Robinson, Spider - Callahan 07 - Callahan' s Legacy

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book couldn't have been begun without the assistance of my ingenious brother-in-law, John

Moore-who brought to my attention, and documented for me at great length, an existing force which

would be considered irresistibly destructive even by people who have been within meters of an

exploding nuclear weapon;

This book couldn't have been completed without the assistance of Montréal fan Steve Herman-who,

when I met him at ConCept '95, provided the key suggestion (actually, the way he phrased it was

perilously close to being an order) that made everything else fall into place at long last;

additional crucial advice, support, pity, and/or medication during the book's interminable genesis

were supplied by the Cultural Services Bianch of the British Columbia Ministry of Small Business,

Tourism and Culture, and by Don DeBrandt, Dr. Oliver Rohinow, Guy lmmega, Bob Atkinson, and just

about all the caffeine-inflamed members of the British Columbia Science Fiction Association's

Alternative-FRED Society;

This book couldn't have been contemplated without the support and assistance of my wife, Jeanne,

and daughter, Tern (it constitutes Jeanne's 20th wedding anniversary present-here you go, spice!

But yours was better. .

This book wouldn't have been as good without the help of my friends Walter and Jill of White Dwarf

Books~Dead Write Mysteries; the one-stop shop for Vancouver's serious word junkies; e~r without

Patrick Regan, habitué of Usenet's alt.callahan's, who unwittingly posted the Pat and Mike jokes

just when I needed them; and finally

This book would not have reached your hands without the sagacity, skill, and professionalism of my

agent, Eleanor Wood; my editor, Jim Frenkel; and the puissant sales samurai of my esteemed

publisher, Shogun Tom Doherty.-sama.

Thanks to the last-named three; by the way, I am happy to report that all of the first three books

of stories about Callahan's Place have just been restored to print by Tot in a trade paperback

omnibus edition called The Callahan Chronicals, for the enjoyment of you and anyone you know who's

having a birthday soon

-Vancouver, B C

28 November 1995

1 TOO HOT TO HOOT

The immortal storyteller Alfred Bester once said that the way to tell a story is to begin with a

disaster and then build to a climax. I'd like to-believe me, I'd like to-but this particular story

happened just the other way round.

It was a good climax, at least.

Well, okay, maybe that's a silly statement. Perhaps you feel that there is no such thing

as a bad climax; that some are better than others, is all. 1 could argue the point, but! won't.

Let's just agree with Woody Allen that 'The worst one! ever had was right on the money," stipulate

that they're all at least okay, and try to quantify the matter a bit.

On a scale of ten, then, rating "the least enjoyable orgasm I've ever had" as a One, and

"reaching the culmination of hours of foreplay with the sexiest partner imaginable after years of

celibacy" as a Ten, the climax I'm speaking of now was probably about a Nine-Five.

This despite the fact that every one of the ingredients I've named for a Ten were present

The foreplay had been so extensive and inventive (Groucho, leering:"...and the aftplay wasn't so

bad either...) that the sun was coming up by the time I was going in the other direction; my

partner was the sexiest woman on the planet, my darling Zoey Berkowitz; and she was my first real

lover (as opposed to mere sexer) in more years than I cared to think about. True, we had already

been lovers for several months, by then.. . but the honeymoon was by no means over. (In fact, it

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still isn't. The way I see it, our relationship is really just a single contirniojis ongoing act

of lovemaking, a dance so complex and subtle that we often disengage bodies completely for hours

at a time.) My father used to say, "Familiarity breeds, content," and that's always been my

experience.

No, what brought the meter down as low as Nine-Five was merely a matter of mechanics Zoey-

thank God-has never been a ~malI woman, not since the sixth grade, any' way, and she was nine and

a half months pregnant at the time all this happened, in the late fall of 1988. Indeed, if I could

travel in time like Mike Callahan, and went far enough back into hominid history, I think I could

prove my theory that pregnancy is responsible for the evolution of Man As Engineer. (This might-

help explain why there are so few female engineers.) A man who has successfully managed the trick

with a mate in the latter stages of pregnancy possesses most of the insights necessary to build a

house-and a strong motivation in that direction, as well. If inventing math were as much fun, we'd

probably own the Galaxy by now.

But I digress...

As Iwas saying, Zoey and I had solved the Riddle of the Sphinx together one more time,

just as enough dawnglow was sneaking past the edges of the curtains to let us see what we already

knew, and neither of us was paying attention to any damn imaginary scoring judges-we were both

well content, if a little fatigued. By the time we had our breath back, the day was well and truly

begun: birds had begun warbling somewhere outside, and traffic was building up to the usual

weekday morning homicidal frenzy out on Route 25A (why are they all in such a hurry to get to a

place they hate and do things they don't care about?), a combination of sounds that always puts me

right to sleep. That's probably just where I'd have gone ifZoey hadn't poked me in a tender spot

and murmured drowsily, ". . . 'cha snickering about?"

I hadn't realized I was. In fact, I wasn't. "I'm not," I said. "I'm chuckling."

She shook her head. "Unh-unh. I like Snickers better'n Chuckles."

