Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

“ Mother ,” I said, “ I was not a toy . God did not give you something to fool around with when you had me.”

She smiled a faint, smug smile. “Why is your penis so hard, Benny?”

“ Why do you think? ” I found myself shouting. “And you aren’t worth it. You’re nothing.”

I was sitting straight up in bed. I reached forward abruptly and slammed the telephone’s “off” switch with the heel of my hand. Her face, with its smug, flirtatious smile, vanished into the electronic limbo it had been generated from.

I finished my cigar slowly and got Orbach’s machine on the phone again. This time the screen was blank. “I hope you are better, Benjamin,” the machine said in Orbach’s normal voice.

“I don’t know. I’m not as angry.”

“And things are clearer?”

“Things are,” I said. “I had an erection while I was looking at her.”

“Congratulations!” the machine said. “Would you like to talk with your father?”

I reached for another cigar and held it for a while in my hand. Then I shook my head. “My father’s dead,” I said.

“Yes,” the machine said, “he is dead.”

“Then I’ve done enough,” I said.

In an hour the fever was down and my head was clear. It was getting dark outside, and the rain had stopped. I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. I would be going out to Lao-tzu in the morning and I needed to do some research first. And I was hungry.

I phoned room service for a hamburger and a glass of ginger ale. Then I called the one local taxi and reserved him for eight in the morning. I hung up, pushed the “Library” button on the viddiphone and began tracking down what was available on Lao-tzu. There was a good deal, much of it in the Shanghai People’s Library.

I found two histories of the company, going back to its origins on a Nanking back street in the nineteenth century, and books about the founder. There were annual reports and stock prospectuses in English and Chinese, and a lot of miscellaneous works on the drug business in China. I put it all on “Hold.”

On a hunch I checked U. S. Political Science and struck it rich there too: a holo movie called L’Ouverture Baynes—Man of the Times , and a book from the University of Kentucky Press, Kentucky Political Campaigns in the 2050s . I had texts of these printed out.

My hamburger arrived on a pewter plate with grapes and cheese cubes and Roquefort dressing and piles of evil-looking lettuce: clearly a Renaissance Pope Sandwich. I signed the bill and turned on the TV, switching it to play the material I had on “Hold” on the viddiphone. I threw away the lettuce and began eating, as an introduction to the Chinese ethical drug business came on. There was a panoramic shot of Chang An in Peking and crowds of healthy, prosperous Chinese. “Welcome to China!” a saccharine voice proclaimed. I sighed, had a drink of ginger ale, and called room service again for a pot of coffee. It was going to take a lot of caffeine to get through all this.

About the time my pitcher of coffee arrived, Howard called to say he’d gotten the report on endolin. There was no way to analyze it completely and no way whatever to synthesize it. I was delighted. I thanked him for his help and told him I had to get busy. Then I instructed the viddiphone to select out for me all the information on analgesics and to read it aloud, in English. I poured a cup of coffee and settled back in my chair.

At Lao-tzu in the morning Pear Blossom’s secretary told me icily that she was in conference. I told him I’d wait, plumped myself into an armchair and opened my Kentucky Politics printout, brought along for just this purpose. I lit a cigar. It must have been thirty years since anybody had made me wait in an outer office, cooling my heels like a porno-videosphere salesman, but I managed it all right. Pear Blossom came in a little over an hour later dressed in a gorgeous lavender shift and high heels. She saw me sitting there and looked away coolly, about to hurry into her office. Nice legs.

I played my ace in the hole immediately: I spoke to her in Chinese, using the Tradition-Revival forms. “Gracious flower of the arching pear tree,” I said, freezing her in her tracks. “I address you unworthily and my outlander’s tongue is lame with its mockery of yours.” In fact, I was speaking Chinese beautifully and Pear Blossom, judging from her face, knew it. “…yet even my poor discourse might add treasure to the bursting storehouse of the exalted Lao-tzu.”

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” Pear Blossom said.

I followed her into her office, a packet of endolin in my hand.

It took them four days to make the first offer. It was absurdly low, as I explained to Pear Blossom and her boss. By that time they had figured out who I was and had come to take me seriously. They also knew, of course, what endolin could do. They wanted it. Oh yes. It tingled my capitalist balls to sense that.

They doubled the offer the next day, and I told them again what I wanted. Three hundred million for the fifty pounds I had and for a 40 percent option on imports.

They walked out on that, as I thought they might.

The following day we met in a bigger room, with gray silk wall hangings. There was a new person among them, a very old woman in a blue robe, just arrived by plane from Peking. Pear Blossom introduced her to me as Mourning Dove Soong and I knew immediately who she was.

I spoke to her in Chinese. “I am filled with pride to address the distinguished chairperson of the world’s most formidable drug company.”

She nodded without smiling. “You ask too much for your endolin. A headache is a headache. Aspirin is a fine drug.”

This was just what I wanted. My heart felt light. It is exhilarating to see research pay off.

“I agree heartily,” I said. “I often buy aspirin from Bayer—a fine company—or Norwich, though that firm tediously outsells Lao-tzu throughout Europe, Scandinavia, and the Gold Coast. Upjohn also purveys a fine U.S.P. aspirin, to be found in twice as many American stores as the Lao-tzu product, unquestionably worthy though the latter is. One might weep at the thought.”

Mourning Dove was looking at me thoughtfully, holding a glass of plum wine. Pear Blossom and her boss were on the sofa. I sat in an armchair.

“One must also regard,” I said, “those merciful aids to the arthritic which are made with an analgesic as a component. Tao, the illustrious nine-way arthritis remedy, has sadly lost millions of dollars to Anacin alone over the past seven quarters. The new plant in Rio de Janeiro for the manufacturing of Tao will be forced to close, at embarrassing cost, if this tendency is not reversed. Worker riots are spoken of publicly. One wonders what the addition of endolin, in trace amounts, might do to this unhappy competition with Anacin. Then we must consider light anesthesia for minor surgery, and the hospital market…”

Mourning Dove was lighting a cigarette, much as Humphrey Bogart might have. “We’ll buy it,” she said.

I could have hugged her. “Splendid!” I said, in English. “Let’s sign the papers here tomorrow.”

Mourning Dove nodded, and sipped her wine. “I understand you have no present citizenship, Mr. Belson,” she said.

“All too true.” I said in English, still feeling some of the Chinese way of speaking in my head. “I have no nationality whatever at present.” I hesitated. “Perhaps you and I are sharing a thought.” My research had told me Mourning Dove was not only Chairperson of Lao-tzu International; she also sat on the Committee for the Enlargement of the People. The Immigration Bureau.