'I appreciate your assistance,' Tito said woodenly.
'No you don't. You think I'm trying to do something wicked. Something out of mere spite.'
Tito said, 'I don't think anything; I'm just hungry. Maybe you don't eat until eight-thirty or nine, but I have pyloric spasms and I have to eat by seven. Will you excuse me ?' He rose to his feet, pushing his desk chair back. 'I want to close up shop.' He did not renew his offer to take her out to dinner.
Gathering up her coat and purse, Myra Sands said, 'Have you located Cally Vale and if so where ?'
'No luck,' Tito said, and felt uncomfortable.
Staring at him, Myra said, 'But why can't you locate her ? She must be somewhere ! She looked as if she could not believe her ears.
'The court process servers can't find her either,' Tito pointed out. 'But I'm sure she'll turn up by trial time.' He, too, had been wondering why his staff had been unable to locate Lurton Sands'
mistress; after all, there were only a limited number of places a person could hide, and detection and tracing devices, especially during the last two decades, had improved to an almost supernatural accuracy.
Myra said, 'I'm beginning to think you're just not any good. I wonder if I shouldn't put my business in somebody else's hands.'
'That's your privilege,' Tito said. His stomach ached, a series of spasms of his pyloric valve. He wondered if he was ever going to get an opportunity to eat tonight.
'You must find Miss Vale,' Myra said. 'She knows all the details of his activity; that's why he's got her hidden - in fact she's pumping blood with a heart he procured for her.'
'Okay, Mrs. Sands,' Tito agreed, and inwardly winced at the growing pain ...
4
The black-haired, extremely dark youth said shyly, 'We came to you, Mrs. Sands, because we read about you in the homeopape. It said you were very good and also you take people without too much money.' He added, 'We don't have any money at all right now, but maybe we can pay you later.'
Brusquely, Myra Sands said, 'Don't worry about that now.' She surveyed the boy and girl. 'Let's see. Your names are Art and Rachael Chaffy. Sit down, both of you, and let's talk, all right ?' She smiled at them, her professional smile of greeting and warmth; it was reserved for her clients, given to no one else, not even to her husband - or, as she thought of Lurton now, her former husband.
In a soft voice the girl, Rachael, said 'We tried to get them to let us become bibs but they said we should consult an advisor first.' She explained, 'I'm - well, you see, somehow I got to be preg. I'm sorry.' She ducked her head fearfully, with shame, her cheeks flushing deep scarlet. 'It's too bad they don't just let you kill yourself, like they did a few years ago,' she murmured. 'Because that would solve it."
'That law,' Myra said firmly, 'was a bad idea. However imperfect deep-sleep is, it's certainly preferable to the old form of self-destruction undertaken on an individual basis. How far advanced is your pregnancy, dear ?'
'About a month and a half,' Rachael Chaffy said, lifting her head a trifle. She managed to meet
Myra's gaze; for a moment, at least.
'Then abort-processing presents no difficulty,' Myra said. 'It's routine. We can arrange for it by noon today and have it done by six tonight. At any one of several free government abort clinics here in the area. Just a moment.' Her secretary had opened the door to the office and was trying to catch her attention. 'What is it, Tina ?'
'An urgent phone call for you, Mrs. Sands.'
Myra clicked on her desk vidphone. On the screen Tito Cravelli's features formed in replica, puffy with agitation.
'Mrs. Sands,' Tito said, 'sorry to bother you at your office so early this morning. But a number of tracking devices we've been employing here have wound up their term of service and have come home. I thought you'd want to know. Cally Vale is nowhere on Earth. That's absolutely been determined; that's definite.' He was silent, then, waiting for her to say something.
'Then she emigrated,' Myra said, trying to picture the dainty and rather nauseatingly fragile Miss
Vale in the rugged environment of Mars or Ganymede.
'No,' Tito Cravelli said emphatically, shaking his head. 'We've checked on that, of course. Cally
Vale did not emigrate. It doesn't make sense, but there it is. No wonder we're making no headway; we're faced with an impossible situation.' He did not appear very happy about it. His features sagged glumly.
Myra said, 'She's not on Earth and she didn't emigrate. Then she must...' It was obvious to her; why hadn't they thought of it right away, when Cally originally vanished from sight ? 'She's entered a government warehouse. Cally's a bib.' It was the only possibility left.
'We're looking into that,' Tito said, but without enthusiasm. 'I admit it's possible but frankly I just don't buy it. Personally, I think they've thought up something new, something original; I'd stake my job on it, everything I have.' Tito's tone was insistent, now. No longer hesitant. 'But we'll check all the Dept. of SPW warehouses, all ninety-four of them. That'll take a couple of days at least. Meanwhile ?' He caught sight of the young couple, the Chaffys, waiting silently. 'Perhaps;
I'd better discuss it with you later; there's no urgency.'
Maybe what the homeopapes are hinting at actually did take place, Myra thought to herself.
Perhaps Lurton has actually killed her. So she can't be subpoenaed by Frank Fenner at the trial.
'Do you believe Cally Vale is dead ?' Myra said to Tito bluntly. She ignored the young couple seated opposite her; they did not at the moment matter; this was far too important.
'I'm in no position ...' Tito began. Myra cut him off; she broke the connection, and the screen faded. I'm in no position to say, she finished for him. But who is ? Lurton ? Maybe even he doesn't know where Cally is. She might have run out on him. Gone to the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite and joined the army of girls there, under an assumed name. With relish, Myra pondered that, picturing her former husband's mistress as one of Thisbe's creatures, sexless and mechanical and automatic. Which will it be, Cally ? One, two, three or four ? Only, the choice isn't yours. It's theirs. Every time. Myra laughed. It's where you ought to be, Cally, she thought.
For the rest of your life, for the next two hundred years.
'Please forgive the interruption,' Myra said to the young couple seated opposite her. 'And do go on.'
'Well,' the girl Rachael said awkwardly, 'Art and I felt that - we thought over the abortion and we just don't want to do it. I don't know why, Mrs. Sands. I know we should. But we can't.'
There was silence, then.
'I don't see what you came to me for,' Myra said. 'If you've made up your minds against it already. Obviously, from a practical standpoint you should go through with it; you're probably frightened... after all, you are very young. But I'm not trying to talk you into it. A decision of this sort has to be your own.'
In a low voice Art said, 'We're not scared, Mrs. Sands. That's not it. We - well, we'd like to have the baby. That's all.'
Myra Sands did not know what to say. She had never, in her practice, run into anything quite like this; it baffled her.
She could see already that this was going to be a bad day.
Between this and Tito's phone call - it was too much. And so early. It was not yet even nine a.m.
In the basement of Pethel Jiff-scuttler Sales & Service, the repairman Rick Erickson prepared, for the second day in a row, to enter the defective 'scuttler of Dr Lurton Sands, Jr. He still had not found what he was searching for.
However, he did not intend to give up. He felt, on an intuitive level, that he was very close. It would not be long now.
From behind him a voice said, 'What are you doing, Rick ?'
Startled, Erickson jumped, glanced around. At the door of the repair department stood his employer, Darius Pethel, heavy-set in the wrinkled dark-brown old-fashioned /i>jerry -type wool suit which he customarily wore.