McClendon's Syndrome (v1.1)

by Robert Frezza

  I studied her face. “To ask a delicate question, since a vamp has about as much chance of passing port clearance as an axe-murderer—which you might very well be—how did you get into space? As a class, spacers tend to be stuffy about incurable, unpredictable diseases.”

  She reached into the purse around her waist and pulled out a plastic card, then turned her head sideways and let it drift onto the table.

  I picked it up. It was a Guild card, a match to my own except for the word “Apprentice” overstamped. She was a spacer. I whistled, long and liquid, and glared at her. “And you asked if the transshipment costs eat you up? Right. How did you get through... Oh, hell. Don’t tell me.”

  She nodded. “Night school.”

  “I had to ask. Why space, I ask?”

  “I figured it was the perfect profession. No sunshine. Regulated temperature. Quiet, peaceful. Plus the stars overhead—romantic.”

  “The living conditions are lousy, the pay is worse, and after six months of standing watches with Elaine O’Day, why, I could just go all dewy-eyed. I take it not everyone agreed it was the perfect profession for you.”

  “I didn’t have McLendon’s when I entered the profession. I did when I got here, which is why I got dumped,” she explained.

  I opened my mouth and shut it. “I take your point.”

  She smiled again and then got serious. “Ken, I need a job. I ‘m not going to rot on this rathole forever.”

  “No cemeteries?”

  “Bad joke. If I don’t cash in pretty quick, I’m going to have to turn myself in. I need a ship.”

  “True enough. The divertissements offered by the port and township of Schenectady on the wonderful world of Schuyler’s are drinking, fighting, and fornicating, in that order. But why ask me? Why not go to the source direct?”

  She smiled yet again, this time a full-magnitude flare, and she held it long enough for me to realise just what an idiotic question it was, coming from someone in the least bit familiar with Iron-Ass. She looked at me long enough to make me appreciate everything that Elaine O’Day was not, then asked, “Any chance, Ken?”

  I thought it through for half a moment.” Sorry,” I said slowly. “Even if you were desperately interested in helping us haul dung from tedium to ennui and even if our peerless leader was willing to take you, which I much doubt, we’re not rated for passengers. We’ve got a full crew, four guys and four dolls, although it’s sometimes difficult to tell which is which. We don’t have a place to put you.”

  “If something did come up, would you put in a word for me?” she pleaded.

  The Scupper wasn’t exactly thrills and spills, but, Elaine notwithstanding, I’d have rather been dipped in goo and left to harden than spent an extra four minutes on Schuyler’s World. “I could, but given a choice, Iron-Ass would rather leave me with you than take you with me, if you take my meaning. Also, I doubt we’ll be here more than another day.”

  “I understand.” She picked up her Guild card and scribbled her name and a number on the back of a cocktail napkin. “If something does turn up, you’ll give me a call?”

  I picked it up with two fingers while I tried to remember whether you had to get bit in the neck to catch McLendon’s.

  “Humour me,” she said. “I’m supposed to have second sight. Call it a premonition.”

  “Well, okay. Tell you what. If the occasion arises, I’ll make the pitch for you, just so I don’t have to shake on it.”

  She smiled. I smiled. I looked around the bar and resigned myself to yet another six months of celibacy. On the way out, I dropped another handful of coins in Dinky’s jar and said, “Play ‘As Time Goes By,’ Dinky.”

  “Again?” he said.

  Halfway across the room, my vampire rose to her feet and to the occasion. “You haven’t played it the first time, squirt!”

  I tipped her a salute and walked.

  I hit the little room marked MALE BEINGS and paused on my way out the door to admire Harry’s plaque. The Prancing Pony is Number 7 Esquimaux Street, situated between a pawnshop and a Laundromat of ill repute. There’s a funeral home on the other side of the pawnshop, and the little plaque says, THE GUY NEXT DOOR GETS THEM COMING AND GOING.

  The gay metropolis of Schenectady doesn’t exactly sleep, and I hit a few of the all-night places for souvenirs, fruit, and other local manufactures. Somebody on board the Scupper had fouled the ship’s coffeepot, so I bought a little one for myself and dropped a few coins in one of the sidewalk slot machines to see if my luck could get worse. It did, but not immediately. Four more hours put me sitting next to my shipmate Frido Kundle in Night Magistrate’s Court to watch Elaine O’Day cap off an evening.

