There were thousands of everyday survival problems, but one of the most exasperating was the shortage of fresh water. Most of the available potable water had long since been impounded by progressive industries for the sake of a better tomorrow, and there was very little left to go around. Rainwater tanks on the roofs, of course. A black market, naturally. That was about all. So the jungle stank. It stank worse than the court of Queen Elizabeth, which could have bathed but didn't believe in it. The Corridor just couldn't bathe, wash clothes, or clean house, and you could smell its noxious effluvium from ten miles out at sea. Welcome to the Fun Corridor.
Sufferers near the shore would have been happy to clean up in salt water, but the Corridor beaches had been polluted by so much crude oil seepage for so many generations that they were all owned by deserving oil reclamation companies. Keep Out! No Trespassing! And armed guards. The rivers and lakes were electrically fenced; no need for guards, just skull-and-crossbones signs and if you didn't know what they were telling you, tough.
Not to believe that everybody minded stinking as they skipped merrily over the rotting corpses in the streets, but a lot did, and their only remedy was perfumery. There were dozens of competing companies producing perfumes, but leader, far and away, was the Continental Can Company, which hadn't manufactured cans in two centuries. They'd switched to plastics and had the good fortune about a hundred stockholders' meetings back to make the mistake of signing a sales contract with and delivering to some cockamamie perfume brewer an enormous quantity of glowing neon containers. The corporation went bust and CCC took it over in hopes of getting some of their money back. That takeover proved to be their salvation when the perfume explosion took place; it gave them entree to the most profitable industry of the times.
But it was neck-and-neck with the rivals until Blaise Skiaki joined CCC; then it turned into a runaway. Blaise Skiaki. Origins: French, Japanese, Black African and Irish. Education: B. A., Princeton; M. E., MIT; Ph. D. Dow Chemical. (It was Dow that had secretly tipped CCC that Skiaki was a winner, and lawsuits brought by the competition were still pending before the ethics board.) Blaise Skiaki: Age, thirty-one; unmarried, straight, genius.
His sense of scent was his genius, and he was privately referred to at CCC as "The Nose." He knew everything about perfumery: the animal products, ambergris, castor, civet, musk; the essential oils distilled from plants and flowers; the balsams extruded by tree and shrub wounds, benzoin, opopanax, Peru, Talu, storax, myrrh; the synthetics created from the combination of natural and chemical scents, the latter mostly the esters of fatty acids.
He had created for CCC their most successful sellers: "Vulva," "Assuage," "Oxter" (a much more attractive brand name than "Armpitto"), "Preparation F," "Tongue War," et cetera. He was treasured by CCC, paid a salary generous enough to enable him to live in an Oasis and, best of all, granted unlimited supplies of fresh water. No girl in the Corridor could resist the offer of taking a shower with him.
But he paid a high price for these advantages. He could never use scented soaps, shaving creams, pomades or depilatories. He could never eat seasoned foods. He could drink nothing but distilled water. All this, you understand, to keep The Nose pure and uncontaminated so that he could smell around in his sterile laboratory and devise new creations. He was presently composing a rather promising unguent provisionally named "Correctum," but he'd been on it for six months without any positive results and CCC was alarmed by the delay. His genius had never before taken so long.
There was a meeting of the top-level executives, names withheld on the grounds of corporate privilege.
"What's the matter with him anyway?"
"Has he lost his touch?"
"It hardly seems likely."
"Maybe he needs a rest."
"Why, he had a week's holiday last month."
"What did he do?"
"Ate up a storm, he told me."
"Could that be it?"
"No. He said he purged himself before he came back to work."
"Is he having trouble here at CCC? Difficulties with middle-management?"
"Absolutely not, Mr. Chairman. They wouldn't dare touch him."
"Maybe he wants a raise."
"No. He can't spend the money he makes now."
"Has our competition got to him?"
"They get to him all the time, general, and he laughs them off."
