“They’re stale,” Joe said. He didn’t need to take one, to touch one, to know that.
“Yeah, so they are.” Al put the pack away. “How did you know?” He waited. “You get discouraged easier than anyone I ever ran into. We’re lucky to be alive; it could be us, all of us, in that cold-pac there. And Runciter sitting out here in this lounge with these nutty colors.” He looked at his watch.
Joe said, “All the cigarettes in the world are stale.” He examined his own watch. “Ten after.” He pondered, having many disjointed and unconnected brooding thoughts; they swam through him like silvery fish. Fears, and mild dislikes, and apprehensions. And all the silvery fish recirculating to begin once more as fear. “If Runciter were alive,” he said, “sitting out here in this lounge, everything would be okay. I know it but I don’t know why.” He wondered what was, at this moment, going on between the moratorium’s technicians and the remains of Glen Runciter. “Do you remember dentists?” he asked Al.
“I don’t remember, but I know what they were.”
“People’s teeth used to decay.”
“I realize that,” Al said.
“My father told me what it used to feel like, waiting in a dentist’s office. Every time the nurse opened the door you thought, It’s happening. The thing I’ve been afraid of all my life.”
“And that’s what you feel now?” Al asked.
“I feel, Christ, why doesn’t that halfwit sap who runs this place come in here and say he’s alive, Runciter’s alive. Or else he’s not. One way or another. Yes or no.”
“It’s almost always yes. Statistically, as Vogelsang said -”
“In this case it’ll be no.”
“You have no way of knowing that.” Joe said, “I wonder if Ray Hollis has an outlet here in Zurich.”
“Of course he has. But by the time you get a precog in here we’ll already know anyhow.”
“I’ll phone up a precog,” Joe said. “I’ll get one on the line right now.” He started to his feet, wondering where he could find a vidphone. “Give me a quarter.”
Al shook his head.
“In a manner of speaking,” Joe said, “you’re my employee; you have to do what I say or I’ll fire you. As soon as Runciter died I took over management of the firm. I’ve been in charge since the bomb went off; it was my decision to bring him here, and it’s my decision to rent the use of a precog for a couple of minutes. Let’s have the quarter.” He held out his hand.
“Runciter Associates,” Al said, “being run by a man who can’t keep fifty cents on him. Here’s a quarter.” He got it from his pocket, tossed it to Joe. “When you make out my paycheck add it on.”
Joe left the lounge and wandered down a corridor, rubbing his forehead blearily. This is an unnatural place, he thought. Halfway between the world and death. I am head of Runciter Associates now, he realized, except for Ella, who isn’t alive and can only speak if I visit this place and have her revived. I know the specifications in Glen Runciter’s will, which now have automatically gone into effect; I’m supposed to take over until Ella, or Ella and he if he can be revived, decide on someone to replace him. They have to agree; both wills make that mandatory. Maybe, he thought, they’ll decide I can do it on a permanent basis.
That’ll never come about, he realized. Not for someone who can’t manage his own personal fiscal responsibilities. That’s something else Hollis’ precog would know, he realized. I can find out from them whether or not I’ll be upgraded to director of the firm. That would be worth knowing, along with everything else. And I have to hire the precog anyhow.
“Which way to a public vidphone?” he asked a uniformed employee of the moratorium. The employee pointed. “Thanks,” he said, and wandered on, coming at last to the pay vidphone. He lifted the receiver, listened for the dial tone, and then dropped in the quarter which Al had given him.
The phone said, “I am sorry, sir, but I can’t accept obsolete money.” The quarter clattered out of the bottom of the phone and landed at his feet. Expelled in disgust.
“What do you mean?” he said, stooping awkwardly to retrieve the coin. “Since when is a North American Confederation quarter obsolete?”
“I am sorry, sir,” the phone said, “the coin which you put into me was not a North American Confederation quarter but a recalled issue of the United States of America’s Philadelphia mint. It is of merely numismatical interest now.”
Joe examined the quarter and saw, on its tarnished surface, the bas-relief profile of George Washington. And the date. The coin was forty years old. And, as the phone had said, long ago recalled.
