Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol XII

by Various

  I thought of the telephone.

  On the off-chance that it might work, I picked it up. Amazing, a voice from the desk answered.

  I crossed my fingers and said: "Room service?"

  And the voice answered amiably enough: "Hold on, buddy. I'll see if they answer."

  Clicking and a good long wait. Then a new voice said: "Whaddya want?"

  There was no sense pressing my luck by asking for anything like a complete meal. I would be lucky if I got a sandwich.

  I said: "Please, may I have a Spam sandwich on Rye Krisp and some coffee for Room Fifteen Forty-one?"

  "Please, you go to hell!" the voice snarled. "What do you think this is, some damn delicatessen? You want liquor, we'll get you liquor. That's what room service is for!"

  * * * * *

  I hung up. What was the use of arguing? Arthur was clacking peevishly:

  WHATS THE MATTER SAM YOU THINKING OF YOUR BELLY AGAIN Q Q

  "You would be if you--" I started, and then I stopped. Arthur's feelings were delicate enough already. I mean suppose that all you had left of what you were born with was a brain in a kind of sardine can, wouldn't you be sensitive? Well, Arthur was more sensitive than you would be, believe me. Of course, it was his own foolish fault--I mean you don't get a prosthetic tank unless you die by accident, or something like that, because if it's disease they usually can't save even the brain.

  The phone rang again.

  It was the desk clerk. "Say, did you get what you wanted?" he asked chummily.

  "No."

  "Oh. Too bad," he said, but cheerfully. "Listen, buddy, I forgot to tell you before. That Miss Engdahl you were expecting, she's on her way up."

  I dropped the phone onto the cradle.

  "Arthur!" I yelled. "Keep quiet for a while--trouble!"

  He clacked once, and the typewriter shut itself off. I jumped for the door of the bathroom, cursing the fact that I didn't have cartridges for the gun. Still, empty or not, it would have to do.

  I ducked behind the bathroom door, in the shadows, covering the hall door. Because there were two things wrong with what the desk clerk had told me. Vern Engdahl wasn't a "miss," to begin with; and whatever name he used when he came to call on me, it wouldn't be Vern Engdahl.

  There was a knock on the door. I called: "Come in!"

  The door opened and the girl who called herself Vern Engdahl came in slowly, looking around. I stayed quiet and out of sight until she was all the way in. She didn't seem to be armed; there wasn't anyone with her.

  I stepped out, holding the gun on her. Her eyes opened wide and she seemed about to turn.

  "Hold it! Come on in, you. Close the door!"

  She did. She looked as though she were expecting me. I looked her over--medium pretty, not very tall, not very plump, not very old. I'd have guessed twenty or so, but that's not my line of work; she could have been almost any age from seventeen on.

  The typewriter switched itself on and began to pound agitatedly. I crossed over toward her and paused to peer at what Arthur was yacking about: SEARCH HER YOU DAMN FOOL MAYBE SHES GOT A GUN

  I ordered: "Shut up, Arthur. I'm going to search her. You! Turn around!"

  * * * * *

  She shrugged and turned around, her hands in the air. Over her shoulder, she said: "You're taking this all wrong, Sam. I came here to make a deal with you."

  "Sure you did."

  But her knowing my name was a blow, too. I mean what was the use of all that sneaking around if people in New York were going to know we were here?

  I walked up close behind her and patted what there was to pat. There didn't seem to be a gun.

  "You tickle," she complained.

  I took her pocketbook away from her and went through it. No gun. A lot of money--an awful lot of money. I mean there must have been two or three hundred thousand dollars. There was nothing with a name on it in the pocketbook.

  She said: "Can I put my hands down, Sam?"

  "In a minute." I thought for a second and then decided to do it--you know, I just couldn't afford to take chances. I cleared my throat and ordered: "Take off your clothes."

  Her head jerked around and she stared at me. "What?"

  "Take them off. You heard me."

  "Now wait a minute--" she began dangerously.

  I said: "Do what I tell you, hear? How do I know you haven't got a knife tucked away?"

  She clenched her teeth. "Why, you dirty little man! What do you think--" Then she shrugged. She looked at me with contempt and said: "All right. What's the difference?"

