Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" (25 page)

I slogged through the long, long tunnel to my room. My future looked even darker than the tunnel, and no room at the end of it—just a tomb, even an "unknown grave."

Without hope, I watched my viewscreen as Heller entered the Silver Spring, Maryland, Howard Johnson Motel. I should have been relieved, for it meant that, with luck, I myself could end, for a few hours, the marathon of sleepless vigil he had been putting me through.

He wasn't looking behind him as he should have. He

didn't scan the desk or waiting area for suspicious figures. He was taking no precautions any normal agent would take.

He simply clickety-clacked up to the desk, told them he wanted a room for the night, laid down thirty bucks and wrote his new car license number, plain as day, on the registration form—he didn't falsify it or even make it illegible. And then he spurred me into near fury.

With a flourish, he signed the register, "JOHN DILLINGER!" He even put the exclamation point on it! A fat lot he'd learned at FBI headquarters: John Dillinger was one of the most famous gangsters of the 1930s. Pure sacrilege!

He threw his bags carelessly in his room as though he hadn't a care in the world. He washed up and soon clickety-clacked outside—not even looking into the many shadows—walked around the building and came into their restaurant.

Heller sat down. An elderly waitress promptly came over and told him he was in the wrong seat. She made him move to another booth in the corner with a flat white wall behind him. She fiddled with the lights until he was totally illuminated. And he didn't even register that she was putting the finger on him! He just busily puzzled away at the menu. And a Howard Johnson menu has nothing on it to puzzle about: they're all the same, numbers and pictures, from coast to coast!

The elderly waitress had gone off but now she returned. She took his baseball cap off his head and put it in the seat beside him, saying, "Young gentlemen don't eat with their hats on."

"I'll have a chocolate sundae," said Heller.

She stood there and she said, "You will have a Number 3. That's green salad, fried chicken, sweet potatoes and biscuits. And if you eat all that, then we will talk

about a chocolate sundae." She imagined Heller was going to protest. She said, "I have boys of my own and you are all alike. You don't realize you have to eat good food to grow!"

She didn't fool me. She had for sure put the finger on Heller for someone. Helplessly I wondered if it would be a bullet or knife or arsenic in the chicken. Maybe, I thought, with a faint stir of hope, it was just a finger to identify. But she had certainly done a workmanlike job and a beautiful cover-up. One comes to learn the hallmarks of a real agent.

The food came. Heller peered about at other plates to see what others were eating. Then he seemed reconciled and fell to, even doing a creditable job of handling his utensils. He even picked the pieces of chicken up and ate them with his fingers, a thing he would never have dreamed of doing on Voltar! But although he was absorbing culture, he was also making mistakes. I realized that in D.C.; and here, he was talking in an Ivy League accent. He thought, apparently, that he was out of the South and this wasn't so. Maryland is as south as the fried chicken he was eating. He wouldn't be in New England unless he went just north of New York City. He was too crude and rough in his nonexistent command of tradecraft.

He had finished his meal, wiped the grease off his mouth and fingers when his attention was attracted by a movement on the other side of the room. It was hard to see as the lights were so strong in his eyes. Just a shadowy figure.

Then I froze. The figure had something held before its face. Was it a gun?

There was a bright blue flash! It was extremely brief.

My viewscreen went white with overload!

Then there were black spots dancing on it and I

could not see even what Heller saw, if he saw anything.

The scene cleared. The black spots faded. And Heller was just sitting there, looking into the room. There was no figure there now.

The waitress came to him. "My, my. You ate it all. You have been a good boy, so you can order your chocolate sundae."

"What was the flash?" said Heller.

"Oh, the cashier's desk lamp just blew out. Did it hurt your eyes?" And with motherly concern she rearranged the lights near him so they would not shine in his face. Sure enough, the cashier was fiddling with her desk lamp.

Heller got and finished his sundae, paid his check with a generous tip and went clickety-clacking off around the building to his room, once more not even looking in the shadows. I was dealing with an idiot!

In his room, which he had entered without a fast door-swing-back and sudden spring, he did not check his baggage to see if it had been tampered with. He simply adjusted the air conditioning—no inspection for a gas capsule—and sat down in an easy chair and read the drug book again.

