Frederick Pohl

by The Cool War

  long since worn off. His jaw and belly felt as if cattle had stampeded over them. He was exhausted—it had been a shock to him to find that it was still only nine o’clock at night by the time they reached the hotel—and he felt as if he were running a temperature. But the thing he was sickest of was the sound of Yosper’s voice. The old man was engaged in a lengthy debate with the waiter on what proportion of Parmesan cheese should go into the softer base in his scaloppine alia Vomero cordon bleu, and with the wine steward on whether the Lacrima Christi really came from the vineyards on Mount Vesuvius, or was something their bottiglieria cooked up out of grape husks and hydrochloric acid that afternoon.

  Hake ordered at random, wanting nothing more than to get it over and get to bed—and, as soon as possible, back to Long Branch, New Jersey. When Yosper tried to guide him to a specialty of the house, he snarled, “Anything! I don’t care. I didn’t come here to spend the taxpayers’ money on gin mills!”

  Yosper gave him a level stare and sent the waiter away. When he was gone, the old man said, “Hake, two things you should remember. First, you don’t talk about working for the government when anybody you don’t know is listening. Second, this isn’t costing the taxpayers a dime. Not ours, anyway. Dieter, who are we sticking with this one?”

  “I was going to use my Barclay card,” the Dutch boy said. “It goes to KLM.”

  Yosper nodded, grinning. “That gets charged to the airline, who charge it to a special account that turns out to be unauditable funds for the Dutch spooks. There’s no way they’ll trace it to us. Let’s see, on Capri I think we used the Banco di Milano credit, which goes through the Italian hydroelectric syndicate to their Air Force Intelligence. You know how to handle the computers, you can get anything you want—and the enemy pays for it! So eat hearty, boy. Every lira you spend takes one away from the other side.”

  He paused, and said to Dietrich, “That reminds me. Will you check on that other matter?” The boy nodded and slipped away, as the waiter came back with platters of raw vegetables and antipasto.

  Chewing the crunchy celery and hearts of palm turned out to be an ordeal for Hake. Half of his molars felt loose in their sockets, and protested the force of his jaw. He ate sullenly, doggedly, staring out across the gentle bay. With the festooned lights of the cruise ships at the docks, the cars along the waterfront, the distant villas on the Portici and Torre del Greco shore it was both lovely and awful— so terrible a waste of energy that he could not understand why it was tolerated, or how it failed to sink the Italian economy. To be sure, the farms and peasant villages were practicing stricter economies than anything in New Jersey, he knew. But that made this prodigious waste even more immoral. There *vas something very sick in the world he lived in. And if the healers, or the people who thought they were healing it, were all like Yosper, what hope was there for even survival? The old man was holding forth on religion again. It was God’s plan for the world, he was saying, that the righteous should survive and conquer; and the words beat against Hake’s inner thoughts confusingly. Then he did a double take on a phrase of Yosper’s and demanded, “What did you say?”

  “You should pay attention,” Mario said accusingly. “Yosper is a great man and he saved your life.”

  The old man patted Mario’s arm tolerantly. “I was saying that I don’t hold with Darwin.”

  Hake goggled. It was exactly as if he had said he thought the earth was flat. “But— But you just said you thought the fittest should survive.”

  “I said the righteous, Hake, but I’ll agree it’s the same thing. God gives us the strength to do His will. But that’s nothing to do with your Darwin. It’s against the Bible, so it’s wrong; that’s all there is to it. And,” he added, warming up, “if you look at the whole picture with the eyes of understanding, you see it’s against science, tool Real science, Hake. Commonsense science. Darwin just doesn’t add up. Heaven’s name, boy, just open your eyes to the marvelous world we live in! Electric eels. Hummingbirds. Desert seeds that are smart enough to pay no attention to a shower, but sprout for a real rain—are you telling me that all happened by chancel No, boy. Your Mister Dar-

  win just can’t cut it. Just look at your own eye. Your Mister Darwin says some pollywog sixteen billion years ago started out with some scales on its skin that responded to light, am I correct? And am I supposed to believe that for all those years it just kept on trying to turn those scales into something that’ll read a book, or watch a TV screen, and turn with the most beautifully designed muscles and nerves you ever saw, and weep, and magnify, and— Why, your scientists can’t even build a machine as sensitive as the human eye! And you want me to believe all that happened by chance, starting from some fish’s scales? That’s as crazy as— Wait a minute.”

