Someone shouted, “Ralph!” and staggered toward me, arms open. I retreated to the restaurant area, cornering the maitre d’. He listened, asking me to repeat several times to overcome the tuba. He pointed upstairs, holding up three fingers. Someone in the beerhall was on the table in lederhosen, slapping his thighs and hopping. I nodded to the maitre d’ and went upstairs.
The tuba diminished. I found room three and entered. Knocking would have been futile unless Parry’s ear were to the other side of the door. Even then, the band was still loud enough to drown any response.
“Ah, Mr. Collins,” said Parry, waving me into the room with his free hand. He finished biting a small drumstick, holding it at his mouth like a toothbrush. In person, he looked younger than on the phone. Mid-forties possibly.
I closed the door. Faintly, through the floor, I could hear the bands each oom-pah transmitted as vibration to my shoes. The room, heavily hung with burgundy drapes and displaying paintings of German stag hunts, contained only the table, heaped with fruit and silver serving dishes, wisps of steam above two of them, and two comfortable armchairs. Parry lowered the bone to his plate. He began daubing at a shiny area around his mouth with his napkin, tucked into his collar outside his cravat.
“Sit down, Mr. Collins. I’m glad you came.”
I sat across from him. “I was in the area.”
“Preparing to take up the reins, no doubt.”
“Something like that.”
He scooped mashed potatoes onto his plate, dimpled them with the silver gravy ladle and poured on brown gravy. “What would, you like, Mr. Collins?”
“Whatever you recommend.”
“Squab?”
“Fine.”
He reached over to a phone next to the fruit bowl, punched one number and ordered squab.
“You don’t mind,” he asked, “if I continue?”
“Persevere,” I said.
“My perseverance ought to be in the opposite direction.” He patted his stomach and laughed. “But then”—he raised both eyebrows, hesitating—“men are weak.” He scooped creamed peas and mushrooms onto his plate, watching them, eyes glistening. “We overindulge. We take what we do not want and want what we do not need.” He returned the serving spoon, pausing to sip white wine from a long-stemmed glass with an apple-shaped bowl. “Oh, excuse me, Mr. Collins. Would you care for some wine?”
“Not just—”
“It’s excellent. A Riesling from Schlossflalle in the Rhine Valley.”
I held my index finger and thumb an inch apart. “Just a short snort.” I had to say something to counterbalance such blatant wine snobbery.
He poured the wine, smiling. I sipped it.
“Like it?”
“It’s good.”
“Straight from hell.”
“Pardon me?”
He pointed at the label on the wine bottle. “Halle—it means hell. Odd thing to name a castle, don’t you think?”
“Does it have a dungeon?”
He laughed, enjoying the idea. Of course hell had a dungeon. He ate peas. “Your predecessor was—how shall I say it—a humorless man.”
“You knew Norton?”
“Quite well. We had lunch in this very room several times.”
“What sort of business did you have with—”
“Ah, here’s your squab.”
A waiter wheeled in a shiny cart, parking it next to me. The band oom-pahed once as the door opened and closed. The waiter uncovered several trays, tilting each up for my approval and placing it on the table in front of me. I realized I was hungry. I glanced around the table for salt. The waiter watched me.
“May I help you, sir?”
“Salt?”
One eyebrow hopped up his forehead. He looked down his nose, or it…seemed as if he was looking down his nose. “All seasoning is done in the kitchen, sir. If something is not to your taste, I will return it to the kitchen, but I must warn you, the chef himself will inquire about the difficulty.”
“The chef.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Himself.”
“Indeed.”
“It’s just fine the way it is.”
“Very good, sir. If you need anything else, simply call.” He indicated the phone and withdrew. The band oom-pahed at his exit. Parry grinned.
“They’re proud of their food, Mr. Collins.”
I mumbled something that contrasted their fine palates with their tin ears and began eating. The squab, I had to admit, was excellent.
“You’re rather young for a chief project engineer,” said Parry, sitting back and straightening his napkin. The creamed peas and mushrooms, succulent, stifled my response. I nodded, eating.
“I had always considered Dr. Norton quite young for the job, mid-forties. You could not be past forty, though you look younger.”
“Twenty-eight,” I said around the squab.
“Twenty-eight! I’m amazed!” He sounded amazed. Since he knew Dolores’ name, I doubted he actually was amazed. “Congratulations! That is an achievement.”
“Thanks.” Whether mistaking me for a young forty was supposed to flatter my maturity, I didn’t know. Whatever it was supposed to do, it misfired. Twenty-eight, forty, seventy-five—who the hell—pardon me, Holle—cares? I sipped some wine. Parry’s relaxed manner of getting to the point began to annoy me.
“You wanted to talk to me about business.”
“In a way, yes.”
“What way?”
“Mr. Collins, enjoy your food. Good food helps the disposition, sharpens the judgment—”
“Hardens the arteries. What did you want to talk to me about, Mr. Parry?”
“Loyalty.”
