Pohl, Frederik - The Age of the Pussyfoot

He gagged. “What— What—”

“Do you see, Charles? You were in bad shape.”

“Me?”

“Oh yes, dear. You really must read your report. See here . . . evidently you fell forward into the flames. Besides your being killed, the whole anterior section of the head was destroyed. At least, the soft parts. Mm . . . lucky your brains weren’t cooked, at that.” He saw with incredulity that this tender, charming girl was studying the photograph with as little passion as though the charred meat it represented were a lamb chop. She went on, “Didn’t you say you noticed your eyes were different? New eyes.”

Forrester croaked, “Put that thing away.”

He took a swallow of his drink and immediately regretted it, then fished one of the remaining cigarettes out of his second pack and lit it. “I see what you mean,” he said at last.

“Do you, dear? Good. You know, I bet four or five hundred people worked on you. All sorts of specialists. All their helpers. Using all their equipment. They get a case like yours, it’s like one of those great big enormous jigsaw puzzles. They have to put it all back together, piece by piece—only they don’t have all the pieces, so they have to get or make new ones . . . and of course the stuff spoils so. They have to—”

“Quit it!”

“You’re awfully jumpy, Charles.”

“All right! I’m jumpy.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette and asked the question that had been developing in his mind for ten minutes now. “Look. At a normal rate of expenditure—oh, you know; the way you see me living—roughly how long is my quarter of a million dollars going to last?”

She looked into space and tapped her fingernails against her teeth. “There are those custom items of yours,” she said thoughtfully. “They come high—those things you smoke, and fowl eggs, and—what was that other thing? The oransh juice—”

“Leaving out that kind of stuff! How long?”

She pursed her lips. “Well, it depends—”

“Roughly! How long?”

She said, “Well, maybe the rest of this week.”

He goggled at her. He repressed a laugh that sounded almost like a sob.

The end of the week?

He had been building himself up to hear an answer he wouldn’t like, but this exceeded his expectations. He said wretchedly, “Adne—what am I supposed to do?”

“Well,” she said, “you could always get a job.”

“Sure,” he said bitterly. “Got one up your sleeve? One that pays a million dollars a week?”

To his surprise, she seemed to take him seriously. “Oh, Charles! Not that much. I mean, you’re not skilled. Twenty, twenty-five thousand a day—I don’t think you can really expect more.”

He said, “You can find me a job like that?”

“Well, what do you think Taiko would have paid?”

“Wait a minute! You mean Taiko would have given me a job? But I thought— I mean, he said it was his club. What did he call it, the Ned Lud Society?”

“Yes, that’s right.” She nodded. “What do you think a club’s for, Charles?”

“Why—so that people with like interests can, well, get together and work on their interests.”

“And what did you used to so quaintly call a business company?”

“Why . . . Yeah, but look, a company produces something of value. Something you can sell.”

She sniffed. “We’ve got beyond that sort of consideration. Anything that any reasonably competent people agree is worth doing is worth a salary in exchange for doing it.”

“Gosh,” said Charles Forrester.

“But Taiko was quite astonished at the way you acted, Charles. I don’t know whether he’s angry or not. But I wouldn’t count on the offer still being open.”

“Figures,” said Forrester gloomily, musing over lost possibilities.

“Man Forrester!”

The sound of the joymaker was almost like an alarm wakening him from sleep. It took him a few moments to realize what it was, as he emerged from his bemused state. Then he said, “In a minute, machine. Adne, let me get this straight—”

But she was looking urgent and abashed. “Charles dear, you’d better take this message.”

“Man Forrester! I have a priority notice of personal visit!”

“Yeah, but Adne—”

“Charles,” she said, “please take it. Or—never mind. I’ll tell you myself.” She looked down at her hands, avoiding his eyes. “I guess I should have told you before. I think that’s Heinzie coming now.”

“Heinzie? The Martian? The one—”

She said apologetically, “I told him to come, Charles dear. You’d really better let him in.”

Seven

As Forrester faced the man named Heinzlichen Jura de Syrtis Major, he felt he was in the state described as “ready for anything.” What this actually meant was that he was totally unready. He did not know what to expect. He could feel his heart pounding; he sensed that his hands were beginning to shake. Even Adne seemed stimulated; she was watching them, her small face intensely interested, and she was fumbling something out of her joymaker. A tranquilizer? No, more likely something to pep her up, thought Forrester. Whatever it was, she popped it in her mouth and swallowed before she said, “Hello, Heinzie. Come on in. I think you and Charles have met.”

Forrester gave her a look, then returned to Heinzlichen. He started to put out his hand, then stopped, balancing on the balls of his feet, half ready to shake hands, half in a stance resembling the attack position of karate. “We’ve met, all right. Too damned often, if you ask me.”

Heinzlichen came in, allowed the door to close behind him, and stood still, studying Forrester as if he were a specimen in a museum. Adne had been playing with the lights again, and mottled reds and yellows flecked his face. They suited his personal color scheme. He was a tall, fat man. His hair was red, and he wore a close-cut red beard that covered all of his face except for nose, lips, and eyes, like the mask of a chimpanzee. He rubbed his beard thoughtfully while he examined Forrester’s face with attention, glanced appraisingly at his arms and body, stared down at the position of his feet, and finally nodded. He returned his gaze to a point on Forrester’s chest and stabbed at it with a finger. He said, “Dat is where I will kill you. Dere. In de heart.”

Forrester exhaled sharply through his nose. It tingled. He felt the flush of adrenalin through his bloodstream. He opened his mouth; but Adne cut in swiftly before he could speak.

“Heinze dear! You promised.”

“Promised? What promised? I promised to talk, dat’s all. So let’s talk.”

“But Charles doesn’t understand how things are, Heinzie. Sit down. Have a drink.”

“Oh, sure I’ll have a drink. You pick me out something nice. But make it fast, because I have only a couple of minutes.” He returned to Forrester. “Well? You want to talk?”

Forrester said belligerently, “You’re damned right I want to talk. And, no, Adne, I don’t want a drink. Now, look here, you—” He hesitated, finding it hard to think of the right thing to say. “Well, what I want to know is, why the devil do you want to kill me?”

The Martian looked baffled. He glanced at Adne helplessly, then back to Forrester. “Sweat, I don’t know,” he said. “Up dere at de party you stomped my foot. . . . But I guess I just didn’t like you anyway. What do you want to ask a question like dat for?”

“Why? It’s my life!”

The Martian growled, “I knew dis was a bad idea. Honey, I’m going. De more I see of dis guy, de less I like him.”

But Adne had her hand on his arm. “Please, Heinzie. Here.” She handed him a fizzy orange drink in a thing like a brandy inhaler with a hollow stem. “You know Charles is just out of the sleep-freeze. He’s kind of a slow learner, I’m afraid.”