Our Friends From Frolix 8 (7 page)

Nick said, ‘We’ll use a fake name.’

‘No.’ She shook her head.

‘Why not?’ His unease became greater; he felt, all at once, as if she were sticking to him like flypaper: he couldn’t pry her loose.

‘I don’t want to be alone,’ Charley said, ‘because if he
does
find me in some motel room, alone, he’ll beat the hell out of me; nothing like you saw, but really. I have to be with someone;
I have to have people who—’

‘I couldn’t stop him,’ Nick said, truthfully. Even Zeta, for all his strength, hadn’t been able to hold onto Denny for more than a few minutes.

‘He won’t fight with you. It’s just that he doesn’t want anybody, any third party, to see what he does to me. But—’ She paused. ‘I shouldn’t try to get you involved. It’s not fair to you. Suppose a fight broke out at your place, and we were all bursted by the PSS, and they found that tract on you that you got from us… you know the penalty.’

‘I’ll throw it away,’ he said. ‘Now.’ He rolled down the window of the squib, reached into his cumberbund for the small book.

‘So Eric Cordon comes second,’ Charley said, in a neutral voice, a voice without censure. ‘First comes protecting me from Denny. Isn’t that funny? It’s really funny!’

‘An individual is more important than theoretical—’

‘You’re not hooked yet, sweet. You haven’t read Cordon; when you do, you’ll feel different. Anyhow, I have two tracts in my purse, so it wouldn’t make any difference.’

‘Throw them away.’

‘No,’ Charley said.

Well, he thought, the stuff has hit the fan. She won’t give up the pamphlets and she won’t let me leave her off at a motel. What do I do now? Just drive around and around in this damn in-city traffic until I run out of fuel? And there’s always the chance that Shellingberg 8 will show up and we’ll be finished right then and there; he’ll probably ram us and kill us all. Unless the alcohol has worn off by now.

‘I have a wife,’ he said, simply. ‘And a child. I can’t do anything that—’

‘You did it. By letting Zeta know that you wanted a tract; you were in it the minute you and Zeta knocked on the door of our apartment.’

‘Before that, even,’ Nick said, nodding; it was true.

So fast, he thought. A commitment made in the blink of an eye. But it had been there a long time, building up. The news of Cordon’s pending murder — and that was what it was — had brought him to a decision, and at that moment,
Kleo and Bobby were in danger.

On the other hand, the PSS had just now spot-checked him, using Darby Shire as bait. And he — and Kleo — had passed it. So from the standpoint of statistical probabilities, there wasn’t a good chance he’d be investigated soon, again.

But he could not fool himself. They probably watch Zeta, he thought. And they know about the two apartments. They know all there is to know; it’s just a question of when they want to make their move.

In that case, it really was too late. He might as well go all the way; have Charley stay with him and Kleo for a couple of days. The couch in the living room made into a cot; they had had friends stay overnight.

But this situation differed, sharply, from those instances.

‘You can stay with my wife and me,’ he said, ‘if you get rid of the tracts you’re carrying. You don’t have to destroy them — can’t you just drop them off at some place you’re familiar with?’

Charley, without answering, picked up one of the pamphlets, turned the pages, then read aloud. ‘“The measure of a man is not his intelligence. It is not how high he rises in the freak establishment. The measure of a man is this: how swiftly can he react to another person’s need? And how much of himself can he give? In giving that is true giving, nothing comes back, or at least—” ‘

‘Sure; giving gives you something back,’ Nick said. ‘You give somebody something; later on he returns the favor by giving you something in return. That’s obvious.’

‘That’s not giving; that’s barter. Listen to this. “God tells us—”’

‘God is dead,’ Nick said. ‘They found his carcass in 2019. Floating out in space near Alpha.’

‘They found the remains of an organism advanced several thousand times over what we are,’ Charley said. ‘And it evidently could create habitable worlds and populate them with living organisms, derived from itself. But that doesn’t prove it was God.’

‘I think it was God.’

Charley said, ‘Can I stay at your place tonight and maybe,
if it’s necessary — and
only
if it’s necessary — maybe tomorrow night. Okay?’ She glanced up at him, her bright smile bathed in the light of innocence. As if, like a little cat, she were asking for a saucer of milk, nothing more. ‘Don’t be afraid of Denny, he won’t hurt you. If he beats up anybody, it’ll be me. But he’s not going to be able to find your apartment; how could he? He doesn’t know your name; he doesn’t know—’

‘He knows I work for Zeta.’

