Mission Earth Volume 2: Black Genesis

  They couldn’t find anything by somebody named “Isaac Newton” and the girl decided he must be some revolutionary banned by the New York Tactical Police Force. But Heller persevered and they eventually came up with a book, Laws of Motion I Have Rewritten and Adapted from a Text by Dr. Still as Translated from an Archaic English Newtonian Work by Elbert Mouldy by Professor M. S. Pronounce, Doctor of Literature.

  “You should have told me it would be in the literature section,” said the girl. “You don’t even know how to read a card catalog.”

  “I’ll try to find out,” said Heller.

  “Jesus,” said the girl, “they teach card catalogs in the third grade! God, didn’t anybody ever teach you anything? There’s a staff at High Library devoted to showing students how to do it. You ask them over there. I’m here to sell books, not teach kindergarten! But let’s get on, this is an awfully long list! You’re keeping others waiting!”

  They did make progress, however, and the pile of books grew and grew. Finally the girl, peering between the columns of books and lifting her glasses to see Heller, said, “You can’t carry all these. And I’m not going to wrap them. So you go over to the college store and get about five rucksacks while I get an assistant to add up this bill.”

  Heller did as he was told.

  When he returned, he packed the five rucksacks and paid the bill. Then he began to adjust straps and finally managed to get the sacks hung around him. Other students who had been waiting made room for him disinterestedly.

  “Can you manage?” said the girl. “That must be about two hundred pounds. Books are heavy.”

  “Just barely,” said Heller. “But we haven’t got everything on this list.”

  “Oh, the rest of that stuff. Well, take that one about thirty from the top, World History Rewritten by Competent Propagandists for Kiddies and Passed by the American Medical Association, that’s fourth grade grammar school. We don’t carry that sort of thing. You’ll have to get them at Stuffem and Glutz, the city’s authorized school supplier. They’re on Varick Street.” And she gave him the number. “My God,” she added, “how’d you ever get here not knowing those texts?”

  Heller turned to make his way through the backlog of student customers who stepped aside patiently. The girl said to the next student in line, “Jesus, what we get for freshmen these days.”

  “It says on your slip there he’s a senior,” said the student.

  “I got it!” said the girl. I quickly and hopefully jacked up the audio. “He’s here on an athletic scholarship! A weight lifter! Hey, call him back. I was awful impolite. I need a date for tonight’s dance! Boy, am I dumb! He was cute, too.”

  Yes, she certainly was dumb! She had denied me opportunity after opportunity to file charges against Heller for Code breaks! And they had watched somebody heft two hundred pounds of rucksacks like they were air and I’m sure if they had looked out the door or window they would have seen Heller running along, clickety-clack, without a care in the world to the subway. My faith in the powers of observation of college students had suffered a heavy blow. Maybe they were all on drugs. That was the only possible explanation! An extraterrestrial right under their noses making all kinds of giveaways and they hadn’t even blinked an eye!

  Heller got right on down to Varick Street on the same subway. He got into the city-authorized bookstore. And he was shortly showing a half-blind old man his list. In the subway he had ticked off missing titles with a red pen and now he handed it over, Voltarian shorthand and all, for the red checks to be filled.

  The old man bustled off to a storeroom. “You want thirty copies of each?” he called back.

  “One will do just fine.”

  “Oh, you’re a tutor. All right.” And he came back in about ten minutes, staggering under a stack of books. “I’ll get the rest now.” And he went back and came out staggering under a second stack.

  Heller checked off the titles. He got almost to the end. “There’s one missing: Third Grade Arithmetic.”

  “Oh, they don’t teach that anymore. It’s all ‘new math’ now.”

  “What’s ‘new math’?” said Heller.

  “I dunno. They put out a new ‘new math’ every year. It’s something about greater and lesser numbers without using any numbers this year. It was orders of magnitude of numbers last year but they were still teaching them to count. They stopped that.”

  “Well, I’ve got to have something about basic arithmetic,” said Heller.

  “Why?”

  “You see,” said Heller, “I do logarithms in my head and the only arithmetic I’ve ever seen done was by some primitive tribe on Flisten. They used charcoal sticks and slabs of white lime.”

  “No kidding?” said the old man.

  “Yes, it was during a Fleet peace mission. They wouldn’t believe we had that many ships and it was really funny to see them jumping about and counting and multiplying and writing it down. They were more advanced than others I’ve seen, however. One tribe had to use their fingers and toes to count their wives. They never had more than fifteen wives because that was all the fingers and toes they had.”

  The old man said, “A Fleet man, huh? I was in the Navy myself, war before last. You just wait there.”

  He went back and searched and searched and finally came out with a dusty, tattered text that had been lying around for ages. “Here’s a book called Basic Arithmetic Including Addition, Multiplication and Division With a Special Section on Commercial Arithmetic and Stage Acts.” He opened the yellowed pages, “It was published in Philadelphia in 1879. It’s got all sorts of tricks in it like adding a ten-digit column of thirty entries by inspection. Old-time bookkeeper stuff. Lot of stage tricks: they used to go on stage and write numbers and do complicated examples upside down leaning over a blackboard and get the answer in three seconds and the audience would flip out. Mr. Tatters said to throw it out but I sort of thought I should send it to a museum. Since they passed the law that kids had to use calculators in class, nobody is interested in it anymore. But as you’re a navy man like myself you can have it.”

  Heller paid and the old man wrapped up the books into two more huge packages. Another two hundred pounds of books. I expected Heller to heft them up and walk off. It disappointed me when he found four hundred pounds too cumbersome. I’m sure he could have, with some strain, walked off with them. He had them call him a taxi. The old man even got a dolly and helped him load up. Heller thanked him.

  “Don’t throw that book away,” said the old man at the curb. “I don’t think there’s a soul in this country knows how to do it anymore. I don’t think they even remember it ever existed. When you’re through with it, give it to a museum!”

  “Thanks for piping the side!” said Heller and the taxi drove away leaving the old man waving at the curb.

  Code break. “Piping the side!” It must be some Voltarian Fleet term. No, wait a minute. I had never heard the term on Voltar. But Heller wouldn’t know Earth terms like that. Or would he? The Voltarian Fleet doesn’t use pipes. A lot of them use puffsticks. Only Earth people smoke pipes. It was moving into the New York rush hour so I had a lot of time to work on this. I got as far as Earth sailors as well as spacers have a lot to do with whores when my concentration was interrupted.

  A houseman was wheeling all that book tonnage across the lobby and Vantagio popped out of his office like some miniature jack-in-the-box.

  He stared at the packages, tore a piece of paper off a corner and opened a rucksack to verify they were books. “They accepted you!” He let out a wheeze of relief and mopped his face with a silk handkerchief. He waved the houseman on and pushed Heller into his office.

  “You did it!” said Vantagio.

  “I think you did it,” said Heller.

  Vantagio looked at him with feigned blank innocence.

  “Come on,” said Heller. “They waived everything including having a head! How did you do it?”

  Vantagio started laughing and sat down at his desk. ?
??All right, kid, you got me. It was awfully late and I had an awful time getting hold of the university president last night but I did it. You see, at peak periods, we use some of the Barnyard College girls here. So I just told him that if you weren’t enrolled in full by 9:30 this morning, we’d cut off our student aid program.”

  “I owe you,” said Heller.

  “Oh, no, no,” said Vantagio. “You don’t get off that easy. You still have to do what I tell you. Right?”

  “Right,” said Heller.

  “Then get on that phone and call Babe and tell her you’re enrolled!”

  Heller turned the desk speaker phone around to face him and Vantagio pushed the lease line button. Giovanni in Bayonne transferred the call to Babe in the dining room.

  “This is Jerome, Mrs. Corleone. I just wanted to tell you what a great job Vantagio did in getting me enrolled.”

  “It’s all complete?” said Babe.

  “Absotively,” said Heller. But I noted he did not tell her, as he had not told Vantagio, that Miss Simmons had really set him up to fail. Heller was sneaky.

  “Oh, I’m so glad. You know, you dear boy, you don’t want to grow up to be a bum like these other bums. Mama wants you to have class, kid, real class. Become president or something.”

  “Well, I certainly do thank you,” said Heller.

  “Now, there’s one more thing, Jerome,” said Babe, a little more severely. “You’ve got to promise me not to play hooky.”

  That stopped Heller. He knew very well he would be missing in as many as two or three classes a day! Bless Miss Simmons!

  Heller found his voice, “Not even one class, Mrs. Corleone?”

  “Now, Jerome,” said Babe, her voice hardening, “I know it is a terrible job bringing up boys. I never did but I had brothers and I know! Let down your guard for one second and they’re off and away, free as birds, skylarking and breaking neighbors’ windows. So the answer is very plain. I give it to you absolutely straight. No hooky. Not even one class! Mama will be watching and Mama will spank! Now promise me, Jerome. And Vantagio, if you’re listening to this, which you are—I am sure you are as I can tell it’s the speaker phone on your desk—you look at his hands; no crossed fingers, no crossed feet. All right?”

  Vantagio peered at Heller. “They aren’t crossed, mia capa.”

  Oh, what a spot Heller was in! With his nonsense Royal officer scruples about keeping his word, I knew he was suffering agonies. He couldn’t keep that promise so he wouldn’t make it. And I was sure that, to Babe Corleone, the phrase “Mama will spank” translated more truthfully into “concrete overcoat.”

  “Mrs. Corleone,” said Heller. “I will be truthful with you.” Ah, here it came! “I promise you faithfully that, unless I get rubbed out, or unless something happens that closes the university, I will complete college on time and get my diploma.”

  “Oh, you dear boy! That is even more than I asked! But nevertheless, Jerome, just remember, Mama will be watching. Bye-bye!”

  Vantagio closed the circuit and sat there beaming at Heller.

  “There’s one more thing,” said Heller. “Vantagio, could you get me the phone number of Bang-Bang Rimbombo. I want to call him from my suite.”

  “Celebrating, are you?” said Vantagio. “I don’t blame you. As a matter of fact, he’s right here in Manhattan and the parole officer is riding his (bleep) off.” He wrote the number on a scrap of paper and handed it over. “Have fun, kid.”

  It left me blinking. Vantagio might be smart but he hadn’t penetrated that one. Heller was full of surprises, (bleep) him. What was he going to pull? Blow up the university? That was the only way I could think of that would let him keep the promise he had just made to Babe Corleone.

  PART EIGHTEEN

  Chapter 8

  About an hour later, Heller came out of his room. The tailors must have delivered something, for in the elevator mirrors I could see that he was dressed in a charcoal gray casual suit—the cloth must be some kind of summer cloth that was very thin and airy but looked thick and substantial. He had a white silk shirt with what appeared to be diamond cuff links and a dark blue tie. For a change he wasn’t wearing his baseball cap and in fact wore no hat at all. But when he crossed the lobby he was obviously still wearing spikes!

  He clattered down the steps of a subway stop and caught a train. He got off at Times Square and was shortly clattering up Broadway past the porno shops. He turned into a cross street. I thought he must be going to a theater for he gave some attention to billboards of stage plays as he passed them.

  Then he was looking up a flight of stairs. K.O. ATHLETIC CLUB, read the sign. He clattered on up and entered a room full of punching bags and helmeted boxers sparring around.

  He was evidently expected. An attendant came over, “You Floyd?” and then beckoned. Heller followed him into a dressing room and the attendant pointed to a locker. Heller stripped and hung up his clothes. The attendant gave him a towel and shooed him through a door into a smoking haze of steam.

  Heller groped around, fanned some steam out of the way and there was Bang-Bang Rimbombo, sitting on a ledge, streaming sweat and clutching a towel about him. The little Sicilian’s narrow face was just a diffused patch in the fog.

  “How are you?” said Heller.

  “Just terrible, kid. Awful. I couldn’t be worse. Sit down.”

  Heller sat down and dabbed at his own face with a towel. The sweat started to pour off him, too. It must be awfully hot.

  They sat in utter silence, steam geysering around them. Now and then Bang-Bang would take a gulp of water from a pitcher and then Heller would take a gulp.

  After nearly an hour, Bang-Bang said, “I’m starting to feel human again. My headache is gone.”

  “Did you take care of what I asked?” said Heller. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

  “Oh, hell, that was easy. Hey, I can bend my neck. I haven’t taken a sober breath since I saw you last.” He was silent for a while and then apparently remembered what Heller had asked. “This time every week, Father Xavier goes down to Bayonne. He’s Babe’s confessor, knew her since she was a kid on the lower East Side. He has dinner with her and then hears her confession and then brings a load of hijacked birth control pills back to town. One of his stops is the Gracious Palms. So it wasn’t any trouble. You’ll have them later tonight. You don’t owe me nothing. They wasn’t no use.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Heller.

  “If all things was handled that easy,” said Bang-Bang, “life would be worth living. But just now it ain’t. You know, life can be pretty awful, kid.”

  “What’s the matter? Maybe I can help.”

  “I’m afraid it’s all beyond the help of God or man,” said Bang-Bang. “Up the river I go next Wednesday.”

  “But why?” demanded Heller. “I thought you were out on parole.”

  “Yeah. But, kid, that arrest was very irregular. A machine gun is a Federal crime but the late Oozopopolis rigged it to be found by the New York Police and they got me on the Sullivan Law or whatever they call illegal possession. I didn’t go to a Federal pen; they sent me up the river to Sing Sing.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Heller.

  “Yeah. They’re so crooked they can’t even send you to the right jail! So when I was paroled, I, of course, went home to New Jersey. And right away, the parole officer dug me up and said I was out of jurisdiction, that I couldn’t leave New York. So I come to New York and we don’t control New York like we used to before ‘Holy Joe’ got wasted. So Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty is leaning all over the parole officer to send me back to the pen to finish my time—they tell me now it’s eight months, kid. Eight dry months!”

  “Is it because you haven’t any place to live? I could—”

  “Naw, naw, I know a chick on Central Park West and I moved in with her and her five sisters.”

  “Well, if it’s money, I could—”

  “Naw, naw. Thanks, kid. I got ton
s of money. I get paid by the job and under the counter and that’s the trouble. The parole officer made it a condition that I get a regular job. Imagine that, kid. A regular job, an artist like me! The job I do have nobody dares report and that leaves me bango right out in Times Square with no clothes on. Nobody will hire an ex-con. Babe said she’d arrange a regular pay Social Security job in one of the Corleone enterprises but that connects the family up to legit business—I’m too famous. I won’t risk getting Babe in trouble, never. She’s a great capa. So that’s what I’m up against. They said, ‘Regular job: Social Security, withholding tax or a charge of vagrancy and back you go this next Wednesday.’ That’s what the parole officer said.”

  “Gosh, I’m awful sorry,” said Heller.

  “Well, it made me feel better just getting it off my chest, kid. I feel tons better. Headache gone?” He shook his head experimentally. “Yep. Let’s get a shower and get out of here and have some dinner!”

  They were soon dressed. As they passed out through the training room, I suppose Heller just plain could not resist socking something—it’s his vicious character. As he passed by a punching bag, he hit it. It flew off its springs.

  “I’m sorry,” said Heller to the attendant.

  “Hey, boss!” the attendant yelled at somebody.

  A very fat man with a huge cigar in his mouth came over.

  “Look at what this kid did,” said the attendant.

  “I’ll pay for it,” said Heller.

  “Hmm,” said the fat man. “Punch this one over here, kid.”

  Heller went over to it and punched it. It simply vibrated back and forth—slam, slam, slam, slam.