Part 7

A young man and woman coming from opposite shadowy walls sighted each other. "Lambie Pie!" he cried. She stood stock-still as he walked up to her and gave her a slap that rocked her red-ringletted head. Then, "Loverman!" she cried and slapped him back. Phil could see his eyes roll ecstatically as the red flamed in his smacked cheek. They linked arms ritualistically and made off.

And it don't help, sweetheart, to know That the whole world went crazy-- Moon-mazy and space-hazy-- About a hundred years ago, So--

At that moment Phil spotted the dark sheen of Mitzie Romadka's hair and cloak at the far end of the room. He started toward her, suddenly feeling a trifle uneasy.

Put away my sky-high platform shoes And don't bring me any happy news, For-- I've got those turn of the century-- Turn of the millennium-- Blues!

As the listeners softly hissed their applause, Phil stopped a few feet away from Mitzie's table. She was with three young men, but they sat away from her pointedly, as if she were ostracized.

The three young men, without lifting a finger, showed more of the mystic toughness that seemed to be the specialty of the joint than any other people in it. They had the quiet dignity of murderers. When Mitzie turned to see what they were looking at, she sprang up with the delighted cry of "Phil!" though there was alarm in her eyes. She wasn't wearing her evening-mask. She walked over to him and slapped him stingingly with her left hand.

He whipped up his hand to slap her back, hesitated, and barely managed a sketchy pat. She glared at him but turned back with a bright smile, saying gayly, "Fellows, Phil. Phil, meet Carstairs, Llewellyn, and Buck."

Carstairs had a head that bulged at the top like a pear. He wore thin bangs, the effect of which was not effeminate. He remarked lazily to Mitzie, "So this is the clown you blabbed tonight's plans to."

Llewellyn looked very British and was very black. He said, "You also seem to have told him we'd come here later. Puzzles me why he didn't bring the police."

Buck was hawk faced and had a Kentucky accent that sounded as if it had been learned from tapes. "P'lice never tried to pick up anybody in the Tan Jit, yit," he observed. "Not here, Otie!" This last remark was addressed to a gaunt, mangy dog which thrust its head from under his legs and snapped at Phil.

Phil leaned on the table, his hand next to a tall, slim pitcher. He said to Mitzie, "I'm surprised to find you at a tame place like this. I expected drugs, knife fights and naked women."

Mitzie whirled his way. "As for drugs, what do you think we're drinking?" she said furiously. "As for knife fights, wait. And as for naked women, you devotee of male-female wrestling, well, if Carstairs, Llewellyn, or Buck should happen to see a girl who took their fancy, I'd just walk up to her and rip off her clothes!"

She was looking past Phil when she finished. He swiveled his head and saw Miss Phoebe Filmer with a rather scared looking young man. But Phoebe, in a half off-the-bosom chartreuse evening gown, looked even more frightened, her face almost as green as her green-blonde hair. Perhaps she had heard Mitzie's last remark. Then she recognized Phil, and astonishment was added to her fright. Phil smiled at her with a somewhat forced reassuringness. At that moment Phoebe's escort called her attention to an empty booth back toward the door, and the two of them hurried toward its haven with the eagerness of skimmers who have overreached themselves.

Phil felt remarkably bucked up. He snared an empty chair from the next table and found himself an empty glass and filled it from the tall, slim pitcher. Llewellyn, who, like the others had a half-inch in the bottom of his glass, caught Buck's attention and rolled his eyes significantly toward the ceiling. The white made eerie half-moons under the irises.

"Just rip 'em off," Mitzie repeated with conviction.

Carstairs said, with a quietly scathing coldness, "Mitz, quit playing the solicitous little mother to Llewellyn, Buck and me." He carefully smoothed his bangs, as an ancient judge might have adjusted his wig before pronouncing sentence. "It's quite clear that you spilled our plans to this clown, and that he told the police so that they were waiting for us when we knocked over the first sales-robot."

"Quite," Llewellyn said, while Buck nodded.

"And if I hadn't insisted on putting a new charge in the rocket assist," Carstairs continued, "we'd have been nabbed."

"It was just a coincidence," Mitzie asserted sharply.

"First time we ever had a coincidence," Carstairs observed. "Personally, I don't believe there are such things."

