My blue T-shirt bearing the image of Krazy Kat and Ignatz with the legend “Hairy, man!” was relatively clean. A small cluster of pinback buttons on my chest displayed the logos or faces of Green Lantern, Frank Buck, Lil Abner, Les Paul, Freeman Dyson, Dash Hammett, Bunny Yeager, Jean Harlow (still gorgeous at age 64), and the Zulu Nation. The pockets of my khaki cargo shorts were stuffed with the tools of my trade. My high-top tennis shoes were fresh kicks.
There was nothing I could do about my perpetually unruly cowlick or thin hairy shanks, so out I went.
A pretty woman under thirty—roughly my own age, stood up as I entered. Her thick auburn hair crested at her shoulders and curled inward and upward, and her wide mouth was limned in that year’s hot colour, Sheena’s Tiger Blood. She wore a green short-sleeved cashmere top that echoed her green eyes, and a felted poodle skirt that featured a snarling Krypto. Black tights, ballet slippers. She looked like a page of Good Girl Art by Bergey come to life.
She extended her hand forthrightly, a sombre expression on her sweet face. “My name’s Polly Jean Hornbine, and I’m here because the police don’t believe someone murdered my father.”
Her grip was strong and honest. I got a good feeling from her, despite her unlikely introductory claim. “Let’s go into my office, Ms. Hornbine.”
“Call me PJ, please. That’s—that’s what Dad—”
And then she began to weep.
Putting my arm around her slim shoulders, I conducted her into my office, got her some tissues and a spaceman’s bulb of diet Moxie (I took a Nehi for myself out of the Stirling-engine fridge), and had her sit. After a minute or so, she had composed herself enough to tell me her story.
“My father is—was—Doctor Harold Hornbine. He was head of pediatric surgery at David H. Keller Memorial. Until he was murdered! The authorities all claim he died of natural causes—heart failure—but I know that’s just not true!”
“What leads you to believe his death was murder, PJ?”
“Dad had just undergone his annual physical, and his T-ray charts revealed he had the physiology of a man much younger. He followed the Macfadden-Kellog Regimen religiously. All his organs were in tip-top shape. There was no way his heart would just stop like it did, without some kind of fatal intervention.”
“An autopsy—”
“—showed nothing!”
This woman’s case was starting to sound more and more delusional. I tried to reason with her gently. “Even with current diagnostic technology, some cardiac conditions still go undetected. For instance, I was just reading—”
“No! Listen to me! I might have agreed with you, except for one thing. Just days before Dad died he confided in me that he had discovered a scandal at the hospital. Something in his department that had much more widespread implications. He claimed that the wrongdoing at Keller would implicate people all the way up to the GDM himself!”
“I find that hard to believe, PJ. In nearly thirty years, Global Data Management hasn’t experienced any scandal worse than the use of some public monies to buy a few first editions for the private libraries of the occasional greedy sub-manager. And even that was resolved with simple tensegrity counselling. No, the GDM is just too perfect a governmental system to harbour any major glitch—especially not something that would involve murder!”
PJ stood up determinedly, a certain savagery burning in her expression. I was reminded immediately of Samantha Eggar playing Clarrissa MacDougall in 1959’s Children of the Lens. I found my initial attraction to her redoubling. I hadn’t felt like this since I fell in love with Diana Rigg (playing opposite Peter Cushing) when I first saw her onscreen in Phantom Lady Versus the Red Skull when I was fifteen.
PJ’s voice was quavering but stern. “I can see that you’re not the man for this job, Max. I’ll be going now—”
I reached out to stop her. I couldn’t let her leave.
“No, wait, I’ll take the case. If only to put your mind at ease—”
“It’s not me I’m concerned about. I want you to find the people who killed my father!”
“If that’s where the trail leads, I promise I’ll run them down.”
A thought suddenly occurred to me. “How’s your mother figure in all this? Mrs. Hornbine. What’s she got to say about your father’s death?”
PJ softened. “Mom isn’t with us anymore. She died five years ago, on the way home from Venus Equilateral.”
I whistled. “Your Mom was Jenny Milano?”
PJ nodded.
Now I could see where PJ got her spunk.
Jenny Milano had managed to nurse the leaky reactor of her crippled spaceship, the GDM Big Otaku, for thousands of miles until she finally achieved Earth orbit and spared the planet from a deadly accidental nuclear strike. Today her ship currently circled the planet as a radioactive memorial to her courage and skills.
According to PJ, Dr. Hornbine hadn’t been conducting any independent research prior to his demise. And he didn’t see any private patients outside the clinical environment. Therefore, whatever scandal he had uncovered had to originate at David H. Keller Memorial itself. At first, I assumed that to learn anything I’d have to go undercover at the hospital. But how? I certainly couldn’t masquerade as a doctor. Even if I managed to get some kind of lowly orderly job, I’d hardly be in any position to poke around in odd corners, or solicit information from leet personnel.
So I abandoned that instinctive first approach and decided to go in for a little social engineering.
I’d try to infiltrate one of Dr. Hornbine’s karasses. Maybe amongst those who shared his sinookas, I’d learn something he had let slip, a clue to whatever secret nasty stuff was going on at the hospital.
Assuming the beautiful PJ Hornbine wasn’t as loony as Daffy Duck.
Hopping onto the a-net, I quickly learned what constituted the Doc’s passions.
He had been a member of the Barbershop Harmony Society.
No way I could join that, since I could carry a tune about as well as Garfield.
The Doc had also belonged to the Toonerville Folks, a society dedicated to riding every municipal trolley line in North, Central and South America, a life-quest which few members actually managed to achieve, given the huge number of such lines. (The old joke about the kid who parlayed a single five-cent transfer for a ride from Halifax to Tierra del Fuego, arriving an old man, came readily to mind.)
But this karass mainly encouraged solitary activity, save for its annual national conventions. No good to me.
Pop Hornbine also collected antique Meccano sets.
Again, that wasn’t going to put me into social situations where I could pump people for dirt.
But at last I hit gold, like Flash discovering Earth-Two.
Harold Hornbine was also known as Balkpraetore, common footpad and strangler.
The Centropolis sept of the Children of Cimmeria called itself the Pigeons from Hell. That was Balkpraetore’s crowd. Every weekend they had a melee with other regional groups. These were the tight friends with whom Hornbine would have shared thoughts on what had been troubling him, even if he hadn’t ventured into full disclosure.
This group I could infiltrate. No reason I had to assume warrior guise. I could go as a bard or mage or tavern-keeper.
Today was Thursday. That gave me plenty of time to prepare.
So that sunny Saturday morning found me riding the Roger Lapin trolley line out to the Frank Reade Playing Fields, several hundred acres in the heart of Centropolis devoted to cosplay, recreations, re-enactments, live RPG and other pursuits of that nature. I was dressed like a priest who might have been Thulsa Doom’s wimpy mouse-worshipping cousin. I figured nobody would want to waste a sword-stroke on me. I didn’t stick out particularly amongst my fellow passengers, as half of them were attired in similar outfits. And besides, most were busy reading books or zines or pictonovels, or watching movies and cartoons on their pocket-solido sets.