And so the nights flowed on. Woman after woman. All a half hour late. All different. All tired at the start. All soon desperate and clawing. All soon screaming "Allah." And all of them looking pleadingly out the window as they drove away.
My calls at the bank had to become more frequent. The allowance got reduced to six hundred and then to four hundred. And finally, I was calling the bank every day.
"You're eating into your capital like a buzz saw," Zengin said. "You're spending one million four hundred thousand lira a week and the branch manager tells me you also have some local gasoline bills and other things you'll have to pay. That concubine keeps buying flowers and theater tickets in New York. You should take a whip to her!"
Oh Gods, if I only dared take a whip to Krak!
"Let it eat into the capital and be (bleeped) to it," I said. "I must have a minimum of two hundred thousand lira a night!"
"Then, as your banker," he said, "I advise you to come to Istanbul and open your box. If you give me another million dollars, I can get you an income like that and you won't be slicing capital away, which is the height of folly."
"I can't spare the time!" I said.
He hung up.
And so the days passed, with, oh, those lovely nights. A new woman every time! Fat and thin, tall and short, but all of them all woman! At first every one seemed totally limp, but soon enough they were frantic. All they ever said was "O Allah!" and "I'm drowning!" But not even curious animals could distract me from my duty.
And every night, without exception, when they were driven away by the evilly laughing Ters, they had the same beseeching look.
I hadn't realized how the time was passing until I saw a bud on a shrub one day. Was it actually moving into spring?
But not for me. Suddenly, without any slightest fore-hint, my dearest dreams turned into horror, my connections disconnected into a tangle of terror and my whole life came unstuck. All in the torture of slow motion like you see a proud building coming down to land at last in a heap of shuddering rubble.
Fate had only been toying with me. And with the planet.
It was midafternoon where I was. I had very little to do. I wandered into my secret room and was struck with the whim that, like Roman emperors of old, I might enjoy the suffering of those who were about to die in the arena.
I brushed off some webs from the blanket covering of the viewers and even killed a spider or two as a sort of hors d'oeuvre to the main bout. I threw back the cover and sat down.
For a moment I thought I had gotten the wrong station or something. It was a hall. People were rushing back and forth in mad streams, very busy. It was Heller's view of the world. He must be in some other building. Their half floor at the Empire State had never had that much traffic tearing around. But no, it was their floor all right. A nearby sign said:
Wonderful Oil for Maysabongo Front Office
What on Earth was going on? They didn't ever have that much staff. Or did they?
He was now passing the Telex Communication Centrale. It was pretty jammed up. Machines were hammering away inside.
A man in white overalls stopped him. "New York Telephone Company, Lease Line Crew Chief, Alf Underwood" was on the badge Heller looked at.
"Hey, you," said the man to Heller, "you look like an executive. We got an order here to run three more lease lines from this floor to the Chryster Building. We dunno where you want the automatic relay switchboard."
Heller looked into the communications room. Gods, there was an operator at every machine and they were working like crazy. Heller pointed to a young man at the end machine. "See him," he said to the crew chief. "The one in the lavender shirt. And if he can't tell you, see Mr. Epstein over at Multinational, third corridor to your right."
Heller went on. He was breasting quite a stream of clerks and callers. He arrived near the door of Multinational, marked with its big logo of an anarchist bomb.
So many people were rushing in and out that he was stalled. He finally got into a line of people waiting to go in.
It looked like he would take so long that I switched my attention to the other viewer. Krak was somewhere else. Looked like Fifth Avenue. She was going along, looking into shop windows. My attention was at once riveted. She must be going to buy something and on my Squeeza credit card. The scene had such potential havoc in it that I didn't want to look. But just as one's eyes will rivet upon an imminent disaster, I could not tear my attention away.
She passed by Tiffany's with only a casual glance and I began to breathe once more. But the way she was staring at street numbers quickened my pulse. Then she saw something ahead. It was a banner sign in a window:
Grand Opening
Post Winter Sale
FURS!
They had racks of them, visible through the window.
She went in. A clerk bustled over.
"I wonder," said the Countess Krak, "if you have something suitable for a space voyage."
I felt the blood rushing to my head! It could only mean one thing. She was doing some sort of planning about going home! Maybe they had had a huge breakthrough!
"Space voyage, madam?"
"Yes. Something soft and warm and comfortable that can be worn instead of a pressure suit."
"Oh, I am sorry, madam," began the clerk.
A tall gentleman in a pinstripe tail coat had come up. "Please answer the phone, Beevertail," he said sharply to the clerk. "Madam, I could not help but overhear your request. Beevertail is a bit new: came in with our last shipment of pelts from Canada. He would not understand that you are from NASA. Now, it just happens that we have a mink jump suit that would be just the very thing you are looking for. This way, please."
Hastily, I turned to the other viewer. Maybe Heller was making enough money now to pay for such frills as mink jump suits. Such a thing would cost a fortune! I knew by experience!
Izzy just that moment spotted Heller in the line. He jumped up. He grabbed a young clerk and shoved him bodily into the chair to handle the callers and then grabbed Heller and pulled him out of the line into the hall.
"Oh, Mr. Jet. I do apologize for keeping you waiting. It's because I am so inefficient."
Heller got him out of there and into a vacant space in the hall. He had a sheet of paper and showed it to Izzy, speaking very low, like a conspirator. "It's your daily broker order list. Chicago Board of Trade: Sell your 1,000 contracts of March wheat today; it is going down by market opening tomorrow by ten cents a bushel. At market opening tomorrow, sell short 1,000 contracts of corn; it is going to drop thirty cents before close. Chicago Mercantile Exchange: Get rid of all our feeder cattle today; they'll be going down to hoof level by tomorrow morning. New York Commodity Exchange: Buy 2,000 contracts of gold at market opening and place a sell order at $869.15 an ounce; that's what it will hit at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon. New York Cotton Exchange: Offload every contract of cotton we have today, as the price has peaked. Got it?"
"Just a minute," said Izzy. He yelled for another clerk and gave him the list to rush to the brokers at once. Then he turned back to Heller. "Mr. Jet, I don't know how you get these lists. You must know some cow at the Chicago stockyards and the head of the Federal Reserve. Oy! Such lists! You haven't failed once in thirty days of commodity trading. You know within two, twenty-four, thirty-six hours, exactly what the market will do! You never lose! You buy, sell. Always right on the money!"
"I'm trying to make a few billion," said Heller. "We need it for the spores plant; we need it to buy Chryster back from IRS and the government; and you need it to get your plan to take over the world with corporations going."