The Computer Connection

2

He was the epileptic type, I was positive the moment I saw him. A lovely candidate, big, rangy, strong. He carried the Knish to the university hospital slung over one shoulder. Jacy was groaning in Aramaic, the language he learned at his mother’s knee. In Emergency my guy was treated with great respect. It was, “Yes, doctor (Yassuh, medico), no, doctor, certainly, doctor.” I figured he must have done something sensational like reviving plague to combat the pop. ex. Good. A genius, too.

We saw Jacy into a bed. I wasn’t worried about him; it takes more than minor injuries to endanger a Moleman, but I was terrified by the possibility of Lepcer. That’s the real, the constant peril. More about Lepcer later. I whispered to Jacy, “I’ve registered you as J. Kristman. Don’t fret. I put me down as next of kin and I’ll take care of you.”

My guy said in XX, “Hey, man, you speak Early English. How come?”

I said, “How come, you?”

“Maybe some day I’ll tell you.”

“Likewise, I’m sure. Could you stand a drink?”

“Any time, but I’m not allowed firewater. I’m a ward of the state.”

“Easy. I’ll order and you sneak it. What am I drinking?”

“Firewater.”

“You mean there’s such a thing?”

His face was wooden. “Do I look like the joking type?”

“You look like something in front of a cigar store.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“There used to be. Where are we drinking?”

“The Passionate Input. I’ll show you.”

It was a typical campus trap, spaced-out psychedelia, a mooing orgasm tape, tripping bods on the floor blown out of their minds, projection commercials standing around like realsies. “Hello,” a jolly giant was saying. “I’m your friendly recycling bank. In our friendly efforts to conserve ecology we want you to let us recycle your money which—” We walked through him and went to the empty bar.

“Double Firewater,” I said. “Double soda for my friend.”

“Gas in the soda?” the bar wanted to know. “Hash? Phet? Sub?”

“Just plain soda. He trips on it.” All this in Spanglish, you unnastand. So it was a double Fire and a double soda and the glasses got kind of intertwined like the lovers on the floor. But I tried the Firewater and nearly had a convulsion.

“I nearly had a convulsion,” I said.

“You did,” he said. “It’s the strychnine we put in. The palefaces love it.”

“What d’you mean, ‘we’?”

“We moonshine it on the Erie reservation and sell it to the palefaces. Quite a switch, isn’t it? That’s how we got rich. Firewater and Ugly Poppies.”

“I’ll figure that one out later. I’m Prince. Ned Prince. Who you?”

“Guess.”

“Sure, but give me a hint.”

“No, no. That’s my name. Guess.” He gave me a deadpan glance. “Haven’t you ever heard about the late, great George Guess?”

“You?”

“My ancestor. That was the name the palefaces gave him. His real name was Sequoya.”

“Named after the tree?”

“They named the tree after him.”

I whistled. “He was that famous? What for?”

“He was the first great Indian scholar. Among other things, he invented the Cherokee alphabet.”

“You’re Dr. Guess?”

“R.”

“Physician?”

“Physicist, but they’re practically the same thing today.”

“Here at Union Carbide?”

“I teach here. I do my real work at JPL.”

“The Jet Propulsion Lab? What’s the real work?”

“I’m project scientist on the Pluto Mission.”

I whistled again. No wonder it was yes, doctor, no, doctor, certainly, doctor. This gonser macher was spending like a million a week on one of the most highly publicized NASA missions in history, financed by the United Conglomerate Fund in their friendly efforts to make the solar system a better place for deserving developers.

“Sounds to me like the state is your ward, Guess. Am I thirsty again?”

“Yeah.”

“This time let me have half. That strych grows on you.”

“Hell, dude, I was just putting you on about the no-drink shtik. All that went out ages ago.”

“Did it? I’m loose in the memory. Hey, bar. Two double Fires. You got a front name, Guess?”

“I’m S. Guess.”

“S for Sam?”

“No.”

“Saul? Sol? Stan? Salvarsan?”

He laughed, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a pokerface laugh. “You’re all right, Prince. Why in hell did your friend get mixed up in that silly brawl?”

