Part 8

She also suggested as a postscript that she might possibly be at her hotel and free about nine any evening, and there was some reference to her being a bit squeamish about the dark. Farradyne was half-inclined to believe her. Carolyn Niles lived on Mercury--a planet that knew no night.

He looked at his watch, he had a couple of idle hours left. He started to wander the streets of Los Angeles, wondering just how a man went about buying a hellflower. He had done that before, but that was on Mercury where such things might be more difficult to find. There were two places in America where, for generations, a man could get anything he had enough money to buy and knew where to look. He was in one; the other was three thousand miles across the continent, in New York. All that remained was the problem of finding out where to look.

Farradyne had to admit he had a difficulty. He was in a position similar to a teetotaler in a prohibition area who suddenly decides to buy a drink and cannot, from lack of experience, locate a speakeasy. And dope, which had been with the human race ever since the first caveman took a bite out of a bit of saw-toothed weed, and was sold on the street by peddlers, was singularly hidden from the clutch of a man who just casually wanted to collect a packet.

So Farradyne spent some time wandering. He went into a florist shop and tried to buy a corsage. He could buy a corsage for a few dollars, but not for fifty. At least, for fifty he could get nothing smaller than a garland.

In one place Farradyne tried his tonal throat gadget. The florist eyed him curiously and asked him if he had something wrong with his throat.

And then, about fifteen minutes before he reached Carolyn's hotel a man sidled up alongside him and said, "Say, Jack, lookin' for somethin'?"

"Who isn't?"

"Might be able to fix you up, Jack. Got five?"

Farradyne knew that this was not the price, so he looked at his watch and said, "I've got fifteen."

"Won't take that long. Try the stand in the Essex Lounge."

Farradyne blinked. The Essex was no more than six years old, right in the middle of the city, and considered one of the plush joints of Terra. Selling hellflowers at the Essex was like selling the things on the steps of the Terran Capitol Building.

"Yeah?" he asked sourly.

"Yeah. Tell 'em Lovejoy sent you to pick up his flowers. Cost you fifty, Jack. Willin' to pay?"

"I've got it; and I'm willing."

"See ya, Jack."

The character sidled away, leaving a slight scent of decaying cloth mingled with a faint fragrance of gardenia. It was, according to Farradyne's standards, one god-awful mixture.

Farradyne went to the Essex and into the florist shop. A girl who was undeniably beautiful came forward. Farradyne smiled knowingly.

"I'm a friend of Mr. Lovejoy," he said. "He asked me to stop by and pick up his corsage."

"Of course." The girl disappeared and returned with a transparent plastic box containing a gardenia--or a love lotus. "That will be five dollars," she said with a piercing look at Farradyne.

Farradyne took a fifty out of his wallet and handed it to her. She rang up five on the register, and Farradyne walked out, wondering if anybody ever considered that Mr. Lovejoy must have a number of peculiar habits and rather easy-going friends that could be imposed upon.

At Carolyn's hotel a few minutes later, the desk clerk informed him that Miss Niles was expecting him and he should go right up.

Carolyn greeted him warmly, took him by the hand and drew him into the hotel room. Once the door was closed she came into his arms and kissed him, not too fervently, but very pleasantly, with her body pressing his briefly. Then she moved out of his arms and accepted the flower. "Lovely," she said.

She opened it and breathed the fragrance deeply. She held the white flower at arm's length, admiring its beauty. Then she held it to her nose and took a deep breath, letting the fragrance fill her lungs.

Farradyne's mind did a flip-flop. First he felt like a louse, as she smiled at him over the edge of the flower and then took another sniff of the fifty-dollar blossom. "Maybe," she said archly, "I shouldn't do this."

Well, she was immune--or she wasn't. Could be that it wasn't even a hellblossom. But she should know. He hoped his smile was honest-looking. "You are stuck already," he grinned wolfishly.

Carolyn took another luxuriant breath and tucked the blossom in her hair. She came into his arms and kissed him sweetly. Then she relaxed, leaning back in his arms to look into his eyes. "I'm not afraid of you, Charles," she said in a low, throaty voice.

"No?"

