Critical Mass Read online

  The mausoleum that had graduated my brother-in-law turned out to be three stories high, with a sun porch and a slate roof and bars on the ground-floor bay windows. It was not all that far from my house. Shirl had been pleased about that, I remembered. She said we could visit her brother a lot there, and in fact she

  had gone over once or twice on Sundays, but me, I’d never set eyes on the place before.

  Dagger-sharp fangs flecking white spume, none dared dispute me as I strode through the great green corridors of the rain forest. Corded thews rippling like pythons under my skin, it was child’s play to carry the craven jackal to his lair. The cabbie helped me up the steps with him.

  The little man, now revealed as that creature who in anticipation had seemed so much larger and hairier, revived slightly as we entered the reception hall. “Ooooh,” he groaned. “Watch the bouncing, old boy. That door. My office. Leather couch. Much obliged.”

  I dumped him on the couch, lit a green-shaded lamp on his desk, closed the door and considered.

  Mine enemy had delivered himself into my power. All I had to do was seize him by the forelock. I seemed to see the faces of my family-Shirl’s smiling sweetly, Butchie’s cocoa-overlaid-with-oatmeal-spurring me on.

  There had to be a way.

  I pondered. Life had not equipped me for this occasion. Raffles or Professor Moriarity would have known what to do at once, but, ponder as I would, I couldn’t think of anything to do except to go through the drawers of his desk.

  Well, it was a start. But it yielded very little. Miscellaneous paper clips and sheaves of letterheads, a carton of cigarettes of a brand apparently flavored with rice wine and extract of vanilla, part of a fifth of Old Rathole and five switchblade knives, presumably taken from the inmates. There was also $6.15 in unused postage stamps, but I quickly computed that, even if I went to the trouble of cashing them in, that would leave me $14,745.88 short.

  Of Papers to Burn there were none.

  All in all, the venture was a bust. I wiped out a water glass with one of the letterheads (difficult, because they were of so high quality that they seemed likelier to shatter than to wad up), and forced down a couple of ounces of the whiskey (difficult, because it was of so low).

  Obviously anything of value, like for instance co-signed agreements with brothers-in-law, would be in a safe, which itself would probably be in the offices of the Gudsell Medical Credit Bureau. Blackmail? But there seemed very little to work with, barring one or two curious photographs tucked in among the envelopes. Conceivably I could cause him some slight embarrassment, but nowhere near $14,752.03 worth. I had not noticed any evidence of Red espionage that might put the little man (whose name, I learned from his letterhead, was Bermingham) away for 10,104 and a quarter days, while I saved up the price of reclaiming our liberty.

  There seemed to be only one possible thing to do.

  Eyes glowing like red coals behind slitted lids, I walked lightly on velvet-soft pads to the kraal of the witch-man. He was snoring with his mouth open. Totally vulnerable to his doom.

  Only, how to inflict it?

  It is not as easy as one might think to murder a person. Especially if one doesn’t come prepared for it. Mr. Morgan doesn’t like us to carry guns at the office, and heaven knows what Shirl would do with one if I left it around home. Anyway, I didn’t have one.

  Poison was a possibility. The Old Rathole suggested itself. But we’d already tried that, hadn’t we?

  I considered the switchblade knives. There was a technical problem. Would you know where the heart is? Granted, it had to be inside his chest somewhere, and sooner or later I could find it. But what would I say to Mr. Bermingham after the first three or four exploratory stabs woke him up?

  The only reasonably efficient method I could think of to insure Mr. Bermingham’s decease was to burn the place down with him in it. Which, I quickly perceived, meant with whatever cargo of drying-out drunks the Institute now possessed in it too, behind those barred windows.

  At this point I came face to face with myself.

  I wasn’t going to kill anybody. I wasn’t going to steal any papers.

  What I was going to do was, I was going to let Mr. Klaw’s lawyers go ahead and take our house, because I just didn’t know how to do anything else. I hefted the switchblades in my hand, threw them against the wall and poured myself another slug of Mr. Bermingham’s lousy whiskey, wishing it would kill me right there and be a lesson to him.