Phil took a deep drink. It seemed mild, sweet stuff, compared to the adulterated whiskey Juno had fed him. That is, it seemed so for the first two or three seconds. Then he felt the top of his head balloon outward, pear-wise, like Carstairs'. The dark songstress was singing some song the refrain of which was,

Darling, I'm queer for you. I'm really strange, quite out of any ordinary range....

Carstairs continued quietly, "Mitz, we let you into the gang, we initiated you, although we knew you were a psychoanalyst's daughter and doubtful material--"

Mitzie glared at him. "Initiated me?" she said. "I'll say you did!"

"Be that as it may," Carstairs asserted slowly, "you betrayed the gang tonight. At the best you acted irresponsibly." His words came slower still. "Your irresponsibility lost us a wad of dough." He paused for a long cruel moment. "You're out, Mitz.

"Out," Carstairs repeated.

"Definitely," Llewellyn agreed. "Yeah," Buck said, rubbing Ortie's lean snoot.

Phil put his elbows on the table. "Gentlemen," he said quietly, "you say you are out a wad of dough? I am in a position to remedy that."

Carstairs looked at him with mild irritation and raised his open hand. Phil smiled and advanced his cheek. "I am seeking a jewel beyond price," he continued. "In order to obtain it, I intend tonight to burgle the premises of Fun Incorporated. I am willing to let you help me."

At the mention of Fun Incorporated, Buck turned his head at least half an inch, while Carstairs almost blinked.

"You have rather big ideas, don't you?" Llewellyn remarked quietly.

"Yeah," Buck agreed with a yawn, "he maybe could have picked an easier place."

Carstairs asked Mitzie softly, "You did say he was one of your father's nuts, didn't you?"

Mitzie started to reply, but Phil interposed blandly, "I know a private way into Fun Incorporated, right through Billig's office. It'll be simple. You needn't worry about the wasps."

Buck drawled, "What is this jewel beyond price, anyhow."

"Something I wouldn't expect you to appreciate," Phil replied. "However," he continued, taking a more cautious slug of the mind swelling drink, "there should be enough in the way of ordinary valuables lying about to compensate you for your effort. I understand that Fun Incorporated is rather wealthy. For one thing, all sales-robots work from there," he finished grandly. "Why not hit them where they live?"

Otie stretched leanly from under Buck's chair and snapped at Phil's hand. Phil, stiffened by the drink, didn't move it. The jaws clashed hardly an inch away. "Why do you call him Otie?" Phil asked.

"'Cause he's a coyote," Buck explained, almost with condescension. "S'posed to have been bred back for ancestral traits to the Oligocene type."

Phil found himself wondering whether cats could be bred back to their Egyptian ancestors and whether those ancestors might have been green.

In the pause, Mitzie's eyes grew bright. She looked at her companions. "Why don't we take him up on it?" she said lightly but not casually. "I mean, about Fun Incorporated. It sounds exciting.

"Why don't we?" Mitzie repeated after a moment.

Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck sat there as coolly and as contemptuous of any challenge as when Phil had first seen them. Yet there was a difference.

"Of course, it's risky," Phil cut in. "Moe Brimstine's boys have orthos."

"What do you know about orthos?" Carstairs demanded hungrily.

Phil shrugged. "They're blue and they sizzle," he said. "I got shot at with one earlier tonight."

"Why don't we, I'm asking?" Mitzie pressed.

"I asked Juno and Jack Jones to help me," Phil put in. "You know, the wrestlers. But they decided not to."

Still no one answered Mitzie's question. "Well, I guess that's it," she said with a triumphant smile, turning away from the table. "Come on, Phil."

They had taken three steps when Carstairs began to chuckle quietly. Phil might have kept going, but Mitzie turned back with a carefully repressed eagerness that Phil resented.

"Don't kill yourselves running," Carstairs said. "Llewellyn and Buck and I are signing up for this little expedition, providing the clown can give the right answers to a few questions when we get outside." He smiled as he got up. "Just one thing, Mitz. This time there better be no cops."

Mitzie laughed. Phil accepted the situation with a "Glad to have your help, boys," and started to take Mitzie's arm, but she linked hers with those of Carstairs and Llewellyn, not sparing Phil another look.

The sequined singer had shifted to a snappier rhythm.

Slap me silly, honey, Beat me till I break. Love is very funny, Laugh until I ache....

To solace his injured feelings, Phil veered over to Phoebe Filmer's booth, where the green-blonde was being rather pointedly annoyed by two bearded young men while her escort looked on agitatedly.

Phil tapped the nearest ruffian on the shoulder. "Lay off, boys," he commanded, with a meaningful nod toward his own party. Buck at least looked his way and Otie growled. The bearded ruffians slunk off. Phil made Phoebe a tiny bow.

"Thank you," she said weakly and astoundedly.

He gestured that it was a mere nothing and walked off.

"Say," she asked, hurrying after him and dragging her escort with her, "did you ever find that green cat of yours?"

He smiled at her. "No," he said, "but I'm going to."

X

"And how did you plan to get inside when the place is closed for the night?" Carstairs prodded sardonically.

For answer Phil cocked his eyebrows defiantly and gave the restaurant door a smart shove. It swung silently inward. He led them in haughtily, vaguely aware that Llewellyn was examining the lock.

The long room was very dark. It smelled stalely of people and liquor and seared meat; Phil even thought he could distinguish Juno's burned rabbit chops. Otie snuffed eagerly and tugged Buck forward by his leash. Phil steered their course confidently between the counter and the booths. He was feeling particularly pleased with himself because Mitzie had found opportunity to ask him for his address on the way over.

"All right, all right," he heard Carstairs whisper behind him to Llewellyn, "so the lock was burned. Somebody's ahead of us. We'll be watching out."

Phil pushed open the door to the stairs, and hesitated. Inside it was now completely black.

Something hissed softly beside him and a luminescent cone puffed out. A couple of seconds later, the half dozen treads of the stairway glowed milkily.

Buck chuckled inches from Phil's ear. "Lum'niscint mist," he explained with professional casualness. "You get going. I'll spray."

Phil started up, the milky surface light keeping two or three treads ahead of him in blobby advances. The mist got on Otie, so that he glowed like the Hound of the Baskervilles. Some of it even got on Phil's trouser bottoms and sockasins.

"We're certainly marked if we have to run away and hide," Phil commented dubiously as he reached the corridor he and Juno had come through and then took the unknown way upward.

"Uh-uh," Buck chuckled wisely, "'cause I'm spraying a neutralizer behind us." He directed at Phil's feet a dark, faintly hissing cannister and Phil's feet blacked out, along with a blob of surrounding treads. Looking back, Phil saw that the glow on the stairs vanished abruptly. He could not see Mitzie, Carstairs, and Llewellyn.

He asked Buck, "How do you manage two cannisters and Otie all at the same time?"

"Hell, I could aim a squirrel rifle and run a still in addition," Buck assured him.

Phil became aware of a dim radiance above him, beyond the range of Buck's mist. Buck hurriedly neutralized all the luminescence, including that on Otie and Phil. Phil cautiously went up the last ten treads, the upper radiance increasing all the while, and found himself in a shadowy, curving corridor. His steps got shorter and shorter, then stopped.

A couple yards ahead lay three swollen furry shapes, each with a half dozen slim black things stuck into them, like feathered darts.

He recognized at least two of the dead cats. Although grotesquely puffed up, their markings told him they were a Siamese and a short hair he had seen at the Akeleys'.

"Watch it!" he heard Carstairs whisper, but at the same instant Otie jerked away from Buck and moved swiftly forward, his leash trailing, to snuff at the nearest swollen shape. The tail of the dart next to Otie's nose began to revolve with a faint, feathery rustle. Otie became tensely still, disregarding his master's anxious, "Back, Otie!" The rustle became a whirr. Otie suddenly snapped sidewise at the dart, but at the same instant the dart withdrew quickly from the dead cat. Otie's teeth clashed emptily. The dart hovered a few feet in the air, just like a huge black wasp. "Don't anybody go closer," Carstairs ordered hoarsely. Buck grabbed for the end of the leash, but it was flirted away from his hand when Otie abruptly changed position, watching the dart with deadly intentness.

The whirr became a loud sinister buzz. There were two quick _zings_ and the hovering dart trembled like a blown candle flame. Half turning, Phil saw that Carstairs was shooting at it with some sort of airgun. The dart began to waltz in little loops. Otie leaped straight up and snapped at it as a dog might at a bee, but the dart curtsied away.

