The Second Mystery Megapack

by Ron Goulart

  When the ceremony wound to an end, Carla accompanied Tony and Zhag back to their hotel suite. “We’ve got two hours,” Zhag said, “and I have some new music running through my head.”

  Carla knew he could zlin that she wanted some private time with Tony. The Sime disappeared into one of the bedrooms, and after a moment, soft strains of shiltpron music drifted out. She was not sure if he was really that eager to play, or if he was reassuring her that he was concentrating on something other than the emotions of the two Gens in the next room.

  Tony plopped down on the couch and patted the seat beside him. Carla sat, leaning on him in the old familiar way. “Tony, I have some questions,” she said.

  His chest vibrated with laughter. “Even I’m too tired to do anything but talk.”

  “I don’t know where to start. For instance, matchmates. Are you the only Gen who can give Zhag transfer?”

  “No. He could go for months on transfer from channels or other Donors, but he’s at his best with me. And if I left him…even if the Tecton were willing to try to find him another match, it isn’t easy.”

  Carla put the spoken and unspoken thoughts together. “If you were permanently unavailable…?”

  “Zhag would probably die.”

  “Explain that. Why can’t he kill? It can’t be just having Gen friends—we still get cases right here in which a child changes over and kills a friend or family member.”

  “Yes, and they come into Sime Territory as emotional wrecks. Disjunction is very hard, but Sime children of Gens have all the incentive in the world. Carla, I’ve witnessed profound change in the past fifteen years. Parts of Gulf Territory were already Unified before I got there—Norlea was one of them. But Zhag was too old to disjunct when he first went to Norlea.”

  “He’s only a few years older than you are.”

  “Simes can only disjunct during the year after changeover. Later, they can become semi-junct, killing once or twice a year. When I first went to Gulf Territory it was full of semi-juncts raising their children to be nonjunct. But semi-junctedness is an unstable state. Eventually the Sime sees all Gens as human beings, and aborts out of any kill. Carla…Zhag was already far down that road—but when he accepted a Gen as partner in his life’s work, he speeded the process. The channels couldn’t force transfer into him, he couldn’t kill—if I hadn’t been able to give him transfer, he would have died.”

  “But,” said Carla, “other Simes do still kill. You mentioned Secret Pens? In Sime Territory they are still raising Gens like cattle to be slaughtered?!”

  Tony’s face was pale beneath his tan. “Yes,” he said flatly. “There are still a few semi-juncts alive. In some Sime Territories the Tecton is so opposed to anyone but channels receiving direct Gen transfer that they won’t even try to make matches. To me, that’s murder—of the semi-junct Simes who die in agony, and all the Gens they kill before that happens.”

  Carla stared at him. “This is the world you want me to join you in?”

  “Carla, if there were no Secret Pens, there would be far more Free Simes. After only fifteen years, with the exception of the handful of nonjuncts and disjuncts who formed the Tecton, almost every Sime who signed the Unity Treaty is dead. Yes, the Sime governments agreed that all Simes would stop killing. But even in Gulf, juncts far outnumbered nonjuncts and disjuncts.

  “But people understood things couldn’t go on as they were. With more Simes living longer, and most Simes killing twelve Gens each year, soon the Simes would have killed all the Gens, and then died themselves. The end of humanity.”

  By this time Carla was shaking. “We had no idea what the Simes were promising, did we? An entire generation in essence agreed to die, for the sake of the future.”

  “And you wonder why I respect them?” Tony asked.

  “It’s going to take me time to absorb all this,” Carla admitted. “Damn you, Tony Logan—you’ve turned my life upside down again!”

  “We’ll set it right,” he said tenderly, and kissed her. It was not a passionate kiss, but one of promise. “I’ll see you again when we come back for the Faith Day concert. I hope, before then, you’ll visit me in Norlea.”

  “How do you get to be so hopeful, Tony? So trusting?”

  But Tony was silent, listening to the music from the next room. It had settled into a melody. Tony sang:

  “Come share a dream, my life’s dream,

  All that was meant one day to be.

  Trust in yourself, trust in my dream.