  Well, there was a considerable difference. She began to unzip and unbutton and wriggle, and pretty soon she was standing there in her underwear, looking at me as though I were a two-headed worm. It was interesting, but kind of embarrassing. I could see Arthur's eye-stalk waving excitedly out of the opened suitcase.

  I picked up her skirt and blouse and shook them. I could feel myself blushing, and there didn't seem to be anything in them.

  I growled: "Okay, I guess that's enough. You can put your clothes back on now."

  "Gee, thanks," she said.

  She looked at me thoughtfully and then shook her head as if she'd never seen anything like me before and never hoped to again. Without another word, she began to get back into her clothes. I had to admire her poise. I mean she was perfectly calm about the whole thing. You'd have thought she was used to taking her clothes off in front of strange men.

  Well, for that matter, maybe she was; but it wasn't any of my business.

  * * * * *

  Arthur was clacking distractedly, but I didn't pay any attention to him. I demanded: "All right, now who are you and what do you want?"

  She pulled up a stocking and said: "You couldn't have asked me that in the first place, could you? I'm Vern Eng--"

  "Cut it out!"

  She stared at me. "I was only going to say I'm Vern Engdahl's partner. We've got a little business deal cooking and I wanted to talk to you about this proposition."

  Arthur squawked: WHATS ENGDAHL UP TO NOW Q Q SAM IM WARNING YOU I DONT LIKE THE LOOK OF THIS THIS WOMAN AND ENGDAHL ARE PROBABLY DOUBLECROSSING US

  I said: "All right, Arthur, relax. I'm taking care of things. Now start over, you. What's your name?"

  She finished putting on her shoe and stood up. "Amy."

  "Last name?"

  She shrugged and fished in her purse for a cigarette. "What does it matter? Mind if I sit down?"

  "Go ahead," I rumbled. "But don't stop talking!"

  "Oh," she said, "we've got plenty of time to straighten things out." She lit the cigarette and walked over to the chair by the window. On the way, she gave the luggage a good long look.

  Arthur's eyestalk cowered back into the suitcase as she came close. She winked at me, grinned, bent down and peered inside.

  "My," she said, "he's a nice shiny one, isn't he?"

  The typewriter began to clatter frantically. I didn't even bother to look; I told him: "Arthur, if you can't keep quiet, you have to expect people to know you're there."

  She sat down and crossed her legs. "Now then," she said. "Frankly, he's what I came to see you about. Vern told me you had a pross. I want to buy it."

  The typewriter thrashed its carriage back and forth furiously.

  "Arthur isn't for sale."

  "No?" She leaned back. "Vern's already sold me his interest, you know. And you don't really have any choice. You see, I'm in charge of materiel procurement for the Major. If you want to sell your share, fine. If you don't, why, we requisition it anyhow. Do you follow?"

  I was getting irritated--at Vern Engdahl, for whatever the hell he thought he was doing; but at her because she was handy. I shook my head.

  "Fifty thousand dollars? I mean for your interest?"

  "No."

  "Seventy-five?"

  "No!"

  "Oh, come on now. A hundred thousand?"

  It wasn't going to make any impression on her, but I tried to explain: "Arthur's a friend
of mine. He isn't for sale."

  * * * * *

  She shook her head. "What's the matter with you? Engdahl wasn't like this. He sold his interest for forty thousand and was glad to get it."

  Clatter-clatter-clatter from Arthur. I didn't blame him for having hurt feelings that time.

  Amy said in a discouraged tone: "Why can't people be reasonable? The Major doesn't like it when people aren't reasonable."

  I lowered the gun and cleared my throat. "He doesn't?" I asked, cuing her. I wanted to hear more about this Major, who seemed to have the city pretty well under his thumb.

  "No, he doesn't." She shook her head sorrowfully. She said in an accusing voice: "You out-of-towners don't know what it's like to try to run a city the size of New York. There are fifteen thousand people here, do you know that? It isn't one of your hick towns. And it's worry, worry, worry all the time, trying to keep things going."

  "I bet," I said sympathetically. "You're, uh, pretty close to the Major?"

  She said stiffly: "I'm not married to him, if that's what you mean. Though I've had my chances.... But you see how it is. Fifteen thousand people to run a place the size of New York! It's forty men to operate the power station, and twenty-five on the PX, and thirty on the hotel here. And then there are the local groceries, and the Army, and the Coast Guard, and the Air Force--though, really, that's only two men--and--Well, you get the picture."

  "I certainly do. Look, what kind of a guy is the Major?"

  She shrugged. "A guy."

  "I mean what does he like?"

  "Women, mostly," she said, her expression clouded. "Come on now. What about it?"

  I stalled. "What do you want Arthur for?"

  She gave me a disgusted look. "What do you think? To relieve the manpower shortage, naturally. There's more work than there are men. Now if the Major could just get hold of a couple of prosthetics, like this thing here, why, he could put them in the big installations. This one used to be an engineer or something, Vern said."

  "Well ... like an engineer."

  * * * * *

  Amy shrugged. "So why couldn't we connect him up with the power station? It's been done. The Major knows that--he was in the Pentagon when they switched all the aircraft warning net over from computer to prosthetic control. So why couldn't we do the same thing with our power station and release forty men for other assignments? This thing could work day, night, Sundays--what's the difference when you're just a brain in a sardine can?"

  Clatter-rattle-bang.

  She looked startled. "Oh. I forgot he was listening."

  "No deal," I said.

  She said: "A hundred and fifty thousand?"

  A hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I considered that for a while. Arthur clattered warningly.

  "Well," I temporized, "I'd have to be sure he was getting into good hands--"

  The typewriter thrashed wildly. The sheet of paper fluttered out of the carriage. He'd used it up. Automatically I picked it up--it was covered with imprecations, self-pity and threats--and started to put a new one in.

  "No," I said, bending over the typewriter, "I guess I couldn't sell him. It just wouldn't be right--"

  That was my mistake; it was the wrong time for me to say that, because I had taken my eyes off her.

  The room bent over and clouted me.

  I half turned, not more than a fraction conscious, and I saw this Amy girl, behind me, with the shoe still in her hand, raised to give me another blackjacking on the skull.

  The shoe came down, and it must have weighed more than it looked, and even the fractional bit of consciousness went crashing away.

  III

  I have to tell you about Vern Engdahl. We were all from the Sea Sprite, of course--me and Vern and even Arthur. The thing about Vern is that he was the lowest-ranking one of us all--only an electricians' mate third, I mean when anybody paid any attention to things like that--and yet he was pretty much doing the thinking for the rest of us. Coming to New York was his idea--he told us that was the only place we could get what we wanted.

  Well, as long as we were carrying Arthur along with us, we pretty much needed Vern, because he was the one who knew how to keep the lash-up going. You've got no idea what kind of pumps and plumbing go into a prosthetic tank until you've seen one opened up. And, naturally, Arthur didn't want any breakdowns without somebody around to fix things up.

  The Sea Sprite, maybe you know, was one of the old liquid-sodium-reactor subs--too slow for combat duty, but as big as a barn, so they made it a hospital ship. We were cruising deep when the missiles hit, and, of course, when we came up, there wasn't much for a hospital ship to do. I mean there isn't any sense fooling around with anybody who's taken a good deep breath of fallout.

  So we went back to Newport News to see what had happened. And we found out what had happened. And there wasn't anything much to do except pay off the crew and let them go. But us three stuck together. Why not? It wasn't as if we had any families to go back to any more.

  Vern just loved all this stuff--he'd been an Eagle Scout; maybe that had something to do with it--and he showed us how to boil drinking water and forage in the woods and all like that, because nobody in his right mind wanted to go near any kind of a town, until the cold weather set in, anyway. And it was always Vern, Vern, telling us what to do, ironing out our troubles.

  It worked out, except that there was this one thing. Vern had bright ideas. But he didn't always tell us what they were.

  So I wasn't so very surprised when I came to. I mean there I was, tied up, with this girl Amy standing over me, holding the gun like a club. Evidently she'd found out that there weren't any cartridges. And in a couple of minutes there was a knock on the door, and she yelled, "Come in," and in came Vern. And the man who was with him had to be somebody important, because there were eight or ten other men crowding in close behind.

  I didn't need to look at the oak leaves on his shoulders to realize that here was the chief, the fellow who ran this town, the Major.