"Then it must be something personal."
"Agreed."
"Woman-trouble?"
"My God! We should have such trouble."
"Family-trouble?"
"He's an orphan, Mr. Chairman."
"Ambition? Incentive? Should we make him an officer of CCC?"
"I offered that to him the first of the year, sir, and he turned me down. He just wants to play in his laboratory."
"Then why isn't he playing?"
"Apparently he's got some kind of creative block."
"What the hell is the matter with him, anyway?"
"Which is how you started this meeting."
"I did not."
"You did."
"Not."
"Governor, will you play back the bug."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, please! Obviously Dr. Skiaki has personal problems which are blocking his genius. We must solve that for him. Suggestions?"
"Psychiatry?"
"That won't work without voluntary cooperation. I doubt whether he'd cooperate. He's an obstinate gook."
"Senator, I beg you! Such expressions must not be used with reference to one of our most valuable assets."
"Mr. Chairman, the problem is to discover the source of Dr. Skiaki's block."
"Agreed. Suggestions?"
"Why, the first step should be to maintain twenty-four hour surveillance. All of the gook's—excuse me—the good doctor's activities, associates, contacts."
"By CCC?"
"I would suggest not. There are bound to be leaks which would only antagonize the good gook—doctor!"
"Outside surveillance?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very good. Agreed. Meeting adjourned."
Skip-Tracer Associates were perfectly furious. After one month they threw the case back into CCC's lap, asking for nothing more than their expenses.
"Why in hell didn't you tell us that we were assigned to a pro, Mr. Chairman, sir? Our tracers aren't trained for that."
"Wait a minute, please. What d'you mean 'pro'?"
"A professional Rip."
"A what?"
"Rip. Gorill. Gimpster. Crook."
"Dr. Skiaki a crook? Preposterous."
"Look, Mr. Chairman, I'll frame it for you and you draw your own conclusions. Yes?"
"Go ahead."
"It's all detailed in this report anyway. We put double tails on Skiaki every day to and from your shop. When he left they followed him home. He always went home. They staked in double shifts. He had dinner sent in from the Organic Nursery every night. They checked the messengers bringing the dinners. Legit. They checked the dinners; sometimes for one, sometimes for two. They traced some of the girls who left his penthouse. All clean. So far, all clean, yes?"
"And?"
"The crunch. Couple of nights a week he leaves the house and goes into the city. He leaves around midnight and doesn't come back until four, more or less."
"Where does he go?"
"We don't know because he shakes his tails like the pro that he is. He weaves through the Corridor like a whore or a fag cruising for trade—excuse me—and he always loses our men. I'm not taking anything away from him. He's smart, shifty, quick, and a real pro. He has to be, and he's too much for Skip-Tracers to handle."
"Then you have no idea of what he does or who he meets between midnight and four?"
"No, sir. We've got nothing and you've got a problem. Not ours anymore."
"Thank you. Contrary to the popular impression, corporations are not altogether idiotic. CCC understands that negatives are also results. You'll receive your expenses and the agreed-upon
fee."
"Mr. Chairman, I-"
"No, no, please. You've narrowed it down to those missing four hours. Now, as you say, they're our problem."
CCC summoned Salem Burne. Mr. Burne always insisted that he was neither a physician nor a psychiatrist; he did not care to be associated with what he considered to be the dreck of the professions. Salem Burne was a witch doctor; more precisely, a warlock. He made the most remarkable and penetrating analyses of disturbed people, not so much through his coven rituals of pentagons, incantations, incense and the like as through his remarkable sensitivity to body English and his acute interpretation of it. And this might be witchcraft after all.
Mr. Burne entered Blaise Skiaki's immaculate laboratory with a winning smile, and Dr. Skiaki let out a rending howl of anguish.
"I told you to sterilize before you came."
"But I did, doctor. Faithfully."
"You did not. You reek of anise, ilang-ilang and methyl anthranilate. You've polluted my day. Why?"
"Dr. Skiaki, I assure you that I—" Suddenly Salem Burne stopped. "Oh, my God!" he groaned. "I used my wife's towel this morning."
Skiaki laughed and turned up the ventilators to full force. "I understand. No hard feelings. Now let's get your wife out of here. I have an office about half a mile down the hall. We can talk there."
They sat down in the vacant office and looked at each other. Mr. Burne saw a pleasant, youngish man with cropped black hair, small expressive ears, high telltale cheekbones, slitty eyes that would need careful watching, and graceful hands that would be a dead giveaway.
"Now, Mr. Burne, how can I help you?" Skiaki said while his hands asked, "Why the hell have you come pestering me?"
"Dr. Skiaki, I'm a colleague in a sense; I'm a professional witch doctor. One crucial part of my ceremonies is the burning of various forms of incense, but they're all rather conventional. I was hoping that your expertise might suggest something different with which I could experiment."
"I see. Interesting. You've been burning stacte, onycha, galbanum, frankincense . . . that sort of thing?"
"Yes. All quite conventional."
"Most interesting. I could, of course, make many suggestions for new experiments, and yet—" Here Skiaki stopped and stared into space.
After a long pause the warlock asked, "Is anything wrong, doctor?"
"Look here," Skiaki burst out. "You're on the track. It's the burning of incense that's conventional and old-fashioned, and trying different scents won't solve your problem. Why not experiment with an altogether different approach?"
"And what would that be?"
"The Odophone principle."
"Odophone?"
"Yes. There's a scale that exists among scents as among sounds. Sharp smells correspond to high notes and heavy smells with low notes. For example, ambergris is in the treble clef while violet is in the bass. I could draw up a scent scale for you, running perhaps two octaves. Then it would be up to you to compose the music."
"This is positively brilliant, Dr. Skiaki."
"Isn't it?" Skiaki beamed. "But in all honesty I should point out that we're collaborators in brilliance. I could never have come up with the idea if you hadn't presented me with a most original challenge."
They made contact on this friendly note and talked shop enthusiastically, lunched together, told each other about themselves and made plans for the witchcraft experiments in which Skiaki volunteered to participate despite the fact that he was no believer in diabolism.
"And yet the irony lies in the fact that he is indeed devil-ridden," Salem Burne reported.
The Chairman could make nothing of this.
"Psychiatry and diabolism use different terms for the same phenomenon," Burne explained. "So perhaps I'd better translate. Those missing four hours are fugues."
The Chairman was not enlightened. "Do you mean the musical expression, Mr. Burne?"
"No, sir. A fugue is also the psychiatric description of a more advanced form of somnambulism . . . sleepwalking."
"Blaise Skiaki walks in his sleep?"
"Yes, sir, but it's more complicated than that. The sleepwalker is a comparatively simple case. He is never in touch with his surroundings. You can speak to him, shout at him, address him by name, and he remains totally oblivious."
"And the fugue?"
"In the fugue, the subject is in touch with his surroundings. He can converse with you. He has awareness and memory for the events that take place within the fugue, but while he is within his fugue, he is a totally different person from the man he is in real life. And—and this is most important, sir—after the fugue he remembers nothing of it."
"Then in your opinion Dr. Skiaki has these fugues two three times a week."
"That is my diagnosis, sir."
"And he can tell us nothing of what transpires during the fugue?"
"Nothing."
"Can you?"
"I'm afraid not, sir. There's a limit to my powers."
"Have you any idea what is causing these fugues?"
"Only that he is driven by something. I would say that he is possessed by the devil, but that is the cant of my profession. Others may use different terms—compulsion or obsession. The terminology is unimportant. The basic fact is that something possessing him is compelling him to go out nights to do—what? I don't know. All I do know is that this diabolical drive most probably is what is blocking his creative work for you."
