Time Enough for Love (22 page)

“Whenever possible, Lazarus. Whenever one of my sensor extensionals can see one. Fascinating!”

“That’s it. Minerva can see a rainbow, a blind man can’t. Electromagnetic theory is irrelevant to the experience.”

“Lazarus,” Minerva added, “it may be that I can see a rainbow better than a flesh-and-blood can. My visual range is three octaves, fifteen hundred to twelve thousand angstroms.”

Lazarus whistled. “Whereas I chop off just short of one octave. Tell me, girl, do you see chords in those colors?”

“Oh, certainly!”

“Hmm! Don’t try to explain to me those other colors; I’ll have to go on being half blind.”

Lazarus added, “Puts me in mind of a blind man I knew on Mars, Ira, when I was managing that, uh, recreation center. He—”

“Gramp,” the Chairman Pro Tem interrupted in a tired voice, “don’t treat us as children. Surely, you’re the oldest man alive…but the youngest person here—that offspring of mine sitting there, making cow-eyes at you—is as old as Gramp Johnson was when you last saw him; Hamadryad will be eighty her next birthday. Ham, my darling, how many paramours have you had?”

“Goodness, Ira—who counts?”

“Ever taken money for it?”

“None of your business, Father. Or were you about to offer me some?”

“Don’t be flip, dear; I’m still your father. Lazarus, do you think you can shock Hamadryad by plain talk? Prostitution isn’t big business here; there are too many amateurs as willing as she is. Nevertheless, the few bordellos we have in New Rome are members of the Chamber of Commerce. But you should try one of our better holiday houses—say, the Elysium. After you are fully rejuvenated.”

“Good idea,” agreed Galahad. “To celebrate. As soon as Ishtar gives you your final physical check. As my guest, Grandfather; I’d be honored. The Elysium has everything, from massage and hypnotic conditioning to the best gourmet food and best shows. Or name it and they’ll supply it.”

“Wait a moment,” protested Hamadryad. “Don’t be a selfish arsfardel, Galahad. We’ll make it a foursome celebration. Ishtar?”

“Certainly, dear. Fun.”

“Or a sixsome, with a companion for Ira. Father?”

“I could be tempted, dear, for Lazarus’ birthday party—although you know I usually avoid public places. How many rejuvenations, Lazarus? That’s how we count this sort of birthday party.”

“Don’t be nosy, Bub. As your daughter says: ‘Who counts?’ Wouldn’t mind a birthday cake, such as I used to have as a child. But just one candle in the middle is enough.”

“A phallic symbol,” agreed Galahad. “An ancient fertility sign—appropriate for a rejuvenation. And its flame is an equally ancient symbol of life. It should be a working candle, not a fake. If we can find one.”

Ishtar looked happy. “Of course! There must be a candle-maker somewhere. If not, I’ll learn how and make it myself. I’ll design it, too—semireatistic but somewhat stylized. Although I could make it true portraiture, Grandfather; I’m a fair amateur sculptor, I learned it when I studied cosmetic surgery.”

“Wait a minute!” Lazarus protested. “All I want is a plain wax candle—then blow it out and make a wish. Thank you, Ishtar, but don’t bother. And thanks, Galahad, but I’ll pick up the tab—although it may be a family party right here, where Ira won’t feel like a duck in a shooting gallery. Look, kids, I’ve seen every possible type of joy house and pleasure dome. Happiness is in the heart, not in that stuff.”

“Lazarus, can’t you see that the kids
want
to treat you to a fancy party? They like you—though Prime Cause alone knows why.”

“Well—”

“But there might be no tab. I think I recall something from that list appended to your will. Minerva—who owns the Elysium?”

“It is a daughter corporation of Service Enterprises of New Rome, Limited, which in turn is owned by Sheffield-Libby Associates. In short, Lazarus owns it.”

“Be damned! Who invested my money in
that?
Andy Libby, bless his sweet shy soul, would be spinning in his grave—if I hadn’t placed him spinning in orbit around the last planet we discovered together, where he was killed.”

“Lazarus, that’s not in your memoirs.”

