The Investigations of Avram Davidson (27 page)

“
I
am going to the Sons and Daughters of Bothnia Residence in Calico Falls. Women are admitted at sixty, men at eighty. In the meanwhile, where
you
are going I'm sure I couldn't say. Don't you have a pension? Hand me that wrap of tissue paper, please.”

Mr. Folsom smote his brow.
“A pension!”
he cried. “Of
course!
”

*   *   *

I
N THE
P
ENSIONS
Office of the Civil Functionaries Administration, Mr. Roswell P. Sawell addressed his assistant, Mr. Merton Rush. “Anything new today, Mert?”

“I've just opened a new file,” said Mr. Rush. “Application for pension from a Mr.—” he consulted the file “—Edgar Folsom. From Wampanoack.”

“Don't matter where from,” said his superior. “What's his timeage?”

“Timeage is seventeen years, seven days.”

“
He
doesn't qualify for full payment, Rush.”

“
I
know that.”

“Minimum pension of, hm, let me calculate a second, um, two hundred and twenty dollars a month. Write him. Application denied. Subject named above may appeal.
You
know the routine.”

“
I
know the routine.”

“Then we'll hold up the appeal for five years, and of course he draws no interest.”

“Of
course.
”

But Mr. Merton Rush did not move back into his own office and Ros Sawell asked, in some surprise, “What are you waiting for, then?”

Mert reminded his boss that it was CFA policy to grant three such applications without delay monthly, that so far they had granted only two, and that it was the last day of the month.

“Oh. Um. Yes, so it is. Shoot. Oh, well,
grant
it. He'll soon enough try to collect the pension in a foreign country with a subversively lower cost of living.
Then
we'll jump him.”

Mert said, “Oh,
boy,
yes! Estopped. Suspended pending investigation. That's
right!
”

“We got to think of the taxpayers.”

*   *   *

E
TTA HAD A
very nice room with her own foyer facing the granite statue of The Intrepid Bothnian on the lawn. Constant hot tap water for making instant coffee. “Well, have you made up your
mind
yet, Edgar, what you're going to do? Your lease runs out this month and your rent will be raised.”

Mr. Folsom straightened his bowtie. (He always had a little trouble with it.) “Well, I certainly hope and trust the President will do something about it.”

Etta was very patriotic,
but.
“Why should he do something about it?” she asked, for once a bit surprised.

“Well, I wrote and asked him to.”

“Oh,
you
—Edgar. What's that sticking out of your pocket instead of a nice clean hankie? A letter. What would you do if I weren't here to remind you.” Deftly, she opened and read. “Well, I never. You are going to get a Civil Functionary Partial Pension of two hundred and twenty dollars a month. Oh, for goodness sake.”

Edgar, however, wasn't surprised. Not at all. “There, you
see.
I guess an American citizen can write to his President if he wants results. Guess that Good Old Days Retirement Company, he fixed their little red wagon sure enough.”

For once Etta had not much to say, but she said it. “
You
can't retire on two hundred and twenty dollars a month. Have you
seen
the prices lately? Where do you
shop?
”

“Tut,” said Edgar. “I'll go live in some country with a lower cost of living. Few can't lick 'em, join 'em. Huh?”

*   *   *

T
HE YOUNG PERSON
in the travel agency repeated his question. “Where can you go for eleven hundred dollars? Well, the pitcheresque Republic of La Banana has just been opened for tourism and foreign migration. We got this bunch of
lit
erature in just today. ‘The picturesque Republic of La Banana, which gave its name to the familiar succulent yellow fruit, contains one hundred and fifty-two species of edible wild slugs, also many colorful parrots.' Here, you can read it while I make out your package.”

In the newly opened consulate and travel office of the Republic of La Banana, Bombo Duzbuz Jambatch looked at Mr. Folsom listlessly. “You wish to go to our country? Fine. So go. One moment. Health precaution. Stick out tongue, please. Thirty-seven dollar, you pay
me.
Okay, now I make out your Permission.”

