Authors: Lawrence Sanders
“Cynic,” I said. “Well, you may be right. Cliches may be the basis of rational speech. We’ve got to start somewhere. Paul? Reactions?”
“Phoebe,” he said, “how will the computer print it out? In a series of words without space breaks?”
“No, no,” she said. “It’s a simple circuitry trick. The thought will be picked up by the input bank as connected phrases or sentences. The printout from retrieval will be properly spaced and punctuated.”
Paul looked at me.
“Nick, let’s try it,” he said. “Nothing to lose.”
“Right,” I said. “Phoebe, have a good time in Denver. Or rather, have a good time.”
October 15, 1998.
1630:1 arrived at Rehabilitation & Reconditioning Hospice No. 4, Alexandria, Virginia, via taxi from the airport. I immediately sought out Chief Resident Luke Warren and informed him I would be his guest for the next five days. During which I intended to monitor the reactions of Hyman R. Lewisohn to the new parabiotic treatment. Lewisohn had already been connected to the first “volunteer,” a young em from Texas. He was a former border guard of the Immigration Service who had been found guilty of actions detrimental to the public interest in that he accepted bribes to allow unlawful immigration across the border. From the US into Mexico.
I also told Dr. Warren I would need accommodations in Transient Quarters and the use of a radiotelephone-equipped car during my stay. He made the arrangements immediately, apologizing for the only radiophone car available, a diesel-powered, four-wheel-drive Rover.
1645: I called Paul Bumford in New York, reported my arrival, gave him the number of the mobile phone in the car assigned to me. I then called Angela Berri’s office at DOB Headquarters to report my whereabouts. I had intended to speak only to an assistant or secretary, but Angela herself came on the flasher screen.
“What’s up, Nick?” she asked.
“I am,” I said.
She tried to smile. It wasn’t only my feeble joke; she seemed worn, features honed down to tight skin on sharp bones. I thought her manner subdued, if not depressed. Her service as DIROB could account for that; I had learned that routine administration can be more wearying than the most demanding creative assignment.
I told her I’d be in Alexandria for the next five days, personally ministering to Lewisohn. She accepted the news casually.
“How about dinner or a drink?” she asked. “Whenever you get a chance.”
“A profit,” I said. “May I flash you at any hour of the day or night?”
Then she became the “old” Angela, did something with her mouth and tongue, and switched off, smiling wickedly.
1710: I drove to the first public phone booth I could find and called Seymour Dove in San Diego. I gave him two phone numbers: the R&R Hospice and my radiophone-equipped Rover. He told me he expected to check into the Morse Hotel in Washington, D.C., by noon on October 20. With the 5,000 new dollars, as Remanded by Art Roach.
1730:1 returned to the Hospice. Dr. Seth Lucas was off-duty, but Maya Leighton was there. In her private office. Feet up on her desk. Tanned legs spread. Leaning far back in a tilted chair. No panties.
The tattooed scarab showed. She was leafing through a unisex ! fashion magazine
{TOOTY: For Those Who Dare!).
She saw me at the door. Her chair slammed down. She came out of it as if propelled.
"Look at the beaver!" she marveled. Stroking my face with both palms. “Look at the dickety twitcher! A devil! Nick, now you look exactly like the Devil!”
She groped my testicles and pursed for a kiss.
1750:1 looked in on Lewisohn, leaving Maya to prepare for her evening with Art Roach. She said he always left before midnight, to drive back to his hotel suite in Washington. I told her I’d call to make certain the coast was clear before I came over.
Lewisohn was sleeping, and so was his donor. I checked the instrumentation, then went back to the Group Lewisohn office to scan the most recent reports. Lewisohn’s blood count had stabilized and was holding. The donor’s leukocyte count was up. That was to be expected.
Reading the record of this radical treatment, I wished, briefly, that Dr. Henry L. Hammond was alive and available for consultation. But after his arrest in the fiascoed Society of Obsoletes’ plot, he had been drained and his corpus assigned to the National Survival Bank. That facility ruled the storage tunnels in the Tetons where the US Government kept its hoard of frozen sperm, fertilized and unfertilized eggs, blood, organs, and complete corpora. In case of a nukewar. They were continually in need of fresh deposits.
