The Sheep Look Up (6 page)

Libra: "Now me, I'd go straight into scrap-reclamation and sewage-plant construction. They're the growth industries of the eighties.

You'll see your investment double in next to no time."

Scorpio: "Rats? No, we have a terrier and a tomcat and keep them hungry. But the ants! I spent two thousand on proofing the kitchen and they still got in. So we fell back on-uh-the old reliable. By the way, if you need any, I have a good discreet source of supply."

Sagittarius: "Yes, up our way we've established a
modus vivendi
with the Syndicate. Their interest in Puritan, of course. Very strong around our base. Anyone tries to put in a false claim gets a dusty answer straight away."

No one at Capricorn.

Aquarius: "No ice, thanks-hey! I said NO ICE! Don't you understand plain English? Doctor's orders. Mustn't touch anything but canned mineral water. I lose more working time thanks to digestive trouble…"

Pisces: "Why don't we make acceptance of a life proposal conditional on installing an approved water purifier in the guy's home, like we insist on an approved precipitator in his car? I've sounded out a couple of the big firms, and they show every interest in cooperating."

No one at Aries.

Taurus: "If we're going to expand into the cattle states we
must
have solid documentation on the natural incidence of deformed births in domestic animals. I managed to hold his claim down to a refund of the stud fee, but even that came to five thousand, and he insisted the value of this mare that died in foal was twice as much. I had to drop very heavy hints about the cost of litigation before he accepted the settlement."

Gemini: "I've had a rash of demands lately for insurance against egg-bundle fetus. Can't help wondering whether there may not be something behind the scare. Maybe a leak from a research lab?"

No one at Cancer…naturally.

Leo: "Yes, the reason I was delayed-this crazy spade…"

Chalmers clucked sympathy when he had heard Philip out, and switched instantly to a less depressing subject. "By the way! Tania and I will be in Colorado over the holiday. Get in some skiing."

"Ah-hah? Where you aiming for-Aspen?"

"Oh, Aspen's full of people who read about it in
Playboy.
No, your own stamping ground. Towerhill?"

"Never! Well, call us up! Maybe you could stop by with us and like have lunch?"

Sweating slightly from the
Playboy
putdown.

The conclusion of Chalmers's meticulously timed peregrination brought him within arm's reach of Grey at five to one.

"The man from Denver," Grey said. "Philip Mason."

"What about him?" Anticipating what was coming, and relieved to be able to offer an impenetrably defensive answer. Chalmers had a stake in that man; the personnel board had split three to two and his own vote had been in favor.

"There's something wrong. Or else he's not himself today."

"Not himself. Saw a man killed right before his eyes this morning."

And recounted the story.

Grey pondered a while. Uncomfortable, Chalmers waited. It was disturbing to watch this man think; it made the world seem full of the sound of whizzing wheels.

"Someone will have to keep an eye on him," Grey said at last.

"But he's one of our best men!" Chalmers felt personally aggrieved.

"He's nearly doubled the business of the Denver office. He was among the first to get wind of the new developments at Towerhill and put us in on the ground floor, and now we cover three-quarters of the place.

Besides, this notion of his of sending out proposal forms for short-term injury insurance with hotel booking confirmations is showing a thousand per cent profit."

"I'm not talking about that," Grey said. "What I want to know is what he was doing driving his own car into Los Angeles this morning.

It's a long pull from Denver. I'd have expected him to fly."

The door opened to admit the president of the company, and he moved away to greet him. Scowling at his back, Chalmers wondered-not for the first time-when if ever he would dare call Grey

"Mike": short for "Mycroft," elder brother of Sherlock Holmes. It was only an inner echelon of the top staff who used the nickname to his face.

THE MORAL OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Last valiant sally of a great department store whose customers had quit the city center, six Santa Clauses marched down the road.

"Ho-ho-ho!" Jingle-jangle.

The sidewalk they passed were crowded. Most of the onlookers were black, and many were children whose eyes reflected unfulfillable dreams. The city's heart was dying before its carcass, and these were the poor, trapped in outworn clothes and rat-ridden tenements. If they wanted to escape, like as not they had to steal a car to travel in because the now compulsory clean exhaust systems were expensive.