I considered a couple of puns having to do with the physical characteristics and

components of the candy named, but left them unspoken. Sexual puns are funnier before you come.

"Chortling, then," I said. "Definitely not a snicker."

Zoey grimaced, her eyes still glued shut. "But why? Are you.,,

"Oh, it's just this silly mental picture I get after we make love," I admitted. "1 keep

seeing little Nameless floating in there, startled awake by this rhythmic earthquake... then

staring in fascination as all these millions of confused, exhausted, disappointed-little wigglers

show up, looking everywhere for an egg. I'll bet they tickle. The little tyke must get

a chuckle out of it."

"Or a chortle," she agreed, chortling sleepily. "I will, too f'now on. Thanks. Neat

image."

She yawned hugely then, so of course I did, too, and we did the little bits of physical

backing and filling necessary to move from Cuddling to Snuggling, and we'd probably both

have been comfortably asleep together in only another minute or two. But we had forgotten about

the Invisible Machines of Murphy.

The universe is full of them, and many of them seem to be simple pressure switches. For

instance, there's one underneath most toilet seats: your weight coming down on the seat somehow-

causes the phone to ring. (Unless you've brought the phone in with you: in that case the switch

cues a Jehovah's Witness to knock on. your door.) There's another one built into most TV remote

controls, wired into the channel select button; if you try to browse, it somehow alerts every

station on the air to go to commercial. The most maddening thing about these switches is that,

being of Murphy, they're unreliable: you can!t be sure whether or just when they will function,

except that it will usually turn out in retrospect to have been at the most annoying possible

moment. So the tiny pair of switches under thy eyelids, sensing that I was just about to di~ off

to sleep, picked now to send out the signal that causes my alarm clock to ring. Excuse me-I mean,

to:BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! !!!

For the past two weeks that damned thing had been going off at just this ungodly hour-set-

by mine own hand and with Zoey's foreknowledge and consent-and every single time it came as a rude

and ghastly surprise. Neither of us could get used to it. I had been a professional musician for a

quarter of a century until I gave it up to tend bar; Zoey still was one- or had been right up

until carrying both a baby and a bass guitar got to be too much for her; it had been decades since

either of us had willingly gotten up at dawn. Dawn was what you occasionally stayed up as late as.

Sunlight gave you the skin cancer, everybody knew that. Civilians got up at dawn, for heaven's

sake.

Well, so do nine-and-a-half-month-pregnant women. And their partners. No matter what their

nonnal sleep cycle is.

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Being more than nine months pregnant may mean nothing at all. Not even when you get up to

nine and a half months, and the kid hasn't even dropped yet. Maybe you just guessed wrong on the

conception date. We don't want you to worry, Ms. Berkowitz. But maybe, just maybe, something

iswrong in there. Maybe little Nameless doesn't want to come out and play, ready or not. If so, it

is a bad decision, however one might sympathize-~-because once Nameless is ready, he or she will

begin to do what all fully formed babies do best: excrete. And, polluting the womb, will die. And

possibly take you along for company. The chances of this are- iow .-:. but it might be wisest if

you just checked into the hospital now,Ms. Berkowitz, and allowed us to induce labor with a

pitocin drip..

Zoey had awarded that offer an emphatic "Fuck you very much, Doctor," and I was behind her

a hundred percent. At the time. We had both devoured most of the available literature on birthing

as a subversive activity, and were determined to Do This Naturally-not with drugs and

episiotomies, like postmodern drones, but the way our prim. itive ancestors did it in the caves:

with a trained Lamaze partner, a camcorder, and a physician standing by just in case. As far as we

were concerned, Nameless could emerge in his or her own good time.

The hospital had seen all too many zealots like us; they sighed and agreed to let us wait

as long as we could stand it, against advice. . . provided we were willing to furnish daily proof

that Nameless was not in fact dying in there. In the form of a maternal urine sample. Which they

would need first thing in the morning. Every morning. Wherefore: BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! I!!!

As far as I can see, the biggest disadvantage to having a pregnant lady around the home is

that it's always your turn to get up. I said a few words, and Zoèy stuck an elbow in my ribs,

saying, "Not in front of the baby!" So I said some more words, but in my head, and got up out of

bed. As I went around the bed, I confirmed by eye that her chamber pot was placed where she would

be able to conveniently straddle it, and went to the bathroom to get another specimen container

from the package under the sink. (If you think ten yards is too short a walk to the bathroom for a-

chamber pot to be necessary, you've never been nine and a half months pregnant.) And then. . .

well, it got complicated.

I bent over, see, and. took the package by a scrap of torn flap at the top, and

straightened up, intending to rummage inside the thing for a specimen cbntainer once I got it up

to around waist level. -But Zoey had been pregnant for nine months ~nd thirteen days, and those

damn packages hold a dozen. . . so it was empty. and since it was empty, it didn't weigh

an~'thing. . . and since I was expecting it to weigh at least something, and was more than a

little groggy. . . well, I overbalanced and landed ass-first in the bathtub, whanging my head

against the tile wall.

It could have happened to you, okay? Sure, it didn't, and riever will.. . but it cäuld

have. And if it had, I wouldn't have laughed at you.