  And we’ll have no more walls between.”

  Carla sighed. “If only it were that simple.”

  “It is,” said Tony. “Territory governments complicate it. The Tecton complicates it. But it really is that simple, Carla.”

  “For dreamers, maybe.”

  “Well,” he replied, “if no one dreamed, nothing would ever be accomplished, would it? There’s my second verse. When you hear this song on the radio, remember, you’re its inspiration.”

  Carla laughed. “When you had so much trouble with literature in school, who’d have guessed you’d end up a poet?”

  “Words are good,” he replied, “but sometimes actions are better. I’m not so tired after all, are you?” And this time when he kissed her it did stir passion.

  And dreams.

  GRIM REAPER’S HANDICAP, by Fergus Truslow

  “Chipman? Room 1228,” the desk clerk purred. “Who is calling, please?”

  “D’Argonne—Eddy D’Argonne,” I told him.

  My palms sweating and my stomach twisted up into a knot, I wondered if I’d ever get enough starch back into my knees to stick in the saddle tomorrow.

  Don’t laugh. Maybe you’ll understand when I tell you that the hotel’s revolving glass doors bit off pieces of the boom of San Diego’s night traffic outside and churned them into the lobby, so it sounded just like a twelve-horse field coming up behind me, fast.

  I had to hold onto the edge of the desk.

  “D’Argonne?” the clerk repeats, “Oh, yes.”

  His polite smile broke off at the edges into the ghost of a sneer. Of course, anybody getting a good gander at my carrot-red hair and freckles can connect the name.

  You know, the jockey who lost his nerve after a fall in the middle of the field at Caliente. Remember? Yeah, I thought so.

  I tried to brace myself against the veiled sneer in the desk clerk’s eyes and I couldn’t. I hated myself for it. My eyes met his and turned away.

  Deep inside me something was ticking like the fuse on a time bomb. But I just couldn’t meet his gaze.

  So I pried my fingers loose from the edge of the desk and walked toward the elevators, feeling the clerk’s stare drilling into my back every step of the way.

  It was all right with me if he forgot to phone Chipman. When you want to ask a guy like Van Chapman a question—like why he hired you to ride a race tomorrow, and then bet against his own nag—you want to walk right in on him without giving him time to think up answers.

  I was glad when the elevator doors sliced off the sound that came through from the street. Until I saw the elevator jockey in the red jacket.

  “Well, now, if it ain’t Mr. D’Argonne!” he whispered, letting a sly grin slide across his little fat face. “Where you working these days?”

  That had a barb to it. He’d been a stable boy at Caliente until I caught him stealing sponges and chamois skins from my boss.

  That fuse was buzzing, way deep inside me, but I was cold and numb in the chest.

  “Naval Hospital, civilian employee,” I told him. “But I’m still in training.”

  “Whadda ya do at the hospital? Hand out horse liniment?”

  The two or three other passengers in the elevator snickered. I tried to grin, but it felt sick on my face, so I stopped trying.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Horse liniment.”

  The elevator stopped. I got rattled and thought it was my floor. I saw it wasn’t and started back in. “Wrong floor!” I muttere
d. They were all grinning.

  The elevator doors slammed shut in my face. “Hey!” I said.

  I could hear them laughing in the elevator as it went on to the floors above.

  For a minute I just stood there, with both fists balled up against the steel doors. My breath felt taut inside me. It didn’t go down all the way into my lungs, but only shallow and short. There was a funny taste in my mouth.

  I could feel that fuse ticking slow and deep, and I wondered what was on the other end of it.

  So I walked up the stairs to my floor and down the hall, thinking. Thinking so much, so hard, I walked right up against a guy’s hand. He shoved me back pretty hard.

  I looked up and realized somebody’d said something just before, and that I’d only half heard it. I guess I was dropping a few stitches.

  “What?” I asked.

  There was a chunky, bald guy in a blue serge business suit blocked the way. He said, “Where d’ya think yer going, Shorty?”

