Callahan's Secret Part 10

"Come on, come on," the Drink said. "Lay it on us."

"You're right," I said mournfully. "I'm taking too long to get to it. A man'll do that sometimes, when he's dehydrated."

Long-Drink sighed and reached into his pants pocket.

"Give the b.a.s.t.a.r.d a beer, Mike."

"Okay," I said when I'd blown the foam off and taken a sip, "this experiment could actually be done in sloppy form right now-but it purifies it a great deal if we imagine it taking place in s.p.a.ce, in a microgravity environment. Lot's say that somewhere up in orbit, there's a perfectly spherical object whose inner surface is mirrored: a spherical mirror, all right? Naturally, it's dark in there. Floating with his eyes at dead center is an astronaut-never mind how he got there," I said hastily as Susie began to object. "Maybe the mirror was blown around him; anyway, he's there. He's scared of the dark, so he takes a flashlight out of his pocket and turns it on. What does he see?"

Everyone in the room started to answer at once- "Well, he-"

"The back of-"

"All of him at-"

"Nothing but pure white-"

-and then they all caught themselves. And fell silent. And got a far look.

After about ten seconds, Susie started to open her mouth. "Docs it make any difference," I asked, "which way he points the flashlight? How would what he see change if he pointed the thing at himself? Or if he put it in his mouth and made Monster-Cheeks?" and Susie closed her mouth again.

When the silence had lasted for nearly a minute, Doc Webster said, "Another cla.s.sic question I've always wanted to know the answer to is how and why evolution designed the human taste buds to love a poison like sugar."

I looked questioningly at Callahan, and he nodded. "Subject change," he agreed. "Appears to me that these birds owe you a case of Anchor Steam, Jake." He counted heads. "I make it a beer a piece; ante up, folks."

Grumbling, everybody did reach into their pockets, but they brightened considerably when Mike handed across my case and I started pa.s.sing out the beers.

About that time Mick and Mary Finn came in, by the wrought iron staircase from the roof. (Finn could just have easily landed on the ground, of course; the parking lot was still empty enough to make an excellent 12-but he's had a sentimental attachment to that roof ever since the night he met his wife up there and to the staircase since he married her on it, and he always comes in that way now.) There was a time when if Mickey came in, in the middle of a conversation, it had to sort of pause for a few minutes while we all helped him work his way into it. But marriage has, among the many other ways it's been good for the big alien, tended to humanize him a little, to make it easier for him to plug into things smoothly.

"Wells what do you know, it's a sawbuck!" I called out, and did not have to patiently explain to Finn that a sawbuck is two fins; he either got it or let it go. "Howdy, folks. Welcome to the feast of reason. The topic is Ponderable Questions-and the fine line between them and the imponderables. You two got any good ones?" I gave him a beer, and then I gave his wife a beer, and I don't even know why I bother mentioning that Mary smiled when I gave it to her, because the smile didn't do anything more than flay the skin off my body, sandblast every nerve and ligament, osterize a few major organs and fry my eyeb.a.l.l.s in their own grease; I made no visible sign that could possibly have been detected by anyone except the people present in the room. I'm over her completely.

"Certainly," Mickey said. "The more I live with humans, the more questions I have, and the more imponderable they become. Mary is better than any human I have ever known at explaining them-even better than you, Michael," he said to Callahan, "but even she has no more than a sixty percent success rate."

"An, now we've hit pay-dirt," Doc Webster said. "What does an intelligent nonhuman think of the human race? We're such vain creatures it's one of the- most fascinating questions we can imagine-sp.a.w.ned thousands of myths and books and movies."

"Well, naturally," Long-Drink agreed. "Man alone cannot know himself. The container can't contain itself."

Mickey Finn looked politely puzzled. "I do not understand what you mean. Do not all containers contain themselves? If not, what does contain them?"

The Drink got another far look. Finally the Doc said, "What puzzles you the most about humans, Mick? Politics? s.e.xual customs? Art? Philosophy?"

"Bathrooms," the big alien said at once.

"Jump back," Long-Drink said incredulously.

"I am serious, Drink, my friend," Finn told him. "I don't understand why humans are not puzzled by their bathrooms. I have wondered about this since before I quit working for my former Masters. I understand the concept of a blindspot, but it is hard to comprehend one of this size."

"There's usually something substantial kinds blocking the view in that direction, Mickey," Callahan said dryly. "What exactly is it that puzzles you about bathrooms?"

