The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories (6 page)

And that last one certainly was right. He'd gained a working knowledge of a lot of alien tongues, but with Pug's he could not even get an inkling.

Leg. forst.?

One couldn't be sure, but it could be—it could be!

He slapped the book shut and took it back to the shelf.

So you watch ahead for me, he said.

And why? To what purpose?

PugAlNash, he said, a little pleased, someday I'll wring your scrawny, meddling neck.

But, of course, he wouldn't. PugAlNash was too far away and he might not be scrawny and there was no reason to believe he even had a neck.

CHAPTER IV

When bedtime came around, he got into his flame-red pajamas with the yellow parrots on them and sat on the edge of the bed, wiggling his toes.

It had been quite a day, he thought.

He'd have to talk with Tony about this government offer to sell him the stamp material. Perhaps, he thought, he should insist upon it even if it meant a loss of possible revenue to Efficiency, Inc. He might as well get what he could and what he wanted when it was for the taking. For Tony, before they were through with it, probably would beat him out of what he had coming to him. He had expected it by now—but more than likely Tony had been too busy to indulge in any crookedness. Although it was a wonder, for Tony enjoyed a dishonest dollar twice as much as he did an honest one.

He remembered that he had told Griffin that he had faith in Tony and he guessed that he'd been right—he had faith in him and a little pride as well. Tony was an unprincipled rascal and there was no denying it. Thinking about it, Packer chuckled fondly. Just like me, he told himself, when I was young as Tony and was still in business.

There had been that triple deal with the bogus Chippendale and the Antarian paintings and the local version of moonshine from out in the Packrat system. By God, he told himself, I skinned all three of them on that one.

The phone rang and he padded out of the bedroom, his bare feet slapping on the floor.

The phone kept on insisting.

“All right!” yelled Packer angrily. “I'm coming!”

He reached the desk and picked up the phone.

“This is Pickering,” said the voice.

“Pickering. Oh, sure. Glad to hear from you.”

And had not the least idea who Pickering might be.

“The man you talked with about the Polaris cover.”

“Yes, Pickering. I remember you.”

“I wonder, did you ever find that cover?”

“Yes, I found it. Sorry, but the strip had only four. I told you five, I fear. An awful memory, but you know how it goes. A man gets old and –”

“Mr. Packer, will you sell that cover?”

“Sell it? Yes, I guess I told you that I would. Man of my word, you realize, although I regret it now.”

“It's a fine one, then?”

“Mr. Pickering,” said Packer, “considering that it's the only one in existence –”

“Could I come over to see it sometime soon?”

“Any time you wish. Any time at all.”

“You will hold it for me?”

“Certainly,” consented Packer. “After all, no one knows as yet that I have the thing.”

“And the price?”

“Well, now, I told you a quarter million, but I was talking then about a strip of five. Since it's only four, I'd be willing to shave it some. I'm a reasonable man, Mr. Pickering. Not difficult to deal with.”

“I can see you aren't,” said Pickering with a trace of bitterness.

They said good night and Packer sat in the chair and put his bare feet up on the desk and wiggled his toes, watching them with a certain fascination, as if he had never seen them before.

He'd sell Pickering the four-strip cover for two hundred thousand. Then he'd let it get noised about that there was a five-strip cover, and once he heard that Pickering would be beside himself and frothing at the mouth. He'd be afraid that someone might get ahead of him and buy the five-stamp strip while he had only four. And that would be a public humiliation that a collector of Pickering's stripe simply couldn't stand.

Packer chortled softly to himself.

“Bait,” he said aloud.

He probably could get half a million out of that five-strip piece. He'd make Pickering pay for it. He'd have to start it high, of course, and let Pickering beat him down.

He looked at the clock upon the desk and it was ten o'clock—a good hour past his usual bedtime.

He wiggled his toes some more and watched them. Funny thing about it, he wasn't even sleepy. He didn't want to go to bed; he'd got undressed from simple force of habit.

