Mission: Earth "The Enemy Within" (11 page)

"You see," said Heller, "it makes it all refined. It puts it in the world of art. The positioning of the

Gracious Palms is upgraded to number one instead of just a horizontal graph. It will be on top!"

Vantagio went back into his office. He began to pace up and down excitedly. Then he stopped and made an expansive Italian gesture. With glowing, visionary eyes, he said, "I can see it now! We've been taking it lying down! We've been guilty of practicing seasonal interruptus. We can spread this climax into a more bilateral approach, even multilateral. We've been practicing nonintervention! We have been underprivileging certain elite minorities!" Vantagio pounded a fist into his palm. "We need a wider spread internationally! And it will give us more consumer flow! They'll lap it up!"

Izzy said, "You can hang a whole gallery here in the lobby with the paintings for sale at very fancy prices. And you can put forms on the counter they can fill out to have girls of their choice painted for their offices and special gift forms for paintings so heads of state and leading politicians can come here and pick out a girl to be painted. And we can handle special trips for artists to go to their countries on special commission, accompanied by PRs to run beauty contests to select Miss Country Name with the grand prize of training and employment at the Gracious Palms. I just this minute formed a corporation called True Allure Fine Arts International, Incorporated—probably in Greece as we don't have one there—and these artists are all under contract to it. Our prices are high and the commission we get is twenty-five percent!"

"Excellentissimo!" cried Vantagio, lapsing into Italian from excitement. "D'accordo! Agreed!"

"I told you Izzy was pregnant with ideas," said Heller.

"The slack season!" said Vantagio. "Things go limp nine months of the year! This will stiffen up foreign trade!"

"We only want ten percent of the gross increase over last year's net," said Izzy.

"Marvelous!" said Vantagio.

Heller turned to the seven remaining painters who were standing there a bit goggle-eyed. "Now, I hope you gentlemen don't think you will be prostituting your art."

"Oh, no!" said the leading painter. "The proposition is too hard to refuse!" Behind him the others cried their assent.

"The name of the program," said Heller, "is Whore of the Week."

They all cheered.

The leading painter said, "Mister, whatever your name is, you're something out of this world!"

"Keep it to yourself," said Heller.

Izzy rushed around and got contract signatures from all eight painters on blank sheets he said he'd fill in. He scribbled a Memorandum Agreement In Principle and Vantagio signed it.

Then they left. As Heller walked out with Izzy, he said, "So that was my marketing project. Did I pass, Izzy?"

"Oy," said Izzy. "Just plain 'oy,' Mr. Jet!"

As they climbed into the cab, Izzy and Heller in back, Heller said, "Well, that was just fun mostly. But it also has its place."

"Fun?" said Izzy. "With neorealism in demand by the tops of every government, it will sweep the world! That project is worth millions! And every real revolution has to have its own art form. Neorealism! Things that look like what they are! Absolutely revolutionary in itself! Neorealism, the art of the people!"

Bang-Bang zoomed the cab out of the garage, heading back to the office. After a bit, Heller said, "Izzy. I've been checking it over and I think we can consider Phase One of the Master Plan complete."

I instantly went into a spin. Even my dulled senses could smell danger. WHAT plan?

In haste I prepared to go back through the older recorded strips. And a moment later, I stared at my equipment in horror. In all my recent travail, I had overlooked loading the recording strip reservoir! I didn't have any back track to look at!

WHAT PLAN!?!?!

Geological surveys and a legation and a diploma and Gods knew what else. I knew Heller! This would all come together some way with a huge black eye for me. Death, even!

A sort of savage feeling began to grip me. Heller and all this success with women. Wasn't it his fault that I had gotten into all this mess in the first place? And if he hadn't been distracting me, I wouldn't be in any trouble with Utanc!

A burning, bitter hatred of Heller began to sear through me.

The following day, I was wandering about after a sleepless night and bitter morning and chanced to look at the viewscreen.