“Having difficulties, sir?” a moratorium employee asked, walking over pleasantly. “I saw the phone expel your coin. May I examine it?” He held out his hand and Joe gave him the U.S. quarter. “I will trade you a current Swiss ten-franc token for this. Which the phone will accept.”
“Fine,” Joe said. He made the trade, dropped the ten-franc piece into the phone and dialed Hollis’ international toll-free number.
“Hollis Talents,” a polished female voice said in his ear and, on the screen, a girl’s face, modified by artificial beauty aids of an advanced nature, manifested itself. “Oh, Mr. Chip,” the girl said, recognizing him. “Mr. Hollis left word with us that you’d call. We’ve been expecting you all afternoon.”
Precogs, Joe thought.
“Mr. Hollis,” the girl said, “instructed us to put your call through to him; he wants to handle your needs personally. Would you hold on a moment while I put you through? So just a moment, Mr. Chip; the next voice that you hear will be Mr. Hollis’, God willing.” Her face vanished; he confronted a blank gray screen.
A grim blue face with recessive eyes swam into focus, a mysterious countenance floating without neck or body. The eyes reminded him of flawed jewels; they shone but the faceting had gone wrong; the eyes scattered light in irregular directions. “Hello, Mr. Chip.”
So this is what he looks like, Joe thought. Photographs haven’t caught this, the imperfect planes and surfaces, as if the whole brittle edifice had once been dropped, had broken, had then been reglued – but not quite as before. “The Society,” Joe said, “will receive a full report on your murder of Glen Runciter. They own a lot of legal talent; you’ll be in court the rest of your life.” He waited for the face to react, but it did not. “We know you did it,” he said, and felt the futility of it, the pointlessness of what he was doing.
“As to the purpose of your call,” Hollis said in a slithering voice which reminded Joe of snakes crawling over one another, “Mr. Runciter will not-”
Shaking, Joe hung up the receiver.
He walked back up the corridor along which he had come; he reached the lounge once more where Al Hammond sat morosely picking apart a dry-as-dust former cigarette. There was a moment of silence and then Al raised his head.
“It’s no,” Joe said.
“Vogelsang came around looking for you,” Al said. “He acted very strange, and it was obvious what’s been going on back there. Six will get you eight he’s afraid to tell you outright; he’ll probably go through a long routine but it’ll boil down like you say, it’ll boil down to no. So what now?” He waited.
“Now we get Hollis,” Joe said.
“We won’t get Hollis.”
“The Society-” He broke off. The owner of the moratorium had sidled into the lounge, looking nervous and haggard but attempting at the same time to emit an aura of detached, austere prowess.
“We did what we could. At such low temperatures the flow of current is virtually unimpeded; there’s no perceptible resistance at minus 150g. The signal should have bounced out clear and strong, but all we got from the amplifier was a sixty-cycle hum. Remember, however, that we did not supervise the original cold-pac installation. Bear that in mind.”
Al said, “We have it in mind.” He rose stiffly to his feet and stood facing Joe. “I guess that’s it.”
“I’ll talk to Ella,” Joe said.
“Now?” Al said. “You better wait until you know what you’re going to say. Tell her tomorrow. Go home and get some sleep.”
“To go home,” Joe said, “is to go home to Pat Conley. I’m in no shape to cope with her either.”
“Take a hotel room here in Zurich,” Al said. “Disappear. I’ll go back to the ship, tell the others, and report to the Society. You can delegate it to me in writing.” To von Vogelsang he said, “Bring us a pen and a sheet of paper.”
“You know who I feel like talking to?” Joe said, as the moratorium owner scuttled off in search of pen and paper. “Wendy Wright. She’ll know what to do, I value her opinion. Why is that? I wonder. I barely know her.” He noticed then that subtle background music hung over the lounge. It had been there all this time. The same as on the chopper. “Dies irae, dies illa,” the voices sang darkly. “Solvet saeclum in favilla, teste David cum Sybilla.” The Verdi Requiem, he realized. Von Vogelsang, probably personally with his own two hands, switched it on at nine A.M, every morning when he arrived for work.