The slime mold of course would be overhearing his thought. He hoped that it would carry it back to Hentman; he wanted Hentman to know.
As soon as the two CIA officials had left, the slime mold flowed under the locked door to his apt, materialized in the center of the old-fashioned wall-to-wall carpeting. It spoke accusingly, with a ring of righteous indignation. “Mr. Rittersdorf, I assure you; I had no contact with Mr. Hentman; I never saw him before that night recently when he came here to obtain your signature on a job contract.”
“You rascals,” Chuck said as he fixed himself coffee in the kitchen. The time was now past four o’clock; however thanks to the illegal stimulants which Lord Running Clam had provided him he felt no fatigue. “Always listening in,” he said. “Don’t you have a life of your own?”
The slime mold said, “I agree with you on one point; Mr. Hentman, in preparing that script, must have known your intentions toward your wife—otherwise the coincidence is just too great to be acceptable. Perhaps someone, Mr. Rittersdorf, is a telepath, someone in addition to me.”
Chuck glanced at him.
“It could be a fellow employee at CIA,” the slime mold said. “Or it could be taking place while you are in the Mageboom simulacrum on Alpha III M2; one of the psychotic settlers there might be a telepath. I conceive it to be my job from now on to assist you to every extent possible, in order to palpably demonstrate my good faith; I am desperately anxious to clear my good name in your eyes. I’ll do all I can to find this telepath who has gone to Hentman, thus—”
“Could it be Joan Trieste?” Chuck interrupted suddenly.
“No. I’m familiar with her mind; it has no such powers. She is a Psi, as you know, but her talent deals with time.” The slime mold pondered. “Unless—you know, Mr. Rittersdorf, there is another way by which your intentions could be known. That would be the Psionic power of precognition… assuming that one day, eventually, your scheme becomes public. A precog, looking ahead, might see this, possess this knowledge now. That is an idea we must not overlook. At least it proves that the telepathic factor is not the sole item which would account for Hentman’s knowledge of what you intend to do vis-á-vis your wife.”
He had to admit that there was merit in the slime mold’s logic.
“In fact,” the slime mold said, pulsing visibly with agitation, “it could be the involuntary functioning of a precog talent—by someone close to you who does not even know he possesses it. Someone, for example, in the Hentman organization. Even Mr. Hentman himself.”
“Hmm,” Chuck said absently, as he filled his cup with hot coffee.
“Your future life-track,” the slime mold said, “is filled with the spectacular violence of your murder of the woman you fear and hate. This enormous spectacle may have activated the latent precog talent of Mr. Hentman and without knowing what he was drawing from he had the ‘inspiration’ for this script idea… often, Psionic talents function in this very way. The more I think of it the more I am convinced that this is precisely what occurred. Hence, I would say that your CIA people’s theory is valueless; Hentman and his Alphane colleague do not mean to confront you with any so-called ‘evidence’ of your intentions… they are simply doing as they say: attempting to concoct a workable TV script.”
“What about the CIA’s contention that the Alphanes are interested in acquiring Alpha III M2?” Chuck said.
“Possibly that portion is so,” the slime mold conceded. “It would be typical of the Alphanes not to give up, to keep hoping… after all, the moon is in their system. But frankly—may I so speak?—your CIA people’s theory strikes me as a miserable bundle of random suspicions, a few spearate facts strung together by an intricate structure of ad hoc theorizing, in which everyone is credited with enormous powers for intrigue. A much simpler view can be entertained with more common sense, and as a CIA employee you must be aware that, like all intelligence agencies, it lacks the faculty of common sense.”
Chuck shrugged.
“In fact,” the slime mold said, “if I may say so, your colorful desire for vengeance on your wife is in part derived from your years of hanging around intelligence-apparatus personnel.”
“You will admit one thing, though,” Chuck said. “It’s colossal bad luck for me that Hentman and his writers have hit upon that particular idea for their TV script.”
“Bad luck, but rather amusing in that you personally will soon be sitting down to do the dialogue for this script.” The slime mold chuckled. “Perhaps you can infuse it with authenticity. Hentman will be delighted with your insight into Ziggy Trots’ motivations.”
