The Counterfeit Heinlein

by Laurence M. Janifer

  “There was indeed,” she said, and took in more coffee. Amazing woman. “Norman W. Nechs. Dentist, I think. Possibly State Patrolman, possibly some sort of honorary police semi-official. Fan of sf. Collector. And jackdaw.”

  I blinked. “Jackdaw?”

  “Trade term,” she said. “People who store things they can’t use. What Norman W. Nechs had done was take what he undoubtedly considered to be his most valuable possessions, seal them in a drum full of nitrogen and a little argon under slight pressure—not a bad combination for preservation of manuscript—make the drum vacuum-tight—and just store it away.”

  “I suppose he thought that, when he came out—”

  “He didn’t think,” she said flatly. “He didn’t store anything to open that drum with safely. And he couldn’t have assumed he’d come out into a world that would provide him the technical facilities to do the job.”

  I thought about it for a minute. A nice heavy drum, tough to break into, sealed vacuum-tight, contents under slight pressure—no, not the sort of thing you’d crawl out of your armored hole and pop open with your thumb. “No tools for opening it?” I said. “None at all?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose, given a small home workshop of some sort—which we didn’t find—and a few days, he could have rigged something that would open the drum without either blasting the contents to shreds or blasting Norman W. Nechs into a puddle. But there was nothing ready in the shelter to do the job; he hadn’t thought it out that far. Many didn’t.”

  “So you opened it—” I began, and she said:

  “The Hell we did, Knave. We had a fair idea what was inside—manuscript, paper of some sort, some metal object—but not any more than that; it takes better spy rays than we’ve got to get fine detail. What we knew was that the person who’d made that shelter, who’d put this stuff in a sealed drum inside an armored hole, thought it had great value. That didn’t mean he’d been right—people value the damnedest things, even today, and people were no different back before the Clean Slate War—but we had to act as if he had been. We almost decided at once not to open the drum on Earth at all—we discussed loading it on board and opening it when we got back here. But that seemed a bit much—and expensive; we’d have to ship the drum itself and the inside atmosphere as well as the contents, and all we were interested in were the contents. The drum wasn’t much of an artifact, and there seems to be quite enough nitrogen and argon around already.”

  A long speech, and it required more coffee; she got up, refilled her cup, and took a swig before sitting down again. Amazing.

  “By the way,” she said. “I’m sorry to have been stiff with you—by all means call me Bitsy.”

  “Fine, Bitsy,” I said. “Call me Knave.” She looked at me, just the least little bit suspiciously. “Everyone does,” I said. “Honestly.”

  She shrugged. “Very well,” she said. “When we—”

  “One moment,” I said. “You’ll pardon me for asking, but just who are the ‘we’ here? The dig crew, I mean. And are any of the others Misfits?”

  Swallow of coffee. “Do you mind if I smoke, Knave?” she said.

  The terrible stuff was actually relaxing her. “Not at all,” I said. “I’ll join you, in fact.” I looked around, saw a couple of ashtrays shining on the refreshments table, and rescued one. I put it on my knee, fished in a pocket and came out with an Inoson tube. Bitsy’s eyebrows went up; well, most cigarettes aren’t wrapped in red.

  She dug out some of her own—I recognized a local blend, a little mild for my taste and wrapped in dull grey—and a small black holder with some sort of cut-glass jewelry at its far end. She stuck her cigarette in the holder, stuck the holder between her teeth, and I lit us both up.

  “Only five of us at the dig by then,” she said. “We’d had more at the start, but once we broke in, and got down to the detail work, more than half the team went on to another dig. The doormen, we call that part of the crew—we need them to crack the door open, and that’s the extent of it. A much smaller crew takes care of matters from there on.”

  “Five of you, then,” I said.

  She nodded. “One of them is a Misfit—Dean Rell. He’s here tonight—you might want to talk to him next. The others—well, Freda Hocksher, a very good woman on electronic antiquities—Gro Rouse—that’s Grosvenor, you may have heard of him, rather old for actual dig work, but he’s always loved it—and Paula Shore, who’s quite a comer. Only Dean is a Misfit—the others know nothing whatever about sf, and Grosvenor, for one, would be absolutely shocked to find that Dean and I actually read the low stuff. Do you want pencil and paper, Knave?”