“Ira, I keep telling you, lots of things not in my memoirs. Poor little guy got to thinking one of his deep thoughts and didn’t stay alert. I put him in orbit because I promised him, when he was dying, to take him back to his native Ozarks. Tried to, about a hundred years later, but couldn’t find him. Beacon dead, I suppose. All right, kids, we’ll have a party at my happy house and you can sample anything the place has to offer. Where were we? Ira, you were about to define ‘love.’”

“No, you were about to tell us about a blind man on Mars, when you were managing that whorehouse.”

“Ira, you’re as crude as Gramp Johnson was. This guy ‘Noisy’—don’t recall his right name, if he had one—Noisy was one of those people like yourself who just will work, regardless. A blind man could get by in those days quite well by begging, and nobody thought the less of him, since there was no way then to restore a man’s sight.

“But Noisy wasn’t content to live off other people; he worked at what he could do. Played a squeeze box and sang. That was an instrument operated by bellows which forced air over reeds as you touched keys on it—quite pretty music. They were popular until electronics pushed most mechanical music makers off the market.

“Noisy showed up one night, skinned out of his pressure suit at the lock dressing room, and was playing and singing before I knew he was inside.

“My policy was ‘Trade, Treat, or Travel’—except that the house might buy a beer for an old customer who temporarily wasn’t holding. But Noisy was not a customer; he was a bum—looked and smelled like a bum, and I was about to give him the bum’s rush. Then I saw this rag around his eyes and skidded to a stop.

“Nobody throws out a blind man. Nobody makes any trouble for him. I kept an eye on him but left him alone. He didn’t even sit down. Just played this broken-down stomach-Steinway and sang, neither very well, and I laid off the pianette not to interrupt him. One of the girls started passing the hat for him.

“When he reached my table, I invited him to sit and bought him a beer—and regretted it; he was pretty whiff. He thanked me and told me about himself. Lies, mostly.”

“Like yours, Gramp?”

“Thanks, Ira. Said he had been chief engineer in one of the big Harriman liners, until his accident. Maybe he had been a spaceman; I never caught him out in the lingo. Not that I tried. If a blind man wanted to claim he was the rightful heir to the Holy Roman Empire, I would go along with the gag—anybody would. Perhaps he was some sort of space-going mechanic, shipfitter or something. More likely he was a transported miner who had been careless using powder.

“When I checked the place at closing time, I found him sleeping in the kitchen. Couldn’t have that, we ran a sanitary mess. So I led him to a vacant room and put him to bed, intending to give him breakfast and ease him gently on his way—I wasn’t running a flophouse.

“A lot I had to say about it. I saw him at breakfast all right. But I hardly recognized him. A couple of the girls had given him a bath, trimmed his hair, and shaved him, and had dressed him in clean clothes—mine—and had thrown away the dirty rag he had worn over his ruined eyes and had replaced it with a clean white bandage.

“Kinfolk, I do not fight the weather. The girls were free to keep pets; I knew what fetched the customers, and it wasn’t my pianette playing. If that pet stood on two legs and ate more than I did, I still did not argue. Hormone Hall was Noisy’s home as long as the girls wanted to keep him.

“But it took me a while to realize that Noisy was not just a parasite enjoying free room and board, and probably our stock-in-trade as well, while siphoning off cash from our customers—no, he was pulling his weight in the boat. My books at the end of the first month he was with us showed the gross profit up and the net way up.”

“How do you account for that, Lazarus? Inasmuch as he was competing for your customers’ cash.”

“Ira, must I do all your thinking for you? No, Minerva does most of it. But it is possible that you have never thought about the economics of that sort of joint. There are three sources of gross, the bar, the kitchen, and the girls themselves. No drugs—drugs spoil the three main sources. If a customer was on drugs and showed it, or even broke out a stick of kish, I eased him out quickly and sent him down the line to the Chinaman’s.

“The kitchen was to supply meals to the girls—who were assessed room and board on a break-even or lose-a-little basis. But it also served food all night to anyone who ordered it, and showed a net since we had its overhead covered anyhow to board the girls. The bar also showed a net after I fired one barkeep with three hands. The girls kept their gross, all the traffic would bear, but they paid the house a flat fee for each kewpie, or a triple fee if she kept a customer all night. She could cheat a little, and I would shut-eye—but if she cheated too much or too often, or a john complained that he was rolled, I had a talk with her. Never any real trouble; they were ladies, and besides, I had means to check on them quietly, as well as eyes in the back of my head.

