George Alec Effinger - Dirty Tricks

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Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

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Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

Other works by George Alec Effinger also available in e-

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WHAT ENTROPY MEANS TO ME

THE NICK OF TIME

THE BIRD OF TIME

Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

Acknowledgments

Publishing Company, originally appeared in The New Mind,

edited by Roger Elwood.

"Contentment, Satisfaction, Cheer, Well-Being, Gladness,

Joy, Comfort, and Not Having to Get Up Early Any More," ©

1976 by George Alec Effinger, originally appeared in Future

Power, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

Effinger.

Ultimate Publishing Co., Inc., originally appeared in Fantastic,

December 1971.

originally appeared in the Haunt of Horror, May 1974.

Inc., originally appeared under the by-line "Susan Doenim" in

Fantastic, February 1972.

originally appeared in Orbit 10, edited by Damon Knight.

originally appeared in New Dimensions 6, edited by Robert

Silverberg.

Silverberg, originally appeared in New Dimensions 5, edited

by Robert Silverberg.

Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science

Fiction, July 1976.

originally appeared in Clarion II, edited by Robin Scott Wilson.

Judgment, skill, and confidence are rare qualities in

anyone, and their combination in a single person is even

more exceptional. I have had the great fortune to have known

two physicians who exemplify the finest ideals of the medical

profession. To these two men, Dr. S. J. Panzarino and Dr.

Francis Nance, this book is gratefully dedicated.

Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

New New York New Orleans

My friend Bergmeier reads a lot. He tells me it's an active

occupation, as opposed to my own. I watch television. It's

apparently a passive thing; Bergmeier tells me it's sad the

way I just sit in my living room and ask to be entertained.

According to him it signifies some very, very deep need on

my part. But book reading, you understand, is a whole lot

different. It doesn't count that I'm watching "Elizabeth R." on

the educational station and he's reading Rogue Photon with a

naked woman copulating with a silver interstellar vehicle on

the cover. Bergmeier says that the telling feature is that I am

merely receptive, my mental tongue lolling from my mental

mouth, while he is actively engaged in a creative pursuit, as

much so as the author of his lurid tale. He is constructing

entire galactic civilizations from the sparse building blocks of

prose supplied by the writer. It doesn't take much

imagination for me to conjure an image of Glenda Jackson

when Channel 13 has done it already.

That's why civilization is crumbling, says Bergmeier.

Movies and, especially, television, have robbed us of our

imaginations. People die, people love, people commit felonies

and misdemeanors in the modes they have learned from the

silver screen. I made the mistake once of mentioning that

books have always had the same effect--look at poor Don

Quixote, why don't you? So Bergmeier just smiled like I

imagine Bobby Fischer might; I mean, it was obvious that I

had just stepped into a trap set down during the initial stages

Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

of the Bergmeier-Chandless friendship. "So few people read,

these days," he said, smiling sadly, shaking his head.

"Nobody reads, except maybe what the disposable racks in

Woolworth's tell us the new bestseller is. So the heroic,

romantic behavior they emulate comes purely from sitting in

the dark, staring at flickering images. What they learn from

books is as the rustle of distant, cold galaxies compared to

WABC-AM at full volume."

If he sounds bitter, it's because Bergmeier wanted to be a

writer himself. Instead, he's a computer analyst. He analyzes

programs, I guess; otherwise it would sound like he was

some kind of shrink for the damned machines. I don't really

know what he does, except that sometimes it has to do with

figuring out the curves for interstate highway cloverleafs. I

know he once began to write a novel about this guy who had

the same job, and who discovered that it all fit into a secret

Pentagon project to contact intelligent life on a far-distant

star or something. The turnpikes spelled out some greeting, I

suppose. Anyway, either some famous writer told Bergmeier

that the idea had already been done (God forbid), or else it

wasn't worth doing. I can't remember.

I tell you all this so you'll understand the framework of this

history. So you can see how our personal relationship affected

our actions, and so be less ready simply to dismiss the two of

us as lunatics. How desperately, how hopelessly I pray that

someone might believe me; then I would be fulfilled. Just one

person. But then, fulfillment is rare in New York City. In fact,

in our social circles, spiritual fulfillment ranks just below

Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

leprosy and reactionary politics as the most fatal of all

character flaws.

Let us go back in time, back a few weeks to the day when

Bergmeier first noticed the strange happenings. That's what

comes from reading so much, I never had the courage to say.

Bergmeier won't say, "What the hell?" or anything like that. If

he did, then he could come to a quick boil, cool down, and

forget. Not Bergmeier. Something absolutely crazy occurs,

and all he does is classify it as a strange happening. He'll

simmer over one of those for weeks. A television person

would know better. I'd let the "Six O'clock News" people

worry about it; then I'd find out what it meant after the

professionals had done all the work.

Let us go back. It was June 27 or 28, a Wednesday. I

remember because I was going to get tickets for the Yankees-

Orioles game, but I decided to watch it on television instead

(well, it can't be "Elizabeth R." all the time). Bergmeier and I

were walking across W. Eighth Street in the Village. That in

itself is a pretty foolish occupation for a hot afternoon in New

York. But we were making our slow progress through the

mongrel hordes that occupied (in a military or chess sense)

the sidewalks. Pedestrians in New York have curiously never

learned to walk in a large crowd. Groups will stroll along the

narrow sidewalks four-abreast, slowly, simultaneously staring

at junk in storefronts and discussing maddeningly inane

subjects culled from snobby articles in New York magazine.

Bergmeier and I were behind one of these squads. Cyrus the

Great should only have had such a phalanx. They were

gawking stupidly at a bunch of cheap shoes in a store

Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

window, but still stubbornly refusing to let my friend and me

play through. Bergmeier indicated the street side, intending a

quick outside flanking maneuver, but I have been too-well

trained against passing on the right. The traffic on Eighth

Street looked as if it were just waiting for some fool to step

out into the street.

Suddenly I heard Bergmeier's disgusted whisper in my ear.

He was more upset than usual. "No wonder," he said.

"They're tourists."

"Aren't we all?" I asked philosophically. "Isn't everyone in

New York a tourist of some kind? Doesn't everyone come to

the Big Apple, looking for the streets paved with gold?"

"Some people are born here, you know," he said sullenly.

"We natives don't take to you strangers so easily."

"Born here?" I said incredulously. "Bergmeier, that's

unworthy of you. People born in New York City? Everyone

knows the whole population is made up of continental

refugees, stultified minds fleeing the tinsel and glitter of

thousands of provincial highways and byways across this, our

great nation." Perhaps, in retrospect, I'm adding somewhat of

wit to my own speech, but let it pass.

"I'll bet I can pretty much narrow down the highways

these rubes came from," said my friend.

I was curious. In my defense I must say that we had taken

a long walk, and I had let down my guard. "How is that?" I

asked innocently.

"They're all from New Orleans," said Bergmeier. "Tourists.

Look at what they're carrying." I did look, but I couldn't

recognize what he meant. The four people were sipping some

Dirty Tricks

by George Alec Effinger

pinkish drink from a tall glass. I turned to Bergmeier and

shrugged.

"They're Hurricanes," he said. "From Pat O'Brien's. They're

famous in New Orleans. The glasses are shaped like hurricane

lamps, whence the name. You see flocks of people visiting

New Orleans walking up and down Bourbon Street carrying

them. That's how you tell tourists from natives in New

Orleans. Like no born-and-bred New Yorker would ever go

into a Greenwich Village coffee house."

Now, it wasn't quite a strange happening yet. What I

should have said then is, "What's in `em?" Bergmeier would

gladly have spent an hour describing fruit punch and rum for

me. We would have made our way across town, noticing

women and bookstores and forever forgetting the vaguely

distasteful tourists from New Orleans. No, like a fool I had to

ask, "What are they doing here?" Bergmeier, of course, had

no good answer, though he labored long in coming up with

one. All that I succeeded in doing was fixing the event in his

memory.

So much for the first incident of the strange happening.

We parted soon after, each to seek his own way home. New

Orleans, the lovely Crescent City, had been much in our

conversation following the encounter with the Hurricanes;

Bergmeier went on at great length, with a certain excited

nostalgia that I was unwilling to interrupt. I had never seen

the area, and Bergmeier's descriptions aroused my atrophied

imagination. His recollections of New Orleans' singular cuisine

particularly interested me, as I've always fancied myself a

somewhat egalitarian gourmand and my previous experience

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