The Space Merchants (21 page)

"Absolutely, Mr. Courtenay! That's exactly what I'm saying! And you can take power off the hot end to make electricity!"

"How certain?"

"Quite certain, Mr. Courtenay," he said, hardly able to suppress the you-couldn't-be-expected-to-understand smile that technical people give you. "The O'Shea reports corroborate satellite, lander and telemetry data, and Gibbs phase-rule analysis clearly shows—"

I interrupted again. "Would you go to Venus on the strength of that certainty, other things being equal?"

"Certainly," he said, a little offended. "Shall I go into the technical details?"

"No. Just run the whole test again with a different crew of experts for confirmation."

"Right, Mr. Courtenay," Charlie said, scribbling busily.

"Right. Does anybody else have anything special on the Venus program before we go on?"

Bernhard, our comptroller, stuck his hand up, and I nodded.

"Question about Mr. O'Shea," he rumbled. "We're carrying him as a consultant at a very healthy figure. I've been asking around— and I hope I haven't been going offside, Mr. Courtenay, but it's my job—I've been asking around and I find that we've been getting damn-all consultation from him. Also, I should mention that he's drawn heavily in recent weeks on retainers not yet due. If we canned —if we severed our connection with him at this time, he'd be owing us money. Also—well, this is trivial, but it gives you an idea. The girls in my department are complaining about his annoying them."

My eyebrows went up. "I think we should hang onto him for whatever prestige rubs off, Ben, though his vogue does seem to be passing. Give him an argument about further advances. And as for the girls—well, I'm surprised. I thought they didn't complain when he made passes at them."

"Seen him lately?" grunted Bernhard.

No; I realized I hadn't.

The rest of the meeting went fast.

Back in my office I asked my night-shift secretary whether O'Shea was in the building, and if so to send for him.

He came in smelling of liquor and complaining loudly. "Damn it, Mitch, enough is enough! I just stepped in to pick up one of the babes for the night and you grab me. Aren't you taking this consultation thing too seriously? You've got my name to use; what more do you want?"

He looked like hell. He looked like a miniature of the fat, petulant, shabby Napoleon I at Elba. But a moment after he had come in I suddenly couldn't think of anything but Kathy. It took me a moment to figure out.

"Well?" he demanded. "What are you staring at? Isn't my lipstick on straight?"

The liquor covered it up some, but a little came through:
Menage a Deux,
the perfume I'd had created for Kathy and Kathy alone when we were in Paris, the stuff she loved and sometimes used too much of. I could hear her saying: "I can't help it, darling; it's
so
much nicer than formalin, and that's what I usually smell of after a day at the hospital . . ."

"Sorry, Jack," I said evenly. "I didn't know it was your howling-night. It'll keep. Have fun."

He grimaced and left, almost waddling on his short legs.

I grabbed my phone and slammed a connection through to my special detail in Business Espionage. "Put tails on Jack O'Shea," I snapped. "He's leaving the building soon. Tail him and tail everybody he contacts. Night and day. If I hit paydirt on this you and your men get upgraded and bonused. But God help you if you pull a butch."

I got so nobody dared to come near me. I couldn't help myself. I was living for one thing only: the daily reports from the tails on O'Shea. Anything else I tried to handle bored and irritated me to distraction.

After a week there were twenty-four tails working at a time on O'Shea and people with whom he had talked. They were headwaiters, his lecture agent, girls, an old test-pilot friend of his stationed at Astoria, a cop he got into a drunken argument with one night—but was he really drunk and was it really an argument?—and other unsurprising folk.

One night, quietly added to the list was: "Consumer, female, about 30, 5'4", 120 Ibs., redhead, eyes not seen, cheaply dressed. Subject entered Hash Heaven (restaurant) 1837 after waiting 14 minutes outside and went immediately to table waited on by new contact, which table just vacated by party. Conjecture: subject primarily interested in waitress. Ordered hash, ate very lightly, exchanged few words with contact. Papers may have been passed but impossible to observe at tailing distance. Female operative has picked up contact."

About thirty, five-four, one-twenty. It could be. I phoned to say: "Bear down on that one. Rush me everything new that you get. How about finding out more from the restaurant?"

Business Espionage began to explain, with embarrassment, that they'd do it if I insisted, but that it wasn't good technique. Usually the news got to the person being tailed and—

"Okay," I said. "Do it your way."