If the food had been worse, I would have walked out. The man seemed intent on giving me some sort of sophomoric lecture on values. If I didn’t watch it, he would trot out Kant and ruin my squab. “OK, shoot.”
“Would you say you are loyal to your new employer?”
“Sure.” I ate some potatoes and sipped some wine. Good wine. Dry. Nice. “They paid for me. They got me.”
“If there were other opportunities to profit by your employment, would you accept them?”
“If this is some kind of bribe attempt—”
Parry made a show of denial, shaking his head vigorously from side to side and scowling. “No, no, Mr. Collins. Bribery is not my style.”
“What’s your style?”
“Aid. Let me ask you a hypothetical question. If you were in a position to gain certain technical information, information that would put your project months ahead of schedule, and, I might even say, add to its capabilities, would you accept it?”
“Depends.”
“Exactly. It depends. Suppose further that the source of this information would have to be kept strictly secret, that you would therefore be given credit for originating the technical innovations it contained.”
“Still depends. It could be bad information.”
“It is good. I assure you. Norton—but perhaps I’ve said too much. In any case, would you, under those hypothetical conditions, accept the information?”
“What do I have to do for it?”
“Nothing.” He beamed. “That is the beauty of it.”
“Nothing?”
“Simply supply, in exchange, status information on your project.” He held up his hand, warding off any potential protest. A tastelessly, large diamond glittered on his little finger. “Nothing technical, Mr. Collins. Just the state of construction.”
“Why don’t you just charter a spacecraft and go look?”
“Mr. Collins, you know as well as I do that hardware, floating in space, gives little evidence of the state of construction. The erected shell of a building says only that tenants will move in soon, not when.”
“Why do you want it?”
“Good question. Businessmen must keep apprised of the business opportunities available, the market. Accurate information is as valuable to assessing a
market as intelligence is to a nation.”
“Hypothetically, what kind of information would I be given?”
“My employer, Fenton Laser Products, is prepared to supply engineering data for the controlled-laser fusion reactor. That was Dr. Norton’s choice for a power supply, wasn’t it?”
“Beats me. Why should I care if you supply the information, or if Westinghouse supplies it or General Electric?”
“Ah, General Electric,” said Parry, as if I had just revealed the name of his wife’s lover. “They have a research facility near Livermore where you did some of your PhD work, don’t they. I imagine Dr. Adamson was quite helpful.”
“He was.”
“Frankly, Mr. Collins, the progress we have made recently makes your dissertation look like a high-school term paper.”
I quit eating. First he accuses me of being forty, then he calls me incompetent. His method of influencing people would not win friends.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Good. Good. I hope our association will be profitable.” He held out a silver bowl. “Nut?”
Smith was still retrospectively tapping Norton’s phone when I got back, his face drawn. He saw me coming and hooked his thumb at the phone.
“Nothing. I’ve only learned one thing all morning.”
“What’s that?”
“Norton was a grade “A” son-of-a-bitch to just about everyone. How was lunch?”
“Parry tried to bribe me.”
Smith chuckled. “How much?”
“Money?” I tried to sound insulted and incredulous simultaneously. “What do you take me for, Smith? Mere money. Fame!”
“Ah. And did you accept?”
I shrugged. “I’m too young for fame. Twenty-eight, much too young.”
“Twenty-eight.” He shook his head. “Too old.”
“For what?”
“My granddaughter.”
“I’m taken.” I told him what happened at the Vier Jahreszeiten. He listened, chewing on an unlit cigar. From time to time a computer technician passed, glancing apprehensively at the cigar. Smith nodded, absorbing it all.
“OK,” he said when I finished. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where to?”
“Lunch. I’m starved.” He rose and started across the computer room, gesturing with his cigar for me to follow. “We’ll find someplace we can talk. And where I can smoke.” He waved the cigar around at the room. “These health fanatics won’t let me smoke. Besides, I want to tell you what you’re going to do.”
“You’ve got my marching orders cut already?”
“Yep.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Be famous, buddy boy. You’re going to take Parry up on his offer.”
VI
Smith ate like a kid, wolfing down two hamburgers, demolishing a chocolate malt and rending an order of fries.
He talked between bites.
“Bad habit, I know.” He ate. “Horrible to eat this way.” He dunked a fry in catsup, apparently content to suffer the horror of it. “It’s my granddaughter, Julia. Bad influence.” The malt blurped in his hand. “I pick up all her bad habits.”
“She smokes cigars?”
He ignored me, outlining his plan, eating, sipping. Parry was the only connection between Norton and Spieler Interstellar. In spite of Spieler’s ultimate ownership of Fenton Laser Products, Parry might only want to sell laser products. It was his business. Smith wanted to know for sure. He wanted me to string Parry along.
“What do I do? Call Parry up and say, ‘OK, make me famous’?”
Smith examined the innards of his second hamburger—lettuce, tomato, meat—all there. He added catsup and mustard, squirting each liberally. “He’ll contact you.”
“He will?”
