Now Wait For Last Year Part 14

So the reegs may have a cure, he thought. Would I go over to them to save my life? Kathy's life? I wonder. He did not really know.

Perhaps, he thought, I'll know after I undergo my first bout with the withdrawal symptoms. And, if not that, after I detect the first signs of neurological deterioration in my body.

It still dazed him that his wife had, just like that, addicted him. What hatred that showed. What enormous contempt for the value of life. But didn't he feel the same way? He remembered his initial discussion with Gino Molinari; his sentiments had emerged then and he had faced them. In the final a.n.a.lysis he felt as Kathy did. This was one great effect of war; the survival of one individual seemed trivial. So perhaps he could blame it on the war. That would make it easier.

But he knew better.

11.

On his way to the infirmary to turn over to Kathy her supply of the drug, he found himself facing, unbelievably, the slumped, ill figure of Gino Molinari. In his wheelchair the UN Secretary sat with his heavy wool rug over his knees, his eyes writhing like separate living things, pinning Eric into immobility.

"Your conapt was bugged," Molinari said. "Your conversation with Hazeltine and Bachis was picked up, recorded, and delivered in transcript form to me."

"So quickly?" Eric managed to say. Thank G.o.d he had made no reference to his own addiction.

"Get her out of here," Molinari moaned. "She's a 'Star fink; she'll do anything-I know. This has happened before." He was shaking. "As a matter of fact she's already out of here; my Secret Service men grabbed her and took her to the field, to a 'copter. So I don't know why I'm getting myself upset like this ... intellectually I know the situation's in hand."

"If you have a transcript you know that Miss Bachis already arranged for Kathy to-"

"I know! All right." Molinari panted for breath, his face unhealthy and raw; his skin hung in folds, dark, wrinkled wattles of loose flesh. "See how Lilistar operates? Using our own drug against us; it's just like the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, something they'd get a kick out of. We ought to drop it in their reservoirs. I let you in here and then you let your wife in; to obtain that c.r.a.p, that miserable drug, she'd be willing to do anything-a.s.sa.s.sinate me if they asked her to. I know everything there is to know about Frohedadrine; I'm the one who thought up the name. From the German Froh Froh, meaning joy, and the Latin heda- heda-, the root for pleasure. Drine Drine, of course-" He broke off, his swollen lips twitching. "I'm too sick to get agitated like this; I'm supposed to be recovering from that operation. Are you trying to heal me or kill me, doctor? Or do you know?" Are you trying to heal me or kill me, doctor? Or do you know?"

Eric said, "I don't know." He felt confused, numbed; this was just too much.

"You look bad. This is tough on you, even though according to your security file and your own statements you detest your wife-and she you. I guess you figure if you'd stayed with her she wouldn't have become an addict. Listen: everyone has to live his own life; she has to take the responsibility. You didn't make her do it. She decided decided to do it. Does that help you? Feel any better?" He scanned Eric's face for his reaction. to do it. Does that help you? Feel any better?" He scanned Eric's face for his reaction.

"I'll-be okay," Eric said briefly.

"In a pig's a.s.s. You look as bad as she does; I went down there to have a look at her, I couldn't resist. The poor G.o.ddam dame; you already can make out the destruction caused by that stuff. And giving her a new liver and all new blood won't help; that's been tried before, as they told you."

"Did you talk to Kathy at all?"

"Me? Talk to a 'Star fink?" Molinari glared at him. "Yes, I talked to her a little. While they were wheeling her out. I was curious to see what sort of woman you'd get mixed up with; you've got a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic streak eight yards wide and she proves it; she's a harpy, Sweetscent, a monster. Like you told me. You know what she said?" He grinned. "She told me you're you're an addict. Anything to cause trouble, right?" an addict. Anything to cause trouble, right?"

"Right," Eric said stiffly.

"Why are you looking at me that way?" Molinari regarded him, his black, fat eyes showing his regained control. "It upsets you to hear that, doesn't it? To know she'd do everything possible to destroy your career here. Eric, if I thought you'd dabbled with that stuff I wouldn't have you kicked out of here; I'd have you killed. I'd have you killed. During wartime I kill people; it's my job. Just as you know and I know, because we discussed it, there may come a time not far from now when it'll be necessary for you to-" He hesitated. "What we said. Kill even me. Right, doctor?" During wartime I kill people; it's my job. Just as you know and I know, because we discussed it, there may come a time not far from now when it'll be necessary for you to-" He hesitated. "What we said. Kill even me. Right, doctor?"