  Dieter had come back, followed by a waiter bearing a telephone. While the instrument was being plugged in the Dutch boy whispered in Yosper’s ear. “Uh-huh,” said Yosper, looking satisfied. “Well, let’s drop this argument, as it’s making our friend uncomfortable. I think that wine’s breathed about long enough now, let’s get the waiter to pour it”

  Hake shook his head unbelievingly. But what was the use? His chicken Marsala was arriving; he waited impatiently for the waiter to finish boning it before his eyes, and then ate swiftly. “I don’t want any dessert,” he said, finished while the others were still savoring the best parts of their meals. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Sure,” said Yosper hospitably. “You’ve had a rough day. Let’s get straight about tomorrow, though. You’re on an eight a.m. flight to Leonardo da Vinci. When you get there, go in to the depot in Rome, the place where you got your clothes on the way down here. They’ll fix you up with the right documents and tickets; i think it’s a two p.m. flight to New York—you’ll sleep tomorrow night in your own bed—but they’ll straighten all that out for you. Leave a call for six. Mario’ll pick you up at six-thirty and take you to the airport.”

  “I will have a coffee sent up to you before we leave,” Mario said agreeably. “If you wish something more before your flight, we can get it after you check in at Capodichino.”

  Hake stood listening. And fidgeting. His instincts wanted to say something his mouth was reluctant to speak. Finally he managed to say, “Anyway, thank you. All of you. I guess you did get me out of a tight place.”

  “No more than was coming to you, dear boy. You were a great help to us. Your nut-lady and the wogs were a considerable annoyance, and now they’re taken care of.”

  “But they got away!”

  “The wogs did, yes. But that’s not all bad, Hake. They are an unpleasant pair, and catching them is like catching rattlesnakes in a net. Besides, dear boy, it’s nothing personal with them. I didn’t want to punish them. You don’t punish a bomb, you just make sure it doesn’t blow you up.”

  They were all smiling at him, Yosper still eating, the boys leaning back and holding hands. Hake waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t. He said tightly, “The girl got away too.”

  “Not far, boy,” said Yosper pleasantly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Yosper sighed. “Well, let’s see if we can find out,” he said, and picked up the phone. He spoke for a few seconds in a language Hake did not know and then put it down, beaming. “She’s in Regina Coeli right now, Hake. She’ll be out of circulation for a while.”

  “Jail? For what? She didn’t break any law here!”

  Yosper shook his head, chuckling. “She broke the most basic law of the land. You see, her little bunch of amateurs pulls the same trick we do, only they’re not as good at it. She was operating on forged identity and credit. But once we tracked her down to the Pescatore and dear Mario turned her room—why, we knew what she was using. The rest of it was easy. We blew her credit. She got as far as Rome, and they picked her up for using phony cards. She’s a bankrupt, Hake. They’ll auction her off in the Rome slave market to pay her bills. It’ll be a good long time before she bothers us again.” />
  Twenty-one hours later Hake jumped out of a taxi on the Trastevere side of the Ponte Sant’Angelo. He had not wasted his time in Rome. The training Under the Wire, and the on-the-job skills he had acquired in the last few days, had all found a use. From the Team’s safe depot in Rome he had secured his new passport and his return ticket to America, along with a few items of standard equipment he had requisitioned on the spot—one of them being the inks and papers to change his ticket, and the cards to finance a few extracurricular activities. The rest of the day had been spent finding out what he needed to know. He set his walking stick and “satchel” on the sidewalk under the looming layer-cake of Hadrian’s Tomb and paid the driver carefully, adding coins according to volume and pitch. When the words dwindled away and the tone dropped back down to tenor he turned away, picked up his gear and crossed to the parapet near the bridge. The Tiber River at that point was a gently meandering stream, between grassy banks, here widening into a pool, there narrow and swift. It did not look artificial. It looked as if it had been there forever.

