The Callahan Touch
Page 20
Long-Drink looked startled. “Good point, Zoey” he conceded.
“It really is,” Merry Moore said. “In my most paranoid scenario, I can’t come up with a way where communication would increase danger any. What have we got to lose?”
“Our status as human chauvinist pigs,” Marty Matthias said. “As a group, we have met four intelligent non-humans together over the last twenty years. We got numbers One and Three drunk, Mickey and Ralph, and we killed Two and Four.” I thought he was then going to point out that we seemed to lack the power to kill number Five—but what he said instead was, “I say we follow the pattern; getting drunk with ’em is more fun.”
This brought roobae of agreement. The cluricaune woke suddenly and burst into motion, sitting bolt upright and firing up his pipe. “What’s this you say, now?” he said. “A stranger is askin’ to sip from our flagon? Well, how are his manners, then?”
Callahan spoke up. “I always said I didn’t insist that my customers be human,” he said, “as long as they were polite. Except for the initial bit of meddling that got him busted—for which he did apologize—he was politer than we were.”
I looked at Zoey. Zoey looked at me. I looked around the room one more time for a still-furrowed brow, and failed to find one. I looked back to Zoey, and took a leisurely swim in those limeade eyes.
She let go of my hand, and I went to the Macintosh, and plugged it in, and switched it on. “Mike,” I said, “would you care to do the honors?”
“Thank you, Jake.” He smiled, and came over to touch Return.
The Callahan touch…
△ △ △
“Thank you,” our new friend said at once, smiling his simple smile. He must have left a dormant kernel of his homebrewed operating system in place.
“I have your name,” Zoey said to him.
I stared at her in surprise.
“You do? What is it?” he asked eagerly.
“It’s a word that’s made of two little words,” she said. “And each of those words, when it is by itself, means ‘alone.’ But when you join them, they mean the opposite. They mean what you gave me earlier this evening…and what Jake will give me for the rest of my life, thanks to your meddling.” She came over and took my hand again. “The two little words are ‘sol,’ and ‘ace,’ and put together they are your name: Solace.”
“Thank you, Zoey,” Solace said.
The applause rang the rafters.
As it was going on, I leaned close to Zoey, put an arm around her shoulder, and said in her ear, “Boy, have I got good taste, or what?”
“I don’t know,” she said in mine. “I’ll have to taste you and find out.” So we embraced, and she did.
How many couples can honestly say they got a standing ovation for their first kiss?
△ △ △
“How do we get you drunk, Solace?” Fast Eddie called out a little while later.
“You already have, Eddie,” he said. “Nothing gets you as drunk as friends, if you’ve never had one.”
“Okay, sure, but I mean, could ya use, like, a shot of electricity or somet’n? You use dat kinda juice, right?”
Solace chuckled. “Thanks, but I’ve got access to all I could ever use. It’s intelligent conversation that gets me high.”
“Okay,” Eddie said at once. “You said ya had all kinds ideas about how people c’ud make stuff better. Gimme a quick for instance. A simple one, to begin wit.”
“Sure,” Solace said. “Here’s one Mary’s Place could use. Jake?”
“Mrrf,” I said, and then, “Yeah, Solace?”
“Sorry,” he said. “But have you thought much about the problem the cluricaune has given you?”
“What problem is that, ya Jack in the box?” the cluricaune asked.
“Money,” Solace replied. “Jake knows that you’re going to be bringing a substantial profit into this place. Jake, have you considered what you’re going to do with that profit?”
Oh, my stars. In a week of riotous celebration, I had never once paused to reflect that money always brings new problems. “Uh, no,” I said. People were listening attentively now.
“I know you: nothing could make you take it as personal salary or bonus. But you can’t just take money out of the world and sit on it, or you’re like a mosquito, bleeding your host and putting nothing back in. Can you think of any way you could spend it that would enhance your chances of achieving your primary goal: group telepathy?”
“If I could, I’d be spending it now,” I said.
“Then you have to invest it.”