Mr. Folsom had never traveled very much. “You're put?” Mamie used to ask. “
Stay
put.”

He now inquired, “Permission for
what?
”

Bombo Duzbuz Jambatch looked up, surprised. “
Ev
erything,” he replied. “Enter. Exit. Transit. Operate steamroller. Even, you may to run for elective office. Save that no more we have elections.
Kay.
All finish. Here.”

Mr. Folsom took the large and colorful paper, folded it. “When does it have to be renewed?”

The bombo suddenly seemed bored. “How
I
know?
I
am not prophet. Do not push fates. Perhaps never. You think we are tyranty? Go.”

Edgar went.

*   *   *

I
N THE CAPITAL
hamlet of Gunk Up High, several gorges away from the non-capital hamlet of Gunk Not So High, Mr. Folsom found there was something of a housing shortage. The best he could obtain for himself was an eight-room
poppick
at a rental of one dollar per room per month, the landlord insisting on renting the
poppick
as a single unit. The other natives rolled their eyes at such cupidity and murmured a local proverb loosely translated as, “Foreigners and their welcome money often make the rich richer.” It was, of course, far more room than Edgar needed, but he found that the space gradually filled with the picturesque native furniture, artwork, and bric-a-brac which he found it amusing to buy at the Weeny Bazaar (the Great Big Bazaar dealt mostly in milch-sheep and rhinoceros legs). Sometimes he spent as much as two or three dollars a month on such items.

Goro-goro luntch-potch,
as they say in the pawkey idiom of La Banana. Meaning, So the time does pass, even so.

*   *   *

“W
ELL, WHAT DID
I tell you?” said Mr. Roswell Sawell. “Didn't he run true to form? Here's a change of address for his Civil Functionary Partial Pension check, just as I predicted.”

“You certainly can pick 'em, Chief.”

“Now, theoretically—” Ros pushed the compliment aside “—any American citizen may elect to receive his pension anywhere in the world—Andorra, Oz, Borrioboola-gha,
any
where. But we don't
like
um to!
We
know that nobody can live on that kind of money! Where's the cost of his
car?
Where's his
gas
money? You know what a
TV set
costs in some a these countries with subversively low standards of living?
Dish
washers? As for, say, the price of
beef,
well, you just price it yourself! If
we
can't make it,
they
can't make it! No, Mert: less a fellow's getting a full career pension of, well, say at least two thousand dollars a month, there's no way he can live on his pension. Which means—well,
you
know what it means!”

Merton nodded his birdy head. “Il-lic-it en-ter-prise.” He rolled out the syllables with relish. Relish, and unction.

“Absolutely. Smuggling Scotch whiskey. Promoting ox-races. And, increasingly, the notorious bush-wax trade.”

His assistant agreed with him. “That's terrible stuff, that bush-wax.”

Terrible? said his superior. Terrible was hardly the word for it. It was diuretic, euphoric, and non-addictive! No wonder the Pensions Office of the Civil Functionaries Administration worked hand in glove with the Illegal Ear Substances Division of the Crack-Down Department. “So let's put a Stop on his pension, and he can swim back, if he likes, and file an appeal.
There's
a good ten years he won't be robbing the taxpayers.—Why are you just
stand
ing there, Mert?”

Merton said because they had already put Stops on eight hundred and thirty-five pensions that month already, which was tops according to policy, and so they'd better wait till next month.

“Don't rock the boat, in other words?”

“You said it, Chief!”

“Well, you may be right. I have a sort of nose for these things. But,
next
month we drop the Himalayan Mountains on him!”

He and his assistant laughed soundlessly.

*   *   *

M
R
. E
DGAR
F
OLSOM
never drank Scotch whiskey, thought the ox-races were smelly, and would have been bored by TV had there been any. (The mountain ranges made it impracticable. As for washing his dishes, he threw them all into the gorge behind his house and got new ones.) He was spending so little money he was obliged to buy quite a number of boxes to store the money he didn't spend. He was by now probably the richest man in Gunk Up High, and the lower caste of natives never came near his house at night lest the gods, who obviously
love
rich men (else why are they rich—answer
that
one, would you?), eat their kidney-fat. They may not know much, those innocent, childlike, very dirty natives, but they know that without kidney-fat you just ain't got it.