“The beefs about rolling were the stickiest, but I remember only one that was the girl’s fault rather than the john’s—I simply terminated her contract, let her go. In the usual beef the slob was not rolled; he simply had a change of heart after he had counted too much money into her greedy little hands and she had delivered what he had ordered—then
he
tried to roll
her
to get it back. But I could smell that sort of slob and would be listening via a mike—then would bust in as trouble started. That sort of jerk I would toss so hard he bounced twice.”

“Grandfather, weren’t some of them pretty big for that?”

“Not really, Galahad. Size doesn’t figure much in a fight—although I was always armed against real trouble. But if I
have
to take a man, I have no compunctions slowing me down about
how
I take him. If you kick a man in the crotch with no warning, it will quiet him down long enough to throw him out.

“Don’t flinch, Hamadear; your father guaranteed that you could not be shocked. But I was talking about Noisy and how he made us money while making some himself.

“In this sort of frontier joint the usual customer comes in, buys a drink while he looks over the girls, picks one by buying her a drink—goes to her room, then leaves. Elapsed time, thirty minutes; net to the house, minimum.

“Pre-Noisy, that is. After Noisy arrived, it went more like this: Buy a drink as before. Maybe buy the girl a second drink rather than interrupt a blind man’s song. Take the girl to her room. When he comes back, Noisy is singing ‘Frankie and Johnnie’ or ‘When the Pusher Met My Cousin,’ and smiles and throws a verse at him—and the customer sits down and listens to all of it—and asks Noisy if he knows ‘Dark Eyes.’ Sure, Noisy knows it, but instead of admitting it, he asks the john to give him the words and hum it and he’ll see what he can do with it.

“If the customer has valuta, he’s still there hours later, having had supper and bought supper for one of the girls and tipped Noisy rather lavishly and is ready for an encore with the girl or another girl. If he’s got the money, he stays all night, splitting his cash between the girls and Noisy and the bar and kitchen. If he spends himself broke and has been a good customer—well behaved as well as free with his money—I stake him to bed and breakfast on credit, and urge him to come back. If he’s alive next payday, he’s sure to be back. If not, all the house is out is the wholesale cost of one breakfast—nothing compared with what he’s spent. Cheap goodwill advertising.

“A month of that, and both the house and the girls have made much more money, and the girls haven’t worked much harder as they have spent part of their time drinking pay-me drinks—colored water, half the price to the house, half to the girl—white they help a john listen to Noisy’s nostalgic songs. Shucks, a girl doesn’t want to work like a treadmill even if she usually enjoys her work as many of them did. But they never got tired of sitting and listening to Noisy’s songs.

“I quit playing the pianette, except, maybe, while Noisy ate. Technically I was a better musician—but
he
had that undefinable quality that sells a song; he could make ‘em cry or laugh. And he had a thousand of ’em. One he called ‘The Born Loser.’ Not much of a tune, just:

“—about a bloke who can never quite make it. Uh:

“Like that, folks. But more of it.”

“Lazarus,” said Ira, “you have been humming or singing that song every day you’ve been up here. All of it. A dozen verses or more.”

“Really, Ira? I do hum and sing; I know that. But I don’t hear it myself. It’s like the purring of a cat; it just means that I’m functioning okay, board all green, operating at normal cruising. It means that I feel secure, relaxed, and happy—and, come to think of it, I do.

“But ‘The Born Loser’ doesn’t have a mere dozen verses, it has hundreds. What I sang was only a snatch of what Noisy used to sing. He was always fiddling with a song, changing it, adding to it. I don’t think this one started out as his; I seem to remember a song about a character whose overcoat was usually in hock clear back when I was very young and raising my first family, on Earth.

“But that song belonged to Noisy when he got through filing off serial numbers and changing the body lines. I heard it again, oh, must have been twenty, twenty-five years later, in a cabaret in Luna City. From Noisy. But he had changed it. Fixed up the scansion, given it a proper rhyme scheme, dolled up the tune. But the tune was still recognizable—in a minor key, wistful rather than sad, and the words were still about this third-rate grifter whose topcoat was always in hock and who sponged off his sister.