2030: I stopped time at a pom movie. Single ems were encouraged to hire young, lubricious efs (“hostesses”) for companionship in small, foul-smelling balcony cubicles (one lumpy sofa), or simply to sit alongside during the performance and supplement the action on the screen with whispered promises or threats, whichever you preferred.
2315: I parked down the block from Maya’s apartment, concealed in shadow. The street was as I remembered it. Her apartment was on the ground floor of a two-story town house. It had both a front and a rear entrance. Important to our plan.
2350: The windows of her apartment suddenly blazed with light. I scrunched down further in the seat of my Rover.
0020: Art Roach strode quickly from her front door. Turned to wave. He got into his four-door, black Buick, an official “command car,” and drove off. Still I waited.
0100: I found a phone booth, called Maya. She said that as far as she could determine, he had forgotten nothing. If he followed his usual pattern, he wouldn’t return that night. .
“Hurry,” she said.
0125: She was in a surly mood. She admitted it.
“It’s that pile of kaka who just walked out of here,” she said wrathfully. “He thinks he owns me. Nick, for God’s sake, how much longer?”
“Five days,” I said.
She came alive. Rushing at me, flinging herself atop me. She was wearing only an em’s undershirt, something thin and clinging, with shoulder straps and deeply cut armholes. One breast plunged out.
“But you have to do a favor for me,” I said. “One final favor. Then we’re home free.”
“Anything,” she murmured. She was rubbing her cheek against my new beard. “I’ll do anything.”
I explained slowly what would be required of her. She listened intently. Her questions were to the point: “But what if he—’’“But what if we—” I had the answers ready. I gave her the fail-safe alternatives to all his possible reactions to the scenario.
She agreed immediately. But I don’t believe her motives were those I anticipated. There was her dislike of Roach, of course. But something more. I sensed it. A tasting of power. A feeling of mastery. It was something new for her. She found it sweet.
We went over the script, in detail, two more times. She provided additional valuable input: Roach was right-handed; he smoked continually, at least two and sometimes three packs a day; he wouldn’t touch cannabis; he didn’t use a lighter; he was continually running out of paper matches. When he lighted a cigarette, he cupped both hands around the match and cigarette, like a sailor in a gale. Excellent.
I told her that her role would begin on the evening of October 18. She would invite Art Roach to a dinner in her apartment. A dinner she would prepare for him.
“Anything unusual in that?” I asked. “Anything to make him suspicious?”
"Of course not. We’ve had dinner here a dozen times. He likes to eat with his shoes off.”
I took a white envelope from my inside pocket and handed it to her. It contained 500 new dollars. Various denominations. She opened it. Thumb riffled the bills. Widening eyes turned up to me.
“It’s not for this Roach thing,” I said hurriedly. “It’s from me to you. For putting up with my nonsense. I didn’t have time to get you a gift. Buy yourself a pretty.”
She was one of those objects sexually excited by the sight of love. I could tell. She felt the bills. Flipped through the stack again and again. Did everything but smell it. Excitement growing. The power of love.
October 16.
1040: I called Paul again at GPA-1 and asked him to call me from an outside phone. When he returned my call, I told him what additional equipment we’d need. He said there would be no problems; his Electronics Team carried most of the devices in stock and could easily assemble what they didn’t have. The Neuropharmacology Team could provide the remainder. Paul had merely to tell the team leaders their cooperation was needed on an urgent classified project. They would ask no questions.
1110: I spent almost two hours with Group Lewisohn, giving the patient a workup. I could only bully, but Maya Leighton could wheedle. Between us, we got what we wanted. All gross indicators were encouraging. Even his color and skin tone had improved as his rejuvenated blood was returned to him through plastirub tubing.
His disposition, of course, was as repellent as ever. Only Maya’s pattings and strokings allowed us to complete our tests. We were filing out when he suddenly shouted, “You bastard!”
Naturally, we all turned around, startled. His ugly mouth stretched in what I assumed to be a grin.
“You all know what you are, don’t you?” He chuckled. “Flair is the particular bastard I want at the moment. The rest of you get the fuck gone.”
The door closed behind them. I came back to his bedside.
“I should let you stop,” I told him. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
He could accept that kind of language. It confirmed his misanthropy. It comforted him.
