“Both.”
The little window opened; a cup of coffee, two tiny paper-wrapped sacks of sugar and a test-tube-like container of cream slid forward and came to rest before him on the counter.
“One international poscred, please,” the speaker said.
Joe said, “Charge this to the account of Glen Runciter of Runciter Associates, New York.”
“Insert the proper credit card,” the speaker said.
“They haven’t let me carry around a credit card in five years,” Joe said. “I’m still paying off what I charged back in-”
“One poscred, please,” the speaker said. It began to tick ominously. “Or in ten seconds I will notify the police.”
He passed the poscred over. The ticking stopped.
“We can do without your kind,” the speaker said.
“One of these days,” Joe said wrathfully, “people like me will rise up and overthrow you, and the end of tyranny by the homeostatic machine will have arrived. The day of human values and compassion and simple warmth will return, and when that happens someone like myself who has gone through an ordeal and who genuinely needs hot coffee to pick him up and keep him functioning when he has to function will get the hot coffee whether he happens to have a poscred readily available or not.” He lifted the miniature pitcher of cream, then set it down. “And furthermore, your cream or milk or whatever it is, is sour.”
The speaker remained silent.
“Aren’t you going to do anything?” Joe said. “You had plenty to say when you wanted a poscred.”
The pay door of the coffee shop opened and Al Hammond came in; he walked over to Joe and seated himself beside him. “The moratorium has Runciter in their chopper. They’re ready to take off and they want to know if you intend to ride with them.”
Joe said, “Look at this cream.” He held up the pitcher; in it the fluid plastered the sides in dense clots. “This is what you get for a poscred in one of the most modern, technologically advanced cities on Earth. I’m not leaving here until this place makes an adjustment, either returning my poscred or giving me a replacement pitcher of fresh cream so I can drink my coffee.”
Putting his hand on Joe’s shoulder, Al Hammond studied him. “What’s the matter, Joe?”
“First my cigarette,” Joe said. “Then the two-year-old obsolete phone book in the ship. And now they’re serving me week-old sour cream. I don’t get it, Al.”
“Drink the coffee black,” Al said. “And get over to the chopper so they can take Runciter to the moratorium. The rest of us will wait in the ship until you come back. And then we’ll head for the nearest Society office and make a full report to them.”
Joe picked up the coffee cup, and found the coffee cold, inert and ancient; a scummy mold covered the surface. He set the cup back down in revulsion. What’s going on? he thought. What’s happening to me? His revulsion became, all at once, a weird, nebulous panic.
“Come on, Joe,” Al said, his hand closing firmly around Joe’s shoulder. “Forget the coffee; it isn’t important. What matters is getting Runciter to-”
“You know who gave me that poscred?” Joe said. “Pat Conley. And right away I did what I always do with money; I frittered it away on nothing. On last year’s cup of coffee.” He got down from the stool, urged off it by Al Hammond’s hand. “How about coming with me to the moratorium? I need back-up help, especially when I go to confer with Ella. What should we do, blame it on Runciter? Say it was his decision for us all to go to Luna? That’s the truth. Or maybe we should tell her something else, tell her his ship crashed or he died of natural causes.”
“But Runciter will eventually be linked up to her,” Al said. “And he’ll tell her the truth. So you have to tell her the truth.”
They left the coffee shop and made their way to the chopper belonging to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. “Maybe I’ll let Runciter tell her,” Joe said as they boarded. “Why not? It was his decision for us to go to Luna; let him tell her himself. And he’s used to talking to her.”
“Ready, gentlemen?” von Vogelsang inquired, seated at the controls of the chopper. “Shall we wind our doleful steps in the direction of Mr. Runciter’s final home?”
Joe groaned and stared out through the window of the chopper, fixing his attention on the buildings that made up the installations of Zurich Field.
“Yeah, take off,” Al.said.
As the chopper left the ground the moratorium owner pressed a button on his control panel. Throughout the cabin of the chopper, from a dozen sources, the sound of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis rolled forth sonorously, the many voices saying, “Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,” over and over again, accompanied by an electronically augmented symphony orchestra.
“Did you know that Toscanini used to sing along with the singers when be conducted an opera?” Joe said. “That in his recording of Traviata you can hear him during the aria ‘Sempre Libera’?”
“I didn’t know that,” Al said. He watched the sleek, sturdy conapts of Zurich move by below, a dignified and stately procession which Joe also found himself watching.
“Libera me, Domine,” Joe said.
“What’s that mean?”
Joe said, “It means, ‘God have mercy on me.’ Don’t you know that? Doesn’t everybody know that?”
“What made you think of it?” Al said.
“The music, the goddam music.” To von Vogelsang he said, “Turn the music off. Runciter can’t hear it. I’m the only one who can hear it, and I don’t feel like hearing it.” To Al he said, “You don’t want to hear it, do you?”
Al said, “Calm down, Joe.”
“We’re carrying our dead employer to a place called the Beloved Brethren Moratorium,” Joe said, “and he says, ‘Calm down.’ You know, Runciter didn’t have to go with us to Luna; he could have dispatched us and stayed in New York. So now the most life-loving, full-living man I ever met has been-”
“Your dark-skinned companion’s advice is good,” the moratorium owner chimed in.
“What advice?” Joe said.
“To calm yourself.” Von Vogelsang opened the glove compartment of the chopper’s control panel; he handed Joe a merry multicolored box. “Chew one of these, Mr. Chip.”
“Tranquilizing gum,” Joe said, accepting the box; reflexively he opened it. “Peach-flavored tranquilizing gum.” To Al he said, “Do I have to take this?”
“You should,” Al said.
Joe said, “Runciter would never have taken a tranquilizer under circumstances of this sort. Glen Runciter never took a tranquilizer in his life. You know what I realize now, Al? He gave his life to save ours. In an indirect way.”
“Very indirect,” Al said. “Here we are,” he said; the chopper had begun to descend toward a target painted on a flat roof field below. “You think you can compose yourself?” he asked Joe.
“I can compose myself,” Joe said, “when I hear Runciter’s voice again. When I know some form of life, half-life, is still there.”
The moratorium owner said cheerily, “I wouldn’t worry on that score, Mr. Chip. We generally obtain an adequate protophasonic flow. At first. It is later, when the half-life period has expended itself, that the heartache arises. But, with sensible planning, that can be forestalled for many years.” He shut off the motor of the chopper, touched a stud which caused the cabin door to slide back. “Welcome to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium,” he said; he ushered the two of them out onto the roof field. “My personal secretary, Miss Beason, will escort you to a consultation lounge; if you will wait there, being subliminally influenced into peace of soul by the colors and textures surrounding you, I will have Mr. Runciter brought in as soon as my technicians establish contact with him.”
“I want to be present at the whole process,” Joe said. “I want to see your technicians bring him back.”
To Al, the moratorium owner said, “Maybe, as his friend, you can make him understand.”
“We have to wait in the lounge, Joe,” Al said.
Joe looked at him fiercely. “Uncle Tom,” he said.
“All the moratoriums work this way,” Al said. “Come on with me to the lounge.”
“How long will it take?” Joe asked the moratorium owner.
“We’ll know one way or another within the first fifteen minutes. If we haven’t gotten a measurable signal by then-”
“You’re only going to try for fifteen minutes?” Joe said. To Al he said, “They’re only going to try for fifteen minutes to bring back a man greater than all of us put together.” He felt like crying. Aloud. “Come on,” he said to Al. “Let’s-”
“You come on,” Al repeated. “To the lounge.”
Joe followed him into the lounge.
“Cigarette?” Al said, seating himself on a synthetic buffalo-hide couch; he held his pack up to Joe.