(3/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume III: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  She said, sweetly, "The better to ensnare you, my dear."

  But as she spoke, for just a moment her thick woolly mind shield thinned out enough for me to catch a strange, puzzled grasp for understanding. As if for the first time she had been shown how admiration for physical attractiveness could be both honest and good. That my repugnant attitude over her Pittsburgh stogies was not so much based upon the spoiling of beauty by the addition of ugliness, but the fact that the act itself cheapened her in my eyes.

  Then she caught me peeking and clamped down a mind screen that made the old so-called "Iron Curtain" resemble a rusty sieve.

  "I'm the one that's supposed to keep track of you, you remember," she said, once more covering up and leaping mentally to the attack.

  "I'll remember," I said. "But will you tell me something?"

  "Maybe," she said in a veiled attitude.

  "Is your boy friend really interested in cleaning up, or is he interested in watching me squirm out of a trap he set for me?"

  "In the first place," she said, "I may have been seen in Barcelona's presence but please remember that my association with Mr. Joseph Barcelona has always been strictly on a financial plane. This eliminates the inference contained under the phrase 'Boy Friend.' Check?"

  "O.K., Tomboy, if that's the--"

  "That's not only the way I want it," she said, "but that's the way it always has been and always will be. Second, I have been getting tired of this nickname 'Tomboy'. If we're going to be racked this close together, you'll grate on my nerves less if you use my right name. It's just plain 'Nora' but I'd like to hear it once in a while."

  I nodded soberly. I held out a hand but she put her empty highball glass in it instead of her own little paw. I shrugged and mixed and when I returned and handed it to her I said, "I'll make you a deal. I'll call you 'Nora' just so long as you maintain the manners and attitude of a female, feminine, lady-type woman. I'll treat you like a woman, but you've got to earn it. Is that a deal?"

  She looked at me, her expression shy and as defenseless as a bruiser-type caught reading sentimental poetry. I perceived that I had again touched a sensitive spot by demanding that she be more than physically spectacular. Her defenses went down and I saw that she really did not know the answer to my question. I did. It had to do with something that only the achievement of a God-like state--or extreme old age--would change.

  This time it was not so much the answer to why little boys walk high fences in front of little girls. It had much more to do with the result of what happens between little boys when the little girl hides her baseball bat and straightens the seams of her stockings when one certain little boy comes into sight. Joseph Barcelona did not admire my ability. He had, therefore, caused me to back myself into a corner where I'd be taken down a peg, shown-up as a second-rater--with the little girl as a witness.

  And why had Barcelona been so brash as to send the little girl into my company in order for her to witness my downfall?

  Let me tell you about Joe Barcelona.

  * * * * *

  Normally honest citizens often complain that Barcelona is living high off'n the hawg instead of slugging it out in residence at Stateville, Joliet, Illinois.

  With their straight-line approach to simple logic, these citizens argue that the advent of telepathy should have rendered the falsehood impossible, and that perception should enable anybody with half a talent to uncover hidden evidence. Then since Mr. Joseph Barcelona is obviously not languishing in jail, it is patent that the police are not making full use of their talented extrasensory operators, nor the evidence thus collected.

  And then after having argued thus, our upstanding citizen will fire off a fast thought to his wife and ask her to invite the neighbors over that evening for a game of bridge.

  None of these simple-type of logicians seem to be aware of the rules for bridge or poker that were in force prior to extrasensory training courses. Since no one recognized psionics, the rules did not take telepathy, perception, manipulation, into any consideration whatsoever. Psionics hadn't done away with anything including the old shell game. All psionics had done was to make the game of chance into a game of skill, and made the game of skill into a game of talent that required better control and longer training in order to gain full proficiency.

  In Barcelona's case, he had achieved his own apparent immunity by surrounding himself with a number of hirelings who drew a handsome salary for sitting around thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts, jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat. Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady in the middle of a sawmill working on an order three days late under a high priority and a penalty clause for delayed delivery.

  People who wonder how Barcelona can think for himself with all of that terrific mental racket going on do not know that Barcelona is one of those very rare birds who can really concentrate to the whole exclusion of any distraction short of a vigorous threat to his physical well-being.

  And so his trick of sending Nora Taylor served a threefold purpose. It indicated his contempt for me. It removed Nora from his zone of interference so that she could really witness firsthand my mental squirmings as I watched my own comeuppance bearing down on me. It also gave him double the telepathic contact with me and my counter-plans--if any.

  In the latter, you see, Barcelona's way of collecting outside information was to order a temporary cease-fire of the mental noise barrage and then he'd sally forth like a one-man mental commando raid to make a fast grab for what he wanted. Since the best of telepaths cannot read a man's opinion of prunes when he's thinking of peanuts, it is necessary for someone to be thinking of the subject he wants when he makes his raid. Having two in the know and interested doubled his chance for success.

  There was also the possibility that Barcelona might consider his deliberate "Leak" to Gimpy Gordon ineffective. Most sensible folks are disinclined to treat Gimpy's delusions of grandeur seriously despite the truth of the cliché that states that a one-to-one correspondence does indeed exist between the perception of smoke and the existence of pyrotic activity. Nora Taylor would add some certification to the rumor. One thing simply had to be: There must be no mistake about placing information in Lieutenant Delancey's hands so as to create the other jaw of the pincers that I was going to be forced to close upon myself.

