Alternating Currents

  ‘It wouldn’t be fair to destroy him for nothing!’

  I brushed aside the ‘fair’ business. ‘What do you mean, “for nothing”?’

  ‘We’re not going to win this referendum, you know.’

  ‘Honey, I’ve got news for you. This is the biggest account anybody ever had and I want it. We will win. What’ve you got on Connick?’

  ‘Nothing. Really nothing,’ she said quietly.

  ‘But you can get it.’

  Candace said, visibly upset, ‘Of course, there’s probably some—’

  ‘Of course. Get it. Today.’

  ~ * ~

  2

  But I wasn’t relying totally on anyone, not even Candace. Since Connick was the central figure of the opposition I caught a cab and went to see him.

  It was already dark, a cold, clear night, and over the mushroom towers of the business district a quarter-moon was beginning to rise. I looked at it almost with affection, I had hated it so when I was there.

  As I paid the cab two kids in snowsuits came sidling out to inspect me. I said, ‘Hello. Is your Daddy home?’

  One was about five, with freckles and bright blue eyes; the other was darker, brown-eyed, and he had a limp. The blue-eyed one said, ‘Daddy’s down in the cellar. Mommy will let you in if you ring the doorbell. Just push that button.’

  ‘Oh, that’s how those things work. Thanks.’ Connick’s wife turned out to be a good-looking, skinny blonde in her thirties; and the kids must have raced around the back way and alerted the old man, because as she was taking my coat he was already coming through the hall.

  I shook his hand and said, ‘I can tell by the smells from your kitchen that it’s dinner time. I won’t keep you. My name is Gunnarsen and—’

  ‘And you’re from Moultrie & Bigelow - here, sit down, Mr Gunnarsen - and you want to know if I won’t think it over and back the Arcturan base. No, Mr Gunnarsen, I won’t. But why don’t you have a drink with me before dinner? And then why don’t you have dinner?’

  He was a genuine article, this Connick. I had to admit he had caught me off balance.

  ‘Why, I don’t mind if I do,’ I said after a moment. ‘I see you know why I’m here.’

  He was pouring drinks. ‘Well, not altogether, Mr Gunnarsen. You don’t really think you’ll change my mind, do you?’

  ‘I can’t say that until I know why you oppose the base in the first place, Connick. That’s what I want to find out.’

  He handed me a drink, sat down across from me and took a thoughtful pull at his own. It was good Scotch. Then he looked to see if the kids were within earshot, and said: ‘The thing is this, Mr Gunnarsen. If I could, I would kill every Arcturan alive, and if it meant I had to accept the death of a few million Earthmen to do it, that wouldn’t be too high a price. I don’t want the base here because I don’t want anything to do with those murdering animals.’

  ‘Well, you’re candid,’ I said; finished my drink, and added, ‘If you meant that invitation to dinner, I believe I will take you up on it.’

  ~ * ~

  I must say they were a nice family. I’ve worked elections before: Connick was a good candidate because he was a good man. The way his kids behaved around him proved it; and the way he behaved around me was the clincher. I didn’t scare him a bit.

  Of course, that was not altogether bad, from my point of view.

  Connick kept the conversation off Topic A during dinner, which was all right with me, but as soon as it was over and we were alone he said, ‘All right. You can make your pitch now, Mr Gunnarsen. Although I don’t know why you’re here instead of with Tom Schlitz.’

  Schlitz was the man he was running against. I said, ‘You don’t know this business, I guess. What do we need him for? He’s already committed on our side.’

  ‘And I’m already committed against you, but I guess that’s what you’re hoping to change. Well, what’s your offer?’

  He was moving too fast for me. I pretended to misunderstand. ‘Really, Mr Connick, I wouldn’t insult you by offering a bribe—’

  ‘No, I know you wouldn’t. Because you’re smart enough to know I wouldn’t take money. So it isn’t money. What is it, then? Moultrie & Bigelow working for me instead of Schlitz in the election? That’s a pretty good offer, but the price is too high. I won’t pay it.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘as a matter of fact, we would be willing—’

  ‘Yes, I thought so. No deal. Anyway, do you really think I need help to get elected?’

  That was a good point, I was forced to admit. I conceded, ‘No, not if everything else was equal. You’re way ahead right now, as your surveys and ours both show. But everything else isn’t equal.’

  ‘By which you mean that you’re going to help old Slits-and-Fits. All right, that makes it a horse race.’

  I held up my glass and he refilled it. I said, ‘Mr Connick, I told you once you didn’t know this business. You don’t. It isn’t a horse race because you can’t win against us.’

  ‘I can sure give it the hell of a try, though. Anyway -’ he finished his own drink thoughtfully - ‘you brainwashers are a little bit fat, I think. Everybody knows how powerful you are, and you haven’t really had to show it much lately. I wonder if the emperor’s really running around naked.’

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Connick. Best dressed emperor you ever saw, take my word for it.’

  He said, frowning a little bit, ‘I think I’ll have to find out for myself. Anyway, frankly, I think people’s minds are made up and you can’t change them.’