  “Siete pescatore?” Hake had not noticed the approach of the Roman policeman. “Pesce,” the man repeated, demonstrating a rod and line with his electric baton. “Feesh? You feesh? Have license?”

  “Oh,” said Hake, enlightened. “No, I’m not going to fish. No fish. Just look. Voyeur.”

  “Ah, paura” said the patrolman in sympathy, touching Hake’s shoulder before moving on. Hake leaned idly on the balustrade, giving the policeman time to get out of sight. It was true, what he had been talking about. There were anglers on the Ponte Sant’Angelo, dangling hooks into the stream as it flowed under the bridge, even at this hour. And in the stream itself, elderly women in hip-length waders were whipping the shallows with fly rods. Hake could not see whether they were catching anything. But he wished them luck, for it took their attention off him.

  He walked quickly twenty yards out onto the bridge and there, just as the map from the depot had said, was an iron disk set in the sidewalk. Using the walking stick as a crowbar he levered the cover off and peered in. It was totally dark, and it stank. That was as expected, too, if not very attractive. He dropped the knapsack in and heard it hit a cement landing a few yards down; he followed, climbing down a slippery metal ladder and lowering the cover back into place above him.

  As soon as it was closed the stench became abominable, and the absence of light was total.

  He was in Rome’s greatest and oldest sewer. Was the Tiber polluted? Va bene! Roof it over. Let it fulfill its function! And now the river was in fact a sewer. It rolled under a grassed and gardened parkland strip with a new, and artificial, stream running its length to justify the maps and the bridges. Waste disposal was benefited. Esthetic appeal was maintained. And la cloaca maxima nuova flowed untroubled to the sea.

  Untroubled? Yes, perhaps, but not untroubling. The stink was at least of an order of magnitude worse than anything Hake had previously experienced in his life. Hastily he fumbled around on the slimy cement to find the knapsack, located the ripcord and popped it open. It made a sharp rush of sound, like a tire abruptly going flat, and unfolded itself. In ten seconds it had sprouted prow and stern, stretching itself into the form of a kayak. He fumbled around to orient himself and found what he was looking for. Inside the well for the paddler was a plastic pouch which, opened, produced flashlight, folded paddle and a breathing mask.

  When Hake had the mask on, he took the first full breath he had allowed himself since entering the manhole. It was bearable. Barely bearable. It was like being downwind of an ill-kept abattoir, where before it had been like being one of the beeves.

  He thumbed the light on and looked about him. The Tiber water did not look bad. Things were floating in it, and the stench was undeniable, but it looked, actually, merely cool and wet—until he held the light at arm’s length out away from the cement landing, and saw the oily iridescence shining up. The roof was steelwork with a courtesy patching of plaster, most of which had peeled away. Under it the river moved more briskly than it appeared. When Hake was in the kayak he found that paddling was hard work.

  It would have been intelligent, he realized, to have let himself in upstream of his destination, rather than down. He had not been that intelligent. Each stroke moved him a yard forward, and while he was bringing the paddle up for the next stroke the current slid him a foot back. It was complicated by the need to change sides from time to time, and still more by the fact that he had to use care; he did not want the sewer sloshing over into the kayak, because the smell would be certain to make him conspicuous where he was going. Even so, he could not avoid a certain amount of dripping. Within a minute he had begun to sweat, and no more than two or three minutes later he was panting for breath. If there had been anything to Leota’s talk about hypnotism, he thought grimly, he could have used a little of the trance state now. Anything—anything that would take his mind off the smell, and the heat, and the fatigue that was beginning to burn his already sore muscles.

  He had expected it to take ten minutes to paddle the four hundred yards up the underground Tiber. It took half an hour, and by the time he found the landing he was looking for he was spent. Stench or none, he pulled the mask off to allow his lungs more air.

