“Yeah?”
“Willie? Sam here. A couple of characters just walked in with a card coming from you. Know them?”
“Two men? Tall? Skinny? Sound like foreigners?”
“That’s right.”
“I know them. Gave ’em the card last night. They wanted a flesh peddler.”
“A what!”
“You heard me. They want to buy some bodies.” Willie chuckled. “What’s the matter, Sam? Looie getting touchy over what they call him?”
“No.” I knew that in Willie’s parlance a flesh peddler was anyone who dealt in human talent. “Just wanted to check up. Looie thinks that it might be a trap/”
“How can it? I only did a month in the pen, never mind for what, but that was out of town.” His voice grew hungry. “Say, Sam, any chance of a touch? Those two guys are good business and I need some dough.”
“I’ll get in touch with you.” I set down the receiver and nodded to Looie. “Willie says that they’re O.K. Bring them in?”
Looie nodded.
They came straight to the point.
“We are interested in buying some humans,” said the one who had spoken to me in the outer office. “I understand that you are in business to supply what we want.”
It was a bit raw, even for Looie. He glanced towards me where I sat in a corner, just in case, then pursed his lips.
“I can supply talent,” he admitted. “What did you have in mind? Hoofers? Canaries? Skin beaters?”
“Men and women.”
“I know, but for what? Singers? Dancers? Musicians?” He frowned. “You putting on a show, or something?”
The man who had spoken before hesitated, then turned to his companion. They muttered for a while, something I couldn’t catch, then the tall guy turned to face Looie again.
“You confound me. Do you sell men and women, or not?”
“Sure I sell ’em, their contracts, that is, but what sort and how many?” Looie was getting impatient. “You starting a road show? Night club? Do you want artistes for a spot south of the border?” He didn’t leer as he said it, but the hint was plain. “I can fix you up with as many as you want.”
“A hundred? Two hundred?”
“As many as you want,” repeated Looie dully. He glanced towards me and I stepped forward. I guessed that he was out of his depth.
“Mr. Samuels will supply any number of artistes you may require,” I said. “Just tell him how many and what you are thinking of paying.”
“Pay,” said the man. He turned to his companion and muttered again. “We will pay one thousand dollars per head.” He fumbled in his pockets. “Here.”
I’ve heard tales of the old currency, I’ve even seen it in museums, but I never thought that I’d live to see a shower of gold scattered over a desk in a modern office. The coins made a lovely ringing sound as they fell, one or two of them rolling to the floor. I stooped and picked them up. They were gold, all right. Double Eagles, Sovereigns, Escutadoes. Pieces of Eight. Golden Louis. I let them trickle through my hands in a gleaming shower.
“There is one thousand dollars in gold,” said the stranger. It is yours. I will pay you one thousand dollars for every man and woman you supply.”
“Leave it with me,” said Looie hastily. His fingers closed over the golden heap. “Come back tomorrow, same time, I’ll have an answer for you by then.”
“Tomorrow,” said the man. He hesitated. “There are other things. You can supply them?”
“Sure.” Looie didn’t ask what. He was too intent on the gold.
After they had gone, we counted the gold. I didn’t know just how much there was, it would take an expert to value the coins, but in sheer weight the stuff came to well over a thousand dollars. Looie pursed his lips as he stacked the coins. “What do you think, Sam?”
“I don’t like it.” I reached for a sovereign. “There’s something fishy going on. Normal people wouldn’t pay their bills in gold, not when it’s worth several times its face value. And the way that man spoke! He talked of men and women as though they were cattle.”
Looie shrugged. He spoke about them the same way, probably thought of them like that too. “So what? If he’s willing to pay a thousand dollars a head in this sort of stuff....” His voice trailed off as he reckoned his immediate profit. “Say it’s just worth double. Two thousand dollars plus twenty percent, no thirty, of all wages. Two hundred people.” He whistled. “Grab ten off the books, for starters, Sam. Pick lookers. Young, hungry, and not too particular. I want to get on this gravy train.”
“But what does he want them for?”
“How the hell do I know?” Looie snatched the sovereign from my hand. “Get busy!”
It wasn’t hard to find ten chorines willing to work, place unknown. By the time the two men came back, I had them lined up for inspection, contracts signed with a space left blank for the salary, but with thirty percent of whatever it was scheduled for Looie’s pockets.
The men didn’t even look at them. They walked into the inner office and, after a while, Looie sent for me. I was curious, I’ll admit it, and took a good look at them as I passed. Looie gestured with his hand.
“My assistant. He will fix up whatever you need.”
“Will I?” I stared at the strangers. “What do you want?”
“A place where we can process the people you have sold to us.” As before the man’s voice was flat, stilted, utterly devoid of emotion. The way he said the words made me think of a foreigner. “We have certain machinery and we need somewhere large to set it up.”
“Rehearse them, you mean?” I frowned. “There’s the old theater at the edge of town. It’s been shut for the past ten years, but I could get it for you.”
“What about the warehouse down on Seventh Street?” Looie owned the warehouse and I could guess what he was after. “You could rent that for them. It wouldn’t cost much to fix a stage, and it’s wired for power.” He looked at the strangers. “That do?”
