THE MAN WHO JAPED

CHAPTER 4

Allen purcell returned home to his one-room apartment at the hour of nine-thirty p.m. Janet met him at the door.

"Did you eat?" she asked. "You didn't."

"No," he admitted, entering the room.

"I'll fix you something." She set back the wall tape and restored the kitchen, which had departed at eight. In a few minutes, "Alaskan salmon" was baking in the oven, and the near-authentic odor drifted through the room. Janet put on an apron and began setting the table.

Throwing himself down on a chair, Allen opened the evening paper. But he was too tired to read; he changed his mind and pushed the paper away. The meeting with Ida Pease Hoyt and Sue Frost had lasted three hours. It had been gruelling.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Janet asked.

"Later." He fooled with a sugar cube at the table. "How was the Book Club? Sir Walter Scott written anything good lately?"

"Not a thing," she said shortly, responding to the tone of his voice.

"You believe Charles Dickens is here to stay?"

She turned from the stove. "Something happened and I want to know what it is."

Her concern made him relent. "The Agency was not exposed as a vice den."

"You said on the phone you went to T-M. And you said something terrible happened at the Agency."

"I fired Fred Luddy, if you call that terrible. When'll the ‘salmon' be ready?"

"Soon. Five minutes."

Allen said: "Ida Pease Hoyt offered me Mavis' job. Director of Telemedia. Sue Frost did all the talking."

For a moment Janet stood at the stove and then she began to cry.

"Why the heck are you crying?" Allen demanded.

Between sobs she choked: "I don't know. I'm scared."

He went on fooling with the sugar cube. Now it had broken in half, so he flattened the halves to grains. "It wasn't much of a surprise. The post is always filled from the Agencies, and Mavis has been washed up for months. Eight years is a long time to be responsible for everybody's morality."

"Yes, you—said—he should retire." She blew her nose and rubbed her eyes. "Last year you told me that."

"Trouble is, he really wants to do the job."

"Does he know?"

"Sue Frost told him. He finished up the meeting. The four of us sat around drinking coffee and settling it."

"Then it is settled?"

Thinking of the look on Mavis' face when he left the meeting, Allen said: "No. Not completely. Mavis resigned; his paper is in, and Sue's statement has gone out. The routine protocol. Years of devoted service, faithful adherence to the Principles of Moral Reclamation. I talked to him briefly in the hall afterward." Actually, he had walked a quarter mile with Mavis, from the Committee building to Mavis' apartment. "He's got a piece of planet in the Sirius System. They're great on cattle. According to Mavis, you can't distinguish the taste and texture from the domestic herds."

Janet said: "What's undecided?"

"Maybe I won't take it."

"Why not?"

"I want to be alive eight years from now. I don't want to be retiring to some God-forsaken rustic backwater ten light years away."

Pushing her handkerchief into her breast pocket, Janet bent to turn off the oven. "Once, when we were setting up the Agency, we talked about this. We were very frank."

"What did we decide?" He remembered what they had decided. They decided to decide when the time came, because it might very well never come. And anyhow Janet was too busy worrying about the imminent collapse of the Agency. "This is all so useless. We're acting as if the job is some sort of plum. It's not a plum and it never was. Nobody ever pretended it was. Why did Mavis take it? Because it seemed like the moral thing to do."

"Public service," Janet said faintly.

"The moral responsibility to serve. To take on the burden on civic life. The highest form of self-sacrifice, the omphalos of this whole—" He broke off.

"Rat race," Janet said. "Well, there'll be a little more money. Or does it pay less? I guess that isn't important."

Allen said: "My family has climbed a long way. I've done some climbing, too. This is what it's for; this is the goal. I'd like a buck for every packet I've done on the subject."

The packet Sue Frost had returned, in fact. The parable about the tree that died.

The tree had died in isolation, and perhaps the Morec of the packet was confused and obscure. But to him it came over clearly enough: a man was primarily responsible to his fellows, and it was with his fellows that he made his life.

"There're two men," he said. "Squatting in the ruins, off in Hokkaido. That place is contaminated. Everything's dead, there. They have one future; they're waiting for it. Gates and Sugermann would rather be dead than come back here. If they came back here they'd have to become social beings; they'd have to sacrifice some part of their ineffable selves. And that is certainly an awful thing."

"That's not the only reason why they're out there," Janet said, in a voice so low that he could barely hear her. "I guess you've forgotten. I've been there, too. You took me with you, one time. When we were first married. I wanted to see."

He remembered. But it didn't seem important. "Probably it's a protest of some sort. They have some point they want to make, camping there in the ruins."

"They're giving up their lives."

"That doesn't take any effort. And somebody can always save them with quick-freeze."

"But in dying they make an important point. Don't you think so? Maybe not." She reflected. "Myron Mavis made a point, too. Not a very different point. And you must see something in what Gates and Sugermann are doing; you keep going out there again and again. You were there last night."

He nodded. "I was."

"What did Mrs. Birmingham say?"

Without particular emotion he answered: "A juvenile saw me, and I'm down for Wednesday's block meeting."

"Because you went there? They never reported it before."

"Maybe they never saw me before."

"Do you know about afterward? Did the juvenile see that?"

"Let's hope not," he said. "It's in the paper."

He snatched up the paper. It was in the paper, and it was on page one. The headlines were large.

