Lowball

by George R. R. Martin

  The raccoon was boiling in salt water when Steely Dan arrived at mid-morning. Dan was, so far as Gordon knew, the only joker in Warren County, and he lived there because he had family in the area. Steely Dan was short, squat, ebon, smooth, and shiny, as if he were made of blackened, polished steel. He had no body hair, he was very strong, and his head was literally bullet-shaped. Children tended to think he was some kind of robot.

  He’d been on American Hero in its fifth season, but had lasted only two episodes.

  Dan worked at auto repair, and he brought useful skills to Gordon’s rocket program. He had built the steel cells used to synthesize sodium perchlorate, and also scavenged lead diodes from an old auto battery, which would have been messy if the job had been left to Gordon. The synthesis of NaClO4 was easy enough; but then any residual chlorides had to be chemically destroyed lest the subsequent addition of ammonium chloride turn the compound into a highly unstable chlorate. The oxidizer itself, ammonium perchlorate, was created through a process of double decomposition, then purified through recrystallization. And because NH4ClO4 could be absorbed through the skin, Gordon and Steely Dan both had to wear protection even though the danger to the thyroid was slight.

  Gordon didn’t know if Steely Dan even had a thyroid.

  At the end of the long afternoon Gordon had a substantial quantity of ammonium perchlorate, a pure white powder that when mixed with aluminum powder and a few minor additives would form solid rocket fuel, the formula used by the Air Force in the boosters of their Hornet shuttle.

  The operation was carried out in the old barn, amid the scent of musty old hay and rodent droppings. By the end of the afternoon, the ammonium perchlorate was safely transferred to steel drums, then pushed on a handcart to Gordon’s storage facility, a prefabricated steel shed in the middle of a meadow, and surrounded by berms of earth pushed into place by a neighbor with a bulldozer. If anything unfortunate should befall the shed, the force of the explosion would go straight up, not out into the countryside.

  Which was good, because of what Gordon kept there. The aluminum powder that would turn the ammonium perchlorate into flammable mixture. Kerosene. Tanks of oxygen. Syntin, which had driven the Russians’ Sever boosters into space. Hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, which were not only explosive in combination but also highly toxic.

  Gordon hadn’t quite worked out what fuel he wanted to take him to orbit, so he was keeping his options open.

  The stuffed raccoon had been sizzling in the oven for two hours. Gordon sautéed new potatoes to serve with it, and he’d made a pesto of ramps, which were the only local vegetable available at this time of year; he served the pesto on linguine, with a sharp parmesan made by one of the local dairy farmers. With the meal Gordon offered a robust Australian shiraz, which Steely Dan preferred in a ten-ounce tumbler, with ice.

  “Damn, man,” Dan said, after tasting the raccoon. “That’s amazing. It’s kinda like pork, isn’t it?” He had a half-comic strangled voice that contrasted with his formidable appearance.

  “Tastes more like brisket to me,” Gordon said. He lowered his face over the plate and inhaled the rich aroma.

  “This is a first for me,” Dan said. “If my family ever ate varmints, that was way before anyone can remember.”

  “I hate to let an animal go to waste. The whole license business is ridiculous.” New Jersey required a license to prepare roadkill, which Gordon thought was simply weird. Who thought of these things? he wondered. And who would actually enforce such a law?

  “So,” Steely Dan said, counting on his fingers, “I’ve had squirrel here, and possum, and rabbit.”

  “Venison,” Gordon pointed out. “There’s a lot of roadkill venison out there.”

  Steely Dan jabbed at Gordon with his fork. “Is there anything you won’t eat?”

  “Rat. They can transmit Weil’s disease—and believe me, you don’t want that.”

  “I never heard of Weil’s disease, but I believe you.” Steely Dan took a generous swig of his shiraz.

  Gordon chewed thoughtfully, and then remembered the previous day’s autopsy. He looked at Steely Dan, and saw himself reflected in the joker’s glossy skin. “Do you know any other wild cards living in this area?” he asked.

