Player Piano (35 page)

“An awful old man, Ma.”

“He’s ten years younger than your Pa, Jimmy.
That’s
what brains got him.”

Pa came in at that moment, wearing the brassard of a Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps Asphalt Leveler, First Class. He was cheery, pink, in first-rate health. “Hi, there, folks,” he said. “Everything hunky-dory in my little old home, eh?”

Jimmy exchanged glances with his mother, and smiled oddly. “Yessir, reckon it is. I mean, you’re darn right it is!”

In came the organ music, the announcer, and the washless, rinseless wash powder, and Paul turned down the volume.

The door chimes were ringing, and Paul wondered
how long they’d been at it. He might have turned on the televiewer, to see if the bell ringer was worth opening the door for, but he was hungry for companionship—just about any kind—and he went to the door gladly, gratefully.

A policeman looked at him coldly. “Doctor Proteus?”

“Yes?”

“I’m from the police.”

“So I see.”

“You haven’t registered.”

“Oh.” Paul smiled. “Oh—I’ve been meaning to do that.” And he had meant to do it, too.

The policeman did not smile. “Then why haven’t you?”

“I haven’t found the time.”

“You better start looking for it, hard, Doc.”

Paul was annoyed by this rude young man, and he was inclined, as he had been inclined with the bartender at the Meadows, to put him in his place. But he thought better of it this time. “All right. I’ll be down to register tomorrow morning.”

“You’ll be down to register in an hour, today, Doc.” The honorific
Doc
, Paul was learning, could be spoken in such a way as to make a man wish to God he’d never come within ten miles of a university.

“Yes—all right, whatever you say.”

“And your industrial identification card—you’ve failed to turn that in.”

“Sorry. I’ll do that.”

“And your firearms and ammunition permit.”

“I’ll bring that.”

“And your club membership card.”

“I’ll find it.”

“And your airline pass.”

“All right.”

“And your executive security and health policy. You’ll have to get a regular one.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I think that’s all. If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know.”

“I’m sure you will.”

The young policeman’s expression softened suddenly, and he shook his head. “Lo! How the mighty are fallen, eh, Doc?”

“Lo! indeed,” said Paul.

And an hour later Paul reported politely at the police station, with a shoebox full of revoked privileges.

While he waited for someone to notice him, he interested himself in the radiophoto machine behind glass in one corner, which was fashioning a portrait of a fugitive, and noting beside it a brief biography. The portrait emerged from a slit in the top of the machine bit by bit—first the hair, then the brows, on line with the word
WANTED
, and then, on line with the large, fey eyes, the name: Edgar Rice Burroughs Hagstrohm, R&R-131313. Hagstrohm’s sordid tale emerged along with his nose: “Hagstrohm cut up his M-17 home in Chicago with a blow-torch, went naked to the home of Mrs. Marion Frascati, the widow of an old friend, and demanded that she come to the woods with him. Mrs. Frascati refused, and he disappeared into the bird sanctuary bordering the housing development. There he eluded police, and is believed to have made his escape dropping from a tree onto a passing freight—”

“You!” said the desk sergeant. “Proteus!”

Registration involved the filling out of a long, annoyingly complicated form that started with his name and highest classification number, investigated his reasons for having fallen from grace, asked for the names of his closest friends and relatives, and ended with an oath of allegiance to the United States of America. Paul signed the document in the presence of two witnesses, and watched a coding clerk translate it, on a keyboard, into terms the machines could understand. Out came a card, freshly nicked and punched.

“That’s all,” said the police sergeant. He dropped the card into a slot, and the card went racing through a system of switches and sidings, until it came to rest against a thick pile of similar cards.

“What does that mean?” said Paul.

The sergeant looked at the pile without interest. “Potential saboteurs.”

“Wait a minute—what’s going on here? Who says I am?”

“No reflection on you,” said the sergeant patiently. “Nobody’s said you are. It’s all automatic. The machines do it.”

“What right have they got to say that about me?”

“Oh, they know, they know,” said the sergeant. “They’ve been around. They do that with anybody who’s got more’n four years of college and no job.” He studied Paul through narrowed lids. “And you’d be surprised, Doc, how right they are.”

A detective walked in, perspiring and discouraged.

“Any break on the Freeman case, Sid?” said the sergeant, losing interest in Paul.

“Nah. All the good suspects came off clean as a whistle on the lie detector.”

“Did you check the tubes?”

“Sure. We put in a whole new set, had the circuits checked. Same thing. Innocent, every damn one of ’em. Not that every damn one of ’em wouldn’t of liked to of knocked him off.” He shrugged. “Well, more leg work. We’ve got one lead: the sister says she saw a strange man around the back of Freeman’s house a half-hour before he got it.”

“Got a description?”

“Partial.” He turned to the coding clerk. “Ready, Mac?”

“All set. Shoot.”

“Medium height. Black shoes, blue suit. No tie. Wedding
ring. Black hair, combed straight back. Clean-shaven. Warts on hands and back of neck. Slight limp.”

The clerk, expressionless, punched keys as he talked.

“Dinga-dinga-dinga-ding!”
went the machine, and out came a card.

“Herbert J. van Antwerp,” said Mac. “Forty-nine fifty-six Collester Boulevard.”

“Nice work,” said the sergeant. He picked up a microphone. “Car 57, car 57—proceed to …”

As Paul walked into the bright sunlight of the street, a Black Maria, its siren silent, its tires humming the song of new rubber on hot tar, turned into the alleyway that ran behind the station house.

Paul peered curiously at it as it stopped by a barred door.

A policeman dismounted from the back of the shiny black vehicle and waved a riot gun at Paul. “All right, all right, no loitering there!”

Paul started to move on, lingering an instant longer for a glimpse of the prisoner, who sat deep in the wagon’s dark interior, misty, futile, between two more men with riot guns.

“Go on, beat it!” shouted the policeman at Paul again.

Paul couldn’t believe that the man would actually loose his terrible hail of buckshot on a loiterer, and so loitered a moment longer. His awe of the riot gun’s yawning bore was tempered by his eagerness to see someone who had made a worse botch of getting along in society than he had.

The iron door of the station house clanged open, and three more armed policemen waited to receive the desperado. The prospect of his being at large in the alley for even a few seconds was so harrowing, seemingly, that the policeman who had been badgering Paul now gave his full attention to covering the eight or ten square feet the prisoner would cross in an instant. Paul saw his thumb release the safety catch by the trigger guard.

“All righty, no funny stuff, you hear?” said a nervous voice in the wagon. “Out you go!”

A moment later, Doctor Fred Garth, wearing a badly torn Blue Team shirt, unshaven, his eyes wide, emerged into the daylight, manacled and sneering.

Before Paul could believe in the senseless scene, his old tent-and teammate, his buddy, the man next in line for Pittsburgh, was inside.

Paul hurried around to the front, and back into the office where he’d filled out the papers and turned in his credentials.

The sergeant looked up at him superciliously. “Yes?”

“Doctor Garth—what’s he doing here?” said Paul.

“Garth? We got no Garth here.”

“I saw them bring him in the back door.”

“Naah.” The sergeant went back to his reading.

“Look—he’s one of my best friends.”

“Should of stuck with your dog and your mother,” said the sergeant without looking up. “Beat it.”

Bewildered, Paul wandered back to the street, left his old car parked in front of the station house, and walked up the hill to the main street of Homestead, to the saloon at the foot of the bridge.

The town hall clock struck four. It might have struck midnight or seven or one, for all the difference it made to Paul. He didn’t have to be anywhere at any time any more—ever, he supposed. He made up his own reasons for going somewhere, or he went without reasons. Nobody had anything for him to do anywhere. The economy was no longer interested. His card was of interest now only to the police machines, who regarded him, the instant his card was introduced, with instinctive distrust.

The hydrant was going as usual, and Paul joined the crowd. He found himself soothed by the cool spray from the water. He waited with eagerness for the small boy to finish fashioning his paper boat, and enjoyed the craft’s jolting progress
toward certain destruction in the dark, gurgling unknown of the storm sewer.

“Interesting, Doc?”

Paul turned to find Alfy, the television shark, at his elbow. “Well! Thought you were at the Meadows.”

“Thought
you
were. How’s the lip?”

“Healing. Tender.”

“If it’s any consolation, Doc, the bartender’s still sneezing.”

“Good, wonderful. Did you get fired?”

“Didn’t you know? Everybody got sacked, the whole service staff, after that tree business.” He laughed. “They’re doing their own cooking, making their own beds, raking the horseshoe pits, and all, all by theirselves.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody below works manager.”

“They’re cleaning their own latrines, too?”

“The dumb bunnies, Doc, with I.Q.’s under 140.”

“What a thing. Still play games, do they?”

“Yep. Last I heard, Blue was way out ahead.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“Yeah, they were so ashamed of you, they just about killed theirselves to win.”

“And Green?”

“Cellar.”

“In spite of Shepherd?”

“You mean Jim Thorpe? Yeah, he entered everything, and tried to make every point.”

“So—”

“So nobody made any points. Last I heard, his team was trying to convince him he had virus pneumonia and ought to spend a couple of days in the infirmary. He’s got something, that’s for sure.” Alfy looked at his watch. “Say, there’s some chamber music on channel seven. Care to play?”

“Not with you.”

“Just for the hell of it. No money. I’m just getting
checked out on chamber music. A whole new field. C’mon, Doc, we’ll learn together. You watch the cello and bass, and I’ll watch the viola and violin. O.K.? Then we’ll compare notes and pool our knowledge.”

“I’ll buy you a beer. How’s that?”

“That’s good; that’s very good.”

In the bar’s damp twilight, Paul saw a teen-ager looking at him hopefully from a booth. Before him, on the table top, were three rows of matches: three in the first row, five in the second, seven in the third.

“Hello,” said the young man uneasily, hopefully. “Very interesting game here. The object of the game is to make the other guy take the last match. You can take as many or as few as you want from any given row at each turn.”

“Well—” said Paul.

“Go ahead,” said Alfy.

“For two dollars?” said the youngster nervously.

“All right, for two.” Paul took a match from the longest row.

The youngster frowned and looked worried, and countered. Three moves later, Paul left him looking disconsolately at the last match. “Goddammit, Alfy,” he said miserably, “look at that. I lost.”

“This is your first day!” said Alfy sharply. “Don’t get discouraged. All right, so you lost. So you’re just starting out.” Alfy clapped the boy on the shoulder. “Doc, this is my kid brother, Joe. He’s just starting out. The Army and the Reeks and Wrecks are hot for his body, but I’m trying to set him up in business for hisself instead. We’ll see how this match business works out, and if it doesn’t, we’ll think of something else.”

“I used to play it in college,” said Paul apologetically. “I’ve had a lot of experience.”

“College!” said Joe, awed, and he smiled and seemed to feel better. “Jesus, no wonder.” He sighed and sat back, depressed again. “But I don’t know, Alfy—I’m about ready to
throw in the towel. Let’s face it, I haven’t got the brains.” He lined up the matches again, and picked at them, playing a game with himself. “I work at it, and I just don’t seem to get any better at it.”

“Sure you work!” said Alfy. “Everybody works at something. Getting out of bed’s work! Getting food off your plate and into your mouth’s work! But there’s two kinds of work, kid, work and
hard
work. If you want to stand out, have something to sell, you got to do
hard
work. Pick out something impossible and do it, or be a bum the rest of your life. Sure, everybody worked in George Washington’s time, but George Washington worked
hard.
Everybody worked in Shakespeare’s time, but Shakespeare worked
hard.
I’m who I am because I work
hard.”

“O.K., O.K., O.K.,” said Joe. “Me, Alfy, I haven’t got the brains, the eye, the push. Maybe I better go down to the Army.”

“You can change your name before you do, kid, and don’t bother me again,” said Alfy tensely. “Anybody by the name of Tucci stands on his own two feet. It’s always been that way, and that’s the way it’s always going to be.”

“O.K.,” said Joe, coloring. “Awri. So I give it a try for a couple more days.”

“O.K.!” said Alfy. “See that you do.”

As Alfy hurried to the television set, Paul stayed at his side. “Listen, do you happen to know who Fred Garth is?”

“Garth?” He laughed. “I didn’t at first, but I sure as hell do now. He’s the one that ringbarked the oak.”

“No!”

“Yep. And they never even thought of questioning him.
He
was on the committee that was supposed to do the questioning.”