As he sat in the rear, spooning up the amorphous chili and tearing out chunks of the sticky, pale, thick bread which accompanied it, Himmel saw a shape bearing down on him, a tangle-haired Anglo-Saxon wearing a leather jacket, jeans, boots, and gloves, an altogether absolutely attired individual seemingly from another era entirely. This was Christian Plout, who drove an ancient turbine-powered taxi in Tijuana; he had hidden out in Lower California for a decade now, being in disagreement with the Los Angeles authorities over an issue involving the sale of capstene, a drug derived from the fly agaric mushroom. Himmel knew him slightly because Plout, like himself, gleeked Taoism.
‘Salve, amicus,’ Plout intoned, sliding into the booth to face Himmel.
‘Greetings,’ Himmel mumbled, his mouth full of burdeningly hot chili. ‘What’s new?’ Plout always had in his possession the latest. During the course of his day, cruising about Tijuana in his cab, he happened across everyone. If it existed, Chris Plout was on hand to witness it and, if possible, extract some gain. Plout, basically, was a bundle of sidelines.
‘Listen,’ Plout said, leaning toward him, his sand-colored dry face wrinkled in concentration. ‘See this?’ From his clenched fist he rolled across the table a capsule; instantly his palm covered the capsule and it had disappeared once more as suddenly as it had manifested itself.
‘I see it,’ Himmel said, continuing to eat.
Twitching, Plout whispered, ‘Hey, hee-hoo. This is JJ-180.’
‘What’s that?’ Himmel felt sullenly suspicious; he wished Plout would shamble back out of the Xanthus in search of other prospects.
‘JJ-180,’ Plout said in an almost inaudible voice, sitting hunched forward so that his face nearly touched Himmel’s, ‘is the German name for the drug that’s about to be marketed in South America as Frohedadrine. A German chemical firm invented it; the pharmaceutical house in Argentina is their cover. They can’t get it into the US A; in fact it isn’t even easy to get it here in Mexico, if you can believe that.’ He grinned, showing his irregular, stained teeth. Even his tongue, Himmel noted once again with disgust, had a peculiar tinge, as if corrupted by some unnatural substance. He drew away in aversion.
‘I thought everything was available here in Tijuana,’ Himmel said.
‘So did I. That’s what interested me in this JJ-180. So I picked some up.’
‘Have you taken it yet?’
‘Tonight,’ Plout said. ‘At my place. I got five caps, one of them for you. If you are interested.’
‘What’s it do?’ Somehow that seemed pertinent.
Plout, undulating with an internal rhythm, said, ‘Hallucinogenic. But more than that. Whee, whoo, fic-fic.’ His eyes glazed over and he retreated into himself, grinning with beatitude. Himmel waited; at last Plout returned. ‘Varies from person to person. Somehow involved with your sense of what Kant called the “categories of perception.” Get it?’
‘That would be your sense of time and space,’ Himmel said, having read the Critique of Pure Reason, it being his style of prose as well as thought. In his small conapt he kept a paperback copy of it, well marked.
‘Right! It alters your perception of time in particular, so it ought to be called a tempogogic drug – correct?’ Plout seemed transported by his insight. ‘The first tempogogic drug … or rather maltempogogic, to be precise. Unless you believe what you experience.’
Himmel said, ‘I have to get back to TF&D.’ He started to rise.
Pressing him back down, Plout said, ‘Fifty bucks. US.’
‘W-what?’
‘For a cap. Creaker, it’s rare. First I’ve seen.’ Once more Plout allowed the capsule to roll briefly across the table. ‘I hate to give it up but it’ll be an experience; we’ll find the Tao, the five of us. Isn’t it worth fifty US dollars to find the Tao during this nurty war? You may never see JJ-180 again; the Mex coonks are getting ready to crack down on shipments from Argentina or wherever it comes from. And they’re good.’
‘It’s really that different from—’
‘Oh yes! Listen, Himmel. You know what I almost ran over with my cab just now? One of your little carts. I could have squashed it but I didn’t. I see them all the time; I could squash hundreds of them … I go by TF&D every few hours. I’ll tell you something else: the Tijuana authorities are asking me if I know where these goddam little carts are coming from. I told ’em I don’t know . .. but so help me, if we don’t all merge with the Tao tonight I might—’
‘Okay,’ Himmel said with a groan. ‘I’ll buy a capsule from you.’ He dug for his wallet, considering this a shakedown, expecting nothing, really, for his money. Tonight would be a hollow fraud.
He couldn’t have been further wrong.
——————————————————————————–
Gino Molinari, supreme leader of Terra in its war against the reegs, wore khaki, as usual, with his sole military decoration on his breast, his Golden Cross First Class, awarded by the UN General Assembly fifteen years before. Molinari, Dr Eric Sweetscent noted, badly needed a shave; the lower portion of his face was stubbled, stained by a grime and sootlike blackness that had risen massively to the surface from deep within. His shoelaces, after the manner of his fly, were undone.
The appearance of the man, Eric thought, is appalling.
Molinari did not raise his head and his expression remained dull and unfocused as Virgil’s party filed one by one into the room, saw him, and gulped in dumbfoundment. He was very obviously a sick and worn-out man; the general public impression was, it would seem, quite accurate.
To Eric’s surprise he saw that in real life the Mole looked exactly as he had of late on TV, no greater, no sturdier, no more in command. It seemed impossible but it was so, and yet he was in command; in every legal sense he had retained his positions of power, yielding to no one – at any rate, no one on Terra. Nor, Eric realized suddenly, did Molinari intend to step down, despite his obviously deteriorated psycho-physical condition. Somehow that was clear, made so by the man’s utterly slack stance, his willingness to appear this natu-ral way to a collection of rather potent personages. The Mole remained as he was, with no poise, no posture of the militant heroic. Either he was too far gone to care, or – Eric thought. Or there is too much of genuine importance at stake for him to waste his waning strength at merely impressing people, and especially those of his own planet. The Mole had passed beyond that.
For better or worse.
To Eric, Virgil Ackerman said in a low voice, ‘You’re a doctor. You are going to have to ask him if he needs medical attention.’ He, too, seemed concerned.
Eric looked toward Virgil and thought, I was brought here for this. It has all been arranged for this, for me to meet Molinari. Everything else, all the other people – a cover. To fool the ‘Starmen. I see that now; I see what this is and what they want me to do. I see, he realized, whom I must heal; this is the man whom my skills and talents must, from this point on, exist for. The must; it is put that way. The must of the situation: this is it.
Bending, he said haltingly, ‘Mr Secretary General—’ His voice shook. But it was not awe that stopped him – the reclining man certainly did not promote that emotion – but ignorance; he simply did not know what to say to a man holding such an office. ‘I’m a GP,’ he said finally, and rather emptily, he realized. ‘As well as an org-trans surgeon.’ He paused; there came no response, visible or audible. ‘While you’re here at Wash—’
All at once Molinari raised his head; his eyes cleared. He focused on Eric Sweetscent, then abruptly, startlingly, boomed in his familiar low-toned voice, ‘Hell on that, doctor. I’m okay.’ He smiled; it was a brief but innately human smile, one of understanding at Eric’s clumsy, labored efforts. ‘Enjoy yourself! Live it up 1935 style! Was that during prohibition? No, I guess that was earlier. Have a Pepsi-Cola.’
‘I was about to try a raspberry Kool-Aid,’ Eric said, regaining some of his aplomb; his heart rate returned now to normal.
Molinari said jovially, ‘Quite a construct old Virgil has, here. I took the opportunity to glim it over. I ought to nationalize the fniggin’ thing; too much private capital invested here, should be in the planet’s war effort.’ His half-joking tone was, underneath, starkly serious; obviously this elaborate artifact distressed him. Molinari, as all citizens of Terra knew, lived an ascetic life, yet oddly intersticed with infrequent interludes of priapic, little-revealed sybaritic indulgence. Of late, however, the binges were said to have tapered off.
‘This individual is Dr Eric Sweetscent,’ Virgil said. ‘The goddam finest nugging org-trans surgeon on Terra, as you well know from the GHQ personnel dossiers; he’s put twenty-five – or is it -six? – separate artiforgs in me during the last decade, but I’ve paid for it; he rakes in a fat haul every month. Not quite so fat a haul, though, as his ever-loving wife.’ He grinned at Eric, his fleshless elongated face genial in a fatherly way.