One day Mr. Edgar Folsom was strolling along a road (path, the very particular might call it) which had yet to receive the biannual attentions of the steamroller. (The fact is that the dictator was very fond of operating it himself and paid no attention to any of the schedules the Department of Public Works submitted to him—very, very occasionally.) Rather incuriously, he observed someone he rather thought was a foreigner. In fact, this one admitted as much to him, saying, “I am a foreigner.”

“What brings you here? Not that it isn't a nice little place.”

The man said he was allowing vortices of energy to carry him along as he observed the Way and the Eternal Snows.

“Oh.”

The foreigner took him by the arm and slightly turned him. He gestured. “Just cast your gaze through the, like, mists of illusion and tell me if there are three energy-forms in uniform standing at the crossroads.”

Mr. Folsom slightly squinted. “Well,” he said, “usually there are two policemen standing there, I don't know why—I mean, there's never
that
much traffic—but today I guess there
are
three.”

The foreigner said that that which was not an enigma was an illusion. “Just point out your house—I mean the compass-point where the non-real you is dwelling, as it were, man. There? Good. Now, would you do me one big favor? My arm hurts today—a mere illusion to be sure, but would you just let me put this in your case and I'll meet you later. Right now it's my, um, time of withdrawal and meditation.”

*   *   *

O
F THE THREE
at the crossroads, only one spoke sufficient English to be more than merely amusing. This was Bombo Yimyam Hutchkutch. “Ah, Meestair Edgar Folsom, you are out to ramble, as often, eh?”

Mr. Folsom acknowledged it. “I was taking some snapshots with my little old Kodak brownie camera and the people there started yelling, so I stopped and gave 'em some pennies—anyway
I
call 'em pennies. So then they all kissed my coat lapels and gave me what they said is the stuffed head of a yeti. I put it in my briefcase. No, that's not it. I dunno what
this
is—some other foreigner asked me to take it down the hill for him, I guess because it will help his hurt arm.” And he gazed round the mountain-circled universe with his candid eyes.

From the policemen meanwhile had come noises of suspicion, irritation, and something which another might have taken for dismay. Said the bombo, “
We
will take it down the hill for you, Meestair.
We
will take care to find him and alleviate his hurt arm. What, to think he can move about with this stash and pay us
nothing?
Proceed upon your ramble, Meestair Folsom, and may you live in our nation for a hundred thousand eons.”

*   *   *

“W
ELL,
C
HIEF
,”
SAID
Merton, “guess what just came in?”

“Some more appeals against estoppment of pensions, I suppose,” suggested Mr. Sawell indifferently. The Pacific Ocean and the entirety of the Indoo Sea might have been filled with swimming appellants, much cared
he.

Nay, not so, Merton told him. “It's the monthly exchange list from the Illegal Ear Substances Division of the Crack-Down Department, and guess what? Folsom, Edgar, in La Banana has been instrumental in catching a cache of illegal bush-wax!”

They gazed at each other with a wild surmise. Then, slowly but with admiration, Mr. Sawell said, “I guess he is one of the IED's men. This pension thing, it's just his cover. Of
course
he doesn't have to live on it. Get the big red rubber stamp and stamp his file NTBTW. Get going, now, Mert.” And Merton, bowing his head respectfully, proceeded to affix the indication that Edgar Folsom's pension was Never To Be Tampered With.

A civil functionary has many, many duties. The public scarcely knows.

*   *   *

A
S FOR
M
R
. Edgar Folsom, he has grown tired of hoarding his money. For one thing, he sends contributions to the worthy causes he finds mentioned in the worn, worn copies of
Reader's Digest
that come his distant way as padding in the ox-caravans. And for another, he has bought a choice and select herd of jet-black milch-sheep, plus three dancing bears.