Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

  Howie had discovered that he no longer had the same enthusiasm he had once possessed for simply hanging around some park all day, watching dope deals go down and pretty women stroll by, while getting a buzz on. True, his job so far at United Illuminating had consisted mostly of just such hanging around, with the single (and singular) exception of his fateful errand to Harlem. But while sitting at his desk in the office of this strange company, he had realized he felt intimately connected to something larger than himself. Although often bored, he had always felt an undercurrent of expectancy that kept him hanging on.

  And besides, the money was damn good.

  Howie arrived at the building where he had seen the curiously blurred placard with its doubled message a few weeks ago. That day seemed like a page out of someone else’s life, so much had happened.

  Nerving himself up, Howie went inside and rode the elevator to the second floor.

  He almost expected the office to be closed, to confront a room empty of furniture and people, with only dangling coaxial cables and coffee stains on the carpet to show there had ever been such an organization.

  Such was not the case. The attractive receptionist—whose name he had never learned—was at her desk in the anteroom as usual. She smiled at Howie as he went by. Howie, now that the imagined confrontation was so near, felt grim and did not smile back.

  All was as before in the big common room, too. Everyone was at his desk, jockeying papers or speaking softly on phones or tapping the keys of terminals. The overhead fluorescents glared as harshly as ever, seeming actually to frighten the sunlight from entering the three windows that looked out upon the street.

  Howie saw Herringbone at his accustomed spot. The man seemed oblivious to Howie, his face awash with cathode rays.

  Moving toward Wargrave’s door, Howie saw that his own desk was as he had left it: bare except for an irregular pile of cassettes for his Walkman on one corner.

  At the door to Wargrave’s sanctum, Howie paused, then knocked and entered without waiting for a response.

  Wargrave sat calmly behind his cluttered desk. He looked up when Howie entered. His hard eyes were like marbles, each centered with a black BB. His expression, as always, was unreadable, blank, uncommunicative.

  “Ah, Mr. Piper,” Wargrave said quietly, “I am glad to see you have returned safely from your first assignment. Mr. Herringbone could not definitely assure me that this was so, since he became separated from you at one point. And unfortunately, the ensuing events prevented me from contacting you at home.”

  Howie was disconcerted by Wargrave’s expression of concern. I wasn’t home anyway,” he replied sullenly.

  Wargrave raised one eyebrow: his most violent gesture to date. “No matter,” he said. “Here you are now, no doubt eager and willing to get back to work. But first I must commend you on the way you carried out the delivery to the Reverend Mr. Evergreen. I have had a full report from Mr. Herringbone, whom, I must confess, I sent along to gauge your performance. You were prompt and industrious—although your offer to await a reply was perhaps a trifle overzealous. But on the whole, I can find no fault with your conduct. I look forward to testing your abilities on future missions.”

  Howie tried to steer the conversation in the direction he had imagined it taking. “Listen, Mr. Wargrave, before we talk about ‘future missions’ and stuff like that, I need a few questions answered. Like, where do you get off having me risk my life like you did? And just what is this screwy company all about? What’re your goals, and who’s behind you? Is this a front for the Klan or something? Are you trying to start a race war? Maybe you’re American Nazis. Is that it?”

  Wargrave—insofar as his stony face was able—seemed to register dismay. “Come now, Mr. Piper. Please do not be naive or disingenuous. If I may quote from one of those popular songs you are so enamored of: ‘Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’”

  Here Wargrave paused, as if he had been particularly witty.

  “Let me address your points one at a time,” continued the seated bald man.

  “First, as for having you risk your life, I judged that you were quite capable of taking care of yourself. Still, I took the precaution of providing the additional safeguard of Herringbone. And you are, after all, being paid rather handsomely to perform your not-too-strenuous duties.

