Frederick Pohl

by The Cool War

  That had been interesting, also somewhat unsettling. Hake got up and explored the rest of the room’s facilities. Under the TV was something called Servizio, which turned out to be a little refrigerator and bar stocked with whiskey, wine, fruit juices and beer. He thought for a moment of getting drunk enough to supply French central heating and going back to sleep; but that way, he suspected, lay pneumonia. Still, one beer wasn’t a bad idea. Carrying it, he checked out the bathroom. The toilet seat vibrated on command, he found. The shower head pulsed, and so, he discovered, did the spray in the bidet. Behind a panel near the door was a coffee maker and a bun warmer, and when he sat on the edge of the still chill bed to drink a cup of hot coffee he kicked something and found that the bed, too, could be made to ripple rhythmically by pushing a switch. Quite an inventive room.

  It was not, however, a room to be alone in. Everything urged company, and Hake didn’t have any.

  What was worse, one of the girls on the television had reminded him of Mary Jean. He sat daydreaming of Mary Jean as a possible subject for film interattivo, and then of Alys, and of Leota, and realized he had a problem. It was a problem most men face, some of them very often, but Hake growing up in a wheelchair had learned to sublimate and to repress that problem, and the new Hake, the muscular Hake of the barbells and the two-mile runs, the action-oriented Hake from Under the Wire—that Hake was a different person. That Hake wanted a different solution, and there was none in sight.

  He dumped the rest of the coffee, put his clothes on and ambled out of the room.

  The long and silent hall was empty, the ceiling lights economically dimmed down. There was a dank, musty smell that he had not remembered, and a large, semicircular water stain by the Chinese couple’s door that he had not noticed before. Rather poor management, he thought; would there be anyone in the lobby? Maybe an all-night coffee shop to get something to eat?

  The lobby was also dimmed-down and silent, but he managed to wake the desk clerk long enough to get change, and from the automatic vending machines he got candy bars, a Rome Daily American, and even an Arabic-language daily published in Naples. Then he returned to his room.

  Reminding himself that he was not in Capri for pleasure, he pulled the covers off the bed and spent the next hour reading and eating candy bars, lying on the floor. After an hour or so he made the trip down to the lobby again for some fifty-lire change and ultimately fell asleep, with the light on, on the floor.

  At ten the door buzzer woke him.

  The room was now intolerably hot, and his bones ached from the floor, but he opened the door. It looked like the girl who had met him at the hoverport, but was not. It was male. “Mario?” he guessed.

  The youth smirked. “Yes, of course Mario,” he said. “But you did not recognize me as a signorina, did you? We must not often be seen together, you see—Hake! What insanity have you been up to?”

  “What? Oh, you mean why the room is this way. Well, we had a power failure. And I nearly froze to death on that bed.”

  Mario’s eyebrows rose. He switched on the air-conditioner and said, “Why did you not use the bed heater? What heater? Oh, Hake, you are such an innocent 1 Here, this switch on the side. You set it to whatever temperature you would like. Thirty-five if you want it, or even more.”

  “Oh, hell.” Now that it was explained, it was perfectly obvious. He dialed it to forty degrees, promising himself at least a nice warm nap. As he straightened up, Mario was approaching him with what looked like an elaborate silver-filigree bracelet. “Hey, what’s that for?”

  Mario snapped it on his wrist. “So that you may enjoy that bed with the companion of your choice, or with none at all,” he said good-humoredly.

  “It’s a sexual-preference thing? I’ve never seen it.”

  “A local custom,” Mario explained. “If you wear this it indicates you do not wish anyone to inaugurate a sexual approach to you. See, I also wear one. Without it on, you would be kept quite busy and it would perhaps interfere with your duties. You will find that such bracelets are quite scarce on Capri, for after all why else would anyone come here?”

  “Well—” said Hake.

  “Oh, do not fear, when you are off duty you may remove it! Now, do you wish to shower, or at least dress?”

  “I suppose so. Oh, and listen,” Hake said, “I haven’t been wasting my time. I managed to get a couple of papers last night, and checked all the stories about religion.”

