Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" (42 page)

"You shouldn't go to all this trouble," said Epstein. "I'll only come to another bad end."

Heller splashed at the water to get oil scum to float away and when he had a clear patch, he used it to get some of the oil off Epstein's head and shoulders.

"Now, don't go away," said Heller. He swam back to the ladder, got up on the dock and shortly had Epstein up beside him, safely on the concrete.

A pair of cops wandered up. "What are you doing?"

"Fishing," said Heller.

"You sure you're not swimming?" said one cop.

"Just fishing," said Heller.

"Well, see that you don't swim," said the cop and he and his partner wandered away, idly swinging their nightsticks.

"You didn't turn me over to them," said Epstein. "But you might as well. They'll get me anyway."

Heller had recovered his redstar engineer's rag. He was wiping the oil off Epstein. Then he got Epstein's

shoes off and got him out of his pants and put the articles in the sun, which seemed to be quite hot.

He took a few more swipes at Epstein's face and then put the young man's horn-rimmed glasses on him.

I wondered if Heller had made a mistake in identity. According to Mr. Twaddle, this Epstein was a roaring anarchist, a terror and a threat to civilization. But he was quite small, had a narrow face, a beaked nose, weak eyes and was shivering.

"You cold?" said Heller.

"No, it is just what I have been through," said Epstein.

"What do they want you for, really?" said Heller.

Epstein looked like he was going to cry. "It all started when I realized that the usual Internal Revenue Service agent just made up regulations as he went along. But one fatal day I was in the law library and found the actual Congressional law and the IRS manual of regulations. I Xeroxed them. I started to do the income tax returns for the faculty and some students with all the correct deductions." He sighed and was silent a bit. "Oh, the way of the revolutionary is hard! I'm not up to it."

"So what happened?" said Heller.

"The local IRS office lost about two million dollars in illegal collections they'd been getting. And the bonuses of agents McGuire, O'Brien and Malone shrank to nothing."

He sighed a long, shuddering sigh. "They will never forgive me. They will persecute me all my days. You shouldn't have rescued me. I am a lost cause."

Heller had gotten some of the oil off of himself. He went over to his jacket and fished out the subpoena. He brought it back and handed it to Epstein. As he sat back down, he said, "What is this?"

Epstein looked at it, turned it over. "It's just a subpoena. It tells you to appear before a grand jury and testify."

"And what does that consist of?" said Heller.

"Oh, very simple. You just take the Fifth Amendment—which is to say, refuse in case it incriminates you—and they put you in jail and bring you out every few weeks and you just take the Fifth Amendment again."

"Then they really don't examine you and make you tell all you know?"

"No, it's just a method of keeping innocent people in jail."

Heller was looking at the water. "Oh, those poor fellows," he said.

"What poor fellows?" said Epstein.

"McGuire, Malone and O'Brien and seven other agents. They're all dead. I thought I was facing a Code break, you see."

"Dead?"

"Yes, your apartment blew up. Killed them all."

"If those three are dead, then the case is ended. They didn't have any evidence, only their own testimony. It means I am not being hunted. The thing is all over!"

"Good," said Heller. "Then you're free and clear!"

Epstein sat for a short time, looking at the water. Then suddenly his teeth began to chatter and from this he went into a torrent of tears.

"If you're free and clear," said Heller, "what's wrong now?"

After a bit Epstein was able to talk. But he still kept on crying. "I know something awful is going to happen in the next few minutes!"

"Why?" said Heller in astonishment.

"Oh," wept Epstein, "I wouldn't be permitted to have this much good news."

"What?" said Heller.

"The news is too wonderful! I don't deserve it! A world record catastrophe is going to strike any moment now to make up for it! I know it!"

"Look," said Heller patiently, "your troubles are over. And there's more good news. I have a job for you."

"Oh?" said Epstein. "You mean I've got a chance to pay back my student loans and re-enroll for my doctorate again?"

