Inside Man and Other Science Fiction Stories Part 11

But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and tasting it.

"Sweet!" he snarled.

They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample. His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's conscience."

"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said Harvey slowly.

His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we have had the best of this colonial conman!Watch your cues from this point hence."

Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they stopped and their fists unclenched.

"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son Jed. Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."

"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.

Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a ma.s.sive roof of sun-bleached hair and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.

He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed one.

"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense atmosphere.

The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and unpleasant turn.

Something shrewd was called for...

"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you feel well?"

Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were gently crossing.

He sagged against the door frame, all his features drooping like a bloodhound's.

"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming down with asteroid fever!"

"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms of the disease that once scourged the universe."

"What do you mean, once?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him out of here!"

"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."

"Then he'll be here for months!"

Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.

"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said frantically.

"Sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction cups"

"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man requires tocombat the dread menace, asteroid fever."

"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.

Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand rocket ship in the center of the shabby s.p.a.ceport. He returned within a few minutes, carrying a bottle.

Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly, put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink. When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and waited for the inevitable result.

Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features straightened out.

"Are are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.

"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.

"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.

Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove it.

Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face, and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.

"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Laanago Yergis never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught this one before it grew formidable."

The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."

"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity. "It sells itself."

"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole case," said Johnson.

"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."

"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.

"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred buckos."

Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of doing so. "F four hundred," he offered.

"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.

"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.

"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.

The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and fifty redsents.

Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include, gratis, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian handicraftsmanship."

Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of that stuff.

You're not switching some worthless junk on me."

Harvey took a gla.s.s from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which the man gradually won.

"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to talk again.

"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to which we have dedicated ourselves."

With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped his murderous silence and cried: "What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that snake oil?"

"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was Laanago Yergis extract, Plus."

"Plus what a.r.s.enic?"

"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling yonder asteroidal tinhorn a bill of medical goods an entire case, mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."

"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.

Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce the same medicine that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a guinea pig for a splendid cause."

"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."

"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he possesses. We could notbe content with less."

"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing with six arms?

He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"

Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.

"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity. Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him. At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the audio-visiphone. Then our triumph we shall sell him at a stupendous figure to the zoo!"

Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at least as good as the first; he gagged.

"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously balanced between, his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter, and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."

Harvey and Joe looked at each other.

They hadn't been thinking about food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.

"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. We've got rations back at the ship."

"Hmph!" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap. Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome to our hospitality."

"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."

"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you can't get anywhere else for any price."

Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw none.

"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.

Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."

"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or less private, though n.o.body else was in the sal and there was little chance of company.

Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with two menus in one hand, two gla.s.ses of water in another, plus napkins, silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their c.o.c.ktails, which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.

Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were phenomenally low.

When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"

"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."

For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian viotars, using his other two hands for waiting on the table.

"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."

"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."

"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often," complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."

The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.

"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."

As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and Harvey.

Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in a yelp of horror.

"What the devil is this?" he shouted. "How do you arrive at this fantastic, idiotic figure three hundred and twenty-eight buckos!"

Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table, not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying gla.s.s. With one of his thirty fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.

Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80 redsents."

"You can go to h.e.l.l!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said with regret.

He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to ask the sheriff to take over."

Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the "restaurateur,"

pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to remain calm.

"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the folk-lore of your native planet. Such, as, for example: 'It is folly to kill a gom that lays golden eggs!" and 'Penny wise is pound foolish.'"

"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.

"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the way you have"

"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted, He rubbed his fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to offer, anyhow?"