Red Heroin

by Jerry Pournelle

  On the outside the place was crumbling, but he had fixed up the inside with Oriental motifs, made arches out of the doorways and such, and dressed his waitresses up in harem trousers. He served good food. Being Sunday, we wouldn't have been able to buy any wine anywhere, but since the place was within a mile of the university it didn't have a license to begin with. The state legislature sure protects the students. Too bad most of them don't want to be protected. I never had.

  I had told Carole we would be going there, so she was wearing a dress. She looked nice. Hell, she was lovely. She had a silver comb-like thing in her hair, and a little brooch, and stockings, and she looked good enough to take anywhere. I found myself wishing she dressed like that all the time, and that I was taking her out in a less cynical way. Anyway she was good company.

  They had entertainment, folksingers. Folksingers in the District tend to be two kinds: the real authentic ethnic addicts who don't sing anything not made up by field hands or convicts, and the political set who want to teach the folk how to sing songs of protest. The political kind sing in coffeehouses, and the ethnics sing in the better restaurants. This group was pretty good, but I only knew one of them. Used to be I knew almost all of the folksingers around that were any good, but I hadn't kept track of the new ones. I can't sing, but I do like the kind of party where everybody gets half-looped and has a good time shouting in rhythm. The trouble was that the people who liked the kind of songs I did had a reverent attitude toward them, so if your voice was bad like mine you weren't welcome to join in. I guess that's one reason I went to parties where the political singers were: at least they didn't act like they were in Carnegie Hall.

  We sat back and listened after our dinner, and people started coming in for coffee and entertainment. One of them was Roger Balsinger. I tried to look the other way so he might not see me, but he did, and came right over.

  My thing about Roger had nothing to do with politics. As far as I knew, he was a real right-winger. He was also the worst bore I knew. Back when he was a student he used to hang around us for financial reasons. His folks were some of the richest people in Seattle, and I understood he had more rich relatives in California, but they had cut him off because they got tired of the way he wasted his time and their money. So he hung around with us, and you couldn't insult him enough to get rid of him. Roger had such a colossal opinion of himself that he simply would not believe there was anybody he knew that didn't like him. No matter what they said or did to him he made like they were kidding, and that included slapping him around if anybody ever had the heart to do it. Not many did. He'd never fight back. Somebody he hadn't totally alienated in his family had died a few years ago and left him enough money to live on, and he worked at an insurance office where his family had an interest, but mostly he was waiting for somebody else to die.

  He didn't ask if he could sit down with us: it would never have occurred to Roger that anybody wouldn't be charmed by his company. He looked Carole over. I could see he was impressed.

  "Hi, Paul," he boomed. "She's nice. Who is she?" Among his other good qualities, Roger is not only sure that he is irresistible to women, but also convinced that any guy should be glad to turn over his current one to Roger as a favor to a great guy. The fact that he has the lowest score in the district doesn't seem to have changed his views at all.

  "Carole," I said, "meet Roger Balsinger, a real swinging cat. You're lucky to be here when he came in." No kidding. I really said it that way, and I wasn't particularly trying to be cruel. On the other hand, since he didn't react at all, it told Carole a lot about Roger, which was what I intended. "Roger, this is Carole Halleck, and she both came in and is leaving with me."

  He grinned and started telling us about what was going on in the insurance office, and how well he was doing in it, and how if we wanted him to he could get us special rates. Luckily the singers started in before he really got going, so we were spared some of it.

  When they finished, he actually remembered he was sitting with other people and that they presumably had lives too, because he asked how things were going.

  "Not too bad," I told him. "I've got a couple of new clients, and the work's real low pressure. Don't have a thing I have to get done for a month at least."

  "Do people pay you much money now?" he asked. It's the one thing about other people that does interest Roger, money and how much they make.

  Carole must have seen the wolfish interest, because she decided to do a little put-down of her own. "They must," she said. She used her best sugar-candy tone. "Paul's just gone out and bought a thirty-four-foot sailboat, and he's taking her on a vacation cruise to Victoria next week."

  "Hey, that's pretty good, Paul," he said. The way he said it didn't make it sound like he thought it was so good. He turned to her. "Are you going with him?"

  It was still for a moment, then Carole said, "He hasn't asked me. I've never been sailing and I've never been to Victoria either."

  "I just got the boat," I put in. "Haven't had a chance to ask. Give a man a chance to do his own asking, will you?" I took her hand and gave it a squeeze. Before we could continue the conversation, the folksingers started in again, and even Roger knew enough not to infuriate everybody in the place by talking while they were trying to tell us about the Midnight Special. It's a favorite in the District, and just about everybody joins in on the chorus. There were enough doing it that it would cover even my off-key baritone. Carole, as I already knew, had a very nice voice. Roger never sang. Too undignified. After all, Roger hired entertainers.

  When the song was done, we chatted about nothing much, and a couple of students came in. They were dressed in the usual black outfits that mark the University District peace movement. To make it certain, the guy was wearing a black beard, not combed, and they both had "Make Love Not War" lapel pins. I didn't give them a second glance, there are so many of them around. They don't much come into the Armenian's because of the prices, but after the dinner hour you can get coffee, and the folksingers were one of the better-known groups specializing in authentic music, so it wasn't too strange they'd turned up.

  Roger almost blew his top. He started in on how they were a disgrace to the District and ought to be run out of the university, and how the taxpayers shouldn't have to put up good money to subsidize people like that.

  This could get touchy. On the one hand, it would look funny if I suddenly started defending the peace movement, because both Carole and Roger knew I didn't ever have much to say about politics. At the same time, I was trying to get in with that crowd, and Carole was paying a lot of attention although she didn't say anything. I looked back at the couple Roger indicated, and said, "Hell, that's just Bill and Janice Sykes. They're so square they've been married to each other for years. The way Bill tells it, the war's immoral, and anybody who doesn't try to stop it is too. Far as I know, though, he's more than sincere about it. Actually it's kind of nice that there are people who act on their moral principles, even if you don't agree with them."

  "Act on their moral principles!" Balsinger exploded. "It's close to treason, that's what it is."

  "Come now, Roger," I said. "It's not wartime, so how can there be treason in opposing our involvement? Hell, man, when I see how many guys go over there, and how little we seem to accomplish, I wonder if we ought not get out too. Why keep feeding a company-a-day meatgrinder? We ought to win or get out, that's the American way to fight." This was as close as I could come to saying something that Carole could report favorably, assuming she was reporting on me at all. I was beginning to hope she wasn't.

  Roger spluttered some more, but he did agree that the strategy used over there was rotten and we ought to go all out to win. We bantered it around a little more, with me talking about how it was no crime to have sincere misgivings and all that, and free speech, and such, until the music started again. We waited until the next round of songs was over, and managed to excuse ourselves. Carole had hardly said a word since Roger sat down, which isn't surprising s
ince both Roger and I like to talk. It came to me that it was pleasant as hell being around a girl who didn't have to get in and compete with you no matter what you were arguing about. I hadn't had much experience with that kind of girl for years, my ex-wife having been captain of the debate team her freshman year.

  Outside, she said, "Thanks. I didn't know you felt that way."

  "Sure you did," I told her. "I will admit that I may have got a little interested in bugging that blowhard, but I don't think I said anything I didn't more or less mean. Maybe having you around broadens my horizons." I took her hand and we walked back to my house, just like the other couples in the District.

  It was now almost ten. It was nice having her around, but I was still no closer to knowing whether she just liked my company or had something else behind her being there, so I set out to discourage her from hanging around. I figured that had to be done with some delicacy. I couldn't put her in the position of having to be too obvious if she was there to report on me, and yet I did want to get rid of her if she just thought of me as company. Well, let's say that I thought I should want to get rid of her. Inside I didn't feel anything of the kind.

  I've had a lot of experience boring women. My ex-wife told me that constantly, and after a while I practiced it as the only way to get back at her. I knew one thing. If there's anything a girl wouldn't like, it would be being ignored for a drainage system. So I went to the office and started spreading blueprints out on the drawing board. Here she had gone and got all prettied, and we went out, and the second night we were together I worked on something incomprehensible to her that couldn't be all that interesting to me.

  She wasn't easy to ignore. Not that she pushed sex at me, just the opposite. She sat down in a chair on the other side of the room and read a book, and she had sense enough not to say anything to me when I took a reading from the slide rule and then stared at the ceiling for a while. My ex-wife never could believe I was working when I got that blank look on my face, but of course that's when most real work is done. Damned if Carole didn't act like it was a very normal thing for a guy to take her out and then bring her home and forget her.

  She made coffee and poured me some once in a while, and when I got up and went to the bathroom she gave me a quick kiss on my way back, and that was all. By eleven thirty I could feel her all over the room. I looked around and she was sitting there reading, but watching me over the top of the book. She saw me look at her and sat very still. We sat there that way for a minute, then I got up, and that was the end of the drainage system for the night. Afterwards, lying beside her, I still didn't know a damn thing more than I had, except that if bed conversation meant anything, we were in love. The trouble was I didn't really know if either of us was.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning it was raining, which is usual for Seattle. Carole got up before I did and fixed some breakfast, and didn't wait for me to finish before she dashed off to class. I got shaved and showered and went out. It wasn't too far to the bank, so I could walk, and I went through the Pay 'n' Save Drugstore and a couple of other places that have front and back doors, getting something or other at each to make it look natural. Nobody was paying a bit of attention to me, and the bank was nearly empty. It was just after opening.

  Janie Youngs was easy to spot. She was a tall girl, maybe 5 '10", and she had blonde hair that hung straight down almost to her shoulders and then curled. Girls used to wear that hair style a lot, and I like it, maybe because that's what they were wearing back when I first got interested in them. I wish they'd do it again. It can't be more trouble than these elaborate upswept beehive things that look vaguely obscene, and although it must be more trouble than short hair, it sure is worth it. She was also dressed like a career girl, and if Carole hadn't got all dolled up the night before that would have been very refreshing too. As it was I couldn't help comparing them, which didn't improve my frame of mind at all. Either one would have done. In the months since my wife finally walked out for good—in contrast to the on-again, off-again show that went on for a couple of years—I hadn't met one girl I approved of. Now I knew one and was pretty sure I was looking at another, and with neither one of them could I get any kind of normal relationship. Normal emotionally, that is; the physical aspects of my relationship with Carole were quite normal and more than satisfactory.

  Talking to Miss Youngs, I couldn't get her age. When you first saw her she looked like a big but very young kid. Then she put on the horn-rimmed reading glasses from her desk, and asked what you wanted and it seemed she was as old as I am. I settled for her being between twenty-two and twenty-eight, which still made her older than Carole.

  I told her my name, and she said, "Crane? Have any relatives in Gainesville, Florida?"

  "No," I replied conversationally, "all my people are around Schenectady." This established that we were who we each thought we were, and it came off in a very natural manner. It's just the sort of thing people might say. "I'm interested in a boat loan," I told her. She got out some forms, and we went through the standard loan application procedures. Since I had telephoned it all in the night before, I didn't have much to say to her anyway.

  When there was nobody around, she said, "Have you been approached about your trip yet?"

  "No. Carole obviously wants to go along, and I'll probably invite her, but first I want to try something." I explained the procedure I was using to bore the kid stiff if she had only a normal interest in me. I didn't go into details as to how it ended, but I said, "She hadn't brought up the subject of the trip again when she left the house this morning. Incidentally, Shearing said I should take you out, but in view of the situation with Halleck that doesn't seem like a good idea."

  "Maybe that's just what will bring her out if she's been instructed to watch you. If it's just your charm, I would think that the sight of you with another woman would do the job nicely."

  "And if it is just my charm, as you put it, I've just hurt a nice kid and fixed things up for my social life."

  "Mr. Crane," she told me, "I couldn't be less interested in your social life. We have quite a lot invested in you and your contacts with that potential agent of theirs, and your personal relationships with a female peace marcher are of no importance to the mission. You will call for me tonight at eight p.m." She handed me a printed card identifying her as "Jane Youngs, Loan Department, Union Bank," after penciling in her home address and telephone number.

  "Yes, Ma'am." If a look could kill somebody, she was fried on the spot. "Where will we go, Ma'am, and how shall I dress?"

  She wasn't happy, but her expression didn't change a bit. Anybody looking at us from across the room would have thought she thoroughly enjoyed processing my loan application. Her voice wasn't pleasant, though. "Will you get it through your demented skull that this is an important operation and not a game? I don't want to go out with you, but I think it's highly advisable. And you damn well are going to look as if you were enjoying your evening. We'll go to a movie here in the District, and then somewhere where it might be presumed that we are engaging in sexual activities. I'll let you decide that. Your loan application will have to be approved by an officer, Mr. Crane," she went on as one of the employees came by. "If you'll come back after lunch, I think we can have a check ready for you. Wouldn't want you to miss that bargain." She smiled pleasantly. I managed to get some sort of pleased look on my face too, and stood up. She gathered the papers together, including the copy of the offer on the boat and the survey, and nodded, and I left the bank.

  I was mad as hell, and did something I haven't done for years, namely went home and had a drink before lunch. This spy bit was playing hell with my life pattern, I thought. Not that most guys would complain. Here I was sleeping with one girl and was supposed to date another, equally attractive. I couldn't really complain about the Youngs girl, at least not as far as looks were concerned. The trouble was that I'm basically a one-woman-at-a-time type. The playboy image has always sounded too damn complicated for me. Ma
ybe it had something to do with marrying young, and before that I hadn't really had much social life anyway; but I wasn't very enthusiastic about trying to handle two women all at once. Well, it was time I learned how. I understand General MacArthur was engaged to four at one time at West Point, and had to get his mother to come and straighten out the situation. That wouldn't do me any good. My mother was in upstate New York, and anyway she'd never believe the situation I was in.

  While I was drinking, Carole came in. We'd never exactly discussed it, but she acted like she was going to be a semipermanent feature of my life for awhile. At any rate she didn't bother to knock anymore. Why should she?