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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CRIME STORIES

THE “DORTMUNDER” STORIES

ASK A SILLY QUESTION

HORSE LAUGH

TOO MANY COOKS

A MIDSUMMER DAYDREAM

THE DORTMUNDER WORKOUT

PARTY ANIMAL

GIVE TILL IT HURTS

JUMBLE SALE

NOW WHAT?

ART AND CRAFT

FUGUE FOR FELONS

THE SWEETEST MAN IN THE WORLD

SCI-FI STORIES

THEY ALSO SERVE

A POINT OF INTEREST

THE RISK PROFESSION

THE “STARSHIP HOPE” STORIES

DON’T YOU KNOW

INTERSTELLAR PIGEON

HEAVEN

THE WORLD'S A STAGE

HITCH YOUR SPACESHIP

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

____________________

Donald E. Westlake was born on July 12, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA.

Westlake, a former US Air Force pilot and one time actor, has become the writer most associated with tales of organised crime. Indeed, in story after story, he has demonstrated his particular belief that crime is actually not very different from any other type of business enterprise-and the intelligent criminal is just, one more example of ‘Organisation Man’.

In Westlake’s early novels like ‘Killing Time’ (1961), about the running of a corrupt upstate New York town, he dealt with organised crime from the inside with great objectivity; but over the years elements of humour and the absurd have crept into his work in the shape of bungled robberies and inept confidence tricks.

In 1962, by way of contrast, he adopted the pen name Richard Stark and started a series of novels about Parker, a cold-blooded professional thief, who was later transferred to the screen in ‘Point Blank’ featuring Lee Marvin (1967).

Not content with this, Westlake invented a second major character, Mitch Tobin, a guilt-ridden former New York cop turned private eye, whose adventures appear under the name Tucker Coe.

More recently still, he has begun writing a number of capers about a group of inept thieves led by criminal manqué John Archibald Dortmunder.

For this remarkable display of virtuosity, Donald Westlake has won numerous awards, including three Edgars and a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, as well as an Oscar nomination for his screenplay of Jim Thompson’s ‘The Grifters’. In ‘The Sweetest Man in the World’, written in 1967, he mixes his deadpan humour and fascination with organised crime in the tale of a clever fraud... and it’s even cleverer denouement.

Donald E. Westlake died of a heart attack on Wednesday, December 31, 2008.  He was 75.

CRIME STORIES

THE “DORTMUNDER” STORIES

When John Dortmunder and I first teamed up, in 1967, neither of us had any idea what we were letting ourselves in for. In fact, at first, it didn’t look as though the partnership would get off the ground.

It all began when my regular guy stood me up. I have been, intermittently, a writer known as Richard Stark, who chronicles the incidents in the life of a character called only Parker. In 1967, Parker refused the role I’d planned for him in what was supposed to have been his next book; he thought it was beneath his dignity. So that’s when I first turned, just as a substitute, a temp, a one–time hire, to John Archibald Dortmunder. And all I asked him to do was steal the same emerald six times–piece of cake.

John was willing at first, but after three heists he turned surly and wouldn’t play any more, so I put that failed project away and turned to something else, thinking Dortmunder and I were merely a blind date that hadn’t panned out. Then, two years later, I came across the partial manuscript in a closet, found Dortmunder in a more accommodating frame of mind now that he’d spent two years in the dark, and together we finished the book. It was called The Hot Rock, and it was published in 1970.

After The Hot Rock and its ensuing movie, in which I was astonished to learn that Dortmunder was Robert Redford, I thought we were quit of each other. I’m sure neither of us ever expected to cross paths again, or to collaborate on what has become as of this writing a total of eleven novels, and we certainly never expected to find ourselves mixed up with short stories.

I’m not quite sure how that latter development came about. Ten years had gone by since I’d finished that first Dortmunder novel, with three more added along the way, when into my head came fragments of an elusive conversation between “an elegant man” and John. It didn’t seem to be part of a novel, but then, what was it?

Ask a silly question. No, I mean “Ask a Silly Question”, the first John Dortmunder short story, containing the elegant man and his class–ridden attitudes, which Playboy published in February 1981. Unlike in the novels, Dortmunder worked single in the short story, except for a phone–in from his friend Andy Kelp. Anyway, it looked to me like a one–off. I wasn’t writing short stories that decade, or at least hardly ever, and Dortmunder was clearly more comfortable in a setting where he could have his gang around him. So that was it.

Except.

Except it kept happening, one way and another. For instance, I was thinking one day about things John might purloin, and I thought of a horse, and I got a picture in my mind of John Dortmunder and a horse gazing deep into each other’s eyes, and I loved it. But I couldn’t do it. I haven’t met enough horses to be able to write an entire novel about a horse. But, come to think of it, I could write a short story. And did.

More time went by, and then, as occasionally happens (my one link to Joan of Arc), another fragment of conversation wafted through my brain one day in 1988 — “What’s that noise?” “Maybe it’s the wind.” “What wind? We’re in a tunnel.” — and that became “Too Many Crooks,” mainly because I wanted to know what those two were doing in a tunnel.

A year later, I myself had occasion to wonder what I was doing in Italy, where, in fact, I was on vacation. The trouble is, I don’t know how to go on vacation. From what? I don’t have a job, I don’t have a boss, and if I have a schedule, it’s self–imposed and mostly ignored. So there we were, my wife Abby and I, in a rented house in Tuscany for the month of August, and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

When at a loss, write. The only writing materials around were pen and paper — pen and postcard to begin with, but we upgraded — and so I wound up doing, in longhand, “A Midsummer Daydream,” in which John Dortmunder finds himself at loose ends outside New York City, not knowing what to do in this strange locale. I typed it when I got home, since my handwriting looks like a ball of string a kitten has played with, and Playboy took that one, too, like the others.

Then there came an anomaly. The Sunday edition of the New York Times doesn’t weigh enough all by itself to satisfy its editors, so they add special sections now and again, and sometimes this special section is a Health supplement to the Magazine. An editor from there phoned me, one day in 1989, wondering if John Dortmunder had any thoughts about health, and I had to admit I didn’t know but I’d ask. I did, and when “The Dortmunder Workout” was published, in the Health supplement to the New York Times Magazine, in the spring of 1990, John was the only guy in the issue without a sweatband around his brow. The editor told me afterward that the staffers who already knew Dortmunder thought it was a nice piece, but those who hadn’t previously met my boy were baffled. Well, that seems fair.

After “The Dortmunder Workout” and its preceding four short stories during the ‘80s, I expected the two of us would really be content from now on to stay forever in the land of long–form, but no. A thought came to me, in the early ‘90s, that a person being chased, wanting to hide, coming across a party, might hide in that milieu not by pretending to be a partygoer — won’t the other partygoers realize they don’t know him? — but by becoming a member of the caterer’s crew, moving among the revelers with little trays of finger food. The other waiters, being temps themselves, won’t be surprised to see an unfamiliar face within their group, so maybe the pursued person could blend into this party tapestry until the baying of hounds has receded into the distance. For John and me, it seemed worth the try.

“Party Animal,” for thus it came to be called, did not begin life as a Christmas story, but merely as a party story. However, Playboy had a hole in its holiday issue that year, and what better thing do these people have to celebrate than Christmas? So there we have it.

But then, just to complicate things, the next story John and I embarked on was supposed from the very beginning to be about Christmas. I, who can go years without writing a word about Christmas, and John Dortmunder, who dislikes all holidays indiscriminately because everybody’s home, combined to make two Christmas stories in a row.

What happened, I got a call from Otto Penzler, founder of Mysterious Press and owner–operator of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan. He explained that his store had a large mailorder business, that the Christmas season was a potent part of that business, and that he’d thought it would be a nice thing to give his regular customers a bonus, a Christmas present of a short story just for them, once every year, each time out with a different writer they might have heard of. Would I like to write the first one?

I consulted with John, and it turned out he’d always wanted to attend the occasional poker game in which Otto and I and a few others are regulars (it’s the game itself, sans scheduled time slot or location, that’s irregular), and which is sometimes played in the library behind Otto’s shop. So John dropped in, played the hand he was dealt, and “Give Till It Hurts” was the result.

Until this point, all these briefer travails had involved John either by himself or in company with Andy Kelp, but no one else from his extended unfamily had ever shown up. But there was one particular character who’d appeared in a few of the novels — a fence with a heart of tin, a sourpuss named Arnie Albright — and in thinking about him one day I saw a little something he could do that didn’t lend itself to novel treatment, but which could certainly be the basis for a short story.

It was, but it wasn’t right for Playboy. I thought, however, it might be right for The Armchair Detective, a very good magazine devoted to the mystery genre, and to my delight they thought so, too, so that’s where “Jumble Sale” was published.

That story, set in Arnie Albright’s charming apartment, was written in the fall of 1993, twelve years after John and I had first entered the lists of the ten–yard dash. In that time, we’d combined for seven short stories and one workout, and until then I’d had no particular goal in mind beyond each event, assuming every time that this story was the last, that John and I had longer fish to fry. But now it occurred to me that if we combined on just two or three additional mini–sagas, we’d have enough for a collection. So all I had to do was think of two or three more stories.

I don’t know how it is with anybody else, but I can never think about what I’m supposed to think about. Dortmunder short stories had come along and come along, never anticipated and never particularly needed, but as soon as I decided I should do another Dortmunder short story, I couldn’t think of one. Here I was, most of the way across the stream, with only two flat stones to touch to reach the other bank, and not a flat stone could I find anywhere inside my head (which is usually full of them).

It wasn’t until more than four years later, when I’d given up on the idea of a Dortmunder collection or any more Dortmunder short stories for any reason at all, a time when I was supposed to be thinking about something else entirely, when here it came, and it couldn’t have been more simple. John would leave home on a little errand, that’s all. “Now What?” the story was called, and it was back to Dortmunder working solo, and all he was trying to do was get from point A to point B. Well, he got back to Playboy; he could settle for that. And we found the same home with the final story in this as semblage, “Art and Craft,” in which, I admit, John did poach on territory not normally his own. Maybe it’s that he’s been associated in bookstores and libraries with detective stories and their sleuths all these years — though, in his case, mostly in rebuttal — that led him at last to make, in “Art and Craft,” the kind of observation of tiny detail that’s usually the province of cerebral plainclothesmen and grandmas with cats. Still, his use of the technique remains peculiarly his own.

And I guess Dortmunder remains peculiarly mine, at whatever length. Originally, he was just passing through. He wasn’t expected to have legs, and yet here he is, still domitable but bowed, apprentice, it would appear, of both the extended romp and the quick hit, the perhaps–not–exactly–surgical strike.

Through these years of John Dortmunder’s brief encounters, there has remained one constant, and her name is Alice Turner. She was the fiction editor at Playboy, where seven of the stories herein first appeared, and through all these travails she continued to look upon John and me with bemused disbelief followed by stoical acceptance. (Acceptance is an important quality in a magazine editor.) Her suggestions have been not onerous and always to the point, and have definitely improved the product. She’s also a terrific person who, in her off–hours, wrote a history of Hell, so what’s not to like?

Speaking of which, some years ago, as a result of a contractual contretemps with a motion picture studio (the closest thing to evil incarnate left in this secular age), it looked for a while as though I might either have to stop writing about John entirely — a horrible thought — or change his name, which the harpies were claiming for themselves. A pseudonym for John seemed a possibility, since he’d been known to sail under colors other than his own once or twice already, but when I went to choose that new name, nothing worked. John Dortmunder was John Dortmunder, damn it, and nobody else.

After brooding for a month, I finally settled on the name Rumsey, which I had found on an exit sign on the Saw Mill River Parkway, north of New York City. Rumsey seemed to me closest in feeling, in philosophy, in Weltanschauung (not to mention weltschmerz) to Dortmunder.

I typed out the name a few times: John Rumsey. John Rumsey. John Rumsey. Hmmm. Fortunately, the evil empire’s shadow receded from my peaceful village, so Dortmunder could go on being Dortmunder after all, and once that happened, I could admit to myself that even Rumsey wasn’t a completely satisfying substitute. The problem is, John Rumsey is short. John Dortmunder is of average height, but John Rumsey is short. If the guys were to get together in the back room of the O.J. Bar & Grill to scope and scheme some new outrage, John Rumsey would be the shortest guy in the joint. Don’t ask me how I know; I know.

Hey, maybe this is really Rumsey, here in this collection. You think?

Donald E. Westlake

April, 2004

ASK A SILLY QUESTION

______________________

“Art theft, of course,” said the elegant man, “has been overdone. By now it’s thoroughly boring.”

Dortmunder didn’t say anything. His business was theft, of art or whatever else had value, and he’d never supposed it was meant to be exciting. Nor, while tiptoeing around darkened halls in guarded buildings with his pockets full of stolen goods, had he ever found boredom much of a problem.

The elegant man sighed. “What do people of your sort drink?” he asked.

“Bourbon,” Dortmunder said. “Water. Coca–Cola. Orange juice. Beer.”

“Bourbon,” the elegant man told one of the two plug–uglies who’d brought Dortmunder here. “And sherry for me.”

“Coffee,” Dortmunder went on. “Sometimes Gallo Burgundy. Vodka. Seven–Up. Milk.”

“How do you prefer your bourbon?” the elegant man asked.

“With ice and water. People of my sort also drink Hi–C, Scotch, lemonade, Nyquil —”

“Do you drink Perrier?”

“No,” said Dortmunder.

“Ah,” said the elegant man, closing the subject with his preconceptions intact. “Now,” he said, “I suppose you’re wondering why we all gathered you here.”

“I got an appointment uptown,” Dortmunder answered. He was feeling mulish. When a simple walk to the subway turns into an incident with two plug–uglies, a gun in the back, a shoving into a limousine outfitted with liveried chauffeur beyond the closed glass partition, a run up the stocking of Manhattan to the East Sixties, a swallowing up into a town house with a garage with an electronically operated door, and an interview at gunpoint with a tall, slender, painfully well–dressed, 60ish, white–haired, white–mustached elegant man in a beautifully appointed and very masculine den imported intact from Bloomingdale’s, a person has a right to feel mulish. “I’m already late for my appointment,” Dortmunder pointed out.

“I’ll try to be brief,” the elegant man promised. “My father — who, by the way, was once Secretary of the Treasury of this great land, under Teddy Roosevelt — always impressed upon me the wisdom of obtaining expert advice before undertaking any project, of whatever size or scope. I have always followed that injunction.”

“Uh–huh,” said Dortmunder.

“The exigencies of life having made it necessary for me,” the elegant man continued, “to engage for once in the practice of grand larceny, in the form of burglary, I immediately sought out a professional in the field to advise me. You.”

“I reformed,” Dortmunder said. “I made some mistakes in my youth, but I paid my debt to society and now I’m reformed.”

“Of course,” said the elegant man. “Ah, here are our drinks. Come along, I have something to show you.”

It was a dark and lumpy statue, about four feet tall, of a moody teenaged girl dressed in curtains and sitting on a tree trunk. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” the elegant man said, gazing fondly at the thing.

Beauty was outside Dortmunder’s visual spectrum. “Yeah,” he said, and looked around this subterranean room, which had been fitted out like a cross between a den and a museum. Bookcases alternated with paintings on the walls, and antique furniture shared the polished wood floor with statuary, some on pedestals, some, like this bronze of a young girl, on low platforms. Dortmunder and the elegant man and the armed plug–uglies had come down here by elevator: apparently, the only route in and out. There were no windows and the air had the flat blanketlike quality of tight temperature and humidity control.

“It’s a Rodin,” the elegant man was saying. “One of my wiser acquisitions, in my youth.” His mouth forming a practiced moue, he said, “One of my less wise acquisitions, more recently, was a flesh–and–blood young woman who did me the disservice of becoming my wife.”

“I really got an appointment uptown,” Dortmunder said.

“More recently still,” the elegant man persisted, “we came to a particularly bitter and unpleasant parting of the ways, Moira and I. As a part of the resulting settlement, the little bitch got this nymph here. But she didn’t get it.”

“Uh–huh,” Dortmunder said.

“I have friends in the art world,” the elegant man went on, “and all men have sympathizers where grasping ex–wives are concerned. Several years earlier, I’d had a mold made of this piece, and from it an exact copy had been cast in the same grade of bronze. A virtually identical copy; not quite museum quality, of course, but aesthetically just as pleasing as the original.”

“Sure,” said Dortmunder.

“It was that copy I gave to Moira; having, of course, first bribed the expert she’d brought in to appraise the objects she was looting from me. The other pieces I gave her with scarcely a murmur, but my nymph? Never!”

“Ah,” said Dortmunder.

“All was well,” the elegant man said. “I kept my nymph, the one and only true original from Rodin’s plaster form, with the touch of the sculptor’s hand full upon it. Moira had the copy, pleased with the thought of its being the original, cheered by the memory of having done me in the eye. A happy ending for everyone, you might have said.”

“Uh–huh,” said Dortmunder.

“But not an ending at all, unfortunately.” The elegant man shook his head. “It has come to my attention, very belatedly, that tax problems have forced Moira to make a gift of the Rodin nymph to the Museum of Modern Art. Perhaps I ought to explain that even I cannot with any certainty bribe an appraiser from the Museum of Modern Art.”

“He’ll tell,” Dortmunder said.

“He will, in the argot of the underworld,” the elegant man said, “spill the beans.”

“That isn’t the argot of the underworld,” Dortmunder told him.

“No matter. The point is, my one recourse, it seems to me, is to enter Moira’s town house and make off with the copy.”

“Makes sense,” Dortmunder agreed.

The elegant man pointed at his nymph. “Pick that up,” he said.

Dortmunder frowned, looking for the butcher’s thumb.

“Go ahead,” the elegant man insisted. “It won’t bite.”

Dortmunder handed his bourbon and water to one of the plug–uglies; then hesitant, unfamiliar with the process of lifting teenaged girls dressed in curtains — whether of bronze or anything else — he grasped this one by the chin and one elbow and lifted … and it didn’t move. “Uh,” said Dortmunder, visions of hernias blooming in his head.

“You see the problem,” the elegant man said, while the muscles in Dortmunder’s arms and shoulders and back and groin all quivered from the unexpected shock. “My nymph weighs five hundred twenty–six pounds. As does Moira’s copy, give or take a few ounces.”

“Heavy,” agreed Dortmunder. He took back his drink and drank.

“The museum’s expert arrives tomorrow afternoon,” the elegant man said touching his white mustache. “If I am to avoid discomfort — possibly even public disgrace — I must remove Moira’s copy from her possession tonight.”

Dortmunder said, “And you want me to do it?”

“No, no, not at all.” The elegant man waved his elegant fingers. “My associates” — meaning the plug–uglies — “and I will, as you would say, pull the scam.”

“That’s not what I’d say,” Dortmunder told him.

“No matter, no matter. What we wish from you, Mr. Dortmunder, is simply your expertise. Your professional opinion. Come along.” The elevator door opened to his elegant touch. “Care for another bourbon? Of course you do.”

“Fortunately,” the elegant man said, “I kept the architect’s plans and models even though I lost the town house itself to Moira.”

Dortmunder and his host and one plug–ugly (the other was off getting more bourbon and sherry) stood now in a softly glowing dining room overlooking a formal brick–and–greenery rear garden. On the antique refectory table dominating the room stood two model houses next to a roll of blueprints. The tiniest model, barely six inches tall and built solid of balsa wood with windows and other details painted on, was placed on an aerial photograph to the same scale, apparently illustrating the block in which the finished house would stand. The larger, like a child’s dollhouse, was over two feet tall, with what looked like real glass in its windows and even some furniture in the rooms within. Both models were of a large, nearly square house with a high front stoop, four stories tall, with a big square many–paned skylight in the center of the roof.

Dortmunder looked at the big model, then at the small, then at the photograph of the street. “This is in New York?”

“Just a few blocks from here.”

“Huh,” said Dortmunder, thinking of his own apartment.

“You see the skylight,” suggested the elegant man.

“Yeah.”

“It can be opened in good weather. There’s an atrium on the second level. You know what an atrium is?”

“No.”

“It’s a kind of garden, within the house. Here, let me show you.”

The larger model was built in pieces, which could be disassembled. The roof came off first, showing bedrooms and baths all around a big square opening coinciding with the skylight. The top floor came off, was set aside and showed a third floor given over to a master bedroom suite and a bookcase–lined den, around the continuing square atrium hole. The details impressed even Dortmunder. “This thing must have cost as much as the real house,” he said.

The elegant man smiled. “Not quite,” he said, lifting off the third floor. And here was the bottom of the atrium — fancy word for air shaft, Dortmunder decided — a formal garden like the one outside these real–life dining–room windows, with a fountain and stone paths. The living and dining rooms in the model were open to the atrium. “Moira’s copy,” the elegant man said, pointing at the garden, “is just about there.”

“Tricky,” Dortmunder commented.

“There are twelve steps down from the atrium level to the sidewalk in front. The rear garden is sunk deeper, below ground level.”

“Very tricky.”

“Ah, our drinks,” the elegant man said, taking his, “and not a moment too soon.” He sipped elegantly and said, “Mr. Dortmunder, the workman is worthy of his hire. I shall now outline to you our plans and our reasoning. I ask you to give us your careful attention, to advise us of any flaws in our thinking and to suggest whatever improvements come to your professional mind. In return, I will pay you — in cash, of course — one thousand dollars.”

“And drive me uptown,” Dortmunder said. “I’m really late for my appointment.”

“Agreed.”

“OK, then,” Dortmunder said, and looked around for a place to sit down.

“Oh, come along,” said the elegant man. “We might as well be comfortable.”

Tall, narrow windows in the living room overlooked a tree–lined expensive block. Long sofas in ecru crushed velvet faced each other on the Persian carpet, amid glass–topped tables, modern lamps and antique bric–a–brac. In a Millet over the mantel, a French farmer of the last century endlessly pushed his barrowload of hay through a narrow barn door. The elegant man might have lost his atriummed town house to the scheming Moira, but he was still doing OK. No welfare housing necessary.

With a fresh drink to hand, Dortmunder sat on a sofa and listened. “We’ve made three plans,” the elegant man said, as Dortmunder wondered who this “we” was he kept talking about; surely not the plug–uglies, giants with the brains of two–by–fours, sitting around now on chair arms like a rock star’s bodyguards. “Our first plan, perhaps still feasible, involves that skylight and a helicopter. I have access to a heli —”

“Loud,” Dortmunder said.

The elegant man paused, as though surprised, then smiled. “That’s right,” he said.

Dortmunder gave him a flat look. “Was that a test? You wanna see if I’ll just say, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s fine, give me my grand and take me uptown’, is that it?”

“To some extent,” agreed the elegant man placidly. “Of course, apart from the noise — a dead giveaway to the entire neighborhood, naturally, the house would swarm with police before we’d so much as attached the grapple — still, apart from that noise problem, a helicopter is quite an attractive solution. At night, from above —”

“Illegal,” interrupted Dortmunder.

“Eh?”

“You can’t fly a helicopter over Manhattan after dark. There’s a law. Never break a law you don’t intend to break: people get grabbed for a traffic violation, and what they’re really doing is robbing a bank. That kind of thing. It happens all the time.”

“I see.” The elegant man looked thoughtful. Smoothing back his silver locks, he said, “Every trade is more complicated than it appears, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Dortmunder. “What’s plan number two?”

“Ah, yes.” The elegant man regained his pleased look. “This involves the front door.”

“How many people in this house?”

“None.” Then the elegant man made a dismissing finger wave, saying, “The staff, of course. But they’re all downstairs. It’s soundproofed down there and servants sleep like the dead, anyway.”

“If you say so. Where’s this Moira?”

“She should be in England, mired on the M four,” the elegant man said, looking extremely irritated, “but the delay I’d arranged for her to undergo didn’t quite take place. As a result, she is probably at this very moment boarding her flight to New York. She’ll be here sometime early tomorrow morning.” Shrugging away his annoyance, he said, “Nevertheless, we still have all of tonight. Plan number two, as I started to say, has us forcing entry through the front door. Three strong men” — with a graceful hand gesture to include both himself and the silent plug–uglies — “with some difficulty, can jog the statue onto a low wheeled dolly. Out front, we shall have a truck equipped with a winch, whose long cable will reach as far as the atrium. The winch can pull the statue on the dolly through the house and down a metal ramp from the head of the stairs to the interior of the truck.”

“That sounds OK,” said Dortmunder. “What’s the problem?”

“The guard,” the elegant man explained, “outside the embassy next door.”

“Oh,” said Dortmunder. “And if you get rid of the guard …”

“We create an international incident. A side effect even more severe than the breaking of helicopter–at–night laws.”

Dortmunder shook his head. “Tell me about plan number three.”

“We effect entry through the rear, from the house on the next block. We set various incendiary devices and we burn the place down.”

Dortmunder frowned. “Metal doesn’t burn,” he objected.

“A flaw we’d noticed ourselves,” the elegant man admitted.

Dortmunder drank bourbon and gave his host a look of disgust. “You don’t have any plan at all,” he said.

“We have no good plans,” the elegant man said. “Would you have a suggestion of your own?”

“For a thousand dollars?” Dortmunder sipped bourbon and looked patiently at the elegant man.

Who smiled, a bit sadly. “I see what you mean,” he said. “Say two thousand.”

“Say ten thousand,” Dortmunder suggested.

“I couldn’t possibly say ten thousand. I might find it possible to say twenty–five hundred.”

It took three minutes and many little delicate silences before Dortmunder and the elegant man reached the $5000 honorarium both had settled on in advance.

The interior ladder down from the skylight had been so cunningly integrated into the decor of the house that it was practically useless; tiny rungs, irregularly spaced, far too narrow and curving frighteningly down the inside of the domed ceiling. Dortmunder, who had a perfectly rational fear of heights, inched his way downward, prodded by the plug–ugly behind him and encouraged by the plug–ugly ahead, while trying not to look between his shoes at the tiny shrubbery and statuary and ornamental fountain three long stories below. What a lot of air there is in an atrium!

Attaining the safety of the top–floor floor, Dortmunder turned to the elegant man, who had come first down the ladder with an astonishing spryness and lack of apprehension, and told him, “This isn’t fair, that’s all. I’m here under protest.”

“Of course you are,” the elegant man said. “That’s why my associates had to show you their revolvers. But surely for five thousand dollars, we can expect you to be present while your rather ingenious scheme is being worked out.”

A black satchel, tied about with a hairy thick yellow rope, descended past in small spasms, lowered by the plug–ugly who was remaining on the roof. “I never been so late for an appointment in my life,” Dortmunder said. “I should of been uptown hours ago.”

“Come along,” the elegant man said, “we’ll find you a phone, you can call and explain. But please invent an explanation; the truth should not be telephoned.”

Dortmunder, who had never telephoned the truth and who hardly ever even presented the truth in person, made no reply, but followed the elegant man and the other plug–ugly down the winding staircase to the main floor, where the plug–ugly with muttered curses removed the black satchel from the ornamental fountain. “You shouldn’t get that stuff wet,” Dortmunder pointed out.

“Accidents will happen,” the elegant man said carelessly, while the plug–ugly continued to mutter. “Let’s find you a telephone.”

They found it in the living room, near the tall front windows, on a charming antique desk inlaid with green leather. Seated at this, Dortmunder could look diagonally out the window and see the guard strolling in front of the embassy next door. An empty cab drifted by, between the lines of parked cars. The elegant man went back to the atrium and Dortmunder picked up the phone and dialed.

“O.J. Bar and Grill, Rollo speaking.”

“This is Dortmunder.”

“Who?”

“The bourbon and water.”

“Oh, yeah. Say, your pals are in the back. They’re waiting for you, huh?”

“Yeah,” Dortmunder said. “Let me talk to Ke — The other bourbon and water.”

“Sure.”

A police car oozed by; the embassy guard waved at it. Opening the desk drawer, Dortmunder found a gold bracelet set with emeralds and rubies; he put it in his pocket. Behind him, a sudden loud mechanical rasping sound began; he put his thumb in his other ear.

“Hello? Dortmunder?” Kelp’s voice.

“Yeah,” Dortmunder said.

“You’re late.”

“I got tied up. With some people.”

“Something going on?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“You sound like you’re in a body shop.”

“A what?”

“Where they fix cars. You don’t have a car, do you?”

“No,” Dortmunder said. The rasping sound was very loud.

“That’s very sensible,” Kelp said. “What with the energy crisis, and inflation, and being in a city with first–rate mass transportation, it doesn’t make any sense to own your own car.”

“Sure,” Dortmunder said. “What I’m calling about —”

“Any time you need a car,” Kelp said, “you can just go pick one up.”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder said. “About tonight —”

“So what are you doing in a body shop?”

The rasping sound, or something, was getting on Dortmunder’s nerves. “I’ll tell you later,” he said.

“You’ll be along soon?”

“No, I might be stuck here a couple hours. Maybe we should make the meet tomorrow night.”

“No problem,” Kelp said. “And if you break loose, we can still do it tonight.”

“You guys don’t have to hang around,” Dortmunder told him.

“That’s OK. We’re having a nice discussion on religion and politics. See you later.”

“Right,” said Dortmunder.

In the atrium, they were cutting the nymph’s head off. As Dortmunder came back from his phone call, the girl’s head nodded once, then fell with a splash into the fountain. As the plug–ugly switched off the saw, the elegant man turned toward Dortmunder a face of anguish, saying, “It’s like seeing a human being cut up before your eyes. Worse. Were she flesh and blood, I could at least imagine she was Moira.”

“That thing’s loud,” Dortmunder said.

“Not outside,” the elegant man assured him. “Because of traffic noise, the façade was soundproofed. Also the floor; the servants won’t hear a thing.”

The plug–ugly having wrapped the decapitated head in rope, he switched on his saw again and attacked the nymph, this time at her waistline. The head, meantime, peering raffishly through circlets of yellow rope, rose slowly roofward, hauled from above.

Dortmunder, having pointed out to the elegant man that removal of this statue was all that mattered, that its postoperative condition was unimportant, had for his $5000 suggested they cut it into totable chunks and remove it via the roof. Since, like most cast–bronze statues, it was hollow rather than solid, the dismembering was certainly within the range of the possible.

Dortmunder had first thought in terms of an industrial laser, which would make a fast, clean and absolutely silent cut, but the elegant man’s elegant contacts did not include access to a laser, so Dortmunder had fallen back on the notion of an acetylene torch. (Everybody in Dortmunder’s circle had an acetylene torch.) But there, too, the elegant man had turned out to be deficient, and it was only after exhaustive search of the garage that this large saber saw and several metal–cutting blades had been found. Well, it was better than a pocket–knife, though not so quiet.

The head fell from the sky into the fountain, splashing everybody with water.

The plug–ugly with the saw turned it off, lifted his head and spoke disparagingly to his partner on the roof, who replied in kind. The elegant man raised his own voice, in French, and when the plug–uglies ceased maligning each other, he said, “I shall bind the parts.”

The nearer plug–ugly gave him a sullen look. “That’s brain–work, I guess,” he said, switched on the saber saw and stabbed the nymph in the belly with it. Renewed racket buried the elegant man’s response.

It was too loud here. From Dortmunder’s memory of the model of this house, the kitchen should be through the dining room and turn right. While the elegant man fumbled with the bronze head, Dortmunder strolled away. Passing through the dining room, he pocketed an antique oval ivory cameo frame.

Dortmunder paused in the preparation of his second pâté and swiss on rye with Dijon mustard — this kitchen contained neither peanut butter nor jelly — when the racket of saber saw was abruptly replaced by the racket of angry voices. Among them was a voice undoubtedly female. Dortmunder sighed, closed the sandwich, carried it in his left hand and went through to the atrium, where a woman surrounded by Louis Vuitton suitcases was yelling at the top of her voice at the elegant man, who was yelling just as loudly right back. The plug–ugly stood to one side, openmouthed but silent, the saber saw also silent in his hand, hovering over the statue stub, now reduced to tree trunk, knees, shins, feet, toes, base and a bit of curtain hem.

This was clearly the ex–wife, home ahead of schedule. The elegant man seemed unable to do anything right. In the semi–darkness of the dining–room doorway, Dortmunder ate his sandwich and listened and watched.

The screaming was merely that at first, screaming, with barely any rational words identifiable in the mix, but the ex–wife’s first impulse to make lots of noise was soon overtaken by the full realization that her statue was all cut to pieces; gradually, her shrieks faded away to gasps and then to mere panting, until at last she merely stood in stunned silence, staring at the destruction, while the elegant man also ceased to bray. Regaining his composure and his elegance, he readjusted his cuffs and, with barely a tremor in his voice, he said, “Moira, I admit you have me at a disadvantage.”

“You — you —” But she wasn’t capable of description, not yet, not with the butchery right here in front of her.

“An explanation is in order,” the elegant man acknowledged, “but first let me reassure you on one point: That Rodin has not been destroyed. You will still, I’m afraid, be able to turn it over to the populace.”

“You bluh — you —”

“My presence here,” the elegant man continued, as though his ex–wife’s paralysis were an invitation to go on, “is the result of an earlier deception, at the time of our separation. I’m afraid I must admit to you now that I bribed Grindle at that time to accept on your behalf not the original but a copy of the Rodin — this copy, in fact.”

The ex–wife took a deep breath. She looked away from the bronze carnage and gazed at the elegant man. “You bloody fool,” she said, having at last recaptured her voice, and speaking now almost in a conversational tone. “You bloody self–satisfied fool, do you think you invented bribery?”

A slight frown wrinkled the elegant man’s features. “I beg your pardon?”

“Beg Rodin’s,” she told him. “You could only bribe Grindle with cash. When he told me your proposition, I saw no reason why he shouldn’t take it.”

“You — you —” Now it was the elegant man who was losing the power of speech.

“And, having taken your bribe and mine,” she went inexorably on, “he pronounced the false true before reversing the statues. That,” pointing at the shins and tree trunk, “was the original.”

“Impossible!” The elegant man had begun to blink. His tie was askew. “Grindle wouldn’t — I’ve kept the —”

“You bloody FOOL!” And the woman reached for a handy piece of luggage — toilet case, swamp–colored, speckled with someone else’s initials, retail $364.50 — and hurled it at her ex–husband, who ducked, bellowed and reached for the late nymph’s bronze thigh with which to riposte. The woman sidestepped and the thigh rolled across the atrium, coming to a stop at Dortmunder’s feet. He looked down at it, saw the glint of something shiny on the rough inside surface and hunkered down for a closer look. At the foundry, when they’d covered the removable plaster interior with wax prior to pouring the bronze, maybe some French coin, now old and valuable, had got stuck in the wax and then transferred to the bronze. Dortmunder peered in at the thing, reaching out one hand to turn the thigh slightly to improve the light, then running his finger tips over the shiny thing, testing to see if it would come loose. But it was well and firmly fixed in place.

The rasp of the saber saw once more snarled; Dortmunder, looking up, saw that the woman had it now, and was chasing her ex–husband around the plants and flowers with it, while the plug–ugly stood frozen, pretending to be a floor lamp. Dortmunder stood, mouthed the last of his sandwich, retraced his steps to the kitchen and went out the window.

The far–off sound of sirens was just audible when he reached the pay phone at the corner and called again the O.J. Bar & Grill. When Kelp came on the phone, Dortmunder said, “The guys still there?”

“Sure. You on your way?”

“No. I got a new thing over here on the East Side. You and the guys meet me at Park and Sixty–fifth.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Just a little breaking and entering.”

“The place is empty?”

Down the block, police cars were massing in front of Moira’s house. “Oh, yeah,” Dortmunder said, “it’s empty. I don’t think the owner’s gonna be back for years.”

“Something valuable?”

There weren’t two copies of the Rodin, no; there was one original, one copy. And the elegant man had been right about ex–husbands’ getting the sympathy vote. The hired expert had accepted bribes from both parties, but he’d made his own decision when it came to distributing the real and the fake Rodins. In Dortmunder’s mind’s eye, he saw again the shiny thing hidden within the nymph’s thigh. It was the flip–off ring from a thoroughly modern beer can. “It’s valuable OK,” he said. “But it’s kind of heavy. On the way over, steal a truck.”

HORSE LAUGH

______________

Dortmunder looked at the horse. The horse looked at Dortmunder. “Ugly goddamn thing,” Dortmunder commented, while the horse just rolled his eyes in disbelief.

“Not that one,” the old coot said. “We’re looking for a black stallion.”

“In the dark,” Dortmunder pointed out. “Anyway, all horses look the same to me.”

“It’s not how they look,” the old coot said, “it’s how they run. And Dire Straits could run the ass off a plug like this one. Which is why he won’t be out here in the night air with these glue factories. We’ll find Dire Straits in one of them barns down there.”

That was another thing rubbing Dortmunder the wrong way– t he names that horses get saddled with. Abby’s Elbow, Nuff Said, Dreadful Summit, Dire Straits. If you were going out to the track, where the horses were almost irrelevant to the occasion, where the point was to drink beer and bet money and socialize a little and make small jokes like, “I hope I break even today; I could use the cash,” it didn’t matter much that you were betting 30 across the board on something called Giant Can and that you had to wait for a bunch of horses outdoors somewhere to run around in a big oval before you found out if you had won. But here, in the darkest wilds of New Jersey, on a ranch barely 60 miles from New York City, surrounded by all these huge, nervous creatures, pawing and snorting and rolling their eyes, out here breathing this moist, smelly air, walking in mud or worse, it just capped Dortmunder’s discontent that these dangerous furry barrels on sticks were named Picasso’s Revenge and How’m I Doin?

From some distance away, Andy Kelp’s cautious voice rose into the rich air, saying, “There’s more down that way. I heard some go, ‘Snushfurryblurryblurryblurry.’ ”

“That’s a whicker,” the old coot said, as though anybody gave a damn.

“I don’t care if it’s mohair,” Kelp told him. “Let’s do this and get out of here. I’m a city boy myself.”

The edge of nervousness and impatience in Kelp’s voice was music to Dortmunder’s ears. It was Kelp who’d brought him into this caper in the first place, so if Dortmunder was going to suffer, it was nice to know that his best friend was also unhappy and discontented.

It was the eternally optimistic Kelp who had first met the old coot, named Hiram Rangle, and brought him around to the O.J. Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue one night to meet Dortmunder and discuss a matter of possible mutual benefit. “I work for this fella,” Hiram Rangle had said in his raspy old–coot voice, his faded–blue eyes staring suspiciously out of his leathery brown face. “But I’m not gonna tell you his name.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Dortmunder said. He was a little annoyed in a general way, having had a series of things go wrong lately — not important, doesn’t matter — and it hadn’t been his idea to take this meeting. Over at the bar, the regulars were discussing the latest advances in psychotherapy — “It’s called A version, and it’s a way to make you have a different version of how you see women”; “I like the version I got” — and Dortmunder was sitting here with this old coot, a skinny little guy in deerskin jacket and flannel shirt and corduroy pants and yellow boots big enough to garage a Honda, and the coot was telling him what he would tell him and what he wouldn’t tell him. “You and my pal Andy here,” Dortmunder said, lifting his glass of bar bourbon, “can go talk to the crowd at the bar for all I care.”

“Aw, come on, John,” Kelp said. He totally wanted this thing to happen, and he leaned his sharp–featured face over the scarred corner table, as though to draw Dortmunder and the old coot together by sheer force of personality. He said, “This is a good deal for everybody. Let Hiram tell you about it.”

“He says he doesn’t want to.”

“I got to be careful, that’s all,” the old coot said, sipping defensively at his Tsing–Tao.

“Then don’t come to joints like this,” Dortmunder advised him.

“Tell the man, Hiram,” Kelp said. “That’s what you’re here for.”

Hiram took a breath and put down his glass. “What it comes down to is,” he said, “we want to steal a horse.”

They wanted to steal a horse. What it came down to was, the old coot worked for some guy who was full of schemes and scams, and one of them was a long–range plot involving this race horse, Dire Straits, on whom Dortmunder could remember having dropped some rent money some years back on a couple of those rare occasions when Dire Straits had finished out of the running. It seemed that Dire Straits, having in his racing career won many millions for many people (and having lost a few kopecks for Dortmunder), had now been put out to stud, which, as described by the old coot, sounded like a retirement plan better than most. These days, Dire Straits hung around with some other male horses on a nice green–grass farm over near Short Hills, New Jersey — “If they’re short, why do they call them hills?” Dortmunder had wanted to know, which was something else the old coot didn’t have an answer for — and from time to time, the owners of female horses paid the owners of Dire Straits great big sackfuls of money for him to go off and party. It seems there was a theory that the sons and daughters of fast horses would also be fast, and a lot of money changed hands on that theory.

Well, the schemer, Hiram Rangle’s anonymous boss, owned some fairly fast horses himself, but nothing in the Dire Straits class, so his idea was to kidnap Dire Straits and put him to work partying with his own female horses; and then, when the female horses had sons and daughters, the schemer would put down on the birth certificate some slow–moving plater as the father. Then, when the sons and daughters grew up enough to start to run, which would take only a couple of years, the odds against them would be very long, because of their alleged parentage; but because Dire Straits was their real daddy, they would run like crazy, and the schemer would bet on them and make a bundle. In a few months, of course, the odds would adjust to the horses’ actual track records; but by then, the schemer would be home free. With three or four of Dire Straits’ disguised kiddies hitting the turf every year and maybe another five or six years of active partying left in his life, it was a scheme that, as a fellow might say, had legs.

Kelp put it slightly differently: “It’s like The Prince and the Pauper, where you don’t know it, but your real daddy’s the king.”

“I think we’re talking about horses here,” Dortmunder told him.

Kelp shook his head. “You never see the romantic side,” he said.

“I’ll leave that to Dire Straits,” Dortmunder said.

Anyway, it turned out that the one fly in the ointment in the schemer’s scheme was the fact that, even with all his hustling and finagling, he’d never in his career done any actual, straightforward, out–and–out theft. He had his scheme, he had his own ranch with his own female horses on it, he had a nice cash cushion to use in making his bets three years down the line, but the one thing he didn’t have, and didn’t know how to get, was Dire Straits. So one way or another, his hireling, Rangle, had got in touch with Andy Kelp, who had said his friend John Dortmunder was exactly the man to plan and execute a robbery of this delicate and unusual a nature, and that was why this meeting was taking place in the O.J., where over at the bar the regulars were now arguing about whether penis envy was confined to men or if women could have it, too: “How can they? What’s the basis of the comparison?”

“I can tell you this much,” Hiram Rangle said. “My boss’ll pay twenty thousand dollars for Dire Straits. Not to me; I’ve already got my salary. To the people who help me.”

“Ten thousand apiece, John,” Kelp pointed out.

“I know how to divide by two, Andy.” Dortmunder also knew how to divide by zero, which was how he’d profited from his other operations recently — just a little run of hard luck, nothing worth talking about — which was why he’d finally nodded and said, “I’ll look at this horse of yours,” and why he was now here in the sultry New Jersey night, ankle–deep in some sort of warm, dark pulpiness, listening to Andy Kelp imitate horse whickers and deciding it was time they found the right animal and got the hell out of there.

Because the problem was that Dire Straits was, in a manner of speaking, in prison. A prison farm, actually, with fields and open sky, but a prison nevertheless, with tall fences and locked gates and a fairly complicated route in and out. And breaking into a prison for horses was not much easier than breaking into a prison for people, particularly when the horses involved were also valuable.

V–A–L–U–A–B–L–E. When Kelp first showed Dortmunder the item from the Daily News sports pages about how Dire Straits was insured for more than $1,000,000, Dortmunder had said, “A million dollars? Then what do we need with ten grand? Why don’t we deal with the insurance company?”

“John, I thought of that,” Kelp had said, “but the question is, Where would we keep it while we negotiated? I’ve only got the studio apartment, you know.”

“Well, May wouldn’t let me keep it at our place, I know that much.” Dortmunder sighed and nodded. “OK. We’ll settle for the ten.”

That was last week. This week, on Tuesday, Kelp and Dortmunder and the old coot had driven out through the Holland Tunnel and across New Jersey into the Short Hills area in a Ford Fairlane the old coot had rented, and when they got to the place, this is what they saw. On a wandering country road through rolling countryside covered with the lush greenery of August was a modest Colonial–style sign reading YERBA BUENA RANCH, mounted on a post next to a blacktop road climbing up a low hill toward a white farmhouse visible some distance in through the trees. Kelp, at the wheel, turned in there just to see what would happen, and what happened was that, about halfway to the house — white–rail fences to both sides of the blacktop, more white–rail fences visible in the fields beyond the house — a nice young fellow in blue jeans and a T–shirt with a picture of a horse on it came walking out and smiled pleasantly as Kelp braked to a stop, and then said, “Help you, folks? This is a private road.”

“We’re looking for Hopatcong,” Kelp said, just because the name HOPATCONG on a highway sign had struck him funny. So then, of course, he had to listen to about 18 minutes of instructions on how to get to Hopatcong before they could back up and leave there and drive on up the public road and take the right turn up a very steep hill to a place from which they could look down and see Yerba Buena Ranch spread out below, like a pool table with fences. The ranch was pretty extensive, with irregularly shaped fields all enclosed by those white wooden rails and connected by narrow roads of dirt or blacktop. Here and there were small clusters of trees, like buttons in upholstery, plus about ten brown or white barns and sheds scattered around out behind the main farmhouse. They saw about 30 horses hanging out and watched a little cream–colored pickup truck drive back and forth, and then Dortmunder said, “Doesn’t look easy.”

Kelp paused in taking many photos of the place to stare in astonishment. “Doesn’t look easy? I never saw anything so easy in my life. No alarm system, no armed guards, not even anybody really suspicious.”

“You can’t put a horse in your pocket,” Dortmunder said. “And how do we get a vehicle down in there without somebody noticing?”

“I’ll walk him out,” the old coot said. “That’s no trouble; I know horses.”

“Do you know this horse?” Dortmunder gestured at the pretty landscape. “They got a whole lot of horses down there.”

“I’ll know Dire Straits when I see him, don’t you worry,” the old coot said.

So now was the time to find out if that was an idle boast or not. Using the photos they’d taken from all around the ranch, plus New Jersey road maps and a topographical map that gave Dortmunder a slight headache, he’d figured out the best route to and from the ranch and also the simplest and cleanest way in, which was to start from a small and seldom–traveled county road and hike through somebody else’s orchard to the rear of the ranch, then remove two rails from the perimeter fence there. They would go nowhere near the front entrance or the main building. The old coot would go with them to identify Dire Straits and lead him away. Going out, they’d restore the rails to confuse and delay pursuit. The old coot had rented a station wagon and a horse van with room for two horses — Dortmunder and Kelp couldn’t get over the idea that they were working with somebody who rented vehicles rather than steal them — and so here they were, around two A.M. on a cloudy, warm night.

But where was Dire Straits?

Could he be off partying somewhere, for heavy money? The old coot insisted no; his anonymous boss had ways of knowing things like that, and Dire Straits was definitely at home these days, resting up between dates.

“He’ll be in one of them buildings over there,” the old coot said, gesturing vaguely in the general direction of planet Earth.

“I can still hear some back that way,” Kelp said. “Now they’re going, ‘Floor–flor’.”

“That’s a snort,” the old coot said. “Those old plugs stay outside in good weather, but Dire Straits they keep in his stall, so he stays healthy. Down this way.”

So they went down that way, Dortmunder not liking any bit of it. He preferred to think of himself as a professional and for a professional there is always the one right way to do things, as opposed to any number of amateur or wrong ways, and this job just wasn’t laying out in a manner that he could take pride in. Having to case the joint from a nearby hilltop, for instance, was far less satisfactory than walking into a bank, or a jewelry wholesaler, or whatever it might be, and pretending to be a messenger with a package for Mr. Hutcheson. “There’s no Mr. Hutcheson here.” “You sure? Let me call my dispatcher.” And so on. Looking things over every second of the time.

You can’t show up at a ranch with a package for a horse.

Nor can you tap a horse’s phone or do electronic surveillance on a horse or make up a plaster imitation horse to leave in its place. You can’t drill in to the horse from next door or tunnel in from across the street. You can’t do a diversionary explosion outside a ranch or use the fire escape or break through the roof. You can’t time a horse’s movements.

Well, you can, actually, but not the way Dortmunder meant.

The way Dortmunder meant, this horse heist was looking less and less like what the newspapers call a “well–planned professional robbery” and more and more like hobos sneaking into back yards to steal lawn mowers. Professionally, it was an embarrassment.

“Careful where you walk,” the old coot said.

“Too late,” Dortmunder told him.

Dortmunder’s ideas of farms came from margarine commercials on television and his ideas of ranches from cigarette ads in magazines. This place didn’t match either; no three–story–high red barns, no masses of horses running pell–mell past boulders. What you had was these long, low brown buildings scattered among the railed–in fields, and what it mostly reminded Dortmunder of was World War Two prisoner–of–war–camp movies — not a comforting image.

“He’ll be in one of these three barns,” the old coot said. “I’m pretty sure.”

So they entered a long structure with a wide central cement–floored aisle spotted with dirt and straw. A few low–wattage bare bulbs hung from the rough beams above the aisle, and chest–high wooden partitions lined both sides. These were the stalls, about two thirds occupied.

Walking through this first barn, Dortmunder learned several facts about horses:

(1) They smell

(2) They breathe, more than anything he’d ever met in his life before

(3) They don’t sleep, not even at night

(4) They don’t even sit down

(5) They are very curious about people who happen to go by

(6) they have extremely long necks.

When horses in stalls on both sides of Dortmunder stretched out their heads toward him at the same time, wrinkling their black lips to show their big, square tombstone teeth, snuffling and whuffling with those shotgun–barrel noses, sighting at him down those long faces, he realized that the aisle wasn’t that wide after all.

“Jeepers,” Kelp said, a thing he didn’t say often.

And Dire Straits wasn’t even in there. They emerged on the other side, warm, curious horse breath still moist on Dortmunder’s cheek, and looked around, accustoming themselves to the darkness again. Behind them, the horses whickered and bumped around, still disturbed by this late–night visit. Far away, the main farmhouse showed just a couple of lights. Faint illumination came from window openings of nearer structures. “He has to be in that one or that one,” the old coot said, pointing.

“Which one you want to try first?” Dortmunder asked.

The old coot considered and pointed. “That one.”

“Then it’s in the other one,” Dortmunder said. “So that’s where we’ll try.”

The old coot gave him a look. “Are you trying to be funny, or what?”

“Or what,” Dortmunder said.

And, as it turned out, he was right. Third stall in on the left, there was Dire Straits himself, a big, kind of arrogant–looking thing, with a narrower–than–usual face and a very sleek black coat. He reared back and stared at these human beings with distaste, like John Barrymore being awakened the morning after. “That’s him,” the old coot said. More important, a small sign on the stall door said the same thing: DIRE STRAITS.

“At last,” Kelp said.

“Hasn’t been that long,” the old coot said. “Let me get a bridle for him.” He turned away, then suddenly tensed, looking back toward the door. In a quick, harsh whisper, he said, “Somebody coming!”

“Uh–oh,” Dortmunder said.

Turning fast, the old coot yanked open a stall door — not the one to Dire Straits — grabbed Dortmunder’s elbow in his strong, bony hand and shoved him inside, at the same time hissing at Kelp, “Slip in here! Slip in!”

“There’s somebody in here,” Dortmunder objected, meaning a horse, a brown one, who stared at this unexpected guest in absolute astonishment.

“No time!” The old coot was pushing Kelp in, crowding in himself, pulling the stall door shut just as the light in the barn got much brighter. Must be on a dimmer switch.

“Hey, fellas,” a male voice said conversationally, “what’s going on?”

Caught us, Dortmunder thought, and cast about in his mind for some even faintly sensible reason for being in this brown horse’s stall in the middle of the night. Then he heard what else the voice was saying:

“Thought you were all settled down for the night.”

He’s talking to the horses, Dortmunder thought.

“Something get to you guys? Bird fly in?”

In a way, Dortmunder thought.

“Did a rat get in here?”

The voice was closer, calm and reassuring, its owner moving slowly along the aisle, his familiar sound and sight leaving a lot of soothed horses in his wake.

All except for the brown horse in here with Dortmunder and Kelp and the old coot. He wasn’t exactly crying out, “Here, boss, here they are, they’re right here!” but it was close. Snort, whuffle, paw, headshake, prance; the damn beast acted like he was auditioning for A Chorus Line. While Dortmunder and company crouched down low on the far side of this huge, hairy show–off, doing their best not to get crushed between the immovable object of the stall wall and the irrepressible force of the horse’s haunch, the owner of the voice came over to see what was up, saying, “Hey, there, Daffy, what’s the problem?”

Daffy, thought Dortmunder. I might have known.

The person was right there, leaning his forearms on the stall door, permitting Daffy to slobber and blubber all over his face. “It’s OK now, Daffy,” the person said. “Everything’s fine.”

I’ve been invaded! Daffy whuffled while his tail dry–mopped Dortmunder’s face.

“Just settle down, big fella.”

Just look me over! Have I ever had ten legs before?

“Take it easy, boy. Everybody else is calm now.”

That’s because they don’t have these, these, these …

“Good Daffy. See you in the morning.”

Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, Daffy mumbled, while trying to step on everybody’s toes at once.

The owner of the voice receded at last, and the old coot did something up around Daffy’s head that all at once made the horse calm right down. As the lights lowered to their former dimness and the sound of thumping boots faded, Daffy grinned at everybody as though to say, I’ve always wanted roommates. Nice!

Kelp said, “What did you do?”

“Sugar cubes,” the old coot said. “I brought some for Dire Straits, didn’t have time to give one to this critter before that hand got here.”

Sugar cubes. Dortmunder looked at the old coot with new respect. Here was a man who traveled with an emergency supply of sugar cubes.

“OK,” the old coot said, shoving Daffy out of his way as though the animal were a big sofa on casters, “Let’s get Dire Straits and get out of here.”

“Exactly,” Dortmunder said, but then found himself kind of pinned against the wall. “Listen, uh, Hiram,” he said. “Could you move Daffy a little?”

“Oh, sure.”

Hiram did, and Dortmunder gratefully left that stall, hurried along by Daffy’s nose in the small of his back. Kelp shut the stall door and Hiram went over to select a bridle from among those hanging on pegs. Coming back to Dire Straits’ stall, he said softly, “Come here, guy, I got something nice for you.”

Dire Straits wasn’t so sure about that. Being a star, he was harder to get than Daffy. From well back in the stall, he gave Hiram down his long nose a do–I–know–you? look.

“Come here, honey,” Hiram urged, soft and confidential, displaying not one but two sugar cubes on his outstretched palm. “Got something for you.”

Next door, Daffy stuck his head out to watch all this with some concern, having thought he had an exclusive on sugar–cube distribution. Whicker? he asked.

That did it. Hearing his neighbor, Dire Straits finally realized there was such a thing as playing too hard to get. With a toss of the head, moving with a picky–toed dignity that Dortmunder might have thought sexually suspicious if he hadn’t known Dire Straits’ rep, the big black beast came forward, lowered his head, wuggled and muggled over Hiram’s palm and the cubes were gone. Meanwhile, with his other hand, Hiram was patting the horse’s nose, murmuring, rubbing behind his ear and gradually getting into just the right position.

It was slickly done, Dortmunder had to admit that. The first thing Dire Straits knew, the bit was in his mouth, the bridle straps were around his head and Hiram was wrapping a length of rein around his own hand. “Good boy,” Hiram said, gave the animal one more pat and backed away, opening the stall.

After all that prima–donna stuff, Dire Straits was suddenly no trouble at all. Maybe he thought he was on his way to the hop. As Daffy and a couple of other horses neighed goodbye, Hiram led Dire Straits out of the barn. Dortmunder and Kelp stuck close, Hiram now seeming less like an old coot and more like somebody who knew what he was doing, and they headed at an easy pace across the fields.

The fences along the way were composed of two rails, one at waist height and the other down by your knee, with their ends stuck into holes in vertical posts and nailed. On the way in, Dortmunder and Kelp had removed rails from three fences, because Hiram had assured them that Dire Straits would neither climb them nor leap over. “I thought horses jumped,” Dortmunder said.

“Only jumpers,” Hiram answered. Dortmunder, unsatisfied, decided to let it go.

On the way out, Hiram and Dire Straits paused while Dortmunder and Kelp restored the rails to the first fence, having to whisper harshly the length of the rail at each other before they got the damn things seated in the holes in the vertical posts, and then they moved on, Kelp muttering, “You almost took my thumb off there, you know.”

“Wait till we’re in the light again,” Dortmunder told him. “I’ll show you the big gash on the back of my hand.”

“No, no, honey,” Hiram said to Dire Straits. It seemed there were other horses in this field, and Dire Straits wanted to go hang out, but Hiram held tight to the rein, tugged and provided the occasional sugar cube to keep him moving in the right direction. The other horses began to come around, interested, wondering what was up. Dortmunder and Kelp did their best to keep out of the way without losing Hiram and Dire Straits, but it was getting tough. There were five or six horses milling around, bumping into one another, sticking their faces into Dortmunder’s and Kelp’s necks, distracting them and slowing them down. “Hey!” Dortmunder called, but softly. “Wait up!”

“We got to get out of here,” Hiram said, not waiting up.

Kelp said, “Hiram, we’re gonna get lost.”

“Hold his tail,” Hiram suggested. He still wasn’t waiting up.

Dortmunder couldn’t believe that. “You mean the horse?”

“Who else? He won’t mind.”

The sound of Hiram’s voice was farther ahead. It was getting harder to tell Dire Straits from all these other beasts. “Jeez, maybe we better,” Kelp said and trotted forward, arms up to protect himself from ricocheting animals.

Dortmunder followed, reluctant but seeing no other choice. He and Kelp both grabbed Dire Straits’ tail, way down near the end; and from there on, the trip got somewhat easier, though it was essentially humiliating to have to walk along holding on to some horse’s tail.

At the second fence, there was another batch of horses, so many that it was impossible to put the rails back. “Oh, the hell with it,” Dortmunder said. “Let’s just go,” He grabbed Dire Straits’ tail. “Come on, come on,” he said, and the horse he was holding on to, which wasn’t Dire Straits, suddenly took off at about 90 miles an hour, taking Dortmunder with him for the first eight inches, or until his brain could order his fingers, “Retract!” Reeling, not quite falling into the ooze below, Dortmunder stared around in the darkness, saying, “Where the hell is everybody?”

A lot of horses neighed and whickered and snorted and laughed at him; in among them all, Kelp’s voice called, “Over here,” and so the little band regrouped again, Dortmunder clutching firmly the right tail.

What a lot of horses — more than ever. Hiram, complaining that he didn’t have that much sugar anymore, nevertheless occasionally had to buy off more intrusive and aggressive animals, while Dortmunder and Kelp had to keep saying, as horses stuck their noses into pants pockets and armpits, “We don’t have the damn sugar! Talk to the guy in front!”

Finally, they reached the last fence, where Hiram suddenly stopped and said, “Oh, hell.”

“I don’t want to hear ‘Oh, hell’,” Dortmunder answered. Feeling his way along Dire Straits’ flank, he came up to the horse’s head and saw Hiram looking at the final fence. Because this was the border of the property, on coming in Dortmunder and Kelp had left the rails roughly in their original positions, though no longer nailed in place, and now the press of horses had dislodged them, leaving a 12–foot gap full of about the biggest herd of horses this side of a Gene Autry movie. More horses joined the crowd every second, passing through the gap, disappearing into the darkness. “Now what?” Dortmunder said.

“Apples,” Hiram said. He sounded unhappy.

Dortmunder said, “What apples? I don’t have any apples.”

“They do,” Hiram said. “If there’s one thing horses like more than sugar, it’s apples. And that” — he pointed his chin in disgust — “is an orchard.”

“And that” Kelp said, “is a siren.”

It was true. Far in the distance, the wail of a siren rose and fell, and then rose again, more clearly. “Sounds exactly like the city,” Dortmunder said, with a whiff of nostalgia.

Kelp said, “Aren’t those lights over there? Over by the road?” Past the bulk of many horses stretching their necks up into apple trees to eat green apples, Dortmunder saw the bobbing beams of flashlights. “Over by the van, you mean,” he said. The siren rose, wonderfully distinct, then fell; and during its valley, voices could be heard, shouting, over by the flashlights. “Terrific,” Dortmunder said.

“What happened,” Hiram said, “is the owner. The orchard owner.”

“He probably lives,” Kelp suggested, “in that house we saw across the street from where we parked.”

“Across the road,” Hiram corrected.

“Anyway,” Kelp said, “I guess he called the cops.”

Beyond the bobbing flashlights, which seemed to Dortmunder to be moving closer, red and blue lights appeared, blinking and revolving. “State troopers,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, we’ll never get to the van,” Hiram said. Turning around, looking past Dire Straits’ shoulder, he said, “We can’t go back that way anymore, either.”

Dortmunder turned to look and saw many more lights on now in the main ranch building and the outbuildings. The ruckus over here had attracted attention, maybe; or, more likely, the owner of the orchard had phoned the owner of the ranch to say a word or two about horses eating apples.

In any event, it was a pincer movement, with the orchard people and the state troopers in front and the ranch people in back, all moving inexorably toward the point occupied by Dortmunder and Kelp and Hiram and Dire Straits.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Hiram said.

Dortmunder looked at him. “That many?”

“It’s time to ride out of here.”

Kelp said, “Hiram, we’ll never get to the van.”

“Not drive. Ride.” Saying which, Hiram suddenly swung up onto Dire Straits’ bare back. The horse looked startled, and maybe insulted. “Grab mounts,” Hiram said, gripping the rein.

“Hiram,” Dortmunder said, “I don’t ride horses.”

“Time to learn, Bo,” Hiram said unsympathetically. Bending low over Dire Straits’ neck, whamming his heels into Dire Straits’ rib cage, Hiram yelled into Dire Straits’ ear, “Go, boy!”

“I don’t ride,” Dortmunder said, “any horses.”

With Hiram on his back, Dire Straits walked over to the nearest apple tree and started to eat. “Go, boy!” Hiram yelled, kicking and whacking the oblivious thoroughbred. “Giddy, damn it!” he yelled, as flashlight beams began to pick him out among the branches and leaves and green apples.

“I never did have much luck with horses,” Dortmunder said. Out in front of him was a scene of mass, and growing, confusion. As the siren’s wail continued to weave, horses shouldered their way up and down the tight rows of gnarly apple trees, munching and socializing. Human beings uselessly yelled and waved things among them, trying to make them go home. Because green apples go right through horses, the human beings also slipped and slued a lot. Hiram, trying to hide in the tree Dire Straits was snacking off but blinded by all the flashlights now converged on him, fell out of the tree and into the arms of what looked very much like a state trooper, who then fell down. Other people fell down. Horses ate. Lights stabbed this way and that. Back by the breached fence, Dortmunder and Kelp watched without pleasure. “That reminds me of the subway,” Dortmunder said.

“Here comes that truck,” Kelp said. Dortmunder turned, and here came a pair of headlights through the night from the ranch, jouncing up and down. “I do understand pickup trucks,” Dortmunder said and strode toward the lights.

Kelp, saying, “John? You got something?” came trailing along.

Dortmunder and the pickup approached each other. As the vehicle neared, Dortmunder waved his arms over his head, demanding that the thing stop, which it did, and a sleepy young guy looked out at him, saying, “Who the hell are you?”

“Your goddamn horses,” Dortmunder said, his manner outraged but disciplined, “are eating our goddamn apples.”

The fellow stared at him. “You aren’t Russwinder.”

“I work for him, don’t I?” Dortmunder demanded. “And I never seen anybody so mad. We need light back there, he sent us down, get your portable generator. You got a portable generator, don’t you?”

“Well, sure,” the fellow said. “But I was gonna —”

“Light,” Dortmunder insisted. Around them, half–awake and half–dressed ranch employees made their way toward the center of chaos, ignoring Dortmunder and Kelp, whose bona fides were established by their being in conversation with the ranch’s pickup truck. “We can’t see what we’re doing back there,” Dortmunder said, “and Mr. Russwinder’s mad.”

The young fellow clearly saw that this was a time to be accommodating to one’s neighbor and to one’s neighbor’s employee. “OK,” he said. “Climb in.”

“We’ll ride in back,” Dortmunder told him and clambered up into the bed of the pickup, which was pleasantly aromatic of hay. Kelp followed, eyes bright with hope, and the pickup lurched forward, jounced around in a great circle and headed back toward the ranch.

The pickup seemed to think it was a horse; over the fields it bucked and bounced, like a frying pan trying to throw Dortmunder and Kelp back into the fire. Clutching the pickup’s metal parts with every finger and every toe, Dortmunder gazed back at the receding scene in the orchard, which looked now like a battle in a movie about the Middle Ages. “Never again,” he said.

Ka–bump! The pickup slued from field to dirt road, a much more user–friendly surface, and hustled off toward the barns. “Well, this time,” Kelp said, “you can’t blame me.” Dortmunder looked at him. “Why not?” The cowboy behind the wheel slammed both feet and a brick onto the brake pedal, causing the pickup to skid halfway around, hurl itself broadside at the brown–plank wall of the nearest barn and shudder to a stop with millimeters to spare. Dortmunder peeled himself off the pickup’s bed, staring wildly around, and the maniac driver hopped out, crying, “The generator’s in here!” Off he went at a lope.

Dortmunder and Kelp shakily assisted each other to the ground, as their benefactor dashed into the barn. “I’d like to wait and run him over,” Dortmunder said, getting into the pickup’s cab and sliding over to the passenger side.

Kelp followed, settling behind the wheel. The engine was on, so he just shifted into gear and they drove away from there, brisk but not reckless. No need to be reckless.

At the highway, Dortmunder said, “Left leads past that orchard. Better go right, up the hill.”

So they went up the hill. As they drove past the high clearing where they’d taken pictures down at the ranch, Kelp slowed and said, “Look at that!”