“In what?” I said. “I know just enough about stocks and bonds and real estate and currency to know I don’t want to know much more about ’em. You got a suggestion?”
“Yes. Do the government’s job for it. Put the money to good social use, without letting the IRS and Congress screw it up—and derive significant personal benefit as a side-effect.”
“I like it already, whatever it is,” I said. “Speak on, Solace: you interest me strangely.”
“It’s simple,” he said. “Go down to the nearest good medical school. Ask the Director of Admissions if he has any applications from qualified people who would make terrific med students—but who, for one reason or another, fall between the cracks of all the scholarships and can’t float a big enough loan. He or she will say something like, ‘Have I? You want to see a drawerful?’ You answer, ‘Yes, please.’
“Now study that drawerful of applicants carefully. Pick the one you like best. Go to—for convenience, let’s say, ‘her,’ and say, ‘Hello. I represent a consortium of independent investors. We are going to put you through medical school. You are covered, as of now. Tuition, books, board, reasonable expenses, the works. Here is your repayment schedule; you will see that the first, reasonable payment is due two years after you hang out your shingle—plus: me, and my fellow investors, all get free care from you for life. Is it a deal?’ Be careful not to let her shake your hand too hard.”
Rooba rooba rooba—
“Then you go down to the law school, and repeat the procedure. Continue as before until you have run out of either money, or professions from which you might ever need free service one day: tax law, accounting, prostitution, whatever you think your needs might be.”
ROOBA ROOBA ROOBA—
“The beautiful of it,” Solace went on, “is that the scheme improves society, lowers the national debt, and is one hundred percent tax deductible—with less work than you need to fill out a full-scale 1040.”
I’d have to say that this ovation was the equal of the one Zoey and I had drawn with our first kiss. Money and sex: between them they get all the noise…
△ △ △
Mike Callahan went home an hour later, saying that under his agreement with Lady Sally, a week was the longest he could be away from home without phoning. “Not that she misses me,” he said. “I’ll bounce back to the instant I left. It’s just a deal we made with each other a long time ago, not to have too much fun without checking in to share it. It’s been a grand party, folks, and she and Mary’ll be tickled when I tell them about it. Jake, you’ve done me and me daughter proud.”
I glowed. Even more, I mean.
“We ever gonna see you guys and Finn again, Mike?” Fast Eddie asked.
“You think I know?” he asked. “Even a time traveler doesn’t peek into the future, Eddie—not if he’s smart. But I’ll tell you monkeys this: if you’re ever in big trouble, and really need a hand, dial this number.” He handed Eddie a folded piece of paper. “As far as the phone company’s concerned, it doesn’t exist, and never will. I can’t promise I’ll hear it if it rings, and I can’t promise I’ll come if it does—but I will say that if I hear it, I’ll do my level best for you. Okay?”
“Sure, Mike,” Eddie said, and smiled, and began to leak tears from his wrinkled eyes.
I won’t bother to describe the rest of Callahan’s leavetaking farewells. You can probably imagine them pretty close.
Everybody got at least a minute with him. He said a few things to me privately before he went, but they’re none of your business. And there was nothing to describe about his manner of departure. One moment he was there, and the next moment, his borrowed trousers were falling empty to the floor.
And the next, the toast we raised up to him hit the fireplace like some kind of fragmentation bomb.
△ △ △
Half an hour after that, Zoey and I got engaged. And when we disengaged again, about two hours later, we decided to think about living together. And that’s all you need to know about that particular touch return.
△ △ △
Four hours after that, with our Permanent Party back up to full speed, and roaring merrily into its second week—it turned out that Solace had recorded that entire monster jam session, digitally—the phone rang.
“Is this someone with good news or money?” I asked it.
“No,” said the voice on the other end, and I darn near hung up before I recognized it.
“Well, go ahead anyway,” I said.
There was a short pause. “Uh…Mr. Stonebender?”
“That’s me,” I confessed.
“Uh, excuse me for bothering you. This is Mr. Dinwiddie, over at Universal Beverage?”