I was startled to see Heller was driving along in the cab! There was no sign of Bang-Bang and, as he turned to check a sign, there was nobody in the back seat!

He was driving in New York! It was illegal! By his license, he was not yet eighteen!

I looked at my watch. It was not yet 6:00 A.M. in Heller's zone!

With a savage curse, I sat down to watch and study this. He was off on some new tack!

I watched for signs. He was on Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and by the horizon light of dawn, he was travelling north. I got out an Octopus Oil Company map of that area. Where was he going? Why?

The old cab was really purring. Heller seemed quite happy and relaxed. He was going faster than Bang-Bang drove but he didn't seem to be having any trouble.

By the signs, he was going to the Bronx. I tried to figure out what was in the Bronx that would interest him. I couldn't come up with anything.

Now he was paying a toll. He left the bridge behind him. Now he was ignoring Bronx signs. He was spotting U.S. 278. Throg's Neck? Was he going to Throg's Neck? No. Now he was on Hutchinson River Parkway. White Plains? Was he going to White Plains? No, he passed that turnoff. Boston? Ah, New Brunswick, Canada! He must be running away to leave the country.

I instantly got up to send Raht and Terb a message. Heller would be going out of the range of the activator-receiver, to say nothing of the 831 Relayer!

I halted. My Gods, due to all the disturbance Heller was guilty of, I had forgotten to give Raht and Terb their receiver and decoder! I was not in contact with them!

Helplessly, I sat and watched the viewer.

I cursed him. This was all his fault. He hadn't gone over this cursed "Master Plan" with anyone while I was watching!

The sun was up now where he was. He seemed to be appreciating the green trees and grass that flowed by, for he certainly wasn't paying much attention to his driving. Maybe somebody would consider that scenery beautiful if they were less under the hammer of fate than I was.

He went through a toll gate and was on a toll road, the New England Thruway. His eye lingered on a sign. Stamford! He was in Connecticut!

And then I got my first clue. Looking at some very dark green trees, he said, "Old Cap Duggan was right! You are a beautiful country."

Cap Duggan! The Geological Survey! But what had they discussed? Gold in Alaska? Maybe he was going to Alaska! But this wasn't the route to Alaska. And you wouldn't be driving a bright orange, vintage antique, New York taxicab to Alaska. You'd go in a dog sled! I knew the planet! But maybe he had some cunning deception plan in mind. I knew no good would come of his ROTC studying for the Army's G-2!

He went right on by any opportunity to turn off into Stamford. But just as my attention was beginning to relax, off to his right he went and was on a bad state highway. A sign said Noroton Point lay in that direction.

Soon, he stopped the cab and got out.

He was standing on a beach. A vast expanse of water spread before him, a solid sheet of gold in the morning sunlight. He walked along the sand. He seemed to be enjoying the flow of ocean air. He took several breaths as though it tasted good.

He said, "They haven't completely wrecked you yet, old planet." Then he walked a ways and saw an oil scum. He amended what he had said. "But they're working on it pretty hard."

He walked further. Some sandpipers did a running walk away from him. Some gulls wheeled overhead. The surf, golden-tipped, purled up the beach toward his toes.

"It's a shame," he said. "You're such a pretty planet." Then, with sudden determination, he said, "I better get to work while you're still habitable!"

He trotted north. He was looking at a place where a river emptied into the sea. "Aha," he said. "That's it!"

He ran back to the cab, jumped in and was soon roaring along. He bypassed the New England Thruway, went through a fair-sized city and continued on into a hilly countryside, green and much of it wild.

He stopped. He unrolled a Geological Survey map. It seemed to have every house on it.

He tossed down the roll and turned the cab from the state highway he had been on straight off into a cow track!

He seemed to be looking for markers. He found an aged milepost. Right there on the cow track! It was so weathered you could hardly read it. Then I worked it out. He was on an ancient, abandoned road!