"Hold it a minute, Mr. Courtenay, please. Our girl just checked in—the new contact went home to the Taunton Building. She has Stairs 17 to 18 on the thirty-fifth floor."

"What's the thirty-fifth?" I asked, heavy-hearted.

"For couples."

"Is she—?"

"She's unattached, Mr. Courtenay. Our girl pretended to apply for the vacancy. They told her Mrs. 17 is holding 18 for the arrival of her husband. He's upstate harvesting."

"What time do the stairs close at Taunton's?" I demanded.

"2200, Mr. Courtenay."

I glanced at my desk clock. "Call your tail off her," I said. "That's all for now."

I got up and told my guards: "I'm going out without you, gentlemen. Please wait here. Lieutenant, can I borrow your gun?"

"Of course, Mr. Courtenay." He passed over a .25 UHV. I checked the magazine and went out on foot, alone.

As I left the lobby of Schocken Tower a shadowy young man detached himself from the wall and drifted after me. I crossed him up by walking in the deserted street, a dark, narrow slit between the mighty midtown buildings. Monoxide and smog hung heavily in the unconditioned air, but I had antisoot plugs. He did not. I heard him wheeze at a respectable distance behind me. An occasional closed cab whizzed past us, the driver puffing and drawn as he pumped the pedals.

Without looking back I turned the corner of Schocken Tower and instantly flattened against the wall. My shadow drifted past and stopped in consternation, peering into the gloom.

I slammed the long barrel of the pistol against the back of his neck in a murderous rabbit punch and walked on. He was probably one of my own men; but I didn't want anybody's men along.

I got to the Taunton Building's night-dweller entrance at 2159. Behind me the timelock slammed the door. There was an undersized pay elevator. I dropped in a quarter, punched 35, and read notices while it creaked upward.

"
NIGHT DWELLERS ARE RESPONSIBLEFOR THEIR OWN POLICING. MANAGEMENT ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEFTS, ASSAULTS, OR RAPES."

"NIGHT-DWELLERS WILL NOTE THAT BARRIERS ARE UPPED AT 2210 NIGHTLY AND ARRANGE THEIR CALLS OF NATURE ACCORDINGLY."

"RENT IS DUE AND PAYABLE NIGHTLY IN ADVANCE AT THE AUTOCLERK." "MANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REFUSE RENTAL TO PATRONS OF STARRZELIUS PRODUCTS."

The door opened on the stairwell of the thirty-fifth floor. It was like looking into a maggoty cheese. People, men and women, squirming uneasily, trying to find some comfort before the barriers upped. I looked at my watch and saw: 2208.

I picked my way carefully and very, very slowly in the dim light over and around limbs and torsos, with many apologies, counting ...at the seventeenth step I stepped over a huddled figure as my watch said: 2210.

With a rusty clank, the barriers upped, cutting off steps seventeen and eighteen, containing me and—

She sat up, looking scared and angry, with a small pistol in her hand.

"Kathy," I said.

She dropped the pistol. "Mitch. You fool." Her voice was low and urgent. "What are you doing here? They haven't given up, they're still out to murder you—"

"I know all that," I said. "I'm grandstanding, Kathy. I'm putting my head into the lion's mouth to show you I mean it when I say that you're right and I was wrong."

"How did you find me?" she asked suspiciously.

"Some of your perfume came off on O'Shea.
Menage a Deux."

She looked around at the cramped quarters and giggled. "It certainly is, isn't it?"

"The heat's off, Kathy," I told her. "I'm not just here to paw you, with or without your consent. I'm here to tell you that I'm on your side. Name it and you can have it."

She looked at me narrowly and asked: "Venus?"

"It's yours."

"Mitch," she said, "if you're lying—if you're lying—"

"You'll know by tomorrow if we get out of here alive. Until then there's nothing more to be said about it, is there? We're in for the night."

"Yes," she said. "We're in for the night." And then, suddenly, passionately: "God, how I've missed you!"

Wake-up whistles screamed at 0600. They were loaded with skull-rattling subsonics, just to make sure that no slugabeds would impede the morning evacuation.

Kathy began briskly to stow away the bedding in the stairs. "Barriers down in five minutes," she snapped. She lifted Stair seventeen's lid and fished around in it for a flat box that opened into a makeup kit. "Hold still."

I yelped as a razor raked across the top of my right eyebrow. "Hold—
still!"
R-R-R-R-ip! It cut a swathe across my left eyebrow. Briskly she touched my face here and there with mysterious brushes.

"Flup!" I said as she turned up my upper lip and tucked a pledget of plastic under it. Two gummy wads pasted my ears against my head and she said: "There," and showed me the mirror.

"Good," I told her. "I got out of here once in the morning rush. I think we can do it again."

"There go the barriers," she said tensely, hearing some preliminary noise that was lost on my inexperienced ear.

The barriers clanged down. We were the only night-dwellers left on the thirty-fifth floor. But we were not alone. B. J. Taunton and two of his boys stood there. Taunton was swaying a little on his feet, red-faced and grinning. Each of his boys had a machine pistol trained on me.

Taunton hiccuped and said: "This was a hell of an unfortunate place for you to go chippy-chasing, Courtenay, ol' man. We have a photo-register for gate-crashers like you. Girlie, if you will kindly step aside—"

She didn't step aside. She stepped right into Taunton's arms, jammed her gun against his navel. His red face went the color of putty. "You know what to do," she said grimly.

"Boys," he said faintly, "drop the guns. For God's sake, drop them!"

They exchanged looks.
"Drop them!"
he begged.

They took an eternity to lay down their machine pistols, but they did. Taunton began to sob.

"Turn your backs," I told them, "and lie down." I had my borrowed UHV out. It felt wonderful.

The elevator could too easily have been flooded with gas. We walked down the stairs. It was a long, slow, careful business, though all night-dwellers had been cleared hours ago for B. J.'s coup. He sobbed and babbled all the way. At the tenth-floor landing he wailed: "I've got to have a drink, Courtenay. I'm really dying. There's a bar right here, you can keep that gun on me—"

Kathy laughed humorlessly at the idea, and we continued our slow step-by-step progress.

At the night-dweller exit I draped my coat over Kathy's gun handin spite of the winter outside. "It's all right!" B. J. called quaveringly to an astounded lobby guard who started our way. "These people are friends of mine. It's quite all right!"

We walked with him to the shuttlemouth and dived in, leaving him, gray-faced and sweating, in the street. It was safety in numbers. The only way he could get at us was by blowing up the entire shuttle, and he wasn't equipped for it. We zigzagged for an hour, and I called my office from a station phone. A plant protection detail rendezvoused with us at another station, and we were in the Schocken Tower fifteen minutes later.

A morning paper gave us our only laugh so far that day. It said, among other things, that a coolant leak had been detected at 0300 today in the stairwell of the Taunton Building. B. J. Taunton himself, at the risk of his life, had supervised the evacuation of the Taunton Building night-dwellers in record time and without casualties.

Over a tray breakfast on my desk I told Kathy: "Your hair looks like hell. Does that stuff wash out?"

"Enough of this lovemaking," she said. "You told me I could have Venus. Mitch, I meant it. And Venus by-God belongs to us. We're the only people who know what to do with it and also we landed the first man there. O'Shea is one of us, Mitch."

"Since when?"

"Since his mother and father found he wasn't growing, that's since when. They knew the W.C.A. was going to need spacepilots soon—and the smaller the better. Earth didn't discover Venus. The W.C.A. did. And we demand the right to settle it. Can you deliver?"

"Sure," I said. "God, it's going to be a headache. We have our rosters filled now—eager suckers itching to get to Venus and be exploited by and for the Earth and Fowler Schocken. Well, I'll backtrack."

I thought for a minute and then said to Kathy: "Can you bring Runstead back to life for me? I don't know where the W.C.A. has been holding him, but we need him here. This is going to be a job. A copysmith's highest art is to convince people without letting them know that they're being convinced. What I've got to do is make my copysmiths unconvince people without letting either the copysmiths or the people know what I'm doing to them. I can use some high grade help that I can talk freely to."

"It can be arranged," she said, kissing me lightly. "That's for saying 'We.' "

"Huh?" I said. "Did I say 'we'?" Then I understood. "Oh. Look, darling, I've got a dandy executive's living suite, twelve by twelve, upstairs. You had a hard night. Suppose you head upstairs and cork off for a while. I've got a lot of work to do."