Hidden Variables (39 page)

I nodded. We discussed it no further. As Disraeli remarked, sensible men are all of the same religion. And pray, what is that? Sensible men never tell. Substitute 'financial views' for 'religion' there, and you have my attitude exactly.

The next time Peter Pinton showed up at the office I was on my own. Waldo had gone off for a meeting 'with an industrial group' and I had not asked for details. Pinton sat down with the neat movements of a man who spent most of his life inside a three by four meter domicibile—the standard house/mobile lab/explorer vehicle of the Mars rangers. He took a small jar of white crystals from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table.

"Version two," he said."Purified, ten times as powerful per gram. Take this for your safe and give me the other one back—I need it for a little demonstration later this week."

I hesitated and he misunderstood my reluctance. "Oh, it's as safe as the last lot. Under any normal circumstances, perfectly neutral. See here." He unscrewed the top of the jar, licked his finger tip, dipped it in the white powder and stuck it in his mouth. He grinned happily as I goggled.

"Perfectly safe. Want a lick? It doesn't taste of much," he assured me. "Sort of yeasty and a bit sweet."

I declined the offer and went reluctantly through to the inner office. I closed the door—so Pinton wouldn't see the nonexistent safe—and opened the cupboard to get the phial. Would it still be there? Thank heaven, it was, just where I had left it. Perhaps I had misjudged Waldo's meeting. Feeling much happier I placed the jar of crystal Pintonite in the cupboard and gave his phial back to Pinton. I sat down again behind the desk. Pinton seemed in no hurry and in a chatty mood, and I wanted certain information from him.

"Occurs naturally on Mars?" he said, repeating my question. "Yes, in crude form. Now that's not suprising—Mars has a different geological history from Earth, so we expect some different compounds. Pintonite's an isomeric hydrocarbon-fluorocarbon form—just as diamond is a form of carbon, created under special conditions in the history of the planet."

"You mean you could make Pintonite from other things, the way we make diamonds?"

"Sure—if you knew the chemical structure and were smart enough, you could synthesize it. But why bother? There's plenty here on Mars if you're smart enough to know where to look and what to look for." He preened himself. "You see, the thing that makes Pintonite so powerful is just an unusual hydrocarbon bond. It's like a compressed spring, with a catch on it. Unhook the catch, and all that energy in the spring is released. The secret's in the chemical structure."

"And that can be found by measurement?"

"Sure. Any run-of-the-mill lab could do it. That's why I wanted to have it here, where it's safe, and not where the industrial espionage boys could lay their hands on it."

His simple trust in the legal profession was touching. My suspicions that he was a little cracked were growing. As he left, those suspicions were given a strong boost by our neighbor along the corridor. She was a youngish, talkative mother of three, with a husband who worked the day shift outside the domes in the open-field agricultural area. According to Waldo, she fancied me—by comparison, I suppose—but I had so far survived with my honor intact.

As Peter Pinton departed she came along the corridor and looked into the office. Her hair had so many curlers in it that she seemed to be wearing an elaborate bronze headpiece.

"What's old Pete been doing in here?" she inquired. "I haven't seen him for a year or two."

"Legal matters, Mrs. Wilkinson—I can't betray a client's confidences, you know. Where did you meet Mr. Pinton?"

"Oh, me and him had a thing going for a while. Never got too serious, though. He was always too busy during the day—not like you lawyers." She paused and eyed me speculatively for a few moments. Gambit declined, she went on. "Anyway, I got a bit tired of him after a while. He was always going on about his bloody parrot. No wonder they all called him Looney Pete."

She turned her head back along the corridor, revealing the full splendor of her ormolu helmet, and shouted a snappy reply to a child's question. Then she smiled at me alluringly. "I'm just going to have a cup of coffee and a little something to go with it, Mr. Carver. Perhaps you'd like to join me?"

As she raised her plucked eyebrows inquiringly, Waldo's familiar figure loomed over her shoulder. I looked at him with relief. She gave him a savage glare and then disappeared down the corridor. Waldo was in excellent spirits. I wondered just what he'd been up to. Well, regardless of that I had work of my own to do now, as soon as I could find the right place to help me. But I must admit that I didn't feel comforted by our lady neighbor's report on our client, Mr. Peter Pinton.

Neither Waldo nor I were particularly alarmed at first when the Tharsis City police arrived. Our licenses were in good shape, and our credentials to practice law on Mars impeccable. As the only two lawyers on the planet, we had framed the bar charter ourselves.

Police Investigator Lestrade had with him a saturnine, dark-haired man from General Mining, a double for Bela Lugosi in the classic Dracula 2-D movies, whom he introduced to us as Test Supervisor Kozak.

Like most Martians, they seemed puzzled by what Waldo and I actually
did
for a living. We explained our activities and they dutifully recorded them with a slight air of disbelief. After the general introductions Lestrade cleared his throat, scratched his thinning pate, and got down to business.

"Yesterday, Mr. Peter Pinton gave a demonstration of a powerful new explosive to General Mining. Mr. Kozak supervised the test." Lestrade spoke very slowly, picking his words with care. "Now, we would like you to tell us all that you know about that explosive, Pintonite."

He stopped. We waited. No more words came, apparently he was done. I was puzzled by his accusing manner and wondered again if Waldo had been up to something.

"I think there may be a misunderstanding," I finally replied. "We know very little. We're not geologists or chemists, you know. You want to talk to Peter Pinton himself—he's the expert."

"You can ask him," said Lestrade morosely. He placed a silver box on the desk, about the same size and shape as a portable communicator. I looked at it for the send/receive button but couldn't see it. I looked questioningly at Lestrade, who pressed a catch on the side of the box. The top opened to reveal a layer of grey powder inside.

"There's Peter Pinton, all there is of him." Lestrade looked at the box with a certain macabre satisfaction. "When he brought in his explosive, with his claim that it was superpowerful and completely safe, Mr. Kozak insisted on a controlled demonstration. They put Pinton inside a sealed metal tank to set up the test and watched from outside. Pinton was half right, you might say—it's far and away the most powerful explosive anybody has ever seen. But Pinton hadn't told anybody the chemical formula for it. Mr. Kozak came to see us after the explosion yesterday afternoon, and this morning we went over to see Polly—"

"—his parrot," Waldo interjected, nodding intelligently.

"—Polly Pinton, his ex-wife, now living in Chryse Dome," Lestrade went on. He scrutinized Waldo closely, as though mentally measuring him for a straitjacket. "She told us that Pinton had left a sample of the explosive with Henry Carver and Waldo Burmeister, Lawyers, at this address."

I sighed. So much for a deal with United Chemicals. I looked at Waldo. He shrugged and went into the back room to get the Pintonite sample.

After half a minute of banging around in the cupboard he was back, pale and sweating.

"Henry, it's not there." He signalled his next message with his eyes, as clearly as if he had spoken it: "What have you done with it, Henry?"

I was shocked. "It must be there, Waldo, I saw it just yesterday. Let me take a look."

I went into the back room and did a lightning but thorough search of the cupboard. No jar of white crystals, not a sign of it.

"Henry, for God's sake, don't play games," whispered Waldo from just behind me. "Tell them what you did with it, we can't do any deals now."

I turned back to him. "What do you mean, play games? Aren't you the one who took it to United Chemicals?"

He shook his head. "I was supposed to meet them again tomorrow, with a sample."

We looked at each other in dismay and stupefaction. Finally we went back into the outer office and faced Lestrade. He took the news that the Pintonite was gone with no emotion. It seemed almost as though he had expected something like that. He nodded slowly.

"We'll have to do a deep probe to get information on this. Who was here when Peter Pinton brought that explosive in and discussed storing it with you?"

"I was," Waldo reluctantly volunteered.

"And were you present, Mr. Carver?" asked Lestrade.

"Only at the very end of the meeting." Thank heaven for literal truth, and for the legal definition of present.

"Right. Mr. Burmeister, you'll have to come with us. This examination will take a few hours."

The game was over all right. But thank heaven, too, for my own foresight. I took out my wallet with a sigh and removed a slip of paper from it.

"I don't think that will be necessary, Mr. Lestrade. This contains the chemical anlysis of a Pintonite sample, performed just a few days ago."

I handed it to him. Waldo looked like a man reprieved at the eleventh hour—psychoprobes were tough stuff and a few people came out of them with their brains permanently scrambled. Kozak leapt on the paper with a cry of joy and read it while we watched.

After a few seconds of inspection he began to turn into a vampire. His teeth curled back from his upper lip and a deep snarl came from him. He seemed all set to leap and suck blood.

"Mr. Carver," he finally said in choked tones. "You had a chemical anlysis done. I suppose you are willing to tell us what type of analysis was performed?"

Now I was really confused. "Well, of course I am. I asked them to do the most final and complete one that they could. I forget the exact word that was used on the order."

"An ultimate analysis?"

"Yes, that's it exactly."

"You scientific illiterate," he screamed at once. "You great baboon." My information didn't seem to have pleased him. "An
ultimate
chemical analysis gives the final chemical composition in terms of the percentage of each element. It doesn't tell you a thing about the chemical
structure.
" He waved the paper in the air, literally gnashing his teeth as he did so. I'd never encountered that before outside the holodramas. "This just gives the amount of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and fluorine. I could no more make Pintonite from this information than I could make your friend here—" He glowered at Waldo. "—from a barrel of lard and a sack of flour."

An unfortunate example, I felt, and quite uncalled for. They dragged poor Waldo away to his fate. I hoped he'd be back again, intact, in a few hours. What on Earth—what on Mars—had gone wrong? I was sure Waldo had told me the truth—so where was the Pintonite?

I wandered around the office, looking everywhere I could think of for the missing jar. No sign. I picked up the useless chemical analysis paper—my trump card—and looked at it sadly. Then I crumpled it into a ball and went through to the inner office to throw it into the trash.

I opened the lid of the trash can—and froze. Suddenly, I understood exactly what had happened to the Pintonite. It had never occurred to me to tell Waldo that Peter Pinton had switched the phial of liquid for a jar of crystalline Pintonite. Waldo had been looking for the phial, while I'd looked for the jar. Now I'd found it. Empty. Waldo, in his insane lust for sweetmeats, had used three ounces of Pintonite to sugar his coffee. "Yeasty and sweet," Pinton had said.

When events call for it I can be a man of action. In less than ten minutes I had made reservations for Waldo and myself, immediate departure for Deimos. It was time that Burmeister and Carver found new business offices. I'd write and tell the Tharsis City police all about recent events, but I'd much rather do it from off-planet. I had a clear mental picture of three ounces of Pintonite going into and through Waldo. Tharsis City had, as I recalled, more than thirty thousand meters of sewage pipes beneath it. I could visualize a thin layer of Pintonite spread through every bit. Peter Pinton had said that it was perfectly safe, but his reputation as a reliable authority had diminished considerably in the past few hours. If the Tharsis City plumbing arrangements happened to have the right environment to set it off, it might not be the biggest explosion in the history of Mars, but it would certainly be the most disgusting.

I sat down to wait impatiently for Waldo's return. On second thoughts, I called and modified our space travel reservations. I didn't know how long it took Pintonite to pass completely through the human alimentary canal. Separate flights. If Waldo was about to fulfill my old warning and finally, literally, explode, I would rather not participate in the event.

AFTERWORD: PERFECTLY SAFE, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.

About three years ago our after-dinner conversation turned to the taboos of science fiction. There are, we all agreed, many subjects that have never been written about, not perhaps because they are truly shocking but because they are generally disgusting and awful.

We made a list. Then we worked on it to eliminate duplicates and categories that reflected very personal prejudices ("Frenchmen" and "rice pudding" were in the original set of disgusting things). Then I was given the final condensed list and told to write stories about all the items on it.

Pigs and lice and personal hygiene and fleas and gross fatness and sewage and dental appointments have all been more or less done, and I am steadily working my way through the rest. It is slow going. Writing
Parasites Lost
was a real effort, and
Space Opera
keeps trying to convert itself from a short story to a novel.

I'll be very glad when the list is finished. It is a slow road to literary immortality, and as the tom-cat making love to the skunk said after the first hour or two, I really think I've enjoyed about as much of this as I can stand.