What shall it profit a man if he gaineth the whole world, yet he hath no deductions?
—EDISON RIPSBORN
"Nearly?" I said weakly, trying to get a deep breath.
Tesla looked troubled. "That mine is disabled . . . not disarmed. Only the radio trigger is destroyed. Its owners could yet hand-trigger it, by physically going to the site. It would be a suicide mission, of course, but I don't think that rules it out."
"But they have no reason to do so," I pointed out. "As far as they know, all their mines are safe and ready to go. We're safe for at least as long as it takes them to push that button and notice how quiet everything is in New York."
It was a good thing Tesla didn't wear glasses; when he frowned like that, those eyebrows would have brushed them right off his face. "Ken, I am forced to assume that the master terrorist—we may as well call him The Miner—is as intelligent as myself. I do not consider this likely, but I must assume it."
"I'll buy that."
"I put myself in his place. I propose to blackmail the world into disarmament. One fine day, I announce my threat to the world, as publicly as possible. Of course the world's governments do not capitulate . . . so I set off one of my mines, telling them in advance when and in what city I will do so, to prove my control. Then I set off one every forty-eight hours until I get what I want."
"I'll buy that too."
"In that case, I wish to be utterly certain that each mine is functioning correctly, will detonate when I tell it to. Malfunction would be embarrassing, and embarrassment is fatal to a bluff."
"What bluff? The Miner's got thirty nukes!"
"Ken, imagine you are the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I tell you that to retain your job, you must sacrifice four American cities. And a few dozen foreign ones, four of them Soviet. How will you decide? Remember that one of the cities is Los Angeles."
The answer was obscene, but undeniable. "I get you. The Miner's bluff depends on making everyone think he has an unlimited number of nukes, that he can keep on taking out cities until he gets his way. And he's gambling that neither of the major players will go higher than four cities before folding. Okay, how does that affect our problem?"
"If I were The Miner, I would have a means of testing my radio receivers at frequent intervals. Some test that would not trigger the bomb, but would give assurance that the trigger was still operational."
Trade name for norepinephrine. Common side effects: elevated pulse and temp, buzzing in ears, dry mouth.
"Nikola," I said gently, "I'm aware of your feelings on strong language. But if we're going to keep having conversations like this, sooner or later I'm going to have to say, 'JESUS CHRIST!'" I shouted the last two words. "Suppose the guy has some kind of continuous failsafe light on every bomb: he may already know something's wrong!"
"Since his trigger is radio, his failure warning would be so as well. A hardwired monitor would be a trail to him. None of the thirty mines has broadcast anything since I began observing them."
"But they could be set to do so at regular intervals."
"I'm sorry, Ken. I said it was a difficult decision. I feared that our enemy might trigger his bombs at any moment. We have no way of being sure he has not already begun blackmailing governments as we speak. Or he could begin with an explosion, to get their attention—and he might well select New York. I reasoned that at a minimum I must preserve the only living humans who know where the mines are."
"No, no! I'm not second-guessing the decision: you did what you had to do. But now there's a clock ticking: we've got to move fast."
"That is correct," he agreed.
"What I don't understand," Arethusa said, "is why we have any time at all. You say there's a bomb planted in every country that's nuclear-capable. Why hasn't he acted already?"
"Damn good question," I said.
"Yes it is," Tesla said. "I can offer two hypotheses. Either there are one or two more marginally nuclear-capable nations left on his list, and he is now busy mining them . . . or he is waiting for some specific, psychologically appropriate date."
That hammer of light hit me between the eyes. I tried not to squint. "August sixth," I heard myself say.
Tesla said something in Croatian. Somehow I knew it was the equivalent of "JESUS CHRIST!" "Of course," he added in English. "How stupid of me."
"What's August sixth?" Arethusa asked.
"Hiroshima Day. But that's not important now." For an instant I had the wild feeling I was Leslie Nielsen in Airplane. "And don't call me Shirley. The important thing is, how often does The Miner test his receivers?"
"He has to strike a balance," Tesla said. "Too frequent broadcasts from a water pipe, even brief ones, might be noticed somewhere, and commented upon. And each test lowers the mean time until failure; if one tests a system too often one risks wearing it out. Assuming a target date no more than months away, I should guess something on the order of once a week would strike him as prudent."
I relaxed a trifle; I'd been thinking in terms of daily, or even hourly.
Come to think of it, I had no assurance at all that he ever tested his receivers. I hadn't thought of it, and maybe the Miner wasn't as intelligent as Nikola Tesla.
I had to assume he was, with stakes like these. But at least I didn't have to mount a military assault within the next hour.
Oh, hell—maybe I did have to. His next weekly check could be as much as six days away . . . but it could be in the next ten minutes.
Time to start acting like a commanding officer.
"Does Mary have ears in this room?" I asked.
Tesla looked puzzled. Arethusa said, "No, Ken. Nowhere on this floor."
"Nikola, is there a telephone in here?"
"What number do you wish?" he asked.
"Lady Sally! As quickly as possible."
He touched his computer. The keyboard stuck out its tongue, to the right. A smaller keypad. A calculator. He pushed numeral one and one other key.
"Coming, Nikky!" Lady Sally said, sounding as though she were sitting in front of me. A second later, she was.
I'd half expected it. And still I was startled. Whatever device she'd used to get here, she was not carrying it on her. We had caught her in the shower; she wore only fragrant suds.
I wasted seconds staring.
No, I take that back. I wasted nothing. I spent seconds staring. Clothed, Lady Sally McGee was a very striking woman. Dressed in foam, she was the second most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
"What is it, Ken?" she said.
"Red alert!" I blurted, forcing my attention back to the war. "I want Pris and . . . who's the next best fighter in the House?"
"Me."
"Then I want you," I said, suppressing my pun generator.
"And after me, Father Newman. He was Special Forces."
"Him too, then. And the Professor and Ralph Von Wau Wau and Cynthia and Tim . . . and Mike, if he's available."
She closed her eyes briefly. "He is."
"Can I have Mary too?"
"Sorry: she's out of town on personal business. What equipment do you want?"
Shoot for the Moon. I gave her my Christmas list. "Walkietalkies, bulletproof vests, handguns and knives for everybody—laser pistols for anyone checked out on them. I've got my own handgun and knife. Ammo. Tear gas grenades would be nice. Binoculars. Enough field rations to last three people at least a week. We'll be working in teams of three on eight-hour shifts around the clock. And for God's sake make sure Ralph has a license tag good for Manhattan."
"No problem so far," she said. "But for the pistols, lasers, and tear gas, may I substitute one of these?" There was a weapon in her hand. Don't ask me where it came from; I don't want to think about it. And don't ask me how I knew it was a weapon: it looked like a midget trumpet, with less than normal flaring to the bell and with the three keys placed inside the loop part instead of on the shaft. She didn't hold it like a firearm or a trumpet: she held it down at her side by the loop part, seemingly upside down, the bell facing in my general direction but not pointed at any one of us. Maybe that was why I was sure that if her fingers were to press upward on those keys in the right way, nastiness would come out the bell.
"It's better than the laser pistol that got Raffalli?"
"Much better."
"What does it do?" I asked.
"Stun, blind, or drill holes through anything, from a millimeter to two meters in diameter, in well under a nanosecond. Range is line of sight. Ammo effectively infinite. Battlefield failure rate, zero, over the course of a busy century. A mirror won't deflect it like a laser beam."
I liked it. It was like those silly guns Buster Crabbe used to use when he was Flash Gordon, only upside down it wasn't silly any more. It was the ultimate quick-draw weapon: you could fire from the hip without so much as torquing your wrist upward to bring a barrel to bear. It would be more awkward than a pistol to bring up to eye level for a dead bead—but that firehose cone-of-effectiveness made precise aim less important. Best of all, it didn't look much like a weapon, even in firing position. At least, not to anyone who didn't know you were a time traveler. "Issue one to everyone that's ever fired one before. The rest of us will drill on it as time allows, and stick to weapons we know until then—with the proviso that no one packs less than thirty-eight caliber. You've got something equally good in body armor?"
"Yes. It'll stop small arms fire. A direct hit to the head from a heavy enough gun might knock you out. Well, not you, but someone with a normal skull."
"That we'll all use right away."
"How soon do you want us to assemble?"
"As soon as possible."
"Give me an hour," she said, and was gone.
"What about me?" Arethusa said dangerously.
I blinked, and nearly said, "What about you?" But it was not possible to say those words to Arethusa, so I said, "You are the most beautiful, intelligent, and captivating woman in the world and I love you with all my heart. What else about you?"
"I'm in, aren't I?"
"Good God, yes! You doubted it?"
She was mollified. "Well . . . you're an unusual private eye, my love. I was a little afraid you might get all macho about not exposing your wife to danger."
"I am. I wouldn't want you to accidentally suffer any harm while beating the shit out of me for trying to keep you out of the party. You could forget and hit me on the head, and hurt your knuckles."
"I wouldn't have hit you on the head," she assured me.
"Something else to worry about," I agreed. "But the issue doesn't arise. You're in. On my shift. And I'm afraid your clients are going to have to be understanding again. I'm only bringing one of you—but I want the other to be lying down alone in a quiet dark room, undistracted. I need your full attention."
"The clients will survive if we do," she said. "About ten minutes ago, by the way."
"Eh?"
"'Now!'" she explained. "Well, 'then,' I mean. When it happened, the conversation here was at a point where I might have started a panic if I'd said, 'Now!'"
"Oh. Sorry I missed it."
"How much of the next hour do you need?" she asked. "I could give you a sort of instant replay . . ."
Well, we were going to be on short rations for as much as a week. A practical woman, my wife.
"Uh, Nikola?" I said. "Would you excuse us?"
He stood, beaming, and placed a hand on top of each of our heads. "Go in peace, my children."
On our way from basement level up to the second floor, we passed through the Parlor. It had been too long since I'd been in that splendid room; I tried to absorb everything I could as I went through.
It wasn't easy. It was a little after nine o'clock: the place was packed. There was a contingent of Japanese at the bar, grinning and photographing everything in sight. Willard's wife Sherry was apparently leading a pun contest over by the fireplace; I heard her raise an appreciative groan with something about a junkies' hamburger stand, where every order comes with the works. The two smoke-artists were working at the other end of the room. She blew a naked woman with streaming hair; her partner studied it a moment, blew a naked man that approached the smoke-woman, grew an erection, moved forward to mingle with her—and a dozen flashbulbs went off at once. Near the room was a short blonde in a gold sari, leading an ocelot on a leash. Male of course. A paper airplane sailed past me and landed where I could see it: it was a traffic ticket. Near the spiral staircase, a slender gent with a goatee and the look of a kindly faun seemed to be giving hugging lessons to a group of attentive ladies. Seated near him was one of the indoor ice-skaters, only he wasn't skating tonight: he was talking sternly to a cat.