  O’Day can best be described by casting unflattering allusions to the habits and morals of innocent swine. Apparently, Callahan’s was a little slow, because she’d tried to take down one unwilling citizen on a tabletop. Even on Schuyler’s, that’s an indictable offence. If half the police force hadn’t been on duty and in there drinking, things might have gotten out of hand. As it was, the place set a new record for broken glass.

  Judge Osman, the night court magistrate, was a portly gentleman with pink cheeks and an enormous white moustache, who never stopped smiling all through the testimony. After the ambulatory casualties finished damning Elaine sufficiently, he rapped his gavel twice and folded his hands. “Mistress O’Day, please stand and receive the sentence of this honourable court.”

  Elaine’s defence lawyer stood and nudged her to her feet.

  “Mistress O’Day, I find you guilty of the many things with which you have been charged, and of other things besides. I fine you a hundred dollars in local currency for lewd acts, a hundred more for causing a public riot, five hundred for assaulting sundry peace officers in the performance of their estimable duty, and ten for public nuisance which was disrobing prior to committing these aforementioned dastardly acts, said fines to be paid to this honourable court. I also sentence you to pay restitution to the owner of the estimable establishment you defiled and to pay compensation to the unfortunate individuals you injured. Finally, I further sentence you to six months in jail for wilful damaging of private property, to give you an opportunity to contemplate the heinousness of your multitudinous offences. Do you understand this? Very, very good.”

  Kundle, one of the Scupper’s, two mayflies straight out of basic, turned to me. “I’ve always wondered how various offences rate in a place like this. What happens next, Ken?”

  “Mistress O’Day, please have your attorney approach the bench,” Osman intoned in a singsong monotone.

  I whispered to Frido. “Now he suspends the six months, after he gives her a lecture and Elaine makes appropriately contrite noises—her lawyer’s already done everything but offer the old darling a bribe in open court.”

  Elaine could have sounded more contrite. At that point, she blurted out, “You potbellied pig turd!”

  Her mouthpiece tried to clamp his hand over her jaws, but the damage was done. It was not the thing to say to a devout Muslim during sentencing. It took the hand-puppet smile off Osman’s face and made it turn various pretty colours.

  “Oh, no. Saint Nicholas there is going to have a fit,” Kundle whispered. I looked down to see if there might be a hole in the floor under my chair. Somewhere on the other side of the courtroom, another of my esteemed shipmates, Annalee McHugh, said in a very loud voice, “Christ, that rips it. It’s crispy-critter time! You’re toast, Elaine!”

  “Bailiff, take the prisoner away to serve her full sentence, and more besides! Court is adjourned,” the magistrate said through clenched teeth. He stood up and strode away from the bench with a rustle of black silk. The lawyer, who had sensibly collected his fee in advance, disappeared with equal dispatch.

  As they led away my erstwhile partner in chains and scanty attire, Frido said, “Hey, Elaine! Can I use your stereo while you’re gone?”

  Davie Lloyd Ironsides is tall and square-hewn, like something carved out
of balsa with a dull axe. “That’s great!” he muttered as we clustered around him. He was so obviously annoyed he almost looked human. “This is just great! The portmaster here is never going to let us lift orbit unless we find someone to replace her.”

  Next to Ironsides, Rosalee Dykstra said mournfully, “Not even a blind portmaster is going to clear a bucket like ours to ship out shorthanded.”

  I’d met the portmaster, Commander Hiro, once. He may not have been bright, but he certainly wasn’t blind.

  “Yeah,” Annalee McHugh rasped, “Navy types who get sent to dumps like this do things by the book, unless they want to stay.” McHugh is a reserve petty officer second with a sallow, yellowish complexion and a permanent scowl. She looked around the circle from face to face. “Just how are we going to find somebody?”

  Dykstra let her mouth hang open, apparently completely overcome by the notion that you could go to jail just for wrecking bars and muscling cops, her favourite pastimes.

  The remainder of our Greek chorus was silent.