Eric said, "I have to give her the drug supply. May I go, Secretary? Before they take off."

"No," Molinari said. "You can't go because there's something I want to ask you. Minister Freneksy is here still; you're aware of that. With his party, in the East Wing, in seclusion." He held out his hand. "I want one capsule of JJ-180, doctor. Give it to me and then forget we had this talk."

To himself Eric thought, I know what you're going to do. Or rather try to do. But you don't have a chance; this isn't the Renaissance.

"I'm going to hand it to him personally," Molinari said. "To see that it actually gets there and isn't drunk by some pimp along the way."

"No," Eric said. "I absolutely refuse."

"Why?" Molinari c.o.c.ked his head on one side.

"It's suicidal. For everyone on Terra."

"You know how the Russians got rid of Beria? Beria carried a pistol into the Kremlin, which was against the law; he had it in his briefcase and they stole his briefcase and shot him with his own pistol. You think matters at the top have to be complex? There're simple solutions average people always overlook; that's the main defect of the ma.s.s man-" Molinari broke off, put his hand suddenly to his chest. "My heart. I think it stopped. It's going now, but for a second there, nothing." He had blanched and his voice now ebbed to a whisper.

"I'll wheel you to your room." Eric stepped behind Molinari's wheelchair and began to push it; the Mole did not protest but sat slumped forward, ma.s.saging his fleshy chest, exploring and touching himself, with the tentativeness of disintegrating, overwhelming fear. Everything else was forgotten; he perceived nothing more than his sick, failing body. It had become his universe.

With the a.s.sistance of two nurses he managed to get Molinari back into bed.

"Listen, Sweetscent," Molinari whispered as he lay back against the pillow. "I don't have to get that stuff through you; I can put pressure on Hazeltine and he'll deliver it right to me. Virgil Ackerman is a friend of mine; Virgil will see to it that Hazeltine complies. And don't try to tell me my job; you do yours and I'll do mine." He shut his eyes and groaned. "G.o.d, I know an artery near my heart just burst; I can feel the blood leaking out. Get Teagarden in here." Again he groaned and then turned his face to the wall. "What a day. But I'll get that Freneksy yet." All at once he opened his eyes and said, "I knew it was a stupid idea. But that's the kind of ideas I've been having lately, dumb ideas like that. And what else can I do but that? Can you think of something else?" He waited. "No. Because there isn't anything else, that's why." Again he shut his eyes. "I feel terrible. I think I really am dying this time and you won't be able to save me."

"I'll get Dr. Teagarden," Eric said, and started toward the door.

Molinari said, "I know you're an addict, doctor." He drew himself up slightly. "I can almost invariably tell when someone is lying, and your wife wasn't. As soon as I saw you I spotted it; you don't know how much you've changed."

After a pause Eric said, "What are you going to do?"

"We'll see, doctor," Molinari said, and again turned his face to the wall.

As soon as he had completed the task of delivering the supply of JJ-180 to Kathy he boarded an express s.h.i.+p for Detroit.

Forty-five minutes later he had reached the Detroit field and was on his way to Hazeltine Corporation by taxi. Gino Molinari, not the drug, had forced him to move this swiftly; he could not even wait until evening.

"Here we are, sir," the autonomic circuit of the cab said respectfully. It slid open its door so that he could emerge. "That gray one-story building with the hedge of rose-colored calyx with the whorl of green bracts at the base ... that is Hazeltine Corporation." Looking out, Eric saw the building, the lawn and heather hedge. It wasn't a large structure as industrial installations went. So this was the point at which JJ-180 had entered the world.

"Wait," he instructed the cab. "Do you have a gla.s.s of water?"

"Certainly." From the slot facing Eric a paper cup of water slid forward, teetered on the lip of the slot, and then halted.

Seated in the cab Eric swallowed the capsule of JJ-180 which he had brought with him. Purloined from Kathy's stock.

Several minutes pa.s.sed.

"Why aren't you getting out, sir?" the cab inquired. "Have I done something wrong?"

Eric waited. When he felt the drug begin to reach him he paid the cab, got out and walked slowly up the redwood-round path toward the office of Hazeltine Corporation.