It was positively coruscating down there, dazzling, like night–time on the Fourth of July. Police and fire engine flashing lights in red and blue mingled with the white of headlights, flashlights, spotlights. Men and horses ran hither and yon. Every building in the area was all lit up.

“Just for a second,” Kelp said, pulling off the road and coming to a stop.

Dortmunder didn’t argue. It was really a very interesting sight, and they could, after all, claim some part in its creation. They got out and walked to the edge of the drop–off to watch. Faint cries and horse snorts drifted up through the sultry air.

“We better go,” Dortmunder said at last.

“Ya. You’re right.”

They turned back to the pickup, and Kelp said, with surprise, “Well, look at this!” He reached out his hand and took the end of a bridle and turned to smile at Dortmunder, saying, “I guess he likes us!”

Dortmunder looked at the creature munching calmly at the other end of the bridle. “It is him, isn’t it?”

“He followed me home,” Kelp said, grinning broadly. “Can I keep him?”

“No,” Dortmunder said.

Surprised, Kelp ducked his head and hissed, so Dire Straits wouldn’t hear him, “Dortmunder, the insurance company! A million dollars!”

“I am not taking a stolen race horse through the Lincoln Tunnel,” Dortmunder said. “That’s just for openers. And we got no place to keep him.”

“In the park.”

“He’d get mugged. He’d get stolen. He’d get found.”

“We gotta know somebody with a back yard!”

“And neighbors. Andy, it doesn’t play. Now, come on, say goodbye to your friend; we’re going home.”

Dortmunder continued on to the pickup, but Kelp stayed where he was, an agonized expression on his face. When Dortmunder looked back, Kelp said, “I can’t, John, I just can’t.” The hand clutching the bridle shook. “I’m holding a million dollars! I can’t let go.”

Dortmunder got into the pickup, behind the wheel. He looked out through the open passenger door at Kelp in the dark, on the hilltop, holding a strip of leather with $1,000,000 on the other end. “I’m going to New York now,” Dortmunder told him, not unkindly. “Are you coming, or are you staying?”

TOO MANY COOKS

_________________

“Did you hear something?” Dortmunder whispered.

“The wind,” Kelp said.

Dortmunder twisted around in his seated position and deliberately shone the flashlight in the kneeling Kelp’s eyes. “What wind? We’re in a tunnel.”

“There’s underground rivers,” Kelp said, squinting, “so maybe there’s underground winds. Are you through the wall there?”

“Two more whacks,” Dortmunder told him. Relenting, he aimed the flashlight past Kelp back down the empty tunnel, a meandering, messy gullet, most of it less than three feet in diameter, wriggling its way through rocks and rubble and ancient middens, traversing 40 tough feet from the rear of the basement of the out–of–business shoe store to the wall of the bank on the corner. According to the maps Dortmunder had gotten from the water department by claiming to be with the sewer department, and the maps he’d gotten from the sewer department by claiming to be with the water department, just the other side of this wall was the bank’s main vault. Two more whacks and this large, irregular square of concrete that Dortmunder and Kelp had been scoring and scratching at for some time now would at last fall away onto the floor inside, and there would be the vault. Dortmunder gave it a whack.

Dortmunder gave it another whack.

The block of concrete fell onto the floor of the vault. “Oh, thank God,” somebody said.

What? Reluctant but unable to stop himself, Dortmunder dropped sledge and flashlight and leaned his head through the hole in the wall and looked around.

It was the vault, all right. And it was full of people.

A man in a suit stuck his hand out and grabbed Dortmunder’s and shook it while pulling him through the hole and on into the vault. “Great work, Officer,” he said. “The robbers are outside.”

Dortmunder had thought he and Kelp were the robbers. “They are?”

A round–faced woman in pants and a Buster Brown collar said, “Five of them. With machine guns.”

“Machine guns,” Dortmunder said.

A delivery kid wearing a mustache and an apron and carrying a flat cardboard carton containing four coffees, two decafs and a tea said, “We all hostages, mon. I gonna get fired.”

“How many of you are there?” the man in the suit asked, looking past Dortmunder at Kelp’s nervously smiling face.

“Just the two,” Dortmunder said, and watched helplessly as willing hands dragged Kelp through the hole and set him on his feet in the vault. It was really very full of hostages.

“I’m Kearney,” the man in the suit said. “I’m the bank manager, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”

Which was the first time any bank manager had said that to Dortmunder, who said, “Uh–huh, uh–huh,” and nodded, and then said, “I’m, uh, Officer Diddums, and this is Officer, uh, Kelly.”

Kearney, the bank manager, frowned. “Diddums, did you say?”

Dortmunder was furious with himself. Why did I call myself Diddums? Well, I didn’t know I was going to need an alias inside a bank vault, did I? Aloud, he said, “Uh–huh. Diddums. It’s Welsh.”

“Ah,” said Kearney. Then he frowned again and said, “You people aren’t even armed.”

“Well, no,” Dortmunder said. “We’re the, uh, the hostage–rescue team; we don’t want any shots fired, increase the risk for you, uh, civilians.”

“Very shrewd,” Kearney agreed.

Kelp, his eyes kind of glassy and his smile kind of fixed, said, “Well, folks, maybe we should leave here now, single file, just make your way in an orderly fashion through —”

“They’re coming!” hissed a stylish woman over by the vault door.

Everybody moved. It was amazing; everybody shifted at once. Some people moved to hide the new hole in the wall, some people moved to get farther away from the vault door and some people moved to get behind Dortmunder, who suddenly found himself the nearest person in the vault to that big, round, heavy metal door, which was easing massively and silently open.

It stopped halfway, and three men came in. They wore black ski masks and black leather jackets and black work pants and black shoes. They carried Uzi submachine guns at high port. Their eyes looked cold and hard, and their hands fidgeted on the metal of the guns, and their feet danced nervously, even when they were standing still. They looked as though anything at all might make them overreact.

“Shut up!” one of them yelled, though nobody’d been talking. He glared around at his guests and said, “Gotta have somebody to stand out front, see can the cops be trusted.” His eye, as Dortmunder had known it would, lit on Dortmunder. “You,” he said.

“Uh–huh,” Dortmunder said.

“What’s your name?”

Everybody in the vault had already heard him say it, so what choice did he have? “Diddums,” Dortmunder said.

The robber glared at Dortmunder through his ski mask. “Diddums?”

“It’s Welsh,” Dortmunder explained.

“Ah,” the robber said, and nodded. He gestured with the Uzi. “Outside, Diddums.”

Dortmunder stepped forward, glancing back over his shoulder at all the people looking at him, knowing every goddamn one of them was glad he wasn’t him — even Kelp, back there pretending to be four feet tall — and then Dortmunder stepped through the vault door, surrounded by all those nervous maniacs with machine guns, and went with them down a corridor flanked by desks and through a doorway to the main part of the bank, which was a mess.

The time at the moment, as the clock high on the wide wall confirmed, was 5:15 in the afternoon. Everybody who worked at the bank should have gone home by now; that was the theory Dortmunder had been operating from. What must have happened was, just before closing time at three o’clock (Dortmunder and Kelp being already then in the tunnel, working hard, knowing nothing of events on the surface of the planet), these gaudy showboats had come into the bank waving their machine guns around.

And not just waving them, either. Lines of ragged punctures had been drawn across the walls and the Lucite upper panel of the tellers’ counter, like connect–the–dot puzzles. Wastebaskets and a potted Ficus had been overturned, but fortunately, there were no bodies lying around; none Dortmunder could see, anyway. The big plate–glass front windows had been shot out, and two more of the black–clad robbers were crouched down, one behind the OUR LOW LOAN RATES poster and the other behind the OUR HIGH IRA RATES poster, staring out at the street, from which came the sound of somebody talking loudly but indistinctly through a bullhorn. So what must have happened, they’d come in just before three, waving their guns, figuring a quick in and out, and some brownnose employee looking for advancement triggered the alarm, and now they had a stalemate hostage situation on their hands; and, of course, everybody in the world by now has seen Dog Day Afternoon and therefore knows that if the police get the drop on a robber in circumstances such as these circumstances right here, they’ll immediately shoot him dead, so now hostage negotiation is trickier than ever. This isn’t what I had in mind when I came to the bank, Dortmunder thought.

The boss robber prodded him along with the barrel of his Uzi, saying, “What’s your first name, Diddums?”

Please don’t say Dan, Dortmunder begged himself. Please, please, somehow, anyhow, manage not to say Dan. His mouth opened, “John,” he heard himself say, his brain having turned desperately in this emergency to that last resort, the truth, and he got weak–kneed with relief.

“OK, John, don’t faint on me,” the robber said. “This is very simple what you got to do here. The cops say they want to talk, just talk, nobody gets hurt. Fine. So you’re gonna step out in front of the bank and see do the cops shoot you.”

“Ah,” Dortmunder said.

“No time like the present, huh, John?” the robber said, and poked him with the Uzi again.

“That kind of hurts,” Dortmunder said. “I apologize,” the robber said, hard–eyed. “Out.” One of the other robbers, eyes red with strain inside the black ski mask, leaned close to Dortmunder and yelled, “You wanna shot in the foot first? You wanna crawl out there?”

“I’m going,” Dortmunder told him. “See? Here I go.” The first robber, the comparatively calm one, said, “You go as far as the sidewalk, that’s all. You take one step off the curb, we blow your head off.”

“Got it,” Dortmunder assured him, and crunched across broken glass to the sagging–open door and looked out. Across the street was parked a line of buses, police cars, police trucks, all in blue and white with red gumdrops on top, and behind them moved a seething mass of armed cops. “Uh,” Dortmunder said. Turning back to the comparatively calm robber, he said, “You wouldn’t happen to have a white flag or anything like that, would you?”

The robber pressed the point of the Uzi to Dortmunder’s side. “Out,” he said.

“Right,” Dortmunder said. He faced front, put his hands way up in the air and stepped outside.

What a lot of attention he got. From behind all those blue–and–whites on the other side of the street, tense faces stared. On the rooftops of the red–brick tenements, in this neighborhood deep in the residential heart of Queens, sharpshooters began to familiarize themselves through their telescopic sights with the contours of Dortmunder’s furrowed brow. To left and right, the ends of the block were sealed off with buses parked nose to tailpipe, past which ambulances and jumpy white–coated medics could be seen. Everywhere, rifles and pistols jittered in nervous fingers. Adrenaline ran in the gutters.

“I’m not with them!” Dortmunder shouted, edging across the sidewalk, arms upraised, hoping this announcement wouldn’t upset the other bunch of armed hysterics behind him. For all he knew, they had a problem with rejection.

However, nothing happened behind him, and what happened out front was that a bullhorn appeared, resting on a police–car roof, and roared at him, “You a hostage?”

“I sure am!” yelled Dortmunder.

“What’s your name?”

Oh, not again, thought Dortmunder, but there was nothing for it. “Diddums,” he said.

“What?”

“Diddums!”

A brief pause: “Diddums?”

“It’s Welsh!”

“Ah.”

There was a little pause while whoever was operating the bullhorn conferred with his compatriots, and then the bullhorn said, “What’s the situation in there?”

What kind of question was that? “Well, uh,” Dortmunder said, and remembered to speak more loudly, and called, “kind of tense, actually.”

“Any of the hostages been harmed?”

“Uh–uh. No. Definitely not. This is a … this is a … nonviolent confrontation.” Dortmunder fervently hoped to establish that idea in everybody’s mind, particularly if he were going to be out here in the middle much longer.

“Any change in the situation?”

Change? “Well,” Dortmunder answered, “I haven’t been in there that long, but it seems like —”

“Not that long? What’s the matter with you, Diddums? You’ve been in that bank over two hours now!”

“Oh, yeah!” Forgetting, Dortmunder lowered his arms and stepped forward to the curb. “That’s right!” he called. “Two hours! More than two hours! Been in there a long time!”

“Step out here away from the bank!”

Dortmunder looked down and saw his toes hanging ten over the edge of the curb. Stepping back at a brisk pace, he called, “I’m not supposed to do that!”

“Listen, Diddums, I’ve got a lot of tense men and women over here. I’m telling you, step away from the bank!”

“The fellas inside,” Dortmunder explained, “they don’t want me to step off the curb. They said they’d, uh, well, they just don’t want me to do it.”

“Psst! Hey, Diddums!”

Dortmunder paid no attention to the voice calling from behind him. He was concentrating too hard on what was happening right now out front. Also, he wasn’t that used to the new name yet.

“Diddums!”

“Maybe you better put your hands up again.”

“Oh, yeah!” Dortmunder’s arms shot up like pistons blowing through an engine block. “There they are!”

“Diddums, goddamn it, do I have to shoot you to get you to pay attention?”

Arms dropping, Dortmunder spun around. “Sorry! I wasn’t — 1 was — Here I am!”

“Get those goddamn hands up!”

Dortmunder turned sideways, arms up so high his sides hurt. Peering sidelong to his right, he called to the crowd across the street, “Sirs, they’re talking to me inside now.” Then he peered sidelong to his left, saw the comparatively calm robber crouched beside the broken doorframe and looking less calm than before, and he said, “Here I am.”

“We’re gonna give them our demands now,” the robber said. “Through you.”

“That’s fine,” Dortmunder said. “That’s great. Only, you know, how come you don’t do it on the phone? I mean, the way it’s normally —”

The red–eyed robber, heedless of exposure to the sharpshooters across the street, shouldered furiously past the comparatively calm robber, who tried to restrain him as he yelled at Dortmunder, “You’re rubbing it in, are ya? OK, I made a mistake! I got excited and I shot up the switchboard! You want me to get excited again?”

“No, no!” Dortmunder cried, trying to hold his hands straight up in the air and defensively in front of his body at the same time. “I forgot! I just forgot!”

The other robbers all clustered around to grab the red–eyed robber, who seemed to be trying to point his Uzi in Dortmunder’s direction as he yelled, “I did it in front of everybody! I humiliated myself in front of everybody! And now you’re making fun of me!”

“I forgot! I’m sorry!”

“You can’t forget that! Nobody’s ever gonna forget that!”

The three remaining robbers dragged the red–eyed robber back away from the doorway, talking to him, trying to soothe him, leaving Dortmunder and the comparatively calm robber to continue their conversation. “I’m sorry,” Dortmunder said. “I just forgot. I’ve been kind of distracted lately. Recently.”

“You’re playing with fire here, Diddums,” the robber said. “Now tell them they’re gonna get our demands.”

Dortmunder nodded, and turned his head the other way, and yelled, “They’re gonna tell you their demands now. I mean, I’m gonna tell you their demands. Their demands. Not my demands. Their de —”

“We’re willing to listen, Diddums, only so long as none of the hostages get hurt.”

“That’s good!” Dortmunder agreed, and turned his head the other way to tell the robber, “That’s reasonable, you know, that’s sensible, that’s a very good thing they’re saying.”

“Shut up,” the robber said.

“Right,” Dortmunder said.

The robber said, “First, we want the riflemen off the roofs.”

“Oh, so do I,” Dortmunder told him, and turned to shout, “They want the riflemen off the roofs!”

“What else?”

“What else?”

“And we want them to unblock that end of the street, the — what is it? — the north end.”

Dortmunder frowned straight ahead at the buses blocking the intersection. “Isn’t that east?” he asked.

“Whatever it is,” the robber said, getting impatient. “That end down there to the left.”

“OK.” Dortmunder turned his head and yelled, “They want you to unblock the east end of the street!” Since his hands were way up in the sky somewhere, he pointed with his chin.

“Isn’t that north?”

“I knew it was,” the robber said.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Dortmunder called. “That end down there to the left.”

“The right, you mean.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Your right, my left. Their left.”

“What else?”

Dortmunder sighed, and turned his head. “What else?”

The robber glared at him. “I can hear the bullhorn, Diddums. I can hear him say ‘What else?’ You don’t have to repeat everything he says. No more translations.”

“Right,” Dortmunder said. “Gotcha. No more translations.”

“We’ll want a car,” the robber told him. “A station wagon. We’re gonna take three hostages with us, so we want a big station wagon. And nobody follows us.”

“Gee,” Dortmunder said dubiously, “are you sure?”

The robber stared. “Am I sure?”

“Well, you know what they’ll do,” Dortmunder told him, lowering his voice so the other team across the street couldn’t hear him. “What they do in these situations, they fix a little radio transmitter under the car, so then they don’t have to follow you, exactly, but they know where you are.”

Impatient again, the robber said, “So you’ll tell them not to do that. No radio transmitters, or we kill the hostages.”

“Well, I suppose,” Dortmunder said doubtfully.

“What’s wrong now?” the robber demanded. “You’re too goddamn picky, Diddums; you’re just the messenger here. You think you know my job better than I do?”

I know I do, Dortmunder thought, but it didn’t seem a judicious thing to say aloud, so instead, he explained, “I just want things to go smooth, that’s all. I just don’t want bloodshed. And I was thinking, the New York City police, you know, well, they’ve got helicopters.”

“Damn,” the robber said. He crouched low to the littered floor, behind the broken doorframe, and brooded about his situation. Then he looked up at Dortmunder and said, “OK, Diddums, you’re so smart. What should we do?”

Dortmunder blinked. “You want me to figure out your getaway?”

“Put yourself in our position,” the robber suggested. “Think about it.”

Dortmunder nodded. Hands in the air, he gazed at the blocked intersection and put himself in the robbers’ position. “Hoo, boy,” he said. “You’re in a real mess.”

“We know that, Diddums.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “I tell you what maybe you could do. You make them give you one of those buses they’ve got down there blocking the street. They give you one of those buses right now, then you know they haven’t had time to put anything cute in it, like time–release tear–gas grenades or anyth —”

“Oh, my God,” the robber said. His black ski mask seemed to have paled slightly.

“Then you take all the hostages,” Dortmunder told him. “Everybody goes in the bus, and one of you people drives, and you go somewhere real crowded, like Times Square, say, and then you stop and make all the hostages get out and run.”

“Yeah?” the robber said. “What good does that do us?”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “you drop the ski masks and the leather jackets and the guns, and you run, too. Twenty, thirty people all running away from the bus in different directions, in the middle of Times Square in rush hour, everybody losing themselves in the crowd. It might work.”

“Jeez, it might,” the robber said. “OK, go ahead and — What?”

“What?” Dortmunder echoed. He strained to look leftward, past the vertical column of his left arm. The boss robber was in excited conversation with one of his pals; not the red–eyed maniac, a different one. The boss robber shook his head and said, “Damn!” Then he looked up at Dortmunder. “Come back in here, Diddums,” he said.

Dortmunder said, “But don’t you want me to —”

“Come back in here!”

“Oh,” Dortmunder said. “Uh, I better tell them over there that I’m gonna move.”

“Make it fast,” the robber told him. “Don’t mess with me, Diddums. I’m in a bad mood right now.”

“OK.” Turning his head the other way, hating it that his back was toward this bad–mooded robber for even a second, Dortmunder called, “They want me to go back into the bank now. Just for a minute.” Hands still up, he edged sideways across the sidewalk and through the gaping doorway, where the robbers laid hands on him and flung him back deeper into the bank.

He nearly lost his balance but saved himself against the sideways–lying pot of the tipped–over Ficus. When he turned around, all five of the robbers were lined up looking at him, their expressions intent, focused, almost hungry, like a row of cats looking in a fish–store window. “Uh,” Dortmunder said.

“He’s it now,” one of the robbers said.

Another robber said, “But they don’t know it.”

A third robber said, “They will soon.”

“They’ll know it when nobody gets on the bus,” the boss robber said, and shook his head at Dortmunder. “Sorry, Diddums. Your idea doesn’t work anymore.”

Dortmunder had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t actually part of this string. “How come?” he asked.

Disgusted, one of the other robbers said, “The rest of the hostages got away, that’s how come.”

Wide–eyed, Dortmunder spoke without thinking: “The tunnel!”

All of a sudden, it got very quiet in the bank. The robbers were now looking at him like cats looking at a fish with no window in the way. “The tunnel?” repeated the boss robber slowly. “You know about the tunnel?”

“Well, kind of,” Dortmunder admitted. “I mean, the guys digging it, they got there just before you came and took me away.”

“And you never mentioned it.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, very uncomfortable, “I didn’t feel like I should.”

The red–eyed maniac lunged forward, waving that submachine gun again, yelling, “You’re the guy with the tunnel! It’s your tunnel!” And he pointed the shaking barrel of the Uzi at Dortmunder’s nose.

“Easy, easy!” the boss robber yelled. “This is our only hostage; don’t use him up!”

The red–eyed maniac reluctantly lowered the Uzi, but he turned to the others and announced, “Nobody’s gonna forget when I shot up the switchboard. Nobody’s ever gonna forget that. He wasn’t here!”

All of the robbers thought that over. Meantime, Dortmunder was thinking about his own position. He might be a hostage, but he wasn’t your normal hostage, because he was also a guy who had just dug a tunnel to a bank vault, and there were maybe 30 eyeball witnesses who could identify him. So it wasn’t enough to get away from these bank robbers; he was also going to have to get away from the police. Several thousand police.

So did that mean he was locked to these second–rate smash–and–grabbers? Was his own future really dependent on their getting out of this hole? Bad news, if true. Left to their own devices, these people couldn’t escape from a merry–go–round.

Dortmunder sighed. “OK,” he said. “The first thing we have to do is —”

“We?” the boss robber said. “Since when are you in this?”

“Since you dragged me in,” Dortmunder told him. “And the first thing we have to do is —”

The red–eyed maniac lunged at him again with the Uzi, shouting, “Don’t you tell us what to do! We know what to do!”

“I’m your only hostage,” Dortmunder reminded him. “Don’t use me up. Also, now that I’ve seen you people in action, I’m your only hope of getting out of here. So this time, listen to me. The first thing we have to do is close and lock the vault door.”

One of the robbers gave a scornful laugh. “The hostages are gone,” he said. “Didn’t you hear that part? Lock the vault door after the hostages are gone. Isn’t that some kind of old saying?” And he laughed and laughed.

Dortmunder looked at him. “It’s a two–way tunnel,” he said quietly.

The robbers stared at him. Then they all turned and ran toward the back of the bank. They all did.

They’re too excitable for this line of work, Dortmunder thought as he walked briskly toward the front of the bank. Clang went the vault door, far behind him, and Dortmunder stepped through the broken doorway and out again to the sidewalk, remembering to stick his arms straight up in the air as he did.

“Hi!” he yelled, sticking his face well out, displaying it for all the sharpshooters to get a really good look at. “Hi, it’s me again! Diddums! Welsh!”

“Diddums!” screamed an enraged voice from deep within the bank. “Come back here!”

Oh, no. Ignoring that, moving steadily but without panic, arms up, face forward, eyes wide, Dortmunder angled leftward across the sidewalk, shouting, “I’m coming out again! And I’m escaping!” And he dropped his arms, tucked his elbows in and ran hell for leather toward those blocking buses.

Gunfire encouraged him: a sudden burst behind him ddrrritt, ddrrritt, and then kopp–kopp–kopp, and then a whole symphony of fooms and thug–thugs and padapows. Dortmunder’s toes, turning into high–tension steel springs, kept him bounding through the air like the Wright brothers’ first airplane, swooping and plunging down the middle of the street, that wall of buses getting closer and closer.

“Here! In here!” Uniformed cops appeared on both sidewalks, waving to him, offering sanctuary in the forms of open doorways and police vehicles to crouch behind, but Dortmunder was escaping. From everything.

The buses. He launched himself through the air, hit the blacktop hard and rolled under the nearest bus. Roll, roll, roll, hitting his head and elbows and knees and ears and nose and various other parts of his body against any number of hard, dirty objects, and then he was past the bus and on his feet, staggering, staring at a lot of goggle–eyed medics hanging around beside their ambulances, who just stood there and gawked back.

Dortmunder turned left. Medics weren’t going to chase him; their franchise didn’t include healthy bodies running down the street. The cops couldn’t chase him until they’d moved their buses out of the way. Dortmunder took off like the last of the dodoes, flapping his arms, wishing he knew how to fly.

The out–of–business shoe store, the other terminus of the tunnel, passed on his left. The getaway car they’d parked in front of it was long gone, of course. Dortmunder kept thudding on, on, on.

Three blocks later, a gypsy cab committed a crime by picking him up even though he hadn’t phoned the dispatcher first; in the city of New York, only licensed medallion taxis are permitted to pick up customers who hail them on the street. Dortmunder, panting like a Saint Bernard on the lumpy back seat, decided not to turn the guy in.

His faithful companion May came out of the living room when Dortmunder opened the front door of his apartment and stepped into his hall. “There you are!” she said. “Thank goodness. It’s all over the radio and the television.”

“I may never leave the house again,” Dortmunder told her. “If Andy Kelp ever calls, says he’s got this great job, easy, piece of cake, I’ll just tell him I’ve retired.”

“Andy’s here,” May said. “In the living room. You want a beer?”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said simply.

May went away to the kitchen and Dortmunder limped into the living room, where Kelp was seated on the sofa holding a can of beer and looking happy. On the coffee table in front of him was a mountain of money.

Dortmunder stared. “What’s that?”

Kelp grinned and shook his head. “It’s been too long since we scored, John,” he said. “You don’t even recognize the stuff anymore. This is money.”

“But — From the vault? How?”

“After you were taken away by those other guys — they were caught, by the way,” Kelp interrupted himself, “without loss of life — anyway, I told everybody in the vault there, the way to keep the money safe from the robbers was we’d all carry it out with us. So we did. And then I decided what we should do is put it all in the trunk of my unmarked police car in front of the shoe store, so I could drive it to the precinct for safekeeping while they all went home to rest from their ordeal.”

Dortmunder looked at his friend. He said, “You got the hostages to carry the money from the vault.”

“And put it in our car,” Kelp said. “Yeah, that’s what I did.”

May came in and handed Dortmunder a beer. He drank deep, and Kelp said, “They’re looking for you, of course. Under that other name.”

May said, “That’s the one thing I don’t understand. Diddums?”

“It’s Welsh,” Dortmunder told her. Then he smiled upon the mountain of money on the coffee table. “It’s not a bad name,” he decided. “I may keep it.”

A MIDSUMMER DAYDREAM

__________________________

It having become advisable to leave New York City for an indefinite period, Dortmunder and Kelp found themselves in the countryside, in a barn, watching a lot of fairies dance. “I don’t know about this,” Dortmunder muttered.

“It’s perfect cover,” Kelp whispered. “Who’d look for us here?”

“I wouldn’t, that’s for sure.”

The fairies all skipped offstage and some other people came on and went off, and then the audience stood up. “That’s it?” Dortmunder asked. “We can go now?”

“First half,” Kelp told him.

First half. Near the end of the first half, one of the players in bib overalls had gone out and come back in with a donkey’s head on, which about summed up Dortmunder’s attitude toward the whole thing. Oh, well; when in Rome, do as the Romans, and when in West Urbino, New York, go to the Saturday–afternoon summer theater. Why not? But he wouldn’t come back Sunday.

Outside, the audience stood around in the sunshine and talked about everything except A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The women discussed other women’s clothing and the men brought one another up to date on sports and the prices of automobiles, all except Kelp’s cousin, a stout man named Jesse Bohker, who smelled of fertilizer because that’s what he sold for a living, and who talked about the size of the audience because he was the chief investor in this barn converted to an extremely barnlike summer theater, with splintery bleachers and nonunion actors up from New York. “Good gate,” Bohker said, nodding at the crowd in satisfaction, showbiz jargon as comfortable as a hay stalk in his mouth. “Shakespeare brings ‘em in every time. They don’t want anybody to think they don’t have culture.”

“Isn’t that great,” Kelp said, working on his enthusiasm because his cousin Bohker was putting them up until New York became a little less fraught. “Only eighty miles from the city, and you’ve got live theater.”

“Cable kills us at night,” cousin Bohker said, sharing more of his entertainment–world expertise, “but in the daytime, we do fine.”

They rang a cowbell to announce the second half, and the audience obediently shuffled back in, as though they had bells round their own necks. All except Dortmunder, who said, “I don’t think I can do it.”

“Come on, John,” Kelp said, not wanting to be rude to the cousin. “Don’t you wanna know how it comes out?”

“I know how it comes out,” Dortmunder said. “The guy with the donkey head turns into Pinocchio.”

“That’s OK, Andy,” cousin Bohker said. He was a magnanimous host. “Some people just don’t go for it,” he went on, with the fat chuckle that served him so well in fertilizer sales. “Tell the truth, football season, I wouldn’t go for it myself.”

“I’ll be out here,” Dortmunder said. “In the air.”

So everybody else shuffled back into the barn and Dortmunder stayed outside, like the last smoker in the world. He walked around a bit, looking at how dusty his shoes were getting, and thought about New York. It was just a little misunderstanding down there, that’s all, a little question about the value of the contents of trucks that had been taken from Greenwich Street out to Long Island City one night when their regular drivers were asleep in bed. It would straighten itself out eventually, but a couple of the people involved were a little jumpy and emotional in their responses, and Dortmunder didn’t want to be the cause of their having performed actions they would later regret. So it was better — more healthful, in fact — to spend a little time in the country, with the air and the trees and the sun and the fairies in the bottom of the barn.

Laughter inside the barn. Dortmunder wandered over to the main entrance, which now stood unguarded, the former ushers and cashier all away being fairies, and beyond the bleachers, he saw the guy in the donkey head and the girl dressed in curtains carrying on as before. No change. Dortmunder turned away and made a long, slow circuit of the barn, just for something to do.

This used to be a real farm a long time ago, but most of the land was sold off and a couple of outbuildings underwent insurance fires, so now the property was pretty much just the old white farmhouse, the red barn and the gravel parking lot in between. The summer–theater people were living in the farmhouse, which meant that, out back, it had the most colorful clothesline in the county. Down the road that–a–way was West Urbino proper, where cousin Bohker’s big house stood.

The second half took a long time, almost as long as if Dortmunder had been inside watching it. He walked around awhile, and then he chose a comfortable–looking car in the parking lot and sat in it — people didn’t lock their cars or their houses or anything around here — and then he strolled around some more, and that’s when the actor with the donkey’s head and the bib overalls went by, maybe to make an entrance from the front of the theater. Dortmunder nodded his head at the guy, and the actor nodded his donkey head back.

Dortmunder strolled through the parked cars, wondering if there were time to take one for a little spin, and then Mr. Donkey came back again and they both did their head nod, and the donkey walked on, and that was it for excitement. Dortmunder figured he probably didn’t have time to take a little drive around the countryside particularly because, dollars to doughnuts, he’d get lost.

And it was a good thing he’d decided not to leave, because only about ten minutes later, a whole lot of applause sounded inside the barn and a couple of ex–fairies came trotting out to be traffic control in the parking lot. Dortmunder swam upstream through the sated culture lovers and found Kelp to one side of the flow, near the cashier’s makeshift office, waiting for cousin Bohker to quit drooling over the take. “It was a lot of fun,” Kelp said.

“Good.”

“And it come out completely different from what you said.”

Cousin Bohker emerged from the ticket office with a brand–new expression on his face, all pinched–in and pruny, as though he’d been eating his fertilizer. He said, “Andy, I guess your friend doesn’t understand much about country hospitality.”

This made very little sense at all; in fact, none. Kelp said, “Come again, cuz?”

“So you talk to him, Andy,” cousin Bohker said. He wasn’t looking at Dortmunder, but his head seemed to incline slightly in Dortmunder’s direction. He seemed like a man torn between anger and fear, anger forbidding him to show the fear, fear holding the anger in check; constipated, in other words. “You talk to your friend” cousin Bohker said in a strangled way, “you explain about hospitality in the country, and you tell him we’ll forget —”

“If you mean, John,” Kelp said, “he’s right here. This is him here.”

“That’s OK,” the cousin said. “You just tell him we’ll forget all about it this once, and all he has to do is give it back, and we’ll never say another word about it.”

Kelp shook his head. “I don’t get what you mean,” he said. “Give what back?”

“The receipts!” cousin Bohker yelled, waving madly at his ticket office. “Two hundred twenty–seven paid admissions, not counting freebies and house seats like you fellas had, at twelve bucks a head; that’s two thousand, seven hundred twenty–four dollars, and I want it back!”

Kelp stared at his cousin. “The fox–office receipts? You can’t —” His stare, disbelieving, doubtful, wondering, turned toward Dortmunder. “John? You didn’t!” Kelp’s eyes looked like hubcaps. “Did you? You didn’t! Naturally, you didn’t. Did you?”

The experience of being unjustly accused was so novel and bewildering to Dortmunder that he was almost drunk from it. He had so little experience of innocence. How does an innocent person act, react, respond to the base accusation? He could barely stand up, he was concentrating so hard on this sudden in–rush of guiltlessness. His knees were wobbling. He stared at Andy Kelp and couldn’t think of one solitary thing to say.

“Who else was out here?” the cousin demanded. “All alone out here while everybody else was inside with the play.

‘Couldn’t stand Shakespeare’, was that it? Saw his opportunity, by God, and took it, and the hell with his host!”

Kelp was beginning to look desperate. “John,” he said, like a lawyer leading a particularly stupid witness, “you weren’t just playing a little joke, were you? Just having a little fun, didn’t mean anything serious, was that it?”

Maybe innocent people are dignified, Dortmunder thought. He tried it: “I did not take the money,” he said, as dignified as a turkey on Thanksgiving eve.

Kelp turned to his cousin: “Are you sure it’s gone?”

“Andy,” said the cousin, drawing himself up — or in — becoming even more dignified than Dortmunder, topping Dortmunder’s king of dignity with his own ace, “this fellow is what he is, but you’re my wife’s blood relative.”

“Aw, cuz,” Kelp protested, “you don’t think I was in it with him, do you?”

And that was the unkindest cut of all. Forgetting dignity, Dortmunder gazed on his former friend like a betrayed beagle. “You, too, Andy?”

“Gee whiz, John,” Kelp said, twisting back and forth to show how conflicted all this made him, “what’re we supposed to think? I mean, maybe it just happened accidental–like; you were bored, you know, walking around, you just picked up this cash without even thinking about it, you could …”

Wordlessly, Dortmunder frisked himself, patting his pockets and chest, then spreading his arms wide, offering himself for Kelp to search.

Which Kelp didn’t want to do. “OK, John,” he said, “the stuff isn’t on you. But there wasn’t anybody else out here, just you, and you know your own rep —”

“The donkey,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp blinked at him. “The what?”

“The guy in the donkey head. He walked around from the back to the front, and then he walked around again from the front to the back. We nodded at each other.”

Kelp turned his hopeful hubcaps in his cousin’s direction.

“The guy with the donkey head, that’s who you —”

“What, Kelly?” demanded the cousin. “Kelly’s my junior partner in this operation! He’s been in it with me from the beginning, he’s the director, he takes character roles, he loves this theater!” Glowering at Dortmunder, exuding more fertilizer essence than ever, cousin Bohker said, “So is that your idea, Mr. Dortmunder?” Dortmunder had been “John” before this. “Is that your idea? Cover up your own crime by smearing an innocent man?”

“Maybe he did it for a joke,” Dortmunder said vengefully. “Or maybe he’s absentminded.”

Kelp, it was clear, was prepared to believe absolutely anything, just so they could all get past this social pothole. “Cuz,” he said, “maybe so, maybe that’s it. Kelly’s your partner; maybe he took the money legit, spare you the trouble, put it in the bank himself.”

But Bohker wouldn’t buy it. “Kelly never touches the money,” he insisted. “I’m the businessman, he’s the ar–tiste, he’s — Kelly!” he shouted through the entranceway, toward the stage, and vigorously waved his fat arm.

Kelp and Dortmunder exchanged a glance. Kelp’s look was filled with a wild surmise; Dortmunder’s belonged under a halo.

Kelly came out to join them, wiping his neck with a paper towel, saying, “What’s up?” He was a short and skinny man who could have been any age from nine to 14 or from 53 to 80, but nothing in between. The donkey head was gone, but that didn’t make for much of an improvement. His real face wasn’t so much lined as pleated, with deep crevices you could hide a nickel in. His eyes were eggy, with blue yolks, and his thin hair was unnaturally black, like work boots. Except for the head, he was still in the same dumb costume, the idea having been that the actors in bib overalls and black T–shirts were supposed to be some kind of workmen, like plumbers or whatever, and the actors dressed in curtains and beach towels were aristocrats. Kelly had been the leader of the bunch of workmen who were going to put on the play within the play–oh, it was grim, it was grim — so here he was, still in his overalls and T–shirt. And black work boots, so that he looked the same on the top and the bottom. “What’s up?” he said.

“I’ll tell you what’s up,” Bohker promised him and pointed at Kelp. “I introduced you to my wife’s cousin from the city.”

“Yeah, you did already.” Kelly, an impatient man probably wanting to get out of his work clothes and into something a little more actorly, nodded briskly at Kelp and said, “How’s it goin’?”

“Not so good,” Kelp said.

“And this,” Bohker went on, pointing without pleasure at Dortmunder, “is my wife’s cousin’s pal, also from the city, a fella with a reputation for being just a little light–fingered.”

“Aw, well,” Dortmunder said.

Kelly was still impatient: “And?”

“And he lifted the gate!”

This slice of jargon was just a bit too showbizzy for Kelly to grab on the fly like that; he looked around for a lifted gate, his facial pleats increasing so much he looked as though his nose might fall into one of the excavations. “He did what?”

Bohker, exasperated at having to use lay terminology, snapped, “He stole the money out of the box office.”

“I did not,” Dortmunder said.

Kelly looked at Dortmunder as though he’d never expected such treatment. “Gee, man,” he said, “that’s our eating money.”

“I didn’t take it,” Dortmunder said. He was going for another run at dignity.

“He’s got the gall, this fella,” Bohker went on, braver about Dortmunder now that he had an ally with him, “to claim you took it!”

Kelly wrinkled up like a multicar collision: “Me?”

“All I said,” Dortmunder told him, feeling his dignity begin to tatter, “was that you went around to the front of the theater.”

“I did not,” Kelly said. Being an actor, he had no trouble with dignity at all.

So he did do it, Dortmunder thought, and pressed what he thought of as his advantage: “Sure, you did. We nodded to each other. You were wearing your donkey head. It was about ten minutes before the show was over.”

“Pal,” Kelly said, “ten minutes before the show was over, I was on stage, asleep in front of everybody, including your buddy here. And without my donkey head.”

“That’s true, John,” Kelp said. “The fairies took the donkey head away just around then.”

“In that case,” Dortmunder said, immediately grasping the situation, “it had to be one of the other guys in bib overalls. They weren’t all on stage then, were they?”

But Bohker already had his mind made up. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s what you saw, the big–town sharpie, when you came out of this box office right here, with the cash receipts in your pocket, and looked through that door right there in at that stage way back there, and saw Kelly was the only rustic on stage, and the donkey prop was gone, and —”

“The what?” Dortmunder had missed something there.

“The donkey prop!” Bohker cried, getting angrier, pointing at his own head. “The head! It’s a prop!”

“Well, you know, Jesse,” Kelly said thoughtfully, “in some union productions, you know, they’d call it a costume.”

“Whatever it is,” Bohker snapped, waving the gnats of showbiz cant away as though he hadn’t summoned them up himself, then turning back to Dortmunder: “Whatever it is, you saw it, or didn’t see it, when you looked right through there and saw Kelly asleep without his head, and none of the other rustics around, and right then you decided how you were gonna blame somebody else. And I’m here to tell you, it won’t work!”

Well, innocence wasn’t any help–overrated, as Dortmunder had long suspected–and dignity had proved to be a washout, so what was left? Dortmunder was considering violence, which usually tended at least to clear the air, when Kelp said, “Cuz, let me have a word in private with John, OK?”

“That’s all I ever asked,” Bohker said, with false reasonableness. “Just talk to your friend here, explain to him how we do things different in the country, how we don’t take advantage of the kindness of people who take us in when we’re on the run, how when we’re away from the city, we behave like decent, God fearing —”

“Right, cuz, right,” Kelp said, taking Dortmunder by the elbow, drawing him away from the ongoing flow, nodding and nodding as though Bohker’s claptrap made any sense at all, turning Dortmunder away, walking him back out toward the now nearly empty parking lot and across it to a big old tree standing there with leaves all over it, and Dortmunder promised himself, if Andy asks me even once did I do it, I’m gonna pop him.

Instead of which, once they’d reached the leafy privacy of the tree, Kelp turned and murmured, “John, we’re in a bind here.”

Dortmunder sighed, relieved and yet annoyed. “That’s right.”

“I dunno, the only thing I can think — How much did he say it was?”

“Two something. Something under three grand.” And that got Dortmunder steamed in an entirely different way. “To think I’d stoop to grab such a measly amount of —”

“Sure you would, John, if the circumstances were different,” Kelp said, cutting through the crap. “The question is, Can we cover it?”

“What do you mean, cover it?”

“Well, Jesse said if we give it back, he’ll forget the whole thing, no questions asked.”

Now Dortmunder was really outraged. “You mean, let the son of a bitch go on thinking I’m a thief?”

Kelp leaned closer, dropping his voice. “John, you are a thief.”

“Not this time!”

“What does it matter, John? You’re never gonna convince him, so forget it.”

Dortmunder glared at the farmhouse, full now of actors, one of them with nearly three grand extra in his pocket. Probably looking out a window right now, grinning at him. “It’s one of those guys,” he said. “I can’t let him get away with it.”

“Why not? And what are you gonna do, play detective? John, we’re not cops!”

“We watched cops work often enough.”

“That isn’t the same. John, how much money you got?”

“On me?” Dortmunder groused, reluctant even to discuss this idea, while out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kelly heading briskly toward the farmhouse. “Why couldn’t it be him?” he demanded. “Partners steal from partners all the time.”

“He was on stage, John. How much money you got?”

“On me, a couple hundred. In the suitcase, back at your goddamn cousin’s house, maybe a grand.”

“I could come up with eight, nine hundred,” Kelp said. “Let’s go see if we can cut a deal.”

“I don’t like this,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t go along with making restitution to begin with, and this is even worse.”

Running out of patience, Kelp said, “What else are we gonna do, John?”

“Search that farmhouse there. Search the theater. You think some amateur can hide a stash so we can’t find it?”

“They wouldn’t let us search,” Kelp pointed out. “We aren’t cops, we don’t have any authority, we can’t throw any weight around. That’s what cops do; they don’t detect, you know that. They throw their weight around, and when you say, ‘Oof’, you get five to ten in Green Haven. Come on, John, swallow your pride.”

“I’m not gonna say I did it,” Dortmunder insisted. “You wanna pay him off, we’ll pay him off. But I’m not gonna say I did it.”

“Fine. Let’s go talk to the man.”

They walked back to where cousin Bohker waited in the narrow trapezoid of shade beside the barn. “Cuz,” said Kelp, “we’d like to offer a deal.”

“Admitting nothing,” Dortmunder said.

“Two thousand, seven hundred twenty–four dollars,” the cousin said. “That’s the only deal I know.”

“We can’t quite come up with that much,” Kelp said, “on accounta John here didn’t actually take your money. But we know how things look and we know what John’s reputation is —”

“Hey,” Dortmunder said. “What about you?”

“OK, fine. The reputations we both have. So we feel we’ll try to make good on what you lost as best we can, even though we didn’t do it, and we could probably come up with two thousand. In and around two thousand.”

“Two thousand, seven hundred twenty–four dollars,” said the cousin, “or I call the troopers.”

“Troopers?” Dortmunder stared at Kelp. “He’s gonna call in the Army?”

“State troopers, he means.” Kelp explained, and turned back to his cousin to say, “That wouldn’t be a nice thing to do, cuz. Turn us over to the law and we’re really in trouble. Can’t you take the two —”

“Two thousand, seven hundred twenty–four dollars,” said the cousin.

“Oh, the hell with this guy,” Dortmunder abruptly said. “Why don’t we just go take a hike?”

“I thought you might come up with that next,” the cousin answered. He was smeared all over with smugness. “So that’s why I sent Kelly for reinforcements.”

Dortmunder turned, and there was Kelly back from the farmhouse, and with him were all the other rustics. Five of them, still in their bib overalls and T–shirts, standing there looking at Dortmunder and Kelp, getting a kick out of being the audience for a change.

It’s one of them, Dortmunder thought. He’s standing there and I’m standing here, and it’s one of them. And I’m stuck.

Kelp said something, and then the cousin said something, and then Kelp said something else, and then Kelly said something; and Dortmunder tuned out. It’s one of these five guys, he thought. One of these guys is a little scared to be out here, he doesn’t know if he’s gonna get away with it or not, he’s looking at me and he doesn’t know if he’s in trouble or not.

Their eyes? No, they’re all actors; the guy’s gotta know enough to behave like everybody else. But it’s one of them.

Well, not the fat one. You look at skinny Kelly there, and you see this fat one, and even with the donkey head on, you’d know it wasn’t Kelly, having already seen Kelly in the first half, wearing the donkey head, and knowing what he looked like.

Hey, wait a minute. Same with the tall one. Kelly’s maybe 5’5" or 5’6", and here’s a drink of water must be 6’4", and he stands all stooped, so if he had the donkey head on, the donkey’s lips would be on his belt buckle. Not him.

Son of a gun. Two down. Three to go.

Conversation went on, quite animated at times, and Dortmunder continued to study the rustics. That one with the beard, well, the beard wouldn’t show inside the donkey head, but look how hairy he is anyway; lots of bushy black hair on his head and very hairy arms below the T–shirt sleeves, all that black hair with the pale skin showing through. With the donkey head on, he’d look maybe a little too realistic. Would I have noticed? Would I have said, “Wow, up close, that’s some hairy donkey?” Maybe, maybe.

Shoes? Black work boots, black shoes; some differences, but not enough, not so you’d notice.

Wait a minute. That guy, the one with the very graceful neck, the one who would be kept in the special block for his own protection if he were ever given five to ten at Green Haven, the one who moves like a ballet dancer; his bib overalls have a crease. Not him. He could cover himself in an entire donkey and I’d know.

Number five. Guy in his mid–20s, average height, average weight, nothing in particular about him except the watch. He’s the guy, during the first half, while I’m waiting for it to be over, trying to find something to think about, he’s the guy with the pale mark around his wrist where he usually wears a watch, so it isn’t tanned. And now he’s wearing the watch. Did the guy who walked by me have a pale mark on his wrist? Would I have noticed?

“John? John!”

Dortmunder looked around, startled out of his reverie. “Yeah? What is it?”

“What is it?” Kelp was looking frantic and he clearly wanted to know why Dortmunder wasn’t frantic as well. “Do you think she could or not?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Dortmunder said, “I didn’t hear the question. Who could what? Or not?” And thinking, it’s either the hairy arms or the watch; hairy arms or watch.

“May,” Kelp said, elaborately patient. “Do you think if you phoned May, she could send us a grand to pay off my cousin?”

Hairy arms or watch. Nothing shows on either face, nothing in the eyes.

“John? What’s the matter with you?”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, and put a big smile on his face, and even forced a little laugh, or something similar to a laugh, “well, you got us, cuz.”

Kelp stared. “What?”

“Yeah, we took the money,” Dortmunder said, shrugging. “But it was just for a joke, you know; we never meant to keep it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Bohker said with a sarcastic smirk, while Kelp stood as though turned to stone. Limestone. In acid rain.

Kelly, cold and brisk, said, “Where is it?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly,” Dortmunder said. “I gave it to my partner to hide.”

Kelp squawked; it sounded exactly like those chickens that a neighbor of Bohker’s kept in his back yard. He squawked, and then he cried, “John! You never did!”

“Not you,” Dortmunder told him. “My other partner, the actor in the cast here that’s an old pal of mine. I slipped him the money and he went and hid it in the house.” Hairy arms or watch; hairy arms or watch. Dortmunder turned and grinned easily at the kid with the pale band under his watch. “Didn’t I?” he said.

The kid blinked. “I don’t get you,” he said.

“Aw, come on; the gag’s over,” Dortmunder told him. “If Bohker here calls his state troopers, I’ll just tell them I gave you the money to hide and they’ll go look in the house there and find it, and everybody knows I was never in that house, so it was you. So now the gag is over, right?”

The kid thought about it. Everybody standing there watched the kid thinking about it, and everybody knew what it meant that the kid had something to think about. The kid looked around and saw what it was that everybody knew, and then he laughed and clapped his hands together and said, “Well, we sure had them going there for a while, didn’t we?”

“We sure did,” Dortmunder said. “Why don’t you and me go in the house now and get the cousin his money back?”

Bohker, sounding tough, said, “Why don’t we all go in and get the goddamn money?”

“Now, now,” Dortmunder said, mild as could be, “why don’t you let us have our little secrets? We’ll go in and we’ll come out with the money. You’ll get your money back, cousin, don’t worry.”

Dortmunder and the kid walked across the parking lot and up the stoop and across the porch full of gaping actors and went into the house. The kid led the way upstairs and down the hall and into the third room on the left, which contained two narrow beds and two small dressers and two wooden chairs. “Hold it a second,” Dortmunder said, and looked around, and saw the one dresser drawer open about three inches. “Taped it to the back of the dresser drawer,” he said.

“OK, OK, you’re Sherlock Holmes,” the kid said, sounding bitter. He went over and pulled the drawer out and put it on the bed. Masking tape held a bulky white envelope to the back of the drawer. The kid peeled it off and handed it to Dortmunder, who saw that it had a printed return address on the upper left corner: BOHKER & BOHKER, FERTILIZER & FEED.

“How’d you figure it out?” the kid asked.

“Your shoes,” Dortmunder said. Which was a variant on the old untied–shoelace gag, because when the kid looked down at his shoes, what he saw was Dortmunder’s fist coming up.

Outside again, Dortmunder crossed to the waiting rustics and held the envelope out in front of himself, flap open, so everybody could see the money wadded inside. “OK?”

Kelly said, “Where’s Chuck?”

“Resting.”

Bohker reached for the envelope, but Dortmunder said, “Not yet, cuz,” and tucked the envelope inside his shirt.

Bohker glowered. “Not yet? What are you playing at, fella?”

“You’re gonna drive Andy and me to your house,” Dortmunder told him, “and we’re gonna pack, and then you’re gonna drive us to the bus depot, and when the bus comes in, I’ll hand you this envelope. Play around, I’ll make it disappear again.”

“I’m not a vengeful fella,” Bohker said. “All I care about is I get my money back.”

“Well, that’s one difference between us,” Dortmunder said, which Bohker maybe didn’t listen to hard enough.

Bohker’s station wagon was one of the few cars left in the parking lot. Bohker got behind the wheel, his cousin Kelp beside him, and Dortmunder got in back with the old newspapers and cardboard cartons and fertilizer brochures and all the junk, and they drove off toward town. Along the way, Bohker looked in the rearview mirror and said, “I been thinking about what happened back there. You didn’t take the money at all, did you?”

“Like I said.”

“It was Chuck.”

“That’s right.”

Kelp twisted around to look over the back of the seat and say, “John, how did you figure out it was him? That was goddamn genius.”

If Kelp wanted to think what had happened was genius, it would be better for Dortmunder to keep his thought processes to himself, so he said, “It just come to me.”

Bohker said, “You had to mousetrap Chuck like you did or he’d have just denied it forever.”

“Uh–huh.”

“Well, I owe you an apology,” Bohker said, being gruff and man to man about it.

“That’s OK,” Dortmunder told him.

“And there’s no reason you fellas have to move out.”

“Oh, I think we’re ready to go, anyway,” Dortmunder said. “Aren’t we, Andy?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Kelp said.

As Bohker turned the station wagon in to the driveway at his house, Dortmunder said, “Does that glove compartment lock?”

“Yeah, it does,” Bohker said. “Why?”

“I tell you what we’ll do,” Dortmunder told him. “We’ll lock this envelope in there for safekeeping, and you give me the key off the ring, and when we get on our bus, I’ll give it back to you. On account of I know you don’t trust me.”

“Now, that’s not fair,” Bohker said defensively, parking beside his house. “I apologized, didn’t I?”

“Still,” Dortmunder said, “we’ll both be happier if we do it this way. Which key is it?”

So Bohker took the little key off his key ring, and he and Kelp watched Dortmunder solemnly lock the envelope away in the crowded, messy glove compartment, and an hour and 45 minutes later, on the bus to Buffalo, Kelp turned in his seat and said, “You did, didn’t you?”

“Sure, I did,” Dortmunder agreed, taking wads of Bohker’s money out of his pants pockets. “Treat me like that, threaten me with troopers.”

“What’s cousin Bohker looking at in that envelope?”

“Fertilizer brochures.”

Kelp sighed, probably thinking about family complications.

“Still, John,” he said, “you can hardly blame the guy for jumping to conclusions.”

“I can if I want,” Dortmunder said. “Besides, I figured I earned this, with what he put me through. That stuff, what’s–it. Anguish, you know the kind. Mental, that’s it. Mental anguish, that’s what I got,” Dortmunder said, and stuffed the money back into his pockets.

THE DORTMUNDER WORKOUT

____________________________

When Dortmunder walked into the O.J. Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue that afternoon, the regulars were talking about health and exercise, pro and con. “A healthy regime is very important,” one of the regulars was saying, hunched over his beer.

“You don’t mean ‘regime’,” a second regular told him. “A healthy regime is like Australia. You mean ‘regimen’.”

“ ‘Regimen’ is women,” a third regular put in. “Something about women.”

The other regulars frowned at that, trying to figure out if it meant anything. In the silence, Dortmunder said, “Rollo.”

Rollo the bartender, observing the world from a three–point stance — large feet solidly planted on the duckboards behind the bar, elbow atop the cash register drawer — seemed too absorbed either by the conversation or in contemplation of the possibility of health to notice the arrival of a new customer. In any event, he didn’t even twitch, just stood there like a genre painting of himself, while the first regular said, “Well, whatever the word is, the point is, if you got your health you got everything.”

“I don’t see how that follows,” the second regular said. “You could have your health and still not have a Pontiac Trans Am.”

“If you got your health,” the first regular told him, “you don’t need a Pontiac Trans Am. You can walk.”

“Walk where?”

“Wherever it was you were gonna go.”

“St. Louis,” the second regular said, and knocked back some of his tequila sunrise in satisfaction.

“Well, now you’re just being argumentative,” the first regular complained.

“Some of that health stuff can get dangerous,” the third regular put in. “I know a guy knew a guy had a heart attack from the Raquel Welch workout video.”

“Well, sure,” the first regular agreed, “it’s always possible to exercise too much, but —”

“He wasn’t exercising, he was just watching.”

“Rollo,” Dortmunder said.

“When I was in the Army,” the first regular said, “they used to make us do sailor jumps.”

“If you were in the Army,” the second regular told him, “they were soldier jumps.”

“Sailor jumps,” insisted the first regular.

“We used to call those jumping jacks,” the third regular chimed in.

“You did not,” the second regular told him. “Jumping jacks is that little girl’s game with the lug nuts.”

“Rollo,” Dortmunder demanded, and this time Rollo raised an eyebrow in Dortmunder’s direction, but then he was distracted by movement from the third regular, the jumping jacks man, who, with a scornful “Lug nuts!” climbed off his stool, paused to wheeze and then said, “This is jumping jacks.” And he stood there at a kind of crumpled attention, arms at hs sides, heels together, chest in.

The second regular gazed upon him with growing disgust. “That’s what?”

“It isn’t sailor jumps, I know that much,” the first regular said.

But the third regular was unfazed. “This is first position,” he explained. “Now watch.” Carefully, he lifted his right foot and moved it about 18 inches to the side, then put it back down on the floor. After stooping a bit to be sure he had both feet where he wanted them, he straightened up, more or less, faced forward, took a deep breath you could hear across the street and slowly lifted both arms straight up into the air, leaning his palms against each other above his head. “Position two,” he said.

“That’s some hell of an exercise,” said the second regular.

The third regular’s arms dropped to his sides like fish off a delivery truck. “When you’re really into it,” he pointed out, “you do it faster.”

“That might be sailor jumps,” the first regular admitted.

“In my personal opinion,” the second regular said, twirling the dregs of his tequila sunrise, “diet is the most important part of your personal health program. Vitamins, minerals and food groups.”

“I don’t think you got that quite right,” the third regular told him. “I think it goes, animal, vitamin or mineral.”

“Food groups,” the second regular contended. “This isn’t twenty questions.”

The first regular said, “I don’t get what you mean by this food groups.”

“Well,” the second regular told him, “your principal food groups are meat, vegetables, dessert and beer.”

“Oh,” the first regular said. “In that case, then, I’m OK.”

“Rollo,” Dortmunder begged.

Sighing like an entire Marine boot camp, Rollo bestirred himself and came plodding down the duckboards. “How ya doin?” he said, flipping a coaster onto the bar.

“Keeping healthy,” Dortmunder told him.

“That’s good. The usual?”

“Carrot juice,” Dortmunder said.

“You got it,” Rollo told him, and reached for the bourbon bottle.

PARTY ANIMAL

_______________

There was no use going any farther down the fire escape. More cops were in the yard: A pair of flashlights white–lined the dark down there. From above, the clonk–clonk of sensible black shoes continued to descend on rusted metal stairs. A realist, Dortmunder stopped where he was on the landing and composed his soul for 10 to 25 as a guest of the state. American plan.

What a Christmas present.

A window, left of his left elbow. Through it, a dimly lighted bedroom, empty, with brighter light through the door ajar opposite. A pile of coats on the double bed. Faint party chatter wafting out through the top part of the window, open two inches.

An open window is not locked. It was a cold December out here. Dortmunder was bundled in a peacoat over his usual working uniform of black shoes, slacks and shirt — but with the party going on in there, the window had been opened at the top to let out excess heat.

Sliiide. Now open at the bottom. Sliiide. Now closed. Dortmunder started across the room toward that half–open door.

“Larry,” said the pile of coats in a querulous female voice. “There’s somebody in here.”

The pile of coats could do a snotty male voice, too: “They’re just going to the John. Pay no attention.”

“And putting down my coat,” Dortmunder said, dropping his peacoat with its cargo of burglar tools and knickknacks from the corner jeweler, from where he had traveled up and over rooftops to this dubious haven.

“Ouch!” said the girl’s voice.

“Sorry.”

“Get on with it, all right?” Boy’s voice.

“Sorry.”

A herd of cops went slantwise downward past the window, their attention fixed on the darkness below, the muffled clatter of their passage hardly noticeable to anyone who didn’t happen to be (a) a habitual criminal and (b) on the run. Despite the boy’s advice to get on with it, Dortmunder stayed frozen until the last of the herd trotted by, then he took a quick scan of the room.

Over there, the shut door outlined in light would lead to the bathroom. The darker one would be … a closet?

Yes. Hurried, in near darkness, Dortmunder grabbed something or other from inside the closet, then shut that door again and moved quickly toward the outlined one as the girl’s voice said, “Larry, I just don’t feel comfortable anymore.”

“Of course you don’t.”

Dortmunder entered the square, white bathroom — light–green towels, dolphins on the closed shower curtain — ignored the two voices departing from the room outside, one plaintive, the other overbearing, and studied his haberdashery selection.

Well. Fortunately, most things go with black, including this rather weary sports jacket of tweedy tan with brown leather elbow patches. Dortmunder slipped it on and it was maybe two sizes too big, but not noticeable if he kept it unbuttoned. He turned to the mirror over the sink, and now he might very well be a sociology professor — specializing in labor relations — at a small Midwestern university. A professor without tenure, though, and probably no chance of getting tenure, either, now that Marx has flunked his finals.

Dortmunder’s immediate problem was that he couldn’t hide. The cops knew he was in this building, so sooner or later some group of police officers would definitely be gazing upon him, and the only question was, how would they react when that moment came? His only hope was to mingle, if you could call that a hope.

Leaving the bathroom, he noticed that the pile of coats was visibly depleted. Seemed like everybody’s plans were getting loused up tonight.

But this gave him a chance to stash his stash, at least temporarily. Finding his peacoat at last — already it was at the bottom of the pile — he took the jeweler’s former merchandise and stowed it in the top left dresser drawer amid some other gewgaws and gimcracks. His tools went into the cluttered cabinet under the bathroom sink, and then he was ready to move on.

Beyond the partly opened bedroom door was a hall lined with national park posters. Immediately to the right, the hall ended at the apartment’s front door. To the left, it went past a couple of open and closed doors till it emptied into the room where the party was. From here, he could see half a dozen people holding drinks and talking. Motown versions of Christmas songs bubbled along, weaving through the babble of talk.

He hesitated, indecisive, struck by some strange stage fright. The apartment door called to him with a siren song of escape, even though he knew the world beyond it was badly infested by law. On the other hand, a crowd is supposed to be the ideal medium into which a lone individual might disappear, and yet he found himself reluctant to test that theory. To party or not to party — that was the question.

Two events pushed him to a decision. First, the doorbell next to him suddenly clanged like a fire engine in hell, causing him to jump a foot. And second, two women emerged from the party into the hallway, both moving fast. The one in front looked to be in her early 20s, in black slacks and black blouse and white half–apron and red bow tie and harried expression; she carried an empty round silver tray and she veered off into the first doorway on the right. The second woman was older but very well put together, dressed in baubles and beads and dangling earrings and a whole lot of Technicolor makeup, and her expression was grim but brave as she marched down the hall toward Dortmunder.

No, toward the door. This was, no doubt, the hostess, on her way to answer the bell, wondering who’d arrived so late. Dortmunder, knowing who the late arrivals were and not wanting to be anywhere near that door when it opened, jackrabbited into motion with an expression on his face that was meant to be a party smile. “How’s it goin?” he asked with nicely understated amiability as they passed each other in the middle of the hall.

“Just fine,” she swore, eyes sparkling and voice fluting, her own imitation party smile glued firmly in place. So she didn’t know everybody at her party. Dortmunder could have been brought here by an invited guest, right? Right.

The party, as Dortmunder approached it, was loud, but not loud enough to cover the sudden growl of voices behind him. He made an abrupt turn into the open doorway that the harried woman had gone through and then he was in the kitchen, where the harried woman was putting a lot of cheese–filled tarts onto the round tray.

Dortmunder tried his line again: “How’s it goin?”

“Rotten,” the harried woman said. Her ash–blonde hair was coiled in a bun in back, but much of it had escaped to lie in parabolas on her damp brow. She’d have been a good–looking woman if she weren’t so bad–tempered and overworked. “Jerry never showed up,” she snapped, as though it were Dortmunder’s fault. “I have to do it all —” She shook her head and made a sharp chopping motion with her left hand. “I don’t have time to talk.”

“Maybe I could help,” Dortmunder suggested. The growl of cop voices continued from back by the apartment door. They’d check the room next to the fire escape first, but then they’d be coming this way.

The woman looked at him as though he were trying to sell her magazine subscriptions: “Help? What do you mean, help?”

“I don’t know anybody here.” He was noticing: She was all in black, he was all in black. “I came with Larry, but now he’s talking to some girl, so why don’t I help out?”

“You don’t help the caterer,” she said.

“OK. Just a thought.” No point getting her suspicious.

But as he was turning away, she said, “Wait a minute,” and when he looked back, her sweat–beaded brow was divided in half by a vertical frown line. She said, “You really want to help?”

“Only if you could use some.”

“Well,” she said, reluctant to admit there might be something in this world for her not to be mad at, “if you really mean it.”

“Count on it,” Dortmunder told her. Shucking out of the borrowed jacket, looking around the room for a white apron like hers, he said, “It’ll give me something to do other than just stand in the corner by myself. I’ll take those things out, pass them around, you can get caught up.”

Once the jacket was off and hanging on a kitchen chair, Dortmunder looked exactly like what he was: a semihardened criminal, a hunted man, a desperate fugitive from justice and a guy who just keeps slipping the mind of Lady Luck. This was not a good image. Failing to find a white apron, he grabbed a white dish towel instead and tucked it sideways across the front of his trousers. No red bow tie like the woman’s, but that couldn’t be helped.

She watched him suiting up. “Well, if you really want to do this,” she said, and suddenly her manner changed, became much more official, commanding–even bossy. “What you have to do is remember to keep moving. It’s a jungle out there.”

“Oh, I know that,” Dortmunder said.

“You don’t want to get caught.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’ll get people,” she said, making hand gestures to demonstrate the point, “who’ll just keep grabbing and grabbing. You get into the middle of a conversational group, all of a sudden you can’t get out without knocking somebody over, and then — that’s a no–no, by the way,” she interrupted herself.

Dortmunder had been nodding, one ear cocked for the approach of society’s defenders, but now he looked quizzical and said, “A no–no?”

“Knocking over the guests.”

“Why would I do that?” he asked. You knock over jewelry stores, not guests. Everybody knows that.

“If you’re stuck in the middle of a group and there’s no way out,” she explained, “they’ll eat everything on the tray. They’re like a bunch of locusts, and there you are, and most of the other guests haven’t had anything at all.”

“I see what you mean. Keep moving.”

“And,” she said, “stick the tray into the middle, but don’t go into the middle.”

“I got it,” he promised her. “I’m ready to make the move.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“Sure,” he said, and picked up the tarts and went to the aid of the party.

The party consisted of several clumps of people, mostly crowded around the bar, which was a serve–yourself table in front of curtained windows at one end of the long living room. Most people ignored the big cut–glass bowl of eggnog and went straight for the wine or the hard stuff. At the opposite end of the room stood the Christmas tree, short and fat and shedding, with many tiny colored lights that blinked on and off as if to say chickee–the–cops, chickee–the–cops, chickee–the–cops. I know, Dortmunder thought back at them, I know about it, all right?

A sofa and some chairs had been shoved against the walls to make room for the party, so everybody was standing, except one heavy woman dressed in a lot of bright fluttery scarves who perched on the sofa holding a glass as she talked to various people’s stomachs. Occasionally, someone would bend down to say a friendly word to her forehead, but mostly she was ignored; the party was taking place at the five–foot level, not the three–foot level. And, as at most Christmas parties, everybody was looking a little tense thinking about all those lists at home.