  I’d made my notes where I usually make them, in my skull. I find it handier that way, most of the time. “Thanks, I’ll be all right. So you opened the thing right there?”

  “Well,” she said, “not right there at the dig, Knave—we wanted the safest surroundings we could get, right from the start of things. And those are in what used to be southeastern Oregon—interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Fascinating,” I said. “I suppose it is a coincidence?” But I couldn’t see how it could have been anything else; if the forged Heinlein had been set in Oregon because the treasure was going to get itself unwrapped in Oregon, I couldn’t come close to imagining a chain that would make that “because” even remotely sensible.

  True, very little about any of this made sense; somebody had very carefully stolen something which had almost no real value, and had missed me twice, hit three Berigot (five years before) and killed Ramsay Leake dead, all as part of the same damn package. But Oregon was a bit too much; that had to be a coincidence, I was sure. So, within reason, was she.

  “I should think so,” Bitsy said. She tapped ash into the tray on my knee. I did the same. “There are university facilities there—the Western buildings of NA Collegium, and closest to the dig.”

  “So you opened the thing at NA Collegium West,” I said, “and the Heinlein was inside.”

  Bitsy looked at me very carefully. “In fact, we didn’t,” she said. “I’m trying to give you every detail, Knave. We thought about it—we even began plans with the people at NA Collegium. And then we decided—why not be entirely safe? Why not come back to Ravenal, and open the thing here?”

  “You brought the unopened drum back from Earth to Ravenal?” I said. She nodded. “Despite the expense.” She nodded again. “And you’re sure it was unopened—from the dig until wherever the Hell it was you finally cracked the thing.”

  “Perfectly sure,” she said. “It was in Cargo, no way to get to it en route. And nobody opened the thing on Earth—no equipment for it nearer than Oregon, which is some distance from Uta, where the dig was.”

  I thought for a minute. Perhaps, just perhaps, someone had figured out a way to break into Cargo space on a ship traveling through space-four. All that would take would be a brand-new theory for space-four.

  Anything else seemed probable by comparison.

  “And when the pie was opened?” I said.

  She blinked. “Pie? The drum, you mean? Well, Knave, I wasn’t there. It’s as special a job as—as bomb disposal, you see. We waited—the dig crew—three floors away from the shop where they opened it.”

  “So you don’t know for certain that the Heinlein had been in the drum before it was opened here,” I said.

  “Not for—not for absolutely certain, no,” Bitsy said. “But we assumed—”

  “Naturally,” I said. “And what else was in the damn drum?”

  Bitsy smiled. “Only a science-fiction fan would remember in any detail, four years later,” she said. “A signed copy of Heinlein’s The Menace from Earth in what was called a paperbacked edition—a real rarity. Two other signed books—Oath of Fealty by Niven and Pournelle, of which six other copies are known to exist, and Poul Anderson’s The Earth Book of Stormgate, not really a rarity today, but we don’t have many signed copies, and this one is in fine condition. A paper certifying that Norman W. Nechs w
as in fact a professional dentist—he may have had some sort of police job as a public service, we can’t be wholly sure—a diploma, whatever they were called, that identified him as D. D. S., official dentist. Some other published books, I can’t recall just which. And a metal plaque, commending him as most congenial dentist at a convention or gathering of some sort in Taos, New Mexico.” She grinned. “I told you he was crazy.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “SO YOU TOSSED the diploma and the plaque—”

  “The diploma and the plaque are in the Scholarte museum,” she said a little stiffly. “Artifacts. They have value—if not precisely the sort of value Norman W. Nechs thought they had, whatever the Hell that was.”

  “And the rest—”

  “The two books went for testing at once, of course. So did the Heinlein manuscript. Those tests were passed, easily.”

  Another second or so of thought. “And has anyone tested the two books since finding out the manuscript was forged? Or the plaque and the diploma, for that matter?”

