VI
Max Wyman woke raving with the chuck horrors. There was somebody thereto hand him candy bars, sweet lemonade, lump sugar. There was somebodyto shove him easily back into the pallet of rags when he tried tostumble forth in a hunt for booze. On the second day he realized thatit was an old man whose face looked gray and paralyzed. His name was T.G. Pendelton, he said.
After a week, he let Max Wyman take little walks about their part ofRiverside--but not by night. "We've got some savage people here," hesaid. "They'd murder you for a pint. The women are worse. If one callsto you, don't go. You'll wind up dumped through a manhole into theHudson. Poor folk."
"You're _sorry_ for them?" Wyman asked, startled. It was a new idea tohim. Since Buffalo, he had never been sorry for anybody. Something awfulhad happened there, some terrible betrayal ... he passed his bony handacross his forehead. He didn't want to think about it.
"Would I live here if I weren't?" T. G. asked him. "Sometimes I can helpthem. There's nobody else to help them. They're old and sick and theydon't fit anywhere. That's why they're savage. You're young--the onlyyoung man I've ever seen in Riveredge. There's so much outside for theyoung. But when you get old it sometimes throws you."
"The Goddammed Syndic," Wyman snarled, full of hate.
T. G. shrugged. "Maybe it's too easy for sick old people to get booze.They lose somebody they spent a life with and it throws them. Peopleharden into a pattern. They always had fun, they think they always will.Then half of the pattern's gone and they can't stand it, some of them.You got it early. What was the ringing bell?"
Wyman collapsed into the bay of the I-beam as if he'd been kicked in thestomach. A wave of intolerable memory swept over him. A ringing bell, awobbling pendulum, a flashing light, the fair face of his betrayer, thehateful one of Hogan, stirred together in a hell brew. "Nothing," hesaid hoarsely, thinking that he'd give his life for enough booze toblack him out. "Nothing."
"You kept talking about it," T. G. said. "Was it real?"
"It couldn't have been," Wyman muttered. "There aren't such things. No.There was her and that Syndic and that louse Hogan. I don't want to talkabout it."
"Suit yourself."
He did talk about it later, curiously clouded though it was. The yearsin Buffalo. The violent love affair with Inge. The catastrophic scenewhen he found her with Regan, king-pin mobster. The way he felt turnedinside-out, the lifetime of faith in the Syndic behind him and thelifetime of a faith in Inge ahead of him, both wrecked, the booze, theflight from Buffalo to Erie, to Pittsburgh, to Tampa, to New York. Andsomehow, insistently, the ringing bell, the wobbling pendulum and theflashing light that kept intruding between episodes of reality.
T. G. listened patiently, fed him, hid him when infrequent patrols wentby. T. G. never told him his own story, but a bloated woman who livedwith a yellow-toothed man in an abandoned storage tank did one day, hervoice echoing from the curving, windowless walls of corrugated plastic.She said T. G. had been an alky chemist, reasonably prosperous,reasonably happy, reasonably married. His wife was the faithful kind andhe was not. With unbelievable slyness she had dulled the pain for yearswith booze and he had never suspected. They say she had killed herselfafter one frightful week-long debauche in Riveredge. T. G. came down toRiveredge for the body and returned after giving it burial and drawinghis savings from the bank. He had never left Riveredge since.
"Worsh'p the grun' that man walks on," the bloated woman mumbled. "Nev'gets mad, nev' calls you hard names. Give y'a bottle if y' need it. Talkto y' if y' blue. Worsh'p that man."
Max Wyman walked from the storage tank, sickened. T. G.'s charitycovered that creature and him.
It was the day he told T. G.: "I'm getting out of here."
The gray, paralyzed-looking face almost smiled. "See a man first?"
"Friend of yours?"
"Somebody who heard about you. Maybe he can do something for you. Hefeels the way you do about the Syndic."
Wyman clenched his teeth. The pain still came at the thought. Syndic,Hogan, Inge and betrayal. God, to be able to hit back at them!
The red ride ebbed. Suddenly he stared at T. G. and demanded: "Why? Whyshould you put me in touch? What is this?"
T. G. shrugged. "I don't worry about the Syndic. I worry about people.I've been worrying about you. You're a little insane, Max, like all ofus here."
"God damn you!"
