'You can write letters to homeopapes.'
Hadley glared at him in mute outrage. 'Some joke. You're personally okay, Dar; you're all set.
But what about the rest of us ? Briskin better come up with something, or it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.'
'How do you like knowing you're going to have a col for president ?'
'I voted for him, along with the others.' Hadley wandered back to the locked front door of the store. 'Can I start tomorrow ?'
'Sure. Come in at nine.'
'You think life is worth living, Dar ? Hadley demanded suddenly.
'Who knows. And if you have to ask, there's something wrong with you. What's the matter, are you sick or something ? I'm not hiring anybody who's a nut or mentally flammy; you better get straightened out before you show up here tomorrow morning.'
'The compassionate employers.' Hadley shook his head. 'Sorry I asked. I should have known better.'
'That emigration stunt with that this-Olt girl didn't apparently teach you anything; you're as fouled up as ever. What's the matter, can't you accept life as it is ? You've always got to pine after what isn't ? A hell of a lot of men would envy you your job; you're incredibly darn lucky to gel it back.'
'I know that.'
'Then why don't you calm down ? What's the matter ?'
'When you had hopes once,' Hadley explained after a pause, 'it's always hard to go on after you give them up. It's not so hard to give them up; that part is easy. After all, you've got to, sometimes. But afterward ...' He gestured, grunting, '... What takes their place ? Nothing. And the emptiness is frightening. It's so big. It sort of absorbs everything else; sometimes it's bigger than the whole world. It grows. It becomes bottomless. Do you know what I'm talking about ?'
'No,' Pethel said. Nor did he particularly care.
'You're lucky. Maybe it'll never hit you, or anyhow not until old age, until you're a hundred and fifty or so.' Hadley gazed at him. 'I envy you.'
'Take a pill,' Pethel said.
'I'd be glad to take a pill, if I knew of one. I don't think they'd help, though. I feel like taking a long walk; maybe I'll walk all night. You give a darn ? Do you want to come along ? Hell no, you don't. I can see that.'
Pethel said, 'I've got work to do; I don't have time to stroll around taking in the sights. I tell you what, Hadley. When you come back to work tomorrow - listen to this - I'll give you a raise. Does that cheer you up ?' He peered at him, trying to see.
'Yes,' Hadley said, but without conviction.
'I thought it would.'
'Maybe Briskin will go back to advocating planet-wetting.'
'Would that interest you ? That tired old nothing program ?'
Opening the door, Hadley moved back outside into the dark sidewalk. 'Anything would interest me. To be honest. I'd buy anything, right now.'
Gloomily, knowing that he had failed somewhere in this interchange with Hadley, Darius Pethel said, 'Some employee you're going to make.'
'I can't help it,' Hadley pointed out. 'Maybe 'I'll change, though, in time; maybe something'll come along. God, I'm still hoping!' He seemed amazed, even a little disgusted with himself.
'You know what you could try for a change ?' Pethel said. 'Showing up a little early, a few minutes before nine. It might alter your life. Even more than that moronic attempt to escape by sneaking off with that girl to that weird world where those semi-apes live. Try it. See if I'm not right.'
Hadley eyed him. 'You mean it. And that's the whole point; that's why we don't understand each other. Maybe I should feel sorry for you instead of trying to get you to feel sorry for me. You know, maybe someday you'll suddenly crack up completely, fly into a million pieces, without warning. And I'll limp on for years. Never really give up, never actually stop. Interesting.'
'For a person who used to be optimistic...'
'I've aged,' Hadley said briefly. 'That experience on that alter-world did it to me. Can't you see it in my face ?' He nodded goodbye to Darius Pethel, then. 'See you tomorrow. Bright and early.'
As he shut the door, Pethel said to himself, I hope he can still peddle 'scuttlers. We'll see about that. If not, he's out. For good. As far as I'm concerned, he's just back here on probation, and he's lucky to get that.
He's sure depressing to talk to these days, Pethel said to himself as he returned to his back office.
That raise in salary will eventually cheer him up, he decided. How can it not ?
His own meager tendency to doubt was assuaged by that timely realization. Thoroughly. Or ... was it ? Down underneath on a level which he did not care to communicate, a region of his mind which remained his own damn business, he was not so sure.
His feet up on the arm of the couch, Phil Danville said, 'It was my majestic speeches that did it for you, Jim. So what's my reward ?' He grinned. 'I'm waiting.' He waited. 'Well ?'
'Nothing on Earth could ever be sufficient reward for such an accomplishment,' Jim Briskin said absently.
'He's got his mind on something else.' Danville said, appealing to Dorothy Gill. 'Look at him.
He's not even happy; he's going to ruin Sal Heim's party, when we get there. Maybe we better not go.'
'We have to go,' Dorothy Gill said.
'I won't wreck the mood of the party,' Jim assured them, drawing himself up dutifully. 'I'll be over it by the time we get there.' After all, this was the moment. But actually the great historic instant had already managed to slide away and disappear; it was too elusive, too subtly interwoven into the texture of more commonplace reality. And, in addition, the problems awaiting him seemed to efface his recognition of anything else. But that was the way it had to be.
The door of the room opened and a Peke entered, carrying a portable version of a TD linguistics machine. At the sight of him everyone jumped to their feet. The three Secret servicemen whipped out their guns and one of them yelled.
