima shook his head. “It’s like a plague that’s got to be wiped out, but we don’t know what it is, why it is, where it is, what it wants.”
“The Black Death didn’t know or want anything; it just was.”
“Agreed, and that’s a hell of a good analogy, Gretch. Since we know nothing about this Golem we should handle it like an alien disease. That means locating a vector which will lead us back to the plague reservoir. Then we can zap.”
“Yes, that’s the hard-science way.”
“Let’s look at the possible vectors. It may be following me.”
“Or you as Mr. Wish.”
“It may be after you.”
“Or you and me together.”
“It may have some connection with the goons.”
“A possibility.” Gretchen thought for a moment. “Maybe the most likely.”
“It may be functioning at random.”
“In which case we’re helpless. No design or construct could lead to it.”
“Wrong, lady. Even randomness has a pattern where life is involved.”
“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”
“Isn’t the thing we’re tackling a contradiction?”
“Damn it, you’re right, Blaise.”
“Strange problems require strange solutions. As you said, the most likely vector candidate is its possible past connection with the goons. That means we’ll need Subadar Ind’dni’s data on other outrages.”
“Which means going to him.” Gretchen scowled. “I don’t like it, Blaise. He’s shrewd, experienced, intuitive. He can be dangerous.”
“What you really mean is that you don’t want to run the risk of his connecting me with Mr. Wish. I thank you, lady, but I’ll have to take my chances. We join up with Ind’dni. Have we got a reason?”
“Easy. I’m volunteering cooperation because Guff-arrest is bad for my business. I want to help him crack the case as quickly as possible.”
“He’ll buy that.”
“Only if we’re completely honest with him, Blaise.”
“Including Mr. Wish?”
“No, we reserve that.”
“Then your weapon fable will have to stand.”
“Yes.”
“What else must we be honest about?”
“Everything he can check, and make no mistake, baby, he’ll check everything about us.”
“It’s risky.”
“Yes, but not for me; for Mr. Wish. Are you still game?”
“By God, I am, lady. Yes. Now how am I supposed to assist you? In psychodynamics?”
“Me? Ask you for help in my specialty? Unbelievable. No, as a chemist.”
“To do what?”
“Help me get an I.D. on the goons through a chemical analysis of the remains.”
Shima thought that over, then nodded. “Yes, it might work.”
“Ind’dni will be too courteous to tell you that you’re wasting your time. He has his own forensic experts on the precinct staff. But he won’t know that it’s a fake. Just another sincere civilian trying to get into the Sherlock Holmes act.”
Shima nodded again. “They do it all the time.”
“And while you’re staging your phony chemical analysis, I’ll be sifting for information by indirection… anything that’s likely to help us shape up an—”
“Empiric equation?”
“I was going to say ‘equals sign,’ but what’s the difference?”
“Lay down and I’ll show you.”
8
“What in the world is that, Nellie?”
“The latest heap-big magic from my Droney, Regina.”
“?WHY? does he keep trying to get into OUR ACT?”
“He’s just trying to service the Queen Bee and her ladies, Sarah.”
“Sorry, Nell, not interested.” The twins were disgusted. “His binary bag was a bust. We reject.”
“No more binary. This, sisters in the hive, is The Price!”
“What price?” Yenta was definitely interested.
“The price we have to pay the Devil.”
“Oh, no! Not Mr. Wrong Number again.”
“Wait a minute.” Mary Mixup was bewildered. “That’s a price, Nell? Those lines?”
“Of course. You must know. You see lines like that on every package in your markethon.”
“WE, madame, do!NOT! market in person.”
“Then when you unwrap them after they’re delivered.”
“I, madame, do NOT unwrap in P*E*R*S*O*N. I leave that to the (UGH!) Pi-persons (YCH!).”
“Then you’ll have to take Droney’s word for it, Sarah. These lines are read by the shop computer and translated into the price you pay. Then they’re all added up and put on the bill that’s sent to your bank computer.”
“Which pays, kicking and screaming,” Yenta growled. “That part we all know in person.”
“Droney says maybe Lucifer hasn’t shown because we neglected to tell him the price we’re willing to pay for a personal appearance.”
“And this is it, Nell?” Regina was amused.
“Yes. Isn’t it fabelhaft?”
“That’s up to my bank.” Yenta was not amused.
“No, no. The bank doesn’t pay. We do.”
Mary was bewildered. “We do? Us?”
“In person. Yes.”
“How much?” Yenta demanded.
“Droney wouldn’t tell me. All he said was, ‘Satan isn’t paid with money.’”
Miss Priss was offended. “Shame on him.”
“Regina, what d’you think? Should we try it?”
“I honestly don’t know, Nell,” Regina laughed. “Are we supposed to run these lines through the house computer? I don’t think it can read this sort of message.”
“Droney says just put it in the pentacle and burn it.”
“Well, all right. It can’t do any harm to try, but let’s add our evil symphony to attract Lucifer’s evil attention. Pi-girl! Lights and smells, please. Witches, gather ‘round and please be sincere.”