  Garigolli to Home Base

  Now, don’t get excited, Chief,

  But we have another problem.

  Before I get into it, I would like to remind you of a couple of things. First, I was against exploring this planet in the first place, remember? I said it was going to be very difficult, on the grounds of the difference in mass between its dominant species and us. I mean, really. Here we are fighting member to member against dangerous beasts all the time, and the beasts, to the Host and his race, are only microorganisms that live unnoticed in their circulatory systems, their tissues, their food and their environment. Anybody could tell that this was going to be a tough assignment, if not an impossible one.

  Then there’s the fact that this Host moves around so. I told you some of our crew got left in his domicile. Well, we’ve timed this before, and almost always he returns within 144 or 216 time-units-at most, hah* of one of his planet’s days. It’s pretty close to critical, but our crew is tough and they can survive empathy-deprival that long. Only this time he has been away, so far, nearly 432 time-units. It’s bad enough for those of us who have been with him. The ones who were cut off back at his domicile must have been through the tortures of the damned.

  Two of them homed hi on us to report just a few

  time-units ago, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like what’s happened. They must have been pretty panicky. They decided to try meeting the Second Directive themselves. They modified some microorganisms to provide some organic chemicals they thought the Host might like.

  Unfortunately the organisms turned out to have an appetite for some of the Host’s household artifacts, and they’re pretty well demolished. So we not only haven’t given him anything to comply with Directive Two, we’ve taken something from him. And in the process maybe weVe called attention to ourselves.

  I’m giving it to you arced, Chief, because I know that’s how you’d like it. I accept full responsibility.

  Because I don’t have any choice, do I?

  Garigolli

  “What the Hell,” said the voice of Mr. Bermingham, from somewhere up there, “are you doing in my office?”

  I opened my eyes, and he was quite right. I was in Mr. Bermingham’s office. The sun was streaming through Mr. Bermingham’s Venetian blinds, and Mr. Bermingham was standing over me with a selection of the switchblade knives in his hands.

  I don’t know how Everyman reacts to this sort of situation. I guess I ran about average. I pushed myself up on one elbow and blinked at him.

  “Spastic,” he muttered to himself “Well?”

  I cleared my throat. “I, uh, I think I can explain this.”

  He was hung over and shaking. “Go ahead! Who the devil are you?”

  “Well, my name is Dupoir.”

  “I don’t mean what’s your name, I mean-Wait a minute. Dupoir?”

  “Dupoir.”

  “As in $14,752.03?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Bermingham.”

  “You!” he gasped. “Say, you’ve got some nerve

  coining here this way. I ought to teach you a lesson.”

  I scrambled to my feet. Mighty thews rippling, I tossed back my head and bellowed the death challenge of the giant anthropoids with whom I had been raised.

  Bermingham misunderstood. It probably didn’t sound like a death challenge to him. He said anxiously, “If you’re going to be sick, go in there and do it. Then we’re going to straighten this thing out.”

  I followed his pointing finger. There on one side of the foyer w
as the door marked Staff Washroom, and on the other the door to the street through which I had carried-him. It was only the work of a second to decide which to take. I was out the door, down the steps, around the corner and hailing a fortuitous cab before he could react.

  By the time I got to the house that Mr. Klaw wanted so badly to take away from us it was 7:40 on my watch. There was no chance at all that Shirl would still be asleep. There was not any very big chance that she had got to sleep at all that night, not with her faithful husband for the first time hi the four years of our marriage staying out all night without warning, but no chance at all that she would be still in bed. So there would be explaining to do. Nevertheless I insinuated my key into the lock of the back door, eased it open, slipped ghost-like through and gently closed it behind me.

  I smelled like a distillery, I noticed, but my keen, jungle-trained senses brought me no other message. No one was in sight or sound. Not even Butchie was either chattering or weeping to disturb the silence.

  I slid silently through the mud-room into the half-bath where I kept a spare razor. I spent five minutes trying to convert myself into the image of a prosperous young executive getting ready to be half an hour late at work, but it was no easy job. There was nothing but soap to shave with, and Butchie had knocked it into the sink. What was left was a blob of

  jelly, sculpted into a crescent where the dripping tap had eroded it away. Still, I got clean, more or less, and shaved, less.