One does not summon Gretchen Nunn, not even if you're CCC whose common stock has split twenty-five times. You work your way up through the echelons of her staff until you are finally admitted to the Presence. This involves a good deal of backing and forthing between your staff and hers, and ignites a good deal of exasperation, so the Chairman was understandably put out when at last he was ushered into Miss Nunn's workshop, which was cluttered with the books and apparatus she used for her various investigations.
Gretchen Nunn's business was working miracles; not in the sense of the extraordinary, anomalous or abnormal brought about a superhuman agency, but rather in the sense of her extraordinary and/or abnormal perception and manipulation of reality. In any situation she could and did achieve the impossible begged by her desperate clients, and her fees were so enormous that she was thinking of going public.
Naturally the Chairman had anticipated Miss Nunn as looking like Merlin in drag. He was flabbergasted to discover that she was a Watusi princess with velvety black skin, aquiline features, great black eyes, tall, slender, twentyish, ravishing in red.
She dazzled him with a smile, indicated a chair, sat in one opposite and said, "My fee is one hundred thousand. Can you afford it?"
"I can. Agreed."
"And your difficulty—is it worth it?"
"It is."
"Then we understand each other so far. Yes, Alex?"
The young secretary who had bounced into the workshop said, "Excuse me. LeClerque insists on knowing how you made the positive identification of the mold as extraterrestrial."
Miss Nunn clicked her tongue impatiently. "He knows that I never give reasons. I only give results."
"Yes'N."
"Has he paid?"
"Yes'N."
"All right, I'll make an exception in his case. Tell him that it was based on the levo and dextro probability in amino acids and tell him to have a qualified exobiologist carry on from there. He won't regret the cost."
"Yes'N. Thank you."
She turned to the Chairman as the secretary left. "You heard that. I only give results."
"Agreed, Miss Nunn."
"Now your difficulty. I'm not committed yet. Understood?"
"Yes, Miss Nunn."
"Go ahead. Everything. Stream of consciousness, if necessary."
An hour later she dazzled him with another smile and said, "Thank you. This one is really unique. A welcome change. It's a contract, if you're still willing."
"Agreed, Miss Nunn. Would you like a deposit or an advance?"
"Not from CCC." br />
"What about expenses? Should that be arranged?"
"No. My responsibility."
"But what if you have to—if you're required to—if—"
She laughed. "My responsibility. I never give reasons and I never reveal methods. How can I charge for them? Now don't forget; I want that Skip-Trace report."
A week later Gretchen Nunn took the unusual step of visiting the Chairman in his office at CCC. "I'm calling on you, sir, to give you the opportunity of withdrawing from our contract."
"Withdraw? But why?"
"Because I believe you're involved in something far more serious than you anticipated."
"But what?"
"You won't take my word for it?"
"I must know."
Miss Nunn compressed her lips. After a moment she sighed. "Since this is an unusual case I'll have to break my rules. Look at this, sir." She unrolled a large map of a segment of the Corridor and flattened it on the Chairman's desk. There was a star in the center of the map. "Skiaki's residence," Miss Nunn said. There was a large circle scribed around the star. "The limits to which a man can walk in two hours," Miss Nunn said. The circle was crisscrossed by twisting trails all emanating from the star. "I got this from the Skip-Trace report. This is how their tails traced Skiaki."
"Very ingenious, but I see nothing serious in this, Miss Nunn."
"Look closely at the trails. What do you see?"
"Why . . . each ends in a red cross."
"And what happens to each trail before it reaches the red cross?
"Nothing. Nothing at all, except—except that the dots change to dashes."
"And that's what makes it serious."
"I don't understand, Miss Nunn."
"I'll explain. Each cross represents the scene of a murder. The dashes represent the backtracking of the actions and whereabouts of each murder victim just prior to death."
"Murder!"
"They could trace their actions just so far back and no further. Skip-Trace could tail Skiaki just so far forward and no further. Those are the dots. The dates join up. What's your conclusion?"