"Everything, Michael. The first item one finds in a typical bathroom is the sink. I have made tests: half of the time and energy spent at a sink are used in adjusting water temperature. Your technology makes cheaply available thermocouples which will reliably deliver water of any specified temperature-yet in every single bathroom in the world the job is done by hand, with every use. Unbelievable waste of time and water and heated water.

"Next the medicine cabinet: I have never seen one designed with the intelligence of the average spice rack. You have to spill everything into the sink to access the aspirins.

"The human bathtub could only have been invented to help weed out the elderly, careless and unlucky; it could be argued that this is laudable, but why must even the survivors be made so uncomfortable during what ought to be a delightful ch.o.r.e? Why are comfortable head supports not standard; why must tubs always be too short, too narrow, too hard and too difficult to keep clean; why build them of such preposterous materials; and above all, why is the single showerhead almost invariably located where it cannot be brought to bear on the specific areas where it would be most useful and most pleasant?

"As for the commode ... it would take a volume to simply list its gross deficiencies. Forget the insanity of throwing precious fecal matter into the ocean, along with gallons per bowls of drinking water-how could humans possibly have designed for daily use and accepted as a universal standard an artifact which is acutely physically painful to use, enforces an unnatural and inefficient posture, and has no facilities whatsoever for cleansing either its user or itself? And why do you persist in using them for male urinals though they are manifestly unsuitable for that purpose?

"To be fair, I must admit that given your level of technology there is not much to criticize in the towel rack but my friends, from an engineering point of view it is the only pardonable object in a human bathroom."

Well, a few of us said a few things, but there's no sense kidding; Finn had us cold. It seemed strange that these things had never occurred to any of us before. Of course, we took bathrooms for granted, we'd grown up with them, but still ...

About that time the door opened and a crisp breeze blew two men into the room; there was a glad shout as we recognized them.

"By all the Saints in Leslie Charteris's bookshelf," boomed Callahan, "if it ain't the MacDonald Brothers! About time you two b.u.ms showed up here. It's been too d.a.m.n many years."

After a short merry interval of backslaps and handshakes and let-me-get-your-coats we got Jim and Paul seated at the bar-with G.o.d's Blessings in front of them. "G.o.d, it's good to be back here," they chorused, and then Jim took over the vocalizing for both of them. "I make it three years," he said to Callahan, and, "Yes, Jake, two years ago, and yes, it is," to me, and "Upstate in Plattsburgh-and it's getting pretty sane there," to Long-Drink, and "Perfect, thanks; we're learning some things about repairing ourselves," to Doc Webster, and, "No, Eddie-we don't need one," to Fast Eddie, and, "No, Reverend, and don't think we haven't tried," to Tom Hauptmann, and then, to all of us: "We're sorry, we ought to let you vocalize the questions so you can all share the answers-but there were so many in the first round that we wanted to save a little time."

Jim and Paul are telepaths, you see.* What I'd been wondering was if they'd finished getting certified as psychiatrists yet, and if so whether it was working out the way they'd hoped. Some of the others' questions I could puzzle out. Callahan had been wondering how long it's been since their last visit; the Drink was going to ask where they were practicing; the Doc was going to ask after their health. Eddie's and Tom's questions eluded me.

"h.e.l.lo, Mary," Jim went on, "it's good to meet you, too. G.o.d, what a lovely marriage you two have! No, really? But that's wonderful! Don't worry, we wouldn't dream of it. Thanks. Finn, that's really fascinating stuff about the human bathroom. Do you see a pattern? Do the rest of you?"

I'd been thinking of filling Jim and Paul in on the conversation that'd been in progress when they arrived, but of course they were a step ahead of me. "Consider: the same inherent stupidity Finn points out can be found in the typical kitchen. Fridges that spill money on the floor when you access them; stoves and ovens that spill money on the ceiling; a heatmaker and a heat-waster side by side, unconnected; sinks with the same problems he mentioned and others; waste management techniques that belong in the Stone Age.

"In the typical bedroom you'll find just as much inexplicable thoughtlessness. It's only in the last year or two that anyone even thought of adapting hospital bed technology to home beds. The three rooms all people must spend

*~ "Two Heads Are Better Than One," in CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON (Berkley) .

time in every day, none of them rationally designed. Yet in the den you'll probably find a computer that's a masterpiece of skullsweat and micromachining, and overhead there are satellites beeping in high orbit and footprints on the Moon. Right now Paul and I are planning to spend over a thousand dollars on a hard-disk drive for our Macintosh, because it drives us crazy having to wait more than seven seconds to boot in, and it never occurred to either of us to spend fifty dollars on a thermocouple to save us hours a week of adjusting hot and cold water taps. Humans seem to have the idea that it's okay to devote thought and money and energy to our jobs, but not to our selves."