“Is it large?”
“Big enough to train a regiment.”
They muttered together again, a hissing rush of sibilants, then the spokesman nodded. “It will do. You have the people?”
“Outside.” I jerked my thumb towards the door. “Shall I tell them to report to the warehouse?”
“Tomorrow. You will show us the place?”
“We’ll have you fixed up inside a day.” Looie reached for the phone. “That’s all, Sam. You know what to do.”
* * * *
Things moved fast after that. The first ten chorines went to the warehouse, and that was the last I ever saw of them. More followed, lots more, and men too. At first I tried to pick those with some genuine talent, then, as Looie began to get more greedy and as the strangers didn’t complain, we skinned the books for all the broken-down hams, the so-called comics, the dancers who had long forgotten their prime, the musicians with ten thumbs instead of fingers, the dregs and fringes of an overcrowded profession.
Each one we sent was paid for in gold, and Looie seemed to get fatter and greasier every day. He was satisfied—why shouldn’t he have been? But me? I was getting worried.
Little things started it. The utter impartiality of age or sex, talent or lack of skill of the people we sent them. The way the warehouse seemed to swallow them up without a trace. The steady, incredible stream of gold that found its way into Looie’s hands.
I wondered about that gold. I asked questions at the museums and from noted experts in numismatics. I even stole a piece I found lying in a corner and had it analyzed. The gold was there, all right; the trouble was that there was too much of it. The assay showed at least fifty per cent of the precious metal. The coins were, as I suspected, counterfeit.
The whole thing didn’t make sense.
The blow-up came when we had a visitor from the Health Department. He didn’t waste any time with me, but went straight in to Looie. I followed him as a matter of course, Looie was the sort of man to attract violence, a
nd anyway, I was curious. The inspector came straight to the point.
“You own that warehouse down on Seventh Street?”
“Yes,” said Looie cautiously. “Why?”
“It stinks. We’ve had complaints from the neighbors, and you’ve got to clean it up.” He stared at the fat man. “What are you running it as, anyway? A slaughterhouse?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Well it smells that way to me. Who’s working there now?”
“Some people hired it from me,” said Looie quickly. “I don’t know what they wanted it for, experiments, I think. Why don’t you ask them?”
“The place is locked.” The inspector stared his dislike. “As you’re the owner, it’s up to you to stop the nuisance. Better get working on it; if you don’t stop it, we will, and fine you in the bargain.”
After he had left I sat on the edge of the desk and stared at Looie.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“I had a feeling about those two men.” I told him about the coin assay. “Now there are complaints of a funny smell down where they are working. If you ask me, you’re in trouble.”
“Why? Where’s the harm in a new theatrical company rehearsing in a warehouse?”
“Rehearsing?” I shrugged. “You can’t believe that. We’ve sent them about two hundred men and women, all the drifters and hams in the business, and they still want more. Any legitimate producer would have screamed for his money back at the talent we’ve supplied. It would take a genius to get even a third-rate show out of them.” I stopped him speaking with a stab of my finger. “Don’t mention South America. I could swallow that for a few girls, yes, but not for those grandmothers, charwomen, and shapeless morons we’ve been supplying. And what of the men? Do they want to ship them south too?”
“They know their own business,” Looie protested. “I’m just an agent.”
“You’re just a flesh peddler,” I agreed. “That’s what everyone calls you, and....” I stared at him. “Say! Those men never said that they were going to rehearse. They spoke of processing the people we sent.”
“Slang.” Looie dismissed it with a wave of his pudgy hand. “They’re foreigners and don’t know our terms.” He chuckled. “They even said they’d pay so much a head. A head! Who the hell would want to buy heads?”
“Headhunters,” I said, and somehow it didn’t seem funny. “Looie! Suppose that they were speaking the literal truth? Suppose that they really did think you were a flesh peddler, that you could sell men and women? Remember how they asked you to sell them humans? Remember how they never took off their hats or coats, even though it’s June? And they paid you in gold at so much a head. And they processed the people we sent them. And now the Health Department is complaining about the smell.”
“Sewers,” Looie said. “That warehouse was condemned a long time ago.” He reached for a bowl of nuts. “Quit worrying. You talk as though those two men were Martians or something.”
“Maybe they were.” I swallowed as I thought about it. “Or time travelers, or robots, or anything you like to pick. They counterfeited gold coins; maybe they wanted to make sure that they had a currency good for any era. They wanted heads, and Willie sent them to you, telling them that you sold flesh. How the hell would they know about slang? They must have taken him at his word.”
“You’re crazy,” said Looie, but I could see he was shaken. “They’re human, why should they want heads?”
“Does it matter? Suppose that we wanted something from the past. Neanderthal skins, for example. We went back and found someone who said that he could sell them to us. Would we consider them human? We’d take what was offered.” I snapped my fingers. “Perhaps they were traders from another planet or dimension or time. They wanted heads, brains rather, perhaps for study, perhaps for use. You told them you could supply them with what they asked for. You took their money and sent them people.” I rose from the edge of the desk. “I’m going down to the warehouse and find out what’s going on.”