"I think so," said Heller.

"What is your name?"

"Jet."

Oh, my Gods! This was a Code break. Heller was going to tell him his real name.

"That isn't all of it," said Epstein.

"Well, no," said Heller. "The full name on my papers is Jerome Terrance Wister. That makes my initials 'J. T.' My real friends call me Jet."

Oh, that slippery dog. He'd just squeaked by on that one.

"Oh, J. T. Wister. Jet. I get it. The name on the subpoena was J. Edgar Hoover and I was sure you wanted me to murder somebody. I am not the type, you know. I can't even kill cockroaches."

"Nothing drastic like that," said Heller. "You're over twenty-one, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm twenty-three and an aged wreck."

"Well, all I want you to do is open a broker account for me."

"Do you have credit?"

"Well, no," said Heller. "But all I want you to do is open an account so I can buy and sell stocks—some firm like Short, Skidder and Long Associates."

Epstein drew a shuddering sigh. "It isn't that simple. You have to have an address so you can have a bank account. Then you have to arrange credit and open a brokerage account. Do you have any money?"

"Yes. I have a hundred thousand to use in such gambling."

"Do you have any heavy debts or liabilities like me?"

"No."

"I know everybody has enemies. But do you have any special enemies that would like to get at you?"

Heller thought a bit. "Well, there's a Mr. Bury, an attorney I've run into."

"Bury? Bury of Swindle and Crouch?"

"Yes, the same."

"He's Delbert John Rockecenter's personal family attorney. He's one of the most powerful lawyers on Wall Street. And he's an enemy?"

"I would say so," said Heller. "He keeps working at it."

"Oh," said Epstein. He was silent for a bit and they sat in the hot sun drying off. Then he said, "This thing you're asking is pretty big. It's going to take an awful lot of work. You would need somebody on it full time, not just to start it but to run it for you."

"Well, how much do you earn a week?"

"Oh, I don't earn much of anything," said Epstein. "I'm not really an accountant—that's just one of the things a business administrator has to know. They wouldn't take my last thesis for my doctorate. It was a good thesis, too. It was all about corporate feudalism-industrial anarchy, you know—how the corporations could and should run everything. Its title was 'Is Government Necessary?' But I think I could get them to accept my new title. It's 'Anarchy Is Vital If We Are

Ever Going to Establish Industrial Feudalism.'"

"Well," said Heller, "you could have time to work on that."

"You see," said Epstein, "they argue with me that it isn't in the field of business administration. They say it is a political science subject. But it isn't. No! About eighty percent of a corporation's resources are absorbed in trying to file government reports and escort inspectors around. If they would listen, I could get the Gross National Product up eighty percent, just like that!" He brooded a bit. "Maybe I ought to change my thesis title to 'Corporations Would Find Revolution Cheaper Than Paying Taxes.""

"I would pay you five hundred dollars a week," said Heller.

"No. If I did it, it would be for one percent of the gross income with a drawing account not to exceed two hundred dollars a week. I'm not worth much."

Heller went over to his jacket and fished out two one hundred dollar bills. He tried to hand them to Epstein.

"No," said Epstein. "You don't know enough about me. The offer is probably very good. But I can't accept it."

"Right now, do you have any money? Any place to live? Your apartment isn't there anymore."

"It's no more than I deserve. I didn't have any other clothes and I can sleep in the park tonight. It's warm weather."

"You've got to eat."

"I am used to starving."

"Look," said Heller, "you've got to take this job."

"It's too good an offer. You do not know me, Mr. Hoover—I mean, Mr. Wister. You are probably a kind, honest, patient man. But your efforts of philanthropy

are being directed at a lost cause. I cannot possibly accept your employment."

They sat for a while, dangling their legs off the dock edge, drying out in the warm sun. The Hudson had begun to flow again as the tide ebbed.

Suddenly Heller said, "Is ethnology included in business administration studies?"

"No."