‘Zeta isn’t afraid of him. Zeta could beat him to a pulp—’

‘You contradict yourself,’ Nick said, or at least so it seemed; perhaps the alcohol was still affecting him. He wondered when it wore off, an hour? Two? Anyhow, it appeared that he was flying his squib adequately; at least no PSS occifer had flagged him down or grappled onto him with tractor beams.

‘You’re afraid of what your wife will say,’ Charley said. ‘If you bring me home. She’ll think lots of things.’

‘Well, there’s that,’ he said. ‘And also the law called “statutory rape”. You’re not twenty-one, are you?’

‘I’m sixteen.’

‘There, you see—’

‘Okay,’ she said merrily. ‘Land and drop me off.’

‘Do you have any money?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘But you’ll manage?’

‘Yes. I can always manage.’ She spoke without rancor; she did not seem to blame him for his hesitation. Maybe this sort of thing has happened before between them, he reflected. And others, like myself, have been lured in. With the best intentions in mind.

‘I’ll tell you what may happen to you if you take me to your place,’ Charley said. ‘You can be bursted for being in the same room with Cordonite material. You can be bursted for statutory rape. Your wife, who will also be arrested for being in the same room with Cordonite material, will leave you, and will never understand or forgive you. And yet you can’t just let me off, even though you don’t know me, because I’m a girl and I have nowhere to go to—’

‘Friends,’ he said. ‘You must have friends you could go to.’ Or are they too much afraid of Denny? he wondered. ‘You’re right.’ he said, then. ‘I can’t just let you off.’

Kidnapping, he thought; I could also be charged with that, if Denny felt like calling the PSS. But — Denny could not, would not, do that, because then, in return, he would be nailed as a peddler of Cordonite material. He can’t take that chance.

‘You’re a strange little girl,’ he said to Charley. ‘In some ways you’re naïveté itself and in other ways you’re tough as a warehouse rat.’ Did selling illegal material make her like this? he wondered. Or did it happen the other way around… she had grown up hard, toughened, and hence had gravitated to such work. He glanced at her, now, sizing up her clothes. She is too well-dressed, he thought; those are expensive garments. Maybe she is greedy — this is a way of earning enough pops to satisfy that greed. For her, clothes. For Denny, the Shellingberg 8. Without this they would merely be teenagers, going to school in jeans and shapeless sweaters.

Evil, he thought, in the service of good. Or were Cordon’s writings good? He had never seen an authentic Cordon tract before; now, presumably, he had one and he was free to read it himself and decide. And let her stay if it’s good? he wondered. And if it isn’t, toss her out to the wolves, to Denny and the prowl cars with their telepathic Unusuals listening constantly.

‘I am life,’ the girl said.

‘What?’ he said, startled.

‘To you, I am life. What are you, thirty-eight? Forty? What have you learned? Have you done anything? Look at me, look. I’m life and when you’re with me, some of it rubs off on you. You don’t feel so old, now, do you? With me here in the squib beside you.’

Nick said, ‘I’m thirty-four and I don’t feel old. As a matter of fact, sitting here with you makes me feel older, not younger. Nothing is rubbing off.’

‘It will,’ she said.

‘You know this from experience,’ he said. ‘With older men. Before me.’

Opening her purse she got out her mirror and cheekstick; she began to stroke elaborate lines from her eyes, across her cheekbones, to the rim of her jaw.

‘You use too much makeup,’ he said.

‘All right, call me a two-pop whore.’

‘What?’ he asked, staring at her, his attention momentarily turned away from the mid-morning traffic.

‘Nothing,’ she said. She closed up her cheekstick, placed it and the mirror back in her purse. ‘Do you want some alcohol?’ she asked. ‘Denny and I have a lot of contacts for alc. I might even be able to get you some — what’s it called — oh yes, scotch.’

‘Made in some fly-by-night distillery out of God knows what,’ Nick said.

She began to laugh helplessly; she sat, head down, her right hand over her eyes. ‘I can picture a distillery flapping through the midnight sky, on its way to a new location. Where the PSS won’t find it.’ She continued laughing, holding onto her head as if the idea of it refused to leave her.

‘You can go blind from alcohol,’ Nick said.