  “Very commendable, Hake,” Mario said, glancing at his watch.

  “There wasn’t an awful lot, but there was one stroke of luck. I found an editorial in something called, what is it, Corriere Islamica di Napoli about an interesting youth cult. There’s this fellow in Taormina—”

  “That is splendid, Hake, but please, your shower. We must hurry. Of course you will want a coffee? Then you can tell me all about it. But the taxi is waiting, and my expense account—well, you know what it is like with one’s expenses!”

  Actually Hake did not know. He had never had an expense account from the Team. But if what Mario had meant to imply was that his expenses would be scrutinized it seemed to Hake strange that they should take a taxi all the way to Anacapri to sit and drink morning coffee in an open-air restaurant exactly like twenty-five others they had passed on the way; and then to take another taxi all the way back to a restaurant that turned out to be a block from Hake’s hotel, for the lunch Mario insisted he had to have at the stroke of twelve. It seemed to Hake that Mario was not a very efficient secret agent. In fact, flaky. The Mario of Munich and the rest of the flu-spreading trip had been subdued and deferential; this one was more like a plumbing salesman on a tour.

  And when the lunch came Mario picked at it. He was obviously much more interested in the nearly nude dancers in the floor show than in eating. He divided his time between staring at them as they whipped off their peasant skirts to reveal nothing much beneath, and nudging Hake and peering at his face excitedly. Hake felt distinctly uncomfortable. Mario had been much the same on the patio at Anacapri, where bar girls in bikinis had served them their cappuccinos. In neither place did he seem very interested in the Islamic youth cult Hake had boned up on out of the Arab-language newspaper and a few discreet questions to the Lebanese night porter at the hotel.

  It all seemed like an awful waste of time to Hake, and the situation did not get better. After the lunch Mario had barely picked at, he said, “Well, perhaps it would be as well for you to rest this afternoon. I will meet you for dinner. And then we will plan our activities for tomorrow.”

  “What activities? Look, Mario, I came here on a specific mission, and Curmudgeon said it was of the highest priority.”

  “Ah, Curmudgeon,” said Mario, shrugging easily. He took a nail-clipper from his pocket, signaled for the check and began manicuring his already perfect nails. “At Headquarters what do they know of us in the field, eh? You are doing very well, Hake. There is no need to try to impress the home office with your diligence. In our work it is always essential to move with precise knowledge, according to a plan. Speed? Yes, sometimes. But caution and precision, always.”

  “But—”

  “Hush!” Mario gestured at the waiter, coming to bear away check and credit card. “Have the goodness to postpone this conversation to a more opportune time,” he said coldly. Then he dropped his napkin—on purpose, as it appeared to Hake—and bent down to retrieve it. There was a quiet but definite sputtering sound from under the table. The lights went out, and Mario sat up, rubbing his fingers.

  Hake stared. “Mario! What the hell did you do?”

  “I warn you again, Hake, not here! Have they taught you nothing in Texas?” Mario whispered furiously. They sat in angry silence until the waiter returned, carrying check and card, his expression embarrassed. Hake could not understand a word of the Italian, but the sense was clear enough. Due to this wholly unforeseeable interruption to the electricity, the computer was unable to process the credit card.

  Mario held his ha
nd up forgivingly. “Capisco,” he said. “Va bene. Ecco—due cento, tre cento, tre cento cinquenta, e basta. Ciao.”

  “Grazie, grazie, tanto, arrivederla,” said the waiter, clutching the wad of lire gratefully.

  And walking along the crowded street, on the short block back to the hotel, Mario said, “Yes, of course it was I. Why do you think I selected that table? There was an electric outlet beneath it for the cleaning. Have you not been taught, it is the little things that add up?”

  “And last night in the hotel. Did you do that, too?”

  “Of course I did, Hake. Both the electricity and the flooding. I wedged the lock in that room door, and when I left you I turned on their taps, just a trickle, with a washcloth stuffed in the drain. Were you not taught such things?”

  “Christ, no.” Hake thought silently for a moment. At the steps to the hotel he said, “You know, all that seems pretty chickenshit to me. You’re just annoying people. You’re not doing any real damage.”

