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  03 MILES. DUPOIR OFF 147.52-no, that was a fly speck, not a decimal point-OFF 14,752.03 FOR NEW

  LOW, RAILS AND BROTHERS AND LAW MIXED IN ACTIVE

  TRADING. I always feel you’re more efficient if you start the day with the gist of the news straight in your mind.

  I arrived at the office punctually at 9:07, late enough to show that I was an executive, but not so late that Mr. Horgan would notice it. The frowning brow of my cave opened under the grim rock front that bore the legend “International Plastics Co.” and I walked in, nodding good morning to several persons from the Fourteenth Floor, but being nodded to myself only by Hennie, who ran the cigar stand. Hermie cultivated my company because I was good for a dollar on the numbers two or three times a week. Little did he know that it would be many a long day before he saw a dollar of mine, perhaps as many as 14,752.03 of them.

  Garigolli to Home Base

  Further to my last communication, Chief,

  We ran into a kind of a setback. We found a suitable organic substrate and implanted a colony of modified organisms which extracted gold from environmental sources, and they were performing beautifully, depositing a film of pure metal on the substrate, which the Host was carrying with him.

  Then he fblded it up and threw it in a waste receptacle.

  We’re still working on it, but I don’t know, Chief, I don’t know.

  Garigolli

  I find it a little difficult to explain to people what I do for a living. It has something to do with making the country plastics-conscious. I make the country plastics-conscious by writing newspaper stories about plastics which only seem to get printed in neighborhood shopping guides in Sioux Falls, Idaho. And by scripting talk features about plastics which get run from 11:55 P.M. to 12:00 midnight on radio stations the rest of whose programs time is devoted to public-service items like late jockey changes at Wheeling Downs. And by scripting television features which do not seem ever to be run on any station. And by handling the annual Miss Plastics contest, at least up to the point where actual contestants appear, when it is taken over by the people from the Fourteenth Floor. And by writing the monthly page of Plastics Briefs whieh goes out, already matted, to 2,000 papers in North America. Plastics Briefs is our best bet because each Brief is illustrated by a line drawing of a girl doing something with, to or about plastics, and heir costume is always brief. As I said, all this is not easy to explain, so when people ask me what I do I usually say, “Whatever Mr. Horgan tells me to.”

  This morning Mr. Horgan called me away from a conference with Jack Denny, our Briefs artist, and said: “Dupoir, that Century of Plastks Anniversary Dinner idea of yours is out. The Fourteenth Floor says it lacks thematic juice. Think of something else for a winter promotion, and think big!” He banged a plastic block on his desk with a little plastic hammer.

  I said, “Mr. Horgan, how about this? Are we getting the break in the high-school chemistry text books we should? Are we getting the message of polythene to every boy, girl, brother-in-law-“

  He shook his head. “That’s small,” he said, and went on to explain: “By which I mean it isn’t big. Also there is the flak we are getting from the nature nuts, which the Fourteenth Floor does not think you are dealing with in a creative way.”

  “I’ve ordered five thousand pop-up recycling bins for the test, Mr. Horgan. They’re not only plastic, they’re recycled plastic. We use them in my own home, and I am confident-“

  “Confidence,” he said, “is when you’ve.got your eyes so firmly fixed on the goal that you trip on a dog-doodie and fall in the crap.”

  I regrouped. “I think we can convert the present opposition from the ecology movement to-“

  “The ecology movement,” he said, “is people who love buzzards better than babies and catfish better than cars.”

  I fell back on my last line of defense. “Yes, Mr. Horgan,” I said.

  “Personally,” Mr. Horgan said, “I like seeing plastic bottles bobbing in the surf. It makes me feel, I don’t know, like part of something that is going to last forever. I want you to communicate that feeling, Du-poir. Now go get your Briefs out.”

  I thought of asking for a salary advance of $14,-752.03, but hesitated.

  “Is there something else?”

  “No, Mr. Horgan. Thank you.” I left quietly.

