“He’s right, though,” Cussick pointed out. “The law gives anybody the right to live as he pleases. Relativism says—”
“Then the hell with Relativism. Did we fight a war, did we beat those Jews and atheists and Reds, so people could be any damn kind of freak they want? Believe any kind of egghead trash?”
“Nobody beat anybody,” Cussick answered. “Nobody won the war.”
A small knot of people had stopped to listen. The veteran noticed them; all at once his cold eyes faded and glazed over. He grunted, shot a last hostile look at Cussick, and melted off into the group. Disappointed, the people moved on.
The next freak was part human, part animal. Somewhere along the line, inter-species mating had occurred; the event was certainly lost in the nightmarish shadows of the war. As he gazed up, Cussick tried to determine what the original progenitors had been; one, certainly, had been a horse. This freak, in all probability, was a fake, artificially grafted; but it was visually convincing. From the war had come intricate legends of man-animal progeny, exaggerated accounts of pure human stock that had degenerated, erotic tales of copulation between women and beasts.
There were many-headed babies, a common sport. He passed by the usual display of parasites living on sibling hosts. Feathered, scaled, tailed, winged humanoid freaks squeaked and fluttered on all sides: infinite oddities from ravaged genes. People with internal organs situated outside the dermal wall; eyeless, faceless, even headless freaks; freaks with enlarged and elongated and multi-jointed limbs; sad-looking creatures peeping out from within other creatures. A grotesque panorama of malformed organisms: dead-ends that would leave no spawn, monsters surviving by exhibiting their monstrous qualities.
In the main area, the entertainers were beginning their acts. Not mere freaks, but legitimate performers with skills and talents. Exhibiting not themselves, but rather their unusual abilities. Dancers, acrobats, jugglers, fire-eaters, wrestlers, fighters, animal-tamers, clowns, riders, divers, strong men, magicians, fortune-tellers, pretty girls . . . acts that had come down through thousands of years. Nothing new: only the freaks were new. The war brought new monsters, but not new abilities.
Or so he thought. But he hadn’t seen Jones, yet. Nobody had; it was too early. The world went on rebuilding, reconstructioning: its time hadn’t come.
To his left glared and winked the furious display of a girl exhibit. With some spontaneous interest, Cussick allowed himself to drift with the crowd.
Four girls lounged on the platform, bodies slack with ennui. One was clipping her nails with a pair of scissors; the others gazed vacantly at the crowd of men below. The four were naked, of course. In the weak sunlight their flesh glowed faintly luminous, oily, pale-pink, downy. The pitchman babbled metallically into his horn; his amplified voice thundered out in a garble of confused noise. Nobody paid any attention to the din; those who were interested stood peering up at the girls. Behind the girls was a closed sheet-tin building in which the show itself took place.
“Hey,” one of the girls said.
Startled, Cussick realized she was speaking to him. “What?” he answered nervously.
“What time is it?” the girl asked.
Hurriedly, Cussick examined his wrist watch. “Eleven-thirty.”
The girl wandered out of line, over to the edge of the platform. “Got a cigarette?” she asked.
Fumbling in his pocket, Cussick held up his pack.
“Thanks.” Breasts bobbing, the girl crouched down and accepted a cigarette. After an uncertain pause, Cussick reached up his lighter and lit it for her. She smiled down at him, a small and very young woman, with brown hair and eyes, slim legs pale and slightly moist with perspiration. “You coming in to see the show?” she inquired.
He hadn’t intended to. “No,” he told her.
The girl’s lips pulled together in a mocking pout. “No? Why not?” Nearby people watched with amusement. “Aren’t you interested? Are you one of those?”
People around Cussick tittered and grinned. He began to feel embarrassment.
“You’re cute,” the girl said lazily. She settled down on her haunches, cigarette between her red lips, arms resting on her bare, out-jutting knees. “Don’t you have fifty dollars? Can’t you afford it?”
“No,” Cussick answered, nettled. “Can’t afford it.”
