The Green Millennium

XII

IT couldn’t have been three minutes since Phil’s capture, yet it seemed that he had been listening to Mr. Billig for years. He was sitting apprehensively on a stool in a long low room to which he had been conducted by two men in sober sports togs – obviously a cut above company guards – whom Mr. Billig addressed as Harris and Hayes. Along one of the long sides of the room were windows and a doorway leading onto a balcony of some sort, beyond which yawned perplexing darkness. Harris and Hayes stood behind Phil while Billig paced in front of him.

Just now the voice that was like a tape played at triple speed, but not so high-pitched, was saying, “Have you ever pictured $10,000,000 concretely? Think of it this way: a yacht on the Amazon, bubble-dome cabin, your private copter, a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, yourself absolute monarch of a very interesting microcosm. Doesn’t it appeal to you?”

“But I didn’t take the green cat,” Phil replied quickly – Billig’s speed was catching. “I don’t know where it is.”

“What do you want then?” Billig demanded. “Or like most people, are you afraid to say? Tell me, I’ve heard everything.”

Phil opened his mouth, thought of Lucky, and said nothing.

“Hit him, Harris,” Billig ordered, “and don’t be all day about it!”

Pain bounced like a steel ball back and forth inside Phil’s skull at Harris’ dispassionate swipes. At the last one Phil felt his head go numb and his thoughts glassy. Harris’ bank cashier face swam out of sight, to be replaced by Billig’s smooth mask with its lurking host of wrinkles.

Billig produced the gun he’d been carrying when Phil was caught. He informed Phil, “I propose to cut your limbs off, one by one. The beam burns, which keeps you from bleeding too fast.”

All Phil’s glazed mind could think was how ludicrous the word “limb” was. He wondered if Billig considered him a tree. Billig’s head persisted in circling Phil like a small planet, though that may only have been the room swimming. Suddenly Phil stuck out an arm.

“All right,” he informed Billig, “Begin with this. Don’t hurt the leaves.”

Billig lowered the gun. “You hit him too hard,” he told Harris, “or else he likes it. There are other kinds of pain. Where’s Brimstine? I told him he had only two minutes to find Jack. Hayes, frisk this man.”

Slim fingers rippled through Phil’s pockets and tossed Billig commonplace items. When the hand went for his right hand pocket, Phil had a belated memory and made a move to prevent it, but Harris grabbed his arms from behind.

Hayes carefully handed Billig the figurine of Mitzie Romadka in black, off the bosom frock.

Billig rattled softly to Hayes, “I’d swear this is Mary what’s-her-name’s work – the girl who used to do strip-tease dolls for us. She always had a touch and now it’s got better.” He fingered the doll delicately, studying the reactions in Phil’s face. “Do you want her?” he asked suddenly. “Would it pain you to see her hurt?” He made as if to wring the doll’s head off, then quickly set it on a table beside him and threw up his hands. “Whereis Brimstine!”

“Here,” the latter announced, hulking into the room like a bear in a great hurry. “I’ve located Jack. And we’ve caught the girl the three hep-jerks blabbed about. She lined herself up with the dress-display robots and might have passed herself off as one, but she sneezed.”

Mitzie was marched into the room, her hands twisted behind her by Dora, whose face wore a disdainful smile that now seemed spiced with cruelty. The analyst’s daughter had lost her evening cape and her long dark hair hung half over one eye. She held her chin up, as one who has struggled, found it no use, yet not really submitted. She saw Phil and looked away from him proudly, as if her being caught had wiped out the problem into which he had plunged her.

“Ah, the original,” Billig observed, looking up from the figurine, which he deftly pocketed. “Darling,” he said, walking toward Mitzie, “would you care to be featured in coast-to-coast living ads, or sit for a line of ultra deluxe dress display robots; would you like to be a handie star, ambassadress to Brazil, or become my girl Friday and be in on everything interesting that goes on in the world; would you take $10,000,000? Just tell us what you’ve done with the green cat.”

Mitzie answered the five-second barrage with a shrug of her upper lip. “Darling, I’m serious,” Billig assured her. “This is a lifetime opportunity and you’re a nice girl.” And he made as if to caress her shoulder affectionately, but instead whipped around to catch Phil’s reaction.

Jack Jones ran into the room and whisked to a stop. He glanced at Phil as if he didn’t know him and then saluted Billig sardonically.

“What are you standing around for?” Billig demanded. “Get to work. Hayes, I want those three hep-jerks in here.”

Phil tried to squirm away from Harris’ seemingly casual grip. And then Jack’s fingers were digging at nerves and pain was not a steel ball but a fiery plant’s red hot roots and million rootlets finding an instant way through every crevice between the cells of his body. He heard himself squealing, “Romadka! Romadka!” The pain lessened and he babbled swiftly, “Dr. Romadka stole the cat. I saw him coming out of the room where the cage is, carrying his black bag. The cat must have been inside.”

“Who’s this Romadka?” Billig whipped at him.

“An analyst,” Phil gasped weakly. He nodded at Jack Jones. “He can tell you about him.”

“I never heard of the man,” Jack asserted instantly.

“You did,” Phil mumbled desperately. “You saw how he was after me tonight. You must have guessed he was after the green cat.”

Jack shook his head curtly. “He’s making it up,” he assured Billig.

Across the room Brimstine put down a phone and called to Billig, “Benson says Greeley ’s acting cool as they come, still confident the raid will start when he said.”

“Well, don’t freeze!” Billig rapped exasperatedly at Jack. “Get back to work on him.”

As the small terrible hands approached, Phil looked imploringly at Mitzie.

“Dr. Anton Romadka is my father,” she said coldly, “reputed to be a great psychoanalyst. This hysteric you’re wasting time on is one of his patients.”

“Darling, why didn’t you say so before?” Billig asked her joyfully. “Dora, let go of her wrists at once!” The violet blonde complied with a cynical hop of her slim eyebrows.

“Darling, it escaped my mind she was still doing that, I’m sorry,” Billig assured Mitzie as he glided towards her, his feet moving almost as glibly as his tongue. “Darling, it’s very clear to me now: this hysteric, as you accurately describe him, stole the cat on your father’s orders and handed it to your father, whom I can see you don’t like and who probably forced you to come along. Now just tell us where your father is, or where you think he is, darling, and you’ll have, not one, but all of those things I mentioned to you a half minute back.”

“My father hasn’t skill enough to burgle a banana-vending robot,” Mitzie snapped at him. “You’re as stupid and conceited and unbalanced as all men, only faster. You think because something clever has been done, a man must have done it. My father’s a rotten analyst, but you could use a few sessions with him.”

“Darling, we’re not going to get anywhere if you talk that way,” Billig assured her laughingly. “Realize it, darling, you’re among friends and well-wishers.” And he took her arm with a paternal amiability.

Mitzie’s right hand was a blurred are and Billig sashayed back with four bright red lines on his left cheek.

“Grab her, Dora!” Billig ordered. The violet blonde willingly wrapped her arms around Mitzie’s waist and elbows. Mitzie avoided noticing it. Meanwhile, Billig was rapid firing, “I assumed she was disarmed, Brimstine. Get those claws off her.” Brimstine grabbed Mitzie’s right hand around the knuckles with one of his big paws and began to jerk off the needle-fanged thimbles. Billig waved off Harris, who had let go Phil to offer to minister to his boss’s dripping cheek.

Billig paced back toward Mitzie. “Darling,” he said, and for once the words came slow, “you’re really wonderful, you’re just the sort of charming vixen the sadisto-hackers dream up to torture the hero. But tonight I’m afraid you’re going to have to reverse roles.”

Phil’s mysterious inward tormentor who had made him go up against Moe Brimstine at the Akeleys’, now got to work again and despite the weakness of his pain-threaded muscles, forced him to start a staggering rush at Billig, meanwhile calling out, “Don’t you touch her!”

Naturally Jack tripped him, caught him by the collar almost before he’d painfully smashed into the flooring, and slammed him back onto the stool.

At that moment, Hayes and four or five other men, the latter in the company guard costume of the half-headless man, marched a banged up Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck into the far end of the room. Carstairs, who now had blood as well as hair trailing down his forehead, looked steadily at Mitzie.

“Thank you for this, Mitz,” he said rather quietly.

Llewellyn and Buck each nodded his head.

“You take it for granted I skunked on you?” Mitzie asked. None of the three acted as if they’d heard the question.

Phil, watching Billig, noted a very slight shiver, smile, and widening of the eyes, although the boss man of Fun Incorporated wasn’t looking at anything in particular.

“Take those boys down to the company garage,” Billig called to Hayes; keeping his slashed cheek turned away. “I’ll phone you orders about them in fifteen seconds.” Then, as Hayes and the guards jumped to obey, Billig said to Mitzie in a voice just loud enough to reach Carstairs, “Thanks again, darling. That was a nice job.”

Carstairs had time to give her one last deadly look before he was hurried out with the others.

“Come on, everybody,” Billig said gayly, “we’re going to have a little show. Darling, would you like to take my arm? I’ve quite forgotten that love tap. If you promise to be a good girl, I’ll tell Dora to let go of you.” Mitzie made no reply but Dora unwrapped her arms with lazy reluctance. “Come on, darling,” Billig entreated, starting for the balcony. Mitzie didn’t look at him, but she walked at his side. He didn’t try to touch her. They moved fast. Billig looked back over his shoulder.

“Hurry up, everybody,” he ordered exasperatedly. “Stop acting slow-motion!”

Brimstine, Dora and Harris quickly fell in behind them. Jack brought up the rear with Phil.

“I had to do that,” Jack whispered in Phil’s ear. “I couldn’t take it and trust you to fake reactions well enough to fool Billig. But for God’s sake, don’t spill anything more about Romadka. I know you’re Juno’s lover. Well, Romadka made me bring him here. His friends are at the house. They’ll kill Mary and Sacheverell – Juno and Cookie, too – if he gets caught.”

As Phil was trying to formulate some sort of answer to this, they followed the others onto the balcony. Its railing was split by a gateway, from which a metal stairway projected down and out into the darkness, its first dozen treads glimmering faintly.

Without warning Mitzie left Billig and darted down the stairs, taking them three at a time. Harris lunged after her, but Billig stopped him with a gesture. “She’s doing what I want,” he explained softly, “and five times faster than if you dragged her. Won’t you ever understand it’s speed I need?”

Brimstine was closely watching Mitzie, who was now no more than a glimmering moth flitting through a duller darkness. “She can’t see the steps any more,” he said with professional admiration. “That girl’s good.”

Billig shrugged and stepped to a control panel in the railing. He picked up a phone, then paused thoughtfully as if he were making sure it was a full fifteen seconds since he had spoken to Hayes and not a mere twelve or thirteen.

“Hayes?” Billig said, and then whispered rapidly. He paused for a moment, writhing his eyebrows, as though Hayes were being unbelievably slow in catching on. “Of course, of course!”

Then Billig touched a button and blinding light transformed the darkness into a huge, empty, gray garage, its floor some thirty feet below the balcony. There were all sorts of lines and signs indicating which way cars should move and park, only there weren’t any cars. There were also a dozen open gateways in the gray walls, eight of them marked “Exit.” The silvery stairs down which Mitzie had flown touched the center point of the garage’s vast floor. A few paces away from that, Mitzie stood tiny and stock-still, as if blinded by the light.

Somewhere, far off, an electric motor was revving up.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Billig said to Dora, Brimstine, Harris, and Jack, but mostly to Phil, “this is the place where people park their cars while they watch the wrestling bouts. But now the wrestling’s over and the cars are gone.” He delicately touched his cheek, where the four furrows had almost stopped bleeding. “So now we can have the place for our little show. Mr. Gish, I must have the green cat. I believe you value that girl’s beauty and life -”

But Phil, whose arms were gripped hard by Jack from behind, hardly heard him he was watching Mitzie so intently. She seemed to come out of her daze suddenly. Dark, close bars shot down and blocked it, as they did all the other gateways Phil could see. He looked at Billig and saw his dark fingers lifting from buttons. He looked back at Mitzie and saw her hesitate and then run back toward the silvery stairs. Billig touched another button and the stairs retracted, telescoping upward. Mitzie stood on the gray floor all alone.

The revving of the unseen motor grew louder. Billig leaned over the guard wall and looked thoughtfully at Mitzie, as if he were a cleverer Caligula, a more practical Nero. Then he turned back, and took the figurine of Mitzie out of his pocket, and spoke to Phil.

“Mr. Gish,” he said, “I seriously want to know where the green cat is, or where your Dr. Romadka has taken it. Otherwise, how would you like this to happen to her down there?” And he jerked off a leg of the figurine. Phil could see the twin ragged cones of wax where the leg had parted. “Or this?” Billig jerked off an arm. “Or this or this?”

At that moment an open topped black jeep came accelerating out from under the balcony. Phil saw there were three people in it, though for a moment he couldn’t tell who. But Mitzie darted to the car, calling out excitedly, “Carstairs!” The car came on. “You’re wonderful?’ Mitzie called. But then suddenly the car came forward faster and straight toward her, and she had to dive out of the way to keep from being hit.

The car started to swing around in a great loop. Mitzie picked herself up from the harsh floor.

“Orthis! ” Billig hissed at Phil, and he ripped the figurine apart at the waist, while one thumb made a smashed flatness of the tiny breasts. “Now please tell me where’s this Dr. Romadka.”

“I don’t know!” Phil yelled, struggling to get away from Jack, who maddeningly whispered in his ear, “That’s right, don’t spill a word.”

“I’ll remind you,” Billig continued swiftly, taking something else from under his coat, “that it’s much more worse for her – or anyone – to be hurt by people she idolizes than by people she hates. So tell me about the green cat. Look here, this is an ortho. I can cut down that car any moment you tell me.”

But Phil, like all the others, was watching Mitzie. Having picked herself up, she didn’t move. She simply stayed there, facing the oncoming car. When it was so close that for an instant Phil saw Mitzie’s dark head against its chrome muzzle, it veered and missed her by a breath. Mitzie stood motionless as a statue, though her short skirt whipped out.

Then she turned at the waist and watched the retreating jeep.

“Chicken!” she jeered, loudly.

For an instant everyone on the balcony was very still. Then there was a dull banging, and Phil realized that Moe Brimstine was pounding the railing, and saying, “I tell you, that girl’s good.”

“Yes, she is,” Billig buzzed at him curtly. Brimstine stopped his applause, looking ashamed.

“But,” Billig continued smoothly, turning to Phil, “they’re bound to get her, sooner or later, unless…” And he wiggled the large black gun he held in his small hand. “So you better talk.”

The jeep swung round under the balcony in a much tighter loop and headed back, revving screamingly. Mitzie faced it, grinning, hands as light on her hips as before.

Then, just as – from Phil’s point of view – it had swallowed her up to the waist, she sprang to one side. Phil felt her foot must have brushed the tire. The jeep slammed through the air where she’d been.

“Dumb-bell!” Mitzie screamed.

Brimstine lifted his clenched fists above the railing, glanced at Billig, and with an effort dropped them to his sides. Phil realized his arms were numb, Jack was gripping them so tightly. Beyond Billig, Harris and Dora leaned forward over the guard rail, as abstracted as gamblers.

But Billig himself, though presumably a gambler, was neither still nor intent. “Look, Mr. Gish,” he said rapidly, “I don’t want to see this girl smashed myself, and Brimstine here is figuring on starring her in a knife throwing or dodge-the-car act. This is probably the last chance you have to save her. Where’s Romadka? Where’s the cat?”

A phone-light began to blink on the control panel. Billig ignored it. “Where’s the cat?” he repeated.

But all Phil could think, as the black jeep turned very tightly by the far wall and as Mitzie pivoted to face it – all he could think was that this had happened before, in ancient Crete, where girls as slim waisted and dark haired as Mitzie had faced the black, charging bull and dodged it or vaulted or somersaulted over its cruel horns, their breasts as bare as Mitzie’s, opposing the most tender thing in the world to the most terrible.

The phone-light continued to blink.

The jeep finished its tight turn, Llewellyn and Buck leaning out to balance it like a sailboat while Carstairs stuck steady as death behind the wheel. Then it shrieked toward Mitzie. She waited until it was almost as close as the time before, then sprang toward the left. Quickly, almost as if it were tied to her thoughts, the jeep veered toward the left, too. But Mitzie’s feet, slamming down after that first jump, didn’t carry her farther, but reversed her direction, carrying her back to the spot she’d first occupied.

Again the jeep slammed past her.

“Double dumb-bell!” Mitzie howled.

The jeep, screaming into another tight turn, vanished under the balcony. There was a grating crash, then a sick, rasping sound, as if the jeep had sideswiped the wall but was still going.

At the same moment a dark shouldered but pink topped figure walked out rapidly from under the balcony. It was carrying a black bag. It stopped, leaned over, set the black bag on the floor, and opened it.

The black jeep came out from under the balcony, limpingly but gaining speed.

Something green and small stuck its head out of the black bag and looked toward the jeep.

The jeep didn’t stop, but it slowed, and Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck tumbled out and sprinted away from the green head as if from horror itself.

The jeep continued very slowly and haltingly toward Mitzie, like a blinded, badly injured animal.

The pink topped figure walked rapidly and mechanically back under the balcony, as if it didn’t understand the why of what it had been doing. Belatedly, Phil realized it must be Dr. Romadka.

The phone-light went on blinking.

The green cat leaped out of the black bag and lightly settled itself beside it.

“Stun it!” Billig knifed at Brimstine and Harris.

The green cat twisted its neck and looked up curiously.

Brimstine and Harris looked at Billig and each took a step and peered down over the railing and stopped stock-still. Behind them Dora was as pale and quiet as a ghost.

And then Phil felt it too – the same invisible golden wave of amiability and understanding as had quieted the quarrelers at the Akeleys’, but now in a flood, a spring tide.

“Stun that thing down there!” Billig demanded. The hidden wrinkles were showing themselves twitchingly on his face and he was backing away from the railing as if he couldn’t bear the golden wave.

Brimstine started to reach inside his coat, but instead picked up the phone beside the blinding light. After a moment he said quite casually, “The raid’s begun, just as Greeley told us it would. The FBL are coming in everywhere.”

“Stun it, I tell you! Get it somehow; it can save us,” Billig ordered, frantically fanning the air in front of his face as if to beat off the golden wave.

Harris just looked at him. Brimstine slowly and puzzledly shook his head.

Billig gave a shuddering gasp and clapped his free hand over his mouth and nostrils, as if the golden wave were something breathed in with the air, and fought his way to the railing. With his other hand he raised the big gun until it was high above his shoulder.

A needle of blue light jutted from either end of the big gun and made smoking trenches in the opposite wall of the garage and the wall behind them. Then Billig brought the gun steadily downward, lengthening the forward and rearward trenches. The air smelled acid, as if laced with ozone. The blue beam dimmed the bright lights and made everything shadowy.

The green cat still looked up at Billig curiously. Billig didn’t look straight back at it. The little muscles in his jaw and temple bulged around the hand clamping shut his mouth and nose.

The forward trench dug itself across the wall and floor, swung drunkenly past Mitzie and the doddering jeep, got ten feet from the green cat and hesitated. It swung this way and that, as if it had encountered a magic circle it couldn’t pierce – and stopped.

Jack murmured, “Sash was right.”

Billig gave a great gasp and began to squeal.

The blue beams winked out. The gun clanked on the floor. The squeal changed to a clucking and Billig swayed. Jack jumped to catch him.

Phil sprang forward and his fingers touched buttons he’d seen Billig touch. The bars in the garage gateways shot up. Phil was on the telescoped stairs almost before they began to move, and rode them to the ground through layers of stinging ozone and golden harmony. The jeep had trembled to a stop just short of Mitzie, who stared at it groggily, her whole figure slack, as if a puff of wind could have felled her.

When the stairs touched the floor, momentum carried Phil forward a half dozen steps but he kept his footing and circled back at a run. When he plunged into the area between the green cat and the spot where the jeep had been abandoned, he felt a shiver of sudden and extreme terror, which even as he felt it, began to fade.

But he hardly had time to ask himself whether that was what had stampeded Carstairs and the rest, for the next instant he was calling, “Lucky!” and Lucky was saying “Prrt!” and he was scooping up the unresisting cat, his fingers trembling as they touched the green fur, and darting back toward Mitzie and the jeep. Her groggy look had now become a dazed smile of triumph and pride.

He grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her toward the jeep. “Get in!” he shouted in her ear. “We’re getting out of here. You’re driving.”

A little life seemed to come back into her as her hands touched the wheel. She kicked the starter as he scrambled in beside her, Lucky gently clutched to his chest. “Which way?” she asked thickly.

“Any exit gateway,” he told her.

With a rather wheezy hum, the jeep started toward the nearest gateway. Phil felt a thinning of the golden peace around them, as if, he told himself, Lucky were resting. The jeep, though gaining a little speed, seemed to move as slowly as a school slideway. But looking back, he saw that the group on the balcony was still standing as motionless as dress display dummies with the power off all except Billig, who was once again moving about rapidly.

“Get them,” Phil could barely hear Billig’s cracked voice implore, as he darted from one to the other. “Kill them.”

The jeep nosed through the high doorway and started up a ramp.

“Dora!” Phil heard Billig yell. “Grab my ortho and kill them.”

The effect of the golden wave must be wearing off, Phil thought, for just as the top of the gateway was cutting off his view he saw the violet blonde stoop rapidly behind the guard wall.

The next second a blue beam flashed, and smoke and starry splatter sprayed up just behind the jeep. The beam moved up and encountered the top of the gateway. It noticed that, came a little closer to them, and then was stopped by the thickness of the wall. The ramp turned and Phil saw a half dozen men in the Fun Incorporated company guard uniform. Two of them had drawn their guns and the other four hadn’t. They turned and saw the jeep. The two with guns raised them and the others reached for theirs.

Then Lucky sat up on Phil’s lap straight as the statuette of Bast, and Phil felt him let go of another of those great golden invisible waves. Phil could tell the moment it hit the guards from the sudden change in their tough faces. They watched the jeep with awe and incredulous grins as it went past.

Farther on they found themselves approaching an expanse of gray cold light, against which a party of some twenty heavily armed men was partly silhouetted, although they were advancing warily along the walls. They were carrying guns, nets and sprays that could swiftly immobilize men in plastic cocoons, and what looked like bird cages.

They leveled their weapons, but once again and mightier than ever, so mighty it made Phil shiver with understanding, the golden wave rolled forward to engulf them. Once again the jeep glided past astonished, troubled faces that smiled in spite of themselves. As the jeep rolled out into the cool, shadowy dawn, Phil stroked Lucky’s soft, springy fur and murmured, “Little peace maker. You even gentled the FBL.”

Lucky looked up at him coquettishly and then yawned tremendously and curled up on Phil’s lap. The feeling of golden harmony subsided until only a ghost of it lingered.

“I know,” Phil said, “you’re tired from so much peace making.” He suddenly felt extremely tired himself, yet he went on to say, in slurred syllables, “Lucky, I don’t care whether you come from Egypt, Russia, or the jungles of the Amazon – you’re good for the USA.”