  Jack Denny was still waiting in my office, doodling still-life studies of cornucopias with fruits and nuts spilling out of them. “Look,” he said, “how about this for a change? Something symbolic of the season, like ‘the rich harvest of Plastics to make life more gracious,’ like?”

  I said kindly, “You don’t understand copy, Jack. Do you remember what we did for last September?”

  He scowled. “A girl in halter and shorts, very brief and tight, putting up plastic storm windows.”

  “That’s right. Well, I’ve got an idea for something kind of novel this year. A little two-act drama. Act One: She’s wearing halter and shorts and she’s taking down the plastic screens. Act Two: She’s wearing a dress and putting up the plastic storm windows. And this is important. In Act Two there’s wind, and autumn leaves blowing, and the dress is kind of windblown tight against her. Do you know what I mean, Jack?”

  He said evenly, “I was the youngest child and only boy in a family of eight. If I didn’t know what you meant by now I would deserve to be put away. Sometimes I think I will be put away. Do you know what seven older sisters can do to the psychology of a sensitive young boy?” He began to shake.

  “Draw, Jack,” I told him hastily. To give him a chance to recover himself I picked up his cornucopias. “Very nice,” I said, turning them over. “Beautiful

  modeling. I guess you spilled some paint on this one?”

  He snatched it out of my hand. “Where? That? That’s gilt. I don’t even have any gilt.”

  “No offense, Jack. I just thought it looked land of nice.” It didn’t, particularly, it was just a shiny yellow smear in a corner of the drawing.

  “Nice! Sure, if you’d let me use metallic inks. If you’d go to high-gloss paper. If you’d spend a few bucks-“

  “Maybe, Jack,” I said, “it’d be better, at that, if you took these back to your office. You can concentrate better there, maybe.”

  He went out, shaking.

  I stayed in and thought about my house and brother-in-law and the Gudsell Medical Credit Bureau and after a while I began to shake too. Shaking, I phoned a Mr. Klaw, whom I had come to think of as my “account executive” at Gudsell.

  Mr. Klaw was glad to hear from me. “You got our lawyer’s note? Good, good. And exactly what arrangements are you suggesting, Mr. Dupoir?”

  “I don’t know,” I said openly. “It catches me at a bad time. If we could have an extension-“

  “Extensions we haven’t got,” he said regretfully. “We had one month of extensions, and we gave you the month, and now we’re fresh out. I’m really sorry, Dupoir.”

  “With some time I could get a second mortgage, Mr. Haw.”

  “You could at that, but not for $14,752.03.”

  “Do you want to put me and my family on the street?”

  “Goodness, no, Mr. Dupoir! What we want is the sanitarium’s money, including our commission. And maybe we want a little bit to make people think before they sign things, and maybe that people who should go to the county hospital go to the county hospital instead of a frankly de luxe rest home.”

  “I’ll call you later,” I said.

  “Please do,” said Mr. Klaw sincerely.

  Tendons slack as the limp lianas, I leafed listlessly through the dhawani-bark jujus on my desk, studying Jack Denny’s draftsmanship with cornucopias. The yellow stain, I noted, seemed to be spreading, even as a brother-in-law’s blood might spread on the sands of the doom-pit when the cobras hissed the hour of judgment.

  Mr. Horgan rapped perfunctorily on the doorframe and came in. “I had the impression, Dupoir, that you had something further to ask me at our conference thi
s morning. I’ve learned to back those judgments, Dupoir.”

  “Well, sir-” I began.

  “Had that feeling about poor old Globus,” he went on. “You remember Miss Globus? Crying in the file room one day. Seems she’d signed up for some kind of charm school. Couldn’t pay, didn’t like it, tried to back out. They wanted their money. Attached her wages. Well, Naturally, we couldn’t have that sort of financial irresponsibility. I understand she’s a PFC in the WAC now. What was it you wanted, Dupoir?”

  “Me, Mr. Horgan? Wanted? No. Nothing at all.”

  “Glad we cleared that up,” he grunted. “Can’t do your best work for the firm if your mind’s taken up with personal problems. Remember, Dupoir. We want the country plastics conscious, and forget about those ecology freaks.”

