Narabedla Ltd

by Frederik Pohl

  So we took it back to the hotel, and there I had plenty of time to answer Irene’s question.

  Or would have had. If I had had an answer. I was glad when it was time to go out again for a last check on the phone. There was no one in the cubicle this time, and not many people on the street at all, and I stood there wondering just what I was going to say to Irene when I got back to the hotel. I went over all the things we had done. We had distributed copies of our accounts in places where even the resources of Narabedla weren’t going to find them. That was our insurance policy; Davidson-Jones would have to reckon with that before doing anything violent to us. The people we had chosen were good people. We could trust them …

  But what should we do next?

  I was so deep in concentration that the ringing of the phone was only an annoyance at first. Then I almost dropped it when I picked it up.

  But then I heard Marlene’s voice saying, “Nolly? It is you, isn’t it? Oh, God, honey, I’m so glad you’re alive.”

  * * *

  On my way back to the hotel I almost ran, but when I passed the pet store on Lexington Avenue I stopped long enough to buy a few dozen tropical fish.

  The bedbug was delighted. He promised to stay in the room while he enjoyed his meal at leisure, and I took Irene down to the hotel restaurant to celebrate. We found a quiet table in a corner, and over a drink I told her about my conversation with Marlene. “She sold the business,” I told her, “to raise money to pay for private detectives. She didn’t give up. She’s been building up a whole dossier on Narabedla and Henry Davidson-Jones.”

  “Which will help support our story?” Irene put in. “Which will damn prove our story,” I corrected her. “She’s going to get all the papers out of her safe-deposit box tomorrow morning. Then I’m going to go up to see her with a copy of our stuff, and we’ll figure out what to do from there.”

  “Sounds good,” Irene said, looking at me thoughtfully over her old-fashioned glass. “You know, Nolly,” she commented, “you’re really some kind of guy.”

  I shrugged modestly.

  “I mean it,” she said. “You’re a regular Clark Kent. One day you’re a mild-mannered accountant, and then all of a sudden you’re taking on sixty-dozen wizard alien creatures with all sorts of high-tech jazz and rescuing the girl. I never expected k of you.”

  I said honestly, “I didn’t really expect it of myself.”

  “It’s a nice trait in a man. Is your drink empty, too?” That was easily enough taken care of. When the waiter brought us the second round she frowned. “The funny thing is,” she said, “I always thought I didn’t really like jocks. You know? The kind of guy that figures he can take care of anything just by throwing some weight around? Do you suppose …”

  She hesitated, fiddling with the orange slice in her new drink. Then she looked up at me with a peculiar expression, a little bit amused, a little bit embarrassed. “Tricia told me about your, uh, operation,” she said. “Do you suppose that’s why you’re doing all this?”

  Well, if I’d thought at all (I hadn’t, actually) I would have been damn sure Tricia would not have missed the chance to gossip a little with her cousin. I didn’t like that thought, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I said shortly, “How would I know if it was?” Then I said, more carefully, “I can tell you what lit my fuse this time. What got me going, Irene, was you. When I found out they had kidnapped you I wanted to—well, hell, I was willing to do anything I had to do to get you out.”

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling at me.

  “Don’t mention it. Uh, what else did Tricia tell you?”

  “Oh, well,” she said vaguely. “Different things.”

  I was flustered. “I guess she told you that she and I—”

  “Really, Nolly,” she said, “what difference would that make? It’s not important, is it?”

  “Um,” I said. “Uh. Well, Irene, you see, I didn’t think there was any way that, for instance, you and I would ever see each other again—”

  “Of course not.”

  “And we really didn’t know each other very well, did we? You and I, I mean.”

  “Hardly at all.”

  “The only thing is,” I said, “I felt kind of tacky about it, all the same.”

  “No reason you should have,” she said firmly. “Don’t you think we might order now? I’m starved.”