  I tried to make myself throw a punch, but a school girl could do better. The guy only grabbed my arm.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he said slow and amused. He held up a deputy’s badge. “House detective,” he informed me. “You can’t go any further down this wing without an invitation from the movie dame who’s taken it. She’s throwing a party for a Marine Defense Battalion just back from the South Pacific. Say, where did y’think y’was going, Shorty!”

  “Room 1228,” I said.

  I guess it was the smell of his cheap cigar that made me feel sick. I was hungry—having a hard time making the weight—and that makes your nose sharp.

  “1228 is back the other way,” he said, giving me a kindly pat on the shoulder. “Down the hall and to the left.”

  “Thanks,” I said grudgingly. Some guys you just can’t hate.

  I went back and found the right room number. Outside the door, I stopped a minute. My heart flopped like a fish. It was one thing to think about how I’d lay it right on the line. It was something else to open that door and do it.

  Just like it was one thing to dream about a comeback as a reinsman and another to know I had to go through with it tomorrow.

  I’d started out walking a tightrope. It had turned into the thin edge of a knife blade way out over the steepest mountainside in the world, with a million people ready to laugh every time I hesitated.

  The doorknob of 1228 seemed to get bigger, like a balloon being blown up. It swam at me out of a haze.

  I took a big breath and grabbed it. The door opened and shut. I was inside.

  Two men looked up quickly and moved quickly.

  One of them was Chipman. His hand swept across the little dinner table and dropped a napkin on something that sparkled in the light.

  The other guy was a blond Marine, about my size. He got halfway out of his chair in one move, and his right hand went to the sleeve of his left.

  “Well, well,” Van Chipman’s suave voice said. His eyes were cold as pale stones in his dark, soft face. “If it isn’t that bootin’, kickin’ jockey, Eddy D’Argonne.”

  The sneer in his voice built that ticking up inside me.

  “I had to talk to you, Van,” I said. My mouth was so dry I had to keep licking my lips.

  “That Mr. Chipman to you,” said Chipman.

  I swallowed it. “Okay. Mr. Chipman.”

  I’d seen that blond Marine somewhere. He wore the shoulder patch of a South Pacific unit and the service ribbons to go with it. His thin face with the soft blond hair around it struck something in my memory like a warning gong. But I was too busy with Chipman.

  “Listen, Mr. Chipman. I gotta know—”

  “Listen, you ill-bred little saddle monkey, what do you mean by slamming into my room without knocking!”

  I had a quick remember of the time he introduced me to his friends in the bar of the St. Francis after a day at Bay Meadows. Back then he’d been proud to have me call him Van.

  I spoke up over the smooth, even ticking of that fuse inside me. “Why’d you lay five grand against Zalacain—your own horse—in the third race tomorrow?”

  Chipman picked up a broiled lamb chop and took a bite out of it with even white teeth. “One thing at a time, little man,” he chuckled.

  The way he said it hit me on a numb spot. I took it and yet wondered why I took it. Maybe I’m yellow. It’s what I’d been wondering, thinking…

  The blond Marine never took his cold, washed-out blue eyes off me. He sat there and watched.

  Chipman’s eyes showed enjoyment. I was a sort of floor show for him while he ate. He put down the bone, picked up another crisp, juicy chop, and sank his teeth into it. My stomach twisted at the sight, I was so hungry.

  “I don’t mind telling you why, really,” he said, chewing. “I’m betting against my own nag because you’re up in the saddle, and you’re yellow!”

  It was like he sneaked up and soused me with a bucket of ice-water. It knocked the breath out of me. I took another step forward, the ticking of that fuse beating against my wishbone now.

  “Chipman…” the word tore my throat.

  “You see,” he said with a grin, “I only own a fourth of Zalacain, and the other owner will race him come hell or high water. I want to buy the rest of that horse cheap. He’ll sell after you lose tomorrow. A yellowbelly jock can’t win races.”

  “I’ll win! I’ll boot him home!” My mouth was bone dry.

  “Will you? I’m a sort of a connoisseur of cowardice. I think you’ll remember how it feels to be out in front of a big field when something goes wrong and you have to hit the dirt. You’ll hear the drumming beat of hoofs, and—” His grin grew wider.