“He always does; he won’t learn. Why in hell won’t you tell me your name?”

“What difference does it make? Call me Doc.”

“I can look you up in the U-Con stockholder reports.”

“No you can’t. I’m always S. Guess, Ph.D. Bar! Two more. On me.”

The bar objected to excessive alcohol and suggested we switch to something respectable like mescaline, so we obliged. A dead ringer for Columbus, including spyglass, shot up through the floor. “Friends, have you ever considered what would happen to know-how without wherewithal? Give generously to the Industrial Research Foundation by buying the products we endorse; Meegs, Gigs, Poons, Fubs—”

We ignored it. “If I show you my passport,” I said, “will you show me yours?”

“Haven’t got one. You don’t need a passport for space. Yet.”

“Don’t you travel?”

“They won’t let me out of Mexifornia, officially.”

“Are you that special?”

“I know too much. They’re afraid I may fall into the wrong hands. Con Ed tried to kidnap me last year.”

“I can’t stand the torture any longer. I’m really a spy for AT T. In drag. My real name is Nellie.”

He laughed again, still deadpan. “You’re all right, Nellie. I’m a pure Cherokee.”

“Nobody’s pure anything these days.”

“I am. My mother named me Sequoya.”

“No wonder you’re hiding the name. Why’d she play a dirty trick like that on you?”

“She’s romantic. She wants me to remember that I’m the twentieth in direct descent from the mighty Chief.”

Fee-5 came into the trap, playing the intellectual bit now; hornrim spectacles without lenses, stark naked and covered with spray-can graffiti, applied by herself.

“What’s this thing selling?” Guess asked.

“No, she’s a realsie.”

“Gas,” Fee told the bar and turned great dark eyes on us. “Benny Diaz, gemmum.”

“It’s all right, Fee. He speaks XX. An educated type. This is Dr. Sequoya Guess. You can call him Chief. Chief, this is Fee-5 Grauman’s Chinese. Talk about names!”

“Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transforms the wretched,” Fee said in somber tones.

“What is it and what’s it grieving for?” Sequoya wanted to know.

“Could be anyone. Newton, Dryden, Bix, Von Neumann, Heinlein. You name it. She’s my girl-Friday.”

“Also Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,” Fee said, belting down her gas. She pierced the Chief with a clinical look. “You want to fondle my boozalum,” she said. “Go ahead. Don’t deny your manhood.”

Sequoya pulled off her spectacles and perched them on one of her boozalums, which were recent and a source of great pride. “That one’s a little cockeyed,” he said. “What kind of name is Fee?” he asked me. “Short for Fee-Fie-Fo-Fum?”

“Short for Fee-mally.”

“Short for female,” Fee corrected with great dignity.

The Chief shook his head. “I think I’d better go back to JPL. At least the machines make sense there.”

“No, no. It makes sense. When she was born—”

“In the orchestra of Grauman’s.” Very proud.

“Her dumb mother couldn’t think of a name, so the demographer listed her as Female. The mother liked it and called her Fee-mally. She calls herself Fee-5.”

“Why the five?”

“Because,” Fee explained patiently, “I was born in the fifth row. Any fool would understand that, but against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain. Gas!”

A capsule floated down on top of the bods with its jets spraying fireworks. A blue-eyed blond astronaut stepped out and came up to us. “Duh,” he mumbled in Kallikak. “Duh-duh-duh-duh…”

“What’s this thing selling?” Uncas asked.

“Duh,” Fee told him. “That’s about all the honks can say, so they named the product after it. I think it’s a penis amplifier.”

“How old is this squaw?” Sequoya demanded.

“Thirteen.”

“She’s too young for her frame of reference. Next you’ll be telling me she can count.”

“Oh, she can, she can. She can do anything. She picks it up from the bug broadcasts. This brat is picking all the brains on Earth. By ear.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t either.”

“Probably some sort of interface.” The Chief produced an otoscope from the interior of his tutta. I had a glimpse and the interior looked like a portable laboratory. “Let me have a look, Fee-Fie-Fo.” She presented an ear obediently and he had his look. He grunted. “Fantastic. She’s got a wild canal circuitry and there’s an otolith in there that looks like a transponder.”