  “I see! And that is not worthy of your efforts, Master American Spy? What a pity! But it is exactly this that we must do, on a small scale or large! The lit match in the mailbox. The phone off the hook. The emergency cord pulled in a tram at the rush hour. Each is tiny, but together they are great!” -

  “But I don’t see—”

  “But, but, but,” said Mario, “always there is a ‘but’! I have no time to explain these simple things to you, Hake. I have much to do. Go inside. Swim in the pool, meet some signorinas—you may take off your bracelet, and then you will see! And I will meet you tonight for dinner—and,” he twinkled, “perhaps I will have a surprise for you! Now go, I do not wish to be seen too often in your hotel.”

  But when they met later, Mario’s mood had changed again. He drove the three-wheeled Fiat-Idro vengefully along Capri’s narrow roads. After ten minutes of it, Hake asked, “Are you going to tell me what you’re angry about?”

  “Angry? I am not angry!” Mario snapped over the noise of the wind. And then, relenting, “Well, perhaps I am. I have had sad news. Dieter is in jail.”

  “That’s too bad,” Hake said, although in his heart he was not moved. “What’s he in for?”

  “For the usual thing, of course! For doing his job.”

  Mario drove in silence for some minutes, and then, surprisingly, his face cleared. Hake stared around to see why. They were passing through an olive grove, where crews of Ethiopian laborers were cutting down trees, stacking them and burning them. The smoke drifted unpleasantly across the road. It was a hot evening anyway; the wisps of steam from the Fiat’s exhaust vanished almost at once into the air, and the laborers were glistening with sweat. But Mario seemed pleased. “At least some things go well,” he said obscurely. “Now observe, we are almost there.”

  Their destination turned out to be an open-air trattoria on the brink of a precipice. They drove under a vine-covered arch, atop it a bright liquid-crystal sign that showed what looked like an ancient Roman peasant being shampooed with a huge fish. The name of the place was La Morte del Pescatore. Mario tossed the Fiat’s keys to a parking attendant, and led the way between tables and waiters to a banquette overlooking the cliff.

  And there, beaming at them, was Yosper.

  “Well, Hake!” he said, rising to shake hands from the meal he had not waited to start, “so we meet again! Are you surprised?”

  Hake sat down and spread his napkin on his lap before. he answered. When he had seen Yosper last it had been in Munich, along with Mario and Dieter and the other two young thugs who had accompanied him; and none of them had responded by word or hint to any of his overtures about the Team.

  “Not really,” he said at last.

  “Of course you weren’t,” Yosper agreed heartily. “I knew you understood we were part of the gang in Germany.”

  “Then why didn’t you say something?”

  “Oh, come on, Hake! Didn’t they teach you anything in Texas? All information is on a need to know basis, that’s doctrine. There was no need for you to know; you were doing fine without it. And declassifying is always contra-indicated when it might jeopardize a mission. Which it could have; who knew what you might take it into your head to do? The whole point of what you were doing was that you were a simple man of God, doing the Lord’s work in Europe. What better cover could you have than to believe it yourself?” He raised a hand to forestall Hake. “And then, of course,” he said, “that was just your first training mission. We all do a blind one first. That’s doctrine, too. Can’t expect special treatment, can you, Horny?”

  “Can Dieter expect special treatment?” Mario put in sullenly.

  “Oh, Mario, please. You know that Dieter will be taken care of. A few days, a we^k or two at the most—well have him out of there. Don’t we always?”

  “We don’t always get put in a Neapolitan jail,” Mario responded sulkily.

  “That’s enough.” There was a distinct silence, and then Yosper continued on sunnily, “Now, as I’m well ahead of you, why don’t you both order? There’s excellent seafood here. Though not, of course, local.”

  After a moment, Mario began ordering methodically from the most expensive items on the menu. He did not meet Yosper’s eyes, but the old man was only looking amused. Hake settled for a fritto misto and a salad, unwilling to load his stomach in the heat. When the waiter had gone, he said, “Is it all right to talk here?”

  “We have been, haven’t we? Don’t worry. Mario will let us know if anyone is pointing a microphone at us.”