“How did you know the character is to be named Ziggy Trots?” At once he was again suspicious.
“It’s in your mind.”
“Then it must also be in my mind that I’d like you to leave so I can be alone.” He did not feel sleepy, however; he felt like sitting down and starting on the TV script.
“By all means.” The slime mold flowed off and presently Chuck was alone in the apt. The only sound arose from the meager traffic in the street below. He stood at the window drinking his cup of coffee for a little while and then he seated himself at his typewriter and pressed the button which raised a sheet of blank paper into position.
Ziggy Trots, he thought with aversion. Christ, what a name. What kind of person does it suggest? An idiot, like one of the Three Stooges. Someone defective enough, he thought acidly, to dwell on the concept of murdering his wife.…
He began, with professional canniness, to conjure up the initial scene. It, of course, would be Ziggy at home, trying peacefully to do some harmless task. Perhaps Ziggy was reading the evening homeopape. And, like some Harpy, his wife would be there, giving him the business. Yes, Chuck thought, I can supply verisimilitude to this scene; I can draw on years of experience. He began to type.
For several hours he wrote, marveling at the efficiency of the illegal hexo-amphetamine stimulants; he felt no fatigue—in fact, he worked more swiftly than had been his custom in times past. At seven-thirty, with the street outside touched by the long, golden rays of the morning sun, he rose stiffly, walked into the kitchen and began to prepare himself breakfast. Now for my other job, he said to himself. At eight-thirty, off to the CIA building in San Francisco. And Daniel Mageboom.
Piece of toast in hand he stood by the typewriter, glancing over the pages which he had written. They looked good—and dialogue to be spoken had been his trade for years. Now to air-express them to Hentman in New York; they would be in the comic’s hands within an hour.
At twenty minutes after eight, as he was shaving in the bathroom, he heard the vidphone ring. His first call since having it installed.
Going to it he switched it on. “Hello.”
On the tiny screen a girl’s face formed, stunningly beautiful Irish features; he blinked. “Mr. Rittersdorf? I’m Patricia Weaver; I just learned that Bunny Hentman wants me for a script you’re doing. I wondered if I could see a copy; I’m dying to look it over. For simply years I’ve prayed for a chance to be on Bunny’s program; I just admire it to hell and back.”
Naturally he had a Thermofax copying machine; he could run off any number of duplicates of the script. “I’ll send you what I have. But it’s not done and Bunny hasn’t seen it to okay it; I don’t know how much he’ll want to keep. Maybe none.”
“From the way Bunny talked about you,” Patricia Weaver said, “I’m sure he’ll use all of it. Could you do that? I’ll give you my address. Actually I’m not far from you at all; you’re up in Northern California and I’m down in L.A., in Santa Monica. We could get together; would you like that? And you could listen to me read my part of the script.”
Her part. Good grief, he realized; he hadn’t written any dialogue that included her, the slinky, breast-heavy, nipple-dilated female intelligence agent—he had only done scenes between Ziggy Trots and his shrewish wife.
There was only one solution. To take a half-day leave of absence from his CIA job, sit here in the con
apt and write more dialogue.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll bring a copy down to you. Give me until this evening.” He found a pen and paper. “Let’s have your address.” The hell with the Mageboom simulacrum, in view of this; he had never witnessed such an attractive girl in his life. All at once everything else had become mediocre, hurled back into proper perspective.
He got the girl’s address, shakily hung up the vidphone, then at once packaged up the pages of the script for Bunny Hentman. On his way to San Francisco he put the envelope in the rocket express mail and that was that. While he worked at his CIA job he probably could dream up dialogue for Miss Weaver; by dinner time he would be ready to get it down on paper and by eight o’clock he would have the actual pages to show her. Things, he decided, are not going so badly after all. Certainly this is a vast improvement over my nightmarish life with Mary.
He reached the CIA building on Sansome Street in San Francisco and started to enter by the wide, familiar gate.
“Rittersdorf,” a voice said. “Please come into my office.” It was Roger London, large and grimly sullen, eyeing him with displeasure.
