William Tenn: Firewater

The hairiest, dirtiest and oldest of the three visitors from Arizona scratched his back against the plastic of the webfoam chair. “Insinuations are lavender nearly,” he remarked by way of opening the conversation.

His two companions—the thin young man with dripping eyes, and the woman whose good looks were marred chiefly by incredibly decayed teeth—giggled and relaxed. The thin young man said “Gabble, gabble, honk!” under his breath, and the other two nodded emphatically.

Greta Seidenheim looked up from the tiny stenographic machine resting on a pair of the most exciting knees her employer had been able to find in Greater New York. She swiveled her blonde beauty at him. “That too, Mr. Hebster?”

The president of Hebster Securities, Inc., waited until the memory of her voice ceased to tickle his ears; he had much clear thinking to do. Then he nodded and said resonantly, “That too, Miss Seidenheim. Close phonetic approximations of the gabble-honk and remember to indicate when it sounds like a question and when like an exclamation.”

He rubbed his recently manicured fingernails across the desk drawer containing his fully loaded Parabellum. Check. The communication buttons with which he could summon any quantity of Hebster Securities personnel up to the nine hundred working at present in the Hebster Building lay some eight inches from the other hand. Check. And there were the doors here, the doors there, behind which his uniformed bodyguard stood poised to burst in at a signal which would blaze before them the moment his right foot came off the tiny spring set in the floor. And check.

Courteously, he nodded at each one of his visitors from Arizona; he smiled rue-fully at what the dirty shapeless masses they wore on their feet were doing to the almost calf-deep rug that had been woven specially for his private office. He had greeted them when Miss Seidenheim had escorted them in. They had laughed in his face.

“Suppose we rattle off some introductions. You know me. I’m Hebster, Algernon Hebster—you asked for me specifically at the desk in the lobby. If it’s important to the conversation, my secretary’s name is Greta Seidenheim. And you, sir?”

He had addressed the old fellow, but the thin young man leaned forward in his seat and held out a taut, almost transparent hand. “Names?” he inquired. “Names are round if not revealed. Consider names. How many names? Consider names, reconsider names!”

The woman leaned forward too, and the smell from her diseased mouth reached Hebster even across the enormous space of his office. “Rabble and reaching and all the upward clash,” she intoned, spreading her hands as if in agreement with an obvious point. “Emptiness derogating itself into infinity—”

“Into duration,” the older man corrected.

“Into infinity,” the woman insisted.

“Gabble, gabble, honk?” the young man queried bitterly.

“Listen!” Hebster roared. “When I asked for—”

The communicator buzzed and he drew a deep breath and pressed a button. His receptionist’s voice boiled out rapidly, fearfully:

“I remember your orders, Mr. Hebster, but those two men from the UM Special Investigating Commission are here again and they look as if they mean business. I mean they look as if they’ll make trouble.”

“Yost and Funatti?”

“Yes, sir. From what they said to each other, I think they know you have three Primeys in there. They asked me what are you trying to do—deliberately inflame the Firsters? They said they’re going to invoke full supranational powers and force an entry if you don’t—”

“Stall them.”

“But, Mr. Hebster, the UM Special Investigating —”

“Stall them, I said. Are you a receptionist or a swinging door? Use your imagination, Ruth. You have a nine-hundred-man organization and a ten-million-dollar corporation at your disposal. You can stage any kind of farce in that outer office you want—up to and including the deal where some actor made up to look like me walks in and drops dead at their feet. Stall them and I’ll nod a bonus at you. Stall them.” He clicked off, looked up.

His visitors, at least, were having a fine time. They had turned to face each other in a reeking triangle of gibberish. Their voices rose and fell argumentatively, pleadingly, decisively; but all Algernon Hebster’s ears could register of what they said were very many sounds similar to gabble and an occasional, indisputable honk!

His lips curled contempt inward. Humanity prime! These messes? Then he lit a cigarette and shrugged. Oh, well. Humanity prime. And business is business.

Just remember they’re not supermen, he told himself. They may be dangerous, but they’re not supermen. Not by a long shot. Remember that epidemic of influenza that almost wiped them out, and how you diddled those two other Primeys last month. They’re not supermen, but they’re not humanity either. They’re just different.

He glanced at his secretary and approved. Greta Seidenheim clacked away on her machine as if she were recording the curtest, the tritest of business letters. He wondered what system she was using to catch the intonations. Trust Greta, though, she’d do it.

“Gabble, honk! Gabble, gabble, gabble, honk, honk. Gabble, honk, gabble, gabble, honk? Honk.”

What had precipitated all this conversation? He’d only asked for their names. Didn’t they use names in Arizona? Surely, they knew that it was customary here. They claimed to know at least as much as he about such matters.

Maybe it was something else that had brought them to New York this time—maybe something about the Aliens? He felt the short hairs rise on the back of his neck and he smoothed them down self-consciously.

Trouble was it was so easy to learn their language. It was such a very simple matter to be able to understand them in these talkative moments. Almost as easy as falling off a log—or jumping off a cliff.

Well, his time was limited. He didn’t know how long Ruth could hold the UM investigators in his outer office. Somehow he had to get a grip on the meeting again without offending them in any of the innumerable, highly dangerous ways in which Primeys could be offended.

He rapped the desk top—gently. The gabble-honk stopped short at the hyphen. The woman rose slowly.

“On this question of names,” Hebster began doggedly, keeping his eyes on the woman, “since you people claim—”

The woman writhed agonizingly for a moment and sat down on the floor. She smiled at Hebster. With her rotted teeth, the smile had all the brilliance of a dead star.

Hebster cleared his throat and prepared to try again.

“If you want names,” the older man said suddenly, “you can call me Larry.”

The president of Hebster Securities shook himself and managed to say “Thanks” in a somewhat weak but not too surprised voice. He looked at the thin young man.

“You can call me Theseus.” The young man looked sad as he said it.

“Theseus? Fine!” One thing about Primeys, when you started clicking with them, you really moved along. But Theseus! Wasn’t that just like a Primey? Now the woman, and they could begin.

They were all looking at the woman, even Greta with a curiosity which had sneaked up past her beauty-parlor glaze.

“Name,” the woman whispered to herself. “Name a name.”

Oh, no, Hebster groaned. Let’s not stall here.

Larry evidently had decided that enough time had been wasted. He made a suggestion to the woman. “Why not call yourself Moe?”

The young man—Theseus, it was now—also seemed to get interested in the problem. “Rover’s a good name,” he announced helpfully.