The same old guy was playing piano tonight. He still looked like Hoagy Carmichael, and he was playing "New Orleans." But all the singing was being done by his accompanist: a tall skinny galoot with long brown hair and a beard, playing an acoustic guitar. And he had changed the lyrics, so strikingly that Arethusa and I actually stopped to listen. Hoagy had written that song something like fifty years ago; this guy was updating it:
If you've ever seen a shithole Southern city,
One-time pretty,
That's New Orleans . . .
And if you have to live there, that's a pity:
Man, it's shitty
In New Orleans . . .
It will remind you Of old tarnished slums
For a glass of wine They'll eat it till it comes
See that little Creole whore? She is nine
years old . . .
Goin' down, in New Orleans
So if you're passin' through, I think you oughta
Stay in the Quarter:
Bag New Orleans.
And don't you wander far away from Bourbon;
Man, it's disturbin',
The real Orleans . . .
It will depress you, Like your mother's grave;
If you stay long, You're either dumb or brave.
See that Old Man River there? He is tryin'
and tryin'
To get out
Of New Orleans . . .
Some people made approving sounds when he was done, and some were silent. Whoever that was at the ivories clapped his hands harder than a piano player ought to. "There y'are, Jake," he said happily.
Maybe you're from New Orleans, and think a guy from New York had no business criticizing any city. I won't argue. I'd made my first visit to the Big Easy a year before. I'd gone to pay my respects to the famous statue of Satchelmouth in Armstrong Park. What is it, four blocks from Bourbon Street? An abandoned area, filthy and unkempt, the pond a cesspool of stagnant water. A New York crackhead wouldn't have gone there to cop. I got mugged in broad daylight. Lost two hundred bucks, my watch, and a gun I was fond of. Louie smiled down at me sheepishly. At least New York doesn't claim to be quaint and charming.
I shook off my stasis—what a fine, melancholy voice that Jake had!—dropped a twenty into the ten-gallon hat he had upright on the floor, and led Arethusa to the staircase.
An attractive brunette in her fifties was just coming down; she paused as she passed us, said to me, with the most infectious smile I ever saw, "Keep that one," and was gone.
"I will," I said to her back. Arethusa smiled at me. "Do you know her?" I asked.
"No, but here's to her."
As we were ascending, we heard a man say, "Aw come on, Sherry . . . you know I can do it like a bunny."
"That's the problem," she told him. "I just washed my thing, and I can't do a hare with it."
Arethusa folded up with the giggles.
"A more appropriate note to leave on," I said, chuckling myself.
"I don't know what's gotten into Sherry tonight," she said. "She hates puns."
"I'm more interested in what's gotten into you tonight."
"I could get into that," she agreed. "Let's go join me and we'll tell you all about it."
One of these days I was going to have to walk up that staircase with Arethusa slowly . . .
There's nothing like the prospect of impending combat to et cetera. And so forth. You know what two people do when they're in love—don't you?—so I'll say only that once again I felt a taste of that telepathic union that had startled me on our last encounter. Not as strong, maybe, but unmistakable. God, it's so different for women! I began dimly to grasp why they put up with us.
I could not decide whether the phenomenon was specific to Arethusa, related to her own peculiar self-telepathy . . . or whether perhaps this was simply the first time in my life I'd ever really been in love. Others suffering from that condition have reported similar symptoms . . .
What I finally decided was, what the hell difference does it make?
We barely made it on time to the war council I had called.
We'd left enough time—but on our way back down through the Parlor, we had to pull up short to avoid a collision. That hippie again. The one with the carpenter's tool belt. Riding a bicycle, this time.
"Easy, Nazz," Arethusa said, smiling across the handlebars at him. He smiled back at her.
"Forgive me," he said. "I knew not what I did."
While I groped for a reply, he took a jug from the bike's basket, gave it to me, and pedaled away, weaving in and out of Parlor traffic with easy grace. As he passed by the brunette with the infectious grin, I heard him say, "I love you more than you'll know, Ev." She smiled.
I blinked down at the jug, pulled the stopper, sniffed. No one who's ever been in the Orient will ever forget the smell. Rice liquor.
"What's the jug for?" Arethusa said.
The answer hit me like a blow to the solar plexus. "It's . . . it's for Christ's sâke," I said weakly . . . and fell down laughing.
The funniest part was that I wouldn't have bet five cents he wasn't . . . who he seemed to be.
But eventually I pulled myself together. "Well," I said, "I've got this jug, and thou beside me—now all I need is a loaf of bread."
"Yippee, I owe Khayyam," she sang.
So I had to tickle her, and we were nearly late for the meeting.
It was just as I was entering Tesla's lab that the penny dropped. When we'd left him an hour ago, he had touched us both on the head. On the head! His violent aversion to touching human hair seemed to finally be gone.
Which implied—given his address and his smouldering good looks—that Nikola Tesla was no longer a virgin any more . . .
That cheered me up even more . . . and I needed it.
Everyone I'd asked for was present, including Mike Callahan. He lived more than an hour's travel time away . . . but only if you were restricted to conventional transport. I introduced myself as "Ken Taggart" to Cynthia and Father Newman (there was no longer any need for that masquerade, but this seemed the wrong time to start confusing everyone), winked at the Professor, winked in a different way at Tim, scratched Ralph behind the ear, nodded to Pris, and shook hands with Mike, who was kind enough to return my hand afterward. If you still need any clues as to just what an extraordinary assemblage of people that was, try this: it took less than fifteen minutes by my watch to bring everybody there up to speed.
Nikola's Raincoat Five computer helped a lot: there's nothing like visual aids to get a presentation over. But that was only part of it. Not one dumb question or extraneous issue was raised. Nobody wasted time on shock or disbelief or oratorical posturing. And nobody needed to be told anything twice. It reminded me a little of the Army, with one guy up front saying impossible and unspeakable things, and all the rest waiting in patient silence for their cue to salute. (Except that it was impossible to look at that motley crew and be reminded much of the Army. Mike was the only one who wasn't hopelessly miscast: he'd have made a great DI or platoon sergeant. But Tim? Nikola Tesla? Father Newman? Mistress Cynthia? Ralph Von Wau Wau? Even during Nam they took few recruits that wonky.) The longer that briefing went on—no, the longer it didn't go on—the better I felt about my squad.
Nobody objected, as I had thought someone might, that we had made an awful lot of stew from one oyster—our sole fact being that civilization had inexplicably not yet been consumed in thermonuclear fire. They all found the circumstantial evidence for the existence of The Miner as compelling as Lady Sally had, and nobody knocked any holes in the logic structure, and when Nikola showed them some of the radio-equipped cylinders in municipal water pipes with his computer screen, nobody thought of anything they could be but private enterprise nuclear weapons.
"Nikola," I finished at last, "has persuaded me that the terrorist mastermind we've been calling The Miner either does regular systems checks on his mines, or is an idiot. We're guessing that he checks about once a week, and we know the New York mine will fail. So we're going to stake it out for a week or two, and try to tail whoever shows up to see what's wrong. If he spots the tail, we capture him, or kill him, in that order of preference. If nothing happens by the second week, we'll fall back and revise our plans on the assumption that we're dealing with an idiot. I think this should be safe enough. If I'm wrong and the world comes to an end, I'll accept any criticisms you have. We have no proof that his final target date is six August . . . but both Nikola and I have had strong intuitions about it."
"That's good enough for me," Lady Sally and Mike said together.
"We'll work three-man shifts," I said, "so even when somebody has to pee we'll have at least two in position at all times. We may well get ample warning: Nikola's got widgets running that will sound an alarm the instant anyone broadcasts or narrowcasts anything on that frequency, worldwide, and locate the source. If the systems check should be initiated by The Miner from his end, we'll know exactly when he gets his out-of-order message. Even so, we will fucking well stay alert at all times. The device may have been preset to report at regular or irregular intervals—which it no longer will—or, if The Miner has the manpower, he might even do his systems checks by eyeball, in corpus, and there's no telling when.
"Fortunately, Penn Station lends itself well to this kind of operation—we could probably all sleep there for a month without causing much talk. But do please try your best not to draw the attention of the local heat, hookers, hustlers, or heroin addicts. We can't afford the distraction of being jugged, hugged, mugged or plugged just now."
Mike Callahan put up a hand the size of a first baseman's mitt.
"Yes, Mike?"
"When we spot him . . . are you sure you want to fall back and go for a tail? He could always be a kamikaze, there to set off that particular bomb and radio-trigger the others from there. I know that's stupid—but do you know that old one about, 'Never attribute to evil what can be satisfactorily explained by stupidity'?"
"True enough," I admitted. "That's why on every shift, one of us will be stationed within sight of the bomb at all times. I think it's reasonable to assume that even if he walks in there intending to light the candle, he'll pause to find out why his radio trigger has melted. That gives us time. If he then reaches for any other component of the bomb, the inside man drops him in his tracks with one of those magic trumpets, and we take him back here for an interview.
"But for me the ideal outcome would be: he inspects the bomb, curses at the spoiled trigger, scratches his head, and makes a beeline for Bad Guy HQ to report, wagging his tails behind him. That way we're sure of getting some information. One thing I learned in Nam about interrogating fanatics: they have this frustrating tendency to die too soon on you. Poison tooth, special ring, chew open an artery . . . I saw a guy do it by sheer willpower, once. Restrained so well all he could move were his eyes and his asshole, and he just plain made up his mind to die.
"Please bear in mind at all times our ultimate objective, and make sure you've got it straight. It's not simply to prevent any bombs going off. If someone were to wave a magic wand right now and make all thirty nukes disappear, we would have failed. What we must do, if we are to safeguard the present and the future, is to disable those nukes, leave them in place, and then very quietly tell the DIA and KGB about them. That is what it will take to shock both sides into fixing that annoying rattle they have in their sabers these days, to nurse history through the next five critical years. Remember how the Cuban Missile Crisis sobered 'em all up for a while? The difference here will be that this one must not make the news. Ever—even after it's over.
"But this strategic situation presents us with a tactical problem. Lady Sally has appropriate contacts in both agencies—but we can't simply give them the mines. We must also give them The Miner, and as many minor Miners as we can identify, and as much information on them and their operations as we can get. As a great man once said to Mary Astor, 'Shumbody's got to take the fall.' If we don't supply a whole lot of convincing fanatics, the spooks will take us—and even Lady Sally's many years of goodwill won't help us. She and Mike wouldn't even be able to use future-magic to get us all clear and underground. They'd risk blowing their cover as time travelers—which would be precisely as bad as one or more of those atom bombs going off."
"Surely not to the people near to the bomb," Father Newman said mildly. He was in his fifties, grizzled and grey but very fit, with that indefinable air of being ready to run up the side of a five-story building that Special Forces guys seldom seem to lose, even in retirement.
"I'm afraid so, Father. And don't call me Shirley. At least I think so. Mike, Your Ladyship, Nikola, check me out: there's a point at the beginning of a nuclear explosion past which nothing could conceivably stop it, yes?"
"Sure," Mike said.
"A very tiny slice of a second after the two subcritical masses meet, right?"
"Take a right at the decimal point, and bring your hiking boots," he agreed.
"So at that instant, a historical paradox exists . . . and the universe goes away. A man standing next to the bomb wouldn't have time to die before he ceased to ever have been."
He frowned. "You're right," he said, and worked his jaws. I could tell he wanted to chew on his cigar. But if he took it out, he'd have to light it; . . . and this was Nikola Tesla's laboratory.
"What an extraordinary situation!" Tesla said. "Thirty armed atom bombs, and none of them can possibly hurt anybody. Yet we must prevent one going off at all costs."
When someone starts to talk about the amazing philosophical aspects of a combat situation, it's time to move the briefing along. "Okay: if we do get a miner, small m or large, and he does inspect the damage and go to report back, the person nearest the bomb stays there while the others tail the bastard. We do not leave that bomb alone. On each shift, one of the two backups is going to be playing a blind beggar, tin cup and all. That's our excuse for having Ralph around. Ralph, you're going to be there around the clock, but you don't have to stay awake all the time. You're going to do the actual tailing—by smell. The others will follow you. There's no way the miner can spot that tail."
"If I get too close," Ralph said, "he may zee it vagging."
"Ken," the Professor said urgently, "I see a problem. A blind man can't just walk into Penn Station and set up a pitch, any more than a girl can just pick out a street corner and start hooking. You can get cut that way. It's a turf situation."
I frowned. "You're right. Damn. Excuse me, Nikola. I wanted the kind of person most people would look away from."
"I don't sink it vill be a problem," Ralph said. "If anyvun giffs us trouble, I vill tell him to go avay. Humans haff a tendency to obey ven I tell zem ziss. If he duss not, I shall urinate upon him vile speaking disparagingly uff hiss muzzer. Ziss neffer fails."
"Well, hold it to a minimum," I said. "If The Miner happens to hear a German shepherd talking, he's liable to start thinking in terms of James Bond, which is just what we don't want. All right, let's issue ordnance and materiel. Quartermistress!"
Lady Sally began passing out party favors. First the little trumpets, to those checked out on them: Mike, Pris, Father Newman (to my mild surprise) and Tim (to my stronger surprise). Then 9mm Smith & Wesson 559s for the others, with dum-dum ammo. She brought out a box of assorted throwing and carving knives and invited everyone to take their pick. (Pris and the Professor turned out to have their own.) Each of us was issued a powerful flashlight and two pairs of handcuffs: good cop handcuffs, not bondage toys. Then things got more exotic.
The binoculars I'd asked for came in the form of little contact lenses. The Lady had to put mine in for me. I was acutely conscious of them for a few seconds, and then I never noticed them again unless I was using them. "Don't worry about them falling out," she told me, "they can't. When you want far-sight, just squint and hold it."
I did—and after about three seconds, there was a zoom lens effect. I relaxed my eyes, and it went away at once. I stepped out into the hallway and experimented while she outfitted the others. The max effect approximated a pair of 7X35 binoculars, although it hurt to squint that hard for very long. "Slick," I told Lady Sally when I reentered the lab. "I can't wait to see the walkie-talkies."
"You'll only see them twice," she said, and held out her hand. On it was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of caraway seeds. "Pay attention, darlings," she said merrily to the group. "Observe this small device. It is not alive, in any technical sense, but it does excellent impressions. I shall place one of these in each of your mouths. There will be a short pause while it realizes I have done so, at which point it will begin to move of its own accord. Please do not be alarmed. It will seek out a convenient crevice somewhere on the inside of your teeth, and nest there. It will then buzz gently for some ten seconds to enable you to locate it with your tongue. If you are dissatisfied with its placement, hold your tongue against it for five seconds, and it will try again. Once it's found a place you like, say the vowel e and hold it until the seed stops buzzing. From that point on, if you touch your tongue to it firmly and then speak, you will be heard clearly by everyone else within a mile who is similarly equipped. Be aware that the picophone is voice-activated: if you stop talking for one full second, you are no longer sending; you'll have to tongue it back on again. It is quite discreet: civilians around your listeners will hear nothing, as the sound is carried by bone conduction. When the job is done, hold your tongue against the seed for more than ten seconds. It will head for your tongue and wait there to be expectorated."
"My God," I said. "The inventor of that thing must have died rich. I mean, 'must be going to die rich.' If for some reason he decides to die."
"Actually," Tesla said, "I died penniless. Fortunately, it did not stop me."
I stared at him. I should have guessed. It was a radio, wasn't it? "Nikola," I said slowly, "I know this is irrelevant—but I haven't had a chance to ask before now, and I might never get another. Do you mind if I ask what you're working on these days? When you're not saving space and time, I mean?"
"Not at all, Ken. I'm investigating electrical aspects of nanotechnology."
I knew it was hopeless, but asked, "What kind of technology?"
"Nano," he said. "Nano."
I blinked at him. "You're telling me with a straight face that you work with Mork from Ork?"
He blinked at me. "Who?"
I gave it up. "Never mind, Nilcola. I knew I wouldn't understand the answer. Your Ladyship, let me have one of those seeds."