More talk? Chuck asked himself as he followed London to his office.
“Mr. Rittersdorf,” London said, as soon as the door had shut, “we bugged your conapt last night; we know what you did after we left.”
“What did I do?” For the life of him he could not remember having done anything that would arouse the CIA… unless in his conversation with the slime mold he had said too much. The Ganymedean’s thoughts, of course, would be imperceptible to the monitoring device. All that he could remember having uttered himself was some remark that it was a colossal piece of bad luck that the TV script idea which Hentman wanted written had to do with a man murdering his wife by means of a CIA sim. And surely that—
London said, “You were up the balance of the night. Working. That would be impossible unless you had access to drugs currently banned on Terra. Therefore you have non-T contacts which are supplying you with the drugs, and in view of this—” He studied Chuck. “You’re temporarily suspended from your job. As a security risk.”
Stunned, Chuck said, “But to hold both my jobs—”
“Any CIA employee foolish enough to make use of illegal non-T stimulant drugs can’t possibly be capable of fulfilling his task here,” London said. “As of today the Mageboom simulacrum will be operated by a team consisting of Pete Petri and a man you don’t know, Tom Schneider.” London’s coarse features twisted into a mocking smile. “You still have your other job… or do you?”
“What do you mean, or do I?” Of course he still had his job with Hentman; they had signed a contract.
London said, “If CIA’s theory is correct Hentman will have no use for you the moment he learns that you’ve been denied access to the Mageboom simulacrum. So I would say that in roughly twelve hours—” London examined his wristwatch. “That, say, by nine tonight you’ll discover the unpleasant fact that you have no employment at all. And then, I think, you’ll be a trifle more cooperative with us; you’ll be glad to revert to your former status of holding one job here, period.” London opened his office door, ushering Chuck out. “By the way,” he continued, “would you care to name your source of supply of your drugs?”
“I deny taking any illegal drugs,” Chuck said, but even in his own ears it did not sound convincing, London had him and they both knew it.
“Why not simply coöperate with us?” London inquired. “Give up your job with Hentman, name your supplier—you could have access to the Mageboom simulacrum in fifteen minutes; I can personally arrange it. What reason do you have for—”
“The money,” Chuck said. “I need the money from both jobs.” And I’m being blackmailed, he said to himself. By Lord Running Clam. But he couldn’t say that, not to London.
“Okay,” London said. “You may go. Get in touch with us when you’ve seen your way clear to drop your job with Hentman; perhaps we can settle on just that one stipulation.” He held the office door open for Chuck.
Dazed, Chuck found himself on the wide front stairs of the CIA building. It seemed incredible and yet it had happened; he had lost his job of many years, and on what seemed to him a pretext. Now he had no way to reach Mary. The hell with the loss of salary; his income from the Hentman organization more than made that up. But without the use of the Mageboom simulacrum he could not expect to carry out his plan—which he had obviously delayed too long anyhow—and in the vacuum left by the disappearance of this anticipation he felt a powerful sinking emptiness inside him; his entire raison d’être had, all at once, evaporated.
He started numbly back up the stairs once more, toward the main gate of the CIA building. A uniformed guard at once materialized out of nowhere and blocked his way. “Mr. Rittersdorf, I’m sorry; I regret. But I’ve been given orders, you see, not to admit you.”
Chuck said, “I want to see Mr. London again. For a minute.”
Using his portable intercom the guard put through a call. “All right, Mr. Rittersdorf; you may proceed to Mr. London’s office.” He then stepped aside and the turnstile flew automatically open for Chuck.
A moment later he once more faced London in the man’s large wood-paneled office. “You’ve reached a decision, have you?” London asked.