  I shuddered. The boom of traffic drifted up to the hotel windows from the street below. To me it was like hoofs pounding, thundering at me, and I was down smelling the dirt, tasting it again, knowing what I was going to get.

  “Damn you!” the words stuck in my aching throat and came out in a kind of dry sob. “You dirty, crooked—”

  “Oh, come! I’m not essentially prejudiced against honesty, if it’s convenient.” Chipman licked grease off his fingers.

  I picked up his napkin and threw it at him. Then I realized what I had done.

  A blaze of blue-white light lay there where the napkin had been. Diamonds! And what diamonds!

  The smile faded off Chipman’s face in a wink. The lines on his face went the other way—up and down.

  The Marine shoved back his chair. A thin-bladed stiletto came out of his sleeve, but the look on his thin face didn’t change. It had been there all along, and now it fitted.

  I remembered now. At Santa Anita once, somebody’d pointed him out. Paid muscle with a rap sheet as long as his arm.

  I didn’t know they took cons in the Marines, I thought.

  They don’t, the answer came to me.

  “Never mind, Smitty,” Chipman purred. “Don’t dirty up the floor. It’s not necessary.”

  “Not necessary?” Smitty’s voice was falsetto. He didn’t take those washed-out blue eyes off me, and he didn’t put away the stiletto.

  “He’ll play ball,” Chipman said.

  Will I? I thought. Will I?

  Just like I’d been asking myself for days, weeks, months, if I was really yellow.

  And all the time, inside I felt that fuse going tick-tick-tick, and I began to wonder.

  “Since you’ve cut yourself in on this deal,” Chipman remarks in suave tones, “take a gander at that chair over by the window.”

  It was a big easy chair, and the reason I hadn’t seen the guy in the gray suit before was that he’d been slumped way down, passed out. His face was a pale, dirty sort of yellow.

  I hurried over and put my hand to his forehead. Not dead. A glass on a side table gave me the idea he’d been helped along to slumberland. I dipped two fingers, then rubbed them together and sniffed.

  “Mickeyed,” I whispered.

  “Just a little bad ice in his drink,” Chipman said
with a shrug. “You can get rid of him for us.”

  I faced them, my lungs working hard for air. I wondered if they could hear that buzzing inside me. It was loud now. Really loud.

  Van Chipman was grinning. Smitty stood there with his shiv glittering palely under a rich floor lamp.

  “Just leave him on a bench in the Plaza, Eddy,” Chipman told me. “Take him out the back way.”

  “What if I don’t?” My voice sounded like it belonged to somebody else.

  “Do as your told.” Chipman wiped his lips, set the napkin down. “Pick him up.”

  I found myself reaching over to pick the guy up out of the chair. It was a funny feeling, wondering if I was going to do it and finding myself doing it at the same time.

  With one corner of my mind, I noticed a funny thing about the set-up. The guy’s shirt wasn’t buttoned, and he looked like he had been dressed a blind monkey.

  Instead of picking the guy up, I raised his undershirt. His belly was a dirty yellow color, a shade or two brighter than his face.

  It did something to me. That yellow belly!

  The fuse inside me stopped ticking and there was a long pause.

  One step I took toward Chipman. Two, three, and it blasted, welling up out of me like a depth charge of T.N.T.

  “You dirty pair of heels!” I yelled. “I’ll see you in hell first!”

  Smitty came gliding across the floor with his stiletto balanced like a toy.

  “You hooked those diamonds from the movie queen throwing the Marines a party down the hall!” I snarled at Smitty. “You’ve got a record a mile long. Jewel thief—and killer!”

  The traffic below sounded like a twelve-horse field coming up behind me all right, but I loved it!

  A breath of air hit my lungs and went all the way to my toes. It was the first in a long time!

  With one hand, I tipped the dinner table over in front of Smitty as he closed. With the other I grabbed a wine bottle and swung on Chipman.

  It caught him a glancing blow. He went down. I gave my undivided attention to Smitty, who was weaving around the corner of the messed-up table like a blond weasel, the cold-looking shiv in his grip.