“That would be a vug which calls itself U.S. Cummings,” Pete said. He had had a number of squabbles with that particular vug; he had found the creature to be particularly trying, in a nit-picking manner.
“The alternative,” Joe Schilling said thoughtfully, “would of course be to temporarily deed title to some of your remaining areas to me, but as I said before—”
“Aren’t you out of practice?” Pete said. “It’s been years since you played The Game.”
“Possibly,” Schilling conceded. “We’d soon find out, I hope, in time. I think—” He glanced toward the front of the store; another auto-auto had parked outside and a customer was entering.
It was a lovely red-headed girl, and both Pete and Joe temporarily forgot their conversation. The girl, evidently at a loss in the chaotic, littered store, wandered about aimlessly from stack to stack.
“I better go help her,” Joe Schilling said.
“Do you know her?” Pete asked.
“Never saw her before.” Pausing, Joe Schilling straightened his wrinkled, old-fashioned necktie, smoothed his vest. “Miss,” he said, walking toward the girl and smiling, “can I assist you?”
“Perhaps,” the red-headed girl said in a soft shy voice. She seemed self-conscious; glancing about her, not meeting Schilling’s intent gaze, she murmured, “Do you have any records by Nats Katz?”
“Good grief no,” Schilling said. He turned around and said to Pete, “My day’s ruined. A pretty girl comes in and asks for a Nats Katz record.” In chagrin, he walked back to Pete.
“Who’s Nats Katz?” Pete asked.
The girl, roused by amazement from her shyness, said, “You’ve never heard of Nats Katz?” Clearly, she could not believe it. “Why he’s on TV every night; he’s the greatest recording star of all time!”
Pete said, “Mr. Schilling here does not sell pops. Mr. Schilling sells only ancient classics.” He smiled at the girl. It
was hard, with the Hynes Gland operation, to assess a person’s age, but it seemed to him that the red-headed girl was quite young, perhaps no more than nineteen. “You should excuse Mr. Schilling’s reaction,” Pete said to her. “He’s an old man and set in his habits.”
Schilling grated, “Come on, now. I just don’t like popular ballad-belters.”
“Everybody’s heard of Nats,” the girl said, still indignant. “Even my mother and father, and they’re distinctly fnool. Nats’ last record, Walkin’ the Dog, has sold over five thousand copies. You’re both really strange people. You’re real fnools, for real.” Now she became shy again. “I guess I better go. So long.” She started toward the door of the shop.
“Wait,” Schilling said in an odd tone, starting after her. “Don’t I know you? Haven’t I seen a news-wire picture of you?”
“Maybe,” the girl said.
Schilling said, “You’re Mary Anne McClain.” He turned to Pete. “This is the third child of the woman you met today. It’s synchronicity, her coming in here; you recall Jung’s and Wolfgang Pauli’s theory of the acausal connective principle.” To the girl, Schilling said, “This man is Bindman for your area, Mary Anne. Meet Peter Garden.”
“Hi,” the girl said, unimpressed. “Well, I have to go.” She disappeared out the door of the shop and got back into her car; Pete and Joe Schilling stood watching until the car took off and was gone.
“How old do you think she is?” Pete said.
“I know how old she is; I remember reading it. She’s eighteen. One of twenty-nine students at San Francisco State College, majoring in history. Mary Anne was the first child born in San Francisco in the past hundred years.” His tone, now, was somber. “God help the world,” he said, “if anything happens to her, any kind of an accident or illness.”
Both of them were silent.
“She reminds me a little of her mother,” Pete said.
Joe Schilling said, “She’s stunningly attractive.” He eyed Pete. “I suppose now you’ve changed your mind; you want to stake her instead of me.”
“She’s probably never had an opportunity to play The Game.”
“Meaning?”
“She wouldn’t make a good Bluff partner.”
“Right,” Joe said. “Not nearly as good as me. And don’t forget that. What’s your marital status, right now?”
“When I lost Berkeley, Freya and I split up. She’s now Mrs. Gaines. I’m looking for a wife.”
“But you’ve got to have one who can play,” Joe Schilling said. “A Bindman wife. Or you’ll lose Marin County just like you lost Berkeley and then what’ll you do? The world can’t use two rare-record shops.”