He paused courteously to let Doc Webster say aloud, "I don't know; we indulge ourselves pretty good in some ways. They make some pretty fancy entertainment gear, stereo and video and computer games and so forth."

"Nothing near as fancy as the stuff people use for work. In our Mac Buyer's Guide, business applications programs outnumber software games ten or twenty to one. All the stuff you mention was used for work for years before they made home consumer versions. And you can't sit in anything near as comfortable as a dentist's chair to enjoy them all. Holdover of the Puritan ethic: work can be n.o.ble, but the self is not worth attention. Considering that useful work is getting harder to come by, it's an att.i.tude we're going to have to change eventually."

"I dunno," Doc Webster said. "I think we put in plenty of time on enjoyin' ourselves; maybe too much."

"Maybe. But I think we enjoy ourselves in inappropriate ways, at inappropriate times, to inappropriate degrees, just because we're so unused to doing it, so uncomfortable with wanting to, so reluctant to put thought into it. Paul and I find that most of our patients don't love themselves enough, so they treat themselves so badly it's hard for them to love themselves enough-it can be a literally vicious circle."

Finn glanced at Mary on that one, and she smiled fondly. "See, kid? It's not just a human problem, is it?" He smiled sheepishly back. "Don't worry, you're making progress."

She turned back to the MacDonald brothers. "I'm glad to meet you fellows, and you've got a mighty insight going there, which come to think of it is no surprise, but ... can we tell it now? You know I'm dying to."

Jim and Paul both smiled, and this time it was Paul who did their talking. "Of course, dear. I don't know how you've held it in this long. Go ahead."

She turned to the rest of us. "You folks know what's been keeping Mick awake nights since he got to this planet, right?"

"Sure," Jimmy Janssen said. "Same thing that keeps a lot of us human type beings awake nights too."

"And I don't know about the rest of you," the Doc insisted on saying, "but Armageddon awful tired of it."

Mary ignored him magnificently. "That's right: nuclear holocaust. It wouldn't bother him any, physically, of course- and by the way, it wouldn't bother me or any of you physically either. You know how raindrops ignore friends of Mick's? Well, ionizing radiation and blast forces behave the same way, now." She reached over the bar, took out Callahan's riot-baton, and brought it down on my head as hard as she could. A microinstant after it struck, the top of my head turned hard as t.i.tanium alloy.

"That's fantastic," I said as soon as I could get my breath. "I felt a little sting, as though you slapped me with your open palm."

"That's the most pain you'd feel even if I shot you with Pop's 12-gauge," she said, grinning broadly. "However you die, Jake, it won't be by violence-. But that's beside the point. Nuclear devastation would be a sad thing even for us who survived. We'd miss the rest of the human race."

"Speak for yourself," the Doc interjected.

"-and as for Mick, without a high-tech civilization, he'd die in a few hundred years for lack of maintenance. So he and I have been working on the problem ever since we got married, kind of putting our heads together, and the reason we came here tonight is-"

"To kick around some ideas, sure," Tommy said. "Great. As long as we're all brainstorming the Unanswerable Questions, we might as well tackle the Big One."

"Well, no, actually," Mary said. "I mean, we'd be glad to kick around ideas on some other topics with you later, if you like. But this one we've sort of ... uh ... solved."

"WHAT?"

