Our Friends From Frolix 8

  I have to think about Provoni, he told himself. Instead of this.

  Twenty-four hours later, a fourth message came from the Gray Dinosaur, monitored by the huge radio telescope on Mars.

  We are aware that you have opened the camps and granted a general amnesty. That is not enough.

  Certainly terse, Willis Gram thought, as he studied the message in written form. ‘And we haven’t been able to transmit back to them?’ he asked General Hefele, who had brought him the news.

  ‘I think we’re reaching him, but he’s not listening, either due to faulty circuitry in his receiving apparatus or due to his unwillingness to negotiate with us.’

  ‘When he is approximately one hundred astronomical units out,’ Gram asked, ‘can’t you get him with a cluster-missile? One of those that is tropic to—’ He gestured.

  ‘To life,’ General Hefele said. ‘We have sixty-four types of missiles we can try; I’ve already had their carrier-ships deploy them in the general area in which we expect to encounter the ship.’

  ‘You don’t know of any “general area in which we expect to encounter the ship”. He could have come out of hyper-space anywhere.’

  ‘Then let’s say we have all our hardware available for use, once the Dinosaur is spotted. Maybe he’s bluffing. Maybe he’s come back alone. Exactly as he went, ten years ago.’

  ‘No,’ Gram said cannily. ‘His ability to remain in hyper-space in that old 2198 tub. No, his ship has been rebuilt. And not by any technology we know.’ A further idea struck him. ‘God — he, he and the Dinosaur, may be inside the creature; it may have wrapped itself around the ship. So of course the hull didn’t disintegrate. Provoni may be like some little internal parasite in the nonhumanoid entity, but one he’s on good terms with. Symbiosis.’ The idea struck him as plausible. Nobody, humanoid or otherwise, ever did anything for nothing; he knew that as one of life’s verities, as sure as he knew his own name. ‘They’ll probably want our entire race, six billion Old Men and then us, to fuse with him in some kind of poly-encephalic jello. Think of that; how would you like that?’

  ‘Everyone of us, Old Men included, would fight that,’ General Hefele said quietly.

  ‘It doesn’t sound so bad to me,’ Gram said. ‘And I know, far better than you, what brain-fusion is like.’ You know what we telepaths do every few months, he thought. We get together somewhere and weave our minds into a vast composite mind, a single mentational organism that thinks with the power of five hundred, six hundred men and women. And it is our joy-time, for all of us. Even for me.

  Only this way, Provoni’s way, everyone could be woven into the web.

  But that might not be Provoni’s idea at all. And yet — he had caught something in the four messages, the use of the word ‘we’. A kind of concurrence between him and it seemed indicated. And in harmony, Gram thought. The messages, though terse, are frosty… as the kids say.

  And the one he’s bringing is the vanguard for thousands, he said morbidly to himself. Badger’s crew, the first casualties. There ought to be an alloy plaque set up somewhere, honoring them. They weren’t afraid to take Provoni on; they dogged the Dinosaur and died in the attempt. Maybe with men with that courage we might fight and win after all. And an inter-stellar war is hard to maintain – he had read that somewhere. Thinking this, he felt a trifle better.

  Nicholas Appleton, after hours of fighting his way through crowds, managed to locate Denny Strong’s apartment building. He entered the elevator, ascended to the fiftieth floor.

  He rapped on the door. Silence. And then her voice, Charley’s voice, came, ‘Who the fuck is it?’

  ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘I knew you would come here.’ If Willis Gram wanted us not to see each other, he thought, he shouldn’t have let both of us go.

  The door opened. There stood Charley in a striped red-and-black shirt, hoop trousers, living sandals… and she had on a good layer of makeup, including enormous lashes. Even though he knew they were fake, the eyelashes got through to him. ‘Yes?’ she asked.

  PART THREE

  TWENTY

  Denny Strong appeared beside Charlotte Boyer. ‘Hi, Appleton,’ he said in a toneless voice.

  ‘Hi,’ Nick said warily; he remembered vividly how Denny – and Charlotte – had run amuck. And this time there existed no Earl Zeta to help him get out of there, when people began bouncing off the walls.

  But Denny seemed calm. Wasn’t that true of alcohol binges? A sine wave oscillation between murderous drunkenness and ordinary daytime civility… and Denny was at the bottom of the sine wave, right now.

