“Make yourself at home.” He tossed a box of crackers to Allen, and then a wedge of cheddar cheese. “Not hot—perfectly safe. Man, we’ve been digging, digging. Under all this ash, way down. Gates and Sugermann, archeologists for hire.”
Remnants of the old. Tons of usable, partly usable, and ruined debris, objects of priceless worth, trinkets, indis- criminate trash. Allen seated himself on a carton of glassware. Vases and cups and tumblers and cut crystal.
“Pack rats,” he said, examining a chipped bowl designed by some long-dead craftsman of the twentieth century. On the bowl was a design: a faun and hunter. “Not bad.”
“Sell it to you,” Gates offered. “Five bucks.”
“Too much.”
“Three bucks, then. We’ve got to move this stuff. Fast turnover, assure profit.” Gates giggled happily. “What do you want? Bottle of Beringer’s chablis? One thousand dollars. Copy of the Decameron? Two thousand dollars. Electric waffle iron?” He computed. “Depends on if you want the kind becomes a sandwich grill. That’s more.”
“Nothing for me,” Allen murmured. Before him was a huge pile of moldering newspapers, magazines, books, tied with brown cord. Saturday Evening Post, the top one read. “Six years of the Post,” Gates said. “From 1947 to 1952. Lovely condition. Say, fifteen bills.” He pawed into an opened stack beside the Posts, ripping and shredding violently. “Here’s a sweet item. Yale Review. One of those ‘little’ magazines. Got stuff on Truman Capote, James Jones.” His eyes sparkled slyly. “Plenty of sex.”
Allen examined a faded, water-logged book. It was cheaply bound, a bulging pulp with stained pages.
THE INDEFATIGABLE VIRGIN
Jack Woodsby
Opening at random he came across an absorbing paragraph.
“. . . Her breasts were like two cones of white marble bulging within the torn covering of her thin silk dress. As he pulled her against him he could feel the hot panting need of her wonderful body.
Her eyes were half-shut and she was moaning faintly. ‘Please,’ she gasped, trying feebly to push him away. Her dress slipped entirely aside, re- vealing the pulsing fullness of her taut, firm flesh . . .”
“Good grief,” Allen said.
“Fine book,” Gates remarked, squatting down beside him. “Lots more. Here.” He dug out another and pushed it at Allen. “Read.”
I, THE KILLER
The author’s name was blurred by time and decay. Opening the tattered paper-covered book, Allen read:
“. . . Again I shot her in the groin. Guts and blood spilled out, soaking through her torn skirt.
The floor under my shoes was slippery with her gore. I accidently crushed one of her mangled breasts under my heel, but what the hell, she was dead . . .”
Bending down, Allen pulled out a fat, mildewed, gray-bound book and opened it.
“. . . Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary’s fingers prove a time- dulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails . . .”
“That’s a hot one,” Gates said, peering over his shoulder. “Go on, look through it. At the end especially.”
“Why is this here?” Allen asked.
Gates clapped his hands together and writhed. “Man, that’s the one. That’s the spiciest of them all. You know how much I get for a copy of that? Ten thousand dollars!” He tried to grab the book, but Allen hung onto it.
“. . . Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and wine- dark stones . . .”
Allen put down the book. “That’s not bad.” It gave him a queer feeling, and he reread the passage carefully.
There was a scraping at the stairs and Sugermann entered. “What’s not bad?” He saw the book and nodded. “James
Joyce. Excellent writer. Ulysses brings us a good deal, these days. More than Joyce himself ever got.” He tossed down his armload. “Tom, there’s a shipload up on the surface. Don’t let me forget. We can get it down later.” He, a heavy-set, round-faced man, with a stubble of bluish beard, began peeling off his wool overcoat.
Examining the copy of Ulysses, Allen said: “Why is this book with the others? It’s entirely different.”
“Has the same words,” Sugermann said. He lit a cigarette and stuck it in a carved, ornate ivory holder. “How are you these days, Mr. Purcell? How’s the Agency?”
