Текст книги "The Cross of Gold Affair"

Автор книги: Fredric Davies

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

“Be prepared to stick my neck in the noose with yours, is more like it. The quickest approach would get me there early tomorrow, right under the heaviest shipping lanes; what do you think the harbor police will say to an atomic submarine spinning up to your pier?”

“No need, no need,” said Porpoise, shaking his bald head vigorously. “You get close, close enough to catch me if I flit out of here, and I’ll take care of the rest. You can be hovering outside the harbor by sunrise, I know. Wait there, and send me a signal. I’ve got to be covered in case those dolts let him escape. Now, get back to steering, or feeding rocks to your reactor, or whatever you do. I’ve got a hundred affairs to clean up before I can begin to be ready for U.N.C.L.E.”

The Canary’s captain turned into a colorful pattern on the screen. The nervousness that Porpoise had tried to conceal during the call took control again, and he sped over to the pool’s edge near Apis.

“Get my saucer free and ready,” he said, words tumbling over themselves as he manuevered the seachair, wiped away beads of seat, and waved both arms at his tame giant. “And I want my wetsuit, and …” He stopped his gush of words as he looked beyond Apis at the flashing lights on the console. He fell back into the water, and relaxation washed over him.

Apis had anticipated the order in a rare burst of inspiration and had already triggered a series of remote mechanisms into activity from his console. Below the pier, a steel underbelly had cracked outward like the egg of a mammoth bird, revealing the swimming-pool’s true bottom and a saucer-shaped ornament hanging from it.

One by one various devices performed their appointed tasks, freeing the vessel from its mooring and placing it lightly on the edges of the metallic eggshell. It rested there, ready for use, while it hummed and responded in the careful check-out procedures Apis controlled. When the consoles ready-lights flashed, Porpoise had good reason to relax and chuckle up at Apis. He was prepared to flee the amusement pier on any alarm in his two-man submarine, a 1966 French design that would just hold his bulk. It looked like a flying saucer, and no nation’s underwater program had developed a swifter search-and-recovery vessel. At depths to 200 feet, the saucer cut through the sea faster than man had ever been able to travel in the ocean. Its master could now cheerfully plan to escape any unwelcome callers.

A smile broke Apis’ craggy features as his master burbled for joy in the water. Suddenly the signals from below were interrupted by a slow bell ringing. Apis twisted back to scan the board, and lashed out one long arm to press a button.

Light swam over the ceiling televideo screen again and resolved into the side view of a man’s face. Care and cat-alertness furrowed the brow. One hand reached up to push back straight blond hair.

“That’s the camera in Hawk Carse’s pistol,” said Apis, hoping his temperamental boss wouldn’t blame him for the intruder.

He needn’t have worried. Porpoise leaned back to make himself comfortable, and locked his pudgy fingers together in an embrace of Oriental luxuriousness over his tummy. He smiled with deep warmth at the face on the ceiling. “Now fancy that,” he said, more to himself than to Apis. “Long before Napoleon Solo could have alerted U.N.C.L.E., Mr. Illya Kuryakin has followed that wight into our lair. Direct a parabolic mike over here, Apis, and let me speak to our visitor.”

A sign in the center of the room told Illya he was in the future’s hall of fame, and he straightened up to look around at the shapes nearby. Directly in front of him a figure labeled captain future was aiming a ray-pistol at a Bug Eyed Monster carrying off a frightened bikini-clad girl in a transparent spacesuit. Nearby, a Gemini astronaut posed upside-down in a contortion that was meant to seem like free-fall. Side by side, the “Hall of Fame” paid tribute to Virgil Grissom, Kimball Kinnison, Von Braun and Robbie the Robot.

Illya stepped back warily to scan the rest of the room, and received a rude prod from another figure. He turned and found himself in the middle of a tableau showing the exploration of an alien planet, face to face with a somber individual who frowned right back at him. 1 bet when Mr. Waverly was younger he looked a lot like that, he thought, examining the serious, analytical set of the statues eyes. That is, if he had pointy ears, green skin and black bangs.

The statue of “Space Hawk” Carse pointed to an exit from the museum with his ray-gun, and Illya paused before him to scout the next room. All looked safe, and he brushed his hair back from his eyes before stepping in.

As he stepped through the opening, a blur of motion beside the door triggered every suspicious reflex in his body. The U.N.C.L.E. Special spat twice as he rolled across the floor, ending in a crouch against the opposite wall. The hulk by the door pulled back, and Illya fired again.

