“And he’s not there under that name,” Miss Fugate said, pale and enervated from the effort of foreseeing; she relit her cigar, which had gone out; sitting straighter in her chair, she once more crossed her supple legs. “The homeopapes will say that Eldritch was listed in the hospital records as a Mr.–” She paused, squeezed her eyes shut, and sighed. “Oh hell,” she said. “I can’t make it out. One syllable. Frent. Brent. No, I think it’s Trent. Yes, it’s Eldon Trent.” She smiled in relief; her large eyes sparkled with naïve, childlike pleasure. “They really have gone to a lot of trouble to keep him hidden. And they’re interrogating him, the ’papes will say. So obviously he’s conscious.” She frowned then, all at once. “Wait. I’m looking at a headline; I’m in my own conapt, by myself. It’s early morning and I’m reading the front page. Oh dear.”
“What’s it say?” Leo demanded, bending rigidly forward; he could catch the girl’s dismay.
Miss Fugate whispered, “The headlines say that Palmer Eldritch is dead.” She blinked, looked around her with amazement, then slowly focused on him; she regarded him with a confused mixture of fear and uncertainty, almost palpably edging back; she retreated from him, huddled against her chair, her fingers interlocked. “And you’re accused of having done it, Mr. Bulero. Honest; that’s what the headline says.”
“You mean I’m going to murder him?”
She nodded. “But–it’s not a certainty; I only pick it up in some of the futures… do you understand? I mean, we precogs see–” She gestured.
“I know.” He was familiar with precogs; Barney Mayerson had, after all, worked for P. P. Layouts thirteen years, and some of the others even longer. “It could happen,” he said gratingly. Why would I do a thing like that? he asked himself. No way to tell now. Perhaps after he reached Eldritch, talked to him… as evidently he would.
Miss Fugate said, “I don’t think you ought to try to contact Mr. Eldritch in view of this possible future; don’t you agree, Mr. Bulero? I mean, the risk is there–it hangs very large. About–I’d guess–in the neighborhood of forty.”
“What’s ‘forty’?”
“Percent. Almost half the possibilities.” Now, more composed, she smoked her cigar and faced him; her eyes, dark and intense, ffickered as she regarded him, undoubtedly speculating with vast curiosity why he would do such a thing.
Rising, he walked to the door of the office. “Thank you, Miss Fugate; I appreciate your assistance in this matter.” He waited, indicating clearly his expectations that she would leave.
However, Miss Fugate remained seated. He was encountering the same peculiar streak of firmness that had upset Barney Mayerson. “Mr. Bulero,” she said quietly, “I think I’d really have to go to the UN police about this. We precogs–”
He reshut the office door. “You precogs,” he said, “are too preoccupied with other people’s lives.” But she had him. He wondered what she would manage to do with her knowledge.
“Mr. Mayerson may be drafted,” Miss Fugate said. “You knew that, of course. Are you going to try to influence them to let him off?”
Candidly, he said, “I had some intentions in the direction of helping him beat it, yes.”
“Mr. Bulero,” she said in a small, steady voice, “I’ll make a deal with you. Let them draft him. And then I’ll be your New York Pre-Fash consultant.” She waited; Leo Bulero said nothing. “What do you say?” she asked. Obviously she was unaccustomed to such negotiations. However, she intended to make it stick if possible; after all, he reflected, everyone, even the smartest operator, had to begin somewhere. Perhaps he was seeing the initial phase of what would be a brilliant career.
And then he remembered something. Remembered why she had been transferred from the Peking office to come here to New York as Barney Mayerson’s assistant. Her predictions had proved erratic. Some of them–too many of them, in fact–had proved erroneous.
Perhaps her preview of the headline relating his indictment as the alleged murderer of Palmer Eldritch–assuming that she was being truthful, that she had really experienced it–was only another of her errors. The faulty precognition which had brought her here.
Aloud he said, “Let me think it over. Give me a couple of days.”
“Until tomorrow morning,” Miss Fugate said firmly.
