And oh god, he thought. The police are spotting it; they barged into my room minutes after I consulted the bank. Last night, those two; they knew already what these letters and weird note floating in the water closet of the toilet mean. They could have told me. But of course they wouldn't; that would be too natural, too humane.
His phone buzzed. He lifted the receiver.
"I contacted the encyclopedia," Smith said, as his image appeared on the screen. "Plowman's Planet is space argot for Sirius five. Since I had hold of the encyclopedia I took the opportunity of asking it more. I thought you might appreciate it."
"Yes," Joe said.
"One vast old creature lives there. Apparently infirm."
"You mean it's sick?" Joe asked.
"Well, you know... age and such like. Dormant; that's what it's been."
"Is it menacing?"
"How could it be menacing if it's dormant as well as infirm? It's senile. Yes, that's the word—senile."
Joe asked, "Has it ever said anything?"
"Not really."
"Not even the time of day?"
"Ten years ago it came to briefly and asked for an orbiting weather-station satellite."
"What did it pay for it with?"
"It didn't. It's indigent. We contributed it free, and we threw in a news type satellite along with the weather one."
"Broke and senile," Joe said. He felt glum. "Well," he said, "I guess I won't be getting any money out of it."
"Why? Were you suing it?"
"Goodby, Smith," Joe said.
"Wait!" Smith said. "There's a new game. You want to join? It consists of speed-scanning the newspaper archives to come up with the funniest headline. Real headline, you realize; not made up. I have a good one; it's from 1962. You want to hear it?"
"Okay," Joe said, still feeling glum. His glumness had oozed throughout him, leaving him inert and spongelike; he responded reflexively. "Let's hear your headline."
"ELMO PLASKETT SINKS GIANTS," Smith read from his slip of paper.
"Who the hell was Elmo Plaskett?"
"He came up from the minors and—"
"I have to go, now," Joe said, standing up. "I have to leave my office." He hung up. Home, he said to himself. To get my bag of quarters.
4
Along the sidewalks of the city the vast animallike gasping entity which was the mass of Cleveland's unemployed—and unemployable—gathered and stood, stood and waited, waited and fused together into a lump both unstable and sad. Joe Fernwright, carrying his sack of coins, rubbed against their collective flank as he pushed his way toward the corner and the Mr. Job booth. He smelled the familiar vinegarlike penetrating scent of their presence, their overheated and yet plaintively disappointed massiveness. On all sides of him their eyes contemplated his forward motion, his determination to get past them.
"Excuse me," he said to a slender Mexican-looking youth who had become wedged, among all the others, directly ahead of him.
The youth blinked nervously, but did not move. He had seen the asbestos bag which Joe held; beyond any doubt he knew what Joe had and where Joe was going and what Joe intended to do.
"Can I get by?" Joe asked him. It seemed an impasse of permanent proportions. Behind him, the throng of inactive humanity had closed in, blocking any chance of retreat. He could not go back and he could make no progress forward. I guess the next thing, he thought, is that they'll grab my quarters and that will be that. His heart hurt, as if he had climbed a ridge, a final ridge of life itself, a terrible hill strewn with skulls. He saw, about him, gaping eye sockets; he experienced a weird visual distortion, as if the ultimate disposition of these people had made its appearance palpably... as if, he thought, it can't wait; it must have them now.
The Mexican youth said, "Could I look at your coins, sir?" It was hard to know what to do. The eyes—or rather the hollow sockets—continued to press in at him in a complete circle; he felt them encompass him and his asbestos bag. I am shrinking, he thought in surprise. Why? He felt weak and glum, but not guilty. It was his money. They knew it and he knew it. And yet the vacant eyes made him small. As if, he thought, it doesn't matter what I do, whether I get to the Mr. Job booth or not; what I do, what becomes of me—it won't change things for these people.
And yet, on a conscious level, he didn't care. They had their lives; he had his, and his included a sack of carefully saved-up metal coins. Can they contaminate me? he asked himself. Drag me down into their inertial storm? This is their problem, not mine, he thought. I'm not going to sink with the system; this is my first decision, to ignore the two special delivery letters and do this: take this journey with this sack of quarters. This is the start of my escape, and there will be no new bondage.
"No," he said.
"I won't take any," the youth said.
A strange impulse overcame Joe Fernwright. Opening the bag he rummaged, got out a quarter; he held it out toward the Mexican youth. As the boy accepted it other hands appeared, on all sides; the ring of hopeless eyes had become a ring of outstretched, open hands. But there was no greed conspiring against him; none of the hands tried to grab his sack of coins. The hands were simply there, merely waiting. Waiting in a silence made up of trust, as his own earlier waiting at the mail tube had been. Horrible, Joe thought. These people think I'm going to give them a present, as if they've been waiting for the universe to do this: the universe has given them nothing all their lives and they have accepted that as silently as now. They see me as a kind of supernatural deity. But no, he thought. I've got to get out of here. I can't do anything for them.
But even as he realized this he found himself digging into the cloth sack; he found himself putting a quarter into one palm after another.
Overhead, a police cruiser whistled loudly as it lowered, like a great lid, its two occupants in their slick, bright uniforms, wearing riot helmets that sparkled, holding, each of them, a laser rifle. One of the two cops said, "Get out of this man's way."
The pressing circle began to melt back. The extended hands disappeared, as if into a numbed, intolerable darkness.
"Don't stand there," the other cop said to Joe in his thick cop's voice. "Get moving. Get those coins out of here or I'll write you out a citation after which you won't have one goddam coin left."
Joe walked on.
"What do you think you are?" the other cop said to him, as the cruiser followed after him, holding its position directly above his head. "Some sort of privately endowed philanthropic organization?"
Saying nothing, Joe continued on.
"You're required by law to answer me," the cop said.
Reaching into his asbestos cloth sack, Joe got out a quarter. He handed it up toward the nearer of the two cops. And, at the same time, saw with amazement that only a few quarters remained.
My coins, he realized, are gone! So there is only one door open to me—the mail tube and what it has brought in the last two days. Whether I like it or not—by what I've done just now it's been decided.
"Why did you hand me this coin?" the cop asked.
"As a tip," Joe said. And, at the same time, felt his head burst as the laser beam, on stun, hit him directly between his eyes.
At the police station the swank young police official, blondhaired, blue-eyed, slim, in his swank clean uniform, said, "We're not going to book you, Mr. Fernwright, although technically you're guilty of a crime against the people."
"The state," Joe said; he sat hunched over, rubbing his forehead, trying to make the pain stop. "Not the people," he managed to say. He shut his eyes and the pain flooded over him, radiating out from the spot where the beam had touched him.