The Man Who Lost the Sea (18 page)

“Who is he? You know him?” Iris whispered.

“I know him,” growled Horowitz. “He’s Heri Gonza’s bodyguard.”

“Nobody but the two of them,” said Flannel.

“Good,” said a new voice and a second man walked in, throwing off a slouch hat and opening the twin to the long, loose topcoat Flannel wore. “Hi, chillun,” said Heri Gonza.

There was a long silence, and then Horowitz plumped down on his pile of
Proceedings
, put his chin in his hands; and said in profound disgust, “Ah, for God’s sake.”

“Dr. Horowitz,” said Heri Gonza pleasantly, nodding, and “Dr. Barran.”

Iris said, shakily, “I th-thought you were doing a sh-show.”

“Oh, I am, I am. All things are possible if you only know how. At the moment Chitsie Bombom is doing a monolog, and she’s good for two encores. After that there’s a solido of me sitting way up on the flats in the left rear, oh so whimsically announcing the Player’s Pub Players. They have a long one-acter and a pantomime. I’ve even got a ballet company, in case this takes that long.”

“Phoney to the eyeballs, even when you work,” said Horowitz. “Quickly and quietly and get the hell out of here, ’scuse me, Dr. Barran.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” she murmured.

“Please,” said the comedian softly, “I didn’t come here to quarrel with you. I want to end all that. Here and now, and for good.”

“We’ve got something he wants,” said Horowitz in a loud aside to Iris.

Heri Gonza closed his eyes and said, “You’re making this harder than it has to be. What can I do to make this a peaceful talk?”

“For one thing,” said Horowitz, “your simian friend is breathing and it bothers me. Make him stop.”

“Flannel,” said Heri Gonza, “get out.”

Glowering, the big man moved to the door, opened it, and stood on the sill. “All the way,” said the comedian. Flannel’s broad back was one silent mass of eloquent protest, but he went out and shut the door.

Deftly, with that surprising suddenness of nervous motion which was his stock in trade, Heri Gonza dropped to one knee to bring their faces on a level, and captured Iris’s startled hands. “First of all,
Dr. Barran, I came to apologize to you for the way I spoke on the telephone. I had to do it—there was no alternative, as you’ll soon understand. I tried to call you back, but you’d already gone.”

“You followed me here! Oh, Dr. Horowitz, I’m sorry!”

“I didn’t need to follow you. I’ve had this place spotted since two days before you moved into it, Horowitz. But I’m sorry I had to strongarm my way in.”

“I yield to curiosity,” said Horowitz. “Why didn’t my locks alarm when you opened them? I saw Flannel’s palm-print eliminator, but dammit, they should have alarmed.”

“The locks were here when you rented the place, right? Well, who do you think had them installed? I’ll show you where the cutoff switch is before I leave. Anyhow—grant me this point. Was there any other way I could have gotten in to talk with you?”

“I concede,” said Horowitz sourly.

“Now, Dr. Barran. You have my apology, and you’ll have the explanation to go with it. Believe me, I’m sorry. The other thing I want to do is to accept, with thanks from the bottom of my heart, your very kind offer of the prize money. I want it, I need it, and it will help more than you can possibly realize.”

“No,” said Iris flatly. “I’ve promised it to Dr. Horowitz.”

Heri Gonza sighed, got to his feet, and leaned back against the lab bench. He looked down at them sadly.

“Go on,” said Horowitz. “Tell us how you need money.”

“The only two things I have never expected from you are ignorance and stupidity,” said Heri Gonza sharply, “and you’re putting up a fine display of both. Do you really think, along with all my millions of ardent fans, that when I land a two-million-dollar contract I somehow put two million dollars in the bank? Don’t be childish. My operation is literally too big to hide anything in. I have city, county, state and federal tax vultures picking through my whole operational framework. I’m a corporation and subject to outside accounting. I don’t even have a salary; I draw what I need, and I damn well account for it, too. Now, if I’m going to finish what I started with the disease, I’m going to need a lot more money than I can whittle out a chip at a time.”

“Then take it out of the Foundation money—that’s what it’s for.”

“I want to do the one thing I’m not allowed to do with it. Which happens to be the one thing that’ll break this horrible thing—it has to!”

“The only thing there is like that is a trip to Iapetus.”

To this, Heri Gonza said nothing—absolutely nothing at all. He simply waited.

Iris Barran said, “He means it. I think he really means it.”

“You’re a big wheel,” said Horowitz at last, “and there are a lot of corners you can cut, but not that one. There’s one thing the government—all governments and all their armed forces—will rise up in wrath to prevent, and that’s another landing and return from any place off earth—especially, Iapetus. You’re got close to four hundred dying kids on your hands right now, and the whole world is scared.”

“Set that aside for a moment.” The comedian was earnest, warm-voiced. “Just suppose it could be done. Horowitz, as I understand it you have everything you need on the iapetitis virus but one little link. Is that right?”

“That’s right. I can synthesize a surrogate virus from nucleic acids and exactly duplicate the disease. But it dies out of its own accord. There’s a difference between my synthetic virus and the natural one, and I don’t know what it is. Give me ten hours on Iapetus and half a break, and I’ll have the original virus under an electron mike. Then I can synthesize a duplicate, a real self-sustaining virus that can cause the disease. Once I have that, the antigen becomes a factory process, with the techniques we have today. We’ll have shots for those kids by the barrel lot inside of a week.”

Heri Gonza spread his hands. “There’s the problem, then. The law won’t allow the flight until we have the cure. We won’t have the cure unless we make the flight.”

Iris said, “A Nobel prize is an awful lot of money, but it won’t buy the shell of a space ship.”

“I’ve got the ship.”

For the first time Horowitz straightened up and, spoke with something besides anger and hopelessness. “What kind of a ship? Where is it?”

“A Fafnir. You’ve seen it, or pictures of it. I use it for globe-trotting mostly, and VIP sightseeing. It’s a deepspace craft, crew of twelve, and twelve passenger cabins. But it handles like a dream, and I’ve got the best pilot in the world. Kearsarge.”

“Kearsarge, God yes. But look, what you call deepspace is Mars and Venus. Not Saturn.”

“You don’t know what’s been done to that ship. She’ll sleep four now. I have a lab and a shop in her, and all the rest is nothing but power-plant, shielding and fuel. Hell, she’ll make Pluto!”

“You mean you’ve been working on this already?”

“Man, I’ve been chipping away at my resources for a year and a half now. You don’t know what kind of footsie I’ve been playing with my business managers and the banks and all. I can’t squeak out another dime without lighting up the whole project. Dr. Barran, now do you see why I had to treat you like that? You were
the
godsend, with your wonderful offer and your vested interest in Billy. Can you astrogate?”

“I—oh dear. I know the principles well enough. Yes, I could; with a little instruction.”

“You’ll get it. Now look, I don’t want to see that money. You two will go down and inspect the ship tomorrow morning, and then put in everything you’ll need beyond what’s already there. You’ve got food, fuel, water and air enough for two trips, let alone one.”

“God,” said Horowitz.

“I’ll arrange for your astrogation, Dr. Barran. You’ll have to dream up a story, secret project or long solitary vacation or some such. Horowitz, you can drop out of sight without trouble.”

“Oh, sure, thanks to you.”

“Dammit, this time you’re welcome,” said the comedian, and very nearly smiled. “Now, you’ll want one more crew member: I’ll take care of that before flight time.”

“What about the ship? What will you say?”

“Flight test after overhaul. Breakdown in space, repair, return—some such. Leave that to Kearsarge.”

“I freely admit,” said Horowitz, “that I don’t get it. This is one frolic that isn’t coming out of taxes, and it’s costing you a packet. What’s in it, mountebank?”

“You could ask that,” said the comedian, sadly. “The kids, that’s all.”

“You’ll get the credit?”

“I won’t, I can’t, I don’t want it. I can’t tie in to this jaunt—it would ruin me. Off-earth landings, risking the lives of all earth’s kids—you know how they’d talk. No sir: this is your cooky, Horowitz. You disappear, you show up one day with the answer. I eat crow like a hell of a good sport. You get back your directorship if you want it. Happy ending. All the kids get well.” He jumped into the air and clicked his heels four times on the way down. “The kids get well,” he breathed with sudden sobriety.

Horowitz said gently, “Heri Gonza, what’s with you and kids?”

“I like ’em.” He buttoned his coat. “Goodnight, Dr. Barran. Please accept my apologies again, and don’t think too badly of me.”

“I don’t,” she said smiling, and gave him her hand.

“But why do you like kids that much?” asked Horowitz.