She laughed at him and then turned out of his arms. She went to a tiny sideboard and waved a hand at glasses and a bottle of Farradyne's favorite liquor. He nodded, and she mixed. "Don't disappoint me, Charles," she said.

"How?" he asked, wondering what she was driving at, and feeling that this had nothing to do with hellflowers.

She handed him the highball.

She sipped at her drink and flirted with him over the top of the glass for a moment. "I don't think anybody will call me overinflated if I admit for a moment that my family is a long way from poverty; if, for an instant, I admit that I know that I am very well equipped with physical charm. I also flatter myself that I have a mind large enough to absorb some of the interesting factors of this rather awesomely beautiful universe."

"I will grant you the truth of all three."

"Thanks," she said with a sly-looking smile. "But the point is, Charles, that a girl with a bit of money in the top of her stocking--and a brain in her head--wonders whether the gentleman is interested in the money, or the shape of her stocking. She is more interested in having the man want her for the aforementioned brain, I think. She'd like to feel that the gentleman in question would still be interested if the shape of the stocking changed for the worst with age and the money disappeared."

Farradyne looked at her and wondered again what she was and what she was after. If nothing else, Carolyn was a consummate actress. He wanted very much to take his face in his hands and ponder this problem deeply, but there was no time. He had to reply at once or have the appearance of a man who must make a careful answer. He walked across the room and took Carolyn by the shoulders and shook her gently. He bent down and kissed her and he found that the warm and eager response was back again, even though he touched her only with his lips and his hands on her warm shoulders.

"Let's leave it just that way," he told her. "Sooner or later something will give me away--and then you will know whether I am after your body, your money or your mind." Farradyne kissed her again, and again lightly. "Until you know, nothing I say will convince you of anything."

Farradyne still had her shoulders under his palms; Carolyn moved forward into his arms and rested against him. She put up her face for his kiss, and held herself against him, close. Then she said dreamily, "You're a nice sort of guy, Charles, and I'll be very happy to leave it that way. Maybe you'll be the one who stays."

Farradyne recoiled mentally and hoped that his instinctive revulsion was not noticed. It was too easy to forget what Carolyn represented when Carolyn went soft and sweet and eager. He wanted to be a male Mata Hari; he wanted to lure her on, to caress her into breathless acquiescence and then walk out with a cold smile to show his contempt.

Then he relaxed--and hoped that the muscles of his body had not undergone the change that his mind had--and decided if this were part of the game he had to play to cut the hellblossom-hellflower-love lotus ring out of the human culture, it was nice work. He recalled reading in history, as a child, another, but mild drug, marijuana, had multiple names.... His job would have been infinitely more difficult if Carolyn had been a gawky ugly duckling with buck teeth and a pasty complexion.

"Charles," she breathed, "take me out into the dark?"

He laughed lightly. "Where?"

She leaned way back, arching her fine back. "I want to go out to some dark gin mill and dance among the smoke and the natives and the throbbing of tomtoms."

Their evening was a repetition of the evening on Mercury except that on Terra it was dark outside. They danced and there was a steak dinner at midnight, and there was Carolyn relaxed in his arms in the taxi on the way back to her hotel at three.

He took her up to her room, and Carolyn came into his arms again, soft and sweet. Her response was deep and passionate in a mature way that Farradyne was not prepared for. The woman in his arms was all woman and there could be no mistaking the fact, but there was also the mysterious ability of the woman to know when to call a halt. She smiled softly and put her head on his chest.

"It's been wonderful again, Charles," she said quietly. "I hope it always is."

Farradyne rubbed his chin against the top of her head. Then Carolyn swirled away. "It's incredibly late again. I'm going to come aboard your ship at seven tomorrow night so we can take off before the crack of dawn. This much I'll tell you and no more, now."

"But--"

"Easy, sweetheart, easy. Take it slow and lovely. Tomorrow night. Tonight I need my beauty sleep."

He eyed her humorously.

"Think it doesn't help?" Then she laughed happily. "Charles, do me a favor. Put this gardenia in your refrigerator for me. Please?"

