George Effinger - When Gravity Fails

Ah, but Nero Wolfe rarely got himself into life-threatening situations. He let Archie Goodwin take most of those risks. Wolfe would uncover the Budayeen’s assassins by sitting behind his familiar old desk — figuratively. of course — and ratiocinating his way to the killers’ identities. Then peace and prosperity would descend once more upon the city, and all Islam would resound with Marîd Audran’s name .

Wolfe glanced again at Miss Nablusi . He often showed a distaste for women that bordered on open hostility . How did he feel toward a sex-change? After a moment’s reflection , it seemed the detective had only the same mistrust he held for organically grown , nothing artificially added , lo-cal , high-fiber females in general . On the whole , he was a flexible and objective evaluator of people; he could hardly have been so brilliant a detective otherwise . Wolfe would have no difficulty interviewing the people of the Budayeen , or comprehending their outré attitudes and motivations .

As their body grew more comfortable with the moddy , Marîd Audran’s personality retired even further into passivity , able to do little more than make suggestions , while Wolfe assumed more control . It became clear that wearing a moddy could lead to the expenditure of a lot of money . Just as the murderer who’d worn the James Bond moddy had reshaped his physical appearance and his wardrobe to match his adopted personality , so too did Audran and Wolfe suddenly want to invest in yellow shirts and yellow pajamas , hire one of the world’s finest chefs , and collect thousands of rare and exotic orchid plants . All that would have to wait . “ Pfui ,” grumbled Wolfe again .

They reached up and popped the moddy out .

There was another dizzy swirl of disorientation; and then I was standing in my own room, staring stupidly down at my hand and at the module it held. I was back in my own body and my own mind.

“How was it?” asked Yasmin.

I looked at her. “Satisfactory,” I said, using Wolfe’s most enthusiastic expression. “It might do,” I admitted. “I have the feeling that Wolfe will be able to sort through the facts and find the explanation, after all. If there is one.”

“I’m glad, Marîd. And remember, if this one isn’t good enough, there are thousands of other moddies you can try, too.”

I put the moddy on the floor beside the bed and lay down.

Maybe I ought to have had my brain boosted a long time ago. I suspected that I’d been missing a bet, that I’d been wrong and everybody else had been right. Well, I was all grown-up and I could admit my mistakes. Not out loud, of course, and never to someone like Yasmin, who’d never let me forget about it: but deep down inside I knew, and that’s what counted. It had only been my pride and fear, after all, that had kept me from getting wired sooner — my feeling that I could show up any moddy with my own native good sense and one cerebral hemisphere tied behind my back. I unclipped my phone and called the Half-Hajj at home; he hadn’t gone out yet for lunch, and he promised to pass by my apartment in a few minutes. I told him I had a little gift for him.

Yasmin lay down beside me while we waited for Saied to arrive. She put a hand across my chest and rested her head on my shoulder. “Marîd,” she said softly, “you know that I’m really proud of you.”

“Yasmin,” I said slowly, “you know that I’m really scared out of me wits.”

“I know, honey; I’m scared, too. But what if you hadn’t done your part in all this? What about Nikki and the others? What if more people are killed, people you could have saved? What could I think about you then? What would you think?”

“I’ll make a deal with you, Yasmin: I’ll go on and do what I can and take whatever chances I can’t avoid. Just stop telling me all the time that I’m doing the right thing and that you’re so glad I may be dead in the next halt-hour. All the cheering in the reserved seats is great for your morale; but it doesn’t help me in the least, after a while it gets kind of tiresome, and it won’t make bullets or knives bounce off my hide. Okay?”

She was, of course, hurt, but I meant exactly what I’d said; I wanted to nip all this “Go out there and get ‘em, boy!” choo in the bud. I was sorry that I’d been so hard on Yasmin, though. To cover it, I got up and went to the bathroom. I closed the door and ran a glass of water. The water is always warm in my apartment, summer or winter, and I rarely had ice in the little freezer. After a while you can drink the tepid water with its swirling, suspended particles in it. Not me, though. I’m still working on that. I like a glass of water that doesn’t stare back at you.

I took my pill case from my jeans and scrabbled out a cluster of Sonneine. These were the first sunnies I’d taken since I got out of the hospital. Like some kind of addict I was celebrating my abstinence by breaking it. I dropped the sunnies into my mouth and took a gulp of warm water. There, I thought, that ’s what will keep me going. A couple of sunnies and a few tri-phets are worth a stadium full of well-wishers with their bedsheet banners. I closed the pill case quietly — was I trying to keep Yasmin from hearing? Why — and flushed the toilet. Then I went back into the big room.

I was halfway across the floor when Saied knocked or the door. “ Bismillah ,” I called, and swung it open.

“Yeah, you right,” said the Half-Hajj. He came into the room and dropped himself on the corner of the mattress “What you got for me?”

“He’s amped now, Saied,” said Yasmin. He turned toward her slowly and gave her that rough-and-tough glare of his. He was in that bitter frame of mind again. A woman’s place is in certain areas of the home, seen and not heard, maybe not even seen if she knows what’s good for her.

The Half-Hajj looked back at me and nodded. “ I was wired when I was thirteen years old,” he said.

I wasn’t going to arm-wrestle with him about anything. I reminded myself that I was asking him to help me, and that it would truly be dangerous for him. I flipped the Archie Goodwin moddy to him, and he caught it easily with one hand. “Who is it?” he asked.

“A detective from some old books. He works for the greatest detective in the world. The boss is big and fat and never leaves his home, so Goodwin does all the legwork for him. Goodwin is young and good-looking and smart.”

“Uh huh. And I suppose this moddy is just an end of Ramadan gift, a little late, right?”

“No.”

“You took Papa’s money, and you took his wire-job, and so you’re really going out after whoever’s been disenfranchising our friends and neighbors. Now you want me to chip in sturdy, reliable Goodwin and ride along with you after adventure or something.”

“I need someone, Saied,” I said. “You were the first person I thought of.”

He looked a little flattered by that, but he was still far from enthusiastic. “This just isn’t my line,” he said.

“Chip it in, and it will be.”

He looked at that one from both sides and realized I was right. He took off his keffiya , which he’d shaped into a kind of turban, popped out the moddy he was wearing, and plugged in Archie Goodwin.

I walked by him, toward the sink. I watched as his expression lost focus and then reformed subtly into something else. He seemed more relaxed, more intelligent now. He gave me a wry, amused smile, but he was measuring me and the new contents of his mind. His eyes took in everything in the room, as if he’d have to make an item-by-item catalog of it all later. He waited, giving me a look that was part insolence and part devotion. He wasn’t seeing me, I knew; he was seeing Nero Wolfe.