Duel Page 10

  “Would you like me to sit down?” Wade asked.

  Apoplectic scarlet spattered over Captain Ranker’s already mottled features.

  “Sit down!” he gargled. “When Commissioner Castlemould says to sit down, he means to sit down!”

  Professor Wade sat down.

  Both men circled him like calculating buzzards anticipating the first swoop. The professor looked at Chief Ranker.

  “Maybe you’ll tell me …”

  “Silence!” snapped Ranker.

  Wade slapped an irate hand on the chair arm. “I will not be silent! I’m sick and tired of this asinine prattle you people are talking. You look in my time chamber and find these idiotic things and …”

  He jerked the cloth from its shielding drape. The two men jumped back and gasped as though Wade had torn the clothes from the backs of their grandmothers.

  Wade got up, throwing the cloth on the desk.

  “For God’s sake, what’s the matter!” he growled. “It’s food. Food. A little food!”

  The men wilted under the repeated impact of the word as though they stood in blasts of purgatorial wind.

  “Shut your filthy mouth,” said the captain in a choked, wheezy voice. “We refuse to listen to your obscenities.”

  “Obscenities!” cried Professor Wade, his eyes and mouth expanding in disbelief. “Am I hearing right?”

  He held up one of the objects.

  “This is a box of crackers!” he said incredulously. “Are you telling me that’s obscene?”

  Captain Ranker closed his eyes, all atremble. The old Commissioner regained his senses and, pursing his greyish lips, watched the professor with cunning little eyes.

  Wade threw down the box. The old man blanched. Wade grabbed the other two objects.

  “A can of processed meat!” he exclaimed furiously. “A flask of coffee. What in the hell is obscene about meat and coffee?”

  Dead silence filled the room when the tirade had ended.

  They all stared at one another. Ranker shivered bonelessly, his face suffused with hopeless fluster. The old man’s gaze bounced back and forth between Wade’s indignant face and the objects that were back on the desk. Cogitations strained his brain centers.

  At length Castlemould nodded and coughed meaningfully.

  “Captain,” he said, “I want to be alone with this scoundrel. I’ll get to the bottom of this outrage.”

  The captain looked at his superior and nodded his grotesque skull. He hurried from the room wordlessly. They heard him stumbling down the hall, breathing steam whistles.

  “Now,” said the Commissioner, dwindling into the immensity of Ranker’s chair. “Just tell me what your name is.” His voice cajoled. It was half joking.

  He picked up the cloth between sedate thumb and forefinger and dropped it over the offending articles with the decorum of a minister throwing his robe over the naked shoulders of a strip teaser.

  Wade sank down in the other chair with a sigh.

  “I give up,” he said, “I come from the year 1954 in my time chamber. I bring along a little … food … in case of a slight emergency. Then you all tell me that I’m an obscene dog. I’m afraid I don’t understand a bit of it.”

  Castlemould folded his hands over his sunken chest and nodded slowly.

  “Mmm-hmmm. Well, young man, I happen to believe you,” he said. “It’s possible. I’ll admit that. Historians tell of such a period when, ahem … physical sustenance was taken orally.”

  “I’m glad someone believes,” Wade said. “But I wish you’d tell me about this food situation.”

  The Commissioner flinched slightly at the word. Wade looked puzzled again.

  “Is it possible,” he said, “that the word … food … has become obscene?”

  At the repeated sound of the word something seemed to click in Castlemould’s brain. He reached over and drew back the cloth with glittering eyes. He seemed to drink in the sight of the flask, the box, the tin. His tongue flicked over dried lips. Wade stared. A feeling close to disgust rose in him.

  The old man ran a shaking hand over the box of crackers as though it were a chorus girl’s leg. His lungs grappled with the air.

  “Food.” He breathed the word in bated salacity.

  Then, quickly, he drew the cloth back over the articles, apparently surfeited with the maddening sight. His bright old eyes flicked up into Professor Wade’s. He drew in a tenuous breath.

  “F—well,” he said.