Last time Peg had come down this way it had been to cover the story of a thriving trade in fake filters, home-built out of sheet steel by an enterprising mechanic.

In spite of the few cars, the air stank. She had taken off her mask, not wanting to be conspicuous-at least, no more than was due to being white. In this district people didn't wear them. They seemed inured to the reek. The chests of the children were shallow, as though to discourage overdeep breathing.

She stared at the Santa Clauses. Behind those once-white beards, now grimed from an excursion in the open, she could not make out their features. She did, though, notice that the second man in the line was only moving his lips, not booming out his "Ho-ho-ho!" His eyes were bulging with the effort of repressing a cough.

Which would be very out of character for Saint Nick.

They broke the line to distribute come-on leaflets, most of which were immediately dropped, and dispersed into a dark alley where notices warned that only "authorized personnel" might enter.

Was one of the six, as she'd been assured, Austin Train?

The idea seemed crazy on the surface. Underneath, maybe it wasn't wholly absurd. She hadn't seen Austin since just after he recovered from his breakdown, but when he vanished from the public eye it had been with the promise that he was going to live as the poor were living, even if it meant risking what they risked. That decision had caused trendy Catholic television spokesmen to mention openly the possibility that the Church might recognize a new category of "secular saints."

She'd watched one such program with Decimus and Zena, and they'd laughed aloud.

But if this was the path Austin had chosen, it was different from Decimus's. His principle, at the Colorado wat, was third-world oriented; his community grew its own food, or tried to-crops had a nasty habit of failing because of wind-borne defoliants or industrial contaminants in the rain-and likewise wove its own cloth, while its chief source of income lay in handicrafts. The underlying concept was to dramatize the predicament of the majority of mankind. Often, prior to a meal, there had been little homilies: "You're each getting about twice as much at this table as someone in a Bolivian mountain village gets in a day." And sometimes there were strange unexciting dishes: glutinous African sauces of fine-chopped okra, tasteless cakes of anonymous grain, samples of relief shipments sympathizers had paid for and mailed to the wat.

"This is what we're giving away," Decimus would say. "Not steak or chicken or big fat Idaho potatoes. This is made from"-and it could be algae, or yeast, or grass clippings, or on one occasion, incredibly, sawmill wastes. "See how
you
like it, and think of those who have only such shit to be grateful for!"

But that had been a long time ago. Around the back of the store she found a half-empty parking lot. There was a door marked
Employees
Only.
She found it barred from inside. Nearby, though, was a reeded-glass window. She could make out blurred images if she leaned close to the panes. Inside, red forms changing to white as the Santa Clauses stripped off their suits and padding.

She listened, hoping to discern Austin's voice.

"In a bad way, aren't you, pal? Ah, leave him be! Well, just don't cough on me, I have kids at home and all the time doctor's bills. Don't we all?"

And so on. Some of them went through a door at the back of the room and noise of running water indicated showers. A man in a dark suit appeared and shouted, "Easy with that water! There's a shortage!"

"Shortage hell." Husky, consumptive; the voice might belong to the man who hadn't been able to shout. Louder, he added, "Is it hot?"

"Shit, of course not!" someone called back. "Tepid!"

"In that case give me my pay and I'll go. The doc warned me not to get chilled. So I won't be wasting your precious water, okay?"

"Don't blame me." With a sigh. "I don't make the rules around here."

In the dusk none of the men noticed Peg as they headed toward their cars. Five got into three vehicles. The last traced a line of smoke across the lot-liable to be arrested, him. The sixth man didn't make for a car.

"Austin!" Peg said in a low voice.

He didn't break stride and scarcely looked around. "The girl reporter!" he said. "Finally decided to throw me to the wolves?"

"What?" She fell in beside him, matching step for step the well-remembered paces that were too long for a man of his height, an average five-ten. Making the muscles do penance came naturally when Austin Train was around.

"You mean you're not here on business?" His tone was tinged with sarcasm.

She prevaricated, pointing to her right beyond the lot; it was going to be hard to hear herself speak the news she had brought. "My car's that way. Can I give you a lift? It is a Hailey!"

"Ah. The precepts are being kept, hm? Steam is cleaner than gas!

No, thanks. I walk. Have you forgotten?"

She caught his hand and forced him to turn and face her. Looking at him, she found little change revealed by the poor light, apart from his having shaved off the beard he'd worn during his period of notoriety.

The high cheekbones were the same, the curiously arched eyebrows, almost semicircular, the thin sour lips…Though maybe his sparse brown hair had receded a trifle. It had been nearly three years.

His mouth parodied a smile: a tilt of a few degrees at one corner.

Abruptly furious, determined to wipe away his complacency, she burst out, "I came to tell you Decimus is dead!"

And he said, "Yes. I know."

All those hours of searching, without food or rest, aware that every moment increased the likelihood of losing her job-gone to waste? Peg said weakly, "But it only happened this morning…"

"I'm sorry." His look of mockery softened. "You loved him, didn't you? Okay, I'll come to your car."

Mechanically she walked on; now, for a change, he matched her strides, though it was perceptibly frustrating to his energetic frame.

Nothing more was said until they reached the spot where she had left the little Hailey under the harsh beams of a mercury-vapor light.

"I wonder if I did love him," she said suddenly.

"You were the person who thought she didn't know how, weren't you? But you must have. Coming in search of me like this is proof of it.

It can't have been easy."

"No, it wasn't." The finger whose nail she had torn was still tender; she had trouble guiding her key into the lock.

"Funny," Austin said, looking at the car.

"What is?"

"People thinking of steam as being clean. My grandmother lived in a house backing on a railroad. Couldn't hang out laundry for fear of smuts. I grew up thinking of steam as filthy."

"Sermon time?" Peg snapped, reaching to open the passenger door.

"And you called Train, come to that!"

"A stale joke," he said, getting in. "Train as in powder train. A very old name. Originally it meant a trap or snare."

"Yes, you told me. I'm sorry. Next time I want to try and get one of these Freon-vapor cars…Oh, shit! I'm rambling. Do you-do you mind if I have a cigarette?"

"No."

"You mean yes."

"I mean no. You need a tranquilizer, and tobacco isn't the most dangerous kind." He half turned in the narrow seat. "Peg, you went to a lot of trouble. I do appreciate it."

"Then why do I get a welcome about as warm as someone carrying plague?" Fumbling in her purse. "How did you hear, anyway?"

"He had a meet with me this morning. When he didn't show I made inquiries."

"Shit, I should have guessed."

"But he didn't come just to see me. He has a sister working in LA, you know, and there's some family problem he wanted to sort out."

"No, I don't know. He never told
me
he had a sister!" With a vicious jab at the dashboard lighter.

"They quarreled. Hadn't met for years…Peg, I really am sorry!

It's-well, it's the nature of your job that makes me react badly. I lived in the spotlight for a long time, you know, and I just couldn't stand it any more once I realized what they were doing to me: using me to prove they cared about the world when in fact they didn't give a fart. After me the deluge! So I generated my smokescreen and disappeared. But if things go on the way they've been going lately…"

He spread his hands. They were the first things that had suggested to Peg she might learn to like him, thorny though he was, because they were fractionally overlarge for his body, the sort of hands nature might have reserved for a sculptor or a pianist, and despite being thick-knuckled they were somehow beautiful. "Well, if one reporter knows how to find me, another may, and eventually it may be the fuzz."

"Are you really afraid of being arrested?"

"Do you think I shouldn't be? Don't you know what happened right on Wilshire this morning?"

"Yes, but you don't organize their demonstrations!" The lighter clicked out; her hand shook so much she could barely guide it to the cigarette.

"True. But I wrote their bible and their creed, and if I were put on oath I couldn't deny that I meant every last word."

"I should hope not," she muttered, letting go a ragged puff of gray smoke. The taste, though, wasn't soothing but irritating, because she'd stood on that corner for more than half an hour without her filtermask.