Alien Harvest
by Robert Sheckley
To my wife, Gail, with all my love
Captain Hoban’s Prologue
I was in the middle of the whole thing with Stan and Julie.
I guess almost everybody on Earth knows how it ended. But they don’t know how it began.
I’ve been putting together everything I know about it. I figure it started the morning Stan got the summons.
I guess almost everybody on Earth knows how it ended. But they don’t know how it began.
I’ve been putting together everything I know about it. I figure it started the morning Stan got the summons.
1
That morning Stan had to go downtown to the Colonial Mercantile Building on Vesey Street. The day before there had been a ring at his doorbell. Stan hadn’t been doing much when it came. He had several experiments going in his cellar laboratory. The lab took up most of the space in the old frame house on Gramercy Park that he had inherited from his father. Stan hadn’t been feeling well lately, and although he tried to tell himself it wasn’t anything, some little voice within him kept on intruding, telling him, “This could be very serious…”
He had been avoiding his doctor for a while, but now he called up and made an appointment with Dr. Johnston at the Fifty-ninth Street clinic for the next day. That was when the doorbell rang.
The man standing outside was tall and thin, and dressed in a badly pressed gray business suit.
“Are you Professor Myakovsky?”
“I am,” Stan replied.
“Are you the Stanley Myakovsky who wrote the book about Ari the ant?”
“Yes, I am,” Stan repeated. He was starting to feel a little better. This guy seemed to be someone who had read his book, was probably a fan, maybe even wanted an autograph. “What can I do for you?”
“I got a summons for you,” the man said, taking a folded paper out of his pocket and slapping it briskly into Stan’s hand. “You are served. Have a nice day, Doctor.” He turned and left.
Stan went back inside and looked over the summons. He had no idea what it was about and the document itself didn’t enlighten him. It simply said he was to appear in Courtroom B at 311 Vesey Street the following day, or face the consequences.
Have a nice day.
What a laugh.
It had been so long since Stan had had a nice day, he couldn’t remember what one looked like.
The next day he left early for Vesey Street. The Broadway trolley was running again, rumbling past the newly restored buildings of midtown. It was a bright day outside, and despite his depression, Stan started to feel just the slightest lift to his spirits.
That lasted until he got to Vesey Street.
Vesey Street was filled with city and federal buildings, some of them quite old, dating from before the time of the aliens, miraculously unburned during the anarchic days when the aliens ruled. Some of the buildings in this area were brand-spanking-new. There had been a lot of rebuilding since those days. Stan would have liked to have been part of the first days after humans reoccupied their own planet It must have been exhilarating, reoccupying your own country, having a future again on your own planet. Now, of course, it was business as usual…More or less.
Times were pretty good. America was experiencing a boom. Business was strong. A lot of people were making a lot of money. Some people, of course, were losing a lot of money. It had to come from somewhere.
So it came from people like Stan.
He mounted the stone steps of the Criminal Courts Building. Within, he found a clerk who checked his summons and directed him up a flight of stairs to the correct courtroom.
He walked in. It was a small room with a half-dozen chairs facing a raised desk. The sign on the door had said judge jacob lessner, presiding. Behind the desk sat a small man in black robes. He said, “Dr. Stanley Myakovsky?”
“Yes,” Stan replied.
“Come in. I suppose you know what this is about?”
“No, I don’t.”
Judge Lessner frowned. “Your lawyer really should keep you better informed.”
Stan nodded, although he knew very well he hadn’t been answering his lawyer’s calls over the last few days.
“Well, this is a pretty simple matter.” The judge searched among the papers on his desk until he found what he was looking for. “This is a government order seizing your spaceship.”
“The Dolomite?” Stan asked.
The judge searched his paper until he found it. “Yes, of course, that’s the name of your ship. You may no longer go aboard.”
“But why?”
“You were sent a notice a month ago advising you of the government’s decision to take action against your unpaid bills.”
Stan thought the paper must be somewhere among the unopened mail on his desk. He had been too depressed of late to open any of it. Most of the letters had something bad to say: how this investment or that was sliding to hell on him, or how his patents weren’t earning as expected. And even more papers about all his back taxes.
He felt a wave of hopelessness engulf him. He tried to struggle out of it. “They are not allowed to do that. My spaceship is one of the few ways I have of conducting business. If they take that, how am I supposed to pay them what they say I owe?”
“That is not my concern,” the judge stated flatly. “You should have taken that into consideration when you fell so deeply into arrears. In any event, I am hereby notifying you of the government’s decision to take your ship. If you have any difficulty with this, you or your lawyer can file a complaint with the clerk down the hall.”
“Thanks a lot,” Stan said bitterly, and left the court room. A few blocks away he found a park bench to sit on. He needed to collect himself. His heart was beating wildly and he was sweating, though it was a mild day. At least, he thought, maybe my bad news for the day is over. I’ve had my share.
That was before his doctor’s appointment, of course.
Dr. Johnston of the Fifty-ninth Street clinic came to the dressing room just as Stan finished knotting his tie.
“How did my tests work out?” Stan asked.
The doctor looked uncomfortable. “Not so good, I’m afraid.”
“But I was here a year ago; you said I was fine!”
“A lot can happen in a year,” the doctor said.
Stan wanted to say, Sure, tell me about it, but he held back.
“Exactly what is the matter?” he asked.
Dr. Johnston answered, “I might as well give it to you straight, Dr. Myakovsky. You were correct in your surmise about those black marks on your chest and back. They are indeed cancers.”
Stan sat down. He needed a moment to think about this. He couldn’t believe what he had heard. And yet he had suspected it for months.
Finally he asked, “Is my condition terminal?”
“Yes.” The doctor nodded gravely. “In fact, you don’t have much time left. A matter of months. I’m sorry, but it’s best to give you the news straight. The condition, as I’m sure you know, is incurable. But its progress can be slowed, and we can ease some of the symptoms. I’ve already made out a prescription for the medicine we prescribe for such cases.” He handed Stan a folded slip of paper. “And there is also this.”
The doctor held out a small plastic box. Within it, packed in foam rubber, were a dozen ampoules of a bluish liquid.
“This is Xeno-Zip. Have you heard of it?”
Stan nodded. “If memory serves, it is produced from the royal jelly of alien females.”
“That is correct,” Dr. Johnston said. “I must tell you it’s no cure for what you have. But it should relieve the symptoms. The stuff’s illegal and I shouldn’t be giving you this … but it could be just what you’re looking for.”
“Does it have much in the way of side effects?” Stan asked.
The doctor smiled grimly. “It has indeed. That’s why it hasn’t received government approval yet, though many people still use it. Indeed, it has become the most-sought-after consciousness-altering substance in existence. Although the effect is not invariable, it does give most people an intense feeling of well-being and competence. Others experience levels of their own being not normally perceived. Still others have an orgasm that seems to go on forever.”
“At least I’m going to die happy.” Stan wasn’t smiling as he spoke.
He had been avoiding his doctor for a while, but now he called up and made an appointment with Dr. Johnston at the Fifty-ninth Street clinic for the next day. That was when the doorbell rang.
The man standing outside was tall and thin, and dressed in a badly pressed gray business suit.
“Are you Professor Myakovsky?”
“I am,” Stan replied.
“Are you the Stanley Myakovsky who wrote the book about Ari the ant?”
“Yes, I am,” Stan repeated. He was starting to feel a little better. This guy seemed to be someone who had read his book, was probably a fan, maybe even wanted an autograph. “What can I do for you?”
“I got a summons for you,” the man said, taking a folded paper out of his pocket and slapping it briskly into Stan’s hand. “You are served. Have a nice day, Doctor.” He turned and left.
Stan went back inside and looked over the summons. He had no idea what it was about and the document itself didn’t enlighten him. It simply said he was to appear in Courtroom B at 311 Vesey Street the following day, or face the consequences.
Have a nice day.
What a laugh.
It had been so long since Stan had had a nice day, he couldn’t remember what one looked like.
The next day he left early for Vesey Street. The Broadway trolley was running again, rumbling past the newly restored buildings of midtown. It was a bright day outside, and despite his depression, Stan started to feel just the slightest lift to his spirits.
That lasted until he got to Vesey Street.
Vesey Street was filled with city and federal buildings, some of them quite old, dating from before the time of the aliens, miraculously unburned during the anarchic days when the aliens ruled. Some of the buildings in this area were brand-spanking-new. There had been a lot of rebuilding since those days. Stan would have liked to have been part of the first days after humans reoccupied their own planet It must have been exhilarating, reoccupying your own country, having a future again on your own planet. Now, of course, it was business as usual…More or less.