Oh all right, I'm lying. Go ahead.

Zoey had apparently decided to rest her eyes until I got back, and then get up into a

sitting position, when there was someone there to help. But her love was true: I believe the

combination of my piteous wail and the loud reverberating boom were probably enough to cause at

least one of her eyes to open, perhaps as much as halfway. "You alive, hon?" she murmured.

I was dazed, and not honestly sure of the answer, but I could not ignore the concern in

her voice. "Depends on what you call living," I temporized, trying with little success to get out

of the tub.

Her reply was a snore.

My struggles triggered another of those invisible Murphy Switches: the showerhead's built-

in bombsight detected the presence of an unsuspecting human in its target area, and cut loose with

the half cup or so of ice water it keeps handy for such occasions, scoring a direct hit on my

groin. That got me up out of the bathtub, at least, though I can't explain exactly how; all I know

is, an instant later I was standing up and drawing in breath to swear. Loudly. With a great effort

I managed to squelch it. The useless empty paper sack that should have held specimen jars was

still in my hand; I flung it angrily to, ward the wastebasket beyond the toilet bowL But of course

it had poor aerodynamic characteristics for a projectile: it fluttered and flapped and curled over

and fell short, square into the toilet bowl. Two points. This time I was not entirely successful

in suppressing my bark of rage; it emerged as a kind of moan. I turned angrily on my heel, and

walked straight into the edge of the open bathroom door. The sun went nova, and when it had

cooled, I found that I was sitting again, on the cold tile floor this time. The front of my head

now hurt as much as the back, and my buttocks hurt twice as much..

Outside in the bedroom, Zoey snored again.

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For the third time, my lungs sucked in air.. . and then let it out again, very slowly. if

I woke Zoey with screamed curses, I'd have to explain why-and then refrain from strangling her

while she giggled. Or chortled. I got up, rubbed the places that hurt, and turned my attention to

the problem of improvising an alternate urine container. If it had been for myself or another

male, no problem-but females need a wider aperture. I shuffled past the sleeping Zoey and left the

bedroom, searching for inspiration.

By the time I found it, 1 had left our living quarters completely and wandered out into

Mary's Place proper.

Living in back of a tavern has been a lifelong dream of mine, and the reality has turned

out to be even better than I imagined. There, for instance, ranked in rows behind the bar, were a

plethora of acceptable receptacles. (Say that three times fast with marbles in your mouth and

you'll never need a dentist again.) Before selecting one, I-punched a combination into The Machine

and set a mug upright on its conveyor belt, which hummed into life and whisked the mug away into

the interior. Less than a minute later it emerged from the far side of The Machine, filled now

with fteih hot Tanzanian Peaberry coffee adulterated to my taste. I took it and the specimen

container I had chosen backinto the bedroom.

There are few things a very pregnant woman will wake up for, but peeing is definitely one

of them. Getting Zoey to a sitting. position on the side of the bed (without tipping over the

chamber pot) was probably less difficult than portaging a piano in rough country. The smell of

coffee must have helped. She took a long sip of it, then came fully awake when

- she recognized the receptacle I was offering her.

"Jake, I am not peethg into a stein."

"Oh hell, Zoey, what's its religion got to do with anything? It's wide enough, it's been

sterilized, it'sgot a lid I can tape shut after, we're out of specimen jars, just go ahead and get

it over with, okay? Whoever it is today will be here any minute."

My best friends in the world-AKA: my regular clientele-had organized what they insisted on

calling a PeePool; each morning one of them took a turn at coming by Mary's Place to pick up the

day's specimen and ferry itto the hospital for analysis. I had no idea whose turn it was today,

arid was too groggy to figure it out, but the way things were going I suspectçd it would be one of

the rare prompt ones.

Zoey thought it over and relaxed to the inevitable. She set the coffee down where I

couldn't reach it without stepping over her, deployed the stein above the thundermug, and cut

loose.

Sure enough, just as she finished, there was a thunderous knocking. A distant thunderous

knocking at the bar's front door.

That irritated me. Whoever it was could have just as easily come around to this side of

the building and knocked on the much-closer back door. As a gesture of my irritation, I tossed

aside the underpants I had just managed to locate, snatched the filled stein out of Zoey's hand,

and set off to answer the knock stark naked. "Jake-" Zoey called after me, and I snarled, "Whoever

it is has it coming," over my shoulder. For-the second time that day I padded Out of the living

area and into the bar, went through the swinging doors into the foyer, and flung open- the outside

door with a flourish.

And was vouchsafed a vision.

It had to be a vision. Reality, even the rather plastic kind I've learned to live with

over the years; sin~pIy could not-I felt-.produce a sight like that. Nor was it a mere

hallucination; I had not had a drink in many hours, or a toke in several days. The thing was so

weird that it took me a full second or two to learn to see it: at first my brain rejected what it

was given and searched for plausible alternatives.