Leo laughed. “I see why Barney was so riled up.” And Barney probably sensed with his own precog faculty, at least nebulously, that Miss Fugate was going to make a decisive strike at him, jeopardizing his whole position. “Listen.” He walked over to her. “You’re Mayerson’s mistress. How’d you like to give that up? I can offer you the use of an entire satellite.” Assuming, of course, that he could pry Scotty out of there.
“No thank you,” Miss Fugate said.
“Why?” He was amazed. “Your career–”
“I like Mr. Mayerson,” she said. “And I don’t particularly care for bub–” She caught herself. “Men who’ve evolved in those clinics.”
Again he opened the office door. “I’ll let you know by tomorrow morning.” As he watched her pass through the doorway and out into the receptionist’s office he thought, That’ll give me time to reach Ganymede and Palmer Eldritch; I’ll know more, then. Know if your foresight seems spurious or not.
Shutting the door behind the girl, he turned at once to his desk, and clicked the vidphone button connecting him with the outside. To the New York City operator he said, “Get me the James Riddle Veterans’ Hospital at Base III on Ganymede; I want to speak to a Mr. Eldon Trent, a patient there. Person to person.” He gave his name and number, then rang off, jiggled the hook, and dialed Kennedy Spaceport.
He booked passage for the express ship leaving New York for Ganymede that evening, then paced about his office, waiting for the call-back from James Riddle Veterans’ Hospital.
Bubblehead, he thought. She’d call even her employer that.
Ten minutes later the call came.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bulero,” the operator apologized. “Mr. Trent is not receiving calls, by doctors’ orders.”
So Rondinella Fugate was right; an Eldon Trent did exist at James Riddle and in all probability he was Palmer Eldritch. It was certainly worth making the trip; the odds looked good.
Looked good, he thought wryly, that I’ll encounter Eldritch, have some kind of altercation with him, God knows what, and eventually bring about his death. A man that at this point in time I don’t even know. And I’ll find myself arraigned; I won’t get away with it. What a prospect.
But his curiosity was aroused. In all his manifold operations he had never found the need of killing anyone under any circumstances. Whatever it was that would occur between him and Palmer Eldritch had to be unique; definitely a trip to Ganymede was indicated.
It would be difficult to turn back now. Because he had the acute intuition that this would turn out to be what he hoped. And Rondinella Fugate had only said that he would be accused of the murder; there was no datum as to a successful conviction.
Convicting a man of his stature of a capital crime, even through the UN authorities, would take some doing.
He was willing to let them try.
THREE
In a bar hard by P. P. Layouts, Richard Hnatt sat sipping a Tequila Sour, his display case on the table before him. He knew goddam well there was nothing wrong with Emily’s pots; her work was saleable. The problem had to do with her ex-husband and his position of power.
And Barney Mayerson had exercised that power.
I have to call Emily and tell her, Hnatt said to himself. He started to his feet.
A man blocked his way, a peculiar round specimen mounted on spindly legs.
“Who are you?” Hnatt said.
The man bobbed toy-like in front of him, meanwhile digging into his pocket as if scratching at a familiar microorganism that possessed parasitic proclivities that had survived the test of time. However, what he produced at last was a business card. “We’re interested in your ceramic ware, Mr. Hatt. Natt. However you say it.”
“Icholtz,” Hnatt said, reading the card; it gave only the name, no further info, not even a vidnumber. “But what I have with me are just samples. I’ll give you the names of retail outlets stocking our line. But these–”
“Are for minning,” the toylike man, Mr. Icholtz, said, nodding. “And that’s what we want. We intend to min your ceramics, Mr. Hnatt; we believe that Mayerson is wrong–they will become fash, and very soon.”
Hnatt stared at him. “You want to min, and you’re not from P. P. Layouts?” But no one else minned. Everyone knew P. P. Layouts had a monopoly.
Seating himself at the table beside the display case, Mr. Icholtz brought out his wallet and began counting out skins. “Very little publicity will be attached to this at first. But eventually–” He offered Hnatt the stack of brown, wrinkled, truffle-skins which served as tender in the Sol system: the only molecule, a unique protein amino acid, which could not be duplicated by the Printers, the Biltong life forms employed in place of automated assembly lines by many of Terra’s industries.