Frederik Pohl - The Cool War

“Stop now,” Hake said clearly.

Yosper was brought down, disconcerted, in full flow. “What?”

“I said stop for a minute. Please,” he added, pro forma. “I want to know what happened to Leota.”

“Why, she’s gone, Hake. The Sheik of Araby took off for his desert tent off in the Sahel or someplace, and naturally he took her along to give him what he wants. You know,” he said scientifically, “from what I hear, those sheiks want some freaky fixin’s when they go to it. Too bad you can’t ask her about it sometime, Hake. Be interesting to learn something, you know?”

“Yosper, God damn you—”

Around the table the three young men shifted position slightly, without either menace or anger, simply -entering the “ready” mode. Yosper raised his hand. “Hake here isn’t going to do anything, are you, Hake? No. You shouldn’t take the name of the Lord in vain. But He’s got as much sense as I have, and He knows you’re just pissed off.” He paused for a second, looking at Hake with sharp blue eyes that, for a wonder, had something in them Hake could only recognize as compassion. “Get over it, boy,” he said.

“You’ll never see her again. Listen. Likely as not she’ll come out of it smelling of roses. Old Sheik Hassabou gives his ladies emeralds and rubies—maybe a few little scars too, of course. Don’t get sore, boy.”

Hake said bitterly, “Of course I won’t get sore! Why should I? All you’ve done is get a girl’s life wrecked, and involve me in dope selling, and—”

“Shu, shu, boy. There’s important reasons for all this.”

“I can’t wait to hear what the important reason for addicting kids to dope is,” Hake snarled.

“Hake,” Yosper said kindly, “dope’s not that bad. I been there. You ever hear of Haight-Ashbury?”

Hake shrugged. “Some place in California? A long time ago?”

“I was there,” Yosper said proudly. “It was all love and sharing, and dope, and nobody got hurt. Much. ‘Course, it didn’t last. The rich ones went to Napoma. The rest of us tried the East Village, and the caves on Crete, and Khatmandu. I did every bit of it, boy, and I thank my Lord Savior I don’t have to do it again.” He stared into space, his lips working as though he were tasting something he liked. “Good dope in Nepal,” he said at last, “but it’s against God’s commandments. Now they’re all off around the Persian Gulf, old bastards like me that haven’t learned their lesson and kids that don’t know the score yet.”

Carlos grumbled, “Yosper, why do you waste your time with him?”

“It’s no waste,” Yosper said earnestly. “The boy’s got good stuff. He justa has a few wrong ideas, like about dope. Why, look at it the righta way, we’re doing those wop kids a favor.”

“Us too,” Dieter grinned. “We make even more from PCP than we made from selling Ku Klux Klan nightshirts in Germany.”

“But the kids get the most out of it,” Yosper insisted. “Dope separates the men from the boys, and it teaches you a lot about just plain living. Why,” he said earnestly, “wasn’t for my time in the Haight and Khatmandu I wouldn’t be half this honest and open and compassionate.”

Hake flew back to the United States in far grander style than he had left it. Not merely was he in th£ first-class section of the Trans-Pam jumbo, marinated in wines, cosseted with cushions, but the seat beside him was paid for and empty. The stewardesses made it up into a little bed for him. The Team rewarded its members.

But Hake’s question was how he could best reward the Team. He began to think of it while the jet was lunging up into the yellow-gray Tyrrhenian sky and the oily beach at Ostia was dropping away beneath. He did not sleep, even though one of the stews brought him hot milk and another sat beside him, to stroke the poor bandaged head of the man who had been so brutally attacked by ragazzi- He wished they would leave him alone. He was busy scheming.

At Kennedy the chief flight attendant hurried out the gate to speak to the customs agents and a stewardess found him a wheelchair. He went straight to the head of the line, and when he got through Immigration a Trans-Pam courier was waiting to conduct Reverend Hake to his waiting limousine. Hake was aware of what was happening. Part of it was only that Yosper had whispered a word in the purser’s ear, to say that this poor man’s very life was at risk because of a mugging in the shadow of the Colosseum itself. But part of it was more. The invisible embrace of the Team never let him go.

One of Yosper’s boys had even phoned ahead. It was ten at night before the limo reached Long Branch, but Jessie was warned and waiting. She peered into his ruined face. “Oh, Horny! They said yg,u might need a wheelchair, but I thought we could just use your old chairlift. Then you can lean on my arm—”

“I can walk, Jessie.” He waved the driver away—let the Team tip him, if a tip was what he was waiting for.

She clucked despairingly. “You look really terrible, Horny.”

“I appreciate your telling me that, Jessie.” He proved his ability to walk by limping heavily past her into the house. All of the cuts and stabbing pains had turned into sullen sore aches and stiffnesses, and walking was no fun. He didn’t want to discuss it. Knowing she had followed him into his room he dropped his bag and said over his shoulder, “And for the next few days I don’t want to see anyone but you.”

“Well, I don’t blame you there, Horny.”

“Except,” he said, “first thing tomorrow I want you to get an IBM representative in to see me, and a car dealer. And, oh, yes, while I think of it, a carpet salesman. And day after get me on an early flight to Washington.”

“You mean the Metroliner, right?”

“I mean a flight. On an airplane, and now I’m going to take a hot bath and go to bed. Good night, Jessie.”

As soon as she was out of the house, clucking and fussing, coming back twice to tell him that she had left him a pot of chicken soup on the stove and that she wasn’t really sure she could get all those people in but would do her best, Hake spilled his battered bag onto the bed. He dumped the filthy clothes, some of them still from the unwashed weeks Under the Wire, into a hamper and hesitated over the rest. Lock-pick, garroting wire, circuit testers. Telecommunications codes and Blue Box pitchpipe. At the bottom were the tapes and fiches The Incredible Art had given him so long ago, and for them he could see no immediate use. For the other things—yes, no doubt. He was not yet sure what the use would be but he would find one. He stripped off his clothes and limped to the full-length mirror in the bathroom door.

He was, in fact, a mess. The old network of scars on the left side of his chest, where his ribs had been spread and respread with tools like car jacks, were almost lost under the greater, newer marks. He had green-gray bruises all over his body. Both eyes were black. Under the adhesive dressing, the squashed sides of his nose were purply red, and the bandage over his ear was stained with blood. He studied himself appraisingly and nodded. Nobody trained Under the Wire could have done a more thorough job.

Remained to see what he was going to do about it.

He ran hot water prodigally into the tub and, while he was waiting for it to fill, experimentally flushed his toilet. It did not speak to him, not even a “hello.” Apparently he had been given the evening off.

Hake lowered himself into the steaming tub, so sore and so troubled that he was almost at peace. Inside his head was a solid and well-defined lump of cold anger. It was not mere helpless rage and frustration, not any more. It had been transmuted, and the transmutation occurred as Yosper and his boys were walking him through the perfunctory Roman passport control. They ambled in military formation, Yosper on his right side, Dieter on his left; Carlos followed a few paces behind and Mario took the point; it was exactly as if they were patrolling some not quite secure area, and as Yosper waved genially to the boarding clerk and led Hake past her into the waiting plane, he stopped and said, with real emotion, “You’re a good man, Hake.” He patted Hake’s shoulder awkwardly, and then amended himself. “Too shitfired headstrong, sure. Get you in trouble one of these days, boy, real trouble, mark my words. But you got a lot of Moxie. I want you to know I’m sending a commendation in for your promotion file. And next time I have a job you can help in, I’m going to ask for you by name.”