  ‘We don’t have to,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know why people vote the way they do, Connick? They don’t vote their “minds”. They vote attitudes and they vote impulses. Frankly, I’d rather work on your side than against you. Schlitz would be easy to beat. He’s Jewish.’

  Connick said angrily, ‘There’s none of that in Belport, man.’

  ‘Of anti-semitism, you mean. Of course not. But if one candidate is Jewish, and if it turns up that fifteen years ago he tried to square a parking ticket - and there’s always something that turns up, Connick, believe me - then they’ll vote against him for fixing parking tickets. That’s what I mean by “attitudes”. Your voter - oh, not all of them; but enough to swing any election - goes into the booth pulled this way and that. We don’t have to change his mind. We just have to help him decide which part of it to operate on.’ I let him refill my glass, and took a pull at it. I was aware that I was beginning to feel the effects. ‘Take you, Connick,’ I said. ‘Suppose you’re a Democrat and you go in to cast your vote. We know how you’re going to vote for president, right? You’re going to vote for the Democratic candidate.’

  Connick said, not unbending much, ‘Not necessarily. But probably.’

  ~ * ~

  ‘Not necessarily, right. And why not necessarily? Because maybe you know this fellow who’s running on the Democratic ticket - or maybe somebody you know has a grudge against him, couldn’t get the postmaster’s job he wanted, or ran against his delegates for the convention. Point is, you have something against him just because your first instinct is for him. So how do you vote? Whichever way happens to get dominance at the moment of voting. Not at any other moment. Not as a matter of principle. But right then. No, we don’t have to change any minds ... because most people don’t have enough mind to change!’

  He stood up and absentmindedly filled his own glass - I wasn’t the only one who was beginning to feel the liquor. ‘I’d hate to be you,’ he said, half to himself.

  ‘Oh, it’s not bad.’

  He shook his head, then recollected himself and said, ‘Well, thanks for the lesson. I didn’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing you’ll never do. You’ll never get me to vote on the Arcturan side on any question.’

  I sneered, ‘There’s an open mind for you! Leader of the people! Takes an objective look at every question!’

  ‘All right, I’m not objective. They stink.’


  ‘Race prejudice, Connick?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a fool.’

  ‘There is,’ I said, ‘an Arcturan aroma. They can’t help it.’

  ‘I didn’t say “smell”. I said “stink”. I don’t want them in this town and neither does anybody else. Not even Schlitz.’

  ‘You don’t have to ever see them. They don’t like Earth climate, you know. Too hot for them. Too much air. Why, Connick,’ I said, ‘I’ll bet you a hundred bucks you won’t set eyes on an Arcturan for at least a year, not until the base is built and staffed. And then I doubt they’ll bother to— What’s the matter?’

  He was looking at me as though I were an idiot, and I almost began to think I was.

  ‘Why,’ he said, again in that tone that was more to himself than to me, ‘I guess I’ve been overrating you. You think you’re God, so I’ve been accepting your own valuation.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Inexcusably bad staff work, Mr Gunnarsen,’ he said, nodding judgematically. ‘It ought to make me feel good. But you know, it doesn’t. It scares me. With the kind of power you throw around, you should always be right.’

  ‘Spit it out!’

  ‘It’s just that you lose your bet. Didn’t you know there’s an Arcturan in town right now?’

  ~ * ~

  3

  When I got back to the car the phone was buzzing and the ‘Message Recorded’ light blinked at me. The message was from Candace:

  ‘Gunner, a Truce Team has checked into the Statler-Bills to supervise the election and get this. One of them’s an Arcturan!’

  The staff work wasn’t so bad, after all, just unpardonably slow. But there wasn’t much comfort in that.

  I called the hotel and was connected with one of the Truce Team staff - the best the hotel would do for me. The staff man was a colonel who said, ‘Yes, Mr Knafti is aware of your work here and specifically does not wish to see you. This is a Truce Team, Mr Gunnarsen. Do you know what that means, exactly?’

  And he hung up on me. Well, I did know what it meant -strictly hands-off, all the way - I simply hadn’t known that they would interpret it that rigidly.

  It was a kick in the eye, any way I looked at it. Because it made me look like a fool in front of Connick, when I kind of wanted him scared of me. Because Arcturans do, after all, stink - not good public relations at all, when your product smells like well-rotted garlic buds a few hundred feet away. I didn’t want the voters smelling them.

  And most of all because of the inference that I was sure any red-blooded, stubborn-minded, confused voter would draw. Jeez, Sam, you hear about that Arcturan coming to spy on us? Yeah, Charley, the damn bugs are practically accusing us of rigging the election. Damn right, Sam, and you know what else? They stink, Sam.

  Half an hour later I got a direct call from Haber. ‘Gunner, boy! Good God! Oh, this is the reeking end!’

  I said, ‘It sounds to me like you’ve found out about the Arcturan on the Truce Team.’

  ‘You know? And you didn’t tell me?’

  Well, I had been about to ream him for not telling me, but obviously that wasn’t going to do any good. I tried anyway, but he fell back on his fat ignorance. ‘They didn’t clue me in from Chicago. Can I help that? Be fair now, Gunner, boy!1’

  Gunner boy very fairly hung up.