This object is a fireplug-no, a fireplug's older fri-other-over which someone has draped a

very used painter's drop cloth, and onto the top of which someone has placed the severed head of a

pit bull. No, wait, pubulls don't have mustaches. Perhaps this is the secret midget son of Buddy

Hackett, wea-ting a paint-spattered toga as part c/his fraternity initiation. No, I have ii now:

this is R2D2 dressed for Halloween. Or maybe- We gaped at each other for a good five seconds of

silence, the vision and I, before I tentatively-and correctly- identified it as the ugliest woman

I had ever seen. The moment I didso, Iscreamed and jumped back a foot-and at the exact same

instant, she did the exact same thing.

The difference was, I was holding a nearly full stein.

The lid flew open when I started, and a glog of-the contents sailed out into the air; an

elongated fluid projectile, like a golden version of the second, liquid-metal-model Terminator. It

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caught her amidships and splattered, the splat sound overpowered by the clop? of the stein lid

slamming shut again.

There was a short pause, arid then she barked.

I mean barked, like a dog. In fact, yapped is closer to the sound she made-but doesn't

begin to convey the impact. Even "barked" isn't strong enough. Maybe "bayed." Imagine a two-

hundred-pound Pekingese with a bullhorn, and you've only started to imagine that sound. It was

something like all the fingernails in the world being drawn across all the blackboards in Hell and

then amplified through the Madison Square Garden sound system at maximum gain.

I shivered rather like a dog myself, blinked rapidly without effect, and felt my testicles

retreating into my trunk.

- The vision barked again, louder-a sound which you can duplicate for yourself if you wish

by simply inserting.a power drill into each ear simultaneously. As its echo faded, I heard the

distant sounds of Zoey approaching to investigate. She pushed the swinging doors open and joined

me in the foyer- stopped short and gaped.

The... I was finally beginning to believe it was a human woman, or something like one...

gaped hack at the two of us, staring from the naked hairy man to the extremely pregnant woman in

the ratty bathtobe. She opened her mouth to bark again, paused, blinked, looked down at the dafttp

stain on her chest, sniffed sharply-the sight of her hirsute nostrils flaring will go with me to

my grave-glared up at me, then at the stein in my hand, then back at me, then down at the stain on

her chest again, then one more time at Zoey, and finally she threw back her head and howled.

A couple of glasses burst behind the bar.

I heard them just before my hearing cutout completely, as though God had accidentally

overloaded the automatic level control on my tape deck. I know I tried to scream myself, but don't

know whether I succeeded. I alsO tried to jam my fingers into my ears, to stop the pain that

continued long after actual hearing had fled. Not only didn't it help a bit, the stein I had

abandoned to do so landed squarely on my bare right foot, with a crunch that I did hear, by bone

conduction, and sprayed the last of its contents. onto the creature's behaired shins, pilled

socks, and orthopedic shoes.

A pity, for it caused her to sustain her howl longer than she might have otherwise, and to

shake at me a fist like a small wrinkled ham.

Horrible as that shriek was-and it was, even without being audible-the end of it was

worse, for now she had to draw in breath for the next one, and so I saw her teeth. I. can see them

now. My eyes sent my btain an urgent message asking how come they had to stay on duty when my ears

had already bugged Out?

With that, my Guardian-Idiot snapped out of his stupor, and reminded me that I did not

have tt endure this trial any longer than I chose to. I closed the door quietly but firmly in her

face.

Then I stood on bne leg and cradled my mashed ioot in both hands and hopped in pain. Then

I lost my balance and fell down, for the third time that morning, on my bare ass, banging my head

again too. (For those of you who are connoisseurs of anguish, a hardwood floor is perceptibly

harder than either tub or tile.)

Zoey, bless her, did the only thing she could; she burst out laughing.

I did not join her. Not right away~ I tried a withering glare-but if age cannot wither nor

custom stale my Zoey, no glare of mine is going to do the trick. Then I thought about kicking her,

somewhere that wouldn't endanger Nameless- but now was not a good time to get beat up. Next I

opened my mouth to say something-deeming it safe because I assumed she was still as deafened as I

by the vision's banshee cry.

But before I could, I realized that the deafness must have worn off~ I could hear Zoey's

hoots of helpless hysteria, now, and the distant and fading sound of that monstrous barking

outside. So I closed my mouth, prepared a slightly less offensive speech, opened my mouth again .

. and clearly heard the sound of knocking.

Distant knocking. Not here-but at the back door, back in the bedroom. . where one of my

friends must be waiting to receive the daily beaker of piss.

Now I joined Zoey in laughing.

I just had to. it was that or go mad. The louder and more urgent the distant knocking

became, the harder we laughed. Finally I got up, collected the empty stein, and went, still

laughing, to answer the knock.

"What the hell was that?" Zoey asked as we walked back toward our quarters, wiping away

tears of laughter.

"I think it was a person," I said~ "I'm pretty sure it was a life-form of some kind,

anyway."

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"If you say so. I wonder what in God's name she wanted. What language was that she was

speaking?"

"I'm not sure she was evolved that far. Come on, hurry up,

Needless to~y, by the time we got to the back door to answer the knock, the knocker-Noah

Gonzalez-had given up and gone round to the front door. I left Zoey thete and retraced my steps

through the entire building-for the third time, before coffee,and got to the front door moments

after Noah had given up and gone round to the back door again.

