William Tenn - Firewater

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Firewater

William Tenn

The hairiest, dirtiest and oldest of the three visitors from Arizona scratched his back against the plastic

of the webfoam chair. "Insinuations are lavender nearly," he re-marked by way of opening the

conversation.

His two companions—the thin young man with dripping eyes, and the woman whose good looks

were marred chiefly by incredibly decayed teeth—giggled and re-laxed. The thin young man said

"Gabble, gabble, honk!" under his breath, and the other two nodded emphatically.

Greta Seidenheim looked up from the tiny stenographic machine resting on a pair of the most

exciting knees her employer had been able to find in Greater New York. She swiveled her blonde beauty

at him. "That too, Mr. Hebster?"

The president of Hebster Securities, Inc., waited until the memory of her voice ceased to tickle his

ears; he had much clear thinking to do. Then he nodded and said resonantly, "That too, Miss Seidenheim.

Close phonetic approximations of the gabble-honk and remember to indicate when it sounds like a

question and when like an exclamation."

He rubbed his recently manicured fingernails across the desk drawer containing his fully loaded

Parabellum. Check. The communication buttons with which he could summon any quantity of Hebster

Securities personnel up to the nine hun-dred working at present in the Hebster Building lay some eight

inches from the other hand. Check. And there were the doors here, the doors there, behind which his

uni-formed bodyguard stood poised to burst in at a signal which would blaze before them the moment his

right foot came off the tiny spring set in the floor. And check.

Algernon Hebster could talk business—even with Primeys.

Courteously, he nodded at each one of his visitors from Arizona; he smiled rue-fully at what the dirty

shapeless masses they wore on their feet were doing to the al-most calf-deep rug that had been woven

specially for his private office. He had greeted them when Miss Seidenheim had escorted them in. They

had laughed in his face.

"Suppose we rattle off some introductions. You know me. I'm Hebster, Algernon Hebster—you

asked for me specifically at the desk in the lobby. If it's important to the conversation, my secretary's

name is Greta Seidenheim. And you, sir?"

He had addressed the old fellow, but the thin young man leaned forward in his seat and held out a

taut, almost transparent hand. "Names?" he inquired. "Names are round if not revealed. Consider names.

How many names? Consider names, recon-sider names!"

The woman leaned forward too, and the smell from her diseased mouth reached Hebster even

across the enormous space of his office. "Rabble and reaching and all the upward clash," she intoned,

spreading her hands as if in agreement with an obvi-ous point. "Emptiness derogating itself into infinity—"

"Into duration," the older man corrected.

"Into infinity," the woman insisted.

"Gabble, gabble, honk?" the young man queried bitterly.

"Listen!" Hebster roared. "When I asked for—"

The communicator buzzed and he drew a deep breath and pressed a button. His receptionist's voice

boiled out rapidly, fearfully:

"I remember your orders, Mr. Hebster, but those two men from the UM Special Investigating

Commission are here again and they look as if they mean business. I mean they look as if they'll make

trouble."

"Yost and Funatti?"

"Yes, sir. From what they said to each other, I think they know you have three Primeys in there.

They asked me what are you trying to do—deliberately inflame the Firsters? They said they're going to

invoke full supranational powers and force an entry if you don't—"

"Stall them."

"But, Mr. Hebster, the UM Special Investigating—"

"Stall them, I said. Are you a receptionist or a swinging door? Use your imagina-tion, Ruth. You

have a nine-hundred-man organization and a ten-million-dollar corporation at your disposal. You can

stage any kind of farce in that outer office you want—up to and including the deal where some actor

made up to look like me walks in and drops dead at their feet. Stall them and I'll nod a bonus at you.

Stall them." He clicked off, looked up.

His visitors, at least, were having a fine time. They had turned to face each other in a reeking triangle

of gibberish. Their voices rose and fell argumentatively, pleadingly, decisively; but all Algernon Hebster's

ears could register of what they said were very many sounds similar to gabble and an occasional,

indisputable honk!

