“You’ve been out cold for forty-eight hours,” he said. “You had a high fever, chills, the works. What happened to you and Downing?”
“How’s Esmeralda?” I demanded.
“Huh? Exploded about half a million miles off. The atomics went.” ^
“Did anybody get it to ISN for me?”
“Couldn’t. Interplanetary phones are out again. You seem to have got the last clear call through to Gammadion. And you put a bullet through your ethertype—”
“/ did? Like hell—Downing did!”
“Oh? Well, that makes better sense. The fact is, Downing’s dead. He went crazy with that gun of his and Chief Selig shot him. But old Portwanger said you broke the ethertype when you got the gun away from Downing for a minute— no, that doesn’t make sense. What’s the old guy up to?”
“I don’t give a damn. You see my pants anywhere? I want to get that printer fixed.”
He helped me dress. I was a little weak on my pins and he insisted on pouring expensive eggnog into me before he’d let me go to the bureau.
Downing hadn’t done much of a job, or maybe you cant do much of a job on an ethertype without running it through an induction furnace. Everything comes apart, everything’s replaceable. With a lot of thumbing through the handbook I had all the busted bits and pieces out and new ones in. The adjustment was harder, needing two pairs of eyes. Chenery watched the meters while I turned the screws. In about four hours I was ready to call. I punched out:
NOTE MARSBUO ISN. FRBBUO RESTORED TO SVC AFTR MECHNCL TRBL ETILLNESS.
The machine spat back:
NOTE FRBBUO. HW ELLNSS COINCDE WTH MJR DISSTR YR TRRTRY? FYI GAMMADION BUO ISN OUTRCHD FR ESMERALDA AFTR YR INXPLCBL SLNCE ETWS BDLY BTN GAMMADION BUGS COM-PTSHN. MCG END.
He didn’t want to hear any more about it. I could see him stalking away from the printer to the copydesk slot to chew his way viciously through wordage for the major splits. I wished I could see in my mind’s eye Ellie slipping over to the Krueger 60-B circuit sending printer and punching out a word or two of kindness—the machine stirred again. It said: “JOE JOE HOW COULD YOU? ELLIE”
Oh, God.
“Leave me alone, will you?” I asked Chenery.
“Sure—sure. Anything you say,” he humored me, and slipped out.
I sat for a while at the desk, noticing mat the smashed phone connection had been installed again, that the place had been policed up.
Leon Portwanger came waddling in with a bottle in his hand. “I have here some prune brandy,” he said.
Things began to clear up. “You gave me that mickey,” I said slowly. “And you’ve been lying about me. You said I wrecked the ethertype.”
“You are a determinist and I was trying to save your life,” he said, setting down two glasses and filling them. “Take your choice and I will have the other. No micfceys.” I picked one and gulped it down—nasty, too-sweet stuff that tasted like plum peelings. He sipped his and seemed to enjoy it.
“I thought,” he said, “that you were in with their gang. What was I to think? They got rid of poor Kennedy. Pneumonia! You too would have pneumonia if they drenched you with water and put you on the roof in your underwear overnight. The bottles were planted here. He used to drink a little with me, he used to get drunk now and then— so did I—nothing bad.”
“You thought I was in their gang,” I said. “What gang are you in?”
“The Frostbite Interplanetary Party,” he said wryly. “I would smile with you if the joke were not on me. I know, I know—we are Outs who want to be Ins, we are neurotic youngsters, .we are led by stooges of the Planetary Party. So what should I do—start a one-man party alone on a mountain-top, so pure that I must blackball everybody except myself from membership? I am an incorrigible reformer and idealist whether I like it or not—and sometimes, I assure you, I don’t like it very weD.
“Kennedy was no reformer and idealist. He was a prag-matist, a good man who .wanted a good news story that would incidentally blow the present administration up. He used me, I used him. He got his story and they killed him and burglarized the bureau to remove all traces of it. Or did they?”