You are here: Webley Page > The Spirit of Exmas Sideways > Part 2Sat 24 Dec 212 A.L., 02:15 O'Clock
"Come in, Win. Even in these circumstances it's splendid seeing you."
Like Littleshin, my own first thought had been of Deejay Thorens, girl physicist at Laporte U., Ltd. The universe, I'm told, contains an infinite number of sub-universes, places where the Kennedy of your choice escaped assassination, the Russians got to the Moon first, or Johnson pulled it off in Vietnam. The U.S. of A. where I was born in 1939, the North American Confederacy where I wound up in 1987, represent only two such alternatives.
In the Confederacy, when Alexander Hamilton had first tried collecting whiskey taxes under a brand-new Federal Constitution, he'd set off a rebellion, just like at home. Here, the rebels had enlisted the fifteen thousand conscripts sent to suppress them and marched on the capital. No more Constitution, no more Hamilton. Sans revenue, government grew smaller every year, all but disappearing in the end. Folks here are wealthier, enjoy a more advanced technology, live longer.
I'd been caught in an interdimensional wringer when a cabal of latter- day Confederate Hamilton admirers had tried importing tactical nukes -- something never invented here despite the advanced technology -- from the Land of the Fee. In an America wracked by depression and oppressive government, I'd been a Denver dick, investigating the homicide of another scientist, which turned out to involve Federal agents allied across the borders of reality with the Hamiltonians. During a large-caliber difference of opinion in this guy's lab, Deejay's "probability broach" had sucked me into the Confederacy.
In theory you can travel backward in time to what was, forward to what will be, or sideways to what might have been. The first two are still theory as far as I know, but Deejay's broach represented an artificial moth-hole in the fabric of what's what, through which I'd fallen from one world to another. Generated by high-energy machinery at one end, the other could show up anywhere, a doorway where there wasn't any wall. Such a doorway, I reasoned, might account for the way Mott had been murdered without leaving footprints.
Revving the Neova, I'd trundled down the long, Lombardian drive, having called ahead, despite the hour, to Deejay's campus quarters. Like Las Vegas or L.A., Laporte's a twenty-four hour municipality, geared for those of us who run on Transylvanian Standard Time. Maybe somewhere along the way, before or after seeing Deejay, I could get in a little moonlight Exmas shopping.
"Thanks, Fraulein Doktor Professor."
I wasn't sure what kind of name Thorens was, but Deejay had Icelandic genes somewhere. Outside, it was twelve degrees below freezing. Inside her apartment, it was fewer degrees than that below blood temperature, like I was being invited into a blast furnace. Shrugging out of my snow-damp serape, I handed it to her, along with my battered gray felt, gave my boots a swipe, and raised my eyebrows. Deejay was fair, blond, maybe an inch taller than me -- so is Clarissa, though I've never been fussy about it -- slender, with accretions of non-slender in all the most decorative places. Her eyes were the shade of blue you see peeking out between black storm-clouds on one of those Rocky Mountain summer afternoons when it rains and shines at the same time. I'd always thought she looked more like a showgirl than a scientist.
"You may not think it's so splendid after we're through talking. Like I asked on the 'com, can you prove where you were from seventeen to nineteen last night?"
She wore a one-piece satiny athletic outfit in a criminal shade of flesh-colored beige that fit her like a coat of baby oil, and a metallic pistol belt across her hips supporting a short, lightweight .375 automatic. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I followed her into a room full of white tile and light colored laminated hardwood, centered on a blue-green amoeba-shaped pool. As always, I had trouble watching those hips sway in front of me, not to mention various parts south, without imagining what it would be like to ...
She gestured, we sat on a low couch. She didn't wait for me to ask if I could smoke, but offered me a handworked box matching the decor, let me make my selection, then picked out a cigarillo for herself, lighting both from a laser on the coffee table. Water filled the room with pleasant lapping noises, reflected light.
"You mean the time of the murder?" she answered, getting her cheroot going, "I was in my lab from twelve hundred yesterday until just before you called. Fourteen hours straight."
She didn't look it. "I hope you can prove that." I exhaled smoke. It evaporated six inches from my face, a gridwork in the table's surface generating negative ions. Leave it to a physicist. "I know a man determined to hang what happened on you, or have me do it."
I described the circumstances. Her eyes widened, then gathered annoyed wrinkles. "Littleshin," she took a furious drag, "That rat, it couldn't be anybody else! He's saying I used the broach to kill from a distance, isn't he? Well it can't be done, although the reasons for it are technical. Aside from that, I can't offer any -- the word is 'alibi', isn't it? -- except corroboration from a graduate assistant who just left on vacation."
"Good timing," I leaned back against a cushion, enjoying the mild flavor of the cigar (mine taste like smoldering cardboard) along with the scenery, "Better find your assistant, make sure he has an alibi. You're dead right about Littleshin, pardon the expression. What were you doing in your lab last night? And why does Littleshin have it in for you?"