Times were pretty good. America was experiencing a boom. Business was strong. A lot of people were making a lot of money. Some people, of course, were losing a lot of money. It had to come from somewhere.
So it came from people like Stan.
He mounted the stone steps of the Criminal Courts Building. Within, he found a clerk who checked his summons and directed him up a flight of stairs to the correct courtroom.
He walked in. It was a small room with a half-dozen chairs facing a raised desk. The sign on the door had said judge jacob lessner, presiding. Behind the desk sat a small man in black robes. He said, “Dr. Stanley Myakovsky?”
“Yes,” Stan replied.
“Come in. I suppose you know what this is about?”
“No, I don’t.”
Judge Lessner frowned. “Your lawyer really should keep you better informed.”
Stan nodded, although he knew very well he hadn’t been answering his lawyer’s calls over the last few days.
“Well, this is a pretty simple matter.” The judge searched among the papers on his desk until he found what he was looking for. “This is a government order seizing your spaceship.”
“The Dolomite?” Stan asked.
The judge searched his paper until he found it. “Yes, of course, that’s the name of your ship. You may no longer go aboard.”
“But why?”
“You were sent a notice a month ago advising you of the government’s decision to take action against your unpaid bills.”
Stan thought the paper must be somewhere among the unopened mail on his desk. He had been too depressed of late to open any of it. Most of the letters had something bad to say: how this investment or that was sliding to hell on him, or how his patents weren’t earning as expected. And even more papers about all his back taxes.
He felt a wave of hopelessness engulf him. He tried to struggle out of it. “They are not allowed to do that. My spaceship is one of the few ways I have of conducting business. If they take that, how am I supposed to pay them what they say I owe?”
“That is not my concern,” the judge stated flatly. “You should have taken that into consideration when you fell so deeply into arrears. In any event, I am hereby notifying you of the government’s decision to take your ship. If you have any difficulty with this, you or your lawyer can file a complaint with the clerk down the hall.”
“Thanks a lot,” Stan said bitterly, and left the court room. A few blocks away he found a park bench to sit on. He needed to collect himself. His heart was beating wildly and he was sweating, though it was a mild day. At least, he thought, maybe my bad news for the day is over. I’ve had my share.
That was before his doctor’s appointment, of course.
Dr. Johnston of the Fifty-ninth Street clinic came to the dressing room just as Stan finished knotting his tie.
“How did my tests work out?” Stan asked.
The doctor looked uncomfortable. “Not so good, I’m afraid.”
“But I was here a year ago; you said I was fine!”
“A lot can happen in a year,” the doctor said.
Stan wanted to say, Sure, tell me about it, but he held back.
“Exactly what is the matter?” he asked.
Dr. Johnston answered, “I might as well give it to you straight, Dr. Myakovsky. You were correct in your surmise about those black marks on your chest and back. They are indeed cancers.”
Stan sat down. He needed a moment to think about this. He couldn’t believe what he had heard. And yet he had suspected it for months.
Finally he asked, “Is my condition terminal?”
“Yes.” The doctor nodded gravely. “In fact, you don’t have much time left. A matter of months. I’m sorry, but it’s best to give you the news straight. The condition, as I’m sure you know, is incurable. But its progress can be slowed, and we can ease some of the symptoms. I’ve already made out a prescription for the medicine we prescribe for such cases.” He handed Stan a folded slip of paper. “And there is also this.”
The doctor held out a small plastic box. Within it, packed in foam rubber, were a dozen ampoules of a bluish liquid.
“This is Xeno-Zip. Have you heard of it?”
Stan nodded. “If memory serves, it is produced from the royal jelly of alien females.”
“That is correct,” Dr. Johnston said. “I must tell you it’s no cure for what you have. But it should relieve the symptoms. The stuff’s illegal and I shouldn’t be giving you this … but it could be just what you’re looking for.”
“Does it have much in the way of side effects?” Stan asked.
The doctor smiled grimly. “It has indeed. That’s why it hasn’t received government approval yet, though many people still use it. Indeed, it has become the most-sought-after consciousness-altering substance in existence. Although the effect is not invariable, it does give most people an intense feeling of well-being and competence. Others experience levels of their own being not normally perceived. Still others have an orgasm that seems to go on forever.”
“At least I’m going to die happy.” Stan wasn’t smiling as he spoke.
2
It was cold that night. Wind demons seemed to chase up and down the streets of New York, wailing at the high-flying moon like all of the banshees of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
The block that Stan’s house stood upon had once been genteel, a part of Gramercy Park. Now, armed citizens patrolled the streets night and day. Insurrection and disorder were rife all over the city, brought on by the breakdown of law and order since the troubles with the aliens. Some people could remember the coming of the aliens, and the many deaths that had resulted from their macabre practices. Their effect on New York had been to make it seem a much older city than it in fact was, one of those ancient cities like Baghdad or Babylon. Now, after the aliens, the city felt like it had seen unimaginable evil, and was resting, a little exhausted, waiting for the good life to start up again.
After making himself a light dinner from an InstaPac protein ration, Stan went to the living room and started a fire in the fireplace. He sat down in a rocking chair and stared morosely into the flames, listening to the wind whistling outside the window and thinking of how little time he had left.
It was strange how, upon hearing that your life had an imminent termination date, you began to think of suicide. Stan had never before understood Schopenhauer’s saying that he got through many a long night with thoughts of suicide, but now it made sense. To kill himself might even be a triumph; it would rob the cancer of its victory. No longer would he dance to death’s tune. No longer could the pain curl him up and make him beg for relief. He could get out of it, laugh at it all, and, as Hamlet had said, “Make his quietus with a bare bodkin.;”
From the plate of apples near his chair he picked up a short, keenly edged knife and looked at it like he’d never seen one before. Where in his body should he put it in? Should it be done hara-kiri style? Or was there another manner more appropriate for a Westerner?
And yet, tempting as the thoughts of suicide were, they were mainly interesting when considered in the abstract. He didn’t really want to kill himself. He wanted to do something. But he didn’t know what it was.
These were long, sad winter thoughts he was thinking, and he was startled out of his reverie when he heard the front door chimes.
Stan looked up in surprise. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He was a lonely man as he had been a lonely boy. He had gotten used to his solitary condition early in life, and had learned there was no sense struggling against it. He felt that it was written somewhere that he should be alone. This was his fate. He had no girlfriends-in fact, no real friends at all. No one came to take him to the movies or a concert, or for an evening’s drinking. Since his parents’ death four years ago in a traffic accident, he had become even less sociable. Sometimes he talked with colleagues at the laboratory, but even among people who should have been his own kind, his macabre and ironic sense of humor kept him apart. Stan lived alone in the house. He had set up a laboratory in the basement, and as far as possible, he did his experiments, wrote his papers, and lived his life at home, in solitude, among familiar things.
It was here that he had written Cyberantics, his children’s book about a cybernetic ant named Ari, based on an ant he had actually constructed himself. In fact, Ari was in the room with him now, perched on a small box on the mantel. The ant could see Stan as he hesitated a moment at the door.
The chimes rang again. He arose and went to answer the summons. The front door creaked in his hand, almost as if it were reluctant to open. Stan peered out, his nearsighted eyes blinking behind his thick glasses.
A young woman stood under the porch light and the first thing Stan noticed was the sheen of copper on her dark chestnut-red hair. She was tall and slender, and had masses of hair pushed back and tied behind her neck with a white ribbon. She wore a dark belted trench coat, severely cut, but not severe enough to hide the fact that she had a very good figure.
Her face was oval and attractive, lightly made up. An old scar, now almost completely faded but visible even in the darkness of the porch, ran from the outside corner of her left eye to the corner of her full lips. It looked like an old dueling scar, such as they had once sported in places like Heidelberg some centuries earlier. Could it really be a dueling scar? Did people still fight duels? Some accident, perhaps. But then why hadn’t she had it surgically removed? One thing was certain; the scar seemed to enhance her beauty, just as ancient people believed that scarification increased a woman’s charm.
“Dr. Myakovsky?” the woman said. “I am Julie Lish. I have a matter of considerable importance to discuss with you. May I come in?”
Stan had been staring at her hard, as if she were a lab specimen. Now he came back to himself with a start.
“Oh certainly; please. Come in.”
He escorted Julie Lish inside and led her through the gloomy hallway to the well-lighted room where he had been staring into the flames of a dying fire. He picked up a poker now and stirred the fire up, then indicated a pair of matching armchairs just a comfortable distance from the flames. She took one and he seated himself in the other, then quickly got up again.
“May I get you something to drink?”
She smiled at him, amused by his bumbling eager-ness. “You don’t even know what I’ve come for.”