“Aw.” Teasing, pretending disappointment, the girl reached out her hand and rumpled his carefully-combed hair. “That’s too bad. Maybe I’ll take you on free. Would you like that? Want to be with me for nothing?” Winking, she stuck out the tip of a pink tongue at him. “I can show you a lot. You’d be surprised, the techniques I know.”
“Pass the hat,” a perspiring bald-headed man on Cussick’s right chuckled. “Hey, let’s get up a collection for this young fellow.” A general stir of laughter drifted around, and a few five-dollar pieces were tossed forward.
“Don’t you like me?” the girl was asking him, bending down and toward him, one hand resting on his neck. “Don’t you think you could?” Taunting, coaxing, her voice murmured on: “I’ll bet you could. And all these people think you could, too. They’re going to watch. Don’t you worry—I’ll show you how.” Suddenly she grabbed tight hold of his ear. “You just come on up here; mama’ll show all of you people what she can do.”
A roar of glee burst from the crowd, and Cussick was pushed forward and boosted up. The girl let go of his ear and reached with both hands to take hold of him; in that moment he twisted his way loose and dropped back down in the mass of people. After a short interval of shoving and running, he was standing beyond the crowd, panting for breath, trying to rearrange his coat . . . and his savoir faire.
Nobody was paying attention to him, so he began walking aimlessly along, hands in his pockets, as nonchalant as possible. People milled on all sides, most of them heading toward the main exhibits and the central area. Carefully, he evaded the moving flow; his best bet was the peripheral exhibits, open places where literature could be distributed and speeches made, tiny gatherings around a single orator. He wondered if the lean war veteran had been a fanatic; maybe he had identified Cussick as a cop.
The girl exhibit had been a sort of all-man’s-land between freak and talent. Beyond the stage of girls stood the booth of the first fortuneteller, one of several.
“They’re charlatans,” the portly curly-haired man revealed to him; he was standing with his family by a dart-throwing booth, a handful of darts clutched, trying to win a twenty-pound Dutch ham. “Nobody can read the future; that’s for suckers.”
Cussick grinned. “So’s a twenty-pound Dutch ham. It’s probably made of wax.”
“I’m going to win this ham,” the man asserted good- naturedly. His wife said nothing, but his children displayed overt confidence in their father. “I’m going to take it home with me, tonight.”
“Maybe I’ll get my fortune told,” Cussick said.
“Good luck, mister,” the curly-headed man said charitably. He turned back to the dart target: a great eroded backdrop of the nine planets, pitted with endless near-misses. Its virgin center, an incredibly minute Earth, was untouched. The portly, curly-headed man drew back his arm and let fly; the dart, attracted by a deflecting concealed magnet, missed Earth and buried its steel tip in empty space a little past Ganymede.
At the first fortunetelling booth an old woman, dark-haired and fat, sat hunched over a squat table on which was arranged timeless apparatus: a translucent globe. A few people were lined up on the stage, crowded in among the tawdry hangings waiting to pay their twenty dollars. A glaring neon sign announced:
YOUR FORTUNE READ MADAME LULU CARIMA-ZELDA
KNOW THE FUTURE
BE PREPARED FOR ALL EVENTUALITIES
There was nothing here. The old woman mumbled through the traditional routine, satisfying the middle-aged women waiting in line. But next to Madame Lulu Carima-Zelda’s booth was a second booth, shabby and ignored. A second fortuneteller, of sorts, sat here. But the bright
glaring cheapness of Madame Carima-Zelda’s booth had faded; the glittering nimbus died into gloomy darkness. Cussick was no longer walking through the shifting artificial fluorescent lights; he was standing in a gray twilight zone, between gaudy worlds.
On the barren platform sat a young man, not much older than himself, perhaps a little younger. His sign intrigued Cussick.
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND
(NO PERSONAL FORTUNES)
For an interval Cussick stood studying the young man. He was slouched in a sullen heap, smoking angrily and staring off into space. Nobody waited in line: the exhibit was ignored. His face was fringed with a stubbled beard; a strange face, swollen deep red, with bulging forehead, steel-rimmed glasses, puffy lips like a child’s. Rapidly, he blinked, puffed on his cigarette, jerkily smoothed back his sleeves. His bare arms were pale and thin. He was an intent, sullen figure, seated alone on an empty expanse of platform.