"Two questions," she replied, "with the same answer. We've been working overtime for several weeks specifically on account of Littleshin and Mott. They intend -- intended in Mott's case -- to stop my research for political reasons. They're opposed by Jenny Smythe -- Jenny's a Trustee -- and Freeman Bertram. We don't know where Mott's sister stands. I wanted to get in as much practical work as possible before the next Board meeting."
The Board ran by unanimous consent like all Confederate organizations. They couldn't touch Deejay's work, but they could make decisions difficult, appropriations impossible. "I didn't know Jenny was a Trustee before tonight. Guess she has to be something besides figurehead President of North America, can't be any money in that."
She shook her head. "None at all, but -- "
"What 'practical work' were you doing," I sat forward, dropping a gray ash into a tray, "dragging more unsuspecting victims away from friends and family in their native continua?"
She colored. "I thought you didn't have any family in the States."
"Not many friends, either." I sat back again. "What are you up to that Mott wants -- wanted -- to stop?"
She turned, looking straight at me. "I meant to explain that. Thanks to you, Win," she smiled, "Jenny has a practical use for the probability broach."
I raised my hands, palms outward. "Leave me out of it. There's that word 'practical' again."
"She wants to infiltrate the States," she nodded, "support groups working against its government, and free its people from centuries of oppression."
I blinked, "That's practical?"
"With the right backing. Mott and Littleshin claim we're being sponsored by commercial interests, simply to open up new markets. And, as far as that goes, they're right. Revolution at a profit, that's the practical aspect. We even expect competition in the long run, from Interworld, if nobody else. They -- Mott and Littleshin, I mean -- say it's immoral to interfere with another culture, even to save lives or salvage the future of an entire world."
My world. I was reminded of a similar reluctance to interfere, abetted by a handful of Marxist Congressmen, which had lost us Central America, Mexico, Canada. I was also reminded, watching Deejay, listening to her, that I'd always felt uneasy in her presence. It wasn't any different this time. In addition to her qualities as a scientist, which I was qualified to judge only in terms of the interdimensional slapstick she'd involved me in, she was a bright, attractive young woman. I'm a sucker for bright, attractive young women. Most of my life I'd felt invisible to them. Deejay, however, seemed to like me, and that led to involuntary speculations which weren't just unprofessional and without redeeming social value, but which left me even more uneasy than before.
Feeling sweaty (Deejay did keep her apartment like a sauna), I reached up to shove a finger into my necktie and loosen it, only to realize I hadn't worn one in months. Just because Clarissa and I were having trouble living together after a year, didn't mean ... I recalled that, looking forward to seeing Deejay for the first time in a long while, I'd forgotten to stop for that Exmas present. Some husband (or whatever) I was. Some detective.
Get hold of yourself, I told me. This was nothing particularly new or threatening. Given my current domestic dissatisfactions, I was finding myself tempted by beauty and brains. It had happened to billions of men before. It would happen to billions more before the sun burnt out. In the States, fifty percent of all marriages ended --
I stopped. This wasn't a train of thought I'd meant to climb aboard. With difficulty, I refocused on what Deejay was saying, instead of the soft, full, moist, warm lips she was saying it with. Something further about "revolution at a profit".
" ... commercial interests at the meeting. Jenny and I, because we were only after results at that point, and worried about potential competition, made the mistake of saying we failed to see anything wrong with that."
"It does seem consistent with Confederate tradition." I observed, inhaling smoke, nodding as if I'd been following her all along.
"Besides," she agreed, "it was our impression, Jenny's, mine, that Mott would oppose anything new, simply because it was new."
"I guess a person could get set in his ways," I grinned, "after a hundred and seven years."
Stubbing her cigar, she shook her head: "I don't think it had anything to do with that, Win. There are natural-born neophiles, who seek the new because it is new, and their opposites, natural-born neophobes. Maybe there's no logical reason to value one over the other, but I have personal, aesthetic preferences. They include making sure my mistakes aren't just repetitions of somebody else's. Anyway, it wasn't age with Mott. All he and Littleshin saw in the broach was instantaneous transport, a sort of matter transmitter. I tried explaining why that wasn't sensible, how it would take two sets of apparatus, since the broach only operates between alternate worlds -- and the power it would consume -- but they called me an 'obstructionist'."
"'Don't mess up my beautiful theory with facts,'" I quoted, "that's how San Francisco wound up with a subway system more expensive than buying a car for everybody in the Bay Area. What else was Mott against?"
"Well, he was on record, in his youth, as being against Confederation -- he wanted to keep the Old United States separate from Mexico and Canada -- as well as recognition of the rights of sapient non-humans."
"Chimpanzees," I supplied, "gorillas, porpoises, killer whales," I still had trouble getting used to it, though some of my best friends were simians or cetaceans, "orangutans, gibbons, maybe even yetis."
