The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories (5 page)

“You'll tell her no such thing,” raved Packer. “You'll leave her out of this.”

“Now, Unk,” Tony reasoned with him, “if you won't do it for yourself, do it for me—me, the only kin you have in the entire world. It's the first big thing I've ever had a chance at. I may talk a lot and try to look prosperous and successful, but I tell you, Unk …”

He saw he was getting nowhere.

“Well, if you won't do it for me, do it for Ann, do it for the kids. You wouldn't want to see those poor little kids –”

“Oh, shut up,” said Packer. “First thing you know, you'll be blubbering. All right, then, I'll do it.”

It was worse than he had thought it would be. If he had known it was to be so bad, he'd never have consented to go through with it.

The Widow Foshay brought the bowl of broth herself. She sat on the bed and held his head up and cooed and crooned at him as she fed him broth.

It was most embarrassing.

But they got what they were after.

When she had finished feeding him, there was still half a bowl of broth and she left that with them because, she said, poor man, he might be needing it.

CHAPTER III

It was three o'clock in the afternoon and almost time for the Widow Foshay to come in with the broth.

Thinking of it, Packer gagged a little.

Someday, he promised himself, he'd beat Tony's brains out. If it hadn't been for him, this never would have started.

Almost six months now and every blessed day she had brought the broth and sat and talked with him while he forced down a bowl of it. And the worst of it, Packer told himself, was that he had to pretend that he thought that it was good.

And she was so gay! Why did she have to be so gay? Toujours gai, he thought. Just like the crazy alley cat that ancient writer had penned the silly lines about.

Garlic in the broth, he thought—my God, who'd ever heard of garlic in beef broth! It was uncivilized. A special recipe, she'd said, and it was all of that. And yet it had been the garlic that had done the job with the yellow spore-life—it was the food needed by the spores to kick them into life and to start them growing.

The garlic in the broth might have been good for him as well, he admitted to himself, for in many years, it seemed, he had not felt so fine. There was a spring in his step, he'd noticed, and he didn't get so tired; he used to take a nap in the afternoon and now he never did. He worked as much as ever, actually more than ever, and he was, except for the widow and the broth, a very happy man. Yes, a very happy man.

He would continue to be happy, he told himself, as long as Tony left him to his stamps. Let the little whippersnapper carry the load of Efficiency, Inc.; he was, after all, the one who had insisted on it. Although, to give him credit, he had done well with it. A lot of industries had signed up and a whole raft of insurance companies and a bunch of bond houses and a good scattering of other lines of business. Before long, Tony said, there wouldn't be a business anywhere that would dare to try to get along without the services of Efficiency, Inc.

The doorbell chimed and he went to answer it. It would be the Widow Foshay, and she would have her hands full with the broth.

But it was not the widow.

“Are you Mr. Clyde Packer?” asked the man who stood in the hall.

“Yes, sir,” Packer said. “Will you please step in?”

“My name is John Griffin,” said the man, after he was seated. “I represent Geneva.”

“Geneva? You mean the Government?”

The man showed him credentials.

“Okay,” said Packer a bit frostily, being no great admirer of the government. “What can I do for you?”

“You are senior partner in Efficiency, Inc., I believe.”

“I guess that's what I am.”

“Mr. Packer, don't you know?”

“Well, I'm not positive. I'm a partner, but I don't know about this senior business. Tony runs the show and I let him have his head.”

“You and your nephew are sole owners of the firm?”

“You bet your boots we are. We kept it for ourselves. We took no one in with us.”

“Mr. Packer, for some time the Government has been attempting to negotiate with Mr. Camper. He's told you nothing of it?”

“Not a thing,” said Packer. “I'm busy with my stamps. He doesn't bother me.”

“We have been interested in your service,” Griffin said. “We have tried to buy it.”

“It's for sale,” said Packer. “You just pay the price and –”

“But you don't understand. Mr. Camper insists on a separate contract for every single office that we operate. That would run to a terrific figure –”

“Worth it,” Packer assured him. “Every cent of it.”

“It's unfair,” said Griffin firmly. “We are willing to buy it on a departmental basis and we feel that even in that case we would be making some concession. By rights the government should be allowed to come in under a single covering arrangement.”

“Look,” protested Packer, “what are you talking to me for? I don't run the business; Tony does. You'll have to deal with him. I have faith in the boy. He has a good hard business head. I'm not even interested in Efficiency. All I'm interested in is stamps.”

“That's just the point,” said Griffin heartily. “You've hit the situation exactly on the head.”

“Come again?” asked Packer.

“Well, it's like this,” Griffin told him in confidential tones. “The government gets a lot of stamps in its daily correspondence. I forget the figure, but it runs to several tons of philatelic material every day. And from every planet in the galaxy. We have in the past been disposing of it to several stamp concerns, but there's a disposition in certain quarters to offer the whole lot as a package deal at a most attractive price.”

“That is fine,” said Packer, “but what would I do with several tons a day?”

“I wouldn't know,” declared Griffin, “but since you are so interested in stamps, it would give you a splendid opportunity to have first crack at a batch of top-notch material. It is, I dare say, one of the best sources you could find.”

“And you'd sell all this stuff to me if I put in a word for you with Tony?”

Griffin grinned happily. “You follow me exactly, Mr. Packer.”

Packer snorted. “Follow you! I'm way ahead of you.”

“Now, now,” cautioned Griffin, “you must not get the wrong impression. This is a business offer—a purely business offer.”

“I suppose you'd expect no more than nominal payment for all this waste paper I would be taking off your hands.”

“Very nominal,” said Griffin.

“All right, I'll think about it and I'll let you know. I can't promise you a thing, of course.”

“I understand, Mr. Packer. I do not mean to rush you.”

After Griffin left, Packer sat and thought about it and the more he thought about it, the more attractive it became.

He could rent a warehouse and install an Efficiency Basket in it and all he'd have to do would be dump all that junk in there and the basket would sort it out for him.

He wasn't exactly sure if one basket would have the time to break the selection down to more than just planetary groupings, but if one basket couldn't do it, he could install a second one and between the two of them, he could run the classification down to any point he wished. And then, after the baskets had sorted out the more select items for his personal inspection, he could set up an organization to sell the rest of it in job lots and he could afford to sell it at a figure that would run all the rest of those crummy dealers clear out on the limb.

He rubbed his hands together in a gesture of considerable satisfaction, thinking how he could make it rough for all those skinflint dealers. It was murder, he reminded himself, what they got away with; anything that happened to them, they had coming to them.

But there was one thing he gagged on slightly. What Griffin had offered him was little better than a bribe, although it was, he supposed, no more than one could expect of the government. The entire governmental structure was loaded with grafters and ten percenters and lobbyists and special interest boys and others of their ilk. Probably no one would think a thing of it if he made the stamp deal—except the dealers, of course, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it except to sit and howl.

But aside from that, he wondered, did he have the right to interfere with Tony? He could mention it to him, of course, and Tony would say yes. But did he have the right?

He sat and worried at the question, without reaching a conclusion, without getting any nearer to the answer until the door chimes sounded.

It was the Widow Foshay and she was empty-handed. She had no broth today.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “You are a little late.”

“I was just opening my door to come over when I saw you had a caller. He's gone now, isn't he?”

“For some time,” said Packer.

She stepped inside and he closed the door. They walked across the room.

“Mr. Packer,” said the Widow, “I must apologize. I brought no broth today. The truth of the matter is, I'm tired of making it all the time.”

“In such a case,” he said, very gallantly, “the treats will be on me.”

He opened the desk drawer and lifted out the brand new box of PugAlNash's leaf, which had arrived only the day before.

Almost reverently, he lifted the cover and held the box out to her. She recoiled from it a little.

“Go ahead,” he urged. “Take a pinch of it. Don't swallow it. Just chew it.”

Cautiously, she dipped her fingers in the box.

“That's too much,” he warned her. “Just a little pinch. You don't need a lot. And it's rather hard to come by.”

She took a pinch and put it in her mouth.

He watched her closely, smiling. She looked for all the world as if she had taken poison. But soon she settled back in her chair, apparently convinced it was not some lethal trick.

“I don't believe,” she said, “I've ever tasted anything quite like it.”

“You never have. Other than myself, you may well be the only human that has ever tasted it. I get it from a friend of mine who lives on one of the far-out stars. His name is PugAlNash and he sends it regularly. And he always includes a note.”

He looked in the drawer and found the latest note.

“Listen to this,” he said.

He read it:

Der Fiend: Grately injoid latter smoke you cent me. Ples mor of sam agin. You du knot no that I profetick and wach ahed for you. Butt it be so and I grately hapy to perform this taske for fiend. I assur you it be onely four the beste. You prophet grately, maybee.

Your luving fiend,

PugAlNash

He finished reading it and tossed it on the desk.

“What do you make of it?” he asked. “Especially that crack about his being a prophet and watching ahead for me?”

“It must be all right,” the widow said. “He claims you will profit greatly.”

“He sounds like a gypsy fortune-teller. He had me worried for a while.”

“But why should you worry over that?”

“Because I don't want to know what's going to happen to me. And sometime he might tell me. If a man could look ahead, for example, he'd know just when he was going to die and how and all the –”

“Mr. Packer,” she told him, “I don't think you're meant to die. I swear you are getting to look younger every day.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Packer, vastly pleased, “I'm feeling the best I have in years.”

“It may be that leaf he sends you.”

“No, I think most likely it is that broth of yours.”

They spent a pleasant afternoon—more pleasant, Packer admitted, than he would have thought was possible.

And after she had left, he asked himself another question that had him somewhat frightened.

Why in the world, of all people in the world, had he shared the leaf with her?

He put the box back in the drawer and picked up the note. He smoothed it out and read it once again.

The spelling brought a slight smile to his lips, but he quickly turned it off, for despite the atrociousness of it, PugAlNash nevertheless was one score up on him. For Pug had been able, after a fashion, to master the language of Earth, while he had bogged down completely when confronted with Pug's language.

I profetick and wach ahed for you.

It was crazy, he told himself. It was, perhaps, some sort of joke, the kind of thing that passed for a joke with Pug.

He put the note away and prowled the apartment restlessly, vaguely upset by the whole pile-up of worries.

What should he do about the Griffin offer?

Why had he shared the leaf with the Widow Foshay?

What about that crack of Pug's?

He went to the bookshelves and put out a finger and ran it along the massive set of
Galactic Abstracts.
He found the right volume and took it back to the desk with him.

He leafed through it until he found
Unuk al Hay
. Pug, he remembered, lived on Planet X of the system.

He wrinkled up his forehead as he puzzled out the meaning of the compact, condensed, sometimes cryptic wording, bristling with fantastic abbreviations. It was a bloated nuisance, but it made sense, of course. There was just too much information to cover in the galaxy—the set of books, unwieldy as it might be, would simply become unmanageable if anything like completeness of expression and description were attempted.

X-lt.kn., int., uninh. hu., (T-67), tr. intrm. (T-102) med. hbs., leg. forst., diff. lang …

Wait a second, there!

Leg. forst.

Could that be legend of foresight?

He read it again, translating as he went:

X-little known, intelligence, uninhabitable for humans (see table 67), trade by intermediaries (see table 102), medical herbs, legend (or legacy?) of foresight, difficult language …