The Jagged Orbit (10 page)

THIRTY-NINE
THOUGHT PASSING REPEATEDLY THROUGH THE MIND OF CAPTAIN GORDON K. LORIMER ON HIS WAY HOME AFTER SUPERVISING THE AFTERNOON EXERCISE OF THE CITIZENS' DEFENSE GROUP TO WHICH LIONEL PRIOR BELONGS

"What in the hell is the
good
of trying to maintain internal security if Immigration goes and does something as stupid as letting Morton Lenigo into the country? And when you run across a bunch of half-assed incompetents like I did this afternoon ..."

FORTY
THE FLIGHT OF THE SPOOLPIGEON

I'm the one who's out of his skull, Flamen thought as he keyed the controls of the skimmer to the state traffic computers and waited for them to find him a slot in the pattern. What was the penalty tag for breaking the month-to-month contract for Celia's hospitalization—a quarter-million, wasn't it?

"As though I didn't have enough trouble already," he muttered.

Beside him, shrunk back into the corner of the seat like a frightened bird, Lyla played with the hem of her yash and either failed to hear or ignored him.

When the skimmer lifted clear of the encircling towers, however, she exhaled loudly and relaxed. Flamen glanced at her.

"What made you decide to mention my wife?" he demanded.

"When? Oh, you mean while I was prophesying. Did I?"

Flamen sighed. "I wish I knew what to make of all this! Are you just a clever actress? Is it all a first-rate con job? I knew I'd heard the name Dan Kazer before somewhere, and I placed it as we were coming away. He used to mack for Michaela Baxendale, right?"

"Yes."

"He parlayed her into a fortune, but she stayed a phoney. Always will. Looks like she didn't even have the grace to share a slice of her profits with the guy who launched her. Ever met her?"

"No. Dan doesn't even like talking about her very much."

"That I'm not surprised at. She purely and simply disgusts me." For the latest of many times he considered, and dismissed, the idea of doing a piece about her on the show. There was nothing he could reveal about her, no matter how nasty, which didn't accord with the image the public already had of her.

Anyway, if things went on as they were going at the moment there wouldn't be a Matthew Flamen show for long. What it would be like trying to deal with Prior tomorrow morning when, on top of today's quarrel, he discovered that there was material scheduled about which he hadn't been consulted, and which hadn't even been comped for acceptability before it was put down, he hardly dared to think.

But he was still determined to use the item. He'd got some excellent tape; it should be worth a good four minutes.

Besides, being offered such publicity might help to mollify Mogshack and his colleagues if they'd been offended by his crack about Celia.

And yet: Celia ... He shook his head. It was no good trying to pretend he was heartbroken at their separation, nor even making out that he had been surprised when it proved necessary to commit her. For months she had seemed to come alive only when a fight broke out between them, and that wasn't normal on anyone's scale of values. Nonetheless, it had come as a terrible shock to find that she was as chilly with him, still her husband, as she might have been with a total stranger who was trying to pick her up.

Beside him, Lyla was fidgeting with something. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her remove from the pocket of her Nix the small flat bottle he had caught a glimpse of earlier and make to slip it into the pouch of her yash.

"What's in those things?" he demanded.

"You mean the sibs?"

"Sibs?"

"Short for 'sibyl-pills.' Here you are." She handed him the bottle. It bore a gaudy yellow label on which was printed the name of a famous pharmaceutical company.

Flamen read the wording slowly.

"My God! If that's what I think it is—! You honestly mean you took two-fifty mg's of this stuff less than an hour ago and you walked out on your own two feet?"

"It sort of gets burned up during the trance, I guess. But it is pretty fierce for someone who isn't used to it. Dan tried one once and went into such a high orbit I thought he'd never come down. Maybe he didn't Slapping me out of trance—the damned fool!"

"And you buy this stuff at the drugstore?"

"Well, it's not something I'd care to home-brew on the kitchen stove!" Lyla said tartly. "It's supposed to have been made up to the formula of Diana Spitz, the first of the great pythonesses—back before the turn of the century, someone told me."

Genuinely awed, Flamen passed the bottle back, "Okay, I believe you. You don't know what you're saying when you're in trance. Nobody could stay conscious under a load like that."

"So tell me what I'm supposed to have said about your wife. And why should I have mentioned her, anyway?"

"She was right there in the audience."

"You mean the doctor who . . . ? Oh, no!" Lyla's eyes rounded enormously. "Oh, Lord! I'm dreadfully sorry, Mr. Flamen. I was—uh—distracted. It simply didn't register. Is it something very serious?"

"When they took her in, they assured me it wasn't. But—but damn it! I know my own wife better than any doctor ever could, and experts or no experts I say she's not better since she went into the Ginsberg, but worse. Come to think of it. .."

Now what would be the consequences if it were shown that one of Mogshack's patients had actually deteriorated as a result of his treatment? A rising tide of excitement filled Flamen's mind. He hadn't tackled a sacred cow of that size since—well, perhaps since the affair which had secured him promotion from local station work to network transmissions, five years ago.

"Yes," he said aloud. "Yes, I'm going to do that! It's high time someone tore the beard off Dr. Mogshack!"

"Then you can start by telling people there's a man in the Ginsberg who's more rational than the director."

"What? Who?" Flamen jerked his head around.

Lyla had put her hands to her temples and was swaying giddily. "I—I don't know. I guess maybe this time I didn't bum the sib up, what with Dan slapping me awake. I heard myself say that, but I don't know why I said it and I don't know who I meant."

"One of the patients?"

