ONE: THE SEARCH BEGINS

JUNE 23, 2039 will be a historic date if this earth continues to have a history. On that day I discovered what was really at the bottom of the case that until then had been known to me only as the July 4th Murders.

My connection with the case had begun with the fifth murder, that of the Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, who had been found dead on June 20th in a speciality ballroom of that city devoted to the study and performance of the primitive African dance. The next day, June 21st, the sixth corpse turned up, in a storeroom of the state-supported Sunday Artists Museum in San Francisco, California. On June 22nd, the seventh corpse was found behind the paddock of the Ucanrun Racetrack ¹ in Baltimore, Maryland.

These three murders, like the four preceding them, had apparently been committed by the same person or persons. The murderer’s trademark, so to speak, accompanied all of them — a slip of paper bearing the following message.

TO THE AUTHORITIES
EVERYBODY DIES ON JULY 4TH

The victims, except for the first victim, a United States Senator, were all important city officials.

On June 23rd, with Commissioner Elvis Sonata,² I returned to Washington, and at Law and Order Headquarters, we discussed the seventh, or Baltimore corpse. “Exactly like all the others,” the Commissioner said with a smile. They were always smiling. Since the day I had left the Reservation I hadn’t seen more than a dozen sad or unhappy or even just plain thoughtful faces.

He gave me the murder slip. Its duplicate had been found pinned to the hair or attached to the fingers of the previous six victims. “Elvis,” I said seriously. “You’ve been withholding important information from me. Is it because we disagree in our private beliefs? If so, I’ll be damned if I know why you drafted me!”

“You’re Reservation Chief of Police, Crockett,” he said.

“Am I? This is the first time in sixty years Washington has called on any of us!”

“Better late than never, as the lifelong spinster said on her wedding night.” He made his pitiful joke like a bird sings, without thinking. They were always joking, always looking at what they called “the brighter side of life.” As a result, they all had what I would describe as laughy faces, faces without character. They didn’t need character. They were a nation on a perpetual weekend. Although most of them held jobs, it was only as a means to an end, a technique for heightening their fun. Even the two-hour day of 1979 was entirely voluntary in 2039!

How different they were from us! We worked hard as in the great days of the country when the West was the West. We had to work hard because all machinery invented after 1879, a century before 1979, the year of the Great Return as we called it, was prohibited. Ours was the ideal society. Work, Courage and Large Families. True, we had criminals, but thank God, crime with us was honest crime because we still had honest temptation. Among us, temptation hadn’t been reduced to gratification, as on the Outside.

I stared angrily at his blond handsome face, so insipid, so self-indulgent. “Answer this one question, Elvis. Are these murders the work of the St. Ewagiow¹?”

He was silent, and I said, “It is that death cult, isn’t it?”

He reached into his pocket and took out a small red, white and blue bound book — the National Dictionary of Pocket Humor — consulted it and then read aloud: “ ‘Death Cult … Death Dulls …’ ” and began laughing to himself as he glanced through the suggested puns and other humorous connotations. But before he could (as they were constantly saying) “Wowsle me,” I grabbed him by his coat lapels and shook him. Believe me, as a Reservation police officer who had followed horse thieves on mountainous trails for a week at a stretch, I had muscles in my shoulders.

His coat lapels ripped, leaving a piece of cloth in my hands. (He was wearing one of those lightweight Wearitwunce suits whose price was two for a dollar. It was made of wafton, nikrilon and daffin. The controlled climate on the Outside had eliminated the need for heavier clothing. Temperature year-round was 70 degrees, a perpetual spring, unlike us, thank God, who still lived under the old-fashioned four seasons.) The commissoner stared at the cloth in my hands and roared at this joke on himself while I controlled the impulse to throw the rag into his face. That’s what they called cloth! And suddenly I became aware of my own sturdy gray homespun. I felt homesick. I thought of the long winter evenings in which my wife Ruth had sat weaving at her loom, with the older children busy at soap-making.

“Fun, fun,” I said bitterly.

The Commissioner wiped his eyes. “This much I can tell you, Crockett. There is a national emergency.” He said that in what was for him a solemn tone. “The threat ‘Everybody Dies On July 4th’ is no idle threat. We have exactly eleven days to prevent disaster.”

He looked at me for a long time, and maybe I was imagining things but for a second I thought his eyes had got wet. Not really wet or even good and damp, but as if a single tear, one to the eye, had unwillingly leaked its way. The Commissioner’s crying, even in this limited way, was more than I could stand. They had no use for tears. Hadn’t he said during the investigation of the Atlanta corpse that tears were a saline solution that not only blurred the accurate observation of scientific facts¹ but were also a criticism of the Government?

“Elvis,” I said, greatly moved. “Eleven days!”

But as I spoke, he again began flipping through the pages of his little red, white and blue handbook. Probably for a witticism based on the number eleven. This typical reaction infuriated me. I thought it was my duty to get the information he was suppressing, a duty above all to the people back home. My people, the real Americans.

I thought of how our forefathers had come to the Reservation in the year 1979 to escape the then-new, soul-destroying, two-hour work-day. Leaving a nation already debauched with leisure and sunken in a stew of hobbies, where countless men in the prime of life were retiring at the age of thirty. The New Redskins, they had called us, predicting that we wouldn’t stay for more than a few years, and that we ourselves would tear down the great atomic-powered fence our forefathers had asked for to protect themselves from sightseeing parties from the Outside. I thought of this precious territory of ours, ploughed with our own sweat, in the heart of the continent — its eastern border running through Valley City, North Dakota, Yankton, South Dakota, and North Plate, Nebraska; its western border cutting through the middle of Montana and Wyoming; southwards to within fifty miles of the cityurb¹ that had boomed around Denver, Colorado; and northward by treaty agreement with Canada to Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, and Portage La Prairie, Manitoba.

Yes, a hundred and one thoughts of the founding days of the Reservation streamed through my heart, and I came to a lightning decision — the kind of decision typical of men brought up in the big spaces.

I jumped to my feet and hit the Commissioner on the jaw. He fell to the floor, and as I stuffed the torn piece of his coat lapel into his mouth, I began to whistle, for there is no satisfaction like going about a job properly. I knew exactly what I wanted. The contents of the Commissioner’s brain.

I hauled him back into his chair and tied him securely with the All-Emergency Thread² carried by their Law and Order officers. A spool of it had been given to me on my arrival. Then I studied the Com-Tel or Communications-Telephone on his desk and pushed in the SCI Button. A few seconds later an electronic voice was talking to me from somewhere in the building.

“Science,” it said pleasantly. “Science, Science … Are you ready, Commissioner? Ready? Ready? Authors. Ballistics. Controls …”

At Controls I lifted my hand from the button. There was a moment of silence and then a second electronic voice began to talk.

“Controls, Controls … Are you ready. Commissioner? Ready? Ready?” This voice began to call off a long list of controls, all beginning with the letter A. What I wanted was in the B’s. I pressed the proper button on the Com-Tel. The voice paused as if to catch its electronic breath and then began.

“Brain-Effectors, Brain-Effectors … Are you ready, Commissioner? Ready? Ready? Amnesia Pills. Antibiotic Neurodromes. Brain-Confessors …”

Brain-Confessors! That was what I wanted. Within a few minutes there was a knock on the door. I walked over and opened it cautiously. Before me stood a four-foot automaton typical of the automatons and robots that performed their duller jobs. Headless, with a piston moving up and down where its neck should have been and, mounted on the piston, one green eye and one red eye.

“I’ll take it, officer,” I said, “Thanks.”

“Thank you, Commissioner,” it replied in a throaty voice — a female, this one. The red eye flicked off, the green eye flicked on and it swiftly moved down the corridor.

I carried the Brain-Confessor over to the desk. It seemed like a simple affair to operate. (I should mention that on my arrival from the Reservation I had been given a basic course in police techniques at L. and O. Headquarters.) I clamped the grooved cranial band across the Commissioner’s forehead, released the two occipital recorders¹ and slid them across the band until they were directly over both of his temples, where I fastened them. A single wire connected the occipital recorders to the control box. I turned the main dial until the arrow pointed at the legend: WILLED ACTIONS. These were now neutralized. I picked up the earphones attached to the control box, reached for the mouthpiece and asked my first question.

“Commissioner, I understand that there is a national emergency?”

A tiny voice, the voice of the unconscious man, not his voice really, not his ordinary voice — but his B-Voice or Brain-Voice — sounded in the earphones, “Yes,” it said.

“What’s this national emergency all about?”

The B-Voice replied. “The A-I-D has been stolen.”

“Stolen!” I exclaimed.

As if in response to the horror in my voice, the B-Voice, like a sad echo repeated. “Stolen. Stolen from India and brought to the United States.”

“Who stole it?” To this day I can hear my trembling question.

“The St. Ewagiow.”

I groaned at the thought of the A-I-D in the hands of the death cult. And in the United States! Wiping the sweat from my face I said. “The A-I-D here?”

“Yes, hidden somewhere in the country. Barnum Fly, Barnum Fly, Barnum Fly.” The B-Voice repeated this name a dozen times.

“Who is Barnum Fly?”

“Public enemy number one. See the dossier in my desk.”

“Where in your desk?”

“The third drawer on the right. Under the pictures.”

And so concluded that memorable conversation of June 23rd.

I pulled open the third drawer and was startled when the top picture,¹ that of a naked blonde, smiled and waved her hand and in a lecherous voice whispered. “Darling, watch me do some bumplettes …” Quickly, I turned it face downward on the desk, cutting off the blonde’s voice. But a second voice, the voice of a naked brunette on the picture underneath whispered. “Darling, I live at 2340 Connecticut Avenue …” I grabbed the entire stack, turning them bottoms up and faces down to the technological devil who was their master.

The name Fly had seemed vaguely familiar to me, and as I glanced through the thick dossier I placed it. I must have fainted from the shock. How long I was unconscious I don’t know, but the low murnur of a woman’s voice aroused me. From the floor where I had dropped I saw the Commissioner at his desk, the Brain-Confessor removed from his head and watching something in his hands. One of the Animateds.

“Elvis,” I called.

He shrugged and reluctantly ended his interview with the murmuring woman. “I should be angry with you,” he said with a smile. Nothing is more irritating than the forgiving smile of a man who by rights should be in a fury. Besides, my professional pride was hurt, for somehow he had escaped from the All-Emergency Thread.

“I should be angry,” he repeated. “But I feel too good about sharing that damned secret. Crockett, I can’t tell you the strain it’s been!”

“Barnum Fly, I muttered. All I could think of was that according to the dossier, Barnum Fly was one of ours, although on the Reservation his first name had been Nathaniel. He had changed it to Barnum¹ when he had been granted permission to leave for the Outside. That was our custom. Once a year, after the harvest, all dissatisfied Reservationists had the right to leave. As Nathaniel Fly had, when his wheat crop was devoured by locusts, and his wife and children died of typhoid.

“I understand now why I’m needed,” I said with bitter shame. “A Reservation man to catch a Reservation man. What I can’t understand is, why the secrecy?”

“Can’t you guess?” he asked softly.

I shook my head and he said, “They made it hard for me to bring you in.”

“They?”

He pointed up at the ceiling. “The Board.”

I understood him now. The Board, The They, he was referring to were the Think Machines² on the upper floors.

“The trouble I’ve had with Them!” he said. (I follow Outside usage in capitalizing when referring to the Think Machines.) “I was forced to appeal to the Supreme Court¹ and if I hadn’t won the President’s support you wouldn’t be here, Crockett.”

Never in all my life had I received such a testimonial to my reputation as a police officer. Deeply touched, I thanked him, and then my suspicions got the best of me. “You sent for me,” I said bluntly, “because your job as Commissioner is shaky. You haven’t stopped these murders. The A-I-D is still missing.”

“I’m worried about my job,” he conceded. “But believe me I’m more worried about what will happen if we don’t recover the A-I-D. We’ll all be finished if we don’t catch up with Barnum Fly. You and I and the Supreme Court Itself. It’s on the moon, but if the earth is turned into dust what will the moon revolve about? It’s too frightful to think about! That’s why I fought for you, Crockett. I’ll accept any help I can get. It’s that simple! I don’t want to die on July 4th!”

I must have become pale, for he pulled out a rectangular box from his pocket. Inside it were a row of small white pills lettered in bright purple: U-LATU.² I took one and ate it. Within seconds I became calm and even cheerful.

“Elvis, I have some questions. One, how did this Fly manage to steal the A-I-D? What were his motives? Why did he tie up with the St. Ewagiow?”

“It’s all in his dossier, but I’ll give you a capsule summary. When he came to us from the Reservation about twenty-five years ago, Barnum Fly was ambitious, a hard worker, understandably so when you consider his immigrant background.” The Commissioner smiled at his little joke but instantly, to his credit, wiped the smile from his lips. “Within a few years, he had become a successful theatrical agent. His speciality was animal performers. In cooperation with our animal psychologists, the Barnum Fly Monkey Ballet was trained to perform the first creditable — by human standards — Swan Lake. It made him famous. He was admitted to the Institute — ”

“What Institute?”

“I keep forgetting you’re a stranger. The Institute of Applied Science. All our great showmen are Institute graduates. Let me explain a bit. At the Institute, they concentrate on the basic problem of adapting science to entertainment. Magicientists as the public calls them. Barnum Fly’s record was brilliant, and even more brilliant after his graduation. The Atomic Amusement Park¹ is a product of his genius, and for it the Rulers awarded him our highest honor, the S.C.O.S.T. Medal of Distinguished Pleasure. Yet the man was dissatisfied, as we discovered. On January 10th of this year, the investigations of Senator Clark Gable Fresset² proved that he was the secret head of a small group of Institute graduates who had succeeded in gaining control over a number of smaller nations, Costa Rica, Yemen, and Ghana among them.”

“How did he do that?”

“By exporting our way of life. Forgive me, Crockett, but only a Reservation man could have been so ambitious. Our national motto of Each Man To His Pleasure also includes the concept of each nation to its own brand of nationalism. Forgive me for being so self-righteous, Crockett.”

“Why libel a whole people because of one renegade, Elvis?”

“Let’s get back to Barnum Fly,” he said. “Together with his associates he was tried in secret session and proven guilty. Sentence, however, was suspended because of his great services to his country. It was at this point that his closest associate, the magicientist M.E. Bangani, who had been his teacher at the Institute, turned Government witness and testified that Fly was perfecting a subversive game with which he hoped to take over power in the United States itself.”

“A game you said?”

“Yes. Tentatively called You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine. This treason of course was utterly unforgivable. He was sentenced to two years in prison, our maximum sentence. Two years of deprivation from pleasure! Even the brilliant mind of Fly couldn’t take the shock. He shouted that he would support the outlawed St. Ewagiow. For this he was given an additional two months to be served concurrently for illegal verbal associations. Subsequent investigation disclosed that he had actually established an alliance with the St. Ewagiow. They engineered his escape from prison, and as you know Senator Fresset was found murdered on May 28th.”

“And now there have been seven of these July 4th murders,” I said thoughtfully.

“We’re after the most dangerous man in the world, Crockett. An egomaniac prepared to destroy civilization if he can’t dominate it. I use the word maniac literally. Imagine yourself in his place. As a magicientist, what trick can surpass the A-I-D? The curtain rises on July 4th and, with a wave of your hand, this globe of ours with all its continents and oceans vanishes in a cloud of smoke. Oh, God!” he groaned, and, grabbing at the box of U-Latus, he popped two into his mouth, “Take another, Crockett, you’ll need it.”

I swallowed one of the purple-lettered pills and felt a sick smile come to my clenched lips.

“There isn’t much more to add. During Barnum Fly’s second trial, our agents in the St. Ewagiow reported that the A-I-D had been stolen and brought to the United States.”

“Why didn’t they detonate the A-I-D in India?”

“We can only guess. Remember, the inventor is an American, the Universal Redeemer as they call him. Perhaps the St. Ewagiow felt the redemption ought to begin here in honor of Professor Kane? Perhaps some of Fly’s associates among the magicientists managed to get their hands on it, leaving the St. Ewagiow with no choice but to go along with that egomaniac’s time table? Eleven days! That’s all we have left.”

I swallowed another U-Latu, but behind the cheerful relaxed smile on my lips I felt myself gasping. The Commissioner seized the box and gulped down a pill. “That professor fellow invented the joke to end all jokes,” he said. “The A-I-D, or twenty-four pounds of pure unalloyed humor. Do you know what he said when he was put into custody? ‘My detonator has an affinity with infinity!’ That’s why he called it the A-I-D. Infinity!” the Commissioner laughed hysterically. “Infinity and redemption …”

I helped myself to a couple more U-Latus and now I was able to laugh with him. I wiped the tears of joy from my eyes as I thought of the United States, his United States and my United States, turned into dust and scattering into space.

“Redemption!” he howled. “Redeem the world by blowing it up. Isn’t that a funny game when you think of it? The game of death, the last game where there no winners and no losers …”

Oh, I tell you, we were both howling.

Then, the Com-Tel buzzed, and some clerk of an automaton informed us that the eighth corpse had been found in the Royal Bridal Suite Number 17¹ at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. It looked as if Barnum F., formerly Nathaniel F. had been, to use an old-fashioned expression — ”working overtime.”

When we arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria, we were directed to the fourth, or Marilyn Monroe floor, so-named after another great entertainer of the twentieth century. Royal Bridal Suite No. 17 with its red plush and lighting fixtures in the shape of gold crowns, was crowded with L. and O. operatives and lab technicians. The body was in the bedroom under a gaudy sheet whose design consisted of two crowns, a male and a female, locked together in an unholy alliance. Under ordinary circumstances I would have blushed.

I reached for the sheet. My hand was trembling, my face felt hot and feverish. I could see that they were all surprised at my emotion. To them, I was a police officer from a backward territory, a primitive. Perhaps. But knowing what I knew now about the July 4th Murders, I was, to put it plainly, bigger than myself. I was a representative of mankind. Not that I underestimated the Commissioner and his men, but I think it is fair to say that no man on the Outside was capable of sustained work. The voluntary two-hour day defined both their ambitions and their limitations.

One of the lab technicians misunderstood my emotions, He smirked at the others and whispered some comment. I looked at him with contempt and, embarrassed, he said in a professional tone, “A very bloody murder, Chief. I estimate that 1.75 pints of blood were lost by the victim — ”

“Damn your estimates!” I shouted and suddenly my nerves snapped and I began to cry like a baby. That is, like a Reservation baby, for their babies no longer cried.²

They all stared at me with disapproval, even the Commissioner. I knew what they thought, these Think-Machine accessories. I was too non-scientific for their tastes, a throwback to an earlier America where detection still depended on the individual hunch and flash of intuition. Left to themselves they would follow the taped instructions of their electronic L. and O. Board, and if they caught the killer would bring him to trial, and the judge after studying a digest of similar cases prepared by still another Board would deliver judgment. If the psychiatric defense was good, the killer would be committed to one of the country’s H.R.L.H. Farms¹ where they would cut up paper dolls, as once on the Outside they had cut up flesh-and-blood ones. On the Reservation we had one treatment for killers. We strung them up.

I wiped my tears. I’m not ashamed to admit that I wept. Then, I lifted the sheet and examined the corpse. It was a woman. Tied to the toes of her right foot was a slip with the now-familiar words:

TO THE AUTHORITIES
EVERYBODY DIES ON JULY 4th

I studied the slip and thought of how, one by one, that miserable renegade Barnum F. was throwing these pitiful corpses at the authorities. As if playing some kind of insane teasing joke.

The lab technicians got busy with their instruments, analyzing the breath-marks and radar traces. I had seen them before at their plodding fact-finding. They consulted with the Commissioner, who came over to me and said, “That accounts for it, Crockett.”

“Accounts for what?”

“Why she was alone in the bridal suite. The man with her was the Fire Chief and intended victim, but unfortunately for her there was a fire at the Small Boat Builders Dock. It’s the same pattern we’ve had right along. Prominent city officials marked for murder.”

“Elvis, has it occurred to you that we have data by the yard, and that what we need are suspects?”

He took me aside and whispered. “What are you talking about? You and I know the identity of the murderer.”

The others paid no attention to us. They weren’t curious.

“Elvis, who would our man be seeing?”

“According to our master plan — ”

“What master plan?”

“The Board’s master plan. Don’t look so hurt, Crockett. I haven’t had a chance to tell you everything. Anyway, the Board has analyzed the problem of suspects from the mathematical and quantitative viewpoints, correlating the incidence of chance with all available statistics — ”

“For God’s sake, will you talk plain American!”

“This very minute our operatives are keeping an eye on all suspects. Barnum Fly’s former friends, his associates. Magicientists like himself. His wives. He was married eight times with nine children — ”

“Have you narrowed it down?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean leading targets.”

“We’re proceeding on the basis that every suspect is a leading target.”

“There’s no time for that, Elvis. I want you to ask the Board to go over Their facts and come up with somebody They can definitely label Number One Suspect, Number Two Suspect. And so on. I’ll go to the Board myself!”

“That wouldn’t be advisable, feeling the way They do about you, Crockett. No, I’ll talk to the Board myself. Why don’t you get some sleep? We have a room in this hotel.”

It seemed like a good idea, but when I stood outside the room — Room 889 on the eighth, or Pagliacci floor, so named after the great clown of the eighteenth century immortalized by the Italian songwriter, Verdi — it was apparently occupied. A 28¹ gleamed in the center of the door. I called to the clerk at the end of the corridor, showed him my L. and O. badge, and he unlocked the door.

It was occupied. Sleeping on the bed was a woman in a red nightgown stitched with off-color jokes in white. I stared at her, and for a second I thought I was going to faint a second time. For this woman was my wife Ruth, whom I’d left behind on the Reservation.

I fought for self-control. Shutting my eyes I recalled the words of my predecessor as Reservation Chief of Police, Boone Truckley: “Jump for your gun but not to conclusions!” Only then did I open my eyes and approach the bed. Would my modest wife wear such a nightgown? I wondered. Never! It was a flaming red and even with a quick glance I could see that the jokes and stories were of the sort that even our boldest women would have been ashamed of. Suddenly I felt a sensation of relief. My wife’s hands were hard and calloused from spinning and carding and washing and a hundred other chores. This woman’s hands were white and delicate, the hands of a butterfly, the typical hands of a woman of the Outside.

Still, with the exception of the hands, she was a dead ringer for my wife Ruth. A good looking blonde of about thirty, becoming a little heavy, what we called a buxom blonde.

Immediately I began searching the room for clues. There was an empty quart on the floor. A second quart, two-thirds gone, stood on a desk next to a combination Talko-Typo, one of their voice-operated machines containing an inbuilt grammarian that corrected all mistakes of punctuation and spelling. In the machine there was a sheet of paper with the following lines which I reproduce, for they were to prove of some significance in the historic events of the eleven days remaining before July 4th.

“Who are you?” I heard her calling from the bed.

“You didn’t hear me come in but you hear me now,” I said. “What kind of sleep is that?”

“My own kind of sleep, darling,” she said. “Haven’t you heard of the 28th?”

She was staring at me with two eyes that were exactly like my wife’s. Big blue eyes that were slightly protuberant, the left one with a slight squint. It was unnerving. Only her hands proved she was an imposter. This woman was one of their women, and yet she wasn’t beautiful as all women were beautiful on the Outside ever since the Garden of Eden Salons¹ had won their case in S.C.O.S.T. This Gladys Ellsberg seemed like the real thing, a natural article who hadn’t picked her face and body out of the latest Garden of Eden Catalogue². Her eyelashes, although long, were not the size so popular that season — three-quarter to full-inch lashes on the lower eyelids that covered up both eye shadow and eyewrinkle. Her dark yellow hair seemed genuine, as were her breasts³ which were a little too full, sagging a little with the beginning of middle age.

She was the very image of my wife Ruth! The blood rushed to my head as I stared at this ripe double. I felt guilty and confused. I won’t cover up my emotions. On the Reservation we call a spade a spade, and I’d missed my wife as a man has a right to miss his wife, and here she was, except for those give-away hands.

She was smiling at me, the easy smile they all had, amused perhaps, flattered perhaps, willing to make love perhaps, in the easy way they all had in this land of the 28th Amendment. And I? (Ruth, I won’t conceal anything. This eyewitness report is the straight unvarnished truth.) I was tempted. I had just come from the fourth floor of this hotel with its eighth victim and eighth message announcing the end of the world on July 4th.

“I seem to know you,” she said.

“Who are you?” I asked her.

“A writer. I do autobiogs of famous people, the really great entertainers.”

I must have looked blank for she said eagerly, “Maybe you read my last one about B. S. Wong-Nottingshire? Imagine climbing four of the biggest Himalayas, including Mount Everest in two weeks! Only an Englishman of Tibetan ancestry could have done it!” She got out of bed, her eyes narrowing. “I know who you are! You’re Crockett Smith! I’ve seen a dozen photos of you in the papers, all mysterious, too! Why are you here?”

I said nothing.

“Have you thought of someone doing your autobiog?”

“I’m not an entertainer,” I said. “And you’re not the writer you pretend to be.”

She smiled, but that smile of hers no longer tempted me. I was afraid of this woman who could have been my wife, a decoy playing on my emotions, but who for all I knew was a member of the St. Ewagiow. Then, I recalled that it was the Commissioner himself who had urged me to come to this room and it was all clear. They had assigned one of Their policewomen to spy on me and ordered a Garden of Eden treatment to produce this double of my dear wife Ruth. It was unfair. It was like hitting a man below the belt. And the Commissioner who pretended to be my friend had gone along with Their dirty Scheme.

Without a word I headed for the door. She barred my way. “Why go?” she asked.

“Why?” I said with contempt. “You’re nothing but a cheap police spy.”

“Every writer is a spy,” she said calmly. “We snoop into the lives of our characters, real or imaginary. Have a drink, or is that forbidden on the Reservation?”

I hesitated, wondering if I shouldn’t try to find out more about her. Wasn’t that my duty?

“So you think I’m a spy? What difference does it make for whom we work as long as our personal lives are our own? Or don’t you people believe in a personal life?”

As she stood there in that flaming nightgown, she reminded me more than ever of my wife. I felt myself succumbing to her charm, the old familiar charms that had been reproduced so accurately in this strange woman. True, my conscience was still bothering me, but against this still small voice I silently invoked the 28th. After all any police officer will respect the laws of the country whose guest he is.

I picked up the bottle of whiskey and drank. It wasn’t as good as our corn whiskey but it would do. When I put the bottle down she smiled and floated towards me. I stepped back, and she said, “Darling, don’t be so moral.” She laughed and pointed at the white stitched words on her nightgown, just above her navel. “Read this, darling.”

I read: ‘Among the natural rights of every nation is the flight of fornication.’

She laughed and said. “Perhaps you don’t care for puns? There’s a perfectly wonderful story, the best traveling-salesman story you ever heard, over my left hip.”

Again, she floated towards me, I stood there while she snuggled close, her blue eyes so like my wife’s looking up into mine, asking, demanding. I kissed her, and when I lifted my lips she stroked my cheek and whispered. “I wouldn’t let Them redo my hands, not my hands, darling.”

This bold confession was too much for me. I pushed her away. She laughed as if I were a child and without a word began pulling her nightgown off.

“Who the hell do you think I am?” I shouted. “One of your kind?”

Laughing she tossed the nightgown at me. “Read the story about the honeymooners. It’s below my right breast Oh, how can you find it now?” Laughing and giggling she came over to me. I waited until she was close, then I slapped her face.

“Report that to Them!” I yelled and rushed out of the room.

That evening when I saw Commissioner Sonata, he admitted he was responsible for Gladys Ellsberg. He said that when he had decided to bring me in from the Reservation, the Board had advised him of the importance of activating the life-wish in any man.

Delays at the Garden of Eden Salons had prevented earlier delivery of Gladys Ellsberg.