“Fine,” he said. The book bothered him. “But this—”
“This book is still pornography,” Sugermann said: “Joyce, Hemingway. Degenerate trash. The Major’s first Book Committee listed Ulysses on the hex-sheet back in 1988. Here.” Laboriously, he scooped up a handful of books; first one and then another was tossed into Allen’s lap. “A bunch more of them. Novels of the twentieth century. All gone, now. Banned. Burned. Destroyed.”
“But what was the purpose of these books? Why are they lumped with the junk? They weren’t once, were they?”
Sugermann was amused, and Gates cackled and slapped his knee.
“What kind of Morec did they teach?” Allen demanded.
“They didn’t,” Sugermann said. “These particular novels even taught unMorec.”
“You’ve read these?” Allen scanned the volume of Ulysses. His interest and bewilderment grew. “Why? What did you find?”
Sugermann considered. “These, as discriminated from the others, are real books.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Hard to say. They’re about something.” A smile spread across Sugermann’s face. “I’m an egghead, Purcell. I’d tell you these books are literature. So better not ask me.”
“These guys,” Gates explained, breathing into Allen’s face, “wrote it all down, the way it was back in the Age of Waste.” He hammered a book with his fist. “This tells. Everything’s here.”
“But these ought to be preserved,” Allen said. “They shouldn’t be tossed in with the trash. We need them as historical records.”
“Certainly,” Sugermann said. “So we’ll know what life was like, then.”
“They’re valuable.”
“Very valuable.”
Angrily, Allen said: “They tell the truth!”
Sugermann bellowed with laughter. He got out a pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “That’s so, Purcell. They tell the truth, the one and only absolute truth.” Suddenly he stopped laughing. “Tom, give him the Joyce book. As a present from you and me.”
Gates was appalled. “But Ulysses is worth a hundred bills!”
“Give it to him.” Sugermann sank into a growling, acrid stupor. “He should have it.”
Allen said: “I can’t take it; it’s worth too much.” And, he realized, he couldn’t pay for it. He didn’t have ten thousand dollars. And, he also realized, he wanted the book.
Sugermann glared at him for a long, disconcerting time. “Morec,” he muttered at last. “No gift-giving. Okay, Allen. I’m sorry.” He roused himself and went into the next room. “How about a glass of sherry?”
“That’s good stuff,” Gates said. “From Spain. The real thing.”
Re-emerging with the half-empty bottle, Sugermann found three glasses and filled them. “Drink up, Purcell. To Goodness, Truth, and—” He considered. “Morality.”
They drank.
Malparto made a final note and then signalled his tech- nicians. The office lights came on as the trellis was wheeled away.
On the table the patient blinked, stirred, moved feebly.
“And then you came back?” Malparto asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Coates said. “I drank three glasses of sherry and then I flew back to Newer York.”
“And nothing else happened?”
Mr. Coates, with an effort, sat up. “I came back, parked the sliver, got the tools and bucket of red paint, and japed the statue. I left the empty paint can on a bench and walked home.”
The first session was over and Malparto had learned absolutely nothing. Nothing had happened to his patient either before or at Hokkaido; he had met some boys, tried to buy a fifth of Scotch, had seen a book. That was all. It was senseless.
“Have you ever been Psi-tested?” Malparto asked.
“No.” His patient squinted with pain. “Those drugs of yours gave me a headache.”
“I have a few routine tests I’d like to give you. Perhaps next time; it’s a trifle late, today.” He had decided to cease the recall-therapy. There was no value in bringing to the surface past incidents and forgotten experiences. From now on he would work with the mind of Mr. Coates, not with its contents.
“Learn anything?” Mr. Coates asked, rising stiffly to his feet.
“A few things. One question. I’m curious to know the effect of this japery. In your opinion—”
“It gets me into trouble.”
“I don’t mean on you. I mean on the Morec Society.”
Mr. Coates considered. “None. Except that it gives the police something to do. And the newspapers have something to print.”
“How about the people who see the japed statue?”
“Nobody sees it; they’ve got it boarded up.” Mr. Coates rubbed his jaw. “Your sister saw it. And some of the Cohorts saw it; they were rounded up to guard it.”
Malparto made a note af that.
“Gretchen said that some of the Cohorts laughed. It was japed in an odd way; I suppose you’ve heard.”