That's it, I thought, I quit. I went as far as the bar, made a secOnd cup of coffee, and

vowed- not to move another step until I had finished drinking this one. Zoey and Noah must have

connected, and worked out for themselves the awkward business of him waiting in the bedroom while

she waddled into the bathroom and refilled the stein for him. (No problem for a pregnant lady.) By

the time she came out to find me, carrying my bathrobe, I was putting the finishing touches on the

lyrics of a new song.

It goes like this:

God has a sense of humour, but it's often rather crude

What He thinks is a howler, you or I would say is rude

But cursing Him is not a real productive attitude

Just laugh-you might as well, my friend,

'cause either way you're screwed

I know: it sounds so simple, and it's so hard to do

To laugh when the joke's on you

God loved Mort Sahl, Belushi, Lenny Bruce-He likes it sick

Fields, Chaplin, Keaton. . . anyone in pain will do the trick

'Cause God's idea of slapstick is to slap you with a stick:

You might as well resign yourself to steppin on your dick

It always sounds so simple, but it's so hard to do

To laugh when the joke's on you

You can laugh at a total stranger

When it isn't your ass in danger

And your lover can be a riot

-if you learn how to giggle quiet

But if you want the right w giggle, that is what you gotta do

when the person steppin on that old banana peel is you

A chump and a banana peel: the core of every joke

But when it's you that steps on one, your laughter tends to choke

Try not to take it personal,just have another toke

as long as you ain't broken, what's the difference if you're broke?

I know: it sounds so simple, but it's so hard to do

To laugh when the jokes on you

It can be hard to force a smile, as you get along-in years

It isn't easy laughin at your deepest secret fears

But try to find your funny bone, arid have a couple beers:

If it don't come out in laughter, man, it's comM out in tears

I said it sounds so simple, but it's so hard to do

To laugh when the joke's on you

The barking vision did not return. Within ten minutes, Zoey and I had crawled back into

bed, where we would enjoy a sound and undisturbed sleep, and nothing else awful or astonishing was

to happen after that until well after sundown.

But-had we but known it-the ending of Mary's Place had already begun.

CHAPTER 2 TOO FAR, EDNA: WE WANDER AFOOT

That evening started Out to be a fairly typical night. At least, by the standards of the

patrons of Mary's Place-and its proprietor and chief bartender: myself.

Not that the evening had been uneventful. By ten o'clock, just under thirty of us had put

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away about thirteen gallons of booze. . . though admittedly something over eleven gallons of that

had gone directly from their various bottles and kegs to the throat of Naggeneen, our resident

Irish cluricaune, without ever occupying the intervening space. (Like their cousins the

leprechauns, and indeed like all the Daoine Sidh, cluricaunes have paranormal psi powers-in their

case, the ability to teleport and absorb alcohol-and Naggeneen feels that pouring, lifting and

sipping are shameful wastes of good drinking time.) On the bright side, he paid for every drop he

drank, cash on the bar, in gold coin so pure it would take a toothmark. And, of course, he tended

to be a very agreeable drunk, neither pugnacious nor pathetic, neither morose nor maniac, both

merry and mannerly. I guess a few, hundred years of practice must count for something.

Thanks to our other resident Irish myth, Ernie Shea, the Lucky Duck-a half-breed pooka,.

around whom the iron laws of probability tend to turn into extremely silly putty- we had even had

a brief spell of weather indoors: at about nine o'clock one of the very few tornadoes in Long

Island's history had suddenly sprung up out of nowhere and lifted the roof clear off the place,

neat as you please, and scaled it away into the night like a Frisbee. The noise and suddenness of

the roof's departure startled us a bit, naturally (Doc Webster, though, rising to the occasion as

he so often does, glanced up nonchalantly and said, raising -his voice over the howling wind, "A

Gable roof, I see-gone with the wind."), and there can't be many sights sillier than a roomful of

people gaping up at rain falling on their faces . . . but fortunately it is not possible for any

of us at Mary's Place to get wet when it rains (thanks to an alien cyborg friend of ours-I'll get

to that later), and besides, by now we had all acquired a êertain sense of just how the Duck's

luck tends to run; we simply covered our drinks with our hands to prevent their dilution and

waited it out. Sure enough, another roof came along in a few minutes. It wa~ a good enough fit,

and apparently it arrived with all its nails bristling because it installed itself with a solidity

that we could hear and feel was reliable. Indeed, it turned out to be slightly better than the

roof I'd traded for it, in one respect: like its predecessor, ithad a built-in hatch kr rooftop

access-but this hatch was better positioned, farther away from the bar, so that I would now be

able to get a stairway up to it and allow my customers the option of doing their drinking under

the stars. (I'd have to put a fence around the roof, too, of course.)

After that, well, let's see. . . once the floor had dried -sufficiently, Ralph Von Wau Wau

the talking dog got out his latest sh6rt story and read it aloud to us, turning the pages

expertly with his muzzle and paws, and dropping, for the duration of the reading, that silly fake

accent he usually puts-on. (Well, okay, I have to admit-a German shepherd speaking-in a German

accent is kind of amusing.)

And after he was done and we finished applauding and commenting and petting him, and so

forth, we all spent a while chatting with the Internet. Not chatting on the Internet. Chatting

with the Internet...with its self-generated Artificially Intelligent avatar, whom my true love

Zoey had named Solace, and who had for several months now been manifesting herself, at infrequent

intervals, through the house's souped-up Mac H (augmented with camera and microphone). The chat

was of a fairly standard type: we tried to think of Turing Tests that Solace couldn't pass-and she

tried out a few Turing Tests of her own on us.

Like I say; a pretty routine night, for us-at Mary's Place. It was nearly ten o'clock

before anything I'd classify as weird happened.

Solace had just aced our latest homebrewed Turing Test, a speech recognition homonym-

discriminator devised by Doc Webster. This consisted of correctly displaying onscreen, as the Doc

dictated it, without perceptible pause for thought-the following nonsense sentence:

"I was musing on the Muse under some yews outside S.M.U.'s museum, as I'm used to doing,

when a kitten's musical mews drew me into the museum's mews, which some use-damn youse-to- sniff

mucilage for amusement."

This is, of course, just an extended variation on Heinlein's classic construct, "Though

the tough cough and hiccough plough him through," that is, a sentence designed to confound just

about any imaginable speech-recognition system short of a human brain or functional equivalent. As

far as I'm concerned; software capable of grokking that all six of Heinlein's different-sounds

are, spelled identically, or that the single repeating sound in the Doc's sentence can and must be

semantically interpreted thirteen different ways, is software that meets my criteria for

sentience, whether its neurons are wet or dry. (What matter if said sentience consists of "nothing

more than" a large sheaf of complex algorithtms. I don't know about you, but a good half the human

beings I run into on the street are, or seem to be, on automatic pilot: navigating by a series of

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prestored algorithms, clumsy primitive rules of thumb. Can't see that it makes any difference

whether the algorithms are expressed by meat, machine, or Martian.) As the last words of the Doc's

test sentence appeared onscreen, correctly spelled, a mild cheer went up from those ten or fifteen

patrons who were paying attention.

I'd like to pause there for just a second and preen, if I may. I think I have a right to

be a little proud: at age forty-five, I ran the kind of bar where a live, realtime chat with the

Net come alive was not necessarily the most interesting thing in the room. Over at the opposite

end of the house from the sparkling fireplace, for example, Ev and Don were playing tictac-toe

with smoke rings for an appreciative crowd of onlookers-don't ask me how Don can blow an X; all I

can tell you is they seem very happy with each other-and in another corner of the house, the Darts

Championship of the Universe (a weekly ritual) was in progress; the Lucky Duck had agreed to

accept as handicaps both a blindfold and the tying of both hands behind his back, and nonetheless

was clearly going to seize the crown from Tommy Janssen, the reigning champion; it was just a

matter of time. His luck was with him, you see.

But I digress.

As I was saying, Solace successfully displayed that silly sentence (in thirty-six-point

Benguiat font on her fourteeninch monitor, if you're a computer weenie. And by the way, did you

know that nanotechnology fans are known as "teeny weenies?") as fast as Doe Webster could say it,

and was applauded by something like a dozen onlookers. "Way to go, Solace," Long~Drink McGonnigle

called out.

"Thank you, Phil," Solace said. Ever since we had decided that Solace was more of a she

than a he, she had spoken aloud to us-through the stereo speakers I'd hooked up to the Mac II in a

warm contralto, not unlike Zoey's.

"Hell," the Drink went on, "these days there's probably Ph.D.s in English who couldn't

spell that sentence correctly. Even I might have had to hesitate a second.or two, here and there."

"These days there are Ph.D.s in English who can't spell 'Ph.D.,'" Tanya Latimer said

gloomily, and her husband Isham nodded agreement.

Marty Matthias spoke up. "My grade twelve students at St. Dominic's all did rotten on the

last exam I gave them. So to try and cheer them, up a little, I told them the inspirational story

of how Albert Einstein himself failed math when he was in school, right? A hand goes up in the

back of the room. 'Mr. Matthias,' he says, not kidding, honestly puzzled, 'I don't get it. If he

was so iousy in school and everything.. . how come they called him "Einstein"?'"

There were cries of horror, outrage and protest. But no disbelief.

"I didn't know what to say. I stood there with my mouth open until the bell rang."

Doc Webster sighed. "It's the 'Tood and Janey' effect," he announced.

"The which?" Long-Drink asked.

"Creeping---no, galloping-illiteracy. The township repaired the sidewalks in my

neighborhood recently, poured fresh concrete, you know? Naturally kids with popsicle sticks

condensed out of the ether, to immortalize themselves with. . . uh . -. concrete poetty." Groans.

"Well sir, right in front of my house, where I have to look at it every time I go out, there is

now inscribed a large heart, within which lie the dread words, 'TOOD AND JANEY'

"Huh?" chorused half a dozen people at once.

"I know the world has gotten weird lately," the Doc went on, "but I still don't believe

we've reached the point where any set of parents would name their son 'Tood.' I'm forced to

conclude that young Todd can't spell his own fucking name." This brought shocked laughter. "Old

enough to be horny for Janey, mind you, and the boy can't spell his name. Miracle he got hers

right; her mom must have sewn name tags onto her underwear." That got even more laughter.

Long~Drmnk shook his head. "How much you want to bet her name is Jeanie?" he asked, and

the laughter redoubled.

"Wait, I got a topper," Tommy Janssen said. The Lucky Duck had just finished skunking him

at darts-tossing all five shots with his teeth and then punting them into the bullseye, with his

own eyes closed-and Tommy had naturally gravitated to the nearest source of laughter to soothe his

wounds. "I was in the men's room .down at the library, and I was reading the graffiti on the wall

of the stall, - to iass the time, right? And at first I was bummed out, because all the ones I saw

were racist. But then a pattern began to emerge, and I cheered up a little. The first one I saw

said, 'Pakis' suck' . . but the author had spelled 'Pakis' P-A-K-I-S-apostophe. The next one read,

'KKK-the clan is back,' only 'clan' was spelled with a c instead of a k! But the third one was the

best: he was trying to say, 'Death to anyone wearing a turban'.. . but the last word was spelled T-

U-R-B-I-N-E!" By now people were whooping. "Which as far as I know lets out everybody but Mickey

Finn, and maybe the Terminator. So the bad news is, racistt~ is on the rise. . . but the good news

is, they're even stupider than ever!" The laughter became applause, and a number of empty glasses

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sailed across the room and met in the fireplace with a musical sound.

I think it was about then that I first noticed the newcomer enter my bar.

I remember wondering if a barrage of flying glasses was going to put him off. Newcomers to

Mary's Place-and we don't get many, for I don't advertise, and there's no sign outside-sometimes

take a while to dope out that all the silicon shells are ending up in the fireplace. But this guy

seemed to take a rain of glasses in stride. It even seemed to tickle him. I liked him for that.

He was about fifty or so, close on to six foot, clean-shaven with short gray hair (which

was dry; the rain must have stopped outside), dressed casual and cheap-save for an exceptionally

fine pair of boots that looked like some kind of exotic endangered lizard's skin. When I saw their

heels I revised my estimate of his height downward by several inches. Since he carried an acoustic-

guitar case, I took him for a fellow musician, who had heard about Mary's Place through the

folkies' grapevine.

He must have observed a couple of toasts being made, as he covered the distance from the

door to the bar. I believe Doc Webster started it, toasting, "To the American educational system,

God bless it," and flinging his empty glass into the fire. And then Tommy stepped up and replaced

him at the chalk line, said, "Literates:-next on Oprah," drained his own beer, and unloaded his

own empty into the flames. ~nyway, by the time the new guy bellied up to-the bar, he seemed from

his expression to have intuitively grasped the essential nature of our most central custom-and!

could see he approved of it. More points for alertness and class. "What'll it be, friend?" I said,

going through that silly little ritual of pretending to polish the bartop in front of him.

"A cold day in Hell before I find another bar as interesting as this one," he said

agreeably. (I agreed with him, anyway.) "Not many innkeepers let you smash your glass in their

hearth anymore these days." He held up his guitar case. 'Okay if! set this thing on the bar a

minute?"

It was a big case, but there was ample room. "Sure. Let me mop up.some of the spills and

circles for you-"

"No need," he said, and set the case down on the bar. "I won't be needing the case much

longer."

I was finding him as interesting as he found my bar. "Why not?" I asked him.

He was fumbling with the latches. "I intend to empty it for good." He got the last one

open and lifted the lid. It blocked my view of whatever was in the case, and I wrestled with the

question of whether it would be polite-or prudent-to shift my position a little and sneak a glance

over the opened lid. What kind of guitar was this man proposing to destroy? Or was that a machine

gun in there?

Standing behind him, Noah Gonzalez suddenly did a double-take then made it a triple,

gaping at the open case. That decided me. But before I could move forward, the stranger plucked

something from the case, took it at either end with his fingertips, and snapped it taut.

It was, or appeared to be, a one-hundred-dollar bill.

Noah nudged his nearest neighbor, Suzy Maser, directed her attention to the stranger and

his guitar case, and Suzy did what may have been the first qoadruple-take I've ever seen.

A crisp new hundred-dollar bill, it looked to be: he folded it lengthwise and it took a

crease between his fingernails. He folded one corner over to meet the central crease, then did the

same with the resulting new corner. Then he repeated the procedure with the opposite corner. By

now Noah and Suzy were no longer the only ones staring.

I glanced over the lid. That entire jumbo guitar case was packed with what seemed to be

genuine U.S. currency, all of it-or at least all the ones visible on top of each banded stack-

crisp starchy hundred-dollar bills. I knew less than an innkeeper probably really ought to know

about spotting counterfeit money, but these looked pretty good to me. My intuition told me they

were genuine. I couldn't estimate the total; but something told me it would have the word

"million" in it somewhere, quite possibly in the plural.

I looked back up at the stranger. He had folded one raked outer edge back to meet the

central crease, and was doing the same with the other. Maybe half my customers were discreetly

watching now; the bu2z of conversation faltered.

By the time I had allowed myself to believe that I was watching a man make a paper

airplane out of a hundreddollar bill, he had it airworthy. He grinned briefly at me, turned around

to face the fireplace, and let fly.

The bill soared gracefully across the room. By the time it arrived at the hearth, most of

the eyes in the Place were tracking it. It was damned -well aimed. The sudden updraft over the

flames made it try to climb up the chimney, but too abruptly: it stalled, rolled out, and angered

into a chunk of birch, falling over and bursting into flame.

All eyes traveled back to the stranger. I guess he'd been confident of his aim he was

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already halfway through the next C-note/airplane..

The general reaction was unanimous. Once people were satisfied that he had torched the

bill intentionally, and meant to continue doing so for a while, they politely looked away and went

back about their own business. The noise level in the robm went back up to normal.

Oh, no doubt many of them discussed the stranger but did so in politely hushed tones,

without any unseemly gawking or pointing. I stared at the guy closely, but I had professional

obligations. I figure if a man comes - into my bar and starts setting cash on fire, I have a moral

duty to assure myself that he isn't drunk before I decide whether to sell him liquor. I'm much

better at detecting drunkenness than I am at detecting counterfeit money, and it was clear to me

that while he was not cold sober, neither was he near bombed enough to call for intervention.

"Want any help with that, cousin?" I asked.

Our combined reaction-or rather, lack of it-delighted him as much as our glass-smashing

custom had. "Why, thanks," he said, and gestured for me to help myself.

I signaled Tom Hauptman, my backup bartender, to take over the job of keeping everybody

else's glasses refilled. He nodded and went to work with the industry you'd expect of a former

minister. So I busted the paper tape off another stack of hundreds and fashioned the top bill into

a paper airplane. When I had it done, I set it close to the newcomer's hand and built another.

Soon we had sorted it into a system: I made the planes and he launched them. The only attention

anyone else paid was to make sure they didn't wander into his line of fire. His aim was

impressive. Before too long he had to pause and wait for the pile of crashed C-planes to burn down

a bit, so that new arrivals wouldn't spill out ontp the floor.

"This is really nice of you," he said. "This was going to be my last attempt before I gave

up the whole idea. The last three places I tried this, people got very upset."

I nodded. "I can see how that could be. Riots have started over less."

"The third time I picked a really upscale bar, a Hampton joint where a Coke cost five

bucks and a rum-and-Coke cost ten, on the theory that people who actually had money to bum would

be the least upset to see it done. Hah! I thought they were going to merrill-lynch me. I had

blasphemed their religion. How many rum-and-Cokes will this buy me here?" He offered me one of his

pale green aircraft.

"None at all," I told him. "I'm afraid I deal in nothing but one-dollar bills."

"Singles? Seriously? How come?"

I shrugged. "House custom. Call it. . . homage to the memory of a departed friend Long

story."

He grinned. "Do you actually mean to tell me that with a guitar case full of hundred-

dollar bills, I can't get a drink in here? Oh, that's marvelous!"

"Well,"! said, "I judge you to be a special case. How about if on a one-time basis, I

change one of those into singles for you?"

He looked thoughtful. "How many drinks would a hundred singles buy me? Hypothetically."

"That depends."

"Say they were all rum-and-Cokes."

I shook my head. "That's not what it depends on. Every drink in the house, from Coke to

Irish coffee to champagne, costs three dollars. But if you turn in your empty glass or mug or

whatever, you get to take a dollar back from the cigar box over there." I pointed it out, down at

the end of the bar closest to the door. "So, hypothetically speaking ... well, let's see:

ninety-nine singles would buy you thirty-three drinks-but if you dIdn't toss any of your empties

into the fireplace, you'd be entitled to raid the cigar box for another thirty-three singles,

treat yourself to eleven more drinks, then go get eleven singles from the box, add 'em to the

dollar you still had left over from your original hundred and have four more snorts for a

nightcap, then take four singles, have one more for the road, and walk out with a buck in your

pants. Plus whatever leftover hundred-dollar bills you don't have time to burn by closing, if any.

This is just theoretical, of course: I wouldn't sell a man forty-nine glasses of orange juice. And

I'd cut you off Once you were down to cab fare~ I don't let anyone leave here drunk with their car

keys. But it comes down to, three bucks a drink, a dollar back if you return your empty."

He was stating at the cigar box, sitting there unattended at the end of the bar, singles

spilling over its sides. "What keeps anyone from filching a fistful of those on their way out?"

he asked.

I shrugged again. "Honesty? Integrity? Self-respect? Enlightened self-interest?"

He grinned delightedly. His grin was almost manic, his gaze intense. "I'm beginning to

like this place. You don't find many bars with a flat rate-much less a Free Lunch of dollar bills.

But look here: if I let you break that yard. . . well, let's say I'll have three or four drinks,

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file:///F|/rah/Spider%20Robinson/TXT%20-%20Spider%20Robinson%20-%207%20-\%20Callahan's%20Legacy.txtACKNOWLEDGMENTSThisbookcouldn'thavebeenbegunwithouttheassistanceofmyingeniou\sbrother-in-law,JohnMoore-whobroughttomyattention,anddocumentedformeatgreatlength\,anexistingforcewhichwouldbeconsideredirre...

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