  Wade leaned back in his chair, beginning to feel an embarrassed heat sluicing through his body. He shook his head and grimaced at the thought of it all.

  “Fantastic,” he muttered.

  He lowered his head to avoid the old man’s gaze. Then, looking up, he saw Castlemould peeking under the cloth again with all the tremor of an adolescent at his first burlesque show.

  “Commissioner.”

  The ratty old man jerked in the chair, his lips drawing back with a startled hiss. He struggled for composition.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, gulping.

  Wade stood up. He pulled off the cloth and stretched it out on the desk. Then he piled the objects in the center of it and drew up the corners. He suspended the bundle at his side.

  “I don’t wish to corrupt your society,” he said. “Suppose I get the facts I want about your era and then leave and take my … take this with me.”

  Fear sprang into the lined features. “No!” Castlemould cried.

  Wade looked suspicious. The Commissioner bit off his mental tongue.

  “I mean,” he glowed, “no point in going back so soon. After all …” He flourished his skinny arms in an unfamiliar gesture. “You are my guest. Come, we’ll go to my house and have some …”

  He cleared his throat violently. He got up and hurried around the desk. He patted Wade’s shoulders, his lips wrenched into the smile of a hospitable jackal.

  “You can get all the facts you need in my library,” he said.

  Wade didn’t say anything. The old man looked around guiltily.

  “But you … uh, better not leave the bundle here,” he said. “Better take it with you.”

  He chuckled confidentially. Wade looked more suspicious. Castlemould stiffened the backs of his words. “Hate to say it,” he said, “but you can’t trust inferiors. Might cause terrible upset in the department. That, I mean.”

  He glanced with affected carelessness toward the bundle. His narrow throat suffered an honest contraction.

  “Never know what might happen,” he continued. “Some people are unprincipled, you know.”

  He said it as though the horrendous thought had just made its unwanted appearance in his pristine mind.

  He started for the door to avoid argument. He turned, fingers clawed around the knob. “You wait here,” he said, “I’ll get your release.”

  “But …”

  “Not at all, not at all,” said Castlemould, springing out into the hallway.

  Professor Wade shook his head. Then he reached into his coat pocket and drew out a bar of chocolate.

  “Better keep this well hidden,” he said to himself, “or it’s the firing squad for me.”

  As they entered the hallway of his house, Castlemould said, “Here, let me take the package. We’ll put it in my desk.”

  “I don’t think so,” Wade said, keeping back laughter at the Commissioner’s eager face. “It might be too much of a … temptation.”

  “Who, for me?” cried Castlemould. “Haah, that’s funny.” He kept holding onto the professor’s bundle, his lips molded into a pouting circle.

  “Tell you what,” he bargained furiously. “We’ll go in my study and I’ll guard your bundle while you take notes from my books. How’s that, haah? Haah?”

  Wade trailed the hobbling old man into the high-ceilinged study. It still didn’t make sense to him. Food. He tested the sound of it in his mind. Just a harmless word. But, like anything else, it could have any meaning people assigned to it.

&nb
sp; He noted how Castlemould’s vein-popping hands caressed the bundle, noted the acquisitive, shifty-eyed look that swallowed up his dour old face. He wondered if he could leave the … . He smiled to himself at the hesitation in his mind. It was getting to him too.

  They crossed the wide rug. “Have the best collection in the city,” bragged the Commissioner. “Complete.” He winked a red-veined eyeball. “Unexpurgated,” he promised.

  Wade said, “That’s nice.”

  He stood before the shelves and ran his eyes over the titles surveying the parallel rows of books that walled the room.

  “Do you have a …” he started, turning. The Commissioner had left his side and was seated at the desk. He had unwrapped the bundle and was looking at the can of meat with the leer of a miser counting his gold.

  Wade called loudly, “Commissioner!”

  The old man jumped wildly and dropped the can on the floor. Abruptly, he slid from sight and emerged from the desk surface a moment later, dripping with abashed chagrin, the can tightly gripped in both hands.

  “Yes?” he inquired pleasantly.

  Wade turned quickly, his shoulders shuddering with ill-repressed laughter.

  “Have you … a history text?” His voice was shaky.

  “Yes sir!” Castlemould burst out. “Best history text in the city!”

  His black shoes squeaked over the floor. From a shelf overladen with dust, he tugged out a thick volume. “Reading it myself just the other day,” he said proffering it to Professor Wade. Wade nodded as he blew off a cloud of dust.

  “Here we are,” Castlemould said. “Now you just sit right here.” He patted the cracked leather back of an armchair. “I’ll get you something to write on.”

  Wade watched him as he hustled back to the desk and jerked out the top drawer. May as well let the old fool have the food, he thought as Castlemould came back with a fat pad of artipaper. At first Wade was going to say he had a pad but then he changed his mind, thinking it would be nice to have a sample of the paper of the future.

  “Now you just sit right here and take all the notes you want,” said Castlemould, “and don’t you worry about your f—don’t you worry.” He soothed anciently.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere! Nowhere!” the Commissioner professed. “Staying right here. I’ll guard the …” His Adam’s apple dipped low as he surveyed the articles again and his voice petered out in depleting passion.

  Wade eased down into the chair and opened the book. He glanced up once at the old man.

  Castlemould was shaking the flask of coffee and listening to it gurgle. On his seamed face hung the look of a reflective idiot.

  The destruction of Earth’s f—bearing capacities was completed by the overall military use of bacterial sprays, the Professor read. These minute germinal droplets permeated the earth to such a depth as to make plant growth impossible. They also destroyed the major portion of m—giving animals as well as ocean edibles, for whom no protective provision was made in the last desperate germ attack of the war.

  Also rendered unpalatable were the major water supplies of earth. Five years after the war, at the time of this writing, the heavy pollution still remains, undiminished by fresh rains. Moreover … .

  Wade looked up from the history text, shaking his head grimly.

  He looked over at the Commissioner. Castlemould was leaning back in his chair, juggling the box of crackers thoughtfully.

  Wade went back to the book and hurriedly finished the selection. He glanced at his watch. He had to get back. He completed the notation and closed the book. Standing, he slid the volume back into its place and walked over to the desk.

  “I’ll be going now,” he said.

  Castlemould’s lips trembled, drawing back from his china teeth.

  “So soon?” he said, close to menace hovering in his words. His eyes searched the room, searching for something.

  “Ah!” he said. Gently he put down the box of crackers and stood up.

  “How about a vein-ball?” he asked. “Just a short one before you go.”

  “A what?”

  “Vein-ball.” Wade felt the Commissioner’s hand touch his arm. He was led back to the armchair. “Come along,” said Castlemould, weirdly jovial. Wade sat. No harm, he thought. I’ll leave the food. That will mollify him.

  The old man was wheeling a cumbersome wagon-like table from one corner of the room. On its dialed top rose numerous shiny tendrils, each dangling over the sides and ending in a stubby needle.

  “Just our way of—” The Commissioner glanced around like a salesman of illicit postcards “—drinking,” he finished softly.

  Wade watched him pick up one of the tendrils. “Here, give me your hand,” said the Commissioner.

  “Will it hurt?”

  “Not at all, not at all,” said the old man. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

  He took hold of Wade’s hand and jabbed the needle into the palm. Wade gasped. The pain passed almost immediately.

  “It might …” Wade started. Then he felt a soothing flow of muscle-easing liquors flowing into his veins.

  “Isn’t that good?” asked the Commissioner.

  “This is how you drink?”

  Castlemould stuck the needle into his own palm.

  “Not everyone has such a deluxe set,” he said proudly. “This veinwagon was presented to me by the governor of the state. For my services, y’know, in bringing the notorious Tom-Gang to justice.”

  Wade felt pleasantly lethargic. Just a moment more, he thought, then I’ll go. “Tom-Gang?” he asked.

  Castlemould perched on the edge of another chair.

  “Short for, ahem, Tomato Gang. Group of notorious criminals trying to raise … tomatoes. Wholesale!”

  “Horrors,” said Wade.

