PLATINUM POHL (59 page)

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Authors: Frederik Pohl

BOOK: PLATINUM POHL
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The whole thing seemed unnecessarily
mean
. Pulcher understood quite clearly why anyone who had had the experience of renting would never want to do it again. But why did it have to be so unpleasant? Surely, at least, conditions for the renter-mind in a machine-body could be made more bearable; the tactile sensations could be reduced from pain to some more supportable feeling without enough loss of sensation to jeopardize the desired ends.
He wondered wistfully if Madeleine had once occupied this particular machine.
Then he wondered how many of the dynamiters and diggers were female, how many male. It seemed somehow wrong that their gleaming stainless-steel or phosphor-bronze exteriors should give no hint of age or sex. There ought to be some lighter work for women, he thought idly, and then realized that the thought was nonsense. What difference did it make? You could work your buckets off, and when you got back topside you’d be healthy and rested—
And then he had a quick, dizzying qualm, as he realized that that thought would be the thought in the mind of the tourist now occupying his own body.
Pulcher licked his not-lips and attacked the sand with his buckets more viciously than before.
“All right, Mac.”
The familiar steel bug was back beside him. “Come on, back to the barn,” it scolded. “You think I want to have to haul you back? Time’s up. Get the tracks back in the parking lot.”
Never was an order so gladly obeyed.
But the overseer had cut it rather fine. Pulcher had just reached the parking space, had not quite turned his clanking steel frame around when,
rip
, the tearing and the pain hit him … .
And he found himself struggling against the enfolded soft shroud that they called “the squeeze.”
“Relax, friend,” soothed a distant voice. Abruptly the pressure was removed from his face and the voice came nearer. “There you are. Have a nice dream?”
Pulcher kicked the rubbery material off his legs. He sat up.
“Ouch!” he said suddenly, and rubbed his eye.
The man by his head looked down at him and grinned. “Some shiner. Must’ve been a good party.” He was stripping the sections of rubbery gripping material off him as he talked. “You’re lucky. I’ve seen them come back in here with legs broken, teeth out, even
bullet holes. Friend, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. ’Specially the girls.” He handed Pulcher another bleached towel. “All right, you’re through here. Don’t worry about the eye, friend. That’s easy two, three days old already. Another day or two and you won’t even notice it.”
“Hey!” Pulcher cried suddenly. “What do you mean, two or three days? How long was I down there?”
The man glanced boredly at the green-tabbed card on Pulcher’s wrist. “Let’s see, this is Thursday. Six days.”
“But I only signed up for twenty-four hours!”
“Sure you did. Plus emergency overcalls, naturally. What do you think, friend, the Agency’s going to evict some big-spending tourist just because you want your body back in twenty-four hours? Can’t do it. You can see that. The Agency’d lose a fortune that way.” Unceremoniously Pulcher was hoisted to his feet and escorted to the door. “If only these jokers would read the fine print,” the first man was saying mournfully to his helper as Pulcher left. “Oh, well. If they had any brains they wouldn’t rent in the first place—then what would me and you do for jobs?”
The closing door swallowed their laughter.
Six days! Pulcher raced through medical check-out, clothes redemption, payoff at the cashier’s window. “Hurry, please,” he kept saying, “can’t you please hurry?” He couldn’t wait to get to a phone.
But he had a pretty good idea already what the phone call would tell him. Five extra days! No wonder it had seemed so long down there, while up in the city time had passed along.
He found a phone at last and quickly dialed the private number of Judge Pegrim’s office. The judge wouldn’t be there, but that was the way Pulcher wanted it. He got Pegrim’s secretary. “Miss Kish? This is Milo Pulcher.”
Her voice was cold. “So
there
you are. Where have you been? The judge was furious.”
“I—” He despaired of explaining it to her; he could hardly explain it to himself. “I’ll tell you later, Miss Kish. Please. Where does the kidnap case stand now?”
“Why, the hearing was yesterday. Since we couldn’t locate you, the judge had to appoint another attorney. Naturally. After all, Mr. Pulcher, an attorney is supposed to be in court when his clients are—”
“I know that, Miss Kish. What happened?”
“It was open and shut. They all pleaded
non vult
—it was over in twenty minutes. It was the only thing to do on the evidence, you see. They’ll be sentenced this afternoon—around three o’clock, I’d say.
If
you’re interested.”
It was snowing again, blue this time.
Pulcher paid the cabdriver and ran up the steps of the courthouse. As he reached for the door he caught sight of three airfish solemnly swimming around the corner of the building toward him. Even in his hurry he paused to glance at them.
It was past three, but the judge had not yet entered the courtroom. There were no spectators, but the six defendants were already in their seats, a bailiff lounging next to them. Counsel’s table was occupied by—Pulcher squinted—oh, by Donley. Pulcher
knew the other lawyer slightly. He was a youngster, with good political connections—that explained the court’s appointing him for the fee when Pulcher didn’t show up—but without much to recommend him otherwise.
Madeleine Gaultry looked up as Pulcher approached, then looked away. One of the boys caught sight of him, scowled, whispered to the others. Their collective expressions were enough to sear his spirit.
Pulcher sat at the table beside Donley. “Hello. Mind if I join you?”
Donley twisted his head. “Oh, hello, Charley. Sure. I didn’t expect to see you here.” He laughed. “Say, that eye’s pretty bad. I guess—”
He stopped.
Something happened in Donley’s face. The young baby-fat cheeks became harder, older, more worried-looking. Donley clamped his lips shut.
Pulcher was puzzled. “What’s the matter? Are you wondering where I was?”
Donley said stiffly, “Well, you can’t blame me for that.”
“I couldn’t help it, Donley. I was renting. I was trying to gather evidence—not that that helps much now. I found one thing out, though. Even a lawyer can goof in reading a contract. Did you know the Tourist Agency has the right to retain a body for up to forty-five days, regardless of the original agreement? It’s in their contract. I was lucky, I guess. They only kept me five.”
Donley’s face did not relax. “That’s interesting,” he said noncommittally.
The man’s attitude was most peculiar. Pulcher could understand being needled by Donley—could even understand this coldness if it had been from someone else—but it wasn’t like Donley to take mere negligence so seriously.
But before he could try to pin down exactly what was wrong the other lawyer stood up. “On your feet, Pulcher,” he said in a stage whisper. “Here comes the judge!”
Pulcher jumped up.
He could feel Judge Pegrim’s eyes rake over him. They scratched like diamond-tipped drills. In an ordinarily political, reasonably corrupt community, Judge Pegrim was one man who took his job seriously and expected the same from those around him. “Mr. Pulcher,” he purred. “We’re honored to have you with us.”
Pulcher began an explanation but the judge waved it away. “Mr. Pulcher, you know that an attorney is an officer of the court? And, as such, is expected to know his duties—and to fulfill them?”
“Well, Your Honor. I thought I was fulfilling them. I—”
“I’ll discuss it with you at another time, Mr. Pulcher,” the judge said. “Right now we have a rather disagreeable task to get through. Bailiff! Let’s get started.”
It was all over in ten minutes. Donley made a couple of routine motions, but there was no question about what would happen. It happened. Each of the defendants drew a ten-year sentence. The judge pronounced it distastefully, adjourned the court and left. He did not look at Milo Pulcher.
Pulcher tried for a moment to catch Madeleine’s eye. Then he succeeded. Shaken, he turned away, bumping into Donley. “I don’t understand it,” he mumbled.
“What don’t you understand?”
“Well, don’t you think that’s a pretty stiff sentence?”
Donley shrugged. He wasn’t very interested. Pulcher scanned the masklike young face. There was no sympathy there. It was funny, in a way. This was a face of flint; the plight of six young people, doomed to spend a decade each of their lives in prison,
did not move him at all. Pulcher said dispiritedly, “I think I’ll go see Charley Dickon.”
“Do that,” said Donley curtly, and turned away.
 
But Pulcher couldn’t find Charley Dickon.
He wasn’t at his office, wasn’t at the club. “Nope,” said the garrulous retired police lieutenant who was the club president—and who used the club headquarters as a checker salon. “I haven’t seen Charley in a couple of days. Be at the dinner tonight, though. You’ll see him there.” It wasn’t a question, whether Pulcher would be at the dinner or not; Pop Craig knew he would. After all, Charley had passed the word out.
Everybody
would be there.
Pulcher went back to his apartment.
It was the first time he had surveyed his body since reclaiming it. The bathroom mirror told him that he had a gorgeous shiner indeed. Also certain twinges made him strip and examine his back. It looked, he thought gloomily, staring over his shoulder into the mirror, as though whoever had rented his body had had a perfectly marvelous time. He made a mental note to get a complete checkup someday soon, just in case. Then he showered, shaved, talcumed around the black eye without much success, and dressed.
He sat down, poured himself a drink and promptly forgot it was there. He was thinking. Something was trying to reach the surface of his mind. Something perfectly obvious, which he all the same couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was rather annoying.
He found himself drowsily thinking of airfish.
Damn, he thought grouchily, his body’s late tenant hadn’t even troubled to give it a decent night’s sleep! But he didn’t want to sleep, not now. It was still only early evening. He supposed the Chester A. Arthur Day Dinner was still a must, but there were hours yet before that … .
He got up, poured the untasted drink into the sink and set out. There was one thing he could try to help Madeleine. It probably wouldn’t work. But nothing else would either, so that was no reason for not trying it.
 
The mayor’s mansion was ablaze with light; something was going on.
Pulcher trudged up the long, circling driveway in slush that kept splattering his ankles. He tapped gingerly on the door.
The butler took his name doubtfully, and isolated Pulcher in a contagion-free sitting room while he went off to see if the mayor would care to admit such a person. He came back looking incredulous. The mayor would.
Mayor Swinburne was a healthy, lean man of medium height, showing only by his thinning hair that he was in his middle forties. Pulcher said, “Mr. Mayor, I guess you know who I am. I represent the six kids who were accused of kidnaping your son.”
“Not accused, Mr. Pulcher. Convicted. And I didn’t know you still represented them.”
“I see you know the score. All right. Maybe, in a legal sense, I don’t represent them anymore. But I’d like to make some representations on their behalf to you tonight—entirely unofficially.” He gave the mayor a crisply worded, brief outline of what had happened in the case, how he had rented, what he had found as a renter, why he had missed the hearing. “You see, sir, the Tourist Agency doesn’t give its renters even ordinary courtesy.
They’re just bodies, nothing else. I can’t blame those kids. Now that I’ve rented myself, I’ll have to say that I wouldn’t blame anybody who did
anything
to avoid it.”
The mayor said dangerously, “Mr. Pulcher, I don’t have to remind you that what’s left of our economy depends heavily on the Tourist Agency for income. Also that some of our finest citizens are among its shareholders.”
“Including yourself, Mr. Mayor. Right.” Pulcher nodded. “But the management may not be reflecting your wishes. I’ll go farther. I think, sir, that every contract the Tourist Agency holds with a renter ought to be voided as against public policy. Renting out your body for a purpose which well may be in violation of law—which, going by experience, nine times out of ten
does
involve a violation of law—is the same thing as contracting to perform any other illegal act. The contract simply cannot be enforced. The common law gives us a great many precedents on this point, and—”
“Please, Mr. Pulcher. I’m not a judge. If you feel so strongly, why not take it to court?”
Pulcher sank back into his chair, deflated. “There isn’t time,” he admitted. “And besides, it’s too late for that to help the six persons I’m interested in. They’ve already been driven into an even more illegal act, in order to escape renting. I’m only trying to explain it to you, sir, because you are their only hope. You can pardon them.”
The mayor’s face turned beet red. “Executive clemency, from
me?
For
them?
”
“They didn’t hurt your boy.”
“No, they did not,” the mayor agreed. “And I’m sure that Mrs. Gaultry, at least, would not willingly have done so. But can you say the same of the others? Could she have prevented it?” He stood up. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pulcher. The answer is no. Now you must excuse me.”
Pulcher hesitated, then accepted the dismissal. There wasn’t anything else to do.
He walked somberly down the hall toward the entrance, hardly noticing that guests were beginning to arrive. Apparently the mayor was offering cocktails to a select few. He recognized some of the faces—Lew Yoder, the County Tax Assessor, for one; probably the mayor was having some of the whiter-collared politicians in for drinks before making the obligatory appearance at Dickon’s fund-raising dinner. Pulcher looked up long enough to nod grayly at Yoder and walked on.
“Charley Dickon! What the devil are you doing here like that?”
Pulcher jerked upright. Dickon here? He looked around.
But Dickon was not in sight. Only Yoder was coming down the corridor toward him; oddly, Yoder was looking straight at him! And it had been Yoder’s voice.
Yoder’s face froze.
The expression on Yoder’s face was an odd one but not unfamiliar to Milo Pulcher. He had seen it once before that day. It was the identical expression he had seen on the face of that young punk who had replaced him in court, Donley.
Yoder said awkwardly, “Oh, Milo, it’s you. Hello. I, uh, thought you were Charley Dickon.”
Pulcher felt the hairs at the back of his neck tingle. Something was odd here. Very odd. “It’s a perfectly natural mistake,” he said. “I’m six feet tall and Charley’s five feet three. I’m thirty-one years old. He’s fifty. I’m dark and he’s almost bald. I don’t know how anybody ever tells us apart anyway.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” Yoder blustered.
Pulcher looked at him thoughtfully for a second.
“You’re lucky,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I know. But I hope to find out.”

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