  Bitsy nodded. “Of course,” she said. “That began instantly. Recreating a bound book, well enough to pass all other tests, is a formidable challenge to anyone—I couldn’t do it myself, even ignoring the isotope question. But we were obviously faced with great technical facility; anything seemed possible. Anything still does; testing on the books is not yet complete. It’s very slow work; we want as little damage to the books themselves as possible, of course.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “How soon after the pie—after the drum was opened did you see the manuscript?”

  Bitsy thought back. “Perhaps an hour,” she said. “I wasn’t the first to see it, Gro was. He was very anxious about the drum; he did feel it might contain something of importance. I think the bit of metal fascinated him most, but that’s only my guess. By the time they’d got the thing open, he was standing outside in the hall.”

  I nodded. “But within an hour—”

  “More or less,” she said. “I wasn’t clocking it, you know.”

  “—more or less,” I said, “you did see the manuscript?”

  She nodded. “Seems impossible, doesn’t it?”

  “Not quite,” I said. “I’m going to have to talk to some other people.”

  “Gro, you mean,” she said.

  “Well, him too,” I said. “But mainly, whoever actually opened the damn thing. That’s the point: when was the forgery slipped in? Before or after opening the drum?”

  “If it was before opening the drum,” she said, “it might have been a forgery away back before the Clean Slate War; Nechs may have bought it thinking it was genuine. The man was a fool in any case, and—”

  I was shaking my head. “It won’t work that way,” I said. “If the forgery were as old as everything else in the drum, all the isotopes would have checked out nicely.” I sighed. “No, someone put the thing in—either at the dig, or here on Ravenal.”

  Bitsy crushed out her second cigarette. “You mean it’s one of us,” she said. I shook my head again.

  “Not necessarily,” I told her.

  “But probably.”

  “Probably,” I said. “You said Dean Rell was also a sf fan?”

  “Of course he is,” she said. “He’s here But Dean wouldn’t—well, you’ll meet him. You can’t believe—” She paused. “The fact is, I’m the one who can’t believe it—not of any of us. Dean, Gro, Paula, Freda Hocksher—you might as well believe I did it.”

  “Well—” I said. Bitsy nodded.

  “Of course you might,” she said. “Why not? I’m as likely as anybody else, as far as you know. But I didn’t do it. And I can’t believe any of the others did, either.”

  “It would take someone very familiar with Heinlein’s work to do a decent job,” I said. “That points to a fan.”

  “A Misfit, probably,” she said. “Fans tend to stick together, to cluster—not only because it’s rather a low taste, or so people think, but because we like to talk about our interests. People do, you know.” She hesitated just a hair. “But I simply can’t believe that one of us did such a thing. You don’t know these people, but I do. Dean wouldn’t harm a fly. Not a fly. Not the whisker on the head of a fly.”

  “And the others?”

  “Freda Hocksher is a dedicated worker,” she said. “A plugger, and a dependable person on any dig. I’ve worked with her before—we opened a hole in New Mexico together six years ago. Some fine artifacts, silver coins, ancient slug guns. There’d been water seepage there—it does happen, the water table’s shifted quite a lot since the holes were dug—but two of the slug guns were in good enough shape for real restoration; they’re working models, now. In the museum, of course.”

  “Paula Shore, Grosvenor Rouse,” I said.

  “Paula’s a youngster—bright, quick, ready for anything. Honest as the day is long, Knave. And Gro—the idea is ridiculous. He’s got standing in the field, very great standing. Besides, he doesn’t know anything about sf, and cares less. He’d be lost, faced with the job of trying to construct a believable Heinlein manuscript.”

  “And the other Misfits?” I said. She shook her head. Violently. “Not even Glatz, say? Or Chandes Washington, Corri Reges, Max Headroom—”

  “Why those?”

  “No special reason,” I said. “They look a little odd, somehow—no offense. They may be a lot odd.”

  “So may anyone,” Bitsy said icily. “You might be a bit odd yourself, Knave.”