  It was just the kind of thing Vern would do.

  * * * * *

  Vern said, with the look on his face that made strange officers wonder why this poor persecuted man had been forced to spend so much time in the brig: "Now, Major, I'm sure we can straighten all this out. Would you mind leaving me alone with my friend here for a moment?"

  The Major teetered on his heels, thinking. He was a tall, youngish-bald type, with a long, worried, horselike face. He said: "Ah, do you think we should?"

  "I guarantee there'll be no trouble, Major," Vern promised.

  The Major pulled at his little mustache. "Very well," he said. "Amy, you come along."

  "We'll be right here, Major," Vern said reassuringly, escorting him to the door.

  "You bet you will," said the Major, and tittered. "Ah, bring that gun along with you, Amy. And be sure this man knows that we have bullets."

  They closed the door. Arthur had been cowering in his suitcase, but now his eyestalk peeped out and the rattling and clattering from that typewriter sounded like the Battle of the Bulge.

  I demanded: "Come on, Vern. What's this all about?"

  Vern said: "How much did they offer you?"

  Clatter-bang-BANG. I peeked, and Arthur was saying: WARNED YOU SAM THAT ENGDAHL WAS UP TO TRICKS PLEASE SAM PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HIT HIM ON THE HEAD KNOCK HIM OUT HE MUST HAVE A GUN SO GET IT AND SHOOT OUR WAY OUT OF HERE

  "A hundred and fifty thousand dollars," I said.

  Vern looked outraged. "I only got forty!"

  Arthur clattered: VERN I APPEAL TO YOUR COMMON DECENCY WERE OLD SHIPMATES VERN REMEMBER ALL THE TIMES I

  "Still," Vern mused, "it's all common funds anyway, right? Arthur belongs to both of us."

  I DONT DONT DONT REPEAT DONT BELONG TO ANYBODY BUT ME

  "That's true," I said grudgingly. "But I carried him, remember."

  SAM WHATS THE MATTER WITH YOU Q Q I DONT LIKE THE EXPRESSION ON YOUR FACE LISTEN SAM YOU ARENT

  Vern said, "A
hundred and fifty thousand, remember."

  THINKING OF SELLING

  "And of course we couldn't get out of here," Vern pointed out. "They've got us surrounded."

  ME TO THESE RATS Q Q SAM VERN PLEASE DONT SCARE ME

  * * * * *

  I said, pointing to the fluttering paper in the rattling machine: "You're worrying our friend."

  Vern shrugged impatiently.

  I KNEW I SHOULDNT HAVE TRUSTED YOU, Arthur wept. THATS ALL I MEAN TO YOU EH

  Vern said: "Well, Sam? Let's take the cash and get this thing over with. After all, he will have the best of treatment."

  It was a little like selling your sister into white slavery, but what else was there to do? Besides, I kind of trusted Vern.

  "All right," I said.

  What Arthur said nearly scorched the paper.

  Vern helped pack Arthur up for moving. I mean it was just a matter of pulling the plugs out and making sure he had a fresh battery, but Vern wanted to supervise it himself. Because one of the little things Vern had up his sleeve was that he had found a spot for himself on the Major's payroll. He was now the official Prosthetic (Human) Maintenance Department Chief.

  The Major said to me: "Ah, Dunlap. What sort of experience have you had?"

  "Experience?"

  "In the Navy. Your friend Engdahl suggested you might want to join us here."

  "Oh. I see what you mean." I shook my head. "Nothing that would do you any good, I'm afraid. I was a yeoman."

  "Yeoman?"

  "Like a company clerk," I explained. "I mean I kept records and cut orders and made out reports and all like that."

  "Company clerk!" The eyes in the long horsy face gleamed. "Ah, you're mistaken, Dunlap! Why, that's just what we need. Our morning reports are in foul shape. Foul! Come over to HQ. Lieutenant Bankhead will give you a lift."

  "Lieutenant Bankhead?"

  I got an elbow in my ribs for that. It was that girl Amy, standing alongside me. "I," she said, "am Lieutenant Bankhead."

  Well, I went along with her, leaving Engdahl and Arthur behind. But I must admit I wasn't sure of my reception.