Seven Seats to the Moon Read online

  “And the great brain. Where is he now?”

  “As dead as Doctor Willing,” snapped his companion. “But unfortunately my nephew had once studied under Willing, and he took it into his stupid head, once he—uh—became aware of my thoughts, to warn his old mentor not to go.”

  “Well, well, well,” said Goodrick. “So Doctor Willing could have had an idea what your thoughts are?”

  “I have arranged a strict watch on Halliwell Bryce, of course, but it seems wise,” said the other man, ignoring the question, “to explore the local situation very thoroughly. They are fanatics, you know,” he said, suddenly angry.

  Goodrick was staring at him. “I’d say this man Little is keeping quiet about something,” he said. “I doubt it’s about this. That’s not likely.”

  “It wasn’t likely, was it?” purred the other. “Tell me, Barry, have you ever heard of a Tony Thees?”

  “Sure. Know him by sight, in fact.”

  “Good. Did you know that he has been working very closely with Mr. Smith?” Goodrick shook his head.

  “Do you know that Tony Thees landed in Los Angeles this morning? Why is that, do you imagine? Can anything in these parts be worrying Mr. Smith?”

  “Well, well,” Goodrick widened his grin.

  The other man rapped on the tabletop. “Now, if Tony Thees seems to be in any way watching over this man Little, would it not then seem that we have struck a vein here?” He was looking sly.

  “Excuse me,” said Goodrick flatly. “I’ve got blood to tell me this. If Willing, knowing your thoughts, did let slip the rendezvous, he would simply have said so. They’d call the meeting off.”

  “Did he say so? Necessarily? The great Doctor Ambrose Willing, caught blabbing to a nonentity, carelessly spilling this sacred secret? He’d feel no reluctance to confess his final idiocy? No shame?”

  Goodrick sipped and licked his lips. “He might have just run out on the embarrassment, eh? After all, he had to die, anyway. Maybe Tony Thees doesn’t know what the man Little might know, either. How about taking a crack at opening up Tony Thees? Better bet, wouldn’t it be?”

  “Would it?” purred his companion. “Shall we have a go at a man, trained to resist interrogation, who in all probability is only blindly following orders and could not tell us? Now the man Little is a different case. Just some ordinary American citizen, isn’t he? Shouldn’t be much trouble to open him up. Appeal to his deepest core. Let him tell all for the sake of mother, flag, and apple pie. Or bribe him. He must be greedy. They all are. Threaten him. He’ll have no stamina. Actually, it would take no more than three minutes to break him the direct way if we chose to do that. I prefer a method less extreme, of couse, for the sake of quiet. I want the rendezvous kept secret so that it will be kept, do you understand? I, myself, simply want to know what it is.”

  “And nobody is talking?” said Goodrick skeptically. “How many men, all over the globe, aren’t talking?”

  “I told you they were fanatics,” said the other impatiently. “Some chord has been struck with those men. The conceit that they have! And, of course, it’s unwise to seize and seclude one of them. That would cancel the meeting. I don’t—”

  “What about money?” Goodrick broke in.

  “Do you mean your fee?” said the other man drawing back coldly. “It will be generous.” Then he cast his torso forward and began to speak with no purr whatsoever, rising toward rant.

  “Are you stupid? Don’t you know that the only realistic hope for humanity lies in our domination? Will you press for more American dollars for your individual self—when you must understand how the loss of the top brains of much of the rest of the world would give our brains precious time? Don’t you see, as I see, the opportunity here?”

  Goodrick said, cold-eyed and unruffled, “I wanted to know how much money I am authorized to offer the man Little. For myself, I’ll take the usual generous fee, since this won’t be much of a chore.”

  His companion studied him suspiciously, but Goodrick showed no particular emotion. At last the other man resumed his purr. “Ah, the cool professional! Very good. What sum would impress him?”

  “Not too much,” said Goodrick. “He’ll be scared to death of the tax man. Heh, heh. Say fifty thousand maximum? I’ll start with less.”

  “I’ll see that you get it. Naturally we’ll be trying pressures wherever else seems possible. But it seems to me that we may have here the weakest link of all. Check him out, will you?”