‘Smoke.
Wood
alcohol.’

‘How can you be sure it isn’t that?’

‘How can you be sure of anything? Denny may catch us any time and kill us, or the PSS may do it… it’s just not likely, and you have to go by what’s likely, not what’s possible.
Anything
is possible.’ She smiled up at him. ‘But that’s good, don’t you see? It means you can always hope; he says that, Cordon — I remember that. Cordon says it again and again. He really doesn’t have much of a message, but I remember that. You and I might fall in love; you might leave your wife and I’d leave Denny, and then he’d go outright insane — he’d go on a drinking binge — and he’d kill all of us and then himself.’ She laughed, her light eyes dancing. ‘But isn’t it great? Don’t you see how great it is?’

He didn’t.

‘You’ll see,’ Charley said. ‘Meanwhile, don’t talk to me
for the next ten or so minutes, I have to figure out what to tell your wife.’

‘I’ll tell her.’ Nick said.

‘You’d foul it all up.
I’ll
do it.’ She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating. He drove on, then, turning in the direction of his apartment.

Fred Huff, personal assistant to PSS Director Barnes, placed a list on his superior’s desk and said, ‘Pardon me, but you asked for a daily report on apartment 3XX24J and here it is. We used standard tapes of voices to identify those who came by. Only one person — one new person, I mean — came by. A Nicholas Appleton.

‘Doesn’t sound like much,’ Barnes said.

‘We ran it through the computer, the one we lease from the University of Wyoming. It made an interesting extrapolation as soon as it had all previous material on this Nicholas Appleton, his age, occupation, background, is he married, does he have any children, has he ever—’

‘He’s never broken the law before in any manner whatsoever.’

‘You mean he’s never been caught. We asked the computer that, too. What are the chances, given this particular man, that he would knowingly violate the law, at the felony level. It said probably no, he would not.’

‘He did when he went to 3XX24J,’ Barnes said caustically.

‘So noted; hence the application from the computer for a prognosis. Extrapolating from his case, and others similar to it during the last few hours, the computer declares that the news of Cordon’s impending execution has already swelled the ranks of the Cordonite underground by forty percent.’

‘Balls,’ Director Barnes said.

‘That’s how it works out statistically.’

‘You mean they’ve joined in protest? Openly?’

‘Not openly, no. In protest, yes.’

‘Ask the computer what the reaction will be to the announcement of Cordon’s death.’

‘It can’t compute. Not enough data. Well, it computed, but in so many possible ways as to tell us nothing. Ten percent: a mass uprising. Fifteen percent: a refusal to believe that—’

‘The greatest probability is what?’

‘A belief that Cordon is dead, but that Provoni is not; that he’s alive and will return. Even without Cordon. You must remember that thousands — authentic or forged — writings by Cordon are being circulated everywhere on Earth every minute of the day. His death isn’t going to end that. Remember the famous revolutionary of the twentieth century, Ché Guevara. Even though dead, the diary which he left behind—’

‘Like Christ,’ Barnes said. He felt depressed; he had begun to brood. ‘Kill Christ and you get the New Testament. Kill Ché Guevara and you get a diary that’s a book of instructions on how to gain power all over the world. Kill Cordon—’

A buzzer on Barnes’ desk buzzed.

‘Yes, Council Chairman,’ Barnes said into the intercom. ‘I have occifer Noyes with me.’ He nodded to her and she rose from the leather-covered chair facing his desk. ‘We’ll come in.’ He motioned to her, feeling at the same time a stiff dislike of her.

He did not like policewomen in general, and especially those who liked to wear the uniform. A woman, he had mused long ago, should not be in uniform. The female informers did not bother him, because in no way were they required to surrender their femininity. Police occifer Noyes was sexless — in actual, physiological fact She had undergone Snyder’s operation, so that both legally and physically speaking, she was not a woman; she had no sex organs as such, no breasts; her hips were as narrow as a man’s, and her face was fathomless and cruel.

‘Just think,’ Barnes said to her as they walked down the
corridor — past the double rows of weapons-police guards — and came to Willis Gram’s massive, ornate oak door, ‘how good you’d feel if you had after all managed to get something on Irma Gram. Too bad.’ He nudged her as the door opened and they entered Gram’s bedroom office. In his huge bed, Gram lay, buried in piles of sections of the
Times
, an expression of cunning on his face.