The Sheep Look Up (26 page)

That snapped together in Peg's mind with lack of sunlight and rain that didn't nourish plants but killed them, and all of a sudden she let fall her hoe and was crying with her face in her palms. Part of her was standing back in amazement and thinking: Peg Mankiewicz crying? It can't be true!

But it was a catharsis and a cleansing.

"I can't stand it!" she said after a while, feeling Zena's arm comforting around her shoulders. She blinked her tears away and looked at the dying potatoes: stock selected on the assumption that every plant would be doused with artificial fertilizers, systemic insecticides, plastic leaf-sprays to minimize water loss, and the hell with how they tasted so long as they looked good and weighed heavy. Cast back on the resources of nature, they wilted because the resources had been stolen.

"What kind of future do we have, Zena? A few thousand of us living underground in air-conditioned caves, fed from hydroponics plants like Bamberley's? While the rest of our descendants grub around on the poisoned surface, their kids sickly and crippled, worse off than Bushmen after centuries of proud civilization?"

She felt Zena wince. The younger of her adopted daughters suffered from allergies, and half the time went around wheezing and choking and gasping.

"We've got to make them listen!" Peg declared. "Isn't that the message of all Austin's books? You can't blame the people who can't hear the warnings; you
have
to blame the ones who can, and who ignore them. I have one talent, and that's for stringing words together.

Austin's vanished, Decimus is dead, but someone's got to go on shouting!"

On the point of striding away, she checked. "Give the kids my love," she said. And added, to her own surprise, in a husky whisper,

"And remember I love you too, won't you?"

FROM THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH

Duplicate at home the famous SPA WATERS OF THE WORLD!

Laugh at that "Don't-Drink" notice! We supply the salts from
every major spa in packet form-VICHY! PERRIERI FONTELLAI
APOLLINARIS! MALVERN! ALL $9.95/oz!

Gallon cans of PURE water: $1.50!

SYPHOON BRAND and other famous makes of MIXER IN

STOCK!

Guard the health of your familyl DON'T TAKE RISKS WITH

WATER!

Christ! Flies!

Austin Train stopped dead in his tracks, listening to the buzz of wings around the heaped-up garbage. There hadn't been a clearance here in five weeks. The epidemic meant the removal gangs were working at under half strength, and there had been an order from high up that the prosperous areas should get the benefit before the poor ones.

"Hell, they chuck their trash straight out the window anyway,"

someone had said.

And it looked as though he'd been right. Every can in sight along the narrow alley, which angled back between two buildings four and five stories high, was overflowing, and huge sodden cartons bulged and leaked beside them and on top of that mess was yet one more layer which certainly must have been tossed from windows. The lot stank.

But there were flies. Incredible. Last summer down in LA he hadn't seen one, that he could remember.

His back ached and his feet were sore and that condition on his scalp had killed off most of his hair and the whole of his head itched abominably, but all of a sudden he was cheerful, and he was whistling when he forced the nose of his trolley under the first of the cans to be wheeled to the truck waiting on the main street.

"Hey! Hey, mister!"

A cry from overhead. A small swarthy boy peering from a window on the third floor, most likely a Chicano kid. He waved.

"Wait a minute! Please don't go 'way!"

The kid vanished. Now what was all that about? He shrugged and went on trying to load up the can. It was tricky with so much loose muck in the way. In the end he had to use his boots to expose its base.

A door to the alley swung open and here was the kid, in a torn shirt and faded jeans, a grimy bandage wrapped around his right arm. His eyes were swollen as though from long weeping.

"Mister, would you take away my dog, please? He-he died."

Oh.

Austin sighed and brushed his hands on the side of his pants. "He upstairs? Too heavy to carry down with your bad arm?"

"No, he's right around the corner in the alley. Not allowed to keep him in the apartment," the boy said, and snuffled a little. "I wanted to take him and-well, bury him properly. But mom said not."

"Your mom's quite right," Austin approved. Right here in the dense-packed city center you didn't bury carcasses, though the odd dog or cat rotting in the ground wouldn't be half the health hazard of this uncleared garbage. "Okay, let's see him."

He followed the kid around the angle of the alley, and there was a kind of kennel nailed together out of scrap wood and plastic. The dog's muzzle protruded over the lip of the entrance. Austin hunkered down to look at the body, and whistled.

"Say! He was a handsome beast, wasn't he?"

The kid sighed. "Yeah. I called him Rey. Mom said that was 'king'

in Spanish. He was half German shepherd and half chow…Only he got in this fight, see? And where he was bitten it went all kind of rotten." He pointed.

Austin saw, on the side of the dog's neck, an infected wound. Must have hurt like hell.

"We did everything we could for him. Didn't help. It hurt so much he even bit me." Waving the bandaged arm. "Last night he was howling and howling, you could hear him even with the windows shut. So in the end Mom had to take sleeping pills, and said to give him one as well.

Wish I hadn't! But the neighbors were kinda angry for the noise…" An empty shrug.

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, quickl"

"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 facade 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 cabdriver 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 cabdriver 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 streetlights 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 cabdriver 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

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