She sat back against the cushions at her corner of the couch and folded her hands in her lap. "He was a more recent opponent of what he called the 'unnatural' process of biological rejuvenation."
"Hmph. A Renaissance man, our Mr. Mott. You'd think somebody with one foot in the grave and the other on a produce-counter cliche -- "
"You'd think so. I'd think so, too. I have nightmares, Win, about getting old and dying. But Mott -- "
"Could have been a judge of his own life and unwilling to prolong the agony. If so, he was unusual. I think most Confederates are neophiles. Even without rejuvenation they live twice as long as people in the States and usually die by violence -- they slip in the bathtub or get chewed up and spit out by a hovercraft -- because it's the one thing left that can kill them."
"Or perhaps because, from a neophile's viewpoint," she smiled, shuddering at the same time, "a quick, violent death is preferable to the alternative."
I grunted. "I always thought so."
We sat a while, Deejay contemplating her nightmares, me feeling guilty over thoughts I'd been thinking about her. Of course there weren't any laws against thinking. There weren't any laws at all, which seemed, oddly enough, to be the source of problems between Clarissa and me. Nothing in the Confederacy is illegal. The closest thing to law, in any formal sense, is the Covenant of Unanimous Consent, quilled by Albert Gallatin, second President of the Old United States, following successful overthrow and execution of the first President, George Washington. The one punishable violation is initiating force against another sapient, and even that doesn't put it right. Swap "punishable" for "interruptible", the idea's clearer. With no government to bestow its mixed and dubious benefits, and being in the habit of carrying personal weapons all the time, Confederates solve their own problems, at the moment and location they arise. Any honest mugger, rapist, or B&E man will tell you this is a deterrent that works.
"Confederate crime is rare," I found myself repeating aloud. Along with a tall drink, Deejay had offered me a copper for my thoughts, asking after Clarissa. I was dog-tired, hadn't eaten in hours (I forget when I'm working), and there was nobody else to talk to. "And Confederate criminals an endangered species. That makes this a swell place to live, my fine feathered physicist, but a hell of a place for a detective to earn a decent living, short of discovering where Uncle Ethelbert absently misplaced the family hovercraft, or finding strayed cats for teary-eyed little girls." Deejay raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything. I took a swallow of my second drink, noticing it was halfway gone already. "I admit I've been desperate enough to take a couple of cases like that. Maybe a couple of dozen."
She nodded. "And Clarissa?"
"Clarissa, otherhandwise, is in on the ground floor of a brand-new growth industry: 'the unnatural process of biological rejuvenation'. You know, I had a partner in the States once, another cop named James J. James. The J. stood for -- but never mind that. He claimed that success in a capitalist society, in any society, consists of thinking up something you can make for a nickel, sell for a buck, and everybody has to have one, twice a day, or die."
Deejay laughed. I liked the way her eyes looked when she did that.
"Rejuvenation," I continued, "doesn't fit the criteria as well as, say this Pennsylvania paint-remover we're drinking, but it works about the same."
She tipped her glass. "How's that?"
"In the first place, considering it amounts to a kind of immortality, it's dirt cheap. I've seen bowling alleys that charged more for a season pass. Medicine is a competitive business in the Confederacy, not the first step to canonization it represents in a galaxy far, far away. Just to give you an idea, Clarissa MacDougall Olson, H.D., makes housecalls."
"So does my Healer," Deejay shrugged, "So what?"
"I'll tell you: for anyone under the age of forty still unfortunate enough to be living in the States, housecalls are a quaint prehistoric custom where the doctor came to you, instead of your bundling up, trudging out into the cold to add pneumonia to whatever ails you, then risking chicken pox or cancer virus during hours in the waiting room spent thumbing through a dog- eared stack of last year's Reactionary Digest."
"More to the point," Deejay suggested in a kind, sisterly tone I found myself resenting, "Clarissa's very busy, isn't she, meaning you two have less time together than is good for your relationship?"
I tossed back the rest of my bourbon, set the glass on the table. "Old age," I informed her, "as I'm sure you know, isn't a natural process, like growing up or going male-pattern bald, it's a disease."
"Several diseases," she sipped at her own drink, "cheerfully cooperating to ruin your whole life. You didn't answer my question, did you?"
"I'm the detective. I'll do the questioning. Where was I? Oh yeah. Depending on the customer's condition, rejuvenation can use up weeks or months, be a gradual, part-time project, or require full-time therapy. In either case it's a complicated, individual proposition. Clarissa tries to make up her overhead on volume. She succeeds."
"Which makes," Deejay reached out, sisterly again, to pat my hand, "all things being unequal, for quite a difference in your respective incomes."
"It's damned hard on an old flatfoot's pride." I told her.
I wasn't just talking about Clarissa.
Next: Sat 24 Dec 212 A.L., 05:40 O'Clock
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