Be safe. Drive Offensively.
52
The Emoman
Every kind of drug is available on the street market Pick you up, put you down, carry you off to never-never land—name it and it’s being dealt on your local corner.
Someday someone’s going to eliminate the chemical middleman.
This is the story of two people and how three of them died.
By and large, they were pretty nice people.
But it’s not a very nice story.
“I’ve come to buy some anger,’* called up the too-young man. He sat himself down on a metal sawhorse and waited.
“Indeed?” replied the man working up and across from him.
“Indeed,” answered the too-young man.
The gentleman working across from the too-young man and his metal sawhorse was engaged in an anomaly. He was repairing a boat. This in itself was not terribly unusual. It was a common enough activity in boatyards. But he was driving metal pinions into the
53
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . ..
boat’s hull with a hand-held hammer. This, instead of using an automatic arm.
What was more, the hull of the craft appeared to be made of natural celluloid materials instead of plasticine, metalloy, or ferrosponges. This ship was not new. Its hull was badly in need of a new coat of paint. From the back the man did not seem especially arresting. This impression changed when he paused, straightened, and turned on his ladder to face the other.
He stood slightly over average height but seemed taller. Leonine, well built, lithe. The lines in his face seemed put there by a drunken cartographer. Each led to some strange valley, forbidden city, or unfathomable abyss of the soul.