"No, it isn’t from any of the Hundred Worlds, nor from any licensed planet. I didn’t pick it up in any such backyards. It’s from a distance.”
"Has it a name?”
"A private name only.”
"Likely it has a flaw.”
"If it had a dozen it would still be peerless. But it has none.”
"Not even a built-in curse?”
"I have worn it in health. I believe it is lucky.” "Since we admit it has value, why are you not afraid to wear it openly?”
"I’m a full-sized man, and armed, and in my wits. I would not be easily taken.”
"It is too large to market,” said David, "and diamonds are down.”
'To the buyer, the market is always down.”
"If you would set a price—to turn the conversation to the point.”
"Oh, if you like it, I’ll give it to you,” Hodl said.
David ordered a drink to settle his nerves before he answered.
"For a moment I didn’t recognize your opening,” he told Hodl after he had sipped and swallowed. "Skyman, I would bet that you have haggled prices on Trader Planets.”
"Aye, I’ve dealt with the gentlemen there and found them not too sharp,” said Hodl. "I left the Traders, shirtless and barefoot, it’s true, but not much worse than I was when I went there. I’m an easy mark.”
"I wouldn’t like to play poker with you.”
"It is not my game. I am too guileless.”
"Would five thousand interest you?”
"Not very much,” Hodl said, looking at the Bump of Rectitude of his right hand. "I wouldn’t stoop to pick it off the floor, but if it were in my pocket I wouldn’t trouble to throw it away.”
"Yes, you have haggled on Trader Planets. I could double it, but that is my limit.”
"That will do nicely, David,” said Hodl.
"What? You will go along with me? You will sell?”
"I will sell nothing. Am I a merchant? I will give it to you as I said that I would. But to salve your feelings, I will accept the small sum you have named. Out of respect to you, I would hardly accept a smaller sum with an easy mind. Bring it here and lay it on the bar.”
"I will send Henry,” said David. He nodded to Henry, and Henry left.
"You have sent Henry, but not for the money.” Hodl smiled as he studied the Island of Icarus of his right hand. "He has gone to collect some comic-strip characters to keep me company. One of them, what we call Homo conventus or mechanical man, will analyze myself and my gaud. Only after you are satisfied with the reports (and I’m told that they miss nothing nowadays) will you go and get the money. I admire your prudence, for this is the way that gentlemen do business.”
And that is the way that the gentlemen did it. Henry Hazelman returned with three-comic strip characters, and one of them was a machine—a descendant of Structo the Mechanical Man from the strip of that name.
It was Structo (his name in Hodl’s mind only) who affably and left-handedly shook hands with Hodl and engaged him in conversation.
"It is a fine hand, sir,” said Structo, "(I am told you were saying the same thing about it yourself), and a fine ornament on it. No, do not attempt to withdraw your hand, skyman. It is necessary that I retain my grip in order to analyze yourself and your thing. My own filaments make contact with the crystalline complex, as well as with your own reta. I can read you like a book, to coin a phrase.”
"Look out for a little double phrase in a middle chapter,” said Hodl.
"It’s an antibunko machine, skyman,” said David Daumier. "It reads you and your stone at the same time. Well, what do you read, Penetrax Nine?”
"Mr. Daumier, the stone is sound and without flaw,” said Structo (Penta 9). "It rings like a bell.”
"—to coin a phrase,” said Hodl. "How do I ring?” "Yes, that is the question,” said David. "My device, skyman, has appraised the stone, as my eye has done. But at the same time it can read what is in your mind regarding that stone. Should there be a flaw in the stone to escape both myself and my device, my machine will find it in your mind.” "Intelligent-looking contrivance, is he not?” said Hodl. "Can he follow a syllogism to the end? Can he recognize a counterman? Can he count the marbles when the game is over?”
"He can’t, but I can,” said David. "His job is to detect, and he does it well. My contrivance can sniff out every newest trick in the world.”
"Aye, but can he snuffle out the oldest?” Hodl asked. "How do you read me, contrivance?”
"Yes, is there any doubt in the mind of this man about the stone, Penta?” David asked.
