The Sheep Look Up (24 page)

Austin nodded, estimating the weight of the beast. Not under seventy pounds, maybe eighty. A load. How could a family this poor feed that big an extra mouth? Well, better drag him out. He reached for purchase, and his hand brushed something dangling from the underside of the kennel’s roof. What the—?

Oh no!

He unhooked the thing from its nail and drew it out. A fly-killing strip. Spanish brand name. No country of origin, of course.

“Where did you get this?” he demanded.

“Mom bought a box. Flies got so bad when the garbagemen stopped coming. And they were crawling all over Rey’s sores, so I put that up.”

“Your mom got more of these in the apartment?”

“Why, sure. In the kitchen, the bedroom, all over. They work fine.”

“You go straight up and tell her she must take them down. They’re dangerous.”

“Well...” Biting his lip. “Well, okay, I’ll tell her you said so. When she wakes up.”

“What?”

“She ain’t up yet. Heard her snoring when I got up. And she hates for me to disturb her.”

Austin clenched his fists. “What kind of sleeping pills does she take—barbiturates, aren’t they?”

“
I
don’t know!” There was fear and astonishment in the boy’s eyes. “Just pills, I guess!”

Stupid to have asked. He knew already that they had to be. “Here, take me up to your apartment, quick!”

“Smith!” A roar from the gang-boss, storming up the alley. “What the hell are you playing at? Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

Austin waved the fly-strip under his nose. “There’s a woman sick upstairs! Taken barbiturates in a room with the windows shut and one of these hanging up! Know what they put in these stinking things? Dichlorvos! It’s a cholinesterase antagonist! Mix that with barbiturates and—”

“What’s all this crazy doubletalk about?” the gang-boss snapped.

“It’s about what killed that dog! Come on, hurry!”

They saved her life. But of course reporters wanted to talk to this unexpectedly well-informed garbage-man, so he had to move on again before they got the chance.

A PLAN TO MAP THE PLANET

As yet they had undertaken only makeshift repairs to the façade of the Bamberley Trust building. The broken windows had been covered, of course—you couldn’t let street air leak in—but the store at ground level had been boarded up. Shortage of labor, Tom Grey deduced.

“Looks like it’s been hit by an earthquake!” said his cab-driver cheerfully.

“Well, not really,” Grey contradicted. “An earthquake produces a highly characteristic type of damage, readily distinguishable from the effect of a bomb.” But he was extremely late for his appointment with Moses Greenbriar, so he was disinclined to pursue the point.

Besides, out here on the street it was most depressing. Garbage was piled high by the curb and against the walls of the buildings. Moreover, the air was unbelievably clammy, from air-conditioning systems no doubt—and people at bus-stops were coughing and wiping their streaming eyes because of the fumes. On the way from the airport he’d seen a fight break out at one stop, between two men in working overalls who—astonishingly—were belaboring each other with umbrellas.

His cab-driver had volunteered the information that this bus-route had been particularly hard hit by the enteritis outbreak, and those people might have been waiting in the open for more than an hour, which was bad for the temper. He’d asked about the umbrellas, and the man had chuckled.

“Ah, that’s New York rain!” he said with a sort of perverse pride. “Got one myself, wouldn’t be without it!” He pointed at the shelf under the dash. “You know, I’m going to quit this job next month. Sick of them Trainites! Saw the skull and crossbones they painted on this cab?” Grey had not; doubtless it was on the other side from the one where he’d entered. “Had enough, me. Gon’ put my savings into a dry-cleaning business. Coining it in that line. Five minutes in the rain, umbrella or no umbrella, and if you don’t go to the cleaners right away you need a new suit.”

Many street-lights had broken down and not yet been repaired. National Guardsmen, masked and helmeted but armed only with pistols, were controlling traffic. It had been in the news: the mayor had reserved all policemen who were well enough for duty to cope with essential jobs like night crime patrols.

There had been huge State Health Authority posters at the airport, warning all out-of-town arrivals to purchase a recognized brand of prophylactic stomach tablets, and under no circumstances to drink unpurified water.

“I never had so many drunks to take home in my life,” the cab-driver had said. “Like they took this warning not to risk the water as orders to fill up on hard liquor.”

“I don’t drink,” Tom Grey had said.

He was a little nervous, because he set so much store by his world-simulation program now. Since the financial setbacks suffered by Angel City, first with the Towerhill avalanche, and now because of the enteritis epidemic—they had had enormous success in persuading their youngest clients to take out life insurance policies on their babies at birth, and over ten thousand had so far generated claims—they’d been compelled to find every possible means of improving the situation, even down to renting their computers at cut price to evening and weekend users. Grey therefore needed an alternative sponsor.

Having reviewed every major corporation, he’d decided that Bamberley Trust met all his requirements. It had plenty of capital; it had spare computer capacity, since it was primarily an investment firm and used computers solely for market analysis; and it was desperately in need of something to boost its public image. The UN inquiry into the Noshri disaster had not been able to prove how the dangerous drug was introduced into Nutripon, and the lack of a firm exoneration had allowed suspicion to continue.

He’d forwarded a fully detailed prospectus of his project, with appendices describing sample applications of the completed program. Obviously he had made it persuasive, for they had now invited him to New York to discuss the document.

And, within five minutes of entering Greenbriar’s office, he knew—to employ a metaphor that was especially apt on Bamberley territory—he’d struck oil first time.

Of course, with New York in this mess you’d expect people to appreciate the potential advantages.

BURNING YOUR BRIDGES BEFORE YOU COME TO THEM

Chairman:
My apologies for the repeated postponements of this meeting, ladies and gentlemen, but—ah—as you know it’s been due to the fact that fate wasn’t obliging enough to make our various indispositions coincide. For the record, I’m Edward Penwarren, and I’m the President’s special representative in this matter. I believe you all know Mr. Bamberley, but I guess I should draw attention to the presence of Captain Advowson—sorry, Major Advowson, special delegate from the UN observation team that went to Noshri. Congratulations on your promotion, by the way, major; I believe it’s recent. Yes, senator?

Sen. Howell (Rep., Col.):
I want to go on record as objecting very strongly to the presence of this foreigner. I’ve repeatedly stressed both in public and private that this is a purely internal affair and the UN has no business meddling—

Advowson:
Senator, I have been trying to get the hell out of your country for the past month. It stinks, and I mean that literally. I’ve never been so sick in my life. I’ve never had so many sore throats or so much diarrhea. And I’ve never before been blown up in a bomb outrage.

Chairman:
Gentlemen, if you please—

Howell:
Isn’t that proof enough that everything this man says and does is prejudiced?

Advowson:
Prejudice be damned. Based on the experiences of my first and I devoutly hope only visit to—

Chairman:
Order! Major, may I remind you that you are here by invitation? And as for you, senator, I must stress that the president personally approved the composition of this committee as best suited to the requirements of the situation. Thank you. Now the proximate reason for this meeting is a report which has not yet been publicly announced, but which I’m afraid will almost certainly be delivered to UN delegates within the next few days, because a copy of it is unaccounted for. I won’t go into the background; the matter is
sub judice.
But what it is, this report, it’s a confidential US Medical Corps report on the condition of certain of the survivors from the—uh—the village of San Pablo. I’m sorry, major; did you say something?

Advowson:
Only “ah-hah!”

Howell:
If that’s your idea of a constructive contribution to these proceedings—

Advowson:
It’s just that I’ve been hearing rumors about—

Chairman:
Order! Order! Thank you. Yes, as I was saying, this report. It—ah—it tends to the conclusion that the survivors from San Pablo do display many of the same symptoms as were reported from Noshri. Now I must stress something at once. It’s been a long time since Dr. Duval in Paris analyzed the Nutripon from Noshri. It is our firm belief that what has happened is this. The Tupas have had a similar substance prepared, to give identical effects, and have deliberately administered it to hapless civilians to discredit the US intervention in Honduras. What was that, major?

Advowson:
Never mind. Go on.

Chairman:
Supporting this asumption I’d adduce the following point. If—I say if—Nutripon were again at the root of the trouble, the symptoms would have been noticed long ago, back in January maybe at the time when the search was going on for Dr. Williams and Leonard Ross. Yet the first mention of recognizable mental disturbance, according to the Medical Corps investigation, was not until March, and was so—uh—so unremarkable in the circumstances, what with the necessity of interrogating suspected Tupas and so forth, that ... Well, the point is that a very small proportion of the persons detained for interrogation showed any mental abnormality, and it was not until the beginning of April that any symptoms were recognized which were sufficiently serious to lead to close psychiatric examination and eventual—uh—serum analysis and so forth. I’m not an expert on this, I’m afraid, just quoting the report. Yes, Mr. Bamberley?

Bamberley:
San Pablo was the first place we were asked to send Nutripon to, I think. Globe Relief asked us before Christmas and we got some off, thanks to my workers putting in a lot of overtime. I never heard that Globe’s people out there noticed anything in the way of bad effects.

Chairman:
Well, I’m afraid it wouldn’t follow. Their local agent was Mr. Ross, wasn’t it? And he died. Yes, major?

Advowson:
Could I ask Mr. Bamberley how many people the contract was for? I mean, how many people was he supposed to feed for how long?

Bamberley:
I believe I have those data ... Yes, here. A hundred adults and eighty children, initially for two days in order to get some kind of relief out on the ground straight away.

Advowson:
Well, even at a couple of pounds apiece that doesn’t sound like much!

Bamberley:
We were closing down for the holiday, remember. It was what we had left from the previous contract, you see—just, like you say, a couple of hundred pounds or so for the worst-hit village. And we sent much greater quantities directly after New Year’s, tons and tons of it, and there was no complaint about that lot!

Advowson:
If I might ask you something, Mr. Chairman? How many survivors have displayed this mental derangement?

Chairman:
Only about a dozen or fifteen including children.

Advowson:
Is that because only a dozen or fifteen of the villagers are being held for Tupamaro sympathies, or is it because all the rest have been killed?

Howell:
Tupa sympathies! Hell, every damn thing he says comes right out of their own lying propaganda! Mr. Chairman, I demand his removal from the committee!

Chairman:
Senator, kindly do not presume to give me orders! I welcome that question, although I don’t approve the way it was phrased, because that’s exactly the sort of question we’re going to have to answer in the UN. Major, I’m afraid the report doesn’t specify, but thank you for drawing my attention to the point and I’ll try and find out. Now Mr. Bamberley knows the point I’m going to raise next, I believe.

Bamberley:
Yes. We seem to have no alternative. We have a great deal of Nutripon still in store, which was prepared before the new filtration system was installed at our plant. It’s been suggested that we should have it destroyed with maximum publicity, have its destruction testified to by an unimpeachable witness—the Major here, if he’s willing, and a scientist of international reputation as well, Lucas Quarrey for example—

Howell:
That anti-American bastard! You must be crazy!

Chairman:
Senator, you miss the point. The new installation at the factory must be approved by someone whom no one can conceivably call a—a lackey of the imperialists or whatever the phrase is. Professor Quarrey is not noted for his reluctance to speak his mind, as you correctly observe. His opinion will carry that much more weight abroad. Now, if I may continue—

Howell:
I haven’t finished. Jack, that stockpile must be worth money. How much?

Bamberley:
About half a million dollars. And modifications to the plant have cost as much again.

Chairman:
Naturally there will be compensation.

Howell:
Whose pocket is it going to come out of? The taxpayer’s, as usual?

Chairman:
Senator, we shall have to think of it as the premium on an insurance policy. Don’t you realize what a desperate situation this country is in right now? We’ve got to get that plant back in operation,
and
wipe out the prejudice against Nutripon, before the fall, because we’re almost certainly going to have to distribute the stuff here at home. Over the past few weeks thirty-five million people have been sick for a week or longer. Factories, farms, all kinds of public services have been shut down or cut back. And according to HEW we’re going into a second cycle of the epidemic because we’ve run out of water, we’re having to re-release it before it’s been completely sterilized. All the don’t-drink warnings in the world won’t stop people here and there from catching the bug a second time. And you know what it did in Honduras, don’t you?