Farradyne nodded dumbly. He watched Carolyn put the thing into its plastic box, he watched her tie it up in the original ribbon. She handed it to him, and then, chuckling because he had one hand full, she came into his arms again for one last caress.

"Go," she told him with a wistful smile. "Go and dream about tomorrow night."

Farradyne went, half-propelled by her hands, his reluctance partly honest and partly curious. But he went.

On the street he hailed a taxi and spent the time on the way to the spaceport wondering whether sharpers had clipped him for fifty for a five-dollar gardenia. He wanted to toss the thing out of the cab window, but he did not because Carolyn would ask for it tomorrow. He even cursed himself for being willing to save it for her.

Farradyne walked into his spacer feeling like a man who had put his last dollar on the turn of a card, and lost. Lost at least until he could get somewhere and draw another stake from the bank. Futility and wonder confused him; in one moment he was on top of the world with everything going according to plan and the next his world was kicked out from underneath him and he was dropped back into the mire of fumbling, helpless ignorance again.

Farradyne walked into the salon of the Lancaster and stopped short. The last peg had been pulled out of the creaky ladder of his success.

"What's the matter, Farradyne? Aren't you glad to see me?"

There was plenty the matter and he was not glad to see her.

Her eyes widened a bit and she came up out of her chair and toward him. "Farradyne," she said, with more eagerness in her voice than he had ever heard before, "you've brought me a love lotus!"

He let her have it, and watched as her rapid fingers tore away the ribbon.

Norma lifted the flower from its nest in the box, buried her nose deep in the center of the blossom and inhaled with a deep shuddering sob. Her eyes closed, then opened serenely to look up at Farradyne from beneath half-closed lids. She relaxed. The tension went out of her body and she sank back against the cushions. She put her head back and rested. And now Farradyne could see her face more clearly. Her features had lost their chiseled immobility and her eyes had lost the glassy stare. Her face became alive, and pleasant color flooded it. Her muscles took on tone and Norma became alive and young-bodied and beautiful. She was a new person.

Her lips parted slightly and curved into sweet lines. The hand that held the flower lay idly on the seat beside her, the other lay palm up on the other side. She looked like a young girl who had just been kissed. Slowly, Norma lifted the blossom to her face and inhaled again the fragrance from the center of the flower.

"Thanks, Farradyne," she said softly.

Farradyne's mouth was open and his mind refused to work on any but the single thought. It was a hellflower. It had had no visible effect on Carolyn--why? Then the attitude of the woman sitting on the divan forced the other thought from his mind.

Not that Norma's attitude had changed in the past minute or so. She was still relaxed, alive and obviously at peace with both the world and herself. But Farradyne had been expecting much more; he had expected an onslaught of passion, of hate, of violence, of emotion. It might be either a demanding lust or the pleading languor of a woman bereft of her defenses. Or.... But in any case Farradyne expected passion, of a wanton depth.

He was wholly unprepared for this calm return to young and healthy womanhood.

He wondered whether Norma would react normally to a gesture of affection and absently he took a step toward her. He felt once again that flush of pity for her and righteous anger for the rotten devils that had done this to her; he wanted to comfort her. She had changed visibly from a hardened woman whose beauty was stiff and unnatural to a girl whose loveliness was vivid enough to shine through the hard facade of heavy makeup.

"Norma," he said.

She smiled at him warmly but shook her head. Her arms raised as she tucked the hellflower in the heavy hair over one ear. The gesture slimmed her waist and raised her breasts, and through the triangle of her arms he could see her eyes. They were sultry as they contemplated him, but she shook her head.

"No," she said and Farradyne stopped. "You are a nice sort of fumbling idiot, Charles, and I've stopped hating you for the moment, but that doesn't mean I want any part of your caresses."

"I--"

She smiled at him knowingly. "You were, Charles. You were. But don't." The odor of the love lotus, identical to the heady perfume of a gardenia, permeated the room and Norma sniffed at the air, lifting her face as she inhaled. "The smell of this is all I want."

Farradyne looked down at her and swore under his breath. This was the story then. The future under such conditions must be insufferable. He contemplated a man with an addicted wife; he would go on slaving night and day to buy this damnable and beautiful hellflower for her just to see her make this swift, sweet return to the normal woman he had once known, only to discover time and again that she had no use for him.