No personal fortunes. An odd come-on for an exhibit; nobody was interested in abstract fortunes, group fortunes. It sounded as if the teller wasn’t much good; the sign implied vague generalities. But Cussick was interested. The man was licked before he started; and still he sat there. After all, fortunetelling was ninety-nine percent showmanship and the rest shrewd guesswork. In a carny he could learn the traditional ropes; why did he choose this offbeat approach? It was deliberate, obviously. Every line of the hunched, ugly body showed that the man intended to stick it out—had stuck it out, for God knew how long. The sign was shabby and peeling; maybe it had been years.
This was Jones. But at the time, of course, Cussick didn’t know it.
Leaning toward the platform, Cussick cupped his hands and yelled: “Hey.”
After a moment the youth’s head turned. His eyes met Cussick’s. Gray eyes, small and cold behind his thick glasses. He blinked and glared back, without speaking, without moving. On the table his fingers drummed relentlessly.
“Why?” Cussick demanded. “Why no personal fortunes?”
The youth didn’t answer. Gradually his gaze faded; he turned his head and again glared down sightlessly at the table.
There was no doubt about it: this boy had no pitch, no line. Something was wrong; he was off-key. The other entertainers were hawking, yelling, turning themselves inside out (often literally) to attract attention, but this boy simply sat and glared. He made no move to get business; and he got none. Why, then, was he there?
Cussick hesitated. It didn’t look like much of a place to snoop; actually, he was wasting the government’s time. But his interest had been aroused. He sensed a mystery, and he didn’t like mysteries. Optimistically, he believed things should be solved; he liked the universe to make sense. And this blatantly flaunted sense.
Climbing the steps, Cussick approached the youth. “All right,” he said. “I’ll bite.”
The steps sagged under his feet; a rickety platform, unstable and unsafe. As he seated himself across from the youth, the chair groaned under him. Now that he was closer he could see that the youth’s skin was mottled with deep splotches of color that might have been skin grafts. Had he been injured in the war? A faint odor of medicine hung about him, suggesting care of his frail body. Above the dome of his forehead his hair was tangled; his clothes clung in folds against his knobby frame. Now, he was peering up at Cussick, appraising him, warily studying him.
But not fearfully. There was an awkward crudeness about him, an uncertain twitch of his gaunt body. But his eyes were harsh and unyielding. He was gauche, but not afraid. It was no weak personality that faced Cussick; it was a blunt, determined young man. Cussick’s own cheery bluster faded; he felt suddenly apprehensive. He had lost the initiative.
“Twenty dollars,” Jones said.
Clumsily, Cussick fumbled in his pocket. “For what? What am I getting?”
After a moment Jones explained. “See that?” He indicated a wheel on the table. Pulling back a lever he released it; the hand on the wheel slowly turned, accompanied by a laborious metallic clicking. The face of the wheel was divided into four quarters. “You have one hundred and twenty seconds. Anything you want to ask. Then your time is up.” He took the change and dropped it in his coat pocket.
“Ask?” Cussick said huskily. “About what?”
“The future.” There was contempt in the youth’s voice, undisguised, unconcealed. It was obvious; of course, the future. What else? Irritably, his thin hard fingers drummed. And the wheel ticked.
“But not personal?” Cussick pursued. “Not about myself?”
Lips twitching spasmodically, Jones shot back: “Of course not. You’re a nonentity. You don’t figure.”
Cussick blinked. Embarrassed, feeling his ears begin to burn, he answered as evenly as possible: “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe I’m somebody.” Hotly, he was thinking of his position; what would this rustic punk say if he knew he was facing a Fedgov secret-service man? It was on the tip of his tongue angrily to blurt it out, to give his role away in self-defense. That, of course, would finish him off with Security. But he was harried, and uncertain.
“You’re down to ninety seconds,” Jones notified him dispassionately. Then his gaunt, stony voice took on feeling. “For God’s sake, ask something! Don’t you want to know anything? Aren’t you curious?”
Licking his lips, Cussick said: “Well, what’s the future hold? What’s going to happen?”