"How about the customs of people?"

"No. You're talking about social anthropology, I guess. I've never studied that."

"Good," said Heller. "Then you would not realize that the laws of the American Indian were still binding on Manhattan, due to prior sovereignty."

"They are?" said Epstein.

"There was an Indian law that when you saved a man's life, that man was thereafter responsible for you from there on out."

"Where did you hear that?"

"I was told by a master of political science from your own university."

"So it must be true," brooded Epstein.

"Good," said Heller. "I just saved your life, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did. I'm afraid there's no doubt about that."

"All right," said Heller. "Then you are responsible for me from here on out."

Silence.

"You have to take the job and look after my affairs," said Heller. "It's prior Indian law. There's no way out of it."

Epstein stared at him. Then suddenly his head dropped. He broke into a torrent of tears. When he could talk, he blubbered, "You see, I knew when I heard all

that good news, some new catastrophe was lurking just ahead! And it's arrived! It's been horrible enough, in the face of malignant fate, trying to bear up and take responsibility for myself. And now," a fresh torrent of tears, "I have to take responsibility for you, too!"

Heller laid the two one-hundred-dollar bills in his hand. Epstein looked at them forlornly. He got up and went over to his jacket. He put them in his empty wallet.

He sadly looked at Heller. "Meet me on the steps of High Library on the campus tomorrow at noon and I will have the plan of what we have to do."

"Good," said Heller.

Epstein picked up his coat and walked a little ways. Then he turned. "I am sure that, with my awful fate, you will live to regret the kind things you have done. I am sorry."

Head down, he trudged away.

That evening, in the Gracious Palms lobby, Heller sat reading the Evening Libel. He was wearing his old, blue, too-short suit. The "throwaway" suit had really been thrown away after Heller's swim in the polluted river water. And evidently the tailors had not delivered any new clothes.

The story he was reading said:

In a strongly worded statement today, Mayor Don Hernandez O'Toole censured the New York District Office of the Internal Revenue Service.

"The IRS practice of blowing up perfectly good tax-deductible property must cease," said Mayor O'Toole. "It places all New York at risk."

The censure came on the heels of an explosion this afternoon on West 125th Street where an IRS squad was visiting a tax-deductible apartment house.

Dynamite found in the government cars was clear proof of intent to dynamite, according to New York Fire Commissioner Flame Jackson.

Premature dynamission was the stated cause of the blast.

A U.S. Government spokesman said, "IRS has a perfect right to do what it pleases, when it pleases and to whom it pleases and New York better get the word, see?" This was generally accepted as an evidence of cover-up as usual.

There were no lives of any importance lost in the blast.

Heller had just turned the paper over and half a strip of Bugs Bunny became visible and I was much annoyed when he was interrupted.

Heller looked up. Vantagio was standing right beside his chair.

"Did you get registered?" His voice was edgy. Hostile? "If you did, why didn't you call me?"

"Well," said Heller, "it's sort of up in the air. It's my

grades: D average and I'm asking to be accepted as a senior. It's possible I won't make it."

Had Vantagio gone white? Hard to tell as he was shadowed by a lobby palm. "What did they say?"

"It's 'under advisement.' I am to go back at nine in the morning."

"Sangue di Cristo! You wait until eight o'clock at night to tell me this!" Vantagio rushed off. He slammed the door of his office. Oh, he was angry.

Yes, I felt I could make, possibly, use of this jealousy for Heller.

But I made a more important observation about nine, New York time. Heller disengaged himself from some African diplomat he was talking to, got in the elevator and went to his suite. I could see that, down the hall, his door was wide open!

And down close to the floor, as though she were lying on it, a beautiful brunette girl was extending her hand out into the hall. In a musical voice she called, "Come along, pretty boy. We're waiting!"

A torrent of giggles came out of the room.

The interference went on. But I had made my observation. Heller never locked his door! Those women simply walked in whenever they chose!