  I shrugged. “Hell, I am a bit odd,” I said. “Everybody is, more or less. But I know I didn’t forge the manuscript, or plant it with the rest of the things—or steal it, for that matter.”

  She scowled at me. “Well, I know I didn’t,” she said. “And the others—”

  “I’ll try to find out what they know,” I said.

  “They didn’t do it,” Bitsy said. “This is Heinlein, after all. They’d have too much respect. Any fan would.”

  I sighed. “So a fan couldn’t have done it,” I said. “Too much respect. And someone who wasn’t a fan couldn’t have done it—not enough background. And that leaves nobody at all.”

  She sighed too. “I know,” she said. “Somebody did it. I just can’t imagine who.”

  Just at that moment, neither could I.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DEAN RELL WAS an entirely different kettle of fish, if you’ll pardon the Classical allusion. He turned out to be a tiny man with a red-brown crew-cut, very heavily corrective contact lenses tinted a bright green, and a jumper that fit as tightly as an antique corset. Bitsy Bowyer had gone and fetched him, and then herself retired back to the meeting, and when he sat down he asked me if I’d mind not smoking, tobacco smoke irritated his throat.

  About three in ten of the Misfits were smoking at any given moment, but of course I was sitting very close to him. I stubbed out my current Smoking Pleasure Tube, ported the ashtray back to its table and returned with a cheery smile. “Thank you, I’m most grateful,” he said in a clear, high voice a bit like B’russ’r’s. “What would you like to know?”

  “You were on the dig with Dr. Bowyer,” I said.

  “There were eleven of us,” he said. “I was among them, yes.”

  I nodded. “Five in the dig crew. You found the drum —”

  “We found, actually, a great deal,” Rell said. “A mass of survival equipment, of course—lighting and wiring, a waste-disposal and recycler arrangement, hundreds of cans of food—quite the usual thing, as far as that went. Nothing we haven’t seen a good many times before, all according to the books. Very little originality among these people, you know; everything had become a sort of ritual.”

  “Well, there are only so many good ways to arrange—” I began.

  “I suppose so,” Rell said wearily. Some distance from us, the meeting was going on. Voices had become raised; Corri Reges was objecting to something, and it was a little surprising how well that small voice carried. I couldn’t quite distinguish the words, and
didn’t try. “But the sameness of the digs does get to one after a bit,” Rell said.

  “Beyond the survival equipment—” I said.

  “Books,” he said. “Many in remarkably good condition—the dryness of the air had been a great help, though of course there was deterioration. Photographs—most of them of people we can’t identify, or places we can’t really locate precisely now, but valuable despite that, of course, as showing details of the daily life of the time and approximate place. Recordings; this one was a collector of jazz, and had forty or fifty cassette-tapes of jazz musicians from about 1920 to about 1945. Or was that—no, I think the jazz recordings were from that dig.”

  I stopped him for a minute while he explained what a cassette-tape was, but we needn’t bother with it here; it’s archaic, and I haven’t yet found any use for the knowledge. “And the Heinlein,” I said.

  “In its special drum,” Rell said. “Yes. Of course, we didn’t know what it was until we got back here and had it opened, but we were quite excited about it; if the man thought those things valuable enough for very special protection, there was at least the chance that he’d been right.”

  “That’s what Dr. Bowyer said,” I put in. “But you weren’t right there when the drum was opened, were you?”

  “We were as close as we could get,” he said. “I think Bitsy—Dr. Bowyer—was the first into the room, but we were all very close behind.”

  I nodded. “I understood that Dr. Rouse was—”

  “Oh, Gro,” Rell said. “Gro was waiting outside the door—literally outside the door. But I think, even so, Bitsy beat him in at the announcement. I can’t be sure after all this time, you know.”

  “And the Heinlein did come from that drum?”

  “Where else could it have come from?” he said. “We didn’t have the thing in our pockets.”

  * * * *

  I SPOKE TO a few others at the Misfits meeting. Only Corri Reges seemed helpful at the time.

  “I think it’s terrible,” she said. “Somebody trying to imitate Heinlein, of all people.”