I let go of my drink; Long-Drink started so sharply his watchman's cap flew from his head; Tommy spit a cigarette across the room; Fast Eddie the piano player had what musicians call a "train wreck"; the Doc was caught without a wisecrack of any kind; and Callahan-imperturbable Callahan-poured coffee on his hand and let out a bellow. It is worth mentioning that my drink didn't go anywhere, the Drink's cap returned to its perch, Tommy's cigarette landed in wet sawdust and extinguished itself, the Doc's flabby old heart did not stop, and the coffee failed to b.u.m Callahan's wrist. The MacDonald Brothers were grinning a mile a minute, and even Finn had a happy expression pasted on his long gaunt face. Mary looked more embarra.s.sed than anything else, like someone who's solved the whole crossword in two minutes and spoiled everyone's fun. Jake, I thought to myself, taking hold of my gla.s.s again, you sure can pick 'em. It seemed astonishing that I had ever thought myself this woman's equal, imagined us living together ... (It's stupid to be jealous of someone with Mickey Finn's unique advantages, especially when he's such a good friend. But I had learned lately that I'm easily that stupid.) None of us doubted her for a moment, of course. In the first place this was Callahan's Bar, where anything can happen-and frequently does; in the second place, she was Mike Callahan's daughter, and therefore capable of anything she put her mind to; in the last place, she was Finn's wife. Me, I gave up using the word "impossible" after the time I watched Fast Eddie win a large bet by successfully skiing through a revolving door. If Mary Callahan Finn said nuclear war wasn't a problem anymore, then it was time to start converting my fallout shelter back into a root cellar again, that was all ...

The tone of Callahan's voice, now there was something genuinely startling. "Darlin'," he said darkly, "I would like to know, if you wouldn't mind telling me exactly how you and Mick solved this little problem."

"No, Mike, no," Jim or Paul hastened to a.s.sure him. "Nothing like that."

Mary apparently knew her old man well enough to read him as well as two professional telepaths. "You ought to know me better than that, Pop. No ... to answer your question out loud for everyone e se's benefit - we did not solve the problem of nuclear war by making any changes in human nature. I'm not saying Mick couldn't pull it off if he tried with enough lead time, but he wouldn't. Besides, I wouldn't let him. The very aggressiveness that makes the human race dangerous to itself is what's going to take us to the stars one of these days-you couldn't filter it out without changing humanity for the worse, maybe destroying it."

"My own race lacked that sort of aggressiveness," Finn put in. "I am its last living member, and it has not escaped me that there may be a connection. I am more advanced, more knowledgeable than any of you ---- and even I am not competent to alter a psyche-individual or collective, Michael."

Callahan relaxed. "Well, that's okay then. I misgive my misgivings. Irish Coffee, anybody?"

Long-Drink exploded. "How did you f.u.c.king do it?"

"Well," Mary said, "you all have to promise not to tell a soul-anybody that isn't a regular, I mean ..."

She was cut off by the sound of the blender as Callahan whipped cream for the Irish coffee. The big red-headed son of a b.i.t.c.h made us wait on elevator hooks until he was done, had Mary hold off until he had Blessed everyone in the room, then waved her to go ahead. Jim and Paul were smiling their faces off. I took a deep gulp of my own black magic healing potion, and decided that Callahan had good instincts and a nice judgment.

"You all know," she said. "that Mick and I have been spending our honeymoon traveling. I'd always wanted to see the world, and what with one thing and another I'd never managed to find the time to visit more than a dozen countries or so. So Mick indulged me. You know, it's funny how fast you can use up the tourist attractions of this planet when none of your time is wasted in the fiddle-faddle of getting there, and hauling and storing your stuff, and eating and drinking, and all of that chaff. On top of that, I hardly ever sleep since I took up with Mick-I don't need to anymore, and it makes me feel a little silly and selfish to go off and leave him for eight hours at a time like that. So in an astonishingly short time I discovered I was bored and there was nothing left to see.

"Well, you all know how polite this big cyborg is, but eventually he broke down and managed to diffidently suggest that Terra is not the only or even the most beautiful tourist attraction in this solar system.

"You want to know the truth, people? It's not even in the Top Ten ...

"So lately we've been doing some real traveling, having a wonderful time. One day we were hanging out in The Rings-"

"Saturn?" I burst out.

"I said it with a capital T, Jake. Hanging out in The Rings, just sort of digging, you know, and chewing the fat now and then. We talked about the c.o.c.kroaches" (the name Mary came up with for Finn's former employers when she could not bring herself to call them The Masters) "and some of the other planets and civilizations he's seen, and so forth. And of course Topic A kept coming up-you just can't look at a sterile planet for long without thinking about it- and all of a sudden Finn asked me a question."

Just like a human husband, Finn interpreted her pause and took up the tale. She's had a considerable effect on him. "The news had been full of the Disarmament Talks when we left; you will recall that the Russians refused to even discuss the subject unless Reagan promised to abort his plans for a defensive satellite network-"

"Oh," said Long-Drink, "you mean the Star W-" Callahan hefted the big fifteen-cup coffee pot in one hand like a set of bra.s.s knuckles. "-the Strategic Defense Initiative, sure," the Drink finished.

