Modus Vivendi Read online

trying to find her and are using you for a stalking horse,"he added with fiendish accuracy.

  "So don't trust me," I snarled. "You can send her saw blades baked ina cake." I reached up, too.

  "Hold it."

  I stopped, trying to keep my glower going.

  "Passarelli would have to be in on it, too," he decided. "And I can'tfigure _him_ for a louse. O.K., Maragon. I'll pick you up at youroffice at about eight o'clock."

  * * * * *

  With nearly two hours to kill, I went out to eat. I still felt glumand lousy. Part of it was the knifelike penetration of Crescas'intuition--his knowing that I was just a stalking horse so that thebig guns could zero in on Mary Hall. And there was that little tremorof fear that comes from knowing that a Psi may think you'vedoublecrossed him. They have some powerful abilities when it comes toexacting vengeance. Well, if everything about the deal was as muchscrewed up as the part I had heard so far, I decided, I might get outwith a whole skin at that.

  That was my attempt at consolation--that and an order of sweet-breads,Financiere, which is a ridiculous dish for a sawed-off shyster tendingtoward overweight.

  I was back in the law library by ten minutes of eight, trying tooccupy my mind with the latest _Harvard Law Review_, when the 'phonerang. Keys' face, a little tight-lipped and bright-eyed, peered at mefrom the screen, which it completely filled. He must have darned nearswallowed the 'scope.

  "Ready?" he asked softly.

  "Sure. You picking me up?"

  His lip curled in half a smile. "What do I look like?" he sneered."Grab a cab. You know a bar called the Moldy Fig?" I nodded. "That'swhere." He cut the image.

  Well, this was more like it. You can't deal with Psis without thewhole affair acting like something out of E. Phillips Oppenheim. Iclosed up the office, turned out the ceiling, and rode the elevatordown to the street.

  The night howled and shrieked with air-borne traffic. A hot-roddingkid gunned his fans up the street a way and ripped what silence mighthave remained to the night into shreds as he streaked past me. Thejerk wasn't forty feet off the ground, and was pouring the coal to histurbine. The whine of his impellers sounded a strong down-Doppler ashis ripped past me, nose dropped a good thirty degrees and draggingevery knot he could get out of his 'copter.

  I waved to a cab standing at the rank up the block a way and watchedthe skim-copter rise a couple inches off the ground as the hackerskimmed on the ground-cushion toward me. City grit cut at my anklesfrom the air blast before I could hop into the bubble and give him mydestination. He looked the question at me hopefully, over hisshoulder, his hand on the arm of his meter.

  "Oh, what the hell," I said, still sore at the world, and a littleworried about what I was trying to do. "Let's 'copter!" He grinned andswung the arm over to the "fly" position with its four-times-higherrate. His turbine screamed to a keener pitch with wide throttle, andhe climbed full-bore into the down-town slow lane.

  * * * * *

  The swift ride down to the Village was long enough to induce that oddmotion-hypnosis so common in night flight over a metropolitan area.The dizzy blur of red and green running lights from air-borne trafficat levels above and below us, the shapes of 'copters silhouettedbeneath us against the lambent glow of the city's well-lit streets,all wove into a numbing pattern.

  "Here's the _Fig_, Mac," the hacker said as we grounded. I stuck mycredit card in the meter and hopped out, not fast enough to duck thefan-driven pin-pricks of sand as he pulled away.

  Crescas appeared as if by magic--Psis act like that--and had me by thearm. "Quick!" he said, pushing me back into the spot he had appearedfrom. It was a doorway beside the Moldy Fig, opening on a flight ofsteps running to an apartment above the bar. As we climbed the cleanand well-lit stairs, I reminded myself that I was probably entering aden of Psis--and clamped down tight on my thoughts. There was plentythey had better not peep.

  Keys didn't have to knock on the door--there's always a telepathhanging around these Stigma hideouts who knows who's coming. A huskyyoung man, quite blond and pink of face, opened the door. A softrustle of music spilled out around his big shoulders. He wore aT-shirt, and his powerful forearms were bare.

