Дэймон Найт - Orbit 3

What indecent maniac would take such elaborate pains to pilfer the corpse of a man of God from a public place? Cassius was at once afraid he’d come in contact with some sinister group of madmen. Only later, when hindsight began to operate, did he analyze his reaction more deeply. He knew later that what had really troubled him was the fear that those who’d stolen the body were not crazy but perfectly, if esoterically, sane.

Lurching along in the rain, Cassius didn’t know what he was going to do about the theft. But he was positive he was going to do something.

The trip to his apartment in Alexandria would require the better part of an hour. Cassius decided to put the time to use.

After he jockeyed his Ford Aircoupe to the hook-on with the magnetic strip, he dialed the tinted shell. The shell closed around the seat blister, shutting out the dazzle of thousands of headlamps in the oncoming lanes. Cassius rang up the headquarters of the Ecumenical Brothers in downtown Washington. The paper had paid for installing the minimum-screen visor in his car.

Presently a sleepy, clerical-collared face appeared.

“This is Reverend Tooker speaking. Yes?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Reverend.”

“Quite all right. Tonight’s my shift in the B-complex free kitchen. How can I help you?”

The cleric was unfamiliar. But so was Timothy’s whole life, practically. Cassius hadn’t seen his brother in twelve years. That didn’t lessen his sense of duty and outrage:

“Reverend, I’m Cassius Andrews. I just came from Dulles where I planned to pick up Timothy’s body. There seems to have been a mixup. Did you by any chance send a hauler from your building to fetch it?”

“No, Mr. Andrews. We understood you wished to take delivery. Wasn’t our departed brother on the rocket?”

“He was. But somebody stole the coffin.”

Reverend Tooker at once launched into theologically tinged commiseration. Cassius listened politely. But he knew he’d get no help from the white-haired divine. Most of Tooker’s sincere and sympathetic talk about Timothy’s service on the Moon, his dying a violent death in the service of the Creator and His Son, to Cassius was neither here nor there. Long ago he’d abandoned any concern with religion.

While the Reverend eulogized Timothy, Cassius drifted off into other realms. Timothy had been a shy, dreamy boy in their childhood. He had been passionately religious, in contrast to Cassius who was passionately secular. For no special reason, Cassius was stung with somber recollections of his boyhood dreams of becoming a famous newsman and correspondent.

“—can only suggest you contact the police,” Reverend Tooker concluded.

“Yes, I planned to do that next.”

“Please come into the chapel at any time if we can be of help in your hour of trial,” the Reverend said.

“Yes, TH do that too, thanks.” That was a lie. Cassius rang off. There was no point in telling the gentle, simple old fellow that he was becoming convinced Timothy’s body had been pilfered by some sort of sex ghoul cult. A cult which—God help his brother—must be massively organized.

The Ford Aircoupe whizzed along on its thin pillars of air, halfway to Alexandria now. Cassius dialed the central police switchboard.

They were officially receptive, properly angry. Somehow, though, the conversation seemed routine. Cassius doubted the police would learn anything new when their operatives visited the freight sheds. The rain, the accident caused by the inexperienced driver, the resulting confusion, all had worked together to effectively blot out the trail of the body snatchers.

The Aircoupe was on the less crowded feeder belt over the polluted Potomac. The hour was growing late. In spite of that, Cassius dialed another number. He didn’t want to be completely alone tonight. He found that Joy was home.

“That’s terrible, Cassius,” she said. He thought she was sincere. Joy was nearing forty, rather chubby-faced and a little ferret-eyed in the wrong light. Basically she was pretty, if grown stocky now that she’d given up hope of marriage and settled on a career. “Would you like me to come over?”

Rain hammered black, lonely, on the Aircoupe bubble.

“Could you, Joy? It’ll take you an hour, I know. I really would like company. I can cook some eggs. You can stay the night.”

“I wish I might, sweets. But the piece I’m working on is due tomorrow. I’ve unearthed some positively fantabulous little gimmicks in re what to do with leftover paper undies. They make the cutest buffers for a dusting robot and—oh dear. Forgive me. This is a terrible time to talk shop.”

“That’s all right.” He forgave her. One of Joy’s failings was a kind of compulsion to seek editorial paydirt in any situation, even lovemaking. Once in the middle of the night Joy had suddenly interrupted everything, sat up and jotted down some notes on a simply fantabulous position a housewife might use to relax her calf muscles. He added, “You don’t have to stay the night, then.”

“I can’t, dear. As I say, this little piece is due. Cassius!”

“What, Joy?”

“You don’t suppose there’s anything in this theft, do you? Oh, I realize the moment is very trying for you. But could we make anything out of it?”

“I doubt that it’s Joy de Veever’s cup of tea,” he replied. “Nor mine either. I also have a sinking feeling the cops are going to get nowhere. To tell the truth, Joy, this business has some nasty overtones. I’m not sure I want to pursue it myself.”

The screened face grew bright-eyed. He might have been irritated if he hadn’t understood that her query sprang from her compulsive professionalism. But only in part. He knew from their years of pleasant liaison that she was, at bottom, kindly.

“But you will pursue it, won’t you, Cassius?”

“Yes, I suppose I must. Provided I can figure out where to turn next.”

“We’ll think of something. See you in an hour, sweets.” And the screen blurred out.

Cassius occupied a one-room flat on the eighty-seventh floor of one of fifteen cluster buildings in a small Alexandria development. Decelerating for the hook-off, Cassius saw a familiar sprawl of towers just this side of his own project. The towers dwarfed the other units in the district. They were the local project of the Securo Corporation.

Securo, a private firm started ten years ago by a contractor and a professor of psychology, provided co-op living for young marrieds but added a fillip: all conceivable services, including mortgage, burial and educational insurance were included in one payment for the benefit of the occupants, who signed a lifetime contract. All across the country and everywhere abroad, Securo was building similar projects, but not fast enough for the demand.

Down at the paper, the boys, fancying themselves rather independent souls, referred to a Securo flat as a womb to tomb room, since many young parents were already willing their living space to their infants, to provide them maximum protection against the buffetings of fate.

Now, riding in the dark rain, Cassius shuddered a little as the lights of the Securo tract flashed past. There was something to be said for knowing you were protected, especially on unpleasant nights like this. And the newsmen weren’t all that independent, either. The last Guild negotiations had lasted eighteen weeks, because management initially refused to include podiatry benefits in the package. Everyone wanted to be safe. Sometimes Cassius clucked his tongue, but sometimes too he sympathized.

Unlike Securo, Cassius’s landlords offered only the standard auto, theft and major medical insurance with their flats. Cassius’s place was a litter of books and the other paraphernalia of bachelor untidiness.