Feeling the guard–dog eyes of the law scrape at his back, though the search party hadn’t yet made its way down the hall, Dortmunder held the tray chest high and followed it into the scrum. People parted at the arrival of food, paused in drink and talk to take a tartlet, then closed ranks again in his wake. Sidling to the center of the crush, in the party but not of it, Dortmunder began to relax and to pick up shreds of conversation as he motored along.

“There’s only twenty guys gonna be let in on this thing. We have seven already, and once we have all of the seed money …”

“She came to the co–op board in a false beard and claimed she was a proctologist. Well, naturally …”

“So then I said you can have this job, and he said OK, and I said you can’t treat people like that, and he said OK, and I said that’s it, I quit, and he said OK, and I said you’re gonna have to get along without me from here on in, buster, and he said OK … so I guess I’m not over there anymore.”

“And then these guys in a rowboat — no, wait, I forgot. First they blew up the bridge, see, and then they stole the rowboat.”

“Merry Christmas, you Jew bastard, I haven’t seen you since Ramadan.”

“And he said, ‘Madam, you’re naked’, and I said, ‘These happen to be gloves, if you don’t mind’, and that shut him up.”

“Whatever you want, Sheila. If you want to go, we’ll go.”

Wait a minute, that was a familiar voice. Dortmunder looked around, and another familiar voice, this one female, said, “I didn’t say I wanted to leave, Larry. Why do you always put it on me?”

The couple from the coats. Dortmunder steered his tart tray in that direction, and there they were, both in their mid–20s, wedged into a self–absorbed bubble inside the larger party. Larry was very tall, with unnecessarily wavy dark hair and a long thin nose and long thin lips and little widely spaced eyes. Sheila was on the short side, a pretty girl, but with an extra layer of baby fat, driveway–colored hair and not much clothes sense; either that, or she’d just recently put on those extra pounds and hadn’t bought any new clothes for the new body.

Dortmunder inserted the depleted tartlet tray into their space as Larry said, “I don’t put it on you. You weren’t happy in the other room, and now you’re not happy here. Make your own decisions, that’s all.”

She turned her worried look to the tarts, but Larry grandly waved the tray away. Neither of them looked directly at Dortmunder. In fact, nobody looked directly at the server (not servant, please, in egalitarian America) where tartlets simply appeared in one’s hand at a given point during the party.

Moving on through the throng, Dortmunder heard one last exchange behind him. (“Lately, you do this all the time.” “I’m not doing anything, Sheila, it’s up to you.”) But his attention was diverted by an event ahead: The cops had arrived.

Three of them, uniformed, stocky, mustached, irritable. They were so grumpy that the Technicolor hostess in their midst looked as though she were under arrest.

But she wasn’t under arrest, she was bird–dogging, eyeing the guests for the cops, looking for cuckoos in the nest. Unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar faces …

Meanwhile, all the faces had grown just a little more rigid. It’s hard to be aware that three bad–tempered cops are looking at you and pretend you aren’t aware of it, and at the same time present an image that shows you’re innocent of whatever it is they think you’re guilty of, when you don’t know what they think you’re guilty of, and for all you know you are. Complex. No wonder every drink in the room was being drained more rapidly, even the club sodas and ginger ales.

Someone else was also observing the scene: the harried woman caterer. She’d been circulating in another part of the room with another tray, and she’d noticed the new arrivals. Dortmunder caught her looking from him to the cops and back again, and in the space between her damp hair and perky red bow tie, her thunderclouded face was an absolute emblem of suspicion. Doesn’t anybody believe in altruism anymore?

Well, it was time to grasp the tiger by the tail and face the situation. The best defense is a good despair; Dortmunder marched directly to that dark blue cloud in the doorway, shoved his tray into its middle and said, “Tarts?”

“No, no,” they said, brushing him away — even cops don’t look at servers — and they went back to saying to the hostess, “Anybody you don’t know. Anybody at all.”

Dortmunder dallied nearby, offering his last few tarts to the closest convivials as he eavesdropped on the manhunt. The hostess was a rich contralto; under most circumstances, she would have been a pleasure to listen to, but these were not most circumstances: “I don’t see anyone. Well, that person came with Tommy, his name is, oh, I’m so bad at names.”

“It’s faces we care about,” one of the cops said, and damn near looked at Dortmunder.

Who realized it was time to move on. Unloading the last of his tarts, he segued into the empty kitchen, where he briefly considered his circumstances, contemplated a cut–and–run and decided this was no time to become a moving target.

On a cookie sheet on the kitchen counter lay a regiment of two–inch–long celery segments, each filled with red–dyed anchovy gunk. Green and red, Christmas colors; pretty, in a way, but not particularly edible–looking. Nevertheless, he arranged these on his tray, making a spiral, getting caught up in the design, attempting to make a Santa Claus face, failing, then picking up the tray, and as he turned to leave, one of the cops walked in.

Dortmunder couldn’t help himself; he just stood there. Deep down inside, a terrific struggle was going on, invisible on the surface. You’re a waiter, he told himself in desperation, you’re with the caterer, nothing else matters to you. Trying to build a performance using the Method. But no. It didn’t matter how he spurred himself, he just went on standing there, tray in hands, waiting to be led away.

The cop glared around the room as though he were pretty sure somebody was there. His gaze slid off Dortmunder’s furrowed brow, moved on, kept searching.

I am a waiter! Dortmunder thought, and almost smiled; except a waiter wouldn’t. He took a step toward the door, and the cop said, “Whose coat is that?”

Who’s he talking to? There’s nobody here but the waiter.

“You,” the cop said, not quite looking in Dortmunder’s direction. He pointed at the jacket Dortmunder had worn in here from the bedroom. “That yours?”

“No.” Which was not only the truth, it was also the simplest possible answer. So rarely is the truth the simplest possible answer that Dortmunder, pleased by the coincidence, repeated it. “No,” he said again, then added a flourish for the hell of it. “It was here when I came in.”

The cop picked up the jacket and patted its pockets. Then he turned, draping the jacket over his arm, and Dortmunder, in the part at last, extended the tray. “You want a, a thing?”

The cop shook his head. He still wasn’t looking at Dortmunder. He went away with the jacket, and Dortmunder sat on the now jacketless chair to have a quiet nervous breakdown. The hostess was going to say, “Why, that’s my husband’s jacket. In the kitchen? What was it doing there?” Then all the cops would come back and lay hands on him, and he would never be heard from again.

The harried woman steamed in, her own tray empty. Dortmunder got to his feet and said, “Just resting a minute.”

She raised a meaningful brow in his direction.

Which he pretended not to see. “The cops didn’t want the tarts,” he said.

“I wonder what they did want,” she said, still with that meaningful look.

“Maybe the party’s too noisy,” Dortmunder suggested. “Maybe the neighbor upstairs complained.”

“That many cops? The neighbor upstairs must be the police commissioner.”

“That’s probably it,” Dortmunder said. “What do you think? Should I make a special tray for them?”

“For the police?” This question brought her back to earth, and to business. “Nonguests are not our concern,” she said. “What’s that you’re taking out there?” She peered at his tray much more suspiciously than she’d peered at him; good. “Ah, the anchovy logs,” she said, nodding her approval.

“Anchovy logs?”

“You don’t have to mention the name, just distribute them. And stick to the area at the other end of the room from the bar to move people away from the drinks.”

“These logs,” Dortmunder pointed out, “will drive them right back to the drinks.”

“That’s OK. Circulation’s the name of the game.”

The hostess came fluttering in, saying, “We have to do something. Can you believe this? Police!”

“We noticed,” the harried woman said.

“Police ruin a party,” the hostess announced.

“They sure do,” Dortmunder agreed.

He should have kept his mouth shut; this just made the hostess focus on him, saying, “Jerry, what you should do is —” She blinked. “You’re not Jerry.”

“Sure I am,” Dortmunder said, and flashed the tray of logs. “I better get out there,” he said, scooting through the door. From behind he heard the harried woman say, “A different Jerry.”

In the living room, the party wasn’t really ruined at all. The cops were nowhere in sight and the partygoers were peacefully at graze once more. Dortmunder moved his tray hither and yon, away from the bar, and soon the hostess returned, but she was not at ease. She kept flashing worried looks toward the hall.

Hmmm. His tray still half full of logs, Dortmunder eased away from the party, skirted the hostess at some little distance and proceeded down the hall to reconnoiter, tray held out in front of himself as a carte d’identité.

He heard them before he saw them, a cop voice saying, “Which coat is yours?” Then he made the turn into the bedroom and there were the three cops, plus two more cops, plus two male partygoers, who looked worried and guilty as hell as they pawed through the pile of coats. “Snack?” Dortmunder inquired.

All the cops looked at him, but with annoyance, not suspicion. “Geddada here,” one of them said.

“Right.” Dortmunder bowed from the waist, like butlers in the old black–and–white movies on TV, and backed out of the room. Moving down the hall toward the party, he considered the possibility that one or both of those suspects would prove to have some sort of illegal substance in his coat. A happy thought, but would it sufficiently distract the law? Probably not.

Back at the party, Dortmunder unloaded more anchovy logs, and then somebody put two glasses onto his not–quite–empty tray and said, “Two white wines, pal.”

Dortmunder looked at the glasses, then looked up, and it was his buddy Larry again, who turned away to continue pistol–whipping his girlfriend, saying, “Make your own decisions for yourself, Sheila, don’t put the blame on me.”

Bewildered, she said, “The blame for what?”

The waiter wasn’t supposed to get drinks for people, was he? Everybody else was getting his own. Dortmunder considered tucking the two glasses inside Larry’s shirt, but then he glanced over and saw a cop briefly in the doorway, looking around. He decided a waiter was somebody who waited on people, not somebody who knocked people around, so he carried the tray to the drinks table. The cop was gone again. Dortmunder filled one glass with white wine and the other with tonic and carried them back on the tray, being careful to give Sheila the wine. She was saying wistfully, “It just seems as though you’re trying to push me away, but making it my fault.”

So she was catching on, was she? Airily, Larry smirked at her and said, “It’s all in your mind.”

Dortmunder made a rapid retreat to the kitchen, not wanting to be in sight when Larry tasted the tonic, and now this room was absolutely full of cops talking to the harried woman, one of them saying, “You been here since the beginning of the party?”

“We’re catering the party,” she said. “We had to be here an hour before it started, to set up the food and the bar.”

The cop gave Dortmunder a full frontal stare. “Both of you?”

“Of course both of us,” the harried woman said. To Dortmunder she said, “Tell them, Jerry. We got here at six–thirty.”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder told the cops, then turned to his partner in crime to say, “They’re still hungry out there.”

“We’ll give them the shrimps now,” she decided, and gestured for Dortmunder to join her at the counter next to the sink, where plastic pots of cold peeled shrimp and glass bowls of redsauce awaited.

The cops stood around and growled together while Dortmunder and the harried woman worked, their fingers sliding on the slippery shrimp. At last, though, the law left the room, and Dortmunder whispered, “Thanks.”

“I don’t know what you did —”

“Mistaken identity.”

“All I know is, you saved my sanity. Also, I still need help with these shrimp.”

“You got it.”

“There’s one thing, though, that I have to tell you,” she said as they arranged shrimp on decorative plates. “I’m married.”

“So am I,” Dortmunder said. “Kinda.”

“Me, too,” she agreed. “Kinda. But for real.”

“Sure,” Dortmunder said. “We’re just trays of shrimp that pass in the night.”

“Right.”

Returning to the party, Dortmunder saw Larry at the drinks table, a wrinkled look around his mouth as he poured a glass of white wine. Dortmunder kept out of his way as he circulated, distributing shrimp. The two suspects from the bedroom came back, looking shaken but relieved, and both beelined to the drinks table, where they made quite a dent.

A few minutes later, the apartment door thudded shut with a sound that gonged all the way down the hall and into the room with the party, where a whole lot of tense smiles suddenly loosened up.

Really? Gone? Given up? Dortmunder, suspicious by nature and cautious by necessity, carried his half–full tray of shrimp and sauce down the empty hall, glanced into the empty bedroom, opened the apartment door and looked out at five cops looking in.

Umm. Two of them were women cops. All five were just standing around the corridor with faintly eager and hungry looks, like lions in the Colosseum. Behind them, the door to the apartment across the hall was propped half–open.

OK. So they still think the odds are that their missing burglar is at the party, so they’ve set up this corridor equivalent of a radar trap. Each partygoer on the way out will be taken into the apartment across the hall — with that good citizen’s cooperation and approval, no doubt — and frisked. The women cops are for the women partygoers. And all five were looking at Dortmunder as though he were their first customer.

Uh–uh. True, he didn’t have the stash on him, but the identity papers he carried were in case of routine stops, not for anything serious. These documents were like vampires, they crumbled when exposed to light.

Dortmunder extended the tray, “Have a shrimp?”

“We’re on duty,” one of the women cops said, and the other cops looked faintly embarrassed.

“Maybe later,” Dortmunder suggested, and he closed the door on all those official eyes before they got the idea to dry–run their little gauntlet on the help.

What now? Eventually, this party, like all good things, must end. Until then, he was probably more or less safe, but as things stood, there was absolutely no way for him to get out of this apartment. Until they got their hands on the burglar, the police would not relax their vigilance for a second.

Until they got their hands on the burglar. Until they got their hands on somebody.

Play the hand. Dortmunder slipped sideways into the bedroom, balancing the tray one–handed as he opened the dresser drawer where he’d stashed the stash. He was careful about his selection; a proper Christmas gift should be something you’d like to receive yourself, so he resisted the impulse to keep the best swag for himself, instead choosing to sacrifice two brooches and a bracelet that were definitely cream of the crop. These went into his pants pocket and back out of the bedroom he eased, on the alert.

And here came Larry and Sheila down the hall away from the party, he still assuring her that she was the one making all the decisions, while she wore the expression of someone who can’t figure out what it is that keeps biting her on the ass. They would all meet at the midpoint of the hall, with just enough room for everybody to get by.

Well, it could have been anybody, but, in fact, Dortmunder had been thinking about Larry a bit, anyway. The guy was a smart–aleck, which was good; he’d be more likely to think he could bullshit the cops the way he was doing Sheila, more likely to rub them the wrong way and attract their attention. And now this business of sidestepping past one another in the hall just made it easier.

“I don’t want to go if you don’t want to go,” Sheila was saying, her eyes phosphorescent with tears that hadn’t yet started to fall, and at that point in the middle of Larry’s long–suffering sigh, darned if the server didn’t almost dump his whole tray of shrimp and red sauce all over Larry’s shirt. “Hey! Watch it!”

“Oops! Here, let me —”

“That’s all right, that’s all right, no harm done, everything’s fine, if you don’t mind,” Larry said with an aggressive, splay–fingered brushing down of his front, where nothing had actually spilled but where the server had been apologetically pawing and patting.

Timing is all. Dortmunder made his way back to the party, distributed the rest of his shrimp among the needy, and when he saw the harried woman, empty–trayed, heading for the kitchen, he followed her.

Now she was putting little sausages on the tray, each with its own yellow toothpick. Dortmunder reached into his pocket for the one prize he hadn’t given Larry: an extremely nice gold brooch shaped like a feather. “Hold it,” he said, walking over behind her, and tucked it into the raveled bun of her hair.

“What? What? What’s that?” She didn’t know what was happening but was afraid to turn her head.

“When you get home,” Dortmunder advised, “have your guy fish that out of there. Not before.”

“But what is it?”

“A feather,” he said accurately, and disrobed himself of the dish towel he’d been hiding behind. Too bad that jacket wasn’t around anymore. “Well,” he said, “up the chimney I speed.”

She laughed, a happier person than when they’d met, and picked up her refilled tray. “Say hello to the elves.”

“I will.”

They both left the kitchen, she to continue her good works and he moving briskly but without unseemly haste down the hall toward the apartment door, through which, as he neared it, came the muffled sound of voices raised in dispute, among them the high tones of the perhaps unnecessarily loyal Sheila.

“Just who do you think you are?” And that was Larry, bless him.

Eventually, of course, Larry’s innocence — at least in this context — would be established, and the manhunt would resume. But by then the wily perpetrator would be long gone. Flexing into the bedroom, the wily perpetrator found his pea–coat at the bottom of the pile again and refilled it quickly and silently with his tools and the evening’s profits. Before leaving, he paused briefly to pick up the bedside phone and dial his faithful companion, May, waiting for him at home, who answered by saying “Wrong number,” which was her form of preemptive strike against possible breathers and objectionable conversationalists.

“I’m a little bit late, May,” Dortmunder said.

“You certainly are,” May agreed. “Where are you, the precinct?”

“Well, I’m at a party,” Dortmunder said, “but I’ll be leaving in a minute.” Leaving, to be specific, to continue his interrupted descent of the fire escape. “There was a complication,” he explained, “but it’s OK now.”

“Is it a nice party?”

“The food’s good,” Dortmunder said. “See you soon.”

GIVE TILL IT HURTS

__________________

It was hard to run, Dortmunder was discovering, with your pockets full of bronze Roman coins. The long skirt flapping around his ankles didn’t help, either. This hotel is either too damn big, he told himself, huffing and puffing and trying to keep his pants up under this bulky white dress, or it’s too small.

Okay, the dress isn’t really a dress, it’s an aba, but it gets in the way of running legs just as much as any dress in the world. How did Lawrence of Arabia do it, in that movie that time? Probably trick photography.

Also, the sheet on his head, called a keffiyeh, held on by this outsize cigar band circlet called an akal, is fine and dandy if you’re just walking around looking at things, but when you run it keeps sliding over your eyes, particularly when you have to go around a corner and not run straight into the wall, like now.

Dortmunder turned the corner, and here came a half dozen of his fellow conventioneers, Arabian numismatists jabbering away at each other and kicking their skirts out ahead of them as they walked. How did they do that?

Dortmunder braked hard to a walk, to a stroll, and fixed a brotherly smile on his face as he approached the approaching sheiks, or whatever they were. “Sawami,” he said, using the one word he’d found that seemed to work. “Sawami, sawami.”

They all smiled back, and nodded, and said some stuff, and proceeded on around the corner. With any luck, the cops would arrest one of them.

Here’s the thing. If you happen to hear that in a big hotel in midtown Manhattan there’s going to be a sale of ancient coins, where most of the dealers and most of the customers are going to be rich Arabs, what can you possibly do but dress yourself up like a rich Arab, go to the hotel, mingle a little, and see what falls into your pockets? If the dealer with the heavy beard and the loud voice hadn’t also happened to see what was falling into Dortmunder’s pocket, everything would have been okay. As it was, he’d eluded pursuit so far, but if he were to try to leave the hotel by any of its known exits he was pretty sure he’d suddenly feel a lot of unfriendly hands clutching at his elbows.

What to do, what to do? Getting out of this OPEC drag wouldn’t help much, since his pursuers had no doubt already figured out he was a goof in sheik’s clothing. In fact, wearing it helped him blend in with the hotel’s regular guests, so long as he didn’t have to engage in conversation more complicated than, “Sawami sawami. Sawami? Ho, ho, sawami!”

And at least he wasn’t up in Santa Claus rig. Every year around this time, with shiny toys in the store windows and wet snow inside your shoes, wherever there might happen to be any kind of a robbery in a public setting, the cops immediately would nick the nearest Saint Nick, because it is well known that Santa Claus is every second–rate second story guy’s idea of a really terrific disguise.

Not Dortmunder. Better a sheet among sheiks than a red suit, a white pillow and handcuffs. Leave your camel at home.

NO ADMISSION. That was what the door said, and that was perfect. That was exactly what you would look for when you’re on the run, a door that says No Admission, or Authorized Personnel Only, or Keep Out; any of those synonyms for quick–exit. This particular door was at a turn in the corridor, tucked away mostly out of sight in the corner of the L. Dortmunder looked down both lengths of empty hallways, tried the knob, found it locked, and stepped back to consider just what kind of lock he was expected to go through here.

Oh, that kind. No problem. Hiking up his skirt, reaching into a coin–laden pants pocket, he brought out a little leather bag of narrow metal implements he’d once told an arresting officer was his manicure set. That cop had looked at Dortmunder’s fingernails and laughed.

Dortmunder manicured No Admission, pushed the door open, listened, heard no alarm, saw only darkness within, and stepped through, shutting the door behind him. Feeling around for a lightswitch, his fingers bumped into some sort of shelf, then found the switch, flipped it up, and a linen closet sprang into existence: sheets, towels, tissue boxes, soap, quart–size white plastic coffee pitchers, tiny vials of shampoo. Well, hell, this was no way out.

Dortmunder turned and reached for the doorknob and felt a breeze. Yes? He turned back, inspecting the small but deep crowded room with all his eyes, and there at the rear was a window, an ordinary double hung window, and its bottom half was just slightly open.

What floor am I on? Dortmunder had gone out windows before in his career that had turned out to be maybe a little too high up in the air for comfort and he’d lived to regret it, but at least he’d lived. But where was he now?

The window was behind shelves piled with towels. Dortmunder moved towels out of the way, leaned his head in between two shelves, pushed the window farther open and looked out into December darkness. A kind of jumbled darkness lay in an indefinite number of stories below, maybe three, maybe five. To the right were the backs of tall buildings facing 57th Street and to the left were the backs of shorter buildings facing 56th Street.

Didn’t people make rope ladders out of sheets? They did; Dortmunder followed their example, first tying the end of a sheet around the handle of a coffee pitcher and lowering that out the window, then tying sheets together and paying them out until he heard the far–away clunk of the pitcher against something hard.

Far away.

Don’t look down, Dortmunder reminded himself, as he tied the top sheet to a shelf bracket and stripped at last out of his Middle East finery and switched off the linen closet light, but then he had to figure out how to get this body from this position, standing in the dark linen closet, to hanging on sheets outside the window. How do you get from here to there? To slide between the shelves and out the window head first seemed utter folly; you’d wind up pointing the wrong way, and you wouldn’t last long. But to get up on the shelf and through that narrow opening feet first was obviously impossible.

Well, the impossible takes a little longer, particularly in the dark. Many parts of himself he hit against the wooden edges of the shelves. Many times he seemed certain to fall backward off a shelf and beat his head against the floor. Many times he had all of himself in position except one arm, on the wrong shelf, or maybe one knee, that had found a way to get into the small of his back. Then there came a moment when all of him was outside the window except his left leg, which wanted to stay. Ultimately, he was reduced to holding onto the sheet with his teeth and right knee while pulling that extra leg out with both hands, then in a panic grabbing the sheet with every molecule in his body just as he started to fall.

The sheets held. His hands, elbows, knees, thighs, feet, teeth, nostrils and ears held. Down he went, the cold city breeze fanning his brow, his descent accompanied by the music of ancient coins clinking in his pocket and tiny threads ripping in the sheets.

The jumbled darkness down below was full of stuff, some of it to be climbed over, some to be avoided, none of it friendly. Dortmunder blundered around down there for a while, aware of that white arrow on the side of the hotel in the evening dark, pointing its long finger directly at him, and then he saw, up a metal flight of stairs, a metal grillwork door closed over an open doorway, with warm light from within.

Maybe? Maybe. Dortmunder tiptoed up the stairs, peered through the grill, and saw a long high room completely encased by books. A library of some kind, well lit and totally empty, with a tall Christmas tree halfway along the left side.

Dortmunder manicured the metal door, stepped through, and paused again. At this end of the room were a large desk and chair, at the far end a long marble–topped table, and in between various furniture; sofa, chairs, round table. The Christmas tree gave off much bright light and a faint aroma of the north woods. But mostly the room was books, floor to the ceiling, glowing amber in the warmth of large faceted overhead light globes.

At the far end was a dark wooden door, ajar. Dortmunder made for this, and was halfway there when a short gray–haired guy came in, carrying two decks of cards and a bottle of beer. “Oh, hi,” the guy said. “I didn’t see you come in. You’re early.”

“I am?”

“Not very early,” the guy conceded. Putting the cards on the round table and the beer on a side table, he said, “I have this right, don’t I? You’re the fella Don sent, to take his place, because he’s stuck at some Christmas party.”

“Right,” Dortmunder said.

“Pity he couldn’t make it,” the guy said. “He always leaves us a few bucks.” He stuck his hand out. “I’m Otto, I didn’t quite get your …”

“John,” Dortmunder said, fulfilling his truth quota for the day. “Uh, Diddums.”

“Diddums?”

“It’s Welsh.”

“Oh.”

Two more guys came into the room, shucking out of topcoats, and Otto said, “Here’s Larry and Justin.” He told them, “This is John Diddums, he’s the guy Don sent.”

“Diddums?” Justin said.

“It’s Welsh,” Otto explained.

“Oh.”

Larry grinned at Dortmunder and said, “I hope you’re as bad a player as Don.”

“Ha ha,” Dortmunder said.

Okay; it looks like there’s nothing to do but play poker with these people, and hope the real substitute for Don doesn’t show up. Anyway, it’s probably safer in here, for the moment. So Dortmunder stood around, being friendly, accepting Otto’s offer of a beer, and pretty soon Laurel and Hardy came in, Laurel being a skinny guy called Al and Hardy being a nonskinny guy called Henry, and then they sat down to play.

They used chips, a dollar per, and each of them bought twenty bucks worth to begin. Dortmunder, reaching in his heavy pockets, pulled out with some wadded greenbacks a couple of bronze coins, which bounced on the floor and were picked up by Henry before Dortmunder could get to them. Henry glanced at the coins and said, as he put them on the table and pushed them toward Dortmunder, “We don’t take those.”

Everybody had a quick look at the coins before Dortmunder could scoop them up and slip them back into his pocket. “I’ve been traveling,” he explained.

“I guess you have,” Henry said, and the game began. Dealer’s choice, stud or draw, no high–low, no wild cards.

As Dortmunder well knew, the way to handle a game of chance is to remove the element of chance. A card palmed here, a little dealing of seconds there, an ace crimped for future reference, and pretty soon Dortmunder was doing very well indeed. He wasn’t winning every hand, nothing that blatant, but by the time the first hour was done and the cops began to yell at the metal grillwork door Dortmunder was about two hundred forty bucks ahead.

This was Otto’s place. “Now what?” he said, when all the shouting started out back, and got to his feet, and walked back there to discuss the situation through the locked grill.

Looking as though he didn’t believe it, or at least didn’t want to believe it, Al said, “They’re raiding our poker game?”

“I don’t think so,” said Henry.

Otto unlocked the door, damn his eyes, and the room filled up with a bunch of overheated uniformed cops, several of them with new scars and scrapes from running around in that jumbled darkness out there. “They say,” Otto told the table generally, “there was a burglary at the hotel, and they think the guy came this way.”

“He scored some rare coins,” one cop, a big guy with sergeant’s stripes and Perry on his nameplate, said. “Anybody come through here tonight?”

“Just us,” Larry said. Nobody looked at Dortmunder.

“Maybe,” one of the cops said, “you should all show ID.”

Everybody but Dortmunder reached for wallets, as Otto said, “Officer, we’ve known each other for years. I own this building and the bookshop out front, and these are writers and an editor and an agent, and this is our regular poker game.”

“You all know each other, huh?”

“For years,” Otto said, and grabbed a handy book, and showed the cop the picture on the back. “See, that’s Larry,” he said, and pointed at the guy himself, who sat up straight and beamed a big smile, as though his picture was being taken.

“Oh, yeah?” The cop looked from the book to Larry and back to the book. “I read some of your stuff,” he said. “I’m Officer Nekola.”

Larry beamed even more broadly. “Is that right?”

“You ever read William J. Caunitz?” the cop asked. Larry’s smile wilted slightly. “He’s a friend of mine,” he said.

“Of ours,” Justin said.

“Now there’s a real writer,” Nekola said. “He used to be a cop himself, you know.”

“We know,” Larry said.

While the literary discussion went on, Dortmunder naturally found himself wondering: Why are they covering for me here? I came in the back way, I showed those coins, they don’t know me for years, so why don’t they all point fingers and shout, “Here’s your man, take him away!” What’s up? Isn’t this carrying the Christmas spirit a little too far?

The symposium had finished. One of the cops had gotten Justin to autograph a paperback book. The cops were all leaving, some through the front toward the bookstore, the rest returning to the jumbled darkness out back. Otto called after them, “In case anything comes up, how do we get in touch with you people?”

“Don’t worry,” Sgt. Perry said. “We’ll be around for hours yet.”

And then Dortmunder got it. If these people were to blow the whistle, the cops would immediately take him away, meaning he would no longer be in the game. And he had their money.

You don’t do that. You don’t let a new guy leave a poker game after one measly hour, not if he has your money, not for any excuse. And particularly under these current circumstances. Knowing what they now knew about Dortmunder, his new friends here would be replaying certain recent hands in their minds and seeing them in a rather different light.

Which meant he knew, unfortunately, what was expected of him now. If this is the quid, that must be the quo.

Otto resumed his seat, looking a bit grim, and said, “Whose deal?”

“Mine,” Justin said. “Draw, guts to open.”

Dortmunder picked up his cards, and they were the three, five and seven of spades, the queen of hearts and the ace of clubs. He opened for the two dollar limit, was raised, and raised back. Everybody was in the hand.

Since it didn’t matter what he did, Dortmunder threw away the queen and the ace. Justin dealt him two replacements and he looked at them, and they were the four and six of spades.

Has anybody ever done that before? Dortmunder had just drawn twice to an inside straight in the same hand, and made it. And made a straight flush as well. Lucky, huh? If only he could tell somebody about it.

“Your bet, John,” Justin said.

“I busted,” Dortmunder said. “Merry Christmas.” He tossed in the hand.

It was going to be a long night. Two hundred and forty dollars long.

JUMBLE SALE

_____________

Dortmunder having come into possession of some certain coins of a particular value, and the merchant named Stoon having recently returned to the slammer upstate, he decided it was time to go see Arnie Albright. Nothing else to be done. Therefore, shrugging his shoulders and pocketing his Ziploc bag of coins, Dortmunder took the West Side IRT up to 86th, then walked on up to 89th between Broadway and West End, where Arnie’s apartment moldered upstairs over a bookstore.

Dortmunder entered the vestibule. He thought about ringing the doorbell there, but then he thought about not ringing it, and liked that thought better, so he went through the interior door with a shrug of a credit card. Climbing the stairs, he stopped at Arnie’s door — it was a particularly offensive shade of dirty gray — yellow — green — and rapped the metal with his knuckles.

Nothing.

Was Arnie out? Impossible. Arnie was never out. It was practically against a city ordinance for Arnie Albright to go out of his apartment and mingle with ordinary people on the ordinary street. So Dortmunder rapped again, with the knuckle of the middle finger of his right hand, and when that still produced nothing, he kicked the door instead, twice: KHORK, KHORK.

“WHAT?” demanded a voice from just the other side of the door.

Dortmunder leaned close. “It’s me,” he said, not too loudly. “John Dortmunder.”

“DORTMUNDER?”

“Who you tryin’ to tell, the people in Argentina?”

Many lock noises later, the door opened and Arnie Albright stood there, the same as ever, unfortunately. “Dortmunder,” Arnie cried, already exasperated. “Whyn’tchoo ring the doorbell, like a person?”

“Because then you yell at me on the intercom,” Dortmunder explained, “and you want me to yell back, and tell my business to everybody on the street.”

“I gotta protect myself,” Arnie said. “I got things of value here.” He gestured vaguely behind himself, as though he couldn’t quite remember which things of value they were, or where exactly he’d put them.

Dortmunder said, “You gonna let me in?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Arnie, a grizzled, gnarly guy with a tree–root nose, a skinny, deeply lined person who could have been any age from four hundred to a thousand, stepped back and gestured Dortmunder inside, saying, “So Stoon’s been sent up again, huh?”

Surprised, because this was very new news, Dortmunder said, “When’d you hear that?”

Arnie shut the door. “I didn’t. But when I see you coming to Arnie, I know Stoon’s outta business.”

“Oh, naw,” Dortmunder said.

“Don’t tell me, Dortmunder,” Arnie said, leading the way across the living room, if that’s the word. “If Stoon was out and about, up and around, coming and going, it’s him you’d go see in a minute, even though I pay better dollar.”

“Naw, Arnie,” Dortmunder said, following, wishing he didn’t have to spend so much time lying when he was with Arnie.

The Albright apartment had small rooms with big windows, all of them looking out past a black metal fire escape at a panoramic view of the brick rear wall of a parking garage maybe four feet away. For interior decoration, Arnie had hung a lot of his calendar collection around on the walls, all of these Januaries starting on all different days of the week, with numbers in black or red or, very occasionally, dark blue. Also, to break the monotony, there were the calendars that started in March or August, the ones Arnie called incompletes. (Being a serious collector, he was full of serious collector jargon.) The top halves of all these calendars were pictures, mostly photographs (fall foliage, kittens in baskets, the Eiffel Tower), except that the pictures of the girls bent way over to pump gas into a roadster were drawings. Excellent drawings in very bright colors, really artistic. Also, the religious pictures, mainly the Sermon on the Mount (perspective!), were drawings, but generally not as artistically interesting as the girls.

Arnie led the way through the decades to the table over by the parking garage view, saying, “So what have you got for me today? Huh? Not a piano, I bet, huh? Not a piano? Huh?”

It was amazing how quickly Arnie could become tiresome. “Some coins, Arnie,” Dortmunder said.

“Damn, you see?” Arnie said. “It didn’t work.”

“It didn’t?”

“Just the other day,” Arnie said, his voice full of accusation, “I read this self–improvement thing, see, in some goddam magazine in the garbage, ‘Lighten Up, Asshole’, something like that, it said, ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you, piss and moan and you piss and moan alone’.”

“I heard that,” Dortmunder allowed. “Something like that.”

“Well, it’s bullshit,” Arnie said. “I just tried a joke there —”

“You did?” Dortmunder looked polite. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

“It’s my personality that’s wrong,” Arnie said. “It’s just who I am, that’s all. Somebody else could tell that joke, you’d be on the floor, you’d need CPR, the Heimlich Maneuver. But not me. I’m a pain in the ass, Dortmunder, and don’t argue with me about that.”

“I never argue with you, Arnie,” Dortmunder said.

“I get on people’s nerves,” Arnie insisted. He waggled a bony finger in Dortmunder’s face. “I make them sorry they ever met me,” he snarled. “It don’t matter what I do, I even put on perfume, would you believe it?”

“Well,” Dortmunder said cautiously, “you do smell kinda different at that, Arnie.”

“Different, yeah,” Arnie growled. “Not better, just different. I put on these male scents, you know what I mean? Ripped ‘em outta some other magazine, outta the trash can up at the corner, rubbed ‘em all over myself, now people get close to me, they hail a cab to get away.”

Dortmunder sniffed, not a lot. “It’s not that bad, Arnie,” he said, though it was.

“At least you lie to me,” Arnie said. “Most people, I’m so detestable, they can’t wait to tell me what a turd I am. Well, sit–down by the window there, that’ll help a little.”

Dortmunder sat by the open window, at the wooden chair by the table there, and it did help a little; the honest reek of old parking garage and soot helped to cut the cloying aromas of Arnie, who smelled mostly like a giant package of artificial sweetener gone bad.

On this old library table Arnie had long ago laid out a number of his less valuable incompletes, attaching them with a thick layer of clear plastic laminate. Dortmunder now took out his Zip–loc bag and emptied it in the middle of the table, onto a June, where two barefoot, freckle–faced, straw–hatted lads were just arriving at the old fishin’ hole. “This is what I got,” he said.

Arnie’s dirty, stubby fingers brushed coins this way and that. “You been travelin’, Dortmunder?” he wanted to know. “Seein’ the world?”

“Is that one of those jokes, Arnie?”

“I’m just askin’.”

“Arnie,” Dortmunder said, “the Roman Empire isn’t there anymore, you can’t visit, it’s been gone, I dunno, a hundred years, maybe. More.”

“Well, let’s see,” Arnie said, giving nothing away. From his rumpled clothing he withdrew a piece of old rye bread and a jeweler’s loupe. Putting the bread back where he’d found it, he tucked the loupe into his left eye and bent to study the coins, one at a time.

“They’re good,” Dortmunder assured him. “It’s a big sale of the stuff, at a hotel in midtown.”

“Mm,” Arnie said. He lifted one coin, and bit it with his back teeth.

“It isn’t an oreo, Arnie,” Dortmunder said.

“Mm,” Arnie said, and the doorbell rang.

Arnie lifted his head. For one horrible moment, the loupe stared straight at Dortmunder, like somebody looking out a door’s peephole without the door. Then Arnie put his left hand in front of himself on the table, palm up, lifted his left eyebrow, and the loupe fell into his palm. “There,” he said, “that’s what you should do, Dortmunder. Ring the doorbell.”

“I’m already here.”

“Lemme just see what this is.”

Never knowing when it might become necessary to remove oneself to a different location, Dortmunder scooped the ancient coins back into the Ziploc bag, and the bag back into his pocket, as Arnie crossed to the intercom grid near the door, pressed the button, and said, “WHAT?”

“That’s why I don’t,” Dortmunder muttered.

A voice, distorted by all the kinks in the intercom wires, bracked from the grid: “Arnie Albright?”

“WHO WANTS TO KNOW?”

“Petey Fonanta.”

“NEVER HEARDA YA.”

“Joe sent me.”

Arnie turned to cock a look at Dortmunder, who pushed his chair back a bit from the table. The fire escape was a very comforting presence, just outside this open window.

“WHICH JOE? JERSEY JOE OR PHILLY JOE?”

“Altoona Joe.”

Arnie reared back, releasing the button. He showed Dortmunder a gaze rich in wonder and confusion. “There really is an Altoona Joe,” he whispered.

“Never heard of him,” Dortmunder said.

“He’s inside, been in a while. Petey Fonanta?”

“Never heard of him either.”

The doorbell rang. Arnie whirled back, stabbing the button: “HOLD ON!”

“We’re just standin’ around out here.”

“WHO’S WE’RE?”

“My partner and me.”

Arnie released the button and frowned at Dortmunder in an agony of indecision. “Now a partner,” he said.

“Let them in or not,” Dortmunder suggested.

“Why didn’t I thinka that?” Arnie turned to chop at the button: “WHADAYA HEAR FROM JOE?”

“He’s still in Allentown, another two three clicks.”

Button release; turn to Dortmunder. “And that’s true, too. I’m gonna let them in, Dortmunder. Don’t say a word.”

Dortmunder nodded, not saying a word.

“You’re my cousin from outta town.”

“No,” Dortmunder said. “I’m from the block association, I’m here to talk to you about a contribution.”

Arnie glowered. “Now you don’t even wanna be related to me.”

“It isn’t that, Arnie,” Dortmunder lied. “It’s, we don’t look that much alike.”

“Neither did Cain and Abel,” Arnie said and turned back to push the button once more: “COME ON UP.” He pushed the other button, and the buzz sound could be heard, faintly, from far away downstairs.

Dortmunder stood and pulled his chair around with its back to the wall, so it wasn’t exactly at the table anymore, but the fire escape was still extremely handy. Then he sat down again. Arnie opened the apartment door and stood there looking out and down the stairs. Feet could be heard. A normal human voice, without intercom distortion, said, “Arnie Albright?”

“I didn’t change in one flight a stairs,” Arnie said. “Come in.”

Two people came in, and it wasn’t hard at all to tell which one was Petey Fonanta. He was the non–woman. He was maybe 30, a little bulky, black–haired, blue–jawed, in chinos and thick shoes and a maroon vinyl jacket with a zipper. The woman was very similar to Petey, except her short hair was yellow, her jaw was white, and her vinyl jacket was robin’s–egg blue.

It wasn’t a total surprise that Petey Fonanta’s partner should be a woman. Crime has been a politically correct gender–blind equal–opportunity career for a long, long time, much longer than fireperson or mailperson or even doctor person. Bonnie Parker, Ma Barker, Leona Helmsley; the list goes on.

Petey and the woman stopped in the middle of the room and looked at Dortmunder, who got to his feet and smiled like he was just a stranger here, passing through. Arnie shut the door and came around his new guests to say, “So Altoona Joe sent you, huh?”

“Yeah,” Petey Fonanta said. He was still looking at Dortmunder.

“Altoona Joe can’t stand my guts,” Arnie remarked, and shrugged. “But neither can anybody else. And the same with you two.”

The woman said, “What? What’s the same with us two?”

“By the time you leave here,” Arnie told her, “you’ll be so disgusted, all you’ll want to do is punch Altoona Joe in the mouth, and there he is in the pen, safe. I’m surprised he didn’t warn you about me, paint you one a them word pictures? You owe him money or something?”

Petey Fonanta ignored all that, because he was still looking at Dortmunder, and now he said, out of the side of his mouth, “You didn’t introduce your friend.”

“Acquaintance,” Dortmunder said.

Arnie said, “That’s John —”

“Diddums,” Dortmunder said, in a hurry, not knowing what Arnie might have come out with.

Petey Fonanta frowned. The woman said, “Diddums?”

“It’s Welsh.”

“Oh.”

Arnie said, “John’s my cousin from outta town.”

“Once removed,” Dortmunder said, giving Arnie a dirty look.

Petey gestured at the woman: “This is my partner, Kate Murray. That’s all she is, we’re partners.”

“That’s right,” Kate Murray said. She looked and sounded determined. “Just partners, that’s it.”

“And Altoona Joe sent you,” Arnie said, looking thoughtful.

“He said, we come to town,” Petey answered, “we should look you up.”

“That’s some friend you got there,” Arnie said. “He sends you to me, just to chat.”

“Well, we got something you might want,” Petey said.

“Yeah,” Kate said.

“And what would that be?” Arnie asked.

Petey lowered his eyebrows in Dortmunder’s direction. “Can we talk in front of the cousin?”

“Why not?” Arnie asked. “He’s still my cousin, no matter how much he removes.”

Dortmunder said, “Blood is thicker than water.”

Petey considered that. “They both spill the same,” he said.

Kate said, “Petey, if it’s gonna go down, let’s do it.”

Petey shrugged. “Okay.” Turning at last away from Dortmunder and toward Arnie, he said, “What we got, we got television sets.”

Arnie did an elaborate act of looking all over Petey, up and down, his clothing and hair and everything, before he said, “They must be awful small television sets, huh? Huh? Small sets? Huh?”

That was the joke again, going by there. Dortmunder recognized it this time, but he still didn’t feel like laughing. And Petey just stood there and moved his shoulders like a guy overdo for a workout and said, “What?”

Arnie spread his hands at Dortmunder. “You see what I mean,” he said. Then, to Petey, he said, “Where are these television sets?”

“In the truck outside.”

Kate said, “You can have the truck, too.”

“For trucks I got no interest,” Arnie told her. “With the alternate side parking on this block, I wouldn’t even have a tricycle. You found a parking place, huh?”

“We’re double–parked out front,” Petey said. “Which is why we’d like to move this transaction a little.”

“Transaction,” Arnie said, tasting the word. “So you got a truck out there with some televisions.”

Kate said, “We got a extra–long semi with Ohio plates and four hundred television sets.”

Arnie stared at her. “Double–parked on 89th Street?”

Kate said, “Where else would you put it?”

“It’s not a question comes up a lot,” Arnie said.

Petey, sounding impatient, said, “Well? Are you up for this or not?”

“You come all this way,” Arnie told him, unruffled, “and you’re such a good friend of Altoona Joe, the least I can do is look at the goods. Okay?”

“Sure.” Petey nodded heavily at Arnie, and then nodded heavily at Kate, saying, “Stay with the cousin.”

“Sure.”

Petey and Arnie left, and Dortmunder said to Kate, “Why not sit down?”

“All right,” she said, and sat on a lumpy brown sofa under a lot of January mountain ranges and waterfalls. Dortmunder took again his chair by the window, and she looked at him and said, “You here for a transaction, too?”

Transaction. Dortmunder said, “I’m here being a cousin, that’s all. Once removed.”

“You aren’t in the business?”

Dortmunder looked very interested. “What business?” he asked.

“Never mind.”

Conversation ceased after that, like a plant that’s never been watered, until Arnie and Petey returned, arguing about the potential value of four hundred Taiwanese television sets in a depressed economy. “I gotta make a phone call,” Arnie announced, “see can I get these things off my hands again, should it happen I put them on my hands in the first place. That is, if I can find somebody’ll talk to a piece of crap like me, is what.”

Arnie went into the other room, from where the faint murmur of his phone call could soon be heard. Petey sat on the sofa next to Kate and patted her knee, saying, “How’s it going?”

“Fine.”

Petey looked at Dortmunder. He smiled, which Dortmunder didn’t believe at all, and said, “We interrupt you guys doin’ business?”

“No, just being cousins,” Dortmunder assured him.

“He’s a civilian,” Kate said.

Petey considered that, looking from Dortmunder to Kate and back. He seemed unconvinced, but didn’t say anything, and conversation again dropped into nothingness.

Arnie walked into the room and looked around at the three silent people seated there. “What is this?” he wanted to know. “Did I die? Is this my wake? I didn’t expect so many people.”

Petey never much liked anything that anybody ever said about anything. Glowering at Arnie, he said, “So? Do we have a deal or not?”

“We have a wait,” Arnie told him. “I hate to have to tell you this, but you’re gonna have to put up with my presence a little while longer. Until the guy calls me back.”

Kate, with a worried frown at her partner, said to Arnie, “How long?”

“Five minutes? Maybe ten minutes?”

Petey lifted his wrist to look at a watch the size of a pizza covered with black olives, and said, “Ten minutes. Then we’re outta here.”

Arnie said, “You want my cousin to drive the truck around while we wait?”

Petey gave him a look. “Do we look like we’re worried about a ticket?”

Kate said, “And nobody’s gonna tow a truck that size.”

“You’re right, there,” Arnie said.

Funny how conversation kept dying. This group just didn’t have much to say to one another. Also, Petey was not a patient kind of person, in the normal way of things, which was becoming increasingly evident. About the fourth time he looked at the pizza on his wrist, Arnie said, “I could turn on the radio, you like, find some music, you two could dance.”

Petey glowered. “We’re just partners,” he said.

“Right, right, I forgot.”

Dortmunder got to his feet, as though casual. “Well, cuz,” he said to Arnie, “maybe I’ll go back outta town.”

Petey switched his glower to Dortmunder. “Why don’t you stick around instead?” he said.

“Yeah, Door–Diddums,” Arnie said. “Stick around.”

Although Dortmunder did say, “I don’t see why —” nobody heard him because at that moment a whole lot of pounding rattled the metal apartment door, and voices shouted, “Open up! Police! Police!”

Petey and Kate stared at one another wide–eyed. Dortmunder stared at the fire escape; if Arnie could only stall the cops for thirty or forty seconds …

Arnie strode briskly to the apartment door and flung it open. “Took you guys long enough,” he said.

Dortmunder and Petey and Kate all reacted to that remark, staring open–mouthed at Arnie as the room filled up with uniforms. There then followed a great deal of noise and confusion, during which Dortmunder and Petey and Kate found themselves standing in a row against a wall of Januaries — baseball players, old cars, chrome–covered diners — while a number of fierce–looking cops pinned them there with gimlet glares.

When at last there was comparative silence, except for everybody’s heavy breathing, a plainclothesman came in through the open door and pointed his lumpy forehead at Arnie to say, “Arnie, what the hell are you up to?”

“Nothing, Lieutenant,” Arnie said, “as you well know. I’m retired, and reformed, and off the fence.”

“Crap,” the lieutenant said, and sniffed. “What stinks in here?”

“Me,” Arnie said. “As usual.”

“Worse than usual, Arnie.” The lieutenant’s forehead considered Dortmunder and Petey and Kate. “What’s with this unlovely crowd?”

“What I told you on the phone,” Arnie reminded him. “Them two tried to sell me stolen TV sets.”

Petey said, “We never said they were stolen.”

“Sharrap,” the lieutenant told Petey. To Arnie, he said, “These three, huh?”

“No, no, them two. That one’s my cousin, John Diddums, from outta town.”

“First cousin!” Dortmunder cried. In that moment, he became the only person in history ever to love Arnie Albright.

The lieutenant’s forehead expressed all sorts of disbelief. “This isn’t a crook?”

“Absolutely not,” Arnie said. “I’m the black sheep of the family, Lieutenant. John there, he’s my inspiration for honesty. He runs the family grocery store in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania.”

The lieutenant frowned at Dortmunder. “Where the hell is Shickshinny?”

“Pennsylvania,” Dortmunder said, being in no mood to contradict Arnie.

The lieutenant thought things over. He said, “Arnie? You’ll come downtown, make a statement?”

“Naturally,” Arnie said. “I told you, I’m the straight goods now.”

“Will wonders never cease.” To his armed forces, the lieutenant said, “Take those two, leave that one.”

Kate cried out, “This is a hell of a thing! Lou, what we —”

“Shut up, Kate,” Petey said, and Kate shut up. But she fumed, as she and Petey were taken away by all the uniforms, followed by the lieutenant, who closed the door.

Dortmunder dropped into the chair by the window like something that had fallen out of an airplane. Arnie came over to sit across the table and say, “Quick, lemme see those coins. We don’t got a whole lotta time.”

Wondering, handing over the Zip–loc bag, Dortmunder said, “Arnie? Why’d you turn those two in?”

“You kidding?” Loupe in eye, Arnie studied coins. “They were cops. Undercover. Entrapment, like they like to do. That’s probably what got your pal Stoon.”

“Cops? Are you sure?”

The loupe looked at Dortmunder; still an uncomfortable event. “What’s the first thing they said when they come in? ‘We’re just partners’. Dortmunder? Were they just partners?”

“He put his hand on her knee, while you were out on the phone.”

“They do the four–hand aerobics, am I right?”

“Sure. So?”

“If two regular, honest crooks walk in here,” Arnie said, “and they’re a guy and a broad, what do they care what we think about whether they’re schtuppin’ or not, am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“But an undercover cop,” Arnie said, studying coins again, “when he’s out on the job, he’ll pretend to be a druggie, a burglar, a murderer, a spy, any goddam thing. He’ll say he’s anything at all, because everybody that matters knows he really isn’t. But the one thing he can’t say is he’s getting it on with his partner, because when that gets home to the wife, she’ll know it’s true.”

“You had me very worried, Arnie,” Dortmunder said. “I probably didn’t show it, but I was really very worried.”

“They won’t uncover themselves until they get downtown,” Arnie said, “so we got a little time. Not much.”

“Really very worried,” Dortmunder said.

“I may be ugly, stupid, bad–smelling, antisocial, friendless and a creep,” Arnie said, “but I don’t get entrapped by officer Petey and officer Kate. I tell you what I’ll do with these coins.”

“Yeah?”

From his pocket Arnie took the piece of rye bread and a set of truck keys. The keys he dropped on a January of a boy carrying his girlfriend’s books home from school down a country lane, and the bread he started to eat. “I palmed those when we went down to look at the goods,” he said, around the stale bread. “I got no use for trucks or TVs, Dortmunder, but there’s a guy over in Jersey —”

“I know him.”

“An even swap,” Arnie said. “I’ll take the coins, you take the truck and the TVs.”

“Done.”

Dortmunder scooped in the keys and got to his feet. “Better give me the Zip–loc bag, Arnie,” he said.

“For why?”

“For why?”

Arnie gaped at him, bread an unlovely mass in his mouth. “The TVs and the truck? In a Zip–loc bag?”

Dortmunder smiled upon him. “That’s how you tell that joke, Arnie,” he said, and got out of there.

NOW WHAT?

____________

Everybody on the subway was reading the Daily News, and every newspaper was open to exactly the same page, the one with the three pictures. The picture of the movie star, smiling. The picture of the famous model, posing and smiling. And the picture of the stolen brooch. Shaped vaguely like a boomerang, with a large, dark stone at each end and smaller, lighter stones scattered between like stars in the night sky seen, say, from a cell, even the brooch seemed to be smiling.

Dortmunder was not smiling. He hadn’t realized how big a deal this damn brooch would be. With pictures of the brooch in the hands of every man, woman and child in the greater New York metropolitan area, it was beginning to seem somehow less than brilliant that he should smuggle the thing into Brooklyn, disguised as a ham sandwich.

Over breakfast (sweetened orange juice, coffee with a lot of sugar, Wheaties with a lot of sugar), that concept had appeared to make a kind of sense, even to have a certain elegance. John Dortmunder, professional thief, with his sloped shoulders, shapeless clothing, lifeless hair — colored hair, pessimistic nose and rusty–hinge gait, knew he could, if he wished, look exactly like your normal, average working man, even though, so far as he knew, he had never earned an honest dollar in his life. If called upon to transport a valuable stolen brooch from his home in Manhattan to a new but highly recommended fence in Brooklyn, therefore, it had seemed to him that the best way to do it was to place the brooch between two slabs of ham with a lot of mayonnaise, this package to be inserted within two slices of Wonder Bread, the result wrapped in paper towels and the whole carried inside an ordinary wrinkled brown paper lunch bag. It had seemed like a good idea.

Only now he didn’t know. What was it about this brooch? Why was its recent change of possessor all over the Daily News?

The train trundled and roared and rattled through the black tunnel beneath the city, stopping here and there at bright–lit white–tile places that could have been communal showers in state prisons but were actually where passengers embarked and detrained, and eventually one such departing passenger left his Daily News behind him on the seat. Dortmunder beat a bag lady to it, crossed one leg over the other and, ignoring the bag lady’s bloodshot glare, settled down to find out what the fuss was all about.

300G BROOCH IN DARING HEIST

Lone Cat Burglar Foils Cops, Top Security

Well, that wasn’t so bad. Dortmunder couldn’t remember ever having been called daring before, nor had anyone before this ever categorized his shambling jog and wheezing exertions as that of a cat burglar.

Anyway, on to the story:

In town to promote his new hit film, Mark Time III: High Mark, Jer Crumbie last night had a close encounter with a rapid–response burglar who left the superstar breathless, reluctantly admiring, and out the $300,000 brooch he had just presented his fiancée, Desiree Makeup spokesmodel Felicia Tarrant.

‘It was like something in the movies’, Crumbie told cops. ‘This guy got through some really tight security, grabbed what he wanted and was out of there before anybody knew what happened.’

The occasion was a private bash for the Hollywood–based superstar in his luxury suite on the 14th floor of Fifth Avenue’s posh Port Dutch Hotel, frequent host to Hollywood celebrities. A private security service screened the invited guests, both at lobby level and again outside the suite itself, and yet the burglar, described as lithe, in dark clothing, with black gloves and a black ski mask, somehow infiltrated the suite and actually managed to wrest the $300,000 trinket out of Felicia Tarrant’s hands just moments after Jer Crumbie had presented it to her to the applause of his assembled guests.

‘It all happened so fast’, Ms. Tarrant told police, ‘and he was so slick and professional about it, that I still can’t say exactly how it happened.’

What Dortmunder liked about celebrity events was that they tended to snag everybody’s attention. Having seen, both on television and in the New York Post, that this movie star was going to be introducing his latest fiancée to 250 of his closest personal friends, including the press, at his suite at the Port Dutch Hotel, Dortmunder had understood at once that the thing to do during the party was to pay a visit to the Port Dutch and drop in on every suite except the one containing the happy couple.

The Port Dutch was a midtown hotel for millionaires of all kinds — oil sheiks, arbitrageurs, rock legends, British royals — and its suites, two per floor facing Central Park across Fifth Avenue, almost always repaid a drop–in visit during the dinner hour.

Dortmunder had decided he would work only on the floors below the 14th, where the happy couple held sway, so as not to pass their windows and perhaps attract unwelcome attention. But on floor after floor, in suite after suite, as he crept up the dark fire escape in his dark clothing, far above the honking, milling, noisy red–and–white stage set of the avenue far below, he met only disappointment. His hard–learned skills at bypassing Port Dutch locks and alarms — early lessons had sometimes included crashing, galumphing flights up and down fire escapes — had no chance to come into play.

Some of the suites clearly contained no paying tenants. Some contained occupants who obviously meant to occupy the suite all evening. (A number of these occupants’ stay–at–home activities might have been of educational interest to Dortmunder, had he been less determined to make a profit from the evening.)

A third category of suites was occupied by pretenders. These were people who had gone out for an evening on the town, leaving behind luggage, clothing, shopping bags, all visible from the fire escape windows, providing clues that their owners were second–honeymooners from Akron, Ohio who would repay an enterprising burglar’s attentions with little more than Donald Duck sweatshirts from 42nd Street.

Twelve floors without a hit. The not–quite–honeymoon suite was just ahead. Dortmunder was not interested in engaging the attention of beefy men in brown private security guard uniforms, but he was also feeling a bit frustrated. Twelve floors, and not a soul no bracelets, no anklets, no necklaces; no Rolexes, ThinkPads, smuggled currency; no fur, no silk, no plastic (as in credit cards).

OK. He would pass the party, silent and invisible. He would segue from 12 up past 14 without a pause, and then he would see what 15 and above had to offer. The hotel had 23 floors; all hope was not gone.

Up he went. Tiptoe, tiptoe; silent, silent. Over his right shoulder, had he cared to look, spread the dark glitter of Central Park. Straight down, 140 feet beneath his black–sneakered feet, snaked the slow–moving southbound traffic of Fifth Avenue, and just up ahead lurked suites 1501–2–3–4–5.

The window was open.

Oh, now what? Faint party sounds wafted out like laughing gas. Dortmunder hesitated but knew he had to push on.

Inch by inch he went up the open–design metal steps, cool in the cool April evening. The open window, when he reached it, revealed an illuminated room with a bland pale ceiling but apparently no occupants; the party noises came from farther away.

Dortmunder had reached the fire escape landing. On all fours, he started past the dangerous window when he heard suddenly approaching voices:

“You’re just trying to humiliate me.” Female, young, twangy, whining.

“All I’m trying is to teach you English.” Male, gruff, cocky, impatient.

Female: “It’s a pin. Anybody knows it’s a pin!”

Male: “It is, as I said, a brooch.”

Female: “A brooch is one of them things you get at the hotel in Paris. For breakfast.”

Male: “That, Felicia, sweetheart — and I love your tits — I promise you, is a brioche.”

Female: “Brooch!”

Male: “Brioche!”

Most of this argument was taking place just the other side of the open window. Dortmunder, thinking it unwise to move, remained hunkered, half–turned so his head was just below the sill while his body was compressed into a shape like a pickup’s spring right after 12 pieces of Sheetrock have been loaded aboard.

“You can’t humiliate me!”

An arm appeared within that window space above Dortmunder’s head. The arm was slender, bare, graceful. It was doing an overarm throw, not very well; if truth be told, it was throwing like a girl.

This arm was attempting to throw the object out through the open window, and in a way it accomplished its purpose. The flung object first hit the bottom of the open window, but then it deflected down and out and wound up outside the window.

In Dortmunder’s lap. Jewelry, glittering. What looked like emeralds on the ends, what looked like diamonds along the middle.

Any second now somebody was going to look out that window to see where this bauble had gone. Dortmunder closed his left hand around it and moved. It was an automatic reaction, and since he’d already been moving upward he kept on moving upward, rounding the turn of the landing, heaving up the next flight of the fire escape, breathing like a city bus, while behind him the shouting began:

Male: “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!”

Female: “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!”

Up and over the hotel roof and into the apartment building next door and down the freight elevator and out onto the side street, a route long known to Dortmunder. When he at last ambled around the corner onto Fifth, merely another late–shift worker going home, the police cars were just arriving in front of the hotel.

Newspapers tell lies, Dortmunder thought. He read on, to find a description of the thing in his ham sandwich. The things that looked like emeralds were emeralds, and the things that looked like diamonds were diamonds, that was why the fuss. Altogether, the trinket the bride — perhaps–to–be had flung ricocheting out the window last night was valued, in the newspapers, at least, at $300,000.

On the other hand, newspapers lie. So it would be up to Harmov Krandelloc, said to be an ethnic so different from anybody else that no one had yet figured out even what continent he came from, but who had recently set himself up in a warehouse off Atlantic Avenue where it crossed Flatbush as king of the next generation of really worthwhile fences, who paid great dollar (sometimes even more than the usual ten percent of value) and never asked too many questions. It would be up to Harmov Krandelloc to determine what the thing in the ham sandwich was actually worth, and what Dortmunder could hope to realize from it.

But now, on the BMT into deepest Brooklyn, surrounded by newspaper photos of his swag, realizing that the celebrity of its former owners made this particular green–and–white object more valuable but also more newsworthy (a word the sensible burglar does his best to avoid), Dortmunder hunched with increasing despondency under his borrowed paper, clutched his brown bag in his left hand with increasing trepidation and wished fervently he’d waited a week before trying to unload this bauble.

More than a week. Maybe six years would have been right.

Roizak Street would be Dortmunder’s stop. While keeping one eye on his News and one eye on his lunch, Dortmunder also kept an eye on the subway map, following the train’s creeping progress from one foreign neighborhood to another; street names without resonance or meaning, separated by the black tunnels.

Vedloukam Boulevard; the train slowed and stopped. Roizak Street was next. The doors opened and closed. The train started, roaring into the tunnel. Two minutes went by, and the train slowed. Dortmunder rose, peered out the car windows and saw only black. Where was the station?

The train braked steeply, forcing Dortmunder to sit again. Metal wheels could be heard screaming along the metal rails. With one final lurch, the train stopped.

No station. Now what? Some holdup, when all he wanted to do —

The lights went out. Pitch–black darkness. A voice called, “I smell smoke.” The voice was oddly calm.

The next 27 voices were anything but calm. Dortmunder, too, smelled smoke, and he felt people surging this way and that, bumping into him, bumping into one another, crying out. He scrunched close on his seat. He’d given up the News, but he held on grimly to his ham sandwich.

“ATTENTION PLEASE.”

It was an announcement, over the public address system.

Some people kept shouting. Other people shouted for the first people to stop shouting so they could hear the announcement. Nobody heard the announcement.

The car became still, but too late. The announcement was over. “What did he say?” a voice asked.

“I thought it was a she,” another voice said.

“It was definitely a he,” a third voice put in.

“I see lights coming,” said a fourth voice.

“Where? Who? What?” cried a lot of voices.

“Along the track. Flashlights.”

“Which side? What way?”

“Left.”

“Right.”

“Behind us.”

“That’s not flashlights, that’s fire!”

“What! What! What!”

“Not behind us, buddy, in front of us! Flashlights.”

“Where?”

“They’re gone now.”

“What time is it?”

“Time! Who gives a damn what time it is?”

“I do, knucklehead.”

“Who’s a knucklehead? Where are you, wise guy?”

“Hey! I didn’t do anything!”

Dortmunder hunkered down. If the car didn’t burn up first, there was going to be a first–class barroom brawl in here pretty soon.

Someone sat on Dortmunder. “Oof,” he said.

It was a woman. Squirming around, she yelled, “Get your hands off me!”

“Madam,” Dortmunder said, “you’re sitting on my lunch.”

“Don’t you talk dirty to me!” the woman yelled, and gave him an elbow in the eye. But at least she got off his lap — and lunch — and went away into the heaving throng.

The car was rocking back and forth now; could it possibly tip over?

“The fire’s getting closer!”

“Here come the flashlights again!”

Even Dortmunder could see them this time, outside the window, flashlights shining blurrily through a thick fog, like the fog in a Sherlock Holmes movie. Then someone carrying a flashlight opened one of the car’s doors, and the fog came into the car, but it wasn’t fog, it was thick oily smoke. It burned Dortmunder’s eyes, made him cough and covered his skin with really bad sunblock.

People clambered up into the car. In the flashlight beams bouncing around, Dortmunder saw all the coughing, wheezing, panicky passengers and saw that the people with the flashlights were uniformed cops.

Oh, good. Cops.

The cops yelled for everybody to shut up, and after a while everybody shut up, and one of the cops said, “We’re gonna walk you through the train to the front car. We got steps off the train there, and then we’re gonna walk to the station. It’s only a couple blocks, and the thing to remember is, stay away from the third rail.”

A voice called, “Which is the third rail?”

“All of them,” the cop told him. “Just stay away from rails. OK, let’s go before the fire gets here. Not that way, whaddya looking for, a barbecue? That way.”

They all trooped through the dark smoky train, coughing and stumbling, bumping into one another, snarling, using their elbows, giving New Yorkers’ reputations no boost whatsoever, and eventually they reached the front car, where more cops — more cops — were helping everybody down a temporary metal staircase to the ground. Of course it would be metal, with all these third rails around; it couldn’t be wood.

A cop took hold of Dortmunder’s elbow, which made Dortmunder instinctively put his wrists together for the cuffs, but the cop just wanted to help him down the stairs and didn’t notice the inappropriate gesture. “Stay off the third rail,” the cop said, releasing his elbow.

“Good thought,” Dortmunder said, and trudged on after the other passengers, down the long smoky dark tunnel, lit by bare bulbs spaced along the side walls.

The smoke lessened as they went on, and then the platform at Roizak Street appeared, and yet another cop put his hand on Dortmunder’s elbow, to help him up the concrete steps to the platform. This time Dortmunder reacted like an innocent person, or as close to one as he could get.

A lot of people were hanging around on the platform; apparently, they wanted another subway ride. Dortmunder walked through them, and just before he got to the turnstile to get out of here yet another cop pointed at the bag in his hand said, “What’s that?”

Dortmunder looked at the bag. It was much more wrinkled than before and was blotchily gray and black from the sooty smoke. “My lunch,” he said.

“You don’t want to eat that,” the cop told him, and pointed at a nearby trash can. “Throw it away, why don’t ya?”

“It’ll be OK,” Dortmunder told him. “It’s smoked ham.” And he got out of there before the cop could ask for a taste.

Out on the sidewalk at last, Dortmunder took deep breaths of Brooklyn air that had never smelled quite so sweet before, then headed off toward Harmov Krandelloc, following the directions he’d been given: two blocks this way, one block that way, turn right at the corner, and there’s the 11 paddy wagons and the million cops and the cop cars with all their flashing lights and the long line of handcuffed guys being marched into the wagons.