"He has...."
Max Wyman paused a long time and said: "Go on, will you?" He realizedthat anybody else would have apologized. But he couldn't and he knewthat T. G. knew he couldn't.
The old man said: "A little insane. Bottled-up hatred. It's better outof you than in. It's better to sock the man you hate and stand a chanceof having him sock you back than it is just to hate him and let thehate gnaw you like a grave-worm."
"What've you got against the Syndic?"
"Nothing, Max. Nothing against it and nothing for it. What I'm for ispeople. The Syndic is people. You're people. Slug 'em if you want andthey'll have a chance to slug you back. Maybe you'll pull down theSyndic like Samson in the temple; more likely it'll crush you. Butyou'll be _doing_ something about it. That's the great thing. That's thething people have to learn--or they wind up in Riveredge."
"You're crazy."
"I told you I was, or I wouldn't be here."
The man came at sunset. He was short and pudgy, with a halo of wispyhair and the coldest, grimmest eyes that Wyman had ever seen. He shookhands with Wyman, and the young man noted simultaneously a sharp pain inhis finger and that the stranger wore an elaborate gold ring. Then theworld got hazy and confused. He had a sense that he was being askedquestions, that he was answering them, that it went on for hours andhours.
When things quite suddenly came into focus again, the pudgy man wassaying: "I can introduce myself now. Commander Grinnel, of the NorthAmerican Navy. My assignment is recruiting. The preliminary examinationhas satisfied me that you are no plant and would be a desirable citizenof the N. A. Government. I invite you to join us."
"What would I do?" Wyman asked steadily.
"That depends on your aptitudes. What do you think you would like todo?"
Wyman said: "Kill me some Syndics."
The commander stared at him with those cold eyes. He said at last: "Itcan probably be arranged. Come with me."
* * * * *
They went by train to Cape Cod. At midnight on January 15th, thecommander and Wyman left their hotel room and strolled about thestreets. The commander taped small packets to the four legs of themicrowave relay tower that connected Cape Cod with the Continental Presscommon carrier circuits and taped other packets to the police station'smotor pool gate.
At 1:00 A.M., the tower exploded and the motor pool gate fused into animpassible puddle of blue-hot molten metal. Simultaneously, fifty men inturtle-neck sweaters and caps appeared from nowhere on Center Street.Half of them barricaded the street, firing on citizens and cops who cametoo close. The others systematically looted every store between thebarricade and the beach.
Blinking a flashlight in code, the commander approached the deadlineunmolested and was let through with Wyman at his heels. The goods, theraiders, the commander and Wyman were aboard a submarine by 2:35 andunder way ten minutes later.
After Commander Grinnel had exchanged congratulations with the subcommander, he presented Wyman.
"A recruit. Normally I wouldn't have bothered, but he had a ratherspecial motivation. He could be very useful."
The sub commander studied Wyman impersonally. "If he's not a plant."
"I've used my ring. If you want to get it over with, we can test him andswear him in now."
They strapped him into a device that recorded pulse, perspiration,respiration, muscle-tension and brainwaves. A sweatered specialist cameand mildly asked Wyman matter-of-fact questions about his surroundingswhile he calibrated the polygraph.
Then came the pay-off. Wyman did not fail to note that the sub commanderloosened his g
un in his holster when the questioning began.
"Name, age and origin?"
"Max Wyman. Twenty-two. Buffalo Syndic Territory."
"Do you like the Syndic?"
"I hate them."
"What are your feelings toward the North American Government?"
"If it's against the Syndic, I'm for it."
"Would you rob for the North American Government?"
"I would."
"Would you kill for it?"
"I would."
"Have you any reservations yet unstated in your answers?"
"No."
It went on for an hour. The questions were re-phrased continuously;after each of Wyman's firm answers, the sweatered technician gave asatisfied little nod. At last it ended and he was unstrapped from thedevice.
Max was tired.
The sub commander seemed a little awed as he got a small book and readfrom it: "Do you, Max Wyman, solemnly renounce all allegiancespreviously held by you and pledge your allegiance to the North AmericanGovernment?"
"I do," the young man said fiercely.
In a remote corner of his mind, for the first time in months, the bellceased to ring, the pendulum to beat and the light to flash.
Charles Orsino knew again who he was and what was his mission.