Nine o'clock, he thought, is a hell of a time for a man to go to bed. He could remember a time when he had never turned in until well after midnight and there had been many certain memorable occasions, he chucklingly recalled, when he'd not gone to bed at all.

But there had been something to do in those days. There had been places to go and people to meet and food had tasted proper and the liquor had been something a man looked forward to. They didn't make decent liquor these days, he told himself. And there were no great cooks any more. And no entertainment, none worthy of the name. All his friends had either died or scattered; none of them had lasted.

Nothing lasts, he thought.

He sat wiggling his toes and looking at the clock and somehow he was beginning to feel just a bit excited, although he could not imagine why.

In the silence of the room there were two sounds only—the soft ticking of the clock and the syrupy gurgling of the basket full of spores.

He leaned around the corner of the desk and looked at the basket and it was there, foursquare and solid—a basketful of fantasy come to sudden and enduring life.

Someday, he thought, someone would find where the spores came from—what distant planet in what misty reaches out toward the rim of the thinning galaxy. Perhaps even now the origin of the stamps could be determined if he'd only release the data that he had, if he would show the covers with the yellow stamps to some authority. But the covers and the data were a trade secret and had become too valuable to be shown to any one and they were tucked away deep inside a bank vault.

Intelligent spores, he mused—what a perfect medium for the carrying of the mail. You put a dab of them on a letter or a package and you told them, somehow or other, where the letter or the package was to go and they would take it there. And once the job was done, then the spores encysted until the day that someone else, or something else, should recall them to their labors.

And today they were laboring for the Earth and the day would come, perhaps, when they'd be housekeepers to the entire Earth. They'd run all businesses efficiently and keep all homes picked up and neat; they would clean the streets and keep them free of litter and introduce everywhere an era of such order and such cleanliness as no race had ever known.

He wiggled his toes and looked at the clock again. It was not ten-thirty yet and it was really early. Perhaps he should change his mind—perhaps he should dress again and go for a moonlight stroll. For there was a moon; he could see it through the window.

Damn old fool, he told himself, whuffling out his whiskers.

But he took his feet down off the desk and padded toward the bedroom.

He chuckled as he went, planning exactly how he was going to skin Pickering to within an inch of that collector's parsimonious life.

He was bending at the mirror, trying to make his tie track, when the doorbell set up a clamor.

If it was Pickering, he thought, he'd throw the damn fool out. Imagine turning up at this time of night to do a piece of business that could better wait till morning.

It wasn't Pickering.

The man's card said he was W. Frederick Hazlitt and that he was president of the Hazlitt Suppliers Corporation.

“Well, Mr. Hazlitt?”

“I'd like to talk to you a minute,” Hazlitt said, peering furtively around. “You're sure that we're alone here?”

“Quite alone,” said Packer.

“This is a matter of some delicacy,” Hazlitt told him, “and of some alarm as well. I came to you rather than Mr. Anton Camper because I know of you by reputation as a man of proven business sagacity. I feel you could understand the problem where Mr. Camper –”

“Fire away,” invited Packer cordially.

He had a feeling that he was going to enjoy this. The man was obviously upset and scared to death as well.

Hazlitt hunched forward in his chair and his voice dropped almost to a whisper.

“Mr. Packer,” he confided in stricken horror, “I am becoming honest!”

“That's too bad,” said Packer sympathetically.

“Yes, it is,” said Hazlitt soberly. “A man in my position—in any business connection—simply can't be honest. Mr. Packer, I'll tell you confidentially that I lost out on one of the biggest deals in all my business life just last week because I had grown honest.”

“Maybe,” Packer suggested, “if you persevered, if you set your heart on it, you could remain at least partially dishonest.”

Hazlitt shook his head dolefully. “I tell you, sir, I can't. I've tried. You don't know how hard I've tried. And no matter how I try, I find myself telling the truth about everything. I find that I cannot take unfair advantage of anyone, not even of a customer. I even found myself the other day engaged in cutting my profit margins down to a more realistic figure –”

“Why, that's horrible!” cried Packer.