  “Okay,” said Goodrick. “Where can I reach you?”

  The man said, “At the Biltmore Hotel. You may ask for John Jones. Mr. Jones,” he added and giggled in a high squeal, looking for a moment like a mad child.

  CHAPTER 8

  Monday Morning Continued

  The blinds were drawn; the room was dim and quiet. The telephone had awakened him. J sat on the edge of his bed, scratching at his waistline for quite some time. Then he picked up the phone, although it was not ringing anymore.

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Bringgold,” Sophia was saying out in the living room. “I didn’t feel that I ought to wake him. I’m so glad you understand.”

  “Well, you take good care of him, Mrs. Little. We can’t have old J down sick, you know.”

  “I’m hoping that I can get him to our own doctor today. I want to be absolutely sure.”

  “Well, you just be sure, and let me know how he is. We can’t get along down here without old J; you know that.”

  “Well, I certainly hope that you can’t, Mr. Bringgold,” said Sophia coyly. When they began to thank each other with the usual idiotic profusion, J slipped the phone back.

  “Humph!” he said out loud.

  It was almost ten in the morning. He ought to have been at the office long ago.

  “They can get along without me very well,” sang J to himself. Oh, they’d have a few problems breaking Tom Pollack into the full load, but they wouldn’t have those problems very long. They’d get somebody else.

  Humph. He bathed and dressed very slowly, deliberately dawdling. He felt, if not quite angry, at least miffed. He didn’t like his wife and his boss “handling” him. He wasn’t going to go to the damn doctor.

  Mrs. Arriola was wielding the vacuum cleaner in the family room. She was a spidery little woman, with dark wisps of hair hanging out of a head scarf, and she wore her normal expression of woe and foreboding. “Oh, Mr. Little, how are you feeling?” Her eyes raked him up and down for signs of distress.

  “Fine,” he said. “Fine. How are you, Mrs. Arriola?”

  “Oh, Mr. Little, that was a terrible thing nearly happened. I knew something was wrong. I didn’t feel right all day Saturday. I couldn’t help thinking of a plane crash, but they didn’t say anything on the six o’clock news.”

  “My plane didn’t crash,” said J patiently. “I’m okay,” he added, knowing very well that she wasn’t going to accept this.

  “Oh, Mr. Little, you want to watch out for them internal injuries. Them doctors, they don’t always catch everything. Them things can kick back on you, and you wouldn’t know what hit you. Oh, Mr. Little!”

  “We must hope for the best,” said J feebly, and he got away.

  Sophia was in the kitchen. They said to each other, very carefully, what they always said to each other. “Hi. Do you want an egg?”

  “Hi,” he said. “I guess so.”

  “How many?”

  “Oh, a couple.” J slid into one of the plastic benches in the corner of the kitchen and looked out at his backyard, which slept in light.

  “That,” said Sophia, who had heard the extension click, “was Mr. Bringgold on the phone. I told him about your accident.”

  “I know,” said J. So it was his property? Like his operation? Or his cold? He was in a word-sensitive mood.

  “You slept,” said Sophia, as if he had just denied it. She poured his juice.

  “Fine,” he said absently.

  “J, I wish you would stop by Doctor Lo
dge’s office. I called, and they think they can work you in.”

  J grunted. This was the same as saying, “I don’t want to do that.” Sophia didn’t press. She concentrated on his eggs. J did not open the newspaper that lay at his hand. He felt afloat; the gears of Monday were not engaged at all.

  “I’ll let you read the paper in peace,” hinted Sophia as she slid his perfectly fried eggs before him. He had everything at his hand, the toaster, the percolator. “I hope the coffee’s not too muddy. Shall I make fresh, dear?”

  “No, no,” he said, not looking at her.

  Sophia went softly out of the kitchen.

  J ate his breakfast without unfolding the paper at all. He didn’t need the Monday’s harvest of the weekend’s horrors. Mrs. Arriola kept peeking in to see whether he had yet been stricken, and Sophia kept coaxing her away.