“Look at the beard,” he said. “The lean and hungry look. Ah there, Cassius. Or Iago.” He stared at me. “No,” he said. “A cut-rate Machiavelli.” The idea seemed to amuse him. Then: “Where do those tubes go?” he demanded.
They led from his arm through the thick, soundproof wall separating him from the former Texas border guard.
“Continuous blood analysis,” I said glibly. “Constant monitoring on a linked computer. We put it behind a wall so the noise wouldn’t disturb you. Want to see the latest printout? It looks good.”
“Fuck you,” he grumbled. “No, I don’t want to see the latest printout. You’d fake it, you monster.”
He was right. I would.
“Now what the hell is this?” he shouted.
He took a manuscript from a stack alongside his bed and threw it at me. I caught it in midair. Glanced at it. An Instox copy of my prospectus for a new Department of Creative Science.
“Oh?” I said. “The Chief Director sent you a copy?”
“Oh?” he said. Burlesquing my innocent tone. “The Chief Director sent you a copy? Just what are you plotting, you devious whoreson?”
“Plotting?” I said. Righteous indignation. “I’m not plotting anything. I suggested the idea to the Chief. He was interested and wanted to see it expanded. That’s all there is to it.”
He stared at me.
“It’s all a mouse in a cage to you, isn’t it?” he said finally.
‘‘Now look,” I said. Anger in my voice. Feigned? I don't know. “If you’re going to give me the canned lecture on science versus humanism, forget it. I’ve heard it from better brains than yours. I’ve heard it in a hundred lecture halls, conditioning sessions, symposia, and colloquies. You know what it all adds up to? Kaka. Rich, refined, intellectual kaka. Let other objects debate, endlessly, morality and value judgments. I won’t spend a microsecond wringing my hands and pleading, ‘What does it all mean?’ To act is all. I’m just not teleologically oriented. I’m only interested in the tomorrow I can compute and plan. The future that can be manipulated.”
“You think scientists can do a better job than politicians?” “We couldn’t do worse, could we?”
“Yes,” he said.
Which, from him, was almost praise.
“Who’s this Paul Bumford you mentioned?” he said.
“You met him. A small, slight em. He was with me the last time l was here.”
“Oh. That one. The one memorizing the titles of the books I was reading.”
That shook me.
“He’s got some fresh ideas,” he went on. “And you’re giving him credit.”
“Of course,” I said. “They were his ideas.”
Again I saw that caricature of a cynical grin. Lips drawn back," yellowed teeth showing it in an ugly rictus.
“Round and round it goes,” he said. “And where it stops, nobody knows.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re mumbling about,” I told him, “and I don’t think you do either.”
He turned his face to the wall through which his blood was disappearing, to reappear young, cleansed, whole. I took his silence for dismissal and left. The old fart had bounced me.
1400: We took Maya’s tooty little sports car. We spent all afternoon finding the right location. It had to be on a secondary road between her apartment and a tavern, an all-night drive-in movie, a cabaret, a grogshop—something like that. The road, preferably, would be bordered with trees. The spot selected should be within quick walking distance of a public phone. In a booth, store, gas station—anyplace. Any phone available around midnight.
We didn’t find the perfect spot, of course. But the one we selected would serve. Light traffic in the afternoon, probably less at night. Direct route from Maya’s apartment to a roadhouse called the King’s Pawn. Maya said she and Art Roach had been there before. They served food and featured a transvestite pianist after 2100. There was a roadside phone booth a five-minute walk from the place we selected. Most of the road ran through a wood.
2200:1 drove my Rover back to the selected location to inspect it at the anticipated time of action. It looked better. It was quite dark. Traffic was minimal. Trees menaced on both sides. The road itself was a paved two-laner. The shoulders on both sides sloped down steeply. Nice.
October 17.
1020: It is hardly an original observation: The basic motivation of all living things is self-interest. This is, to be sure, a generalization. As operative and inoperative as all generalizations. But still, the hard rock of self is there. In
Homo sapiens,
it may be—usually is—slicked over with various camouflage: patriotism, mercy, devotion, sacrifice, altruism, duty, and so forth. Sometimes you can hardly see the rock.
In manipulating Dr. Seth Lucas, my only problem was in determining where the young black’s self-interest lay. As expected, it proved to be a melange.