“Help me get this up,” I choked. “There’s a man underneath.”
We all heaved together. Nothing. Then a tall guy, long-boned, with deep-set eyes and a coppery complexion appeared, grabbed the edge of the frame, and turned it over. Christ went up with it, crucified by the chassis, and that’s how I met my first successful candidate for eternity.
2
He was the epileptic type, I was positive the moment I saw him. A lovely candidate, big, rangy, strong. He carried the Knish to the university hospital slung over one shoulder. Jacy was groaning in Aramaic, the language he learned at his mother’s knee. In Emergency my guy was treated with great respect. It was, “Yes, doctor (Yassuh, medico), no, doctor, certainly, doctor.” I figured he must have done something sensational like reviving plague to combat the pop. ex. Good. A genius, too.
We saw Jacy into a bed. I wasn’t worried about him; it takes more than minor injuries to endanger a Moleman, but I was terrified by the possibility of Lepcer. That’s the real, the constant peril. More about Lepcer later. I whispered to Jacy, “I’ve registered you as J. Kristman. Don’t fret. I put me down as next of kin and I’ll take care of you.”
My guy said in XX, “Hey, man, you speak Early English. How come?”
I said, “How come, you?”
“Maybe some day I’ll tell you.”
“Likewise, I’m sure. Could you stand a drink?”
“Any time, but I’m not allowed firewater. I’m a ward of the state.”
“Easy. I’ll order and you sneak it. What am I drinking?”
“Firewater.”
“You mean there’s such a thing?”
His face was wooden. “Do I look like the joking type?”
“You look like something in front of a cigar store.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“There used to be. Where are we drinking?”
“The Passionate Input. I’ll show you.”
It was a typical campus trap, spaced-out psychedelia, a mooing orgasm tape, tripping bods on the floor blown out of their minds, projection commercials standing around like realsies. “Hello,” a jolly giant was saying. “I’m your friendly recycling bank. In our friendly efforts to conserve ecology we want you to let us recycle your money which—” We walked through him and went to the empty bar.
“Double Firewater,” I said. “Double soda for my friend.”
“Gas in the soda?” the bar wanted to know. “Hash? Phet? Sub?”
“Just plain soda. He trips on it.” All this in Spanglish, you unnastand. So it was a double Fire and a double soda and the glasses got kind of intertwined like the lovers on the floor. But I tried the Firewater and nearly had a convulsion.
“I nearly had a convulsion,” I said.
“You did,” he said. “It’s the strychnine we put in. The palefaces love it.”
“What d’you mean, ‘we’?”
“We moonshine it on the Erie reservation and sell it to the palefaces. Quite a switch, isn’t it? That’s how we got rich. Firewater and Ugly Poppies.”
“I’ll figure that one out later. I’m Prince. Ned Prince. Who you?”
“Guess.”
“Sure, but give me a hint.”
“No, no. That’s my name. Guess.” He gave me a deadpan glance. “Haven’t you ever heard about the late, great George Guess?”
“You?”
“My ancestor. That was the name the palefaces gave him. His real name was Sequoya.”
“Named after the tree?”
“They named the tree after him.”
I whistled. “He was that famous? What for?”
“He was the first great Indian scholar. Among other things, he invented the Cherokee alphabet.”
“You’re Dr. Guess?”
“R.”
“Physician?”
“Physicist, but they’re practically the same thing today.”
“Here at Union Carbide?”
“I teach here. I do my real work at JPL.”
“The Jet Propulsion Lab? What’s the real work?”
“I’m project scientist on the Pluto Mission.”
I whistled again. No wonder it was yes, doctor, no, doctor, certainly, doctor. This gonser macher was spending like a million a week on one of the most highly publicized NASA missions in history, financed by the United Conglomerate Fund in their friendly efforts to make the solar system a better place for deserving developers.
“Sounds to me like the state is your ward, Guess. Am I thirsty again?”
“Yeah.”
“This time let me have half. That strych grows on you.”
“Hell, dude, I was just putting you on about the no-drink shtik. All that went out ages ago.”
“Did it? I’m loose in the memory. Hey, bar. Two double Fires. You got a front name, Guess?”
“I’m S. Guess.”
“S for Sam?”
“No.”
“Saul? Sol? Stan? Salvarsan?”
He laughed, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a pokerface laugh. “You’re all right, Prince. Why in hell did your friend get mixed up in that silly brawl?”
“He always does; he won’t learn. Why in hell won’t you tell me your name?”
“What difference does it make? Call me Doc.”
“I can look you up in the U-Con stockholder reports.”
“No you can’t. I’m always S. Guess, Ph.D. Bar! Two more. On me.”
The bar objected to excessive alcohol and suggested we switch to something respectable like mescaline, so we obliged. A dead ringer for Columbus, including spyglass, shot up through the floor. “Friends, have you ever considered what would happen to know-how without wherewithal? Give generously to the Industrial Research Foundation by buying the products we endorse; Meegs, Gigs, Poons, Fubs—”
We ignored it. “If I show you my passport,” I said, “will you show me yours?”
“Haven’t got one. You don’t need a passport for space. Yet.”
“Don’t you travel?”
“They won’t let me out of Mexifornia, officially.”
“Are you that special?”
“I know too much. They’re afraid I may fall into the wrong hands. Con Ed tried to kidnap me last year.”
“I can’t stand the torture any longer. I’m really a spy for AT T. In drag. My real name is Nellie.”
He laughed again, still deadpan. “You’re all right, Nellie. I’m a pure Cherokee.”
“Nobody’s pure anything these days.”
“I am. My mother named me Sequoya.”
“No wonder you’re hiding the name. Why’d she play a dirty trick like that on you?”
“She’s romantic. She wants me to remember that I’m the twentieth in direct descent from the mighty Chief.”
Fee-5 came into the trap, playing the intellectual bit now; hornrim spectacles without lenses, stark naked and covered with spray-can graffiti, applied by herself.
“What’s this thing selling?” Guess asked.
“No, she’s a realsie.”
“Gas,” Fee told the bar and turned great dark eyes on us. “Benny Diaz, gemmum.”
“It’s all right, Fee. He speaks XX. An educated type. This is Dr. Sequoya Guess. You can call him Chief. Chief, this is Fee-5 Grauman’s Chinese. Talk about names!”
“Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transforms the wretched,” Fee said in somber tones.
“What is it and what’s it grieving for?” Sequoya wanted to know.
“Could be anyone. Newton, Dryden, Bix, Von Neumann, Heinlein. You name it. She’s my girl-Friday.”
“Also Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,” Fee said, belting down her gas. She pierced the Chief with a clinical look. “You want to fondle my boozalum,” she said. “Go ahead. Don’t deny your manhood.”
Sequoya pulled off her spectacles and perched them on one of her boozalums, which were recent and a source of great pride. “That one’s a little cockeyed,” he said. “What kind of name is Fee?” he asked me. “Short for Fee-Fie-Fo-Fum?”
“Short for Fee-mally.”
“Short for female,” Fee corrected with great dignity.
The Chief shook his head. “I think I’d better go back to JPL. At least the machines make sense there.”
“No, no. It makes sense. When she was born—”
“In the orchestra of Grauman’s.” Very proud.
“Her dumb mother couldn’t think of a name, so the demographer listed her as Female. The mother liked it and called her Fee-mally. She calls herself Fee-5.”