The Aluminum Man

by G. C. Edmondson

  The Aluminum Man

  By

  G.C. Edmondson

  A BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOK

  published by

  BERKLEY PUBLISHING CORPORATION

  Copyright © 1975, by G. C. Edmondson

  ISBN 425-02737-6

  BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS are published by

  Berkley Publishing Corporation

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, N.Y. 10016

  To Trevor Hearnden

  who may someday program an aluminophage.

  CHAPTER 1

  It was murder. Polished, urbane, witty, this Mohawk was slashing Rudolf to ribbons with a martini glass, doing it without spilling a drop.

  “Now we of the Six Nations,” he was saying, “had undergone the iron-axe-and-canoe revolution a full century before you Plains Indians got the horse and suddenly became noble warriors instead of scavengers after wolf leavings.” The glass swung in graceful punctuation. Rudolf felt his jugular spurt as the Mohawk continued, “Elijah, Baldur, Christ, Mohammed — all spent their forty days in the wilderness. We Mohawk fasted to find Manitou. You Sioux went on solitary journeys, fasting until a totem animal appeared.” The Mohawk shrugged. “Hardly a unique phenomenon.”

  Rudolf glanced desperately around the circle of listeners. Pamela St. Audrey stirred. “By the way, Rudy,” she asked, “what is your totem animal?”

  For one panic-stricken moment Rudolf almost admitted having been raised Christian. Soul Brothers could get away with that but an Indian couldn’t. Not yet anyway. What the hell did he know about totem animals?

  A door opened and Rudolf thought he was saved but it was only Pamela’s father. Mr. St. Audrey’s silver-haired matinee idol facade was deceiving. Thoroughly immersed in money-making, he passed through the room, nodding absently, his mind still somewhere between Chase and Manhattan. A door closed behind him and there stood Rudolf. Pamela had moved closer to the goddamn Mohawk. From somewhere drifted the sweet smell of burning grass.

  “Rudy doesn’t have a totem animal!” somebody shrieked. Even the Mohawk seemed slightly aghast at the fervor with which these liberal cocktail circuit habitues were turning on their darling. But that, Rudolf noticed, did not stop him from adding fuel.

  “Perhaps a journey back to one’s roots—” He let it hang a moment then drove in the clincher: “From time to time I find it imperative to shed the artificial restraints of an alien culture.”

  And before Rudolf quite knew what was happening he found himself stuffed into a canoe loaded with groceries and camping gear dredged up from somewhere. And all because he’d written a book! Paddling up this sludge-filled river, Rudolf belatedly remembered a quote from that Christian work he’d so struggled to disown. Who had said, “O that mine adversary had written a book”?

  Rudolf had come a long way from the mission school on the reservation and rather faster than he had expected. Last week he had been top totem on the liberal cocktail circuit, with guest appearances on TV and the whole bit. Now he was fending off rusting beer cans in upstate New York. Was it his fault he was only seven eighths? Was he personally responsible for the nineteenth-century metaphysicist who deserted a wagon train to go native with Teutonic thoroughness? Paddling fiercely and ineptly, Rudolf remembered a Plains Indian rite for bringing disaster upon an enemy. Would it work against that goddamn Mohawk?

  Rudolf had already capsized and lost most of his supplies as well as soaking his clothes and sleeping bag in this excremental excuse for a river. He tried to remember if his last meal had been yesterday or the day before. He had intended to start fasting but not this soon!

  “Damn all reviewers!” he muttered.

  Somewhere ahead on the right bank rose a pillar of smoke. If he paddled briskly Rudolf might reach it before dark. Another night alone in this forest, shivering in wet stinking clothes, trying to ignite wet matches… Unwillingly his thoughts returned to that Mohawk’s review:

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Rudolf knows less about the Iroquois Federation than the average white man. Perhaps his overly bookish approach could be remedied by a return to his own Sioux roots. Obviously young Rudolf is still searching for a totem to lend focus to his own life.”