“When I die,” Fee said, “I’ll leave my ears to science.”

“What’s the Fraunhofer wavelength of calcium?” he shot.

She cocked her head. “Well?” he asked after a pause.

“I’ve got to find somebody who’s talking about it. Wait for it… Wait for it… Wait for it…”

“What do you hear when you listen?”

“Like the wind in a thousand wires. Ah! Here it is. 3968 Angstroms, in the extreme violet.”

“This kid is a treasure.”

“Don’t flatter her. She’s vain enough as it is.”

“I want her. I can use her at JPL. She’ll make an ideal assistant.”

“You’re not bugged,” Fee told him, “and you’re not being monitored. Did you know?”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I suppose you are.”

“No,” I said. “Fee and I aren’t bugged because we’ve never been in a hospital. She was born in a movie house and I was born in a volcano.”

“I’m going back to JPL,” he muttered. “You’re all scrambled around here. Will you let her come and work for me?”

“If you can stand her, but she’s got to come home nights. I’m raising her old-fashioned. You’re not really serious about this, are you, Geronimo?”

“Damn serious. I won’t have to waste time teaching her the things an assistant ought to know. She can pick everything up reading the bugs. The people I’ve had to fire for illiteracy! Education in Spangland! Pfui!”

“So where were you educated that makes you so literate?”

“On the reservation,” he said grimly. “Indians are traditional. We still revere Sequoya and we’ve got the best schools in the world.” He groped inside the inexhaustible tutta, produced a silver medallion, and handed it to Fee. “Wear this when you come to JPL. It opens the front gate. You’ll find me in the Cryonics Section. Better wear something. It’s damned cold.”

“Russian sable,” Fee said.

“Does that mean she’s going to come?”

“If she wants to and if you pay my price,” I said.

He took the spectacles off her chest. “Oh, she wants to. She’s been batting her cockeyed boozalums at me without success and she never gives up.”

“I’ve been rejected by better men than you,” Fee said indignantly.

“So what’s your price, Ned?”

“Sell me your soul,” I said brightly.

“Hell, you can have it for free if you can get it back from United Conglomerate.”

“Let’s have dinner first. The only question is, do we feed the girls before or after?”

“Me! Me! Me!” Fee cried. “I want to be one of the girls.”

“Virgins are so pushy,” I said.

“I was raped when I was five.”

“The wish is father to the thought, Fee.”

“Who said that?” Montezuma shot at her. “Well?”

“Shush. Shush. Shush. Nobody’s talking about — Ah! Got it. Shakespeare. Henry IV.”

“It’s the Jung caper,” Guess said in awe. “She can tap the collective conscious of the world. I’ve got to have her.”

“If I come to JPL will you pay my price?” Fee asked.

“What is it?”

“Criminal assault.”

He looked at me. I winked at him.

“All right, Fee, and I’ll make it real criminal; inside the centrifuge at 1,000 rpm, in the vacuum chamber at half a millimeter of mercury, in one of the cryonics coffins with the lid on. It’s a promise.”

“There! See?” she threw at me, as triumphant as she was eight months back when her boobs jumped up.

“I never thought you were such a conformist, Fee-doll. Now go to the hospital and comfort Jacy. He’s registered as J. Kristman. Tell them you’re the confidential assistant of Dr. Guess and they’ll sink to their knees.”

“Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, Fee-Fie. If it’s a deal.”

She stuck out a paw and slapped hands. “It’s a deal,” she said and walked out through Louis Pasteur, who was waving test tubes and selling a mugging repellent.

We picked up a couple of girls who claimed they were coeds and might well have been; one of them could recite the alphabet all the way to L. The only problem was how to stop her from reciting. A show-off. We took them to Powhatan’s pad, which really was impressive, an enormous tepee guarded by three very unfriendly timber wolves. When we got inside I understood the reason for the security; it was decorated with some of the most beautiful art I’ve ever seen in my life, all museum pieces.