STREITER STATUE DESECRATED

VANDALS IN PARK

INVESTIGATION UNDER WAY

"That was you," Janet said tonelessly.

"It was," he agreed. He read the headlines again. "It really was me. And it took an hour to do. I left the paint can on a bench. They probably found it."

"That's mentioned in the article. They noticed the statue this morning around six a.m., and they found the paint can at six-thirty."

"What else did they find?"

"Read it," Janet said.

Spreading the paper out flat on the table, he read it.

STREITER STATUE DESECRATED

VANDALS IN PARK

INVESTIGATION UNDER WAY

Newer York, Oct. 8 (T-M). Police are investigating the deliberate mutilation of the official statue of

Major Jules Streiter, the founder of Moral Reclama- tion and the guiding leader of the revolution of

1985. Located in the Park of the Spire, the monu- ment, a life-size statue of bronzed plastic, was struck from the original mold created by the foun- der's friend and life-long companion, Pietro Buetello in March of the year 1990. The mutilation, des- cribed by police as deliberate and systematic, ap- parently took place during the night. The Park of the Spire is never closed to the public, since it represents the moral and spiritual center of Newer York.

"The paper was downstairs when I got home," Janet said. "As always. With the mail. I read it while I was eating dinner."

"It's easy to see why you're upset."

"Because of that? I'm not upset because of that. All they can do is unlease us, fine us, send you to prison for a year."

"And bar our families from Earth."

Janet shrugged. "We'd live. They'd live. I've been thinking about it; I've had three hours and a half here alone in the apartment. At first I was—" She pondered. "Well, it was hard to believe. But this morning we both knew something had happened; there was the mud and grass on your shoes, and the red paint. And nobody saw you."

"A juvenile saw something."

"Not that. They'd have picked you up. It must have seen something else."

Allen said: "I wonder how long it'll be."

"Why should they find out? They'll think it's some person who lost his lease, somebody who's been forced back to the colonies. Or a noose."

"I hate that word."

"A supplicant, then. But why you? Not a man going to the top, a man who spent this afternoon with Sue Frost and Ida Pease Hoyt. It wouldn't make sense."

"No," he admitted. "It doesn't." Truthfully he added: "Even to me."

Janet walked over to the table. "I wondered about that. You're not sure why you did it, are you?"

"I haven't an idea in the world."

"What was in your mind?"

"A very clear desire," he said. "A fixed, overwhelming, and totally clear desire to get that statue once and for all. It took half a gallon of red paint, and some skillful use of a power-driven saw. The saw's back in the Agency shop, minus a blade. I busted the blade. I haven't sawed in years."

"Do you remember precisely what you did?"

"No," he answered.

"It isn't in the paper. They're vague about it. So whatever it was—" She smiled listlessly down at him. "You did a good job."

Later, when the baked "Alaskan salmon" was nothing but a few bones on an empty dinner platter, Allen leaned back and lit a cigarette. At the stove Janet carefully washed pots and pans in the sink attachment. The apartment was peaceful.

"You'd think," Allen said, "this was like any other evening."

"We might as well go on with what we were doing," Janet said.

On the table by the couch was a pile of metal wheels and gears. Janet had been assembling an electric clock. Diagrams and instructions from an Edufacture kit were heaped with the parts. Instructional pastimes: Edufacture for the individual, Juggle for social gatherings. To keep idle hands occupied.

"How's the clock coming?" he asked.

"Almost done. After that comes a shaving wand for you. Mrs. Duffy across the hall made one for her husband. I watched her. It isn't hard."

Pointing to the stove Allen said: "My family built that. Back in 2096, when I was eleven. I remember how silly it seemed; stoves were on sale, built by autofac at a third of the cost. Then my father and brother explained the Morec. I never forgot it."

Janet said: "I enjoy building things; it's fun."

He went on smoking his cigarette, thinking how bizarre it was that he could be here when, less than twenty-four hours ago, he had japed the statue. "I japed it," he said aloud. "You—"

"A term we use in packet assembly. When a theme is harped on too much you get parody. When we make fun of a stale theme we say we've japed it."

"Yes," she agreed. "I know. I've heard you parody some of Blake-Moffet's stuff."

"The part that bothers me," Allen said, "is this. On Sunday night I japed the statue of Major Streiter. And on Monday morning Mrs. Sue Frost came to the Agency. By six o'clock I was listening to Ida Pease Hoyt offer me the directorship of Telemedia."

"How could there be a relationship?"

"It would have to be complex." He finished his cigarette. "So roundabout that everybody and everything in the universe would have to be brought in. But I feel it's there. Some deep, underlying causal connection, not chance. Not coincidence."

"Tell me how you—japed it."

"Can't. Don't remember." He got to his feet. "Don't you wait up. I'm going downtown and look at it; they probably haven't had time to start repairs."

Janet said instantly: "Please don't go out."

"Very necessary," he said, looking around for his coat. The closet had absorbed it, and he pulled the closet back into the room. "There's a dim picture in my mind, nothing firm. All things considered, I really should have it clear. Maybe then I can decide about T-M."

Without a word Janet passed by him and out into the hall. She was on her way to the bathroom, and he knew why. With her went a collection of bottles: she was going to swallow enough sedatives to last her the balance of the night. "Take it easy," he warned.

There was no answer from the closed bathroom door. Allen hung around a moment, and then left.