It wasn't half as bad as it sounds. It didn't taste like anything at all, and it wasn't moving for that long, and once it settled in place it was not obtrusive, and when tested it worked as advertised.
"Okay, let's see your body armor," I told her.
I was expecting something odd, and she didn't let me down. "Certainly, Ken. Please take off all your clothes."
"Yes, ma'am." Even for a PI, there are times not to make a wisecrack. I set down my weapons on . . . one of those somethings Tesla filled his lab with, and began to strip.
"All the rest of you save Nikky too, please, darlings," she said.
Dammit, there were so many wonderful wisecracks to suppress. I thought of at least a dozen . . . and knew that to make them, here, in this House, to this crew, at this time, would be to mark myself a jerk. A garment or two later, it dawned on me that to have made them anywhere, to anyone, would have made me just as much of a jerk—even if nobody else had noticed. God, if I was going to start growing up, it was a good thing I was getting out of the detective business.
Finally we were all bare except Tesla. It was by no means the first time I'd been in a room with a bunch of naked people. But it was unquestionably the best-looking group of naked people I'd ever been part of. Arethusa had the advantage, of course: she was in stereo.
"Tastes like peanut butter to me," Tim murmured near me.
"Beg pardon?" I said.
"Oh, you don't know that one? I thought everybody did. Back in the Sixties a guy I knew was ordered to report for his induction physical. That morning he gave himself a thorough antiseptic enema—and then inserted about half a pint of peanut butter where the sun don't shine. Creamy, of course. He got to about this point here in the physical, and the doctor with the rubber glove recoiled and said, 'Jesus, what the hell is that?' So the guy reaches behind himself for a sample, takes a lick, and says, 'Tastes like peanut butter to me.' They threw him out on the sidewalk, threw his clothes after him."
If I was the only one present who hadn't heard that one, then I guess everybody else collapsed into weeping hysterics just to be polite. Despite the prevailing climate of gung-ho, there had been a lot of free-floating tension in the room, waiting to be released. Tim's story did the trick. I thought Tesla was going to pee in his pants.
I'll say one thing for that group, though: nobody tried to keep it going, come up with a topper. Everyone laughed long and thoroughly . . . and then they stopped, and Lady Sally gave us our body armor.
It was preposterous, naturally. She produced a gizmo that was the spitting image of a roll-on deodorant . . . and used it to draw on me. From head to toe in two long continuous strokes, down the front and up the back, not excluding the soles of the feet. Three times around the torso. From one armpit down and up that arm, across the shoulder girdle and up the neck, right into the hair, then down the other side to the other armpit. The roller left a thick purple line, which spread slowly, growing paler as it did so, until it met itself everywhere and I was just a little pinker than a new sunburn victim. She walked around me, studying me carefully, and touched up one or two places. They tickled.
"Be sure and get the heels this time, Ma," I said.
"You have a tendon-cy to say things like that," she growled. "Would you open the door and go stand in the hall, please? I want to shoot you." Agreeably I went out into the hall and turned to look back through the open doorway, and she shot me. With one of the Smith & Wessons. A hollowpoint 9mm slug pancakes to the size of a .70-caliber shell when it hits something, and the 559 will throw one hard enough to pierce the engine block on a Jaguar.
She had told me she was going to make me invulnerable, and then she had told me she was going to shoot me; nonetheless I was startled. I flinched backwards—
—and that was all the backward motion I achieved. All straight back, too: I didn't spin, even though I was certain the slug had taken me on the left side just above the hipbone. I could feel a stinging sensation there, as if a small child had punched me as hard as he could. I looked down, and of course the spot was unmarked. I remembered that less than twenty-four hours ago, there had been stitches and a drain there . . .
I touched the spot with my hand. It felt like me, Humphrey Bogart Quigley. Even my bogus sunburn was gone now.
I glanced down the hall to my left. Minutes ago I had been looking at that wall with binoculars; there hadn't been a bullet hole in it then. I smelled cordite. I took a firm hold on my temper. The reason you don't like people pointing guns at you is they could hurt you.
"Very nice," I said. Everything sounded the way it does when a powerful handgun has gone off near you. If you know, I don't have to explain, and if you don't, I can't. "How long does this stuff last?"
"Until I remove it," she said. "You can go a month without risk of skin trouble. It's not perfect. If someone were to lean a knife against you and push slowly, the shield would let it in—and it won't stop chemical weapons or laser fire or a few other things. But at what it does do, it is failsafe. Money-back warrantee. Cynthia, I'll do you next."
"My Lady," Cynthia said carefully, "no one appreciates your sense of humor more than I . . . but if you point that gun at me, Doctor Kate will have to return it to you, and by then you might not want it any more."
"Well," I said a few minutes later, "we're immortal, just this side of invulnerable, we have the eyes of an eagle, we're wired better than a federal narc, and each team is armed with stun guns and death rays, with which for all I know we can also produce a few bars of Dixieland. All the enemy has is atom bombs, and he doesn't know we exist. Anybody want to quit?"
"It does sound like a boat-race," the Professor agreed.
"Well," I said, "theoretically I suppose we're vulnerable to betrayal. But that's the best thing about this group: we're all X-rated."
"Huh?" Tim said obligingly.
"Not for sale to miners."
Three people shot me at once, two in the belly and one lower. It stung, but I had no kick coming. (Or is that another pun?) The ricochets whined around the lab for a while and finally all found homes. Tesla made no objection; he seemed to feel it had been something that had to be done.