We swopped the girls a couple of times and then Guess cooked us a traditional Cherokee dinner in a huge thermal stewpot: rabbit, squirrel, onions, peppers, tomatoes, corn, and lima beans. He called it msiquatash. I took the girls home. They were living in the fuselage of a Messerschmitt in a TV prop dump, and then I called Pepys in Paris.

“Sam, it’s Guig. All right if I project?”

“Come on in, Guig.”

So I projected. He was having breakfast in the bright morning sun. You’d think that being the Group historian he’d identify with someone like Tacitus or Gibbon, but no, it was Balzac, complete with monk’s drag. We’re all a little loose.

“Good to see you, Guig. Sit down and join me.” Joke. When you project you’re only two-dimensional and you ooze through furniture and floors if you don’t keep moving, so I kept moving. It was like walking through slush.

“Sam, I’ve got another candidate, a beauty this time. Let me tell you about him.”

I described Sequoya. Sam nodded appreciatively. “Sounds perfect, Guig. What’s the problem?”

“Me. I don’t trust myself anymore; I’ve failed too often. I swear if I fail with Rain-in-the-Face I’m going to quit for good.”

“Then we must make sure you don’t fail.”

“Which is why I’m here. I’m afraid to try it on my own. I want the Group to pitch in and help me.”

“Murder a man. Hmmm. But what’s your plan?”

“I haven’t got any. I’m asking the Group to come up with horror suggestions and then come out and work with me.”

“Watch yourself, Guig. You’re knee-deep in the fireplace. Now let me get this straight. You want to use the Grand Guignol technique on Guess and you’re asking the Group for ideas, aid, and comfort.”

“That’s it, Sam.”

“Some don’t approve.”

“I know.”

“And some don’t believe.”

“I know that, too, but some have an open mind. They’re the ones I want to tap.”

“You’re sliding into the piano, Guig. Then this is going to be your final superergon, and we can’t let you down. God knows, a man of the stature of Dr. Guess would be a tremendous asset to the Group. I’ve always agreed that we need new blood. I’ll pass the word on the grapevine. You’ll be hearing from us.”

“Thanks, Sam. I knew I could depend on you.”

“Don’t go yet. I’m a month behind on your shenanigans. What have you been up to?”

“I’ll beam you a printout from my diary. The usual channel?”

“Yes. And what about that remarkable young lady, Fee-5? Should we plan a recruitment for her?”

I stared at him, absolutely speechless. It had never occurred to me, and my instantaneous reaction was to shake my head.

“But why not, Guig? She sounds as tremendous as Dr. Guess.”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Revoir, Sam.” And I retrojected.

Confusions and upsetments. I went to her room to have a look at her. She was sleeping in a white coverall, scrubbed and polished, her hair skinned back, and she had a lunch packed and waiting. All set for the big new job. I inspected the lunch; enough for two including a kilo of my private caviar from the St. Lawrence hatchery. Hmmm.

Her bed was murmuring, “The vacuum-insulated cryogenic tank at the United Conglomerate JPL Space Center contains nine hundred thousand gallons of liquid hydrogen for fueling the Pluto Mission rockets. In terms of energy its contents are equivalent to…” Usw. Boning up to make herself worthy of Sitting Bull. Hmmm.

I went to the study for a rap with my diary. I had to know what was wrong with me. Was I overprotective? Was I afraid of her? Did I hate her? Did she hate me? Was I rejecting the prospect of knowing her forever?

TERMINAL. READY?

READY. ENTER PROGRAM NUMBER.

NEW PROGRAM. CODE 1001.

DESCRIBE PARAMETERS.

USE ALL RELATIONS BETWEEN FEE-5

AND TERMINAL AS FIXED POINT AND

FLOATING POINT VARIABLES.

STATE ARGUMENT MODE.

ARE FEE-5 AND TERMINAL MEMBERS

OF SAME SET?

CODE 1001 HAS BEEN LOADED.

LOC. + CODE. START COUNT.

It took like ten minutes, and when you translate that into nanoseconds there aren’t enough zeros to go around.

CODE 1001 HAS FINISHED RUN.