A smile crossed her face and Farradyne realized that Norma had dozed off in an ecstasy of relaxation. He wondered what to do next; his mind was mingled with the desire to protect her by letting her sleep the effects of the love lotus off, and the certain knowledge that if he did, Norma would never leave him in time for his meeting with Carolyn Niles. Of the two, the latter was by far the more important.

13

As Farradyne stood there wondering what to do, a knuckle-on-metal rap came at the spacelock and he turned to see Clevis standing there. He waved Clevis in.

Clevis came through the inner lock and caught sight of Norma. He stopped stock-still and looked the woman over from head to toe and back again. His eyes were bleak, his face bitter and hard as he turned away from Norma to face the other man.

"Farradyne, is this the contact you've managed to make?" The tone was heavy with sarcasm.

Farradyne shook his head sourly. "She's the one that got me started on the road to find out--" He was about to explain but Clevis cut him off with a scowl.

"You do seem to have started," said Clevis. "That's a real hellflower she's doping, you know. If I'd known--"

"Oh, for God's sake, listen!" snapped Farradyne. His shout rang through the salon and echoed up and down the ship's corridors. Norma stirred and came awake. She looked at Farradyne happily first, then her eyes settled on Clevis.

"Company? Hello, Howard," she said cheerfully.

"How do you do?" said Clevis, coldly.

"Not bad, thank you. In fact, I'm feeling in very topnotch shape, thanks to Mr. Farradyne."

"You're--"

"I must admit. A shame, too, but there it is."

"There's a reward out for you, Miss Hannon."

Norma's eyes twinkled a bit. "I know. He tried to collect on it. In fact, I think he did collect on it. But I couldn't sit around and watch a couple of fine old people tearing their hearts out over the ruin of their daughter. That's a hell of a way to end an otherwise happy existence--a son killed, a daughter doped. So I left."

Farradyne looked at Norma and Clevis sharply, he was lost; he could only wait for Clevis' next move.

Clevis shrugged, Norma nodded and relaxed again. She said, quietly, "If you gentlemen want to talk business, do it somewhere else. Or better, Charles, may I have my old room again for the night?"

Farradyne nodded, speechless in his furious bewilderment, and led Clevis up into the control room. Here, in a low voice, he explained how Norma had announced his connection with the hellflower racket, how Cahill had been killed and how he had picked up Carolyn Niles and the subsequent sabotage by Brenner, sometimes called Hughes, and the rest of it. At the end he spread out his hands and said, "This isn't hard work and good management, Clevis. But here I am. It isn't even good thinking, but I have a couple of questions that I'd like to have answered."

"Yes?"

"Carolyn Niles wore the hellflower for six or seven hours without turning a corpuscle. Norma Hannon proved that it was no gardenia. There is something fishy here. Does medical history indicate any immunes to the love lotus?"

"Some. Not many. Some doctors have even gone so far as to claim that the hellflower is no more dangerous than tobacco."

Farradyne swore. "Not according to Norma Hannon, it isn't," he said harshly.

Clevis eyed Farradyne carefully. "You're not a bit soft-headed over Norma, are you?"

"I doubt it," said Farradyne honestly. "She's a poor kid that got clipped and it makes my blood boil, and I want to go out and rap a half-dozen scum-brained heads together for what they did to her. Norma, she'd be the kind of woman I could fall in love with, Clevis, but Norma is a real blank. You know, if you doped up enough women with hellflowers, the birthrate would take a decline that would alarm a marble statue."

"It's something to think about," nodded Clevis.

"Of course, I've never seen a woman after she has just taken her first sniff so I don't know what it really adds up to, and I don't know how long after the first sniff a woman's libido is still capable of being excited, or even how high the libido can get under hellflowers. But by the time they get to Norma's state, a love lotus only changes their attitude from a completely scar-tissued emotional system to something barely normal whose only desire is to sniff the flower." Farradyne shook his head roughly. "Anyway," he said, after a moment of thought, "you can get a couple of ships to follow me day after tomorrow morning. We're going out somewhere--destination unknown--to make a rendezvous with someone who is high-up. And no matter what, Clevis, I think it wise for you fellows to keep on my trail, because at least one faction of their gang is out to clip me hard. Sooner or later--if my luck holds out as it has--they'll be sending someone of large proportions to clobber me and then I'd like to have your gang move in fast. Preferably before the clobbering gets too thick. And there's more to it--"

"Give," said Clevis in a flat tone.