  I was beginning to feel very sleepy. For a moment I debated taking a brisk-up pill, but the mild buzz Connick’s liquor had left with me was pleasant enough, and besides it was getting late. I went to the hotel Candace had reserved for me and crawled into bed.

  It only took me a few minutes to fall asleep, but I was faintly aware of an odour. It was the same hotel the Truce Team was staying at.

  I couldn’t really be smelling this Arcturan, Knafti. It was just my imagination. That’s what I told myself as I dialled for sleep and drifted off.

  ~ * ~

  The pillow-phone hummed and Candace’s voice said out of it, ‘Wake up and get decent, Gunner, I’m coming up.’

  I managed to sit up, shook my head and took a few whiffs of amphetamide. As always, it woke me right up, but at the usual price of feeling that I hadn’t had quite enough sleep. Still, I got into a robe and was in the bathroom fixing breakfast when she knocked on the door. ‘It’s open,’ I called. Want some coffee?’

  ‘Sure Gunner.’ She came and stood in the doorway, watching me turn the Hilsch squirt to full boil and fill two cups. I spooned dry coffee into them and turned the squirt to cold. ‘Orange juice?’ She took the coffee and shook her head, so I just mixed one glass, swallowed it down, tossed the glass in the disposal hamper and took the coffee into the other room. The bed had stripped itself already: it was now a couch, and I leaned back on it, drinking my coffee. ‘All right, honey,’ I said, ‘What’s the dirt on Connick?’

  She hesitated, then opened her bag and took out a photofax and handed it to me. It was a reproduction of an old steel-engraving headed, in antique script, The Army of the United States, and it said,

  Be it known to all men that

  DANIEL T. CONNICK

  ASIN Aj-32880515

  has this date been separated from the service of the United States for the convenience of the government; and

  Be it further known to all men that the conditions of his discharge are

  DISHONOURABLE

  ‘Well, what do you know,’ I said. *You see, honey? There’s always something.’

  Candace finished her coffee, set the cup down neatly on a windowsill and took out a cigarette. That was like her: she always did one thing at a time, an orderly sort of mind that I couldn’t match - and couldn’t stand, either. Undoubtedly she knew what I was thinking because undoubtedly she was thinking it too; but there wasn’t any nostalgia in her voice when she said: ‘You went and saw him last night, didn’t you? ... And you’re still going to knife him?’

  I said, ‘I’m going to see that he is defeated in the election, yes. That’s what they pay me for. Me and some others.’

  ‘No, Gunner,’ she said, ‘that’s not what M&B pay me for, if that’s what you mean, because there isn’t that much money.’

  I got up and went over beside her. ‘More coffee? No? Well, I guess I don’t want any either. Honey—’

  Candace stood up and crossed the room, sitting in a straight-backed chair. ‘You wake up all of a sudden, don’t you? Don’t change the subject. We were talking about—’

  ‘We were talking,’ I told her, ‘about a job that we’re paid to do. All right, you’ve done one part of it for me, you got me what I wanted on Connick.’

  I stopped, because she was shaking her head. ‘I’m not so sure I did.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Well, it’s not on the fax, but I know why he got his DD. “Desertion of hazardous duty.” On the Moon, in the UN Space Force. The year was 1998.’

  I nodded, because I understood what she was talking about. Connick wasn’t the only one. Half the Space Force had cracked up that year. November. A heavy Leonid strike of meteorites and a solar flare at the same time. The Space Force top brass had decided they had to crack down and asked the US Army to court-martial every soldier who cut and ran for an underground shelter, and the Army had felt obliged to comply. ‘But most of them got presidential clemency,’ I said. ‘He didn’t?’

  Candace shook her head. ‘He didn’t apply.’

  ‘Um. Well, it’s still on record.’ I dismissed the subject. ‘Something else. What about these Children ?’

  Candace put out her cigarette and stood up. ‘Why I’m here, Gunner. It was on your list. So - get dressed.’

  ‘For what?’

  She grinned. Tor my peace of mind, for one thing. Also for investigating the Children, like you say. I’ve made you an appointment at the hospital in fifty-five minutes.’

  ~ * ~

  You have to remember that I didn’t know anything about the Children except rumours. Bless Haber, he hadn’t though
t it necessary to explain. And Candace only said, ‘Wait till we get to the hospital. You’ll see for yourself.’

  Donnegan General was seven storeys of cream-coloured ceramic brick, air-controlled, wall-lighted throughout, tiny asepsis lamps sparkling blue where the ventilation ducts opened. Candace parked the car in an underground garage and led me to an elevator, then to a waiting room. She seemed to know her way around very well. She glanced at her watch, told me we were a couple of minutes early and pointed to a routing map that was mural with coloured lights showing visitors the way to whatever might be their destination. It also showed, quite impressively, the size and scope of Donnegan General. The hospital had twenty-two fully equipped operating rooms, a specimen and transplant bank, X-ray and radiochemical departments, a cryogenics room, the most complex prosthesis installation on Earth, a geriatrics section. OT rooms beyond number ...