Skylark DuQuesne

11. BLOTTO

THE world had come a long way from the insular, mudbound globe of rock and sea of the 1950s and 1970s; Seaton and Crane had seen to that. Norlaminian observers were a familiar sight to most humans — if not in person, then surely through the medium of TV or tapefax. A thousand worlds had been photographed by Tellurian cameramen and reporters; the stories of the Osnomians, the Fenachrone, the Valeronians, even the Chlorans and the other weirdly non-human races of the outer void were a matter of public record.

Nevertheless, it is a far different thing from knowing that other races exist to find yourself a guest of one of them, a quarter of a million miles from home; wherefore Madlyn and Charles’s expressed intentions took immediate and tangible form.

Madlyn Mannis and Charles K. van der Gleiss were facing each other across a small table in a curtained booth; a table upon which a waiter was placing a pint of bonded hundred-proof bourbon and the various items properly accessory thereto. As soon as the curtain fell into place behind the departing waiter the girl seized the bottle, raised it to her mouth, and belted down a good two fingers — as much as she could force down before her coughing, choking, and strangling made her stop.

“Hey! Take it easy!” the man protested, taking the bottle from her hand and putting it gently down on the table. “You’re not used to guzzling it like that; that’s for plain damn sure.”

She gulped and coughed a few times; wiped her streaming eyes. “I’ll tell the world I’m not; two little ones is always my limit, ordinarily. But I needed that jolt, Charley, to keep from flipping my lid completely. Don’t you need one, too?”

“I certainly do. A triple, at least, with a couple of snowflakes of ice and about five drops of water.” He built the drink substantially as specified, took it down in three swallows, and drew a profoundly deep breath. “You heard me tell them I’m a petrochemical engineer, tee eight. So maybe that didn’t hit me quite as hard as it did you, but bottled courage helps, believe me.” He mixed another drink — a single — and cocked an eyebrow at the girl. “That’ll you have as a chaser for that God-awful belt?”

“A scant jigger — three-quarters, about — in a water glass,” she said, promptly. “Two ice-cubes and fill it up with acceptor.” He mixed the drink and she took a sip. “Thanks, Charley. This is much better for drinking purposes. Now maybe I can talk about what happened without blowing my top. I was going to wonder why we’ve been running into each other all the time lately, but that doesn’t amount to anything compared to… I actually thought… in fact, I know very well… we were on… weren’t we? Both of us?”

“We were both on the moon,” he said flatly. “To make things worse, we were inside a spaceship that I still don’t believe can be built. Those are facts.”

“Uh-uh; that’s what I mean. Positively nobody ever went to the moon or anywhere else off-Earth without being in something, and we didn’t have even the famous paddle. And posi-damn-tively nobody — but nobody! — ever got into and out of a tightly closed, vacuum-tight spaceship without anybody opening any doors or ports or anything. How do you play them tunes on your piccolo, friend?”

“I don’t; and the ship itself was almost as bad. Not only was it impossibly big; it was full of stuff that makes the equipment of the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg look like picks and shovels.” She raised an eyebrow questioningly and he went on, “One of the missile-tracking vessels — the hairiest hunks of electronic gadgetry ever built by man.

What it all adds up to is a race of people somewhere who know as much more than even the Norlaminians do as we do than grasshoppers. So I think we had better report to the cops.”

“The cops!” she spat the word out like an oath. “Me? Madlyn Mannis? Squeal to the fuzz? When a great big gorilla slugs me in the brisket and heists fifteen Brands’ worth of diamonds off of me and I don’t get…”

She broke off suddenly. Both had avoided mentioning the diamonds, but now the word was accidentally out. She shook her head vigorously, then said, “Uh-uh. They aren’t there. Who ever heard of diamonds by the quart? Anyway, even if that Luloy could have done it and did, I’ll bet they evaporated or something.”

“Or they’ll turn out to be glass,” he agreed. “No use looking, hardly, I don’t think. Even if they are there and are real, you couldn’t sell ’em without telling where they came from — and you can’t do that.”

“I couldn’t? Don’t be naive, Charley. Nobody ever asks me where I got any diamonds I sell — I’d slap his silly face off. I can peddle your half, too, at almost wholesale. Not all at once, of course, but a few at a time, here and there.”

“Half, Uh-uh,” he objected. “I was acting as your agent on that deal. Ten per cent.”

“Half,” she insisted; then grinned suddenly. “But why argue about half of nothing? To get back onto the subject of cops — the lugs! — they brushed my report off as a stripper’s publicity gag and I didn’t get even one line in the papers. And if I report this weirdie they’ll give me a oneway, most-direct-route ticket to the nearest funny-farm.”

“You’ve got a point there.” He glowered at his drink. “I can see us babbling about instantaneous translation through the fourth dimension and an impossible spaceship on the moon manned by people exactly like us — except that the men all look like Green Bay Packers and all the girls without exception are stacked like… like…” Words failed him.

Madlyn nodded thoughtfully. “Uh-huh,” she agreed. “They were certainly stacked. That Luloy… that biologist Sennlloy, who was studying all those worms and mice and things… all of ’em. And they swap hundred-carat perfect blue-white diamonds for books.”

“Yeah. We start babbling that kind of stuff and we wind up in wrap-arounds.”

“You said it. But we’ve got to do something!”

“Well, we can report to an Observer—”

“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s tie one really on.”

Neither of them remembered very much of what happened after that, but at about three o’clock the following afternoon Charley van der Gleiss struggled upward through 4 million miles of foul-tasting molasses to consciousness. He was lying on the couch in his living room; fully dressed, even to his shoes. He worked himself up, very carefully, to a sitting position and shook his head as carefully. It didn’t quite explode. Good — he’d probably live.

Walking as though on eggs, he made cautious way to the bedroom. She was lying, also fully dressed, on his bed. On the coverlet. As he sat gingerly down on the side of the bed she opened one eye, then the other, put both hands to her head, and groaned; her features twisting in agony. “Stop shaking me, you… please,” she begged. “Oh, my poor head! It’s coming clear off… right at the neck…”

Then, becoming a little more conscious, she went on, “It didn’t go back into the woodwork, Charley, did it? I’ll see that horrible moonscape and that naked Luloy as long as I live.”

“And I’ll see that nightmare of a spaceship. While you’re taking the first shot at the bathroom I’ll have ’em send up a gallon of black coffee, a couple of quarts of orange juice, and whatever the pill-roller downstairs says is good for what ails us. In the meantime, would you like a hair of the dog?”

“My God, no!” She shuddered visibly. “I never got drunk in my life before — I have to keep in shape, you know — and if I live through this I swear I’ll never take another drink as long as I live!”

When they began to feel better Madlyn said, “Why don’t you peek into that drawer, Charley? There just might be something in it.”

He did, and there was, and he gave her the honor of lifting the soft plastic bag out of the drawer.

“My God!” she gasped. “There’s four or five pounds of them!” She opened the bag with trembling fingers and stood entranced for half a minute, then took out a few of the gems and examined them minutely.

“Charley,” she said then, “if I know anything about diamonds — and I admit that I know a lot — these are not only real, but the finest things I have ever seen. I’m almost afraid to try to sell even the littlest ones. Men just simply don’t give girls rocks like that. I’m not even sure that there are very many others like those around. If any.”

“Well, we would probably have had to talk to an Observer anyway, and this makes it a forced putt. Let’s go, Maddy.”

“In this wreckage?” Expression highly scornful, she waved a hand at her rumpled and wrinkled green afternoon gown. “Are you completely out of your mind?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I’ll shave and put on a clean shirt and an intelligent, look and then we’ll skip over to your place for you to slick up and then we’ll go down to the Observer’s office. Say, have you got a safe-deposit box?”

“No, but don’t worry about that for awhile, my friend. We haven’t got ’em past the Observer yet!”

An hour later, looking and feeling almost human again, the two were ushered into the Observer’s heavily screened private office. They told him, as nearly as they could remember, every detail of everything that had happened.

He listened attentively. He had been among the Tellurians only a few short months; in the cautious thoughtful way of Norlaminians, he was far from ready to claim that he understood them. These two in particular seemed quite non-scientific and un-logical in their attitudes… and yet, he thought, and yet there was that about them which seemed to deserve a hearing. So he heard. Then he put on a headset and saw.

Visually he investigated the far side of the moon; then, frowning slightly, he increased his power to microscopic magnification and re-examined half a dozen tiny areas. He then conferred briefly with Rovol of Rays on distant Norlamin, who in turn called Seaton into a long-distance three-way.

“No doubt whatever about it,” Seaton said. “If they hadn’t been hiding from somebody or something they wouldn’t have ground up that many thousands of tons of inoson into moon-dust — that’s a project, you know — and I don’t need to tell you that inoson does not occur in nature. Yes, we definitely need to know more about this one. Coming in!”

Seaton’s projection appeared in the Observer’s office and, after being introduced, handed thought-helmets to Madlyn and Charley. “Put these on, please, and go over the whole thing again, in as fine detail as you possibly can. It’s not that we doubt any of your statements; it’s just that we want to record and to study very carefully all the side-bands of thought that can be made to appear.”

The two went over their stories again; this time being interrupted, every other second or two, by either Seaton or the Observer with sharply pertinent questions or suggestions.

When, finally, both had been wrung completely dry, the Observer took off his helmet and said:

“Although much of this material is not for public dissemination, I will tell you enough to relieve your minds of stress; especially since you have already seen some of it and I know that neither of you will talk.” Being a very young Norlaminian, just graduated from the Country of Youth, he smiled at this, and the two smiled — somewhat wryly — back.

“Wait a minute,” Seaton said. “I’m not sure we want their minds relieved of too much stress. They both ring bells — loud ones. I’d swear I know you both from somewhere, except I know darn well I’ve never met either of you before… it’s a cinch nobody could ever forget meeting Madlyn Mannis…” He paused, then snapped a finger sharply.

“Idiot! Of course! Where were you, both of you, at hours twenty-three fifty-nine on the eighteenth?”

“Huh? What is this, a gag?” van der Gleiss demanded.

“Anything else but, believe me,” Seaton assured him. “Madlyn?”

“One minute of midnight? That would be the finale of my first show… Oh-oh! Was the eighteenth a Friday?”

“Yes.”

“That’s it!” The girl was visibly excited now. “Something did happen. Don’t ask me what — all I know is I was just finishing my routine, and I got this feeling — this feeling of importance about something. Why, you were in it!” She stared at Seaton’s projection incredulously. “Yes! But — you were different somehow. I don’t know how. Like a — like a reflection of you, or a bad photograph…”

Through his headset Seaton thought a quick, private three-way conference with Rovol and the Norlaminian on Earth:

“—clearly refers to our beacon message—”

“— yes, but holy cats, Rovol, what’s this about a ‘reflection’?—”

“—conceivably some sort of triggered response from another race—”

It took less than a second, then Seaton continued with the girl and her companion, who were unaware that any interchange had taken place.

“The ‘something important’ you’re talking about, Madlyn, was a message that we broadcast. You might call it an SOS; we were looking for a response from some other race or civilization with a little more on the ball than we have. We’ve been hoping for an answer; it’s just possible that, through you, we’ve got one. What was that ‘reflection’ like?”

“I’d call it a psychic pull,” said Madlyn promptly. “And now that you mention it, I felt it with these Jelmi too. And—” Her eyes widened, and she turned to stare at Charley.

Seaton snapped his fingers. “Look, Madlyn. Can you take time off to spend with us? I don’t know what you’ve got into — but I want you nearby if you get into it again!”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Seaton. I mean — Doctor Seaton. I’ll call Moe — that’s my agent — and cancel Vegas, and—”

“Thanks,” grinned Seaton. “You won’t lose anything by it.”

“I’m sure I won’t, judging by… but oh, yes, how about those diamonds — if they are?”

“Oh, they are,” the Norlaminian assured her, “and they’re of course yours. Would you like to have me sell them for you?”

She glanced questioningly at van der Gleiss, who nodded and gave the jewels to the Observer. Then, “We’d like that very much, sir,” Madlyn said, “and thanks a lot.”

“Okay,” Seaton said then. “Now, how about you, Charley. What kind of a jolt did you get at one minute of twelve that Friday night?”

“Well, it was the first time I caught Madlyn’s act, and I admit it’s a sockeroo. She has the wallop of a piledriver, no question of that. But if you mean spirit-message flapdoodle or psychic poppycock, nothing. I’m not psychic myself — not a trace — and nobody can sell me that anybody else is, either. That stuff is purely the bunk — it’s strictly for the birds.”

“It isn’t either, Mister Charles K. van der Gleiss!” Madlyn exclaimed. “And you are too psychic — very strongly so! How else would we be stumbling over each other everywhere we go? And how else would I possibly get drunk with you?” She spread her hands out in appeal to the Observer. “Isn’t he psychic?”

“My opinion is that he is unusually sensitive to certain forces, yes,” the Norlaminian said. “Think carefully, youth. Wasn’t there something more than the mental or esthetic appreciation of, and the physical-sexual thrill at, the work of a superb exotic dancer?”

“Of course there was!” the man snapped. “But… but… oh, I don’t know. Now that Madlyn mentions it, there was a sort of a feeling of a message. But I haven’t got even the foggiest idea of what the goddam thing was!”

“And that,” Seaton said, “is about the best definition of it I’ve ever heard. We haven’t either.”