“I have a point to make. If Hentman doesn’t fire me, wouldn’t that be de facto proof that your suspicions of him were incorrect?” He waited while London scowled… scowled but did not answer. “If Hentman does not fire me,” Chuck said, “I’m going to appeal your decision to bar me from my job; I’m going before the Civil Service Commission and show that—”
“You’re barred from your job,” London said smoothly, “because of your use of illegal drugs. To be blunt, we’ve already searched your conapt and found them. It’s GB-40 that you’re on, isn’t it? You can maintain a twenty-four hour a day work schedule indefinitely on GB-40; congratulations. However, now that you no longer have your position here with us, being able to work around the clock hardly seems a benefit. So lots of luck.” He walked off, seated himself at his desk and picked up a document; the interview was at an end.
“But you’ll know you were wrong,” Chuck said, “when Hentman doesn’t fire me. All I ask is that you rethink the situation, once that’s occurred. Good-by.” He left the office, closing the door noisily behind him. Good-by for lord knows how long, he said to himself.
Once more outdoors on the early-morning sidewalk, he stood uncertainly, buffeted by the hordes of people pushing by. Now what? he asked himself. His life, for the second time in a month, had been inverted: first the shock of the separation from Mary, now this. Too much, he said to himself, and wondered if there was anything left.
The Hentman job was left. And only the Hentman job.
By autonomic cab he returned to his conapt and quickly—in fact, desperately—seated himself at his typewriter. Now, he said to himself, to do dialogue for Miss Weaver; he forgot everything else, narrowing his world to the dimensions of the typewriter with its sheet of paper. I’ll give you a damn good part, he reflected. And—maybe I’ll get something back in exchange.
He began to work. And, by three that afternoon, he had finished; he rose creakily, stretched and felt the weariness of his body. But his mind was lucid. So they bugged my apt, he said to himself. With both audio and video aids. Aloud, for the benefit of the tap, he said, “Those bastards at the office—spying on me. Pathological. Frankly it’s a relief to be out of that atmosphere of suspicion and—” He ceased; what was the use? He went into the kitchen and fixed lunch.
At four, dressed in his best Titanian rouzleweave blue and black suit, powdered, shaved and dabbed with such masculine scents as only the modern chemistry lab could produce, he set off on foot, seeking a jet cab, the manuscript under his arm; he was on his way to Santa Monica and Patty Weaver’s conapt, to— heaven only knew. But he had great hopes.
If this fell through, then what?
A g
ood question, and one he hoped he would not have to answer. He had lost too much already; the structure of his world had undergone an insidious process of truncation, by the loss of his wife and his traditional job, both in such a short period; he felt bewilderment within his percept-system. It expected to see Mary at night and the San Francisco CIA office by day; now it encountered neither. Something would have to occupy his void. His senses craved it.
He flagged down a jet cab and gave it the Santa Monica address of Patty Weaver; then, sitting back against the seat, he got out the pages of dialogue and began going over them for last-minute small alterations.
An hour later, slightly after five o’clock, the cab began to descend to the roof field of Patty Weaver’s remarkably handsome, large and stylish new conapt building. This is the big time, Chuck said to himself. Hobnobbing with a breast-heavy TV starlet… what more could he ask?
The cab landed. A little unsteadily, Chuck got out the fare.
NINE
As if a benign harbinger, Patricia Weaver was at home; she opened the door of her conapt and said, “Oh goodness, so you’re the man with the my script. How early you are; you said on the vidphone—”
“I got finished earlier than I had expected.” Chuck entered her apt, glancing at the excessively modern furniture; it was neo-pre-Columbian in style, based on recent archeological discoveries of the Incan culture in South America. All the furniture of course was hand wrought. And on the walls hung the new animated action-paintings that never ceased moving; they consisted of two-dimensional machines that clattered away softly, like the rush of a distant ocean. Or, he thought more practically, like a subsurface autofac. He was not certain he liked them.
“You’ve got it with you,” Miss Weaver said delightedly. She wore—and this seemed odd for so early in the evening—a high-fashion Paris dress, the like of which he had witnessed in magazines but never before in actual life. This was a long way from his desk at CIA. The dress was lavish and complex, like the petals of a non-T flower; it must have cost a thousand skins, Chuck decided. This was a dress in which to get a job; her right breast, firm and uptilted, was totally exposed; it was a very fashionable dress indeed. Had she been expecting someone else? Bunny Hentman, for example?