“What can we do?” I asked.
“I’ve got a friend—school chum. High in the government. He’ll know.” He paused. “You go home and don’t say a word to anyone. I’ll see him tonight.”
“Why not phone him?”
“May be tapped. Remember, not a word.”
“All right.” I nodded uncertainly and went out. And that was why a fine, respectable young M.D. happened to get taken for a ride.
Bella and her flock were still watching me—hanging on every word.
“Those goons are probably still patrolling the neighborhood,” I said. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
She gestured at the man who’d locked the door. “Take care of it, Tris.”
Tris nodded and an ash fell into the dregs of his beer with a little hissing sound. He got up and disappeared. In a few minutes he came back with a furniture-moving pad. He unrolled it on the floor and motioned me in. “If you aren’t too proud to impersonate a Chippendale.”
They rolled me up and I felt myself being lifted and carried out. I jolted around for a while in the back of the van then it stopped.
“You might as well ride in the cab now,” Tris said. “We’re out of the neighborhood.”
“Is your name really Tristram?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he grinned bashfully.
“You work for a moving outfit?”
“No. This stuff is TV props. I rent them to studios.”
“No kidding? I’ll bet you could get me some tickets.”
“Any time, Doc.” Tris grinned.
“Where are we?” The rain was over but it was still too cloudy to see.
“Downtown. Any place you want to go?” He rolled a brown paper cigarette with one hand.
I couldn’t go back to the apartment. They’d be waiting there for sure. Evidently, Doctor Stillman’s friend wasn’t so true-blue after all so the Doc’s place was out. I got an idea. “Got a directory?” I asked Tris.
“Under the phone.” He pointed to the ledge behind the seat. I looked up an address.
“Can you drop me at 211 East 72d?” I asked.
“No trouble at all.” He turned at the corner. When we got to 72d he slowed to a crawl and I dropped out. I was getting good at it. I went into the building and started counting doors. I found the right one and turned the knob. It opened an inch before the chain reached its limit. It was enough to turn the light on.
“Who is it?” a voice called sleepily.
“Nightmare Alice?”
She opened the door in a hurry. “Flannelmouth! What’re you doing here?”
I ducked in and shut the door. I stared at her. In a nightgown she wasn’t half bad. She reached for a negligee. “If you’re planning criminal assault there are easier ways.”
“Alice, I’m in trouble.”
“Husband or father?”
“Quit kidding, I’m serious.” I told her the story.
She whistled when I was finished. “You won’t be able to stay here very long,” she said.
“I know. I took a chance that they’d need a little while to figure this stop out. I’ll blow and cover my tracks or else you’ll be in it too.”
“I am anyhow. Better tell me how to do it before you go. If you don’t show up again I’d like to pass the information on.”
“That’s why I came. It’s simple. So simple nobody ever thought to look for it. Or if anybody did there was always somebody around to talk him off on another wild goose chase.”
“In one word—how?”
“Distil your own drinking water. Don’t smoke. They’re loaded with oral contraceptive. I’ve found it in bread, fish, and milk so far. Run off your own analyses. Better not do it in the plant though. We seem to have a few Greeks inside our horse. Well, sorry. Got to run.”
She nodded soberly. “Take care of yourself, Flannelmouth.”
It’s funny what a little excitement can do for the glandular system. Before I knew it there I was, kissing Nightmare Alice. I trotted out into the street, considerably shaken.
A light flashed at the corner. I flopped down and tried to make like a drunk, sleeping it off. The car turned up my block. It stopped and somebody got out. From the corner of my eye I could see a square-toed shoe. Cops. He reached down to shake me and I sat up. “Any identification?” he asked.
“I’m Dr. William Cotton.” He’d have found out anyway.
In practically no time I was in a precinct house. In even less time I was on the roof and into a copter. Then I was on a rocket for the Capitol. A copter met us and I was rushed into a small building I’d never heard of before. Doc Stillman was on hand to greet me.
“We’ll see the President in a few minutes,” he said.
While I was wondering how he made it so quick a light flashed over a door. A man in blue serge looked up from his newspaper long enough to say, “You can go in now.”
We went in and met the great man. He needed a shave and some sleep but, for that matter, so did I. Maybe we both looked better on TV.
He greeted Doc Stillman as an old friend. “So you’re the young man who found it?” he said to me.
I gave him an idiotic grin and said, “Yes, I’m the one.”
The President put his hands together and studied his fingertips as if he’d never seen them before. I looked at Doc Stillman but he had just discovered his own fingers.
“Doctor Cotton,” the President finally said, “your discovery comes at a most inopportune time.”
I looked at him.
“To tell the truth, we have suspected something of this sort for quite a while.”
“I don’t see how the Inferlab people could have missed it unless somebody was deliberately sending them on wild goose chases.” I stopped. You could almost see the light bulb exploding over my head like it used to do in the funnies. The President and Doc Stillman were both looking at me silently.
“So that’s the way it is?” I said.
The President nodded. “Who else knows about this?” he asked.
I’ll admit it took a while but when I started thinking I did a lot of it in a hurry.