  “Then let me tell you what I’ve done about our project. I told Mario that last night I found some interesting leads in the newspapers. This afternoon I went to the American Library and did a little research. There’s useful stuff. The most interesting is a new Islamic cult that preaches a return to purity, no intercourse with infidels, four wives to a man, instant divorce—for men, of course—and all the rest. Just like Mahmoud himself. It’s not here on Capri. It’s mostly in a place called Taormina, but there’s also a center in a town named Benevento. According to the map, that‘s up in the hills, not very far from Naples.”

  Yosper nodded judiciously, mopping up his salsa verde with a chunk of bread. “Yes, that sounds promising,” he conceded.

  “It sounds like just what I’m supposed to be looking for!” Hake corrected. “Or almost. I’m not sure that Curmudgeon wanted me to get involved with Islam. I got the impression that he was thinking more of some fundamentalist Christian sort of sect— What’s the matter?”

  Yosper had put down his bread and was scowling fiercely. “I don’t want to hear blasphemy,” he snapped.

  “What blasphemy? It’s the operation I’m assigned to, Yosper. My orders are—”

  “Fuck your orders, Hake! You are not going to despoil the word of God. Stay with your Mohammedans, who the hell cares about their false idols? Don’t mess with your sweet Redeemer!”

  “Now, wait a minute, Yosper. What do you think I’m doing here?”

  “Following orders!”

  “Whose orders?” Hake demanded hotly. “Yours? Curmudgeon’s? Or am I supposed to make up my own little trick-or-treat pranks like Mario, blowing fuses and setting fire to mailboxes?”

  “You are supposed to do what you’re told to do by the officer in charge, which in this case is me.”

  “But this mission—^” Hake stopped himself as the waiter approached, wheeling a table with a solid-alcohol lamp under a huge chrome bowl. By the time the waiter and the maitre d’ had finished collaborating on Mario’s fettuccine Alfredo, Hake had a grip on himself.

  “All right,” he said. “How about this? Suppose I found some Christian revivalist to preach abstinence, to cut the population down? I know it would be slow, but—”

  Mario chuckled. “In Italy?”

  “Yes, in Italy. Or anywhere. Perhaps it shouldn’t be abstinence but birth-control, or even homosexuality—”

  Mario was no longer laughing. “That’s not funny.”

  “I don’t
mean it to be funny!”

  “Then,” said Mario, “it’s funny. Grotesque, even. Not the homosexuality, but your bigoted, out-of-date attitude toward male love.” He had stopped eating, and the look on his face was hostility and wrath.

  Yosper intervened. “You two quit fighting,” he ordered. “Eat your dinner.” And after a moment he began a conversation with Mario in Italian.

  Hake ate in silence, averting his eyes from both of his table companions. They did not seem to mind. Their conversation appeared to be about the food, the wine, the models who moved around the restaurant displaying furs, jewels and bathing suits—about anything and everything that didn’t include Hake. It was a lot like it had been in Germany, and Hake was beginning to have a bad feeling. What was going on? Once again, the situation did not add up. The mission that had been top-priority urgent in Texas did not seem to matter at all on Capri. What was he carrying this time?

  For that matter, what was he doing in Italy at all? He did not fit into this expensive restaurant filled with the idle rich, or with the rich corrupt: Ex-oil sheiks in burnooses, black American dope kings, Calcutta slumlords and Eastern European film stars. Hake had not realized there was so much money in the world. Mario’s fettuccine cost as much as a week’s shopping at the A&P in Long Branch, and the bottle of Chateau Lafite he was washing it down with would have made a sizeable down payment on repainting the parsonage porch. Not just the money. Energy! He had become calloused to power-piggery, with all the jet fuel he had burned for the Team, but this! The illuminated sign outside the restaurant alone would have kept his heater going for weeks. And it was not even in good taste. The liquid crystal display showed a man in Roman peasant costume either trying to snap at a huge fish or trying to avoid it: the fish moved in toward his face, the man’s head bobbed away, and back and forth again.

  Yosper leaned over and said, “Got over your bad mood?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s a story behind that sign, you know.”