  “It was grave, grave.”

  “Grave. I think I’ve had enough.”

  “Better change this a little,” Castlemould said, rising to fiddle with the dials.

  “I’ve had enough,” Wade said.

  “How’s that?” asked Castlemould.

  Wade blinked and shook his head to clear away the fog. “That’s enough for me,” he said, “I’m dizzy.”

  “How’s this?” Castlemould asked.

  Wade felt the warmth rising. His veins seemed to run with fire. His head whirled. “No more!” he said, trying to rise.

  “How’s this?” Castlemould said, drawing the needle from his own hand.

  “That’s enough!” Wade cried. He reached down to pull out the needle. His hands felt numb. He slumped back in the chair. “Turn it off,” he said feebly.

  “How’s this!” cried Castlemould and Wade grunted as a hose of flames played through his body. The heat twisted and leaped through his system.

  He tried to move. He couldn’t. He was inert, in a liquored coma when Castlemould finally turned down the dials. He sagged in the chair, the shiny tentacles still drooping from his palm. His eyes were half closed. They were glassy and doped.

  Sound. His thickened brain tried to place it. He blinked his eyes. It was like compressing his brain between hot stones. He opened his eyes. The room was a blurry haze. The shelves ran into each other, watery streams of book backs. He shook his head. He thought he felt his brains jiggling.

  The mists began to slip away one by one like the veils of a dancer.

  He saw Castlemould at the desk.

  Eating.

  He was bent over the desk, his face a blackish red as though he were performing some rabidly carnal rite. His eyes had glued themselves to the food spread out on the cloth. He was apart. The flask banged against his teeth. He held it in interlocked fingers, his body shivering as the cool fluid drained down his throat. His lips smacked ecstatically.

  He sliced another piece of meat and stuck it between two crackers.

  His trembling hand held the sandwich up to his wet mouth. He bit into their crisp layers and chewed loudly, his eyes glittering orbs of excitement.

 
; Wade’s face twisted in revulsion. He sat staring at the old man. Castlemould was looking at postcards while he ate. He gazed at them, jaws moving busily. His eyes shone. He looked at what he was eating, then looked at the cards again while he chewed.

  Wade tried to move his arms. They were logs. He struggled and managed to slip one hand on the other. He drew out the needle, a sigh rasping in his throat. The Commissioner didn’t hear. He was lost; absorbed in an orgy of digestion.

  Experimentally, Wade shifted his legs. They felt like somebody else’s legs. He knew that, if he stood, he’d pitch forward on his face.

  He dug nails into his palms. At first there was no feeling. Then it came slowly, at last flaring up in his brain and clearing away more fog.

  His eyes never left Castlemould. The old man shivered as he ate, caressing each morsel. Wade thought: he’s committing an act of love with a box of crackers.

  He fought to gain control. He had to get back.

  Castlemould had polished off the cracker box. He was nibbling on the bits of crumb that remained. He picked them up with a moistened finger and popped them into his mouth. He made sure there were no remaining scraps of meat. He tilted up the flask and drained it. Practically empty, it was suspended over his gaping mouth. The remaining drops fell—drip, drip—into the white-toothed cavity and rolled over his tongue and into his throat.

  He sighed and set down the flask. He looked at his pictures once more, his chest laboring. Then he pushed them aside with a drunken gesture and sank back in the chair. He stared in sleepy dullness at the desk, the empty box, the can and flask. He ran two weary fingers over his mouth.

  After a few minutes his head slumped forward. His rattling snores echoed through the room.

  The festival was over.

  Wade struggled up. He stumbled across the floor. It tried to heave itself up in his face. He ran into the side of Castlemould’s desk and held on dizzily. The old man still slept.

  Wade edged around the desk, leaning against its surface. The room still spun.

  He stood behind the old man’s chair, looking down at the shambles of violent dining. He took a deep ragged breath and held onto the chair with eyes closed until the spasm of dizziness had passed. Then he opened his eyes and looked once more at the desk. He noticed the postcards. An incredulous look crossed his face.