MCS, PRINT. W. H. END.

The printout cackled: WITHIN MATHEMATICAL PARAMETERS FEE-5 N = TERMINAL. WITHIN EMOTIONAL PARAMETERS FEE-5 = TERMINAL.

“Emotional!” I hollered at the goddamn diary. “What’s that got to do with it?” and I went to bed (mad).

I chopped her down to JPL next morning where they wouldn’t let me through the main gate and she gave me a triumphant look as she sashayed in. I looked around. I remembered it from the days when it was just a scrubby hill scarred with a few burns where Cal Tech undergraduates had been playing with baby rockets. Now it was a complex so gigantic that JPL was threatening to secede from Mexifornia and go into business for itself.

After a few hours with Jacy at the university hospital (doing fine) and watching the campus riot (Antipleasurehood) I got home just in time to open the door for an enormous figure in an antique rubber diver’s suit. “I’m not buying anything today,” I said and started to shut the door. It opened the face plate of the helmet and about a gallon of seawater gushed out. “Guig! I’m here to help you,” the bod said in XX.

It was Captain Nemo, who’s been cracked on marine biology so long that he prefers to live in water. He turned and waved his arms. “Bring her in, lads,” he shouted in Spanglish and a little more water squirted out of his helmet. Three goons appeared lugging an enormous vat which they carried into the house. “Set her down easy,” Nemo admonished. “Easy, lads. Easy. That’s it. Avast. Belay.” The goons left. Nemo took off the helmet and beamed at me, his whiskers dripping. “I’ve got all your problems solved, Guig. Meet Laura.”

“Laura?”

“Look in the tank.”

I took the lid off and looked. I was face-to-face with the goddamn biggest octopus in history.

“This is Laura?”

“My pride and joy. Say hello to her.”

“Hello, Laura.”

“No, no, Guig. She can’t hear you from out here. Stick your head under the water.”

I stuck. “Hello, Laura,” I bubbled.

Damn if the beak didn’t open and I heard “Herro” and the eyes stared at me.

“Can you say your name, love?”

“Raura.”

I pulled out and turned to Captain Nemo, who was bursting with pride. “Well?”

“Fantastic.”

“She’s brilliant. She has a vocabulary of a hundred words.”

“She seems to have a Japanese accent.”

“Yes. I had a little trouble with the mouth transplant.”

“Transplant?”

“Well you don’t think I found a thinking, talking octopus, do you? I created her with transplants.”

“Nemo, you’re a genius.”

“I admit it,” he admitted modestly.

“And Laura’s going to help me put the squeeze on Sequoya Guess?”

“She can’t miss. We tell her what to do and your man will die so horribly that he’ll never forgive you.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Have you got a pool? I’m beginning to dry out.”

“No, but I can fake one.”

I sprayed the little drawing room with transparent perspex, about six feet up the walls; the floor and furniture too, of course, making the coat two inches thick, and there was a drawing-room-shaped pool including the decor. I filled it from the main pump. Nemo got out of his suit, went into the living room, and came back with Laura in his arms. They got into the pool and Nemo sat down on the couch and breathed a bubble of relief while Laura explored curiously. Then Nemo motioned for me to join them. I joined. Laura wrapped her arms around me affectionately.

“She likes you,” Nemo said.

“That’s nice. So what’s your hideous plan?”

“We take your man aqualung diving. We take him deep. He’ll have a closed atmospheric system with a high-pressure helium-oxygen gas mixture. The helium is for the bends.”

“Yes?”

“Laura attacks. The monster from the deep.”

“And drowns him?”

“No, no, no, lad. More fiendish than that. Laura has been briefed. She cuts off the helium input while he’s struggling.”

“So? He’s getting pure oxygen.”

“That’s what makes it fiendish. Oxygen, under high pressure, produces symptoms of tetanus, strychnine poisioning, and epileptic spasms. It exaggerates the excitomotor power output of the spinal cord and creates violent convulsions. Your man will go under in slow agony.”

“It sounds ghastly enough, Nemo, but how do we save him?”

“Chloroform.”

“With what?”