  Our other mayfly was Wyma Jean Spooner. Spooner was a well-nourished woman, and she had on an expression of dumb distress that made her look like something Peter Paul Rubens would have painted when he was tight. Her shift partner, Kundle, merely looked dumb. He grinned. “People like Elaine ought to have a license to be that stupid,” he said, which added to the overall effect.

  McHugh looked at him. “Christ, if I owned the stupidity franchise for this ship, I’d get rich selling licenses at ten bucks a pop. Hell, Kundle, I’d make you buy two!”

  “Will you two stop that! This is serious!” Ironsides roared.

  “Twit!” Rosalee Dykstra said under her breath, staring at the spots on the ceiling. I wasn’t entirely sure who she was referring to.

  The only crew member who wasn’t present was Bernie Bobo. “Boo-Boo” was listed on the ship’s papers as mate, to the amusement of all concerned. We’d left him as the port watch aboard the Scupper. His absence was the only positive factor I could think of.

  I glanced around the courtroom and spied my newfound friend in the back, grinning large as life. “Damn, she does have second sight,” I muttered. Catching Ironsides’s eye, I handed him Catarina’s napkin. “Davie Lloyd, by coincidence the lady in the glasses back there is an apprentice spacer, down on her luck and looking for a berth. Allow me to lay on you a proposition, with only one slight catch.”

  He took the napkin and grunted. Then he handed it back and checked out her legs. “What’s the catch?” he grumbled non-committally, in his most endearing manner.

  “She’s got McLendon’s Syndrome,” I said, waiting to hear the pin drop.

  “Oh, well. If that’s all, it’s settled,” Davie Lloyd said without a flicker of recognition.

  I saw a bunch of heads move up and down. Spooner and Kundle paid tribute to the solemnity of the moment by playing footsie with each other. While I have never been known for underestimating Davie Lloyd’s capacity for creative idiocy, it hadn’t occurred to me that they might not publish articles on McLendon’s Syndrome in the kind of magazines he reads.

  McHugh’s brows were knit. “Wait a second, how’d she end up here? Is this McLendon’s Syndrome contagious or something?” Annalee McHugh may not have been well read, but when they were handing out brains, she was there for somebody’s share.

  I nodded vigorously. “Or something.”

  Davie Lloyd frowned, displaying those qualities of leadership which have made him famed throughout the known universe. “Well, MacKay, it was your partner that got canned, so you’ll just have to take your chances until we hit Brasilia Nuevo and we can see about getting somebody else.”

  While I was looking for a MacKay other than me, Annalee McHugh folded her arms and nodded. “Ken, tell her we’ll sign her up and get her moving,” Davie Lloyd added. “I’m thinking about moving up our departure, and I want her on board the shuttle and checked out to go in an hour. What did you say her name was?”

  I glanced down at the napkin, which ripped it. Her full name, neatly inscribed, was Anna Catarina Lindquist, and I was damned if I was going to try to explain a Swedish vampire. As I stood there with my mouth open and my index finger cocked, my shipmates trooped off in a clump.

  Catarina appeared by my left shoulder blade. “Hello, Ken. If it’s any consolation, the only other Guild member I know of on Schuyler’s is doing five to seven years for affray and aggravated maiming, and I really don’t think Judge Osman is going to want to make up with your shipmate O’Day for love, or even money.”

  “You probably got that right. Well, welcome aboard,” I said with a general lack of enthusiasm.

  She sidled close to add insult to injury. “That’s the spirit, Ken. Want to help me with my things?”

  I stared at the spots on the ceiling and told her carefully, “It doesn’t pay to talk to people you meet in bars. And it especially doesn’t pay to talk to vampires you meet in bars. I don’t know how you did it, but if I ever find out, I’m going to pound you full of toothpicks.”

  She brushed a stray lock of hair into place and positively beamed.

  “Okay, tell me the truth. Why did you pick me to talk to? Weren’t you taking a risk?”

  “Calculated risk. Blame it on Harry. He said you were an okay guy for a half striper.” She started to slap me on the shoulder and thought better of it. “He also said you can’t lie worth a damn and don’t like people who can.”

  That was true enough to hurt. “Remind me to buy Harry some flowers,” I said glumly.