  I entered the kitchen, and then realized that my jungle-trained senses had failed to note the presence of a pot of fresh coffee perking on the stove. I could hear it plainly enough. Smelling it was more difficult; its scent was drowned by the aroma of cheap booze that hung in the air all around me.

  So I turned around and yes, there was Shirl on the stairway, holding Butchie by one hand like Maureen O’Sullivan walking Cheeta. She wore an expression of unrelieved tragedy.

  It was clearly necessary to give her an explanation at once, whether I had one or not. “Honey,” I said, “I’m sorry. I met this fellow I hadn’t seen in a long time, and we got to talking. I know we should have called. But by the time I realized the tune it was so late I was afraid I’d wake you up.”

  “You can’t wear that shut to the office,” she said woefully. “I ironed your blue and gray one with the white cuffs. It’s in the closet.”

  I paused to analyze the situation. It appeared she wasn’t angry at all, only upset-which, as any husband of our years knows, is 14,752.03 times worse. In spite of the fact that the reek of booze was making me giddy and fruit flies were buzzing around, ShhTs normally immaculate kitchen, I knew what I had to do. “Shirl,” I said, falling to one knee, “I apologize.”

  That seemed to divert her. “Apologize? For what?”

  “For staying out all night.”

  “But you explained all that. You met this fellow you hadn’t seen in a long time, and you got to talking. By the time you realized the time it was so late you were afraid you’d wake me up.”

  “Oh, Shirl,” I cried, leaping to my feet and crushing her in my mighty thews. I would have kissed her, but the reek of stale liquor seemed even stronger. I

  was afraid of what close contact might do, not to mention its effect on Butchie, staring up at me with a thumb and two fingers in his mouth. We Dupoirs never do anything by halves.

  But there was a tear in her eye. She said, “I watched Butchie, honestly I did. I always do. When he broke the studio lamp I was watching every minute, remember? He was just too fast for me.”

  I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. That is not an unfamiliar situation in our house, and I have developed a technique for dealing with it. “What?” I asked,

  “He was too fast for me,” Shirl said woefully. “When he dumped his vitamins into his raisins and oatmeal I was right there. I went to get some paper napkins, and that was when he did it. But how could I know it would nun the plastics bin?”

  I went into Phase Two. “What plastics bin?”

  “Our plastics bin.” She pointed. “Where Butchie threw the stuff.”

  At once I saw what she meant. There was a row of four plastic popup recycling bins in our kitchen, one for paper, one for plastics, one for glass and one for metals. They were a credit to us, and to Mr. Horgan and to the Fourteenth Floor. However, the one marked “plastics” was not a credit to anyone any more. It had sprung a leak. A colorless fluid was oozing out of the bottom of it and, whatever it was, it was deeply pitting the floor tiles.

  I bent closer and realized where the reek of stale booze was coming from: out of the juices that were seeping from our plastics bin.

  “What the devil?” I asked.

  Shirl said thoughtfully, “If vitamins can do that to plastic, what do you suppose they do to Butchie’s insides?”

  “It isn’t the vitamins. I know that much.” I reached in and hooked the handle of what had been a milk jug, gallon size. It was high-density polythene and

  about 400 percent more indestructible than Mount Rushmore. It was exactly the kind of plastic jug that people who loved buzzards better than babies have been complaining about finding bobbing around the surf of their favorite bathing beaches, all the world over.

  Indestructible or not, it was about 90 percent destroyed. What I pulled out was a handle and part’of a neck. The rest drizzled off into a substance very like the stuff I had shaved with. Only that was soap, which one expects to dissolve from time to time. High-density polythene one does not.

  The fruit flies were buzzing around me, and everything was very confusing. I was hardly aware that the front doorbell had rung until I noticed that Shirl had gone to answer it.

  What made me fully aware of this was Mr. Bermingham’s triumphant roar: “Thought I’d find you here, Dupoir! And who are these people-your confederates?”