Dortmunder stopped. No cop happened to be looking in this direction. He turned smoothly around, not even disturbing the air, and walked casually around the corner, then crossed the street to the bodega and said to the guy guarding the fruit and vegetable display outside, “What’s happening over there?”

“Let me get you a paper towel,” the guy said, and he went away and came back with two paper towels, one wet and one dry.

Dortmunder thanked him and wiped his face with the wet paper towel, and it came away black. Then he wiped his face with the dry paper towel and it came away gray. He gave the paper towels back and said, “What’s happening over there?”

“One of those sting operations,” the guy said, “like you see in the movies. You know, the cops set up a fake fence operation, get videotape of all these guys bringing in their stuff, invite them all to a party, then they arrest everybody.”

“When did they show up?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

I’d have been here, Dortmunder thought, if it wasn’t for the subway fire. “Thinka that,” he said.

The guy pointed at his bag: “Whatcha got there?”

“My lunch. It’s OK, it’s smoked ham.”

“That bag, man, you don’t want that bag. Here, gimme, let me —”

He reached for the bag, and Dortmunder pulled back. Why all this interest in a simple lunch bag? What ever happened to the anonymous–workman–with–lunch–bag theory? “It’s fine,” Dortmunder said.

“No, man, it’s greasy,” the bodega guy told him. “It’s gonna soak through, spoil the sandwich. Believe me, I know this shit. here, lemme give you a new bag.”

A paddy wagon tore past, behind Dortmunder’s clenched shoulder blades, siren screaming. So did a second one. Meantime, the bodega guy reached under his fruit display and came out with a fresh new sandwich–size brown paper bag. “There’s plastic people,” he explained, “and there’s paper people, and I can see you’re a paper man.”

“Right,” Dortmunder said.

“So here you go,” the guy said, and held the bag wide open for Dortmunder to transfer his lunch.

All he could hope was that no brooch made any sudden leap for freedom along the way. He opened the original bag, which in truth was a real mess by now, about to fall apart and very greasy and dirty, and he took the paper towel–wrapped sandwich out of it and put it in the fresh, crisp, sharp new paper bag, and the bodega guy gave it a quick twirl of the top to seal it and handed it over, saying, “You want a nice mango with that? Papaya? Tangelo?”

“No, thanks,” Dortmunder said. “I would, but I break out.”

“So many people tell me that,” the bodega guy said, and shook his head at the intractability of fate. “Well,” he said, cheering up, “have a nice day.”

A paddy wagon went by, screaming. “I’ll try to,” Dortmunder promised, and walked away.

No more subways. One burning subway a day was all he felt up to, even if it did keep him from being gathered up in that sting operation and sent away to spend the rest of his life behind bars in some facility upstate where the food is almost as bad as your fellow man.

Dortmunder walked three blocks before he saw a cab; hang the expense, he hailed it: “You go to Manhattan?”

“Always been my dream,” said the cabbie, who was maybe some sort of Arab, but not the kind with the turban. Or were they not Arabs? Anyway, this guy wasn’t one of them.

“West 78th Street,” Dortmunder said, and settled back to enjoy a smoke–free, fire–free, cop–free existence.

“Only thing,” the Arab said, if he was an Arab. “No eating in the cab.”

“I’m not eating,” Dortmunder said.

“I’m only saying,” the driver said, “on account of the sandwich.”

“I won’t eat it,” Dortmunder promised him.

“Thank you.”

They started, driving farther and farther from the neighborhood with all the paddy wagons, which was good, and Dortmunder said, “Cabbies eat in the cabs all the time.”

“Not in the backseat,” the driver said.

“Well, no.”

“All’s the space we can mess up is up here,” the driver pointed out. “You eat back there, you spill a pickle, mustard, jelly, maybe a chocolate chip cookie, what happens my next customer’s a lady in a nice mink coat?”

“I won’t eat the sandwich,” Dortmunder said, and there was no more conversation.

Dortmunder spent the time trying to figure out what the guy was, if he wasn’t Arab. Russian, maybe, or Israeli, or possibly Pakistani. The name by the guy’s picture on the dash was Mouli Mabik, and who knew what that was supposed to be? You couldn’t even tell which was the first name.

Their route took them over the Brooklyn Bridge, which at the Manhattan end drops right next to City Hall and all the court buildings it would be better not to have to go into. The cab came down the curving ramp onto the city street and stopped at the traffic light among all the official buildings, and all at once there was a pair of plainclothes detectives right there, on the left, next to the cab, waving their shields in one hand and their guns in the other, both of them yelling, “You! Pull over! Right now!”

Oh, damn it, Dortmunder thought in sudden panic and terror, they got me!

The cab was jolting forward. It was not pulling over to the side, it was not obeying the plainclothesmen, it was not delivering Dortmunder into their clutches. The driver, hunched very low over his steering wheel, glared straight ahead out of his windshield and accelerated like a jet plane. Dortmunder stared; he’s helping me escape!

Zoom, they angled to the right around two delivery trucks and a parked hearse, climbed the sidewalk, tore down it as the pedestrians leaped every which way to get clear, skirted a fire hydrant, caromed off a sightseeing bus, tore on down the street, made a screaming two–wheeled left into a street that happened to be one–way coming in this direction, and damn near managed to get between the oncoming garbage truck and the parked armored car. Close, but no cigar.

Dortmunder bounced into the bulletproof clear plastic shield that takes up most of the legroom in the backseat of a New York City cab, then stayed there, hands, nose, lips and eyebrows pasted to the plastic as he looked through at this cabbie from Planet X, who, when finished ricocheting off his steering wheel, reached under his seat and came up with a shiny silver–and–black Glock machine pistol!

Yikes! There might not be much legroom back here, but Dortmunder found he could fit into it very well. He hit the deck, or the floor, shoulders and knees all meeting at his chin, and found himself wondering if that damn plastic actually was bulletproof after all.

Then he heard cracking and crashing sounds, like glass breaking, but when he stuck a quaking hand out, palm up, just beyond his quaking forehead, there were no bulletproof plastic pieces raining down. So what was being broken?

Unfolding himself from this position was much less easy, since he was much less motivated, but eventually he had his spine un–pretzeled enough so he could peek through the bottom of the plastic shield just in time to watch the cabbie finish climbing through the windshield where he’d smashed out all the glass, and go rolling and scrambling over the hood to the street.

Dortmunder watched, and the guy got about four running steps down the street when his right leg just went out from under him and he cartwheeled in a spiral down to his right, flipping over like a surfer caught in the Big One, as the Glock went sailing straight up into the air, lazily turning, glinting in the light.

It was a weirdly beautiful scene, the Glock in the middle of the air. As it reached its apex, a uniformed cop stepped out from between two stopped vehicles, put his left hand out, and the Glock dropped into it like a trained parakeet. The cop grinned at the Glock, pleased with himself.

Now there were cops all over the place, just as in the recurrent nightmare Dortmunder had had for years, except none of these came floating down out of the sky. They gathered up the former cabbie, they directed traffic and then arranged for the garbage truck — which now had an interesting yellow speed stripe along its dark green side — to back up enough so they could open the right rear cab door and release the passenger.

Who knew he should not look reluctant to be rescued. It’s OK if I seem shaky, he assured himself, and came out of the cab like a blender on steroids. “Th–thanks,” he said, which he had never once said in that dream. “Th–thanks a lot.”

“Man, you are lucky,” one of the cops told him. “That is one of the major bombers and terrorists of all time. The world has been looking for that guy for years.”

Dortmunder said, “And that’s my luck? Today I hailed his cab?”

The cop asked, “Where’d you hail him?”

“In Brooklyn.”

“And you brought him to Manhattan? That’s great! We never would’ve found him in Brooklyn!”

All the cops were happy with Dortmunder for delivering this major league terrorist directly to the courthouse. They congratulated him and grinned at him and patted his shoulder and generally behaved in ways he was not used to from cops; it was disorienting.

Then one of them said, “Where were you headed?”

“West 78th Street.”

A little discussion, and one of them said, “We’ll go ahead and drive you the rest of the way.”

In a police car? “No, no, that’s OK,” Dortmunder said.

“Least we can do,” they said.

They insisted. When a cop insists, you go along. “OK, thanks,” Dortmunder finally said.

“This way,” a cop said.

They started down the street, now clogged with gawkers, and a cop behind Dortmunder yelled, “Hey!”

Oh, now what? Dortmunder turned, expecting the worst, and here came the cop, with the lunch bag in his hand. “You left this in the cab,” he said.

“Oh,” Dortmunder said. He was blinking a lot. “That’s my lunch,” he said. How could he have forgotten it?

“I figured,” the cop said, and handed him the bag.

Dortmunder no longer trusted himself to speak. He nodded his thanks, turned away and shuffled after the cops who would drive him uptown.

Which they did. Fortunately, the conversation on the drive was all about the exploits of Kibam the terrorist — the name on the hack license was his own, backward — and not on the particulars of John Dortmunder.

Eventually they made the turn off Broadway onto 78th Street. Stoon lived in an apartment building in the middle of the block, so Dortmunder said, “Let me out anywhere along here.”

“Sure,” the cop driver said, and as he slowed Dortmunder looked out the window to see Stoon himself walking by, just as Stoon saw Dortmunder in the backseat of a slowing police car.

Stoon ran. Who wouldn’t?

Knowing it was hopeless, but having to try, Dortmunder said, “Here’s OK, this is fine, anywhere along here, this’d be good,” while the cop driver just kept slowing and slowing, looking for a spot where there was a nice wide space between the parked cars, so his passenger would be able to get to the curb in comfort.

At last, stopped. Remembering his sandwich, knowing it was hopeless, unable to stop keeping on, Dortmunder said, “Thanks I appreciate it I really do this was terrific you guys have been —” until he managed to be outside and could slam the door.

But he couldn’t run. Don’t run away from a cop, it’s worse than running away from a dog. He had to turn and walk, in stately fashion, rising on the balls of his feet, showing no urgency, no despair, not a care in the world, while the police car purred away down West 78th Street.

Broadway. Dortmunder turned the corner and looked up and down the street, and no Stoon. Of course not. Stoon would probably not come back to this neighborhood for a week. And the next time he saw Dortmunder, no matter what the circumstances, he’d run all over again, just on general principle.

Dortmunder sighed. There was nothing for it; he’d have to go see Arnie Albright.

Arnie Albright lived only eleven blocks away, on 89th between Broadway and West End. No more modes of transportation for today; Dortmunder didn’t think his nerves could stand it. Holding tight to the lunch bag, he trekked up Broadway, and as he waited for the light to change at 79th Street a guy tapped him on the arm and said, “Excuse me. Is this your wallet?”

So here’s the way it works. The scam artist has two identical wallets. The first one has a nice amount of cash in it, and ID giving a name and phone number. The scam artist approaches the mark, explains he just found this wallet on the sidewalk, and the two inspect it. They find a working pay phone — not always the easiest part of the scam — and call that phone number, and the “owner” answers and is overjoyed they found the wallet. If they wait right there, he’ll come claim the wallet and give them a handsome reward (usually $100 to $500). The scam artist then explains he’s late for an important appointment, and the mark should give him his half of the reward now ($50 to $250) and wait to collect from the owner. The mark hands over the money, the scam artist gives him the second wallet, the one with all the dollar–size pieces of newspaper in it, and the mark stands there on the corner awhile.

“Excuse me. Is this your wallet?”

Dortmunder looked at the wallet. “Yes,” he said, plucked it out of the scam artist’s hand, put it in his pocket and crossed 79th Street.

“Wait! Wait! Hey!”

On the north corner, the scam artist caught up and actually tugged at Dortmunder’s sleeve. “Hey!” he said.

Dortmunder turned to look at him. “This is my wallet,” he said. “You got a problem with that? You wanna call a cop? You want me to call a cop?”

The scam artist looked terribly, terribly hurt. He had beagle eyes. He looked as though he might cry. Dortmunder, a man with problems of his own, turned away and walked north to 89th Street and down the block to Arnie Albright’s building, where he rang the bell in the vestibule.

“Now what?” snarled the intercom.

Dortmunder leaned close. He had never liked to say his own name out loud. “Dortmunder,” he said.

“Who?”

“Cut it out, Arnie, you know who it is.”

“Oh,” the intercom yelled, “Dortmunder! Why didn’t ya say so?”

The buzzer, a more pleasant sound than Arnie’s voice, began its song, and Dortmunder pushed his way in and went up to Arnie’s apartment, where Arnie, a skinny, wiry ferret in charity cast–off clothing, stood in the doorway. “Dortmunder,” he announced, “you look as crappy as I do.”

Which could not be accurate. Dortmunder was having an eventful day, but nothing could make him look as bad as Arnie Albright, even normally, and when Dortmunder got a little closer he saw Arnie was at the moment even worse than normal. “What happened to you?” he asked.

“Nobody knows,” Arnie said. “The lab says nobody’s ever seen this in the temperate zones before. I look like the inside of a pomegranate.”

This was true. Arnie, never a handsome specimen, now seemed to be covered by tiny red Vesuviuses, all of them oozing thin red salsa. In his left hand he held a formerly white hand towel, now wet and red, with which he kept patting his face and neck and forearms.

“Geez, Arnie, that’s terrible,” Dortmunder said. “How long you gonna have it? What’s the doctor say?”

“Don’t get too close to me.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

“No, I mean that’s what the doctor says. Now, you know and I know that nobody can stand me, on accounta my personality.”

“Aw, no, Arnie,” Dortmunder lied, though everybody in the world knew it was true. Arnie’s personality, not his newly erupting volcanoes, were what had made him the last resort on Dortmunder’s list offences.

“Aw, yeah,” Arnie insisted. “I rub people the wrong way. I argue with them, I’m obnoxious, I’m a pain in the ass. You wanna make something of it?”

“Not me, Arnie.”

“But a doctor,” Arnie said, “isn’t supposed to like or not like. He’s got that hypocritic oath. He’s supposed to lie and pretend he likes you, and he’s real glad he studied so hard in medical school so he could take care of nobody but you. But, no. My doctor says, ‘Would you mind staying in the waiting room and just shout to me your symptoms?’ ”

“Huh,” Dortmunder said.

“But what the hell do you care?” Arnie demanded. “You don’t give a shit about me.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said.

“So if you’re here, you scored, am I right?”

“Sure.”

“Sure,” Arnie said. “Why else would an important guy like you come to a turd like me? And so I also gotta understand Stoon’s back in the jug, am I right?”

“No, you’re wrong, Arnie,” Dortmunder said. “Stoon’s out. In fact, I just saw him jogging.”

“Then how come you come to me?”

“He was jogging away from me,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, what the hell, come on in,” Arnie said, and got out of the doorway.

“Well, Arnie,” Dortmunder said, “maybe we could talk it over out here.”

“What, you think the apartment’s contagious?”

“I’m just happy out here, that’s all.”

Arnie sighed, which meant that Dortmunder got a whiff of his breath. Stepping back a pace, he told him, “I got something.”

“Or why would you be here. Let’s see it.”

Dortmunder took the paper towel–wrapped package out of the paper bag and dropped the bag on the floor. He unwrapped the paper towels and tucked them under his arm.

Arnie said, “What, are you delivering for a deli now? I’ll give you a buck and half for it.”

“Wait for it,” Dortmunder advised. He dropped the top piece of Wonder Bread on the floor, along with much of the mayo and the top slab of ham. Using the paper towels, he lifted out the brooch, then dropped the rest of the sandwich on the floor and cleaned the brooch with the paper towels. Then he dropped the paper towels on the floor and held the brooch up so Arnie could see it, and said, “OK?”

“Oh, you got it,” Arnie said. “I been seeing it on the news.”

“In the News.”

“On the news. The TV”

“Oh. Right.”

“Let’s have a look,” Arnie said, and took a step forward.

Dortmunder took a step back. It had occurred to him that once Arnie had inspected this brooch, Dortmunder wouldn’t be wanting it back. He said, “The newspaper says that it’s worth $300,000.”

“The newspaper says Dewey defeats Truman,” Arnie said. “The newspaper says sunny, high in the 70s. The newspaper says informed sources report. The news —”

“OK, OK. But I just wanna be sure we’re gonna come to an agreement here.”

“Dortmunder,” Arnie said, “you know me. Maybe you don’t want to know me, but you know me. I give top dollar, I don’t cheat, I am 100 percent reliable. I don’t act like a normal guy and cheat and gouge, because if I did, nobody would ever come to see me at all. I have to be a saint, because I’m such a shit. Toss it over.”

“OK,” Dortmunder said, and tossed it over, and Arnie caught it in his revolting towel. Whatever he offers, I’ll take, Dortmunder thought.

While Arnie studied the brooch, breathing on it, turning it, Dortmunder looked in his new wallet and saw it contained a little over $300 cash, plus the usual ID plus a lottery ticket. The faking of the numbers on the lottery ticket was pretty well done. So that would have been the juice in the scam.

“Well,” Arnie said, “these diamonds are not diamonds. They’re glass.”

“Glass? You mean somebody conned the movie star?”

“I know that couldn’t happen,” Arnie agreed, “and yet it did. And this silver isn’t silver, it’s plate.”

In his heart, Dortmunder had known it would be like this. All this effort, and zip. “And the green things?” he said.

Arnie looked at him in surprise. “They’re emeralds,” he said. “Don’t you know what emeralds look like?”

“I thought I did,” Dortmunder said. “So it’s worth something, after all.”

“Not the way it is,” Arnie said. “Not with its picture all over the news. And not with the diamonds and silver being nothing but shit. Somebody’s gotta pop the emeralds out, throw away the rest of it, sell the emeralds by themself.”

“For what?”

“I figure they might go for 40 apiece,” Arnie said. “But there’s the cost of popping them.”

“Arnie,” Dortmunder said, “what are we talking here?”

Arnie said, “I could go seven. You wanna try around town, nobody else is gonna give you more than five, if they even want the hassle. You got a famous thing here.”

Seven. He’d dreamed of 30, he would have been happy with 25. Seven. “I’ll take it,” Dortmunder said.

Arnie said, “But not today.”

“Not today?”

“Look at me,” Arnie said. “You want me to hand you something?”

“Well, no.”

“I owe you seven,” Arnie said. “If this shit I got don’t kill me, I’ll pay you when I can touch things. I’ll phone you.”

A promissory note — not even a note, nothing in writing — from a guy oozing salsa. “OK, Arnie,” Dortmunder said. “Get well soon, you know?”

Arnie looked at his own forearms. “Maybe what it is,” he said, “is my personality coming out. Maybe when it’s over I’ll be a completely different guy. Whaddya think?”

“Don’t count on it,” Dortmunder told him.

Well, at least he had the $300 from the wallet scam. And maybe Arnie would live; he certainly seemed too mean to die.

Heading back to Broadway, Dortmunder started the long walk downtown — no more things on wheels, not today — and at 86th Street he saw that a new edition of the New York Post was prominent on the newsstand on the corner. Jer–Felicia split was the front–page headline. That, apparently, in the New York Post’s estimation, was the most important North American news since the last time Donald Trump had it on or off with somebody or other.

What the hell; Dortmunder could splurge. He had $300 and a promise. He bought the paper, just to see what had happened to the formerly loving couple.

He had happened, essentially. The loss of the pin (brioche, brooch) had hit the lovers hard. “It’s in diversity you really get to know another person,” Felicia was reported as saying, with a side–bar in which a number of resident experts from NYU, Columbia and Fordham agreed, tentatively, that when Felicia had said diversity she had actually meant adversity.

“I remain married to my muse,” Jer was quoted as announcing. “It’s back to the studio to make another film for my public.” No experts were felt to be needed to explicate that statement.

Summing it all up, the Post reporter finished his piece, “The double–emerald brooch may be worth $300,000, but no one seems to have found much happiness in it.” I know what you mean, Dortmunder thought, and walked home.

ART AND CRAFT

_______________

The voice on the telephone at John Dortmuder’s ear didn’t so much as ring a distant bell as sound a distant siren. “John,” it rasped, “how ya doin?”

Better before this phone call, Dortmunder thought. Somebody I was in prison with, he figured, but who? He’d been in prison with so many people, back before he had learned how to fade into the shadows at crucial moments, like when the SWAT team arrives. And of all those cellmates, blockmates, tankmates, there hadn’t been one of them who wasn’t there for some very good reason. DNA would never stumble over innocence in that crowd; the best DNA could do for those guys was find their fathers, if that’s what they wanted.

This wasn’t a group that went in for reunions, so why this phone call, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of October? “I’m doin’ OK,” Dortmunder answered, meaning, I got enough cash for me but not enough for you.

“That makes two of us,” the voice said. “In case you don’t recognize me, this is Three Finger.”

“Oh,” Dortmunder said.

Three Finger Gillie possessed the usual 10 fingers but got his name because of a certain fighting technique. Fights in prison tend to be up close and personal, and also brief; Three Finger had a move with three fingers of his right hand guaranteed to make the other guy rethink his point of view in a hurry. Dortmunder had always stayed more than an arm’s reach from Three Finger and saw no reason to change that policy. “I guess you’re out, huh?” he said.

Sounding surprised, Three Finger said, “You didn’t read about me in the paper?”

“Oh, too bad,” Dortmunder said, because in their world the worst thing that could happen was to find your name in the paper. Indictment was bad enough, but to be indicted for something newsworthy was the worst.

But Three Finger said, “Naw, John, this is good. This is what we call ink.”

“Ink.”

“You still got last Sunday’s Times?” he asked.

Astonished, Dortmunder said, “The New York Times?”

“Sure, what else? ‘Arts and Leisure’, page 14, check it out, and then we’ll make a meet. How about tomorrow, four o’clock?”

“A meet. You got something on?”

“Believe it. You know Portobello?”

“What is that, a town?”

“Well, it’s a mushroom, but it’s also a terrific little cafe on Mercer Street. You ought to know it, John.”

“OK,” Dortmunder said.

“Four o’clock tomorrow.”

Keeping one’s distance from Three Finger Gillie was always a good idea, but on the other hand he had Dortmunder’s phone number, so he probably had his address as well, and he was known to be a guy who held a grudge. Squeezed it, in fact. “See you there,” Dortmunder promised, and went away to see if he knew anybody who might own a last Sunday’s New York Times.

The dry cleaner on Third Avenue had a copy.

Life is very different for Martin Gillie these days. “A big improvement,” he says in his gravelly voice, and laughs as he picks up his mocha cappuccino.

And indeed life is much improved for this longtime state prison inmate with a history of violence. For years, Gillie was considered beyond any hope of rehabilitation, but then the nearly impossible came to pass. “Other guys find religion in the joint,” he explains, “but I found art.”

It was a period of solitary confinement brought about by his assault on a fellow inmate that led Gillie to try his hand at drawing, first with stubs of pencils on magazine pages, then with crayons on typewriter paper, and, finally, when his work drew the appreciative attention of prison authorities, with oil on canvas.

These last artworks, allegorical treatments of imaginary cityscapes, led to Gillie’s appearance in several group shows. They also led to his parole (his having been turned down three previous times), and now his first solo show, in Soho’s Waspail Gallery.

Dortmunder read through to the end, disbelieving but forced to believe. The New York Times; the newspaper with a record, right? So it had to be true.

“Thanks,” he told the dry cleaner, and walked away, shaking his head.

Among the nymphs and ferns of Portobello, Three Finger Gillie looked like the creature that gives fairy tales their tension. A burly man with thick black hair that curled low on his forehead and lapped over his ears and collar, he also featured a single, wide block of black eyebrow like a weight holding his eyes down. These eyes were pale blue and squinty and not warm, and they peered suspiciously out from both sides of a bumpy nose shaped like a baseball left out in the rain. The mouth, what there was of it, was thin and straight and without color. Dortmunder had never before seen this head above anything but prison denim, so it was a surprise to see it chunked down on top of a black cashmere turtleneck sweater and a maroon vinyl jacket with the zipper open. Dressed like this, Gillie mostly gave the impression he’d stolen his body from an off–duty cop.

Looking at him, seated there, with a fancy coffee cup in front of him — mocha cappuccino? — Dortmunder remembered that other surprise, from the newspaper, that Three Finger had another front name. Martin. Crossing the half–empty restaurant, weighing the alternatives, he came to the conclusion no. Not a Martin. This was still a Three Finger.

He didn’t rise as Dortmunder approached, but patted his palm on the white marble table as if to say siddown. Dortmunder pulled out the delicate black wrought–iron chair, said, “You look the same, Three Finger,” and sat.

“And yet,” Three Finger said, “on the inside I’m all changed. You’re the same as ever outside and in, aren’t you?”

“Probably,” Dortmunder agreed. “I read that thing in the paper.”

“Ink,” Three Finger reminded him, and smiled, showing the same old hard, gray, uneven teeth. “It’s publicity, John,” he said, “that runs the art world. It don’t matter, you could be a genius, you could be Da Vinci, you don’t know how to publicize yourself, forget it.”

“I guess you must know, then,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, not enough,” Three Finger admitted. “The show’s been open since last Thursday, a whole week. I’m only up three weeks, we got two red dots.”

Dortmunder said, “Do that again,” and here came the willowy waitress, wafting over with a menu that turned out to be eight pages of coffee. When Dortmunder found regular American, with cream and sugar — page five — she went away and Three Finger said, “Up, when I say I’m only up three weeks, I mean that’s how long my show is, then they take my stuff down off the walls and put somebody else up. And when I say two red dots, the way they work it, when somebody buys a picture, they don’t get to take it home right away, not till the show’s over, so the gallery puts a red dot next to the name on the wall, everybody knows it’s sold. In a week, I got two red dots.”

“And that’s not so good, huh?”

“I got 43 canvases up there, John,” Three Finger said. “This racket is supposed to keep me out of jewelry stores after hours. I gotta have more than two red dots.”

“Gee, I wish you well,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, you can do better than that,” Three Finger told him. “That’s why I called you.”

Here it comes, Dortmunder thought. He wants me to buy a painting. I never thought anybody I knew in the whole world would ever want me to buy a painting. How do I get out of this?

But what Three Finger said next was another surprise: “What you can do for me, you can rip me off.”

“Ha–ha,” Dortmunder said.

“No, listen to me, John,” Three Finger said. Leaning close over the marble table, dangerously within arm’s reach, lowering his voice and peering intensely out of those icy eyes, he said, “This world we’re in, John, this is a world of irony.”

Dortmunder had been lost since yesterday, when he’d read the piece in the newspaper, and nothing that was happening today was making him any more found. “Oh, yeah?” he said.

Three Finger lifted both hands above his head — Dortmunder flinched, but only a little — and made quotation signs. “Everything’s in quotes,” he said. “Everybody’s taking a step back, looking the situation over, being cool.”

“Uh–huh,” Dortmunder said.

“Now, I got some ink,” Three Finger went on. “I already got some, but it isn’t enough. The ex–con is an artist, this has some ironic interest in it, but what we got here, we got a situation where everybody’s got some ironic interest in them, everybody’s got some edge, some attitude. I gotta call attention to myself. More ironic than thou, you see what I mean?”

“Sure,” Dortmunder lied.

“So, what if the ex–con artist gets robbed?” Three Finger wanted to know. “The gallery gets burgled, you see what I mean?”

“Not entirely,” Dortmunder admitted.

“A burglary doesn’t get into the papers,” Three Finger pointed out. “A burglary isn’t news. A burglary is just another fact of life, like a fender bender.”

“Sure.”

“But if you give it that ironic edge,” Three Finger said, low and passionate, “then it’s the edge that gets in the paper gets on TV. That’s what gets me on the talk shows. Not the ex–con turned artist, that isn’t enough. Not some penny–ante burglary, nobody cares. But the ex–con turned artist gets ripped off, his old life returns to bite him on the ass, what he used to be rises up and slaps him on the face. Now you’ve got your irony. Now I can get this sheepish kinda grin on my face, and I can say, ‘Gee, Oprah, I guess in a funny way this is the dues I’m paying’, and I got 43 red dots on the wall, you see what I mean?”

“Maybe,” Dortmunder allowed, but it was hard to think this way. Publicity was to him pretty much what fire was to the Scarecrow in Oz. There was no way that he could possibly look on public exposure as a good thing. But if that’s where Three Finger was right now, reversing a lifetime of ingrained behavior, shifting from a skulk to a strut, fine.

However, that left one question, so Dortmunder asked it: “What’s in it for me?”

Three Finger looked surprised. “The insurance money,” he said.

“What, you get it and you split it with me?”

“No, no, art theft doesn’t work like that.” Three Finger reached into the inside pocket of his jacket — Dortmunder flinched, but barely — and brought out a business card. Sliding it across the marble table, he said, “This is the agent for the gallery’s insurance company. The way it works, you go in, you grab as many as you want — leave the red dot ones alone, that’s all I ask — then you call the agent, you dicker a fee to return the stuff. Somewhere between maybe 10 and 25 percent.”

“And I just walk back in with these paintings,” Dortmunder said, “and nobody arrests me.”

“You don’t walk back in,” Three Finger told him. “Come on, John, you’re a pro, that’s why I called you. It’s like a kidnapping, you do it the same way. You can figure that part out. The insurance company wants to pay you because they’d have to pay the gallery a whole lot more.”

Dortmunder said, “And what’s the split?”

“Nothing, John,” Three Finger said. “The money’s all yours. Don’t worry, I’ll make out. You hit that gallery in the next week, I get ink. Believe me, where I am now, ink is better than money.”

“Then you’re in some funny place,” Dortmunder told him.

“It’s a lot better than where I used to be, John,” Three Finger said.

Dortmunder picked up the business card and looked at it, and the willowy waitress brought him coffee in a round mauve cup the size of Elmira, so he put the card in his pocket. When she went away, he said, “I’ll think about it.” Because what else would he do?

“You could go there today,” Three Finger said. “Not with me, you know.”

“Sure.”

“You case the joint, if it looks good, you do it. The place closes at seven, you do it between eight and midnight, any night at all. I’m guaranteed to be with a crowd, so nobody thinks I ripped myself off for the publicity stunt.”

Three Finger reached into his jacket again — Dortmunder did not flinch a bit — and brought out a postcard with a shiny picture on one side. Sliding it across the table, he said, “This is like my calling card these days. The gallery address is on the other side.”

It was a reproduction of a painting, one of Three Finger’s, had to be. Dortmunder picked it up by the edges because the picture covered the whole area, and looked at a nighttime street scene. A side street, with a bar and some brick tenements and parked cars. It wasn’t dark, but the light was a little weird, streetlights and bar lights and lights in windows, all a little too green or a little too blue. No people showed anywhere along the street or in the windows, but you just had a feeling there were people there, barely out of sight, hiding maybe in a doorway, behind a car. It wasn’t a neighborhood you’d want to stay in.

“Keep it,” Three Finger said. “I got a stack of ‘em.”

Dortmunder pocketed the card, thinking he’d show it to his faithful companion this evening and she’d tell him what to think about it. “I’ll give the place the double–O,” he promised.

“I can’t ask more,” Three Finger assured him.

The neighborhood had been full of lofts and warehouses and light manufacturing. Then commerce left, went over to New Jersey or out to the Island, and the artists moved in, for the large spaces at low rents. But the artists made it trendy, so the real estate people moved in, changed the name to Soho, which in London does not mean South of Houston Street, and the rents went through the roof. The artists had to move out, but they left their paintings behind, in the new galleries. Parts of Soho still look pretty much like before, but some of it has been touristed up so much it doesn’t look like New York City at all. It looks like Charlotte Amalie, on a dimmer.

The Waspail Gallery was in a little cluster that had been touristed. In the first place, it came with its own parking lot. In New York?

A U of buildings, half a block’s worth, had been taken over for a series of shops and cafes. The most beat–up of the original buildings had been knocked down to make access to the former backyards, which were blacktopped into a parking area, plus selling and eating space. The shops and cafes faced out onto the three streets surrounding the U; and they all also had entrances in back, from the parking lot.

The Waspail Gallery was midway down the left arm of the U. The original of the postcard in Dortmunder’s pocket stood on an easel in the big front window, looking even more menacing at life size. Inside, a stainless–steel girl in black presided at a little cherrywood desk, while three browsers browsed in the background. The girl gave Dortmunder one appraising look, glanced outside to see if it was raining, decided there was no telling and went back to her Interview.

All the pictures were early evening or night scenes of city streets, never with any people, always with that sense of hidden menace. Some were bigger, some were smaller, all had weirdness in the lighting. Dortmunder found the two with red dots — Scheme and Before the Rain — and they were the same as all the others. How could you tell you wanted this one and not that one over there?

Dortmunder browsed among the browsers, but mostly he was browsing for security. He saw the alarm system over the front door, a make and model he’d amused himself with in the past, and he smiled it a hello. He saw the locks on the doors at front and back, he saw the solid sheet metal–articulated gate that would ratchet down over the front window at night to protect the glass and to keep passersby from seeing any burglar who might happen to be inside, and eventually he saw the thick iron mesh on the small window in the unisex bathroom.

What he didn’t see was the surveillance camera. A joint with this alarm and those locks and that gate would usually have a surveillance camera, either to videotape with a motion sensor or to take still pictures every minute or so. So where was it? There. Tucked away inside an apparent heating system grid high on the right wall. Dortmunder caught a glimpse of light reflecting off the lens, and it wasn’t until the next time he browsed by that he could figure out which way it pointed — diagonally toward the front entrance. So a person coming in from the back could avoid it without a problem.

He went out the back way, past the tourists snacking at tables on the asphalt, and home.

He didn’t like it. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something was wrong. He would have gone in and lifted a few pictures that first night, if he’d felt comfortable about it, but he didn’t. Something was wrong.

Was it just that this was connected with Three Finger Gillie, from whom nothing good had ever flowed? Or was there something else that he just couldn’t put his finger on?

It wasn’t the money. Gillie didn’t plan to rip off Dortmunder later on, or he’d have agreed to share the pie from the get–go. It was the publicity he wanted. And Dortmunder didn’t believe Gillie meant to double–cross him, turn him in to get himself some extra publicity, because it would be too easy to show they used to know each other in the old days, and Gillie’s being the inside man in the boost would be obvious.

No, it wasn’t Gillie himself, at least not directly. It was something else that didn’t feel right, something having to do with that gallery.

Of course, he could just forget the whole thing, take a walk. He didn’t owe Three Finger Gillie any favors. But if there was something wrong, was it a smart idea to walk away without at least finding out what was what? The third day, Dortmunder decided to go back to the gallery one more time, see if he could figure out what was bugging him.

This time, he thought he’d walk in the parking entrance and go into the gallery from that side, to see what it felt like. The first thing he saw, at an outdoor cafe across the half–empty lot from the gallery, was Jim O’Hara, drinking a Diet Pepsi. At least, the cup was a Diet Pepsi cup.

Jim O’Hara. A coincidence?

O’Hara was a guy Dortmunder had worked with here and there, around and about, from time to time. They’d done some things together. However, they didn’t travel in the same circles on a regular basis, so how did it happen that Jim O’Hara was here, and not looking at the rear entrance to the Waspail Gallery?

Dortmunder walked down the left side of the parking area, past the gallery (without looking at it), and when he was sure he’d caught O’Hara’s attention, he stopped, nodded as though he’d just decided on something, turned around and walked back out to the street.

The remaining parts of the original Soho neighborhood included some bars. Dortmunder found one after a three–block walk, purchased a draft beer, took it to a booth and had sipped twice before O’Hara joined him, having traded his Diet Pepsi for a draft of his own. For greeting, he said, “He talked to you, too, huh?”

“Three days ago,” Dortmunder said. “When’d he talk to you?”

“Forty minutes ago. He’ll talk until somebody does it, I guess. How come you didn’t?”

“Smelled wrong,” Dortmunder said.

O’Hara nodded. “Me, too. That’s why I was sitting there, trying to figure it out.”

Dortmunder said, “Who knows how many people he’s telling the story to.”

“So we walk away from it.”

“No, we can’t,” Dortmunder told him. “That’s what I finally realized when I saw you sitting over there.”

O’Hara drank beer, and frowned. “Why can’t we just forget it?”

“The whole thing hangs together,” Dortmunder said. “What got to me, in that gallery there, and now I know it, and it’s the answer to what’s wrong with this picture, is the security camera.”

“What security camera?” O’Hara asked, and then said, “You’re right, there should have been one, and there wasn’t.”

“Well, there was,” Dortmunder told him. “Tucked away in a vent thing on the wall. But the thing about a security camera, it’s always right out there, mounted under the ceiling, out where you can see it. That’s part of the security, that you’re supposed to know it’s there.”

“Why, that son of a bitch,” O’Hara said.

“Oops, wait a minute, I know that fella,” O’Hara said the next night, back in the gallery–facing parking lot. “Be right back.”

“I’ll be here,” Dortmunder said as O’Hara rose to intercept an almost invisible guy approaching the gallery across the way, a skinny slinking guy in dark gray jacket, dark gray pants, black sneakers and black baseball cap worn frontward.

Dortmunder watched the two not quite meet and then leave the parking area not quite together, and then for a while he watched tourists yawn at the tables around him until O’Hara and the other guy walked back together. They came to the table and O’Hara said, “Pete, John. John, Pete.”

“Harya.”

“That Three Finger’s something, isn’t he?” Pete said, and sat with them. Then he smiled up at the actor turned waiter who materialized before him like a genie out of a bottle. “Nothing for me, thanks, pal,” Pete said. “I’m up to here in Chicken McNuggets.”

The actor shrugged and vanished, while Dortmunder decided not to ask for a definition of Chicken McNuggets. Instead, he said, “It was today he talked to you?”

“Yeah, and I was gonna do it, that’s how bright I am,” Pete said. “Like the fella says, I get along with a little help from my friends, without whom I’d be asking for my old cell back.”

O’Hara said, “Happy to oblige.” To Dortmunder he said, “Pete agrees with us.”

Pete said, “And it’s tonight, am I right?”

“Before he recruits an entire platoon,” Dortmunder said.

O’Hara said, “Or before somebody actually does it.”

For a second, it looked as though Pete might offer to shake hands all around. But he quelled that impulse, grinned at them instead and said, “Like the fella says, all for one and one for all and a sharp stick in the eye for Three Finger.”

“Hear, hear,” O’Hara said.

Three–fifteen in the morning. While O’Hara and Dortmunder waited in the car they’d borrowed out in Queens earlier this evening, Pete slithered along the storefronts toward the parking area entrance at the far end of the block. Halfway there, he disappeared into the shifting shadows of the night.

“He moves nice,” Dortmunder said in approval.

“Uh–huh,” O’Hara said. “Pete’s never paid to see a movie in his life.”

They waited about five minutes, and then Pete appeared again, having to come almost all the way back to the car before he could catch their attention. In that time, a couple of cruising cabs had gone by on the wider cross–streets ahead and behind, but nothing at all had moved on this block.

“Here’s Pete now,” O’Hara said, and they got out of the car and followed him back down to the parking area’s gates, which were kept locked at night, except for now. Along the way, speaking in a gray murmur, O’Hara asked, “Any trouble?”

“Easy,” Pete murmured back. “Not as easy as if I could bust things up, but easy.”

Pete had not, in fact, busted anything up. The gates looked as solidly locked as ever, completely untampered with, but when Pete gave a small push they swung right out of the way. The trio stepped through, Pete closed the gates again and here they were.

Dortmunder looked around, and at night, with nobody here, this parking area surrounded by shut shops looked just like Three Finger’s paintings. Even the security lights in the stores were a little strange, a little too white or a little too pink. It was spooky.

They’d agreed that Dortmunder, as the one who’d caught on to the scam, had his choice of jobs here tonight, and he’d picked the art gallery. It would be more work than the other stuff, more delicate, but it would also be more personal and therefore more satisfying. So the three split up, and Dortmunder approached the gallery, first putting on a pair of thin rubber gloves, then taking a roll of keys from his pocket. The other two, meantime, who were also now gloved, were taking pry bars and chisels from their pockets as they neared a pair of other shops.

Dortmunder worked slowly and painstakingly. He wasn’t worried about the locks or the alarm system; they were nothing to get into a sweat over. But the point here was to do the job without leaving any traces, the way Pete had done the gate.

The other two didn’t have such problems. Breaking into stores, the only thing they had to be careful about was making too much noise, since there were apartments on the upper floors here, among the chiropractors and psychic readers. But within that limitation, they made no attempt at all to be neat or discreet. Every shop door was mangled. Inside the shops, they peeled the faces off safes, they gouged open cash register tills and they left interior doors sagging from their hinges.

Every shop in the compound was hit, the costume jewelry store and the souvenir shop and the movie memorabilia place and both antique shops and the fine–leather store and both cafes and the other art gallery. They didn’t get a lot from any one of these places, but they got something from each.

Dortmunder meanwhile had gained access to the Waspail Gallery. Taking the stainless–steel girl’s chair from the cherrywood table, he carried it over to the grid in the wall concealing the security camera, climbed up on the chair and carefully unscrewed the grid, being sure not to leave any scratches. The grid was hinged at the bottom; he lowered it to the wall, looked inside, and the camera looked back at him. A motion sensor machine, it had sensed motion and was now humming quietly to itself as it took Dortmunder’s picture.

That’s OK, Dortmunder thought, enjoy yourself. While you can.

The space was a small oblong box built into the wall, larger than a shoebox but smaller than a liquor store carton. An electric outlet was built into its right side, with the camera plugged into it. Dortmunder reached past the lens, pulled the plug and the camera stopped humming. Then he figured out how to move this widget forward on the right side of the mounting — tick — and the camera lifted right off.

He brought the camera down and placed it on the floor, then climbed back up on the chair to put the grid in its original place. Certain he’d left no marks on it, he climbed down, put the chair where it belonged and wiped its seat with his sleeve.

Next, the tapes. There would be tapes from this camera, probably two a day. Where would they be?

The cherrywood table’s drawer was locked, and that took a while, leaving no marks, and then the tapes weren’t there. A closet was also locked and also took a little while, and turned out to be full of brooms and toilet paper and a bunch of things like that. A storeroom was locked, which by now Dortmunder found irritating, and inside it were some folding chairs and a folding table and general party supplies and a ladder, and stuff like that, and a tall metal locker, and that was locked.

All right, all right, it’s all good practice. And inside the metal locker were 12 tapes. At last. Dortmunder brought out from one of his many jacket pockets a plastic bag from the supermarket, into which went the tapes. Then he locked his way back out of the locker and the storeroom, and added the camera to the plastic bag. Then he locked his way out of the gallery, and there were O’Hara and Pete, in a pool of shadow, carrying their own full plastic bags, waiting for him.

“Took you a while,” O’Hara said.

Dortmunder didn’t like to be criticized. “I had to find the tapes,” he said.

“As the fella says, time well spent,” Pete assured him.

Dortmunder’s faithful companion, May, came home from her cashier’s job at the supermarket the next evening to say, “That fellow you told me about, that Martin Gillie, he’s in the newspaper.” By which, of course, she meant the Daily News.

“That’s called ink,” Dortmunder informed her.

“I don’t think so,” she said, and handed him the paper. “This time, I think it’s called felony arrest.”

Dortmunder smiled at the glowering face of Three Finger Gillie on page five of the News. He didn’t have to read the story, he knew what it had to say.

May watched him. “John? Did you have something to do with that?”

“A little,” he said. “See, May, when he told me that all he wanted was publicity, it was the truth. It was a stretch for Three Finger to tell the truth, but he pulled it off. But his idea was, every day he talks another ex–con into walking through that gallery, looking it over for maybe a burglary. He’s going to do that every day until one of those guys actually robs the place. Then he’s going to show what a reformed character he is by volunteering to look at the surveillance tapes. ‘Oh, there’s a guy I used to know!’ he’ll say, feigning surprise. ‘And there’s another one. They must of all been in it together.’ Then the cops roust us all, and one of us actually does have the stolen paintings, so we’re all accomplices, so we all go upstate forever, and there’s steady publicity for Three Finger, all through the trials and the appeals, and he’s this poster boy for rehabilitation, and he’s got ink, he’s on television day and night, he’s famous, he’s successful, and we probably deserved to go upstate anyway.”

“What a rat,” May said.

“You know it,” Dortmunder agreed. “So we couldn’t just walk away, because we’re on those tapes, and we don’t know when somebody else is gonna pull the job. So if we have to go in, get the tapes, we might as well make some profit out of it. And give a little zing to Three Finger while we’re at it.”

“They decided it was him pretty fast,” she said.

“His place was the only one not hit,” Dortmunder pointed out to May. “So it looks like the rehabilitation didn’t take after all, that he just couldn’t resist temptation.”

“I suppose,” she said.

“Also,” he said, “you remember that little postcard with his painting that I showed you but I wouldn’t let you touch?”

“Sure. So?”

“Myself,” Dortmunder said, “I only held it by the edges, just in case. The last thing we did last night, I dropped that postcard on the floor in front of the cash register in the leather store. With his fingerprints all over it. His calling card, he said it was.”

FUGUE FOR FELONS

___________________

John Rumsey, a short blunt man with the look of a one–time contender about him, was eating his breakfast — maple syrup garnished with French toast — when his faithful companion June looked up from her Daily News to say, “Isn’t Morry Calhoun a friend of yours?”

“I know him,” Rumsey admitted; that far he was willing to go.

“Well, they arrested him,” June said.

“He made the paper?” In Rumsey’s world, there was nothing worse than reading your own name in the newspaper, particularly the Daily News, which all one’s friends also read.

“It’s a little piece,” June said, “but there’s a picture of the car in the bank, and then his name caught my eye.”

“The car in the bank?”

“Police,” June told him, “came across Morry Calhoun last night, breaking into the Flatbush branch of Immigration Trust. A high–speed chase from Brooklyn to Queens ended when Calhoun crashed his car into the Sunnyside branch of Immigration Trust.”

“Well, he’s got brand loyalty anyway,” Rumsey said.

“They’re holding him without bail,” June went on.

“Yeah, they do that,” agreed Rumsey. “It’s kind of an honor, in a way, but it’s also confining. There’s a picture of this car in this bank?”

June passed the paper over her plate of dry toast and his bowl of wet syrup, and Rumsey looked at a picture of the ass end of an Infiniti sticking out of the front of a branch bank that had been mostly glass until Calhoun arrived.

“The car was stolen,” June said.

“Sure, it would be,” Rumsey said, and squinted at the photo. “Bank’s closed.”

“Naturally,” June said. “Until they fix the front.”

“You know,” Rumsey said, “it might be a good idea, wander out there, see is there anything lying around.”

“Don’t get in trouble,” June advised.

“Me? I’ll just call Algy,” Rumsey decided, getting to his feet, “see would he like to take a train ride.”

But there was no answer at Algy’s place.

Algy, in fact, a skinny sharp–nosed guy, was already on the subway, heading back toward Manhattan from Queens after a night of very little success at breaking and entering. He’d broken, all right, and he’d entered, but everywhere he went, the occupant had just moved out, or had a dog, or didn’t have anything at all. It could be a discouragement at times.

About the only thing Algy scored, in fact, other than half a liverwurst on rye in Saran Wrap in a refrigerator in Queens, was a Daily News some other passenger had left behind on the seat. He glanced through it, saw the picture of the car in the bank, recognized Morry Calhoun’s name, got off at the next stop, and took the first train going the other way.

Big Hooper was called Big because he was big. You could say he looked like an elephant in sweats, or an Easter Island statue no longer buried up to the neck, but what he mostly looked like was the Chicago Bears front line — not a lineman, the line.

Big Hooper had just bent to his will the front door of a Third Avenue tavern not yet open for business, intending to give himself a morning vodka–and–Chianti before carrying away the cash register, when he realized he wasn’t alone. The clinking and tinking from the back room suggested the owner was using this morning downtime to do inventory, having left his jacket and newspaper on the bar.

Big went ahead and made his breakfast, then leafed through the paper while trying to decide whether to deal with the jangling offstage owner or come back another time, when he could have some privacy. He saw the Infiniti impaled on the bank, recognized the name Calhoun, finished his drink, and left. He took the paper.

Stan Little was a driver. If you’ve got it, he’ll drive it. When he wasn’t working for various crews around town on their little errands, sometimes he drove for himself, picking up an example of your better–quality automotive cream puff and tooling it to Astoria in Queens, where he would have business dealings with Al Gonzo, an automotive importer–exporter, who would eventually find the merchandise a good home somewhere in the Third World. This morning, while discussing with Al the probable offshore value of a loaded Saab with less than three K on the odometer, Stan took the opportunity of Al’s strategic long silences to eyeball the Daily News.

“All right, four,” Al said.

“Well, look at that,” Stan said. “Morry Calhoun.”

The reason Rumsey got off the F train early was because two transit cops went through his car and they both looked at him funny. Rumsey didn’t like cops to look at him at all, much less funny, so he quick got off at the next station, even though it wasn’t his but was in fact Queens Plaza, which is one of those giant bow ties in the bowels of the New York City subway system. There are 24 separate subway lines in New York, and four of them converge on Queens Plaza, distributing thousands and thousands of people this way and that every second. There’s the F, the 6th Avenue local that Rumsey had been on, which begins in nethermost Brooklyn, wanders northward to run under 6th Avenue in Manhattan, then heads on to outermost Queens; the R, the Broadway local, which is similar except its part of Manhattan is lower Broadway; the 8th Avenue E, which only has to deal with Manhattan and Queens; and the poor G, the Brooklyn Queens Crosstown, which never gets into Manhattan at all but just shuttles back and forth between Brooklyn and Queens, full of people wearing hats.

Having got off the F, there was nothing for Rumsey to do but wait for another F, or some other letter, and so continue his journey in peace, but lo and behold, here were two more transit cops, and now they were looking at him funny. Maybe, he thought, he’d take the escalator upstairs to where the surface part of the bow tie was a lot of bus routes starting with “Q,” but as he turned away, with millions of people rushing all around him in this great echoing iron cavern, this paean to 19th–century engineering at its sternest, a voice cut through the din and the roar to say, “You. Yeah, you. Wait there.”

Now the cops were talking to him; this was very bad. Feeling guilty, even though he hadn’t committed any crimes yet today, Rumsey turned about, hunched his shoulders in that automatic way that tells police officers everywhere that you are guilty, and said, “Me?”

It is impossible for two human beings to completely surround one human being, and yet these two cops did it. They were big bulky guys with big dark bulky uniforms festooned with serious extras like a gun in a holster and a ticket book and handcuffs (Rumsey didn’t like to look at handcuffs) and a little black radio fastened up high on the black belt that angled down across their chests. Their very presence said authority, it said you’re in for it now, Jack; it said fugged aboud it.

“See s’ ID,” one of the cops said.

“Oh, sure,” Rumsey said, because, no matter what, you never disagree when authority is this close into your personal space. He remembered he’d packed somebody’s ID when he’d left the house, so he went to his hip pocket for his wallet, while the cops watched him very carefully, and as he handed over somebody’s credit card and the same somebody’s library card from the branch in Canarsie, he said, “Uh, what’s the problem, officers?”

The cop who took the ID said, “How about your driver’s license?”

“They took my license,” Rumsey explained. “Just temporary, you know.”

The other cop chuckled. “You were a bad boy, huh?”

That was cop humor. Rumsey acknowledged it with a sheepish grin, saying, “I guess so. But what’s wrong here?”

The cop with the ID said, “We’re looking for a guy, Mr. Jefferson.”

So he was Mr. Jefferson today. Trying to feel Jeffersonian, Rumsey said, “Well, why pick me? There’s a lotta guys here.” Millions, in fact — on escalators, in subway trains, on platforms …

“The description we got,” the humorous cop said, “looks like you.”

“A lotta guys look like me,” Rumsey said.

“Not really,” the cop said, and all at once their two radios squawked, making Rumsey flinch like a rabbit hearing a condor.

Police radios are the aural equivalent of doctor’s handwriting. All of a sudden, the little black metal box goes squawk–squawk–squawk, and the cops understand it! Like these two — they understood it when their little metal boxes went squawk–squawk–squawk, and this information they’d just received made them relax and even grin at each other. One of them pushed the button on his metal box and told his shoulder, “Ten–four,” while the other one handed Rumsey Mr. Jefferson’s ID and told him, “Thanks for your cooperation.”

Rumsey said, “Huh? Listen, you don’t mind, would you tell me? Wha’d they just say there?”

The cops looked surprised. One said, “You didn’t hear? They got the guy.”

“The one we were looking for,” the other one addended. “Oh,” Rumsey said. “Was he me?”

“Move along,” said the cop.

Algy came up out of the subway and started walking along the boulevard in the cool October sunshine. Three blocks from the bank he was headed for was another bank, on another corner, this one open for business. As a matter of fact, as Algy walked by its front door, a big–boned guy in a black topcoat, carrying a full grocery store plastic bag, hurtled out of that bank and crashed straight into Algy; this is because the guy wasn’t looking where he was going, but leftward, off at traffic along the boulevard.

Neither Algy nor his new dance partner went down, though it looked iffy for a second, and they had to grab at each other’s coats. “Easy, big guy,” Algy advised, while the guy, increasingly frantic, pulled himself free, waving that plastic bag around over his head, shouting, “Out of the way!”

Algy might have said a cautionary word or two about panic and its discontents, but at that instant a black sedan pulled in by the fire hydrant between them and the curb. The driver, another dark–coated big guy, leaned way over to shove open the passenger door and yell, “Ralph! In!”

Algy stepped back, gesturing for Ralph to go catch his ride, but all at once Ralph had a gun in his hand and a glower on his face and a cluster of Algy’s coat sleeve in his fist, as he snarled in Algy’s face, “Get in.”

Algy couldn’t believe it. “Get in?”

The driver couldn’t believe it, either. “Ralph? What the hell you doin’?”

Over the approaching but still far–off screams of many sirens, under the surveillance of a pair of bank guards, goggle–eyed behind the bank’s glass revolving door, Ralph yelled at his partner, “He’s a hostage!”

The driver also didn’t believe that. With one scornful look at Algy, he said, “He’s no hostage, Ralph. He looks like one of us.”

“I do, you know,” Algy said.

The driver squinted toward his rearview mirror, filling up with nearing patrol cars. “A hostage is a fourteen–year–old girl, Ralph,” he explained. “Get in the car.”

At last Ralph released Algy’s sleeve and jumped into the black sedan, which lunged away into traffic, through the inevitable red light, and on around the corner, with all at once three gumdrops in hot pursuit, and more coming.

One cop car slid to a wheel–locked stop by Algy and the fire hydrant as the two bank guards came running out, both of them pointing at Algy and shouting, “That’s one of them!”

“Hey,” Algy said.

The two cops got out on both sides of their car to hike up their tool belts and give Algy the fish–eye. “What’s your story?” the nearest one wanted to know. His partner was a woman, built low for stability.

“I’m walking by,” Algy started.

“They were talking to him,” a guard argued.

The woman cop, being the smarter of the pair, pointed at Algy and said to the guards, “Was he in the bank?”

“Well, no,” both guards said.

The first cop went back to the first question. “So what is your story?”

“I’m walking by,” Algy started again, “and the guy come out and run into me, and his car showed up, and he wanted me for a hostage, but the driver said no, a hostage is a fourteen–year–old girl, so they went off to find one.”

Wide–eyed, the woman cop said, “They’re on their way to kidnap a fourteen–year–old girl?”

Algy shrugged. “I dunno. That’s what they said.”

The woman cop hopped back into her patrol car to report this development, while her partner abruptly became surrounded by victims from inside the bank, both customers and guards. Over their bobbing heads, the cop called to Algy, “Stick around. You can identify them.”

“Sure thing,” Algy said, with his most honest smile. Holding the smile, he walked casually backward to the corner and around it, the way, as a kid, he used to sneak into movie houses by looking as though he was coming out. Once away from the sight lines of all that drama, he legged it on out of there.

Big Hooper did not take subways. The cars cramped him, and let’s not even talk about the turnstiles. If he had to travel any distance (within the five boroughs, of course — where else is there?), he’d promote the cash he needed one way and another, then phone for a stretch limo, preferably black. The white ones were just a little flashy. He’d take the limo to somewhere near his destination, pay in cash, and if he needed a lift back, he’d call a different service.

Today he’d decided to give the limo driver an address just a few blocks beyond the Sunnyside branch of Immigration Trust, so he could eyeball the place before de–limoing, just in case it might seem like a good idea not to drop in after all.

So they were tooling along eastbound across Queens, maybe a mile, two miles, from their destination, with Big watching a soap opera on the TV in the back of today’s (white, what the hell) limo, when it gradually occurred to him that they weren’t moving, and they hadn’t been moving for quite some little while.

When he looked up from the girl in the hospital bed trying to remember who she was, he saw a lot of stopped cars and the backs of a lot of gawking people. He could tell they were gawking because they kept going up on the balls of their feet, trying to see over the top of one another.

Big offed the TV and said, “ ‘S it?”

“Some kinda cop thing,” the driver said, looking at Big in his interior mirror. He was apparently from some remote, probably mountainous part of Asia that hadn’t started outbreeding until very recently. “They got the street closed,” he went on.

“Well, take another way,” Big told him.

“Can’t,” the driver said.

“Whadaya mean, can’t?”

“Nothing’s open.” The driver ticked items off on his fingers. “Hunner twenny–third torn up by Brooklyn Gas, shut till Thursday. Prospect closed to ve–hic–ular traffic till eleven p.m., block party. Jay blocked by construction until April. Wheeler closed down, a demonstration about charter schools.”

Big said, “For or against?”

“Who cares? Then there’s Hedlong, they —”

“All right, just a minute,” Big said. “Lemme see about this.”

He got out of the limo, the driver watching with the look of a man who’d been here in New York City from far–off remotest Asia long enough to know nothing ever helped around here. Regardless, Big walked forward, slicing a V through the gawkers like a bowling ball through lemmings, until he reached the center of attention, beyond a line of blue police sawhorses.

The center of attention, in a cleared semicircle of sidewalk, turned out to be a loony with a knife. Maybe forty years old, in blue and white vertically striped pajamas, ratty maroon bathrobe, barefoot, hair all messed around like a shag rug after a party, unshaved, eyes full of goldfish. He stood with his back against the brick wall of a Neighborhood Clinic, whatever that is, and he kept waving this huge meat cleaver of a knife back and forth, holding off the half–dozen uniformed cops crouched in a crescent in front of him, all of them talking to him, gesturing, explaining, pointing out, none of them holding a gun.

Big knew how that went. Things rode along easy for a while, and whenever the cops met a loony like this on the street — which happens now and again in New York City, though most of them were crazy before they got here — they would just cheerfully blow him away, then explain in the report how the knife or the hammer or the postage meter had seemed at the time to be a serious threat to the officer’s life, and that would be that. But then a few incidents would pile up, and the cops would decide to dial down for a while, so, when confronted with a prime prospect for the Off button like this one here, they’d do cajole instead, which never works, but which might possibly keep the loony contained until EMT could get here with the net.

Which hadn’t happened yet, and who knew when it would. Big went sideways along this sawhorse to the end, stepped through the gap, and when a lot of cops reached out to restrain him, he said, “Yeah, yeah,” shrugged them away, and walked straight to the loony.

The crescent of cops stared at him, not knowing what this was supposed to be. Big ignored them, kept walking toward the loony, stopped well within cleaver range, stuck out his left hand, and said, “Gimme the knife, bozo.”

Now, we know this loony really was a loony because, when confronted by Big, he did not immediately say yes sir and hand over the cutlery. Instead of acting like a sane person, he went on acting like a loony, lunging forward with the cleaver slicing around in a broad sidearm swing, intending to bisect Big at the waist.

The middle of Big’s body curved inward as his left hand lifted out of the way of the slashing cleaver, then closed, almost gently, on the hand behind it. Hand and cleaver stopped as though they’d hit a glass door. With the loony’s arm and body still thrusting forward, Big made a quarter turn to his right, like a partner in a very formal dance. His left hand flicked up–down. The crack of the loony’s wrist snapping caused a flinch and a queasy look on every cop in the neighborhood.

The cleaver clattered to the ground; so did the loony.

Turning away from his good works, Big nodded at the assembled cops. Before strolling away, “Next time,” he advised them, “try a little tenderizing.”

Stan was a very law–abiding driver, since the cars he drove invariably belonged to somebody else. For that reason, he obeyed every traffic regulation everywhere, and if he’d had a license, it would have been clean as a whistle. So he was astonished, and not happy, when the county cop on the motorcycle up ahead on the Long Island Expressway suddenly pulled off onto the shoulder, stopped, hopped out of the saddle, and briskly waved Stan down.

No choice — hit the right blinker and pull in behind the bike. He’d always known this moment might someday appear, despite his precautions, and he’d worked out a game plan to deal with it. He intended to claim amnesia and let everybody else sort it out.

But there was something different about this traffic stop. In the first place, the cop, instead of taking that leisurely stroll around to the driver’s window that’s standard for such encounters, dashed for the passenger door, going klop–klop in his high leather boots, face strained with urgency. Yanking open that door, he flung himself backward onto the seat, hurling his left arm out to point, so forcefully he banged his gloved fingertip into the windshield as he cried, “Follow that Taurus!”

Stan looked at him. “What?”

The cop had himself turned around and completely into the car now. As he slammed the door, he aimed a very red face in Stan’s direction. “Follow,” he said, and thumped his leather–gloved fist on the dashboard, “that” and did the fingertip–mash against the windshield again, “TAURUS!”

“Okay, okay.”

Stan didn’t see any Taurus, but he figured, if he drove the direction the cop kept pointing, sooner or later a Taurus would present itself. It’s a popular make of car. So he tromped the accelerator, and the car, a very nice BMW recently in the longterm parking lot at LaGuardia, leaped forward so as to multiple–g the cop backward into his bucket seat.

Taurus, Taurus. The cop peeled himself off the seat to say, “Good, that’s good. See him? The green Taurus.”

Then Stan did: recent vintage, pallid green, middle lane, moderate speed. “Got him.”

“Good. Don’t overtake him,” the cop warned, “just keep him in sight.”

“Piece of cake.”

The cop had a little radio high on the angled strap of his Sam Browne belt. Flipping the toggle, he said into it, low but still audible to Stan, “Cycle broke down, commandeered a civilian vehicle, suspects in sight, still eastbound within city limits.”

But not for long. Stan watched his exit go by, but he and the Taurus kept heading for Long Island, while the cop’s radio made nasal guttural vomiting sounds the cop apparently interpreted as speech, because he said, “Ten–four,” which Stan knew cops say because they can never seem to remember “Uh–huh.”

Stan had never been commandeered before. He wondered if it came with benefits, but somehow doubted it. He said, “You don’t mind my asking, wha’d the Taurus do?”

“Held up a jewelry store in Astoria.”

Stan was astonished. “There’s jewelry stores in Astoria?”

The cop shrugged. “Why not? Wedding rings, sorry–honeys. Your jewelry store’s your universal.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Stan said, and the cop tensed all over, like a sphincter: “He’s gonna exit!”

Stan too had seen the Taurus’s right directional blink on. Keeping well back, he said, “I suppose these guys are armed and dangerous.”

“Jeez, I hope not,” the cop said. “I’m on traffic detail. That’s why we don’t wanna overtake them, make them suspicious, just keep them in sight.”

“Ten–four,” Stan said.

“When they get stopped at a light,” the cop said, “pull up next to them, I’ll look it over, see if I can take them down without backup.”

Stan knew he was just saying that to cover for what he’d said a minute ago, but what the hell: “You got it.”

The cop took off his hat, to be in disguise, and sat forward, eyes tense, licking his lips.

Never had Stan seen anybody so lucky with traffic lights. The Taurus went this way and that way on the city streets, block after block with a traffic light hanging over every intersection, the Taurus steadily trending south by east, and every last one of those traffic lights was green when the Taurus arrived. Sometimes, particularly twice when the Taurus had made a turn at an intersection, Stan had to goose it to scoot through on the yellow, but he figured, he was under cop’s orders here; he should be covered.

It bothered him a while, knowing he was part of messing up the day of a couple of fellow mechanics, but then it didn’t bother him anymore.

Meanwhile, the cop kept talking to his radio, giving it coordinates, progress reports, and the radio kept barfing back. Then the cop tensed again, putting on his hat as he said. “This is it. Next intersection–there!”

They were almost a full block back, a tan Jeep Cherokee between them, the green Taurus almost to the corner, when all at once cop cars came out of everywhere, left and right and practically dropping down from overhead, surrounding the Taurus, blocking it in good and, by the way, freaking out the driver of the Cherokee no end.

Stan slammed on the brakes. “Now what?”

“Wait here!” the cop barked, and jumped from the car.

Fat chance. The Taurus is a very popular car, and wishy–washy green for some reason is a very popular color. One of those moments when the cop had been busy giving coordinates and looking for street signs, Stan had managed to stop following green Taurus number one and start following green Taurus number two. Therefore, he was already backing to the corner, swinging around it, flooring that BMW out of there, even before the four little old ladies with the missiles in their hands came stumbling out of their Taurus to stare at all that firepower.

What with one thing and another, Algy was the first to arrive at the Sunnyside branch of Immigration Trust. At first, he just walked past it, hands in his pockets, looking it over, trusting that nobody with a plastic bag full of loot would come hurtling out of this place.

The car had been extracted and taken away. Guys in mustaches and blue jeans and tool belts were slowly closing the facade with sheets of plywood. Streamers of yellow Crime Scene tape were wrapped around everything in sight as though the Easter bunny had been here, bored, nothing else to do in October. And speaking of bored, that’s what the two cops were in the prowl car parked out front, the only official presence still here.