  “Your other accusations are also wildly off the mark. You can see just from the composition of our work force that we are a completely integrated organization. If you wish to know our goals, I can tell you only that we are engaged in the dissemination of information. Our transactions all involve that most abstract of commodities, knowledge. This is the age of information, after all, Mr. Piper, and a company such as ours has a crucial role to play. I regret that I cannot be more specific. But you are just not prepared at the moment to receive more detailed data on what we do. Perhaps you will accept my word that we undertake nothing that you would find morally objectionable. We merely facilitate the flow of information.”

  Howie was partly befuddled, partly mollified, and partly enraged. All he could think of to say was, “I’m not sure I want to work here anymore.”

  Wargrave shuffled a few papers around on his desk. “That, of course, is your decision, Mr. Piper. But there is no need to be precipitous. May I recommend that you take an extended lunch hour, and then return to me with your decision?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Okay, I will.”

  Howie left.

  Outside, he headed toward Union Square, mulling over everything Wargrave had said.

  Union Square was bounded roughly by Seventeenth Street on the north, Broadway on the west, Fourteenth on the south, and Park on the east. Since the city had fixed it up, the square was a lovely grassy, tree-shaded couple of acres.

  Howie walked up and down the familiar paths for a while, thinking. He eventually found himself out on Broadway, standing in front of a news kiosk. Idly, he looked at the magazines.

  There must have been half a hundred titles. They covered the conceivable gamut of mankind’s endeavors.

  Bivalve Monthly, The Onanist’s Chapbook, Hang Gliding and Stamp Collecting, Trucks and Vans and Miniature Railroads, Time, Newsweek, New Times, This Week’s News, Software and Cell Culture, Power Lifting and Gardening Illustrated, Embarrassing Stories, Hangman’s Semiquarterly, Self, Ego, Id, Subconscious, Gourmet, Glutton, Fasting Annual, Psychology Today, Psychology Yesterday, Psychology Tomorrow, Stargazer’s Digest, Awake!, Arise!, Cast Off Your Chains!, Enjoy!, Be!, Sleep….

  Howie’s head was spinning from the titles. Spotting the McDonald’s across the way, he decided he needed something to eat.

  At the counter he studied the canted overhead menu. Jesus, it seemed they added new items every day. MacThis, MacThat.… Howie finally just asked for a hamburger and a Coke, waited, got it, and took the greasy bag to a booth.

  Halfway through his meal, Howie noticed that a woman was watching him.

  She was tall, olive-complexioned, and nervous-looking. Her black hair was a fashionably windblown tangle. Her eyes were an anomalous blue, like two pools of Windex. She had a lit cigarette in her hand and an ashtray full of butts before her.

  When she saw Howie was looking, she took a long drag on her cigarette, ground it out, got up, and came over to him.

  Standing by his table, the woman said, with a trace of accent, “I have to tell you that you’re in grave danger. Goddamn daughter of a whore.”

  Howie dropped his half-eaten burger. “I —I—I beg your pardon.”

  The woman seemed angry. “There is no time to waste in pretending ignorance. Your life is at stake. You must come with me. Hell, piss, son of a bitch.”

  Everyone was staring at Howie, and he felt his face turning red. He spoke very quietly, as if to emphasize that he was not the madman here. “Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I wish you would stop swearing at me.”

  The woman put a hand to her brow and closed her eyes. She slumped and appeared very
weary suddenly.

  “Oh, God, was I swearing again? I’m so sorry, but I can’t help it. I have drug-induced Tourette’s syndrome—uncontrollable obscenities. But you mustn’t let that obscure my message. Look, people are watching us. Can’t we go to the park and talk?”

  Howie would have done anything just then to escape the unwanted attention of his fellow diners. He stood, leaving his meal unfinished, and went out with the woman.

  In the park they sat on a bench.

  The woman introduced herself.

  “My name is Fatima Morgenstern. My personal history is not important. But what you must know is that you are involved with a deadly group of people. For your own good, you must disassociate yourself from them. Give them no more help with their mad schemes. Shit. Christ. Bloody hell.”

