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Knights of Arthur, The

<h1>The Knights of Arthur</h1> By FREDERIK POHL Illustrated by MARTIN With one suitcase as his domain, Arthur was desperately in need of armed henchmen … for his keys to a kingdom were typewriter keys! <div id="illo1" class="illo"> <ANTIMG src="images/illo1-sm.jpg" width-obs="658" height-obs="388" alt="An eyestalk coming from a case looks at a guy doing something with a screwdriver and a typewriter" /> Left side image Right side image</div> <h2>I</h2> There was three of us—I mean if you count Arthur. We split up to avoid attracting attention. Engdahl just came in over the big bridge, but I had Arthur with me so I had to come the long way around. When I registered at the desk, I said I was from Chicago. You know how it is. If you say you’re from Philadelphia, it’s like saying you’re from St. Louis or Detroit—I mean nobody lives in Philadelphia any more. Shows how things change. A couple years ago, Philadelphia was all the fashion. But not now, and I wanted to make a good impression. I even tipped the bellboy a hundred and fifty dollars. I said: “Do me a favor. I’ve got my baggage booby-trapped—” “Natch,” he said, only mildly impressed by the bill and a half, even less impressed by me. “I mean really booby-trapped. Not just a burglar alarm. Besides the alarm, there’s a little surprise  on a short fuse. So what I want you to do, if you hear the alarm go off, is come running. Right?” “And get my head blown off?” He slammed my bags onto the floor. “Mister, you can take your damn money and—” “Wait a minute, friend.” I passed over another hundred. “Please? It’s only a shaped charge. It won’t hurt anything except anybody who messes around, see? But I don’t want it to go off. So you come running when you hear the alarm and scare him away and—” “No!” But he was less positive. I gave him two hundred more and he said grudgingly: “All right. If I hear it. Say, what’s in there that’s worth all that trouble?” “Papers,” I lied. He leered. “Sure.” “No fooling, it’s just personal stuff. Not worth a penny to anybody but me, understand? So don’t get any ideas—” He said in an injured tone: “Mister, naturally the staff won’t bother your stuff. What kind of a hotel do you think this is?” “Of course, of course,” I said. But I knew he was lying, because I knew what kind of hotel it was. The staff was there only because being there gave them a chance to knock down more money than they could make any other way. What other kind of hotel was there? Anyway, the way to keep the staff on my side was by bribery, and when he left I figured I had him at least temporarily bought. He promised to keep an eye on the room and he would be on duty for four more hours—which gave me plenty of time for my errands. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> I made sure Arthur was plugged in and cleaned myself up. They had water running—New York’s very good that way; they always have water running. It was even hot, or nearly hot. I let the shower splash over me for a while, because there was a lot of dust and dirt from the Bronx that I had to get off me. The way it looked, hardly anybody had been up that way since it happened. I dried myself, got dressed and looked out the window. We were fairly high up—fifteenth floor. I could see the Hudson and the big bridge up north of us. There was a huge cloud of smoke coming from somewhere near the bridge on the other side of the river, but outside of that everything looked normal. You would have thought there were people in all those houses. Even the streets looked pretty good, until you noticed that hardly any of the cars were moving. I opened the little bag and loaded my pockets with enough money to run my errands. At the door, I stopped and called over my shoulder to Arthur: “Don’t worry if I’m gone an hour or so. I’ll be back.” I didn’t wait for an answer. That would have been pointless under the circumstances. After Philadelphia, this place seemed to be bustling with activity. There were four or five people in the lobby and a couple of dozen more out in the street. I tarried at the desk for several reasons. In the first place, I was expecting Vern Engdahl to try to contact me and I didn’t want him messing with the luggage—not while Arthur might get nervous. So I told the desk clerk that in case anybody came inquiring for Mr. Schlaepfer, which was the name I was using—my real name being Sam Dunlap—he was to be told that on no account was he to go to my room but to wait in the lobby; and in any case I would be back in an hour. “Sure,” said the desk clerk, holding out his hand. I crossed it with paper. “One other thing,” I said. “I need to buy an electric typewriter and some other stuff. Where can I get them?” “PX,” he said promptly. “PX?” “What used to be Macy’s,” he explained. “You go out that door and turn right. It’s only about a block. You’ll see the sign.” “Thanks.” That cost me a hundred more, but it was worth it. After all, money wasn’t a problem—not when we had just come from Philadelphia. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> The big sign read “PX,” but it wasn’t big enough to hide an older sign underneath that said “Macy’s.” I looked it over from across the street. Somebody had organized it pretty well. I had to admire them. I mean I don’t like New York—wouldn’t live there if you gave me the place—but it showed a sort of go-getting spirit. It was no easy job getting a full staff together to run a department store operation, when any city the size of New York must have a couple thousand stores. You know what I mean? It’s like running a hotel or anything else—how are you going to get people to work for you when they can just as easily walk down the street, find a vacant store and set up their own operation? But Macy’s was fully manned. There was a guard at every door and a walking patrol along the block-front between the entrances to make sure nobody broke in through the windows. They all wore green armbands and uniforms—well, lots of people wore uniforms. I walked over. “Afternoon,” I said affably to the guard. “I want to pick up some stuff. Typewriter, maybe a gun, you know. How do you work it here? Flat rate for all you can carry, prices marked on everything, or what is it?” He stared at me suspiciously. He was a monster; six inches taller than I, he must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He didn’t look very smart, which might explain why he was working for somebody else these days. But he was smart enough for what he had to do. He demanded: “You new in town?” I nodded. He thought for a minute. “All right, buddy. Go on in. You pick out what you want, see? We’ll straighten out the price when you come out.” “Fair enough.” I started past him. He grabbed me by the arm. “No tricks,” he ordered. “You come out the same door you went in, understand?” “Sure,” I said, “if that’s the way you want it.” That figured—one way or another: either they got a commission, or, like everybody else, they lived on what they could knock down. I filed that for further consideration. Inside, the store smelled pretty bad. It wasn’t just rot, though there was plenty of that; it was musty and stale and old. It was dark, or nearly. About one light in twenty was turned on, in order to conserve power. Naturally the escalators and so on weren’t running at all. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> I passed a counter with pencils and ball-point pens in a case. Most of them were gone—somebody hadn’t bothered to go around in back and had simply knocked the glass out—but I found one that worked and an old order pad to write on. Over by the elevators there was a store directory, so I went over and checked it, making a list of the departments worth visiting. Office Supplies would be the typewriter. Garden & Home was a good bet—maybe I could find a little wheelbarrow to save carrying the typewriter in my arms. What I wanted was one of the big ones where all the keys are solenoid-operated instead of the cam-and-roller arrangement—that was all Arthur could operate. And those things were heavy, as I knew. That was why we had ditched the old one in the Bronx. Sporting Goods—that would be for a gun, if there were any left. Naturally, they were about the first to go after it happened, when everybody wanted a gun. I mean everybody who lived through it. I thought about clothes—it was pretty hot in New York—and decided I might as well take a look. Typewriter, clothes, gun, wheelbarrow. I made one more note on the pad—try the tobacco counter, but I didn’t have much hope for that. They had used cigarettes for currency around this area for a while, until they got enough bank vaults open to supply big bills. It made cigarettes scarce. I turned away and noticed for the first time that one of the elevators was stopped on the main floor. The doors were closed, but they were glass doors, and although there wasn’t any light inside, I could see the elevator was full. There must have been thirty or forty people in the car when it happened. I’d been thinking that, if nothing else, these New Yorkers were pretty neat—I mean if you don’t count the Bronx. But here were thirty or forty skeletons that nobody had even bothered to clear away. You call that neat? Right in plain view on the ground floor, where everybody who came into the place would be sure to go—I mean if it had been on one of the upper floors, what difference would it have made? I began to wish we were out of the city. But naturally that would have to wait until we finished what we came here to do—otherwise, what was the point of coming all the way here in the first place? <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> The tobacco counter was bare. I got the wheelbarrow easily enough—there were plenty of those, all sizes; I picked out a nice light red-and-yellow one with rubber-tired wheel. I rolled it over to Sporting Goods on the same floor, but that didn’t work out too well. I found a 30-30 with telescopic sights, only there weren’t any cartridges to fit it—or anything else. I took the gun anyway; Engdahl would probably have some extra ammunition. Men’s Clothing was a waste of time, too—I guess these New Yorkers were too lazy to do laundry. But I found the typewriter I wanted. I put the whole load into the wheelbarrow, along with a couple of odds and ends that caught my eye as I passed through Housewares, and I bumped as gently as I could down the shallow steps of the motionless escalator to the ground floor. I came down the back way, and that was a mistake. It led me right past the food department. Well, I don’t have to tell you what that was like, with all the exploded cans and the rats as big as poodles. But I found some cologne and soaked a handkerchief in it, and with that over my nose, and some fast footwork for the rats, I managed to get to one of the doors. It wasn’t the one I had come in, but that was all right. I sized up the guard. He looked smart enough for a little bargaining, but not too smart; and if I didn’t like his price, I could always remember that I was supposed to go out the other door. I said: “Psst!” When he turned around, I said rapidly: “Listen, this isn’t the way I came in, but if you want to do business, it’ll be the way I come out.” He thought for a second, and then he smiled craftily and said: “All right, come on.” Well, we haggled. The gun was the big thing—he wanted five thousand for that and he wouldn’t come down. The wheelbarrow he was willing to let go for five hundred. And the typewriter—he scowled at the typewriter as though it were contagious. “What you want that for?” he asked suspiciously. I shrugged. “Well—” he scratched his head—“a thousand?” I shook my head. “Five hundred?” I kept on shaking. “All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Look, you take the other things for six thousand—including what you got in your pockets that you don’t think I know about, see? And I’ll throw this in. How about it?” That was fine as far as I was concerned, but just on principle I pushed him a little further. “Forget it,” I said. “I’ll give you fifty bills for the lot, take it or leave it. Otherwise I’ll walk right down the street to Gimbel’s and—” He guffawed. “Whats the matter?” I demanded. “Pal,” he said, “you kill me. Stranger in town, hey? You can’t go anyplace but here.” “Why not?” “Account of there ain’t anyplace else. See, the chief here don’t like competition. So we don’t have to worry about anybody taking their trade elsewhere, like—we burned all the other places down.” That explained a couple of things. I counted out the money, loaded the stuff back in the wheelbarrow and headed for the Statler; but all the time I was counting and loading, I was talking to Big Brainless; and by the time I was actually on the way, I knew a little more about this “chief.” And that was kind of important, because he was the man we were going to have to know very well. <h2>II</h2> I locked the door of the hotel room. Arthur was peeping out of the suitcase at me. I said: “I’m back. I got your typewriter.” He waved his eye at me. I took out the little kit of electricians’ tools I carried, tipped the typewriter on its back and began sorting out leads. I cut them free from the keyboard, soldered on a ground wire, and began taping the leads to the strands of a yard of forty-ply multiplex cable. It was a slow and dull job. I didn’t have to worry about which solenoid lead went to which strand—Arthur could sort them out. But all the same it took an hour, pretty near, and I was getting hungry by the time I got the last connection taped. I shifted the typewriter so that both Arthur and I could see it, rolled in a sheet of paper and hooked the cable to Arthur’s receptors. Nothing happened. “Oh,” I said. “Excuse me, Arthur. I forgot to plug it in.” I found a wall socket. The typewriter began to hum and then it started to rattle and type: DURA AUK UKOO RQK MWS AQB It stopped. “Come on, Arthur,” I ordered impatiently. “Sort them out, will you?” Laboriously it typed: !!! Then, for a time, there was a clacking and thumping as he typed random letters, peeping out of the suitcase to see what he had typed, until the sheet I had put in was used up. I replaced it and waited, as patiently as I could, smoking one of the last of my cigarettes. After fifteen minutes or so, he had the hang of it pretty well. He typed: YOU DAMQXXX DAMN FOOL WHUXXX WHY DID YOU LEAQNXXX LEAVE ME ALONE Q Q “Aw, Arthur,” I said. “Use your head, will you? I couldn’t carry that old typewriter of yours all the way down through the Bronx. It was getting pretty beat-up. Anyway, I’ve only got two hands—” YOU LOUSE, it rattled, ARE YOU TRYONXXX TRYING TO INSULT ME BECAUSE I DONT HAVE ANY Q Q “Arthur!” I said, shocked. “You know better than that!” The typewriter slammed its carriage back and forth ferociously a couple of times. Then he said: ALL RIGHT SAM YOU KNOW YOUVE GOT ME BY THE THROAT SO YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT TO WITH ME WHO CARES ABOUT MY FEELINGS ANYHOW “Please don’t take that attitude,” I coaxed. WELL “Please?” He capitulated. ALL RIGHT SAY HEARD ANYTHING FROM ENGDAHL Q Q “No.” ISNT THAT JUST LIKE HIM Q Q CANT DEPEND ON THAT MAN HE WAS THE LOUSIEST ELECTRICIANS MATE ON THE SEA SPRITE AND HE ISNT MUCH BETTER NOW SAY SAM REMEMBER WHEN WE HAD TO GET HIM OUT OF THE JUG IN NEWPORT NEWS BECAUSE I settled back and relaxed. I might as well. That was the trouble with getting Arthur a new typewriter after a couple of days without one—he had so much garrulity stored up in his little brain, and the only person to spill it on was me. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Apparently I fell asleep. Well, I mean I must have, because I woke up. I had been dreaming I was on guard post outside the Yard at Portsmouth, and it was night, and I looked up and there was something up there, all silvery and bad. It was a missile—and that was silly, because you never see a missile. But this was a dream. And the thing burst, like a Roman candle flaring out, all sorts of comet-trails of light, and then the whole sky was full of bright and colored snow. Little tiny flakes of light coming down, a mist of light, radiation dropping like dew; and it was so pretty, and I took a deep breath. And my lungs burned out like slow fire, and I coughed myself to death with the explosions of the missile banging against my flaming ears…. Well, it was a dream. It probably wasn’t like that at all—and if it had been, I wasn’t there to see it, because I was tucked away safe under a hundred and twenty fathoms of Atlantic water. All of us were on the Sea Sprite. But it was a bad dream and it bothered me, even when I woke up and found that the banging explosions of the missile were the noise of Arthur’s typewriter carriage crashing furiously back and forth. He peeped out of the suitcase and saw that I was awake. He demanded: HOW CAN YOU FALL ASLEEP WHEN WERE IN A PLACE LIKE THIS Q Q ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN SAM I KNOW YOU DONT CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME BUT FOR YOUR OWN SAKE YOU SHOULDNT “Oh, dry up,” I said. Being awake, I remembered that I was hungry. There was still no sign of Engdahl or the others, but that wasn’t too surprising—they hadn’t known exactly when we would arrive. I wished I had thought to bring some food back to the room. It looked like long waiting and I wouldn’t want to leave Arthur alone again—after all, he was partly right. I thought of the telephone. On the off-chance that it might work, I picked it up. Amazing, a voice from the desk answered. I crossed my fingers and said: “Room service?” And the voice answered amiably enough: “Hold on, buddy. I’ll see if they answer.” Clicking and a good long wait. Then a new voice said: “Whaddya want?” There was no sense pressing my luck by asking for anything like a complete meal. I would be lucky if I got a sandwich. I said: “Please, may I have a Spam sandwich on Rye Krisp and some coffee for Room Fifteen Forty-one?” “Please, you go to hell!” the voice snarled. “What do you think this is, some damn delicatessen? You want liquor, we’ll get you liquor. That’s what room service is for!” <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> I hung up. What was the use of arguing? Arthur was clacking peevishly: WHATS THE MATTER SAM YOU THINKING OF YOUR BELLY AGAIN Q Q “You would be if you—” I started, and then I stopped. Arthur’s feelings were delicate enough already. I mean suppose that all you had left of what you were born with was a brain in a kind of sardine can, wouldn’t you be sensitive? Well, Arthur was more sensitive than you would be, believe me. Of course, it was his own foolish fault—I mean you don’t get a prosthetic tank unless you die by accident, or something like that, because if it’s disease they usually can’t save even the brain. The phone rang again. It was the desk clerk. “Say, did you get what you wanted?” he asked chummily. “No.” “Oh. Too bad,” he said, but cheerfully. “Listen, buddy, I forgot to tell you before. That Miss Engdahl you were expecting, she’s on her way up.” I dropped the phone onto the cradle. “Arthur!” I yelled. “Keep quiet for a while—trouble!” He clacked once, and the typewriter shut itself off. I jumped for the door of the bathroom, cursing the fact that I didn’t have cartridges for the gun. Still, empty or not, it would have to do. I ducked behind the bathroom door, in the shadows, covering the hall door. Because there were two things wrong with what the desk clerk had told me. Vern Engdahl wasn’t a “miss,” to begin with; and whatever name he used when he came to call on me, it wouldn’t be Vern Engdahl. There was a knock on the door. I called: “Come in!” The door opened and the girl who called herself Vern Engdahl came in slowly, looking around. I stayed quiet and out of sight until she was all the way in. She didn’t seem to be armed; there wasn’t anyone with her. I stepped out, holding the gun on her. Her eyes opened wide and she seemed about to turn. “Hold it! Come on in, you. Close the door!” She did. She looked as though she were expecting me. I looked her over—medium pretty, not very tall, not very plump, not very old. I’d have guessed twenty or so, but that’s not my line of work; she could have been almost any age from seventeen on. The typewriter switched itself on and began to pound agitatedly. I crossed over toward her and paused to peer at what Arthur was yacking about: SEARCH HER YOU DAMN FOOL MAYBE SHES GOT A GUN I ordered: “Shut up, Arthur. I’m going to search her. You! Turn around!” <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> She shrugged and turned around, her hands in the air. Over her shoulder, she said: “You’re taking this all wrong, Sam. I came here to make a deal with you.” “Sure you did.” But her knowing my name was a blow, too. I mean what was the use of all that sneaking around if people in New York were going to know we were here? I walked up close behind her and patted what there was to pat. There didn’t seem to be a gun. “You tickle,” she complained. I took her pocketbook away from her and went through it. No gun. A lot of money—an awful lot of money. I mean there must have been two or three hundred thousand dollars. There was nothing with a name on it in the pocketbook. She said: “Can I put my hands down, Sam?” “In a minute.” I thought for a second and then decided to do it—you know, I just couldn’t afford to take chances. I cleared my throat and ordered: “Take off your clothes.” Her head jerked around and she stared at me. “What?” “Take them off. You heard me.” “Now wait a minute—” she began dangerously. I said: “Do what I tell you, hear? How do I know you haven’t got a knife tucked away?” She clenched her teeth. “Why, you dirty little man! What do you think—” Then she shrugged. She looked at me with contempt and said: “All right. What’s the difference?” Well, there was a considerable difference. She began to unzip and unbutton and wriggle, and pretty soon she was standing there in her underwear, looking at me as though I were a two-headed worm. It was interesting, but kind of embarrassing. I could see Arthur’s eye-stalk waving excitedly out of the opened suitcase. I picked up her skirt and blouse and shook them. I could feel myself blushing, and there didn’t seem to be anything in them. I growled: “Okay, I guess that’s enough. You can put your clothes back on now.” “Gee, thanks,” she said. She looked at me thoughtfully and then shook her head as if she’d never seen anything like me before and never hoped to again. Without another word, she began to get back into her clothes. I had to admire her poise. I mean she was perfectly calm about the whole thing. You’d have thought she was used to taking her clothes off in front of strange men. Well, for that matter, maybe she was; but it wasn’t any of my business. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Arthur was clacking distractedly, but I didn’t pay any attention to him. I demanded: “All right, now who are you and what do you want?” She pulled up a stocking and said: “You couldn’t have asked me that in the first place, could you? I’m Vern Eng—” “Cut it out!” She stared at me. “I was only going to say I’m Vern Engdahl’s partner. We’ve got a little business deal cooking and I wanted to talk to you about this proposition.” Arthur squawked: WHATS ENGDAHL UP TO NOW Q Q SAM IM WARNING YOU I DONT LIKE THE LOOK OF THIS THIS WOMAN AND ENGDAHL ARE PROBABLY DOUBLECROSSING US I said: “All right, Arthur, relax. I’m taking care of things. Now start over, you. What’s your name?” She finished putting on her shoe and stood up. “Amy.” “Last name?” She shrugged and fished in her purse for a cigarette. “What does it matter? Mind if I sit down?” “Go ahead,” I rumbled. “But don’t stop talking!” “Oh,” she said, “we’ve got plenty of time to straighten things out.” She lit the cigarette and walked over to the chair by the window. On the way, she gave the luggage a good long look. Arthur’s eyestalk cowered back into the suitcase as she came close. She winked at me, grinned, bent down and peered inside. “My,” she said, “he’s a nice shiny one, isn’t he?” The typewriter began to clatter frantically. I didn’t even bother to look; I told him: “Arthur, if you can’t keep quiet, you have to expect people to know you’re there.” She sat down and crossed her legs. “Now then,” she said. “Frankly, he’s what I came to see you about. Vern told me you had a pross. I want to buy it.” The typewriter thrashed its carriage back and forth furiously. “Arthur isn’t for sale.” “No?” She leaned back. “Vern’s already sold me his interest, you know. And you don’t really have any choice. You see, I’m in charge of materiel procurement for the Major. If you want to sell your share, fine. If you don’t, why, we requisition it anyhow. Do you follow?” I was getting irritated—at Vern Engdahl, for whatever the hell he thought he was doing; but at her because she was handy. I shook my head. “Fifty thousand dollars? I mean for your interest?” “No.” “Seventy-five?” “No!” “Oh, come on now. A hundred thousand?” It wasn’t going to make any impression on her, but I tried to explain: “Arthur’s a friend of mine. He isn’t for sale.” <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> She shook her head. “What’s the matter with you? Engdahl wasn’t like this. He sold his interest for forty thousand and was glad to get it.” Clatter-clatter-clatter from Arthur. I didn’t blame him for having hurt feelings that time. Amy said in a discouraged tone: “Why can’t people be reasonable? The Major doesn’t like it when people aren’t reasonable.” I lowered the gun and cleared my throat. “He doesn’t?” I asked, cuing her. I wanted to hear more about this Major, who seemed to have the city pretty well under his thumb. “No, he doesn’t.” She shook her head sorrowfully. She said in an accusing voice: “You out-of-towners don’t know what it’s like to try to run a city the size of New York. There are fifteen thousand people here, do you know that? It isn’t one of your hick towns. And it’s worry, worry, worry all the time, trying to keep things going.” “I bet,” I said sympathetically. “You’re, uh, pretty close to the Major?” She said stiffly: “I’m not married to him, if that’s what you mean. Though I’ve had my chances…. But you see how it is. Fifteen thousand people to run a place the size of New York! It’s forty men to operate the power station, and twenty-five on the PX, and thirty on the hotel here. And then there are the local groceries, and the Army, and the Coast Guard, and the Air Force—though, really, that’s only two men—and—Well, you get the picture.” “I certainly do. Look, what kind of a guy is the Major?” She shrugged. “A guy.” “I mean what does he like?” “Women, mostly,” she said, her expression clouded. “Come on now. What about it?” I stalled. “What do you want Arthur for?” She gave me a disgusted look. “What do you think? To relieve the manpower shortage, naturally. There’s more work than there are men. Now if the Major could just get hold of a couple of prosthetics, like this thing here, why, he could put them in the big installations. This one used to be an engineer or something, Vern said.” “Well … like an engineer.” <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Amy shrugged. “So why couldn’t we connect him up with the power station? It’s been done. The Major knows that—he was in the Pentagon when they switched all the aircraft warning net over from computer to prosthetic control. So why couldn’t we do the same thing with our power station and release forty men for other assignments? This thing could work day, night, Sundays—what’s the difference when you’re just a brain in a sardine can?” Clatter-rattle-bang. She looked startled. “Oh. I forgot he was listening.” “No deal,” I said. She said: “A hundred and fifty thousand?” A hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I considered that for a while. Arthur clattered warningly. “Well,” I temporized, “I’d have to be sure he was getting into good hands—” The typewriter thrashed wildly. The sheet of paper fluttered out of the carriage. He’d used it up. Automatically I picked it up—it was covered with imprecations, self-pity and threats—and started to put a new one in. “No,” I said, bending over the typewriter, “I guess I couldn’t sell him. It just wouldn’t be right—” That was my mistake; it was the wrong time for me to say that, because I had taken my eyes off her. The room bent over and clouted me. I half turned, not more than a fraction conscious, and I saw this Amy girl, behind me, with the shoe still in her hand, raised to give me another blackjacking on the skull. The shoe came down, and it must have weighed more than it looked, and even the fractional bit of consciousness went crashing away. <h2>III</h2> I have to tell you about Vern Engdahl. We were all from the Sea Sprite, of course—me and Vern and even Arthur. The thing about Vern is that he was the lowest-ranking one of us all—only an electricians’ mate third, I mean when anybody paid any attention to things like that—and yet he was pretty much doing the thinking for the rest of us. Coming to New York was his idea—he told us that was the only place we could get what we wanted. Well, as long as we were carrying Arthur along with us, we pretty much needed Vern, because he was the one who knew how to keep the lash-up going. You’ve got no idea what kind of pumps and plumbing go into a prosthetic tank until you’ve seen one opened up. And, naturally, Arthur didn’t want any breakdowns without somebody around to fix things up. The Sea Sprite, maybe you know, was one of the old liquid-sodium-reactor subs—too slow for combat duty, but as big as a barn, so they made it a hospital ship. We were cruising deep when the missiles hit, and, of course, when we came up, there wasn’t much for a hospital ship to do. I mean there isn’t any sense fooling around with anybody who’s taken a good deep breath of fallout. So we went back to Newport News to see what had happened. And we found out what had happened. And there wasn’t anything much to do except pay off the crew and let them go. But us three stuck together. Why not? It wasn’t as if we had any families to go back to any more. Vern just loved all this stuff—he’d been an Eagle Scout; maybe that had something to do with it—and he showed us how to boil drinking water and forage in the woods and all like that, because nobody in his right mind wanted to go near any kind of a town, until the cold weather set in, anyway. And it was always Vern, Vern, telling us what to do, ironing out our troubles. It worked out, except that there was this one thing. Vern had bright ideas. But he didn’t always tell us what they were. So I wasn’t so very surprised when I came to. I mean there I was, tied up, with this girl Amy standing over me, holding the gun like a club. Evidently she’d found out that there weren’t any cartridges. And in a couple of minutes there was a knock on the door, and she yelled, “Come in,” and in came Vern. And the man who was with him had to be somebody important, because there were eight or ten other men crowding in close behind. I didn’t need to look at the oak leaves on his shoulders to realize that here was the chief, the fellow who ran this town, the Major. It was just the kind of thing Vern would do. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Vern said, with the look on his face that made strange officers wonder why this poor persecuted man had been forced to spend so much time in the brig: “Now, Major, I’m sure we can straighten all this out. Would you mind leaving me alone with my friend here for a moment?” The Major teetered on his heels, thinking. He was a tall, youngish-bald type, with a long, worried, horselike face. He said: “Ah, do you think we should?” “I guarantee there’ll be no trouble, Major,” Vern promised. The Major pulled at his little mustache. “Very well,” he said. “Amy, you come along.” “We’ll be right here, Major,” Vern said reassuringly, escorting him to the door. “You bet you will,” said the Major, and tittered. “Ah, bring that gun along with you, Amy. And be sure this man knows that we have bullets.” They closed the door. Arthur had been cowering in his suitcase, but now his eyestalk peeped out and the rattling and clattering from that typewriter sounded like the Battle of the Bulge. I demanded: “Come on, Vern. What’s this all about?” Vern said: “How much did they offer you?” Clatter-bang-BANG. I peeked, and Arthur was saying: WARNED YOU SAM THAT ENGDAHL WAS UP TO TRICKS PLEASE SAM PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HIT HIM ON THE HEAD KNOCK HIM OUT HE MUST HAVE A GUN SO GET IT AND SHOOT OUR WAY OUT OF HERE “A hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” I said. Vern looked outraged. “I only got forty!” Arthur clattered: VERN I APPEAL TO YOUR COMMON DECENCY WERE OLD SHIPMATES VERN REMEMBER ALL THE TIMES I “Still,” Vern mused, “it’s all common funds anyway, right? Arthur belongs to both of us.” I DONT DONT DONT REPEAT DONT BELONG TO ANYBODY BUT ME “That’s true,” I said grudgingly. “But I carried him, remember.” SAM WHATS THE MATTER WITH YOU Q Q I DONT LIKE THE EXPRESSION ON YOUR FACE LISTEN SAM YOU ARENT Vern said, “A hundred and fifty thousand, remember.” THINKING OF SELLING “And of course we couldn’t get out of here,” Vern pointed out. “They’ve got us surrounded.” ME TO THESE RATS Q Q SAM VERN PLEASE DONT SCARE ME <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> I said, pointing to the fluttering paper in the rattling machine: “You’re worrying our friend.” Vern shrugged impatiently. I KNEW I SHOULDNT HAVE TRUSTED YOU, Arthur wept. THATS ALL I MEAN TO YOU EH Vern said: “Well, Sam? Let’s take the cash and get this thing over with. After all, he will have the best of treatment.” It was a little like selling your sister into white slavery, but what else was there to do? Besides, I kind of trusted Vern. “All right,” I said. What Arthur said nearly scorched the paper. Vern helped pack Arthur up for moving. I mean it was just a matter of pulling the plugs out and making sure he had a fresh battery, but Vern wanted to supervise it himself. Because one of the little things Vern had up his sleeve was that he had found a spot for himself on the Major’s payroll. He was now the official Prosthetic (Human) Maintenance Department Chief. The Major said to me: “Ah, Dunlap. What sort of experience have you had?” “Experience?” “In the Navy. Your friend Engdahl suggested you might want to join us here.” “Oh. I see what you mean.” I shook my head. “Nothing that would do you any good, I’m afraid. I was a yeoman.” “Yeoman?” “Like a company clerk,” I explained. “I mean I kept records and cut orders and made out reports and all like that.” “Company clerk!” The eyes in the long horsy face gleamed. “Ah, you’re mistaken, Dunlap! Why, that’s just what we need. Our morning reports are in foul shape. Foul! Come over to HQ. Lieutenant Bankhead will give you a lift.” “Lieutenant Bankhead?” I got an elbow in my ribs for that. It was that girl Amy, standing alongside me. “I,” she said, “am Lieutenant Bankhead.” Well, I went along with her, leaving Engdahl and Arthur behind. But I must admit I wasn’t sure of my reception. Out in front of the hotel was a whole fleet of cars—three or four of them, at least. There was a big old Cadillac that looked like a gangsters’ car—thick glass in the windows, tires that looked like they belonged on a truck. I was willing to bet it was bulletproof and also that it belonged to the Major. I was right both times. There was a little MG with the top down, and a couple of light trucks. Every one of them was painted bright orange, and every one of them had the star-and-bar of the good old United States Army on its side. It took me back to old times—all but the unmilitary color. Amy led me to the MG and pointed. “Sit,” she said. I sat. She got in the other side and we were off. It was a little uncomfortable on account of I wasn’t just sure whether I ought to apologize for making her take her clothes off. And then she tramped on the gas of that little car and I didn’t think much about being embarrassed or about her black lace lingerie. I was only thinking about one thing—how to stay alive long enough to get out of that car. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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