  And we ordered. And we ate. And we had a brandy with our coffee to finish it off. And when we were all done and the check was paid and we were lingering over the last brandy I said, “Well, we’ve got a busy day tomorrow. Do you want the room with the bedbug or the room by yourself tonight?”

  And she said, “He’s probably going to keep the TV going all night again, isn’t he? So why don’t we just let him have one of the suites all to himself?”

  CHAPTER

  43

  When the city of New York decides to take a recess from winter it can change overnight. I came up out of the IRT at Seventy-second Street into bright sunshine. It was only a short walk to Marlene’s block.

  Marlene’s apartment was one of those rent-controlled wonders that New Yorkers are willing to kill for, four big rooms in a well-kept building with an elevator for less than three hundred dollars a month.

  It was a quiet block. There were still knee-high mounds of snow along the curbs where the plows had given up. Just behind one of them there was a parked ambulance. Its driver had the window rolled down to take advantage of the unexpected sun; he was wearing shades, a black man reading a copy of Penthouse. He looked vaguely familiar. An old woman was walking a dog—a real one; I saw it lift its leg to one of the city’s always imperiled shade trees. An elderly man was peering out at the sunshine from the steps of Marlene’s apartment house, trying to decide if it was warm enough to allow his old bones a walk to the 7-Eleven on the corner.

  He looked familiar too. With good reason. As I climbed the steps he caught my arm. “Aren’t you Stennis?”

  As soon as he spoke I knew who he was. Marlene had brought him around to the office now and then. He wasn’t a boyfriend, or even a date; he was just a guy she went to the movies with now and then. “Nice to see you, Mr. Keppler,” I told him. “Is Marlene in now, do you know?”

  “In?” He scowled at me. “Of course she isn’t in,” he went on in a disagreeable tone. “What do you think? Where’ve you been? She told me before she went to the hospital the first time you were someplace out of town. But didn’t you know anything?”

  I pulled my arm free, staring at him. “What hospital?”

  “St. Luke’s. Where she’s dying from cancer,” he said bitterly. “So now it’s too late you can finally take the time to come see her, eh?”

  I couldn’t speak for a moment. I stood staring at him.

  “I didn’t know! Tell me!” I said finally, abjectly begging. He did, with an old man’s attention to the details of terminal illness. According to Mr. Keppler, Marlene got sick the first time over a year ago. She’d had to close down the office, because she was facing at least six months of radiation and chemotherapy. Then she’d been back in her apartment for a while, but she’d regressed. He had gone to the hospital to see her the day before.

  She had, he said, no more than a month to live.

  I cannot say how I felt then. I don’t know the words to describe it. It wasn’t that I wanted to cry; it was a shock too complete and unexpected for that.

  “But,” I said stupidly, “I just talked to her yesterday.”

  “You called her at the hospital? That’s good,” said Mr. Keppler grudgingly. “You were lucky, because it’s a real miracle she could talk. When I went to see her last night she was in a coma.”

  I let him go, my hand on the door to the building.

  I watched him walk down the steps, leaning heavily on his cane, making his way past the ambulance at the curb, where the driver was looking sidewise at me from behind his glasses.

  It would have been a natural question to
ask who it was I had spoken to on the phone yesterday. I didn’t have to ask it. I already knew the answer. I remembered it from Henry Davidson-Jones’s office, when I had heard Marlene’s voice on a tape and it had not been Marlene speaking then, either.

  The sun was still out, but the winter wind was chilling my bones. Everything had suddenly become very different.

  I turned around and walked quickly to the curb, not looking at anyone. When I got to the street I turned left, walking along the parked cars. When I got to the ambulance I stopped short.

  I reached in the open window and grabbed the wrist of the black man in the sunglasses.

  “Nice to see you again since that time in Nice,” I said conversationally.

  His reflexes were fast. He tried to pull his hand free, but I had it solidly. “Got a gun in your pocket?” I asked. “Or is it whoever’s upstairs in Marlene’s apartment that’s got the gun?”