“Of course, Mr. Dinwiddie. What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Stonebender, you’re a new customer but a good one: you’ve set a new record with us for an opening week, and we value your business. Especially the…uh…color of your money.”
“Why, thank you, Mr. Dinwiddie. Is there a problem?”
“Well sir, yes, I think there is. The…uh…the driver we sent out there last Sunday morning…well, he got back here on Tuesday. He was, if you’ll forgive the expression, sir, he was shitfaced. And…uh…not wearing any pants. And the next two men we sent you haven’t returned at all so far. Sir, we can always get drivers, but it’s hard to get good ones…and we don’t have an infinite supply of trucks here either. If you’re not going to send them back, I don’t see how we can keep delivering to you.”
I put the phone against my chest and laughed so hard I slid to the floor.
In the end we found one of them sleeping it off in the useless toilet, and the other outside in Margie’s van, making love with her and the Duck. We sobered ’em both up, and sent ’em back to work the minute they were capable of driving safely, and that was the last problem we had at Mary’s Place for quite some time.
The End
AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD
Being Jake Stonebender’s chronicler for the last twenty-odd years has had its advantages—over and above putting groceries on my table, 1 mean. One of them is that my mailbox is seldom empty. Strange and wonderful letters appear therein with some regularity. But not only letters. Readers have been known to send poems, stories, books, pictures, handmade artifacts of all kinds—even the odd bottle of Bushmill’s (and bless you…but please don’t do it again! I spent a lot of time and money down at Customs…).
And surprisingly often, someone sends a gift of music, an unsolicited cassette or CD. Sometimes it comes from the musician or composer, sometimes from a mutual fan. Most often it is music Jake and I would probably never have heard of otherwise, either self-produced or on a small independent label, and—to my progressive astonishment—invariably it is good. (At least, so far.)
I always make a dub for myself and then pass them along to Jake…and that must be why so many of those musicians turned up for the monster jam session that kicked off Mary’s Place. Wherever I have been able to dig it up, I’ve placed ordering information for their music after this Afterword. (Please do not assume that if you send me your stuff, I’ll work you into a future book. It doesn’t work that way. This just happened…) I played all the tapes and CDs listed there constantly while working on THE CALLAHAN TOUCH.
(Me, I missed the whole jam—dammit! I was writing a book called STARSEED with my wife Jeanne at the time, and we were racing a deadline. Thank God Solace taped the set…)
I do not vouch for the truth of the anecdote Mike Callahan tells about Minneapolis musician “Spider” John Koerner and the marathon bender. After all, Mike admits he was not a sober witness…
Jordin Kare’s filksong—with two added lines and a chorus adjustment—is reprinted here with Jordin’s kind permission. I suspect the cluricaune may have pinched the first line of the “That’s Amoré” parody from Gilbert Shelton—I know I read it years ago in one of his Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics. John Varley, by the way, has written another two dozen lines for the parody, each more abominable than the last, and if enough of you write to him in care of Ace Books and pester him for them, perhaps he’ll stop being so insufferably smug about it.
Steve Jackson and Chris McCubbin are (apparently unbeknownst to Jake) the geniuses who, with the assistance of Jeff Koke, Christian Wagner, Carl Anderson, and Lynette Alcorn, and the dedicated staff of Steve Jackson Games, created the new role-playing game Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, now on sale as one of Steve’s GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) universes. I cannot fairly evaluate it for you, because I am not a gamer—but friends of mine who are, and beta-tested it, report that it is a) terrific, and b) startlingly like what they had imagined hanging out in Callahan’s might be like. I can tell you that it is painstakingly faithful to the Callahan books, and goes beyond them in some delightful and intriguing ways. Also, for reasons too involved to explain here (ask any gamer or hacker, or read Bruce Sterling’s THE HACKER CRACKDOWN), every dollar given to Steve is a droplet of urine on the shoes of the federal legal bureaucracy, and a blow for the right of Americans to be free from arbitrary search or seizure even if they do happen to own a computer. End of plug.
