Mission Earth Volume 2: Black Genesis

  Heller paid him. They put the weird loot in sacks and Heller was on his way. And I, personally, thought he was as crazy as the clerk did. Obsolete cameras, broken fishing reels, tangled line. Idiocy.

  Trotting along, Heller saw a sporting goods store. He right-angled in. He pointed at the window. A young, wild-haired clerk dived in and brought out a pair of baseball shoes.

  Heller looked at them. They were black; they laced to the ankle; they had a long tongue that folded back over the laces. He turned them over. They had no heels, but they had two circles of cleats, one set under the ball of the foot, one set under the heel. The steel cleats were long, about a half an inch high, and the plates which held them were solidly fixed in the leather sole.

  “Let you have them cheap,” said the clerk. “We got a ton of them. The coach over at Jackson High ordered full uniforms for the baseball team; first, he said they came in too big and wouldn’t take them. Then, he ran off with the English teacher and the athletic fund.”

  “Baseball?” said Heller.

  The clerk pointed to a pile of baseballs before he caught himself. “Quit it, kid.”

  Heller had evidently gotten smart. He said, “Do you have them for sale?”

  The clerk just looked at him. Heller walked over to the display of baseballs. They were a trifle bigger and they were a little harder than a bullet ball.

  There was an archery target standing up at the back of the store. Heller said, “Do you mind?”

  He hefted the baseball. He flexed his wrist and then he threw the baseball at the archery target! I could hear the sizzle of the ball going through the air. It hit the bull’s-eye! It plowed right on through, broke the back stand and went splat against the wall.

  “Jesus!” said the clerk. “A pitcher! A real pitcher!”

  Heller went over and recovered the ball. The hide had come off. He pulled curiously at the insides. “Well,” he said to himself, “not so good, but it will have to do.”

  “Jesus,” said the clerk. “You’re a natural! Look, do you mind if I sort of put that target away and when the New York Yankees sign you, I can maybe put it on display?”

  Heller was looking for a bag. He found one you could carry over your shoulder. He was counting baseballs into it. The clerk was trying to pump him as to what college team he was on and what were his plans on going Big League and apologizing because Heller looked so young nobody would think he was a veteran. Heller wasn’t giving him much encouragement. He was shopping around the shelves. He found a book, The Fine Art of Baseball for Beginners, and mystified the clerk by putting it on the purchases pile. Then he added another book, The Fine Art of Angling for Beginners. Was he going fishing?

  But the clerk was busy now. “Look, we got full uniforms. And let’s see what shoe size you take. Look, can we kind of put out we outfitted you?”

  I thought, that’s all we need. Local publicity this very morning!

  Heller had to turn down a lot more than he bought: three pairs of shoes, six white, long-sleeved undershirts, twelve pairs of baseball socks with red-striped tops, two white exercise suits, a dozen support underpants, two unlettered uniforms that were white with red stripes, a red anorak with captain’s stripes, a black belt and a red batting helmet.

  And then Heller saw the caps. They were red baseball caps, not as nice or as stylish as his habitual racing cap, but similar. The bill was longer: it would never crush properly under a racing helmet to act as padding. But Heller was enraptured. He made a sort of cooing sound. He pushed the pile around until he found one his size and put it on. He went over to the mirror.

  I flinched. From the neck up, there was Jettero Heller, spaceracing champion of the Academy! It had been easy to forget his amused blue eyes, his flowing blond hair and that go-to-Hells-who-cares smile! It was like being shot suddenly back to Voltar! But even then I’d missed it.

  “What did you say the initials stood for?” he said.

  “Jackson High,” said the clerk.

  I had been slow, possibly because of the intricate intertwine of the white team letters on the cap. JH! THAT was why he was grinning!

  “I’ll take half a dozen,” said Heller, laughing now.

  Heller ceremoniously made the clerk a present of the purple shirt and the orange suede shoes and the Panama hat.

  They packed the gear up in a sports carryall. Heller paid him three hundred dollars and took the card.