  “Get your hands off me,” he snarled, trying a sudden lunge. I put my elbow in his throat to stop that.

  “You don’t need a gun,” I told him. “Just relax. If you want to take me to Henry Davidson-Jones you don’t need anything at all, because that’s where I want to go. Right now.”

  CHAPTER

  44

  It wasn’t a man with a gun who was waiting for me in Marlene’s apartment. It was Henry Davidson-Jones himself.

  He was sitting at his ease at Marlene’s dining-room table, and he wasn’t alone. There was a Purry lying on Marlene’s couch, regarding me with its little pop eyes—undoubtedly the one who had imitated Marlene’s voice. There was a Kekkety in Marlene’s kitchen, apparently doing dishes. And there was my friend from Nice and the ambulance, escorting me into the apartment, with his hand in his pocket.

  “Hello, Nolly,” said Henry Davidson-Jones. He looked tired, and he moved stiffly as he stood to reach out to shake my hand.

  I didn’t let him. He sighed and sat down again. “You can go, Arnold,” he told my escort, and then as the black man reluctantly left, “I’ve just eaten something, Nolly. I’m sure the Kekkety can make something for you if you’re hungry. No? Then,” he called, raising his voice, “just bring us some coffee.”

  “I didn’t come here for coffee,” I said. “I want to make a deal.”

  “Well, do you mind if I drink some while we’re making it? What deal do you have in mind?”

  I said, “There are two people I want taken care of. One is Irene Madigan. I don’t want her hurt, or confined in any way. I want her to be allowed to stay on the Earth. I’ll ask her myself not to say anything to anybody, ever. I think she’ll do it.”

  He clasped his hands and looked at his thumbnails. “Who’s the other person?”

  “Marlene Abramson.”

  He looked up. “Nolly,” he said earnestly, “I give you my word I haven’t done one thing to harm Marlene Abramson. I was very sorry to hear that she had become ill.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I told him. “Are you sorry enough to take her to Narabedla to get fixed up?”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding in satisfaction. “I see what you’re getting at. You think I’m a kidnapper, a profiteer, maybe a murderer—”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “—and the Associated Peoples really ought to let the Earth in as a member, besides.”

  “I’m not quite as sure of that,” I admitted. “But maybe so. At least we should have the choice.”

  “Yes. The freedom of choice. And in spite of all these wrongs, you’re willing to let everything go on just as before, provided I arrange for Narabedlan medical treatment for one friend of yours.”

  “That’s it exactly,” I said.

  The Kekkety padded silently over with the coffee. Davidson-Jones mused over what I had said while the Kekkety poured for him, then brought a cup over to me.

  It would have been a proper gesture to refuse it, but actually it smelled pretty good. I took a sip. Then I got up, pulled the wad of papers out of my pocket, and dropped it on Marlene’s dining-room table.

  “We’ve sent out twelve copies of this,” I told Davidson-Jones.

  “Yes, so you told the Purry on the phone,” he agreed. He riffled through the Xeroxes idly. “It seems quite complete,” he said.

  “They were only mailed yesterday,” I told him. “There’s not much chance that any of them could be delivered today. The earliest would be tomorrow, just for the nearby ones. I don’t know how you could intercept them, but I imagine you’d have a way.”

  “Possibly,” he agreed.

  “I’ll give you the names and addresses of all those people. Right now. If you give me your word about the two conditions.”

  “What about yourself, Nolly? You haven’t said anything about yourself.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “That’s very commendable. And what makes you think I would keep a promise if I gave it?”

  “I’ll take that chance, too.”

  “I’m flattered, Nolly,” he told me, and he sounded very sincere.

  He got up from the table and walked over to Marlene’s window, gazing out at the bare trees in the snowy joint backyards of all the buildings on that block. “I hate winter,” he said, rubbing his shoulder as though it pained him. “Nolly? There are pushing five billion human beings here on the Earth, and they all die sooner or later. Mostly sooner, and mostly in pain. Should I send them all off to Narabedla?”