"I ... Yes." Lyla tried to rub her forehead, through the encumbering hood of the yash, found she couldn't, and in a fit of rage tore the clumsy garment off. "Oh, stuff this thing! Dan says I have to wear it all the time because otherwise the insurance on me isn't valid, but he doesn't have to walk around half suffocated! Christ, I'm so frightened all of a sudden. I never had a hangover after a trance before. Do you have a trank on board?"

"Sure!" Flamen punched the dispenser key. She seized tile pill and choked it down.

"Gone," she said eventually. "Sorry. I'd have liked to tell you more but I couldn't stand the pressure."

Flamen hesitated. "You disliked the Ginsberg, that's obvious," he said at length.

"It makes my guts churn."

"Why?"

"I
don't know." Lyla's voice was steady again now, and she considered the question dispassionately. "I didn't like the atmosphere there when I arrived. Dan said it had something to do with the patients' skin-secretions, but it wasn't so much something I could smell as ... Oh, I can't define it."

"Are pythonesses sensitive to things other people don't notice, even without going into trance?"

"Well, I guess I do sense things sometimes. But so do friends of mine who aren't pythonesses."

There was a pause. During it Flamen considered various ways in which he could put a cat among Mogshack's pigeons, and reached the depressing conclusion that if he did want to prove that the treatment she was being given had made Celia worse instead of better he'd probably have to have her packled. And personality analog computer logging was hideously expensive, ordinarily reserved for individuals such as government officials or senior executives of giant corporations on whose clear thinking depended the fate of millions.

Still, perhaps his own computers might suggest an alternative; they weren't the best in the world, but certainly they were exceptionally well stocked with information. And there was also that tantalizing hint Lyla had just dropped, about there being a saner man than the director in the Ginsberg. That might indicate a line to follow.

"Can you ever figure out what your oracles mean?" he inquired.

"Oh, sometimes. I'm pretty well acquainted with the shorthand my subconscious uses."

"Do you think you could identify the person you mentioned a moment ago, the man who's more rational than Mogshack?"

Lyla considered the question with a doubtful expression. "I never met any of today's audience before," she said at last. "But I suppose I might just possibly be able to spot a useful clue. I'd have to hear the tape, of course . . . Say, that's a point. Do you think I could hear yours? Lord only knows when Dan will get home with the recording he made."

"Surely you can. Now, if you like. I think it's only fair to show it to you before it's transmitted, in case there's something you'd like me to avoid using. Ah—that is, if you don't mind coming to my place on your own . . . ?"

Lyla gave a wry chuckle. "Think I'm a neo-puritan? It's a luxury I couldn't afford."

"Yes, I guess it is," Flamen nodded. "It's not the attitude, but the upkeep. Hmmm! I hadn't thought of it like that, but it figures: the extra clothes you buy with more fabric in them, the extra comwebs so you never have to be alone in a room with anyone but deal with them at a distance—"

"I wasn't thinking of that," Lyla interrupted. "I meant you just can't have a puritan pythoness. The subconscious is completely amoral, isn't it? It tells the truth, and . . . Well, like they say, 'truth is a naked lady.' If I could get away with it, I'd take that literally and never wear anything but jewelry—not even Nix like these. It's astonishing how much it helps. . . . I'll tell you something very odd to prove it. I was sent to this very proper school, with uniforms and everything—incredibly Victorian—and I never had the slightest suspicion that I might be a pythoness until I ran away from it. I came to New York, I hadn't any money, I was sleeping on strangers' floors, I was practically in rags because my clothes were wearing out, and all of a sudden when I was wearing more dirt than cloth,
bang.
There was the talent. It sort of scared me at first, but I adjusted. And eventually, after I met Dan, I started to figure out how I could encourage it."

"Such as ... ?"

Her pretty face soured like cream when you add lemon-juice. "You're not a kid, Mr. Flamen. How the hell do you think someone learns to identify with the maximum number of other people? You do what they do! You starve with them, you sleep with them, you eat and drink with them, you let them do to you what they want to do, and you don't pass judgment. But I don't imagine that's a point of view you'd appreciate."

"Why not?"

"Sorry. Didn't mean to be offensive. But as I understand it... Hell! I admit, I never watch your show. We didn't even have a vuset in the apt until yesterday when one of Dan's friends gave us his old one. But you're a spoolpigeon, and don't spoolpigeons make their living by pointing shocked fingers at people so the narrow-minded self-righteous prurient mass audience can pretend they're horrified?"

"Yes, I do pass judgments," Flamen said after a pause. "But I like to think, at least, my victims deserve what they get. Liars, cheats, stuffed shirts, small-minded power-hungry empire-builders ... I can't stand hypocrites. I doubt if you can."

"I hope that's true," she said. "I'd like to like you. I always want to like people."

"And I like to be liked. Trouble is, in my line of business, no matter how carefully I choose my targets the bystanders are apt to catch the shrapnel, and it makes everyone kind
of—all—diffident. . .
." Flamen leaned forward and peered at the handsome development of well-spaced modern houses they were flying over. "We're almost there. Just another minute till we land."

FORTY-ONE
I SPEAK WITH THE TONGUES OF MEN AND OF ANGELS AND HAVE NOT CHARITY

Boomed the radio evangelist* at the top of his lungs over the British "pirate" station in 1966:

"You know the streets in your neighborhood you wouldn't dare to walk down alone after dark! You know the streets you wouldn't want your kids to walk along on their way home from school!"

"What in the world is he going on about?" said his audience, and switched off.

*He was an American.