  ‘How did you know I would come here?’ Charley asked. ‘How did you know I’d go back to Denny and we’d make up?’

  ‘I had no other place to look,’ he said, somberly. Of course she went back to Denny, he thought. All this, my trying to help her – wasted. And she probably knew it all along. I was a chess piece, used by Charley to punish Denny. Well, he thought, if the struggle is over, if she’s back here – I see no use for myself, he thought. And said, ‘I’m glad things are going so well for you, now.’

  ‘Hey,’ Denny said, ‘you heard about the amnesty? And them opening the camps? Wheehee!’ His slightly bloated face swelled with excitement; his bulging eyes danced as he smacked Charley on the rump. ‘And Provoni’s almost—’

  ‘Don’t you want to come inside?’ Charley said to Nick, putting her arm round Denny’s waist.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Nick said.

  ‘Listen, man,’ Denny said, squatting down on his haunches, doing, evidently, some sort of body-building exercises, ‘I don’t get like I was very often. It takes a lot to make me mad. And finding out this place wasn’t clean… that did it.’ He retreated into the room, seated himself on the sofa. ‘Sit down.’ In a lower voice he said, ‘I’ve got a can of Hamm’s beer; we’ll split it three ways.’

  Alcohol, Nick thought. I’ll drink with them, and then the insanity will come out in all three of us.

  On the other hand, there existed but a single can. How drunk could they get on a third of a can of beer apiece?

  ‘I’ll come in for a minute,’ he said, but what genuinely motivated him was not the presence of the beer but the presence of Charley. He yearned to gaze at her as long as possible. It was bitter-tasting, her going back to Denny; she had, in effect, rejected him, Nicholas Appleton, by doing so. The emotion affecting Nick was one he had rarely experienced: jealousy. Jealousy – and anger at her for betraying him as she had done; after all, he had given up his wife and child, repudiated them, by walking out of his apartment with Charley. They had been going to stay together… at the 16th Avenue plant, it had turned out. And now, because the plant had been bombed and raided, she had gone back, like a sick cat, to what she knew and understood, awful though it might be.

  Studying her face, he saw a difference, now. Her face was stark, as if the makeup had been applied over a surface of metal or glass, anyhow something inorganic. That was it: Charlotte though apparently friendly and smiling, now seemed as brittle and hard as glass, and this was why she used so much makeup – to hide that quality, that lack of humanness.

  Denny, slapping his crotch with glee, burbled, ‘Hey, we can have six hundred tracts around the apartment now, and no trouble; I mean, no worry about a burst. And did you see the campers?’

  He had seen them, all right, clogging the footlanes. Thin, cadaverous, looking horrifyingly identical in their government-issue olive drab denims… and he had seen the Red Cross soup kitchens set up to feed them. They were everywhere, wandering like ghosts, seemingly completely unable to relate to their new environment. Well, they had no money, no jobs, no places to live; anyhow they were out. And, as Denny said, the general amnesty cleared everyone.

  ‘But they never caught me,’ Denny said, his face growing pale with aggressive pride. ‘They caught you two, though. Shacking up at the 16th Avenue plant.’ He clasped his hands before himself, rocked back and forth. To Charley he said, ‘Even though you did
your goddam best to get us bursted.’ Reaching toward the coffee table he took the beer can, felt it, nodded. ‘Cold enough still. Okay, here we go into dreamland.’ He tore the metal strip from the top of the beer can. ‘You first, Appleton, as our guest.’

  ‘I’ll have a little,’ Nick said; he took only a small sip.

  ‘Guess what happened to Charley,’ Denny said as he took a deep swallow. ‘You probably think she’s been here a day or so, from the time she got out of the 16th Avenue plant. But that’s not true. She just got here an hour ago; she’s been hiding and running.’

  ‘Willis Gram,’ Nick said hoarsely. Once more the sick fear ruled him, made him tense up and feel terribly cold.

  ‘Because,’ Denny said lazily, teasingly, ‘he has these beds in rows in what he calls the “building infirmary”. But in fact—’

  ‘Stop it,’ Charley said gratingly, between clenched jaws.

