“Yes,” I said sympathetically. “I understand you very well. But for me it’s all too stale.”
“Slug is what he needs,” said Eli in his bass voice.
“What’s that again?”
“Slug is what I said.”
Roundhead puckered in distaste.
“Aw, come on, Eli. What’s with you today?”
“I don’t give a hoot for the likes of him,” said Eli. “I just don’t like these guys. Everything is insipid for him, nothing suits him.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said roundhead. “He hasn’t slept all night and is very tired.”
“Well, why not,” I contradicted. “I am quite interested. What is this slug?”
Roundhead puckered his face again.
“It’s not decent, you understand?” he said. “Don’t listen to Eli, he is a good enough guy, a simple fellow, but it’s nothing for him to lambaste a man. It’s a bad term. Certain types have taken to writing it all over the walls. Hooligans, that’s what they are, right? The snot-noses hardly know what it’s about, but they write anyway. See how we had to plane off the railing? Some son of a bitch carved into it, and if I catch him, I’ll turn his hide inside out. We do have women coming here too.”
“Tell him,” pronounced Eli, addressing himself to roundhead, “that he should get hold of a slug and quiet down. Let him find Buba…”
“Will you shut up, Eli?” said roundhead, now angry. “Don’t pay any attention to him.”
Having heard the name Buba, I helped myself to another drink and settled more comfortably on the railing.
“What’s it all about?” I said. “Some kind of secret vice?”
“Secret!” boomed Eli, and let out an obscene horselaugh.
Roundhead laughed, too.
“Nothing can be a secret here,” he said. “What had of secrets can there be when people are living it up at the age of fifteen? The dopes, the Intels, manufacture secrets. They’d like to get a fracas going on the twenty-eighth, they are all in a huddle, took some mine launchers out of town recently to hide them, like kids, honest to God! Right, Eli?”
“Tell him,” the good simple fellow Eli was persisting. “Tell him to be off to Hell and gone. And don’t go protecting him. Just tell him to go to Buba at the Oasis and that’s that.”
He threw my wallet and form on the railing. I finished the whiskey. Roundhead said soberly, “Of course, it’s entirely up to you, but my advice is to stay away from that stuff. Maybe we’ll all come to it someday, but the later, the better. I can’t even explain it to you, I only feel that it is like the grave: never too late and always too soon.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“He even thanks you.” Eli let loose another horselaugh. “Have you seen anything like it! He thanks you!”
“We kept three dollars,” said roundhead. “You can tear up the blank. Or let me tear it up. God forbid something should happen to you, the police will come looking to us.”
“To be honest with you,” I said, putting the wallet away, “I don’t understand how they haven’t closed your office already.”
“Everything is on the up and up with us,” said roundhead. “If you don’t want any, no one is forcing you. But if something should happen, it’s your own fault.”
“No one is forcing the drug addicts either,” I retorted.
“That’s some comparison! Drugs are a profiteering corrupt business!”
“Well, okay, I’ll be seeing you,” I said. “Thanks, fellows. Where did you say to look for Buba?”
“At the Oasis,” boomed Eli. “It’s a cafe. Beat it.”
“What a polite fellow you are, my friend,” I said. “It gets me right in my heart.”
“Go on, beat it,” repeated Eli. “Stinking Intel.”
“Don’t get so excited, pal,” I said, “or you’ll earn yourself an ulcer. Save your stomach, it’s your most valuable possession.”
Eli started to move slowly out from behind the railing, and I left. My shoulder had started to ache again.
A warm, heavy rain was falling outside. The leaves on the trees shone wetly and joyfully, there was a smell of ozone, freshness and thunderstorm. I stopped a taxi and named the Oasis. The street ran with fresh streams, and the city was so pretty and comfortable that it seemed improper to think of the moldy and abandoned Subway.
The rain was pelting in full swing when I jumped out of the car, ran across the sidewalk, and burst into the Oasis. There were quite a few people, most of them were eating, including the bartender, who was spooning some soup out of a dish placed among drinking glasses. Those who had finished eating sat smoking and abstractedly staring out of the streaming window at the street. I approached the bar and inquired in a low voice whether Buba was there. The bartender put down his spoon and surveyed the room.
“Naah,” he said. “Why don’t you have something to eat now, and he’ll be along soon enough.”
“How soon?”
“Twenty minutes, half an hour maybe.”
“So!” I said. “In that case I’ll have dinner, and then I’ll come over and you can point him out to me.”
“Uhuh,” said the bartender, returning to his soup.
I picked up a tray, collected some sort of a meal, and sat down by the window away from the rest of the patrons. I wanted to think. I sensed that there was enough data to ponder the problem effectively. Some sort of pattern seemed to be forming. Boxes of Devon in the bathroom. Pore-nose spoke about Buba and Devon (in whispers). Eli talked of Buba and “slug.” A clear chain of links — bath, Devon, Buba, slug. Further: the sunburned fellow with the muscles cautioned that Devon was the worst of junk, while the roundhead saw no difference between slug and the grave. It all had to fit together. It seemed to be what we were looking for. If so, then Rimeyer had done the right thing to send me to the Fishers. Rimeyer, I said to myself, why did you send me to the Fishers? And even order me to do as I was told and not to fuss about it? And you didn’t know, after all, that I was a spaceman, Rimeyer. If you did know, there were still the other games with bullets and “one against twelve,” besides the demented cyber. You really took a dislike to me for something or other, Rimeyer. Somehow I have crossed you. But no, said I, this cannot be. It is simply that you did not trust me, Rimeyer. It is simply that there is something that I do not know yet. For example, I do net know just who this Oscar is who trades in Devon in this resort city and who is connected with you, Rimeyer. Most likely you have been meeting with Oscar before our conversation in the elevator … I don’t want to think about that.
There he was lying like a dead man and here I was thinking such things about him when he could not defend himself. Suddenly I felt a repulsive cold crawling feeling inside. All right, suppose we trapped this gang. What would change? The shivers would remain, lop-eared Len would be up all night as before, Vousi would be coming home disgustingly drunk, while customs inspector Pete would be smashing his face into broken glass. And all would be concerned about the “good of the people.” Some would be irrigated with tear gas, some would be driven into the ground up to their ears, others would be converted from apehood into something which passes muster as human…. And then the shivers would go out of style and the people would be presented with the super-shivers, while in lieu of the extirpated slug a super-slug would surface. Everything would be for the good of the people. Have fun, Boobland, and don’t think about a thing!
Two men in cloaks sat down at the next table with their trays. One of them seemed to me in some way familiar. He had a haughty thoroughbred face, and were it not for a thick white bandage on the left side of his jaw, I was sure I would recognize him. The other was a ruddy man with a bald pate and fussy movements. They were speaking quietly, but not so as to be inaudible, and I could hear them quite well where I was sitting.
“Understand me correctly,” the ruddy one said with conviction while hurriedly consuming his schnitzel, “I am not at all against theaters and museums. But the allocation for the municipal theater for the past year has not been expended fully, while only tourists visit the museums.”
“Also picture thieves,” inserted the man with the bandage.
“Drop that, please, we don’t have pictures that are worth the theft. Thank God, they have learned how to synthesize Sistine Madonnas out of sawdust. I wish to call your attention to the point that dissemination of culture in our time must occur in an entirely different manner. Culture must not be inculcated into the people, rather it must emanate from the people. Public chorister, do-it-yourself groups, mass games — that is what our public needs.”