  Heller was going out the door when the clerk yelled, “Hey! You forgot to tell me your name!”

  “You’ll hear,” Heller yelled back and was gone.

  Ah, well, there was hope. If he’d given the name he was supposed to use, that (bleeped) clerk would have been all over town with a megaphone. I was thankful Heller was modest. He certainly wasn’t smart. He was trotting up the street now in a scarlet baseball cap with his own initials on it and wearing a long-sleeved baseball undershirt. He had retained the blue-striped pants and red-checked jacket. He stood out like a beacon! And worse than that, the spikes he was wearing were clickety-clacking on the pavement even louder than his old-time hull shoes!

  It was Lombar’s fault, really: he had ordered that Heller not be trained in espionage; any self-respecting spy would know you must remain unnoticeable. A trained agent would have looked at the population around him and dressed like that. He sure did not resemble anyone else in that quiet southern town! Looking at him now, to paraphrase the clerk: Jesus!

  Heller glanced at his watch. It was getting on toward nine. But he had another stop. It was a candy store!

  I groaned. I was dealing with an idiot, not a special agent. Special agents don’t eat candy! They smoke cigarettes!

  Some little twelve-year-old kids were in there haggling with the clerk over the price of gumdrops which seemed to have gone up. Two of them were wearing baseball caps, the way little kids do in America. And I realized that Heller, now wearing one, would mind-associate in people that he was even younger!

  Heller went down the counter, apparently looking for one particular type of candy. He found it: it was individually wrapped in transparent paper; it was red and white in a spiral, just like it’s advertised in magazines sometimes.

  The kids bought their dime’s worth and Heller promptly overwhelmed the aged lady clerk by purchasing ten pounds of candy! Not only did he buy the white and red kind, but also other kinds, and he wanted them all mixed up which brought about the problem of putting them in different bags, all mixed up, and then there not being a big enough bag to contain all the other bags. He sure ruined the day for the old lady clerk.

  Laden, Heller got back on the street. There was a cop car parked at the corner. Now any trained agent would have gone the other way. But not Heller. He trotted right past the cop car!

  I saw, in peripheral vision, the cops look at him.

  It was time to go back and fortify myself with cold sira. And take time off for a small prayer. If they had special Hells for Apparatus case handlers, the one they would send me to would specialize in forcing totally untrained agents on me! Neither the sira nor the prayer helped!

  If anything happened to Heller before I got that platen, I was done for!

  PART FIFTEEN

  Chapter 1

  In the room, Mary Schmeck was still restlessly asleep. Heller threw his loot down on his bed. He lifted his two suitcases up on a long bureau, side by side, and unfastened the straps.

  I was going to get a look at their contents! Maybe the platen was right on top!

  Foolish hope. There were no rocks but there sure was a wild medley of little tubes and boxes and coils of wire. What a junk heap!

  Heller got out a small tool case and two small vials. He picked up the two obsolete Nikon cameras and put them on a table. He inspected the edge of a label, then put some drops under the edge and the gold and black “NIKON” lifted right off! He did the other one.

  Then he took two small cases from the grips and opened them. The time-sights! Both of them! Indeed, the tug was planet bound! I
knew the Apparatus could never pry another one out of the Fleet!

  From the second vial he took a bit of what must be glue and put it on the label backs and in a moment, glaring on the side of each time-sight was “NIKON.”

  They looked now like two Super 8 motion-picture cameras!

  He put them back in their small cases and back into the grip. He threw in the two obsolete ones as well.

  Then he got out the candy he had made on the ship. The wrappers were a bit different but not remarkably so. He had what must be three pounds of it! He mixed it into the other candy sacks and then started packing the bags all through the other grip. Very unneatly, too.

  Then he packed the broken fishing rods and reels hit-or-miss through everything. He added the tangles of line in snarls and coils in and over the other contents. Then he took the bass plugs and the weights and began to jam them in anywhere and everywhere.

  What a MESS!

  And I thought Fleet guys were always so neat!

  He had to let the suitcase straps out to accommodate all the extra. He neated up the athletic carryall and he was ready.