Papier mache crumpled, and the animated B.E.M. shuddered in a mechanical death-rattle.

“Wonderful!” said Illya. “Now I’ve killed an alien creature, without even knowing what planet it came from. Napoleon, if you aren’t in here somewhere, I’m never going to forgive you.”

Beyond the defunct hulk were more aliens. What might have been overgrown potato bugs or magnified lizards wore labels proclaiming them grulzak, fontema, and space unicorn. Some moved as he tripped electric eyes, others flashed lights at him, and one purred. He was quite happy to leave the Alien Room behind. With a casual “Sorry to shoot and run” directed to the defunct B.E.M., he stepped into the mirrored Space Maze.

“If you stand perfectly still, Mr. Kuryakin, you will be in no danger.”

The Russian skipped quickly behind a partition, looking for the speaker, and twisted angrily when he realized he’d been duped. His first step had been enough to take him wholly into the maze, and as he turned again a steel door snapped across the opening.

“Tut, tut,” said the voice, so finely projected that Illya had trouble believing the words weren’t being spoken next to him. “Now you’ve done it. Before you move again, you should know that the mirror directly to your left will explode on slightest contact.”

Illya glanced left, to see his reflection glancing right. A hundred fine lines cut eerily across his image. A hundred fine wires embedded in the glass, each carrying enough energy to hurl glass splinters completely through him. He now had reason enough for believing the voice.

“Now then. We have established that you cannot go backwards, and you can only progress through the maze by careful attention to directions. For instance, step carefully on the runner strip dividing the rooms before you go forward, or you will be cut down by a crisscross of laser beams. Be sure to step into each new room exactly when I tell you to. I’m turning off such traps as I control before you, and I’m turning them on again directly.

Step by step Illya followed his unseen guide through the

maze. It was a bit testy, tiptoe edging through the glass Space-Warp Room, and jumping across a trapdoor advertised to drop him into the 356th Chorp Dimension-or perhaps into the ocean. In a chamber of see-through futuristic machines his left-ring finger accidentally brushed a Cosmic Energy Spacedrive. The Spacedrive was wired for energy considerably beyond house current, and the shock threw him violently against a wall. Gas spewed out, doubling him up in a coughing spasm.

“You have been distressingly clumsy,” said the voice, “but perhaps we can save you from your own mistakes. Keep low, and walk straight ahead quickly.” With minute care to each step Illya followed directions, finally emerging into a safe room, wiping tears from his eyes. The coughing stayed with him, but fans started working near the Spacedrive exhibit, and the gas was dispersed.

“Mr. Kuryakin, you must be more careful. You must not touch anything you aren’t explicitly ordered to touch. If you are recovered, please step along the curved walkway before you.”

Beneath his feet ran the rings of Saturn, sprinkled generously with shards of mirror, an illusion created on glass flooring by projection from below. Meteorites sped by silently, and the walls were darkened to give the illusion of limitless space. The maze was tricky enough in the summertime without the death-laden pitfalls, but in the off-season for tourists it was sweaty palms all the way.

While balancing on the “rings” and trying to keep from touching the walls or tripping over the broken mirror, Illya covertly reached into his jacket and turned on his U.N.C.L.E. communicator. He raised his voice well above conversational level, hoping the Thrush monitoring him would assume the maze was upsetting him.

“Is this right?” he half-shouted. “It’s dark in here. Am I on the open channel?” With any luck, the U.N.C.L.E. switchboard would recognize a distress call and relay him through Enforcement without answering.

“Take the communicator out of your pocket,” said the voice from above. “Hold it up so I can see it plainly.”

He sighed, stopped walking in the darkness and held out

his communicator. He must have been seen turning it on, even in the pitch-black of outer space.

“We can’t let you call for help, I’m afraid. That is a compact little instrument, however; I congratulate your technicians.” With that, a beam burned out from a wall and the fountain-pen communicator became scorchingly hot. It clattered to the floor as Illya’s burned fingers recoiled. “If you’d been holding it just a bit differently, I’d have had to drive the beam through your hand. It’s just a touch more complicated destroying those things than it is building them.”

At the end of the Saturn promenade were more small rooms requiring quick and careful movements. A run across one room and a flat jump across the next brought Illya face to face with a steel door.