“Chloroform. That’s the antidote for oxygen poisoning.”

I thought it over. “It sounds kind of complicated, Nemo.”

“What d’you want, a volcano?” he asked angrily.

“Sorry. Sorry… I just want to be sure it’ll work this time. We’ll try it, Nemo. We — Wait a minute. I hear a godawful pounding on the front door.”

I climbed out and went to the front door, forgetting I was naked. When I irised it open, there was Scented Song, looking as ever like a Ming Dynasty princess. There was an elephant behind her hammering at the door with its trunk.

“The vision of your godlike presence lends celestial light to these concave and unworthy eyes,” she said. “All right, Sabu, knock it off.”

The elephant stopped hammering. “Hi, Guig,” she said. “Long time no see. Don’t look now, but your fly’s open.”

I kissed her. “Come in, princess. It has been a long time, hasn’t it? Too long. Who’s your friend?”

“About as close as I could come to a mastodon.”

“You don’t mean—”

“What else? If it was good enough for Hic-Haec-Hoc it ought to be good enough for your prospect.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I seduce your jewel of a thousand facets. While we’re in the act we’re caught flagrante by Dumbo who, in a mad passion of insensate jealousy, sl-o-w-ly crushes us to death. I scream, but it’s no use. It’s mad, do you hear? Mad. Your guy fights heroically, but the massive forehead presses down and down and down…”

“Jeez,” I said appreciatively.

“And speaking of Sabu’s massive brain, we’d better bring him in. He’s not very bright and he may get himself into trouble. Iris a little wider for him, Guig.”

I opened the door wider and the princess motioned the road-company mastodon in. He in and I have to admit he couldn’t be very bright. In the few minutes that he’d been left alone he’d permitted himself to be covered with spray-can graffiti, all unmistakably obscene. Sabu chirped a little, touched Scented Song with his trunk to reassure himself, and then disappeared as the living room floor collapsed under him with a roar. There he was, down in the basement, trumpeting his fool head off. There were more roars from the drawing room.

“They don’t build houses like they used to,” the princess said. “What’s all that hollering?”

I didn’t have to esplain. Captain Nemo came charging out with his fly open. “Goddamn it, what the hell’s going on? Ahoy, princess. You’ve scared the living daylights out of Laura, Guig. She’s in a red panic. She’s a very sensitive girl.”

“It wasn’t me, Nemo, it was Sabu. He fell down a little.”

Nemo looked down into the basement. “What is it?”

“A Hairy Mastodon,” I said.

“I don’t see any hair.”

“I shave him every morning,” Scented Song said. She seemed a little miffed and I suspected there was going to be rivalry between Sabu and Laura. There was a scratching on the front door. When I opened it I was confronted by a coiled python ringed about seven feet high.

“No rabbits today,” I said. “Come back tomorrow.”

“He does not swallow rabbits,” a familiar voice said with meticulous diction. “He swallows men.”

Long fingers separated two coils and there was M’bantu surrounded by python, smiling at me.

“My favorite Zulu. Come in, McBee. Bring your friend, unless he’s shy.”

“He is not shy, Guig. He is asleep. He will sleep for ten days and then he will be ready for your Dr. Guess. Good afternoon, princess. Captain Nemo. What a pleasant reunion.”

Both of them sniffed and didn’t bother to conceal it. More rivalry. I was warmed by the way the Group was rallying ‘round, but oh! the competition. M’bantu unwrapped the python, which was like fifteen feet long, and draped it gently around one of the archway pillars. It went right on sleeping.

“What’s that bulge in its middle?” Nemo demanded.

“Breakfast,” McBee said courteously, not going into details.

“Does it like fish?”

“Probably prefers elephants,” Scented Song said. “It’s big enough.”

“The next meal will be Dr. Sequoya Guess. That is, with your permission, Guig,” M’b said pleasantly. “He will die most painfully, but what will be even more painful for me will be the sacrifice of my friend to save the doctor. However, che sara sara.”