  He had picked up a sweet roll, a container of milk and another of coffee while I was in my other room praying. He gently tried to wake up Mary Schmeck. She fought him off, trying to go back to sleep. I could see her pupils were contracted. She wanted nothing to do with the roll or the milk or coffee.

  “We’ve got to leave,” said Heller.

  This got to her. “Washington,” she said.

  “Yes, we’ll be going through Washington, DC,” Heller replied.

  She muttered, “There’s sure to be some junk in Washington. There always is. It’s full of it. Get me there, for Christ’s sakes.” She tried to get up. Then she screamed, “Oh, my God! My legs!” They were drawing up in knots. She fell back whimpering.

  He picked up all the luggage, went out and put it in the back seat. Then he returned and carried Mary Schmeck out and put her in the front seat. He laid her shoes on the floorboards. He put the milk, coffee and the roll in the drink tray.

  He had the key in his hand and didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t realize you just left it in the door and slipped away. There was a cleaning woman, an old black woman, coming out of the room next door.

  Oh, my Gods! He walked up to her and handed her the key! Drawing attention to himself. You NEVER do that! And then he compounded the felony. He said, “You know what road to take to Washington?”

  She had not only seen him now, she knew where he was going! And the first thing police do when they’re searching for a criminal is check the motels! She said, “You jus’ follah Yew S. 29. Charlottesville, Culpeper, Arlington and cross the Potomac and there you is. Mah sister, she lives in Washington and I don’t know what the hell I’m doin’ down heah in Virginia wheah we is still slaves!” I thought to myself, I doubt she’d dare say that to an adult Virginian. Slavery has its points! I almost drifted off thinking about Utanc and then something else happened that recalled me firmly and nervously to duty.

  Heller backed out the car, leaned out the window and said, “Thank you, miss, foh a very nahce stay.” And the woman smiled, stood there leaning on the broom and in a moment I could see, in the rearview mirror, that she was staring after the car. And more. I saw the newspaper which hid the license plate blowing off in the car’s wake. For sure she would remember that car. (Bleep) Heller!

  No, no, I mustn’t (bleep) him! I must pray he would get through!

  He had no trouble whatever in finding US 29 to Charlottesville. He tooled along the four-lane through the lovely Virginia morning, admiring the view. The Cadillac was purring, surprisingly smooth, especially on this smooth road.

  It was promising to be a very hot August day and he began to fool with the air conditioning. He set it at seventy-three degrees on the dial, got it functioning on automatic and after a bit, when apparently the hot air had blown out of the car, closed the windows. It was amazingly quiet!

  A white board fence fled by. A big sign:

  JACKSON HORSE RANCH

  Beyond it were some animals in the field, leaping and prancing about. Apparently he added something up. He laughed. “So those are horses!” Then for some idiotic reason, he patted the Cadillac panel ledge. He said, “Never mind, you chemical-engine Cadillac Brougham Coupe d’Elegance. I like you even if you don’t have any of those things under your hood.”

  I will never understand Fleet guys. Compared to a Voltar airbus, an Earth vehicle is a farce. And he knew it! Then I had it. Toys. Anything was a toy to Fleet officers, from landing craft to battleships to planets. They just have no respect for force! No. Then I really had it: fetish worship.

  He found he could drive with one knee and leaned back, arms spread out along the top of the seat. It made me nervous until I realized I was 105 degrees of longitude away.

  But another shock was in store. He glanced at the speedometer and it was doing SIXTY-FIVE! The speed limit is fifty-five and all those roads have signs that say they are radar patrolled!

  I saw he was not driving by the speedometer: he was running with the traffic—some big trucks and passenger cars—and by and large was doing sixty-five. But cops love to pick one car out of such a clump and arrest it. I went and got some more sira.

  He got through Charlottesville all right. And then Mary Schmeck, who had been in a twitchy, comatose state, woke up.

  “Oh, I feel awful!” she moaned. “My legs are killing me! I ache in every joint!” She was thrashing about, obviously in a bad state. “How far are we from Washington?”