“No, Mr. Kuryakin, you are not walking in a circle. This is the other end of the maze.” The door slid open, and he found himself in the small Space Ship Room that Napoleon had so recently exited. ‘Tour friend Mr. Solo didn’t like our company, but I’m certain we can persuade you to spend a little more time with us. There is so much we have to discuss.”

Illya fingered the bottom button of his jacket. Detached, it became a small concussion grenade. Now just open one more door, he thought, stepping toward the spacelock that led to Thrush’s inner sanctum. Aloud, he said, “I’m looking forward to meeting you, but I really can’t stay, especially if Napoleon has already decided to leave. He’s my advance scout, you know. If he turns thumbs down on your accommodations, I’m sure there’s nothing more to be said.”

“The decision is not yours,” said the voice from beyond the door. A swishing sound behind warned him an instant too late. Blackness descended as a Thrush blackjack caught him neatly behind the ear.

Section IK : “By the beautiful sea.”

Chapter 9

“Anybody who swings can’t be all bad.”

Only anger kept Napoleon alive. The wet cold closed over his head and there was nothing underneath but more wet, more cold. In the total body cramp that grabbed him and pulled him under, anger turned into a ball of fire that started in his skull, at the back, and worked into bright, strong fury coursing down his spine.

I just did the impossible, he thought, forcing his hands to uncurl and stretch out. I got here through a hell that would give Dante bad dreams, and I’m not going to be cheated of it by drowning! He forced one, then both legs straight. The cramp pain from the bottoms of his feet shot through his thighs, into his bowels and turned the world black again. No! No! No! he thought angrily. Somehow he made both legs kick, and his head broke surface. Somehow he brought air into his lungs and put back together the pieces of Napoleon Solo.

He floated until he could move both arms and both legs, ignoring the pain. He wanted to cry, and lick his hands, and the blazing touch of salt and cold shot through him down to the navel roots. Flushed, he floated until he realized that the choppy sea was carrying him back into the pilings.

Sanity and some strength returned. Through force of will he held himself still in the near freezing waters, letting the cold numb out his lacerations. Paddling, still on his back, he prayed once more to the patron saint of spies, to keep him

in the dark, and safe from Thrush eyes. More strength returned, and he attempted a single side stroke with some success. ,

Two choices, he thought. Straight in under the pier and trust to luck, or swim down the beach and trust to … Straight in it is, then. The strength for swimming came from some unknown energy source designed for the men who live for danger, and he knew he had to make it in, near the barnacle-covered pilings, because the other path was wide open under starlight.

After all9 he thought, Coney Island is hardly the most exotic place in the world to buy mine. In a job like this 1 could get killed in any of the most glamorous resorts in the world. Nearly have, in point of fact, in most of them. 1 think Td rather get it at Cannes or Trieste.

In his imagination, warm summers on the Mediterranean came back, and the arm-over-arm picked up from a feeble effort to become a rhythm. Memories pushed away the dismal Coney beach, and he was swimming up to another beach far away, an esoteric little strip of sand he knew in Europe, far away from hot-dog crazy crowds, where he had thought he could forget about secrets and death for a while. Adrenalin pumped through him, and a sudden mouthful of briny Atlantic reminded him that even that swim had only been half an eyeblink between fights for his life. He stroked, and began to feel fully in control of himself again, back in harness even with his pants wrapped around one arm.

A small roller wave carried him full-tilt up onto the sand, and all at once the enchantment of his swim was gone. Far from a fight and farther from the Mediterranean summer, he lay on the beach in sodden flannel clothes, mouth crammed with salt and grit, and the cold night air hit him like a shot point blank from a magnum rifle. The water in his clothes and on his body weighed like ten men the size of Avery Porpoise, and the winter freeze settled into his shoes and socks. He always wondered after that evening how that much pain, cold and exhaustion could be overcome; but overcome it he did, slowly heaving to hands and knees, and then to a cautious crouch, hopping further away from the tide.

He stopped spitting out sand when he saw a lean figure silhouetted against the ferris wheel skyline of the amusement centers. Solo went into action, every muscle rejoicing that he was back on dry land and mixing with a human foe instead of the inscrutable Atlantic.

Keeping low, he ran quickly up the beach intending to tackle whoever was standing guard by Thrush s pier, and ask some pointed questions with one knee in the fellows stomach. It had to be quick, bare hands against whatever weapons the sentry had. Despite the drag of his wet shoes he was moving at top speed when he left the ground in a flying tackle. The weight of him and the extra weight of tons of cold water leaped hard, aimed to hit dead amidships.