“It doesn’t really matter… I mean, whatever it is, you are a guest in my house. Perhaps I could bring you a fruit drink? I’m afraid I have no alcohol to mix with it. Alcohol has an adverse effect on my can-my condition.”
“A glass of fruit juice would be nice,” Julie said. “I am well aware that you do not drink, Dr. Myakovsky.”
Stan had already begun pouring from a pitcher on a sideboard near the two armchairs. He looked up.
“Well aware? Why?”
“I’ve made it a point to find out about you,” Julie said. “I am always careful to research my future partners.”
Stan stared at her, his lips slightly parted, trying to make sense out of all this. Was she laughing at him? Girls were such unfathomable creatures! Although he was fascinated by them, Stan had always kept his distance, conscious that he was not the athletic, glib, casual sort of man that women liked. And here was this beautiful and exotic creature already talking about becoming partners with him?
“Please explain,” Stan said, with what he hoped was dignity. “You say you’ve studied me?”
“Probably better than you’ve studied yourself,”
Julie stated. “For example, I know about your first date. You were fifteen.”
“Do you know what was special about it?” Stan asked.
“I do indeed,” Julie replied. “You never showed up for it. You got cold feet at the last moment. And that, Doctor, could be said to characterize all your dealings with the opposite sex.”
Stan remembered the incident. He wondered if he had revealed it in some memoir he might have published at the invitation of a computer magazine. How else could she have found out? And what did she want to know that sort of thing for, anyhow?
“I don’t get this.” Stan looked at her. “What have you come here for? What do you want?”
“Stan,” Julie said, “I’ll make it short and sweet. I’m a thief. A good one. No, I’m a lot better than just good. I’m one of the best who ever lived. Unfortunately I can’t bring you press clippings. Really good thieves don’t get written up. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“All right, let’s say I accept it,” Stan said. “So?”
“I’ve made a lot of money in some of my enterprises,”
Julie went on, “but not as much as I’d have liked. Stan, I want to be rich.”
Stan laughed without humor. “I suppose a lot of people want that.”
“Certainly, but they don’t have my qualifications. Or my desire.”
Stan acknowledged this. “I take it you have some ideas on how to realize that goal?”
She nodded. “I have thought of a way you and I could make a fortune.”
“A fortune,” Stan mused. “How much is that in dollars?”
“Don’t laugh at me,” Julie said. “I don’t know exactly how much it would be. But it would come to millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, and we’d neither of us lack for anything ever again.”
“Nothing?” Stan asked, looking at her and thinking how pretty she was.
“We’d have it all,” she told him. “That’s worth something, isn’t it?”
She slipped off the severe trench coat. Beneath it she wore a nylon, military-style jumpsuit. The tight-fitting clothes set off her well-shaped bosom and fine shoulders to advantage. Stan thought she looked great. He wondered if Julie was one of the things he’d also have if he made a deal with her. He liked the idea but kept that thought to himself as well. Although he was extremely susceptible to beauty, he had cultivated a brusque manner around women so they would never think he was coming on to them and then reject him. He had had a lot of rejection in his life, and he wasn’t going to have any more if he could avoid it.
“Tell me your idea,” he said.
Julie reached into a small purse she carried, took out a package, and handed it to him.
Stan looked at her questioningly.
“Do you know what this is? Open it and find out.”
The package was wrapped in thick manila paper and was held together with tape. He tried to pull the paper off, but there was no place for his fingers to take hold. He went to his desk and found the paper knife, and managed to saw through the tape. Then he slit the paper carefully and opened the package. Within was a plastic box. Inside it, padded with foam rubber, was a stoppered test tube.
Stan held it up to the light. It was a heavy viscous liquid, with bluish lights in it. He unstopped the tube and sniffed. The aroma was unmistakable.
“Royal jelly,” he said.
She nodded. “Do you know what this stuff is worth?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. It is one of the most valuable substances in the galaxy.”
She nodded. “And the stuff is in even shorter supply now that we’ve got the aliens on the run. That’s part of what makes it so expensive. And it’s a monopoly.
The big bionational research companies have it all tied up. They’ve got places out on other planets where they get the stuff from the aliens. It’s all a closed transaction.”
“Which is all well-known,” Stan said. “Tell me something new.”
“Suppose I tell you that I know where we can lay our hands on an entire shipload of the stuff. At least a hundred tons. What about that?”
“Who does it belong to?”
“Whoever gets it.”
“Who did it used to belong to?”
“A freelance honey-collecting expedition. But it came up lost, and has never been heard of again.”
“So what makes you think they struck it rich?”
“Before vanishing, they sent out one signal by subspace radio. It was intercepted by a certain Bio-Pharm official. He never got around to using it. I guess he was going to take it to the grave with him, but I persuaded him otherwise.”
Stan didn’t ask her how she had managed this. At that moment her face looked quite sinister. But it was no less beautiful because of that. “So you know where it is?”
“I know approximately.”
Stan studied her for a while and pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then he said, “And you think it’s as simple as walking in and taking it?”
“Flying in,” she corrected.
“There might be objections to our appropriating this cargo,” Stan said.
“So what? It’s not illegal. Salvage rights belong to whoever gets them. The stuff’s ours if we can get it.”
“And we’re dead if we don’t.”
Julie shrugged. “It’s a lot of money, so there’s going to be a lot of risk. I don’t know about you, Stan, but I’m tired of being small-time. Just once I want to go for all the marbles. Don’t you feel that way sometimes?”
Stan could feel the pains of his condition eating away at him through the haze of the medication. He knew he was sick as hell.
But he also knew he was still alive.
“I think I’m ready for a big one, too,” he said slowly. “But there’s still a difficulty. Where there’s royal jelly, there’ll be aliens. How are we going to get through them?”
“The same way your ant, Ari, got through the enemy ant nest, Stan. That’s how.”
Stan stared at her. “You know about Ari?”
“Of course. I told you I researched you. And I read Cyberantics.”
“You think I could make a cybernetic or robotic alien and he could get through an alien ant nest?”
“I know you’ve been working on such a robot,” Julie said. “Why don’t we find out if it works?”
She looked at him challengingly, and Stan felt his heart lift. At last something was happening to him, an adventure with a beautiful woman.
“Then there’s the question of a ship,” he said.
“You have one.”
“Had. The government just seized it.”
She looked at him levelly. “Let’s worry about getting the ship later. What we need even worse is a spaceship pilot who’s willing to do something illegal.”
“I can think of one man…”
“Who’s that?”
“Just someone I know. Julie, you flatter me by coming to me with this partnership offer. But evidently you don’t know my full situation.”
“I don’t? Tell me, then.”
“Julie, I used to be quite a wealthy man. One of the youngest millionaires on the Forbes list. I have several key patents in bioengineering, and the plans for my cybernetic ant, Ari, are a standard for the field of medical miniaturization.”
“I know all this, Stan.”
“Sure. But did you also know that all that has changed? Did you know the government has put a lien on my assets? It seems that Bio-Pharm, one of the biggest of the international pharmaceutical houses, has filed suit against me for patent infringement.What a laugh. They stole most of their processes from me! But it’s not easy to prove, and in the meantime they’ve got me on the run. I don’t own a damned thing anymore—nothing except this house and Ari.” He lifted up the cybernetic ant to show to Julie. “I even have to beg my grocer to extend me credit so I can go on eating!”
Julie looked at him without sympathy. “I know all that, Stan. It’s tough, isn’t it?”
He thought he detected a tone of irony in her voice. “You’re damned right it’s tough!” “Granted. But so what?”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. “Did you actually come here to insult me?”
“There’s nothing insulting in what I’m saying. I came here to make a deal with you. What I find is you sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. I’m offering you something you can do about it.”
“It’s not just that I’m broke,” Stan said. “There’s also … my condition.”
“Tell me about it,” Julie said. Stan shrugged. “There’s not much to say. Melanoma. I’ve got six months. Maybe a little longer if I want to lie in a hospital bed and breath pure oxygen.” “You look like you’re moving around pretty good just now,” Julie said.
“Oh yeah, sure. But that’s just now. This stuff is the only thing that keeps me going.” He took out a vial of Xeno-Zip and showed it to her.
“I know all about that stuff,” Julie said. “It’s my job to keep track of precious substances that come in small packages. And this is the only stuff that does you any good?”
“That’s right,” Stan said. “It’s expensive even for a rich man. For someone whose assets have been seized … Well, I’ll run out soon, and I don’t know what happens then.”
“Tough,” Julie said, with no pity in her voice. “So this stuff won’t cure you?”
Stan shook his head. “Some doctors have theorized that if I could obtain absolute unadulterated royal jelly fresh from an alien hive, before any by-products were added, and before it had time to lose any of its potency, it might buy me more time. But it’s impossible to get.”
“Except by going to the source,” Julie said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Stan repeated slowly. “Except by going to the source. To a place where the Aliens actually produce it.”
“That’s the sort of place I had in mind for us to go,” Julie said. “Like I told you, I know where there’s a shipload of the stuff.”
He stared at her, his eyebrows raised. Then his head slumped and he looked sad and worn. “No, no. It’s quite impossible. Even if you knew of such a place—”
“That’s exactly what I do know,” Julie said. “You know a place where an alien queen produces royal jelly?”
She patted the sleek leather pouch that she carried at her side. “I’ve got the coordinates right in here, Stan. They’re a part of my contribution to this venture.”
“Where’d you get that information?”
She smiled. She was so lovely when she smiled. “Like I told you, I was good friends with a Bio-Pharm executive. We were a little more than good friends, actually. Well, when he died—he was quite old, you understand—when he died, he decided that that particular secret shouldn’t go to the grave with him.”
“So what is your idea?” Stan asked. “Do you think we can just go there and get it?”
“That’s about what I had in mind,” Julie said.
“The Bio-Pharm people might have something to say about it.”
“I figured we could sneak in, grab the shipload, and get out before they spotted us.”
“You think it would be as easy as that?”
She shook her head. “I never said it would be easy.”
“Or within the law.”
She shrugged impatiently. “There’s nothing illegal about salvage. Why don’t you think of it as your counterclaim to their lawsuit?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re suing you for patent infringement. Wrongly, you say. Well, prove you mean it. Go in there and take what is yours—then take them to court the way they’re taking you.”
Stan thought for a long while, then he began to smile. “You know, I think I’d like that.”
“Now you’re talking!”
“But wait a minute, there are still a lot of problems. We don’t have a ship. My alien robot has never had a field test. And I don’t have any money.”
“We can do something about all that,” Julie said. “But there really isn’t much time. Not for you and not for me. If we’re going to do this, we’ll have to start real soon. And once we begin, there’s no turning back.”
“I understand,” Stan said.
Julie leaned forward and took Stan’s face in her cool hands. He felt something like an electric shock pass through him. Looking at her, he thought he’d never seen anyone so beautiful and so brave. Yes, and maybe a little crazy, too, but what did that matter?
“I want you to think about it, Stan,” Julie said. “Give me your answer tomorrow night over dinner. If you don’t want to do it, fine, no hard feelings. But if you do—listen to me carefully.”
“I’m listening,” Stan said. In fact, he was barely breathing.
“If you do decide to do it, then no more crap about something being difficult or you being sick or any of that. If you’re going to do it, simply decide to do it, and well go on from there.”
“That sounds pretty good to me,” Stan said. “Julie, where’d you learn all this stuff?”
“From my teacher, Shen Hui.”
“He must have been a pretty wise old egg.”
“It didn’t prevent him from dying,” Julie said. “But while he lived, he really lived. Till tomorrow, Stan.”
“Where are you going?” Stan said in alarm as she stood up.
“I’m sure you’ve got a spare bedroom here,” Julie said. I’m going to take a shower and change, and then look over your library and lab. Then I want to get some sleep.”
“Oh, fine. I was afraid you were leaving.” She shook her head. “Play your cards right and I’ll never leave again.”
The block that Stan’s house stood upon had once been genteel, a part of Gramercy Park. Now, armed citizens patrolled the streets night and day. Insurrection and disorder were rife all over the city, brought on by the breakdown of law and order since the troubles with the aliens. Some people could remember the coming of the aliens, and the many deaths that had resulted from their macabre practices. Their effect on New York had been to make it seem a much older city than it in fact was, one of those ancient cities like Baghdad or Babylon. Now, after the aliens, the city felt like it had seen unimaginable evil, and was resting, a little exhausted, waiting for the good life to start up again.
After making himself a light dinner from an InstaPac protein ration, Stan went to the living room and started a fire in the fireplace. He sat down in a rocking chair and stared morosely into the flames, listening to the wind whistling outside the window and thinking of how little time he had left.
It was strange how, upon hearing that your life had an imminent termination date, you began to think of suicide. Stan had never before understood Schopenhauer’s saying that he got through many a long night with thoughts of suicide, but now it made sense. To kill himself might even be a triumph; it would rob the cancer of its victory. No longer would he dance to death’s tune. No longer could the pain curl him up and make him beg for relief. He could get out of it, laugh at it all, and, as Hamlet had said, “Make his quietus with a bare bodkin.;”
From the plate of apples near his chair he picked up a short, keenly edged knife and looked at it like he’d never seen one before. Where in his body should he put it in? Should it be done hara-kiri style? Or was there another manner more appropriate for a Westerner?
And yet, tempting as the thoughts of suicide were, they were mainly interesting when considered in the abstract. He didn’t really want to kill himself. He wanted to do something. But he didn’t know what it was.
These were long, sad winter thoughts he was thinking, and he was startled out of his reverie when he heard the front door chimes.
Stan looked up in surprise. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He was a lonely man as he had been a lonely boy. He had gotten used to his solitary condition early in life, and had learned there was no sense struggling against it. He felt that it was written somewhere that he should be alone. This was his fate. He had no girlfriends-in fact, no real friends at all. No one came to take him to the movies or a concert, or for an evening’s drinking. Since his parents’ death four years ago in a traffic accident, he had become even less sociable. Sometimes he talked with colleagues at the laboratory, but even among people who should have been his own kind, his macabre and ironic sense of humor kept him apart. Stan lived alone in the house. He had set up a laboratory in the basement, and as far as possible, he did his experiments, wrote his papers, and lived his life at home, in solitude, among familiar things.
It was here that he had written Cyberantics, his children’s book about a cybernetic ant named Ari, based on an ant he had actually constructed himself. In fact, Ari was in the room with him now, perched on a small box on the mantel. The ant could see Stan as he hesitated a moment at the door.
The chimes rang again. He arose and went to answer the summons. The front door creaked in his hand, almost as if it were reluctant to open. Stan peered out, his nearsighted eyes blinking behind his thick glasses.
A young woman stood under the porch light and the first thing Stan noticed was the sheen of copper on her dark chestnut-red hair. She was tall and slender, and had masses of hair pushed back and tied behind her neck with a white ribbon. She wore a dark belted trench coat, severely cut, but not severe enough to hide the fact that she had a very good figure.
Her face was oval and attractive, lightly made up. An old scar, now almost completely faded but visible even in the darkness of the porch, ran from the outside corner of her left eye to the corner of her full lips. It looked like an old dueling scar, such as they had once sported in places like Heidelberg some centuries earlier. Could it really be a dueling scar? Did people still fight duels? Some accident, perhaps. But then why hadn’t she had it surgically removed? One thing was certain; the scar seemed to enhance her beauty, just as ancient people believed that scarification increased a woman’s charm.
“Dr. Myakovsky?” the woman said. “I am Julie Lish. I have a matter of considerable importance to discuss with you. May I come in?”
Stan had been staring at her hard, as if she were a lab specimen. Now he came back to himself with a start.
“Oh certainly; please. Come in.”
He escorted Julie Lish inside and led her through the gloomy hallway to the well-lighted room where he had been staring into the flames of a dying fire. He picked up a poker now and stirred the fire up, then indicated a pair of matching armchairs just a comfortable distance from the flames. She took one and he seated himself in the other, then quickly got up again.
“May I get you something to drink?”
She smiled at him, amused by his bumbling eager-ness. “You don’t even know what I’ve come for.”
“It doesn’t really matter… I mean, whatever it is, you are a guest in my house. Perhaps I could bring you a fruit drink? I’m afraid I have no alcohol to mix with it. Alcohol has an adverse effect on my can-my condition.”
“A glass of fruit juice would be nice,” Julie said. “I am well aware that you do not drink, Dr. Myakovsky.”
Stan had already begun pouring from a pitcher on a sideboard near the two armchairs. He looked up.
“Well aware? Why?”
“I’ve made it a point to find out about you,” Julie said. “I am always careful to research my future partners.”
Stan stared at her, his lips slightly parted, trying to make sense out of all this. Was she laughing at him? Girls were such unfathomable creatures! Although he was fascinated by them, Stan had always kept his distance, conscious that he was not the athletic, glib, casual sort of man that women liked. And here was this beautiful and exotic creature already talking about becoming partners with him?
“Please explain,” Stan said, with what he hoped was dignity. “You say you’ve studied me?”
“Probably better than you’ve studied yourself,”
Julie stated. “For example, I know about your first date. You were fifteen.”
“Do you know what was special about it?” Stan asked.
“I do indeed,” Julie replied. “You never showed up for it. You got cold feet at the last moment. And that, Doctor, could be said to characterize all your dealings with the opposite sex.”
Stan remembered the incident. He wondered if he had revealed it in some memoir he might have published at the invitation of a computer magazine. How else could she have found out? And what did she want to know that sort of thing for, anyhow?
“I don’t get this.” Stan looked at her. “What have you come here for? What do you want?”
“Stan,” Julie said, “I’ll make it short and sweet. I’m a thief. A good one. No, I’m a lot better than just good. I’m one of the best who ever lived. Unfortunately I can’t bring you press clippings. Really good thieves don’t get written up. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“All right, let’s say I accept it,” Stan said. “So?”
“I’ve made a lot of money in some of my enterprises,”
Julie went on, “but not as much as I’d have liked. Stan, I want to be rich.”
Stan laughed without humor. “I suppose a lot of people want that.”
“Certainly, but they don’t have my qualifications. Or my desire.”
Stan acknowledged this. “I take it you have some ideas on how to realize that goal?”
She nodded. “I have thought of a way you and I could make a fortune.”
“A fortune,” Stan mused. “How much is that in dollars?”
“Don’t laugh at me,” Julie said. “I don’t know exactly how much it would be. But it would come to millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, and we’d neither of us lack for anything ever again.”
“Nothing?” Stan asked, looking at her and thinking how pretty she was.
“We’d have it all,” she told him. “That’s worth something, isn’t it?”
She slipped off the severe trench coat. Beneath it she wore a nylon, military-style jumpsuit. The tight-fitting clothes set off her well-shaped bosom and fine shoulders to advantage. Stan thought she looked great. He wondered if Julie was one of the things he’d also have if he made a deal with her. He liked the idea but kept that thought to himself as well. Although he was extremely susceptible to beauty, he had cultivated a brusque manner around women so they would never think he was coming on to them and then reject him. He had had a lot of rejection in his life, and he wasn’t going to have any more if he could avoid it.
“Tell me your idea,” he said.
Julie reached into a small purse she carried, took out a package, and handed it to him.
Stan looked at her questioningly.
“Do you know what this is? Open it and find out.”
The package was wrapped in thick manila paper and was held together with tape. He tried to pull the paper off, but there was no place for his fingers to take hold. He went to his desk and found the paper knife, and managed to saw through the tape. Then he slit the paper carefully and opened the package. Within was a plastic box. Inside it, padded with foam rubber, was a stoppered test tube.
Stan held it up to the light. It was a heavy viscous liquid, with bluish lights in it. He unstopped the tube and sniffed. The aroma was unmistakable.
“Royal jelly,” he said.
She nodded. “Do you know what this stuff is worth?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. It is one of the most valuable substances in the galaxy.”
She nodded. “And the stuff is in even shorter supply now that we’ve got the aliens on the run. That’s part of what makes it so expensive. And it’s a monopoly.
The big bionational research companies have it all tied up. They’ve got places out on other planets where they get the stuff from the aliens. It’s all a closed transaction.”
“Which is all well-known,” Stan said. “Tell me something new.”
“Suppose I tell you that I know where we can lay our hands on an entire shipload of the stuff. At least a hundred tons. What about that?”
“Who does it belong to?”
“Whoever gets it.”
“Who did it used to belong to?”
“A freelance honey-collecting expedition. But it came up lost, and has never been heard of again.”
“So what makes you think they struck it rich?”
“Before vanishing, they sent out one signal by subspace radio. It was intercepted by a certain Bio-Pharm official. He never got around to using it. I guess he was going to take it to the grave with him, but I persuaded him otherwise.”
Stan didn’t ask her how she had managed this. At that moment her face looked quite sinister. But it was no less beautiful because of that. “So you know where it is?”
“I know approximately.”
Stan studied her for a while and pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then he said, “And you think it’s as simple as walking in and taking it?”
“Flying in,” she corrected.
“There might be objections to our appropriating this cargo,” Stan said.
“So what? It’s not illegal. Salvage rights belong to whoever gets them. The stuff’s ours if we can get it.”
“And we’re dead if we don’t.”
Julie shrugged. “It’s a lot of money, so there’s going to be a lot of risk. I don’t know about you, Stan, but I’m tired of being small-time. Just once I want to go for all the marbles. Don’t you feel that way sometimes?”
Stan could feel the pains of his condition eating away at him through the haze of the medication. He knew he was sick as hell.
But he also knew he was still alive.
“I think I’m ready for a big one, too,” he said slowly. “But there’s still a difficulty. Where there’s royal jelly, there’ll be aliens. How are we going to get through them?”
“The same way your ant, Ari, got through the enemy ant nest, Stan. That’s how.”
Stan stared at her. “You know about Ari?”
“Of course. I told you I researched you. And I read Cyberantics.”
“You think I could make a cybernetic or robotic alien and he could get through an alien ant nest?”
“I know you’ve been working on such a robot,” Julie said. “Why don’t we find out if it works?”
She looked at him challengingly, and Stan felt his heart lift. At last something was happening to him, an adventure with a beautiful woman.
“Then there’s the question of a ship,” he said.
“You have one.”
“Had. The government just seized it.”
She looked at him levelly. “Let’s worry about getting the ship later. What we need even worse is a spaceship pilot who’s willing to do something illegal.”
“I can think of one man…”
“Who’s that?”
“Just someone I know. Julie, you flatter me by coming to me with this partnership offer. But evidently you don’t know my full situation.”
“I don’t? Tell me, then.”
“Julie, I used to be quite a wealthy man. One of the youngest millionaires on the Forbes list. I have several key patents in bioengineering, and the plans for my cybernetic ant, Ari, are a standard for the field of medical miniaturization.”
“I know all this, Stan.”
“Sure. But did you also know that all that has changed? Did you know the government has put a lien on my assets? It seems that Bio-Pharm, one of the biggest of the international pharmaceutical houses, has filed suit against me for patent infringement.What a laugh. They stole most of their processes from me! But it’s not easy to prove, and in the meantime they’ve got me on the run. I don’t own a damned thing anymore—nothing except this house and Ari.” He lifted up the cybernetic ant to show to Julie. “I even have to beg my grocer to extend me credit so I can go on eating!”
Julie looked at him without sympathy. “I know all that, Stan. It’s tough, isn’t it?”
He thought he detected a tone of irony in her voice. “You’re damned right it’s tough!” “Granted. But so what?”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. “Did you actually come here to insult me?”
“There’s nothing insulting in what I’m saying. I came here to make a deal with you. What I find is you sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. I’m offering you something you can do about it.”
“It’s not just that I’m broke,” Stan said. “There’s also … my condition.”
“Tell me about it,” Julie said. Stan shrugged. “There’s not much to say. Melanoma. I’ve got six months. Maybe a little longer if I want to lie in a hospital bed and breath pure oxygen.” “You look like you’re moving around pretty good just now,” Julie said.
“Oh yeah, sure. But that’s just now. This stuff is the only thing that keeps me going.” He took out a vial of Xeno-Zip and showed it to her.
“I know all about that stuff,” Julie said. “It’s my job to keep track of precious substances that come in small packages. And this is the only stuff that does you any good?”
“That’s right,” Stan said. “It’s expensive even for a rich man. For someone whose assets have been seized … Well, I’ll run out soon, and I don’t know what happens then.”
“Tough,” Julie said, with no pity in her voice. “So this stuff won’t cure you?”
Stan shook his head. “Some doctors have theorized that if I could obtain absolute unadulterated royal jelly fresh from an alien hive, before any by-products were added, and before it had time to lose any of its potency, it might buy me more time. But it’s impossible to get.”
“Except by going to the source,” Julie said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Stan repeated slowly. “Except by going to the source. To a place where the Aliens actually produce it.”
“That’s the sort of place I had in mind for us to go,” Julie said. “Like I told you, I know where there’s a shipload of the stuff.”
He stared at her, his eyebrows raised. Then his head slumped and he looked sad and worn. “No, no. It’s quite impossible. Even if you knew of such a place—”
“That’s exactly what I do know,” Julie said. “You know a place where an alien queen produces royal jelly?”
She patted the sleek leather pouch that she carried at her side. “I’ve got the coordinates right in here, Stan. They’re a part of my contribution to this venture.”
“Where’d you get that information?”
She smiled. She was so lovely when she smiled. “Like I told you, I was good friends with a Bio-Pharm executive. We were a little more than good friends, actually. Well, when he died—he was quite old, you understand—when he died, he decided that that particular secret shouldn’t go to the grave with him.”
“So what is your idea?” Stan asked. “Do you think we can just go there and get it?”
“That’s about what I had in mind,” Julie said.
“The Bio-Pharm people might have something to say about it.”
“I figured we could sneak in, grab the shipload, and get out before they spotted us.”
“You think it would be as easy as that?”
She shook her head. “I never said it would be easy.”
“Or within the law.”
She shrugged impatiently. “There’s nothing illegal about salvage. Why don’t you think of it as your counterclaim to their lawsuit?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re suing you for patent infringement. Wrongly, you say. Well, prove you mean it. Go in there and take what is yours—then take them to court the way they’re taking you.”
Stan thought for a long while, then he began to smile. “You know, I think I’d like that.”
“Now you’re talking!”
“But wait a minute, there are still a lot of problems. We don’t have a ship. My alien robot has never had a field test. And I don’t have any money.”
“We can do something about all that,” Julie said. “But there really isn’t much time. Not for you and not for me. If we’re going to do this, we’ll have to start real soon. And once we begin, there’s no turning back.”
“I understand,” Stan said.
Julie leaned forward and took Stan’s face in her cool hands. He felt something like an electric shock pass through him. Looking at her, he thought he’d never seen anyone so beautiful and so brave. Yes, and maybe a little crazy, too, but what did that matter?
“I want you to think about it, Stan,” Julie said. “Give me your answer tomorrow night over dinner. If you don’t want to do it, fine, no hard feelings. But if you do—listen to me carefully.”
“I’m listening,” Stan said. In fact, he was barely breathing.
“If you do decide to do it, then no more crap about something being difficult or you being sick or any of that. If you’re going to do it, simply decide to do it, and well go on from there.”
“That sounds pretty good to me,” Stan said. “Julie, where’d you learn all this stuff?”
“From my teacher, Shen Hui.”
“He must have been a pretty wise old egg.”
“It didn’t prevent him from dying,” Julie said. “But while he lived, he really lived. Till tomorrow, Stan.”
“Where are you going?” Stan said in alarm as she stood up.
“I’m sure you’ve got a spare bedroom here,” Julie said. I’m going to take a shower and change, and then look over your library and lab. Then I want to get some sleep.”
“Oh, fine. I was afraid you were leaving.” She shook her head. “Play your cards right and I’ll never leave again.”
3
Julie had always been unusual. She’d never known her parents. Her earliest memories were of an international orphanage in Shanghai. This was the place from which Shen Hui bought her, when she was still a very little girl. He had been very good to her, treating her like a favored child rather than a slave. But she was still a slave and she knew it, and it rankled. Shen Hui taught her independence of spirit as well as how to be a good thief. It was inevitable that she would try out her need for liberty on him, the one who was holding her.
She was devious about it, just as he had taught her. She put aside money from jobs she did for him. And she studied and learned so she would know all she needed when she was ready to cut loose from him. And then came the question of finding the right time. It seemed to take forever, and the right moment never seemed to come.
At last they traveled together to Europe. Shen Hui had it in mind to relieve some of the largest art galleries on the continent of some of their smaller and most prized possessions: miniature paintings, small sculpture, carved objects. They went to Zurich first.
The first night Julie excused herself in the lobby of the Grand Basle Hotel, went to the ladies’ room, and never returned.
She had planned well. From the powder room, with a small fortune and a forged passport secreted on her person, she made her way to the airport, and then to Madrid, Lisbon, and London. She made the trail difficult for Shen Hui to follow. And she prepared something else.
He came after her, as she had known he would. He wasn’t going to let her get away that easily. He had invested a lot of money in her, and besides, his feelings were hurt. He had thought she loved him. He had forgotten his own advice—never trust a slave. His love was replaced by hatred, all the more powerful because it was based on his own guilt and ignorance in being duped by the illusion he had created and named Julie.
They met up almost a year later. He came upon her in one of the public squares in Paris, near the Seine. Julie was wearing a black sealskin coat and a chinchilla hat.
Shen Hui noted sardonically that it hadn’t taken her long to outfit herself. He added that she had been silly to expose herself to him in this way.
“What do you mean?” she’d asked.
“I mean if you had any brains, you wouldn’t have let me catch up with you. Do you realize how easily I could kill you? And you could do nothing about it, not even with all the skills I taught you.”
“I know that,” Julie said. “And I wasn’t careless. I chose to let you find me.”
“What are you up to?”
“I don’t choose to spend my life running,” Julie said. “I am extremely grateful to you, Shen Hui. You have taught me respect for the deeper law that underlies appearances. I appeal to that law now. Although you legally own me, your investment has been repaid many times and it is time that I went free. I served you well and you know it I would like to shake hands and have us part friends.”
Shen Hui stared at her. His skin had aged incredibly, with a yellow cast to it like parchment that has been dried too long in the sun. She had never seen him looking so old. Even his thin mustache, which dropped down on either side of his face, seemed lifeless.
And his eyes were brown and opaque.
She wasn’t sure what he would say. She knew that her life hung in the balance. Old as he was, and apparently unarmed, she had no doubt he could kill her anytime he chose.
“You are my greatest creation,” he said at last. “How could I kill you? Who would I have left to hate?”
Her life had really begun at that point. She spent several years on her own, accomplishing unbelievable feats of thievery in Europe and America. She made money easily, and spent it easily. Her life was rich and pleasurable, but she began to sense a loss of purpose, a slackness that was beginning to alarm her. It was a question of motivation. Shen Hui had taught her too well for her to be content with mediocre motives. Why was she doing what she was doing? What was she living for?
The only thing she could think to do with her life was to get rich. It wasn’t enough, she knew, but it was a start. After she accomplished that, she’d take the next step.
For the present she was here with Stan, and Stan was as good as hooked, if she had any knowledge of men.
For dinner that night Stan had ordered a special Moroccan feast catered by a North African couple he knew. Although it was short notice, he had told them to go all out, and he served the meal himself using his best china and silverware. There were game birds roasted on spits, half a sheep braised in many exotic spices and served with rough tasty Arab bread, platters of fruits and vegetables, several different wines. The Moroccan couple followed instructions, delivering the feast and then leaving. Stan paid for it with al-most the last of the cash he had on hand. One way or another, no matter what decision he made tonight, it was going to be a new life for him tomorrow.
Stan hadn’t thought about what he was going to say. He didn’t need to. He was suffused with a knowledge that he couldn’t articulate yet. That would have to come later. For now it was enough to sit across the table from Julie while the strains of a Monteverdi madrigal tinkled in the background.
Julie had found an old ballroom dress upstairs, one of his grandmother’s, neatly folded in a fragrant cedar drawer. It fit perfectly, and she had worn it down to dinner with a set of large pearl earrings that had once belonged to Stan’s mother.
Stan, noting her preparations, had taken out the tuxedo he had worn to his recent college reunion. He put in the cat’s-eye opal cuff links and the diamond pin in the buttonhole. He felt tall and graceful in this outfit, and a little ironic. It was playacting, of course, and he knew that; but it was also in some strange sense real. And Stan knew that there were many costumes he could have worn that night. He wouldn’t have felt out of place in the golden mantle of Alexander the Great Because just like the famous Macedonian, he was on the verge of new worlds to conquer. He was also up against a sea of trouble and pain, and he suspected he was doomed to die gloriously and young as well.
At dinner that evening Julie was radiant in the antique gown, Stan looking handsome in his tuxedo. He had saved a bottle of wine for a long time, waiting for an occasion like this. The bottle had been handed down to him by his parents—a rare St-Emilion, the great vintage of thirty-seven years earlier. Stan had taken good care of the bottle, storing it on its side in the temperature-controlled basement, making sure the cork was properly intact. He brought it up now and opened it with care, pouring a little into a fluted glass and tasting it.
“Just on the verge of turning,’’ he said. “But still superb.
We’ve caught the St-Emilion at its peak, Julie. This is probably the last bottle of this stuff in the world.” She tasted the ruby-red liquid he had poured for her. “It’s marvelous, Stan. But what are we celebrating?”
“Need you ask?”
“I think not,” she said, “but I would like to hear it anyhow.”
“And hear it you shall.” Stan smiled. Never had he felt so at peace with himself. He didn’t know where this course of action was going to take him, but he was satisfied to follow it.
“We’re going to go with your plan, Julie. And we’re going to follow it all the way. We both know the risks. We discussed them yesterday. We both know the odds are against us. But no more talk about that. I’ve decided, and I know that you have, too. We’ll start in the morning.”
She reached across the snowy tablecloth and held his hand tightly. “Why tomorrow morning?”
“Because that’s when my bank opens,” Stan said. “I’m ready for whatever we have to do.”
“I’m ready, too, Stan.”
“Well,” he said, half as a joke and half seriously, “I guess we’ve taken care of everything except what to name our alien.”
“What would you suggest?”
“What about Norbert, after the great Norbert Wiener, father of cybernetics, the science that gave it birth?”