“Sure.” Smith bit into the hamburger and chewed, tucking the food into a pouch at the side of his mouth when he talked. “He contacted you before. He’ll contact you again.” Smith chewed up the pouched food, then dangled a fry over his tongue like a square worm, snapping at it. “Give him time. Make it look natural.” He bit the fry.
“Speaking of how something looks—”
“Hm-m-m?” He looked at me, then at the fry. “Oh, sorry.” He ate the fry.
“Julia?”
He nodded. In the same situation, caught with a dangling fry, I would have blushed. Smith just kept talking. “When Parry contacts you, give him something real to cut his teeth on, something you already know. That way we can check his information.”
I thought about it. If Smith cleared everything with Mr. Merryweather, what could I lose? Fenton Laser made good equipment. If Parry was just a salesman, disguised as an industrial spy, I might even gain by the contact.
“What about Mr. Merryweather? Doesn’t he have policies against trading with the enemy?”
“Don’t worry about Horace.”
I spent the rest of the weekend preparing to leave Tuesday morning. I had several quarrels with Dolores about leaving. She sulked, raged and pouted, mixing them sufficiently to keep me off guard. In mid-quarrel Sunday afternoon, the phone hummed. Dolores stomped out of the bedroom, where I was packing the second of three suitcases, to answer it. She returned grumbling.
“Who was it?”
“That awful man.”
“Pornographic phone call?”
“No.”
“Who was it?”
“That man you work for.”
“Duff’?”
“No.”
“Smith?”
“No.”
“Dolores, can we stop the guessing game?”
“Merryweather.”
“Mr. Merryweather! What did he want?”
“I don’t know. I hung up.”
“You what?”
“Hung up.”
Something like rage overcame me. I stammered about stupidity and irresponsibility and slammed the suitcase shut. Stuffed, it bounced open. She backed toward the bedroom door.
“Dolores, stay in here!”
“Bobby, don’t get angry.”
“I already am angry! When people call for me, I want to talk to them! I do not want you—”
“Bobby.”
“Don’t interrupt!”
“Bobby.”
“What?”
“The phone’s humming.”
It was Mr. Merryweather, his tan face contrasting with the white collar of a tennis shirt. “Sorry to bother you on Sunday.”
“That’s quite all right, sir.”
“I just wanted to tell you to give Smith your entire cooperation.”
“I will, sir.”
“I have complete faith in his abilities. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Do you play tennis, Mr. Collins?” The question took me off guard. He held up a racket.
“A little.”
“We’ll have to get together. Doubles perhaps. Miss Gomez seems a formidable opponent.”
“She is.”
He reached toward the screen to hang up, paused and looked at me. “Or ping-pong.” He hung up.
Monday, I was thumped, probed, sampled and scrutinized. Dr. Merril, the company physician, taped electrodes to everything but my toes, peering at the readouts with grave and profound impassivity. I expected to be wheeled into an operating room immediately. Emergency case. Born without a liver.
“Doctor,” I said, anxious, trying to twist around on the diagnostic couch and see the readings.
“Lie down.”
“But, Doctor—”
“If you do not lie down, young man,” said Dr. Merril, slapping his palm with a rubber mallet, “I shall be forced to use anesthesia.”
“Anesthesia,” I said, looking at the hammer.
“Yes.”
I lay down, staring at the ceiling. A brown stain, residue of a leaking roof, spread from one corner. “Doctor.”
“What is it now?” snapped Dr. Merril, exasperated. I had no
t said more than a half-dozen words to him. “There are others waiting to be examined, in case you didn’t know.”
“People?”
“People. People exactly like yourself, people with concerns and cares and business to conduct, busy people, along with a smattering of very busy people. I am told that one of them will be in charge of our space station project, so you can see what a busy man he must be. I cannot stand around here all day explaining every little thing to you. These people must be examined. You did know we have a space station?”
I told him I had heard a rumor to that effect but had never seen it with my own eyes.
“Space stations, yes,” he grunted. “But decent facilities for the medical personnel? No, definitely not. Look at that ceiling!”
I looked again.
I felt something cold swipe at the inside of my elbow. Dr. Merril and I inspected the area together.
“Ah, there it is.”
I swallowed hard. “What?”
“A vein. Do I have to explain everything?”
“Sorry.” I lay back.
Something stabbed me. I looked at Dr. Merril. He held a large syringe of my blood.
“Aren’t those,” I asked, nodding at the syringe, “a little old-fashioned?”
He glared at me. “Are you a doctor?”
“Not a medical doctor.”
He paused. “But you are a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
I told him. He snorted, returning his attention to the syringe.
“The body,” he said, “contrary to the rather crude analogies of the popular media, is not a machine. It is an organism. The tried and true methods are most effective. Syringes are tried and true. Medicine is an art, nothing more, nothing less. These new machines”—he said the word with contempt—“can never replace the artist.”
The Monet of medicine left with my blood sample. I wondered if he still treated ulcers with mercury. I lay there, thinking about my new job.
Stargate Page 6
