I could say that it wasn’t entirely the fault of the crew members who stayed behind in the Host’s domicile. They thought they had figured out a way to meet Directive Two. They modified some organisms-didn’t even use bacteria, just an enzyme that hydrated polythene into what they had every reason to believe was a standard food substance, since the Host had been observed to ingest it with some frequency. There is no wrong-doing there, Chief. Alcohols are standard foods for many organic beings, as you know. And a gift of food has been held to satisfy the second Directive. And add to that they were half out of their plexuses with empathy deprivation.
Nevertheless I admit the gift failed in a fairly basic way, since it seems to have damaged artifacts the Hosts hold valuable.
So I accept the responsibility, Chief. Wipe this expedition off the records. We’ve failed, and we’ll never see our home breeding-slings again.
Please notify our descendants and former co-parents and, if you can, try to let them think we died heroically, won’t you?
Garigolli
Shirl has defeated the wrath of far more complex ‘Creatures than Mr. Bermingham by offering them coffee-me, for instance. While she got him the clean cup and the spoon and the milk out of the pitcher in the refrigerator, I had time to think.
Mr. Horgan would be interested in what had happened to our plastics Econ-Bin. Not only Mr. Horgan. The Fourteenth Floor would be interested. The ecology freaks themselves would be interested, and maybe would forget about liking buzzards better than babies long enough to say a good word for International Plastics Co.
I mean, this was significant. It was big, by which I mean it wasn’t little. It was a sort of whole new horizon for plastics. The thing about plastics, as everyone knows, is that once you convert them into trash they stay trash. Bury a maple syrup jug in your back yard and five thousand years from now some descendant operating a radar-controlled peony-planter from his back porch will grub it up as shiny as new. But the gunk in our eco-bin was making these plastics, or at least the polythene parts of them, bio-degradable.
What was the gunk? I had no idea. Some random chemical combination between Butchie’s oatmeal and his vitamins? I didn’t care. It was there, and it worked. If we could isolate the stuff, I had no doubt that the world-famous scientists who gave us the plastic storm window and the popup Eco-Bin could duplicate it. And if we could duplicate it we could sell it to hard-pressed garbagemen all over the world. The Fourteenth Floor would be very pleased.
With me to think was ever to act. I rinsed out one of Butchie’s baby-food jars in the sink, scraped some of the stickiest parts of the melting plastic into it and capped it tightly. I couldn’t wait to get it to the office.
Mr. Bermingham was staring at me with his mouth open. “Good Lord,” he muttered, “playing with filth at his age. What psychic damage we wreak with bad early toilet training.”
I had lost interest in Mr. Bermingham. I stood up and told him, “I’ve got to go to work. I’d be happy, to walk you as far as the bus.”
“You aren’t going anywhere, Dupoir! Came here to talk to you. Going to do it, too. Behavior was absolutely inexcusable, and I demand- Say, Dupoir, you don’t have a drink anywhere about the house, do you?”
“More coffee, Mr. Bermingham?” Shirl said politely. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything stronger to offer you. We don’t keep alcoholic beverages here, or at least not very long. Mr. Dupoir drinks them.”
“Thought so,” snarled Bermingham. “Recognize a drunk when I see one: shifty eyes, irrational behavior, duplicity-oh, the duplicity! Got all the signs.”
“Oh, he’s not like my brother, really,” Shirl said thoughtfully. “My husband doesn’t go out breaking into liquor stores when he runs out, you know. But I don’t drink, and Butchie doesn’t drink, and so about all we ever have in the house is some cans of beer, and there aren’t any of those now.”
Bermingham looked at her with angry disbelief. “You too! I smell it,” he said. “You going to tell me I don’t know what good old ethyl alcohol smells like?”
“That’s the bin, Mr. Bermingham. It’s a terrible mess, I know.”
“Funny place to keep the creature,” he muttered to himself, dropping to his knees. He dipped a finger into the drippings, smelled it, tasted it and nodded. “Alcohol, all right. Add a few congeners, couple drops of food coloring, and you’ve got the finest Chivas Regal a bellboy ever sold you out of a bottle with the tax stamp broken.” He stood up and glared at me. “What’s the matter with you, Dupoir? You not only don’t pay your honest debts, you don’t want to pay the bartenders either?”
I said, “It’s more or less an accident.”
“Accident?”
Then illumination struck. “Accident you should find us like this,” I corrected. “You see, it’s a secret new process. We’re not ready to announce it yet. Making alcohol out of old plastic scraps.”.
He questioned Shirl with his eyes. Getting her consent, he poured some of Butchie’s baby-food orange juice into a glass, scooped in some of the drippings from the bin, closed his eyes and tasted. “Mmm,” he said judiciously. “Sell it for vodka just the way it stands.”
“Glad to have an expert opinion,” I said. “We think there’s millions in it.”
He took another taste. “Plastic scraps, you say? Listen, Dupoir. Think we can clear all this up in no tune. That fool Klaw, I’ve told him over and over, ask politely, don’t make trouble for people. But no, he’s got that crazy lawyer’s drive for revenge. Apologize for him, old boy, I really do apologize for him. Now look,” he said, putting down the glass to rub his hands. “You’ll need help in putting this process on the market. Business acumen, you know? Wise counsel from man of experience. Like me. And capital. Can help you there. I’m loaded.”
Shirl put in, “Then what do you want our house for?”
“House? My dear Mrs. Dupoir,” cried Mr. Bermingham, laughing heartily, “I’m not going to take your house! Your husband and I will work out the details in no time. Let me have a little more of that delightful orange juice and we can talk some business.”
Garigolli to Home Base
Joy, joy
Chief!
Cancel all I said. WeVe met Directive Two, the Host is happy, and we’re on our way Home!
Warm up the breeding slings, there’s going to be a hot time in the old hammocks tonight.
Garigotti
Straight as the flight of Ung-Glitch, the soaring vulture, that is the code of the jungle. I was straight with Mr. Bermingham. I didn’t cheat him. I made a handshake deal with him over the ruins of our Eco-Bin, and honored it when we got to his lawyers. I traded him 40 percent of the beverage rights to the stuff that came out of our bin, and he wrote off that little matter of $14,752.03.,
Of course, the beverage rights turned out not to be worth all that much, because the stuff in the bin was organic and alive and capable of reproduction, and it did indeed reproduce itself enthusiastically. Six months later you could buy a starter drop of it for a quarter on any street corner, and what that has done to the vintners of the world you know as well as I do. But Bermingham came out ahead. He divided his 40 percent interest into forty parts and sold them for $500 each to the alumni of his drunk tank. And Mr. Horgan-
Ah, Mr. Horgan.
Mr. Horgan was perched on my doorframe like Ung-Glitch awaiting a delivery of cadavers for dinner when I arrived that morning, bearing my little glass jar before me like the waiting line in an obstetrician’s office. “You’re late, Dupoir,” he pointed out “Troubles me, that does. Do you remember Metcalf? Tall, blonde girl that used to work in Accounts Receivable? Never could get in on time, and-“