  “Besides yourself?” Steely Dan said. And, at Gordon’s blank expression, said, “You are a wild card, right?”

  Gordon ignored the question and explained about the unknown joker found on the road nearby. Steely Dan was surprised.

  “Just up 519 from here,” Gordon said.

  “That’s weird,” Steely Dan said.

  “You haven’t heard of any, say, sporting events involving wild cards?”

  “In Warren County?” Steely Dan shook his bullet head. “Man, that’s nuts.”

  “Murder isn’t exactly the most rational act.”

  Steely Dan’s smooth face contorted into an expression of amusement. “Unlike trying to shoot yourself into space,” he said.

  Gordon grinned. He raised his glass. “Ad astra,” he said.

  Gordon had been involved with amateur rocketry since he was in his early teens. He had been an Air Force brat, and every air base had a model rocketry club where Gordon could find like-minded peers. He and his friends had built rockets and explosives while consuming vast amounts of science fiction, mostly stuff that had been in the base library for years, if not decades.

  Gordon remembered George O. Smith’s Mind Lords of Takis, Leigh Brackett’s Journey to Alpha C, Dick’s Radio Free Skait, “Skait” being the secret, anagrammatical name of Takis, at least according to Philip K. Dick. All books that shared the common assumption that it was only a matter of time before Earth’s scientists succeeded in duplicating Takisian starship technology, leading an unshackled humanity to spread into the galaxy. (Though in the Dick, it turned out that humans were grub-like creatures groping along on a burned-out planet, and all human history an illusion implanted by sinister Takisian telepaths.) All these renderings of smooth, efficient Takisian technology made rocketry seem a little quaint, but Gordon was willing to settle for what he could get, at least until someone handed him a starship.

  In fact Gordon still belonged to an amateur rocket club, the American Rocket League, which had a big meeting in the Nevada desert every year to fire off boosters that required the participants to have a Federal explosives license, and which regularly climbed higher than fifty miles, right to the brink of space. Gordon was not alone in wanting to send himself into orbit. He liked to think he was farther along than most of them, however.

  The fact was that Earth physicists had failed to decode Takisian technology, despite regular claims of breakthroughs that seemed loudest at every budget cycle. Ever since 1950 scientists had promised whole armadas of starships in ten or twenty years.

  In the meantime the Air Force and its Space Command shared Earth orbit with an underfunded Russian program. Each operated as secretly as they could, each spied on the other, each put up thousands of communications and spy satellites, each may or may not have weaponized near-Earth orbit. There was no exploration of the Moon or Mars or any of the bodies that had held the imagination of early-twentieth-century writers. Everyone was waiting for his starship. No one got them.

  It was beginning to look like the solar system might be all humanity ever got. And now it was the turn of Takisian starships to seem like a quaint, old-fashioned chimera, while rocket technology was beginning to seem like the most contemporary thing in all the world. With the military program in stagnation, it was civilians who were driving rocket innovation now. There was even a cash reward now, the Koopman X Prize, for the best, cheapest, and most practical design.

  Gordon figured he was an underdog in the race, but then so were the Wright Brothers. So was Jetboy. Sometimes an underdog could surprise you.

  Sunday was a cool, blustery day, with low clouds that scudded urgently along, dropping lashings of rain. Steely Dan picked Gordon up in his pickup truck for a run into Belvidere, where Gordon had a de
livery waiting. This was a scaled-down version of an aerospike hybrid rocket engine, a working prototype of a larger design that had never been built. Gordon had bought the prototype when the subcontractor had gone out of business following the cancellation of the Air Force project.

  Gordon was beginning to think that hybrid rockets were maybe the way to go. A hybrid had certain inefficiencies, but the aerospike design would more than make up for that. He’d have to work out a way to perform static tests with the new engine, some way that didn’t involve setting his property on fire or blowing anything up. He’d have to build more berms, or maybe big trenches. And he’d have to get some HTPB, or make some.…

  As windshield wipers slapped back and forth, Gordon and Steely Dan discussed the technical details on the ride to Belvidere. Around them the low mountains were green with new spring growth.