The bank was at the corner of a two–story tan–brick structure that ran the length of the block, shops downstairs — Chinese takeout, video rental, dry cleaner, OTB — and apartments above, most of them with window air conditioner rumps mooning the traffic on the boulevard beyond the skimpy plane trees. Each apartment facade was as individual as each store, one bearing RENT STRIKE! signs, one suggesting COME TO JESUS!, one with windows painted black, one crying REMEMBER K with the rest of the paper torn off, one with what appeared to be curtains and blinds and drapes. The corner apartment, above the bank, expressed its individuality through paranoia; every window was as barred and gated as a maximum–security cell, and through those iron braces could be read NO TRESPASSING and BEWARE OF DOG and NO SOLICITING and KEEP OUT and PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Downstairs, the bank had been a bit less prepared for intruders. It had been a retail store until its makeover into a branch bank — probably ladies’ better fashions — and still retained the large windows along both front and side streets for the display of the merchant’s wares; or at least had still retained them until Morry Calhoun had swung by.

The video rental shop was next door to the bank; go in through there? But the shop was open and staffed, and its entrance was very much in the bored cops’ sight line.

Algy walked around the corner, to the side street where the bank’s former glass had already been replaced by plywood, and at the rear of the building was a solid fence of unpainted vertical wood slats, eight feet high and six feet wide. Approaching it, Algy saw that half its width was a wood–slat door, inset into the fence, with a round metal keyhole but no handle. Behind it, from what he could see over the top of the fence, was an areaway running the length of the block. At this end, it was between the rear of the bank and the blank brick side of the nursing home that fronted on the cross street. And above, a row of fire escapes.

Hmmm. Algy strolled on down the block, crossed the street at the corner, and strolled back again, getting a good look at the rear of the bank building, the fire escapes, the windows of the second–floor apartment, which continued the theme stated along front and side, barred gates, though without the warning notices. The interior behind those windows was dark.

Why not? The first step was to get inside the building, so why not into the apartment above the bank? From there, maybe Morry Calhoun had loosened some structural stuff, and an agile person could come down through the ceiling. Or there’d be a staircase, so the tenant could put trash in the areaway. Or whatever.

Algy next strolled all around the block, away from the bank, pausing on the next cross street over to sit briefly on a fire hydrant while he removed his left shoe, took a few flat flexible pieces of metal from inside the heel, put the shoe back on and resumed his walk.

Nearing the bank again, he held the flexible metal strips tucked into both palms and zeroed in on that wooden door in the wooden wail. He’d seen that kind of lock before; they were old friends, and this one didn’t detain him long.

Inside, as he’d expected, the concrete–floored areaway was garbage–can–strewn. There were doors spaced along the rear wall, but it looked as though the near ones were simply ground–floor access.

On the third leap, he hooked a hand over the bottom rung of the fire escape, which his weight then brought downward, making it easier to climb. At the top, the flexible metal strips worked very nicely — to unlock the gate over the nearest window, then slip through between upper and lower sashes of the window itself to gently elbow the window lock out of the way. Slowly, silently, he lifted the window, leaned close to the opening, listened.

Nothing. No TV, no snoring, no whistling teakettle.

Algy slid over the sill, paused to close the gate and window behind himself, then looked around at a small, spartan bedroom. Framed photos of old–time boxers in manly stances were on the walls.

Algy started across the bedroom toward the doorway, and was nearly there when he became aware of the eyes. They were in the hall beyond the bedroom door, they were at crotch height, and they were connected to the largest, meanest–looking, scariest dog Algy had ever seen.

He stopped. The instant he did, the dog started. It didn’t bark, because it was more serious than that. It didn’t want to make a fuss; it merely wanted to kill Algy, slowly, with its teeth.

Algy turned. Window closed and barred. No time.

A shut door was to his right. He leaped to it, yanked it open, saw clothes hanging on a bar, lunged in among them, pulled the door shut; the dog thudded like a locomotive against the door.

Now what?

John Rumsey’s flexible metal tools were just as efficacious as Algy’s on that wooden door, but then Rumsey chose to climb the inside of the fence, finding hand and footholds on the angle irons that held fence to building, and so reach the fire escape’s upper landing that way. (He was too short to have caught the fire escape by jumping.) He was surprised, at the top, to find that both gate and window were unlocked though shut, but he thought this meant merely that even someone as security–conscious as this tenant appeared to be might eventually grow a little slack. He entered noiselessly, shut gate and window and started across the room, getting just about as far as Algy had before making that same dreadful discovery.

Rumsey wasn’t quite as fast as his friend had been. He made it into the closet, but left behind a triangle of trouser leg clenched between the dog’s teeth.

Slamming the door, hearing the dog slam into it from the other side, Rumsey became horribly aware that he wasn’t alone in here. Someone — or something — rustled and slurfed right next to him. “What?” he called. Wham, went the dog against the door.

“I’m not here!” cried a voice. “I can explain!”

A familiar voice. Hardly believing it, Rumsey said, “Algy?”

A little pause. “John?”

Wham, went the dog.

Stan, being a driver, took a slightly different approach. That is, he looked for a means of access that would, in its early phases, include a car. He drove around the block, noted the storefronts, the varied second–floor window treatments, the workmen applying plywood, the bored cops in their cruiser, then the nursing home (barely glancing at the wooden door in the wooden fence); on around the block, coming up at last to the far end of the building holding the bank.

On this block, the space equivalent to the nursing home at the other end was occupied by an open–sided four–story parking garage. Stan made note of that, turned at the corner, drove on down past the cops and the bank and the workmen, took that next turn, and pulled to a stop just short of the wooden fence.

Plywood now covered the former windows on the side of the bank, but the blue police sawhorses were still there, swathed in gay yellow Crime Scene tape. Stan got out of the BMW; opened the trunk, and leaned in to open the small pass–through door between trunk and backseat, placed there because the kind of people who own this kind of car usually also own skis.

The sawhorses came in three parts: two A–shaped sets of legs and the ten–foot–long crossbar, a two–by–six plank. Stan rescued two of these planks from their legs and the yellow tape and wrestled them into the BMW having to fold the front passenger seat down as well to ootch them in all the way. Then he drove around the block again, turned in at the parking garage, and took his ticket from the machine.

He found a useful parking slot on the sloping third level, backed into it so the rear of the BMW was close to the waist–high concrete–block barrier that was all the building had for exterior walls, and slid the sawhorse planks out of the car and across the intervening space between parking garage and bank building roof, though down the block from the bank, closer to the middle of the building. The planks fit very nicely, with good overhang at each end. Stan went across on all fours — two per plank — then walked briskly along the roof to the final fire escape. He went down that, found the unlocked window, climbed in, saw the dog, the dog saw him, Stan bolted for the closet, and soon another reunion took place, though not an entirely happy one.

Big knew he was a memorable guy, and so shouldn’t walk past those cops in the cruiser, no matter how bored they were, more than once. He strolled down the block, took in the scene, turned down the side street, saw a couple of blue sawhorse leg sets lying on the sidewalk, remarked to himself that cops were usually neater than that, and noticed that where the next to last sheet of plywood overlapped the last sheet of plywood, there was a bit of a gap where the plywood might have been screwed down a bit more securely but was not.

With a quick glance around to note that he was alone out here, he stepped to the plywood, inserted a hand in the space, and tugged. He had to tug three times, finally, and then be a little careful of jutting screws, but with a small pivot like the hippopotami in Fantasia he curled around the opening he’d made, and entered the bank. Two tugs were sufficient to pull the plywood back to its original position, or at least to look as though it were in its original position, and then Big went for a stroll through the empty, and rather messy, bank.

Morry Calhoun and his Infiniti had done a pretty complete job in here. He’d come angling through the plate glass, so that just by showing up he’d pretty well cleared out the front of the place, but then the Infiniti had also hit a couple of tables where people could fill out deposit slips and the like, and bounced them deeper into the bank, which is what took out the side windows as well as parts of the tellers’ cages and all the frosted glass fronting the loan officer’s separate cubicle. Shards of glass, slivers of wood, pens with chains attached, wheeled swivel chairs and wrinkled loan applications were scattered everywhere, all of it a bit hard to see, since Morry and his car had also taken out the electricity.

Big picked his way through the debris to the tellers’ cages, where unfortunately there was no cash, since the bank had been closed when Morry arrived and all the money was in the vault for the night. The vault, when Big reached it, was undented but also unopened. It had a time lock, which Big had been hoping for, but with the electricity out, the vault thought it was still one–thirty in the morning, so forget that.

It was just too hard to see in here. Would the branch manager have a flashlight in his office? Why not?

The manager’s office had also, at one time, been sheathed in frosted glass, which now went crunch–crunch beneath Big’s feet. He opened desk drawers, pawed around, and in the bottom right found a small flashlight with a dying battery. By its dim light he saw there was nothing else of interest in the desk, but what was that underneath it?

The night deposit box. Morry’s Infiniti had drop–kicked it across the bank, through the frosted glass, and into the manager’s office, where it had come to rest partially under the desk.

And totally cracked open. In the flashlight’s wan beam, Big saw the thick envelopes inside that metal box with the twisted–open door, and when he withdrew the envelopes every one of them was full of money. Only some of the money was cash, the rest being checks or travelers’ checks or credit card slips (all of which Big left behind), but the cash was a nice amount, enough to make him look around the office for something to carry it all in.

And what have we here? A gray canvas bag, about a foot long and four inches deep, with a lockable zippered top. An actual money bag — what better for carrying money? Big filled it with the cash from the night deposit, then filled his pockets with the leftover, then decided to leave.

But. As he came out of the office, the flashlight weakly glimmering its last in his fist, he heard a sudden nasty whirring sound. It seemed to come from where he’d made entry, between the plywoods.

Yes. Apparently, the workmen were just about finished, and in making one last double–check of their work they’d noticed the same inefficient gap that had drawn Big’s attention, which they were now correcting, with another complete sheet of plywood. The whirring sounds were their portable drills, and every whirr produced another screw spinning through sheets of plywood and into the bank, a full inch of leftover screw sticking through plywood every foot or so all around this area.

Never get through that. Big didn’t like the concept of being able to get in without being able to get out, but this was looking very much like the concept he’d been dealt.

The whirring stopped. The workmen were gone. Outside, it was still a bright and sunny fall morning, while inside, in the dying of the light, Big paced the perimeter of his prison, looking for a way out.

When he reached the front of the bank, where the entrance door used to be, he looked up, and the ceiling looked funny. Damn this flashlight. But wasn’t that a gap up there, between ceiling and wall?

What this required was to move a desk under that bit of ceiling, then put a second desk on top of it, then carry a chair — non–wheeled, non–swivel — up onto the top of the second desk, climb from desk to desk to chair, and there it was.

At this spot, directly above the original point of impact, the front wall had sagged down away from the ceiling, pulling a piece of ceiling after it. Big could reach that Sheetrock ceiling from here, and when he tugged, a big, irregular chunk of it fell away, missed him, hit both desks, and smacked onto the floor.

What was above? A two–by–six beam, also sagging down at this end, since the wall it had always been attached to wasn’t in the right place any more. Big tugged tentatively at the beam, not wanting the whole place to come crashing down on him, and the beam moved in a spongy way, still firmly attached at other spots along its length but willing to angle down now if Big insisted.

He did. The floorboards above the beam popped free, not wanting to come down, but then, they would push up. And now Big needed more height.

The loan officer’s four–drawer filing cabinet. He pulled out the drawers, dragged the cabinet to his desk–and–chair construction, lifted it up onto the second desk, then put the chair on top of the cabinet, climbed the open front of the cabinet, where the drawers used to be, climbed the chair, pushed some floorboards and some rug out of the way, then tossed the money bag up there. When it didn’t come back, he used the dangling beam and the front wall of the building for leverage and worked his way up through ceiling/floor into a small, austere living room with not much more than a narrow sofa, a small TV and reproductions of race horse paintings on the walls.

A back way out. Big picked up the money bag, walked through the apartment to the bedroom, and there he saw a big, ugly dog seated in front of a closed closet door. The dog saw Big, curled his upper lip back over his teeth, turned and hurled himself at Big, who sidestepped, grabbed the hurtling dog by the throat, spun him around, opened the closet door, tossed the dog in, shut the door.

He was just turning toward the rear windows when pandemonium started in the closet: yelling, screaming, crashing around. Now what?

Big turned back to frown at the door, against which there was now a staccato rat–a–tat of frenzied knocking — wasn’t there a handle on the inside? Apparently not, since muffled voices — more than one? — hoarsely begged from in there, “Lemme out!”

It was curiosity that made Big go back to reopen that door, and out tumbled three men and a dog. “Not you again,” Big said, grabbed the dog in the same throat hold as before, and tossed him back onto the pile of clothing now messed up on the closet floor instead of lined up neatly on hangers. Slamming the door yet again, he turned to the three men on the floor, flopping around down there like caught fish in a bucket, and said, “And what the hell is all this?”

Rumsey blinked like an owl in the wrong barn. Around him, everybody was in confused, chaotic motion. On his right, “I can explain!” Algy yelled, while on his left, “Who are you people?” Stan demanded.

Rumsey gazed upward. “Big?” He withdrew Algy’s elbow from his right eye, Stan’s knee from his solar plexus. “Big?” It was like a dream. A very strange dream.

The big man who’d rescued them, whether he wanted to or not, looked around at the three doing their Raggedy Andys on the floor. “I know you birds,” he said.

“Of course you do,” Stan said, having recovered his memory.

Rumsey, climbing up Algy to get to his feet, said, “I saw this thing in the News about Morry Calhoun —”

Stan, climbing up the bed to get to his feet, said, “— great shot of the car in the bank —”

Algy, scrambling around on the floor until Big grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and set him upright, said, “— so I thought I’d come see, is there any spillage.”

“There was some,” Big told him. “Not much.” He gestured at the gray canvas money bag on the bed.

They all looked at it. Unfortunately, they understood, that bag belonged to Big now.

Rumsey spoke for them all — except Big — when he said, “All this, for nothing.”

“I got mine, anyway,” Big said comfortably. “I always get mine.”

Algy said to the others, “And Big did come in handy with the dog, you got to admit.”

“And I got wheels,” Stan told them, “anybody wants a lift anywhere.”

Rumsey was not consoled. He said, “What I come out here for wasn’t wheels, or to get saved from some dog. What I come out here for was a score.”

“Well, you know,” Algy said, “I happen to be aware” — he looked at his watch — “twenty minutes ago, a bank three blocks from here was knocked over by a couple not very skillful guys. They didn’t get much.”

Rumsey said, “I don’t have to hear about other guys’ scores, not even little ones.”

“The point I’m making here,” Algy said, “is twenty minutes ago. The plainclothes detectives didn’t get there yet. You know, the victim interviews.”

Rumsey’s head and eyes and spirits lifted. “Everybody’s rattled,” he said. “They’ve shut the bank, but they’re still there.”

Stan said, “The security tape’s been taken away for evidence.”

Algy whipped a hand into and out of his trouser pocket, flashed at them a gold badge in a brown leather case, pocketed it again, said, “I always carry a little ID. You never know.”

Big said, “Algy? What if a cop frisks you one time, takes a look at that?”

Algy grinned at him. “It says, ‘Love Detective, Licensed To Kiss’.”

Rumsey segued into a look that was very caring, very concerned, very earnest. In a voice like a funeral director, he said, “Mr. Manager, are you certain those felons didn’t gain access to your vault? We’d better check that out.”

Big laughed. “Nice to run into you fellas,” he said.

Ten minutes after the apartment was empty, the dog finally started howling, but there was nobody around to listen.

Coda…

When the vault door was at last reopened at three–thirty that afternoon to release the imprisoned bank employees, one of them, Rufold Hepple, had to be carried out by five fellow tellers, one at each limb and one at his head. (Fortunately, he was a skinny little fellow and didn’t weigh much.) “I’ll be all right,” he kept telling everybody who looked down at him. “Just as soon as I get home, I’ll be fine.”

There were white–clad ambulance attendants in among the blue police officers and black–and–yellow firefighters, and they kept asking him, as he lay supine on the faux marble floor, head cushioned by several empty money sacks, if he didn’t want to go to the hospital, be looked at, checked over; but his fears of (a) hospitals, (b) doctors, and (c) people dressed completely in white, kept him saying over and over, “No, I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine. Get my strength back in a minute. I’ll be fine as soon as I get home.”

The nearly four hours in the pitch–black vault had been the worst experience of Rufold Hepple’s life, calling into play simultaneously so many of his deep–seated fears, it was as though he’d been strapped into one of those machines for mixing paint. There was his fear of darkness, for instance, and his fear of crowds, his fear of unusual smells (several of his coworkers, when confined for a long time in a small, dark space, had turned out to have very unusual smells indeed), his fear of small, confined spaces, (It was his fear of long words derived from the Greek that kept him from even thinking the proper medical terms for all these fears.)

Lying there on the floor, with only his fear of being noticed by other people still actively searing him, Rufold Hcpple continued to give himself, as he had in the vault, the courage to survive this ordeal, by thinking only of his own little home, so near, so soon to protect him again. It was the great paradox of his life that only the comfort and security of his very own little apartment gave him the strength necessary to leave it every day, for his job here at the bank, or to shop, or to make his twice weekly visits to Dr. Bananen, just around the corner.

In just a few minutes now, he would be ready. He would stand, smile, show them all nothing, leave the bank, march the three blocks home and up the stairs and through the many locks, to be greeted by his only friend, his dear dog Sigmund. In just a few minutes. Just a few minutes, and he would be safe and sound.

THE SWEETEST MAN IN THE WORLD

_______________________________

CRIME: Fraud

PLACE: New York

YEAR: 1967

BRIEFING:

Three men dominate the history of fraud in the twentieth century: Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish financier known as ‘The Match King’, who tried to gain a worldwide monopoly of match production using longterm dollar loans, and whose assets, after his suicide, were discovered to be largely fictitious; Horatio Bottomley, the English financier, journalist and politician whose Victory Bond scheme proved to be just one of many frauds that brought down his career; and the American tycoon Bernie Cornfield, whose IOS group based in Switzerland was also shown to be an international swindle. Organised crime groups such as the Mafia and Murder Incorporated have also been masters of the big fraud-with business conglomerates and banking institutions as their prime targets-while clever individuals have similarly worked swindles on ordinary men and women, with phoney business schemes, worthless investments and fake insurance policies as the tools of their trade.

THE STORY:

I adjusted my hair in the hall mirror before opening the door. My hair was grey, and piled neatly on top of my head. I smoothed my skirt, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The man in the hallway was thirtyish, well dressed, quietly handsome, and carrying a briefcase. He was also somewhat taken aback to see me. He glanced again at the apartment number on the door, looked back at me, and said, ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Miss Diane Wilson.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Do come in.’

He gazed past me uncertainly, hesitating on the doorstep, saying, ‘Is she in?’

‘I’m Diane Wilson,’ I said.

He blinked. ‘You’re Diane Wilson?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘The Diane Wilson who worked for Mr Edward Cunningham?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ I made a sad face. ‘Such a tragic thing,’ I said. ‘He was the sweetest man in the world, Mr Cunningham was.’

He cleared his throat, and I could see him struggling to regain his composure. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, uh-well, Miss Wilson, my name is Fraser, Kenneth Eraser. I represent Transcontinental Insurance Association.’

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘I have all the insurance I need, thank you.’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon, I’m not here to sell insurance. I’m an investigator for the company.’

‘Oh, they all say that,’ I said, ‘and then when they get inside they do want to sell something. I remember one young man from an encyclopaedia company-he swore up and down he was just taking a survey, and he no sooner-‘

‘Miss Wilson,’ Fraser said determinedly, ‘I am definitely not a salesman. I am not here to discuss your insurance with you; I am here to discuss Mr Cunningham’s insurance.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ I said. ‘I simply handled the paperwork in Mr Cunningham’s real estate office. His private business affairs he took care of himself.’

‘Miss Wilson, I-‘ He stopped, and looked up and down the hallway. ‘Do we have to speak out here?’ he asked.

‘Well, I don’t know that there’s anything for us to talk about,’ I said. I admit I was enjoying this.

‘Miss Wilson, there is something for us to talk about.’ He put down the briefcase and took out his wallet. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Here’s my identification.’

I looked at the laminated card. It was very official and very complex and included Fraser’s photograph, looking open-mouthed and stupid.

Fraser said, ‘I will not try to sell you insurance, nor will I ask you any details about Mr Cunningham’s handling of his private business affairs. That’s a promise. Now, may I come in?’

It seemed time to stop playing games with him; after all, I didn’t want him getting mad at me. He might go poking around too far, just out of spite. So I stepped back and said, ‘Very well then, young man, you may come in. But I’ll hold you to that promise.’

We went into the living-room, and I motioned at the sofa, saying, ‘Do sit down.’

‘Thank you.’ But he didn’t seem to like the sofa when he sat on it, possibly because of the clear plastic cover it had over it.

‘My nieces come by from time to time,’ I said. ‘That’s why I have those plastic covers on all the furniture. You know how children can be.’

‘Of course.’ He said. He looked around, and I think the entire living-room depressed him, not just the plastic cover on the sofa.

Well, it was understandable. The living-room was a natural consequence of Miss Diane Wilson’s personality, with its plastic slipcovers, the doilies on all the tiny tables, the little plants in ceramic frogs, the windows with Venetian blinds and curtains and drapes, the general air of overcrowded neatness. Something like the house Mrs Muskrat has in all those children’s stories.

I pretended not to notice his discomfort. I sat down on the chair that matched the sofa, adjusted my apron and skirt over my knees, and said, ‘Very well, Mr Fraser. I’m ready to listen.’

He opened his briefcase on his lap, looked at me over it, and said, ‘This may come as something of a shock to you, Miss Wilson. I don’t know if you were aware of the extent of Mr Cunningham’s policy holdings with us.’

‘I already told you, Mr Fraser, that I-‘

‘Yes, of course,’ he said hastily. ‘I wasn’t asking, I was getting ready to tell you myself. Mr Cunningham had three policies with us of various types, all of which automatically became due when he died.’

‘Bless his memory,’ I said.

‘Yes. Naturally. At any rate, the total on these three policies comes to one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars.’

‘Gracious!’

‘With double indemnity for accidental death, of course,’ he went on, ‘the total payable is two hundred fifty thousand dollars. That is, one quarter of a million dollars.’

‘Dear me!’ I said. ‘I would never have guessed.’

Fraser looked carefully at me. ‘And you are the sole beneficiary,’ he said.

I smiled blankly at him, as though waiting for him to go on, then permitted my expression to show that the import of his words was gradually coming home to me. Slowly I sank back into the chair. My hand went to my throat, to the bit of lace around the collar of my dress.

‘Me?’ I whispered. ‘Oh, Mr Fraser, you must be joking!’

‘Not a bit,’ he said. ‘Mr Cunningham changed his beneficiary just one month ago, switching from his wife to you.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ I whispered.

‘Nevertheless, it is true. And since Mr Cunningham did die an accidental death, burning up in his real estate office, and since such a large amount of money was involved, the routine is to send an investigator around, just to be sure everything’s all right.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I was allowing myself to recover. I said, ‘That’s why you were so surprised when you saw me.’

He smiled sheepishly. ‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘yes.’

‘You had expected to find some sexy young thing, didn’t you? Someone Mr Cunningham had been having an-a relationship with.’

‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ he said, and made a boyish smile. ‘I do apologise,’ he said.

‘Accepted,’ I said, and smiled back at him.

It was beautiful. He had come here with a strong preconception, and a belief based on that preconception that something was wrong. Knock the preconception away and he would be left with an embarrassed feeling of having made a fool of himself. From now on he would want nothing more than to be rid of this case, since it would serve only to remind him of his wrong guess and the foolish way he’d acted when I’d first opened the door.

As I had supposed he would, he began at once to speed things up, taking a pad and pen from his briefcase and saying, ‘Mr Cunningham never told you he’d made you his beneficiary?’

‘Oh, dear me, no. I only worked for the man three months.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘It did seem odd to us.’

‘Oh, his poor wife,’ I said. ‘She may have neglected him but-‘

‘Neglected?’

‘Well.’ I allowed myself this time to show a pretty confusion. ‘I shouldn’t say anything against the woman,’ I went on. ‘I’ve never so much as laid eyes on her. But I do know that not once in the three months I worked there did she ever come in to see Mr Cunningham, or even call him on the phone. Also, from some things he said-‘

‘What things, Miss Wilson?’

‘I’d rather not say, Mr Fraser. I don’t know the woman, and Mr Cunningham is dead. I don’t believe we should sit here and talk about them behind their backs.’

‘Still, Miss Wilson, he did leave his insurance money to you.’

‘He was always the sweetest man,’ I said. ‘Just the sweetest man in the world. But why would-‘ I spread my hands to show bewilderment.

Fraser said, ‘Do you suppose he had a fight with his wife? Such a bad one that he decided to change his beneficiary, looked around for somebody else, saw you, and that was that.’

‘He was always very good to me,’ I said. ‘In the short time I knew him I always found Mr Cunningham a perfect gentleman and the most considerate of men.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ he said. He looked at the notes he’d been taking, and muttered to himself. ‘Well, that might explain it. It’s nutty, but-‘ He shrugged.

Yes, of course he shrugged. Kick away the preconception, leave him drifting and bewildered for just a second, and then quickly suggest another hypothesis to him. He clutched at it like a drowning man. Mr Cunningham had had a big fight with Mrs Cunningham. Mr Cunningham had changed his beneficiary out of hate or revenge, and had chosen Miss Diane Wilson, the dear middle-aged lady he’d recently hired as his secretary. As Mr Fraser had so succinctly phrased it, it was nutty, but-

I said, ‘Well, I really don’t know what to say. To tell the truth, Mr Fraser, I’m overcome.’

That’s understandable,’ he said. ‘A quarter of a million dollars doesn’t come along every day.’

‘It isn’t the amount,’ I said. ‘It’s how it came to me. I have never been rich, Mr Fraser, and because I never married I have always had to support myself. But I am a good secretary, a willing worker, and I have always handled my finances, if I say so myself, with wisdom and economy. A quarter of a million dollars is, as you say, a great deal of money, but I do not need a great deal of money. I would much rather have that sweet man Mr Cunningham alive again than have all the money in the world.’

‘Of course.’ He nodded, and I could see he believed every word I had said.

I went further. ‘And particularly,’ I said, ‘to be given money that should certainly have gone to his wife. I just wouldn’t have believed Mr Cunningham capable of such a hateful or vindictive action.’

‘He probably would have changed it back later on,’ Fraser said. ‘After he had cooled down. He only made the change three weeks before-before he passed on.’

‘Bless his soul,’ I said.

‘There’s one final matter, Miss Wilson,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll leave you alone.’

‘Anything at all, Mr Fraser,’ I said.

‘About Mr Roche,’ he said. ‘Mr Cunningham’s former partner. He seems to have moved from his old address, and we can’t find him. Would you have his current address?’

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Mr Roche left the concern before I was hired. In fact, Mr Cunningham hired me because, after Mr Roche left, it was necessary to have a secretary in order to be sure there was always someone in the office.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well-‘ He put the pad and pen back into the briefcase and started to his feet, just as the doorbell rang.

‘Excuse me,’ I said. I went out to the hallway and opened the door.

She came boiling in like a hurricane, pushing past me and shouting. ‘Where is she? Where is the hussy?’

I followed her into the living-room, where Fraser was standing and gaping at her in some astonishment as she continued to shout and to demand to know where she was.

I said, ‘Madam, please. This happens to be my home.’

‘Oh, does it?’ She stood in front of me, hands on hips. ‘Well then, you can tell me where I’ll find the Wilson woman.’

‘Who?’

‘Diane Wilson, the little tramp. I want to-‘

I said, ‘I am Diane Wilson.’

She stood there, open mouthed, gaping at me.

Fraser came over then, smiling a bit, saying, ‘Excuse me, Miss Wilson, I think I know what’s happened.’ He turned to the new visitor and said, ‘You’re Mrs Cunningham, aren’t you?’

Still open mouthed, she managed to nod her head.

Fraser identified himself and said, ‘I made the same mistake you did-I came here expecting to find some vamp. But as you can see-‘ And he gestured at me.

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Mrs Cunningham said to me. She was a striking woman in her late thirties. ‘I called the insurance company, and when they told me Ed had changed all his policies over to you, I naturally thought-well-you know.’

‘Oh, dear,’ I said. ‘I certainly hope you don’t think-‘

‘Oh, not at all,’ Mrs Cunningham said, and smiled a bit, and patted my hand. ‘I wouldn’t think that of you,’ she said.

Fraser said, ‘Mrs Cunningham, didn’t your husband tell you he was changing the beneficiary?’

‘He certainly didn’t,’ she said with sudden anger. ‘And neither did that company of yours. They should have told me the minute Ed made that change.’

Fraser developed an icy chill. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘a client has the right to make anyone he chooses his beneficiary, and the company is under no obligation to inform anyone that-‘

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I said. ‘I don’t need the money. I’m perfectly willing to share it with Mrs Cunningham.’

Fraser snapped around to me, saying, ‘Miss Wilson, you aren’t under any obligation at all to this woman. The money is legally and rightfully yours.’ As planned, he was now one hundred per cent on my side.

Now it was time to make him think more kindly of Mrs Cunningham. I said, ‘But this poor woman has been treated shabbily, Mr Fraser. Absolutely shabbily. She was married to Mr Cunningham for-how many years?’

‘Twelve,’ she said, ‘twelve years,’ and abruptly sat down on the sofa and began to sob.

‘There, there,’ I said, patting her shoulder.

‘What am I going to do!’ she wailed. ‘I have no money, nothing. He left me nothing but debts! I can’t even afford a decent burial for him!’

‘We’ll work it out,’ I assured her. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll work it out.’ I looked at Fraser and said, ‘How long will it take to get the money?’

He said, ‘Well, we didn’t discuss whether you want it in instalments or in a lump sum. Monthly payments are usually-‘

‘Oh, a lump sum,’ I said. ‘There’s so much to do right away, and then my older brother is a banker in California. He’ll know what to do.’

‘If you’re sure-‘ He was looking at Mrs Cunningham, and didn’t yet entirely trust her.

I said, ‘Oh, I’m sure this poor woman won’t try to cheat me, Mr Fraser.’

Mrs Cunningham cried, ‘Oh, God!’ and wailed into her handkerchief.

‘Besides,’ I said, ‘I’ll phone my brother and have him fly east at once. He can handle everything for me.’

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘if we expedite things, we could have your money for you in a few days.’

‘I’ll have my brother call you,’ I said.

‘Fine,’ he said. He hesitated, holdinf his briefcase. ‘mrs Cunningham, are you coming along? Is there anywhere I can drop you?’

‘Let the woman rest here awhile,’ I said. ‘I’ll make her some tea.’

‘Very well.’

He left reluctantly. I walked him to the front door, where he said to me, quietly, ‘Miss Wilson, do me a favour.’

‘Of course, Mr Fraser.’

‘Promise me you won’t sign anything until your brother gets here to advise you.’

‘I promise,’ I said, sighing.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘one more item and I’m done.’

‘Mr Roche, you mean?’

‘Right. I’ll talk to him, if I can find him. Not that it’s necessary.’ He smiled and said goodbye and walked away down the hall.

I closed the door, feeling glad he didn’t think it necessary to talk to Roche. He would have found it somewhat difficult to talk to Roche, since Roche was in the process of being buried under the name of Edward Cunningham, his charred remains in the burned-out real estate office having been identified under that name by Mrs Edward Cunningham.

Would Roche have actually pushed that charge of embezzlement he’d been shouting about? Well, the question was academic now, though three months ago it had seemed real enough to cause me to strangle the life out of him, real enough to cause me to set up this hasty and desperate-but, I think, rather ingenious-plan for getting myself out of the whole mess entirely. The only question had been whether or not our deep-freeze would preserve the body sufficiently over the three months of preparation, but the fire had settled that problem, too.

I went back into the living-room. She got up from the sofa and said, ‘What’s all this jazz about a brother in California?’

‘Change of plans,’ I said. ‘I was too much the innocent, and you were too much the wronged woman. Without a brother, Fraser might have insisted on hanging around, helping me with the finances himself. And the other Miss Wilson is due back from Greece in two weeks.’

‘That’s all well and good,’ she said. ‘But where is this brother going to come from? She doesn’t have one, you know-the real Miss Wilson, I mean.’

‘I know.’ That had been one of the major reasons I’d hired Miss Wilson in the first place-aside from our general similarity of build-the fact that she had no relatives, making it absolutely safe to take over her apartment during my impersonation.

My wife said, ‘Well? What are you going to do for a brother?’

I took off the grey wig and scratched my head, feeling great relief. ‘I’ll’ be the brother,’ I said. ‘A startling resemblance between us.’

She shook her head, grinning at me. ‘You are a one, Ed,’ she said. ‘You sure are a one.’

‘That’s me,’ I said. ‘The sweetest man in the world.’

SCI-FI STORIES

THEY ALSO SERVE

_________________

Why should people hate vultures? After all, a vulture never kills anyone...

The launch carrying the mail, supplies and replacements eased slowly in toward the base, keeping the bulk of the Moon between itself and Earth. Captain Ebor, seated at the controls, guided the ship to the rocky uneven ground with the easy carelessness of long practice, then cut the drive, got to his walking tentacles, and stretched. Donning his spacesuit, he left the ship to go over to the dome and meet Darquelnoy, the base commander.

An open ground-car was waiting for him beside the ship. The driver, encased in his spacesuit, crossed tentacles in a sloppy salute, and Ebor returned the gesture quite as sloppily. Here on the periphery, cast formalities were all but dispensed with.

Ebor stood for a moment and watched the unloading. The cargo crew, used to working in spacesuits, had one truck already half full. The replacements, unused to spacesuits and, in addition, awed and a bit startled by the bleakness of this satellite, were moving awkwardly down the ramp.

Satisfied that the unloading was proceeding smoothly, Ebor climbed aboard the ground-car, awkward in his suit, and settled back heavily in the seat to try to get used to gravity again. The gravity of this Moon was slight, of course--barely one-sixth the gravity of the Home World or most of the colonies--but it still took getting used to, after a long trip in free-fall.

The driver sat at the controls, and the car jerked into motion. Ebor, looking up, noticed for the first time that the dome wasn't there anymore. The main dome, housing the staff and equipment of the base, just wasn't there.

And the driver, he now saw, was aiming the car toward the nearby crater wall. Extending two of his eyes till they almost touched the face-plate of his helmet, he could see activity at the base of the crater wall, and what looked like an air-lock entrance. He wondered what had caused the change, which had obviously been done at top speed. The last time he'd been here, not very long ago, the dome had still been intact, and there had been no hint of any impending move underground.

The driver steered the car into the open air lock, and they waited until the first cargo truck had lumbered in after them. Then the outer door closed, the pumps were turned on, and in a minute the red light flashed over the inner door. Ebor removed the spacesuit gratefully, left it in the car, and walked clumsily through the inner door into the new base.

A good job had been done on it, for all the speed. Rooms and corridors has been melted out of the rock, the floors had been carpeted, the walls painted, and the ceiling lined with light panels. All of the furnishings had been transferred here from the original dome, and the result looked, on the whole, quite livable. As livable as the dome had been, at least.

But the base commander, Darquelnoy, waiting for his old friend Ebor near the inner door of the lock, looked anything but happy with the arrangement. At Ebor's entrance he raised a limp tentacle in weary greeting and said, "Come in, my friend, come in. Tell me the new jokes from home. I could use some cheering up."

"None worth telling," said Ebor. He looked around. "What's happened here?" he asked. "Why've you gone underground? Why do you need cheering up?"

Darquelnoy clicked his eyes in despair. "Those things!" he cried. "Those annoying little creatures on that blasted planet up there!"

Ebor repressed an amused ripple. He knew Darquelnoy well enough to know that the commander invariably overstated things. "What've they been up to, Dar?" he asked. "Come on, you can tell me over a hot cup of restno."

"I've been practically living on the stuff for the last two dren," said Darquelnoy hopelessly. "Well, I suppose another cup won't kill me. Come on to my quarters."

"I've worked up a fine thirst on the trip," Ebor told him.

The two walked down the long corridor together and Ebor said, "Well? What happened?"

"They came here," Darquelnoy told him simply. At Ebor's shocked look, he rippled in wan amusement and said, "Oh, it wasn't as bad as it might have been, I suppose. It was just that we had to rush around so frantically, unloading and dismantling the dome, getting this place ready--"

"What do you mean, they came here?" demanded Ebor.

"They are absolutely the worst creatures for secrecy in the entire galaxy!" exclaimed Darquelnoy in irritation.

"Absolutely the worst."

"Then you've picked up at least one of their habits," Ebor told him. "Now stop talking in circles and tell me what happened."

"They built a spaceship, is the long and the short of it," Darquelnoy answered.

Ebor stopped in astonishment. "No!"

"Don't tell me no!" cried Darquelnoy. "I saw it!" He was obviously at his wit's end.

"It's unbelievable," said Ebor.

"I know," said Darquelnoy. He led the way into his quarters, motioned Ebor to a perch, and rang for his orderly. "It was just a little remote-controlled apparatus, of course," he said. "The fledgling attempt, you know. But it circled this Moon here, busily taking pictures, and went right back to the planet again, giving us all a terrible fright. There hadn't been the slightest indication they were planning anything that spectacular."

"None?" asked Ebor. "Not a hint?"

"Oh, they've been boasting about doing some such thing for ages," Darquelnoy told him. "But there was never any indication that they were finally serious about it. They have all sorts of military secrecy, of course, and so you never know a thing is going to happen until it does."

"Did they get a picture of the dome?"

"Thankfully, no. And before they had a chance to try again, I whipped everything underground."

"It must have been hectic," Ebor said sympathetically.

"It was," said Darquelnoy simply.

The orderly entered. Darquelnoy told him, "Two restno," and he left again.

"I can't imagine them making a spaceship," said Ebor thoughtfully. "I would have thought they'd have blown themselves up long before reaching that stage."

"I would have thought so, too," said Darquelnoy. "But there it is. At the moment, they've divided themselves into two camps--generally speaking, that is--and the two sides are trying like mad to outdo each other in everything. As a part of it, they're shooting all sorts of rubbish into space and crowing every time a piece of the other side's rubbish malfunctions."

"They could go on that way indefinitely," said Ebor.

"I know," said Darquelnoy gloomily. "And here we sit."

Ebor nodded, studying his friend. "You don't suppose this is all a waste of time, do you?" he asked, after a minute.

Darquelnoy shook a tentacle in negation. "Not at all, not at all. They'll get around to it, sooner or later. They're still boasting themselves into the proper frame of mind, that's all."

Ebor rippled in sympathetic amusement. "I imagine you sometimes wish you could give them a little prodding in the right direction," he said.

Darquelnoy fluttered his tentacles in horror, crying, "Don't even think of such a thing!"

"I know, I know," said Ebor hastily. "The laws--"

"Never mind the laws," snapped Darquelnoy. "I'm not even thinking about the laws. Frankly, if it would do any good, I might even consider breaking one or two of the laws, and the devil with my conditioning."

"You are upset," said Ebor at that.

"But if we were to interfere with those creatures up there," continued Darquelnoy, "interfere with them in any way at all, it would be absolutely disastrous."

The orderly returned at that point, with two steaming cups of restno. Darquelnoy and Ebor accepted the cups and the orderly left, making a sloppy tentacle-cross salute, which the two ignored.

"I wasn't talking necessarily about attacking them, you know," said Ebor, returning to the subject.

"Neither was I," Darquelnoy told him. "We wouldn't have to attack them. All we would have to do is let them know we're here. Not even why we're here, just the simple fact of our presence. That would be enough. They would attack us."

Ebor extended his eyes in surprise. "As vicious as all that?"

"Chilling," Darquelnoy told him. "Absolutely chilling."

"Then I'm surprised they haven't blown themselves to pieces long before this."

"Oh, well," said Darquelnoy, "you see, they're cowards, too. They have to boast and brag and shout a while before they finally get to clawing and biting at one another."

Ebor waved a tentacle. "Don't make it so vivid."

"Sorry," apologized Darquelnoy. He drained his cup of restno. "Out here," he said, "living next door to the little beasts day after day, one begins to lose one's sensibilities."

"It has been a long time," agreed Ebor.

"Longer than we had originally anticipated," Darquelnoy said frankly. "We've been ready to move in for I don't know how long. And instead we just sit here and wait. Which isn't good for morale, either."

"No, I don't imagine it is."

"There's already a theory among some of the workmen that the blow-up just isn't going to happen, ever. And since that ship went circling by, of course, morale has hit a new low."

"It would have been nasty if they'd spotted you," said Ebor.

"Nasty?" echoed Darquelnoy. "Catastrophic, you mean. All that crowd up there needs is an enemy, and it doesn't much matter to them who that enemy is. If they were to suspect that we were here, they'd forget their own little squabbles at once and start killing us instead. And that, of course, would mean that they'd be united, for the first time in their history, and who knows how long it would take them before they'd get back to killing one another again."

"Well," said Ebor, "you're underground now. And it can't possibly take them too much longer."

"One wouldn't think so," agreed Darquelnoy. "In a way," he added, "that spaceship was a hopeful sign. It means that they'll be sending a manned ship along pretty soon, and that should do the trick. As soon as one side has a base on the Moon, the other side is bound to get things started."

"A relief for you, eh?" said Ebor.

"You know," said Darquelnoy thoughtfully, "I can't help thinking I was born in the wrong age. All this scrabbling around, searching everywhere for suitable planets. Back when the Universe was younger, there were lots and lots of planets to colonize. Now the old problem of half-life is taking its toll, and we can't even hope to keep up with the birth rate any more. If it weren't for the occasional planets like that one up there, I don't know what we'd do."

"Don't worry," Ebor told him. "They'll have their atomic war pretty soon, and leave us a nice high-radiation planet to colonize."

"I certainly hope it's soon," said Darquelnoy. "This waiting gets on one's nerves." He rang for the orderly.

A POINT OF INTEREST

____________________

The title, They Also Serve, to previous short story is an allusion to the final line in John Milton’s poem “On His Blindness.”

“On His Blindness”

When I consider how my light is spent

E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide,

Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, least he returning chide,

Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,

I fondly ask; But patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts, who best

Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and waite.

THE RISK PROFESSION

_____________________

The men who did dangerous work had a special kind of insurance policy. But when somebody wanted to collect on that policy, the claims investigator suddenly became a member of ...

Mister Henderson called me into his office my third day back in Tangiers. That was a day and a half later than I'd expected. Roving claims investigators for Tangiers Mutual Insurance Corporation don't usually get to spend more than thirty-six consecutive hours at home base.

Henderson was jovial but stern. That meant he was happy with the job I'd just completed, and that he was pretty sure I'd find some crooked shenanigans on this next assignment. That didn't please me. I'm basically a plain-living type, and I hate complications. I almost wished for a second there that I was back on Fire and Theft in Greater New York. But I knew better than that. As a roving claim investigator, I avoided the more stultifying paper work inherent in this line of work and had the additional luxury of an expense account nobody ever questioned.

It made working for a living almost worthwhile.

When I was settled in the chair beside his desk, Henderson said, "That was good work you did on Luna, Ged. Saved the company a pretty pence."

I smiled modestly and said, "Thank you, sir." And reflected to myself for the thousandth time that the company could do worse than split that saving with the guy who'd made it possible. Me, in other words.

"Got a tricky one this time, Ged," said my boss. He had done his back-patting, now we got down to business. He peered keenly at me, or at least as keenly as a round-faced tiny-eyed fat man can peer. "What do you know about the Risk Profession Retirement Plan?" he asked me.

"I've heard of it," I said truthfully. "That's about all."

He nodded. "Most of the policies are sold off-planet, of course. It's a form of insurance for non-insurables. Spaceship crews, asteroid prospectors, people like that."

"I see," I said, unhappily. I knew right away this meant I was going to have to go off-Earth again. I'm a one-gee boy all the way. Gravity changes get me in the solar plexus. I get g-sick at the drop of an elevator.

"Here's the way it works," he went on, either not noticing my sad face or choosing to ignore it. "The client pays a monthly premium. He can be as far ahead or as far behind in his payments as he wants—the policy has no lapse clause—just so he's all paid up by the Target Date. The Target Date is a retirement age, forty-five or above, chosen by the client himself. After the Target Date, he stops paying premiums, and we begin to pay him a monthly retirement check, the amount determined by the amount paid into the policy, his age at retiring, and so on. Clear?"

I nodded, looking for the gimmick that made this a paying proposition for good old Tangiers Mutual.

"The Double R-P—that's what we call it around the office here—assures the client that he won't be reduced to panhandling in his old age, should his other retirement plans fall through. For Belt prospectors, of course, this means the big strike, which maybe one in a hundred find. For the man who never does make that big strike, this is something to fall back on. He can come home to Earth and retire, with a guaranteed income for the rest of his life."

I nodded again, like a good company man.

"Of course," said Henderson, emphasizing this point with an upraised chubby finger, "these men are still uninsurables. This is a retirement plan only, not an insurance policy. There is no beneficiary other than the client himself."

And there was the gimmick. I knew a little something of the actuarial statistics concerning uninsurables, particularly Belt prospectors. Not many of them lived to be forty-five, and the few who would survive the Belt and come home to collect the retirement wouldn't last more than a year or two. A man who's spent the last twenty or thirty years on low-gee asteroids just shrivels up after a while when he tries to live on Earth.

It needed a company like Tangiers Mutual to dream up a racket like that. The term "uninsurables" to most insurance companies means those people whose jobs or habitats make them too likely as prospects for obituaries. To Tangiers Mutual, uninsurables are people who have money the company can't get at.

"Now," said Henderson importantly, "we come to the problem at hand." He ruffled his up-to-now-neat In basket and finally found the folder he wanted. He studied the blank exterior of this folder for a few seconds, pursing his lips at it, and said, "One of our clients under the Double R-P was a man named Jafe McCann."

"Was?" I echoed.

He squinted at me, then nodded at my sharpness. "That's right, he's dead." He sighed heavily and tapped the folder with all those pudgy fingers. "Normally," he said, "that would be the end of it. File closed. However, this time there are complications."

Naturally. Otherwise, he wouldn't be telling me about it. But Henderson couldn't be rushed, and I knew it. I kept the alert look on my face and thought of other things, while waiting for him to get to the point.

"Two weeks after Jafe McCann's death," Henderson said, "we received a cash-return form on his policy."

"A cash-return form?" I'd never heard of such a thing. It didn't sound like anything Tangiers Mutual would have anything to do with. We never return cash.

"It's something special in this case," he explained. "You see, this isn't an insurance policy, it's a retirement plan, and the client can withdraw from the retirement plan at any time, and have seventy-five per cent of his paid-up premiums returned to him. It's, uh, the law in plans such as this."

"Oh," I said. That explained it. A law that had snuck through the World Finance Code Commission while the insurance lobby wasn't looking.

"But you see the point," said Henderson. "This cash-return form arrived two weeks after the client's death."

"You said there weren't any beneficiaries," I pointed out.

"Of course. But the form was sent in by the man's partner, one Ab Karpin. McCann left a hand-written will bequeathing all his possessions to Karpin. Since, according to Karpin, this was done before McCann's death, the premium money cannot be considered part of the policy, but as part of McCann's cash-on-hand. And Karpin wants it."

"It can't be that much, can it?" I asked. I was trying my best to point out to him that the company would spend more than it would save if it sent me all the way out to the asteroids, a prospect I could feel coming and one which I wasn't ready to cry hosannah over.

"McCann died," Henderson said ponderously, "at the age of fifty-six. He had set his retirement age at sixty. He took out the policy at the age of thirty-four, with monthly payments of fifty credits. Figure it out for yourself."

I did—in my head—and came up with a figure of thirteen thousand and two hundred credits. Seventy-five per cent of that would be nine thousand and nine hundred credits. Call it ten thousand credits even.

I had to admit it. It was worth the trip.

"I see," I said sadly.

"Now," said Henderson, "the conditions—the circumstances—of McCann's death are somewhat suspicious. And so is the cash-return form itself."

"There's a chance it's a forgery?"

"One would think so," he said. "But our handwriting experts have worn themselves out with that form, comparing it with every other single scrap of McCann's writing they can find. And their conclusion is that not only is it genuinely McCann's handwriting, but it is McCann's handwriting at age fifty-six."

"So McCann must have written it," I said. "Under duress, do you think?"

"I have no idea," said Henderson complacently. "That's what you're supposed to find out. Oh, there's just one more thing."

I did my best to make my ears perk.

"I told you that McCann's death occurred under somewhat suspicious circumstances."

"Yes," I agreed, "you did."

"McCann and Karpin," he said, "have been partners—unincorporated, of course—for the last fifteen years. They had found small rare-metal deposits now and again, but they had never found that one big strike all the Belt prospectors waste their lives looking for. Not until the day before McCann died."

"Ah hah," I said. "Then they found the big strike."

"Exactly."

"And McCann's death?"

"Accidental."

"Sure," I said. "What proof have we got?"

"None. The body is lost in space. And law is few and far between that far out."

"So all we've got is this guy Karpin's word for how McCann died, is that it?"

"That's all we have. So far."

"Sure. And now you want me to go on out there and find out what's cooking, and see if I can maybe save the company ten thousand credits."

"Exactly," said Henderson.

The copter took me to the spaceport west of Cairo, and there I boarded the good ship Demeter for Luna City and points Out. I loaded up on g-sickness pills and they worked fine. I was sick as a dog.

By the time we got to Atronics City, my insides had grown resigned to their fate. As long as I didn't try to eat, my stomach would leave me alone.

Atronics City was about as depressing as a Turkish bath with all the lights on. It stood on a chunk of rock a couple of miles thick, and it looked like nothing more in this world than a welder's practice range.

From the outside, Atronics City is just a derby-shaped dome of nickel-iron, black and kind of dirty-looking. I suppose a transparent dome would have been more fun, but the builders of the company cities in the asteroids were businessmen, and they weren't concerned with having fun. There's nothing to look at outside the dome but chunks of rock and the blackness of space anyway, and you've got all this cheap iron floating around in the vicinity, and all a dome's supposed to do is keep the air in. Besides, though the Belt isn't as crowded as a lot of people think, there is quite a lot of debris rushing here and there, bumping into things, and a transparent dome would just get all scratched up, not to mention punctured.

From the inside, Atronics City is even jollier. There's the top level, directly under the dome, which is mainly parking area for scooters and tuggers of various kinds, plus the office shacks of the Assayer's Office, the Entry Authority, the Industry Troopers and so on. The next three levels have all been burned into the bowels of the planetoid.

Level two is the Atronics plant, and a noisy plant it is. Level three is the shopping and entertainment area—grocery stores and clothing stores and movie theaters and bars—and level four is housing, two rooms and kitchen for the unmarried, four rooms and kitchen plus one room for each child for the married.

All of these levels have one thing in common. Square corners, painted olive drab. The total effect of the place is suffocating. You feel like you're stuck in the middle of a stack of packing crates.

Most of the people living in Atronics City work, of course, for International Atronics, Incorporated. The rest of them work in the service occupations—running the bars and grocery stores and so on—that keep the company employees alive and relatively happy.

Wages come high in the places like Atronics City. Why not, the raw materials come practically for free. And as for working conditions, well, take a for instance. How do you make a vacuum tube? You fiddle with the innards and surround it all with glass. And how do you get the air out? No problem, boy, there wasn't any air in there to begin with.

At any rate, there I was at Atronics City. That was as far as Demeter would take me. Now, while the ship went on to Ludlum City and Chemisant City and the other asteroid business towns, my two suitcases and I dribbled down the elevator to my hostelry on level four.

Have you ever taken an elevator ride when the gravity is practically non-existent? Well, don't. You see, the elevator manages to sink faster than you do. It isn't being lowered down to level four, it's being pulled down.

What this means is that the suitcases have to be lashed down with the straps provided, and you and the operator have to hold on tight to the hand-grips placed here and there around the wall. Otherwise, you'd clonk your head on the ceiling.

But we got to level four at last, and off I went with my suitcases and the operator's directions. The suitcases weighed about half an ounce each out here, and I felt as though I weighed the same. Every time I raised a foot, I was sure I was about to go sailing into a wall. Local citizens eased by me, their feet occasionally touching the iron pavement as they soared along, and I gave them all dirty looks.

Level four was nothing but walls and windows. The iron floor went among these walls and windows in a straight straight line, bisecting other "streets" at perfect right angles, and the iron ceiling sixteen feet up was lined with a double row of fluorescent tubes. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic already.

The Chalmers Hotel—named for an Atronics vice-president—had received my advance registration, which was nice. I was shown to a second-floor room—nothing on level four had more than two stories—and was left to unpack my suitcases as best I may.

I had decided to spend a day or two at Atronics City before taking a scooter out to Ab Karpin's claim. Atronics City had been Karpin's and McCann's home base. All of McCann's premium payments had been mailed from here, and the normal mailing address for both of them was GPO Atronics City.

I wanted to know as much as possible about Ab Karpin before I went out to see him. And Atronics City seemed like the best place to get my information.

But not today. Today, my stomach was very unhappy, and my head was on sympathy strike. Today, I was going to spend my time exclusively in bed, trying not to float up to the ceiling.

The Mapping & Registry Office, it seemed to me the next day, was the best place to start. This was where prospectors filed their claims, but it was a lot more than that. The waiting room of M&R was the unofficial club of the asteroid prospectors. This is where they met with one another, talked together about the things that prospectors discuss, and made and dissolved their transient partnerships.

In this way, Karpin and McCann were unusual. They had maintained their partnership for fifteen years. That was about sixty times longer than most such arrangements lasted.

Searching the asteroid chunks for rare and valuable metals is basically pretty lonely work, and it's inevitable that the prospectors will every once in a while get hungry for human company and decide to try a team operation. But, at the same time, work like this attracts people who don't get along very well with human company. So the partnerships come and go, and the hatreds flare and are forgotten, and the normal prospecting team lasts an average of three months.

At any rate, it was to the Mapping & Registry Office that I went first. And, since that office was up on the first level, I went by elevator.

Riding up in that elevator was a heck of a lot more fun than riding down. The elevator whipped up like mad, the floor pressed against the soles of my feet, and it felt almost like good old Earth for a second or two there. But then the elevator stopped, and I held on tight to the hand-grips to keep from shooting through the top of the blasted thing.

The operator—a phlegmatic sort—gave me directions to the M&R, and off I went, still trying to figure out how to sail along as gracefully as the locals.

The Mapping & Registry Office occupied a good-sized shack over near the dome wall, next to the entry lock. I pushed open the door and went on in.

The waiting room was cozy and surprisingly large, large enough to comfortably hold the six maroon leather sofas scattered here and there on the pale green carpet, flanked by bronze ashtray stands. There were only six prospectors here at the moment, chatting together in two groups of three, and they all looked alike. Grizzled, ageless, watery-eyed, their clothing clean but baggy. I passed them and went on to the desk at the far end, behind which sat a young man in official gray, slowly turning the crank of a microfilm reader.

He looked up at my approach. I flashed my company identification and asked to speak to the manager. He went away, came back, and ushered me into an office which managed to be Spartan and sumptuous at the same time. The walls had been plastic-painted in textured brown, the iron floor had been lushly carpeted in gray, and the desk had been covered with a simulated wood coating.

The manager—a man named Teaking—went well with the office. His face and hands were spare and lean, but his uniform was immaculate, covered with every curlicue the regulations allowed. He welcomed me politely, but curiously, and I said, "I wonder if you know a prospector named Ab Karpin?"

"Karpin? Of course. He and old Jafe McCann—pity about McCann. I hear he got killed."

"Yes, he did."

"And that's what you're here for, eh?" He nodded sagely. "I didn't know the Belt boys could get insurance," he said.

"It isn't exactly that," I said. "This concerns a retirement plan, and—well, the details don't matter." Which, I hoped, would end his curiosity in that line. "I was hoping you could give me some background on Karpin. And on McCann, too, for that matter."

He grinned a bit. "You saw the men sitting outside?"

I nodded.

"Then you've seen Karpin and McCann. Exactly the same. It doesn't matter if a man's thirty or sixty or what. It doesn't matter what he was like before he came out here. If he's been here a few years, he looks exactly like the bunch you saw outside there."

"That's appearance," I said. "What I was looking for was personality."

"Same thing," he said. "All of them. Close-mouthed, anti-social, fiercely independent, incurably romantic, always convinced that the big strike is just a piece of rock away. McCann, now, he was a bit more realistic than most. He'd be the one I'd expect to take out a retirement policy. A real pence-pincher, that one, though I shouldn't say it as he's dead. But that's the way he was. Brighter than most Belt boys when it came to money matters. I've seen him haggle over a new piece of equipment for their scooter, or some repair work, or some such thing, and he was a wonder to watch."

"And Karpin?" I asked him.

"A prospector," he said, as though that answered my question. "Same as everybody else. Not as sharp as McCann when it came to money. That's why all the money stuff in the partnership was handled by McCann. But Karpin was one of the sharpest boys in the business when it came to mineralogy. He knew rocks you and I never heard of, and most times he knew them by sight. Almost all of the Belt boys are college grads—you've got to know what you're looking for out here and what it looks like when you've found it—but Karpin has practically all of them beat. He's sharp."

"Sounds like a good team," I said.

"I guess that's why they stayed together so long," he said. "They complemented each other." He leaned forward, the inevitable prelude to a confidential remark. "I'll tell you something off the record, Mister," he said. "Those two were smarter than they knew. Their partnership was never legalized, it was never anything more than a piece of paper. And there's a bunch of fellas around here mighty unhappy about that today. Jafe McCann is the one who handled all the money matters, like I said. He's got IOU's all over town."

"And they can't collect from Karpin?"

He nodded. "Jafe McCann died just a bit too soon. He was sharp and cheap, but he was honest. If he'd lived, he would have repaid all his debts, I'm sure of it. And if this strike they made is as good as I hear, he would have been able to repay them with no trouble at all."

I nodded, somewhat impatiently. I had the feeling by now that I was talking to a man who was one of those who had a Jafe McCann IOU in his pocket. "How long has it been since you've seen Karpin?" I asked him, wondering what Karpin's attitude and expression was now that his partner was dead.

"Oh, Lord, not for a couple of months," he said. "Not since they went out together the last time and made that strike."

"Didn't Karpin come in to make his claim?"

"Not here. Over to Chemisant City. That was the nearest M&R to the strike."

"Oh." That was a pity. I would have liked to have known if there had been a change of any kind in Karpin since his partner's death. "I'll tell you what the situation is," I said, with a false air of truthfulness. "We have some misgivings about McCann's death. Not suspicions, exactly, just misgivings. The timing is what bothers us."

"You mean, because it happened just after the strike?"

"That's it," I answered frankly.

He shook his head. "I wouldn't get too excited about that, if I were you," he said. "It wouldn't be the first time it's happened. A man makes the big strike after all, and he gets so excited he forgets himself for a minute and gets careless. And you only have to be careless once out here."

"That may be it," I said. I got to my feet, knowing I'd picked up all there was from this man. "Thanks a lot for your cooperation," I said.

"Any time," he said. He stood and shook hands with me.

I went back out through the chatting prospectors and crossed the echoing cavern that was level one, aiming to rent myself a scooter.

I don't like rockets. They're noisy as the dickens, they steer hard and drive erratically, and you can never carry what I would consider a safe emergency excess of fuel. Nothing like the big steady-g interplanetary liners. On those I feel almost human.

The appearance of the scooter I was shown at the rental agency didn't do much to raise my opinion of this mode of transportation. The thing was a good ten years old, the paint scraped and scratched all over its egg-shaped, originally green-colored body, and the windshield—a silly term, really, for the front window of a craft that spends most of its time out where there isn't any wind—was scratched and pockmarked to the point of translucency by years of exposure to the asteroidal dust.

The rental agent was a sharp-nosed thin-faced type who displayed this refugee from a melting vat without a blush, and still didn't blush when he told me the charges. Twenty credits a day, plus fuel.

I paid without a murmur—it was the company's money, not mine—and paid an additional ten credits for the rental of a suit to go with it. I worked my way awkwardly into the suit, and clambered into the driver's seat of the relic. I attached the suit to the ship in all the necessary places, and the agent closed and spun the door.

Most of the black paint had worn off the handles of the controls, and insulation peeked through rips in the plastic siding here and there. I wondered if the thing had any slow leaks and supposed fatalistically that it had. The agent waved at me, stony-faced, the conveyor belt trundled me outside the dome, and I kicked the weary rocket into life.

The scooter had a tendency to roll to the right. If I hadn't kept fighting it back, it would have soon worked up a dandy little spin. I was spending so much time juggling with the controls that I practically missed a couple of my beacon rocks, and that would have been just too bad. If I'd gotten off the course I had carefully outlined for myself, I'd never have found my bearings again, and I would have just floated around amid the scenery until some passerby took pity and towed me back home.

But I managed to avoid getting lost, which surprised me, and after four nerve-wracking hours I finally spotted the yellow-painted X of a registered claim on a half-mile-thick chunk of rock dead ahead. As I got closer, I spied a scooter parked near the X, and beside it an inflated portable dome. The scooter was somewhat larger than mine, but no newer and probably even less safe. The dome was varicolored, from repeated patching.

This would be the claim, and this is where I would find Karpin, sitting on his property while waiting for the sale to go through. Prospectors like Karpin are free-lance men, working for no particular company. They register their claims in their own names, and then sell the rights to whichever company shows up first with the most attractive offer. There's a lot of paperwork to such a sale, and it's all handled by the company. While waiting, the smart prospector sits on his claim and makes sure nobody chips off a part of it for himself, a stunt that still happens now and again. It doesn't take too much concentrated explosive to make two rocks out of one rock, and a man's claim is only the rock with his X on it.

I set the scooter down next to the other one, and flicked the toggle for the air pumps, then put on the fishbowl and went about unattaching the suit from the ship. When the red light flashed on and off, I spun the door, opened it, and stepped out onto the rock, moving very cautiously. It isn't that I don't believe the magnets in the boot soles will work, it's just that I know for a fact that they won't work if I happen to raise both feet at the same time.

I clumped across the crude X to Karpin's dome. The dome had no viewports at all, so I wasn't sure Karpin was aware of my presence. I rapped my metal glove on the metal outer door of the lock, and then I was sure.

But it took him long enough to open up. I had just about decided he'd joined his partner in the long sleep when the door cracked open an inch. I pushed it open and stepped into the lock, ducking my head. The door was only five feet high, and just as wide as the lock itself, three feet. The other dimensions of the lock were: height, six feet six; width, one foot. Not exactly room to dance in.

When the red light high on the left-hand wall clicked off, I rapped on the inner door. It promptly opened, I stepped through and removed the fishbowl.

Karpin stood in the middle of the room, a small revolver in his hand. "Shut the door," he said.

I obeyed, moving slowly. I didn't want that gun to go off by mistake.

"Who are you?" Karpin demanded. The M&R man had been right. Ab Karpin was a dead ringer for all those other prospectors I'd seen back at Atronics City. Short and skinny and grizzled and ageless. He could have been forty, and he could have been ninety, but he was probably somewhere the other side of fifty. His hair was black and limp and thinning, ruffled in little wisps across his wrinkled pate. His forehead and cheeks were lined like a plowed field, and were much the same color. His eyes were wide apart and small, so deep-set beneath shaggy brows that they seemed black. His mouth was thin, almost lipless. The hand holding the revolver was nothing but bones and blue veins covered with taut skin.

He was wearing a dirty undershirt and an old pair of trousers that had been cut off raggedly just above his knobby knees. Faded slippers were on his feet. He had good reason for dressing that way, the temperature inside the dome must have been nearly ninety degrees. The dome wasn't reflecting away the sun's heat as well as it had when it was young.

I looked at Karpin, and despite the revolver and the tense expression on his face, he was the least dangerous-looking man I'd ever run across. All at once, the idea that this anti-social old geezer had the drive or the imagination to murder his partner seemed ridiculous.

Apparently, I spent too much time looking him over, because he said again, "Who are you?" And this time he motioned impatiently with the revolver.

"Stanton," I told him. "Ged Stanton, Tangiers Mutual Insurance. I have identification, but it's in my pants pocket, down inside this suit."

"Get it," he said. "And move slow."

"Right you are."

I moved slow, as per directions, and peeled out of the suit, then reached into my trouser pocket and took out my ID clip. I flipped it open and showed him the card bearing my signature and picture and right thumb-print and the name of the company I represented, and he nodded, satisfied, and tossed the revolver over onto his bed. "I got to be careful," he said. "I got a big claim here."

"I know that," I told him. "Congratulations for it."

"Thanks," he said, but he still looked peevish. "You're here about Jafe's insurance, right?"

"That I am."

"Don't want to pay up, I suppose. That doesn't surprise me."

Blunt old men irritate me. "Well," I said, "we do have to investigate."

"Sure," he said. "You want some coffee?"

"Thank you."

"You can sit in that chair there. That was Jafe's."

I settled gingerly in the cloth-and-plastic foldaway chair he'd pointed at, and he went over to the kitchen area of the dome to start coffee. I took the opportunity to look the dome over. It was the first portable dome I'd ever been inside.

It was all one room, roughly circular, with a diameter of about fifteen feet. The sides went straight up for the first seven feet, then curved gradually inward to form the roof. At the center of the dome, the ceiling was about twelve feet high.

The floor of the room was simply the asteroidal rock surface, not completely level and smooth. There were two chairs and a table to the right of the entry lock, two foldaway cots around the wall beyond them, the kitchen area next and a cluttered storage area around on the other side. There was a heater standing alone in the center of the room, but it certainly wasn't needed now. Sweat was already trickling down the back of my neck and down my forehead into my eyebrows. I peeled off my shirt and used it to wipe sweat from my face. "Warm in here," I said.

"You get used to it," he muttered, which I found hard to believe.

He brought over the coffee, and I tasted it. It was rotten, as bitter as this old hermit's soul, but I said, "Good coffee. Thanks a lot."

"I like it strong," he said.

I looked around at the room again. "All the comforts of home, eh? Pretty ingenious arrangement."

