Mission: Earth "Fortune of Fear" (24 page)

Word had been taken to Ters. The Daimler-Benz was already warming up.

The back seat was all cleaned up. I got in. He closed the door. He got under the wheel. He gave his evil laugh. I shuddered at it a little bit but away we went.

We tore along the road remarkably fast. We spilled a camel load of opium and it cheered me greatly when the donkey who had been leading the camel bucked and brayed. It was a beautiful if bitterly cold day. And that little drama made it perfect. Nobody was going to argue with this huge, bulletproof limousine and its red eagles!

We blocked the traffic before the Piastre Branch Bank in Afyon and I went in.

The teller recognized me on sight. He called the manager. The manager beckoned me into his office and set a chair for me.

"Mudur Zengin in Istanbul asked for you to call when you came in," he said. "If you..."

"I don't want to talk to Zengin," I said. "I just want my million-lira allowance for the week. I can't send a messenger, you know. Only I can pick it up."

"Please," he said.

He got Mudur Zengin on the phone quite quickly for Turkey. I put the shotgun down on a chair and took the proffered instrument.

"Hello, Zengin," I said. "I trust there's no hanky-panky about my weekly allowance."

"No," said Mudur Zengin. "That is, not at the moment. I wanted to tell you personally and in confidence that your concubine is not following your orders completely. While all purchases have stopped elsewhere, they are still coming in from the Bonbucks Teller Central Purchasing agent on the Squeeza credit card. We've just gotten one here for nearly a hundred and eighty thousand dollars."

"Look at the date," I said. "I think you will find it predates my orders to her. They simply sent it in late." (Bleep) that Krak!

"Do you mind if I call Squeeza on the other phone? They did not give me the exact date of invoice at the store."

Go ahead, I thought. That's pretty ancient history.

He came back on. "You were right about the date of that one. But what they told me was correct. They have quite a few coming in since. They are small. But they exist. Your concubine has not obeyed your orders and is still purchasing, evidently by phone to New York." (Bleep), (bleep), (bleep) that Krak!

"I wanted to be sure you knew," said Zengin. "You see, this pulls down the amount of money I can invest from the sums you left me and if it keeps up, it will reduce the allowance. In fact, it already has. And I can only authorize eight hundred thousand this week to protect your capital here. Unless of course, you wish to drive up and give me further money, which I don't advise."

"(Bleep), (bleep), (bleep), (bleep), (bleep) that Krak!" I inadvertently said aloud.

"I beg your pardon?" said Zengin.

"It's just that I'm mad at the concubine," I said.

"Well, I would advise you to really get onto her about it," said Zengin.

I couldn't. And if I went to Istanbul I would miss a night of ecstasy. And I could see Zengin pulling down my deposit box to grains of dust.

"Authorize the eight hundred thousand," I snarled. I handed the phone to the manager and Zengin did.

I went home with my slightly lesser bale of lira. I put it in the safe. It was only four days' worth.

I tried to reason with the taxi driver when he came at six. "You've got to get a cheaper rate!" I said.

He stood there, staring at me. "Boss, I know for a fact that you have no complaints at all. That's because the merchandise is such top quality." He shook his head. "No, I cannot let you cheapen your delight."

"Listen," I said. "Those first three girls were over the wall about me. They were looking through the back window when they drove away. Why can't you persuade one of them to come back?"

"Alas," he said, "that parting glance you see is the look of forlorn, never-never again. They were taken back to their homes. They have their dowries now. And I know very well you don't want to marry one of them."

I turned ice-cold at the very thought of marriage. It sends shivers of horror through me any time I hear the word.

"Did you know that that first girl was married just today? To a fine young fellow. And the second girl is now going to go away to join her sweetheart who is an immigrant worker in Germany. That's what we're up against: prior commitments. That's the only type I can get. We could, however, cut it down to once a week...."

"No!" I shouted. "Never! Here's a girl's two hundred thousand for tonight. And get one who is less tired to begin with. They are cheating me with the first go.