Pete said, “I’ve thought over and over again for years what I’d do if I were wiped out at the table. I’d become a farmer.”
Guffawing, Joe said, “Indeed. Now you say, ‘I was never so serious in all my life.’ ”
Pete said, “I was never so serious in all my life.”
“Where?”
“In the Sacramento Valley. I’d raise grapes for wine. I’ve already looked into it.” He had, in fact, discussed it with the vug Commissioner, U. S. Cummings; the vug authority would undoubtedly support him with farm equipment and cuttings. It was the type of project which they approved of in principle.
“By God,” Schilling said, “I think you do mean it.”
“I’d charge you extra,” Pete said, “because you’re so rich from gouging record buyers all these years.”
“Ich bin ein armer Mensch,” Schilling protested. “I’m poor.” – “Well, possibly we could trade. Wine for rare records.”
“Seriously,” Joe Schilling said, “if Luckman enters your group and you have to play against him, I’ll come into The Game as your partner.” He slapped Pete on the shoulder, encouragingly. “So don’t worry. Between the two of us we can take him. Of course, I’d expect you not to drink while you’re playing.” He eyed Pete keenly. “I heard about that; you were bagged when you put up Berkeley and lost it. You could hardly reel out of the con-apt to your car when it was over.”
With dignity, Pete started, “I drank after I lost. For consolation.”
“However it may have been, my ukase still stands. No drinking on your part, if we become partners; you have to swear off, and that includes any pills. I don’t want your wits dulled by tranquilizers, especially the phenothiazine class . . . I particularly distrust them, and I know you take them regularly.”
Pete said nothing; it was so. He shrugged, wandered about the store, poking at a stack of records here and there. He felt discouraged.
“And I’ll practice,” Joe Schilling said. “I’ll train, sincerely put myself in top shape.” He poured himself a fresh cup of ooh long tea.
“Maybe I’m going to wind up a lush,” Pete said. And, with a possible life-span of two hundred and some years … it could be pretty dreadful.
“I don’t think so,” Joe Schilling said. “You’re too morose to become an alcoholic. I’m more afraid of—” He hesitated.
“Suicide.”
Pete slid an ancient HMV record from a stack and examined the label. He did not look directly at Schilling; he avoided meeting the man’s wise, blunt gaze.
“Would you be better off back with Freya?” Schilling inquired.
“Naw.” Pete gestured. “I can’t explain it, because on a rational basis we made a good pair. But something intangible didn’t work. In my opinion, that’s why she and I lost at the table; somehow we never could really pull together as a couple.” He recalled his wife before Freya, Janice Marks, now Janice Remington. They had cooperated successfully; at least it had seemed so to him. But of course they had not had any luck.
As a matter of fact, Pete Garden had never had any luck; in all the world he had no progeny. The goddam Red Chinese, he said to himself … he wrote it off with the customary envenomed phrase. And yet—
“Schilling,” he said, “do you have any issue?”
“Yes,” Schilling said. “I thought everyone knew. A boy,
eleven years old, in Florida. His mother was my—” He counted for a time. “My sixteenth wife. I only had two more wives before Luckman wiped me out.”
“How much issue has Luckman exactly? I’ve heard it placed at nine or ten.”
“About eleven, by now.”
“Christ!” Pete said.
“We should face the fact,” Joe Schilling said, “that Luck-man, in many ways, is the finest, most valuable human being alive today. The most direct issue, the greatest success in Bluff; his amelioration of the status of the non-Bs in his area.”
“All right,” Pete said irritably. “Let’s drop it.”
“And,” Schilling continued, unperturbed, “the vugs like him.” He added, “As a matter of fact virtually everyone likes him. You’ve never met him, have you?”
“No.”
“You’ll see what I mean,” Joe Schilling said, “when he gets out to the West Coast and joins Pretty Blue Fox.
To the pre-cog Dave Mutreaux, Luckman said expansively, “I’m glad to see you got here.” It pleased him because it demonstrated the reality of the man’s talent. It was, so to speak, a de facto case for using Mutreaux.