Buck's "Back, Otie," was desperate. Otie stayed on his feet and batted at the dart with his paws. There were more futile _zings_ from Carstairs' airgun. The dart looped back and hovered in front of Otie's muzzle. As he opened his jaws for a snap, it shot down his throat.

Otie, his eyes and jaws open wide, beat the air with his paws. Then he dropped to all fours and hurled himself off at top speed. He slammed against a wall, got up with difficulty, trembled over to Buck, and fell down and didn't move. It seemed to Phil that the gaunt creature was taking a deep breath, and then Phil suddenly felt sick, for the coyote was beginning to swell.

"Don't touch him!" Carstairs shouted, but Buck was keeping his distance. Carstairs came up beside Buck and leaned prudently forward, his bangs swinging out from his forehead. "Always did want to see one of those things in action," he said softly.

"They're what they call singular missiles, aren't they?" Llewellyn asked fascinatedly, coming up. "Anti-individual, I mean."

Carstairs nodded. "Used them in the last cold war, though hardly any rumors got out. They were for assassinations. The FBL and the Russkies could tell tales. They're supposed to be driven by a tiny, ion-emitting radioactive fan. I wish I had a counter so I could know. And of course, they home on the radiant heat of flesh and then inject a poison."

Buck muttered, "Otie." The coyote's puffed eyes turned toward him, then glazed over. Buck jerked up and made a derisive noise. "Always was a dumb pooch," he said harshly. Mitzie, drawn even with Llewellyn, looked on coldly.

Phil started ahead, drugs battling nausea inside him, so that the dim corridor seemed both vivid and unreal.

"Where are you going?" Carstairs demanded.

Phil shrugged. "To find what I came for," he said hazily.

"Well, keep away from the cats," Carstairs called after him softly, but Phil was already hugging the wall.

"How we know those sing'lar missiles won't heat up and go for us like they went for Otie?" he heard Buck demand fretfully.

"The others got through, didn't they?" Carstairs said irritably.

"What others?" Phil heard Buck ask.

"The ones who burnt the lock on the door, the ones who threw the cats ahead of them to draw the missiles," Carstairs told him impatiently. "Incidentally, if any of the missiles start spinning their tails, you might by throwing your coat over them."

Beyond the dead cats, Phil came to a silvery mesh barricade with several jagged cuts in it, three of them making a crude doorway. The mesh looked fine and strong enough to have kept the wasps on this side. He stepped over the fallen section of mesh. The cut ends of silvery wire were rounded and fused, as if by great heat.

Just beyond the mesh lay a chunky man in a gray, company guard uniform. He had a gun in his hand. He was intact except that the top of his head had rolled about a foot away. It had been sliced off tidily just above the nose by something hot. Phil remembered how neatly the blue needle had sliced the steel beam. He hurried past toward an open arch just ahead, and jerked back from a large gray snake coiled there. Then he saw that the snake was a robot doorman like Old Rubberarm, and looking higher he saw that it had been sliced off close to the wall.

Mitzie and the rest came through the mesh. Carstairs kneeled eagerly by the dead man and examined the gun he was clasping, but a moment later got up with a shrug.

"Not an ortho, eh?" Buck inquired. "Usin' those sing'lar missiles, you'd think they'd be up to date in other things."

"No, just an ordinary gas gun," Carstairs told him. "But we can be pretty sure his head wasn't taken off by a red hot buzz saw. The others must have orthos." He turned on Phil and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. "Look here, clown," he said quietly, "who are those others? You must have known someone was going to break in here tonight. You were counting on that door being open."

"We are a bit like jackals, aren't we?" Phil remarked dreamily.

Carstairs twisted his jacket. "Who were they?"

Phil didn't react, but he did jerk around suddenly when he heard Moe Brimstine say metallically, "Whatcha want, Mack?"

Llewellyn had pulled out the stub of gray robot arm sticking from the wall.

"Quit that," Carstairs ordered curtly, letting go of Phil.

"Take it easy, Carstie old boy," Llewellyn said with a smiling flash of white teeth. "Here's a bit of an odd thing. See where whatever sliced this robot arm cut into the wall beyond? Well, follow back from the cut in a straight line through the slice in the robot arm."

Like the others, Phil followed Llewellyn's directions and saw that the straight line ended in a deep cut in the floor a half dozen feet behind them.