  One of the nice things about living in rural New Jersey was that the lady who owned the express company was willing to open on a Sunday so that Gordon could collect his delivery. She even fired up her forklift in order to load the rocket engine on the back of Steely Dan’s Dodge Ram. The engine came with a good deal of plumbing and electronics, and these were packaged separately, and Gordon and Steely Dan strapped the containers into place around the engine.

  “You’ve got the plans, right?” Steely Dan muttered. “Even with a schematic this is going to be like working a jigsaw puzzle.”

  After the cargo was strapped in, Gordon bought Steely Dan lunch in a diner. People stared: they weren’t used to jokers. This reminded Gordon of the dead joker who had been found nearby. “Let’s go look where that victim was dropped,” Gordon said.

  He knew the place only approximately, but there wasn’t anything to look at anyway—just as Gallo had said, there wasn’t much around but dairy farms and woods and tree-covered ridges. Holsteins either endured the drizzle or clustered under shelter. Then a different sort of facility loomed into sight around a curve, and Steely Dan slowed without being told.

  There were a series of long, low buildings, some of them new, some older and maybe repurposed from another use. There were spotlights on tall metal masts. Surrounding the compound were two forbidding twelve-foot chain-link fences, each topped by dense coils of razor wire.

  The place looked more secure than some prisons Gordon had seen. “All it needs is a guard tower in each corner,” Steely Dan said.

  There was no sign out front, so the place wasn’t an enterprise that sold to the public. A fifty-yard-long gravel drive stretched from the highway to the gates, and Gordon could see a small metal sign on the gate.

  “Turn down here,” Gordon said.

  Steely Dan brought the truck to a halt at the driveway entrance. “You sure?” he asked.

  “Yeah. What are they going to do, arrest us?”

  “They could hit us with fucking baseball bats.”

  Gravel crunched under the Ram’s tires as Steely Dan steered it toward the front gate. He brought the vehicle to a halt, and Gordon stepped out and regarded the facility.

  Cold wind rustled up the back of his jacket. He heard dogs barking. There was a wet animal scent in the air. Gordon looked at the rusted sign on the front gate.

  IDS

  CANINE BREEDING

  AND TRAINING FACILITY

  UNIT #1

  Gordon had no idea who or what IDS was. There was a rubber squeeze bulb hanging outside the gate, with a wire that led to the nearest building. Gordon squeezed the bulb, and he heard a metallic clatter from inside the building. A chorus of dog barks rose at the sound.

  A door slammed behind him as Steely Dan left the pickup truck. His bullet head was shrunk in his jacket, and his eyes scanned uneasily back and forth.

  “What are you gonna do?” he asked.

  “I’m going to tell them I want a puppy,” said Gordon.

  “Yeah,” Steely Dan said, “they’re for sure gonna believe that.”

  A man came out of the building. He was tall and wore a scowl on his face. He seemed fit and wore green-and-brown camouflage fatigues with lace-up military boots. The only piece of apparel that didn’t look government issue was a wide cowboy belt, with a buckle in the shape of a longhorn bull’s head.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “You need something?”

  Surprise rose in Gordon at the man’s Eastern European accent. “You breed dogs, right?” Gordon said. “I was thinking of getting a dog.”

  The man didn’t reply. His eyes moved from Gordon to Steely Dan, and then his expression turned thoughtful.

  “You do sell dogs, right?” Gordon prompted.

  The man’s eyes didn’t leave Steely Dan as he answered. “We breed and train dogs for the military, police, customs, and border guards,” he said. “We only sell to government agencies.”

  “Oh,” Gordon said. “Sorry to bother you.”

  The man pointed at Dan. “Wasn’t he on the television? American Hero?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  The man raised a fist and made a muscle. “Very strong, yes?”

  Gordon nodded. “Yes. Very strong.”

  The man said nothing more. Gordon and Steely Dan returned to the truck, backed out onto the highway, and headed for Gordon’s cabin. The man stood behind the gate, watching them the entire way.