“How?” Yenta was wary. “Are we supposed to chant, ‘Thick line, thin line, space, thin line, thin line…?’ That’ll be worse than Hebrew.”
“No, dear, no ritual. Just the lights and smells and our dedication. We must want. Really want. Want Satan to appear. Want to pay this price, whatever it is in your own mind.”
“What took you so long, Gretchen?”
“I lost the Subadar.”
“Lost him!”
“Correction. He lost me.”
“But he was very much with us when he gave permission to run the analysis. He couldn’t have been more cooperative.”
“And then he disappeared.”
“He twigged your ploy?”
“No, he was called out by another outrage.”
“Ugh! Our Golem?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Nothing to tell. Merely a man flayed.”
“Flayed!”
“Skinned alive. And in a safed room.”
“Dear God!”
“I can’t stand this.”
“Neither can Ind’dni. He was shaking when he came back to the precinct complex. He’s a sensitive soul, Blaise. I like him.”
“I think he’s in the wrong business.”
“Everybody in the Guff is in the wrong business.”
“Did you get anything from him?”
“Nothing.”
“Not even through the magic of psychodynamics?”
“Absolutely nothing. Maybe he was too badly shaken.”
“I don’t blame him. Skinned alive. Christ!”
“He went mystic on me. Talked about Saturn, the youngest of the Titans. (You think you’re excessively educated!) It seems that Saturn killed Sky with a sickle and from the drops of Sky’s blood which fell to earth sprang the Furies and the Giants.”
“This is a cop talking?”
“Indeed yes. He’s quite a cop, our Subadar. Where was I? Oh yes. Saturn was warned by his Earth-Mother that he would be deposed by one of his children, so he swallowed them whole, one by one, as they were born.”
“This I remember. Goya did one hell of a painting of that scene. He made Saturn look like one of our ravening Guff psychotics.”
“Ind’dni said that Zeus was the youngest of Saturn’s children. He was saved by his mother and overcame Big Daddy and exiled him, guarded by the Hundred-Handers.”
“The what?”
“The Hundred-Handers. Wild, huh? Out of sight. Ind’dni couldn’t describe those mythical weirdos. He said they had no shape or form.”
“No shape, no form. Sounds like our Golem.”
“Ind’dni seems obsessed with his Hundred-Hander.”
“And that’s what you fished out of him, baroque gems from Thos. Bulfinch?”
“That’s what I got.”
“It scares me. It really does, Gretchen.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m beginning to believe that Ind’dni has second sight.”
“You have to be guffing.”
“No. His Greek obsession ties in with something I found in the goon bones.”
“You can’t be serious. Your phony analysis found something?”
“It wasn’t phony; couldn’t be. The Subadar’s forensic mavins were all over me, and those dudes are good. I didn’t dare fake; had to go the sincere route.”
“And?”
“And now I’m really spooked.”
“Yes. But why?”
“Because I found another gem from Ind’dni’s mythology.”
“Come on, Blaise! What did you find?”
“Promethium in the bones.”
“Promethium?”
“With an I.U.M.”
“Like Prometheus? The hero-type who stole fire from the sun and gave it to man and got zapped by Zeus?”
“The same. It was named after him by the jokers who found it way back in the nineteen-hundreds.”
“What is it?”
“One of the rare earths. I have to talk technical, Gretch, because there’s no other language to describe it. It’s a lanthanide, a radioactive element with a half-life of thirty years. That means—”
“I know about half-life, Blaise. That’s the time it takes for half the atoms to disintegrate. Yes?”
“Good for you. Promethium’s symbol: capital ‘P’ small ‘m,’ Pm. Atomic number, sixty-one. It’s a fission product of uranium. I found its chloride, which is a pink salt.”
“In the bones?”
“In the bones.”
“And this is a clue?”
“Damn right it is, because there are no rare earths—repeat: no rare earths—in the normal bone salts.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Not even hardly ever?”
“Never.”
“Then this is something abnormal.”
“Definitely, and it may be a vector; only I don’t know what it is or where it leads.”
“Let me think a minute. Strike that. Let me feel a minute.”
“Feel free.”
After an extremely long minute, Gretchen asked, “Any of this Pm stuff in our normal, healthy Corridor pollution?”
Shima shook his head. “No.”
“So the goons couldn’t have absorbed it accidental-like?”
“No.”
“Then they acquired it deliberate-like? A conscious act?”
“Probably.”
“Is it used in food or drink?”
“Not a chance.”
“Even as a preservative, fortifier, adulterant, aphrodisiac, health-advertising gimmick?”
“No way, Gretch. Too rare for commercial use of any sort. Too damn expensive.”
“Expensive.” Gretchen meditated. “Yes, that’s the operative word. What would your normal, healthy, all-American goon use that was expensive?”
“Easy. Drugs.”
“Q.E.D. This could be your vector.”
Shima nodded. “Maybe. The only trouble is, I never heard of any tinct, chrome, mord, tinge, any junk that uses Promethium, and I have to know all the squeams in the scent business.”
