Wild Cards Part 3

"s.h.i.t, Ed! Someday you're gonna get us both killed!"

It wasn't a marble. They didn't need their flashlights to tell it wasn't a magnetic mine. It was a rounded canister that glowed on its own, with swirling colors on it. It hid the man pushing it.

"It looks like a rolled-up neon armadillo," said Fred, who'd been out west.

The man behind the thing blinked at them, unable to see past their flashlights. He was tattered and dirty, with a tobacco-stained beard and wild, steel-wool hair.

They stepped closer.

"It's mine!" he said to them, stepping in front of the thing, holding his arms out across it.

"Easy, old-timer," said Ed. "What you got?"

"My ticket to easy street. You from the Air Corps?"

"h.e.l.l, no. Let's look at this."

The man picked up a rock. "Stay back! I found it where I found the plane crash. The Air Corps'll pay plenty to get this atomic bomb back!"

"That doesn't look like any atomic bomb I've ever seen," said Fred. "Look at the writing on the side. It ain't even English."

"Course it's not! It must be a secret weapon. That's why they dressed it up to weird."

"Who?"

"I told you more'n I meant to. Get outta my way."

Fred looked at the old geezer. "You've piqued my interest," he said. "Tell me more."

"Outta my way, boy! I killed a man over a can of lye hominy once!"

Fred reached in his jacket. He came out with a pistol with a muzzle that looked like a drainpipe.

"It crashed last night," said the old man, eyes wild. "Woke me up. Lit up the whole sky. I looked for it all day today, figured the woods would be crawlin' with Air Corps people and state troopers, but n.o.body came.

"Found it just before dark tonight. Tore all h.e.l.l up, it did. Knocked the wings completely off the thing when it crashed. All these weird-dressed people all scattered around. Women too." He lowered his head a minute, shame on his face. "Anyway, they was all dead. Must have been a jet plane, didn't find no propellers or nothing. And this here atomic bomb was just lying there in the wreck. I figured the Air Corps would pay real good to get it back. Friend of mine found a weather balloon once and they gave him a dollar and a quarter. I figure this is about a million times as important as that!"

Fred laughed. "A buck twenty-five, huh? I'll give you ten dollars for it."

"I can get a million!"

Fred pulled the hammer back on the revolver.

"Fifty," said the old man.

"Twenty."

"It ain't fair. But I'll take it."

"What are you going to do with that?" asked Ed.

"Take it to Dr. Tod," said Fred. "He'll know what to do with it. He's the scientific type."

"What if it is an A-bomb?"

"Well, I don't think A-bombs have spray nozzles on them. And the old man was right. The woods would have been crawling with Air Force people if they'd lost an atomic bomb. h.e.l.l, only five of them have ever been exploded. They can't have more than a dozen, and you better believe they know where every one of them is, all the time."

"Well, it ain't a mine," said Ed. "What do you think it is?"

"I don't care. If it's worth money, Doctor Tod'll split with us. He's a square guy."

"For a crook," said Ed.

They laughed and laughed, and the thing rattled around in the back of the dump truck.

The MPs brought the red-haired man into his office and introduced them.

"Please have a seat, Doctor," said A.E. He lit his pipe.

The man seemed ill at ease, as he should have been after two days of questioning by Army Intelligence.

"They have told me what happened at White Sands, and that you won't talk to anyone but me," said A.E. "I understand they used sodium pentathol on you, and that it had no effect?"

"It made me drunk," said the man, whose hair in this light seemed orange and yellow.

"But you didn't talk?"

"I said things, but not what they wanted to hear."

"Very unusual."

"Blood chemistry."

A.E. sighed. He looked out the window of the Princeton office. "Very well, then. I will listen to your story. I am not saying I will believe it, but I will will listen." listen."

"All right," said the man, taking a deep breath. "Here goes."

He began to talk, slowly at first, forming his words carefully, gaining confidence as he spoke. As he began to talk faster, his accent crept back in, one A.E. could not place, something like a Fiji Islander who had learned English from a Swede. A.E. refilled his pipe twice, then left it unlit after filling it the third time. He sat slightly forward, occasionally nodding, his gray hair an aureole in the afternoon light.

The man finished.

A.E. remembered his pipe, found a match, lit it. He put his hands behind his head. There was a small hole in his sweater near the left elbow.

"They'll never believe any of that," he said.

"I don't care, as long as they do something!" said the man. "As long as I get it back."

A.E. looked at him. "If they did believe you, the implications of all this would overshadow the reason you're here. The fact that you you are are here here, if you follow my meaning."

"Well, what can we do? If my ship were still operable, I'd be looking myself. I did the next best thing-landed somewhere that would be sure to attract attention, asked to speak to you. Perhaps other scientists, research inst.i.tutes . . ."

A.E. laughed. "Forgive me. You don't realize how things are done here. We will need the military. We will have have the military and the government whether we want them or not, so we might as well have them on the best possible terms, ours, from the first. The problem is that we have to think of something that is the military and the government whether we want them or not, so we might as well have them on the best possible terms, ours, from the first. The problem is that we have to think of something that is plausible plausible to them, yet will still mobilize them in the search. to them, yet will still mobilize them in the search.

"I'll talk to the Army people about you, then make some calls to friends of mine. We have just finished a large global war, and many things had a way of escaping notice, or being lost in the shuffle. Perhaps we can work something from there.