"Mr. Daumier, I had to travel some distance into his mind to find the stone,” said Structo. "But his mind is serene about the stone. It is good, and he knows it is good. Only—oh, no, sir! Do not attempt to match grips with me, Mr. Skyman, even in fun. I have a grip of iron! I am basically iron. You will be injured if you persist. Or do I have it wrong? Why, you have crushed my hand as if it were an eggshell, to coin a phrase. No matter, I always carry a spare. Now, if you will release me, Mr. Skyman—thank you.”
"Quite a grip, skyman,” said David Daumier. "You crushed an iron probe that was built for durability. But my contrivance had already answered my question for me. You have no mental reservation as to the stone. I will go get the money now. My people will keep you company, skyman, and the contrived one will repair himself meanwhile.”
David Daumier left on his errand.
"I meant to say something else,” chittered Structo (Penta 9) when its master was gone, "but you squeezed the thought out of me. My nexus at the moment was in my hand which you crushed.”
"You intended to say, gentle contrivance, that I knew the stone was good, too good,” said Hodl, "and that I was laughing in my mind. Of course I was! I’m a merry man, and it gladdens me to give away a thing too good to keep.”
The contrivance put on another hand and busied himself hooking it up. The two human c.s. characters, glowering gunmen, studied Hodl with sleepy evil eyes and seemed more mechanical than their mechanical comrade.
After a decent interval, David Daumier returned with a tightly wrapped brown paper package. It was of fair size and was marked with a deformed Greek
M, Daumier’s own code for the amount in the packet.
"Now we will make the exchange,” David said softly, and he laid the paper-wrapped package openly on the bar. "Lay the ring beside it. Then I open and count.”
"The ring won’t come off easily,” said Hodl. He worked and turned it vigorously. It was quite tight. 'There is an amusing story of how the ring came off the finger of the last owner,” Hodl told them. "I finally used a bolt cutter.”
"The band doesn’t show it,” said David. "An expert must have rejoined it.”
'The band wasn’t cut, the finger was,” said Hodl. "Say, that man did make a noise about it!”
"I’ll send for a jeweler’s saw,” said David. "I don’t mind the band being cut.”
"Soap and hot water are quicker,” said Hodl. "It’ll slip off easily with that.”
And soap and hot water were already there. The basin was brought by a counterman in a dirty apron. And who notices a counterman? Especially who notices that he is a pun? So the only one who recognized the man in the dirty apron as Willy McGilly was Hodl.
Hodl soaked his great hand, and the ring came off. Hodl held it dramatically (while the counterman made his counter unseen) in one of his great hands with their deep lines that betokened genius, and the faint islands in the Head Line that in any other man would indicate something a little peculiar about that genius.
"It’s a nice ring,” said Hodl with regret. "Now we count.”
Two of the comic-strip characters-patted their armpits to indicate that the bulge there had a reason for being, Henry Hazelman the spotter lounged in the doorway of the tavern to spot anything that should come, and David opened the package and began to count out the hundreds. Those bills sing a soft song to themselves when they fall on each other.
; When he had reached the count of thirteen, David’s eyelid flickered and he paused, but for much less than a second, only long enough to check and recheck in his rapid mind and to put down a faint surge of panic.
When David had reached thirty, Hodl reached out and lightly touched one of the bills. "It is nice-looking money,” he said. He removed his hand, and David continued to count.
Only one who knew the diamond-factor well, or who knew all men well, could have known that David was nervous. Only a very quick eye could have detected that his hand trembled when he passed the fifty mark. And only a consummate genius like Hodl could have known that the throat of David was dry, or have guessed why it was.
Hodl reached out and touched another bill, the sixty-third or the sixty-fourth, it does not matter which.
"It is nice-looking money, David. Possibly too nice-looking,” he said. "Continue to count.”
The comic-strip characters made moves towards their weapons, but David gulped and went on with the count.
Seventy... eighty... ninety... ninety-nine, one hundred. There was ripe finality about it. And David, waited.
"It’s a nice pile,” said Hodl. "I have never seen such pretty money. Who makes your money, David?”