“I wrote some to be opened in event of my death or disappearance letters just after I ditched those two hoods. Incidentally, were they yours?” I asked Stillman.
He rediscovered his fingers. The President was frowning. I got another idea.
“By a strange coincidence I ran across a mimeograph. Very handy if you want to write a lot of letters in a hurry.”
The President frowned some more and went into conference with himself for thirty seconds.
“We seem to have reached an impasse, Doctor,” he said. “We could probably run down those letters of yours but they have a certain nuisance value. As you may have guessed, we are influential. There is an ancient political axiom concerning the advisability of allying oneself with the invincible.”
“One question.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Why?”
Stillman forgot his fingers for a moment. “We’re working for humanity,” he said sanctimoniously.
“I’ll be brief,” the President said, “War is a thing of the past. There is no enemy to be crushed by sheer weight of population. Young as you are, you must remember a day when earth had fewer children—when there was breathing room. Humanity has grown wild for thousands of generations. In any civilization less than global such growth was necessary. Now it is not.”
“And you’re going to weed the garden?” I asked.
“Someone has to do it.”
“How did you select the progenitors of this future utopia?”
The President shrugged.
“Another proverb?” I asked. “Something about politics making strange bedfellows?” Stillman was looking at me as if I’d flatulated in church.
“Have you a better plan?” the President asked.
He had me there. Any honest geneticist would admit politicians as a class are as representative a cross section as scientists—or bum
s.
“What’s in it for me?” I asked.
“Why not let him discover the cure?” Stillman asked.
“A brilliant idea,” the President said. “In a year or two your researches can lead to a method of inducing fertility. Of course, the drugs must be rare and within reach of the financially responsible only. Wealth and fame will be yours.”
“And women, too,” Stillman chipped in with a non-clinical leer.
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” I said. The President and I shook hands. He stuck his in his pocket and absently wiped it against the lining. I used a hankie.
I got to work late the next day. Alice was moping over coffee when I walked into the cafeteria. I went through the line and picked up two trays of fried sugar-cured abalone and ersatz eggs. She nearly jumped out of her skin when I set the trays in front of her.
“Thanks,” she said. “Now I’m hungry. What’s new?”
“Nothing. Heard a new joke. I’ll tell it to you some day when there are no ladies present.”
“Hah!” she said. We tore into the eggs.
Up in the cubicle we closed the doors and hung a DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT PROTECTIVE CLOTHING AND RESPIRATOR card on them. Alice started making noises with bottles and I went to the blackboard.
“Seen any TV programs lately?” I asked.
“Not around here,” she said so I guessed it was safe. I wrote, “Did anybody connect you with me last night?” and she nodded a no. We kept chattering about one thing and another while I scribbled as much of the story as I could. We started looking for microphones and cameras. We didn’t find any but that was no proof they weren’t there. They could have been poured in the cement when the building went up for all I knew.
We kept busy on the blackboard and decided it would be safer if we didn’t see each other outside of working hours. It wouldn’t be wise for people to know how intimate we were.
The boys and girls of Inferlab went their merry ways chasing their separate geese for three more weeks. I spilled sugar in odd places about my apartment and it was usually disturbed when I came back. Let them look. One thing I could be sure of, they’d never find those letters or even guess where I sent them. It’s hard to find something that doesn’t exist. I felt I was avenging in some small way the virus hunters of Inferlab.
I mailed myself letters from various boxes around town. They were all sealed a little differently when I got them. I took to writing limericks to the hawkshaws that opened them. Meanwhile, I worried. I wanted to talk to Alice and I wanted to see Bella and the Blue Moon again. One day I got an idea. I sent Alice to the Blue Moon via the blackboard.
Next morning she scribbled “Mission accomplished” and rubbed it out as soon as I saw it. I sneaked a kiss before opening the door. Even without excitement it was nice.
I wrote a personal message on the blackboard. Alice read it and nodded. I got out the protective clothing signs again.
Later that day I stepped out into the street in front of Inferlab. There were four or five hot little cars parked in a group with their engines running. Near them a furniture van idled as its driver struggled with the pages of a street map. Suddenly there was an explosion. The bomb burst in the middle of the street with a lot of noise but nobody seemed hurt. Clouds of smoke billowed from it and practically instantly the street was blanketed. I ran.
When the smoke cleared the five little hot cars screamed away in five separate directions. My gumshoes tore their hair and screamed even louder, following them. When the last hawkshaw had left the neighborhood the van driver finally got his map folded. He goosed the turbine and moved away slowly. After a mile or so he stopped again and let me out. I rode the rest of the way to the Blue Moon in the cab.
Bella and Tris heard me out. “It ain’t going to be easy, rounding up thirty or forty girls on short notice,” Bella said. “This must be some party you’re planning.”
“A party to end all parties,” I said.
Tris grinned. Bella gave me a knowing look and mumbled something about doctors being more fun than anybody. I wondered if she knew Nightmare Alice was a doctor.