  “Yes, Mr. Horgan.”

  “And big. Not small.”

  “Big it is, Mr. Horgan,” I said. I rolled up Jack Denny’s sketches into a thick wad and threw them at him hi the door, but not before he had closed it behind him.

  Garigolli to Home Base

  Listen Chief,

  I appreciate your trying to work out a solution for us, but you’re not doing as well as we’re doing, even. Not that that’s much.

  We tried again to meet that constant aura of medium-of-exchange need for the Host, but he destroyed the whole lash-up again. Maybe we’re misunderstanding him?

  Artifacts are out. He’s too big to see anything we make. Energy sources don’t look promising. Oh, sure, we could elaborate lesser breeds that would selectively concentrate, for instance, plutonium or one of the uraniums. I don’t think this particular Host would know the difference unless the scale was very large, and then, blooie, critical mass.

  Meanwhile morale is becoming troublesome. We’re holding together, but I wouldn’t describe the condition as good, Vellitot has been wooing Dinnoliss in spite of the secondary directives against breeding while on exploration missions. I’ve cautioned them both, but they don’t seem to stop. The funny thing is they’re both in the male phase.

  Garigolli

  Between Jack Denny and myself we got about half of the month’s Plastics Briefs before quitting time. Maybe they weren’t big, but they were real windblown. All factors considered, I don’t think it is very much to my discredit that two hours later I was moodily drinking my seventh beer in a dark place near the railroad station.

  The bartender respected my mood, the TV was off, the juke box had nothing but blues on it and there was only one fly in my lugubrious ointment, a little man who kept trying to be friendly.

  From time to time I gave him a scowl I had copied from Mr. Horgan. Then he would edge down the bar for a few minutes before edging back. Eventually he got up courage enough to talk, and I got too gloomy to crush him with my mighty thews, corded like the jungle-vines that looped from the towering nganga-palms.

  He was some kind of hotelkeeper, it appeared. “My young friend, you may think you have problems, but there’s no business like my business. Mortgage, insurance, state supervision, building and grounds maintenance, kitchen personnel and purchasing, linen, uniforms, the station wagon and the driver, carpet repairs -oh, God, carpet repairs! No matter how many ash trays you put around, you know what they do? They steal the ashtrays. Then they stamp out cigarettes on the carpets.” He began to weep.

  I told the bartender to give him another. How could I lose? If he passed out I’d be rid of him. If he recovered I would have his undying, doglike affection for several minutes, and what kind of shape was I in to sneer at that?

  Besides, I had worked out some pretty interesting figures. “Did you know,” I told him, “that if you spend $1.46 a day on cigarettes, you can save $14,752.03 by giving up smoking for 10,104 and a quarter days?”

  He wasn’t listening, but he wasn’t weeping any more either. He was just looking lovingly at his vodka libre, or whatever it was. I tried a different tack. “When you see discarded plastic bottles bobbing in the surf,” I asked, “does it make you feel like part of something grand and timeless that will go on forever?”

  He glanced at me with distaste, then went back to adoring his drink. “Or do you like buzzards better than babies?” I asked.

  “They’re all babies,” he said. “Nasty, smelly, upchucking babies.”

  “Who are?” I asked, having lost the thread. He shook his head mysteriously, patted his drink and tossed it down.

  “Root of most evil,” he said, swallowing. Then, affectionately, “Don’t know where I’d be with it, don’t know where I’d be without it.”

  He appeared to be talking about booze. “On your way home, without it?” I suggested.

  He said obscurely, “Digging ditches, without it.” Then he giggled. “Greatest business in the world! But oh! the worries! The competition! And when you come down to it it’s all just aversion, right?”

  “I can see you have a great aversion to liquor,” I said politely.

  “No, stupid! The guests.”

  Stiffly I signaled for Number Eight, but the bartender misunderstood and brought another for my friend, too. I said, “You have an aversion to the guests?”

