Case and the Dreamer (27 page)

Perk opened his mouth to correct him, then learningly closed it again.

“—they never got him for anything he ever did except he didn’t file his income tax, and for that they jailed him. Well, pot in a small way was like that. You may not have anything on a suspect except you don’t like his looks, chances are you can pat-and-frisk and come up with some marijuana; one time, before the law eased up, we jailed a guy, he was one of those against-the-war kooks, for three seeds we found in his coat lining! There’s another guy, used to preach LSD like a religion, they nailed him in Texas with four ounces of weed, gave him thirty years. That cut down on the preachments a whole heap. You see what I mean.

“Rule two is that the idea some rookies got—maybe you had it, I don’t know—that in the long run the police are in the business to eliminate themselves—well, that’s just wrong. There was a time when dentists claimed they would teach folks to take such good care of their teeth they’d never need dentists; some doctors used to do the same kind of promo. I’m going to give it to you straight; if ever a time comes when there ain’t enough crime around to maintain a police force, somebody will make new crimes, or make something everybody does or eats or drinks or rubs on their belly a crime; but if they don’t, it’s up to the police to do it. Just don’t get caught at it, is all. There’s always better ways.

“Pot, now, it was full of better ways. Like in that war we fought
in Indo-China, there was all sorts of good grass around there, and when the Army got gung-ho about the soldiers smoking it, some officer sniffing one stick in a whole barracks and handing out dishonorable discharges, the soldiers quit grass, which didn’t hurt them, and switched to heroin, which did, just and only because heroin don’t smell. This was great for us when those junkies got home, because the stuff they got here wasn’t pure like what hooked them, it was cut ten times over, and cost so much they couldn’t feed their habit without robbing and stealing; oh, we had a ball with that. The next time you hear that marijuana leads to hard drugs—well you don’t hear that anymore, but it was our Number One chant—remember those soldiers. Pot smells. Heroin don’t.

“Oh God, those were the days! The money that went around! I remember a government study ’way back in ’72, the figures …” The old man laughed; it was not until then that Perk realized his own perennial wonderment: did the old Chief ever laugh? Had he ever? There was indeed an unpracticed tone to it, but it was real and hearty. And brief. “I used to sing myself to sleep with them. A hundred seventy thousand low-level dealers in the US, makin’ about $250 a month each. About a third got busted each year. Got that? Now, the cost for bustin’ dealers and potheads in California alone was forty-three million in ’69, it went up from there, and a healthy slice of that came to us. You think we were about to lean away from a shower o’ gold like that? We had PR blowouts and block meetin’s all over, warning against evil, suggestin’ it was a commie plot (you wouldn’t know what a commie is, or was) and when the facts started flowing the other way we ignored ’em, when they got too deep to ignore ’em we took refuge in: As Long As It Is Illegal We Will Uphold the Law.” His voice supplied the complacent capitals. “Cops can always do that. No cop is required to debate the justice of the law, don’t you never forget that.”

“Was it dangerous, then?”

“Hell no. There is a big study clear back in 1899, the British, where it showed up practically harmless. Even before that a limey doctor name of Birch used pot to cure a chloral hydrate addict and a dude hooked on opium, by steering them to pot and then withdrawing
the pot; in the Carolinas, in ’59 two doctors were curing addicts and alcoholics with a derivative. I even remember their names, Thompson and Proctor, the doctors, not the addicts.”

“And the government didn’t—”

“The government just lost the papers, and we, why we upheld the law. Long as there was a law,” he added regretfully. “Finally all that was left was a law against growin’ it, an’ even that faded. Now the government has quality control on ten thousand acres in Mississippi and grows a breed of marijuana so much better than you can grow yourself that it just ain’t worth the little trouble it takes.” He sighed. “Take away ‘forbidden’ from the fruit, sell it over the counter like candy bars, make it so a smoker ain’t rebelling against anything, an’ then you find what it really is and where it’s at: a big percentage of folks with a high threshold, got to suck a bomber and a half to get where other folks go with two hits; another big percentage just don’t like the taste or smell and can now admit it; and worst of all, it ain’t like tobacco and alcohol; it just ain’t addictive. Pretty soon a rock group is singin’ it plumb out of fashion.”

“I know the one,” said Perk, and recited (he did not dare sing):

Heroin will get you dead

LSD will mess your head

Marijuana gives a buzz

Just because you think it does
.

Who needs it?

“That’s it,” said the old Chief, and sighed again. “With tobacco gone, pot pulls one and a half billion in taxes, and damn little of it comes our way.

“So!” he rapped, and again landslid forward to catch his weight on his elbows and knees. “Here’s where you come in.

“First of all you got to change your ways. You got to stop wearin’ your education an’ good manners like national flags so everybody knows what you are and where you come from. You got to act dumb, talk dumb but
do everything right
. Any time you open your mouth it’s an opinion, not a fact. Here’s a secret weapon: always act dumber than you are, and everyone will treat you like a dumb-dumb, an’ you’ll always win. You never read nothin’, you never learned nothin’
but the P.D. book o’ rules. Aside from that you say every stupid thing that comes into your head, as loud as you can. Always remember that there’s only two kinds o’ people you got to worry about—big shots an’ morons. You listen to the big shots an’ you talk to the morons—in moron talk. Never mind in-betweens, the smarts. The big shots got the power an’ the morons got the vote, and that’s a combination the smarts can’t beat, there ain’t enough of ’em.

“All you need now is what they had in the old days—something you can watch for everywhere, on anybody. Once it was books, would you believe? Or certain kinds of meat. Alcohol. Marijuana. Tobacco. Anything, long as most people are users an’ it’s illegal. You an’ your boys are going to frisk-and-search. Stakeout. Infiltrate. The Marias are comin’ out of mothballs, the courts will jam up again. We’re goin’ to have a force again. Proud. Respected. Feared. There’ll be a black market start up. You’ll let it get big an’ smash it for the news cameras. You’re goin’ to be Chief. What’s that?”

Startled again, Perk followed the pointing finger. On a broad windowsill stood a handsome plant with thick, fleshy, sword-shaped leaves. “Wh—oh. Aloe. Aloe vera.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Everybody knows. Everybody’s got some. Cuts, scrapes, fleabites, it stops the pain, stops the itch as soon as you squeeze out the jelly and wipe it on. My roomy, she uses it for a hair rinse, face cream. That brown inside layer, it’ll cure constipation. It cured my—”

“Well don’t stop there.”

“Piles,” said Perk with difficulty.

“Cured my stomach ulcer, too. Sunburn. Scalds, burns, it leaves no blisters. Grows anyplace, indoors or out, likes to be neglected. Pups out in three, four months, stick the pup in another jug an’ you got two. In six months, a dozen. In a year, one hundred. Too bad, but progress always costs.”

“You don’t mean … but—there’s nothing illegal about it!”

“Yet.” The old Chief rocked slowly back and effortfully raised his eyes. “There’s a lot of heavy money don’t like the aloe vera a bunch. It snuck up on ’em; nobody saw it happen. Cosmetics. Pharmaceuticals. Ethical drugs. Doctors. All we need is a medical opinion,
it causes infantile sexuality. All we need is a Bible scholar discovers the snake hid it in the Garden. All we need is a DOA with his stomach full of aloe vera infusion. All we need is a little panic an’ aloe’ll pile up in the street like snow; mind you, I
know;
folks ain’t been scared in a long time now. Then all we need is a Board of Health Condition Red: rotting aloe can cause the plague.”

“You’ll never get a doctor or a priest to—”

The hating eyes open wide for a terrible moment, and then half closed. “Want to bet?”

Perk slowly rose to his feet, while the Chief crooned, “Now you go on down to HQ and get yourself braced up, because this is goin’ to be your show. Do it right, an’ next time around, you are goin’ to be Chief.”

“Yes, sir.” Perk went slowly to the door, then turned. “Sir
 … why
me?”

“Because you’re a fighter. You got to be … You always have been. You got the one thing I never had, the one thing that’ll make you the greatest Chief this ol’ town ever had—your name. A man’s got a strike against him with a name like Smith or Jones or Davis or Robinson, my kind of name but your name is Percival Noodlemix. You know what you’re goin’ to do with that name? You’re goin’ to put hair on its chest. You’re goin’ to put a gun in its hand. When you’re done they’ll be proud to name their firstborns after you.

“Think a minute, son. Forgettin’ all about the man an’ his work, can you think of a more sissified name than Ernest Hemingway?”

So began the aloe busts, the frisk for half-healed scrapes, the nose-trained dogs, the piles inspections, the choked court calendars, and the police walked proud, respected and feared, and, in time, the babies were named Noodlemix.

Dom Felix invented the Receiver. So say the almanacs. So say the encyclopedias, the infobanks, the students.

Dom Felix invented the Receiver.

Dom Felix was not educated in the theory or trained in the technology or temperamentally suited to such an endeavor, but he did indeed accomplish the greatest single upward, outward leap for his species since the taming of fire.

Dom Felix invented the Receiver not because he was inspired but because he was terrified; not because he had achieved wisdom but because he had to confront the truth. Therefore, it had been obsession that brought about the Receiver—obsession and terror.

The accepted version is that Dom Felix brought the Receiver from Earth. This is not true; it was developed on Medea more than three terrayears after he was defrosted there. He brought something, sure enough. He brought news of the Great Acceptance, that strange mixture of philosophy, religion, and logic (though it was really none of these) that had so drastically changed the face of the earth. Had it been a religion, Dom Felix might have been termed a missionary. Had it been a philosophy, he would have come as a teacher. Had its logic been pure, he might never have come at all. Nevertheless, he came, filled with the wonder of the success of his credo, eager to bring it to another world.

Defrosting
is a word, and
Receiver
is a word; the Receiver is an ultrachron (some say “transchron”) transceiver. Humanity has always encapsulated its pivotal discoveries in a word, at one time or another. The Pill. The Church. The Bomb. The Trip. Cryogenics had nothing to do with spaceflight, the detection of the bioenergetic aura, and the subsequent development of the phase-inversion field, which became operable before freezing was even tried for the purpose. Yet
defrosting
was still the name of the process by which the field was shut off and the activity of every single one of the passengers’ organs (and biochemical reactions and bacilli and viruses) could resume functioning precisely as they had fifty-one terrayears earlier. He or she would then know that the Trip was over.

“… four, three, two, one,” Dom Felix mumbled obediently, finishing the countdown he had begun half a century earlier, and then he inhaled and coughed at the strident edge of this different air, and “Oh?” at the realization that his naked body, suited in fever heat and yet chilled, was being deftly covered by another and his face was being buried in a mass of honey-colored hair that smelled of sea spray and almonds, and
“Oh!”
as he felt a sensation that (by his own choice) he had never known before. There was then a long series of undulations against which, in his present condition, he had no defenses, until, with an unspellable syllable that hurt his throat, he experienced an internal explosion that left him two-thirds unconscious and with his eyes screwed shut. He was remotely aware of the other body’s weight leaving his, and “Oh!” (indignantly) as he opened his eyes and saw a nude female deftly plucking a sheath from his most private apostrophe. She caught his eye and smiled. “Welcome to Medea,” she said. Then she left.

Dom Felix shook his head in denial of this reality and, in the process, saw that there was a tall, bearded man dressed in a waxy-looking short tunic standing by his bed. The man had a voice like a tuba. He said, “Welcome indeed, Dom Felix.”

Dom Felix raised his head to look in the direction of the vanished woman. “Who was that?”

“That? That’s Wallich, about the best wide-spectrum technician there is. Nothing but the best for you, you know.”

“Damn it,” said Dom Felix, surly. He ran over the big man’s words in his mind, trying to make sense out of the outlandish accent. “Damn it, I’m celibate.”

“Not now, you’re not,” said the man cheerfully “My name is Altair II.
Two
, written archaically with two
I
’s. To differentiate me from my father, who was Altair Junior, and to differentiate
him
from
his
father, who was just plain Altair. So although there have been three of us, I’m called Two. What’s the matter?”

Dom Felix looked down at himself and made a vague gesture. “I feel self-conscious, lying here like this.” He was a short, broad man with thick, black brows over what seemed to be pupil-less black eyes, a short, thick beard, short, thick fingers and legs, and a lot of hair on his body.

“Never thought. Sorry,” said Altair, and, crossing his arms downward, he grabbed the hem of his tunic and whipped it off over his head, whereupon the woman Wallich entered. She was dressed a bit.