We settled things and Tris loaded me in the van again. He dumped me on a quiet street not too far from Inferlab and I strolled back into the building and right past some hard and cold looks. None of the hawkshaws opened their mouths though. “Fine restaurant down the street,” I said loudly. “Ought to serve food like that in this cafeteria.” I shut out four glares with the elevator doors.
Time dragged.
One day I cornered Stillman in a hall. “Can we talk?” I asked. He shook his head and walked on. When we were as far as possible from a lighting fixture he nodded.
“I’ve been faking data for nine months. I’ll be ready to spring it in about three more weeks. Can you arrange worldwide TV coverage?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“Make sure the President’s there. I want to do it up good.”
He nodded and walked on.
Alice and I had endless conferences at the blackboard. We scribbled harder and faster than a couple of G.P.’s prescribing placebos. Got to be pretty good at lip reading, too.
The great day came and I stood on stage, peeking through the curtain. The first four rows of the audience were solid women.
“Counting the house, doctor?” the President asked with heavy geniality.
“I just want to make sure there’s no slip-up. This is a big day for me.”
“You’ll be well rewarded,” he said.
“I’m sure we all will be,” I answered.
A little man with headphones rushed around like a chicken taking shock treatments, pushing everybody in place. “Remember, this is worldwide,” he kept saying. A camera boom swung into place. The curtains opened.
My voice was two octaves above normal and my knees were shaking but I didn’t have any reputation to preserve. I looked straight into the lens and started my spiel:
“Before I begin, would you ladies in the first four rows of the studio audience please come on stage?” There was a rumbling mumble from the audience and the President frowned nervously.
“This isn’t the way we rehearsed it,” the little man was hissing from the wings. Meanwhile, the ladies climbed the stairs up onto the stage.
“Now ladies, if you please.” I tried to make a theatrical flourish.
The girls raised their skirts and a few million bluenoses fainted here and there throughout Christendom. The only reaction in the studio was a gasp, then wild applause as the ladies discovered forty beautifully bulging abdomina. And they weren’t padding.
“I’ll turn it over to the President now. Mr. President!” I stepped aside and waved him to the mike. He looked daggers at me and began extemporizing a speech.
Doc Stillman and a half dozen hoods began edging toward me from the wings. I stepped up close beside the President and stood a little behind him, beaming into the camera like a martyred child saint while I kept my right index finger jabbed in his back. The president ran a finger around his collar and changed the tone of his speech. I began to catch phrases like “Due to the fearless and tradition-breaking researches of Doctor Cotton.” Here he put an affectionate arm around my shoulders and tried to ease me in front of him. I jabbed my finger a little harder into his left kidney and he relaxed and said something about “new, inexpensive treatment.” The hoods couldn’t see what I had in my hand but they got the president’s message and started backing off. “Will be added immediately to water supplies throughout the world.” It was all true except he meant remove instead of add.
I’ll admit, he made a good recovery. In ten minutes of round, pear-shaped tones he gave a blow by blow of how the Infer lab team had found a cure. When it was over he turned to me with blood in his eye. Doc Stillman was closing in from the other side.
“I wouldn’t if I were you. This lime I really did mimeograph a few letters. They’re very explicit on how to analyze water. If I disappear and any of those letters are opened your
collective names will be thin mud—the liquidated kind.” Tris and Bella came over.
“I see you fixed me up with a few tickets. Thanks,” I said. Tris grinned like a happy leprechaun. Bella had a basket in her arms.
“Look!” She uncovered the basket. Six puppies crawled over her peke, blue eyes myopically seeking nipples. Alice ambled over from where she’d been indecently exposing herself to the world at large.
“By the way, Mr. President, have you met my wife?” I asked.
He managed a sickly smile and bent over Nightmare Alice’s hand.
“You’ve done a great job, doctor,” I said to Alice. “Your devotion to science shall not go unrewarded.”
“Science shmience,” Alice said. “Anything to get a man.”
The Status Quo Peddlers
One of the most individual of new writers casts fresh light on a classic problem through his special knowledge of Latin America . . . and his more general knowledge of human nature.
YOU’RE LUCKY THE PEOPLE DON’T understand English or I’d have to shoot you right off. You’re the third one that’s strayed up here in the last eight years. Never mind what happened to the other two. Now quit that screaming. You’ll get your rifle back when we’re good and ready to give it to you. Yes, I know what you’ve been through. Will you please shut up and let me tell a story for a change? All right.
It was just another job when I first came down here. That was way back in nineteen fifty—You still keep dates? Well, the hell with it. Like I said, I took the train down from Nogales. After four days on the rápido I got off and hired a mule. One thing about the country, everybody’s polite and willing to give directions. Of course, they might not be the right directions . . .
After two bum steers I got on the right trail and fourteen hours later I was in Temazcal. Heard of it? Sure you have. Not the same place either. The word means hot springs in some Mexican Indian dialect. In the volcano belt they’ve got more temazcales than you can shake a stick at.
The saddle on that mule was a beautiful, silver-mounted job. It conjured up visions of the Cid raising hell with the Moors but after three hours I lost all feeling of historical significance.
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 4