The building flashed as if caught by a whip of lightning. And, overhead, the sky twisted laterally. He saw, gazing up, the clear blue of day dawdle as if attempting to remain and then collapse; he shut his eyes because the dizziness was too great, the reference point of outside objects had become too tenuous, and he walked, step by step, feeling his way ahead, bent down, for some reason motivated to continue in motion, however slow.

It hurt. This, unlike the initial exposure, was a major readjustment of the reality structure impinging on him. His steps made no sound, he noticed; he had strayed onto the lawn, but he still kept his eyes shut. Hallucination, he thought, of another world. Is Hazeltine right? By a paradox perhaps I can answer that within the hallucination itself ... if that is what it is. He did not think so; Hazeltine was wrong.

When a heather branch brushed his arm he let his eyes open. One of his feet had penetrated the soft black soil of a flower bed; he rested on a half-crushed tuberous begonia. Past the heather hedge the gray side of Hazeltine Corporation rose, exactly as before, and above it the sky was a washed-out blue with irregular clouds sweeping toward the north, the same sky, as nearly as he could tell. What had changed? He returned to the redwood-round path. Shall I go in? he asked himself. He looked back toward the street. The cab had gone. Detroit, the buildings and ramps of the city, seemed somehow elaborate. But he did not know this area.

When he reached the porch the door flew open automatically for him and he looked in on a neat office, with relaxing, leather-covered chairs, magazines, a deep-pile carpet whose design changed continuously ... he saw, through an open doorway, a business area: accounting machines and a computer of some ordinary kind, and at the same time he heard the buzz of activity beyond that, from the labs themselves.

As he started to sit down, a four-armed reeg walked into the office, its blue, chitinous face inexpressive, its embryonic wings pressed tightly to its sloping, bullet-s.h.i.+ny back. It whistled a greeting to him-he had not heard that about them-and pa.s.sed on out through the doorway. Another reeg, manipulating its extensive network of double-jointed arms vigorously, made its appearance, traveled up to Eric Sweetscent, halted, and produced a small square box.

Scudding across the side of the box, words in English took shape and departed; he woke to the fact that he had to pay attention to them. The reeg was communicating with him.

WELCOME TO HAZELTINE CORPORATION.

He read the words but did not know what to do with them. This was a receptionist; he saw that the reeg was a female. How did he reply? The reeg waited, buzzing; its structure was so convoluted that it seemed unable to remain entirely still; its multilensed eyes shrank and grew as they were partially absorbed back into the skull, then pushed out like flattened corks. If he hadn't known better he would have said it was blind. And then he realized that these were its false eyes; the genuine ones, compound, were at its top-arm elbows.

He said, "May I speak to one of your chemists?" And he thought, So we did lose the war. To these things. And now terra is occupied. And its industries are run by these. But, he thought, human beings still exist, because this reeg was not dumbfounded to see me; it has accepted my presence as natural. So we can't be mere slaves, either.

REGARDING WHAT MATTER?.

Hesitating, he said, "A drug. Produced here in the past. Called either Frohedadrine or JJ-180; both names refer to the same product."

JUST A MOMENT PLEASE.

The female reeg scuttled through the inner doorway to the business office, then disappeared entirely. He stood waiting, thinking to himself that if this was a hallucination it certainly was not a voluntary one.

A larger reeg, a male, appeared; its joints seemed stiff and Eric realized that it was old. They had a short life span, measured in terms of months, not years. This one had almost come to the end of his.

Utilizing the translating box, the elderly male reeg said: WHAT IS YOUR INQUIRY ABOUT JJ-180? PLEASE BE BRIEF.

Eric bent, picked up a magazine that lay on a table nearby. It was not in English; the cover bore a picture of two reegs and the writing consisted of the crabbed, pictorial reegian script. Startled, he stared at it. The magazine was Life. Life. Somehow it shocked him more than the actual sight of the enemy itself. Somehow it shocked him more than the actual sight of the enemy itself.

PLEASE.

The elderly reeg rattled with impatience.

Eric said, "I want to purchase an antidote to the addictive drug JJ-180. In order to break my addiction."

YOU DID NOT NEED ME FOR THAT; THE.

RECEPTIONIST COULD HAVE TAKEN.

CARE OF YOU.

Turning, the elderly reeg scrabbled haltingly off, eager to return to his work. Eric was left alone.