Disgusted, Jones shook his head. He sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. For a moment it seemed as if he wasn’t going to answer; he concentrated on the smashed cigarette butt under the sole of his shoe. Then he dragged himself upright and carefully said: “Specific questions. Do you want me to think up one for you? All right, I will. Question. Who’ll be the next Council chairman? Answer. The Nationalist candidate, a trivial individual named Ernest T. Saunders.”
“But the Nationalists aren’t a party! They’re a cultist splinter-group!”
Ignoring him, Jones went on: “Question. What are the drifters? Answer. Beings from beyond the solar system, origin unknown, nature unknown.”
Puzzled, Cussick hesitated. “Unknown up to what date?” he ventured. Plucking up his courage, he demanded: “How far can you see?”
Without particular inflection, Jones said: “I can see without error over a span of a year. After that, it fades. I can see major events, but specific details dim and I get nothing at all. As far as I can see ahead, the origin of the drifters is unknown.” Glancing at Cussick, he added, “I mention them because they’re going to be the big issue from now on.”
“They already are,” Cussick said, recalling the present sensational headlines in the cheap press: UNKNOWN FLIGHTS OF SHIPS DETECTED BY OUT-PLANET PATROLS. “You say they’re beings? Not ships? I don’t get it—you mean what we’ve sighted are the actual living creatures, not their artificially constructed—”
“Alive, yes,” Jones interrupted impatiently, almost feverishly. “But Fedgov knows it already. Right now, at high level, they have detailed reports. The reports will be out in a few weeks; the bastards are withholding them from the public. A dead drifter was hauled in by a scout coming back from Uranus.” Suddenly the wheel ceased clicking, and Jones dropped back in his chair, his flow of agitated words ceasing. “Your time is up,” he announced. “If you want to know anything more, it’ll be another twenty dollars.”
Dazed, Cussick retreated away from him, down the steps and off the platform. “No thanks,” he murmured. “That’s plenty.”
3
AT FOUR O’CLOCK the police car picked him up and carried him back to Baltimore. Cussick was seething. Excitedly, he lit a cigarette, stubbed it out, and lit another. Maybe he had something; maybe not. The Baltimore secret-service buildings stood like a vast cube of concrete on the surface of the earth, a mile outside the city. Around the cube jutted metallic dots: coordinate block houses that were the mouths of elaborate subsurface tunnels. In the blue spring sky lazily flitted a few robot interception aerial mines. The police car slowed at the first check
-station; guards carrying machine guns, with grenades bobbing at their belts, steel helmets glinting in the sun, strolled leisurely over.
An ordinary inspection. The car was passed; it made its way along a ramp and into the receiving area. At that point Cussick was dropped off; the car rolled into the garage, and he found himself standing alone before the ascent ramp, his mind still in turmoil. How was he supposed to evaluate what he had found?
Before he made his report to Security Director Pearson, he let himself off at one of the pedagogic levels. A moment later he was standing in the work-littered office of his Senior Political Instructor.
Max Kaminski was laboriously examining papers heaped over his desk. It was awhile before he noticed Cussick. “Home is the sailor,” he remarked, continuing his work. “Home from the sea. And the hunter, too, for that matter. What did you bag out in the hills, this fine April afternoon?”
“I wanted to ask you something,” Cussick said awkwardly. “Before I make my report.” The tubby, round-faced man with his thick mustache and wrinkled brow had trained him; technically, Cussick was no longer under Kaminski’s jurisdiction, but he still came for advice. “I know the law . . . but a lot depends on personal evaluation. There seems to be a statute violation, but I’m not certain which.”
“Well,” Kaminski said, putting down his fountain pen, removing his glasses, and folding his meaty hands, “as you know, violations fall into three main classifications. It’s all based on Hoff’s Primer of Relativism; I don’t have to tell you that.” He tapped the familiar blue-bound book at the edge of his desk. “Go read your copy again.”
“I know it by heart,” Cussick said impatiently, “but I’m still confused. The individual in question isn’t asserting personal taste for statements of fact—he’s making a statement about things unknowable.”