  “Fair flower never won faint heart?” she offered. The people sweeping up the courtroom stared at us.

  “Oh, no. Not a pun. I can’t deal with puns,” I explained weakly. “If a pun were humour, it would be the lowest form known to sapient beings.”

  I could feel her eyes growing bright behind those dark glasses. “You know, I think I’m really going to enjoy this trip, Ken,” she said.

  As we headed down Cinco de Mayo Avenue to her guesthouse, we passed a steady stream of citizens who were starting or finishing their day. It only took a few minutes to pack her out. Turning the corner back onto Esquimaux Street, I almost stopped when I saw two furry beings walking toward us side by side.

  They were both dressed in matching collars and cuffs, black morning coats, and grey pin-striped ties and trousers. They both had wraparound sunglasses stuck on their pointed little faces. The tall one was about a meter and a half high and had something that looked like a feather duster precariously balanced on his head. The little one was about half a meter shorter. He had a black bowler hat jammed down around his eyes.

  “They look like the two dinks we saw in Harry’s bar,” I whispered.

  “They probably are. Want me to find out?” she whispered back.

  “Not really—” I started to say.

  She stepped up close and curtsied. “Good day to you. If I may, I am Catarina Lindquist, and my friend is Ken MacKay. You look like the two gentlebeings we noticed last evening in the Prancing Pony, and we were wondering if this were indeed the case.”

  The tall one lurched a little and straightened his tie. “We were indeed in the Prancing Pony last evening, and that experience we share. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Beaver, the !Plixxi* ambassador.” He introduced the little guy, whose name was something like “Cheeves.”

  The little Rodent pulled himself up stiffly and said, “I am His Rotundity’s body servant and confidential secretary.” Cheeves had a staccato, alto voice. Beaver was more of a mezzo-soprano.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Catarina, extending her hand.

  “The pleasure is mine,” Beaver chirped, taking it and bowing, to the extent that you can get a bend in a shape like a beer bottle. “Please, call me Bucky—I insist. Have we made your acquaintance before?”

  He turned his head slightly toward Cheeves, who shook his head solemnly.

  “Ah, well,” he continued, “as the original Bucky says, ‘New friends are like suns
hine in the morning. They brighten the rest of the day.’ We are exceedingly pleased to have made your acquaintance.”

  “Uh, right. Cheeves and Bucky,” I said, trying to figure out if I was supposed to curtsy.

  “My dear Ken, is it?” Beaver asked. “While we Rodents, as you call us, are primarily visually oriented, I am adept at deciphering human olfactory cues, and I detect that you have a perplexed smell about you. My nose knows these things.”

  “Ah, yeah, Bucky,” I mumbled. “I was just curious about your names. They don’t sound very alien.”

  “Oh, yes. That. The !Plixxi* language is mostly composed of melodious click-whistles and glottal stops. Humans rarely do justice to its lyric, poetical beauty. Indeed, there are some sounds, like the perfectly charming little hoot-whistle at the end of ‘!Plixxi*,’ that you humans don’t seem to make use of at all for some unaccountable reason. It is therefore customary for those of us who deal with humans to pick human names. I myself was fascinated by the complex philosophical and ethical structure underlying the various Bucky Beaver stories, and I decided to choose that name in his honour.”

  I nodded. It made sense, sort of. There was one Chinese guy I’d shipped with who had told us to call him Sherman. “Sounds like an interesting language,” I commented politely.

  “Oh, most definitely, friend Ken,” Beaver continued. “In English and other human Indo-European languages, the importance of time sense through use of verb tenses and distinctions between inherently stable nouns and transitory verbs make for a truly positive literature. In !Plixxi*, by contrast, case endings are largely dependent on whether the object or action being spoken about can be seen by the speaker and whomever is being spoken to, and whether an action in progress is habitual or brief.”

  The little guy Cheeves made a slight noise in his throat and pulled out a large pocket watch. When that didn’t work, he made a quick but dignified cutting motion across his throat.

  “Oh, I had almost forgotten,” Beaver said. “We have an appointment this morning to meet with the portmaster, Commander Hiro, and we must hurry or we shall be late. I am pleased, however, to have made your acquaintance, and I hope someday that we might renew it.”