His lips curled contempt inward. Humanity prime! These messes? Then he lit a cigarette and

shrugged. Oh, well. Humanity prime. And business is business.

Just remember they're not supermen, he told himself. They may be dangerous, but they're not

supermen. Not by a long shot. Remember that epidemic of influenza that al-most wiped them out, and

how you diddled those two other Primeys last month. They're not supermen, but they're not humanity

either. They're just different.

He glanced at his secretary and approved. Greta Seidenheim clacked away on her machine as if she

were recording the curtest, the tritest of business letters. He won-dered what system she was using to

catch the intonations. Trust Greta, though, she'd do it.

"Gabble, honk! Gabble, gabble, gabble, honk, honk. Gabble, honk, gabble, gabble, honk? Honk."

What had precipitated all this conversation? He'd only asked for their names. Didn't they use names

in Arizona? Surely, they knew that it was customary here. They claimed to know at least as much as he

about such matters.

Maybe it was something else that had brought them to New York this time—maybe something

about the Aliens? He felt the short hairs rise on the back of his neck and he smoothed them down

self-consciously.

Trouble was it was so easy to learn their language. It was such a very simple matter to be able to

understand them in these talkative moments. Almost as easy as falling off a log—or jumping off a cliff.

Well, his time was limited. He didn't know how long Ruth could hold the UM investigators in his

outer office. Somehow he had to get a grip on the meeting again without offending them in any of the

innumerable, highly dangerous ways in which Primeys could be offended.

He rapped the desk top—gently. The gabble-honk stopped short at the hyphen. The woman rose

slowly.

"On this question of names," Hebster began doggedly, keeping his eyes on the woman, "since you

people claim—"

The woman writhed agonizingly for a moment and sat down on the floor. She smiled at Hebster.

With her rotted teeth, the smile had all the brilliance of a dead star.

Hebster cleared his throat and prepared to try again.

"If you want names," the older man said suddenly, "you can call me Larry."

The president of Hebster Securities shook himself and managed to say "Thanks" in a somewhat

weak but not too surprised voice. He looked at the thin young man.

"You can call me Theseus." The young man looked sad as he said it.

"Theseus? Fine!" One thing about Primeys, when you started clicking with them, you really moved

along. But Theseus! Wasn't that just like a Primey? Now the woman, and they could begin.

They were all looking at the woman, even Greta with a curiosity which had sneaked up past her

beauty-parlor glaze.

"Name," the woman whispered to herself. "Name a name."

Oh, no, Hebster groaned. Let's not stall here.

Larry evidently had decided that enough time had been wasted. He made a sugges-tion to the

woman. "Why not call yourself Moe?"

The young man—Theseus, it was now—also seemed to get interested in the prob-lem. "Rover's a

good name," he announced helpfully.

"How about Gloria?" Hebster asked desperately.

The woman considered. "Moe, Rover, Gloria," she mused. "Larry, Theseus, Seidenheim, Hebster,

me." She seemed to be running a total.

Anything might come out, Hebster knew. But at least they were not acting snob-bish any more: they

were talking down on his level now. Not only no gabble-honk, but none of this sneering double-talk

which was almost worse. At least they were making sense—of a sort.

"For the purposes of this discussion," the woman said at last, "my name will be...will be—My name

is S.S. Lusitania."

"Fine!" Hebster roared, letting the word he'd kept bubbling on his lips burst out. "That's a fine name.

Larry, Theseus and...er, S.S. Lusitania. Fine bunch of people. Sound. Let's get down to business. You

came here on business, I take it?"

"Right," Larry said. "We heard about you from two others who left home a month ago to come to

New York. They talked about you when they got back to Arizona."

"They did, eh? I hoped they would."

Theseus slid off his chair and squatted next to the woman who was making pluck-ing motions at the

air. "They talked about you," he repeated. "They said you treated them very well, that you showed them

as much respect as a thing like you could gen-erate. They also said you cheated them."

"Oh, well, Theseus." Hebster spread his manicured hands. "I'm a businessman."

"You're a businessman," S.S. Lusitania agreed, getting to her feet stealthily and taking a great swipe

with both hands at something invisible in front of her face. "And here, in this spot, at this moment, so are

we. You can have what we've brought, but you'll pay for it. And don't think you can cheat us."

Her hands, cupped over each other, came down to her waist. She pulled them apart suddenly and a

tiny eagle fluttered out. It flapped toward the fluorescent panels glowing in the ceiling. Its flight was

hampered by the heavy, striped shield upon its breast, by the bunch of arrows it held in one claw, by the

olive branch it grasped with the other. It turned its miniature bald head and gasped at Algernon Hebster,

then began to drift rapidly down to the rug. Just before it hit the floor, it disappeared.

Hebster shut his eyes, remembering the strip of bunting that had fallen from the eagle's beak when it

had turned to gasp. There had been words printed on the bunting, words too small to see at the distance,

but he was sure the words would have read "E Pluribus Unum." He was as certain of that as he was of

the necessity of acting unconcerned over the whole incident, as unconcerned as the Primeys. Professor

Kleimbocher said Primeys were mental drunkards. But why did they give everyone else the D.T.s?

He opened his eyes. "Well," he said, "what have you to sell?"

Silence for a moment. Theseus seemed to forget the point he was trying to make; S.S. Lusitania

stared at Larry.

Larry scratched his right side through heavy, stinking cloth.

"Oh, an infallible method for defeating anyone who attempts to apply the reductio ad absurdum to

a reasonable proposition you advance." He yawned smugly and be-gan scratching his left side.

Hebster grinned because he was feeling so good. "No. Can't use it."

"Can't use it?" The old man was trying hard to look amazed. He shook his head. He stole a

sideways glance at S.S. Lusitania.

She smiled again and wriggled to the floor. "Larry still isn't talking a language you can understand,

Mr. Hebster," she cooed, very much like a fertilizer factory being friendly. "We came here with something

we know you need badly. Very badly."

"Yes?" They're like those two Primeys last month, Hebster exulted: they don't know what's good

and what isn't. Wonder if their masters would know. Well, and if they did—who does business with

Aliens?

"We...have," she spaced the words carefully, trying pathetically for a dramatic effect, "a new shade

of red, but not merely that. Oh, no! A new shade of red, and a full set of color values derived from it! A

complete set of color values derived from this one shade of red, Mr. Hebster! Think what a

non-objectivist painter can do with such a—"

"Don't sell me, lady. Theseus, do you want to have a go now?"

Theseus had been frowning at the green foundation of the desk. He leaned back, looking satisfied.

Hebster realized abruptly that the tension under his right foot had disappeared. Somehow, Theseus had

become cognizant of the signal-spring set in the floor; and, somehow, he had removed it.

He had disintegrated it without setting off the alarm to which it was wired.

Giggles from three Primey throats and a rapid exchange of "gabble-honk." Then they all knew what

Theseus had done and how Hebster had tried to protect himself. They weren't angry, though—and they

didn't sound triumphant. Try to understand Primey behavior!

No need to get unduly alarmed—the price of dealing with these characters was a nervous stomach.

The rewards, on the other hand—

Abruptly, they were businesslike again.

Theseus snapped out his suggestion with all the finality of a bazaar merchant making his last,

absolutely the last offer. "A set of population indices which can be correlated with—"

"No, Theseus," Hebster told him gently.

Then, while Hebster sat back and enjoyed, temporarily forgetting the missing coil under his foot,

they poured out more, desperately, feverishly, weaving in and out of each other's sentences.

"A portable neutron stabilizer for high altit—"

"More than fifty ways of saying 'however' without—"

"...So that every housewife can do an entrechat while cook—"

"...Synthetic fabric with the drape of silk and manufactura—"

"...Decorative pattern for bald heads using the follicles as—"

"...Complete and utter refutation of all pyramidologists from—"

"All right!" Hebster roared, "All right! That's enough!"

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William Tenn - Firewater

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