With rhododendrons and laurel and weeds whipping at the old cab's fenders, he came at length to some buildings. They didn't look like a farm. What did they look like? Then a thoroughly rusted sign told all: it was an abandoned service station now doing duty, with some chicken coops in the back, as a sort of makeshift residence.

A small plume of smoke was coming from a chimney.

Heller knocked on a rickety door.

A very old woman opened it. Suddenly, from her eye misdirection, I could tell she was blind.

"I'm the young fellow who called yesterday from New York," said Heller in a gentle voice.

"Oh, sakes alive. Come in, come in and sit. Have some coffee." Heller did and she bustled about and got him some coffee.

"I am surely glad you could drive in," she said.

"There ain't been a car on that road since my husband died. How'd you find this place anyway?"

"You're still on the map, ma'am," said Heller in a strong New England accent.

"Well, I do declare it's a comfort not to be spilled off the country complete!" She groped for the chair and sat down, not quite facing him. "This used to be a busy place until they changed all the roads. Them dang-blast commissioners is always changing things. Be moving these hills off next! Some more coffee?"

I blinked. How did she know his cup had been emptied?

"No, thanks," said Heller. "Now, you said, ma'am, that the old repair shop could be locked up tightly and the roof was still sound. Could I see it?"

She got some keys and shortly had groped along a wall and around the building and had the place open. It was a space big enough for several cars, greasepits in the floor, windows sealed.

"Looks fine," said Heller. "I'd like to rent it for a few months."

"Well, a little rent would help in these inflation times. What would you be willing to pay?"

"A hundred a month."

"A hundred a month! Sakes alive! You could have the whole place for half that and the chickens, too!"

"Well, there'll be two cars here," said Heller.

"Oh."

"Off and on. Does anyone ever come here, ma'am?"

"My niece, every couple days, to see if I'm all right. But since I drivv some intruders off with a shotgun, nary a soul except my niece."

"It's a deal, then," said Heller. "Mind if I drive a car in here now? I got to make some adjustments."

"Go right ahead! There's plenty of tools if you don't mind rust."

He gave her a hundred and she gave him some keys. He drove the cab in.

And then he did something that showed the cunning and treachery I had always hated in him.

He closed up the doors from within.

He opened a bag and got out paper rolls and he taped it across all the window insides. He turned on the old electric bulbs of the place.

Then, (bleep) him, he took a small floodlight out of his bag and pointed it at the side of the cab, and the area turned BLACK!

The sign on the door vanished!

Playing the light over the whole cab, section by section, he was turning the glaring orange to a midnight ink!

Then I knew what it was. He was using a Voltarian preparation. He had had that man in Newark add it to the cab's paint! The light was giving it a color shift!

They use it in fancy Voltarian advertising signs. A beam passes over the sign and it turns blue, then a second beam of a different frequency passes over the sign and it turns red, by a shift of refraction frequency in the paint additive.

It didn't take him very long. Then he went around to the front and bent down, snapped a sort of cover off the license plate. He did the same thing in back.

Then he opened up the bag and got a little vial, put some liquid on his fingers and rubbed it over his face and into his hair. He put some on the back of his hands.

He sat in front of the rearview mirror, turned a dial on his light and played it over his head. He had black hair! Then he turned the dial again and played the light over his face and hands and he had dark brown, almost black face and hands. Then he put on a false black mustache.

The sly treachery of it!

But he wasn't that good. He still had blue eyes!

He had been wearing a black suit. He didn't change it. He got out a black slouch hat and put it on.

He stood back and looked at the cab. He got in and folded the meter down out of sight.

He opened up the garage and backed out.

At the house door, he said, "I'll be back and forth from time to time. I may be late or early."

"That's all right," said the old blind woman. "Just toot your horn twice so I'll know it's you. An' anybody else'll get drivv off with a shotgun!"

Off went a dark-brown Heller in a black car!

But he wasn't that smart. It still looked like a vintage New York cab, orange or black!

He seemed to know right where he was going. He drove into a town, looked at some street numbers and pulled up at an old house with a big sign: