Lars said, “I think I’m sick. I’m involved in a delusional world. I ought to have been a pursap—without my talent as a medium I would be, I wouldn’t know what I know; I wouldn’t be on the inside looking out. I’d be one of those fans of Lucky Bagman and his morning TV interview show that accepts what he’s told, knows it’s true because he saw it on that big screen with all those stereo colors, richer than life. It’s fine while I’m actually in the comatose state, in the damn trance; there I’m fully involved. Nothing off in a corner of my mind jeers.”
” ‘Jeers.’ What do you mean?” Pete eyed him anxiously.
“Doesn’t something inside you jeer?” He was amazed.
“Hell no! Something inside me says, You’re worth twice the poscreds they’re paying you; that’s what something inside me says, and it’s right. I mean to take that up with Jack Lanferman one of these days.” Pete glared in self-righteous anger.
“I thought you felt the same way,” Lars said. And come to think of it, he had assumed that all of them, even General George McFarlane Nitz, stood in relationship to what they were doing as he stood: corrupted by shame, afflicted with the sense of guilt that made it impossible for him to meet anyone eye-to-eye.
“Let’s go down to the corner and have a cup of coffee,” Pete said.
“It’s time for a break.”
5
The coffee house as an institution, Lars knew, had great historicity behind it. This one invention had cleared the cobwebs from the minds of the English intellectuals at the period of Samuel Johnson, had eradicated the fog inherited from the seventeenth century’s pubs. The insidious stout, sack and ale had generated—not wisdom, sparkling wit, poetry or even political clarity—but muddied resentment, mutual and pervasive, that had degenerated into religious bigotry. That, and the pox, had decimated a great nation.
Coffee had reversed the trend. History had taken a decisive new turn… and all because of a few beans frozen in the snow which the defenders of Vienna had discovered after the Turks had withdrawn.
And here, already in a booth, cup in hand, sat small, pretty Miss Bedouin, with her pointed silver-tipped breasts fashionably in sight. She greeted him as he entered “Mr. Lars! Sit with me, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and he and Pete shuffled and squeezed in on both sides of her.
Surveying Miss Bedouin, Pete interlaced his fingers and rested his hairy arms on the table of the booth. He said to her, “Hey, how come you can’t beat out that girl he keeps to run his Paris office, that Maren something?”
“Mr. Freid,” Miss Bedouin said, “I’m not sexually interested in anyone.”
Grinning, Pete glanced at Lars. “She’s candid.”
Candor, Lars thought, at Mr. Lars, Incorporated. Ironic! A waste. But then Miss Bedouin didn’t know what went on. She was sublimely pursap. As if the era before the Fall had been re-established for roughly four billion citizens of Wes-bloc and Peep-East. The burden, which had once been everyone’s rested now on the cogs alone. The cognoscenti had relieved their race of a curse… if “cog” really derived from that and not, as he suspected, from an English rather than Italian word.
The English archaic definition had always seemed almost supernaturally apt to him. Cog. Using one’s finger as a sort of cog to guide or hold the dice; i.e. to cozen, wheedle; to cheat.
But I could be candid, too, he thought, if I didn’t know anything: I see no particular merit in that. Since Medieval times a fool—no offense to you, Miss Bedouin—has been permitted the liberty of wagging his tongue. But suppose, just for this one moment, as we sit pressed together in this booth, the three of us, two cog males and one dainty silver-tipped pursap girl whose cardinal preoccupation resides in a perpetual concern that her admittedly lovely little pointed breasts be as conspicuous as possible… suppose I could cheerfully pass back and forth as you do, without the need to sharply split what I know from what I say.
The wound would be healed, he decided. No more pills. No more nights of being unable—or unwilling—to sleep.
“Miss Bedouin,” he said. “I actually am in love with you. But don’t misunderstand. I’m talking about a spiritual love. Not carnal.”
“Okay,” Miss Bedouin said.
“Because,” Lars said, “I admire you.”
“You admire her so much,” Pete said grumblingly, “that you can’t go to bed with her? Kid stuff! How old are you, Lars? Real love means going to bed, like in marriage. Aren’t I right, Miss whatever-your-name-is? If Lars really loved you—”
“Let me explain,” Lars said.
“Nobody wants to hear your explanation,” Pete said.
“Give me a chance,” Lars said. “I admire her position.”
” ‘Not so perpendicular,’ ” Pete said, quoting the great old-time composer and poet of the last century, Marc Blitzstein.
Flaring up, Miss Bedouin said, “I am too perpendicular. That’s what I just now told you. And not only that—”
She ceased, because a small, elderly man with the final glimmerings of white hair coating irregularly a pinkish, almost glowing scalp, had abruptly appeared by their booth. He wore ancient lens-glasses, carried a briefcase, and his manner was a mixture of timidity and determination, as if he could not turn back now, but would have liked to.
Pete said, “A salesman.”
“No,” Miss Bedouin said. “Not well dressed enough.”
“Process-server,” Lars said; the elderly, short gentleman had an official look to him. “Am I right?” he asked.
The elderly gentleman said haltingly, “Mr. Lars?”
“That’s me,” Lars said; evidently his guess had been correct.
“Autograph collector,” Miss Bedouin said, in triumph. “He wants your autograph, Mr. Lars; he recognizes you.”
“He’s not a bum,” Pete added reflectively. “Look at that stickpin in his tie. That’s a real cut stone. But who today wears—”
“Mr. Lars,” the elderly gentleman said, and managed to seat himself precariously at the rim of the booth. He laid his briefcase before him, clearing aside the sugar, salt and empty coffee cups. “Forgive me that I am bothering you. But—a problem.” His voice was low, frail. He had about him a Santa Claus quality, and yet he had come on business, something firmer and without sentiment. He employed no elves and he was not here to give away toys. He was an expert: it showed in the way he rooted in his briefcase.
All at once Pete nudged Lars and pointed. Lars saw, at an empty booth near the door, two younger men with vapid, cod-like, underwater faces; they had entered along with this odd fellow and were keeping an eye on matters.
At once Lars reached into his coat, whipped out the document he carried constantly with him. To Miss Bedouin he said, “Call a cop.”
She blinked, half-rose to her feet.
“Go on,” Pete said roughly to her; then, raising his voice, said loudly, “Somebody get a cop!”
“Please,” the elderly gentleman said, pleadingly but with a trace of annoyance. “Just a few words. There’s something we don’t understand.” He now had in sight pics, glossy color shots which Lars recognized. These consisted of KACH-accumulated reproductions of his own earlier sketches, the 260 through 265 sequence, plus shots of final accurate specs drawn up for presentation to Lanferman Associates.
Lars, unfolding his document, said to the elderly man, “This is a writ of restraint. You know what it says?”
Distastefully, with reluctance, the elderly man nodded.
“Any and every official of the Government of the Soviet Union,” Lars said, “of Peoples’ China, Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic,—”
“Yes, yes,” the elderly gentleman agreed, nodding.
” ‘—and all other ethnic or national entities comprising the political entity Peep-East, is restrained and enjoined during the pendency of this action from harassing, annoying, molesting, threatening or striking the plaintiff—myself, Lars Powderdry—or in any manner occupying him or being upon or within proximity so that—’ ”
“Okay,” the elderly gentleman said. “I am a Soviet official. Legally I cannot talk to you; we know that, Mr. Lars. But this sketch, your number 265. See?” He turned the KACH-manufactured glossy for Lars to examine; Lars ignored it. “Someone in your staff wrote on this that it is—” the wrinkled, plump finger traced the English words at the foot of the sketch—”is ‘Evolution Gun.’ Correct?”
Pete said loudly, “Yes, and watch out or it’ll turn you back into protoplasmic slime.”
“No, not the trance-sketch,” the Soviet official said, and chuckled slyly. “Must have prototype. You are from Lanferman Associates? You make up the model and prove-test? Yes, I think you are. I am Aksel Kaminsky.” He held out his hand to Pete. “You are—?”
A New York City patrol ship flopped to the pavement before the coffee shop. Two uniformed policemen hastened, hand at holster, through the doorway with glances that took in everyone, anything or person capable of harm, activity and/or motion—and most particularly those who might be able to in any fashion, wise or manner whatsoever draw a weapon of their own.