  * * * * *

  I tried a gentle poke in the general direction of Barcelona and found that the mental noise was too much to stand. I withdrew just a bit and closed down the opening until the racket was no more than a mental rumor, and I waited. I hunched that Barcelona would be curious to know how his contact-girl was making out, and might be holding a cease-fire early in this phase of the operation. I was right.

  The noise diminished with the suddenness of turning off a mental switch, and as it stopped I went in and practically popped Barcelona on the noodle with:

  "How-de-do, Joseph."

  He recoiled at the unexpected thrust, but came back with: "Wally Wilson! Got a minute?"

  I looked at the calendar, counted off the days to Derby Day in my mind and told him that I had that long--at the very least and probably much, much longer.

  "Thinks you!"

  "Methinks," I replied.

  "Wally boy," he returned, "you aren't playing this very smart."

  "Suppose you tell me how you'd be playing it," I bounced back at him. "Tell you how I have erred?"

  He went vague on me. "If I were of a suspicious nature, I would begin to wonder about certain connective events. For instance, let's hypothecate. Let's say that a certain prominent bookmaker had been suspected of planning to put a fix on a certain important horse race, but of course nothing could be proved. Now from another source we suddenly discover strong evidence to suggest that this
bookmaker is not accepting wagers on the horses he is backing, but conversely is busy laying wagers on the same nags through the help of a rather inept go-between."

  I grunted aloud which caused Nora Taylor to look up in surprise. I was tempted to say it aloud but I did not. I thought:

  "In simple terms, Joseph, you are miffed because I will not cover your bets."

  "I thought nothing of the sort."

  "Let's hedge? I love you too, Joseph."

  "Well, are you or aren't you?"

  "Are I what? Going to top the frosting by financing your little scheme to put the pinch on me?"

  "Now, Wally--"

  "Can it, Joseph. We're both big boys now and we both know what the score is. You know and I know that the first time I or one of my boys takes a bet on any one of the three turtles you like, the guy who laid the bet is going to slip the word to one of your outside men. And you're going to leap to the strange conclusion that if Wally Wilson is accepting bets against his own fix, he must know something exceedingly interesting."

  "Now, who's been saying anything about a fix, Wally?"

  "The people," I thought bluntly, "who have most recently been associated with your clever kind of operator."

  "That isn't very nice, Wally."

  If it had been a telephone conversation, I'd have slammed the telephone on him. The mealymouthed louse and his hypocritical gab was making me mad--and I knew that he was making me mad simply to make me lose control of my blanket. I couldn't stop it, so I let my anger out by thinking:

  "You think you are clever because you're slipping through sly little loopholes, Joseph. I'm going to show you how neat it is to get everything I want including your grudging admission of defeat by the process of making use of the laws and rules that work in my favor."

  "You're a wise guy," he hurled back at me.

  "I'm real clever, Barcelona. And I'm big enough to face you, even though Phil Howland, The Greek, and Chicago Charlie make like cold clams at the mention of your name."

  "Why, you punk--"

  "Go away, Barcelona. Go away before I make up my mind to make you eat it."

  I turned to Nora Taylor and regarded her charms and attractions both physical and mental with open and glowing admiration. It had the precalculated result and it wouldn't have been a whit different if I'd filed a declaration of intent and forced her to read it first.

  It even satisfied my ambient curiosity about what a telepathed grinding of the teeth in frustrated anger would transmit as. And when it managed to occur to an unemployed thought-center of my brain that the lines of battle were soft and sweetly curved indeed, Joseph Barcelona couldn't stand it any more. He just gave a mental sigh and signaled for the noisemakers to shut him off from contact.

  * * * * *

  Derby Day, the First Saturday in May, dawned warm and clear with a fast, dry track forecast for post time. The doorbell woke me up and I dredged my apartment to identify Nora fiddling in my two-bit kitchen with ham and eggs. Outside it was Lieutenant Delancey practising kinematics by pressing the button with a levitated pencil instead of shoving on the thing directly. (I'd changed the combination on the mindwarden at Nora's suggestion.)

  As I struggled out of bed, Nora flashed, "You get it, Wally," at me. She was busy manipulating the ham slicer and the coffee percolator and floating more eggs from the refrigerator. The invitation and the acceptance for and of breakfast was still floating in the mental atmosphere heavy enough to smell the coffee.

  I replied to both of them, "If he can't get in, let him go hungry."

  Lieutenant Delancey manipulated the door after I'd reset the mindwarden for him. He came in with a loud verbal greeting that Nora answered by a call from the kitchen. I couldn't hear them because I was in the shower by that time. However, I did ask, "What gives, lieutenant?"

  "It's Derby Day."

  "Yeah. So what?"

  "Going to watch it from here?" he thought incredulously.

  "Why not? Be a big jam down there."

  "I've a box," he said.

  "No ... how--?"