Not more than a heartbeat separated him from his target when he was blasted out of the sky by a second dark figure, thrown to the ground and pinned.

“Curse you, Red Baron,” he wheezed, trying to breathe around the knee dug firmly into his stomach. “What kind of welcome is this for a poor immigrant just off the ship, anyway?”

Dimly, Napoleon could see that he was held down by two young men dressed entirely in dark denim. But they didn’t wear the little berets that marked Thrush, and objects about them rattled in musical beats when they moved. The one standing asked him, “Just off the boat, why’d you come on like White Fang? All I need this evening is some joker trying to jump for my throat on the beach.”

“Well-” said Napoleon. But the youngster kneeling on him interrupted and pressed harder on his stomach.

“Not well, man, not well at all. Here we are innocently promenading the strand, when we see you doing Lloyd Bridges in the dark. Charlie stops to watch and I lay down. No provocation whatsoever-were just digging. Yet all of a sudden you try to jump Charlie. What kind of a game, that’s all we want to know.”

“And what are you doing out swimming on 3 night like this? You think he’s some kind of health nut, Andy?”

“No,” answered the kneeler, “the health nuts wear union suits or nothing at all. This one is dressed like a very dippy banker or something, complete with shoes.”

“Yeah, shoes. You should hear yourself tippy-toeing up on somebody in soggy shoes. Wow.”

“But-” said Napoleon.

“And breathing,” said Andy, shaking his head mournfully over Napoleon in the dark. “You may just not work out enough, friend, but your wind stinks. You ought to work out more; run some.”

“Sand you got; wind no.” Both of them looked down at him and waited to hear what he had to say.

Napoleon thought wryly of the chase he’d given three Thrushes just a few hours ago, but he couldn’t get breath enough for boasting. The youth holding him down, Andy, couldn’t weigh over 140, but that sat on him like a dozen anvils after the night’s workout. Until that knee raised up, he was likely to remain a fixture on the coast of Kings County.

“You men,” he gasped, “don’t want me to catch my death of cold.” At that, he felt the salt water in this throat was giving more than a touch of diseased hoarseness to his voice. “Why don’t we talk this over? I assure you there was every reason for me to be wary of anyone I saw.”

With no more than a nod between them, Charlie and Andy had Napoleon on his feet, with both arms whipped up behind him and both hands bent uncomfortably in a good imitation of a police come-along. If he pulled away, one or both wrists would probably snap with some small attendant pain. He decided his body had suffered enough tonight, and he could content himself with dragging in great volumes of air to fill his aching lungs. Let them lead on, since obviously they had no connection with Thrush. Even a pair of rough-and-tumble experts were better company than Porpoise and his crew of funhouse crazy thugs.

He stumbled almost unnoticeably as they prodded him, firmly held, across the beach. His breathing and pulse slowed down, and the stumbling vanished. All his control was coming back to maximum, despite the cold and his weakness.

He almost sacrificed a broken wrist in the heart-stopping moment when their goal seemed to be the Thrush amusement pier. But before he fully tensed to spring free, a

flicker of fire showed beneath the pier’s base, and he realized his beach-bum friends were heading for a camp directly underneath Porpoise’s hideout.

“Lovely place for a beach fire,” he said idly. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll bum down the pier?”

“No use for the pier,” replied Andy, amid clankings from his clothes that continued to arouse Napoleon’s curiosity. “The old matzoh-brain who owns it gets no time of day from us. We bum him down, he’ll just build another one.”

“We just hang around, and sneak into the funhouse sometimes. Summers, the barker can’t keep track who goes in, so we spend more time in than out. If we break something, or if we need to borrow the day’s receipts, he breaks out in green splotches, but he never yells for the fuzz.” Charlie shifted his grip on Napoleon for security as they got under the pier, and continued. “There’s a live-in herd of muscle up there, they come on like a riot squad when we make enough trouble. So don’t talk too loud-you wouldn’t like them either.”

A girl’s voice cut in on them: “Hey, a visitor!” They stopped just before the fire, and Napoleon saw the girl, sitting across the flames from him, red and yellow light picking out fair skin, coal-black hair, and a garland of flowers on her head from ear around to ear. “What have you got there, Andy? Put him down so we can talk.”