  There was only one dead joker in the morgue on Monday morning, a straightforward shooting, and Gordon went upstairs to the squad room to deliver a copy of the autopsy to Harvey Kant, the detective in charge.

  Kant was the most senior detective at the precinct and had been there at least forty years. If anyone had told him it was time to retire, he’d ignored the advice. Rumors were that he was holding something, or several somethings, over senior members of the department, and they’d decreed he could stay as long as he liked.

  Kant was brown and scaled and looked like a heavily weathered dinosaur. He dressed in a frayed suit of polyester-blend gabardine and smelled strongly of cigars. He ignored the autopsy photos, glanced at the written report, then put both in their jacket and tossed it on his desk. Because he held a detective rank equivalent to lieutenant, most of the cops just called him “Lou.”

  “Nine millimeter,” he said. “Fits the Sig found on the scene.” He gave a sound like a cross between a snarl and a hacking cough. “Another goddamn drug shooting,” he said. “I’m gonna be chasing my own ass for days on this one.”

  “Hey Doc!” Franny Black crossed the room smiling. He carried a tall clear plastic coffee go-cup from Café Mussolini down the street.

  “I wanted to thank you about that description you gave me the other day,” he said. “Redheaded woman, five six?”

  “You found her?” Gordon asked.

  “Sure did. She was hostess in the third Vietnamese restaurant I visited. And I’m glad you told me she was left-handed, because that was the hand I was watching when she drew the rat-tail comb out of her purse and tried to stab me.”

  “Glad you didn’t end up on my slab,” Gordon said.

  “Yeah, Franny.” The new speaker was the rail-thin Detective McTate, known as Slim Jim, who had followed Franny into the squad room. “You’re lucky all around. The doc here gives you a perfect description of the perp, and you get credit for the bust.”

  Franny flushed. For a cop, Gordon thought, he flushed rather easily.

  “How’s the search for El Monstro coming along?” Gordon asked.

  “El Monstro? He’s vanished.” Franny shrugged. “I don’t know how a joker eight feet tall can just disappear, but that’s what happened.”

  “The family?”

  “His mother’s in a wheelchair and doesn’t speak English. The father’s dead.” Franny’s eyes narrowed. “But the sister’s hiding something.”

  “But not her brother?”

  “Not in that little bitty apartment, no.”

  Kant eyed Franny’s coffee. “What’s that you’re drinking, Fran?”

  “Iced peppermint macchiato,” Franny said in all innocence.

 
; “Yeah.” Kant nodded. “All us detective he-men like us our peppermint macchiatos.”

  Franny flushed a deeper shade, and he turned to Gordon. “Thanks, anyway,” he said, and faded in the direction of the men’s room.

  Kant’s lipless mouth stretched into a grin as he watched Franny’s retreat, and then he looked at Gordon. “Sometimes the information you dig up is uncanny,” he said. “Sometimes it’s useless.” He picked up the jacket with the weekend’s homicide. “I mean, yeah, I know the guy was shot, thanks anyway. And sometimes…” He shook his head. “Remember when you told me that the perp was six feet six and armed with a club?”

  Slim Jim was grinning. “I ain’t heard this story,” he said.

  “I was lookin’ for a fucking Neanderthal,” Kant said.

  “I didn’t see the crime scene,” Gordon explained. “Nobody told me about the—”

  “About the ladder,” Kant said. “The perp was four foot nine and killed the vic by dropping a bowling ball from a ladder.”

  Slim Jim guffawed.

  “If I had seen the crime scene photos,” Gordon said, “I would have seen the ladder.”

  “I spent ten days looking for the Terminator,” Kant said, “and instead I was looking for a munchkin.”

  “If I don’t have all the information,” Gordon said, “I can’t—”

  He looked up and saw a group of uniformed officers coming into the squad room to report to Kant on a door-to-door survey of the area around the crime scene. Among them he recognized Dina Quattore, the telepathic ace attached to the K-9 unit.

  Oh, he thought. That would work.

  “You turned investigator now?” asked Dina Quattore. “Maybe I should buy you a freakin’ Sherlock Holmes hat.”