  Howie felt an irrational resentment toward this woman, despite all her evident sincerity and protestations of wanting to help him. He didn’t like being told what to do. He wanted to make his own decisions.

  “I can’t believe that,” Howie said. “I’ve never seen these people do anything really bad. I mean, even the letter they made me take to Harlem—if you know about that—well, if it was true, then people should have been told about the cover-up. No, I think I’ll stick with them at least a little longer.”

  Howie was surprised to hear himself defending United Illuminating. Did he really want to stay? He guessed so. Now that he had said it aloud, he seemed committed.

  The woman jumped to her feet. “You fool!” she shouted. “You’ll pay in the end with your life!”

  Then she ran off.

  Howie watched. He didn’t know what to think about her, but he wished her well.

  Back at the company building, Howie took the stairs slowly, to spend a last few minutes in thought. Outside Wargrave’s office, he still felt as he had in the park.

  Howie opened the door.

  Inside, Wargrave sat at his desk.

  Beside him stood Fatima Morgenstern, smoking furiously.

  Wargrave spoke.

  “Mr. Piper, I believe you’ve met Miss Morgenstern—who has recently transferred from our Beirut branch—so no introductions are necessary. Miss Morgenstern, by the way, is half Jewish, which should reassure you about the implausibility of any American Nazi connection. Miss Morgenstern has informed me of your decision to remain with us. Let me reiterate my excitement, and also mention that you will find your salary now stands at a round thousand a week.”

  Howie stood silent.

  Morgenstern said, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Allah. Welcome aboard.”

  5.

  Probability is a statement about how much I know

  rather than anything intrinsic.

  —Persi Diaconis

  During the weeks following his tentative acceptance of his own part in the mysterious works of The United Illuminating Company, Howie found himself relying more and more on his music to get him through the sometimes puzzling, sometimes scary, sometimes boring chores that Mr. Wargrave dispatched him on.

  Certain songs seemed to have an obscure bearing on his situation (did he dare to call it “his plight”?), and he returned to them time after time, gaining, if not any effable knowledge, then at least a kind of emotional satisfaction and solace.

  Howie listened to Steely Dan’s “Here at the Western World” with quivering alertness.

  He listened to the Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket” with determined intentness.

  He dissected Elvis Costello’s “Pills and Soap” with microscopic care.

  But all his efforts failed to indicate how he should regard the things he did, and whether or not he should stop doing them.

  So he kept on.

  The tasks were not really so bad—

  Were they?

  For instance:

  Howie was handed a stack of posters and a staple gun and told to hang them up at random about the city. He left the office without reading the topmost poster. Only when he was in the slippery, poorly lit stairwell leading down into the subway did he glance at it. He thought it read:

  ABANDON HOPE

  LET HER WIN

  2000 A.D. ANGUISH

  SIN FAST

  But when he got down to the platform, where the light was marginally better, he saw that the real message was:

  ABOUT THE POPE

  A LECTURE—WHEN

  2:00 P.M. AUG. 12TH

  SAINT PATRICK’S

  Howie’s heart had speeded up something fierce upon deciphering the initial confusing but evocatively apocalyptic warning, and the rapid beating took minutes to slow down when the innocent message replaced the frightening one. He went about the task of hanging the posters with less relish than he anticipated.

  Another day, Howie was told to stay home and watch TV. He was given a VCR—funny, he had always wanted a VCR, but now it didn’t mean so much; wasn’t that just the way life was?—and told to tape certain shows while paying close attention to them.

  After the first two hours or so of early-morning television and its cascade of commercials, Howie noticed his brain was turning to grits. He watched:

  Today, Tomorrow, Right Now, Sunrise Semester, Captain Wombat, He-Man, The Wimp, I Love Lucy, The Price Is Right, The Name Is Wrong, Wheel of Fortune, The Rack, The Iron Maiden, The Procrustean Bed, News at Noon, News at 12:15, News at 1:06, Days of our Lives, Heart-jerking Sob Stories, The Edge of Night, The Break of Day, The Fall of Rome, News at Six, Entertainment Tonight, Glurk!, Splurg!, Futz!, Wham!…

  When the test pattern came on, Howie got up from his chair like a somnambulist and fell into bed.