  He took firm hold on the bar and attempted to look squarely into my eyes, but wound up with his left eye four inches in front of my left eye and both our right eyes staring at respective ears. “The guests must be made to feel an aversion to alcohol,” he said. “Secret of the whole thing. Works. Sometimes. But oh! it costs.”

  Like the striking fangs of Nag, the cobra, faster than the eye can follow, my trained reflexes swept the beer up to my lips. I drank furiously, scowling at him. “You mean to say you ran a drunk farm?” I shouted.

  He was shocked. “My boy! No need to be fulgar. An ‘institute,’ eh? Let’s leave the aversion to the drunks.”

  “I have to tell you, sir,” I declared, “that I have a personal reason for despising all proprietors of such institutions!”

  He began to weep again. “You, too! Oh, the general scorn.”

  “In my case, there is nothing general-“

  “-the hatred! The unthinking contempt. And for what?”

  I snarled. “For your blood-sucking ways.”

  “Blood, old boy?” he said, surprised. “No, nothing like that. We don’t use blood. We use gold, yes, but the gold cure’s old hat. Need new gimmick. Can’t use silver, too cheap. Really doesn’t matter what you say you use. All aversion-drying them out, keeping them comfy and aversion. But no blood.”

  He wiggled his fingers for Number Nine. Moodily I drank, glaring at him over my glass.

  “In the wrong end of it, I sometimes think,” he went on meditatively, staring with suspicious envy at the bartender. “He doesn’t have to worry. Pour it out, pick up the money. No concern about expensive rooms standing idle, staff loafing around picking their noses, overhead going on, going on-you wouldn’t believe how it goes on, whether the guests are there to pay for it or not-“

  “Hah,” I muttered.

  “You’ve simply no idea what I go through,” he sobbed. “And then they won’t pay. No, really. Fellow beat me out of $14,752.03 just lately. I’m taking it out of the co-signer’s hide, of course, but after you pay the collection agency, what’s the profit?”

  I choked on the beer, but he was too deep hi sorrow to notice.

  Strangling, I gasped, “Did you say fourteen thousand-?”

  He nodded. “Seven hundred and fifty-two dollars, yes. And three cents. Astonishes you, doesn’t it, the deadbeats hi this world?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “You wouldn’t think it,” he mourned. “All those salaries. All those rooms. The hydrotherapy tubs. The water bill.”

  I shook my head.

  “Probably you think my life’s a bowl of roses, hey?”

  I managed to pry my larynx open enough to wheeze, “Up to this minute, yes, I did. You’ve opened my eyes.”

  “Drink to that,” he said promptly. “Hey, barman!”

  But before the bartender got there wi
th Number Ten the little man hiccoughed and slid melting to the floor, like a glacier calving into icebergs.

  The bartender peered over at him. “Every damn night,” he grumbled. “And who’s going to get him home this tune?”

  My mind working as fast “as Ngo, the dancing

  spider, spinning her web, I succeeded in saying, “Me. Glad to oblige. Never fear.”

  Garigolli to Home Base

  Chief,

  All right, I admit we haven’t been exactly 144 p.g. on this project, but there’s no reason for you to get loose. Reciting the penalties for violating the Triple Directive is uncalled-for.

  Let me point out that there has been no question at any time of compliance with One or Three. And even Directive Two, well, we’ve done what we could. “To repay sentients in medium suitable to them for information gained.” These sentients are tricky, Chief. They don’t seem to empathize, really. See our reports. They often take without giving in return among themselves, and it seems to me that under the circumstances a certain modification of Directive Two would have been quite proper.

  But I am not protesting the ruling. Especially since you’ve pointed out it won’t do any good. When I get old and skinny enough to retire to a sling in Home Base I guess 111 get that, home-base mentality too> but way out here on the surface of the exploration volume it looks diflerent, believe me.

  And what is happening with the rest of our crew back at Host’s domicile I can’t even guess. They must be nearly frantic by now.

  Garigolli

  There was some discussion with a policeman he wanted to hit (apparently under the impression that the cop was his night watchman playing hookey), but I finally got the little man to the Institute for Psychosomatic Adjustment.