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“Your dark-ski
“What advice?” Joe said.
“To calm yourself.” Von Vogelsang opened the glove compartment of the chopper’s control panel; he handed Joe a merry multicolored box. “Chew one of these, Mr. Chip.”
“Tranquilizing gum,” Joe said, accepting the box; reflexively he opened it. “Peach-flavored tranquilizing gum.” To Al he said, “Do I have to take this?”
“You should,” Al said.
Joe said, “Runciter would never have taken a tranquilizer under circumstances of this sort. Glen Runciter never took a tranquilizer in his life. You know what I realize now, Al? He gave his life to save ours. In an indirect way.”
“Very indirect,” Al said. “Here we are,” he said; the chopper had begun to descend toward a target painted on a flat roof field below. “You think you can compose yourself?” he asked Joe.
“I can compose myself,” Joe said, “when I hear Runciter’s voice again. When I know some form of life, half-life, is still there.”
The moratorium owner said cheerily, “I wouldn’t worry on that score, Mr. Chip. We generally obtain an adequate protophasonic flow. At first. It is later, when the half-life period has expended itself, that the heartache arises. But, with sensible pla
“I want to be present at the whole process,” Joe said. “I want to see your technicians bring him back.”
To Al, the moratorium owner said, “Maybe, as his friend, you can make him understand.”
“We have to wait in the lounge, Joe,” Al said.
Joe looked at him fiercely. “Uncle Tom,” he said.
“All the moratoriums work this way,” Al said. “Come on with me to the lounge.”
“How long will it take?” Joe asked the moratorium owner.
“We’ll know one way or another within the first fifteen minutes. If we haven’t gotten a measurable signal by then—”
“You’re only going to try for fifteen minutes?” Joe said. To Al he said, “They’re only going to try for fifteen minutes to bring back a man greater than all of us put together.” He felt like crying. Aloud. “Come on,” he said to Al. “Let’s—”
“You come on,” Al repeated. “To the lounge.”
Joe followed him into the lounge.
“Cigarette?” Al said, seating himself on a synthetic buffalo-hide couch; he held his pack up to Joe.
“They’re stale,” Joe said. He didn’t need to take one, to touch one, to know that.
“Yeah, so they are.” Al put the pack away. “How did you know?” He waited. “You get discouraged easier than anyone I ever ran into. We’re lucky to be alive; it could be us, all of us, in that cold-pac there. And Runciter sitting out here in this lounge with these nutty colors.” He looked at his watch.
Joe said, “All the cigarettes in the world are stale.” He examined his own watch. “Ten after.” He pondered, having many disjointed and unco
“I don’t remember, but I know what they were.”
“People’s teeth used to decay.”
“I realize that,” Al said.
“My father told me what it used to feel like, waiting in a dentist’s office. Every time the nurse opened the door you thought, It’s happening. The thing I’ve been afraid of all my life.”
“And that’s what you feel now?” Al asked.
“I feel, Christ, why doesn’t that halfwit sap who runs this place come in here and say he’s alive, Runciter’s alive. Or else he’s not. One way or another. Yes or no.”
“It’s almost always yes. Statistically, as Vogelsang said—”
“In this case it’ll be no.”
“You have no way of knowing that.” l
Joe said, “I wonder if Ray Hollis has an outlet here in Zurich.”
“Of course he has. But by the time you get a precog in here we’ll already know anyhow.”
“I’ll phone up a precog,” Joe said. “I’ll get one on the line right now.” He started to his feet, wondering where he could find a vidphone. “Give me a quarter.”
Al shook his head.
“In a ma
“Runciter Associates,” Al said, “being run by a man who can’t keep fifty cents on him. Here’s a quarter.” He got it from his pocket, tossed it to Joe. “When you make out my paycheck add it on.”
Joe left the lounge and wandered down a corridor, rubbing his forehead blearily. This is an u
That’ll never come about, he realized. Not for someone who can’t manage his own personal fiscal responsibilities. That’s something else Hollis’ precog would know, he realized. I can find out from them whether or not I’ll be upgraded to director of the firm. That would be worth knowing, along with everything else. And I have to hire the precog anyhow.
“Which way to a public vidphone?” he asked a uniformed employee of the moratorium. The employee pointed. “Thanks,” he said, and wandered on, coming at last to the pay vidphone. He lifted the receiver, listened for the dial tone, and then dropped in the quarter which Al had given him.
The phone said, “I am sorry, sir, but I can’t accept obsolete money.” The quarter clattered out of the bottom of the phone and landed at his feet. Expelled in disgust.
“What do you mean?” he said, stooping awkwardly to retrieve the coin. “Since when is a North American Confederation quarter obsolete?”
“I am sorry, sir,” the phone said, “the coin which you put into me was not a North American Confederation quarter but a recalled issue of the United States of America’s Philadelphia mint. It is of merely numismatical interest now.”
Joe examined the quarter and saw, on its tarnished surface, the bas-relief profile of George Washington. And the date. The coin was forty years old. And, as the phone had said, long ago recalled.
“Having difficulties, sir?” a moratorium employee asked, walking over pleasantly. “I saw the phone expel your coin. May I examine it?” He held out his hand and Joe gave him the U.S. quarter. “I will trade you a current Swiss ten-franc token for this. Which the phone will accept.”
“Fine,” Joe said. He made the trade, dropped the ten-franc piece into the phone and dialed Hollis’ international toll-free number.