"Sure," he said sourly. "How about getting to the point, Mister?"

There's only one way to handle a blunt old man. Be blunt right back. "I'll tell you how it is," I said. "The company isn't accusing you of anything, but it has to be sure everything's on the up and up before it pays out any ten thousand credits. And your partner just happening to fill out that cash-return form just before he died—well, you've got to admit it is a funny kind of coincidence."

"How so?" He slurped coffee, and glowered at me over the cup. "We made this strike here," he said. "We knew it was the big one. Jafe had that insurance policy of his in case he never did make the big strike. As soon as we knew this was the big one, he said, 'I guess I don't need that retirement now,' and sat right down and wrote out the cash-return. Then we opened a bottle of liquor and celebrated, and he got himself killed."

The way Karpin said it, it sounded smooth and natural. Too smooth and natural. "How did this accident happen anyway?" I asked him.

"I'm not one hundred per cent sure of that myself," he said. "I was pretty well drunk myself by that time. But he put on his suit and said he was going out to paint the X. He was falling all over himself, and I tried to tell him it could wait till we'd had some sleep, but he wouldn't pay any attention to me."

"So he went out," I said.

He nodded. "He went out first. After a couple minutes, I got lonesome in here, so I suited up and went out after him. It happened just as I was going out the lock, and I just barely got a glimpse of what happened."

He attacked the coffee again, noisily, and I prompted him, saying, "What did happen, Mister Karpin?"

"Well, he was capering around out there, waving the paint tube and such. There's a lot of sharp rock sticking out around here. Just as I got outside, he lost his balance and kicked out, and scraped right into some of that rock, and punctured his suit."

"I thought the body was lost," I said.

He nodded. "It was. The last thing in life Jafe ever did was try to shove himself away from those rocks. That, and the force of air coming out of that puncture for the first second or two, was enough to throw him up off the surface. It threw him up too high, and he never got back down."

My doubt must have showed in my face, because he added, "Mister, there isn't enough gravity on this place to shoot craps with."

He was right. As we talked, I kept finding myself holding unnecessarily tight to the arms of the chair. I kept having the feeling I was going to float out of the chair and hover around up at the top of the dome if I were to let go. It was silly of course—there was some gravity on that planetoid, after all—but I just don't seem to get used to low-gee.

Nevertheless, I still had some more questions. "Didn't you try to get his body back? Couldn't you have reached him?"

"I tried to, Mister," he said. "Old Jafe McCann was my partner for fifteen years. But I was drunk, and that's a fact. And I was afraid to go jumping up in the air, for fear I'd go floating away, too."

"Frankly," I said, "I'm no expert on low gravity and asteroids. But wouldn't McCann's body just go into orbit around this rock? I mean, it wouldn't simply go floating off into space, would it?"

"It sure would," he said. "There's a lot of other rocks out here, too, Mister, and a lot of them are bigger than this one and have a lot more gravity pull. I don't suppose there's a navigator in the business who could have computed Jafe's course in advance. He floated up, and then he floated back over the dome here and seemed to hover for a couple minutes, and then he just floated out and away. His isn't the only body circling around the sun with all these rocks, you know."

I chewed a lip and thought it all over. I didn't know enough about asteroid gravity or the conditions out here to be able to say for sure whether Karpin's story was true or not. Up to this point, I couldn't attack the problem on a fact basis. I had to depend on feeling now, the hunches and instincts of eight years in this job, hearing some people tell lies and other people tell the truth.

And my instinct said Ab Karpin was lying in his teeth. That dramatic little touch about McCann's body hovering over the dome before disappearing into the void, that sounded more like the embellishment of fiction than the circumstance of truth. And the string of coincidences were just too much. McCann just coincidentally happens to die right after he and his partner make their big strike. He happens to write out the cash-return form just before dying. And his body just happens to float away, so nobody can look at it and check Karpin's story.

But no matter what my instinct said, the story was smooth. It was smooth as glass, and there was no place for me to get a grip on it.

What now? There wasn't any hole in Karpin's story, at least none that I could see. I had to break his story somehow, and in order to do that I had to do some nosing around on this planetoid. I couldn't know in advance what I was looking for, I could only look. I'd know it when I found it. It would be something that conflicted with Karpin's story.

And for that, I had to be sure the story was complete. "You said McCann had gone out to paint the X," I said. "Did he paint it?"

Karpin shook his head. "He never got a chance. He spent all his time dancing, up till he went and killed himself."

"So you painted it yourself."

He nodded.

"And then you went on into Atronics City and registered your claim, is that the story?"

"No. Chemisant City was closer than Atronics City right then, so I went there. Just after Jafe's death, and everything—I didn't feel like being alone any more than I had to."

"You said Chemisant City was closer to you then," I said. "Isn't it now?"

"Things move around a lot out here, Mister," he said. "Right now, Chemisant City's almost twice as far from here as Atronics City. In about three days, it'll start swinging in closer again. Things keep shifting around out here."

"So I've noticed," I said. "When you took off to go to Chemisant City, didn't you make a try for your partner's body then?"

He shook his head. "He was long out of sight by then," he said. "That was ten, eleven hours later, when I took off."

"Why's that? All you had to do was paint the X and take off."

"Mister, I told you. I was drunk. I was falling down drunk, and when I saw I couldn't get at Jafe, and he was dead anyway, I came back in here and slept it off. Maybe if I'd been sober I would have taken the scooter and gone after him, but I was drunk."

"I see." And there just weren't any more questions I could think of to ask, not right now. So I said, "I've just had a shaky four-hour ride coming out here. Mind if I stick around a while before going back?"

"Help yourself," he said, in a pretty poor attempt at genial hospitality. "You can sleep over, if you want."

"Fine," I said. "I think I'd like that."

"You wouldn't happen to play cribbage, would you?" he asked, with the first real sign of animation I'd seen in him yet.

"I learn fast," I told him.

"Okay," he said. "I'll teach you." And he produced a filthy deck of cards and taught me.

After losing nine straight games of cribbage, I quit, and got to my feet. I was at my most casual as I stretched and said, "Okay if I wander around outside for a while? I've never been on an asteroid like this before. I mean, a little one like this. I've just been to the company cities up to now."

"Go right ahead," he said. "I've got some polishing and patching to do, anyway." He made his voice sound easy and innocent, but I noticed his eyes were alert and wary, watching me as I struggled back into my suit.

I didn't bother to put my shirt back on first, and that was a mistake. The temperature inside an atmosphere suit is a steady sixty-eight degrees. That had never seemed particularly chilly before, but after the heat of that dome, it seemed cold as a blizzard inside the suit.

I went on out through the airlock, and moved as briskly as possible in the cumbersome suit, while the sweat chilled on my back and face, and I accepted the glum conviction that one thing I was going to get out of this trip for sure was a nasty head cold.

I went over to the X first, and stood looking at it. It was just an X, that's all, shakily scrawled in yellow paint, with the initials "J-A" scrawled much smaller beside it.

I left the X and clumped away. The horizon was practically at arm's length, so it didn't take long for the dome to be out of sight. And then I clumped more slowly, studying the surface of the asteroid.

What I was looking for was a grave. I believed that Karpin was lying, that he had murdered his partner. And I didn't believe that Jafe McCann's body had floated off into space. I was convinced that his body was still somewhere on this asteroid. Karpin had been forced to concoct a story about the body being lost because the appearance of the body would prove somehow that it had been murder and not accident. I was convinced of that, and now all I had to do was prove it.

But that asteroid was a pretty unlikely place for a grave. That wasn't dirt I was walking on, it was rock, solid metallic rock. You don't dig a grave in solid rock, not with a shovel. You maybe can do it with dynamite, but that won't work too well if your object is to keep anybody from seeing that the hole has been made. Dirt can be patted down. Blown-up rock looks like blown-up rock, and that's all there is to it.

I considered crevices and fissures in the surface, some cranny large enough for Karpin to have stuffed the body into. But I didn't find any of these either as I plodded along, being sure to keep one magnetted boot always in contact with the ground.

Karpin and McCann had set their dome up at just about the only really level spot on that entire planetoid. The rest of it was nothing but jagged rock, and it wasn't easy traveling at all, maneuvering around with magnets on my boots and a bulky atmosphere suit cramping my movements.

And then I stopped and looked out at space and cursed myself for a ring-tailed baboon. McCann's body might be anywhere in the Solar System, anywhere at all, but there was one place I could be sure it wasn't, and that place was this asteroid. No, Karpin had not blown a grave or stuffed the body into a fissure in the ground. Why not? Because this chunk of rock was valuable, that's why not. Because Karpin was in the process of selling it to one of the major companies, and that company would come along and chop this chunk of rock to pieces, getting the valuable metal out, and McCann's body would turn up in the first week of operations if Karpin were stupid enough to bury it here.

Ten hours between McCann's death and Karpin's departure for Chemisant City. He'd admitted that already. And I was willing to bet he'd spent at least part of that time carrying McCann's body to some other asteroid, one he was sure was nothing but worthless rock. If that were true, it meant the mortal remains of Jafe McCann were now somewhere—anywhere—in the Asteroid Belt. Even if I assumed that the body had been hidden on an asteroid somewhere between here and Chemisant City—which wasn't necessarily so—that wouldn't help at all. The relative positions of planetoids in the Belt just keep on shifting. A small chunk of rock that was between here and Chemisant City a few weeks ago—it could be almost anywhere in the Belt right now.

The body, that was the main item. I'd more or less counted on finding it somehow. At the moment, I couldn't think of any other angle for attacking Karpin's story.

As I clopped morosely back to the dome, I nibbled at Karpin's story in my mind. For instance, why go to Chemisant City? It was closer, he said, but it couldn't have been closer by more than a couple of hours. The way I understood it, Karpin was well-known back on Atronics City—it was the normal base of operations for he and his partner—and he didn't know a soul at Chemisant City. Did it make sense for him to go somewhere he wasn't known after his partner's death, even if it was an hour closer? No, it made a lot more sense for a man in that situation to go where he's known, go someplace where he has friends who'll sympathize with him and help him over the shock of losing a partner of fifteen years' standing, even if going there does mean traveling an hour longer.

And there was always the cash-return form. That was what I was here about in the first place. It just didn't make sense for McCann to have held up his celebration while he filled out a form that he wouldn't be able to mail until he got back to Atronics City. And yet the company's handwriting experts were convinced that it wasn't a forgery, and I could pretty well take their word for it.

Mulling these things over as I tramped back toward the dome, I suddenly heard a distant bell ringing way back in my head. The glimmering of an idea, not an idea yet but just the hint of one. I wasn't sure where it led, or even if it led anywhere at all, but I was going to find out.

Karpin opened the doors for me. By the time I'd stripped off the suit he was back to work. He was cleaning the single unit which was his combination stove and refrigerator and sink and garbage disposal.

I looked around the dome again, and I had to admit that a lot of ingenuity had gone into the manufacture and design of this dome and its contents. The dome itself, when deflated, folded down into an oblong box three feet by one foot by one foot. The lock itself, of course, folded separately, into another box somewhat smaller than that.

As for the gear inside the dome, it was functional and collapsible, and there wasn't a single item there that wasn't needed. There were the two chairs and the two cots and the table, all of them foldaway. There was that fantastic combination job Karpin was cleaning right now, and that had dimensions of four feet by three feet by three feet. The clutter of gear over to the left wasn't as much of a clutter as it looked. There was a Geiger counter, an automatic spectrograph, two atmosphere suits, a torsion densimeter, a core-cutting drill, a few small hammers and picks, two spare air tanks, boxes of food concentrate, a paint tube, a doorless jimmy-john and two small metal boxes about eight inches cube. These last were undoubtedly Karpin's and McCann's pouches, where they kept whatever letters, money, address books or other small bits of possessions they owned. Back of this mound of gear, against the wall, stood the air reconditioner, humming quietly to itself.

In this small enclosed space there was everything a man needed to keep himself alive. Everything except human company. And if you didn't need human company, then you had everything. Just on the other side of that dome, there was a million miles of death, in a million possible ways. On this side of the dome, life was cozy, if somewhat Spartan and very hot.

I knew for sure I was going to get a head cold. My body had adjusted to the sixty-eight degrees inside the suit, finally, and now was very annoyed to find the temperature shooting up to ninety again.

Since Karpin didn't seem inclined to talk, and I would rather spend my time thinking than talking anyway, I took a hint from him and did some cleaning. I'd noticed a smeared spot about nose-level on the faceplate of my fishbowl, and now was as good a time as any to get rid of it. It had a tendency to make my eyes cross.

My shirt was sodden and wrinkled by this time anyway, having first been used to wipe sweat from my face and later been rolled into a ball and left on the chair when I went outside, so I used it for a cleaning rag, buffing like mad the silvered surface of the faceplate. Faceplates are silvered, not so the man inside can look out and no one else can look in, but in order to keep some of the more violent rays of the sun from getting through to the face.

I buffed for a while, and then I put the fishbowl on my head and looked through it. The spot was gone, so I went over and reattached it to the rest of the suit, and then settled back in my chair again and lit a cigarette.

Karpin spoke up. "Wish you wouldn't smoke. Makes it tough on the conditioner."

"Oh," I said. "Sorry." So I just sat, thinking morosely about non-forged cash-return forms, and coincidences, and likely spots to hide a body in the Asteroid Belt.

Where would one dispose of a body in the asteroids? I went back through my thinking on that topic, and I found holes big enough to drive Karpin's claim through. This idea of leaving the body on some worthless chunk of rock, for instance. If Karpin had killed his partner—and I was dead sure he had—he'd planned it carefully and he wouldn't be leaving anything to chance. Now, an asteroid isn't worthless to a prospector until that prospector has landed on it and tested it. Karpin might know that such-and-such an asteroid was nothing but worthless stone, but the guy who stops there and finds McCann's body might not know it.

No, Karpin wouldn't leave that to chance. He would get rid of that body, and he would do it in such a way that nobody would ever find it.

How? Not by leaving it on a worthless asteroid, and not by just pushing it off into space. The distance between asteroids is large, but so's the travel. McCann's body, floating around in the blackness, might just be found by somebody.

And that, so far as I could see, eliminated the possibilities. McCann's body was in the Belt. I'd eliminated both the asteroids themselves and the space around the asteroids as hiding places. What was left?

The sun, of course.

I thought that over for a while, rather surprised at myself for having noticed the possibility. Now, let's say Karpin attaches a small rocket to McCann's body, stuffed into its atmosphere suit. He sets the rocket going, and off goes McCann. Not that he aims it toward the sun, that wouldn't work well at all. Instead of falling into the sun, the body would simply take up a long elliptical orbit around the sun, and would come back to the asteroids every few hundred years. No, he would aim McCann back, in the direction opposite to the direction or rotation of the asteroids. He would, in essence, slow McCann's body down, make it practically stop in relation to the motion of the asteroids. And then it would simply fall into the sun.

None of my ideas, it seemed, were happy ones. If McCann's body were even at this moment falling toward the sun, it was just as useful to me as if it were on some other asteroid.

But, wait a second. Karpin and McCann had worked with the minimum of equipment, I'd already noticed that. They didn't have extras of anything, and they certainly wouldn't have extra rockets. Except for one fast trip to Chemisant City—when he had neither the time nor the excuse to buy a jato rocket—Karpin had spent all of his time since McCann's death right here on this planetoid.

So that killed that idea.

While I was hunting around for some other idea, Karpin spoke up again, for the first time in maybe twenty minutes. "You think I killed him, don't you?" he said, not looking around from his cleaning job.

I considered my answer. There was no reason at all to be overly polite to this sour old buzzard, but at the same time I am naturally the soft-spoken type. "We aren't sure," I said. "We just think there are some odd items to be explained."

"Such as what?" he demanded.

"Such as the timing of McCann's cash-return form."

"I already explained that," he said.

"I know. You've explained everything."

"He wrote it out himself," the old man insisted. He put down his cleaning cloth, and turned to face me. "I suppose your company checked the handwriting already, and Jafe McCann is the one who wrote that form."

He was so blasted sure of himself. "It would seem that way," I said.

"What other odd items you worried about?" he asked me, in a rusty attempt at sarcasm.

"Well," I said, "there's this business of going to Chemisant City. It would have made more sense for you to go to Atronics City, where you were known."

"Chemisant was closer," he said. He shook a finger at me. "That company of yours thinks it can cheat me out of my money," he said. "Well, it can't. I know my rights. That money belongs to me."

"I guess you're doing pretty well without McCann," I said.

His angry expression was replaced by one of bewilderment. "What do you mean?"

"They told me back at Atronics City," I explained, "that McCann was the money expert and you were the metals expert, and that's why McCann handled all your buying on credit and stuff like that. Looks as though you've got a pretty keen eye for money yourself."

"I know what's mine," he mumbled, and turned away. He went back to scrubbing the stove coils again.

I stared at his back. Something had happened just then, and I wasn't sure what. He'd just been starting to warm up to a tirade against the dirty insurance company, and all of a sudden he'd folded up and shut up like a clam.

And then I saw it. Or at least I saw part of it. I saw how that cash-return form fit in, and how it made perfect sense.

Now, all I needed was proof of murder. Preferably a body. I had the rest of it. Then I could pack the old geezer back to Atronics City and get proof for the part I'd already figured out.

I'd like that. I'd like getting back to Atronics City, and having this all straightened out, and then taking the very next liner straight back to Earth. More immediately, I'd like getting out of this heat and back into the cool sixty-eight degrees of—

And then it hit me. The whole thing hit me, and I just sat there and stared. They did not carry extras, Karpin and McCann, they did not carry one item of equipment more than they needed.

I sat there and looked at the place where the dead body was hidden, and I said, "Well, I'll be a son of a gun!"

He turned and looked at me, and then he followed the direction of my gaze, and he saw what I was staring at, and he made a jump across the room at the revolver lying on the cot.

That's what saved me. He moved too fast, jerked his muscles too hard, and went sailing up and over the cot and ricocheted off the dome wall. And that gave me plenty of time to get up from the chair, moving more cautiously than he had, and get my hands on the revolver before he could get himself squared away again.

I straightened with the gun in my hand and looked into a face white with frustration and rage. "Okay, Mister McCann," I said. "It's all over."

He knew I had him, but he tried not to show it. "What are you talking about? McCann's dead."

"Sure he is," I said. "Jafe McCann was the money-minded part of the team. He was the one who signed for all the loans and all the equipment bought on credit. With this big strike in, Jafe McCann was the one who'd have to pay all that money."

"You're babbling," he snapped, but the words were hollow.

"You weren't satisfied with half a loaf," I said. "You should have been. Half a loaf is better than none. But you wanted every penny you could get your hands on, and you wanted to pay out just as little money as you possibly could. So when you killed Ab Karpin, you saw a way to kill your debts as well. You'd become Ab Karpin, and it would be Jafe McCann who was dead, and the debts dead with him."

"That's a lie," he said, his voice getting shrill. "I'm Ab Karpin, and I've got papers to prove it."

"Sure. Papers you stole from a dead man. And you might have gotten away with it, too. But you just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? Not satisfied with having the whole claim to yourself, you switched identities with your victim to avoid your debts. And not satisfied with that, you filled out a cash-return form and tried to collect your money as your own heir. That's why you had to go to Chemisant City, where nobody would recognize Ab Karpin or Jafe McCann, rather than to Atronics City where you were well-known."

"You don't want to make too many wild accusations," he shouted, his voice shaking. "You don't want to go around accusing people of things you can't prove."

"I can prove it," I told him. "I can prove everything I've said. As to who you are, there's no problem. All I have to do is bring you back to Atronics City. There'll be plenty of people there to identify you. And as to proving you murdered Ab Karpin, I think his body will be proof enough, don't you?"

McCann watched me as I backed slowly around the room to the mound of gear. The partners had had no extra equipment, no extra equipment at all. I looked down at the two atmosphere suits lying side by side on the metallic rock floor.

Two atmosphere suits. The dead man was supposed to be in one of those, floating out in space somewhere. He was in the suit, right enough, I was sure of that, but he wasn't floating anywhere.

A space suit is a perfect place to hide a body, for as long as it has to be hid. The silvered faceplate keeps you from seeing inside, and the suit is, naturally, a sealed atmosphere. A body can rot away to ashes inside a space suit, and you'll never notice a thing on the outside.

I'd had the right idea after all. McCann had planned to get rid of Karpin's body by attaching a rocket to it, slowing it down, and letting it fall into the sun. But he hadn't had an opportunity yet to go buy a rocket. He couldn't go to Atronics City, where he could have bought the rocket on credit, and he couldn't go to Chemisant City until the claim sale went through and he had some money to spend. And in the meantime, Karpin's body was perfectly safe, sealed away inside his atmosphere suit.

And it would have been safe, too, if McCann hadn't been just a little bit too greedy. He could kill his partner and get away with it; policemen on the Belt are even farther apart than the asteroids. He could swindle his creditors and get away with it; they had no way of checking up and no reason to suspect a switch in identities. But when he tried to get his own money back from Tangiers Mutual Insurance; that's when he made his mistake.

I studied the two atmosphere suits, at the same time managing to keep a wary eye on Jafe McCann, standing rigid and silent across the room. Which one of those suits contained the body of Ab Karpin?

The one with the new patch on the chest, of course. As I'd guessed, McCann had shot him, and that's why he had the problem of disposing of the body in the first place.

I prodded that suit with my toe. "He's in there, isn't he?"

"You're crazy."

"Think I should open it up and check? It's been almost a month, you know. I imagine he's pretty ripe by now."

I reached down to the neck-fastenings on the fishbowl, and McCann finally moved. His arms jerked up, and he cried, "Don't! He's in there, he's in there! For God's sake, don't open it up!"

I relaxed. Mission accomplished. "Crawl into your suit, little man," I said. "We've got ourselves a trip to make, the three of us."

Henderson, as usual, was jovial but stern. "You did a fine job up there, Ged," he said, with false familiarity. "Really brilliant work."

"Thank you very much," I said. I was holding the last piece of news for a minute or two, relishing it.

"But you brought McCann in over a week ago. I don't see why you had to stay up at Atronics City at all after that, much less ten days."

I sat back in the chair and negligently crossed my legs. "I just thought I'd take a little vacation," I said carelessly, and lit a cigarette. I flicked ashes in the general direction of the ashtray on Henderson's desk. Some of them made it.

"A vacation?" he echoed, eyes widening. Henderson was a company man, a real company man. A vacation for him was purgatory, it was separation from a loved one. "I don't believe you have a vacation coming," he said frostily, "for at least six months."

"That's what you think, Henny," I said.

All he could do at that was blink.

I went on, enjoying myself hugely. "I don't like this company," I said. "And I don't like this job. And I don't like you. And from now on, I've decided, it's going to be vacation all the time."

"Ged," he said, his voice faint, "what's the matter with you? Don't you feel well?"

"I feel well," I told him. "I feel fine. Now, I'll tell you why I spent an extra ten days at Atronics City. McCann made and registered the big strike, right?"

Henderson nodded blankly, apparently not trusting himself to speak.

"Wrong," I said cheerfully. "McCann went to Chemisant City and filled out all the forms required for registering a claim. But every place he was supposed to sign his name he wrote Ab Karpin instead. Jafe McCann never did make a legal registration of his claim."

Henderson just looked fish-eyed.

"So," I went on, "as soon as I turned McCann over to the law at Atronics City, I went and registered that claim myself. And then I waited around for ten days until the company finished the paperwork involved in buying that claim from me. And then I came straight back here, just to say goodbye to you. Wasn't that nice?"

He didn't move.

"Goodbye," I said.

THE “STARSHIP HOPE” STORIES

About the Stories

In 1981, I have no idea why, I started a series of oddball science fiction short stories; I mean, every once in a while those people warped through my brain again, until, by 1988, I'd done 5 of them. Then I stopped, and again I have no idea why; they'd been fun to write. All 5 were published in Playboy. When I sent in the first one, Alice Turner, the wonderful fiction editor there - one of the best, recently no longer there, which is Playboy's loss - said she'd buy the story if I would send her, in a plain wrapper, whatever I'd been smoking or ingesting while writing it.

Herewith, "Don't You Know There's A War On?" the first of the starship Hopeful stories.

“The World’s a Stage”, the fourth of the Starship Hopeful stories, was written in October of 1982, and published in Playboy in July, 1984. By this point, I knew I had a series, and I pretty much knew how it worked. The misfit crew of the Starship Hopeful would visit a new planet in every story, where the ‘civilization’ they’d find would be a distillation of one aspect of human life. Gambling in the first story, war in the second, religion the third, and now – tara-tara! – the-thee-ay-tah!

Enjoy.

Donald E. Westlake

DON’T YOU KNOW…

THERE’S A WAR GOING ON?

__________________________

From the beginning of Time, Man has been on the move, ever outward. First he spread over his own planet, then cross the Solar System, then outward to the Galaxies, all of them dotted, speckled, measled with the colonies of Man.

Then, one day in the year eleven thousand four hundred and six (11,406), an incredible discovery was made in the Master Imperial Computer back on Earth. Nearly 500 years before, a clerical error had erased from the computer's memory more than 1000 colonies, all in Sector F.U.B.A.R.3.

For half a millennium, those colonies, young and struggling when last heard from, had had no contact with the rest of Humanity. The Galactic Patrol Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Captain Gregory Standforth commanding, was at once dispatched to reestablish contact with the Thousand Lost Colonies and return them to the bosom of Mankind.

The two armies were massed in terrible array, banners flying, the hosts facing each other across the verdant valley. The tents of the generals were magnificently bedecked, pennons whipping in the breeze. Down below, clergymen in white and black blessed the day and the pounded grass and the generals and the banners and the archers and the horses and those who sweep up behind the horses. Filled with a good breakfast, the soldiers on the slopes stood comfortably, happy to be a part of this historic moment, while the supreme commanders of both forces marched with their aides and their scribes down through their respective armies and out across the green sweep of neutral territory toward the table and the altar set up in the very center of the valley under a yellow flag of truce.

This was the first time these two supreme commanders had met, and they studied each other with a pardonable curiosity while the various aides exchanged documents and provided signatures. Is he fiercer-looking than me? the supreme commanders wondered as they eyed each other. Is his jaw firmer and leaner? Do his eyes flash more coldly and cruelly? Is his backbone more ramrod-stiff?

The ministers sprinkled holy water over the papers. The supreme commanders firmly shook hands - very firmly shook hands - and a great cheer went up from the multitudes on the slopes. The ceremony was complete. The name had been changed. The 300 Years' War was now officially the 400 Years' War.

"Look out!" someone shouted.

Soldiers gaped. Horses neighed and pawed the ground. Clergy and aides fled with cassocks and tunics flapping, Supreme commanders took to their heels and the great long silver bullet of the spaceship settled slowly, delicately, almost lazily into the very center of the valley, the massive base of the thing gently mashing the main altar into a dinner mat.

"Remember, Councilman," Ensign Kybee Benson said, pacing the councilman's cabin, "these are intelligent and subtle people, the descendants of philosophers."

"Hardly a problem," Councilman Morton Luthguster responded. "I'm something of a philosopher myself."

Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster meshed imperfectly. Ensign Benson was almost painfully aware that the reason the councilman had been chosen to represent the Galactic Council on this endless, trivial, boring mission to the universal boondocks was simply that nobody at the Galactic Council could stand the man's porposities anymore. Luthguster didn't realize that; nor did he realize that it was Ensign Benson's sharp-nosed personality that had won him a berth on the Hopeful (neither did Ensign Benson); but he'd certainly noticed that all his conversations with Ensign Benson left him with the sense that his fur had been rubbed the wrong way.

Ensign Benson's face now wore the expression of a man eating a lemon. "Councilman, would you like to know which particular philosophy these philosophers philosophized about?"

"You're the social engineer," Luthguster pointed out, getting a bit prickly himself. "It's your job to background me on these colonies."

"Dualists," Ensign Benson said. "They were dualists."

"You mean they fought each other.

Lieutenant Billy Shelby, the Hopeful's young second in command, knocked on the open door and entered the cabin, saying, "Sir, the ship has landed."

"Just a second, Billy." Taking a deep breath, displaying his patience, Ensign Benson said, "Not duelists, Councilman, dualists. They believed in the philosophy of dualism. Simply stated, the idea that there are two sides to every story."

"At the very least," Luthguster said. "Back in the Galactic Coun-"

"Gemini," Ensign Benson interrupted. "That's what they named their colony, after the twins of the zodiac. They'd originally considered Janus, after the two-faced god, but that suggested a duplicity they didn't intend. Discussion and debate; that's the core of their approach to life."

"A civilized and cultured people, obviously." Luthguster preened himself, patting his big round belly. "We shall get along famously."

"No doubt," Ensign Benson said. "Shall we begin?"

They followed Billy Shelby down to the main hatch, where the ladder had already been extruded, but the door was not yet open. Waiting beside' it was Captain Standforth, tall and thin and vague, his stun gun ready in his hand. Pointing to the weapon, Luthguster said, "We won't be needing that, Captain. These are peaceful scholars."

"I thought I might shoot some birds," said the captain. "For stuffing." Bird taxidermy was the only thing in life the captain really cared about. Seven generations of Standforths had, unfortunately, made such magnificent careers in the Galactic Patrol that this Standforth had had no choice but to sign up when he'd attained the proper age, but the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, which everybody now knew - and which was why he had been assigned to the Hopeful.

"Shoot birds later," Luthguster said, somewhat stiffly. "Let us begin peacably. Open the door, Billy."

Billy pushed the button, the door opened and Luthguster stepped out onto the platform at the head of the ladder. 'Fellow thinkers," he cried out and fell back into the ship with seven arrows stuck in him.

"Rotten aim," Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw said, wiping her hands on a greasy rag, then dropping it onto the cluster of pulled arrows. "You'll live."

"At least you could sound happier about it," Luthguster told her. Lying here on the engine-room table, he was so enswathed in bandages that he looked like a gift-wrapped beach ball.

"It's mostly all that blubber protected you," Hester said unsympathetically. "You're a very inefficient design."

"Well, thank you very much."

There was no doctor on the Hopeful, there being room for only five crew members and the councilman. Hester Henshaw, 40ish, blunt of feature and speech and hand and mind, had taken a few first-aid courses before departure, with the attitude that the human body was merely a messier-than-usual kind of machine and that most of its ills could be repaired with a few turns of a screwdriver or taps of a hammer. (Pliers had been useful in the current case, plucking the arrows out of the councilman.) Hester never gave her engines sympathy while banging away at them, so why should she give sympathy to Luthguster? "I'll give you some coffee," she offered grudgingly.

Luthguster knew Hester's coffee from hearsay. "No, thank you!"

"Don't worry, you won't leak. I plugged all the holes."

Luthguster closed his eyes. A moan leaked out.

Lieutenant Billy Shelby, handsome, romantic, idealistic, bright as a bowling ball, clutched the microphone in his left hand, white flag in his right, and said, "Ready, sir."

The captain hesitated. "Are you sure, Billy?"

"He already volunteered, Captain," Ensign Benson pointed out. "Obviously we have to make contact with the Geminoids somehow."

"I'm sure, Captain," Billy said.

So the captain pushed the button, the door opened and Billy marched out onto the platform with the white flag high and the loud-speaker microphone to his mouth: "People of-" his voice boomed out over the valley, and a cannon ball ripped through the white flag to carom off the silver hull.

Billy gaped at the hole in the flag. "Gee whizz," his amplified voice told the sunny day. "Don't you guys believe in a flag of truce?"

"That ain't no flag of truce!" a voice yelled from upslope. "It's white!"

"Well, what color do you want?"

"Yellow! The color of cowards!"

"Wait right there," Billy told the two encircling armies and went back into the ship. Carom! went a cannon ball in farewell.

"After dark," Supreme Commander Krraich said, "we'll deploy a patrol to sneak up on the thing and set fire to it."

"I suspect, sir," said an aide carefully (Krraich was known to dislike correction), "the thing is made of metal."

Krraich glowered. Sneaking up on things and setting fire to them was one of his favorite sports. "It's a fort, isn't it?" he demanded. "Could be just shiny paint."

"Sir, uh, cannon balls bounce off."

"Doesn't mean it's metal. Could be rubber."

"Rubber won't burn, sir."

Krraich turned his gaze full upon this pestiferous aide, whose name was Major Invercairnochinchlie. In the bloodshot eye of his mind, Krraich watched Major Invercairnochinchlie burn to the ground - kilt, sporran, gnarled pipe, tam and all. "What do you suggest, Major?"

Invercairnochinchlie swallowed. "Acid, sir?"

The other aides, also in formal officers' kilts, all snickered and shifted their feet, like a corralful of miniskirted horses; aides liked to see other aides in trouble. But then, Krraich's least favorite and most intelligent aide (the two facts were not unconnected), a colonel named Alderpee, said, "Sir, if I may make a suggestion?"

"You always do," Krraich said, irritated because the suggestions were usually good.

"That thing out there is a fort," Aldepee said. "A traveling fort. Think how we could use such a thing."

Krrairh had no imagination. "Your suggestion?"

"They're about to send out a party under a flag of truce. We kidnap that party, apply torture and learn how to invade the fort. Then we take it over."

Krraich was appalled and showed it. "Violate a yellow flag of truce?"

"Those people aren't a part of our war," Alderpee pointed out. "They're innocent bystanders. The rules of battle don't apply."

"Ah,"

"And if we don't do it," Alderpee added, "the Anti-bens will."

"How do you do? I'm Lieutenant Billy Shelby of the Interstel - Mmf!"

"There!" Colonel Alderpee cried. "I told you the Anti-bens would do it"

The chaplain, in his black dress uniform, sprinkled holy water over Billy, who sneezed. "Gesundheit," said the chaplain.

"Thank you."

"I am the Right Reverend Beowulf' Hengethorg," the chaplain explained. "I am here to ready you for torture."

"Torture?" Billy gaped around at all the big, mean-looking, bulgy-armed men lining the periphery of the large, torchlit tent. "Gee whizz," he said, "we're here to be friendly. We came all the way from Earth just to-"

"Earth?" Wide-eyed, Reverend Hengethorg leaned close. "You wouldn't lie to a reverend, would you?"

"Oh, no, sir You see, you were lost, and-"

"And on Earth," the chaplain said, voice tensely trembling, "do they believe in Robert Benchley?"

"I'm the only possible volunteer. The councilman is wounded, Hester keeps the engines going, Pam Stokes astrogates and you understand the mission. I'm not necessary at all."

"Well, Captain," Ensign Benson said as they strode doorward together, "I have to admit you're right. All captains are unnecessary; you're one of the rare ones who know it."

"So I'll try to make peace with the other army," the captain went on, "and ask them to help us rescue Billy."

"And find out what's going on here."

"Well, I'll certainly ask," the captain said.

They had reached the door, where firmly the captain pushed the button. "There's no point in carrying any flags," he said. "These people don't seem to respect any color." He stepped outside.

"Good luck, Captain."

The captain looked back over his shoulder. "Did you say some-" He dropped from sight. Thump crumple bunkle bong kabingbing thud.

Ensign Benson leaned out. to gaze down at the captain, all in a heap at the foot of the stairs. "I said, good luck."

"Another one!" cried Colonel Alderpee. "Men, get that one or we'll be using your heads for cannon balls!"

"The ultimate proof" the Right Reverend Hengethorg was saying. "This fine young chap here has never even heard of Robert Benchicy, much less read his work."

Proud of his ignorance, Billy smiled in modest self-satisfaction at Supreme Commander Mangle. "That's right, sir. What I mostly read is The Adventures of Space Cadet Hooper and His Pals Fatso and Chang. They just have the most -"

Supreme Commander Mangle, a knife of a man - a tall, glinty-eyed, bony, angry knife of a man - growled deep in his throat; a distant early warning. Billy blinked and decided after all not to give the supreme commander a plot summary of Cadet Hooper and His Pals Go to Betelgeuse.

Mangle turned his laser eyes on Hengethorg. "Reverend," he said. His voice needed oiling. "Explain."

"The people of Earth are Anti-bens like us," the chaplain explained. "Must be! Not only does that prove the truth of our philosophy but we can ally ourselves with Earth and destroy the Bens, forever!"

Mangle brooded. Apparently, he was considering the advantages and disadvantages of allying himself with people like Billy Shelby, because when next he asked, "Are there any more at home like you?"

"So you're from Earth," Colonel Alderpee said.

Yes, I am," Captain Standforth told him. "I'm terribly sorry, but would you mind scratching my nose? Just the very tip." The captain had been tied with a lot of rope immediately upon arriving in this army's camp, so now his fingers (and their nails) were imprisoned behind him.

Colonel Alderpee at first looked confused, then seemed on the verge of scratching the captain's nose, then obviously bethought himself and snapped to several nearby soldiers, "Untie this man, I believe there are enough of us quell him if necessary."

"Oh, I won't need quelling," the captain promised. "Just scratching."

So the ropes were removed and the captain indulged in a good scratch while Colonel Alderpee went off to consult with Supreme Commander Krraich and a couple of chaplains in a far corner of the tent. Returning a minute later looking as though his own nose were now a bit out of joint, he said, "Well, Captain Standforth, I wouldn't do it this way - I think it's a waste of time - but before we get to the subject of our conversation, I am required to ask, you, an absolute alien, your position on the Benchley Paradox. So listen carefully."

The captain listened, idly scratching his nose (now more for fun than for need).

"There are two kinds of people in the world," Colonel Alderpee began.

"This world?" the captain asked. "Or Earth?"

"Any world! This is the Benchley Paradox; now, listen."

"I do beg your pardon."

"There are two kinds of people in the world," the colonel repeated. "They are, Robert Benchley claimed, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't believe there are two kinds of people in the world. Now. Do you agree with that?"

"Absolutely," the captain said. "Seems perfectly clear to me."

Ensign Benson did not entirely believe it. Billy and the captain were both back, and each had made a tentative alliance with the locals - with different sets of locals. Upon their return, Ensign Benson had brought them both up to the command, deck and, while the wounded councilman and Hester and even the usually distracted Pam had all sat around listening, he had questioned both ex-prisoners. Their stories had dovetailed so thoroughly that Ensign Benson really had no choice but to accept the reality. "They are fighting," he said at last, "over Robert Benchley,"

"A philosopher, I guess," Billy said, scratching his head.

"Very important, anyway," the captain added, scratching his nose.

"A smart-aleck, to judge from his paradox," Ensign Benson said. "Perhaps even, a deliberate humorist,"

"Dangerous people, humorists," Luthguster opined. "They should not be taken lightly."

All around, the captain's stuffed birds glared down from their perches, unwinking glass eyes peering from among feathers and beaks and claws of every color in the rainbow and a few colors outside the known rainbow of Earth. "All right," Ensign Benson said. "I begin to see what happened. One of those original philosopher settlers, with that heavy-handed light touch professors love so well, introduced the Benchley Paradox, in which you prove Benchley right by disagreeing with him. Because if everybody agreed with the paradox, then there'd be only one kind of person in the world, and the paradox would be wrong. Are any of you pinbrains getting this?"

"Certainly," said Luthguster, while the captain and Billy and Hester shook their heads and Pam doggedly worked her slide rule. The stuffed birds gaped down as though the very thought of the Benchley Paradox made them furious.

"The Gemini philosophers," Ensign Benson went on, "had found a topic without the usual comforting weight of precedent behind it. Rather than cite old texts at one another, they were forced to think for themselves. Unable to appeal to prior authority, they couldn't end the quarrel at all. Each succeeding generation became more rigid and less scholarly, until, by now---"

"Total war," Luthguster finished, demonstrating his grasp of the situation.

"They sure don't like each other much," Billy agreed. "Boy, what they said about the Bens."

"The Bens said some things, too," the captain said, as though he felt it his job to defend his side in the war. "About the Anti-bens, I mean."

Ensign Benson cleared his throat in a hostile manner. When every person and bird in the room was looking at him, he said, "All right. The first question is, What do they want from us?"

"An alliance," Billy said. "To help them destroy the Bens,"

"Well, no," the captain said. "Actually, they want an alliance to help them destroy the Anti-bens."

Luthguster sighed, his wounds creaking. "Dealing with one colony at a time is trouble enough," he said. "When they begin to multiply ---"

"Divide," corrected Ensign Benson. "We're dealing here with mitosis, not sexual reproduction."

"Mitosis," Pam said, looking bright. "I know what that is."

"You would," Ensign Benson told her. "All right, let's concentrate on the problem at hand. Obviously, Earth can't send technical assistance or start trade programs while this war is going on, so our first job is to bring peace. Any suggestions?"

"Once my wounds heal," Councilman Luthguster said, "I shall engage in shuttle diplomacy. I'll speak with the political leaders, deliver their demands, conduct negotiations, and, eventually, I'll find the happy middle ground where the language is vague enough so each side can believe it has won. Yes." The councilman gazed radiantly at some wonderful image of himself in the middle distance. " "The Luthguster Peace," he quoted from some future history text.

"In the first place," Ensign Benson said, "there are no political leaders on Gemini. From what Billy and the captain say, the society has been taken over entirely by the two groups of military commanders, with the assistance of the religious establishment. In the second place, this isn't a war of territory or trade routes or anything else rational that can be negotiated. A war of philosophical difference is something else again. And in the third place, Councilman, I've seen you in action with local citizens before, and I don't want to unite the bloodthirsty factions on Gemini by making them form an alliance against Earth."

"Well, really," Luthguster said, indignantly scratching his wounds.

"If you want a thing done right," Ensign Benson said in disgust, "you have to do it yourself. Unfortunately."

"The Right Reverend Beowulf Hengethorg," Billy said, on his best behavior, "I'd like you to meet Ensign Kybee Benson, social engineer of the Interstellar Ship Hopeful."

"Ensign," echoed Reverend Hengethorg, as he grasped Ensign Benson's outstretched hand in a grip of steel. "Is that a clerical rank, or military?"

"Somewhere between the two," Ensign Benson said through clenched teeth; it was the first time since elementary school that he'd tried to out-squeeze another person in a handshake.

They were standing in the sunlight outside the large command tent while dozens of men armed with arrows and broadswords and maces and battle-axes and clubs and knives and metal-toed shoes sat around their several other tents, watching the two Earthlings with the flat expressions of carnivores looking at meat.

Ensign Benson had understood it was his job to visit both encampments, being introduced first to the Anti-bens by Billy and later to the Bens by the captain in his own effort at shuttle diplomacy - or shuttle philosophy. Now, feeling all those martial eyes on him, he reminded himself that this was, after all, the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances; pity he'd been smart enough to know it.

"It was a great moment for us all," Reverend Hengethorg was saying, as he at last released Ensign Benson's hand with a little superior smile, "when Lieutenant Shelby confirmed what we have for so long believed: that Earth is firmly Antiben. I may say I took it as a personal vindication."

"Actually," Ensign Benson said, massaging his fingers and speaking with caution, "Earth's philosophical position anent the Benchley Paradox is somewhat more sophisticated than that.

Essentially, I would say Earth's position encompasses elements of both the Ben and the Antiben points of view."

Reverend Hengethorg's frown had something of the Inquisition in it. "Both points of view? How can a position encompass absolute contradictions?"

"Well, we don't see the Bens and the Anti-bens as being absolutely contradictory," Ensign Benson explained.

"They are on Gemini," the reverend said. "But you must come with me to the chaplains' tent and explain Earth's position to the reverend fathers."

"I'd like that."

With the smiling, unconscious Billy trailing after, they walked together toward the chaplains' tent, safely placed on the far side of the slope, and Ensign Benson said, "This is quite a large encampment. How many of your people are here?"

"Why, all of us," Reverend Hengethorg said in some surprise. "Except for a few spies in the Bens' camp, of course. Where else would we be?"

"Don't you have a town? Forts?"

"I don't know what you mean by town," the reverend said. "We have had forts, but they were vulnerable to fire and siege and difficult to move, unlike that fort of yours, which we all admire very much."

"So the women are right here with the army."

"The women are in the army. We are all in the army."

"Children?"

"Military school, just over there," the reverend said, pointing toward a nearby copse from which came the shrieks of childish savagery.

"What about farms? Food?"

"We have our herds. We hunt and we pick fruits and so on in season."

They walked past a smithy, where metal bits for harnesses were being hammered into shape. "How many of you are there?" Ensign Benson asked.

"That's a military secret,"

"More than five hundred, I'd guess," Ensign Benson said, looking around. "Fewer than a thousand."

"If you say so." The reverend clearly didn't like having his military secret guessed at so easily and accurately.

"But as the population grows…"

"Why should it grow?" Gesturing around them, the reverend said, "We and the Bens have had stable populations for four hundred years."

Ensign Benson nodded. "Birth control?"

The reverend shook his head. "War," he said.

They had reached the chaplains' tent. "My colleagues will be delighted to meet with you," the reverend said. "There's nothing we all like more than lively philosophical debate."

"That's fine."

"Of course," the reverend went on, "the liveliest philosophical debates take place under torture. But there's no question of that here," he said, holding open the tent flap, smiling wistfully to show how bravely he was taking the deprivation, "is there - Earth being our ally against the Bens."

"Indeed," Ensign Benson said and followed Reverend Hengethorg into the tent.

"Captain," Pam said, tapping her finger tips against the frame of the cabin's open door,

Captain Standforth looked up. A knife was in his right hand, a palmful of desiccated guts in his left, and a pitiful lump of orange feathers lay before him on the desk, oozing green blood. "Yes, Pam? I'm very busy. I must finish stuffing this Nibelungen nuthatch before it dries out."

"There's someone here," Pam told him. '"'To see you. A man named Colonel Alderpee."

"Oh, yes," the captlain said, rising, wiping green phlug from his hands onto his uniform jacket. "I told him he could drop by. He was very interested in the ship."

"He certainly is," said Pam.

He certainly was. The captain and Pam met him in a corridor well within the ship, one level above the entry port. Colonel Alderpee, looking very happy, was accompanied by a small, skinny scribe who earnestly scribbled notes to the colonel's directives: "Granaries along here, I think. Horse stalls below; we'll need straw. Oh, and moat detail to report at fifteen hundred hours."

Seeing the captain and Pam, Colonel Alderpee said, "Ah, Captain, delighted! It's a different fort from anything I've seen before, but very adaptable."

"Colonel, what are you" --- the captain began, then stopped with a squawk when he saw, ambling around the far corner of (the corridor, a purple cow, closely followed by a yellow-and-white polka-dotted dog. "What --- What's that?"

"Eh? Oh, the herd," the colonel answered.

And it was. It was the herd and the herders and the herders' dogs and the herders' wives and children. And the army, with banners, marching to the squeal of bagpipes. And the clergy, with collection baskets, and the cooks and the smithies and the leatherworkers and the teachers and the glee club and the magicians and the stortellers and the horses and the hay and the forges and the whips and the thumbscrews and the tents (folded) and the extra arrow feathers and the cooking pots and the bits of string that might be useful someday and the unfinished wooden statues of horses and the supreme commander, Krraich, who shook the captain's hand very hard and said, "I shall take command now."

"Oh, my goodness," the captain said to Pam. "We've got the Bens!"

Ensign Benson sat on a low stool in the chaplains' tent, in the midst of the reverend fathers, both hearing them and asking them questions. And what he'd already heard had not been at all encouraging. He'd entered this den of iniquity intending by easy stages to lead the Anti-bens around to a more open point of view, but he'd soon seen it was hopeless. Never in his life had he met so many firmly closed minds.

Every approach he'd made to broaden the Benchley Paradox had brought angry frowns and mutterings of Heresy. Ensign Benson could imagine - far too well - what happened to heretics on Gemini, so by now he was simply vamping along, trying to figure out some way to get out of there alive. "if we accept the Runyon Postulate," he was saying, "that all of life is six to five against, as glossed by Sturgeon's Second Law, that ninety percent of everything is crud, we can then see that Benchley's Paradox merely acknowledges that there will at all times be unenlightened people who--"

Were they mumbling "Heresy" again, for God's sake? Was the word blasphemy being bandied about? "What I'm trying to say---" Ensign Benson began again, wondering what he was trying to say, and Billy came into the tent, crying,. "Ensign Benson! Come look!"

"Look?"

"The ship!"

More trouble? "Excuse me," Ensign Benson told the chaplains. "I must be about my captain's business." And he marched right on out of the chaplains' tent.

To see, down in the center of the valley, the Hopeful filling up with Bens. "Oh, now what?" Ensign Benson cried, at the end of his tether.

"You," said a knife-thin, harsh-faced resplendently uniformed man pointing a bony finger at Ensign Benson, "shall pay for this treachery."

"Supreme Commander Mangle," Billy said, with his party manners again, "may I present Ensign Kybee Benson."

"Hello," the supreme commander said. "You die now."

"Wait a minute! I had nothing to do with that," Ensign Benson said, pointing at the spaceship. Some clowns down there had started digging a moat. "I'll take care of it right now."

Mangle's thin lips curled. "You expert us to permit you to return to your Fort?"

Ensign Benson looked at Billy, Who sighed but managed a brave little smile. "I know," he said. "This is where I volunteer to stay as a hostage."

"I don't care who you are," Hester said. "You can't start a lot of fires in my engine room."

"I'm the smithy," the burly man explained, stacking his firebricks near the reactor, "and the sergeant says this is where I set up."

"Well, you can tell your ser ---"

Ensign Benson entered the engine room. "Hester."

"Would you tell this--"

"Ssh! Come here!"

So Hester went there, and Ensign Benson said, "Forget him. Start the engines. Don't worry about a thing."

"Billy will be worried," Pam said.

"Billy will be all right," Ensign Benson told her. "We'll all be all right. You just plot the course. As for you, Captain, surely you know how to drive this thing."

Pam and Ensign Benson and the captain were together on the command deck with a lot of squalling babies; Colonel Alderpee had decreed this space was the nursery. Councilman Luthguster was off making a courtesy call on Supreme Commander Krraich.

"Well," said the captain doubtfully, "I have driven it, but that was a long time ago."

"Just take her up," Ensign Benson said, "and head southeast. Right, Pam?"

"Mm," Pam said, lost, in her slide rule.

"Build boats," Supreme Commander, Mangle said. "Tonight, we cross that moat."

"Sir," said an aide, coming into the tent, "the fort is leaving."

They all went outside. The fort was gone. The moat remained, a ring of muddy water around a crushed altar.

"Sir? Do you still want the boats?"

"Kill that idiot," Mangle said. "And bring me the hostage Earthling."

Ensign Benson went to the commander's tent (a.k.a. dining room) to explain the situation to a suspicious Colonel Alderpee and a glowering Supreme Commander Krraich. "The fort," the colonel Pointed out, "is moving."

"Plague," Ensign Benson said. They stared at him. They recoiled from each other. "Plague! Where?"

"Back where we came from. The ship's instruments showed there was a breakout just due. Congratulations, gentlemen," Ensign Benson continued, "you have at last won your war. Within a week, there won't he a living Antiben on Gemini."

Southeast across the surface of the planet ran the Hopeful, guided by Pam's slide rule and steered erratically by Captain Standforth, who had to keep picking babies out of the controls. Diagonally ran the ship, down frorn the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern, around from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western. Exactly opposite the original encampment, in similar climate and terrain, where they would be easy for Earth's supply ships to find but where they would never again meet their enemies, the Hopeful set down and unloaded the Bens. "You've done a fine thing for Robert Benchley," Colonel Alderpee said as the Bens and their beasts, their tents and their babies all deshipped.

"It was the least we could do," Ensign Benson assured him. "After all, you had reached a stalemate in what was clearly a war of total extermination. Something had to be done."

"Peace, it's wonderful," the colonel said, then frowned. "At least, I've heard it is."

Councilman Luthguster made a speech promising wonders in aid and technical assistance to come from Earth. Some archers playfully lofted arrows in his direction, but they were only fooling, and the one flesh wound that resulted was easily patched by Hester with a snippet of stick-on plaster, meant for stemming leaks in boilers.

"I was beginning to rather like all those babies," Captain Standforth said, a faraway look in his eye. "I wonder how you ... Hmmmm." He went away, to study his taxidermy books.

"Plague," Ensign Benson said, as Billy was untied from the rack. "You'll never see a living Ben on Gemini again."

And you took them away," Reverend Hengethorg said "so they couldn't infect us."

"That's right."

"You've done wonders,"

"I know," Ensign Benson said.

Billy came over, massaging his chafed wrists. He looked taller. "Gosh, Kybee," he said.

"Well, ta-ta," Ensign Benson told the Anti-bens. "You'll be hearing from Earth. Our job here is finished now."

"Sir," an aide said to Colonel Alderpee, "there's a dispute among the men."

The colonel gazed over the new encampment, the tents still being raised, the thud-thud of posts being driven into the virgin ground. "Dispute? Over what?" "Well, some of the men say those people in the fort were from Earth, and some say they weren't."

"Really? Call a meeting. We're mature adults; we'll discuss it."

INTERSTELLAR PIGEON

______________________

Why me?

Watching Captain Gregory Standforth sit at his desk and -- stuff yet another bird -- this one a blue-beaked yellow-backed Latter Sneezer from Degeb IV -- Why me? wondered Ensign Kybee Benson, not for the first time. What flaw is there in me that I don't suspect? Why did they choose ME?

There was no question why the Galactic Council had chosen Captain Standforth to lead this one-way trip into obscurity. Just look at him now: a tall, skinny, mild-eyed fellow with his nose and fingers jammed up that dead bird's ass, tamping the excelsior in real tight. "Got to get it in real tight," the captain said, "or the wings'll sag." Why me? thought Ensign Benson. I'm no misfit.

Captain Standforth was, and would be the first to admit it. Were it not for the seven generations of glorious Standforth's preceding him in the Galactic Patrol, he never would have joined up, nor would they have taken him. Taxidermy was the only thing he really cared about, which was why strange stuffed birds from all over the known Universe pervaded the Hopeful like an eighth plague. Everywhere you looked, plastic eyes looked back, surrounded by feathers.

"Captain," Ensign Benson said, "we really should talk about Casino."

"In a moment."

Ensign Benson, a social engineer, an expert in comparative societies, the man whose job it was to define each of the lost colonies once it was found, to study it and describe what it had become in its 500 years of solitude, brimmed to overflowing with facts about Casino, the first colony they were to visit. The name itself, Casino, had been a brave, irony; the colonists had been a group of compulsive gamblers, who had joined to flee the temptations of society. What had they become in the past 500 years? "Captain-"

"This is the most delicate moment, Ensign Benson." The captain inserted a glittering green eye; balefully, one-eyed, the Latter Sneezer glared at Ensign Benson.

Why me?

"There's a spaceship coming!"

"Six to five it crashes."

Astrogator Pam Stokes, beautiful, brainy and blind to passion, entered the captain's office to find the captain stuffing yet another bird and Ensign Benson 'hopping tip and down on a nearby chair, rather birdlike himself. "Captain," Pam said, "we're about to land, sir."

The captain looked up, startled, the one-eyed bird impaled on his right hand. "Land! Why?"

"Because we're here, sir."

"Here?" The captain looked at the bird, which looked back.

"Casino, Captain," Ensign Benson said. "I've been trying to tell you."

Pam nodded. "That's right, sir. Fourth planet of the star Niobe." Whipping out her ever-present slide rule, she said, "Fifteen sixteenths Earth's size, one point oh oh seven six Earth's density, fifteen point one six--"

Rising, the captain said, "Yes, yes, yes, Astrogator, thank you very much."

"Just trying to keep you informed, sir. I may say, as astrogator, I had quite some time finding this spot. Celestial drift, you know."

The captain, removing the bird from his fingers and edging toward the door, said, "Is that right?"

Absorbed in her slide rule, Pam said, "Given a mean deviation of point oh seven five--"

"I'll just go supervise the landing," the captain said and left with the bird.

"Alter for nebular attraction," Pam mumbled, working the math, "on a scale of--"

Ensign Benson was beside her now. Stroking her smooth, tanned forearm with the tiny golden hairs all along its rounded length, he said, "I know a couple of mean deviations myself."

"Oh, hello, Kybee," she said, gave him a distracted smile and went away to think about the math.

On a grassy field not far from town, the spaceship landed, light as a feather (automatic pilot). A dozen citizens of Casino approached the great gleaming sausage and watched in admiration as an oval door in its side slid away to permit a ladder slowly to descend. Down that ladder, smiling heroically in the sunlight, resplendent in his Galactic Patrol uniform, came Lieutenant Billy Shelby, Hopeful's handsome, idealistic second in command. Pausing two steps from the bottom, he raised his hand like a Roman centurion and cried, "Hail, Casinomen! We come in peace!"

A citizen approached. "Seven to two," he said, "you don't know what day it is."

Billy's smile went lopsided. He said, "What?"

"Do we have a bet, stranger?"

Billy shook his head. When things confused him -- as they frequently did -- he just went on doing what he was supposed to do. "I'm here to find out if you're warlike," he explained.

The citizen frowned. "What's 'warlike'?"

"It's OK, Captain," Billy called.

The captain appeared, birdless, looked at the far horizon and fell down the stairs. Billy helped him pick himself up as Ensign Benson also emerged from the ship, accompanying stout Galactic Councilman Morton Luthguster, who came massively down the ladder as though down a grand staircase to his coronation.

"So this is Casino," the captain said, dusting himself off, looking around at a tree-studded landscape that looked much like northern Wisconsin in late September.

The citizen sidled up to him. "Seven to two you don't know what day it is."

The captain looked at his watch. "It's ten minutes to six in the morning. Greenwich time, on Earth."

"What day it is."

With another look at his watch, the captain said, "August seventh, eleven thousand, four hundred and six."

Of the citizen's patience, not much was left. "Not the date," he said. "the day."

"The day?" The captain shook his head. "Where?"

"Here!"

"Back on Earth, it's Tuesday. Unless my watch stopped."

Councilman Luthguster, having reached the second step from the bottom, now spread his arms wide and declaimed, "Welcome, Casinomen! Welcome to the bosom of Mother Earth! I am Councilman Morton Luthguster; I am here among you to represent the Supreme Galactic Council, and I have full treaty-making powers."

A citizen standing beside the ladder said, "Guess your weight."

Luthguster looked down askance: "I beg your pardon."

The citizen said. "Ten lukes says I can guess your weight within five-kilograms."

"I would prefer if you didn't," Luthguster told him. Looking around himself, realizing there was no one responsible here, that these were all layabouts and scalawags, he said, "Take me to your leader."

It was a normal day in the main plaza of downtown Casino. At benches and tables and grassy patches on the plaza itself -- a large round area rather like a roulette wheel -- pairs and small groups contested together, using various kinds of dice, cards, paddles, marbles, game boards, magnets and lengths of string. Some needed no equipment at all: "Bet you two lukes that cloud passes the hill before that cloud." Next to three employment buses, potential fruit pickers, meat packers or assembly-line button pushers played 14-card monte against the employment agents; the winners took their ten Iukes' wages and went elsewhere, while the losers climbed, muttering, aboard the buses, resigned to a six-hour workday for no pay. Through the crowd passed a ragged beggar, limping, rattling something in a tin cup and whining, "Gimme a break, will ya? Gimme a break."

A prosperous-looking citizen counting out a recent handful of winning's turned toward the beggar his self-confident eye: "What's your proposition?"

The beggar rattled his cup. "Dice. High number. Two lukes -against a kick in the shin."

"You're on."

As they bent over the cup, the Earthmen arrived in the plaza, escorted by several of the citizens who had watched thern land, one of whom pointed across the plaza at a large white wooden structure that looked rather like an old Mississippi riverboat. "That's the chief tout's mansion there."

"Ah," Luthguster said, nodding his pompous head. "The man I must see. Captain Standforth, you and your men wait here. We don't want to startle the head of government with a show of force."

"Yes, sir."

Luthguster waddled off with several citizens toward the chief tout's mansion. Billy Shelby and Ensign Benson gazed around at the citizenry, many of whom gazed back in a rather predatory fashion. Captain Standforth, head back, mouth open, gaped skyward in an abstracted fashion, till all it once he whipped out his stun gun and fired into the air.

All around the plaza, losers ducked for cover while winners crouched protectively over game boards, card layouts and die tosses. A large, big-bellied bird, with a pink tuft on top of its orange head and a lot of bright scarlet feathers on its behind, fell out of the sky and landed dead at the captain's feet. Admiringly, the captain picked it up by one green claw, while its fleas hurriedly packed their bags, left a note for the milkman and went leaping away. "Wonderful specimen," the captain said, turning his prize this way and that. "Never seen anything like it."

A cautious citizen approached, saying, "What did you do?"

"Taxidermy is my passion," the captain explained. "I stuff birds."

Where do you stuff them?"

"In the ship."

The beggar, limping worse than ever, approached the captain, rattling his tin cup. "Gimme a break, sir," he whined. "Gimme a break, will ya?"

The captain, embarrassed, took a coin from his pocket and dropped it into the cup. "Here you are, my good man." The beggar stared into his cup, dumfounded.

Billy Shelby said, "Shall I take the bird back to the ship. Captain?"

"Thank you, Lieutenant, thank you."

Off went Billy with the bird.

Another citizen, pointing after the bird, said, "Even money you can't do that again."

Scratching his wrist, the captain said, "Eh?"

"Even money's the best I can do," the citizen warned him.

The captain looked slowly around the plaza, at last registering the human activity here. "Are they," he said, pointing at one pair of dice players, "are they gambling?"

"They're all gambling," Ensign Benson assured him. "Fascinating, fascinating."

"My goodness," the captain said.

"They've turned their weakness into strength," Ensign Benson went on. "Their vice into virtue. Their swords into -- Well, no."

They strolled together over to a group playing cards around a cement table. "Pardon me," the captain said, "but is this a game of chance?"

"That depends," said one of the players.

"I rnean a gambling game."

Another player -- the prosperous citizen, in fact -- said, "It's a fine game, my friend, and very easy to learn. Care to

sit in?"

"No, no. I'll just watch."

"Then come sit by me," said the citizen, hospitable as a spider. "Name's Scanney. I'll explain it to you as we go."

In the chief tout's office, the chief tout himself, in appearance a cross between a distinguished politician and a sleazy gambler, sat at a desk playing a board game against himself. It looked something like Monopoly but was much more complex, being spread over several layers of boards, with ramps, elevators and slides. The chief tout held two dice cups. one in each hand, and played one hand against the other. It had been years since anyone -- not even Scanney -- would play against him.

He looked up from his left hand's predicament as his secretary -- that is, the loser in that day's steno pool -- came in to say, "Three to two you don't know what Earth is."

"Original Source of mankind," the chief tout immediately responded. '"They brought us here five hundred years ago, said they'd be right back, haven't been heard from since. Why?"

"'They're back," the disconsolate girl said, counting out three hard-won Iukes onto the chief tout's desk. "There's a fat one ontside."

"Send him in," the chief tout said, smiling from ear to ear and rubbing his competing hands together.

A moment later. the fat one himself was ushered in, accompanied by two wolfishly grinning citizens. They'd be demanding a finder's fee later on; the chief tout could tell just by looking at them.

Meanwhile, the fat one was in voice: "I am, Your Honor, proud to announce that I am Councilman Morton Luthguster, representative plenipotentiary from the Supreme Galactic Council, and it is my esteemed pleasure to welcome you back to the Confederation of Earth."

"Haven't heard from you people In quite a while," the chief tout said.

. "I am empowered," Luthguster said, puffing himself up, "to negotiate with you on several fronts. Mutual defense, for instance. Trade agreements, technical advisory personnel. Earth can do much for you now that you're back in the Confederation."

"Trade agreements, eh?" Gesturing toward the game board, the chief tout said, "That's what this game's all about, in a way. Familiar with it?"

Luthguster gave the board a suspicious look. "Uh, no," he said. "I don't believe so."

"Sit down here," the chief tout said making room for a chair beside himself. "I'll show you how it works."

"I'm going to take a stroll around town," Ensign Benson said. "You'll be all right here, Captain?"

The captain nodded in a distracted way; most of his attention was on his new friend Scanney's explanation of this fascinating card game. "I'm fine, Ensign Benson; you go ahead.

"Now, if you get two alike," Scanney was saying, "that's good. But three alike is even better."

Vaguely worried, Ensign Benson said, You won't play or anything, will you, Captain?"

"No, no, no, I'm just observing. Now, Mr. Scanney, what are those cards with the nooses?"

In the main corridor of the Hopeful. Billy Shelby passed Astrogator Pam Stokes, still too involved with her slide rule to notice either him or the bird he carried. He said, nevertheless, believing it good manners -- and good for morale -- to greet crew members when spotted. Unanswered, he went on to dump the dead bird in the captain's office, then to make a quick round of the interior, reassuring himself that everything was spaceshipshape. In the main engine room. He found Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw whamming away at a pipe with a hammer. The sound was awful. "Hester? Something the matter?"

"No," Hester said. "I'm just keeping my arm loose," Fortyish, stocky and blunt-featured, Hester was blunt in manner and personality and rather blunt in brain as well.

"Our very lives," Billy reminded her, "depend upon those engines."

"Is that right?" Hester hammered some more, flailing away.

Billy blinked at every bang. "Hester, is it serious?"

Hester put down her hammer and turned to frown at Billy. "You tell me," she said. Picking up a white plastic china coffee mug, she turned a spigot, filled the mug with black liquid and handed it to Billy. "Give that a taste."

Doubtful, Billy said, "Taste?"

"Go on, go on."

So Billy took a tiny sip, and his face wrinkled up like a cheap shirt. "Oogl" he said.

"You call that coffee?" Hester demanded.

"No! Is it supposed to be?"

"Yes, it's supposed to --" Struck with sudden doubt, Hester took back the mug and sniffed it, "No, you're right; that's crankcase oil. Wait a minute, now."

Turning away, Hester began following pipes with a pointing finger. Billy, making bad-mouth faces, headed for the door, but before he got there, Ensign Benson walked in, saying. "Bad news."

"Don't drink the coffee," Billy said.