“Then that makes your lead even stronger. It must be something new on the market, so we don’t have to waste time on the street level, chasing connections. We go right to the top.”
Shima nodded again. Then he got up and began wandering absently around her workshop. Of course she couldn’t see him because they were alone together, but she could track him by sound. At last he said, “You go right to the top, love. I’m going to try another line.”
“Like what?”
“Cover the chemical supply houses. They know me. They’ll give me what we want.”
“But they don’t handle junk, do they? I mean, it’s legit these days but it’s still infra dig for anybody with class.”
“Of course not, but you don’t find Promethium in any of the street squeams. That means it must be added to produce a new junk trip. And that means it’s got to be bought from a legitimate house, and they keep careful records.”
Gretchen nodded. “Sounds promising.” Then she grinned. “Hey, bubie, got any Pm in your lab? Maybe we should try it ourselves.”
“So happens I do; about a hundred grams of the hydride. But how is that going to lead us to the Hundred-Hander Golem?”
“Oh, it can’t, but maybe we can trip, hundred-hand-in-hand into a psychedelic future, forsaking all others, and—”
“And voted ‘Squeamies of the Year.’ Knock it off, Gretch. You’re not even slightly funny. That damned Hundred-Hander thing may catch up with us at any moment and skin us alive.”
Gretchen sobered.
Shima patted her. “So dozo you take care, hear? We’ve got our empiric equation at last. Pm plus squeam plus goon I.D. equals Hundred-Hander-Golem-Thing. So let’s move it and, for God’s sake, don’t talk to the rough boys on the corner.”
“Yes, but you take care, too. There’s another danger for you.”
“Me? What danger?”
“Ind’dni.”
“The Subadar a danger to me? How? Why?”
“Ind’dni suspects that you’re involved with his Hundred-Hander. That’s why he was so cooperative. He was doing some subtle fishing himself.”
“For what?”
“Your connection with the goon butchery.”
“Subtle, hell! I am connected.”
“Not the way he’s thinking.”
“How is the Hindu thinking?”
“That as a genius-type chemist you may be responsible for the Golem.”
“What? The Frankenstein bag?” Shima burst out laughing. “Preposterous!” Suddenly he sobered as an idea struck him. “But good God! Is it possible that Mr. Wish is responsible?”
“Anything and everything’s possible in the Guff.”
9
Gretchen knew the P.L.O. Oasis by sight. Everybody in the Guff did, although very few were ever permitted entry. It
was one of “The Sights.” Shaped like a pyramid; surrounded by plastic palms in glittering mica sands; fountains at the four corners—not jetting up precious water but chlorobenzene (C6H5C1) as amateur HOjacks discovered to their disgust—it was quite literally an Oasis.
“All it needs is camels,” she thought as she walked up to the gate set between the paws of a pint-sized sphinx. It was guarded by a squad of Liberation guerrillas wearing traditional desert-fighting khaki and carrying antique automatic rifles at the ready. She was stopped at gunpoint.
“Who you?” they demanded.
“Shalom aleichem,” she answered.
“Who you?” The slam of cartridges into rifle chambers meant business.
“Gretchen Nunn. Shalom aleichem.”
“You speak Jew. You Jew?”
“Vudden? Frig mir nicht kein narrische fragen.”
“You? Jew? No.”
“Ich bin a Yid.”
“You no look Jew.”
“Nudnick! Ich bin Falasha Yid.”
There was a blank pause. Then a face brightened. “Ah? Ah! Black Jew. I hear. Never see. You pretty black Jew. Come in.” To the rest of the squad. “She okay real Jew. Let her.”
Gretchen’s first ploy had worked. She was passed into an enormous hall of unspeakable filth and fetor, echoing with the bilious belches of twenty tethered camels. There were tents. There were naked children playing in the mica sands who stopped and stared at her. There were veiled women in black, tending small fires of dried dung, who stared but did not stop. The cathedral ceiling was clouded with acrid smoke.
A bearded sheikh in splendid robes advanced and greeted her. “Shalom aleichem.”
“Aleichem shalom.”
“Good morning, Miz Nunn. How nice of you to pay us a call.”
“Good morning, sir. I’m afraid you have the advantage.”
“Sheikh Omar ben Omar. No, we’ve never met but of course you are one of the Guff celebrateds. Ours the honor, Miz Nunn.”
“Yours the grace, Sheikh Omar.”
“I see you are acquainted with our polite forms, and I thank you. Will you take coffee?”
Over the ceremonial coffee taken cross-legged in a tent, alone except for hordes of urchins peeping in, and after the endless courtesy exchanges, Gretchen began inching up on her business with a confession of her deception of the Oasis guards. Sheikh Omar laughed.
“Yes, they reported to me that a Jew was entering, which is why I gave you the Israeli greeting. We recruit and train our guards for strength, not I.Q. I’m amazed that even one of them has even heard of the Falasha. Our guards are, after all, an equivalent of the old Mafia ‘soldiers.’”
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