Chief,
The mobility of this Host is a constant pain in the spermatophore. Now he’s gone off on the day-cycle early, and half the crew are still stuck in his domicile. Ultimate Matrix knows how they’ll handle it if we don’t get back before they run out of group empathy.
You’ve got no reason to take that tone, Chief. We’re doing a good job and you know it. “Directive One: To remain undetected by sentients on planet being explored.” A hundred and forty-four p.g., right? They don’t have a clue we’re here, although I concede that that part is fairly easy, since they are so much bigger than we are. “Directive Three: Subject to Directives One and Two, to make a complete study of geographic, demographic, ecological and cognitic factors and to transmit same to Home Base.” You actually complimented us on those! It’s only Directive Two that’s giving us trouble.
We’re still trying, but did it ever occur to you that maybe these people don’t deserve Directive Two?
Garigolli
I loped along the jungle trail to the bus stop, calculating with my razor-sharp mind that the distance from the house was almost exactly 14,752.03 centimeters. As centimeters it didn’t sound bad at all. As money, $14,752.03 was the kind of sum I hadn’t written down since Commercial Arithmetic in P.S. 98.
I fell in with Barney Freedman, insurance underwriter and husband of Ginevra, the Demon Decorator. “Whatever became of Commercial Arithmetic?” I asked him. “Like ninety-day notes for fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-two dollars and three cents at six percent simple interest? Although why anybody would be dumb enough to lend anybody money for ninety days beats me. If he doesn’t have it now, he won’t have it in ninety days.”
“You’re in some kind of trouble.”
“Shrewd guess.”
“So what did Shirl do now?”
“She co-signed a note for her brother,” I said. “When he went into the drying-out sanitarium for the gold treatment. They wouldn’t take him on his own credit, for some reason. They must have gold-plated nun. He said the note was just a formality, so Shirl didn’t bother me with it.”
We turned the corner. Barney said, “Ginerva didn’t bother me once when the telephone company-“
“So when Shirt’s brother got undrunk,” I said, “he told her not to worry about it and went to California. He thought he might catch on with the movies.”
“Did he?”
“He didn’t even catch cold with the movies. Then they sent us the bill. Fourteen thou-well, they had it all itemized. Three nurses. Medication. Suite. Occupational Therapy. Professional services. Hydrotherapy. Group counseling. One-to-one counseling. Limousine. Chauffeur for limousine. Chauffeur’s helper for limousine. Chauffeur’s helper’s hard-boiled eggs for lunch. Salt for chauffeur’s helper’s hard-boiled-“
“You’re getting hysterical,” Barney said. “You mean he just skipped?” We were at the bus stop, with a gaggle of other prosperous young suburbanites.
I said, “Like a flat rock on a pond. So we wrote him, and of course the letters came back. They didn’t fool around, the Institute for Psychosomatic Adjustment didn’t.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“I telephoned a man up there to explain, when we got the first letter. He didn’t sound pretty. Just tired. He said my wife shouldn’t sign things without reading them. And he said if his house was-something about joint tenancy in fee simple, he would break his wife’s arm if she was the type that signed things without reading them, and keep on rebreaking it until she stopped. Meanwhile they had laid out a lot of goods and services in good faith, and what was I going to do about it?”
The bus appeared on the horizon, emitting jet trails of Diesel smog. We knotted up by the sign. “So I told him I didn’t know,” I said, “but I know now. I’ll get sued, that’s what I’ll do. The Dupoirs always have an answer to every problem.”
Conversation was suspended for fifteen seconds of scrimmage while we entered the bus. Barney and I were lucky. We wound up with our heads jammed affectionately together, not too far from a window that sucked in Diesel fumes and fanned them at us. I could see the fruit flies gamely trying to get back to my ear, but they were losing the battle.
Barney said, “Hey. Couldn’t you sell your house to somebody you trusted for a dollar, and then they couldn’t-“
“Yes, they could. And then we’d both go to jail. I asked a guy in our legal department.”
“Huh.” The bus roared on, past knots of other prosperous young suburbanites who waved their fists at us as we passed. “How about this. I hope you won’t take this the wrong way. But couldn’t there be some angle about Shirl being, uh, not exactly competent to sign any kind of-“
“I asked about that too, Barney. No hope. Shirls never been hospitalized, she’s never been to a shrink, she runs a house and a husband and a small boy just fine. Maybe she’s a little impulsive. But a lot of people are impulsive, the man said.”
Garigolli to Home Base
Chief,
I think we’ve got it. These people use a medium of exchange, remember? And the Host doesn’t have enough of it! What could be simpler?
With a little modification there are a couple of local organisms that should be able to concentrate the stuff out of the ambient environment, and then-
And then we’re off the impaling spike!
Garigolli
The bus jerked to a stop at the railroad, station and we boiled out on successive rollers of humanity which beached us at separate parts of the platform.
The 8:07 slid in at 8:19 sharp and I swung aboard, my mighty thews rippling like those of the giant anthropoids among whom I had been raised. With stealthy tread and every jungle-trained sense alert I stalked a vacant seat halfway down the aisle on the left, my fangs and molars bared, my liana-bound, flint-tipped Times poised for the thrust of death. It wasn’t my morning. Ug-Fwa the Hyena, scavenger of the mighty Limpopo, bounded from the far vestibule giving voice to his mad cackle and slipped into the vacant seat. I and the rest of the giant anthropoids glared, unfolded our newspapers and pretended to read.
The headlines were very interesting that morning.
PRES ASKS $14,752.03 FOR MISSILE DEFENSE. “SLICK” DUPOIR SOUGHT IN DEFAULT CASE. RUMOR RED PURGE OF BROTHER-IN-LAW. QUAKE DEATH TOLL SET AT 14,752.03. BODY OF SKID ROW CHARACTER IDENTIFIED AS FORMER PROSPEROUS YOUNG SUBURBANITE; BROTHER-IN-LAWS FLIES FROM COAST, WEEPS “WHY DIDN’T HE ASK ME FOR HELP?” FOSTER PARENTS OF “BUTCHIE” DUPOIR OPEN LEGAL FIGHT AGAINST DESTITUTE MA AND PA, SAY “IF THEY LOVE HIM WHY DON’T THEY SUPPORT HIM?” GLIDER SOARS 14,752.-
03 MILES. DUPOIR OFF 147.52-no, that was a fly speck, not a decimal point-OFF 14,752.03 FOR NEW LOW, RAILS AND BROTHERS AND LAW MIXED IN ACTIVE TRADING.
I always feel you’re more efficient if you start the day with the gist of the news straight in your mind.
I arrived at the office punctually at 9:07, late enough to show that I was an executive, but not so late that Mr. Horgan would notice it. The frowning brow of my cave opened under the grim rock front that bore the legend “International Plastics Co.” and I walked in, nodding good morning to several persons from the Fourteenth Floor, but being nodded to myself only by Hennie, who ran the cigar stand. Hermie cultivated my company because I was good for a dollar on the numbers two or three times a week. Little did he know that it would be many a long day before he saw a dollar of mine, perhaps as many as 14,752.03 of them.
Garigolli to Home Base
Further to my last communication, Chief,
We ran into a kind of a setback. We found a suitable organic substrate and implanted a colony of modified organisms which extracted gold from environmental sources, and they were performing beautifully, depositing a film of pure metal on the substrate, which the Host was carrying with him.