"What? No, this is worse. 'The captain got into a game."

Hester looked away from her maze of pipes. "He what?"

"He lost the ship."

"Oh, Captain. my, Captain," Billy said. "Whatever made you do it?"

"I had a hunch," the Captain said. He looked dazed.

A citizen passing with an armchair on his head -- Scanney, the new owner, was moving into the Hopeful -- paused to say, "You should never draw to an inside quork."

The captain sat on his suitcase, far across the large field from his former ship. About him were his possessions, his birds and his crew: Lieutenant Billy Shelby, Ensign Kybee Benson, Astrogator Pam Stokes and Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw. "Oh my", the Captain said. "What will I tell Councilman Luthguster?"

Luthguster rolled the four dice, turned over a card, moved a tiny pyramid three spaces to the left and groaned with disgust. "I don't believe such dreadful luck!"

"Easy come, easy go." the chief tout told him cheerfully. "That's the motto on our money," Presenting a document made ready by his now-grinning secretary, he said, "Now, Councilman, if you'll just sign here and here and initial over here."

Shaking his head, Luthguster signed. The two hovering citizens smirked at each other. "They'll never understand this," Luthguster said sadly, "back at the council."

"Your luck's bound to change,". The chief tout assured him. "Next inning, we'll play for reciprocal tariff agreements. My move, I believe."

"Damn, Pam," Hester said, her personality not improved by eviction. "Where did you ever get a slide rule? Why don't you use a pocket computer, like everybody else?"

"It was my mother's mother's," Pam said, blinking as she looked up from the tool in question. And my mother's. And my mo---"

"How many generations back?"

"Sixteen."

Hester closed her eyes. "I withdraw the question."

"Rather than quibble among yourselves, like the clotheads you are," said Ensign Benson, who had no idea why his previous commanders had been discontented with his performance of duty, "why don't you turn your little brains to how we get rid of this mess?"

"l don't think you should talk to the gentler sex that way," said Billy, with many inaccuracies.

"Maybe Pam can find the answer in her slide rule," Hester said, glaring at Pam, who was sunk in contemplation of her heirloom.

Ensign Benson, about to speak harshly, paused to frown at Pam. "Hmmm," he said. "Pamela, dear?"

"Yes, Kybee?"

"You come along with me," Ensign Benson said.

A. bunch of the citizens were whooping it up in the plaza. "Did you ever," one of them said. "see fish like those Earthmen?"

"It's like walking into a kindergarten," said another, "with loaded dice."

"Scanney's studying how to run that spaceship," said a third. "He's going straight to Earth. He figures he'll own the whole place in two weeks."

"Here come a couple of them." said a fourth as Ensign Benson and Pam came strolling into the plaza.

Grins and nods and a few waves were exchanged between Ensign Benson and the sniggering locals, until he reached the group that had been discussing Scanney, where he said, in an offhand manner. "Nice little games you've got going here."

"Want some action, Earthman?" Clouds, ants and in-out knockup were mentioned.

"Not this smalltime stuff," Ensign Benson said with manifest disparagement. "Aren't there any big-time games around this burg?"

"By big time," a tittering citizen asked, ..what do you mean?

"What have you got?"

"The Dive," several citizens volunteered.

"Sounds right. Lead me to it."

Within The Dive -- a great, cavernous place, in which the gaming tables were brightly, whitely lit, but the far walls and the high ceiling remained in windowless gloom -- a kind of low intense buzzing was the only sound, as though a million bees were getting caught up on their back orders of honey. Citizens and croupiers and dealers hunched over the tables with no small talk, no conversation except the words necessary to keep the games going. "Ah, yes," Ensign Benson said as the simpering citizens led him and Pam into the joint. "This will do just fine."

A hostess approached, slinky in off-the-shoulder red. "Interested in a little action?"

Just to watch, for now," Ensign Benson told her. "What's the highest-money game here?"

Koppel," she said, pointing, "at that table right there."

"Thanks."

"My pleasure," she said.

At the edge of the clearing, Hester busily, grumpily, steadfastly, clumsily worked at making a lean-to out of leafy branches. The captain sat on his suitcase among his birds. Billy paced back and forth, gazing mournfully from time to time at the distant Hopeful.

It was Billy who broke the silence: "Pam says the odds of anyone's stumbling onto this place and rescuing us are eleven billion, four hundred sixty million to one."

"Don't talk about odds," the captain said.

Hester said, "I could use a little help around here."

Billy looked at her project. "What on Earth is that?"

"The same thing it is on Casino," she said. "A lean-to."

"It leans mostly that way," Billy commented.

"It'll keep the rain off."

Billy looked skyward. "It isn't gonna rain."

"Wanna bet?"

The captain groaned and covered his face with his hands as Councilman Luthguster came blustering in, saying, "What's going on around here?"

"Oh, Councilman," the captain said, leaping to his feet and knocking over several birds. "I can explain."

"You can?" Luthguster turned on the captain an eye as baleful as that on any of his birds. "You can explain why Ensign Benson is gambling?"

The koppel table was now the center of interest as half a dozen players faced Ensign Benson, the new shark in town. Having watched koppel for 20 minutes -- it was a pokerlike game but with more cards in more suits and more complicated rules -- having received a tiny frightened nod from Pam, Ensign Benson had converted his watch and camera and other salable possessions into lukes and had taken a seat at the game. Pam stood behind him, nervously fidgeting with her slide rule and from time to time nervously clutching at his shoulder, while Ensign Benson went through his first table of unbelieving opponents like a piranha through a cow.

The stakes were higher and the crowd of spectators was growing fast when the other Earth people came hurrying into The Dive. "Ensign Bensonl" cried the captain.

"Hello, Captain," Ensign Benson said, with a casual half wave, half salute. "And raise a hundred lukes," he said, pushing forward a small stack of'chips.

"You'll ruin usl" the captain cried. "We can't afford your gambling debtsl" To the Casinomen at large, he announced, "Don't gamble with this man; he has no moneyl"

"Wanna bet?" asked a bystander.

Calmly, raking in the lukes, Ensign Benson said, "I'm winning, Captain."

"Ensign Benson," the captain ordered, unheeding, "consider yourself under arrest. Return to the ship at once and confine your. . ." At that point, he ran down, blinking, remembering that he didn't have a ship anymore. None of them had quarters to which they could confine themselves.

Then Billy leaned over to whisper in the captain's ear, "Sir, he seems to be winning."

"Never seen a man learn a game so fast," said a bystander.

The captain said, "What?"

"Why don't we make it interesting gents?" Ensign Benson said, riffling the outsize deck. "Ever hear of something called pot limit?"

On the Hopeful's command deck, Scanney lolled at his ease on his favorite chair, chatting with a pair of his favorite cronies. "So we can't dope out the hyperdrive," he said. "When the time's right, they'll teach it to us themselves."

"Boy, Scanney," said a crony. "how ya gonna do that?"

"They'll be around pretty soon, ready to dicker, but I don't talk till tomorrow. A night in the open air; that'll help."

"You're some operator, Scanney."

"Yes, I am. Three to two it rains tonight."

"I wouldn't bet against you, Scanney."

At that point, another Scanney crony ran in to say, "One of the Earthmen's playing koppel at The Dive!"

"What?" Scanney sat upright and put his feet on the floor. "They better not use up their credit before they deal with me."

"But the Earthman's winning!"

"Impossible", said Scanney. But he got to his feet, saying, "Come on, boys, let's take a look at this wonder."

Ensign Benson looked around the table at nothing but empty chairs. In front of himself, and piled on a special side table brought out for the purpose, was an amazing number of lukes. 'Boys?" Ensign Benson said, "You quitting on me?"

"I don't buck that streak anymore."

"I may be crazy, but I ain't stupid."

The spectators gawked, eight deep, Pam stood behind Ensign Benson, nervously clutching her slide rule in one hand and his shoulder in the other. The captain, Billy, Hester and Councilman Luthguster stood just to the side, open-mouthed. Ensign Benson looked around. "Who'll take a seat?"

"Ten lukes," a bystander said, "says you don't find anybody to play against you."

"You're on," Ensign Benson said as Scanney and his cronies came pushing through the crowd.

"What's this?" Scanney demanded. "Game over?"

"Not if you'll sit in."

Scanney looked at the assembled crowd, at the lukes piled up around Ensign Benson, at the ensign's calmly welcoming smile. "Er," he said.

"Unless you don't feel up to a little game."

"Up to it?" His public reputation, the presence of his cronies, his own bravado all combined to force him into that chair. "Deal, my friend, and kiss your worldly goods goodbye."

Ensign Benson smiled at the bystander. "That's ten lukes you owe me."

"Will you take a check?"

"I'll take anything you've got," Ensign Benson said.

When Billy stepped out of The Dive for a breath of air, he saw Niobe, this planet's sun, just peeping over the horizon. Night had come and gone, and now it was day again. Inside, the epic battle between Scanney and Ensign Benson went on, seesawing this way and that, Ensign Benson always ahead but somehow never able to deliver that final coup de grace. From time to time, the participants and observers had paused to consume something that claimed to be coffee and something else that looked like a prune Danish --or possibly a stinging jellyfish -- but the pauses were few and the concentration intense.

And suspense was turning at last into dread. Billy didn't want to go back in there, but a sense of solidarity with the crew forced him finally indoors once more, where he circled the outer fringes of the crowd, decided solidarity didn't mean he necessarily had to stand with them all the time and found himself a new angle of vision, near Scanney, instead.

A tense moment had been reached; yet another tense moment. Ensign Benson was pushing stack after stack of lukes into the middle of the table; when he was finished, a hoarse Scanney said, "I'm not sure I can cover that."

"You want to concede?" Ensign Benson was also hoarse.

Billy watched Scanney study his cards. Then he watched Scanney's hand reach down to a narrow slot under the tabletop and tap something there as though for reassurance. Tap a --- Tap a ---- A card!

"I'll stay," Scanney said, his hand coming up without that card. Billy stared at the man's right ear.

"Then cover the bet," Ensign Benson said.

"Will you take my I.O.U.?"

"I'll do better. You put up the ship."

"The ship?" Scanney was scornful. "Against that bet?"

This was the moment Ensign Benson had been waiting for. He seemed to draw strength from Pam's hand on his shoulder. "Against," he said, voice calm, eyes unblinking, "against everything I've got."

Again Scanney's finger tips touched that hidden card. "It's a bet," Scanney said. "Deal the last round."

Ensign Benson dealt the cards.

"Captain" Billy yelled across the table, pointing at the black darkness above. "Shoot that bird!"

With a quick draw Bat Masterson himself would have admired, the captain unlimbered his stun gun and fired three blasts into the cavernous darkness of the ceiling. Spectators scrambled for cover, Scanney and Ensign Benson hunched protectively over their cards and chips and Billy slid forward and back like a master swordsman, although sans epee.

Ensign Benson was the first to recover. "What are you bird brains doing?"

"Well," said the captain, embarrassed, bolstering his weapon as ancient dust puffs floated down into the light. "Well, uh, Billy, uh. . . ."

"Sorry," Billy said, palming the 14 of snakes. "I thought I saw a bird."

"Indoors?"

"It happens," Billy said. "I remember once my aunt Tabitha left the porch door open and --"

"Oh, never mind," Ensign Benson said. "Scanney, I'm calling you."

Billy looked at Scanney, whose finger tips were at that now-empty slot, and the expression on the man's face was one of consternation and bewilderment, gradually becoming horror.

"Scanney?" Ensign Benson tapped his own cards on the table. "Want me to declare first?"

Everyone waited. Wide-eyed, slackjawed, face drained of color, Scanney at last managed to nod.

"Fine." Ensign Benson fanned out his cards. "Read 'em and weep."

But Scanney didn't; instead, he turned to look, with a world of understanding in his eyes, at the radiant, innocent face of Lieutenant Billy Shelby.

They all strolled back to the ship together, Earth people and Casino people in little chatting groups; there was general agreement that the night's big head-to-head koppel game was the stuff of legend. The captain was delighted at the return of his ship but was even more relieved that Councilman Luthguster was taking the whole affair so well. "Personal contacts on the natives' terms are vital on a mission such as this," the councilman said. "I myself found it relaxed the chief tout if we played children's games."

A bit apart, Ensign Benson walked with Scanney, who had recovered from his losses and was becoming his old confident self. "Obviously," Ensign Benson was saying, "all those lukes I won can't do me much good on the ship."

"I'll be happy to invest them for you," Scanney said.

"Not invest. I cleaned you out, Scanney, so what's happening is staking you to a new start. It'll be a few years before I can get back, and when I do, half of what you have is mine."

"Hmm," said Scanney.

"0h, you'll be able to siphon off a lot. But you can't hide it all, so we'll both make out."

"It's a deal," Scanney said. As they shook on it, Hester came by, clutching her hammer and looking truculent. She said to Scanney, "I hope you didn't mess up my engines."

"I am a lucky man, madam," he answered, " and a lucky man is one who doesn't mess with engines he doesn't understand."

Hester frowned at Ensign Benson. "What's he mean, 'madam'?"

"It's a local term for engineer," Ensign Benson said.

Meanwhile, at the ship, Luthguster was making a farewell speech to the chief tout and the assembled Casino people: "And I think that when your chief tout promulgates the various treaties and agreements we reached in this most fruitful visit, you will all agree that Earth has been more than fair. More than fair."

Under the speech, Ensign Benson went to Billy to say, "I finally figured out that bird shoot. Thanks."

"Oh, you're welcome. But the great part," Billy said, "was how lucky you were, hand after hand."

"That wasn't luck. It was Pam."

"It was?"

"God meant that girl, Billy, to be one of the great pieces of all time, but something went wrong somewhere, and she took the path of mathematics instead. She and her slide rule add up to one genius. It took her twenty minutes to figure out the odds in koppel; from then on, she gave me signals on my shoulder, and I knew the precise odds at every step of play.

"Ultimately, I couldn't lose."

"Unless somebody cheated," Billy said.

"Which is where you came in. Thanks again."

Luthguster at last was scaling the heights of his peroration: "I have been delighted," he announced, "to be the individual who brought you this tremendous news and effected this magnificent reconciliation. And now we must bid you a fond farewell."

"Tell them where you got it," the chief tout said, "and how easy it was."

As the Earth people started up the ladder, Hester's hammer clanged inadvertently off the metal rail. "Careful with my ship," Ensign Benson said.

The Earth people entered Ensign Benson's ship. The ladder retracted and the door closed. Soon a great, powerful humming was heard. "Even money it blows up," said a citizen.

"I'll take that," Scanney said.

HEAVEN

________

On the command deck of Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Lieutenant Billy Shelby watched the image of Heaven grow larger on the view screen. "We're coming in," he said. "Pam? All secure?"

Astrogator Pam Stokes, beautiful arid brainy and blind to passion, paused in her contemplation of her antique slide rule to check the webbing that held her to the pod. "All set."

"What an exciting moment," Billy said. A handsome young idealist, he was the Hopeful's second-in-command and probably the person aboard who believed most fervently in the ship's mission. "I wish the captain were up here."

Captain Gregory Standforth himself wandered onto the command deck at that moment, holding a stuffed bird mounted on a black-plastic-onyx pedestal. "Isn't she a beauty?" he asked and held up this unlovely creature that in death, as in life, was blessed with a big belly, a pink tuft on top of its orange head and a lot of bright scarlet feathers on its behind. The captain had bagged it on their last planet fall, Niobe IV, a.k.a. Casino. "I just finished stuffing her," he explained. Taxidermy was all he cared for in this life, and only the long, glorious traditions of the Standforth family had forced him into the Galactic Patrol. Conversely, only those traditions had forced the patrol to accept him.

"Heaven ahead, sir," Billy said. "Secure yourself."

The captain studied his trousers for open zippers. "Secure myself?"

"Take a pod, Captain, sir," Billy explained. "Landing procedure."

"Ah." Settling himself into a pod, the captain slid his bird onto a handy flat surface, thereby inadvertently pushing a lever. A red light flashed on all the control consoles, and there came a sudden, brief whoosh. "Oh, dear," the captain said. "Did I do something?"

Billy studied his console. "Well, Captain," he said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you just ejected the laundry."

A long, long time ago, it had been a church; but now it was a roofless pagan temple, dominated by the tall, roughhewn wooden statue of a fat god figure with a blurred face. The altar was made of consumer materials, rusted and ancient and broken: TV sets, washing machines, a truck tire. A religious ceremony was under way, complete with nearly naked virgin ready for sacrifice, supine on the altar, resigned to her fate. The worshipers below were dressed in animal skins or rough cloth. Beside the altar stood Achum, the priest, holding a stone knife high, its point aimed at the virgin's breast. This particular virgin was Achum's own youngest daughter, Malya, but he would not hesitate in his priestly duty. He intoned:

"O great Juju-Kuxtil. Oh, take, we beseech you, this sacrifice of our youngest, our purest, our finest daughter. Find this sacrifice worthy of your mighty eyes and defend us from the yellow rain. If this sacrifice be good in your eyes, give us a sign."

Achum bowed his head in unbroken silence. He prayed, "If she should be spared, who is my own daughter Malya of only sixteen summers, O great Juju-Kuxtil, give us a sign."

The Hopeful's laundry fell on everybody.

Pandemonium. Achum and Malya and the congregation all struggled and fought their way out from under the laundry. "Achum!" the worshipers cried. "Achum, what's happening?"

"A sign!" Achum shouted, spitting out socks. "A sign!"

A worshiper with a greasy work glove rakishly atilt across his forehead cried, "Achum! What does it mean?"

"I'm not sure exactly what it means," Achum answered, looking around at this imitation of a rummage sale, "but it sure is a sign."

A worshiper pointed upward. "Achum, look! From the sky! Something huge is coming!"

"As I understand it, Ensign Benson, these are a religious people."

Councilman Morton Luthguster, stout and pompous, representative of the Galactic Council on this journey of discovery and reunion, sat in his stateroom in prelanding conference with Ensign Kybee Benson, social engineer, the saturnine, impatient man whose job it was to study the lost colonies as they were found and prepare reports on what they had become in the half millennium of their isolation.

"Well, Councilman," Ensign Benson said, "they were a religious people five hundred years ago. The colony here was founded by the Sanctarians, a peaceful, pious community determined to get away from the strife of the modern world. Well, I mean, what was then the modern world. They named their colony Heaven."

"Charming name," Luthguster said, nodding slowly, creating and destroying any number of chins. "And, from what you say, a simple, charming people. I look forward to their acquaintance."

"Landing procedure complete," said the loud-speaker system in Billy Shelby's animated voice.

"Ah, good," Luthguster said, heaving himself to his feet. "Come along, Ensign Benson. I wonder if I recall the Lord's Prayer."

The Hopeful's automatic pilot had set the ship gently down on a wide, barren, rocky plain, similar in appearance to several unpopulated islands of the coast of Norway. A door in the side of the ship opened, a ladder protruded itself slowly from within, like a worm from an apple, and once it had pinged solidly onto the stony scree, Councilman Luthguster emerged and paused at the platform at the ladder's top. Captain Standforth, Billy Shelby and Ensign Benson followed, and all four stared down at the welcoming committee below.

Who were Achum, his unsacrificed daughter Malya and all the worshipers, every last one of them decked out in the Hopeful's laundry. And when Achum looked up at that fat figure atop the ladder and recalled the god statue in his church, hope became certainty: Prostrating himself, with his forehead on the ground, he cried out, in a voice of terror and awe, "Juju-Kuxtil! Juju-Kuxtil!"

The other worshipers, quick on the uptake, also prostrated themselves, and the cry went up from one and all: "Juju-Kuxtil! Juju-Kuxtil!"

"Not very much like my religion," Luthguster said and led the group down the ladder to the ground, where the worshipers continued to lie on their faces and shout out the same name. The instant Luthguster's foot touched rock, Achum scrabbled forward on knees and elbows to embrace the councilman's ankles. "Here! Here!" cried Luthguster, not at all pleased.

Achum half rose. "Hear, hear!" he shouted. "Hip, hip -"

"Hooray!" yelled the worshipers.

"Hip, hip -"

"Hooray!"

"Hip, hip -"

"Hooray!"

Ensign Benson had approached one of the prostrate worshipers, and now he attracted the fellow's attention with a prodding boot in the ribs. "Say, you. What's going on around here?"

"Juju-Kuxtil!" answered the wide-eyed worshiper and nodded in awe at Luthguster. "God! It's God!"

Achum was on his feet, prancing around, crying, "A feast for Juju-Kuxtil! A feast! A feast!"

Luthguster, beginning to get the idea, looked around and visibly became more enamored of it. Frowning at him, Ensign, Benson said, "That's God?"

"He's shorter in person, isn't he" said the worshiper.

The feast was outdoors and vaguely Polynesian in effect, with the visitors and the natives all sitting in a great oval. At the head of the oval, at Councilman Luthguster's right hand, the priest Achum stood and began the feast with a speech: "The time foretold by the sacred writings has come! Juju-Kuxtil is here to save us, as it was written! We have put on the sacred raiment, and we shall be saved from the yellow rain!"

Sotto voce, while the speech went on, Councilman Luthguster asked Ensign Benson, beside him at his other hand, "What's happening here?"

"Apparently," Ensign Benson murmured, "some physical disaster struck this colony quite some time ago and drove these people from an advanced society, with modern religion, back to primitive paganism."

"But what should we do?"

"Go along with them, at least for a while. Until we learn more."

"But what's this yellow rain he's going on and on about?"

"We can't ask questions," Ensign Benson said. "We'll find out later."

Achum was finishing his speech: "Soon the great Juju-Kuxtil shall begin his mighty work; but first, we shall feast. A feast of welcome to Juju-Kuxtil and his angels!"

Cheers rose from the assembled natives. Achum took his seat, and platters of food - lumpy, anonymous brown stuff that smelled rather like mildew - were distributed. Hospitably, Achum said to Luthguster, "I hope you like dilbump."

Luthguster blinked at his plate. "It looks quite, um, filling."

Billy Shelby had seated himself next to the prettiest girl at the feast, who happened to be Achum's daughter Malya. Smiling at her, he said, "Hi. My name's Billy."

"Malya."

"What's the matter? You aren't eating."

"I wasn't planning on dinner today," Malya explained, "so I had a big lunch."

"No dinner? Why not?"

"I was about to be sacrificed when you all got here."

Billy stared. "Sacrificed! Why?"

Wondering but not quite suspicious, Malya said, "For Juju-Kuxtil, of course. Don't you know that?"

"Oh! Um. Well, I'm glad it worked out this way, and now you don't have to be sacrificed, after all."

She pouted prettily. "Don't you want me to live forever with you on the Great Cloud?"

Sincerely, he said, 'I'd like you anywhere."

She gave him a sidelong look. "You don't seem very much like an angel."

"I can be surprisingly human," he told her.

The fourth voyager on the Hopeful also at the feast was Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw, a 40ish, blunt-featured, blunt-talking person who was much happier with her engines than at any social occasion, including religious feasts. She kept her eyes firmly down and did little more than poke at her soup and her dilbump until the native on her left said, "Excuse me."

Hester looked at him. He was middle-aged, with a keen look about the eyes and the gnarled hands of a worker. "Yeah?"

"I was looking at that cloud you all fly around in."

"I hope you didn't mess it up," Hester said.

"It's hard to the touch. I thought clouds were soft and fluffy."

"It isn't a cloud," said Hester, who didn't believe in going along with other people's misconceptions. "It's a ship."

"Make a nice lamp."

Hester stared. "What?"

"I'm a carpenter," the native said. "Name of Keech."

"I'm Hester Hanshaw. Ship's engineer."

"What's that?"

"I keep the engines running."

Keech looked impressed. "All the time?"

"I mean I fix them," Hester told him, "if something goes wrong."

Looking skyward, Keech said, "All those clouds have engines? Fancy that."

Covering her exasperation by a change of subject, Hester said, "What kind of carpentry do you do?"

"Oh, the usual. Sacrificial altars, caskets, suspended cages to put sinners in."

"Cheerful line of work."

"Tough to build things that last," Keech commented, "with the yellow rain all the time. But we won't have that anymore, will we, now that Juju-Kuxtil is here?"

"You mean Councilman Luthguster?"

"The million names of God," Keech said solemnly. "Which one is that?"

"Number eighty-seven," Hester said. "What's in this soup? No, don't tell me."

On Achum's other side sat Captain Standforth, brooding at his soup, and on his other side sat Astrogator Pam Stokes, brooding at her slide rule. "Fascinating," she mumbled. "That asteroid belt."

"Pam?" The captain welcomed any distraction from that soup; things seemed to be moving in it. "Did you say something?"

"This system contains an asteroid belt," Pam told him, "much like the one in our own Solar System."

"Oh, the asteroid belt," the captain said, his mind filling with unhappy reminiscence. "I always have a terrible time navigating around that. You barely take off from Earth, you're just past Mars, and there it is. Millions of rocks, boulders, bits of broken-off planet all over the place. What a mess!"

"Well, the asteroid belt in this system," Pam said, "has an orbit that's much more erratic. In fact. . . ." Swiftly, she manipulated her slide rule. "Hmm. It seems to me. . . ." She gazed skyward, frowning.

So did the captain, though without any idea what he was supposed to be looking at. He blinked, and a yellow stone dropped into his soup, splashing oily liquid in various directions.

"Of course!" said Pam, pleased with her calculations.

A stone bounced off the table near Councilman Luthguster's right hand. A stone thunked into a platter of dilbump and slowly sank. A paradiddle of stones rattled in the center of the circle of feasters.

"The yellow rain!" cried Achum in sheerest horror.

Screams. Terror. The natives fled into handy burrows while the people from the Hopeful stared at one another in wild surmise. More stones fell. Achum dropped to his knees beside Councilman Luthguster, hands clasped together: "Juju-Kuxtil, save us! Save us!"

"It's a meteor shower!" Ensign Benson cried.

"No," Pam said, utterly calm, "it's the asteroid belt. You see, its eccentric orbit must from time to time cross this -"

Clambering clumsily to his feet, Luthguster shouted, "Asteroids? We'll all be killed!"

Taken aback, Achum settled on his haunches and gaped at the councilman. "Juju-Kuxtil?" Meantime, more stones fell.

Bewildered, the captain said, "Pam? Shouldn't we take cover?"

"According to my calculations," Pam answered, "this time we're merely tangential with -"

A good-sized boulder smacked into the earth at Luthguster's feet. In utter panic, spreading his arms to keep from losing his balance, he shrieked, "Stop!"

Still calmly explaining, Pam said, "it should be over almost at once. In fact, right now."

She was right; no more rocks fell. Slowly, the natives crept back out of their burrows, peeking skyward. Achum, faith restored, bellowed, "Juju-Kuxtil did it! He did it!"

"Juju-Kuxtil! Juju-Kuxtil!" the natives all agreed. Then they joined hands and danced in a great circle around Luthguster, singing, "For he's a jolly good savior; for he's a jolly good savior."

After the adoration, Luthguster and the captain and Pam and Ensign Benson met on the command deck of the Hopeful for a conference. "I think it's obvious what's happened here," Ensign Benson began.

"They think I'm God," Luthguster said complacently.

"Heaven has become debased, degenerate."

"I beg your pardon," Luthguster said.

Captain Standforth cleared his throat. "Uh, Billy says they have human sacrifice."

Luthguster assumed his most statesmanlike look. "I don't believe we should be too harsh in our judgments, Captain. These people aren't all bad. We shouldn't condemn a whole society out of hand."

"Of course not," Ensign Benson said. "First, we have to understand why a society behaves a certain way. Then we condemn it."

"According to the old records," the captain said, "they were perfectly nice people when they left Earth - cleaned up after their farewell picnic and everything."

"But no small settlement," Ensign Benson said, "could survive a constant, unpredictable barrage of rocks from the sky. Everything they ever built was knocked down. Every machine they brought with them was destroyed. Every crop they planted was pounded flat. No wonder they returned to barbarism. You have to be hit on the head with a lot of rocks to think the councilman here is God."

Luthguster puffed himself up like a frog preparatory to an answering statement; but before he could make it, Hester came in with Keech. Each carried an armload of yellow rocks. "Captain," Hester said, "request permission to show a visitor around the ship."

"Nice cloud you got here," Keech said.

"His name's Keech," Hester explained. "He's a carpenter; seems a little brighter than most. Thought I'd try to explain engines to him."

"Certainly, Hester," the captain said. He never denied anybody anything. "What are you doing with all those rocks?"

"Going to analyze them," Hester said.

"Very good idea," the captain said. He didn't know what analyze meant.

Hester and Keech left, and Ensign Benson turned to Pam, saying, "Do these rockfalls happen often?"

"Very."

"Every day?"

Pam shook her head. "Not necessarily. According to my calculations, the planet's orbit intersects the asteroid's orbit so frequently, in such a complex pattern, that to most people, it would seem utterly erratic."

"Could you work out the pattern?"

"Of course. As a matter of fact, there should be another brief shower later today."

"Then I'm glad," Luthguster said, we're all in the ship."

"Billy isn't," the captain said. "He asked permission to go for a walk with the human sacrifice."

"Bad," Ensign Benson said. "When the rocks fall, the natives will lose faith in the councilman. They'll want revenge."

In the engine room, Hester explained engines to Keech, who looked bewildered but interested. "And from the generator," she was saying, "electricity is stored in these cells for later use."

"Pretty clever," Keech admitted. "Given the right education and equipment, a human being could do the same stuff you angels do."

"You're beginning to catch on."

Bang, said the ship. Keech look startled, Hester annoyed. Bong, bong, bong, bongbongbong. "Yellow rain!" Keech cried.

"I wish it would lay off," Hester muttered.

"Do you realize," Keech demanded, what all this is doing to my faith?"

On a blasted plain, amid evidence everywhere of prior bombardments, Billy and Malya reclined and kissed. All at once, she pulled back, frowning at him, saying, "Are you sure you're a supernatural being?"

"I'm really not," Billy confessed. "What I really am is a human being."

"A human being?"

"Just like you. Well, not exactly like you. You're a girl and I'm a boy."

"I was beginning to suspect that," Malya said. "But why does Juju-Kuxtil travel around with humans?"

"Well," said Billy. "About Juju-Kuxtil .... "

In rapture, she said, "He saved us from the yellow rain."

"Ahhhh, yes and no," Billy said, scuffing his foot in the rocks.

She frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course," she lied.

Nerving himself up to blurt out the real story, Billy said, "Well the truth is -"

Bong; a good-sized rock landed on his head. He fell over, unconscious. Rocks suddenly started bouncing all over the place. Flinging herself onto Billy to protect him, Malya cried, "I think I know what you were trying to tell me, Billy!"

In the roofless temple, Achum led a community discussion, "Now that Juju-Kuxtil has come and stopped the yellow rain," he said, "Heaven is ours. We can build, travel, everything." He gestured with broadly spread hands, smiling. The worshipers smiled back. A small yellow rock landed on Achum's right palm.

Five minutes later, when the rockfall had ended, Achum and the worshipers came crawling back out of their burrows and none of them were happy.  Juju-Kuxtil lied!" several shouted.

"Yes!" Achum thundered.

"Achum is a false priest!" one shouted.

"Wait a minute," Achum said. "Hold on there."

"You're a false priest."

"Now, hold on. In the first place, I'm not a false priest, and I'll knock you down if you say that again. And in the second place, that's a false god!"

"A false god?"

"That isn't Juju-Kuxtil," Achum explained. "It's a demon trying to lead us astray. A demon disguised as Juju-Kuxtil!"

"A demon disguised as a god," mused a worshiper. "Hmm. That makes sense."

The captain had decided to go out looking for Billy while the others waited on the command deck. He had barely left when rocks started bonging again. "That's funny," Pam said, bending over her slide rule.

Ensign Benson said, "What's funny?"

The captain entered, looking ruffled, saying, "Gee, are they sore."

"Pam? What's funny?"

"There shouldn't be another asteroid fall," she said, "for two days."

"That isn't asteroids," the captain told her. "They're throwing rocks at the ship."

"Rocks at the ship!" Luthguster was incensed. "That's Galactic property!"

"Actually, it's mine," Ensign Benson said.

"They were hollering, 'Demon! Demon!'" the captain explained. "They think you're a false Juju-Kuxtil."

Luthguster gaped. "Me?"

"Councilman," Ensign Benson said, "you've set back superstition on this planet four hundred years."

Hester and Keech entered, Hester saying, "Captain, I -."

Luthguster ran around behind a pod, crying, "Look out! There's one of them!"

"What?" Hester shook her head. "Oh, Keech is all right. I told him the whole story,"

"I'm the soul of discretion," Keech said.

Hester turned to the captain. "Which do you want first, the good news or the bad?"

"Hester, I hate making decisions."

"Start with the bad," Ensign Benson said. "Then we'll have the good for dessert."

"Fine. The bad news is, the rocks damaged our lateral rockets. 'We can't navigate."

"Oh, my goodness," said the captain.

Can it be fixed?"

'I'll have to go outside on a ladder."

"Wear a hat," Ensign Benson advised. "The weather's getting worse out there.."

Pain, looking at a view screen, said, "What's this?"

So they all looked and saw several natives approaching, pulling a wooden-wheeled cart filled with cloth.

"They're bringing back our laundry," the captain said.

Ensign Benson said, "I don't think they cleaned it."

"I'll go get it," Pam said.

Ensign Benson, whose dream that someday Pam would discover she was a human female had not yet died, said, "I'll go with you.

They left, and the captain said, "Hester? You had good news?"

"I would be more than happy," Luthguster said, "to hear good news."

"I did a mineral analysis on those rocks," said Hester. "The reason they're yellow, every one of them is at least part gold."

The natives had dumped the laundry at the foot of the ladder and had gone away with the cart, expressing their contempt. Pam and Ensign Benson cautiously descended, and when they reached the bottom, a hand reached out of the laundry and grabbed Pam's ankle. "Eek!" she said, naturally.

Malya's lovely face appeared among the shirts and the shorts. "Shh! It's me, Malya; I'm on your side! Sneak me in before anybody sees!"

"My laundry never came back with a girl in it before," Ensign Benson said.

Out of a cave onto the blasted plain staggered Billy, rubbing his head. "Ooh, that hurts," he mumbled. "What kind of Heaven is this?" Raising his face and his voice, he cried, "Malya! Malya?"

A dozen natives leaped on him from all sides, pummeled him and, carried him away.

"So I have him hidden," Malya said. She was on the command deck with the five Earthpeople and Keech.

"We'll have to move the ship at once," Luthguster said, "to his hiding place. This young lady can direct us."

"We can't navigate," Hester reminded him "till I fix the lateral rockets."

"We have a saying here," Keech commented. "'Into each life a little rock must fall."

The captain said, "It was a mistake to pretend to be gods."

"I agree, Captain," Ensign Benson said. "My error. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But as long as we've made the mistake, we'll have to live with it. Councilman, you'll have to go out there and reconvince them that you're Juju-Kuxtil.

"Me? They'll stone me!"

"The hand that cradles the rock rules this world," Hester said.

"That isn't nice," Pain said. "People shouldn't throw stones."

"Why not?" Keech asked, "We don't live in glass houses."

The captain said, "if we tell them about the gold, won't -"

Ensign Benson said, "The what?"

Hester explained, "The yellow rain is mainly gold. If this colony went into the export business, it could become rich."

Keech said, "What's gold?"

"I know you're primitive," Luthguster told him, "but that's ridiculous."

"I may be primitive," Keech answered, "but it's you wiseacres that're in trouble."

Ensign Benson said, "Pam, the rockfall pattern repeats, doesn't it? You could do a yearly calendar with the rockfalls."

"It's a very complex pattern, but yes, of course."

"Could you do it in an hour?"

"Oh, my goodness," Pam said. "I'll try."

The captain said, "You have a plan to help Billy, Ensign Benson?"

"If Malya and Keech will help,"

"I'll help," Malya said. "I don't want anybody to hurt Billy."

Keech said, "Is gold something that makes you rich?"

Grinning, Hester said, "I told you he was smart."

This time, in the roofless temple, it was Billy who was about to be sacrificed. He was tied and gagged and lying on the altar, with Achum holding the stone knife over him and the worshipers eagerly watching below. Achum prayed, "Great Juju-Kuxtil, we're sorry we were misled. Please accept this demon as a token of our esteem." He poised with the knife.

Keech came running in, crying, "Wait! I have come from Juju-Kuxtil's cloud! I have much to tell you!"

"After the services," Achum told him. "First the sacrifice, then the collection, then you can talk."

"No, I have to talk now," Keech insisted. "That is the real Juju-Kuxtil."

Achum shook his head and waggled the stone knife. "Stuff and nonsense. There was more yellow rain after he supposedly made it stop."

"He was testing our faith," Keech said.

A worshiper mused, "A god pretending to be a demon disguised as a god to test our faith. Hmm. That makes sense."

Achum wasn't convinced. "How can you know that, Keech?"

"They took me to their ship. I mean the cloud. Also your daughter Malya; they took her there, too."

"Malya?" Achum looked around, called, "Malya!"

"She's still in the cloud," Keech said. "And Juju-Kuxtil is going to come out and talk to us."

Achum lowered. "Oh, he is, is he?"

"He sent me to get everybody to come hear his speech."

"Oh, we'll come," Achum said. "Gather rocks, everybody! This time we'll pelt him good! And bring along the sacrifice; we'll finish the services later."

In a corridor of the Hopeful, by an exit hatch, the captain, Pam and Ensign Benson prepared Councilman Luthguster for his public. "Now, do remember to turn on your microphone," the captain said, yet again. "Your words will be transmitted through the ship's loud-speaker."

"Yes, yes," said the extremely nervous Luthguster.

Handing the councilman a sheaf of papers, Pam said, "Just remember, it's an eight-month cycle, and this planet has a sixteen-month year, so the cycle runs twice a year."

"Young lady," Luthguster said, clutching the papers, "I have no idea what you think you're saying."

"Now, Councilman," Ensign Benson said, "there's nothing to worry about."

"There's nothing for you to worry about. You'll be in the ship."

"You'll be behind this shield." Ensign Benson rapped the clear-plastic shield with his knuckles. "Just give them one of the speeches you're famous for, and they'll calm right down. They'll sleep for a week,"

"I do have some small reputation as a peacemaker," Luthguster acknowledged, though he continued to blink a lot. "Very well. For the future of mankind on this planet." And he stepped onto the small platform that would swing out onto the side of the ship once the hatch was opened.

"Knock 'em dead," Ensign Benson advised him and pushed the button.

A frozen smile of panic on his face, Luthguster permitted himself to be swung slowly out into plain sight high on the side of the gleaming, cigar-shaped Hopeful. And below, bearing armloads of rocks and carrying the trussed-up Billy on a long pole, came the natives. They did not look particularly reasonable.

"People of Heaven," Luthguster said, but, of course, he had forgotten to turn on his microphone, so nobody heard him. Flicking the thing on, he tried again:

"People of Heaven,"

"There he is! There he is!"

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

A thousand stones hit the plastic shield. Luthguster ducked, then recovered, crying out, "Surely, some of you have sinned ' "

"The stones bounce off him!" Keech shouted. "You see? It is Juju-Kuxtil!"

Achum, poised to throw another stone, hesitated, becoming uncertain. "Could I have been wrong?"

The other worshipers had already prostrated themselves, noses in the pebbles, and were wailing, "Juju-Kuxtil! Juju-Kuxtil!"

Privately to Achum, Keech said, "Would you rather be safe or sorry?"

"Juju-Kuxtil!" Achum decided and prostrated himself with the rest.

Quickly, Keech released Billy, while Luthguster delivered his speech:

"People of Heaven, I have tested you, and your faith is not strong. But I am merciful, and I will not return my golden rain to you for" - he consulted Pam's papers -"two days. At ten-fifteen next Tuesday morning, watch out!"

"There you go, kid," Keech said to the freed Billy. "Get to the ship before the councilman louses up."

Billy scampered to the Hopeful while Luthguster rolled on:

"I will never be more than a stone's throw from you all. Achum shall remain my representative here on Heaven, but I won't need any more human sacrifices."

"Drat," the worshipers muttered. "No fun anymore."

"Also, the man who is known among you as Keech will henceforth carry this list, which will tell you the times of all the golden rains that will ever be, from this day forward. You will be smart enough to get in out of the rain, but after every rain, there will be a time to gather stones together. The streets of Heaven are paved with good investments, and I will want them returned. Heaven knows what I'm talking about. Upon these rocks we shall build a mighty nation. Right on this spot here, I want these rocks of ages left for me. Keech will be in charge of all that. I will send ships from Earth to Heaven, and they will trade you machinery, medical supplies, technical advisors and everything else you need, in exchange for my rolling stones. Earth helps those who help themselves. Together, we shall make an Earth right here on Heaven. And remember, a vote for Juju-Kuxtil is a vote for peace, progress and sound financial practice."

Keech led the worshipers in a resounding cheer as Luthguster was wheeled, waving and smiling, back into the ship, where, once the hatch was shut, Ensign Benson said, "Councilman, that may have been your finest hour."

Luthguster was dazzled. "By Heaven, he said, "what a constituency!"

Near the foot of the ladder, Billy made a reluctant farewell to Malya. "Gee, I wish you could come along."

"So do I," Malya admitted. "Earth must be a wonderful place after Heaven."

"Any place is Earth," Billy told her, "With you there."

They were deep in embrace when Ensign Benson appeared at the head of the ladder, calling, "Come on, Billy, or we'll take off without you."

"They can't take off without me," Billy confided to Malya. "I fly it."

"But you must go. Goodbye, Billy."

"Goodbye, Malya."

Malya walked to a nearby rubble heap, where she and Keech watched the Hopeful prepare for take-off. "Gee, what a swell bunch," Malya said.

"That Hester," Keech said, "was the most sensible woman I ever met."

" I wouldn't call Billy exactly sensible," Malya said, "but he was swell."

"Lift-off," Billy said. All six Earthpeople were present on the command deck.

"Captain," Pam said, studying her console, "the ship is overweight."

Diplomatically careful but with an edge of sarcasm, Ensign Benson said, "I believe the councilman smuggled gold aboard."

"Smuggled?" Luthguster was all pompous bluster. "Merely a few souvenirs."

"I'm sorry, Councilman Luthguster," the captain said, "but you'll have to eject them."

"Humph," said Luthguster.

Malya found Achum in the roofless temple, frowning at the statue of Juju-Kuxtil. She said, "What's wrong, Father?"

"I'm still not sure about that crowd," Achum told her. "No more human sacrifices. Would the real Juju-Kuxtil talk like that?"

Luthguster's souvenirs crashed to the altar beside him. Achum froze, then his eyes swiveled to look at the fresh rocks on the altar. Still moving nothing but his eyes, he looked up at the statue. "Ahem," he said. "I guess maybe he would."

"Come along, Father," Malya said. "Dilbump for lunch."

THE WORLD'S A STAGE

______________________

The two tramps, picturesquely filthy, sat by the side of the road in the dusty sunshine. They were dressed in more rags than seemed absolutely necessary given the mildness of the weather; and while one of them mused upon life more or less audibly, the other removed a battered, scruffy boot and frowned mistrustfully into it, as though expecting to find something alive in there. He sighed. He blew into the boot. He sighed. He put the boot on. He took it off again. He turned to his musing, muttering companion and said, “Did I?”

“Yes?”

“What do we do now?”

“We wait.”

A kind of inner earthquake of frustration vibrated through the tramp holding the boot. With a repressed scream, he cried, “For what?”

“For him,” Didi said. “He promised he’d meet us here, and we’re supposed to wait until---” He broke off, gazing upward past his friends filthy forehead.

“Well?” asked the other. “Go on, go on.”

“Oh, my gosh,” said Didi. His voice, his manner, even his facial appearance, all changed.

“What is it?” asked his friend, turning to look.

The two tramps stared upward at the slowly descending spaceship, a great silver corncob lowering through the empty air. “It’s Godot,” Didi whispered in awe. He finally got here.

Inside the spaceship, 27 birds watched Pam Stokes, astrogator, beautiful and brainy but blind to passion, play with her ancestral slide rule. The birds were all stuffed and wired to their perches around the Hopeful’s command deck, and from the expression in their fifty four glass eyes, they didn’t like it a bit. Or perhaps what they didn’t like was the sight of captain Gregory Standforth disemboweling yet another bird on the control panel. Indigo ichor oozed through the dials and switches into the panels innards, where it would make a mysterious bad smell for the next several weeks.

A tall, skinny, vague-eyed, loose wired sort of fellow, Captain Standforth was the seventh consecutive generation of Standforths to spend his life in the service of the Galactic Patrol and the first to be terrible at it. Much was expected of a Standforth, but in this case it was expected in vain. The Captain had had no choice other than to follow the family footsteps into the patrol, and the patrol had to take him, but neither had profited. All the captain wanted was to pursue his one passion, taxidermy-the stuffing of birds from everywhere in the universe-while all the patrol wanted was to never see or hear from him again.

Thump. “Ouch!”, said the captain. As vermilion blood mixed with the indigo ichor, he put his cut varicolored finger into his mouth, said, “oog,” took it out again and made a bad-taste grimace. “Nn”. Turning to Pam, he said, “What was that thump? Made me cut myself.”

“Subsidance,” she said, rapidly whizzing the slide rule’s parts back and forth. “By my calculations, ground level must have eroded seven millimeters in the last half-chiliad. Therefore, the ships computer switched off engines before we actually---”

“Half-chiliad?” asked the captain.

“What’s a half-chiliad?”

“Five hundred years. So that’s why we thumped when we landed.”

“Landed? You mean we’ve arrived somewhere?”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Standforth looked around at his birds. They looked back. “I wonder where we are,” he said. “I wonder what kind of birds they have here.”

“Wardrobe! Wardrobe!”

“Now what?”

“My wings keep falling off.”

"All right, I’ll get my needle and thread.”

He’s an airhead, Ensign Kybee Benson thought, raging murderously within while he struggled to appear calm and composed without. A clothead, a bonehead, a meathead. Chowderhead, fathead. Muttonhead. No, he’s worse than all those-he’s a Luthguster.

The Luthguster in question, Councilman Morton Luthguster of the Supreme Galactic Council, seated on the other side of Ensign Benson’s desk, went obliviously on with his question: “Why name an entire planet after an actor? A planet called J. Railsford Farnsworth is ridiculous.”

“In the first place,” Ensign Benson said, swallowing brimstone, “the planet is named Hestia IV, since it is the fourth planet form its sun, Hestia. The colony’s full name is the J. Rainsford Farnsworth Repertory Company.”

Councilman Luthguster shook his jowly head. “Damn-fool name for a place,” he insisted. “Detroit, now that’s a name. Khartoum. Reykjavik. But J. Rainsford Farnsworth Repertory Company?”

A tap at the frame of the open office door was followed by the cheerful, optimistic, shiny young face of Lieutenant Billy Shelby, Hopeful’s second in command, who said, “We’ve landed, sir. We’re on the ground.”

”I know what landed means,” Ensign Benson snapped. “I felt the bump. And when I’ve finished explaining the situation to the councilman, we’ll be along.”

“OK,” Billy said happily. “We’ll be waiting at the air lock. At the door.”

“I know what an air lock is.”

Billy cantered off, and Ensign Benson returned to his task. As social engineer, an expert in comparative societies, he had the job of giving Council Luthguster the necessary background on each colony they visited. “When this sector of the universe was colonized,” he explained, “a special cultural fund was set up to bring the arts to the far-flung outposts of Man. A theatrical troupe from Earth was offered its own settlement and a subsidy and was meant to tour the other colonies with a repertory of ancient and modern drama. Of course, contact was lost almost immediately, so the troupe never got its transportation and therefore never toured. There’s no guessing what it’s become by now.”

Luthguster pursed fat lips. “So who is this fellow J. Rainsford Farnsworth?”

“Founder of the repertory company. The actor-director-manager of the troupe.”

“Do you mean,” Luthguster demanded, puffing out like an adder, “that I shall be expected to discuss affairs of state with an actor?”

“I don’t think so.” Ensign Benson said. His face was expressionless, but his tense hand had crushed the plastoak arm of his chair. “J. Rainsford Farnsworth would be about five hundred and forty-three by now, and that’s old even for an actor.”

Gathered around the air lock were two thirds of the Hopeful’s complement: Captain Standforth, Astrogator Stokes, Lieutenant Shelby and Chief Engineer Hestor Hanshaw, a stocky blunt woman with a stocky blunt manner, who was saying, “I didn’t like that thump. Bad for the engines.”

“I didn’t like it either,” Captain Standforth told her. “Made me cut myself.” He showed her the scratched finger.

Hester, the closest thing they had to a ship’s doctor, frowned at the scratch a millisecond, then said, “paint a little antirust compound on it. Be good as new.”

Bemused, the captain gazed at his finger. “Are you sure?”

Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster joined the group, and Billy armed the councilman with his microphone, “It’s all set, “ he said. “Just talk straight into it.”

“Fine.”

“Not yet,” Ensign Benson said.

The councilman stepped out onto the small platform suspended halfway up the side of the ship, and his amplified voice rolled out over a dusty landscape reminiscent of certain sections of Eastern Oklahoma in early June.

“Citizens of J. Railsford Farnsworth Repertory com---Ack!”

Inside the ship, Ensign Benson frowned. “Ack?”

Councilman Luthguster bundled hastily back into the ship like a stockbroker into the bar car. “Those aren’t people! They’re, they’re things!”

“Stop talking into the microphone,” Ensign Benson said.

Billy looked out the air lock. “Oh, Wow! Cute bug-eyed monsters!”

“What?” Stepping impatiently out onto the platform, Ensign Benson found himself gazing down on as motley a collection of creatures as ever was lit by the same sun. Nonhuman to a fault but, as Billy had said, cute. They were tiny round puffballs with human legs and wings and yellow wigs over fairy faces. Tall, androgynous sprites in tights. Hoppers with humps. And in front of them stood a beautiful womanoid with gauzy wings and a gauzy gown and long, pointed ears, and a big hairy manoid with a great purple cloak and long feet that curled up into spirals at the end.

Loudly enough for Ensign Benson to hear, the manoid addressed the womanoid: “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.”

In the doorway, the captain said, “That one over there looks like a bird, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Billy.

“What, jealous Oberon!” the woman was bellowing. “Fairies, skip hence: I have foresworn his bed and company.”

“I will not talk to things!”

“Tell that nitwit,” Ensign Benson said over his shoulder, “to stop talking into the microphone.”

Below, half the thingummies were skipping away, while the womanoid frowned up at Ensign Benson. “Fairies, skip hence,” she repeated, even more loudly. “That’s you, buster!”

Ensign Benson called, “Where are the human beings around here?”

“Nowhere in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” jealous Oberon told him, apparently exasperated.

“I will not talk to things!”

“All right,” disgusted Oberon said, “let’s go, troupe.” As his whatsits and flumadiddles obediently slopped off, he turned back to call, “And I suppose that spaceship of yours is an example of kitchen sink realism!”

The entire crowd shuffled away. They appeared to be removing wings and heads and appendages as they went, almost as though they were costumes; and 40 feet from the ship, they stepped around a curtain of air, one after the other, and disappeared.

Ensign Benson blinked. “Oh, boy,” he said.

The captain and Billy came out onto the platform, the captain saying,” Where did everybody go?”

“Um,” said Ensign Benson.

“Those were really keen creatures,” Billy said.

“And what a beautiful day, the captain said, gazing skyward, stepping back from the ship, the better to view the empyrean. “Is it morning here or after---Aak!”

“Another aak,” Ensign Benson moodily said, watching the captain tumble down the stairs to land in a dusty heap at the bottom.

“Kybee, look!” said Billy.

Ensign Benson followed Billy’s pointing finger. There in the middle of the field, an invisible curtain of air was lifting to reveal what seemed to be a house with its side wall torn away. In the kitchen, a woman wearing a slip stood wearily at her ironing board. In the living room, a man in a torn T-shirt sprawled on a sofa and drank beer.

Captain Standforth had picked himself up and was brushing himself off. Ensign Benson started down the ladder, intent on finding out what was going on here, and Billy came after. Above, Pam Stokes and Hester Hanshaw came tentatively out to the platform, Pam looking at the oddly sliced house and saying, “Did they miss a mortgage payment?”

Hester said, “Maybe all their weather comes from the other side.”

“Are the things still out there?”

“They’re gone, Councilman Luthguster,” Pam said. “You can come out.”

“Tell him to leave the microphone inside,” Ensign Benson called up the ladder, then said to the captain, “let’s go find out the story here.”

“I suppose we have to.”

The captain and the ensign and Billy crossed the dusty field, meeting part way a frazzled woman wearing many frilly-but-worn garments and carrying a carpetbag. Smiling rather maniacally at Billy and speaking with an almost impenetrable southern accent complicated by many odd little pauses, she said, “Ah have…allwuz depended…on the…kahndness of stranjuhs.”

“Me too,” said Billy.

“As for me,” said Ensign Benson, “I’ve never depended on the kindness of strangers. Seems to work better somehow.”

In the living room, the man burped and yelled, “Stella!”

The frazzled woman stopped, frowned at Ensign Benson and said, completely without accent or affectation,

“Say. What’s your story?”

“That’s what I meant to ask you,” Ensign Benson said. “What’s your story?”

“A Streetcar Named Desire, of course.”

Billy said, “What’s a streetcar?”

“I’ll tell you what my desire is,” Ensign Benson said, but the captain got there first, stepping forward to say, “Madam, if you please, take me to your leader.”

“Us,” said Ensign Benson

“Oh, that story,” said the woman.

Royal-blue carpet with the Presidential seal in the middle. Large wooden desk, flanked by flags. The Oval Office.

Coming around his desk, smiling, hand outstretched, the President of the United States greeted the people from Earth. “Welcome back. Your safe return from barren Aldebaran has ignited the spirit of mankind. Welcome home to Earth.”

“Actually, Mr. President,” Councilman Luthguster said, puffing himself up, “We’re from Earth, and we wish to---”

“Well, of course you are,” the President said. Picking up a document from his desk, he said, “I have a proclamation here in honor of your voyage and return. ‘Whereas, in the course of human events…’”

Through the window behind the desk, the Washington Monument could be seen; but through the open doorway to the left, the same old dusty plain was visible. A group of people in overalls and sweatbands wheeled a Trojan horse by. Two women in straw hats and tuxedos bucked and wung the other way.

The proclamation ran its course. At its finish, Councilman Luthguster squared his round shoulders and said, “Mr. President, I am empowered by the Galactic Council---”

Approaching Ensign Benson, the President firmly shook his hand and said, “Captain, your voyage into the unknown makes this the most important day in all creation.”

“Sir,” said Captain Standforth, “I’m the captain.”

“You,” the President reminded him, “are the captain’s best friend.” Turning to Pam Stokes, he said, “And you are the ship’s biologist.”

“Actually,” Pam said, “I’m the astrogator. I don’t think we’d need a biologist on a---”

“Of course you do.” Irritation seeped through the Presidential manner. “How else do we discover the killer virus that’s taken over the crew’s bodies?”

“Wait a minute,” Ensign Benson said. “You aren’t the President: you’re pretending to be the President. This is a play!’

“Well, of course it is!” the President cried! “And this is the worst rehearsal I have ever participated in!”

Luthguster harrumphed. “Do you mean to say,” he demanded, “that you are not empowered to deal on a primary level with a plenipotentiary from Earth?”

Frowning, the president said, “ Have you come unglued, fella?”

Ensign Benson muttered, “Director-no. Producer-no.” Snapping his fingers, he said to the President, “Take me to your stage manager.”

The man sat atop a six foot wooden ladder. Behind him were three rows of kitchen chairs, several occupied by solemn-faced people wearing their Sunday best. The man on the ladder said, “I’m the stage manager here. I guess I know just about everything there is to know about our town….”

The captain and the crew sat by the side of the dusty road. Billy took his boot off and looked in it. Councilman Luthguster, marching back and forth, announced, “This is absurd! These people can’t spend all their time play acting. They must have a government, an infrastructure. How do they get their food?”

“Of Mice and Men for an extended run,” suggested Ensign Benson.

Across the way, out in the middle of an empty field, a group of men in togas strolled out from behind an invisible curtain of air and began declaiming at one another. They all stood with one foot in front of the other.

“That’s the part that bugs me the most,” Ensign Benson said. “How do they appear and disappear like that?”

“Scrim,” said Hester.

Ensign Benson gave her an unfriendly look. “What?”

“I know what a scrim is,” Billy said. “We had one in the theater in college. It’s a big mesh screen. You paint a backdrop on it and hang it across the front of the stage. If you shine a light in front, you see the painting but you can’t see the stage. If you shine the light in the back, the painting disappears and you see the stage,.”

“Close but no psuegar,” said Hester. “That’s the original, old-fashioned kind of scrim, but then a way was found to alter air molecules so light would bend around them. Now a scrim is a curtain of bent molecules. You put it around a set and it shows you what’s beyond it. They used to use one in the field questions for the S.E. degree, but of course its old-fashioned now.”

“None of which solves,” Councilman Luthguster reminded them, “the problem of how to get in touch with whoever runs this blasted colony. I’ll do no more play acting!”

Standing, the captain said, “Well, Hestia’s going down; there’s no more to do today. We’ll get an early start tomorrow.

“Wasn’t it right here?” the captain asked.

“I thought,” said Pam vaguely, “it was more over that way, by those little trees.”

“There weren’t trees here before,” Ensign Benson said. “Those are cardboard, part of a set.”

“I am uninterested in sets, “the councilman said. “Totally uninterested. What I want is my room on the ship.”

“Well, yes,” said Luthguster.

The little group stood on the plain, looking around. The captain said, “It was just--- It was right around --- I know it was over here somewhere.”

A man dressed in the front half of a horse costume came striding purposefully by, carrying the horse’s head under his arm. Billy said, “Excuse me. Have you seen our spaceship?”

“What?” The horseman looked around, then said, “Oh, right. They struck that set.” And he walked on.

“Struck?’ Echoed the captain. “Struck?”

“Theatrical term,” Pam told him. “It means to dismantle a set and take it off the stage.”

“You can’t dismantle a spaceship, “ the captain said. “Not in half an hour.”

“No,” Ensign Benson said, through clenched jaws. Smoke seemed to be coming out of his ears. “But you can put a curtain around it.” Glaring at Hester as though it were her fault, he said, “Our ship is surrounded by your goddamn bent molecules!”

Darkness fell, a bit at a time. “I think,” said the captain inaccurately, “I think we’ll just have to sleep on the ground.”

“Like camping out!” said the irrepressible Billy.

“Without the camp,” said the repressible councilman.

The captain said, “We’ll each have to find a declivity to sleep in.”

“Amen,” said the councilman.

“Kybee,” Pam said, “This is my declivity.”

“It’s important to retain our body heat,” Ensign Benson explained, trying to hunker down beside her.

“Thank you, Kybee,” Pam said, “But I’m really quite warm enough sleeping by myself.”

“You would be,” Ensign Benson muttered, thumping off across the darkling plain and all at once running into a spider web. “Ptchah!” he cried, flailing at the web, then realized it wasn’t a web at all. It was a, it was some sort of, it felt like a thin sheet or a ---

Curtain.

“Oh, boy,” Ensign Benson said. Feeling the material with both hands, maintaining a lot of body contact with this drapery, he sidled along to the right, noticing how clothlike it was, giving when he pressed but resisting when he pressed too hard. Somewhere there would be, there had to be, an opening.

There. His right hand slipped off the curtain’s edge and fell forward against unresisting air, and all at once, instead of Hestia’s dull but protracted set, he was looking at somebody’s drawing room.

Comedy-of-manners time. A sofa centered, telephone on stand to its left. Several upstage doors for slamming. Occasional furniture along the walls. Steady, not-too-bright light, source uncertain.

Ensign Benson stepped through the break and inspected more closely. Windows fakes with painted views. Bookcase a painted façade. Telephone nonoperative. Water in ashtray, soap on mirror. Some sort of mottled obscurity high above blocking the sky. Sofa real and soft.

Turning about, he looked through the curtain of bent molecules at his shipmates settling down for the night on the duty ground, like a small herd from some endangered species. Tell Pam about the sofa? Surely she wouldn’t mind sharing it. On the other hand, there was the rest of the crew.

Ensign Benson sighed. Pushing open the flap, he called, “Everybody! I found us a room.”

Hestia rose like thunder out of the horizon across the way. “I hear thunder,” Pam said, sitting up on the sofa, squinting in the rosy light, looking tousled and adorable and unavailable.

The other earthlings, less adorable, rose from their beds of chair curtains and window draperies. “Rain,” grumbled Ensign Benson, stretching his stiff, sore back. “Just to make things perfect.”

But there was no rain, and when the thunder stopped, it became obvious that the sound had actually been some sort of approaching motor. For a few seconds the earthlings waited in silence, contemplating their morning mouths, and then an upstage door opened and a heedless young couple in evening dress-black tie for him, green flapper outfit for her---entered and slammed the door. “Tennis, anyone?” cried the boy, with a toothy grin; then, as he reacted to the scene onstage, his grin became a toothless O of shock. “Lor!” he breathed.

The girl stared about in disbelief. “Well, I never!” she said, in character.

Captain Standforth clambered stiffly from his settee, saying, “I’m terribly sorry. Is this your place?”

The young man stared about in well-bred horror. “Look what you’ve done,” he said, “to this set.”

“We’ll fix it right up,” Billy promised, fluffing the pillow that had been his sole companion on the floor.

“I’ve a good mind,” the young man said angrily, “to report you to, report you….”

Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster both leaned eagerly toward him. “Yes?” asked the councilman. “Yes?”

“To the agency!”

“Of course!” cried Ensign Benson.

The vehicle was a four-wheeled land traveler with a simple metal-pipe frame and three rows of bucket seats. While the Earthfolk piled atop another in the back---Pam deflecting Ensign Benson’s attempt to pile atop her-the annoyed thespians sat in front, the male kicking the engine to life and hunching over the handle bars. “We’ll see about this” he said, and off they lurched.

Up a dusty slope they went and over the ridge and down the long, dusty road toward the settlement, a cluster of small buildings along an X of two streets.

“That’s the colony,” said Ensign Benson, staring around Hester’s shoulder.

“Where we landed was nothing but an outdoor---”

“Rehearsal hall,” said Billy.

“They figured,” Ensign Benson said, “we were just actors, rehearsing a---”

“Space opera,” said Billy.

“Shut up, Billy” said Ensign Benson.

Meanwhile, up front, the girl was pleading her case to her companion. “They’re just trying to attract attention,” she said. “Come on, Harv, you and I aren’t above stunts like that ourselves to get a part. They’re just between gigs, that’s all.”

“Then let ‘em go to Temp, like the rest of us.”

“Come on, Harv, don’t be a producer.”

By then they were in the middle of the most utilitarian town the Earthpeople had ever seen. The buildings were drabbly functional and lacking in ornamentation, with none more than two stories high. Other stripped-down land travelers moved back and forth, and the several pedestrians, male and female, were mostly dressed in plain, drab jump suits. The few people in costume-a cowboy, a striped-pants diplomat, a belly dancer-stood out like parakeets in a field of crows.

The land traveler stopped. Reluctantly, the driver said, “All right, get out. I won’t report you.”

“Gee thanks!” said Billy, bounding over the rail.

The others followed, and Ensign Benson said, “Where’s the agency?”

“Don’t milk the joke, fella,” the driver said and accelerated away. But his girlfriend, behind his back, pointed and gestured toward a nearby gray-metal building, then waved a good-luck good bye.

“She was nice,” Billy said.

“I’ve never dealt with agents before,” Luthguster said, frowning at the building.

“Only principals.”

Ensign Benson stared at him. “You only deal in principles? Come along, councilman; this I have to see.”

J. Railsford Farnsworth Successors-Talent Agency read the inscription on the frosted fiber of the door. The Earthians filed into a small, bench-lined room personed by a feisty receptionist. “Well, look at what the omkali dragged in,” she said, surveying the bedraggled Terrans.

Hester glared at the girl. ‘Get smart with me, snip,” she said, “and I’ll breath on you.”

“Harridan,” commented the receptionist calmly, flipping through a card file on her desk. “Battle-ax.” “Dyke.”

"Sorry, got nothing for your type at the moment, We have your photo and resume on file?”

“Girlie,” Hester said, leaning over the desk, “if I had my socket wrench, I’d unscrew your head.”

“Just a minute, just a minute,” said Ensign Benson, interposing himself. “Is the boss here?”

The girl frowned at him, then smiled. “Oh yes. You’re the captain.”

“That’s right, and he’s my best friend. Is the chief in?”

“You mean-the agent?

“The man in charge,” said Councilman Luthguster.

The girl looked dubious. “Who shall I say is calling?”

The councilman drew himself up to his full round. “The Earth,” he said.

The girl looked him up and down. “I won’t argue,” she said.

Framed autographed photos-glossy 8 x 10s-covered every inch of wall space in the small windowless room. The roll-top desk was picturesquely old and battered, the wastebasket overflowing, the leatherette sofa sagging, the two client chairs tired and gnawed.

So was the agent. A short and stocky man in a wrinkled jump suit with sleeve garters, he looked harried, sympathetic and negative. “I’m sorry, group,” he said. I can’t tell you anything more than my girl did. Space opera just doesn’t move right now. How about a family drama?” Pointing to Billy, he said, “You could be the secret-faggot younger son.”

“Gee,” said Billy, “I don’t know.”

“Well, you do know the alternative,” the agent said. “If you’re not in rehearsal, you have to sign up with Temp. When something comes up that suits you, we’ll be in touch. In the meantime, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

“Who’s Temp?” Ensign Benson asked. “Is he in charge here?”

The agent offered a brief smile, knowing, condescending and a bit irritated. “Don’t audition with me, pal,” he said.