"Yes," Finn agreed. "I asked Mary: why does not Reagan say to Gorbachev, 'Let us mutually agree to found together, in a neutral country such as Switzerland or New Zealand, a single factory which manufactures defensive satellites; divide the inventory at random; and launch them two by two until each side feels safe. Until that time is reached, each of us shall have a b.u.t.ton which will destroy the factory if he suspects the other is cheating in any way. In that way-"

"If the Russians could build them things on their own, they'd be doing it," Long-Drink said argumentatively. "The U.S.'d contribute a lot more to the party than the Russians."

"So what?" Finn said simply.

The Drink opened his mouth. After a moment he reached up and closed it with his fingers.

"So what'd you answer, darlin'?" Callahan asked his daughter.

"I told him that it wouldn't work, but I couldn't explain why not. He said that was his thinking, too; just checking.

But it gave me a honey of an idea-"

"-I am ashamed that I never thought of it myself," Finn said. "It is so obvious-"

"My love," she told him, "from a human's perspective there are only two deficiencies in your character: aggressiveness, as we discussed before, and audacity." And a sense of humor, I thought jealously, and suppressed the thought.

Funny how you start censoring yourself when there's a couple of telepaths in the room. "But not imagination. Once I laid it down, you picked it up and ran with it." She turned back to the rest of us. "Mick's thoughts had been along the lines of figuring out some way to destroy nuclear warheads, and of course the problem was that even he couldn't get all of them simultaneously-and anything less would probably trigger a nuclear exchange. Even if he managed it, he might have just kicked off a conventional war that'd be d.a.m.n near as bad. Well, it occurred to me that a satellite umbrella system would make the nut just fine, except that neither side wants the other to have one first, and they're too d.a.m.n paranoid to coordinate or synchronize with each other.

"So Mick and I decided to do it for them."

After a frozen second or two, people began to grin along with Jim and Paul.

"We ducked over to the Asteroid Belt for raw materials, Finn drew up the blueprints and I set up a smithy, and we started turning out defensive satellites, free-lance. A little more sophisticated than the ones Reagan's advisors have in mind. They're in place now; we just hung the last one an hour or two ago."

Callahan frowned. "You sure n.o.body caught you at it?"

"Relax, Mike," she told him. "n.o.body sees Mick, on any wavelength whatsoever, unless he wants them to. As for the hardware, the largest components, the four system brains, are the size of ghetto blasters-and as transparent as gla.s.s. You could tell NASA roughly where they are, and give them twenty years, and they'd never find 'em.

"But for gosh sakes, don't tell anybody," Mary went on. "A general tends to freak out when he finds out his d.i.c.k won't shoot. Of course, if they're dumb enough to let the situation, uh, come up, then the h.e.l.l with their feelings- but for now, let's leave them with the comforting illusion that they hold the fate of mammalian life in their hands- it'll keep 'em out of serious mischief."

A rebel yell went up from someone, and like the first firecracker in a string it kicked off the loudest, and happiest, and most sincere cheer I had ever partic.i.p.ated in or heard of in my life. It started loud, and built to a crescendo, and then squared itself, and then sustained, and eventually, there being a limit to the capacity of human lungs, dwindled, dopplered down, attenuated and finally was reduced to a single voice. And, astonishingly, the voice was very soft, very quiet, very flat, almost totally devoid of any emotion at all. It was an oddly chilling effect. Oh, for heaven's sake, I told myself, it's just that it's Finn, and he forgets to put expression into his voice sometimes, and as my blood started to unchill it froze solid because I heard what he was murmuring so gently, over and over: "I have made a terrible mistake."

What made it even more horrible was that Jim and Paul MacDonald, dumbstruck, were nodding along with him.

Mary's face paled; I think if both her parents had been Caucasian she would have been white as a sheet. "What is it, Mick? What's wrong, for Christ's sake? I thought about it for weeks, you thought about it for hours, what did we miss?"

If anyone could have reached Finn it was Mary, but he didn't seem to hear her. She shook him, kicked him in the shin, and beat a tattoo on his face with her fists, without attracting his attention; he was a tall thin juke-box with a stuck record, repeating over and over again. "I have made a terrible mistake."

"Jim," Callahan said sharply, "what's wrong with him?"

But it was older brother Paul who answered. "The same thing that was wrong with me the first night my brother came in here, Mike. He's mindblown."

"d.a.m.n straight," Tommy Janssen said. "But what by?"