He did something then which put me into an idea conflict. On the one hand, he must NOT be killed until I had the platen. On the other hand, he would HAVE to be killed if he really penetrated what our Apparatus Earth base was all about.

Heller got up and found two ashtrays. He turned out the right-hand pocket of his jacket into the first and the left-hand pocket into the second. He was carrying DRUGS!

I couldn't understand it. Then I realized he simply had taken a small handful out of each of two jars at the FBI drug lab!

He opened up his suitcase and took out a little vial. It only had a tiny amount in it, a few specks of powder. Then he took out another vial and it, too, had a tiny amount in it.

There actually had been drugs in his suitcases when the DC. policeman searched them! Microscopic amounts but drugs all the same! Where had they come from?

He inspected the vials. Then he put the contents of vial one into the ashtray over at the edge. He put the contents of vial two into the second ashtray over at the edge.

He went over to the light and held ashtray one to his eye.

The granules were suddenly HUGE!

It was Turkish opium!

He did the same with ashtray two.

It was Turkish heroin!

Then he went over to the long French doors to a porch which served as the motel room window and with a bit of fiddling got them open.

He took a book of matches and lighted one. He dropped it in the ashtray. And, of course, the opium began to burn and smoke like mad.

He coughed and put a plastic table mat over it.

He lit the heroin the same way.

He coughed some more and put a mat over the ashtray to put it out.

The room went sort of wobbly for a moment on my screen. Naturally. He had had a whiff of opium smoke followed with a whiff of heroin smoke.

Heller went outside on the balcony and took a lot of rapid breaths of fresh air. Then he ran in place a bit, breathing noisily. Of course, the wobble in the view cleared up.

He went back and dumped both ashtrays in the toilet,

washed them, washed out the vials, thoroughly dusted out his coat pockets and put everything away.

He satisfied himself that there was no trace of either one left anywhere.

But, all in all, it was a pretty amateur performance. No dope addict would ever waste drugs that way. And although you can burn heroin, it is too expensive a way to imbibe it. One has to shoot it into the blood to get the maximum good out of it.

Even though it was probably a hot night, he left the window open. Looking for something to do, he found and read The Fine Art of Angling for Beginners. Finishing that, he tackled The Fine An of Baseball for Beginners.

It was not yet eight. He got interested in the TV set. He got it on. He got a picture. And then he kept pummeling and picking at its switches. He got it all out of kilter and finally got it back in again. I couldn't figure out what he found wrong with it. It was working, sound and picture.

Somewhat impatiently, he went through the whole routine again. There was a sign that said if the TV didn't work to call the desk and he approached the phone. Then he apparently thought better of it and slumped in a chair. He addressed the set: "All right. You're the first viewer I ever met I couldn't fix. So just go on hiding your 3-D control. I'll look at you anyway!"

A movie was just coming on. The title was THE FBI IS WATCHING YOU!

He sat through all manner of shootings and car chases and wrecks. The FBI wiped out all the red agents in America. It then wiped out all the Mafia in America. It then wiped out the U.S. Congress. I could tell Heller was impressed. He kept yawning and, psychologically, that is a sure sign of tension building up and releasing.

The Washington, D.C., local late news followed.

Whites had been mugged. Blacks had been mugged. Whites had been raped. Blacks had been raped. Whites had been murdered. Blacks had been murdered.

There is a law in America that TV must cover everything impartially without showing bias and they had racially balanced the program up pretty well.

There had been no slightest mention of any incident in Potomac Park. There hadn't even been a line about a Mary Schmeck, a junkie, dying on the way to a hospital—such deaths are too common to even get notice.

Heller sighed and shut off the TV.

He went to bed.

It was just past six in the morning in Turkey. I, too, turned in. But I couldn't sleep. He had not even put a chain on his room door or locked the French doors to the balcony. He had not even placed any sort of a weapon under his pillow!

He was going to be hit. That was for certain. Somewhere on the path he was taking, Bury had it all arranged. There was no IF about it. There was only WHEN?