“And it's all your fault,” yelled Hazlitt.

“My fault,” protested Packer, whuffling out his whiskers. “Upon my word, Mr. Hazlitt, I can't see how you can say a thing like that. I haven't had a thing to do with it.”

“It's your Efficiency units,” howled Hazlitt. “They're the cause of it.”

“The Efficiency units have nothing to do with you,” declared Packer angrily. “All they do …”

He stopped.

Good Lord, he thought, they could!

He'd been feeling better than he'd felt for years and he didn't need his nap of an afternoon and here he was, dressing to go out in the middle of the night!

“How long has this been going on?” he asked in growing horror.

“For a month at least,” said Hazlitt. “I think I first noticed it a month or six weeks ago.”

“Why didn't you simply heave the unit out?”

“I did,” yelled Hazlitt, “but it did no good.”

“I don't understand. If you threw it out that should be the end of it.”

“That's what I thought at the time, myself. But I was wrong. That yellow stuff's still there. It's growing in the cracks and floating in the air and you can't get rid of it. Once you have it, you are stuck with it.”

Packer clucked in sympathy.

“You could move, perhaps.”

“Do you realize what that would cost me, Packer? And besides, as far as I'm concerned, it simply is no good. The stuff's inside of me!”

He pounded at his chest. “I can feel it here, inside of me—turning me honest, making a good man out of me, making me orderly and efficient, just like it made our files. And I don't want to be a good man, Packer—I want to make a lot of money!”

“There's one consolation,” Packer told him. “Whatever is happening to you undoubtedly also is happening to your competitors.”

“But even if that were the case,” protested Hazlitt, “it would be no fun. What do you think a man goes into business for? To render service, to become identified with the commercial community, to make money only? No, sir, I tell you—it's the thrill of skinning a competitor, of running the risk of losing your own shirt, of –”

“Amen,” Packer said loudly.

Hazlitt stared at him. “You, too …”

“Not a chance,” said Packer proudly. “I'm every bit as big a rascal as I ever was.”

Hazlitt settled back into his chair. His voice took on an edge, grew a trifle cold.

“I had considered exposing you, warning the world, and then I saw I couldn't …”

“Of course you can't,” said Packer gruffly. “You don't enjoy being laughed at. You are the kind of man who can't stand the thought of being laughed at.”

“What's your game, Packer?”

“My game?”

“You introduced the stuff. You must have known what it would do. And yet you say you are unaffected by it. What are you shooting at—gobbling up the entire planet?”

Packer whuffled. “I hadn't thought of it,” he said. “But it's a capital idea.”

He rose stiffly to his feet. “Little old for it,” he said. “But I have a few years yet. And I'm in the best of fettle. Haven't felt –”

“You were going out,” said Hazlitt, rising. “I'll not detain you.”

“I thank you, sir,” said Packer. “I noticed that there was a moon and I was going for a stroll. You wouldn't join me, would you?”

“I have more important things to do, Packer, than strolling in the moonlight.”

“I have no doubt of that,” said Packer, bowing slightly. “You would, of course, an upright, honest business man like you.”

Hazlitt slammed the door as he went out.

Packer padded back to the bedroom, took up the tie again.

Hazlitt an honest man, he thought. And how many other honest men this night? And a year from now—how many honest men in the whole wide world just one year from now? How long before the entire Earth would be an honest Earth? With spores lurking in the cracks and floating in the air and running with the rivers, it might not take so long.

Maybe that was the reason Tony hadn't skinned him yet. Maybe Tony was getting honest, too. Too bad, thought Packer, gravely. Tony wouldn't be half as interesting if he should happen to turn honest.

And the government? A government that had come begging for the spores—begging to be honest, although to be completely fair one must admit the government as yet did not know about the honesty.