  Rudolf believed in totem animals slightly less than in Santa Claus. Did any of the old people still believe that jazz, identifying with whatever animal they met after the ritual fasting, living their days in spiritual partnership? Be nice if he could find a red wolf — this being the English for Rudolf. Did wolves survive in upstate New York? Did they attack men?

  By now he could see a faint flicker of campfire. He paddled clumsily another hundred yards and grounded, cringing as his shoes squelched through semisolid sludge. The fire was inland up a foot-wide rivulet of clear water. Rudolf walked up the middle of it and got the worst of the crud off his shoes.

  Though there was no trace of road, he saw what looked like a 1948 DeSoto standing on end, and without wheels. Before it was a spring and beside the spring a campfire. Sitting before the campfire was a barrel-chested man in Levis and checkered wool shirt. “Never work,” he was saying. “Can’t be done that way.”

  “Hello,” Rudolf said.

  The stranger turned and Rudolf saw a week’s growth of red whiskers surrounding a bulbous nose and two bleary eyes. “My god, another one!” the stranger said.

  “Another what?”

  “Anybody can see pink elephants. Only the Flaherty has the originality for squelching horrors and wild Indians.”

  “I’m not wild. And if by squelching horror you mean that river—”

  “That’s what they all say.” Flaherty delved into a jumble of blankets and found a bottle. After a swallow he cautiously faced Rudolf again. “You go wild on firewater?”

  “The only thing that’d drive me wild at the moment is a hot bath and a meal.”

  Flaherty offered the bottle. “Try to hallucinate the rest.”

  “I don’t even believe in you.” Rudolf took the bottle. It was good whiskey and a moment after it landed in his empty stomach he felt more on a par with the world. “What makes you think I’m not for real?” he asked.

  “Are you?”

  Rudolf thought a moment. “No,” he admitted. “I’m a fake like everybody else. Only I got caught.”

  “Happens to us all.” Flaherty’s voice was mid-range between basso buffo and transit-mix. “What d’you suppose he was before he got caught?”

  “Who?”

  “Him.”

  Rudolf looked toward the wrecked DeSoto. There was a pile of wet earth where the spring had been deepened and widened to bathtub size. Flaherty had not used it.

  Water flowed from the spring to make the tiny stream he’d rinsed his shoes in. But there was something odd. He blinked. Could one drink so affect his vision, even on a two-day empty stomach?

  There was a faint swirl like congealed turbulence, as if a giant egg white had been broken into the spring. Except for three triangularly spaced black dots, it was nearly invisible. “Pollution?” he asked.

  The viscid mass convulsed. While Rudolf stared in horror the black spots emerged from the pool stretching toward him like the neck of some improbable snail. “Hello,” they said.

  It was a mouth; the two spots over it were eyes. Rudolf shook his head and the apparition went out of focus. “There isn’t any such thing!” he exploded.

  “No more than you’re here,” the man by the fire said. “Happens every time I despair for humanity and hie myself off to save my own soul.”

  One mad corner of Rudolf’s mind kept saying, “This is your totem animal.” He wondered if it referred to the Irishman or the thing in the spring. How could he present either vision to the tribal elders? “It’s not really there,” he persisted.

>   “That’s what the other of you keeps saying,” the thing in the pool conceded. “Yet I remain firmly convinced of my own existence. I am less convinced of yours. How do you absorb oxygen through that leathery outer mantle?”

  “Skin,” Rudolf corrected absently. Looking at the night sky’s sparse, smog-tinged stars, he wondered how to answer. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Tuchi.”

  “I’m Rudolf.”

  “Flaherty.” the red-whiskered man chorused. “And sure I can do it — maybe in six months.”

  “I must get home sooner,” the thing in the spring said.

  “For an uncooked omelet you have remarkably human needs.”

  “I am gravid. I do not wish to consummate my most private and sacred act where neither gravity nor radiation are suitable, much less this foul mixture you breathe. No wonder you’re leathery.”

  “Could I have another?” Rudolf asked.

  Flaherty handed him the bottle. This time the whiskey burned and Rudolf guessed he was finally getting warm. “What does — uh, Tuchi want?” he asked.

  Flaherty looked owlishly at Rudolf. “You’re not really here. Neither is he.”

  “I’m not sure enough to argue the point. But if we were, what would he want?”

  “She” Tuchi insisted. “I want to go home.”

  “You can’t go back,” Rudolf said morosely.

  “Gravid!” Flaherty exploded. “Does that mean what I think it does?”

  “You can start boiling water,” Rudolf said.

  Flaherty shuddered. “How many?”

  “Two to three thousand.”

  Flaherty put the bottle to his lips again.

  “At home there would be a selection. Only the hundred best would survive. But here, without proper facilities…”

  “We already have a population problem,” Rudolf said.

  “I’m leaving,” the thing in the spring said. Momentarily the three black dots came closer together in an expression Rudolf could only guess at. “All I need is a little help.”

  “Like what?”

  “His — her ship’s out of fuel,” Flaherty explained.

  “Gasoline?”

  “Powdered aluminum.”

  Rudolf thought a moment. “Like the pigment they use in aluminum paint?”

  “That might do,” Flaherty said, “if it was pure enough.”

  “Why not go to town and buy some?”

  “I can’t wait,” Tuchi said impatiently. “I’m gravid.”

  “I could grow it in six months,” Flaherty said.

  Rudolf was suddenly reminded of some Massachusetts Indians who planted gunpowder bought from the Pilgrims and were chagrined when it failed to grow a crop. “This hallucination’s getting out of hand,” he said.

  “Who asked you?” Flaherty growled. “And what’s funny about growing aluminum?”

  “Perhaps my sense of humour is deficient.”

  “More likely your genetic engineering’s deficient.”

  Rudolf looked wistfully at the bottle. For the moment he no longer cared that he was tired, dirty, hungry.

  “I’m a good one when I want to be,” Flaherty growled.

  “Good what?”

  “Genetic engineer.”

  “I’m a good Indian when they let me be.”

  “You think I can’t grow aluminum?” Flaherty was growing ugly.

  “How do you do it?”

  “Tailor a bacterium to eat bauxite. Gets its energy from the sun like any growing plant and excretes tiny grains of metallic aluminum.”

  “You can do this?”

  “I’ve been working on a strain of high tolerance yeast,” Flaherty said. “Once that’s cleared up I think I’ll tackle it.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Because that curdled omelet already has it.”

  “Has what?”

  “A strain of aluminophagic bacteria.”

  “Why doesn’t she go home then?”

  “Time,” Tuchi said exasperatedly. “This red-fringed specimen needs half of one of your years to plant and harvest. By the way, are you of the same species? You don’t have red cilia like Flaherty. Oh, I know. Black cilia and no facial fringe. You’re female!”

  Rudolf ignored this. Suddenly he began to see riches, fame, entree back into the cocktail circuit. Back into the front seat of Pamela St. Audrey’s oriental red Lamborghini…

  “Could you use solid aluminum?” Rudolf asked.

  “I could pulverize it. It would be better than nothing.”

  “How much would you need?”

  “I suppose you just happen to have an ingot of pure aluminum wrapped up in your sleeping bag?” Flaherty sneered.

  There was a moment’s silence while Tuchi converted into Earth units. “Perhaps fifty pounds.”

  “I wonder how much my canoe weights?” Rudolf mused.

  “You can’t cut up a canoe!” Flaherty protested.

  “You have metal?” Tuchi asked.

  “Make me an offer.”

  “The bacteria.”

  Rudolf looked at Flaherty. “You’re the expert,” he said. “How much would they be worth?”

  Flaherty sputtered a moment before upending the bottle. “Millions,” he finally gasped. “Be the biggest thing since atomic power!”

  “You’ve got yourself a canoe,” Rudolf said.

  “You can’t!” Flaherty protested. “Besides, there’s a catch. What if they don’t breed true?”

  “Won’t they?” Rudolf asked.

  “No.”

  “See!” Flaherty triumphed.

  “They’re for a different planet,” Tuchi explained. “Different atmosphere, gravity, solar constant—”

  “I guess the deal’s off.”

  “Damn well better be!” Flaherty huffed. “Hallucinations must obey their creator’s innate logic.”

  “How were you going to grow them?” Rudolf asked.

  Tuchi produced a small black object. Rudolf thought it was a transistor radio.

  “Incubator,” Flaherty explained. “We’re holed up here to get a crop and get her back on her way.”

  “It’s a soil problem,” Tuchi continued. “Bauxite beds on this planet lay somewhere around the equator. This far north there is little bauxite.”

  “Can’t recall seeing any. What’s bauxite?”

  Flaherty gave the Indian a sharp look. He sighed. “It’s several ores. All they have in common is a high alumina content.”

  “You mean aluminum?”

  “I mean carborundum.”

  “What good’s that?”

  “Four tons reduce to one of pure aluminum.”

  “How?”

  Flaherty sighed again. “First you dig it up in Guyana or Liberia, then ship it where there’s cheap hydroelectric power. Somewhere above a thousand degrees it melts and starts electrolysis. At one pole you get aluminum. At the other you get crud. Some of this river’s pollution probably comes from an aluminum plant. They hide them in the boondocks so ecologists can’t see.”

  “And this — uh, Tuchi has something that does it without electricity?”

  “Hallucination,” Flaherty insisted.

  “All right. But if it was for real how would it work?”

  “Plant bacteria, come back and scoop up your metal.”

  “But they don’t breed true?”

  Flaherty pointed at the black transistor gadget.

  “They live eight of your days,” Tuchi interjected. “A hundred-generation safety factor before viability is lost. The incubator preserves a true strain.”

  “Won’t it run dry?”

  “Not for thousands of your years unless you try to open it.”

  “What’ll you take for the incubator?”

  Whorls of curdle writhed, then Tuchi’s three pointed “face” emerged again. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t sell. You must treat it with great care.”

  “I will.” Rudolf didn’t intend to go about sowing aluminum crops for everyone
.

  “Very well. Pulverize your boat into micron-sized particles and you may have the incubator.”

  “You’re out of your skull!” Flaherty roared. “Even if we had the time and machinery we couldn’t grind it that fine. Besides, that damn canoe—”

  Spring water roiled suddenly and slopped over its banks. “All right!” Tuchi snapped. “I’ll do it myself.”

  Rudolf slogged down to the river. Fumbling in the dark, he piled his stinking water-soaked gear on the bank. He horsed the canoe back up the rivulet, splashing clean water on it and himself along the way. A pseudopod stretched an astonishing distance and smeared wetly over one side of the canoe. “This is aluminum,” Tuchi said. “I can smell it.”

  “I wish I could do things like that,” Rudolf said.

  “You’ll be sorry about selling that canoe,” Flaherty warned.

  “So I forfeit my deposit!”

  Flaherty reached for the bottle and couldn’t find it.

  There was another commotion in the spring then Tuchi began flowing toward the wrecked DeSoto. Suddenly a back door opened smoothly to reveal an interior that showed no signs of weathering. It showed no signs of being an automobile either. Rudolf squinted around all that whiskey on an empty stomach and suddenly realized this vehicle had never known wheels. “Your ship?” he asked.

  “What did you think it was?” Tuchi asked testily.

  Rudolf decided not to answer.

  “Help me,” Tuchi continued.

  “What?”

  “The metal. Help me put the canoe inside.”

  “It’s too big,” Rudolf protested. “You can’t get it in there until you cut it up.”

  The pseudopod turned until that triangle faced Rudolf. The three black dots came momentarily together. Rudolf wished he knew what that particular gesture meant.

  “There are more things in the universe than Euclidean geometry,” Tuchi said. “Give me a tentacle.”

  Rudolf and Flaherty got on opposite sides of the canoe. Rudolf wondered if that last remark had anything to do with the way the eighteen-foot canoe entered, the five-foot wide car and kept on going and going — and going! The canoe disappeared and the door began closing. Flaherty turned back toward the fire and stumbled headlong. The tiny box flew across the campfire and Flaherty landed face down in the spring. Once Rudolf had made sure the incubator was unharmed he slipped it into his pocket. Then he helped Flaherty. “You’ve got a boat somewhere,” Rudolf insisted.