"Okay, people," I said at last, when we'd all finished getting dressed again. "The teams are: me, Arethusa and Pris, midnight to eight. Second team, Mike, Cynthia and the Professor. From four to midnight, Father Newman, Lady Sally and Tim. Ralph Von Wau Wau, triple shifts, a dog's life. Any questions?"
Amazingly, there were none.
"Okay, I've got some. I ought to ask some of these privately, but there just isn't time. Cynthia?"
"Yes, Ken?"
"This is probably a rude question, don't mean it that way, okay? I understand the difference between a persona and a personality . . . but I know absolutely nothing about you except your scene. Will you have a problem taking orders?"
She looked me square in the eye and took her time answering. I looked her square in the eye and waited. I'll play poker with God if I have to, but I was privately glad to be invulnerable.
But when she spoke, her voice was gentle and calm. "I concede that I have a problem in that direction. Everyone else here knows that. But I am also my own Mistress . . . and I understand the stakes. In this cause I would take orders from Robin."
"Okay, you'll take orders. Will you obey them?"
Her dark eyes flashed, and Tim stepped back a pace. But all she said was, "Yes, sir." Tim stared at her. And then stared at me, the way twelve-year-old boys stare at me when they find out I'm a real live detective.
"Thank you," I said.
"You had to ask," she said.
"You'll command your team," I told her.
She looked at Mike and the Professor. "Yes," she said. "I will."
Neither of them had any comment.
"Your Ladyship, you'll command your team. Father Newman, a question for you. Did you get that collar before or after you were Special Forces?"
He had the kind of warm avuncular Pat O'Brien smile that can calm a PCP zombie or charm a head nurse. I hoped I'd have a chance to become his friend. "You're asking me if I will kill in combat."
"Yes."
"If necessary, yes. But only on my own initiative, or that of an authority I've personally selected. That's why I had to swap uniforms. Here and now, you are my general, and Lady Sally is my captain." His smile faltered. "I have one reservation you'd better know. I will not be part of an interrogation that includes torture."
"I will," the Professor said quietly. "For these stakes."
"Shut up, Willard," I said. "If I want volunteers, I'll appoint 'em. Father, as your commanding officer I order you to pray that things don't go that sour."
"I'll take that seriously," he said.
"That's how I meant it," I agreed. "You look competent to me, so we can table that question for good. Back to my original question. Tim . . . no, let's speed this up. I want a show of hands. How many here have never taken a life?"
As I had expected, Arethusa raised two hands. Lady Sally raised a hand too, to my mild surprise. Just as surprisingly, Tim did not.
"If any of you think you might hesitate, say so now. Please be honest: you can't flunk out, but I need to know."
This time Tim's was the only hand.
"Thank you, Tim. Next question: would everyone please hold up one finger for each language you speak well enough to get by? Enough to conduct an interrogation, say."
The lowest number of fingers I saw was six. Lady Sally and Mike held up ten fingers each, but I figured them for double that. "Russian?" I asked, and nobody lowered any fingers. Well, it figured the staff of a bordello across the river from the UN would run to polyglots. That could prove very useful if The Miner was not American. But I was glad the commanding officer doesn't have to answer his own questions. The only languages I could speak fluently were American and English . . . although I could get along in Canadian, in a pinch.
"Okay, one last question." I glanced at my watch. "Father, how short can you make a wedding?"
Arethusa began to glow. There was a general murmur of surprise and approval. Cynthia's face lost all its sternness for the first time since I'd known her; Mike's face was split in a broad pirate's grin; Nikola Tesla was practically purring; Ralph's tail wagged.
Father Newman didn't so much as crack a smile. "You want to be married?"
"Yes!" I said.
Arethusa came to me and looked up at me. You could swim in those eyes . . . if you could take the undertow. Either pair. She took both my hands and faced the priest. "Yes," "Yes," she said, spacing it so that each sounded clearly.
"Anybody here got a beef?" he asked, looking around.
No one spoke.
"You're married," he said. And then he cracked a smile, half as big as his head.
"Is that legal?" Arethusa asked.
"Yes," he said, "but what the hell does that matter? It's morally binding."
"Yes," she said. "Yes, it is." The one of her on my right turned me to face her, took me by the ears, and kissed the living hell out of me.
The applause was loud and enthusiastic.
There was a tap on my shoulder, and she cut in on herself.
The applause redoubled in volume and took on a ribald undertone.
Just for a second there, and not for the first time, I envied my darling. I kind of wished I could see myself being that happy.
"Thank you, my general," she said when we came up for air. "For fitting that into the agenda."
"It was a pleasure," I said. "And a privilege."
"You don't know the half of it," she promised. "And right back at you. But we've got work to do first."
"Right you are," I agreed. "Let's go shadow us a terrorist or two."
There was a rumble of agreement and high morale.
"It's going to be a real switch for some of us," Lady Sally said thoughtfully.
"How do you mean?" I asked foolishly.
"Being a tail of peace, for a change."
"Don't shoot her!" I cried quickly. "It'd be a shame to spoil that dress."
I was barely in time.
"Okay, people," I said shortly. "That's all I have on my agenda. One last chance to ask questions or raise objections." Silence. "Okay, Teams Two and Three, you're dismissed. Priscilla, Arethusa, wait here, please. Lady Sally, may I speak with you privately a moment?"
"Step into my office, dear boy," she said, and led me down the hall to that very place.