  "Both the Derby Association and the Chicago Police Force have assigned me to protect you from the evil doings of sinners," he said with a chuckle. "And I suggested that the best way of keeping an official eye on you was to visit you at the scene of the alleged intended crime and to serve that end they provided me with a box where we can all be together."

  I tossed, "And if we do not elect to go to Kentucky?"

  He chuckled again. "Then I shall have to arrest you."

  "For what?"

  "There is an old law in the City Statute that declares something called 'Massive Cohabitation' to be illegal. You have been naughty, Wally."

  Nora exploded. "We have not!" she cried.

  Lieutenant Delancey laughed like a stage villain. "The law I mention," he said after a bit of belly-laughing, "was passed long, long ago before telepathy and perception were available to provide the truth. At that time the law took the stand that any unmarried couple living together would take advantage of their unchaperoned freedom, and if this state of cohabitation went on for a considerable length of time--called 'Massive' but don't ask me to justify the term--the probability of their taking pleasure in one another's company approached a one hundred per cent positive probability.

  "Now this law was never amended by the Review Act. Hence the fact that you have been chastely occupying separate chambers has nothing to do with the letter of the law that says simply that it is not lawful for an unmarried couple to live under the same unchaperoned roof."

  I came out of the shower toweling myself and manipulating a selection of clean clothing out of the closet in my bedroom.

  "The law," I observed, "is administered by the Intent of the Law, and not by the Letter, isn't it?"

  "Oh, sure," he said. "But I'm not qualified to interpret the law. I'll arrest you and bring you to trial and then it's up to some judge to rule upon your purity and innocence of criminal intent, and freedom from moral taint or turpitude. Maybe take weeks, you know."

  "And what's the alternative?" I grunted.

  "Flight," he said in a sinister tone as I came out of my bedroom putting the last finishes on my necktie. "Flight away from the jurisdiction of the law that proposes to warp the meaning of the law to accomplish its own ends."

  "And you?"

  "My duty," he grinned, "is to pursue you."

  "In which case," observed Nora Taylor, "we might as well fly together and save both time and money."

  "That is why I have my personal sky-buggy all ready to go instead of requisitioning an official vehicle," he said. He scooped a fork full of eggs and said, "You're a fool, Wally. The lady can cook."

  I chuckled. "And what would happen if I hauled off and married her?"

  "You mean right here and now?"

  "Yes."

  "Sorry. I'd have to restrain you. You see, you couldn't get a legal license nor go through any of the other legal activities, ergo there would be a prima facie illegality about some part of the ceremony. Without being definite as to which phase, I would find it my duty to restrain you from indulging in any act the consummation of which would be illegal."

  Nora said in pseudo-petulant tone, "I've been damned with very faint praise."

  "How so?"

  "Wally Wilson has just said that he'd rather marry me than go to the Kentucky Derby with you."

  Lieutenant Delancey said, "I urge you both to come along. You see, my box is also being occupied by an old friend of yours. I managed to talk him into joining us, and with reluctance he consented."

  "I'm a mind reader," I said. "Our friend's name is Joseph Barcelona?"

  "As they say on the space radio, 'Aye-firm, over and out!'"

  * * * * *

  Barcelona was there with two of his boys. Watching them were four ununiformed officers. Nora and I and the lieutenant were joined later by Gimpy Gordon, who might have been radiating childlike wonder and a circus-air of excitement at actually being at the Derby.
He might have been. No one could cut through the constant, maddening mental blah-blah-blah that was being churned out by Barcelona's noisemakers.

  He greeted me curtly, eyed Nora hungrily. He said: "You look pretty confident, Wilson."

  "I can't lose," I said.

  "No? Frankly I don't see how you can win."

  I smiled. "Without mentioning any names, Joseph, I feel confident that the final outcome of this racing contest will be just as you want it to be. I shall ask that no credit be given me, although I shall be greatly admired by our mutual friend Miss Nora Taylor who will think that I am truly wonderful for making you happy. And it is more than likely that she may marry me once I have shown you, and she, and Lieutenant Delancey, that I am a law-abiding citizen as well as a man who values friendship enough to do as his old pal Joe Barcelona desires."

  "It's going to be one of the neatest tricks of the week," he said.

  "It will be done by the proper application of laws," I said modestly.

  Behind us, Gimpy Gordon light-fingered a half dollar out of Delancey's pocket and was attracting the attention of a hot dog peddler by waving his program. Some folks nearby were eying Barcelona's noisemakers angrily but making very little visible protest once they identified him. Nora was reading her program and underlining some horses. The whole place began to grow into a strange excited silence as the track board began to go up. It was to be a nine-horse race, and at the top of the list were three--count them--three odds-on favorites:

  1. Murdoch's Hoard 1:2 2. Mewhu's Jet 3:5 3. Johnny Brack 5:7 4. Piper's Son 8:5 5. Daymare 3:1 6. Helen O'Loy 8:1

  And then, of course, there were our three mud turtles which must have been entered by someone who thought that the Kentucky Derby was a claiming race and who hoped that the LePage's Glue people would make a bid for the three mounds of thoroughbred horseflesh that dropped dead in the backstretch: