Critical Mass

The Gift of Garigolli

This is the last story of the posthumous collaborations to be published, and in one sense it is the most dated of them. It is a pretty damn sexist story. Shirl is Dorothy Vaneman Seaton out of Anita Loos: pretty, kind, charming and possessed of the I.Q. of a toad. Nobody would have written this story in the 1970’s, not Cyril, and certainly not I, and over a good many years I would from time to time look at the tattered manuscript again and try to find some way of detoxifying it. There never was one. There was a great deal of brightness and charm, but it was all bound up in the empty-headedness of Shirl. I couldn’t change that without destroying everything Cyril had put on paper, and so I finally took my courage in my hands, pretended that it was 1953 instead of 1973 and finished it up.

Garigolli to Home Base

Greeting, Chief,

I’m glad you’re pleased with the demographics and cognitics studies. You don’t mention the orbital mapping, but I suppose that’s all complete and satisfactory.

Now will you please tell me how we’re going to get off this lousy planet?

Keep firmly in mind, Chief, that we’re not complainers. You don’t have a better crew anywhere in the Galaxy and you know it. We’ve complied with the Triple Directive, every time, on every planet we’ve explored. Remember Arcturus XII? But this time we’re having trouble. After all, look at the disproportion in mass. And take a look at the reports we’ve sent in. These are pretty miserable sentients, Chief.

So will you let us know, please, if there has ever been an authorized exception to Directive Two? I don’t mean we aren’t going to bust a link to comply- if we can-but frankly, at this moment, I don’t see how.

And we need to get out of here fast.

Garigolli

Although it was a pretty morning in June, with the blossoms dropping off the catalpa trees and the algae blooming in the twelve-foot plastic pool, I was not enjoying either my breakfast or the morning mail.

The letter from the lawyer started, the way letters from lawyers do, with

RE: GUDSELL VS. DUPOIR

and went on to advise Dupoir (that’s me, plus my wife and our two-year-old son Butchie) that unless a certified check arrived in Undersigned’s office before close of business June llth (that was tomorrow) in the amount of $14,752.03, Undersigned would be compelled to institute Proceedings at once.

I showed it to my wife, Shirl, for lack of anything better to do.

She read it and nodded intelligently. “He’s really been very patient with us, considering,” she said. “I suppose this is just some more lawyer-talk?”

It had occurred to me, for a wild moment, that maybe she had $14,752.03 in the old sugar bowl as a surprise for me, but I could see she didn’t. I shook my head. “This means they take the house,” I said. “I’m not mad any more. But you won’t sign anything for your brother after this, will you?”

“Certainly not,” she said, shocked. “Shall I put that letter in the paper-recycling bin?”

“Not just yet,” I said, taking off my glasses and hearing aid. Shirl knows perfectly well that I can’t hear her when my glasses are off, but she kept on talking anyway as she wiped the apricot puree off Butchie’s chin, rescued the milk glass, rinsed the plastic infant-food jar and dropped it in the “plastics” carton, rinsed the lid and put it in the “metals” box and poured my coffee. We are a very ecological household. It astonishes me how good Shirl is at things like that, considering.

I waved fruit flies away from the general direction of my orange juice and put my glasses back on in time to catch her asking, wonderingly, “What would they do with our house? I mean, I’m not a demon decorator like Ginevra Freedman. I just like it comfortable and neat.”

“They don’t exactly want the house,” I explained. “They just want the money they’ll get after they sell it to somebody else.” Her expression cleared at once. Shirl always likes to understand things.

I sipped my coffee, fending off Butchie’s attempt to grab the cup, and folded the letter and laid it across my knees like an unsheathed scimitar, ready to taste the blood of the giaour, which it kind of was. Butchie indicated that he would like to eat it, but I didn’t see that that would solve the problem. Although I didn’t have any better way of solving it, at that.

I finished the orange juice, patted Butchie’s head and, against my better judgment, gave Shirl the routine kiss on the nose.

“Well,” she said, “I’m glad that’s settled. Isn’t it nice the way the mail comes first thing in the morning now?”

I said it was very nice and left for the bus but, really, I could have been just as happy if Undersigned’s letter had come any old time. The fruit flies were pursuing me all the way down the street. They seemed to think they could get nourishment out” of me, which suggested that fruit flies were about equal in intelligence to brothers-in-law. It was not a surprising thought. I had thought it before.

Garigolli to Home Base

Chief,

The mobility of this Host is a constant pain in the spermatophore. Now he’s gone off on the day-cycle early, and half the crew are still stuck in his domicile. Ultimate Matrix knows how they’ll handle it if we don’t get back before they run out of group empathy.

You’ve got no reason to take that tone, Chief. We’re doing a good job and you know it. “Directive One: To remain undetected by sentients on planet being explored.” A hundred and forty-four p.g., right? They don’t have a clue we’re here, although I concede that that part is fairly easy, since they are so much bigger than we are. “Directive Three: Subject to Directives One and Two, to make a complete study of geographic, demographic, ecological and cognitic factors and to transmit same to Home Base.” You actually complimented us on those! It’s only Directive Two that’s giving us trouble.

We’re still trying, but did it ever occur to you that maybe these people don’t deserve Directive Two?

Garigolli

I loped along the jungle trail to the bus stop, calculating with my razor-sharp mind that the distance from the house was almost exactly 14,752.03 centimeters. As centimeters it didn’t sound bad at all. As money, $14,752.03 was the kind of sum I hadn’t written down since Commercial Arithmetic in P.S. 98.

I fell in with Barney Freedman, insurance underwriter and husband of Ginevra, the Demon Decorator. “Whatever became of Commercial Arithmetic?” I asked him. “Like ninety-day notes for fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-two dollars and three cents at six percent simple interest? Although why anybody would be dumb enough to lend anybody money for ninety days beats me. If he doesn’t have it now, he won’t have it in ninety days.”

“You’re in some kind of trouble.”

“Shrewd guess.”

“So what did Shirl do now?”

“She co-signed a note for her brother,” I said. “When he went into the drying-out sanitarium for the gold treatment. They wouldn’t take him on his own credit, for some reason. They must have gold-plated nun. He said the note was just a formality, so Shirl didn’t bother me with it.”

We turned the corner. Barney said, “Ginerva didn’t bother me once when the telephone company-“

“So when Shirt’s brother got undrunk,” I said, “he told her not to worry about it and went to California. He thought he might catch on with the movies.”

“Did he?”

“He didn’t even catch cold with the movies. Then they sent us the bill. Fourteen thou-well, they had it all itemized. Three nurses. Medication. Suite. Occupational Therapy. Professional services. Hydrotherapy. Group counseling. One-to-one counseling. Limousine. Chauffeur for limousine. Chauffeur’s helper for limousine. Chauffeur’s helper’s hard-boiled eggs for lunch. Salt for chauffeur’s helper’s hard-boiled-“

“You’re getting hysterical,” Barney said. “You mean he just skipped?” We were at the bus stop, with a gaggle of other prosperous young suburbanites.

I said, “Like a flat rock on a pond. So we wrote him, and of course the letters came back. They didn’t fool around, the Institute for Psychosomatic Adjustment didn’t.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“I telephoned a man up there to explain, when we got the first letter. He didn’t sound pretty. Just tired. He said my wife shouldn’t sign things without reading them. And he said if his house was-something about joint tenancy in fee simple, he would break his wife’s arm if she was the type that signed things without reading them, and keep on rebreaking it until she stopped. Meanwhile they had laid out a lot of goods and services in good faith, and what was I going to do about it?”

The bus appeared on the horizon, emitting jet trails of Diesel smog. We knotted up by the sign. “So I told him I didn’t know,” I said, “but I know now. I’ll get sued, that’s what I’ll do. The Dupoirs always have an answer to every problem.”

Conversation was suspended for fifteen seconds of scrimmage while we entered the bus. Barney and I were lucky. We wound up with our heads jammed affectionately together, not too far from a window that sucked in Diesel fumes and fanned them at us. I could see the fruit flies gamely trying to get back to my ear, but they were losing the battle.

Barney said, “Hey. Couldn’t you sell your house to somebody you trusted for a dollar, and then they couldn’t-“

“Yes, they could. And then we’d both go to jail. I asked a guy in our legal department.”

“Huh.” The bus roared on, past knots of other prosperous young suburbanites who waved their fists at us as we passed. “How about this. I hope you won’t take this the wrong way. But couldn’t there be some angle about Shirl being, uh, not exactly competent to sign any kind of-“

“I asked about that too, Barney. No hope. Shirls never been hospitalized, she’s never been to a shrink, she runs a house and a husband and a small boy just fine. Maybe she’s a little impulsive. But a lot of people are impulsive, the man said.”

Garigolli to Home Base

Chief,

I think we’ve got it. These people use a medium of exchange, remember? And the Host doesn’t have enough of it! What could be simpler?

With a little modification there are a couple of local organisms that should be able to concentrate the stuff out of the ambient environment, and then-

And then we’re off the impaling spike!

Garigolli

The bus jerked to a stop at the railroad, station and we boiled out on successive rollers of humanity which beached us at separate parts of the platform.

The 8:07 slid in at 8:19 sharp and I swung aboard, my mighty thews rippling like those of the giant anthropoids among whom I had been raised. With stealthy tread and every jungle-trained sense alert I stalked a vacant seat halfway down the aisle on the left, my fangs and molars bared, my liana-bound, flint-tipped Times poised for the thrust of death. It wasn’t my morning. Ug-Fwa the Hyena, scavenger of the mighty Limpopo, bounded from the far vestibule giving voice to his mad cackle and slipped into the vacant seat. I and the rest of the giant anthropoids glared, unfolded our newspapers and pretended to read.

The headlines were very interesting that morning.

PRES ASKS $14,752.03 FOR MISSILE DEFENSE. “SLICK” DUPOIR SOUGHT IN DEFAULT CASE. RUMOR RED PURGE OF BROTHER-IN-LAW. QUAKE DEATH TOLL SET AT 14,752.03. BODY OF SKID ROW CHARACTER IDENTIFIED AS FORMER PROSPEROUS YOUNG SUBURBANITE; BROTHER-IN-LAWS FLIES FROM COAST, WEEPS “WHY DIDN’T HE ASK ME FOR HELP?” FOSTER PARENTS OF “BUTCHIE” DUPOIR OPEN LEGAL FIGHT AGAINST DESTITUTE MA AND PA, SAY “IF THEY LOVE HIM WHY DON’T THEY SUPPORT HIM?” GLIDER SOARS 14,752.-

03 MILES. DUPOIR OFF 147.52-no, that was a fly speck, not a decimal point-OFF 14,752.03 FOR NEW LOW, RAILS AND BROTHERS AND LAW MIXED IN ACTIVE TRADING.

I always feel you’re more efficient if you start the day with the gist of the news straight in your mind.

I arrived at the office punctually at 9:07, late enough to show that I was an executive, but not so late that Mr. Horgan would notice it. The frowning brow of my cave opened under the grim rock front that bore the legend “International Plastics Co.” and I walked in, nodding good morning to several persons from the Fourteenth Floor, but being nodded to myself only by Hennie, who ran the cigar stand. Hermie cultivated my company because I was good for a dollar on the numbers two or three times a week. Little did he know that it would be many a long day before he saw a dollar of mine, perhaps as many as 14,752.03 of them.

Garigolli to Home Base

Further to my last communication, Chief,

We ran into a kind of a setback. We found a suitable organic substrate and implanted a colony of modified organisms which extracted gold from environmental sources, and they were performing beautifully, depositing a film of pure metal on the substrate, which the Host was carrying with him.

Then he folded it up and threw it in a waste receptacle.

We’re still working on it, but I don’t know, Chief, I don’t know.

Garigolli

I find it a little difficult to explain to people what I do for a living. It has something to do with making the country plastics-conscious. I make the country plastics-conscious by writing newspaper stories about plastics which only seem to get printed in neighborhood shopping guides in Sioux Falls, Idaho. And by scripting talk features about plastics which get run from 11:55 P.M. to 12:00 midnight on radio stations the rest of whose programs time is devoted to public-service items like late jockey changes at Wheeling Downs. And by scripting television features which do not seem ever to be run on any station.

And by handling the annual Miss Plastics contest, at least up to the point where actual contestants appear, when it is taken over by the people from the Fourteenth Floor. And by writing the monthly page of Plastics Briefs which goes out, already matted, to 2,000 papers in North America. Plastics Briefs is our best bet because each Brief is illustrated by a line drawing of a girl doing something with, to or about plastics, and heir costume is always brief. As I said, all this is not easy to explain, so when people ask me what I do I usually say, “Whatever Mr. Horgan tells me to.”

This morning Mr. Horgan called me away from a conference with Jack Denny, our Briefs artist, and said: “Dupoir, that Century of Plastics Anniversary Dinner idea of yours is out. The Fourteenth Floor says it lacks thematic juice. Think of something else for a winter promotion, and think big!” He banged a plastic block on his desk with a little plastic hammer.

I said, “Mr. Horgan, how about this? Are we getting the break in the high-school chemistry text books we should? Are we getting the message of polythene to every boy, girl, brother-in-law-“

He shook his head. “That’s small,” he said, and went on to explain: “By which I mean it isn’t big. Also there is the flak we are getting from the nature nuts, which the Fourteenth Floor does not think you are dealing with in a creative way.”

“I’ve ordered five thousand pop-up recycling bins for the test, Mr. Horgan. They’re not only plastic, they’re recycled plastic. We use them in my own home, and I am confident-“

“Confidence,” he said, “is when you’ve got your eyes so firmly fixed on the goal that you trip on a dog-doodie and fall in the crap.”

I regrouped. “I think we can convert the present opposition from the ecology movement to-“

“The ecology movement,” he said, “is people who love buzzards better than babies and catfish better than cars.”

I fell back on my last line of defense. “Yes, Mr. Horgan,” I said.

“Personally,” Mr. Horgan said, “I like seeing plastic bottles bobbing in the surf. It makes me feel, I don’t know, like part of something that is going to last forever. I want you to communicate that feeling, Dupoir. Now go get your Briefs out.”

I thought of asking for a salary advance of $14,-752.03, but hesitated.

“Is there something else?”

“No, Mr. Horgan. Thank you.” I left quietly.

Jack Denny was still waiting in my office, doodling still-life studies of cornucopias with fruits and nuts spilling out of them. “Look,” he said, “how about this for a change? Something symbolic of the season, like ‘the rich harvest of Plastics to make life more gracious,’ like?”

I said kindly, “You don’t understand copy, Jack. Do you remember what we did for last September?”

He scowled. “A girl in halter and shorts, very brief and tight, putting up plastic storm windows.”

“That’s right. Well, I’ve got an idea for something kind of novel this year. A little two-act drama. Act One: She’s wearing halter and shorts and she’s taking down the plastic screens. Act Two: She’s wearing a dress and putting up the plastic storm windows. And this is important. In Act Two there’s wind, and autumn leaves blowing, and the dress is kind of wind-blown tight against her. Do you know what I mean, Jack?”

He said evenly, “I was the youngest child and only boy in a family of eight. If I didn’t know what you meant by now I would deserve to be put away. Sometimes I think I will be put away. Do you know what seven older sisters can do to the psychology of a sensitive young boy?” He began to shake.

“Draw, Jack,” I told him hastily. To give him a chance to recover himself I picked up his cornucopias. “Very nice,” I said, turning them over. “Beautiful modeling. I guess you spilled some paint on this one?”

He snatched it out of my hand. “Where? That? That’s gilt. I don’t even have any gilt.”

“No offense, Jack. I just thought it looked land of nice.” It didn’t, particularly, it was just a shiny yellow smear in a corner of the drawing.

“Nice! Sure, if you’d let me use metallic inks. If you’d go to high-gloss paper. If you’d spend a few bucks-“

“Maybe, Jack,” I said, “it’d be better, at that, if you took these back to your office. You can concentrate better there, maybe.”

He went out, shaking.

I stayed in and thought about my house and brother-in-law and the Gudsell Medical Credit Bureau and after a while I began to shake too. Shaking, I phoned a Mr. Klaw, whom I had come to think of as my “account executive” at Gudsell.

Mr. Klaw was glad to hear from me. “You got our lawyer’s note? Good, good. And exactly what arrangements are you suggesting, Mr. Dupoir?”

“I don’t know,” I said openly. “It catches me at a bad time. If we could have an extension-“

“Extensions we haven’t got,” he said regretfully. “We had one month of extensions, and we gave you the month, and now we’re fresh out. I’m really sorry, Dupoir.”

“With some time I could get a second mortgage, Mr. Haw.”

“You could at that, but not for $14,752.03.”

“Do you want to put me and my family on the street?”

“Goodness, no, Mr. Dupoir! What we want is the sanitarium’s money, including our commission. And maybe we want a little bit to make people think before they sign things, and maybe that people who should go to the county hospital go to the county hospital instead of a frankly de luxe rest home.”

“I’ll call you later,” I said.

“Please do,” said Mr. Klaw sincerely.

Tendons slack as the limp lianas, I leafed listlessly through the dhawani-bark jujus on my desk, studying Jack Denny’s draftsmanship with cornucopias. The yellow stain, I noted, seemed to be spreading, even as a brother-in-law’s blood might spread on the sands of the doom-pit when the cobras hissed the hour of judgment.

Mr. Horgan rapped perfunctorily on the doorframe and came in. “I had the impression, Dupoir, that you had something further to ask me at our conference this morning. I’ve learned to back those judgments, Dupoir.”

“Well, sir-“ I began.

“Had that feeling about poor old Globus,” he went on. “You remember Miss Globus? Crying in the file room one day. Seems she’d signed up for some kind of charm school. Couldn’t pay, didn’t like it, tried to back out. They wanted their money. Attached her wages. Well, Naturally, we couldn’t have that sort of financial irresponsibility. I understand she’s a PFC in the WAC now. What was it you wanted, Dupoir?”

“Me, Mr. Horgan? Wanted? No. Nothing at all.”

“Glad we cleared that up,” he grunted. “Can’t do your best work for the firm if your mind’s taken up with personal problems. Remember, Dupoir. We want the country plastics conscious, and forget about those ecology freaks.”

“Yes, Mr. Horgan.”

“And big. Not small.”

“Big it is, Mr. Horgan,” I said. I rolled up Jack Denny’s sketches into a thick wad and threw them at him in the door, but not before he had closed it behind him.

Garigolli to Home Base

Listen Chief,

I appreciate your trying to work out a solution for us, but you’re not doing as well as we’re doing, even. Not that that’s much.

We tried again to meet that constant aura of medium-of-exchange need for the Host, but he destroyed the whole lash-up again. Maybe we’re misunderstanding him?

Artifacts are out. He’s too big to see anything we make. Energy sources don’t look promising. Oh, sure, we could elaborate lesser breeds that would selectively concentrate, for instance, plutonium or one of the uraniums. I don’t think this particular Host would know the difference unless the scale was very large, and then, blooie, critical mass.

Meanwhile morale is becoming troublesome. We’re holding together, but I wouldn’t describe the condition as good, Vellitot has been wooing Dinnoliss in spite of the secondary directives against breeding while on exploration missions. I’ve cautioned them both, but they don’t seem to stop. The funny thing is they’re both in the male phase.

Garigolli

Between Jack Denny and myself we got about half of the month’s Plastics Briefs before quitting time. Maybe they weren’t big, but they were real windblown. All factors considered, I don’t think it is very much to my discredit that two hours later I was moodily drinking my seventh beer in a dark place near the railroad station.

The bartender respected my mood, the TV was off, the juke box had nothing but blues on it and there was only one fly in my lugubrious ointment, a little man who kept trying to be friendly.

From time to time I gave him a scowl I had copied from Mr. Horgan. Then he would edge down the bar for a few minutes before edging back. Eventually he got up courage enough to talk, and I got too gloomy to crush him with my mighty thews, corded like the jungle-vines that looped from the towering nganga-palms.

He was some kind of hotelkeeper, it appeared. “My young friend, you may think you have problems, but there’s no business like my business. Mortgage, insurance, state supervision, building and grounds maintenance, kitchen personnel and purchasing, linen, uniforms, the station wagon and the driver, carpet repairs -oh, God, carpet repairs! No matter how many ash trays you put around, you know what they do? They steal the ashtrays. Then they stamp out cigarettes on the carpets.” He began to weep.

I told the bartender to give him another. How could I lose? If he passed out I’d be rid of him. If he recovered I would have his undying, doglike affection for several minutes, and what kind of shape was I in to sneer at that?

Besides, I had worked out some pretty interesting figures. “Did you know,” I told him, “that if you spend $1.46 a day on cigarettes, you can save $14,752.03 by giving up smoking for 10,104 and a quarter days?”

He wasn’t listening, but he wasn’t weeping any more either. He was just looking lovingly at his vodka libre, or whatever it was. I tried a different tack. “When you see discarded plastic bottles bobbing in the surf,” I asked, “does it make you feel like part of something grand and timeless that will go on forever?”

He glanced at me with distaste, then went back to adoring his drink. “Or do you like buzzards better than babies?” I asked.

“They’re all babies,” he said. “Nasty, smelly, upchucking babies.”

“Who are?” I asked, having lost the thread. He shook his head mysteriously, patted his drink and tossed it down.

“Root of most evil,” he said, swallowing. Then, affectionately, “Don’t know where I’d be with it, don’t know where I’d be without it.”

He appeared to be talking about booze. “On your way home, without it?” I suggested.

He said obscurely, “Digging ditches, without it.” Then he giggled. “Greatest business in the world! But oh! the worries! The competition! And when you come down to it it’s all just aversion, right?”

“I can see you have a great aversion to liquor,” I said politely.

“No, stupid! The guests.”

Stiffly I signaled for Number Eight, but the bartender misunderstood and brought another for my friend, too. I said, “You have an aversion to the guests?”

He took firm hold on the bar and attempted to look squarely into my eyes, but wound up with his left eye four inches in front of my left eye and both our right eyes staring at respective ears. “The guests must be made to feel an aversion to alcohol,” he said. “Secret of the whole thing. Works. Sometimes. But oh! it costs.”

Like the striking fangs of Nag, the cobra, faster than the eye can follow, my trained reflexes swept the beer up to my lips. I drank furiously, scowling at him. “You mean to say you ran a drunk farm?” I shouted.

He was shocked. “My boy! No need to be vulgar. An ‘institute,’ eh? Let’s leave the aversion to the drunks.”

“I have to tell you, sir,” I declared, “that I have a personal reason for despising all proprietors of such institutions!”

He began to weep again. “You, too! Oh, the general scorn.”

“In my case, there is nothing general-“

“-the hatred! The unthinking contempt. And for what?”

I snarled. “For your blood-sucking ways.”