  “We’re almost to Culpeper,” he said.

  “Oh,” she moaned. “It’s still a long way yet!”

  “Only about an hour,” said Heller.

  “Jesus, I hurt! Turn on some music. Maybe it will redirect my focus intensity.”

  Heller fiddled with the radio and finally got some jazz. A song came on:

  As I passed by the St. James Infirmary,

  I saw my sweetheart there.

  Stretched out on a long white table,

  So pale, so cold, so bare.

  Mary moaned, “Oh, my legs!”

  Went up to see the doctor.

  “She’s very low,” he said.

  Went back to see my woman.

  Good God, she’s lying there dead!

  SHE’S DEAD!

  “Oh, my God,” said Mary.

  Sixteen coal-black horses,

  All hitched to a rubber-tired hack,

  Carried seven girls to the graveyard.

  Only six of them comin’ back!

  “Turn that off!” Mary shrieked.

  Heller turned it off. I was very sorry he did so. It was the first pleasant thing I had heard for days!

  Mary was covered with goose pimples. “I’m freezing!” she cried out, writhing.

  Heller quickly turned the thermostat up to eighty.

  Long before it could have warmed up, Mary said, “I’m roasting hot!”

  Heller turned the thermostat down again.

  She kept it up, thrashing about. It was obvious to me what was wrong with her. She was in the third stage of withdrawal symptoms. People sure do complain about them.

  “I can’t get my breath,” she was panting now. Well, that’s normal, too, for somebody who has a bad heart. But still, respiratory failure is the usual cause of death in morphine addiction and it would be no different for its derivative, heroin. The lung muscles cease to function. And in her case, since she’d been complaining of a bad heart, I wondered idly whether she would die in the car or in the next motel.

  Then it was I who almost had respiratory failure. What if Heller had a dead prostitute dope addict on his hands! With his assumed name!

  Oh, Gods! He’d be front page in every tabloid dirt sheet in America! And what Rockecenter would do was awful!

  I couldn’t count on Heller to do the right thing. In espionage, he simply would have known enough to haul up out of sight and dump her in a ditch and leave her quick. B
ut no, here he was, doing the wrong things as usual! He was trying to help her!

  They were through Culpeper. Suddenly, the girl said, “You got to find a toilet! Look, that service station ahead! Stop there! Quick!”

  Fourth stage. The diarrhea had hit her!

  Heller zoomed into an unfrequented service station and Mary was out of the car like a shot, racing to the women’s room. I prayed they wouldn’t stay there long, exposed to view from traffic.

  Heller told the gawky country boy attendant to “fill up the chemical repository” and the lonely boy made out that Heller meant gas. The usually idle boy then figured out for himself that Heller’s early education had been neglected.

  With careful instruction, Heller got taught to service the car: steering fluid, brake fluid, transmission fluid, correct radiator coolant, windshield wiper water with Windex in it, oil and the right and wrong kinds of oil, gas and the right and wrong kinds of gas. Apparently nobody in his whole life had ever listened to this country boy before and he really went flat out to educate a “younger Virginia kid,” even though he seemed disappointed to find that Heller hadn’t stolen the car.

  The kid exhausted the subject of tires and then got bright. He said the car needed a grease job and the differential checked. He said it would only take a short while to grease it up. And onto the rack he drove it and up into the air the car went. Sure enough, the differential was half empty. And sure enough it needed grease and the airhose and greasegun pumped away. Heller marked where all the fittings were. And then he got worried about the girl and went to find her.

  Mary was crumpled up on a toilet seat, passed out. Somehow, Heller roused her and got her to straighten herself up.

  Then voices outside. Heller peeked through a window.

  A cop car! Virginia State Police!

  I turned up the gain. The cop was saying, “. . . man and a woman. They went up this road someplace last night.”

  “What kind of a car?” said the gawky country boy.

  The officer consulted his sheet. “Cadillac. Same color as that one you got on the rack.”

  I went white. There went Heller and no platen!