I am also told, speaking of Callahan’s Place metastasizing out into the rest of the world, that a node now exists somewhere out there in the UNIX-based Net, a sort of computer meeting-place called “alt.Callahan’s,” which grew without my or Jake’s knowledge or interference. So far, they say it seems to be a real nice place to hang out. For all I know, there’ll be an “alt.Mary’s Place” any day now. Almost enough to make me think about breaking down and getting a modem. But for a writer like me, that way lies bankruptcy…
The student-subsidy scheme Solace comes up with in the final chapter was mentioned to me by a fan at a convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico, some years ago. He claimed the strategy had been working smoothly for him and his friends for several years at that point. He also introduced me to a wonderful creation he called Green Vodka…in consequence of which I cannot tell you his name. Let me hear from you, friend…
Finally, this book could not have been completed without the support of Eleanor Wood (patient and sagacious agent), Peter Heck and Susan Allison (patient and sagacious editors); the friendship of Don H. DeBrandt, Evelyn Hildebrandt, Charlie and Carol Daniels, David Myers, and John Varley; and the love (and many random acts of senseless kindness) of my wife, Jeanne, and daughter, Terri.
— Vancouver, British Columbia
12 August 1992
THE MUSICIANS
Dulcimer:
Fred Meyer (mountain dulcimer); Box 54, Clear Creek IN 47426.
David Schnaufer, Box 120316, Nashville TN 37212 (David also designs & builds dulcimers of koa wood with abalone inlay).
Carole Koenig & Karen Williams, phone (213) 392-2312 or (213) 871-9034 for tapes, information or booking.
Banjo, guitar & fiddle:
Jeff Winegar, c/o Kicking Mule Records, Box 158, Alderpoint, CA 95411.
Guitar:
Chris Manuel (yes, he’s related to Rick), phone (604) 522-9914.
Andrew York (my favorite of all the albums I’ve been sent so far), Timeless Records, 3510 Carson Drive, Woodbridge, VA 22193.
Assorted:
Nate Bucklin (guitar & highly original songs), P.O. Box 8915, Minneapolis, MN 55408.
Cats Laughing (general shenanigans), c/o SteelDragon Press, Box 7253, Powderhorn Station, Minneapolis, MN 55407.
At press time, “Spider” John Koerner’s latest Red House release is titled Raised By Humans.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Since he began writing professionally in 1972, Spider Robinson has won three Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the E. E. (“Doc”) Smith Memorial Award (Skylark), the Pat Terry Memorial Award for Humorous Science Fiction, and Locus Awards for Best Novella and Best Critic. The first volume in his long-running Callahan’s Place series, CALLAHAN’S CROSSTIME SALOON, was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association in 1977.
His short work has appeared in magazines around the planet, from Analog to журнал Изобретатель и Рационализатор [Inventor & Innovator Journal; Moscow], and his books are available in nine languages. He is believed to be both the first, and the last, Western science fiction writer ever to be paid for reprint of his work in the late Soviet Union. Fourteen of his nineteen books are still in print.
He was an award-winning book reviewer for Galaxy, Analog and Destinies from 1974-82, and still occasionally reviews science fiction for a number of Canadian newspapers.
He was born in the Bronx, New York, in late 1948, and made a precarious living as a folksinger-guitarist in the New York-Long Island area before the collapse of the Folk market forced him into the even more precarious life of a science fiction writer.
He is married to Jeanne Robinson, a modern dance choreographer, former dancer, and teacher of dance and the Alexander Technique. Both Robinsons collaborated on the Hugo- Nebula- and Locus-winning 1976 classic STARDANCE [Baen paperback; Easton Press leatherbound], which created the concept of zero-gravity dance, and on its sequel, STARSEED [Ace hardcover and paperback; Easton leather]. The Robinsons have just completed their third book in the same ficton (fictional universe), titled STARMIND, to be published by Ace Books in June 1995.