"I don't git it," Buck said. "You mean somebody shot some kind of beam from the next floor under us?"

Llewellyn said, "Hardly. The evidence points to a gun that shoots in opposite directions at the same time. I fancy that if we'd have looked behind us at the head of the stairs, we'd have seen some cuts mirror-imaging those in the mesh."

He thinned his eyes at Carstairs. "I'm beginning to think orthos are rather strange weapons, Carstie old boy." He glanced at Phil. "You said they're blue and sizzle, Mr. Gish. Do they also backfire?"

"Say, look at this here communicator," Buck interrupted. He had been poking around the side of the corridor behind the guard. "One button's got a new-looking gadget rigged up to it that's pushed it twice now while I've been watching."

"Don't touch it," Carstairs said. "It's probably a button Headless here is supposed to thumb every so often to show he's on guard. Whoever broke in ahead of us knows their business. Once more, clown, who were they?"

"Yeah, talk," Buck said, coming up beside Carstairs. "I figure you're responsible for my Otie gettin' killed."

"Indeed, do," Llewellyn said, at the same moment letting go of the stub arm which contracted toward the wall until it was like a wrinkled scar, while at the same time, as though internal injuries were now showing up in the thing, a broken clockworks version of Moe Brimstine's voice wheezed, "That's right, Mack. Go away and stay away."

In the moment while that eerie and ominous admonition held everyone else stock-still, Phil walked with drugged aplomb past Llewellyn and through the arch.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I imagine you would like to inspect the treasure house."

He faced a room that was not extremely high ceilinged, but so wide and long that the only clearly visible wall was the one against which they were standing. The room was not brightly lit, yet it seemed so because of the brightness of the two sorts of ranked objects on which the light fell. To the left were row on endless row of sales-robots, shiny high turtle shapes with a smaller dome set on the main one, the same efficient metal hucksters that daily and eveningly roamed the streets, guiding themselves and spotting customers by hypersonic radar and visual scanner. Only now their fascinating windows for displaying samples were closed, their money collecting and commodity bestowing arms were neatly folded, the restless wheels under their metal skirts were still, and their dulcet voices rich with a restrained sex appeal suitable to robots (male voices for females, female for males, sprightly and wise-cracking for children) were likewise silent.

To the right, marshaled with equal precision, were a host of dress-display robots, arrayed in everything from high collared sable evening cloaks to bathing jewelry. Their hair gleamed with a hundred tints, their suede-rubber skins glowed with a creamy seductiveness, they held themselves with the poise of princesses, but like the sales-robots they were still. No slinky parading, no cute individualized gestures, no mysterious or haughty smiles, no soft lips opening to recite the qualities and prices of the garments they were modeling. They all stared straight ahead like Egyptian mummies not yet wrapped and indeed one, appropriately crowned and clad in a filmy sheath, was a precise copy of Nefertiti.

It occurred to Phil that the ranked sales-robots and dress-display robots really were a military display, that he was looking at the armed might--the money army and the glamor army--of Fun Incorporated.

Llewellyn was the first to break the silence. He darted to the nearest sales-robot, made some practiced manipulations, and then there was a clinking and he was waving a green and silver handful and his teeth and the whites of his eyes shone gleefully in his black face.

"They're still carrying the day's cash!" he called softly.

Buck looked from the money army to the glamor army with greedy indecision. When Carstairs snorted contemptuously, he trotted over to help Llewellyn, who was methodically working his way down the first row of sales-robots.

Despite his show of greater self control, it was obvious that Carstairs' hands were itching too. He looked at Phil uncertainly. Then, "Wake up, Mitz," he commanded sharply. She obediently turned toward him an oddly incurious face. "Mitz," he went on, "I want you to guard the clown. If he tries to get away or goes for any buttons, use your shiv on him." She nodded.

"Hey," Buck called in an excited stage whisper, "I think we're coming to some that are gambling robots."

But Carstairs didn't go at once, although he was noiselessly snapping his fingers in an excess of impatience. He studied Mitzie fiercely. "You get it, Mitz? I don't want any slip-ups. You made one already today. Not that I believe for a minute you're soft on the clown, but you've acted a bit silly around him. There mustn't be any more of that. Understand?"

This time her nod, though mute as the first, seemed to satisfy him and he rushed off to join Llewellyn and Buck.