'Drop!' The people in the room sprawled clumsily, dropping to the floor in grotesque, inexpert heaps, scrambling without dignity away from the line of prospective fire.
'Hello, Homo friends,' the Peke said, by means of the linguistics machine. 'I wish in particular to thank you, Mr. Briskin, for permitting me to remain in your world. I will comport myself entirely within the framework of your legal code, believe me. And, in addition, perhaps later...'
The three Secret servicemen put their laser pistols away and slowly returned to their unobtrusive places about the room.
'Good lord,' Dorothy Gill breathed in relief as she got unsteadily to her feet. 'It's only Bill Smith.
This time, anyhow.' She sank back down in her chair, sighing. 'We're safe for a little while longer.'
'You really gave us a scare,' Jim Briskin said to the Peke. He found himself still shaking. 'I don't remember having had anything to do with permitting him to stay here,' he said to Tito Cravelli.
'He's thanking you in advance,' Tito said. 'You're going to decide after you become president, or rather he hopes so.'
Phil Danville said, 'Let's take him along with us to the party. That ought to please Sal Heim. To know there's still one of them here, that we haven't quite gotten rid of them and probably never will.'
'It is highly fortunate that our two peoples ...' the Peke began, but Tito Cravelli cut him off.
'Save it. The campaign is over.'
'We're taking a rest,' Danville added. 'Highly deserved, too.'
The Peke blinked in surprise, then said hurriedly, 'As currently the sole surviving member of my race on this side of the...'
I'm sorry,' Jim said, 'But Tito's right; we can't listen to any more. We've got to leave here. You're welcome to come along, but don't make any speeches. You understand ? It's over. We've got other things on our minds, now." The time you're talking about seems like a million years ago, he said to himself. It no longer seems plausible that your race and ours made contact during modern, historical times; the memory of it is beginning to fade. And your presence here among us has the qual
ity of a startling and unexplained anomaly; it's more puzzling than anything else.
'Let's go,' Phil Danville said, getting his coat and Dorothy's from the hall closet and moving toward the door.
'I would think twice before going out there,' the Peke said to Jim Briskin. 'There's a man lying in wait for you.'
The Secret servicemen, again alert, strolled forward.
'Who is it ?' Jim asked the Peke.
'I couldn't catch his name,' the Peke said.
'Better not go out there,' Tito said warningly.
'A well-wisher,' Jim said.
'An assassin, you mean,' Tito said.
Jim started to open the hall door, but one of the Secret servicemen stopped him. 'Let us check first.' They filed, hard-eyed, out of the room.
'They're still after you,' Tito said to Jim.
'I doubt that very much,' Jim said.
A moment later the Secret servicemen returned, leisurely. 'It's okay, Mr. Briskin. You can talk to him.'
Opening the hall door, Jim looked out. It was not a well wisher and, as the Secret servicemen had said, it was not an assassin.
The man waiting for him was Bruno Mini.
Hand extended, Mini said, 'It certainly took me a long time to catch up with you, Mr. Briskin.
I've been trying all throughout the latter part of the campaign.'
'Indeed you have, Mr. Mini,' Jim said.
Mini advanced toward Jim, smiling an intense, white-tooth smile. A small man, wearing a stylish but somewhat gaudy Ionian purple snakeskin jacket with illuminated kummerbund and curlytoed
Brazilian pigbark slippers, Mini looked exactly what he was: a dealer in wholesale dried fruit. 'We've got a tremendous amount of vital business to transact,' Mini said earnestly. The gold toothpick projecting from between his molar teeth wobbled in a spasm of energetic activity. 'At this point I can reveal to you that the first planet I've planned on - and this will no doubt come to you as a complete surprise - is Uranus. You'll naturally ask why.'
'No,' Jim Briskin said. 'I won't ask why.' He felt resigned. Sooner or later Mini had to catch up with him. In fact, he was very slightly but perceptibly relieved that it had at last happened... and that did surprise him.
'Where can we go that we can talk at adequate length to do justice to this topic, and of course, in strict private ?' Mini asked. He added, 'I've already gone to the trouble of informing the media that we would meet, tonight; it's my 'conviction', based on years of experience, that dignified but continual public exposure to our program will do much to put it over with the - how shall I
phrase it ? - less educated masses.' He rooted vigorously in his overstuffed briefcase.
A Secret serviceman appeared out of nowhere and took the briefcase from Mini.
Grumbling, Mini said, 'You fellows inspected it downstairs on the front sidewalk and then here just a minute ago. For heaven's sake.'
'Can't afford to take any chances.' Obviously the Secret servicemen viewed Bruno Mini with magnified distrust. Some quality about him aroused their professional interest. The briefcase was elaborately examined and then, reluctantly, passed back to Mini as being harmless.
From the room noisily trooped Tito Cravelli, Phil Danville, Dorothy Gill, the Peke Bill Smith, wearing his blue cloth cap and carrying his linguistics machine, and finally three Secret servicemen. 'We're on our way to Sal and Pat's,' Tito explained to Jim Briskin. 'You coming or not ?'
'Not for a while,' Jim Briskin said, and knew that it would be a long time before he managed to get to this party or any other party.
'Let me describe the advantages of Uranus,' Mini said enthusiastically. And began handing Jim an overwhelming spectrum of documents from his briefcase as rapidly as possible.
It was going to be a difficult four years. He could see that. Four ? More likely eight.
The way things turned out, he was proved correct.
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