  ‘Gram offered her a little “bed rest”. Did you know Gram is that type of man, Appleton?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nick said tightly.

  ‘But I got away,’ Charley said; she giggled, mischievously. ‘They had four army MPs and I got away.’ To Denny, she said, ‘You know how I am when I’m mad, really mad. You saw me, Nick, when we first met; you saw Denny and I fighting; right? Aren’t I awful?’

  ‘So Gram didn’t get you,’ Nick said. And I am seeing you again, he reflected. But – not really. I am seeing you made up for Denny, back to your disguises and falsifying forms. Legality has come to your work, but habits remain. You want to be elegant – at least, elegant as you conceive it – and you want to go riding in the Purple Sea Cow again, at high speeds, speeds great enough that were you to hit anything, the body-shell of the squib would disintegrate. But before that happens it’s still plenty of fun. And you two can walk into prastical parlor or a scenera smokery or a drugbar and everyone’s reaction will be, ‘What a beautiful girl.’ And, beside you, Denny can leer a leer which says, ‘Hey, guys, look what I get to lay.’ And their envy will be enormous. So to speak.

  Rising to his feet, he said, ‘I guess I’ll go.’ To Charley he said, ‘I’m glad you got away from Gram. I knew he wanted you and I assumed he’d get you. That makes me feel a lot better.’

  ‘He still may,’ Denny said, grinning and sipping beer.

  ‘Then get out of this apartment,’ Nick said. ‘If I can find her, they can find her.’

  ‘But they don’t know her address,’ Denny said, propping his feet up on the table; he wore genuine leather shoes… which had probably cost him plenty. But which gained him entry to the most notorious scenera smokeries on the planet, including those in Vienna.

  That was it. They both looked dressed and groomed for a tour of drugbars and smokeries. Alc was not their only thing – it was merely one more of their illegal things. Smokery-hopping was legal, and so, by assuming certain trappings, certain makeup, they could circulate with the elite of a world in which even New Men and Unusuals participated. Everyone, government workers included, liked the new derivation of opium, called scenera after its discoverer, Wade Scenera, a New Man. It had, like miniature plastic statuettes of God, become a planet-wide craze.

  ‘You see, Appleton,’ Denny said, handing the virtually empty can of beer to Charley, ‘she carries completely false ID cards, all the official ones’ – he gestured – ‘you know, the ones you have to have, not like, say, a Union Oil credit card. And they’re faked so good that they’ll fit into those little slots in those little electronic boxes the pissers carry. Right, you little bitch?’ He affectionately reached to put his arm around her.

  ‘I’m a bitch all right,’ Charley said. ‘And that’s what got me away from the Federal Building.’

  ‘They’ll find her here,’ Nick said patiently.

  Arrogantly, and at the same time exasperated, Denny said, ‘Look, I explained it to you. When they picked up you and her at the printing plant they—’

  ‘Who is this apartment in the name of?’ Nick asked him. Frowning, Denny said, ‘Me.’ He brightened. ‘They don’t know – as far as they’re concerned, I don’t exist. Listen, Appleton, you have to have more guts; you’re a crybaby, a crasher. Boy, if I was in the sky, I’d sure hate to have you around.’ He laughed, but this time it was an insulting laugh, one of denigration.

  ‘You’re sure her name has never come up officially in connection with this apartment?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Well, she’s paid the rent a couple of times by check. But I fail to see how that—’

  ‘If she signed a check,’ Nick said, ‘for this apartment, her name would be fed automatically into the New Jersey computer. And not just her name – it would receive and store the information as to where her name had come from. And she has a file with the PSS, like the rest of us. They’ll ask the New Jersey computer to spill out everything it has on you – they’ll match it up to the police file… for instance, were you two ever in the Purple Cow when you got cited?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Denny grunted. ‘Speeding.’

  ‘They took her name, too, as a witness.’

  Denny, his arms folded, slowly slumping back against the sofa and down into it, said, ‘Yes.’

  Nick said, ‘That’s all they need. They’ve got the connection with you, then with this apartment, then God knows what the PSS folder on her may show.’

  A look of consternation flew across Denny’s face, a shadow, moving from right to left. His eyes shone with suspicion and agitation; he looked, now, as he had looked the time before. The mixture of fear and hate toward the authorities, the father symbols. Denny was thinking rapidly; the expression on his face changed, now, second by second. ‘But what could they get me on?’ he said hoarsely. ‘God.’ He rubbed his head. ‘I’m grassed by this alc; I can’t think. Could I talk my way out of it? Goddam it – I have to take something.’ He disappeared into the bathroom, rummaged in the medicine cabinet. ‘Methamphetamine hydrochloride,’ he said, getting a bottle down. ‘That’ll clear my brain. My brain has got to be clear if I’m going to get out of this.’

  ‘So you’ve lost the grassy from the alc,’ Charley said tauntingly, ‘by gulleting the mess.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me!’ Denny said, coming back into the living room. ‘I can’t stand it; I’ll go crazy.’ To Nick, he said, ‘Take her away from here. Charlotte, you stay with Nick; don’t try to come back here to the apartment. Nick, you got any pops on you? Enough to rent a motel room for a couple of days?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Nick said, and felt delight swim through him – he had twisted Denny up enough to ace himself out.

  ‘Then find a motel. And don’t fone me – the line’s probably tapped. They’re probably ready to close in right now.’

  ‘Paranoid,’ Charley said coldly. She then glanced at Nick and—

  And two blackers, black uniformed police, ‘black pissers’ as they were called, entered the apartment without touching the knob or using a key – the door simply swung open for them.

  The black pisser on the left held something out to Nick. ‘Is this a photograph of you, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nick said, staring at the photograph. How had they gotten it? The picture – one print – lay in a bottom drawer of his dressing cabinet at home.

  ‘You’re not getting me,’ Charley said. ‘You’re not getting me.’ She strode toward them, and, raising her voice, she yelled, ‘Get out of here.’

  The black pisser reached for his regulation issue heavy-duty laser gun. So did the other.

  Denny sprang onto the pisser doing the backup; together they rolled, like cats in a fight, on the floor: a buzzsaw of motion.

  Charley kicked the first pisser in the groin, then, raising her arm up and back, caught his windpipe with the sharp bone of her elbow, moving at high speed so that to Nick it was only a blur of motion… and then the pisser lay on the floor, struggling to breathe, whooping loudly and vainly in a struggle for air.

  “There’ll be one more,’ Denny said, rising successfully from his catfight. ‘Downs
tairs, probably, or up on the roof field. Let’s take a chance on the field; if we can get in the Sea Cow we can outrun one of their ships. Did you know that, Appleton? I can outrun a police cruiser; I can get her up to 120 m.p.h.’ He started toward the door. Nick followed, numbly.

  ‘They weren’t after you,’ Denny said to Charley as they rose via the elevator. ‘They were after Mr. Clean, here.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, with an oops expression. ‘Well, Jesus – so we saved him instead of me. Isn’t he important.’

  Denny said to Nick, ‘I wouldn’t have fought them if I knew it was you they wanted. I don’t even know you. But I saw that one going for his gun and I recognized him as a special forces commando. So I knew they were here for a snuff.’ He smiled, a liquid, luminous smile from his big sensual blue eyes. ‘You know what I’ve got?’ He reached into his back pocket and brought out a tiny pistol. ‘A self-defense weapon. Made by Colt. Shoots a .22 short, but with damn high muzzle velocity. I didn’t have time to use it; I wasn’t prepared. But I am now.’ He held the gun at his side until they reached the roof field.

  ‘Don’t go out,’ Nick said to Charley.

  ‘I’ll go out alone first,’ Denny said. ‘Because I have the gun.’ He pointed. ‘There she is, the Cow. Christ, if they’ve pulled out the ignition wires… that car had goddam well better start or I’ll go back downstairs and kill both those pissers.’

  He stepped from the elevator.

  A black pisser leaned from behind the parked vehicle, pointed his laser tube at Denny, and said, ‘Stop right there.’

  ‘Hey, occifer,’ Denny said congenially, showing bare hands. The gun was in his sleeve, now. ‘What’s up? I’m going for a spin, that’s all. You still trying to nail Cordonites? Don’t you know—’

  The black pisser shot him with his laser tube.

  Charley touched the one button on the elevator control panel; the doors lumbered shut. She then pressed emergency express. The elevator dropped deadfall.