“Yeah, I know,” Alexander said. “You know a place I can get this book?”
“I’d let you have mine, on’y I let my nymph’s girlfriend take it to show her daddy. We kinda switch ofi sometimes, even if it ain’t strictly legal until my contract’s up, but sometimes even a well-adjusted guy like me gets all tied up and can’t loosen up, you know. I ain’t scared at all, o’course, but some of the things that the aliens can do can really make you shaky. You don’t think that means I’m unstable, do you?”
“No, your group-doc has just been slipping up, not helping relax you and get you back into the swing,” Alexander said comfortingly, remembering his BURINF days.
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been tellin’ my nymph, the group-docs oughta know what to tell us about the aliens so we know what we oughta think; it’s their fault if we get kinda shaky and get screaming dreams sometimes. But look, Jack, we’re gettin’ pretty near my place, so if you wanta you can come up and meet my nymph. I ain’t got any old-fashioned blocks about her, you know, and any friend of mine is a friend of hers.”
“Thanks, some other time.” The car had been wheeling through the low, drab buildings of north St. Louis. “Look, what did you say that book was called?”
“Alien Invaders. You can get it anywhere. You sure you don’t wanta come up for one round anyway?”
“No thanks,” Alexander said, feeling a little sick, not so much with disgust as with pity, “but give her my love.”
“All twenty-nine, and same to you.”
Alexander stepped onto the curb and waved, and walked quickly toward the man-strip as the Hydro buzzed around the corner.
The town was dead in early-morning stillness, and he headed for the downtown section. The gulf before him had suddenly narrowed, and he thought he saw the first step across.
A pulpie book called Alien Invaders.
It was ingenious, and deadly, and it fitted, Alexander realized as he sipped surro-coffee in a stall in the deserted downtown area, waiting for the city to come alive. He knew that BURINF would never have countenanced a book like that. Actually, it could not have known of its existence, or it would have been nailed before a dozen copies had been circulated. No publisher in the country had dared try to launch a science-fiction or fantasy book since the crash, under the tacit threat of embargoes on paper and typcmetal, and of DEPCO investigation and reassignment of Stability Ratings if that was not enough.
But the channels of distribution were there, created by BURINF, and the psychological Achilles’ heel of the society was there, too—the abiding, hysterical, carefully nurtured fear of space and anything associated with space.
Quite abruptly, Alexander could see a pattern. Early, undetected landings . . . contact, perhaps psychological control of key individuals . . . a concentrated study of the society and psychology of the inhabitants . . . circulation of a book, fanciful enough in nature until the things it predicted began happening . . . then landings that were less secretive, designed to draw attention to feed the growing fear and panic, in preparation for the final, massive blow.
He dropped his coin in the slot and went out into the cool, gray early-morning ugliness. In his head the syrupy tunelessness of the coffee-stall vendo music was still recycling, monotonous, deliberately unresolved, always running itself back into the beginning of a phrase. He walked faster, dredged up the theme from Marche Slav to drive the vendopop from his mind, blinked a little as the sun hit him through a break between two building cubes.
Near the river front he found a street that looked likely, crowded with bars and porno-mag stalls and drunks sleeping on doorsteps. The first step would be easy: get a copy of the book. At least he thought it would be easy until he tried it; then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t so easy after all.
The first stand was completely out, sold out for a week. Another place the vendor started to shake his head, then blinked at Alexander suspiciously and claimed he’d never heard of the book. In a third the last copy had gone the day before, and the distributor wouldn’t be back for a week at least. A fourth, fifth and sixth try were equally fruitless.
Back on the street, Alexander looked around him at the sluggish hesitancy with which the city was coming to life. There was none of the downtown hustle of the early job-rush. People seemed to be moving aimlessly, stopping to gaze in windows, congregating in small groups on the street corners. It was something Alexander had not seen since the early days of the crash, when the people, not yet desperate enough for violence, had walked about stunned, realizing with painful unwillingness that the little familiar formalities of dull, dreary work were suddenly meaningless.
And now, on this morning, he saw and felt the same blunted apathy.
It was wrong, somehow, in the same way the Wildwood raid had been wrong, in the same way a pulp magazine called Alien Invaders was wrong . . . all fitting, but not quite fitting. DEPCO, he knew, should be clocking this rumbling volcano; they should be furiously at work draining off the pressure before the action stage was reached, before the explosion came. That was what DEPCO was organized to do, had to do to maintain the stability that had to be maintained.
But there was no evidence of DEPCO activity, and Alexander, seeing the vacuous, frightened faces passing him, felt a growing sense of alarm, as if all the twittering birds and monkeys in this nightmare psycho-structured jungle had suddenly stilled at the soft low cough of a stalking killer.
He found the place he was looking for, taking a spinner across town to the crowded warehouse and trucking terminal. He saw the lettering on the third floor window of a decrepit plasti-brick building of the last century: Magdisco, the local warehouse of the sprawling Magazine Distributing Company. Since hardbound books were practically nonexistent any more, except for collector’s items and university archives, all books and magazines were distributed by magazine wholesaling agencies, and Magdisco was the largest, and the one least critical of the material it handled. Alexander crossed the street, assuming his Qualchi slouch, and went up die narrow flight of stairs.
The operation from the warehouse was largely automatic, and the tiny, littered office space was empty. The rest of the place seemed to be crammed to the ceiling with bundles of remainders, nude glossies, and a huge stack of particularly disgusting action sets that were obviously meant for the Playschool contraband circuit. Alexander’s eyes searched the piles for the title he was looking for, but there was no evidence of it.
“Help you?” A thin, putty-faced man with thick glasses appeared out of the file room in the back.
“I’m looking for a copy of Alien Invaders.”
The man lost interest. “Sorry, we don’t retail.”
“I was thinking of buying in quantity.”
“Got a retailer’s license and quota?”
Alexander let his eyes shift to the stack of glossies in the corner. “This was . . . uh . . . for private distribution.”
“Look, beat it, huh? I got an agreement with the retailers and racks. I don’t sell to private parties . . . and they buy up to quota. I’m happy, they’re happy. Get your copy at a rack; I’m not cuttin’ my throat.” The man plunked down behind a desk and turned to the talktyper.
Obviously subtle questioning wouldn’t help. Alexander’s ID card was actually ten years out of date, but it looked official when he flashed it under the man’s nose.
“Lieutenant Alexander, Army CI. I’m checking up on Alien Invaders. I want to know who wrote it, where he lives, what else he’s written. And I want all the copies of the book you have.”