The front door burst wide with a blaze of sparks and Edison marched in, carrying his toolbox. “Told you these magnetic locks can’t hold, Guig,” he snapped. “How much electric power does this Sachem have in his house? Princess. Nemo. M’bantu. Well?”

“None,” I said. “He lives in a tepee. Strictly Indian style. Thanks for coming, Ed.”

“Then we’ll have to get him here. You’ve got power?”

“I can deliver ten kilowatts.”

“Plenty. You’ve always been behind the times?”

“Conservative. Yes.”

“Conservative kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“Conservative oven?”

“The old-fashioned walk-in type. Yes.”

“Perfect. That’s how we’ll get him.” Edison opened his toolbox and yanked out a blueprint. “Look at this.”

“Just tell us, Ed.”

“We rewire it, power it, turn it into a magnetic induction furnace.”

“What’s that?”

“It melts metal; nothing else. Only conductive metals. Understand?”

“So far.”

“Put in your hand and you feel nothing. But if you’ve got a ring on your finger, the ring will melt and burn your finger off. Induction.”

“Phew. That sounds grisly.”

“Doesn’t it? Get the Indian into your oven. We start the induction slow and the torture begins.”

“You mean his fingers burn off?”

“No. The brain begins to burn. Bugged, isn’t he?”

“No.”

“Bugs are platinum.” Obviously Ed wasn’t hearing me. “Platinum is conductive. QED.”

At this point the other three, who had been listening utterly fascinated, burst out laughing. They shrieked and rocked helplessly while Edison glared at them. It looked as though this loyal rally was going to turn into a Donnybrook Fair and I’d get nowhere with the murder of Sequoya. I was wondering how to make peace when Fee-5, bless her, called and asked if she could project. I said come ahead and there she was in a starched white lab coat looking every inch the dedicated young scientist.

“He wants you to come to JPL right away,” she burst out in XX. Then she looked around. “Oh, sorry, cats. I didn’t know there was company. Am I intruding?” still in XX.

“All gung, Fee. All friends. As a matter of fact we were just discussing the Chief. Now what’s all this?”

“There’s an elephant in the cellar. Did you know?”

“Yes, we know.”

“And a snake up there.”

“We know. Also an octopus in the drawing room. Why does Dr. Guess want me to come to JPL right away?”

She took fire again. “The event of the century. The experimental cryocapsule will put down in an hour. Three cryonauts have been out in orbit for three months and now they’re coming back. All the celebs from U-Con will be there and the Chief wants you, too.”

“Why me? I’m not celebrated. I don’t even own any stock in United Conglomerate.”

“He likes you. I don’t know why. Nobody else does.”

“Well, ask him if I can bring four friends.”

Fee nodded and retro’d. The others protested that they weren’t faintly interested in the event of the century; they’d witnessed too many in their time and they were always a let down. All of them began bitching simultaneously; about the Boxer rebellion, Franklin and his kite, Captain Bligh and the Bounty, Henry Christophe. I tried to break it up. “You don’t understand,” I told them. “I couldn’t care less about those frozen characters coming in for a landing, but this is a golden opportunity to case the guy we’re going to kill. Don’t you want to size up your victim?”

Fee reappeared. “It’s gung, Guig. He says the more the merrier. You can bring the elephant if you like. I’ll meet you at the front gate and pass you in.” She disappeared.

As we trooped up to the roof (elephant not included) to get into the big chopper, they were all delivering asides.

“Who is she?”

“Sam says he’s had her for three years.”

“One of yours, M’bantu?”

“Alas, I would say not. She is too light. Most probably Maori and Aztec Indian with a strong strain of Honk. It’s the touch of the Waspbrush that accounts for the delicate bones.”

“Guig always likes them exotic.”

“Behind the times all his life.”

“She is pretty.”

“And as nubile as a young dolphin.”

“I wonder how many he’s scored.”

“Sam would know.”

I was delivering a few asides to myself: How the hell did Fee-5 know my guests understood XX? I had the uneasy feeling that there was a lot more I didn’t know about Fee. I also had a sinking that this Cherokee caper was going to turn into the wrong kind of catastrophe. I wanted to go to the university hospital and ask Jacy to move over.