The receptionist returned with a small brown paper bag; she held it out to him, not with a jointed arm but with a mandible. Eric accepted it, opened it, and looked inside. A bottle of pills. This was it; there was nothing more to be done.

THAT WILL BE FOUR THIRTY-FIVE SIR.

The receptionist watched as he got out his wallet; he took a five-dollar-bill from it and pa.s.sed it to her.

I AM SORRY SIR; THIS IS OUTDATED WARTIME.

CURRENCY NO LONGER IN USE.

"You can't take it?" he said.

WE HAVE A RULE FORBIDDING US TO.

"I see," he said numbly, and wondered what to do. He could gulp down the contents of the bottle before she could stop him. But then he would probably be arrested, and the rest he could visualize in an instant; once their police had examined his identification they would know that he came from the past. And they would be aware that he might carry back information affecting the outcome-which had obviously been favorable for them-of the war. And they couldn't afford that. They would have to murder him. Even if the two races now lived in concert.

"My watch," he said. He unfastened it from his wrist, pa.s.sed it to the female reeg. "Seventeen jewel, seventy-year battery." On inspiration he added, "An antique, perfectly preserved. From prewar days."

JUST A MOMENT SIR.

Accepting the watch, the receptionist made her way on her long yielding legs to the business office, conferred with someone invisible to Eric; he waited, making no attempt to devour the pills-he felt trapped in a membrane of crus.h.i.+ng density, unable to act or escape from action, caught in a halfway land between.

From the business office something emerged. He looked up.

It was a human. A man, young, with close-cropped hair, wearing a work smock that was stained and rumpled. "What's the trouble, buddy?" the man asked. Behind him the reeg receptionist followed, her joints clacking.

Eric said, "Sorry to bother you. Could you and I talk in private?"

The man shrugged. "Sure." He led Eric from the room and into what appeared to be a storage chamber; shutting the door, the man turned to him placidly and said, "That watch is worth three hundred dollars; she doesn't know what to do with it-she's only got a 600-type brain; you know how the D-cla.s.s is." He lit a cigarette, offered the pack-Camels-to Eric.

"I'm a time traveler," Eric said as he took a cigarette.

"Sure you are." The man laughed. He extended his match to Eric.

"Don't you know the action of JJ-180? It was made right here."

After a thoughtful pause the man said, "But not for years. Because of its addictive qualities and its toxicity. In fact there hasn't been any since the war."

"They won the war?"

" 'They'? Who's that?"

"The reegs," Eric said.

"The reegs," the man said, "is us. Not they. They They was Lilistar. If you're a time traveler you ought to know that even better than I." was Lilistar. If you're a time traveler you ought to know that even better than I."

"The Pact of Peace-"

"There was no 'Pact of Peace.' Listen, buddy, I minored in world history in college; I was going to teach. I know all about the last war; it was my specialty. Gino Molinari-he was UN Secretary then, just before hostilities broke out-signed the Era of Common Understanding Protocols with the reegs and then the reegs and the 'Starmen started fighting and Molinari brought us in, on the reeg side, because of the protocols, and we won." He smiled. "And this stuff you say you're hooked on, it was a weapon that Hazeltine Corp. developed in 2055, during the war, for use against Lilistar, and it didn't work out because the Freneksytes were advanced even over us in pharmacology and quickly worked out an antidote-which antidote you're attempting to buy. G.o.d, they had had to develop it; we got the snunk into their drinking water; that was the Mole's idea himself." He explained, "That was Molinari's nickname." to develop it; we got the snunk into their drinking water; that was the Mole's idea himself." He explained, "That was Molinari's nickname."

"All right," Eric said. "Let's just leave it at this. I want to buy the antidote. I want to trade that watch. It is satisfactory?" He still held the brown paper bag; reaching into it, he lifted out the bottle. "Get me some water and let me take it and then let me get out of here; I don't know how long it'll be before I go back to my own time. Is there any objection to that?" He had difficulty controlling his voice; it tried to rise and escape. And he was shaking, but he did not know with what. Anger, possibly fear-more likely bewilderment. At this point he did not even know if he were bewildered.

"Calm down." Cigarette jutting from his lips, the man walked off, evidently in search of water. "Can you take them with a c.o.ke?"

"Yes," Eric said.

The man returned with a half-empty bottle of Coca-Cola and watched as Eric struggled to get the pills down one after another.

At the door the female reeg receptionist appeared.

IS HE ALL RIGHT?.