"The only thing is, we had better do all this from a phone booth. The MPs will be along, so I will have to talk quietly. Tell me," he said, picking up his hat from the corner of a cluttered bookcase, "do you like ice cream?"

"Lactose and sugar solids congealed in a mixture kept just below the freezing point?" asked the man.

"I a.s.sure you," said A.E., "it is better than it sounds, and quite refreshing." Arm in arm, they went out the office door.

Jetboy patted the scarred side of his plane. He stood in Hangar 23. Linc came out of his office, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

"Hey, how'd it go?" he asked.

"Great. They want the book of memoirs. Going to be their big Spring book, if I get it in on time, or so they say."

"You still bound and determined to sell the plane?" asked the mechanic. "Sure hate to see her go."

"Well, that part of my life's over. I feel like if I never fly again, even as an airline pa.s.senger, it'll be too soon."

"What do you want me to do?"

Jetboy looked at the plane.

"Tell you what. Put on the high-alt.i.tude wing extensions and the drop tanks. It looks bigger and shinier that way. Somebody from a museum will probably buy it, is what I figure-I'm offering it to museums first. If that doesn't work, I'll take out ads in the papers. We'll take the guns out later, if some private citizen buys it. Check everything to see it's tight. Shouldn't have shaken much on the hop from San Fran, and they did a pretty good overhaul at Hickam Field. Whatever you think it needs."

"Sure thing."

"I'll call you tomorrow, unless something can't wait."

HISTORICAL AIRCRAFT FOR SALE: Jetboy's twin-engine jet. 2 1200 lb thrust engines, speed 600 mph at 25,000 ft, range 650 miles, 1000 w/drop tanks (tanks and wing exts. inc.) length 31 ft, w/s 33 ft (49 w exts.) Reasonable offers accepted. Must see to appreciate. On view at Hangar 23, Bonham's Flying Service, Shantak, New Jersey.

Jetboy stood in front of the bookstore window, looking at the pyramids of new t.i.tles there. You could tell paper rationing was off. Next year, his book would be one of them. Not just a comic book, but the story of his part in the war. He hoped it would be good enough so that it wouldn't be lost in the clutter.

Seems like, in the words of someone, every G.o.dd.a.m.n barber and shoeshine boy who was drafted had written a book about how he won the war.

There were six books of war memoirs in one window, by everyone from a lieutenant colonel to a major general (maybe those PFC barbers didn't write that many books?).

Maybe they wrote some of the two dozen war novels that covered another window of the display.

There were two books near the door, piles of them in a window by themselves, runaway best-sellers, that weren't war novels or memoirs. One was called The Gra.s.s-Hopper Lies Heavy The Gra.s.s-Hopper Lies Heavy by someone named Abendsen (Hawthorne Abendsen, obviously a pen name). The other was a thick book called by someone named Abendsen (Hawthorne Abendsen, obviously a pen name). The other was a thick book called Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms by someone so self-effacing she called herself "Mrs. Charles Fine Adams." It must be a book of unreadable poems that the public, in its craziness, had taken up. There was no accounting for taste. by someone so self-effacing she called herself "Mrs. Charles Fine Adams." It must be a book of unreadable poems that the public, in its craziness, had taken up. There was no accounting for taste.

Jetboy put his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and walked to the nearest movie show.

Tod watched the smoke rising from the lab and waited for the phone to ring. People ran back and forth to the building a half-mile away.

There had been nothing for two weeks. Thorkeld, the scientist he'd hired to run the tests, had reported each day. The stuff didn't work on monkeys, dogs, rats, lizards, snakes, frogs, insects, or even on fish in suspension in water. Dr. Thorkeld was beginning to think Tod's men had paid twenty dollars for an inert gas in a fancy container.

A few moments ago there had been an explosion. Now he waited.

The phone rang.

"Tod-oh, G.o.d, this is Jones at the lab, it's-" Static washed over the line. "Oh, sweet Jesus! Thorkeld's-they're all-" There was thumping near the phone receiver on the other end. "Oh, my . . ."

"Calm down," said Tod. "Is everyone outside the lab safe?"

"Yeah, yeah. The . . . oooh oooh." The sound of vomiting came over the phone.

Tod waited.

"Sorry, Dr. Tod. The lab's still sealed off. The fire's-it's a small one on the gra.s.s outside. Somebody dropped a b.u.t.t."

"Tell me what happened."

"I was outside for a smoke. Somebody in there must have messed up, dropped something. I-I don't know. It's-they're most of them dead, I think. I hope. I don't know. Something's-wait, wait. There's someone still moving in the office, I can see from here, there's-"

There was a click of someone picking up a receiver. The volume on the line dropped.

"Tog, Tog," said a voice, an approximation of a voice.

"Who's there?"

"Torgk-"

"Thorkeld?"

"Guh. Hep. Hep. Guh."

There was a sound like a sack full of squids being dumped on a corrugated roof. "Hep." Then came the sound of jelly being emptied into a cluttered desk drawer.

There was a gunshot, and the receiver bounced off the desk.

"He-he shot-it-himself," said Jones.

"I'll be right out," said Tod.

After the cleanup, Tod stood in his office again. It had not been pretty. The canister was still intact. Whatever the accident had been had been with a sample. The other animals were okay. It was only the people. Three were dead outright. One, Thorkeld, had killed himself. Two others he and Jones had had had to kill. A seventh person was missing, but had not come out any of the doors or windows. to kill. A seventh person was missing, but had not come out any of the doors or windows.