By Any Other Name
Page 17
“Yeah, you bet, kid. I got the most goddamned interesting stories you ever heard in your life!” He paused again, embarrassed by his fervor.
“Hey, listen, man,” the kid said softly. “I know how it is. Nobody likes to be lonely.”
And he smiled.
The Mome ahead completed its business and gunned away noisily, and Sol pulled his own vehicle smoothly up alongside the Chase World Bank. Rolling down the forward driver’s-side window, he addressed it.
“Solomon Orechal, 4763987IMHS967403888.453, license NY-45-83-299T.”
The Bank, which bore a remarkable resemblance to a vacuum cleaner making love to a garbage can, asked San Francisco a question, received a reply, and answered without a millisecond’s hesitation, “Sir?”
“Request additions and alterations allotment, three thousand dollars and zero cents; travel allotment, five hundred dollars and zero cents.”
“Purpose?”
“A and A: Fortrex cooling unit. Travel: To Lesser Yuma.”
“Justification?”
“Profession: entertainer.”
“Type and Credit Number, please,” the Bank said a bit more respectfully. Its voice was like a contralto kazoo.
“Folksinger. Number SWM-44557F, ASCAP. I’m my own agent.”
This time the machine actually paused. Barbara squirmed on the seat next to Solomon, twisting her hair nervously. “Aren’t you going to get it, lover?”
“Relax,” he said easily. “The Bank’s got to consult a human for this. Judgment decision required. It’s bound to take a minute or so; they’ve got to decide if I’m worth shipping across the country.”
“Oh, Sol…”
“Now don’t worry, Barb, I told you. If the Bank says no, I’ll use my own credit and we’ll go just the same. Now relax, will you?”
The squat machine spoke up. “So ordered,” it said emotionlessly, “and good luck to you, sir. Have a pleasant time in Lesser Yuma.”
“You got it,” she said excitedly as Solomon engaged gears and roared away from the Bank, “oh, baby, you got it! When can we go?”
“Get centered, mama,” he answered as he slid the huge mobile home smoothly into the freeway traffic. “There’s a lot of things we have to do first. We’ve got to get the cooling unit installed, gotta cop a big block of food, got to get the engine overhauled and tuned. Gotta say good-bye to our parents. It’ll be a couple of days, easy. Less if we bust ass.”
Behind his practical words Solomon was immensely pleased with himself. Barbara had been difficult lately, carefully avoiding any mention of Truth Dope but finding more and more reasons to sulk. But he’d managed to find something to distract her. She’d never been out of New York State in her life, and travel held a fascination for her, as for so many. A similar feeling had been responsible for Solomon’s decision to buy a Mome in the first place, and so he was somewhat excited about the trip himself.
And, too, his ego writhed with gratification that his performing record was in fact impressive enough to make the Bank invest in his relocation to an area where performers were scarce. Consciously he had never doubted the outcome, and he would never admit his subconscious doubts, but it felt good to know.
You had to be good to be a performer; it was one of the most sought-after jobs in the country. It wasn’t only the tremendous prestige, nor even the almost orgasmic egoboo that applause brought. It was simply that the first time you saw drab, apathetic faces come alive during your set, the first time you made some of those thousands of crowded, useless people a little more content with their lot, somehow you never again felt that gut-ache of uselessness quite so sharply yourself.
“Sol,” Barbara said softly, breaking into high reverie, “do we have to start…right away?” Her soft fingers traced a question mark on his thigh.
“Mama,” he mock-growled, “I’ll never be that busy!”
And no one was more surprised than he when, having found a place to park the Mome, he failed to achieve an erection.
“How did you ever come to be an embezzler, Mr. McGinny?”
“I embezzled.”
“No, I mean why?”
“Because I wanted some money.”
The kid was impervious to sarcasm. “What did you want the money for?” He adjusted the guard’s cap that looked so incongruous atop his shaggy mane, his hand stroking his mustache on the way down in a mannerism that McGinny suspected he could learn to hate sometime in the next ten years. “I mean, it isn’t like way back when people were hungry.”
“Listen, what is this, a quiz show or something? I mean, what’s it to you?”
“Oh, I’m just curious, is all. I mean, there’s nothing much else to do on this job but talk with you fellows. Anyway, crime interests me, you know? Like the things that made you end up…in here.”
“Well, it’s none of your taken business, how do you like that?” McGinny snapped. The kid made as if to turn away, and suddenly McGinny almost panicked. The kid was a pain in the joints, but he was better than nothing, better than the tangled, tormenting company of McGinny’s own thoughts, of his self-recrimination and his frustrated rage.
“No, wait, kid. Listen, I’m sorry, please wait. You…you don’t want to lift off so soon. C’mon, look: a guy gets a little hot under the collar sometimes, you ask him personal questions. I didn’t mean any offense.”
The kid half-turned back to the door, stroking his mustache again.
“Look, it was like this, see? I’m an accountant, I was, I mean, and they pulled an audit at the wrong time. No big story—I just got caught with my hand in the cookie jar. Could have happened to a dozen other accountants, just happened to be me, that’s all.”
“Why’d you have your hand in the cookie jar?”
“I needed the money.” There was a pause, and the kid turned to walk away again.
McGinny cracked. “It was a fem, dammit.”
The kid turned back again, smiling now. A gentle smile. “Yeah?”
McGinny gave in. Maybe the kid was right—it might help to talk about it, straighten his thoughts. In any case it was certainly better than trying to think of something new to play on the quadio. Or something to dictate into the voicewriter, which stubbornly refused to do anything more than repeat his own thoughts back to him.
“It was like this: I had to get my hands on a whole lot of money at once to shut this fem up. She had something on me that could have ruined me, had me by the hairs, and she loved every minute of it, the little slot. She had it in for me, but she needed green more than she needed my scalp, and she didn’t even care if I got burned getting it. ‘You’re an accountant,’ she says. ‘You can get it.’ Sure. Easy. Ten years easy, and she walks away, laughing. I had a chance, I’d be in here for murder right now.”
The kid was all ears now, face almost pressed up against the cell window like a child at a candy-store window. “What’d she have on you?” he breathed.
McGinny turned bright red. The kid didn’t bother to pretend to leave again; he simply waited. After a time the prisoner answered him.
“See, she was…she was pregnant without a license, and she was far enough along she was going to start showing any day, and she said when they hauled her in she was going to name me in the affadavit. The pregnancy fine alone could have ruined me, let alone the Lifetime Child Support without even a welfare option. I mean every man’s entitled to welfare, isn’t he? You can see what a jam I was in. I just had to have the green—she said if I gave her enough money to keep her and the kid until she could leave him with a sitter and go to work, she’d tell the Man she didn’t know who the father was.”
“I don’t get it,” the kid said cheerfully. “What was the sweat? You’d have beat the heat easy. Kark, they couldn’t pin an Elsie’s on you—it’s your word against hers. Unless there was a photographic record of the conception…” his voice trailed off with the faintest suggestion of a leer.
McGinny shrugged,
made a face. “Well, maybe they couldn’t have pinned an L.C.S. on me, if it came to that…” He seemed disinclined to continue.
“Then I don’t understand why you took such a risk,” the kid persisted.
“Well,” McGinny said reluctantly, “I…I got a wife and kids.”
“Oh,” the kid said brightly. “Have you got a picture of them?”
“No I have not got a karkin’ picture of them!”
“All right, all right, don’t jump salty. I can take a hint. Sorry if I bothered you.” The kid gave his mustache a final tug, turned, and walked out of view down the corridor. Suddenly terrified, not wanting to be alone with his memories, McGinny beat against the door with his fists.
“Wait, damn you, wait! Hold on a taken minute, I didn’t mean to shout at you. Hey, listen, I’m sorry, wait, come back, please come back. Come back, you bastard you, don’t leave me alone. You sonofabitch, I’ll cut your heart out, COME BACK!”
Footsteps echoed faintly down the acoustically muffled hallway.
McGinny looked down at his hands stupidly. They ached terribly, and the heels of them glowed an angry red. He went to the mirror on shaky legs, tried a sickly grin, then whirled and threw himself across the bed, and very suddenly he was crying, the wild, racking sobs of a child.
Sol looked around at the hundreds of prairie rats who made up a cross-section of the population of this particular sector of Lesser Yuma, brushed the guitar strap out of the way of his wrist, and adjusted the microphone with a feeling of growing desperation. He wasn’t reaching them, he just couldn’t get it on for this audience, and he felt a frustration which was growing familiar of late.
It’s the people, he told himself frantically, tuning up to stall for time. There was plenty of parking space left in the deserts, and hence a trouble-free existence for Mome-owners who could afford cooling gear. But the thousands who had flocked to the vast barren expanses had learned quickly that boredom was the price of ex-urban existence. They looked to entertainers like Solomon to keep them going, but the wary ennui they brought to a concert depressed him so much (he told himself now) that he just couldn’t seem to get into his music tonight.
In desperation, he seized upon a song that summed up his mood precisely, one of his own. For the first time in his career he didn’t care how the audience liked it, whether it was what they wanted to hear. He hurt, and so he sang.
This time next year…
I will have won or lost
This time next year…
my bridges all
will be crossed
I’ll either be
in headlines
Or standin’ in
the breadlines
It all depends
on how the dice are tossed
This time next year…
I will be up or down
Far away from here…
or still hung up in town
I’ll either be in clover
Or barely turnin’ over
It all depends on how
the deal goes down
I feel it comin’ on—
it’s O so close now
Wonder if it’s
bad or good
Hope it isn’t gonna be
an overdose now
Really wish I knew
where I stood
This time next year…
I’ll either win or lose
This time I fear…
I’m on a short, short fuse
I’ll either be together
Enjoyin’ sunny weather
Or suckin’ up
an awful lot of booze
He trailed off, fingers stinging from the harsh, emphatic runs. The catharsis of the blues left him literally exhausted, but the pain was reduced to an empty, fading ache.
The applause nearly frightened him out of his wits. From then on he had them, had them in the palm of his hand. Having made them cry, he could now make them laugh or clap or dance or anything he had a mind to. He had shown them that he shared something with them, and now they could empathize, let themselves be taken with him along whatever musical road he chose to pick.
It felt good.
It was on the way home, joyfully breaking the speed limit and humming snatches of his closing number, that he heard the news from Barbara.
“Sol?”
“Yeah, kitten? Here, have a toke.”
“Later.” She waved the joint away. “Sol, the clinic called while you were onstage. I came out to get my shawl and played back the message.”
“Oh.”
There was a pause.
“Sol, they said…the results were negative.”
A longer pause, long enough for humiliation to turn to anger.
“Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Why, they’re full of shit. Negative! What is that supposed to signify, it’s all in my karkin’ mind? Is that it?”
She was silent, and his fury boiled over.
“ANSWER ME, GODDAMMIT! Is it all in my mind?”
“Sol, I don’t know, baby, I don’t know. Maybe they made a mistake.” She was crying, soundless tears highlighted by oncoming headlights, and he flung the joint out the window in disgust.
“Don’t make excuses for me, you taken slot! It’s no big deal. So the results were negative, so there’s a little something I got to work out in my head is all. You know I’ve got it. I just have to get it back.”
He drove on furiously, concentrating on the road until his eyes ached from squinting. They left the Mome colony behind, took a seemingly abandoned side road up into the hills. The road swerved treacherously beside sheer precipices at some points, but Sol had his control back now, and his hands on the steering wheel were unnaturally steady. The ponderous Mome was like a live thing under his hands, and he drove it with a grim determination. Eventually they passed through a great shadow-filled crevice between two walls of granite, and came out upon a ridge overlooking a great valley, invisible in the darkness.
There were only seven or eight Momes parked here, clustered around the natural mountain spring which surfaced in this unlikely spot. It was sufficiently long that there was at least one acre for each of them. Solomon had been lucky to find this place; the few who had tended to keep their mouths shut. We are all very happy here, he thought savagely, wheeling the huge Mome to its parking space.
He parked, shut down the engine, extruded the watersucker and threw power to the house generator. Pushing the button that dropped the seat-back flat, he got up and walked to the back of the Mome, flinging himself down on the bed without a word.
Barbara got up and walked slowly back to the bed, sat down on the carpeted floor beside it.
“Sol, what do we do now?”
“What the kark can I do?” he said, voice muffled by the pillow.
“Well, as far as I can see, there’s only two things left. Analysis, or…”
“Or the Truth Dope,” he snarled, lifting his head to throw her a venomous glance. “Get my head candled or my chromosomes scrambled, that’s the choice, huh?”
“Well, all I know is I’m pretty karkin’ sick and tired of masturbating,” she shot back, and then gasped.
He winced.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said pitifully. “You know I didn’t meant that.”
“Well, it’s true, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” he barked. “I’ll go to hell before I’ll let some professional voyeur probe into my sex life. Analysis! No thanks, mama. If there’s anything wrong with me, I’ll fix it myself. I’m not about to have some fumble-fingered idiot ‘adjusting’ my personality for me.”
“Then do some Truth, lover,” she pleaded. “Just once, do Truth with me. Once we know what it is, we’ve got it licked. It’ll never bother us again.”
He tried to stall for time. “Ah, we’d never find a connection for Truth out here in the sticks. Forget it, mama. It’ll pass.”
She bit her lip. “Sol…I’ve got some here. I brought it with us from New Yo
rk.”
He stared at her, mouth dry, and knew that it was all over.
“Sol, please baby, take it with me. Honey, I don’t want to live with a man who’s…who’s impotent.”
It was the first time either of them had said the word, but he didn’t explode as she had half expected him to. He only buried his head in the pillow for a long, long time, tasting defeat, accepting what was to come. At last he raised himself upon his elbows and regarded her levelly.
“Okay, Barbara,” he said quietly. “We’ll do Truth.”
Shakin’!
Taken!
All forsaken!
I think I got to
Flash now, mama,
Believe I got to flash!
McGinny slumped in his chair, growling along with the fuzzbass. The quadio’s separation was improperly adjusted, forcing him to hold his head at an uncomfortable angle. By now this had produced a permanent crick in his neck, which had a serious effect on his peace of mind, not to mention his taste. The snarling flash tune he had opted for was symptomatic of a growing unease (as, in startlingly close analogy, it was with flash freaks outside the prison). The ex-accountant was seething with frustrated rage, and would not understand why.
The moog took a solo on the left front speaker, began pouring on the watts. With a treble shriek, the speaker went dead.
McGinny howled with rage, sprang from the chair, and stood under the speaker, cursing fulminously.
He leaped upward and smashed his fist at the darkened area behind which the dead speaker crouched, accomplishing nothing whatever. “Ten years,” he gibbered, “Ten years!” He began slamming his fists against the near wall, flaying the limits of his universe with a black hatred. His eye was caught by the skull face of the time-lock, grinning reminder of the unpaid balance of his sentence, and he struck at it savagely, fracturing two knuckles on its hard surface.
His bellow of pain chopped off in the middle as he saw his jailer watching him from a foot away. The kid’s face held a clinical interest; his cornflower-blue eyes gazed with infuriating calmness into McGinny’s.
“Off,” the prisoner snarled over his shoulder at the paraplegic quadio, which went completely silent at once. “What the hell are you staring at?” he demanded of the young guard.