The comic-strip characters and Henry Hazelman started their moves again, but Hodl froze them at half-reach. There is a proverb that a gun in the hand is worth three in a shoulder holster, and Hodl had one in his hand so fast that it sparkled in all their eyes.
"I’m surprised at you, Mr. Daumier,” Hodl said softly. "I did not know that you dealt in funny money. To offer a poor price to a poor skyman is one thing. To pay even that in counterfeit is another. The deal is off, sir! I will keep my ring, and you may keep your pile.”
"It can’t be,” David groaned, bedazed. "I never take a bad bill. I sure never took a hundred of them. I myself have just got it from my own safe.”
"It does look good. It is almost the best I have ever seen,” said Hodl. "But, David, you have handled a million bills. You know what it is.”
"You switched the package,” said David, hoarsely.
"I have not. Your men and your machine have scanned me the whole time. I have nothing on me but this ring now back on my hand, and this little thing back on my other hand. And my pockets which I turn out for me contain nothing but twelve cents Earth coin, a small luck charm (a coney’s foot), and a Ganymede guilder. Your machine can read me as to physical things without contact.”
"That’s right, Mr. Daumier,” said Structo (Penta 9). "That’s all he’s got on him.”
"I came with this, and with this I leave,” said Hodl.
They looked at the stocky skyman with the forearms like a lion’s and the little gun in one of his deep-lined hands. And they were afraid to jump him.
David still didn’t know how the switch had been made. But now he knew when.
That evening in another tavern, and this a secluded one down in Wreckville, Hodl Oskanian and Willy McGilly and some of their friends sat and drank together. And from a bundle of bills similar to David’s, Willy McGilly now counted out bills, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred; and these were valid.
'They have multiplied the Earth by billions and made all things intricate,” said Willy. "Men are not the same as their fathers were, and a man would need three brains to comprehend all the new devices. And yet in quiet places, like a Green Valley, some of the simple and wholesome things endure— old friends, old customs, old cons—sweet frauds that are ever young. We are like ancient handi-crafters in an automated universe, but we do fine and careful work.
"They have multiplied it all, but the basic remains the same: the Setting (and the hands of Hodl do set the thing off well); the Bait (and the Stone would have to be the finest ever or we’d have worn it to dust using it for bait); the Warning, to give fun to the game; the Counterplay; and then the Innocent Disclaimer.”
Hodl once more gazed at his hands, and he spoke.
"It was a nice touch, Willy, to use his own brown paper to wrap your own bundle, and to tape it so similarly with his own 'David Daumier Jeweler’ tape. It was nice to find out and reproduce his own peculiar mark for the amount, and to learn all the little details while you were in his establishment, even though you could not get into The Safe Itself. I hope you didn’t help yourself to trinkets while you were there. It would be wrong to burglarize his premises, but it is licit to take a taker in honest combat. You were the good switchman, Willy, while I was the strong magnet to hold their eyes.
"But, Willy, the water was too hot, and the soap was too strong. You are inconsiderate in so many ways.”
"And you are always perfectly considerate yourself?” Willy McGilly asked, cocking an eyebrow like a soaring hawk.
"Always,” said Hodl. And he studied his hands with their deep Heart Lines passing through the Mounds of Rectitude and Magnanimity and Piety and Sympathy and Generosity and Gentleness and all the Virtues.
Mr. Lafferty writes that he has "seen one ghost and one UFO” and imagines this to be "about par for a lifetime.” But he adds "I have also met, absolutely and in the flesh, one of the fictional characters I had made up entirely. It was in a bar in Galveston, and he was about fifteen years younger than I had created him, than I had imagined him. But he was himself absolutely, and he looked at me as though he were the one seeing a ghost. 'How old are you anyhow?’ I asked him. 'What's your name and what do you do?’ 'I’m nineteen,’ he said. 'My wrestling name is Richard the Lion-Hearted. I don’t give my real name because I still want to go back north and play college football under it next year.’ Then he left quite suddenly, saying something to another man as he went out.