  In the morning the previous day seemed like a bad dream.

  But Howie ate two entire boxes of breakfast cereal, used up two bottles of shampoo while showering, and couldn’t stop thinking about the marital problems of certain actresses.

  He vowed never to do again whatever he had done wrong that had caused him to receive such an assignment.

  Subsequent missions consisted of:

  —standing on the corner of Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue handing out flyers for peep shows;

  —inscribing with felt-tip marker the phrase BOG LIVES! on what seemed like every clean surface in the city;

  —entering the main branch of the Public Library on Fifth and hiding sealed envelopes in certain volumes;

  —delivering assorted packages to various odd addresses in all five of the city’s boroughs.

  There were never any immense repercussions from Howie’s actions, as on that first trip, and he eventually stopped anticipating such things. In fact, he pretty much stopped thinking about what he was doing at all. His job—unusual as it was—became, like all jobs, just something to fill the day. Howie concentrated on turning off his higher brain and meshing his subconscious with the music constantly filtering out of his headphones, carrying out his duties with automatic efficiency.

  One thing he did become aware of, however, was a curious leveling tendency in his perceptions of the world. Howie had to assume that the mostly trivial things he was doing and the relatively innocuous information he was disbursing were important on some level—else why would Mr. Wargrave want them done? But if these insignificant actions were important, then almost anything else could be. Suddenly one’s every gesture and word became imbued with cosmic meaning. Crushing a butterfly could engender the destruction of the world. A single syllable spoken at the right moment could topple empires.

  Everything—and nothing—seemed equally meaningful.

  While in this odd state of mind one day, Howie was informed by his superior that he was expected to begin studying for a promotion.

  6.

  The bad news is, we may be lost; but the good news is

  we’re way ahead of schedule.

  —David Lee Roth

  Outside Wargrave’s office, Howie thumbed the volume control higher for a brief blast of “Shock the Monkey” by Peter Gabriel. Thus armored, he went in.

  Wargrave’s desk was messie
r than ever. The mound of papers topped with video and audio cassettes was so high as to almost hide the huge man from view. Only his shiny pate and anthracitic eyes were visible.

  When he saw Howie enter, he arose and came around the desk.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Piper. Please.”

  Howie was taken aback by this unexpected solicitude. He sat warily.

  “I assume,” said Wargrave, “that you have finished perusing the material I required you to master.”

  Reaching up to doff his headphones, Howie nodded wordlessly. Lately he had taken to saying less and less.

  Wargrave seemed to accept Howie’s silence as a satisfactory response. Pacing up and down the small office in his stiff way, he continued to speak. Howie, his ears ringing from near-continual music, had to strain to hear the big man’s small voice.

  “Well then, Mr. Piper, you no doubt have a firmer conception now of how our organization works. But if I may, I will recapitulate briefly. It always thrills me to contemplate its functioning.

  “Our company is perhaps the only one modeled on truly twentieth-century scientific principles. All other businesses, no matter how seemingly modern, actually function according to nineteenth-century paradigms. Ours is different.

  “We realize that information, however abstract it seems, is the only real thing of value. And also that information can be manipulated to attain certain ends.

  “Governing our actions are three basic precepts derived from scientific research done in this most exciting of centuries.

  “First, perhaps most important, we abide by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which, simply put, tells us that information cannot exist without an observer, and that the observer, by the very act of observing, changes reality.

  “Second, the work of Godel figures importantly in our actions. It was Godel who proved that any formal system must contain certain tenets that are forever unprovable. It is a small step from this observation to realize that our physical world is such a formal system—or system of systems, if you will—and thus must contain many unprovable truths.