  “I don’t suppose you could do that,” I said reluctantly.

  “So who do we save? Just the particular friends of Nolly Stennis?” -

  “I’m not asking for that. I’m only asking for Marlene Abramson.”

  He turned and shook his head at me. “Oh, but Nolly,” he said, chiding me, “you aren’t making your best deal. You’ve got something to trade that, I admit, is valuable to me. It’s worth a better price. Don’t you want something thrown in for the human race? The secret of the go-box, for instance. Look at what that would mean. No more trains, planes, trucks, supertankers. No more sixteen-wheelers killing people on the highways—no more highways! No more jets from LaGuardia deafening the crowds at the Mets games. No more big tankers spilling their oil into the ocean. No more oil imports to bankrupt the high-energy countries. No more—”

  I interrupted his catalogue. “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll take that, too.”

  “Will you? It wouldn’t be hard to do. The Associated Peoples wouldn’t object—they’re too busy trying to patch up their own troubles. And it’s just a matter of Einstein-Rosen separability. There are a lot of institutions right here that are close to finding it already. I’ve helped some of them, with money grants for research. Only—well, what about all those truckers and airline pilots and railroad workers? What are they going to do for jobs? How can you handle the unemployment that follows?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, not liking the way the conversation was going.

  “Neither do I,” he said soberly. “I haven’t known how to handle any of that, from penicillin to the silicon chip. I’ve helped them all, you know. For a long time.”

  I stared at him. “You mean with grants, and maybe little tips from time to time? But why do that when you could just hand all these things over?”

  “Is that what you’d do, Nolly?”

  “It’s not my problem,” I said shortly.

  “But if it were?” he persisted. “Wouldn’t you try to make all these changes gradually, so the human race would have time to adjust? And maybe even to give it a chance to keep its self-respect?”

  “I might,” I said, “but I wouldn’t kidnap people.”

  He was silent for a moment, looking at me. He snapped his fingers, and the Kekkety glided up with more coffee. “I’m afraid I’ve made a lot of mistakes lately,” he said. “I’m getting old.”

  “So go back to Narabedla yourself, and get fixed up.”

  “I have, Nolly, many times. I’m a good deal older than you think. It’s time for me to retire.”

&nbs
p; I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, because I didn’t understand it. Then I began to understand it, and I liked it even less.

  “Oh, no!” I cried.

  “Oh, yes,” said Henry Davidson-Jones.

  CHAPTER

  45

  When Davidson-Jones’s doctors got Marlene out of the hospital I was sitting in the ambulance, waiting for her. She looked terrible. She was tiny. A lot of her hair had fallen out. Her face was like death itself. She was in a coma, all right, and she didn’t speak to me.

  But when the Kekketies were gently lifting her into the box on the yacht I kissed her and whispered to her that everything was all right, and at least her eyelids flickered.

  When the limo was taking us to the hotel Henry Davidson-Jones was silent. “Don’t you have any instructions for me?” I demanded bitterly as we turned into Lexington Avenue.

  “You give the instructions now, Nolly,” he told me. “Just don’t forget to make those telephone calls. Then, if you want to, come down to the office and you can get started. I’ll be there. The car will come back and wait for you; it’s your car now.”

  And I got out and stared after him as the limousine drove away.

  It was early-evening dark. The streets were full. The hotel lobby was busy with well-dressed men and women intent on their own concerns.

  They hardly glanced at me. They didn’t know who I was— who I had suddenly become.

  I had never been in charge of anything bigger than a six-person accountancy office, but I acknowledged that it was true, as Davidson-Jones had ordered, that money was money and if you knew how to handle a sum it didn’t matter how many zeroes were at the end of it.

  The second thing to do, I told myself, was to sit down with Irene Madigan and the telephones and call up each of the people we had sent those documents to to explain that they shouldn’t open them, because they were a mistake, and someone would come around to collect them.