Heri Gonza shrugged easily and laughed his deadpan laugh. “Never had none,” he chuckled. He went to the door and stopped facing it, suddenly immobile. His shoulders trembled. He whirled suddenly, and the famous carven face was wet, twisted, the mouth tortured and crooked. “Never can,” he whispered, and literally ran out of the room.

The weeks went by, the month. Iapetitis cases underwent some strange undulations, and a hope arose that the off-world virus was losing its strength. Some of the older cases actually improved, and a blessing that was, too; for although overall growth was arrested, there was a tendency for the mobile side to grow faster than the other, and during the improvement phase, the sides seemed to equalize. Then, tragically the improvement would slow; and stop.

Incidence of the disease seemed to be slackening as well. At the last, there had been only three new cases in a year, though they caused a bad flurry, occurring as they did simultaneously in a Belgian village which had had no hint of the disease before.

Heri Gonza still did his weekly stint (less vacation) and still amazed his gigantic audiences with his versatility, acting, singing, dancing,
clowning. Sometimes he would make quiet appearances, opening and closing the show and turning it over to a theater or ballet group. During the Old Timer’s Celebration he learned to fly a perfect duplicate of a century-old light aircraft with an internal combustion engine, and daringly took his first solo during the show, with a trideo camera occupying the instructor’s seat.

At other times he might take up the entire time-segment alone, usually with orchestra and props, once—possibly his most successful show—dressed in sloppy practice clothes on a bare stage, without so much as a chair, and with no assistance but lights and cameras and an occasional invisible touch from the hypnos and the scent generators. Singlehandedly he was a parade, a primary schoolroom, a zoo in an earthquake, and an old lady telling three children, ages five, ten, and fifteen, about sex all at the same time.

And in between (and sometimes during) his shows, he faithfully maintained I. F. He visited his children regularly, every single one of the more than four hundred. He thrilled with their improvements, cheered them in their inevitable relapses. The only time he did not make one of his scheduled shows at all was the time the three cases appeared in Belgium, and then the slot was filled with news-items about the terrifying resurgence, and a world tour of I. F. clinics. He was a great man, a great comic, no question about it, right up to his very last show.

He didn’t know it was his last show, which in its way was a pity, because with that knowledge he would have been more than good; he’d have been great. He was that kind of performer.

However, he was good, and was in and out of a vastly amusing variety show, using his old trick of standing offstage and singing with perfect mimicry while top vocalists stood center stage and mouthed the words. He turned out to be one of the Japanese girls who built body-pyramids on their bicycles, and, powered by a spring device under the water, joined a succession of porpoises leaping to take fish out of a keeper’s hand.

He played, as he preferred to do, in a large studio without an audience, but playing to the audience-response sound supplied to him. He made his cues well, filled in smoothly with ad-libs when a
girl singer ran a chorus short on her arrangement, and did his easy stand-up comedy monologue to close. A pity he didn’t smile on that show. When the on-the airs went out and the worklights came on, he threw a sweat-shirt around his shoulder and ambled into the wings, where, as usual, the network man, Burcke, waited for him.

“How’d it look, Burckee ol’ turkey?”

“Like never before,” said Burcke.

“Aw, you’re cute yourself,” said the comedian. “Let’s have a look.” One of his greatest delights—and one reason for his fantastic polish—was the relaxed run-through afterward, where he lounged in the projection-room and looked at the show he had just finished from beginning to end. He and Burcke and a few interested cast members, backstage people, and privileged strangers got arranged in the projection room. Beer was passed around and the small-talk used up. As usual they all deferred to Heri Gonza, and when he waved a negligent hand everybody shut up and the projectionist threw the switch.

Title and credits with moving cloud-blanket background. Credits fade, camera zooms towards clouds, which thin to show mountain range. Down through clouds, hover over huge misty lake. Water begins to heave, to be turbulent, suddenly shores rush together and water squirts high through the clouds in a thick column. Empty lake rises up out of clouds, is discovered to be Heri Gonza’s open mouth. Pull back to show full face. Puzzled expression. Hand up, into mouth, extracts live goldfish
.

GONZA: Welcome to the Heri Gonza show, this week “As you lake it.”
(beat)
Which is all you can expect when you open with a punorama. What ho is
(beat)
What ho is yonder? A mountain. What ho is on the mountain? A mountain goat. What ho is the goat mountain? Why, another moun—Fellers, keep the lens on me, things are gettin’ a little blue off camera. Now hear ye, Tom, now hear ye Dick, now hear ye hairy Harry, Heri’s here. Hee hee, ho ho, here comes the show.