  Bermingham had no terrors for me. I was past that point. I said, “Hello, Mr. Bermingham. This confederate is my wife, the littler one here is my son. Shirl, Butchie-Mr. Bermingham. Mr. Bermingham’s the one who is going to take away our house.”

  Shirl said politely, “You must be tired, Mr. Bermingham. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

  Garigolli to Home Base

  Chief,

  I admit it, we’ve excreted this one out beyond redemption. Don’t bother to reply to this. Just write us off.

  I could say that it wasn’t entirely the fault of the crew members who stayed behind in the Host’s domicile. They thought they had figured out a way to meet Directive Two. They modified some organisms-didn’t even use bacteria, just an enzyme that hydrated polythene into what they had every reason to believe was a standard food substance, since the Host had been

  observed to ingest it with some frequency. There is no wrong-doing there, Chief. Alcohols are standard foods for many organic beings, as you know. And a gift of food has been held to satisfy the second Directive. And add to that they were half out of their plexuses with empathy deprivation.

  Nevertheless I admit the gift failed in a fairly basic way, since it seems to have damaged artifacts the Hosts hold valuable.

  So I accept the responsibility, Chief. Wipe this expedition off the records. We’ve failed, and we’ll never see our home breeding-slings again.

  Please notify our descendants and former co-parents and, if you can, try to let them think we died heroically, won’t you?

  Garigolli

  Shirl has defeated the wrath of far more complex ‘Creatures than Mr. Bermingham by offering them coffee-me, for instance. While she got him the clean cup and the spoon and the milk out of the pitcher in the refrigerator, I had time to think.

  Mr. Horgan would be interested in what had happened to our plastics Econ-Bin. Not only Mr. Horgan. The Fourteenth Floor would be interested. The ecology freaks themselves would be interested, and maybe would forget about liking buzzards better than babies long enough to say a good word for International Plastics Co.

  I mean, this was significant. It was big, by which
I mean it wasn’t little. It was a sort of whole new horizon for plastics. The thing about plastics, as everyone knows, is that once you convert them into trash they stay trash. Bury a maple syrup jug hi your back yard and five thousand years from now some descendant operating a radar-controlled peony-planter from his back porch will grub it up as shiny as new. But the gunk in our eco-bin was making these plastics, or at least the polythene parts of them, bio-degradable.

  What was the gunk? I had no idea. Some random chemical combination between Butchie’s oatmeal and his vitamins? I didn’t care. It was there, and it worked. If we could isolate the stuff, I had no doubt that the world-famous scientists who gave us the plastic storm window and the popup Eco-Bin could duplicate it. And if we could duplicate it we could sell it to hard-pressed garbagemen all over the world. The Fourteenth Floor would be very pleased.

  With me to think was ever to act. I rinsed out one of Butchie’s baby-food jars in the sink, scraped some of the stickiest parts of the melting plastic into it and capped it tightly. I couldn’t wait to get it to the office.

  Mr. Bermingham was staring at me with his mouth open. “Good Lord,” he muttered, “playing with filth at his age. What psychic damage we wreak with bad early toilet training.”

  I had lost interest in Mr. Bermingham. I stood up and told him, “I’ve got to go to work. I’d be happy, to walk you as far as the bus.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere, Dupoir! Came here to talk to you. Going to do it, too. Behavior was absolutely inexcusable, and I demand-Say, Dupoir, you don’t have a drink anywhere about the house, do you?”

  “More coffee, Mr. Bermingham?” Shirl said politely. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything stronger to offer you. We don’t keep alcoholic beverages here, or at least not very long. Mr. Dupoir drinks them.”

  “Thought so,” snarled Bermingham. “Recognize a drunk when I see one: shifty eyes, irrational behavior, duplicity-oh, the duplicity! Got all the signs.”

  “Oh, he’s not like my brother, really,” Shirl said thoughtfully. “My husband doesn’t go out breaking into liquor stores when he runs out, you know. But I don’t drink, and Butchie doesn’t drink, and so about all we ever have in the house is some cans of beer, and there aren’t any of those now.”