His arms free, Napoleon moved as close to the fire as he could. He brushed himself off, making each motion do double duty, cleaning the sand from him and warming his numbed body. The bleeding had stopped during his swim, but both hands were still embedded with splinters and sand, and as he chafed them warm again he realized how much damage had been done.

A covert glance at the young lady’s grin reminded him that he was still wearing his trousers wrapped around one arm. She watched him straighten them out and force his feet down each leg. She watched him button them, and curse when the zipper fouled in soft cloth. She sat grinning through his whole performance, until he finally shook all over once, and stood up.

“Your boxer shorts are flower-patterned,” she said.

“My boxer shorts regret being flower-patterned,” said Napoleon in his best Old World courtly manner. “They were not consulted before being brought here.”

“Hey, I wasn’t complaining. I think you’ve got the grooviest underpants this side of the East River.” She reached up with both hands and pushed her hair back over her shoulders, and he watched. He was pleased with her broad forehead and narrow chin, but he wished he was sure what the happy smile meant. s

“You know, you beat all,” she said. “If that’s the costume for this winter’s surfers, we’ll just have to close the beach to keep me from going into hysterics.” She rested her head on one fist, elbow on knee, and both her eyes sparkled with laughter. Napoleon looked down at himself, and at them. They were all in the same somber levis, the remains of denim jackets, and flowers. But they looked ready for high society compared to him.

The moebius twisting he’d had to use to escape from Porpoise had ripped his pants legs, and salt water had ruined the rest of a new flannel suit. His shoes looked like chewed cardboard, and it was anybody’s guess what his hair was like.

“Well,” he said, “the party got sort of rough on my yacht. People drinking and getting sort of physical, you know. When the whole thing got into one big hot pile of bodies, I must have had too much and just jumped overboard.”

“Sure,” said Charlie calmly. “You swam ashore from a boat we didn’t see, or else it’s running sadly amiss in the legal lights department. You must have come in from outside the three-mile limit for us not to see it.” He picked his teeth with a daisy stem, and moved his eyes up and down Napoleon. “Try again. Only this time let’s start with a jump off the pier. I think we’ll buy a try at suicide, if you throw in the reason your clothes are all slashed.”

Napoleon looked at the girl, who’d stopped laughing at him. “You won’t buy suicide, will you?”

“Nope. Look at him, you two. He’s trying to figure some way away from here right now, and every time we mention the pier, he flinches. Looks to me like he’s got trouble with the boys upstairs.”

Napoleon looked around at two boys in their early twenties, and a girl who might have been eighteen, but no more. “I’m not off a boat, and I didn’t attempt suicide,” he said, “but I did come from the pier. If they grab me again, they probably won’t let me go in nearly this good a condition. I need to get as far from here as possible, preferably back to the city. I need clothes, food and first aid, and they’re all back in Manhattan for me.”

She stood up and walked around the fire, which allowed him to turn and warm his backside. With his teeth no longer chattering, he could concentrate on the strange pretty girl, with her dark hair hanging free, decked with flowers, tiny bells and clay jewelry, before an open fire on the sand. Night winds moved under the pier to push hair from her face and make tinglings among her bells, building a picture of witchery that made him shiver.

“We’ll take you,” she said.

“You off your nut?” said Andy. “If the hired apes upstairs catch us with him, well all take a real bad trip!

“Besides,” said Charlie, “who wants to leave the fire? We’ve been out on the beach since sundown, and it’s anything but summer. Come off it, Mai-let him go, but don’t mix us in.”

She laughed, and looked right at Napoleon. Her foot kicked twice, and the fire was nearly smothered with heavy sand. “There’s no action out there yet, or you ought to have seen it. When they decide to go looking for him, they’ll charge out yelling and flashing lights, like when we steal something. You know there isn’t one brain to share around for all of them, except Arnold, and he usually has to stay back to hold Fatty’s hand. Anytime I can’t take a herd of camels through one of their search parties, I’ll throw away my retrievable subway token.” She stopped in the night to chuckle right in Napoleon’s face.

“Besides, he’s got flowers on his shorts, so he’s cool. He doesn’t look like much all cut up and half-drowned, but he comes on right; he doesn’t give an inch. Anybody who swings can’t be all bad.”

And like that, the four of them were heading across the sand, with Napoleon dose to the girl, flanked by her mascots.

Keeping his voice down, he asked her, “What’s Mai short for?”

“It’s kind of Greek,” she said. “My full name is Phroso Popia Boulis, but that was good for when I lived at home. Not now.” With one hand she indicated the direction of Brooklyn and brushed her hair back over one shoulder in a single wide sweep, continuing to drive a long, fast pace over the sand. “I was raised near 50th Street, good Greek Orthodox family. When things started seeming a little silly, I split. And if you don’t get married or hit college at that age, you end up a part of some gang. For a couple months I worked in a store, and ran with a bunch of ragged-ass kids, mostly Greek and Puerto Rican.” As they hurdled the boardwalk at a low point it occurred to Napoleon that this was a long explanation for such a short name. He hadn’t time to say anything to her, though, because as all four of them came up onto the boardwalk two Thrushes appeared from shadows and the furtive beach ramble turned into a free-for-all.

Napoleon ran head-on into one of the hoodlums and caught a blackjack across his forearm before he could put his left hand into the man’s solar plexus. Turning, he found Andy sitting piggy-back on the other one, with Charlie doing a land of half-twist to put his bare heel into the Thrush’s groin.

“Hurry!” whispered Mai. “There’s more of them along the walk!” She stopped to hit each of the unconscious Thrushes quickly behind the ear, and then noises from both sides made them hurry off through Coney.

“The bugger tried to bite me,” muttered Andy, while they did four statue imitations in shadow. Mai shushed him.

When two more Thrush agents came together over the unconscious pair, took counsel and split up into the darkness between buildings, Mai took her brood out again. They loped along for four blocks, springing across lighted area, and finally the urgency quieted down. “I think they’re looking for us to be quivering in a comer back there near the bodies,” said Mai. “If we loop over now and head for the coffee-house area, we won’t cover any place they’ll be

looking.” At a quick walk, she led Napoleon while Andy took point and Charlie covered the rear.

“So the P.R.s never bothered me, but the other Greek kids did. They figured they were big men, and kept after me one way and another. I finally learned to stop saying no, because when I just stood and said, Oh, yes, indeed/ they got all hot and bothered, and got close enough for me to half murder ‘em.” She smiled wickedly through her hair at him. “I got to be sort of famous at dirty fighting in my own gang,” she beamed, “and got named for it. Mai is short for ‘Malista’ my nickname. It means Yes, indeed/ in Greek.”

Napoleon smiled in the night. When the two from Thrush jumped out at them, he hadn’t seen Mai raise a finger. The boys had let him do his share, and they’d taken care of the other one with vicious teamwork. Yet he had a feeling both Thrushes wouldn’t have stood a chance against this snip of a girl.

For a while, as they got further from the beach toward brighter street lights, they hurried and Napoleon decided not to say anything when he could use the energy to keep up with his trio of guards. Charlie and Andy kept an alert lookout for more black-clad men or for the more dangerous street-wanderers who might call up a local gang. They waited in a space between buildings near an open nightclub, and while they watched for cabs he wondered how rugged life might be in a Brooklyn tenement. If a clear-eyed pretty girl like Mai chose a gang for a second family, things must have gotten way past ten-to-a-room at home.

“Now you live out?” he asked her. “No place in out of the snow?”

“Not much snow yet this year,” she said, “and when it comes we’ll do just like last year. Sleep on subways, in johns, in that funhouse you bust out of, or more likely in somebody’s pad, when we figure a way to click with vacations. Lot of people live here half a year, trundle off to Florida all winter.”

“Not likely this year,” said Andy, wishing he were back by their fire. “Lot of blowy weather coming up that tore a piece off Florida last week. Any day we’ll get a whole beach full of rain.”

“Charlie and Andy don’t like rain. It was raining the1 night they tried to mug me, last November in Gravesend.”

“Mug schmug,” said Andy. “The subject is sore in need of a change.”

“They braced me near a park, and walked me into it.

I was just going to see how well I could handle the two of | them, when something happened.”

“Something happened,” said Andy.

“She shoulda murdered us,” said Charlie.

“I was just back from a love-in. I went to dig the hippies, and I spent all day trying to figure what made’ them tick. Big bruisers with motorcycle boots and chains, little geeks with glasses, and kids like me. All running around with silly grins, handing each other flowers. Before I got out of there. I was all over flowers from guys and girls who kept talking about agape.”

“Agape,” said Charlie. “She shoulda murdered us.” Both boys kept looking right and left, trying to ignore the talk while they looked for cabs.