Councilman Luthguster said, “I assure you, my friend, continuing play acting is the farthest thing from my mind. I am here representing the Galactic Council, and I wish to---”

Óh, please,” the agent said, becoming really annoyed. “If you people don’t get out of here at once, I’ll put your photos and resumes in the inactive file and you’ll be permanently on temp.”

“Go ahead,” Ensign Benson said.

The agent blinked at him. “What?”

“My name is Kybee Benson. I am not the captain and I don’t have a best friend; and if my picture is in your files, you’re a magician.”

“That goes for me double,” said Hester. “And I’m not a dyke.”

Ensign Benson stared at her. “You aren’t?”

“Wait a minute,” the agent said. Doubt curdled his face. “Who are you people?”

“A mission from Earth,” Ensign Benson said.

“Representing the Galactic Council,” Councilman Luthguster added.

“And I’m sorry to bother you, Captain Standforth said, “but your people struck our ship.”

“So Temp is temporary employment,” Ensign Benson said, “and it’s the source for all the necessary labor in the colony.”

“That’s right.” The agent and the Earthpersons sat around a long table in a conference room. A secretary had distributed coffee and notepads and pencils and now sat poised to one side with her memo pad open.

“And, Ensign Benson went on, “for the past five hundred years, you’ve been in rehearsal.”

“The assumption has always been,” the agent said, “that sooner or later, our transportation would arrive. ‘The show must go on eventually’ is our national motto. So we keep a group of shows ready to perform, the choice of shows ready to perform, the choice of which ones being based on popular vote. There’s a certain understandable growing negativity about space opera, which is why you’ve been having so much trouble.”

“Well, our troubles are over now,” Billy said, beaming at everybody.

“Ours, too,” the agent said. Eagerly he leaned forward. “What’s our first stop on the tour?”

The captain said “Tour?”

“It will make a difference,” the agent explained, “as to which plays we carry. You wouldn’t do Lysistrata in Gayville, for instance.”

“Sir,” said Luthguster, “You have misunderstood. We are an introductory mission representing the Galactic Council in the reabsorbtion of---”

“You mean, you aren’t our transportation?”

“Certainly not,” Luthguster said. “I assure you, sir, I am neither a play actor nor a tour director. I am---”

“In terrible trouble,” the agent finished. To his secretary-who had stopped note taking, the better to look shocked and horrified-he said, “Erase that bit, Emily, and don’t breath a word of this to anyone.”

“Oh, sir,” breathed Emily, with all the despairing fervor of any showbiz secretary ordered not to gossip,

The captain said, “Really, uh, your Honor, I’m sure we can arrange all the transportation you need.”

“I’m delighted and relieved to hear it,” the agent said. “Five at the very most.”

The captain said, “All we need is to get to the ship and---”

“Impossible,” the agent said.

“I knew there had to be a kicker,” Ensign Benson said. “What is it?”

The agent pressed all his fingers to his chest in the time-honored agent’s gesture of innocence. “Bubee,” he said, “do I know where your ship is? No. Certain members of the rep company do, If you go to the rep company and tell them you’re here in a spaceship, after five hundred years but you’re not their transportation, do you know what they’ll do?”

The Earth party shook its heads.

“Lynch you,” said Emily bitterly. She was shredding her pencil.

“Very probably,” said the agent.

Ensign Benson said, “Do you mean we can’t get our space ship back because, if people know it’s real but not your damned tour bus, they’ll blame us?”

“I couldn’t have phrased it better myself,” the agent said. “Remember, five hundred years is a long rehearsal.”

Emily, sniffing solemnly over her note pad, murmured, “But what else could we have done? We never knew when….”

“Yes, Emily,” the agent said sympathetically.

Councilman Luthguster said, “But this is terrible; I can’t arrange for transportation or trade agreements or development aid or anything until I’m back on the ship.”

“But how to get there,” Pam said. “That’s the problem.”

All nodded dolefully. But then Billy leaped to his feet, his fresh face eager and alight. “Say, gang!” he cried. “Why don’t we-I dunno-put on a show?”

And what a show! Dorothy and the Wizard of J. Railsforth Farnsworth Repertory Company, and Selected Shorts. The agent helped arrange for cooperation from the craft guilds, and the sounds of cheerful hammering and more cheerful whistling rose up from the stage carpenters building the sets. Backdrops were flown, specialty acts were auditioned and Ensign Benson took to wearing jodhpurs and an ascot. Councilman Luthguster sang the base notes, Billy gave pep talks from the tops of ladders and the captain flew squadrons of stuffed birds. The crew spent hours in the wardrobe shed, sequences from other shows were freely borrowed and even Emily chipped in, writing lyrics.

Curtain up!

“Somewhere over the welkin, skies are green….”

“Of thee I sing, hyperspace!”

“Toto, I don’t think we’re on Alpha Centauri anymore.”

“Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! It’s off to J. Railsforth Farnsworth Repertory Company we go!”

“Whatever Toto wants, Toto gets.”

“Hee, hee, hee! And I’ll get that dog, too!”

“Toto! Toto!”

“Dingdong, the dingbat’s dead!”

“Ignore the man behind that curtain!”

The finale! A scrim parted and a gasp went up from the audience as Hopeful appeared, gleaming in the Hestia light. Dorothy (Pam), the Cowardly Lion (the captain), the Scarecrow (Ensign Benson), the Tin Person (Hester), the Wizard (Councilman Luthguster) and Toto (Billy) marched, singing, toward their ship.

Along the way, the agent shook Councilman Luthguster’s hand.

“Hurry back,” he said. “We’ll take lunch.”

Klonk-klonk, up the yellow-metal ladder. Snuck went the air-lock door.

Ssssssummmmmmmmmm went the spaceship, up, up and away.

What stage effects!” marveled the cheering throng. “What magic! What realism! What a finish!”

What-no encore?

HITCH YOUR SPACESHIP

_______________________

Breakfast on the hopeful consisted of ocher juice, parabacon, toastettes, mock omelet, papjacks, sausage, (don’t ask) and Hester’s coffee. It was called Hester’s coffee because Hester made it and Hester drank it; the others had to draw the line somewhere.

This morning, all hands had gathered for the prelanding meal. At the head of the round table sat Captain Standforth himself, under the glassy eyes of nearly two score defunct birds mounted on the walls, the stuffing of which was his only true vocation. Descended from those Standforths, the ones who had so routinely over the past seven generations covered themselves with glory in the service of the Galactic Patrol, the captain had been compelled by both his family and destiny to enlist when his turn came, just as the patrol had been compelled by family and history to take him, inadvertently and unhappily proving that sometimes neither nature nor nurture may create character. Taxidermy? A Standforth? Regrettably, yes.

Gathered around, scoffing down the fabrifood, were the rest of the expendable captain’s expendable crew, plus his lone expendable passenger, Councilman Morton Luthguster, as plump and pompous as a pouter pigeon crossed with a blimp. The crew consisted of second-in-command Lieutenant Billy Shelby, young and idealistic but not to awfully bright; Astrogator Pam Stokes, very bright and very beautiful but a stranger to passion; Ensign Kybee Benson, whose encyclopedic knowledge of human societies did not keep him from being personally antisocial; and stockily blunt Chief Engineer Hester (of the coffee) Hanshaw, proud mistress of the engine room.

The captain wiped his lips on a toastette, then ate it. “Well,” he said to his murky band, “we’ll be landing soon.” His mild eyes gleamed with visions of this unknown planet and the unimaginable new birds he would soon disembowel.

Councilman Luthguster, swirling a forkful of papjack in pseudoleo, said, “What is this place we’re coming to, Ensign Benson? What are its characteristics?”

“No one knows for sure about this one, Councilman,” the ensign told him. “The old records simply say the colonies were a group of like-minded people whose goal was a simple life free of surprises.”

“Well, we’ll be a surprise,” the councilman said.

Councilman Luthguster said, “What’s the name of the place, Ensign Benson? I’ve noticed that the name the colonists give their settlements frequently offers a clue to their social structure.”

“It’s called Figulus,” Ensign Benson said.

“Figulus?”

Blank looks around the table. Billy Shelby said, “Wasn’t he one of the founders of ancient Rome? Figulus and Venus.”

“No, Billy,” said Ensign Benson.

Jim frowned skyward. “You don’t suppose they got the coordinates wrong? Landed someplace else on Figgy?” Behind them, on the knoll where they stood, the pleasant town dreamily awaited.

“They’re dawdling over their breakfast, like as not,” Hank replied. “In fact, there they come yonder.”

“Publius Nigidius Figulus,” Ensign Benson said. “He was the most learned Roman of his age, a writer and a statesman, died circa forty-five BC”

Billy looked sad. “Died at the circus? That’s awful.”

“Terrible,” the ensign agreed. “Figulus was most noted for his books on religion and-----”

“We’re,” Pam Stokes said, her ancestral slide rule moving like a live thing in her slender-fingered hands, a subtle alteration simultaneously taking place in the faint aura of engine hum all about them, “here.”

Everyone jumped up to look out the view ports at Figulus, third of ten planets in orbit around the Sollike star called Ptolemy. Only Ensign Benson remained at the table, draining his vial of ocher juice. “And astrology,” he finished.

“People of Fugulis-----”

“Hi, Senator,” Jim said.

Councilman Luthguster frowned across the top of his P.A.-system microphone at the two locals at the foot of the extruded stairs. He was on the platform at the top. Both were middle-aged, mild-mannered, Jim with a gray cardigan and a pipe, Hank with eyeglasses and a tweed jacket. All four elbows sported leather patches. “I am a councilman,” he informed them.

“Ha!” said Hank. “That’s a five-buck you owe me, Jim.”

Jim scratched his head. “I would have sworn a plenipotentiary from Earth would be at least a senator.”

Councilman Luthguster stared. “Í haven’t told you that yet,” he told the world through the P.A.-system.

Just inside the ship where the others waited, Ensign Benson frowned and said, “What’s going on out there?” He edged closer to the open hatch, where he could hear both sides of the conversation. ”Well, in any event,” Hank was saying, while his pal Jim sadly produced a five-buck from his wallet and handed it over, “the councilman is not the one we have to talk to here. No, we want the man in charge.”

“You mean the captain?”

Hank said, “No, no, he’s just some sort of hobbyist along for the ride. We want the---what will you call him? Social scientist. Anthropologist.”

“Sociologist,” Jim suggested. “Ethnologist.”

Ensign Benson stepped out onto the light. “Social engineer,” he said.

“How do you do, sir,” Hank said, smiling behind his glasses, coming up the ladder with hand outstretched. “I’m Hank Carpenter, mayor of Centerville.”

Back on the ground, Jim made a dang-it gesture with his pipe. “I knew he’d be a Scorpio! Dang it, that’s what we should have bet on.”

Ensign Benson accepted Hanks firm but friendly handshake. “Centerville?”

“Well, sir,” Hank said, “it happens that this is the center of the universe. May not look like much, but that’s what it is and why our forebears came here. But lets quit jawing. You and the councilman and the four inside the ship, come on to town and meet the folks.”

Ensign Benson held tight to the stair rail. “Four inside?”

“Well, there's your captain,” Hank said. “Tall, skinny, distracted fella. A Pisces. And his number two, a nice young boy but not too quick upstairs-probably a Moon Child. Moony, anyway.”

“Show-off,” Jim said. He was still smarting over his fiver.

Hank went on, pretending not to notice. “Then there's your navigator---“

“Astrogator.”

“Same thing, just gussied up. A highly motivated young person, probably female.”

“Not yet,” Ensign Benson muttered.

“But definitely Virgo.”

“That I’ll go along with.”

“Now, your engineer,” Hank went on, “a solid Taurus, but we just can’t decide if it’s a man or a woman.

“Nobody can,” Ensign Benson said.

“I heard that,” Hester said, coming out onto the platform to shake a wrench at the ensign. “I’m a woman, and don't you forget it.”

“Why not?”

“Come on, folks,” Hank said, gesturing toward town. “You’ve had a long, hard journey; come along and relax.”

The captain, the lieutenant and the astrogator joined the three other earthlings on the platform and they all looked off toward town. A pretty little place with peaked roofs, a traditional white steeple and a sports ground alive with running, yelling children, it nestled in a setting of low hills where neat farms mingled with elm groves, the whole area very much like bits of Devon and Kent-the parts beyond commuting distance from London. "What a nice place,” Pam said, her slide rule for one instant forgotten.

“You’ll learn to love it,” Hank assured them, “in time.”

“Chick, chick, Nero,” Jim said as Hank explained to the Earthers, “Our energy sources are really very slender. No oil, no coal. Hydropower and solar power give us enough electricity to run our homes and businesses, but there was no way we could keep powered transportation. Fortunately, there were several indigenous animals capable of domestication, including the like of old Nero here.”

Nero, a gray-and-white creature that might very well pass for a horsy steed in the dusk with the light behind it was apparently quite strong; without effort it pulled this ten-seater surrey and its eight passengers along the gently up-and-down crushed-stone road toward the town. A farmer in a nearby field, plowing behind another Nero, waved; Hank and Jim and Billy and Hester waved back.

“Have any birds here?” the captain asked.

“Oh, all sorts.”

Ensign Benson had been deeply frowning, intensely brooding, acutely staring into the middle distance, but now all at once he nodded and said, “Hyperradio.”

Jim frowned around his pipe. “Say what?”

“You must be in hyperradio contact with one of the colonies we already visited.”

“Not us,” Jim said. “never heard of hyperradio.”

“Then someone else has been here from off planet. Recently.”

“No, sir.” Jim shook his head and Nero’s reins.

Hank said, “You’re our first visitors in five hundred years. You’ll be starting the guestbook.”

Ensign Benson gave him the old gimlet eye. “You knew we were coming. You knew how many of us and where we were from and our mission. Somebody had to tell you all that.”

“Easy,” Hank said, grinning. “The stars told us.”

The town was small but busy, with a bustling, shop-filled main street, Nero-powered surreys and wagons everywhere, and an aura of prosperity and contentment.

“What’s that?” the captain asked as they made their way around a white-stone obelisk in its own little center-of-the-street garden.

“The peace memorial,” Hank said. “We’ve never had anybody to have a war with, but the town plan called for a memorial there----our ancestors’ original town back on earth had one at that spot----so about a hundred years ago, they just went ahead and put up a peace memorial.”

People waved as they went by, and a dressed-up reception committee waited out front of the grange hall. “I know you’ve all had breakfast,” Hank said, “but you could probably tuck into some real food. Come on.”

Everybody climbed out of the surrey. Billy Shelby, a happy and innocent smile on his face, said to ensign Benson, “Golly, Kybee, isn’t this place nice?”

“I’m not so sure,” the ensign muttered, glowering at all those happy people. “Keep your eyes open, Billy. There’s something wrong here.”

It was a gala breakfast, laid on just for the visitors and with nearly 50 of the most prominent local citizens in attendance. The Terrans were introduced to, among many others, the principals of both high schools, three ministers, one priest, four doctors, both judges, the police chief, the editors of both newspapers…. Oh, the list went on and on. Then they all sat at long trencher tables under crepe-paper decorations of umber and sienna---Earth colors--- and happy chitchat filled the hall as the food came out.

Real eggs. Real homemade bread with real butter. Real bacon. “Hester,” Councilman Luthguster said, “this is what coffee taste like.”

“Not my coffee,” said Hester.

“I know,” said the councilman.

“How do you like the breakfast?” Hank asked.

“Fine,” said Ensign Benson, though, in fact, it was all as ashes in his mouth. Looking up, he noticed the designs painted high on the walls, just under the ceiling, 12 on each side, six along each end. Beginning at the front left, three designs incorporated rams’ heads, three involved bulls, then…. “The zodiac,” Ensign Benson said.

“You know it, then.” Hank Carpenter seemed pleased.

“Astronomy. Publius Nigidius Figulus wrote on astrology.”

“One of the great early scholars in the science.”

Ensign Benson raised such a skeptical brow. “Science?”

Hank offered such an indolent chuckle: “You’re from Earth, of course,” he said, “where it doesn’t operate as efficiently.”

“Oh, really?”

“If you were to take an ordinary chemistry-lab experiment,” Hank suggested, “and try it under water, the results wouldn’t please you. Would that disprove the science or reflect the surroundings?”

“So what makes this place better surroundings than Earth?”

“To begin with,” Hank said, “our being at the center of the universe means there's no distortion. Then, our year is precisely three hundred sixty days long, so we don’t have to keep eternally adjusting things. And Ptolemy’s system includes ten planets, and our planet has two moons and our sun; twelve. One heavenly body per house.”

“Oh, but you can’t seriously----”

“As the bumblebee said to the physicist,” Hank said, “All I know is, it works.”

The extremely beautiful blond girl to Billy’s left said, “Hi, I’m Linda. What’s your sign?”

“Billy.”

“Billy? No, that’s your name. When were you born?”

“About three-thirty in the morning,” Billy said. “Mom said everybody’s born at three-thirty in the morning. Can that be right?”

Linda thought about that. She had beautiful violet eyes. “You were born in July,” she decided and turned to talk to the person on her other side.

Ensign Benson ate toast, eggs, bacon, waffles; but he did not, in fact, taste a thing. He was thinking too hard. “If astrology works,” he said, “it rules out free will.”

“Not at all,” said Hank. The heavens don’t say certainly thus and so will happen, or everybody born at the same time in the same general area would be identical. Astrology deals in probabilities. For instance, the astral alignment so strongly suggested Earth would make fresh contact with its Lost Colonies now that we pretty well discounted any other possibility, but as to the exact make-up of the crew, there were some details we couldn’t be sure of.”

“Still,” Ensign Benson said, “you’re telling me you people can read the future.”

“The probabilities,” Hank corrected.

“Of course,” Pam Stokes said, an actual real piece of bacon in one hand and her ever-present slide rule in the other, “there are many ways to define the center of the universe.” She bit off a piece of crunchy bacon.

“Oh, sure,” Jim Downey agreed. “And they all work out to be right here.”

Pam frowned, “This doesn’t taste like bacon.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, its----Actually, its better.”

Putting the slide rule down, she picked up a fork and had at the scrambled eggs.

Pointing, Jim said, “ What is that little stick, anyway?”

“This slide rule? It’s a sort of calculator, used before the computer came in.”

“Like the abacus?” Jim picked it up, pushed the inner pieces back and forth, watched the little lines and numbers join and separate.

“I guess so,” Pam said, reaching for the toast, pausing in amazement when the toast flexed. “It was my mother’s,” she explained, “and my mother’s mother’s, and my mother’s mother’s mother’s and my mo-----”

“Very interesting,” Jim said and put it down.

Ensign Benson, lost in thought, had stopped eating. “If you’re done, “ Hank said, “We’ll show you to your house.”

The ensign looked at him. “My house?”

“You and your friends. We thought you’d probably all want to live together at first until you get to know the town, make friends, find employment----”

“Wait, wait a minute.” Ensign Benson was almost afraid to phrase the question. “How long do you expect us to stay?”

“I’m sorry,” Hank said, “You haven’t read your chart, of course. You’ll be here forever.”

Give Councilman Luthguster a crowd, hell make you a speech. “Earth can do much better for the people of Figulus.” He declared to the local citizens assembled at his table. “Technology, trade agreements. A chicken in every pot; a, a, a, a horse in every stable. Peace, prosperity----”

“We’ve got all that,” said a citizen.

“And a stable buck,” said another.

Councilman Luthguster paused in mid-flight. “Buck? A stable buck?” Visions of deer, all with symmetrical antlers, leaped into his head.

“That’s our unit of currency,” a citizen explained. “We have the quarter-buck, half-buck, buck, five-buck, sawbuck, all the way up to the C-buck and the grand-buck.”

“And its stable,” another said. “Been a long time since there was a drop in the buck.”

“It’s entered the language idiomatically,” said a citizen who happened to be a high school principal. “Pass the buck, for instance, meaning to pay a debt.”

“Buck the tide,” offered another.

“That’s to throw good money after bad.”

“Buck and wing.”

“To buy your way out of a difficult situation.”

The councilman stared, popeyed. “But that’s all wrong!”

A friendly citizen patted his hand. “You’ll learn them,” she assured him. “Won’t take long-a strong-willed Leo like you.”

“Oh no.” The councilman was firm on that. “How happy I am I’ll never have to learn such gibberish.’

His audience just smiled.

“If your stars tell you we’re staying here,” Ensign Benson said, “they’re crazy.”

“Look, friend,” Hank said. “What if the billions and billions of human beings scattered across the Galaxies were to learn that right here, smack in the middle of it all, was a place where they could find out almost everything about the future? What would happen?”

“You could do a great mail order business.”

“They would come here,” Hank said. “In their billions. Our town would be destroyed; our way of life would simply come to an end.”

Reluctantly, Ensign Benson nodded. “It could get difficult.”

“And that’s why the stars say you’ll remain here and never expose us to the rest of the human race.”

“Sorry,” the ensign said. “I understand your feelings, but we have our own job to do. We just can’t stay.”

“But you will,” Hank said apologetically but firmly. “You see, there's an armed guard at your ship right now, and there will be for the rest of your lives.”

Odd how easily the next month flowed by. Billy Shelby got a paper route and a job delivering for the supermarket. Pam became a substitute math teacher at one of the high schools, where the male students could never figure out what she was talking about but flocked to her class anyway. Captain Standforth, roaming the country side with his stun gun, brought back many strange and---to him--- interesting new birds to stuff. Councilman Luthguster took to hanging around down at city hall, and Hester Hanshaw became a sort of unofficial apprentice at the neighborhood smithy.

Socially, the local belief that ‘those who sign together combine together’ made it easy to met folks of similar interests. Herds of hefty Taurians took Hester away for camping trips, Billy joined a charitable organization called Caring Cancers, a Piscean gardening-and-water-polo club enrolled Captain Standforth, Pam linked up with the Friends of the Peace Memorial (an organization devoted to maintaining the patch of flowers and lawn around said memorial) and Councilman Luthguster joined the local branch of Lions Club Intergalactical.

Only Ensign Kybee Benson failed to make the slightest adjustment. Only he sat brooding on the porch of their nice white-clapboard house with the green shutters. Only he resisted the overtures of his sign’s organization (the Scorpio Swinging Singles Club). Only he failed to learn the local idioms, take an interest in the issues raised by the morning and evening newspapers (which gave the following day’s weather, with perfect accuracy), involve himself in the community. Only he refused to accept the reality of the local saying that meant the end of negotiation, parley, haggling. The buck stops here.

“Buck up, Kybee,” Billy said, coming up the stoop.

“What?” Ensign Benson, in his rocking chair on the porch, glared red-eyed at the returning delivery boy. “What is that supposed to mean in this miserable place?”

“Gee, Kybee,” Billy said, backing away a little, “the same as it does back on Earth. It means ‘be cheerful; look at the sunny side’”.

“What sunny side? We’re trapped here, imprisoned in this small town for the rest of our----”

“Garr-rraaaghhh!” Ensign Benson announced, leaped to his feet and chased Billy three times around the block before his wind gave out.

Somehow, the second month was less fun. The area round about Centerville had shown to Captain Standforth its full repertory of birds; the board of aldermen would let Councilman Luthguster neither deliver a speech to them nor (as a noncitizen) run for office against them; the high school boys, having grown used to Pam’s useless beauty and having realized none of them would ever either claim her or understand her, now flocked away from her classes; at the supermarket , Billy was passed over for promotion to assistant produce manager; and a Nero kicked Hester in the rump down at the smithy, causing her to limp.

On the social side, things weren’t much better. Hester found her biking Taurians too bossy and quit. Caring Cancers met every week in a different members home to discuss, over milk and gingersnaps, possible recipients for its good works but so far hadn’t found any, which made Billy feel silly. The captains gardening-and-water-polo club kept postponing its meetings, necessitating constant rounds of messages and plan reshufflings. No two Friends of the Peace Memorial could agree on a flower arrangement. And Councilman Luthguster, after a hard-fought campaign in which he had taken an extremely active part, had been blackballed at the Lions Club.

More and more, the former space rovers hung around the house, vaguely fretful. The bilious green sky, the nasty sun (color of ochre juice), the two mingy little marble moons in the eccentric orbits all pressed down on the landscape, on the town, on their own little gabled house, with its squeaking floors and doors that stuck. The local citizens had brought from the Hopeful all their personal possessions---cloths, tools, video camera and monitor, the captain’s birds, Pam’s sky charts Billy’s collection of the Adventures of Space Cadet Hooper and His Pal Fatso and Chang, Ensign Benson’s folders of Betelgeusean erotica, the bound cassettes of Councilman Luthguster’s speeches to the Galactic Council (with the boos edited out), even Hester’s coffee mug---but all these things simply reminded them of their former lives, made their present state less rather than more bearable.

Centerville was a small town in no nation. Distractions were few and local. No movies or videos, only the Morning Bugle and the Afternoon Independent for reading matter, very little variety in clothing or food (all good, all stolid) and no real use for any of their skills or talents. In 500 years, the population had grown from the original 63 to just over 11,000, but 11,000 aren’t very many when that’s all there are.

Even the news that both high school bands would march in next month’s Landing Day parade didn’t lift their spirits a hell of a lot. That’s how bad things were.

Ensign Benson brooded alone in his rocking chair on the front porch, watching the world (hah!) go by, when a bit of the world in the person of mayor Hank Carpenter came up onto the stoop to say, “Hey, Kybee.” The ensign gave him a look from under lowered brows. Hank cleared his throat, a bit uncomfortable. “We’re sending an ambulance,” he said.

“You’re what?”

“Sorry,” Hank said, looking truly sorry, “but we’ll be taking the captain over to the hospital for a while.”

“What for?”

“Well, uh, he’s about to commit suicide.”

Ensign Benson stared. He knew these people now; they didn’t lie and weren’t wrong. But the captain? He said, “I thought I’d be the first to snap.”

“Oh, no,” Hank assured him. “In fact, you’ll, uh, be the last.”

“That’s it,” Ensign Benson said. Rising, he pointed stern finger at Hank. “Keep your ambulance. We’ll take care of our own.”

“Well, if you’re sure you----”

But the ensign had gone into the house and slammed the door.

He found the captain upstairs in his room, fooling with a rope. “Come downstairs,” he said. “Now.”

In the kitchen Billy and Hester were making coffee-separately, in different pots. The ensign and the captain entered and the ensign said, “Watch him. If he starts drinking anything funny, stop him.”

Billy said, “You mean, like Hester’s coffee?” But the ensign was gone.

Soon he was back, with Pam and the councilman. “Its time,” he told them all,

“To quit fooling around and get out of here.”

“But, Kybee,” Billy said, “we can’t. These people know the future, and they say we’ll never leave.”

“Probabilities,” The ensign corrected him. “The future is not fixed, remember? There's still free will. The probabilities are caused by our narrowing free will. Things will probably happen in this way or that way because we are who we are, not because the stars force us into anything.”

Hester said, “I don’t see how that helps.”

“We have to break out of the probabilities. Somehow or other-I don’t see it clearly yet, but somehow or other-if we do what we wouldn’t do, well get out of here.

Pam said, “But what wouldn’t we do?” The ensign gave her a jaundiced look. “I know what you wouldn’t do,” he said. “But I would do it, so that’s that. No, we need something that’s so far from the probabilities that , that….”

The others watched him. Ensign Benson seemed to be reaching down far inside himself, willing a solution where there was none. “Take it easy, Kybee,” Billy said.

Hester said “Do you want some coffee? Billy’s coffee.”

Slowly, the ensign exhaled; it had been some time since he’d breathed. “I know what were going to do,” he said.

“No!” said the captain. “I won’t!”

“That’s the point,” Ensign Benson said.

Hester said, “There’s no way your going to get me to do a thing like that.”

Pam said, “Kybee, this is just a scheme of yours; I can tell.”

“Gosh, Kybee,” said Billy.

“My dignity,” said the councilman.

“Precisely!” Ensign Benson said. “Your dignity is what keeps the probabilities all lined up in a neat and civilized and predictable row. It’s the only way were ever going to get back onto the Hopeful. Think about it.”

They thought about it. They hated it. But that, of course, was the point.

“Hidy, Kybee. The captain feeling better?”

“Oh, we’ll all adapt, Hank.”

“What’s that you’re watching?”

“Just a little video I made of the captain shooting birds. Never saw one of these machines?”

“No, sir, can’t say I have.”

“They’re easy to operate. Come here, Ill show you.”

One nice thing about knowing the future, you never have to worry about a rain date for your parade. The sun shone bright, the bands and the marchers were respendent, and this year, thanks to the Earthpeople, there would be a permanent record of the whole affair! Hank Carpenter, armed with the video camera, stood atop a wagon right down by the Peace Memorial, ready to tape the whole show.

And a real nice show it was. The South Side High School band led off, in uniforms of scarlet and white, and the North Side High School band, in blue and gold, brought up the rear. In between were contingents of the 4-H, the Grange, the police department, bowling leagues, volunteer firemen, a giggle of beauty-contest winners in a bedecked surrey; oh, all sorts of interesting things.

Including the crew of the Hopeful. Naked.

“Keep taping!” Ensign Benson yelled at Hank Carpenter. “Tape! Tape!” And he did, and they all looked at the tape later, and it was still impossible to believe.

What an array of uncomfortable-looking people. What a variety of flesh was here on display. What an embarrassment all the way around.

Captain Standforth and Hester appeared first, side by side but determinably separate. The captain sort of vaguely squinted and blinked, pretending to do difficult math problems in his head, while Hester marched along like an angry rhinoceros, daring anyone to tell her she was naked. The captain in the buff looked more mineral than animal: an angular, gawky armature, a scarecrow that wouldn’t scare a wren, an espalier framework for no known tree. Hester, on the other hand, merely became more Hester: chunky, blocky, squared-off.

A rosy astrogator came next: Pam Stokes blushing from nipple to eyebrow, accompanied by an ashen legislator. Councilman Luthguster, shaped very much like the balloons being carried by some of the younger spectators, appeared to have been drained by a vampire before leaving the house that morning. Upon this pallid sausage casing, the hobnails of embarrassed perspiration stood out in bold relief. Would he faint, or would he make it to Main Street? He suffered from the loss of his pomposity much more severely than the simple loss of his clothes.

Pam suffered from the loss of clothes. She was beautiful, but she didn’t want to be beautiful; she was graceful, but she didn’t want to be graceful; she was a treat, but the last thing on Earth-or Figulus-that Pam Stokes wanted to be was a treat. Her expression was like that sometimes seen in dentist’s offices.

Finally there came Billy and the ensign, and here the mark of the ensign’s determination really showed itself. Although it would certainly be embarrassing for him or for Billy to appear naked in public, it wouldn’t, in truth, be quite the horror it clearly was for the others, so for himself and Billy the ensign had escalated the attach.

They were dancing.

Arm in arm, the ensign leading, Billy following pretty well, they turned and turned in great loops, waltzing to John Philips Sousa’s The Thunderer-not impossible but not easy.

Nobody stopped them; nobody knew what to do but stand and gape. For two blocks past the astounded populace, down Broadway from Elm past Church to Main-that being the reach of the video camera-the captain paced, the chief engineer plodded, the councilman trudged, the astrogator inadvertently and unwillingly promenaded and the lieutenant and the ensign waltzed. At Main, surrounded by a populace still immobilized by disbelief, they broke and ran for it, around behind the crowd, through back yards and alleys and away. With many a hoarse cry and broken gasp, this unlikely herd thundered all the way home, up the stoop, across the porch, into the house and slammed the door.

Knock, knock.

“Who’s there?”

“Hank Carpenter, Miss Hanshaw. You folks all right in there?”

“Go away.”

“It’s been five days; you can’t just----”

Hank waited. He went over and sat on the porch railing and looked out at the sunny day. The rubbernecks who had filled this street at first had given up by now, and everything was back to normal. But what had it all been about, anyway?

This was one of those rare moments when the charts didn’t help. If it were simple madness, of course, that would explain a lot, since insanity can play merry hob with your probabilities, but somehow Hank didn't believe lunacy was the answer.

The front door opened and Ensign Benson came out, carrying a thin folder. He shut the door behind himself, gave Hank a quick, nervous smile, then frowned out at the street.

“They’ve all gone,” Hank assured him.

“I didn’t know it would be quite that I bad,” the ensign said. “It does something to your nervous system to be naked in front of that many people.” He had a twitchy look to him and didn’t quite meet Hank’s eye.

“What we can't figure out is why you did it.”

“So you could let us go, of course.”

Hank smiled in confusion. “You mean, we’d take pity on you because you lost your minds?”

“We didn’t lose our minds, just our clothes. You’ve got it all on tape, right?”

“I don’t know why you’d want such a thing,” Hank said, “but yes, we do.”

“Look at this,” Ensign Benson said, extending the folder.

Hank took it, opened, found himself reading a report to the Galactic Council about the lost colony known as Figulus.

“Says here, the settlement was abandoned. Colonists long dead. Some unanticipated poison in the atmosphere.”

“Not suited for human life,” the ensign said. “As soon as we're aboard ship, that’s the report we’ll send.”

“Why?”

“You’re keeping us here because you’re afraid well spread the news about you and a lot of people will show up to learn all about the future.”

Hank nodded. “Destroying our future in the process.”

“If anybody did arrive, the ensign said, “you’d blame us. You’d probably be mad enough to show that tape.”

“I’m beginning to see the light,” Hank said. “You were looking for a way to bust loose from the probabilities.”

“That’s right. What could we do that we wouldn’t do?”

“Walk down Broadway at high noon, naked, with a brass band.”

“As long as you have that tape,” Ensign Benson said, “we’ll do anything-anything-to keep the rest of the human race away from here.” Wanly he smiled. “And if this doesn’t work,” he said, “if you still won’t let us go, we’ll just have to get more improbable.”

“How?” Hank asked, a bit wide-eyed.

“I don’t know yet,” the ensign told him. “I hope I never know. How about you?”

Out, out, out across the illimitable void soared the Hopeful. Its crew, garbed in every piece of clothing they owned and not looking one another in the eye, had left Figulus without even having their charts done. They knew nothing of the future.

Just as well.

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU

________________________

When the sky filled with the roar of the descending ship, they all slithered into their holes to wait.

“You know,” Captain Standforth said, unclenching his fingers from the controls as the ship shuddered its last and sagged onto the ground, “I think I’m beginning to get the hang of this landing business.”

Groans answered him.  Chipper young Lieutenant Billy Shelby, the person who normally dealt with landings – Captain Standforth was apt to take the term planetfall literally – managed a cheerful smile and even injected a little perkiness into his voice as he said, “Much better, sir.  Why, this was quite smooth!”

Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw, blunt in body, mind and mouth, gave Billy a look.  “Not as smooth as you, you little toady.”

Billy’s handsome if not brilliant face clouded.  He said, “What’s a toady?”

Astrogator Pam Stokes, who had been lost in study of her ancestral slide rule, wondering if it had been damaged in the landing, looked up and said, “Thursday, I think.  Back on Earth, that is.”

In the baffled silence this created, Captain Standforth mused, “It’s that tricky business of not turning the engines off until you actually touch down; that’s the part I have the trouble with.”

“If we’ve landed on the damn planet,” Ensign Kybee Benson said, struggling out of the pod that had absorbed the brunt – though not all – of the impact, “let’s take a look at it.”  A social engineer, an expert in comparative societies, Ensign Benson was responsible for studying each lost colony when it was found and describing its 500 years of unsung history.  Being the only one aboard the Hopeful likelier to be interested in the planet than in the landing, he was the first to cross the command deck to the viewscreens, switch them on and look out at a rolling and nearly treeless savanna that looked much like the Rift Valley in Kenya in August, before the rains.  Each screen showed the landscape from a different direction, all the views very similar, each with low tan hills far in the background.  “Hmmmm,” said Ensign Benson.

The five other travelers in the Hopeful crowded around:  Captain Standforth, tall and craggy; Pam, beautiful, brainy and blind to passion; Hester, the human fireplug; Billy, the idealist; and Councilman Morton Luthguster, portly as a plum pudding, representative of the Galactic Council, who harrumphed and said, “Fine farmland, I should think.”

“Oh, should you?” Ensign Benson snarled.  He despised his shipmates, each and every.  They were here because they were misfits, home base delighted to be rid of them on this endless journey; but why was he here?  Furious by nature, he said savagely, “We aren’t here for real estate, Councilman.  Where’s the colony?  Pam?  You steered us here.”

“This is definitely the nexus,” Pam told him, the slide rule flashing in her slender fingers.  “We are on the planet Matrix, fourth from the star Mohonk, gravity and air compatible with Earth---“

“It’s a big planet,” commented Ensign Benson.

“One point one nine three times the size of Earth,” Pam agreed.  “Earth density to one point---“

“It’s a small colony,” the ensign interrupted.

“Oh, it’s here,” Pam assured him, getting the idea.  “This is the place.  The coefficients are---“

Billy, peering at one of the viewscreens, said, “I see something out there. Little boxes or something.”

Everyone peered at the same screen.  Thirty yards away on the tundra were low, slender structures of some kind.

“Then let’s take a look,” Ensign Benson said.

They watched the new creatures emerge from the giant silver ship.  One, two, three, four, five, six.  They watched, and absorbed, and studied.

Then, for the moment, they slid deeper into their holes, drawing the earth closed above them.

The slender structures were gravestones, made of metal.

“Oh, dear,” said Pam.

Ensign Benson looked around at the bare land.

A slight breeze blew.

“There were forty colonists,” he said.

“There are thirty-seven graves.”

Captain Standforth, who had been scanning the sky – bird taxidermy was his one passion – said, “What’s that?  You mean the colony never survived at all?”

“Look at the dates,” Ensign Benson told him, gesturing at the letters and numbers etched into the metal.  “Not one person was born here, and none of the original colonists lasted more than four years after arrival.”

Hester said, “But they didn’t all die at once, so it wasn’t poisoned water or an attack from hostile creatures.”

Billy said, “Forty colonists and only thirty-seven graves?  How come, do you suppose?”

“Well,” Ensign Benson said, being uncharacteristically patient with Billy, his natural animosity softened by the presence of all those headstones, “I suppose there wasn’t anybody around to bury the last one, and the other two could have died away from the colony.  After five hundred years, you know, Billy, they’d all be gone by now, anyway.”

“I guess so,” Billy said, nodding but glancing surreptitiously toward the horizon.

Councilman Luthguster pointed at something beyond the cemetery, farther from the ship.  “Is that some sort of ruin?”

It was.

They approached it and found that it was at the crest of a low fold in the land, with more ruins on the slope down from them.  Crumbled remnants of poured quasi-parquet flooring, stubby bits of pseudostone wall, the entire area scattered with artifacts of domesticity:  pots, coat hangers, plastic picture frames.  During 500 years of neglect, accumulated rust, wind and dirt had gnawed at the husk of the fledgling colony, working tirelessly to make it unexist, coming closer to that goal with every passing year.

At the bottom of the fold in the terrain, among coatless buttons and doorless handles, the crew found a sturdy metal footlocker half-buried in the earth; buried deeper on one side, indicating the direction of the prevailing wind.  The locker’s catches were closed, but it wasn’t padlocked.  Inside were sheets of paper that had all but rotted away, photos faded to a nearly uniform beige and what looked like a video tape, but not of a sort Ensign Benson had ever seen.  Picking it up, removing the cassette from its metal box, he showed it to Hester, saying, “Any idea what this is?”

“If that’s a tape,” Hester commented, “it’s goddam old.”

“Hester,” the ensign said, “if it’s anything in this forsaken place, it’s goddam old.”

“Well, that’s true,” Hester admitted.  She took the cassette from the ensign’s hands and studied it.  “Tape seems all right,” she said, “but we don’t have anything to play this on.”

“Then it doesn’t matter if it’s all right or not,” the ensign pointed out.

“Well, I’m wondering,” she said, turning the cassette in her hands, “if I could adapt it. If you read this tape the same way our machine does, with a laser, with the same kind of laser, maybe I could rewind it or something, fix the machine to take it.”  She turned.  “Captain?”

Captain Standforth guiltily looked down from the skies.  “Yes, Hester?”

“Want me to see if I can play this tape?”

“Excellent idea,” the captain told her.

For two days, while the rest of the crew roamed and searched the surrounding area, collecting basketfuls of detritus and trash, examining remnants and ruins, learning nothing, Hester struggled with the ancient tape.

“It’s impossible,” she would announce at every meal, smudges of machine oil on cheeks and knuckles, the banked fires of frustration in her eyes.  Sometimes it was impossible because the tape was not scanned in the way the machine knew how to scan; sometimes it was because the speed of the tape was unknown and d unknowable; sometimes it was because of incompatibilities at the magnetic or the electronic or simply the physical level.  And always, having announced the impossibility, Hester would grumble and sigh and shake her head and wade back in to try some more.

Everyone else rooted for her, of course, partly wanting Hester to succeed simply because she was their shipmate and they wanted their shipmate to succeed, but also because they wanted to know what had happened to the Matrix colony and assumed the tape would tell them.  That is, everybody but Ensign Benson assumed that.  As the struggle to read the tape grew more and more prolonged, he came to believe it would turn out – if they ever did crack it – to be no damn use at all.  Instead of the Rosetta tape, instead of the answer to the mystery of the colony’s failure, it would prove to be, in Ensign Benson’s private, unstated opinion, nothing more than some silly piece of entertainment, songs and dances perhaps, some piece of forgettable 500-year-old fluff brought along by the colonists to distract themselves during the long nights of their settlement’s youth.  In a brand-new colony, after all, there is no downtown.

On the third day, Hester didn’t appear for lunch, she was so engrossed in the complexities of her impossible task.  It was midafternoon when she emerged from the ship, looking as disgruntled as ever but with some sort of firm line of satisfaction in her jaw.

She marched out across the dusty tan landscape toward Ensign Benson, who had been studying the grave markers yet again, hoping to find some inscription he hadn’t noticed before, some clue that had eluded him up till then.  Reaching him, she stopped and put her stubby hands on her broad hips.

“It’s there if you want it,” she announced.

He straightened, one hand to his aching back.  “Hester?  The tape?”

“That’s what I’ve been working on, isn’t it?”

“You found a way to play it!”

“I invented a way to play it,” Hester corrected, “and it wasn’t easy.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”  Then, unable to keep his doubts to himself any longer, he said, “What’s on it?  A sports roundup?  A wet T-shirt contest?”

“Some gloomy-looking fellow sitting g at a table,” she told him. “That’s all I know. I’m sick of that damn thing, Kybee. You want to watch it, watch it.”

“I want to watch it,” he agreed.

“It’s in there, in my workroom next to the engine room,” she told him.  “Just push the green button.  It’s not the cleanest picture you’ve ever seen, but you can make it out.”

Doubtful, he said, “You don’t want to operate it yourself?”

“I don’t want to be anywhere near it,” Hester told him. “Not for a while. Go ahead, take a look.”

They were nearly ready.  They slithered and groped toward the surface, moving unfamiliar parts, tiny clods of dirt dropping down past their shuuz.  Shooz.  Shoez.  Shoes.

A terrible picture, with green horizontal lines of interference and a pink glow around every object.  A raspy, furry buzz obscured the sound track.  Ensign Benson leaned forward, squinted and listened.

“I am Hafter Kass,” said the frowning, bulky, steep-shouldered, despairing man seated at the black plastic table, elbows and forearms on the table before him, fingers nervously twining.  Behind him was a blank wall with a closed door in it.  “I am the real Hafter Kass,” the man said, leaning forward, staring intensely at the camera.  Then rage broke through.  “Do you hear me?  The real Hafter Kass!  Goddam it, the real one!”

“I believe you,” Ensign Benson murmured.  “Honest, I do.”

As though reassured, Hafter Kass subsided into his chair.  He was about 40, wearing a rough plaid old-fashioned tunic.  He lifted a shaking hand to rub his mouth, then said, “Whoever you are, if anybody ever sees this, get off Matrix.  Get off now!  Before---“

He stopped and looked quickly over his shoulder, then back at the camera.  “Have to get hold of myself,” he said.

“Good idea,” agreed Ensign Benson.

“We arrived three years ago,” Kass went on, “and almost immediately lost contact with the mother ship.  That’s the worst of it, knowing there won’t be any help, ever. Not ever. Stuck here, doomed here---“

Again, Kass visibly brought himself under control.  “They didn’t come out right away,” he said.  “The---the things.  But then they--  No, wait, I’m not making any sense.”

“True,” Ensign Benson said.

“About two weeks after we landed,” Kass said, voice trembling, “they appeared.  Creatures that looked exactly like us.  Like specific ones of us.”  He gestured toward the door behind him.  Out there, hundreds of Hafter Kasses.  Hundreds of Magla Damerons.  Hundreds of---” He ran both hands through thinning hair.  “Their clothing is exactly like ours, they look exactly like us, they have some kind of low-level telepathy, so they have our memories, our gestures, our expressions.  Stee Venking, our zoographer – well, amateur zoographer – anyway, he says these creatures developed this as a defense against predators.  Become the predator and it can’t eat you without being a cannibal.”

Kass gestured helplessly, looking around, then back at the cameras.  “At first, we didn’t realize the horror of it.  But then we found out what it means.  You never know if you’re talking to a human being like yourself or one of them.  You’re alone.  Every one of us is alone, surrounded by thousands of . . . whatever they are.”  He shook his head.  “Well, we know what they are.  If you kill one, it reverts to its real shape, a kind of fat eight-foot-long worm.”

“Ugh,” said Ensign Benson.

“There will never be a child born in this colony,” Kass went on.  “How could any of us, any of us human beings, go to bed with-- Never knowing if--  That’s a part of the creatures’ defense mechanism, too.  They make the predators die out, cease to reproduce.”

A chill ran through Ensign Benson at that; a life without even the possibility of sex?  Couldn’t you just go along with what you saw, if what you saw was built the way, uh . . .

But then he frowned, thinking it through.  What you saw might be shaped any way at all, but if you knew the odds were hundreds to one that the person in bed with you was really an eight-foot-long worm, even the horniest human being would begin to lose enthusiasm.  Bad news.

Hafter Kass was going on, saying, “Is it any wonder most of us chose suicide?”

“No,” Ensign Benson told him.  An odd, uncomfortable feeling had crept over him, a warmth he rarely experienced.  Could it be sympathy?  He watched the long-gone Hafter Kass with suspiciously moist eyes.

“That’s the only way, finally, we can tell us from them,” Kass went on.  “When they die, they revert to their real shape.  At first, we tried shooting them – each of us shooting his own imitations, because those were the only ones anybody could be sure of – but there’s just too many of them, an entire species.  They never fight back, never try to shoot us, but it doesn’t matter.  Violence isn’t part of their nature, because it doesn’t matter.  They’ve found the ultimate defensive weapon.”

Again, Kass rubbed a shaking hand across his mouth.  “One of the worst things,” he said, “is that after one of us dies, they still go on with the imitation.  Your husband, your wife . . .  You know they’re dead, but there they are, walking around.  And again.  And again.  Hundreds of them.  Smiling at you, calling you by the pet name that only the two of you knew.”

The door behind Kass opened, and a cluster of people, a dozen or more, came in, looking concerned, saying, “There you are, Hafter,” or “Why are you hiding in here. Hafter?”

Kass didn’t even turn as the people gathered around him.  His expression bleak, he faced the camera.  Beneath the friendly cries of the newcomers – two of them, Ensign Benson realized with a sudden shiver, identical Hafter Kasses – beneath their voices but clear and passionate, Kass said to the camera, “Get away from here.  This is hell.  This is the worst you can imagine.  I may even be the last human alive here, there’s no way to know.  I’m surrounded by people, and I’ve been in solitary confinement for three years.”

“Oh, Hafter,” one of the others cried, happy and careless, “you’re taping!  Can I tape, too?  Shall I sing?”

“No,” Hafter said.  Rising, he moved the table, shoving the others out of his way as though they were dummies on rollers – none objected – and darkness descended as he approached the camera.  There was a click, and the recording ended.

“Oh, boy,” Ensign Benson said.  “Not good.”  Decisively, he got to his feet, left Hester’s workroom, hurried through the ship to the exit and went down the ramp, looking around for the rest of the crew.

The nearest was Pam, walking diagonally away toward the ruined colony.  “Pam!” Ensign Benson called, and when she turned, he waved to her to stop, to wait for him.  “We’ve got to get into the ship!” he cried, trotting up to her.

She frowned as he approached.  “Kybee?  What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you later.  Just get into the ship; I’ll go after the others.”  And he hurried past her toward the ruins.  But when he looked back after a few half-running paces, she was still standing there, frowning at him.  “For God’s sake, Pam!” he yelled.  “Get going!”

“Kybee?” Pam said.  “What’s wrong? “ But her voice came from behind him.

When Pam saw the strange woman beyond Kybee, she couldn’t understand who it might be.  A survivor from the colony, for 500 years?  One of the three without graves?  But that was impossible.  This attractive-looking woman was young, was certainly no more---

Was herself.

Dread touched Pam.  All at once, she was not an astrogator, not a scientist, not a rational, civilized person, but a primitive creature feeling a sudden surge of the most basic fear.  She stared, not understanding, and the woman stared back at her with an expression of horror.  “Kybee!” they cried together.  “What’s happening?”

He stared from one to the other.  “Which---  Which---“

“Kybee, it’s me!  It’s Pam!”  But it was the other one who said that.

Pam hurried toward Kybee, crying, “Don’t listen to her!  She’s---She’s--  I don’t know what she is!”

“The ship,” Kybee muttered, dazed.  “Save the ship.”

“Yes,” Pam said, reaching for his arm, her terror deepening when he pulled away.  “We’ll go into the ship,” she said.  “We’ll figure out---“

But he was backing away, staring from her to the impostor, his eyes terrified.  “How do I---  How can I--  You don’t get inside the ship!”  And he turned and ran.

The Billys and the Hesters and the Ensign Bensons were building sheds and lean-tos.  The Councilman Luthgusters were sorting through the food supplies Kybee had pushed out of the ship the day before so that the real crew members wouldn’t starve to death.  The Pams were cooking on the makeshift stoves the Hesters had constructed. Most of the Captain Standforths had quit banging on the Hopeful’s door and yelling on the monitor cameras and had wandered off across the landscape, presumably in search of birds suitable for taxidermy.

In a horrible way, it was fascinating to see how the creatures worked it.  The fear and disbelief and repugnance that were the natural reaction of the real crew members were perfectly mirrored in all the imitations.  Then, as time went by without any change in the situation, with no further events, no escalation of threat, as horror became dulled, that, too, was echoed, the real and the fakes all calming together, getting used to this madness together.

If he were out there with the rest of them, would he behave any differently from the headshaking wide-eyed Ensign Bensons he watched on the viewscreens?  No, he would not.

It was two days since Kybee had run back into the ship and sealed the entrance behind him, and he had not yet slept.  What was he going to do?  What were any of them going to do?  They were doomed here, just like the original colonists.  He couldn’t fly the ship alone, and even if he could, what about the others?  He couldn’t just abandon them here, in this hell on Earth.  Or hell on Matrix.  “In this case,” Kybee muttered to himself, watching the mobs on the viewscreens, “hell really is other people.”

It was strange how circumstances changed attitudes.  Kybee had always felt impatient loathing toward his shipmates, knowing himself to be the only truly sharp – and sharp-edged – person on the ship.  He had thought it miserably unfair that he should be assigned to this team of losers on this mission into oblivion; what did he have in common with them?

It was only now, in this extremity, that he found himself drawing parallels, that he saw his own social prickliness as much of a liability as Hester’s bluntness or Pam’s unworldliness or the councilman’s pomposity.  Damn it, somehow, damn it, in the course of their voyage, damn it, they had become a team, damn it, a unit, while his back was turned, damn it, some kind of stupid tribe.  His shipmates were in trouble out there, damn it, and he was the only one in the universe who could help.

Except, of course, that he couldn’t.  What was there to do?  Forty colonists had spent four years trying to solve this problem, without success.  How could he hope to do anything but keep the interior of the ship free of impostors by banning everything?

There’s something comforting about despair.  When Kybee realized that there truly was no way out, that they were all stuck on Matrix for the rest of their lives, himself inside the ship and the rest of the crew outside amid the crowds of ersatz, A kind of peace descended on him.  There’s nothing to be done; doom is at hand; no point struggling.  Yawning, easy at last in his mind, warmed by the hopelessness of their situation, Kybee left the view screens and went to bed.

It was dark.

He was suddenly wide awake.  Sitting up, he spoke into the black room.  “It isn’t the same.  The colonists had to live here, somehow, live with those creatures forever.  All I have to do is find the right five people and get them on the ship.  That’s all.”

It was light.  Kybee drank nearcoffee and brooded at the viewscreens.  More of them were out there today.  A couple of thousand by now.  Food would become a problem soon.  And as for finding the right Pam, the right Billy . . .

No.  It was still impossible.

Nevertheless, the comfort of despair had been wrested from him.  He had no choice.  The task might be impossible, but he was going to have to try it, anyway.  “The tape,” he told himself.  “I’ll watch it again.  I’ll watch it a hundred times if I have to.  Maybe there’s a clue in it, maybe there’s something. . .”

He sighed and finished his nearcoffee and went off to watch again the final testament of Hafter Kass.

Kybee was slapping Hesters. His hand had begun to sting as he left reddened cheek after reddened cheek in his wake, but he persisted.  “Kybee!” the Hesters cried, blinking, putting their hands up to their slapped faces.  “What are you doing?” they cried, or, “What was that for?” or, “What’s the big idea?”

He didn’t answer, not a one of the stinking worms.  He’d left the ship, sealing the entrance behind him, carrying the only electronic key that would work with the combination he’d just created, and now he was moving among the crowd, slapping and slapping.

What a mob there was, more than ever, and how they liked to mill around.    Kybee shoved Billys and Ensign Bensons out of his way, seeking out the Hesters, slapping them, slapping them, and at last, one of the Hesters yelled, “What the hell was that for?” and slugged him back.

Seated at the viewscreens, Hester watched Kybee rove through the crowd, tweaking councilmen’s noses.  “The bastard’s enjoying himself,” she told the air, watching Luthguster after Luthguster recoil, fat hands flailing the air, piggy eyes filling with tears, noses reddening.

Her own cheek still stung from that hefty wallop the bastard had given her.  Having now watched that poor doomed fellow, Hafter Kass, on the tape, and having had Kybee point out to her that Kass described the worms as nonviolent, she could understand that violence was the only way to find the real wolf when surrounded by sheep in wolf’s clothing, but that still didn’t excuse him for hitting so hard.  It’s because he was enjoying it, that’s all.

Still, being rescued from the legion of look-alikes was worth it, no matter what the cost.  It had been really frightening down there for a while, not knowing who anybody was, surrounded by piss-poor imitations of herself – why couldn’t Kybee simply have noticed that the fake Hesters were dumpier and uglier than the original? – and never knowing if the ship would up and leave, abandoning her to an entire population of Captain Standforths and Councilman Luthgusters and second-rate Hesters for the rest of her life.

(The true long-range horror hadn’t occurred to her while she was out there and probably hadn’t yet occurred to the rest of the Earthlings still trapped out there, but now that she’d seen Hafter Kass’s description of life on Matrix, she knew just how horrible it would have been and how lucky she was not to be nonviolent.)

Outside, Kybee moved off the edge of one viewscreen’s range and was picked up by another, tweaking Luthgusters left and right.  All reacted in the same roly-poly fashion, pained and astonished, waving arms and legs, and Kybee kept moving.  And then one Luthguster, after Kybee turned his back, yanked off a shoe, ran up behind him and whammed him over the head with the heel.

“Now,” said Hester, smiling, “why didn’t I think of that?”

Out there, Luthguster kept swinging the shoe, shouting in rage, letting out all the mad emotions created by their mad situation, while the surrounding throng backed away, like cattle slightly disturbed at their feeding. Kybee went down under the rain of blows, huddling to the ground, and the councilman started kicking the fallen social engineer with his shod foot.  Kybee rolled away, tumbling a nearby Billy and a Hester like ninepins, and Councilman Luthguster pursued him, hopping on one foot, that massive belly, like Falstaff’s flacon of sack, blooping over the ground.  Kybee managed to scramble to his feet and come running toward the ship, Luthguster and his furious paunch bounding along in his wake.

“There you go, Kybee,” Hester said, nodding.  “That’s the way to bring him home.”

The ship’s entryway controls were at her fingertips.  Across the viewscreens came Kybee at a dead run, bowling a path through the shoals of Pams and pseudo ensigns, the councilman following, bobbing like an escaped grapefruit.  Up the ramp came Kybee, heelmarks on his forehead and cheeks, eyes wild, voice echoing from the intercom, “Hester!  Open up!  Open up!”

Her fingers hovered on the controls.  Luthguster came panting up the ramp, looking now more like a lobster than a grapefruit, and gave Kybee just one more whop.  Then Hester opened up.

It was breasts he tweaked on Pam.  In the first place, he simply couldn’t bring himself to behave harshly toward that beautiful face or harm that beautiful nose.  And in the second place, when would he ever again get the opportunity to cop a feel in a noble cause?

“Kybee!  Stop that!”  Pam after Pam threw up protective arms, and when he reached for the second breast, back-pedaled in horror and shame.  Exactly like Pam, of course, but not good enough.  On he went.

If this doesn’t work, he told himself, clutching breast after breast, I’ll just have to escalate.  The thought was not untinged with a kind of anticipation.

“Kybee!  Stop that!  What’s got into you?”

“It’s what’s getting into you, baby,” Kybee leered, and lunged for the other breast, and this Pam slapped feebly at his lupine fingers.

Slapped?  Was that meaningful?  To be certain, Kybee aimed for target number three.

“I’m sorry I gave you a bloody nose, Kybee,” Pam said.

“Dad’s all wry,” Kybee told her, tilting his head back, holding many blobs of absorbent cottonique to his nose while Hester held an ice pack to the back of his neck.  Councilman Luthguster stood off to one side, looking, Kybee knew, pleased with this turn of events.

“Now that I know there was nothing personal in it,” Pam went on, “I’m not upset anymore.”

Kybee rolled his eyes.  Some problems remain insoluble, no matter what.

“I think it’s stopped bleeding,” Hester said, stepping back, giving him a critical look.

Kybee lowered the bloody rags from his nose, straightened, breathed experimentally and said, “OK.  Back into the fray.”

“Gee whiz!” said all the Billys.

“Kybee?  Did I have a fly on my nose?” asked all the captains.

“The problem is.” Kybee said, back in the ship, in serious conclave with Hester, Pam and the councilman on the control deck, “the real Billy and the real captain are also nonviolent.”

Pam said, “Kybee, we can’t just leave them there.”

Hester said, “There has to be a way.”

“Glad to hear that,” Kybee told her.  “What’s the way?”

“Beats me,” Hester said.

The councilman brooded at the viewscreens, where the walking, milling simulacra still included hundreds of himself.  “Ghastly out there,” he said.  “To see myself in the mirror in the morning and, of course, on election posters, that’s good enough for me.”

Kybee also looked at the viewscreens.  “I used to think sometimes,” he said, “I’d be really content in a world where everybody was exactly like me.  Well, half like me and half like Pam.  Well, like Pam, but with modifications.”

Blinking without comprehension, Pam said, “Kybee?  What can you mean?”

“But now,” Kybee went on, ignoring her for one of the few times since they’d shipped out together, “I’m going to have to find a new dream.  When I’m shaving in---“

He stopped.  He frowned at the viewscreens.  “Could they?”

The others all sensed the change in him.  Hester said, “Kybee, do you have something?”

“I don’t know.”  Kybee turned toward the others, his manner intent but distracted, as though he were already outside, doing whatever it was.  He said, “When we came aboard, they put a lot of sports equipment on, didn’t they?  Bats and balls and rackets and all that.”

“Cluttering up my storage space,” Hester grumped.

Kybee nodded at her.  “Still there, eh?  Hester, get me a ball.  A tennis ball or something.”

“Hey, Billy!  Catch!  Hey, Billy!  Toss it back!”

“Hey, Billy!  Catch!  Hey, Billy!  Toss it back!”

And finally, out of a sea of lefties, one Billy caught it right-handed.  Beaming, holding it up, this Billy called, “Want me to throw it back?”

“No, Billy, “ Kybee said.  “You come along with me.”

“Mirror image,” Kybee explained to the others.  “There was just a chance, when they did their imitations, they wouldn’t match us, they’d mirror us.  Do what they see us doing, which isn’t exactly like doing what we do.”

“Gee,” Billy said, smiling at everybody, delighted and relieved to be back in the ship, “I don’t know how you think of things all the time, Kybee.”

Kybee looked at him.  “Variety is good,” he said.  “I’d be unhappy if everybody was the same as me.  I’ll have to keep reminding myself of that.”  He tossed the yellow tennis ball into the air and caught it.  “And now,” he said, “to bring in the captain.”

“Oops.  Sorry, Kybee,” said all the captains.

“And now the problem is,” Kybee told the others back in the ship, “the captain can’t catch a ball thrown at him.  And even if he could, he isn’t sure if he’s right- or left-handed.”

Sonorously, Councilman Luthguster said, “He’s ambidextrous, you mean.”

(He loved to say long words he could wrap his tongue around.)

“That’s what I mean,” Kybee agreed.  “He’s equally inept with either hand.”  He looked at the viewscreens.

Out there, in the lengthening shadows of afternoon, the false crew members milled and trailed along, all except the Captain Standforths.

One by one, they were moving toward the ship, looking up at the monitor cameras, waving and gesturing.  Their thin reedy voices began to be heard on the open intercom:  “Kybee?  Billy?  How about me out here?  Hester?  Hi, don’t forget about me!  Hello?”

Pam stood beside Kybee, looking at the viewscreens.  “Kybee?  How can we save him?”

“I wish I knew,” Kybee said.

They turned the intercom off that night, but in the morning the captains were still there, crowding around the ship, more of them than ever.

The numbers of the other faux crewpersons in the background seemed not to have increased by much, as though it were harder to create imitations once the original was gone, but the Captain Standforths had doubled overnight.

“More and more of them,” Kybee said grimly.  “How are we ever going to sift through that mob?”

“O Captain, my captain,” Pam  said, and sighed.

“The captain of his soul,” Hester said, and sighed.

“A captain courageous,” the councilman said, but didn’t sigh.

“And a right good captain, too,” Billy said, and brushed away a tear.

“Gimme a break,” Kybee said and went away to his own room to think.

“Kybee?  Pam?  Anyone at all?”

It was late afternoon.  Captain Standforth felt lonely, sad, tired, worried and confused as he stood with all these bumbling fellows outside the Hopeful.  Who were all these awkward people, anyway?  “Why don’t you be off about your business?” he told a few nearby louts.  “Go find your own ships.”

“This is my ship!” one of them announced, poking himself in the eye in his agitation.

“My ship!” cried dozens of others.

“Oh, really!” snapped the captain and raised his plaintive face to the monitor camera high on the Hopeful’s side.  If only he’d caught that ball yesterday, things would be so different now.  But he’d never been any good at sports.  Back at the Academy---

“Captain.  Listen up.”

It was Kybee’s voice, amplified over the speakers.  The captain – and all these oafs around him – alertly listened up.  Many of them even said, “Yes, Kybee?”

“Bad news, captain,” Kybee’s voice said.

Oh, dear, the captain thought.  If only I’d caught that ball.

“There’s no way to tell which of you is real,” Kybee’s voice went on.  “We can’t stay here forever.  We have to leave.  But if some other ship stumbled onto this place and found you, we could be vaporized for mutiny.”

Ah, thought the captain, so they can’t leave.  No one wants to be vaporized.

“Tomorrow morning,” Kybee’s voice continued, “before we leave, we’re coming out to shoot all the captains.  We’re sorry, Captain, but you can understand.  That’s the only way we’ll be safe.”

The captain gaped at the ship, astounded and appalled.  Shoot him?  He looked around, and all the other captains were also astounded and appalled.  Shoot them all?

And yet, of course, Kybee wouldn’t want to risk being vaporized by the authorities.  It did make an awful kind of sense.

“Oh, dear,” Captain Standforth said.  So did most of the others.

Morning.

Kybee and Hester went out onto the ramp, armed with heavy laser guns, and looked around at a world crawling with thousands and thousands of Pams, councilmen, Billys, Hesters and Ensign Bensons, many, many more than ever before.  But not one Captain Standforth.

“By golly, Kybee,” Hester said, “you were right.”

“Of course I was,” Kybee said, though he hadn’t, in fact, been at all certain it would work.  “Tell them that everybody who looks like the captain is going to get shot, then everybody who can look like somebody else will.”

He pointed his laser gun at a nearby councilman, the largest available target:  “Where’s the captain?”

A hundred imitations pointed.  “Betrayed!” wailed the voice of Captain Standforth from the shed in which he’d taken cover.

It took quite a while to convince the captain he wasn’t going to be shot, but even then, he was too nervous to handle the take-off, so Billy did, to everybody’s relief.

“That was fun,” said a Billy, watching the great silver ship soar upward.

“Oh, I don’t know,” a Hester said.  “Let’s get out of these damn shoes.”

Shoez.  Shooz.   Shuuz.  Ssshhhuuuuuu…

Table of Contents

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CRIME STORIES

THE “DORTMUNDER” STORIES

ASK A SILLY QUESTION

HORSE LAUGH

TOO MANY COOKS

A MIDSUMMER DAYDREAM

THE DORTMUNDER WORKOUT

PARTY ANIMAL

GIVE TILL IT HURTS

JUMBLE SALE

NOW WHAT?

ART AND CRAFT

FUGUE FOR FELONS

THE SWEETEST MAN IN THE WORLD

SCI-FI STORIES

THEY ALSO SERVE

A POINT OF INTEREST

THE RISK PROFESSION

THE “STARSHIP HOPE” STORIES

DON’T YOU KNOW

INTERSTELLAR PIGEON

HEAVEN

THE WORLD'S A STAGE

HITCH YOUR SPACESHIP

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU