Mosul soundlessly opened and shut his mouth. Noonan let go of him, returned to the chair, and put his feet up on the desk.
“Well?” he said. Mosul sniffled back the blood from his nose and said: “Honest, boss, what’s the matter? What swag can Buzzard have? He doesn’t have any. Nobody’s got swag.”
“What, are you going to argue with me?” Noonan asked gently, taking his feet off the desk.
“No, no, boss, honest,” Mosul hurried to say. “Me argue with you? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I’m going to get rid of you,” Noonan threatened. “You don’t know how to work. What the hell do I need you for, you so-and-so? Guys like you are a dime a dozen. I need a real man for real work.”
“Hold on, boss,” Mosul said reasonably, smearing blood all over his face. “Why do you attack me all of a sudden? Let’s work this out.” He touched his nose gingerly. “You say Burbridge has a lot of swag? I don’t know, somebody’s been lying to you. Nobody’s got any swag now. After all, only punks go into the Zone now, and they’re the only ones coming out. Nope, boss, someone’s lied to you.”
Noonan was watching him covertly. It looked as if Mosul really didn’t know a thing. It wouldn’t have paid him to lie, anyway— Buzzard Burbridge didn’t pay very well.
“These picnics, are they profitable?”
“The picnics? I don’t think so. You won’t shovel in the money. But there aren’t any profitable things left in town.”
“Where are these picnics held?”
“Where? You know, in different places. By White Mountain, at the Hot Springs, at Rainbow Lake.”
“Who are the customers?”
“The customers?” Mosul sniffed, blinked, and spoke confidentially.
“If you’re planning to get into the business yourself, boss, I wouldn’t recommend it. You won’t make much up against Buzzard.”
“Why not?”
“Buzzard’s customers are the blue helmets, one.” Mosul was ticking the points off on his fingers. “Officers from the command post, two. Tourists from the Metropole, the White Lily, and the Plaza, three. Then he’s got good advertising. Even the locals go to him. Honest, boss, it’s not worth getting mixed up in this business. He doesn’t pay us that much for the girls, you know.”
“The locals go to him, too?”
“The young people, mostly.”
“Well, what happens on these picnics?”
“What happens? We go there on buses, see? And when we get there everything is set up—tables, tents, music. And everyone lives it up. The officers usually go with the girls. The tourists go look at the Zone-if it’s at the Hot Springs, the Zone is just a stone’s throw away, on the other side of the Sulphur Gorge. Buzzard has thrown a lot of horse bones around there and they look at them through binoculars.”
“And the locals?”
“The locals? Well, that doesn’t interest the locals, of course. They amuse themselves in other ways.”
“And Burbridge?”
“Burbridge? Burbridge … is like everybody else.”
“And you?”
“Me? I’m like everybody else. I watch to see that the girls aren’t hurt … and, well, like everybody else, basically.”
“And how long does all this go on?”
“Depends. Three days, sometimes, sometimes a whole week.”
“And how much does this pleasure trip cost?” Noonan asked, thinking about something else entirely. Mosul answered something, but Noonan didn’t hear him. That’s the ticket, Noonan thought. Several days, several nights. Under those conditions, it’s simply impossible to keep an eye on Burbridge, even if you tried. But still he didn’t understand. Burbridge was legless, and there was the gorge. No, there was something else there.
“Which locals are steady customers?”
“Locals? I told you, mostly the young ones. You know, Halevy, Rajba, Chicken Tsapfa, that Zmyg guy—and the Maltese often goes. A cute little group. They call it Sunday school. Shall we go to Sunday school, they say. They concentrate on the old ladies, make pretty good money. Some old broad from Europe….”
“Sunday school,” Noonan repeated.
A strange thought came to him. School. He rose.
“All right,” he said. “The hell with the picnics. That’s not for us. But get it straight: Buzzard has swag, and that’s our business, pal. Look for it, Mosul, look for it, or I’ll throw you to the dogs. Where does he get it, who gives it to him? Find out and we’ll give twenty percent more than he does. Got it?”
“Got it, boss.” Mosul was standing, too, at attention, loyalty on his blood-smeared face.
“Move it! Use your brains, you animal!” Noonan shouted and left.
Back at the bar he quickly drank his aperitif, had a chat with Madame about the decline in morality, hinted that he was planning to expand the operation, and lowering his voice for emphasis, asked for her advice on what to do about Benny-the old guy was getting old, he was deaf, his reaction time was off, and he didn’t get along like he used to. It was six already and he was hungry. A thought was drilling through his brain, out of nowhere but at the same time explaining a lot. Actually, a lot had become clear by now anyway and the mystical aura that irritated and frightened him about this business was gone. All that was left was disappointment in himself because he had not thought of the possibility earlier. But the most important thing was the thought that kept floating in his head and giving him no peace.
He said good-bye to Madame and shook Penny’s hand, and headed straight for the Borscht. The whole trouble is that we don’t notice the years slipping by, Noonan thought. The hell with the years, we don’t notice everything changing. We know that everything changes, we’re taught from childhood that everything changes, and we’ve seen everything change with our own eyes many a time, and yet we’re totally incapable of recognizing the moment when the change comes or else we look for the change in the wrong place. There are new stalkers now, created by cybernetics. The old stalker was a dirty, sullen man who crawled inch by inch through the Zone on his belly with mulish stubbornness, gathering his nest egg. The new stalker was a dandy in a silk tie, an engineer sitting a mile or so away from the Zone, a cigarette in his mouth, a glass with a pleasant brew at his elbow, and all he does is sit and monitor some screens. A salaried gentleman. A very logical picture. So logical that any alternative just did not come to mind. But there were other possibilities—the Sunday school, for one.
And suddenly, from nowhere, a wave of despair engulfed him. It was all useless. Pointless. My God, he thought, we won’t be able to do a thing! We won’t have the power to contain this blight, he thought in horror. Not because we don’t work well. And not because they’re smarter and more clever either. It’s just that that’s the way the world is. And that’s the way man is in this world. If there had never been the Visitation, there would have been something else. Pigs always find mud.
The Borscht was lit up and gave off a delicious smell. The Borscht had changed, too. No more dancing, no more fun. Gutalin didn’t go there any more, he was turned off by it, and Redrick Schuhart probably had stuck his nose in, made a face, and left. Ernest was still in stir and his old lady finally got to run the place. She built up a solid steady clientele; the entire institute lunched there, including the senior officers. The booths were cozy, the food good, the prices reasonable, and the beer bubbly. A good old-fashioned pub.
Noonan saw Valentine Pilman in one of the booths. The laureate was drinking coffee and reading a magazine he had folded in half. Noonan approached him.
“May I join you?”
Valentine turned his dark glasses on him.
“Ah,” he said. “Please do.”
“Just a second, I’ll wash up first.” He had remembered Mosul’s nose.
He was well known there. When he got back to Valentine’s booth, there was a plate of steaming sausages and a mug of beer—not cold and not warm, just the way he liked it—on the table. Valentine put down the magazine and took a sip of coffee.
“Listen, Valentine,” Noonan said, cutting the meat. “What do you think, how will all this end?”
“What?”
“The Visitation. The Zones, the stalkers, the military-industrial complexes—the whole lot. How can it all end’” Valentine looked at him for a long time with his blind black lenses.
“For whom? Be specific.”
“Well, say for our part of the planet.”
“That depends on whether we have luck or not. We now know that in our part of the planet the Visitation left no aftereffects, for the most part. That does not rule out, of course, the possibility that in pulling all these chestnuts out of the fire, we may pull out some thing that will make life impossible not only for us, but for the entire planet. That would be bad luck. But, you must admit, such a threat always hovers over mankind.” He chuckled. “You see, I’ve long lost the habit of talking about mankind in general. Humanity as a whole is too fixed a system, there’s no changing it.”