The Spy in the Ointment

11

Late that afternoon Duff wired me for sound. I walked into his hobby shop and he handed me a glass of water and a black medicinal-looking capsule, and said, “Take this.”

I said, “Why?”

“Bottoms up,” he said. “We’ve still got lots to do.”

So I put the capsule in my mouth, downed it with water, gave him the glass back, and said, “Is it all right if I know what that was?”

“Certainly,” he said. “A microphone.”

“A who?”

“You will excrete it,” he said, “in approximately three days. In the interim, you will be able to record and broadcast all conversations held in your presence.”

I said, “You mean I’m bugged? I’ve got a microphone inside me?”

“That’s right,” he said, calm and unperturbed. That was because he didn’t have any microphones inside him. “There are no special instructions in regard to it,” he said, “except that we would prefer you not to eat gassy foods. Now, try this pair of shoes on.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “You’re going too fast. Gassy foods? What do you mean, gassy foods?”

“Beer,” he said. “Baked beans. You know the sort of thing.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Noise.” He made vague motions. “We have trouble picking up external conversations,” he explained, “unless the body itself remains quiet.” And he extended toward me a pair of black shoes with plain squarish toes, the sort of thing Navy men wear all the time, shoes that look mostly like bad drawings of shoes in cartoon strips.

Moving gingerly, because the idea of a microphone in my stomach was still a trifle exotic to me, I sat down, removed my own shoes, and put these Navy clogs on in their place. They fit perfectly. In fact, they had the soft and comfortable fit that new shoes never have, and I looked at them on my feet and wondered how that particular miracle had been managed.

Duff said, “How are they?”

“Fine,” I said. “Are they new?”

“No, they’re not. Now, in the—”

“Wait a second,” I said. “They’re used shoes?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“Why am I wearing somebody else’s shoes?” I asked.

“The previous wearer,” he said, “has no further use for them.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t want to know about that. That sounds ungood, I don’t want to hear any more about it. But what I do want to know about, I want to know why I’m wearing them.”

“They contain,” he explained patiently, “your transmitter and receiver.”

“My transmitter,” I said, “and receiver.”

“Certainly. Information picked up by your microphone is carried via your skeletal frame to your right heel, and thus into your right shoe, which contains your transmitter. The transmitter has a range of not quite two miles, so there will always be at least one recording team within pickup distance.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “And what about my receiver? That’s in my left shoe?”

“Correct,” he said, avoiding an Abbott and Costello routine. “Come on over here.”

I went on over there, where Duff motioned at a table littered with objects. “Choose which one you want to carry,” he said.

I looked at the objects on the table: a pair of hornrimmed glasses, a watch with expansion band, an ostentatious ring with a green jade stone, a set of comedy-tragedy mask cuff links, an identification bracelet, an engineer’s pocket watch with a gold chain, a plain gold wedding band, a money clip shaped like a dollar sign, and a shiny Zippo lighter. I said, “What are these things?”

“Speakers,” he said.

“Oh ho,” I said, beginning to catch on. “In comes news to my left shoe, then up through my bones to one of these things.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“I’ll take the watch,” I said. “I don’t have a watch.”

“Good. Try it on.”

I tried it on, and the expansion band pulled all the hair off my wrist, one blade at a time. “That hurts,” I said.

“It’ll stop. Now, whenever your control wishes to communicate with you, you’ll feel a slight tingling sensation in your wrist. At such time, put the watch to your ear. The sound will be low, but perfectly audible.”

“It will, will it?”

“Now come this way,” he said, and led me past a lot more Flash Gordon stuff to another table littered with apparent innocents, among them a shiny new quarter, which he picked up and handed me, saying, “Keep track of this coin. When placed in water, it signals a strong directional beam, and should only be used if you are in serious difficulty and require rescue.”

I looked closely at the coin and said, “Well, it’s probably the only shiny 1950 quarter I’m liable to have for a while, so I guess I won’t mix it up.” I put it in my pocket.

“Fine,” he said. “Next, this credit card,” and handed me a laminated Diner’s Club card. “Please don’t use it for restaurant bills,” he said, “unless it’s absolute necessary. It isn’t a normal Diner’s Club account.”

“I’ll say,” I said. “It’s got my name on it.”

“It is,” he said, “an explosive, capable of doing approximately as much damage as a World War II hand grenade. If it becomes necessary to use it, use one of your shoelaces as a fuse, they’re specially treated. Wrap the lace once around the card, ignite the further end, and you’ll have approximately twenty seconds to take cover.”

I said, “This thing blows up?”

“As I just said,” he said.

“You expect me,” I said, “to put this card in my wallet, put my wallet in my hip pocket, and sit down someplace. That’s called being hoist by one’s own petard, you know. It isn’t commonly known, by the way, but a petard is a kind of bomb. Not this kind,” I said, holding the credit card carefully but gingerly but carefully. “Some other kind,” I said.

“Fire is required to ignite the bomb,” Duff assured me casually. “You can hit it with a hammer if you like, and nothing will happen.”

“Can I have that in writing?”

Duff smiled, as though I’d made a joke and not a very good one, and returned to his Mr. Wizard table. “Now, this,” he said, picking up an ordinary-looking black leather belt with a silver buckle, “is an antenna, in case you are in an area where transmission and/or reception is difficult. Tie this end to a handy radiator, pipe, some such thing, hold the buckle end in either hand, and your communications system will be augmented sufficiently to overcome most poor reception areas.”

I put the belt on in place of my own, and Duff next handed me a ballpoint pen which would take pictures; a mechanical pencil which would fire a red signal flare; a necktie which, when set fire to, would create a smokescreen; and a handkerchief which, when immersed in water, released a noxious gas into the air that would induce nausea.

I said, “For the record, I’d like to point out one last time that I am an avowed pacifist. I do not perform violent, warlike, or aggressive acts upon others, not even in self-defense. Passive resistance is my only weapon.”

Duff, looking somewhat cynical, nodded and said, “Uh huh. My job is to arm you, Q. Whether you use any of this material or not isn’t my concern. I give you the stuff, I teach you its operation, and then I’m done with you.”

“Are you done with me now?”

“Yes. Good luck to you. I think Karp wants you now, in the front office.”

“Thanks.” Then I felt a little sheepish at having sounded ungrateful for what he’d been trying to do, and I added, “I do want to thank you, Duff, uhh...”

“It’s my job,” he said.

“Well. Thanks, anyway.”

I left there and went walking down the corridor, and very shortly noticed an odd tingling sensation on my left wrist. I looked at it, looked at the new watch sitting there, and wondered if the damn thing was getting set to electrocute me. Then I remembered that Duff had told me the tingling sensation meant somebody wanted to talk to me, and I should put the watch to my ear. I stopped, therefore, in the middle of a long and blank and empty corridor, and raised my left arm to put my watch to my ear.

Whereupon I heard a tiny tinny voice repeating, over and over, “Say something. Say something. Say something.”

“Me?” I said. All alone, in the corridor.

“There you are,” said the tiny tinny voice, which I barely recognized as belonging to Duff. “Took you long enough.”

“Can you really hear me?” I asked. I was alone, in a featureless corridor with green walls and gray carpeting. I was standing there all by myself, holding my left wrist pressed against my ear and talking out loud. I felt like an idiot.

“One, two, three,” said Duff. “One, two, three.”

“What?” I said.

Duff said, “How am I coming through? Can you hear me all right?”

“Sure,” I said.

“All right, fine. End of test.”

Then there was silence. I continued to stand there, holding my wrist to my ear, hearing nothing but the faint ticking of the watch, and after a minute I said, “What do I do now?” And got no answer. Now I really was alone.

Feeling very embarrassed, I put my arm down at my side and walked electronically away.