"All right, you asked for it." Farradyne took the throat-whistle out of his pocket and tucked it back against the curve of his tongue. He tried it and produced a three-toned sound, brief and musical.

"That's the sort of thing I was telling people about," he said. "At the Semiramide's crack-up. Three voices, I thought--then."

"That's the sort of half-witted story you tried to use at your trial."

"That's the sort of noise that Cahill made as he died. It's the sort of noise made by Brenner-Hughes. Clevis, could it be the rudiments of some odd new language?"

"How could you use it?"

"I don't know. Maybe a polysyllabic word like 'manifest' might turn out to be a single chord with certain articulation spoken in three distinct tones."

"How would you articulate?" asked Clevis.

"Well, you'd have to utter the same vocal sound sequence for all registers of the word. The word I just used for an example is a rather complicated series of sounds, with definitions I am not familiar with, like dental fricative, and sub-dental stop. Regardless of the names of the tongue-flappings," said Farradyne, "the word itself would have to be revised in pronunciation."

Clevis shook his head. "With a gizmo such as you are choking on," he said, "you'd have a hard time making a tone other than the one it's tuned for. You're asking a lot, Farradyne. Furthermore, I gather that you have a fair-to-middling ear."

"It isn't absolute pitch by a hell of a long way, but it is good enough to make my face turn sour when the third violinist hits a crab on his strings."

Clevis leaned back in the chair. "I'd be in bad shape," he said. "I'm tone-deaf. Someone would say, 'Clevis, have a drink?' and I'd shake my head because it sounded like 'Do you like radishes?'"

Farradyne eyed Clevis for a moment. "Supposing for the moment that this odd evidence I have--"

"Based upon a grunt, a cry and an exclamation."

"--is true. Then mightn't they prefer to let people into their organization who, they know, have a good pitch sense?"

Clevis looked back at Farradyne. "We've spent years following less rational will-o-the-wisps than that. Perhaps we should follow this crackpot idea for a couple."

"Well, let me toss you one more. During the next few days I am going to startle Carolyn Niles, and I hope she cries out or whatever in three notes. Then I'll have a tie-up."

"How so?"

"She has a hellflower-operator background. She'll have a three-noted cry. And she'll be immune to the God damned flowers her gang deals in. And there is something more than money in this."

"Okay, for the time being that's your game. But in the meantime, what are you going to do with Norma?"

Farradyne eyed Clevis carefully. "You are going to drive off with her."

"What makes you think I'm going to drive off with a doped-to-the-eyes hellflower addict?"

"Because one of the games I'm playing is nosey-nosey with Carolyn Niles, and there's going to be no addict cluttering up my spacer. She'd crumb up the whole deal for fair. You obviously know her, know where she belongs. Take her to a sanatorium. That'll keep her out of everyone's hair, especially mine, and she's on my trail."

"I guess this move is up to me. I hate to drop her in a sanatorium."

"What else can anybody do?" asked Farradyne, wistfully, spreading his hand.

"Not much, but I feel that I owe her more than that kind of handling. Not much more than a jail, you know." Clevis sighed.

"I can imagine. But what can you do for people cursed with a disease that no one knows how to cure?"

"Segregate 'em," growled Clevis. "Well, let's see what we can do about carting Norma out of the ship. When you ship out you will be followed at extreme military radar range. You'll have hard-boiled company watching you, Farradyne."

They went below and found Norma stretched out on the divan. She was sleeping, relaxed as a kitten, with one leg drawn up to uncover the other shapely leg. Her hands were outstretched over her head and open. Her breathing was regular, and normal. The hellflower still cast its heady perfume through the room, and Norma was smiling.

Farradyne plucked the flower from her hair. "This I'll need," he said quietly.