An idiot had me on a chain and was leading me straight to my death! Maybe I would go as anonymously and unremarked as Mary Schmeck. The thought saddened me.

For a man about to be hit, Heller certainly was relaxed the next morning.

There was a small buzzer on my viewer which

sounded when reception intensified, if you remembered to set it and I certainly had! At 2:00 P.M. Turkish time I was blasted out of bed by it. It was 7:00 A.M. in Maryland and Heller was up and taking a shower. At least he was still alive, though I was unconfident that it would be for long.

He was splashing around in the shower. His Fleet passion for cleanliness grated on my nerves. It had been just as hot in Turkey as it had been around Washington I was sure. I didn't have air conditioning and I was certainly more sweaty and dirty and rumpled than he had been, yet I didn't have to take any shower! The man was clearly mad.

I went out and got a small boy by the ear and hurled him in the direction of the cookhouse and, shortly, I was back hanging over the viewer, wolfing kavun, or melon, and washing it down with kahve, the Turkish name for coffee, which is a cousin to hot jolt. I was so intent that I was gulping it down with sade and omitting mineral water swallows between sips the way you are supposed to do. The fact was forcefully called to my attention when my already raw nerves began to leap peculiarly. I dumped in the sugar and drank about a quart of water very quick. But my nerves were still jumping.

It was absolutely horrifying to watch what Heller was doing—or, more correctly, what he was not doing!

He made no baggage inspection—he simply got out a clean set of underclothes and socks from the carry-all and put them on, thus denying me any real inspection of his suitcases.

Dressed, he did not look up and down the hall before he stepped into it. He gave not the slightest glance around corners before he rounded them. He did not inspect the parking lot as he passed it for new, strange cars. And he did not even look over the restaurant when

he entered but, with indecent carelessness, walked over to a booth and sat down.

A teen-age girl with a ponytail came to wait on him. He said, "Where's that elderly woman that was here last night?" Evidently the stupid idiot had formed some attachment—mother fixation no doubt!

The dumb girl went off to ask the manager of all things! She came back. "She was just temporary. You got no idea how the help shifts around in these motel chains. What'll y'have?"

"A chocolate sundae," said Heller. "That's to start. Then ... what's these?" He was pointing at a picture.

"Waffles?" said the girl. "They're just waffles."

"Give me five," said Heller. "And three cups of hot jo–coffee."

I made a hurried note. Although I realized it was quite plain that he was imitating the accents of the people he talked to, he had almost strayed into a Code break. When I had the platen, those could be used to hang him high!

She came with a big, gooey chocolate sundae and he demolished it. Then she came with five separate plates of waffles and spread them around and he demolished those. Then she came with three separate cups of coffee. He emptied the sugar bowl of cubes into them and demolished those.

She was hanging around, not giving him his check. "You're cute," she said. "It'll be fall semester soon. You going to sign up with a local high school?"

"I'm just passing through," said Heller.

"(Bleep)," said the girl and stalked off. She came back with his check. She had put all the items on it. She was very frosty and uppity. Even the dollar tip didn't seem to matter. She must have been looking at his back

as she left the table but her voice came through clearly. "I never get the breaks."

Heller said to the cashier, "I understand your lamp blew out last night."

"Which one?"

"This one," said Heller, tapping it.

The cashier asked the manager who was fiddling around with the cigarette display. He said, "Oh, yeah. Outside fuse. But it didn't blow. The fuse got pulled somehow."

He bought a whole bale of daily papers and went back to his room. A golden opportunity had been missed, I realized suddenly. I cursed Raht and Terb. They were somewhere within two hundred miles of him or I wouldn't be getting a picture. They were depending on the fact that his clothes and suitcases were bugged to keep him ranged. I could have kicked them for not demanding a receiver-typer. Yes, I knew it was illegal for them to pack around more than a small transmitter that looked like an alarm clock. But they should have said, "(Bleep) the regulations, Gris must be served!" They hadn't. A pair of (bleepards), both of them. A golden chance to ransack his baggage had been missed! If I had that platen, I wouldn't be going through all this!