  But he was there. He was under the great pavilion that had been built to straddle the river, for music and dance and other special functions. And if his information was correct, Leota was somewhere overhead.

  There was a lock on the door but once again the training Under the Wire proved itself. He was through it in a minute, emerging into a steel-staired cement shaft. After climbing six short flights he found a door and, opening it quickly, slipped through.

  He was in a round chamber, not very large, that looked like a surgical amphitheater. The center was a sort of pit, like an orchestra hall set up for a pops concert. It was surrounded by circular, rising tiers of benches; and for some reason it looked reminiscent. But not familiar. Scattered around the pit were cloth-draped wooden stands, like the ones animal trainers use to put their lions through their paces, but they were not occupied. He had cut it close, but the auction had not yet begun. A few dozen persons were strolling about the pit, others seated on the benches above. Waiters in smoking jackets and waitresses in tiny cocktail skirts were passing among them with trays of wine and orange juice, and no one had observed him as he entered. He reached for a glass at random and realized what non-memory had been trying to assert itself as he tasted the orange. The place was exactly as he had imagined Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to be. A woman in a long dress and corsage approached him. “II programma, signore?” He took the program and thanked her, and then, when it appeared more was expected, gave her a hundred-lire tip. She was looking at him curiously, and he turned away as if urgently in need of a place to set down his orange-juice glass.

  Half the crowd on the floor seemed to be Western businessperson types, both male and female. The others wore burnooses, a few dashikis, and Hake caught phrases of old, familiar tongues. He did not pause to listen. He felt out of place, and was anxious to avoid attracting attention. The sunglasses covered his two still black eyes, but the bruises on his face were visible and he was aware that he carried with him a faint smell of the sewer. He was also younger than almost any of the other men, and far less expensively dressed. But as he looked closer he revised his opinion. It would not be easy to be out of place in this group, they were too disparate among themselves. The sheiks were not all Arab, and probably not sheiks. Hake recognized Bedouin and Turk as well as the familiar Palestinian and Lebanese of his childhood. Some of them were black, and broader-featured than any of those—perhaps Sudanese, perhaps anything at all. Or anything that had money. That was the unifying characteristic of them all, whether they wore burnoose or open-necked sports shirt, or, like the woman who snapped at Hake in French when he bumped into her, a velvet pants suit. Some of them were worse dressed than Hake. But there was about them an air that said that, if so, it was because they chose to be
; and they all had the look of persons who acquired what they liked.

  Hake reached out for another glass—this time making sure that it was wine, not a fruit juice, that it contained— and retired to the edge of the pit to study the programma. It was not exactly a program. It was more like a catalogue. A soft, matte-paper cover enclosed a four-page, neatly photocopied listing of the fifteen indentured credit-fraud criminals who were to be sold off that evening.

  He had taken an Italian-language copy of the insert, which perhaps was why the program-vender had looked at him that way. Leota’s name was not on the list. Well, of course, it wouldn’t be. He searched carefully and decided that Joanna Sailtops, signorina di 26 anni, degli Stati Uniti, L2 265 000 must be she. And if the two-million-lire-plus figure represented her selling price, it would be well within the limits of the credit cards he had forged.

  There was nothing else in the insert that seemed helpful, but inside the matte cover was some material repeated in eight languages, including French and German and Japanese, but also in English and Arabic. They all said the same thing, and were descriptions of the conditions of sale. The contract conformed to Italian law, which meant, at least, that Leota would be somewhere in Italy until it expired; outside, it automatically went void. Each of these persons had pleaded guilty to credit fraud and accepted indentured service in lieu of prison terms. Proceeds of sale would go to repay the losses sustained, and to post bonds; a percentage was deducted to cover the expenses of the State in the conduct of the trial and the auction. Each person was fully guaranteed against any permanent damage. Each had been given a full medical examination that afternoon and the records would be kept; a similar examination would be performed upon conclusion of the term of service, and if any lasting harm had been inflicted the indentured person would have the right of suing for damages, as well as a possible criminal action against the purchaser. It was not quite slavery, Hake conceded to himself. But close enough, close enough.