“Sounds good to me,” Julie said. “I guess that just about covers it, Stan. Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
She leaned close to him. He felt dizzy with her face so close to his. She bent closer. Her lips were partially open. He was fascinated by her teeth, all perfect except one small one to the left, an eyetooth. It was a little crooked.
And then he stopped thinking as she kissed him, and Ari the cybernetic ant stood in his box on the mantel and watched, and the flames of the fire lifted and died away, and Stan watched Ari watching and watched himself kissing Julie, not knowing that Ari was watching, and all this from within his frozen moment in time and all of it stained in the blue light of the royal jelly of memory.
She was devious about it, just as he had taught her. She put aside money from jobs she did for him. And she studied and learned so she would know all she needed when she was ready to cut loose from him. And then came the question of finding the right time. It seemed to take forever, and the right moment never seemed to come.
At last they traveled together to Europe. Shen Hui had it in mind to relieve some of the largest art galleries on the continent of some of their smaller and most prized possessions: miniature paintings, small sculpture, carved objects. They went to Zurich first.
The first night Julie excused herself in the lobby of the Grand Basle Hotel, went to the ladies’ room, and never returned.
She had planned well. From the powder room, with a small fortune and a forged passport secreted on her person, she made her way to the airport, and then to Madrid, Lisbon, and London. She made the trail difficult for Shen Hui to follow. And she prepared something else.
He came after her, as she had known he would. He wasn’t going to let her get away that easily. He had invested a lot of money in her, and besides, his feelings were hurt. He had thought she loved him. He had forgotten his own advice—never trust a slave. His love was replaced by hatred, all the more powerful because it was based on his own guilt and ignorance in being duped by the illusion he had created and named Julie.
They met up almost a year later. He came upon her in one of the public squares in Paris, near the Seine. Julie was wearing a black sealskin coat and a chinchilla hat.
Shen Hui noted sardonically that it hadn’t taken her long to outfit herself. He added that she had been silly to expose herself to him in this way.
“What do you mean?” she’d asked.
“I mean if you had any brains, you wouldn’t have let me catch up with you. Do you realize how easily I could kill you? And you could do nothing about it, not even with all the skills I taught you.”
“I know that,” Julie said. “And I wasn’t careless. I chose to let you find me.”
“What are you up to?”
“I don’t choose to spend my life running,” Julie said. “I am extremely grateful to you, Shen Hui. You have taught me respect for the deeper law that underlies appearances. I appeal to that law now. Although you legally own me, your investment has been repaid many times and it is time that I went free. I served you well and you know it I would like to shake hands and have us part friends.”
Shen Hui stared at her. His skin had aged incredibly, with a yellow cast to it like parchment that has been dried too long in the sun. She had never seen him looking so old. Even his thin mustache, which dropped down on either side of his face, seemed lifeless.
And his eyes were brown and opaque.
She wasn’t sure what he would say. She knew that her life hung in the balance. Old as he was, and apparently unarmed, she had no doubt he could kill her anytime he chose.
“You are my greatest creation,” he said at last. “How could I kill you? Who would I have left to hate?”
Her life had really begun at that point. She spent several years on her own, accomplishing unbelievable feats of thievery in Europe and America. She made money easily, and spent it easily. Her life was rich and pleasurable, but she began to sense a loss of purpose, a slackness that was beginning to alarm her. It was a question of motivation. Shen Hui had taught her too well for her to be content with mediocre motives. Why was she doing what she was doing? What was she living for?
The only thing she could think to do with her life was to get rich. It wasn’t enough, she knew, but it was a start. After she accomplished that, she’d take the next step.
For the present she was here with Stan, and Stan was as good as hooked, if she had any knowledge of men.
For dinner that night Stan had ordered a special Moroccan feast catered by a North African couple he knew. Although it was short notice, he had told them to go all out, and he served the meal himself using his best china and silverware. There were game birds roasted on spits, half a sheep braised in many exotic spices and served with rough tasty Arab bread, platters of fruits and vegetables, several different wines. The Moroccan couple followed instructions, delivering the feast and then leaving. Stan paid for it with al-most the last of the cash he had on hand. One way or another, no matter what decision he made tonight, it was going to be a new life for him tomorrow.
Stan hadn’t thought about what he was going to say. He didn’t need to. He was suffused with a knowledge that he couldn’t articulate yet. That would have to come later. For now it was enough to sit across the table from Julie while the strains of a Monteverdi madrigal tinkled in the background.
Julie had found an old ballroom dress upstairs, one of his grandmother’s, neatly folded in a fragrant cedar drawer. It fit perfectly, and she had worn it down to dinner with a set of large pearl earrings that had once belonged to Stan’s mother.
Stan, noting her preparations, had taken out the tuxedo he had worn to his recent college reunion. He put in the cat’s-eye opal cuff links and the diamond pin in the buttonhole. He felt tall and graceful in this outfit, and a little ironic. It was playacting, of course, and he knew that; but it was also in some strange sense real. And Stan knew that there were many costumes he could have worn that night. He wouldn’t have felt out of place in the golden mantle of Alexander the Great Because just like the famous Macedonian, he was on the verge of new worlds to conquer. He was also up against a sea of trouble and pain, and he suspected he was doomed to die gloriously and young as well.
At dinner that evening Julie was radiant in the antique gown, Stan looking handsome in his tuxedo. He had saved a bottle of wine for a long time, waiting for an occasion like this. The bottle had been handed down to him by his parents—a rare St-Emilion, the great vintage of thirty-seven years earlier. Stan had taken good care of the bottle, storing it on its side in the temperature-controlled basement, making sure the cork was properly intact. He brought it up now and opened it with care, pouring a little into a fluted glass and tasting it.
“Just on the verge of turning,’’ he said. “But still superb.
We’ve caught the St-Emilion at its peak, Julie. This is probably the last bottle of this stuff in the world.” She tasted the ruby-red liquid he had poured for her. “It’s marvelous, Stan. But what are we celebrating?”
“Need you ask?”
“I think not,” she said, “but I would like to hear it anyhow.”
“And hear it you shall.” Stan smiled. Never had he felt so at peace with himself. He didn’t know where this course of action was going to take him, but he was satisfied to follow it.
“We’re going to go with your plan, Julie. And we’re going to follow it all the way. We both know the risks. We discussed them yesterday. We both know the odds are against us. But no more talk about that. I’ve decided, and I know that you have, too. We’ll start in the morning.”
She reached across the snowy tablecloth and held his hand tightly. “Why tomorrow morning?”
“Because that’s when my bank opens,” Stan said. “I’m ready for whatever we have to do.”
“I’m ready, too, Stan.”
“Well,” he said, half as a joke and half seriously, “I guess we’ve taken care of everything except what to name our alien.”
“What would you suggest?”
“What about Norbert, after the great Norbert Wiener, father of cybernetics, the science that gave it birth?”
“Sounds good to me,” Julie said. “I guess that just about covers it, Stan. Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
She leaned close to him. He felt dizzy with her face so close to his. She bent closer. Her lips were partially open. He was fascinated by her teeth, all perfect except one small one to the left, an eyetooth. It was a little crooked.
And then he stopped thinking as she kissed him, and Ari the cybernetic ant stood in his box on the mantel and watched, and the flames of the fire lifted and died away, and Stan watched Ari watching and watched himself kissing Julie, not knowing that Ari was watching, and all this from within his frozen moment in time and all of it stained in the blue light of the royal jelly of memory.
4
Next morning he had a chance to show Julie around his house. She admired the fine old silverware he had inherited from his grandparents, and looked with something approaching awe at the portraits of his ancestors that hung on the great staircase that led to the upper rooms. There were dozens of somber oil paintings in ornate gilt frames, showing stern-faced men—some with side-whiskers and some clean-shaven—and proper-looking ladies in starched black bombazine and stiff Dutch lace. Stan had been lucky that this stuff still remained after the great destruction.
“It’s wonderful, Stan,” Julie said. “I never knew who my parents were. They sold me before I knew them.”
“I’ve got more than enough relatives,” Stan said. “You can have some of mine.”
“Can I? I’d like that. I’ll take that fat one with the smile for my mother.”
“That’s Aunt Emilia. You’ve picked well. She was the best of the bunch.”
There were other treasures upstairs. Eiderdowns whose cases were heavy with intricate embroidery; gaudy antique jewelry; massive furniture cut from gigantic tropical trees whose species had become extinct.
“This is such beautiful stuff,” Julie said. “I could look at it forever. How do you ever pull yourself away?”
“You know, it’s funny,” Stan said. “I never liked any of this before. But since you’ve come here… Well, it looks pretty nice to me now.”
