"How can you tell?" asked Clevis eagerly.
"Only because you wouldn't be coming halfway across Venus to bring me a
gardenia. So that is a love lotus."
Clevis looked a bit disappointed. "I thought that maybe you might have
some way--"
"What makes you think I'd know more than a botanist?"
Clevis smiled. "Spacemen tend to come up with some oddly interesting
specks of knowledge now and then."
"So far as I know, there's only one way of telling. That's to try it
out. Thanks, I'll not have my fun that way. That's one thing you can't
pin on me."
"I wouldn't try. But listen, Farradyne. In the past twelve years we
have carefully besmirched the names and reputations of six men, hoping
that they could get on the inside. For our pains we have lost all six
of them one way or another. The enemy seems to have a good espionage
system. Our men roam up and down the solar system making like big time
operators and get nowhere. The love-lotus operators seem to be able to
tell a phony louse when they see one."
"And I'm a real louse?"
"You've a convincing record, Farradyne."
Farradyne shook his head angrily. "Not that kind," he snapped. "Your
pals sloughed off my license and tossed me out on my duff to scratch,
but no one ever pinned the crooked label on me and made it stick."
"Then why did they take away your license?"
"Because someone needed a goat."
"And you are innocent?"
Farradyne growled hopelessly. "All right," he said, returning to his
former lethargy. "So just remember that I was acquitted, remember? Lack
of evidence. But they took my license and tossed me out of space and
that's as bad as a full conviction. So where am I? I'll stop beating my
gums about it, Clevis."
* * * * *
Clevis smiled quietly. "You were a good pilot, Farradyne. Maybe a bit
too good. You collected a few too many pink tickets for cutting didoes
and collecting women to show off in front of. They'd have marked it
off as an accident if it hadn't been Farradyne. Your record accused
you of being the hot-pants pilot, the fly-fly boy. Maybe that last job
of yours was another dido that caught you. But let's leave the ghost
alone, Farradyne. We need you, Farradyne."
Farradyne grunted and his lips twisted a bit. He got up from the unmade
bed and went to the scarred dresser to pour a stiff jolt from an
open bottle into a dirty glass. He took a sip and then walked to the
window and stood there, staring out into the dusk and talking, half to
himself. Clevis listened.
[Illustration: Charles Farradyne.]
"I've had my prayer," said Farradyne. "A prayer in a nightmare. A man
fighting against a rigged job, like the girl in the old story who
turned up in her mother's hotel room to find that every evidence of her
mother's existence had been erased. Bellhops, and cab driver, and the
steamship captain, and the hotel register all rigged. Even the police
disbelieved her, remember? Well, that's Farradyne, too, Clevis. My
first error was telling them that someone came into the control room
during landing. They said that no one would do that because everybody
knew the danger of diverting the pilot's attention during a landing. No
one, they said, would take the chance of killing himself; and the other
passengers would stop anybody who tried to go up the stairs at that
time because they knew the danger to themselves.
"They practically scoffed me into jail when I told them that there were
three people in the room. I couldn't look around, you know. A pilot
might just as well be blindfolded and manacled to his chair during
landing. So I heard three people behind me and couldn't look. All I
could do was to snarl for them to get the hell out. Then we rapped the
cliff and dumped the ship into The Bog, and I got tossed out through
the busted observation dome. They salvaged the Semiramide a few months
later and found only one skeleton in the room. That made me a liar.
Besides the skeleton was of a woman, and then they all nodded sagely
and said, 'Woman? Well, we know our Farradyne!' and I got the works.
"So," Farradyne sounded bitter once more, "they suspended me and took
away my license. They wouldn't even let me near a spacer; maybe they
thought I might steal one, forgetting that there's no place to hide.
Maybe they thought I'd steal Mars, too. So if I want a drink they ask
me if it's true that jungle juice gives a man hallucinations. If I
light a cigarette I'm asked if it is real laughing grass. If I ask for
a job they want to know how hard I'll work for my liquor. So I end up
in this God-forsaken marsh playing nursemaid to a bunch of stinking
toadstools." Farradyne's voice rose to an angry pitch. "The mold grows
on your hide and under your nails and in your hair and you forget what
it's like to be clean and you lose hope and ambition because you're
kicked off the bottom of the ladder, but you still dream of someday
being able to show the whole damned solar system that you're not the
louse they made you. Then instead of getting a chance, a man comes to
you and offers you a job because he needs a professional bastard with
a bad record--and its damned small consolation, but I'll take it just
to show you and everybody else that I'm not the hot-rock that I've been
called."
* * * * *
Farradyne sniffed at the glass and then threw it into the dirty sink
with a derisive gesture. "I'll ask for a lot of things," he said,
quietly now. "The first thing is for enough money to buy White Star
Trail instead of this rotgut."
"That can be done, but can you take it?"
"It'll be hard," admitted Farradyne. "I've been on this diet of soap
and vitriol too long. But I'll do it. Give me a month."
"I can't offer you much," said Clevis. "But maybe this can be hope for
you: help us clean up the hellblossom gang and you'll do a lot towards
erasing that black mark on your record."
"Just what's the pitch?"
Clevis took a small leather folder from his briefcase and handed it
over. Farradyne recognized it as a space-pilot's license before he
opened it. He read it with a cynical smile before he asked, "Where did
you get it?"
"It's probably the only official forgery in existence. The Solar
Anti-Narcotics Department has a lot of angles to play, Farradyne.
First, that ticket is made of the right paper and printed with the
right type and the right ink because," and Clevis smiled, "it came from
the right office. The big rubber stamp 'Reinstated' is the right stamp
and the initials are put on properly, but not by the right man. The
license will get you into and out of spaceports and all the rest of the
privileges. But it has no listing on the master log at the Bureau of
Space Personnel. So long as you stay out of trouble, the only people
who will check on the validity will be the ones we hope to catch. When
they discover that your ticket is invalid, you may get an offer to join
'em."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime you'll be running a spacer in the usual way. We've a
couple of subcontracts you can handle to stay in business, and you'll
pick up other business, no doubt. But there are two things to remember,
always. The first is that you've got to play it flat, Farradyne. No
nonsense. Just remember who and what you are. To make sure of it, I'll
remind you again that you are a crumb with a bad reputation. You'll be
running a spacer worth a hell of a lot of dough and there will be a
lot of people asking a lot of other people how you managed the deal.
Probably none of them will ever get around to asking you, but your
attitude is the same as the known gangster whose only visible means of
support for his million-dollar estate and his yacht and his high living
is his small string of hot-dog stands. That he owns these things is
only an indication of thrift and good management."
"I get it," grinned Farradyne.
* * * * *
Clevis snapped, "This is no laughing matter. What goes along with this
is important. You'll play this game as we outline it to you and in no
other way. The first time we find you playing hanky-panky we'll have
you by the ears in the morning. And if you cut a dido and get pinned
for it, there you'll be with a forged license and a spacer that will
have some very odd-looking registration papers so far as the Master Log
runs. And no one is going to admit that they know you. Certainly the
SAND office won't. And furthermore if you do claim any connection at
any time for any reason whatsoever, we'll haul you in for attempting to
impersonate one of us. You're a decoy, a sitting duck with both feet in
the mud, Farradyne, and no damned good to anybody until you get mired
deeper in the same stinking mud. Now for the second item."
"Second? Weren't there ten or twelve in that last?" grunted Farradyne.
"That was only the beginning. The second is this: do not, under any
circumstances make any attempt to investigate that accident of yours.
The game you are going to play will not permit you to make any attempt
to clear up that mess. As a character of questionable background, your
attitude must be that of a man caught in a bad show and forced to
undergo visible suffering long enough for the public to forget, before
you can resume your role of professional louse. Got this straight?"
Farradyne looked at Clevis; gaunt has-been looking at success. The
window was dark now, but there were no stars visible from the surface
of Venus; only Terra and Jupiter and Sirius and Vega and a couple of
others that haloed through the haze. The call of the free blackness of
space pulled at Farradyne. He turned back from the window and looked
at the unmade bed, the insect-specked walls, the scarred dresser, the
warped floor. His nose wrinkled tentatively and he cursed inwardly
because he knew that the joint reeked of rancid sweat and mildewed
cloth and his nose was so accustomed to this stink that he could not
smell it.
Inwardly Farradyne came to understand, in those few moments while
Clevis watched him quietly, that his oft-repeated statement that there
were some things that even a bum wouldn't do was so much malarkey.
Farradyne would join the hellblossom operators if it gave him an
opportunity to get out of this Venusian mire. He turned to Clevis, not
realizing that only a few seconds had passed.
"Let's go," he said.
Clevis cast a pointed look at the dresser.
"There's nothing in the place but bad memories," said Farradyne. "I'll
leave them here. Good, bad or indifferent, Clevis, I'm your man no
matter how you want it played. For the first time in years I want a
bath and a clean shirt."