"The other man came over to me. 'He said there’s something about you that bugs him out totally,’ the other man scud. 'Richard the Lion-Hearted isn’t very good as a wrestler. Oh, he’s never been pinned ami he’s never lost, but he doesn’t make a good villain or a good good-guy either. He’s too good-natured, not aggressive enough, and lacks menace.’
"I went home the next week and wrote 'The Hands of the Man,’ with Richard the Lion-Hearted at his correct age, about thirty-five, as I had created him; but I’ve always been glad that I got that glimpse of him when he was younger. I felt a menace in the latter-day Lion-Man, but 1 suspect that he is still too good-natured. He’s been in several of the stories about Willy McGilly and his Wreckville Gang, but often he doesn’t have a speaking part and you’d hardly know he was there.”
Two collections of Mr. Lafferty’s stories have recently appeared from Corroboree Press. He is the author of numerous novels, including Past Master, Archipelago, The Flame Is Green, and The Devil Is Dead.
ENDURANCE VILE
by Steven Barnes
A Los Angeles health-food, bar can be a place for strange stories....
I was the last customer in Owensville Health Foods, and Albert Owens rang up my order with one eye on the clock. He was just beginning to get those "it’s time to close shop” yawns he is famous for, when The Runner walked into the store. Walked, not ran, which was a surprise in itself. Owens lifted his shaggy brows to the heavens in supplication. "So much for going home early,” he growled in my ear. Owens has an impressive growl, too. In fact, everything about the man is impressive: over fifty years old, and he still has the broad shoulders and firm arms of the halfback he was in college.
"What?” I asked in mock surprise. "And miss the chance to concoct an Owsly Special? Shame, shame that such a thought should cross your mind. Just look at that poor lost soul...” I pointed surreptitiously at The Runner, as all of Owensville’s customers called the little man. This month. Two months ago he had been The Yogi, and before that, The Bodybuilder. He was a male secretary named Owsly Bostic with a penchant for changing obsessions every fortnight or so, and the bad judgment to fill every available ear with his latest health theories. The last time I had seen him, he wore dirty sneakers and raveled white jogging-shorts, and his stringily muscular legs were flecked in mud. His jersey smelled as if a p
latoon of Marines had taken a sponge bath with it.
The Runner was about thirty-five, perennially going on eighteen. He was always "almost back in shape,” filling his stomach with nostrums purchased by the armload from Albert’s shelves and punishing his body with a series of brutal exercise regimes. I reflected that this was, after all, America, and everyone had a right to go to Hell in the handbasket of their choosing. But did Free Speech guarantee a man the right to yell "Botulism!” in a crowded cafeteria?
"Carrot Juice Special,” he said to Suzie, the USC coed who tends the health bar at nights. She looked at him for an instant as if she didn’t recognize him, then began to fix the drink. I could understand her confusion. It was the first time I had seen Owsly out of jockstrap, so to speak. He wore slacks and a knit shirt, and not a trace of a terry-cloth headband or other athletic paraphernalia. His usual locker-room aroma could, in Albert’s picturesque phrase, "wilt wheat germ”; but now he seemed to be freshly cleaned and polished. Amend that: there was a small white bandage on his forehead.
"Boy, he sure seems quiet tonight.” I grinned at Albert.
Owens returned my grin with a twist of lemon. "Listen, Steve, you haven’t had to sit through as many of his lectures about isometrics, or vegetarianism, or colonic irrigation, or Sufi dancing, as I have. I'm counting my blessings.” He ran a hand over his thick mop of black hair, and I found myself wondering when he’d start showing age like normal human beings.
"Oh, well,” I countered, "at least it’s only one new kick at a time.”
"Yeah, there’s that.”
I looked in my bag at the vitamins and kefir that I had dropped by Owensville to pick up, and was about to say good night and good luck, when Owsly looked up from his Special (carrot juice with brewer’s yeast and desiccated liver powder. I remember the night when, in a garrulous mood, Bostic had insisted that I try a swig. 1 remember a stray thought concerning maggot milk shakes running through my mind as I downed it) and said, "I’m giving it up. Swear on my mother’s grave.”
Tales From the Spaceport Bar Page 12