The next day Stan was pleased when it was the time for action. He felt like his life was just beginning. He was very pleased with this notion, although he also dreaded it, because if his life was beginning, it was also drawing to a close. Which would come first, he wondered, victory or death? Or would they arrive simultaneously?
He refused to think about it. What was important was that he and Julie were in this together. He was no longer alone.
He dressed with special care that morning, humming to himself as he shaved. He selected an Italian silk suit and a colorful Brazilian imported shirt made of a light cotton. He wore his tasseled loafers, even going so far as to buff them up to a high polish. He usually laughed at people who took pains over their dress and appearance, but for this morning, at least, he was one of them. It was a way of reminding himself that he was making a fresh start.
He had been thinking a lot about fate and chance, and how they were influenced by the human will. He had come to the conclusion that what he wanted very badly was going to happen, as long as he willed it hard enough. It seemed to him that he was allied to a universal spirit that determined the course of things.
As long as he wanted what the universal spirit wanted for him, he couldn’t go wrong.
Although these were exhilarating thoughts, Stan also had some doubts. He wondered if the fire caused by the Xeno-Zip might be affecting his mind. Was he getting a little … grandiose? Did he really think he had found a way to cheat death?
Sometimes it seemed obvious to him that death was what was really happening to him. This was the real meaning of the disease rotting out his insides. There were too many details of his everyday life to remind him; the spitting and spewing into basins; the many pills he was continually taking, and their many strange effects.
He knew he was a very sick man. But he thought it represented some ultimate courage in himself that he was refusing to face the facts. He decided that if people really faced the facts, they’d all be licked before they could start.
He was determined to go on. It was not yet time to give up and let go. That would come later, when he found his doom; for Stan sensed a horrible fate awaiting him, one that was presently without a name or a face. Then he shook his head angrily and put those thoughts out of his mind.
He found a fresh daisy from the garden for his buttonhole.
It was a bright crisp day outside, a day that seemed filled with infinite promise. He could hear Julie humming from the kitchen. She had come down after her shower and was making breakfast. He went in. She was wearing his long fluffy bathrobe. Her hair was tied up in a Donald Duck towel. Her face sparkled, and she looked very young, ingenuous. It was a nice thing to see, though he knew it was an illusion, and only a temporary one at that.
They had bacon and eggs over easy, toast, coffee. A simple breaking of the fast. And now they were ready to discuss plans.
“The first thing we need,” Stan said, “is operating capital. I’ve got a lot of ideas for how to get this project of ours going. But it’s going to take some money. Have you any thoughts on how we could acquire a cash flow?”
“I do,” Julie said. “Raising money at short notice is what a thief does best, Stan. And I’m the best thief that ever was. How much do we need?”
Stan made some calculations. “A hundred thou-sand, anyway.”
“And how much money do you have right now?”
“I don’t know,” Stan said. “A couple hundred, I sup-pose, maybe a thousand in savings.”
“That’s not enough, is it?” Julie asked.
“Nowhere near. We need fifty thousand anyway.”
“As much as that?” Julie said. “Are you sure we need so much?”
“I’m afraid so,” Stan said. “We’ll have a lot of expenses to set up what we need in order to get a ship, put Norbert into final working shape, get the equipment we need, and get on with our plan.”
“All right, Stan,” Julie said. “I think I can be of some use here. Give me what you’ve got. I’ll double it.”
“How will you do that?”
“Watch and see.”
“Will you use your skills as a thief?”
“Not immediately,” Julie said. “There’s an intermediate step I need to take.”
“Could you be a little clearer?”
“I’m talking about gambling.”
“I didn’t know you were a gambler as well as a thief,” Stan said.
“My real profession is thief, but I’m a gambler also because everyone needs a second line of work. The fact is, I’m lucky at certain games. Like Whorgle. I’ve been told that I’ve got latent psychokinetic abilities. I can affect the fall of dice sometimes. But they don’t play dice at Callahan’s, only card games. Well, Whorgle is a new game that depends on hand-eye coordination. I’ve got that, and I’ve also got something else.
“It’s wonderful, Stan,” Julie said. “I never knew who my parents were. They sold me before I knew them.”
“I’ve got more than enough relatives,” Stan said. “You can have some of mine.”
“Can I? I’d like that. I’ll take that fat one with the smile for my mother.”
“That’s Aunt Emilia. You’ve picked well. She was the best of the bunch.”
There were other treasures upstairs. Eiderdowns whose cases were heavy with intricate embroidery; gaudy antique jewelry; massive furniture cut from gigantic tropical trees whose species had become extinct.
“This is such beautiful stuff,” Julie said. “I could look at it forever. How do you ever pull yourself away?”
“You know, it’s funny,” Stan said. “I never liked any of this before. But since you’ve come here… Well, it looks pretty nice to me now.”
The next day Stan was pleased when it was the time for action. He felt like his life was just beginning. He was very pleased with this notion, although he also dreaded it, because if his life was beginning, it was also drawing to a close. Which would come first, he wondered, victory or death? Or would they arrive simultaneously?
He refused to think about it. What was important was that he and Julie were in this together. He was no longer alone.
He dressed with special care that morning, humming to himself as he shaved. He selected an Italian silk suit and a colorful Brazilian imported shirt made of a light cotton. He wore his tasseled loafers, even going so far as to buff them up to a high polish. He usually laughed at people who took pains over their dress and appearance, but for this morning, at least, he was one of them. It was a way of reminding himself that he was making a fresh start.
He had been thinking a lot about fate and chance, and how they were influenced by the human will. He had come to the conclusion that what he wanted very badly was going to happen, as long as he willed it hard enough. It seemed to him that he was allied to a universal spirit that determined the course of things.
As long as he wanted what the universal spirit wanted for him, he couldn’t go wrong.
Although these were exhilarating thoughts, Stan also had some doubts. He wondered if the fire caused by the Xeno-Zip might be affecting his mind. Was he getting a little … grandiose? Did he really think he had found a way to cheat death?
Sometimes it seemed obvious to him that death was what was really happening to him. This was the real meaning of the disease rotting out his insides. There were too many details of his everyday life to remind him; the spitting and spewing into basins; the many pills he was continually taking, and their many strange effects.
He knew he was a very sick man. But he thought it represented some ultimate courage in himself that he was refusing to face the facts. He decided that if people really faced the facts, they’d all be licked before they could start.
He was determined to go on. It was not yet time to give up and let go. That would come later, when he found his doom; for Stan sensed a horrible fate awaiting him, one that was presently without a name or a face. Then he shook his head angrily and put those thoughts out of his mind.
He found a fresh daisy from the garden for his buttonhole.
It was a bright crisp day outside, a day that seemed filled with infinite promise. He could hear Julie humming from the kitchen. She had come down after her shower and was making breakfast. He went in. She was wearing his long fluffy bathrobe. Her hair was tied up in a Donald Duck towel. Her face sparkled, and she looked very young, ingenuous. It was a nice thing to see, though he knew it was an illusion, and only a temporary one at that.
They had bacon and eggs over easy, toast, coffee. A simple breaking of the fast. And now they were ready to discuss plans.
“The first thing we need,” Stan said, “is operating capital. I’ve got a lot of ideas for how to get this project of ours going. But it’s going to take some money. Have you any thoughts on how we could acquire a cash flow?”
“I do,” Julie said. “Raising money at short notice is what a thief does best, Stan. And I’m the best thief that ever was. How much do we need?”
Stan made some calculations. “A hundred thou-sand, anyway.”
“And how much money do you have right now?”
“I don’t know,” Stan said. “A couple hundred, I sup-pose, maybe a thousand in savings.”
“That’s not enough, is it?” Julie asked.
“Nowhere near. We need fifty thousand anyway.”
“As much as that?” Julie said. “Are you sure we need so much?”
“I’m afraid so,” Stan said. “We’ll have a lot of expenses to set up what we need in order to get a ship, put Norbert into final working shape, get the equipment we need, and get on with our plan.”
“All right, Stan,” Julie said. “I think I can be of some use here. Give me what you’ve got. I’ll double it.”
“How will you do that?”
“Watch and see.”
“Will you use your skills as a thief?”
“Not immediately,” Julie said. “There’s an intermediate step I need to take.”
“Could you be a little clearer?”
“I’m talking about gambling.”
“I didn’t know you were a gambler as well as a thief,” Stan said.
“My real profession is thief, but I’m a gambler also because everyone needs a second line of work. The fact is, I’m lucky at certain games. Like Whorgle. I’ve been told that I’ve got latent psychokinetic abilities. I can affect the fall of dice sometimes. But they don’t play dice at Callahan’s, only card games. Well, Whorgle is a new game that depends on hand-eye coordination. I’ve got that, and I’ve also got something else.