The following ones are okay but that first one needs pepping up."

He rushed off in a blast of Citroen smoke.

And that night, again half an hour late, I was back under the cedar tree with a sloe-eyed creature, dusky in the dim light of the limousine. Tired out at the start but gathering energy as we engaged, she tried to claw my eyes out as we progressed. She screamed "Allah!" so loud that at the night's end I hardly heard the old man's evil laugh.

And so the nights flowed on. Woman after woman. All a half hour late. All different. All tired at the start. All soon desperate and clawing. All soon screaming "Allah." And all of them looking pleadingly out the window as they drove away.

My calls at the bank had to become more frequent. The allowance got reduced to six hundred and then to four hundred. And finally, I was calling the bank every day.

"You're eating into your capital like a buzz saw," Zengin said. "You're spending one million four hundred thousand lira a week and the branch manager tells me you also have some local gasoline bills and other things you'll have to pay. That concubine keeps buying flowers and theater tickets in New York. You should take a whip to her!"

Oh Gods, if I only dared take a whip to Krak!

"Let it eat into the capital and be (bleeped) to it," I said. "I must have a minimum of two hundred thousand lira a night!"

"Then, as your banker," he said, "I advise you to come to Istanbul and open your box. If you give me another million dollars, I can get you an income like that and you won't be slicing capital away, which is the height of folly."

"I can't spare the time!" I said.

He hung up.

And so the days passed, with, oh, those lovely nights. A new woman every time! Fat and thin, tall and short, but all of them all woman! At first every one seemed totally limp, but soon enough they were frantic. All they ever said was "O Allah!" and "I'm drowning!" But not even curious animals could distract me from my duty.

And every night, without exception, when they were driven away by the evilly laughing Ters, they had the same beseeching look.

I hadn't realized how the time was passing until I saw a bud on a shrub one day. Was it actually moving into spring?

But not for me. Suddenly, without any slightest fore-hint, my dearest dreams turned into horror, my connections disconnected into a tangle of terror and my whole life came unstuck. All in the torture of slow motion like you see a proud building coming down to land at last in a heap of shuddering rubble.

Fate had only been toying with me. And with the planet.

It was midafternoon where I was. I had very little to do. I wandered into my secret room and was struck with the whim that, like Roman emperors of old, I might enjoy the suffering of those who were about to die in the arena.

I brushed off some webs from the blanket covering of the viewers and even killed a spider or two as a sort of hors d'oeuvre to the main bout. I threw back the cover and sat down.

For a moment I thought I had gotten the wrong station or something. It was a hall. People were rushing back and forth in mad streams, very busy. It was Heller's view of the world. He must be in some other building. Their half floor at the Empire State had never had that much traffic tearing around. But no, it was their floor all right. A nearby sign said:

Wonderful Oil for Maysabongo Front Office

What on Earth was going on? They didn't ever have that much staff. Or did they?

He was now passing the
Telex Communication Centrale.
It was pretty jammed up. Machines were hammering away inside.

A man in white overalls stopped him. "New York Telephone Company, Lease Line Crew Chief, Alf Underwood" was on the badge Heller looked at.

"Hey, you," said the man to Heller, "you look like an executive. We got an order here to run three more lease lines from this floor to the Chryster Building. We dunno where you want the automatic relay switchboard."

Heller looked into the communications room. Gods, there was an operator at every machine and they were working like crazy. Heller pointed to a young man at the end machine. "See him," he said to the crew chief. "The one in the lavender shirt. And if he can't tell you, see Mr. Epstein over at Multinational, third corridor to your right."

Heller went on. He was breasting quite a stream of clerks and callers. He arrived near the door of Multinational, marked with its big logo of an anarchist bomb.

So many people were rushing in and out that he was stalled. He finally got into a line of people waiting to go in.