  "Hey!" he said to Keys, spotting himself as a Southerner as surely asif he'd had the Stars and Bars tattooed on his forehead. We followedhim down a short hall into a room furnished, with a couple of couches,an easy-chair, several small but delightful tables, and a piano. Herewas the music. A blond bombshell was drumming box chords on theivories, and grouped around her on side chairs were four young men,playing with her. It was jazz, if that's what you call the quietracket that comes out of a wooden recorder, a very large potteryocharina that hooted like a gallon jug, a steel guitar and a pair ofbongo drums played discreetly with the fingertips.

  My appearance stopped them right in the middle of a chorus of "MuskratRamble." I'd have liked to hear more--it was Dixieland times two--whatthe Psis call Psixieland. That's jazz played by a gang of telepaths.Each one knows what the others are about to play. The result isextemporaneous counterpoint, but without the clinkers we associatewith jazz. Almost too perfect, yet untrammeled.

  My eyes ran around the room as the four men who had been playing withthe girl got up and prepared to leave. The place was spotless. Oh, thefurnishings weren't costly, but they were chosen with that sense offitness, of refinement of color and decor that is curiously Psi. Isuppose that's one of the little things that annoys Normals so much.Stigma powers seem to go beyond telepathy, clairvoyance andtelekinesis--they extend in some hard to define way into theaesthetic. A chaste kind of cleanliness is only part of it. _Taste_, Iguess that's the word. Their attire, their homes, everything aboutPsis, seems tasteful.

  * * * * *

  In moments only Keys, the blond Southerner and the still blonder bombon the piano bench were left to face me. Keys poked a finger at theplow-jockey in the T-shirt. "Elmer," he explained.

  "Take off yo' hat, Yankee," Elmer grinned. I felt it tipped from myhead by his TK.

  I glowered at him. "Kid stuff!" I snorted. "So you can lift fourounces from six feet away. But you don't have any idea whatincorporeal hereditaments are. Which is better?"

  The pink of his face got red. He could have broken me in two.

  "Just making a point," I said. "I'm stupid about TK. You're stupidabout the law. I figure that makes us even."

  He clamped his mouth shut. I turned back to Keys and the girl I wassure was Mary Hall. "What I came here for--"

  "What we _got_ you here for," Keys interrupted, "was to set youstraight on something." I guess I looked as surprised as I felt. Theimpossibly blond girl giggled. "Over the phone, Maragon," Keys wenton, sitting down on the bench beside the girl, "you said there was aFederal rap hanging over Mary's head on this 99th National Bankfracas."

  I nodded.

  "The theory being," he went on, "that the law doesn't let anybody withthe Stigma get away with a thing, right?"

  "Right."

  "Then relax. Mary hasn't got the Stigma. Have you, Mary?"

  "No," she said. I looked her over more carefully. She was closer totwenty than thirty, round-faced, with blue eyes that were about asimpossibly bright as her hair was impossibly white. It could have beena corneal tattoo, but somehow I doubted it. Impossibly red lips madeup the patriotic triad of colors--but that was lipstick, pure andsimple.

  "No Stigma?" I demanded. "I know Psixieland when I hear it, Miss Hall.Don't tell me that wasn't telepathic jazz."

  She tossed her short hair-do around. "My side-men were TP's," sheconceded. "Why do you think I was playing box chords? They knew what Iwas playing--I didn't know what they'd play."

  Well, some of it was adding up. Still, I had to be sure. "I see. Tellme, Mary, where were your parents on the 19th of April in '75?"

  She sat up straight beside Keys on the bench, and her fair faceflushed pinkly. "Drop dead!" she told me.

  I stood up. "See you in
jail," I said, and started for the door.

  * * * * *

  Elmer had played tackle for Ol' Miss--he sure stopped me in my tracks."I reckon we ain't through with you yet, Yankee," he grinned. He hurtme with his hands, big as country hams. My stiffened fingers jabbedhis T-shirt where it covered his solar plexus, and he dropped back,gasping.

  "You could learn a little about fighting, too, Psi," I growled. "Andyou're through with me if that bottle blonde won't answer myquestions."

  "Hey!"