  At last J got himself ready to leave the house, and Sophia followed him to the passage that was a link from kitchen to garage. “J, will you stop at the doctor’s?”

  “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. No point in it. I’m going to the office.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. Mr. Bringgold doesn’t expect you.”

  J braced himself. Since he must now, in a way, lie to Sophia, he had better look sharp about it. He said, “I’ll tell you what’s the matter.” He was looking over her head. “I might have been stone-cold-dead in Chicago. Well, I wasn’t, but it sure as hell made me stop and think.”

  “Oh, don’t.…” Sophia grabbed for him. J was trembling slightly, and he knew she could tell as much. He held her off.

  “I guess it just caught up with me, you know, the good old question.” He looked down at her slyly. “I don’t know who I am.”

  “Oh, J,” said Sophia. Half relief, half concern in her voice came out not unlike stifled laughter. J knew the drill as well as she. Now she must tell him that he mustn’t mind being not very much really, because he was beloved.

  J crinkled the skin under his eyes, just slightly, to warn her off that stuff. Sophia caught the warning.

  “I want to know if you are okay to drive,” she said. “That is the question.”

  “Oh, I’ll make it. See—I guess this is just one of those things. But I’ve got a notion it’s not the kind that if you lie down, it will go away. Maybe I’ll get a clue in the office.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Don’t worry.”

  He knew she didn’t like any part of this and was worried.

  “I won’t, J,” she lied.

  Sophia was the wise wife; she wouldn’t nag. She let him go.

  J went out and got into his car. The garage gave him a pang. How strange! Why shouldn’t she nag? he thought to himself. How come we’ve got all these modern rules, that everybody has to be let do what he wants to do, whether you think it is dangerous or not? Is it because if you don’t think he ought to do it and say so, then he won’t love you anymore? So let him go have a crash on the freeway as the lesser of two evils? This didn’t seem to make any sense at all.

  J felt somewhat lighter of heart, however, to be alone. He breezed along the freeway, which was a delight at this hour. He paid no attention to a blue Ford that changed lanes, behind him, exactly as he did.

  He was very late. All the girls looked up with curiosity. Hah, old dependable goofed for once! thought J rather gleefully. His assistant, Tom Pollack, came fussing nervously. J went to his desk, sat down in his chair, and thought, Here I am—in the middle. He was assistant to Herman Bringgold, who was the office manager. J also had an assistant.

  Mr. Bringgold was a somewhat maddening superior, one of those who veered, who often contradicted his own didactically given instructions, and was always very much surprised that they had not been understood to have been tentative in the first place. J’s assistant was an unfortunate young man who died a thousand deaths whenever he was contradicted in the slightest.

  Between his boss’s insensitivity and his assistant’s thin and quivering skin, J usually slid in skillful tension.

  But today he sat. I am neither capital nor labor, he mused. I am neither dispensable nor indispensable.

  Then Bringgold came roaring like a little lion out of his office (which, naturally, was larger and handsomer and on the corner). “Ah, J! Good to see you. Excuse me. The partners want your notes.”

  Bringgold was a plump, short man with black hair combed sideways and glasses on his meaty little nose. He exuded an air of “hurry-hurry.”

  J surrendered his notes on the meetings he had been sent to attend in Chicago. He had long ago learned to take legible, orderly, and complete notes, because Bringgold almost never permitted his assistant to catch even a glimpse of the high and the mighty, the Partners, the “really big” bosses.

  Hah, Bringgold’s in the middle, too, J reflected, as his boss hurried away on small feet that twinkled in shining shoes. But over Bringgold’s shoulder the man now cast, and J accepted, an invitation to lunch.

  J, brushing off Tom Pollack as if he had been a mosquito, sat at his desk for a full hour and did absolutely nothing. The enlightening thing was that this seemed to make no difference whatsoever to the universe or mankind. And God, as usual, chose not to tell J Little what He thought of it.

  Lunchtime came. J had just (he felt) eaten breakfast. He accepted, however, the offered cocktail. Uneasily, it sat upon the eggs.

  Bringgold had taken some time to settle in the restaurant chair. He had acquaintances to nod to, the waitress to patronize, the napkin to unfold, the water glass to shift, the silver to realign. When he had at last come to rest like a hummingbird upon a twig, the table and chair still seemed to sway (like the twig) in an aftermath of his bustle.

  The boss demanded to know all about what happened in Chicago.

  J bestirred himself to do a moderately humorous sketch of his accident, but it went very flat, and Bringgold’s glasses shone upon him suspiciously.

  “You’d better get a checkup from your own man,” Bringgold advised. “I told your good wife that we can’t have you out of the office with some damn thing. Pollack tries, you know, J.”

  “I know.”

  Bringgold sighed. “He’s got the old college try, but not the old college spirit. Don’t you poop out on me,” chided the boss. “After all, we wear the old school tie.”

  J put one shrimp into his mouth and chewed it slowly. “Did we ever see each other on campus in our lives?” he said thoughtfully.

  Bringgold goggled at him.

  “What the hell does it mean,” asked J, “if, coincidentally, we were sent to the same huge university? You were a junior when I was a frosh. You were fairly large on campus,” (Bringgold bridled), “and studying didn’t bother you, I’ll bet. You went for background, and you got background.” (Bringgold visibly stiffened.) “Whereas I went because my highly educated family assumed that I would lap up knowledge thirstily and cry for more. I was slow at the books, though. I had a terrible time just getting through. I never played any games or held any offices or joined any fun groups. As a matter of fact, I didn’t have much fun.”

  “Here, here, that’s no way to talk!” Bringgold took his glasses off and began to clean them. His face, without them, looked like the face of another man.

  He said, “I think you’ve had a shocking experience, old boy, maybe worse than you admit. Right? Tell you, why don’t you take off the rest of the week? We can stagger along with Pollack that long, I suppose. All work and no play makes Jack, ha, ha, I always say. But you want to watch your health, you know that.”

  “There is nothing physically wrong—” J began and stopped, because he could see Bringgold continuing the sentence with a “but.”

  “Take a few days, why don’t you?” his boss said when J dried up, “and get yourself a little recreation.”

  J said, “Recreation?”

  “Sure. Get out on the golf course a couple of hours a day.”

  “And I will be created anew?”

  Bringgold popped his glasses on and
stared.

  J thought, I’m scaring the liver out of him. The notion tickled him. The boss was not (as J well knew) a word person; playfulness with a word was not within his ken.

  Bringgold said rather coldly, “You brought in a good report. Thanks very much. But you could have sent it in by messenger. I think you should go home and stay there until you’re perfectly all right.”

  He thinks I am “emotionally upset,” J reflected, and he doesn’t know what else to do about it but order it to go away. He smiled and said, “All right, Herman.” He almost never used the first name. “I won’t go back, then. Something I said I’d do this afternoon. Okay?”

  “Fine, fine,” said the boss, grabbing the check in a fast, wide gesture that announced to anyone who might have been watching that he was grabbing it. “Do that, J. This—uh—trouble in Chicago,” his eyeglasses shone, “whatever it takes to get you over it and back on the ball, you take,” he said severely. “Your wife is a fine woman.”

  By the time J followed him out of the restaurant he knew that Bringgold’s notion of emotional upset was tied to one human function only, and that Bringgold no longer believed that he had been told the truth about what had happened in Chicago. (What happened in Boston, Willy?)

  J ambled to his car, wondering what the devil he thought he was doing. Maybe it was time he had some recreation. If trying to find out who-he-was involved blatting out what-he-thought whenever he felt like it, J perceived that what-he-thought was no neat package of firmly held convictions, consistently developed, hanging together, well arrived at, the sum of an examined life, ripened into a philosophy. It seemed, instead, to be a series of rambling speculations that did not hang together at all and were going to offend or alarm almost everybody. (Poor Nanjo!)

  Well, he’d take this occasion to go see his father, but pretty soon he had better begin to speak the boss’s language (a pidgin English, used in trade, which J could speak, of course). For the wheels of business would roll on. Oh, they would roll, those deep and dark-blue wheels! And if J fell out of his place as a useful, although not irreplaceable cog, he would have to go to the trouble of meshing back in again.