It looked like he would take so long that I switched my attention to the other viewer. Krak was somewhere else. Looked like Fifth Avenue. She was going along, looking into shop windows. My attention was at once riveted. She must be going to buy something and on my Squeeza credit card. The scene had such potential havoc in it that I didn't want to look. But just as one's eyes will rivet upon an imminent disaster, I could not tear my attention away.

She passed by Tiffany's with only a casual glance and I began to breathe once more. But the way she was staring at street numbers quickened my pulse. Then she saw something ahead. It was a banner sign in a window:

Grand Opening

Post Winter Sale

FURS!

They had racks of them, visible through the window.

She went in. A clerk bustled over.

"I wonder," said the Countess Krak, "if you have something suitable for a space voyage."

I felt the blood rushing to my head! It could only mean one thing. She was doing some sort of planning about going home! Maybe they had had a huge breakthrough!

"Space voyage, madam?"

"Yes. Something soft and warm and comfortable that can be worn instead of a pressure suit."

"Oh, I am sorry, madam," began the clerk.

A tall gentleman in a pinstripe tail coat had come up. "Please answer the phone, Beevertail," he said sharply to the clerk. "Madam, I could not help but overhear your request. Beevertail is a bit new: came in with our last shipment of pelts from Canada. He would not understand that you are from NASA. Now, it just happens that we have a mink jump suit that would be just the
very
thing you are looking for. This way, please."

Hastily, I turned to the other viewer. Maybe Heller was making enough money now to pay for such frills as mink jump suits. Such a thing would cost a fortune! I knew by experience!

Izzy just that moment spotted Heller in the line. He jumped up. He grabbed a young clerk and shoved him bodily into the chair to handle the callers and then grabbed Heller and pulled him out of the line into the hall.

"Oh, Mr. Jet. I do apologize for keeping you waiting. It's because I am so inefficient."

Heller got him out of there and into a vacant space in the hall. He had a sheet of paper and showed it to Izzy, speaking very low, like a conspirator. "It's your daily broker order list. Chicago Board of Trade: Sell your 1,000 contracts of March wheat today; it is going down by market opening tomorrow by ten cents a bushel. At market opening tomorrow, sell short 1,000 contracts of corn; it is going to drop thirty cents before close. Chicago Mercantile Exchange: Get rid of all our feeder cattle today; they'll be going down to hoof level by tomorrow morning. New York Commodity Exchange: Buy 2,000 contracts of gold at market opening and place a sell order at $869.15 an ounce; that's what it will hit at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon. New York Cotton Exchange: Offload every contract of cotton we have today, as the price has peaked. Got it?"

"Just a minute," said Izzy. He yelled for another clerk and gave him the list to rush to the brokers at once. Then he turned back to Heller. "Mr. Jet, I don't know how you get these lists. You must know some cow at the Chicago stockyards and the head of the Federal Reserve. Oy! Such lists! You haven't failed once in thirty days of commodity trading. You know within two, twenty-four, thirty-six hours, exactly what the market will do! You never lose! You buy, sell. Always right on the money!"

"I'm trying to make a few billion," said Heller. "We need it for the spores plant; we need it to buy Chryster back from IRS and the government; and you need it to get your plan to take over the world with corporations going."

"Yes, yes. I know that and we are already a half a billion on our way to it. But I'm scared to death. The quantities we buy are so big. If we ever missed, we'd be wiped out. I go have nightmares every night that this will turn into another Atlantic City!"

Oh, I hoped it would! This scene was giving me chills! Half a billion? That was almost twice what I had! Money is power and with enough money, Heller could succeed! All this had been going on, like an avalanche roaring at me down the mountainside, while I was just peacefully whistling.

"Be calm, Izzy," said Heller. "Be calm. Here, come with me. I've been meaning to show you because I can't be here all the time and you'll have to know how to do it."

They walked through the throng of hurrying people. Heller stopped before a blank door and took out a key. "This is the spare office I asked you to give me last month. Now, don't start screeching that I have ruined the decor or something, because I can patch up the holes in the wall and the floor and nobody will know the difference."