“Blood, old boy?” he said, surprised. “No, nothing like that. We don’t use blood. We use gold, yes, but the gold cure’s old hat. Need new gimmick. Can’t use silver, too cheap. Really doesn’t matter what you say you use. All aversion-drying them out, keeping them comfy and aversion. But no blood.”

He wiggled his fingers for Number Nine. Moodily I drank, glaring at him over my glass.

“In the wrong end of it, I sometimes think,” he went on meditatively, staring with suspicious envy at the bartender. “He doesn’t have to worry. Pour it out, pick up the money. No concern about expensive rooms standing idle, staff loafing around picking their noses, overhead going on, going on-you wouldn’t believe how it goes on, whether the guests are there to pay for it or not-“

“Hah,” I muttered.

“You’ve simply no idea what I go through,” he sobbed. “And then they won’t pay. No, really. Fellow beat me out of $14,752.03 just lately. I’m taking it out of the co-signer’s hide, of course, but after you pay the collection agency, what’s the profit?”

I choked on the beer, but he was too deep in sorrow to notice.

Strangling, I gasped, “Did you say fourteen thousand-?”

He nodded. “Seven hundred and fifty-two dollars, yes. And three cents. Astonishes you, doesn’t it, the deadbeats in this world?”

I couldn’t speak.

“You wouldn’t think it,” he mourned. “All those salaries. All those rooms. The hydrotherapy tubs. The water bill.”

I shook my head.

“Probably you think my life’s a bowl of roses, hey?”

I managed to pry my larynx open enough to wheeze, “Up to this minute, yes, I did. You’ve opened my eyes.”

“Drink to that,” he said promptly. “Hey, barman!”

But before the bartender got there with Number Ten the little man hiccoughed and slid melting to the floor, like a glacier calving into icebergs.

The bartender peered over at him. “Every damn night,” he grumbled. “And who’s going to get him home this tune?”

My mind working as fast “as Ngo, the dancing spider, spinning her web, I succeeded in saying, “Me. Glad to oblige. Never fear.”

Garigolli to Home Base

Chief,

All right, I admit we haven’t been exactly 144 p.g. on this project, but there’s no reason for you to get loose. Reciting the penalties for violating the Triple Directive is uncalled-for.

Let me point out that there has been no question at any time of compliance with One or Three. And even Directive Two, well, we’ve done what we could. “To repay sentients in medium suitable to them for information gained.” These sentients are tricky, Chief. They don’t seem to empathize, really. See our reports. They often take without giving in return among themselves, and it seems to me that under the circumstances a certain modification of Directive Two would have been quite proper.

But I am not protesting the ruling. Especially since you’ve pointed out it won’t do any good. When I get old and skinny enough to retire to a sling in Home Base I guess I'll get that, home-base mentality too> but way out here on the surface of the exploration volume it looks different, believe me.

And what is happening with the rest of our crew back at Host’s domicile I can’t even guess. They must be nearly frantic by now.

Garigolli

There was some discussion with a policeman he wanted to hit (apparently under the impression that the cop was his night watchman playing hookey), but I finally got the little man to the Institute for Psychosomatic Adjustment.

The mausoleum that had graduated my brother-in-law turned out to be three stories high, with a sun porch and a slate roof and bars on the ground-floor bay windows. It was not all that far from my house. Shirl had been pleased about that, I remembered. She said we could visit her brother a lot there, and in fact she had gone over once or twice on Sundays, but me, I’d never set eyes on the place before.

Dagger-sharp fangs flecking white spume, none dared dispute me as I strode through the great green corridors of the rain forest. Corded thews rippling like pythons under my skin, it was child’s play to carry the craven jackal to his lair. The cabbie helped me up the steps with him.

The little man, now revealed as that creature who in anticipation had seemed so much larger and hairier, revived slightly as we entered the reception hall. “Ooooh,” he groaned. “Watch the bouncing, old boy. That door. My office. Leather couch. Much obliged.”

I dumped him on the couch, lit a green-shaded lamp on his desk, closed the door and considered.

Mine enemy had delivered himself into my power. All I had to do was seize him by the forelock. I seemed to see the faces of my family-Shirl’s smiling sweetly, Butchie’s cocoa-overlaid-with-oatmeal-spurring me on.

There had to be a way.

I pondered. Life had not equipped me for this occasion. Raffles or Professor Moriarity would have known what to do at once, but, ponder as I would, I couldn’t think of anything to do except to go through the drawers of his desk.

Well, it was a start. But it yielded very little. Miscellaneous paper clips and sheaves of letterheads, a carton of cigarettes of a brand apparently flavored with rice wine and extract of vanilla, part of a fifth of Old Rathole and five switchblade knives, presumably taken from the inmates. There was also $6.15 in unused postage stamps, but I quickly computed that, even if I went to the trouble of cashing them in, that would leave me $14,745.88 short.

Of Papers to Burn there were none.

All in all, the venture was a bust. I wiped out a water glass with one of the letterheads (difficult, because they were of so high quality that they seemed likelier to shatter than to wad up), and forced down a couple of ounces of the whiskey (difficult, because it was of so low).

Obviously anything of value, like for instance co-signed agreements with brothers-in-law, would be in a safe, which itself would probably be in the offices of the Gudsell Medical Credit Bureau. Blackmail? But there seemed very little to work with, barring one or two curious photographs tucked in among the envelopes. Conceivably I could cause him some slight embarrassment, but nowhere near $14,752.03 worth. I had not noticed any evidence of Red espionage that might put the little man (whose name, I learned from his letterhead, was Bermingham) away for 10,104 and a quarter days, while I saved up the price of reclaiming our liberty.

There seemed to be only one possible thing to do.

Eyes glowing like red coals behind slitted lids, I walked lightly on velvet-soft pads to the kraal of the witch-man. He was snoring with his mouth open. Totally vulnerable to his doom.

Only, how to inflict it?

It is not as easy as one might think to murder a person. Especially if one doesn’t come prepared for it. Mr. Morgan doesn’t like us to carry guns at the office, and heaven knows what Shirl would do with one if I left it around home. Anyway, I didn’t have one.

Poison was a possibility. The Old Rathole suggested itself. But we’d already tried that, hadn’t we?

I considered the switchblade knives. There was a technical problem. Would you know where the heart is? Granted, it had to be inside his chest somewhere, and sooner or later I could find it. But what would I say to Mr. Bermingham after the first three or four exploratory stabs woke him up?

The only reasonably efficient method I could think of to insure Mr. Bermingham’s decease was to burn the place down with him in it. Which, I quickly perceived, meant with whatever cargo of drying-out drunks the Institute now possessed in it too, behind those barred windows.

At this point I came face to face with myself.

I wasn’t going to kill anybody. I wasn’t going to steal any papers.

What I was going to do was, I was going to let Mr. Klaw’s lawyers go ahead and take our house, because I just didn’t know how to do anything else. I hefted the switchblades in my hand, threw them against the wall and poured myself another slug of Mr. Bermingham’s lousy whiskey, wishing it would kill me right there and be a lesson to him.

Garigolli to Home Base

Now, don’t get excited, Chief,

But we have another problem.

Before I get into it, I would like to remind you of a couple of things. First, I was against exploring this planet in the first place, remember? I said it was going to be very difficult, on the grounds of the difference in mass between its dominant species and us. I mean, really. Here we are fighting member to member against dangerous beasts all the time, and the beasts, to the Host and his race, are only microorganisms that live unnoticed in their circulatory systems, their tissues, their food and their environment. Anybody could tell that this was going to be a tough assignment, if not an impossible one.

Then there’s the fact that this Host moves around so. I told you some of our crew got left in his domicile. Well, we’ve timed this before, and almost always he returns within 144 or 216 time-units-at most, half of one of his planet’s days. It’s pretty close to critical, but our crew is tough and they can survive empathy-deprival that long. Only this time he has been away, so far, nearly 432 time-units. It’s bad enough for those of us who have been with him. The ones who were cut off back at his domicile must have been through the tortures of the damned.

Two of them homed in on us to report just a few time-units ago, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like what’s happened. They must have been pretty panicky. They decided to try meeting the Second Directive themselves. They modified some microorganisms to provide some organic chemicals they thought the Host might like.

Unfortunately the organisms turned out to have an appetite for some of the Host’s household artifacts, and they’re pretty well demolished. So we not only haven’t given him anything to comply with Directive Two, we’ve taken something from him. And in the process maybe we’ve called attention to ourselves.

I’m giving it to you arced, Chief, because I know that’s how you’d like it. I accept full responsibility.

Because I don’t have any choice, do I?

Garigolli

“What the Hell,” said the voice of Mr. Bermingham, from somewhere up there, “are you doing in my office?”

I opened my eyes, and he was quite right. I was in Mr. Bermingham’s office. The sun was streaming through Mr. Bermingham’s Venetian blinds, and Mr. Bermingham was standing over me with a selection of the switchblade knives in his hands.

I don’t know how Everyman reacts to this sort of situation. I guess I ran about average. I pushed myself up on one elbow and blinked at him.

“Spastic,” he muttered to himself “Well?”

I cleared my throat. “I, uh, I think I can explain this.”

He was hung over and shaking. “Go ahead! Who the devil are you?”

“Well, my name is Dupoir.”

“I don’t mean what’s your name, I mean- Wait a minute. Dupoir?”

“Dupoir.”

“As in $14,752.03?”

“That’s right, Mr. Bermingham.”

“You!” he gasped. “Say, you’ve got some nerve coining here this way. I ought to teach you a lesson.”

I scrambled to my feet. Mighty thews rippling, I tossed back my head and bellowed the death challenge of the giant anthropoids with whom I had been raised.

Bermingham misunderstood. It probably didn’t sound like a death challenge to him. He said anxiously, “If you’re going to be sick, go in there and do it. Then we’re going to straighten this thing out.”

I followed his pointing finger. There on one side of the foyer was the door marked Staff Washroom, and on the other the door to the street through which I had carried- him. It was only the work of a second to decide which to take. I was out the door, down the steps, around the corner and hailing a fortuitous cab before he could react.

By the time I got to the house that Mr. Klaw wanted so badly to take away from us it was 7:40 on my watch. There was no chance at all that Shirl would still be asleep. There was not any very big chance that she had got to sleep at all that night, not with her faithful husband for the first time in the four years of our marriage staying out all night without warning, but no chance at all that she would be still in bed. So there would be explaining to do. Nevertheless I insinuated my key into the lock of the back door, eased it open, slipped ghost-like through and gently closed it behind me.

I smelled like a distillery, I noticed, but my keen, jungletrained senses brought me no other message. No one was in sight or sound. Not even Butchie was either chattering or weeping to disturb the silence.

I slid silently through the mud-room into the half-bath where I kept a spare razor. I spent five minutes trying to convert myself into the image of a prosperous young executive getting ready to be half an hour late at work, but it was no easy job. There was nothing but soap to shave with, and Butchie had knocked it into the sink. What was left was a blob of jelly, sculpted into a crescent where the dripping tap had eroded it away. Still, I got clean, more or less, and shaved, less.

I entered the kitchen, and then realized that my jungle-trained senses had failed to note the presence of a pot of fresh coffee perking on the stove. I could hear it plainly enough. Smelling it was more difficult; its scent was drowned by the aroma of cheap booze that hung in the air all around me.

So I turned around and yes, there was Shirl on the stairway, holding Butchie by one hand like Maureen O’Sullivan walking Cheeta. She wore an expression of unrelieved tragedy.

It was clearly necessary to give her an explanation at once, whether I had one or not. “Honey,” I said, “I’m sorry. I met this fellow I hadn’t seen in a long time, and we got to talking. I know we should have called. But by the time I realized the tune it was so late I was afraid I’d wake you up.”

“You can’t wear that shut to the office,” she said woefully. “I ironed your blue and gray one with the white cuffs. It’s in the closet.”

I paused to analyze the situation. It appeared she wasn’t angry at all, only upset-which, as any husband of our years knows, is 14,752.03 times worse. In spite of the fact that the reek of booze was making me giddy and fruit flies were buzzing around, Shirl’s normally immaculate kitchen, I knew what I had to do. “Shirl,” I said, falling to one knee, “I apologize.”

That seemed to divert her. “Apologize? For what?”

“For staying out all night.”

“But you explained all that. You met this fellow you hadn’t seen in a long time, and you got to talking. By the time you realized the time it was so late you were afraid you’d wake me up.”

“Oh, Shirl,” I cried, leaping to my feet and crushing her in my mighty thews. I would have kissed her, but the reek of stale liquor seemed even stronger. I was afraid of what close contact might do, not to mention its effect on Butchie, staring up at me with a thumb and two fingers in his mouth. We Dupoirs never do anything by halves.

But there was a tear in her eye. She said, “I watched Butchie, honestly I did. I always do. When he broke the studio lamp I was watching every minute, remember? He was just too fast for me.”

I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. That is not an unfamiliar situation in our house, and I have developed a technique for dealing with it. “What?” I asked,

“He was too fast for me,” Shirl said woefully. “When he dumped his vitamins into his raisins and oatmeal I was right there. I went to get some paper napkins, and that was when he did it. But how could I know it would nun the plastics bin?”

I went into Phase Two. “What plastics bin?”

“Our plastics bin.” She pointed. “Where Butchie threw the stuff.”

At once I saw what she meant. There was a row of four plastic popup recycling bins in our kitchen, one for paper, one for plastics, one for glass and one for metals. They were a credit to us, and to Mr. Horgan and to the Fourteenth Floor. However, the one marked “plastics” was not a credit to anyone any more. It had sprung a leak. A colorless fluid was oozing out of the bottom of it and, whatever it was, it was deeply pitting the floor tiles.

I bent closer and realized where the reek of stale booze was coming from: out of the juices that were seeping from our plastics bin.

“What the devil?” I asked.

Shirl said thoughtfully, “If vitamins can do that to plastic, what do you suppose they do to Butchie’s insides?”

“It isn’t the vitamins. I know that much.” I reached in and hooked the handle of what had been a milk jug, gallon size. It was high-density polythene and about 400 percent more indestructible than Mount Rushmore. It was exactly the kind of plastic jug that people who loved buzzards better than babies have been complaining about finding bobbing around the surf of their favorite bathing beaches, all the world over.

Indestructible or not, it was about 90 percent destroyed. What I pulled out was a handle and part of a neck. The rest drizzled off into a substance very like the stuff I had shaved with. Only that was soap, which one expects to dissolve from time to time. High-density polythene one does not.

The fruit flies were buzzing around me, and everything was very confusing. I was hardly aware that the front doorbell had rung until I noticed that Shirl had gone to answer it.

What made me fully aware of this was Mr. Bermingham’s triumphant roar: “Thought I’d find you here, Dupoir! And who are these people-your confederates?”

Bermingham had no terrors for me. I was past that point. I said, “Hello, Mr. Bermingham. This confederate is my wife, the littler one here is my son. Shirl, Butchie-Mr. Bermingham. Mr. Bermingham’s the one who is going to take away our house.”

Shirl said politely, “You must be tired, Mr. Bermingham. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

Garigolli to Home Base

Chief,

I admit it, we’ve excreted this one out beyond redemption. Don’t bother to reply to this. Just write us off.

I could say that it wasn’t entirely the fault of the crew members who stayed behind in the Host’s domicile. They thought they had figured out a way to meet Directive Two. They modified some organisms-didn’t even use bacteria, just an enzyme that hydrated polythene into what they had every reason to believe was a standard food substance, since the Host had been observed to ingest it with some frequency. There is no wrong-doing there, Chief. Alcohols are standard foods for many organic beings, as you know. And a gift of food has been held to satisfy the second Directive. And add to that they were half out of their plexuses with empathy deprivation.

Nevertheless I admit the gift failed in a fairly basic way, since it seems to have damaged artifacts the Hosts hold valuable.

So I accept the responsibility, Chief. Wipe this expedition off the records. We’ve failed, and we’ll never see our home breeding-slings again.

Please notify our descendants and former co-parents and, if you can, try to let them think we died heroically, won’t you?

Garigolli

Shirl has defeated the wrath of far more complex ‘Creatures than Mr. Bermingham by offering them coffee-me, for instance. While she got him the clean cup and the spoon and the milk out of the pitcher in the refrigerator, I had time to think.

Mr. Horgan would be interested in what had happened to our plastics Econ-Bin. Not only Mr. Horgan. The Fourteenth Floor would be interested. The ecology freaks themselves would be interested, and maybe would forget about liking buzzards better than babies long enough to say a good word for International Plastics Co.

I mean, this was significant. It was big, by which I mean it wasn’t little. It was a sort of whole new horizon for plastics. The thing about plastics, as everyone knows, is that once you convert them into trash they stay trash. Bury a maple syrup jug in your back yard and five thousand years from now some descendant operating a radar-controlled peony-planter from his back porch will grub it up as shiny as new. But the gunk in our eco-bin was making these plastics, or at least the polythene parts of them, bio-degradable.

What was the gunk? I had no idea. Some random chemical combination between Butchie’s oatmeal and his vitamins? I didn’t care. It was there, and it worked. If we could isolate the stuff, I had no doubt that the world-famous scientists who gave us the plastic storm window and the popup Eco-Bin could duplicate it. And if we could duplicate it we could sell it to hard-pressed garbagemen all over the world. The Fourteenth Floor would be very pleased.

With me to think was ever to act. I rinsed out one of Butchie’s baby-food jars in the sink, scraped some of the stickiest parts of the melting plastic into it and capped it tightly. I couldn’t wait to get it to the office.

Mr. Bermingham was staring at me with his mouth open. “Good Lord,” he muttered, “playing with filth at his age. What psychic damage we wreak with bad early toilet training.”

I had lost interest in Mr. Bermingham. I stood up and told him, “I’ve got to go to work. I’d be happy, to walk you as far as the bus.”

“You aren’t going anywhere, Dupoir! Came here to talk to you. Going to do it, too. Behavior was absolutely inexcusable, and I demand- Say, Dupoir, you don’t have a drink anywhere about the house, do you?”

“More coffee, Mr. Bermingham?” Shirl said politely. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything stronger to offer you. We don’t keep alcoholic beverages here, or at least not very long. Mr. Dupoir drinks them.”

“Thought so,” snarled Bermingham. “Recognize a drunk when I see one: shifty eyes, irrational behavior, duplicity-oh, the duplicity! Got all the signs.”

“Oh, he’s not like my brother, really,” Shirl said thoughtfully. “My husband doesn’t go out breaking into liquor stores when he runs out, you know. But I don’t drink, and Butchie doesn’t drink, and so about all we ever have in the house is some cans of beer, and there aren’t any of those now.”

Bermingham looked at her with angry disbelief. “You too! I smell it,” he said. “You going to tell me I don’t know what good old ethyl alcohol smells like?”

“That’s the bin, Mr. Bermingham. It’s a terrible mess, I know.”

“Funny place to keep the creature,” he muttered to himself, dropping to his knees. He dipped a finger into the drippings, smelled it, tasted it and nodded. “Alcohol, all right. Add a few congeners, couple drops of food coloring, and you’ve got the finest Chivas Regal a bellboy ever sold you out of a bottle with the tax stamp broken.” He stood up and glared at me. “What’s the matter with you, Dupoir? You not only don’t pay your honest debts, you don’t want to pay the bartenders either?”

I said, “It’s more or less an accident.”

“Accident?”

Then illumination struck. “Accident you should find us like this,” I corrected. “You see, it’s a secret new process. We’re not ready to announce it yet. Making alcohol out of old plastic scraps.”.

He questioned Shirl with his eyes. Getting her consent, he poured some of Butchie’s baby-food orange juice into a glass, scooped in some of the drippings from the bin, closed his eyes and tasted. “Mmm,” he said judiciously. “Sell it for vodka just the way it stands.”

“Glad to have an expert opinion,” I said. “We think there’s millions in it.”

He took another taste. “Plastic scraps, you say? Listen, Dupoir. Think we can clear all this up in no tune. That fool Klaw, I’ve told him over and over, ask politely, don’t make trouble for people. But no, he’s got that crazy lawyer’s drive for revenge. Apologize for him, old boy, I really do apologize for him. Now look,” he said, putting down the glass to rub his hands. “You’ll need help in putting this process on the market. Business acumen, you know? Wise counsel from man of experience. Like me. And capital. Can help you there. I’m loaded.”

Shirl put in, “Then what do you want our house for?”

“House? My dear Mrs. Dupoir,” cried Mr. Bermingham, laughing heartily, “I’m not going to take your house! Your husband and I will work out the details in no time. Let me have a little more of that delightful orange juice and we can talk some business.”

Garigolli to Home Base

Joy, joy

Chief!

Cancel all I said. WeVe met Directive Two, the Host is happy, and we’re on our way Home!

Warm up the breeding slings, there’s going to be a hot time in the old hammocks tonight.

Garigotti

Straight as the flight of Ung-Glitch, the soaring vulture, that is the code of the jungle. I was straight with Mr. Bermingham. I didn’t cheat him. I made a handshake deal with him over the ruins of our Eco-Bin, and honored it when we got to his lawyers. I traded him 40 percent of the beverage rights to the stuff that came out of our bin, and he wrote off that little matter of $14,752.03.,

Of course, the beverage rights turned out not to be worth all that much, because the stuff in the bin was organic and alive and capable of reproduction, and it did indeed reproduce itself enthusiastically. Six months later you could buy a starter drop of it for a quarter on any street corner, and what that has done to the vintners of the world you know as well as I do. But Bermingham came out ahead. He divided his 40 percent interest into forty parts and sold them for $500 each to the alumni of his drunk tank. And Mr. Horgan-

Ah, Mr. Horgan.

Mr. Horgan was perched on my doorframe like Ung-Glitch awaiting a delivery of cadavers for dinner when I arrived that morning, bearing my little glass jar before me like the waiting line in an obstetrician’s office. “You’re late, Dupoir,” he pointed out “Troubles me, that does. Do you remember Metcalf? Tall, blonde girl that used to work in Accounts Receivable? Never could get in on time, and-“

“Mr. Morgan,” I said, “look.” And I unscrewed my baby-food jar and dumped the contents on an un-popped pop-up Eco-Bin. It took him a while to see what was happening, but once he saw he was so impressed he forgot to roar.

And, yes, the Fourteenth Floor was very pleased.

There wasn’t any big money in it. We couldn’t sell the stuff, because it was so happy to give itself away to everyone in the world. But it meant a promotion and a raise. Not big. But not really little, either. And, as Mr. Horgan said, “I like the idea of helping to eliminate all the litter that devastates the landscape. It makes me feel, I don’t know, like part of something clean and natural.”

And so we got along happily as anything-happily, anyway, until the tune Shirl bought the merry-go-round.