* * * *
The place was silent when I got there. I discovered what the Health Department was complaining about straight away. The smell was sickening; the only thing like it I’ve ever experienced was once when I lived near a fertilizer plant.
Lighting a cigarette, I managed to break in and take a look around.
No strangers. No machines. No signs of life. At one end of the place I found signs that seemed to show some electrical equipment had been used, scraps of wire and insulation. The dust was scuffed and disturbed by footprints, and, in a small office-like room, I found the thing that sent me streaking out of the building towards the nearest phone. 1 found something else too, but I don’t like to think of that.
The office contained two bodies. Two men, tall, thin, pale-faced men. Only they weren’t bodies. They were like dummies, built of plastic and wire. They were empty, and I mean that literally. Two hollow shells that had once contained—what?
The other thing was what made me retch and retch and keep on retching.
We had sent two hundred men and women down to the warehouse, and they were still there. But not all of them. Each one had lost something vitally important. In the warehouse rested two hundred neatly decapitated corpses.
As I said, I don’t envy Looie!
THE WATER SCULPTOR, by George Zebrowski
Sitting there, watching the Earth below him from the panel of Station Six, Christian Praeger suddenly felt embarrassed by the planet’s beauty. For the last eight hours he had watched the great storm develop in the Pacific, and he had wanted to share the view with someone, tell someone how beautiful he thought it was. He had told it to himself now for the fiftieth time.
The storm was a physical evil, a spinning hell that might reach the Asian mainland and kill thousands of starving billions. They would get a warning, for all the good that would do. Since the turn of the century there had been dozens of such storms, developing in places way off from the traditional storm cradles.
He looked at the delicate pinwheel. It was a part of the planet’s ecology—whatever state that was in now. The arms of the storm reminded him of the theory which held the galaxy to be a kind of organized storm system which sucked in gas and dust at its center and sent it all out into the vast arms to condense into stars. And the stars were stormy laboratories building the stuff of the universe in the direction of huge molecules, from the inanimate and crystalline to the living and conscious. In the slowness of time it all looked stable, Praeger thought, but almost certainly all storms run down and die.
He looked at the clock above the center screen. There were six clocks around the watch room, one above each screen. The clock on the ceiling gave station time. His watch would be over in half an hour.
He looked at the sun screen. There all the dangerous rays were filtered out. He turned up the electronic magnification and for a long time watched the prominences flare up and die. He looked at the cancerous sunspots. The sight was hypnotic and frightening no matter how many times he had seen it. He put his hand out to the computer panel and punched in the routine information. Then he looked at the spectroscopic screens, small rectangles beneath the Earth watch monitors. He checked the time and set the automatic release for the ozone scatter-canisters to be dropped into the atmosphere. A few minutes later he watched them drop away from the station, following their fall until they broke in the upper atmosphere, releasing the precious ozone that would protect Earth’s masses from the sun’s deadly radiation. Early in the twentieth century a good deal of the natural ozone layer in the upper atmosphere had been stripped away as a result of atomic testing and the use of aerosol sprays, resulting in much genetic damage in the late eighties and nineties. But soon now the ozone layer would be back up to snuff.
When his watch ended ten minutes later, Praeger was glad to get away from the visual barrage of the screens. He made his way into one of the jutting spokes of the station where his sleep cubicle was located. Here it was a
comfortable half-g all the time. He settled himself into his bunk and pushed the music button at his side, leaving his small observation and com screen on the ceiling turned off. Gradually the music filled the room and he closed his eyes. Mahler’s weary song of Earth’s misery enveloped his consciousness with pity and weariness, and love. Before he fell asleep, he wished he might feel the Earth’s atmosphere the way he felt his own skin.
I wish I could hear and feel the motion of gas molecules in the upper air, the whisperings of subtle energy transfers….
In the Pacific, weather control engineers guided the great storm into an electrostatic basket. The storm would provide usable power for the rest of its natural life.
* * * *
Praeger awoke a quarter of an hour before his watch was due to begin. He thought of his recent vacation Earthside, remembering the glowing volcano he had seen in Italy, and how strange the silver shield of the Moon had looked through Earth’s atmosphere. He remembered watching his own Station Six, his post in life, moving slowly across the sky, remembered one of the inner stations as it passed Julian’s Station 233, one of the few private satellites, synchronous, fixed for all time over one point on the Earth. He should be able to talk to Julian soon, during his next off period. Even though Julian was an artist and a recluse, a water sculptor as he called himself, Julian and he were very much alike. At times he felt they were each other’s conscience, two ex-spacemen in continual retreat from their home world. It was much more beautiful and bearable from out here. In all this silence he sometimes thought he could hear the universe breathing. It was alive, the whole starry cosmos throbbing.
If I could tear a hole in its body, it would bleed and cry out for a bandage….
He remembered the stifling milieu of Rome’s streets: the great screens which went dead during his vacation, blinding the city, the crowds waiting on the stainless steel squares for the music to resume over the giant audios. They could not work without it. The music pounded its monotonous bass beat: the sound of some imprisoned beast beneath the city. The cab that waited for him was a welcome sight: an instrument for fleeing.
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