Bugs Read online

  Later, Rain phoned him at work.

  ‘You’ve been avoiding me, Alfie.’

  ‘No, look, I –’

  ‘No excuses. I expect you to meet me at the usual place right after work today. Otherwise, I can make your life with Sturge very unpleasant, darling.’

  Shit.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nuffink. Right, see you then. Aw the best. Ta-da.’

  Moira peeped over the partition wall. ‘Who were you talking to?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you seem all upset.’

  ‘It’s this tax geezer. I bloddy got to go see him after work, don’t I?’

  ‘Come over after?’

  ‘I better give you, tinkow, love. Dunno when I’ll bloddy be shot of this bloddy berk.’

  ‘OK. Why are you making a face and talking so funny?’

  He stopped twisting his face in a cockney sneer and said: ‘Sorry, only sometimes it gets on my bloddy – Sorry.’

  ‘Back to work.’ She disappeared.

  Rain, always ready for drama, insisted that they meet at a certain small shopping-centre under the most exacting conditions. He was to arrive first, and go into the drugstore, to the greeting-card counter, remain there for two minutes, then go back out to his car. She would meanwhile follow him to observe that no one else was following him, then get back into her car, and follow him to another mall, where they could finally get into one car and head for a motel. Today she provided a costume.

  ‘Do I really have to wear this clobber?’

  ‘A pair of glasses and a poplin raincoat, is that so difficult?’

  ‘I can’t see – that’s what’s bloddy difficult. Did you have to get real specs?’

  Rain said: ‘I have a surprise for you. We’re going to a drive-in.’

  At any other time, with any other woman, this would have been a treat. Fred had always wanted to go to a drive-in movie. Now that they were practically extinct, he might never have another chance.

  Yet he said: ‘A drive-in. Oh, bloddy marvellous. I can’t see a bloddy thing with these goggles. How can I drive, let alone see the flick?’

  ‘You can take them off, silly. Anyway, I’ll do the driving. We’re taking my car. I don’t want to show up in your car and have everyone staring at me. What happened to your silencer?’

  ‘Fell off, dinnit?’

  ‘Well, come on, let me help you.’ She took his arm and led him into a dim parking-ramp to a large expensive-smelling car. In a moment they were on the road, heading into the setting sun.

  He peeped at her over the glasses. “Ere, what you wearin’? A nurse’s uniform?’

  ‘Alfie gets it on with a nurse,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the few scenes that would be fun. Of course, there’s him in chauffeur’s uniform – we can try that one later.’

  Later. It rang like a sentence. The sentence of this court that you be taken to the place whence you posed as Robert Donat, and thence to a place of execution, and that there you be dressed like a chauffeur until you are dead. And may God have mercy on your soul.

  Who was it – Cedric Hardwicke? Played the old judge in his black cap. God, don’t mention that; she’ll want to act that one out, too. Later.

  ‘What’s the name of this flick, girl?’

  ‘Later.’

  When Alfie had done his bit, he was allowed to remove the strong glasses and watch the movie.

  ‘I’ll say one fing, love, it’s a marvellous bloddy motor for a push in the truck.’ He turned up the sound and settled back. ‘What’s the name of this flick? Looks familiar.’

  ‘That was part of the surprise. It’s The Thirty-Nine Steps,’ she said.

  ‘Never. Straight up? But it’s all in – in colour.’ The famous film had been colourized, he saw, and worse. Robert Donat had been given a permanent five o’clock shadow and deep circles under his eyes. His voice had been redubbed by someone imitating Humphrey Bogart. Madeleine Carroll had received heavy tarty make-up and a voice in the Marilyn Monroe register. The speeches had been changed, to make him a tough antihero, her a feather-headed blonde bombshell. The plot had been changed, so they were both criminals, on the run but doomed.

  ‘Can they really do this? Isn’t there some law?’ he asked. But Rain was asleep. He turned down the irritating sound and watched on, fascinated.

  All at once a green light appeared in the sky above the screen. The light moved closer, to become a writhing green mass that glowed with an inner light. Fred found himself unable to move as the mass, writhing, descended and settled on a distant car. The people within the car made no attempt to struggle free, but sat still, facing the screen, as the mass dissolved them in their car. The car melted quickly into a sticky smoking pool. The glowing green mass writhed over it and sucked up every trace of it. Then it rose, still writhing, and sailed off into the sky again. He watched it until it was out of sight.

  No one but Fred seemed to notice. Maybe everyone was asleep. Maybe the bug-men of Vega had projected sleep rays over the place, and only he was unaffected.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LeRoi and Poker sat in their van outside Fred’s apartment-house.

  ‘We goin’ in there or what?’

  ‘You just hold on. I got plans,’ said LeRoi. ‘Like I told you, that Eloi is our meat.’

  ‘I rather go get some ribs. If we ain’t gonna do nothing.’

  ‘You just hold on. I gotta plan this.’

  Fred came out of the house.

  ‘There he goes! We grab him?’

  LeRoi said: ‘Don’t be an asshole. It is broad daylight out there.’

  ‘Great, man. Give ’em a show!’ Poker shouted.

  ‘That ain’t the Morlock way. We gotta pick out the meat at night.’

  ‘Meat shit. If we ain’t gonna do nothing, I want some ribs.’

  Weeks went by. The hunt for ‘Robinson’ robot continued, while Fred’s team began to work on M2, the second prototype. The work was not going well. Fred tried to avoid the thought that building a successful robot required the special touch of a homicidal lunatic.

  Moira had not been speaking to him since the day after the UFO ate a car at the drive-in. Their last conversation had been:

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should anything be wrong?’

  ‘You’re acting strangely.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ask yourself why that should be.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You mean you don’t want to talk about it?’ she said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You’re trying not to think about it.’

  ‘All right, if you say so.’

  ‘You’ll try to put it out of your mind. You’ll think about something else.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know … think about the news. Wasn’t there anything in the news today that interested you?’

  ‘Nothing, no.’

  ‘Oh.’

  This pointless and Pinteresque exchange might have gone on for ever, but Moira had finally said: ‘I saw you last night, with your tax consultant. She has a nice car.’

  ‘Oh, that was –’

  ‘Don’t bother cooking up another lie. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What was the first lie?’

  ‘You were wearing a disguise. Glasses and a coat with the collar turned up. It was pretty obvious you didn’t want to be seen.’

  ‘But I –’

  ‘And you went to such lengths to hide your rendezvous. The business of meeting at the drugstore was really very professional; you could be a spy. I suppose that means she’s married.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Look, it doesn’t matter.’

  It had not mattered that way the rest of the week. He was worried, but what could he say? Sure, I’m playing sex games with the boss’s wife, but I don’t really enjoy it?

  He could only hope to wait it out, si
tting in his cube, reading cuttings. This Sergio seemed to know his stuff. There were items from papers all over the country:

  ROBINSON STILL ELUDES PENTAGON HUNTERS

  ROBOTS HAVE FEELINGS, WARNS MIT SCIENTIST

  ROBOTS MAKE FAITHFUL PETS, SAYS VET

  ROBOT KILLER OR METAL VICTIM?

  Noted Criminologist Blames Kidnapper

  POLICE CHIEF: ROBINSON HARMLESS

  VET SAYS EXPERIMENTS ON ROBOTS ‘LIKE ANIMAL CRUELTY’

  PORTRAIT OF A SHY METAL GUY

  ROBOT HAS MANY HUMAN FRIENDS

  Local Group Demands: ‘Leave Robinson Alone!’

  HANDS OFF ROBINSON!

  Growing Demand for Robot Fair Deal

  ROBINSON: THE WHOLE STORY

  It amazed Fred that Sergio could keep the story going. Not only did it have to fight the natural tendency of the media to forget what happened last week; it had to compete with an athlete accused of rape, a cardinal caught shoplifting (who wanted to plea bargain), the presidential sanity hearings, the discovery of radon in the House of Representatives, the discovery of KGB bugs in the White House, all the shock and sensation that was fit to print.

  Nor had television been ignored. Fred turned it on as soon as he got home. Not every channel gave Sergio’s stories equal prominence.

  ‘… continue the hunt for the robot – now nicknamed “Robinson”. In Florida, fifteen cans of Yingzip have been tampered with – they contain the poisonous metal mercury. So far, no one knows exactly how the poison got into the cans, but a company spokesperson here in South Bend, Washington, said …’

  Another took the political angle: ‘… same man who shot up other Little Dorrit restaurants elsewhere. Speaking of fugitives, in Minnesota the hunt goes on for Robinson Robot, believed to have been kidnapped from a laboratory near Minneapolis. The man who stole Robinson is Melville Ester-hazy Pratt, a former mental patient prone to violence. There’s a new twist to the story today, as a delegation of the Friends of Robinson Society handed in a petition to the Governor …’

  A third appealed to science: ‘… said to be hiding in northern Minnesota. At first it looked as though the robot had stabbed a man to death during its escape, but most experts on robot behaviour discount that theory. We asked Professor Michbutt Owler of MIT what he thought of this case.’

  A round-faced pleasant man with shaggy brows smiled at the camera. ‘Nonsense!’ he shouted. ‘Robots are just folks like anybody else! Only much better behaved, ha, ha!’

  ‘Better behaved how, Professor?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, they don’t go around murdering other folks. The behaviour of robots is very predictable.’

  ‘What does that mean in this case, Professor?’

  ‘It means that this robot, this Robinson, is hiding out for one of two reasons. Either he is scared – and who wouldn’t be? – or else his kidnapper, the criminal lunatic Pratt, is holding a gun to his head. There are no other possibilities!’

  The phone rang. Ready for Rain, he braced himself into a cockney snarl.

  “Allo. That you, darlin’?’

  ‘Fred, is that you?’ It was Susan.

  ‘Course it’s me. I mean, yes, it’s me. Hello … uh, Susan. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in London. So there’s no danger of my dropping round and catching you at it. Just who is darlin’, then? You don’t waste time, I must say.’

  ‘Waste time – what are we talking about?’

  ‘Drop one woman in New York, pick up another in Mindianapolis.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, it’s been five months since you walked off and left me in bloody New York.’

  ‘Ha, ha. I heard all about the high times in New York, the minute I left. Brawling in restaurants, trying to shoot somebody –’

  ‘I didn’t try any such thing–who told you all this?’

  ‘Allan, of course. He’s come back to London. We had dinner and he told me all about your escapades.’

  ‘Escapades? Now, just a bloody moment. Allan was trying it on; he’ll say anything. Took you to dinner, did he?’

  ‘No, I made dinner for the two of us.’

  There was a transatlantic silence.

  ‘And it’s bloddy Minneapolis, by the way, not bloddy Indianapolis.’

  ‘That’s what I said, Mindianapolis. Why are you trying to sound like Michael Caine?’

  ‘What are you phoning about?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just keeping in touch.’

  ‘Well – thanks.’

  They said goodbye. Fred knew he was not going to sleep the rest of the night – all of the buried problems had just turned up like a skull on a shovel.

  He made coffee and sat down to read. But his thoughts went back to little old New York.

  ‘Now it’s all yours,’ she said again. ‘You take Manhattan. You go to all the cockroach parties. You wallow in the filth. Not me.’

  ‘I have to stay till Monday. Jonah’s fixed this lunch with an editor.’

  ‘For you. No reason for me to hang about. I’m off.’

  It was almost the last thing they said to one another in person. He helped her hail a taxi.

  ‘You could come with me,’ she said, relenting a bit.

  But now it was his turn to be angry. ‘It all may look quite simple to you, but it’s not. I’ve got business here.’

  ‘What business? A lunch Monday with some publishing twit who’ll forget your name an hour later. If you even live till Monday.’

  ‘What’s the alternative? Come back to London? Sit around broke and miserable, waiting for the Council to build us a new island? At least here I can do something.’

  ‘Like what?’ she said. The taxi bore her away.

  He went into a place called the Blarney Room of Paddy O’Foylahan’s Shamrock Pub. It was just another American bar, though leprechauns and shamrocks featured in the décor.

  ‘Top o’ th’ evenin’ to ye,’ said the bartender, slipping apostrophes into almost every word. ‘An’ will ye be havin’ a drink, now?’

  ‘A ball o’ malt,’ Fred said.

  ‘Right ye are.’ The bartender went off somewhere. In a moment, he came back to lay a single Malteser on the bar.

  ‘Ball o’ malt it is, sir. Now, will ye be havin’ a drink to go with it?’

  It cheered Fred greatly. If an Irish bartender in the middle of hell could be funny, maybe hell wasn’t such a bad place.

  But just as he was beginning to have faith in New York another drinker, hearing his accent, turned to him.

  ‘Why don’t you fucking Brits fuck off out of Ireland?’

  The reception-area of Gorgon & Zola Inc. was about the size of ‘two typical apartments. A huge curved desk like a bar occupied one corner; three receptionists filed their nails behind it.

  ‘Manfred Jones. To see Garner Dean Howells.’

  In a few moments, Howells came forth; a tweedy man chewing a leather-covered pipe. He put away the pipe at once and held out a hand.

  ‘Manfred! We meet at last!’

  ‘Fred will do.’

  ‘And call me Gar, OK? Excuse me just a second here.’ Howells handed a pile of large manila envelopes to one of the three receptionists. ‘Hold these for messengers, Estrellita.’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘One more thing, Fred, and we go.’ Howells opened his tweed jacket to expose a shoulder-holster. He unlimbered a small automatic, checked it and loaded it.’

  ‘I have a permit,’ he explained. ‘It makes life here a lot more comfortable.’

  ‘You live in New York?’

  Howells cocked the gun and put it away. ‘God, no. It’s bad enough coming in three days a week from Westchester. Shall we grab a bite of lunch?’

  They strolled comfortably to Esperanto’s, a huge restaurant where hundreds of business lunches were in progress. Under the high cathedral ceiling, the place seemed like a huge school for priests: the acres of tables were white-draped altars; the waiters solemn priests; the busboys acolytes; and the High Mass lesso
n just getting under way.

  He was unable to concentrate. Everything told him that money was close at hand – the very menu prices spoke of wealth. If he could only find some way to unlock it. He hardly heard Howells recommend the grilled lamb, with a California wine.

  ‘Fine,’ he managed. The price of this entrée would keep him and Susan for a week. In beans on toast.

  The food and wine arrived, and Perrier for Howells. He began to talk. Though clearly sober, Howells had a loud drunk’s voice that could be heard across the great room. No one seemed to pay attention, however.

  ‘I’ve known Jonah a long time. I knew him when he was Joan Bramble, working for Mark Windsor Agency. Those were the days. Mark Windsor was a real publisher’s agent. There was nothing that guy wouldn’t do to make a deal. I mean, he changed his name to make a deal.’

  ‘Changed his name?’

  ‘In the thirties he was Marcus Weintraub. But when he had a chance to pick up the exclusive American rights for Mein Kampf, he had to become Mark Windsor. He almost made it, too. But then war broke out and the deal went sour. But what a magnificent try. What a guy!’

  Fred noticed a group of Middle Eastern men at the next table. One wore the white robe and dish-towel of a sheikh. The other two wore business suits and dark glasses.

  ‘Mark Windsor, what a guy! Mark was kind of tough on clients sometimes but, hell, they came out all right. Like, most authors move around a lot, right? Well, when Mark had a cheque to send out, he used to send it to a client’s old address, so maybe the cheque would take a lot longer to clear – or, hell, the client might not get it at all. Then, too, Mark used to keep part of a royalty payment as a reserve against returns. But, hell, the clients did all right – like when Mark would sell the same rights twice.’

  ‘How could he do that?’

  ‘If anybody complained, he just blamed the author.’

  Fred found himself watching the Middle Eastern group. The two men in business suits and dark glasses were scanning the room as they ate. He was disappointed to note that they ate with both hands, just like everyone else.