The most extraordinary thing about it was that I could see nothing extraordinary about it. An office. Desk. Typewriter. Bric-a-brac. Bookshelves. Couch, chairs, assorted flat surfaces. This, the inner sanctum of the strangest woman I had ever met, could have been the office of any madam. Or for that matter, a stockbroker.
I wouldn't have cared if it made Tesla's lab look ordinary. As I took a chair, my head was spinning. Too much had happened to me in too few days. In too few hours! I was on a huge emotional roller coaster . . . and the moment I'd dismissed my troops, I'd felt it start the downhill ride.
"What is it, Joe?"
I bit my lip and stared at the floor.
She gave me a minute. Maybe two. When she did speak, her voice had softened, lost its whiskey rasp and a good deal of its British accent. "What's wrong?"
"Lady," I said slowly, "I couldn't say anything in front of the others. But I'm telling you now, officially, that I think you should assume command of this show. Or Mike, if you don't want the job."
"Good Lord, why?" she asked, genuinely startled. "You've already done most of the work. Except for the worrying—and I'll be doing that too, if it's any comfort to you. We all will."
"I know that," I said irritably. "I'm not trying to duck the worry. I don't care about the worry. It's the responsibility. Just that, the nominal responsibility."
"I'm not sure I grasp the distinction," she said slowly.
"Remember a few minutes back, when I was describing our assets in morale-building detail for the troops? We're just this side of immortal and invulnerable, we've got the greatest genius in the history of the world spotting for us, we're packing death rays and magic specs, and we've got a talking dog. A 'boat-race,' the Professor called it. What could possibly go wrong?"
"You tell me."
"Do you by any chance recall the last boat-race you and I bet on together? Just a few days ago, in the Reception area? Did we or did we not have Christian Raffalli nailed down just as tight as this? No, tighter, by God: we knew what he looked like, and which door he'd come in, and it went down on our own turf." I heard my own voice rising in pitch and volume.
"What is it you're afraid of, Joe?" she asked.
"God damn it, you've seen it in operation! The famous Quigley Jinx! It came within a highly fractionated second of getting us all killed—and turning me into a soprano."
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Lady Sally barked.
"The hero you've selected had to have the heroine and a muscular ingenue literally save his nuts for him the last time out."
"You don't want me," she said witheringly. "I'll give you a chit to see Father Newman."
"Will you listen to me? This isn't a male pride thing, it's not a question of my morale. I can deal with women saving my bacon; that's been permissible in detective stories for years now. I can live with the absolute certainty that I'm going to come out of this looking like a fool; I got used to that a long time ago—"
"Joe, for God's sake, the dice have no memory—"
"You haven't got the right to say that to a man who's been rolling sevens for thirty years straight! I'll withdraw my request if you can answer one question. Take your time: can you conceive of any way this operation could go a little bit wrong?"
She started to answer . . . and stopped with her mouth open.
"The way I see it, it's total success or total failure. I haven't had all that many total failures in my life. But I've never had a total success."
"Oh."
Those binocular lenses were making my eyes sting. "Lady, I'm not a wimp. I can live with failure. The proof is that I'm not dead yet." Bullshit, lenses, I was crying. "But I can't live with this failure! Not on my wedding night! Even if there's no history to go down in for it, I don't want to be the guy who literally fucked up everything!" I remembered the last time I had cried, the night my mother died, and lost it completely.
Lady Sally gathered me into her arms and onto her lap as if I weighed no more than a child, and let me cry it out against her throat. She stroked my hair and said soothing things, not to make me stop crying but to make the flow emerge easier.
After a long time I became aware that she was speaking to me. "Can you hear me, Humphrey?"
"Snuff."
"You survived Raffalli. Didn't you?"
"Yeah. But—"
"Here: blow. In fact, that whole caper was a success for you. Things went wrong . . . but for the first time, nothing went irrevocably wrong, did it?"
"Huh," I said. My breathing was under control now. "Actually, you're right. I wonder why not."
"Humphrey Joseph Kenneth," she said fondly, "I love you—but sometimes you are an awful chump."
I frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"Let's overlook the fact that whoever leads this expedition is going to have to cope with your alleged jinx, and you have the most experience. Apropos of nothing, how many children do you think could have survived being brought up by people as crazy as Arethusa's parents?"
It was a curious digression—but I'd been thinking about those two birds a lot the past few days, in between the cracks, trying to figure out whether I was angry at them or not. "That's right," I agreed, "she was very lu . . ."
Pause.
"Ah, you're beginning to see it at last," Lady Sally said. "How many whorehouses would you say feature really good piano in the parlor any more these days? How many places are there where Arethusa could practice both her arts, within the same building? And how many of those would you estimate are run by madams broadminded enough to deal with a single broad who has two telepathic bodies—on her terms?"
I sat up and knuckled my eyes. "Jesus—"
"That she stumbled across this place, the perfect home for her, is a miracle. That she should find her True Love here, the week before Armageddon, is good fortune beggaring the imagination. Face it, Joe: Arethusa is Luck on four lovely legs."
"Holy shit—" The world tilted on its axis.
"And now she is your luck. And the evidence suggests it's just enough to keep your balls out of trouble. As with all good marriages: between you, you seem to make up a more or less normal human being."
I could barely believe what I was about to say, but the words came out in spite of me. "Do you mean to stand there with your bare face hanging out and tell me that the reason a nice girl like her is working in a place like this—"
And she grinned broadly and gave the classic punchline:
"Just lucky, I guess . . ."