“No way, Gretch. Too rare for commercial use of any sort. Too damn expensive.”
“Expensive.” Gretchen meditated. “Yes, that’s the operative word. What would your normal, healthy, all-American goon use that was expensive?”
“Easy. Drugs.”
“Q.E.D. This could be your vector.”
Shima nodded. “Maybe. The only trouble is, I never heard of any tinct, chrome, mord, tinge, any junk that uses Promethium, and I have to know all the squeams in the scent business.”
“Then that makes your lead even stronger. It must be something new on the market, so we don’t have to waste time on the street level, chasing connections. We go right to the top.”
Shima nodded again. Then he got up and began wandering absently around her workshop. Of course she couldn’t see him because they were alone together, but she could track him by sound. At last he said, “You go right to the top, love. I’m going to try another line.”
“Like what?”
“Cover the chemical supply houses. They know me. They’ll give me what we want.”
“But they don’t handle junk, do they? I mean, it’s legit these days but it’s still infra dig for anybody with class.”
“Of course not, but you don’t find Promethium in any of the street squeams. That means it must be added to produce a new junk trip. And that means it’s got to be bought from a legitimate house, and they keep careful records.”
Gretchen nodded. “Sounds promising.” Then she grinned. “Hey, bubie, got any Pm in your lab? Maybe we should try it ourselves.”
“So happens I do; about a hundred grams of the hydride. But how is that going to lead us to the Hundred-Hander Golem?”
“Oh, it can’t, but maybe we can trip, hundred-hand-in-hand into a psychedelic future, forsaking all others, and—”
“And voted ‘Squeamies of the Year.’ Knock it off, Gretch. You’re not even slightly funny. That damned Hundred-Hander thing may catch up with us at any moment and skin us alive.”
Gretchen sobered.
Shima patted her. “So dozo you take care, hear? We’ve got our empiric equation at last. Pm plus squeam plus goon I.D. equals Hundred-Hander-Golem-Thing. So let’s move it and, for God’s sake, don’t talk to the rough boys on the corner.”
“Yes, but you take care, too. There’s another danger for you.”
“Me? What danger?”
“Ind’dni.”
“The Subadar a danger to me? How? Why?”
“Ind’dni suspects that you’re involved with his Hundred-Hander. That’s why he was so cooperative. He was doing some subtle fishing himself.”
“For what?”
“Your connection with the goon butchery.”
“Subtle, hell! I am connected.”
“Not the way he’s thinking.”
“How is the Hindu thinking?”
“That as a genius-type chemist you may be responsible for the Golem.”
“What? The Frankenstein bag?” Shima burst out laughing. “Preposterous!” Suddenly he sobered as an idea struck him. “But good God! Is it possible that Mr. Wish is responsible?”
“Anything and everything’s possible in the Guff.”
9
Gretchen knew the P.L.O. Oasis by sight. Everybody in the Guff did, although very few were ever permitted entry. It was one of “The Sights.” Shaped like a pyramid; surrounded by plastic palms in glittering mica sands; fountains at the four corners—not jetting up precious water but chlorobenzene (C6H5C1) as amateur HOjacks discovered to their disgust—it was quite literally an Oasis.
“All it needs is camels,” she thought as she walked up to the gate set between the paws of a pint-sized sphinx. It was guarded by a squad of Liberation guerrillas wearing traditional desert-fighting khaki and carrying antique automatic rifles at the ready. She was stopped at gunpoint.
“Who you?” they demanded.
“Shalom aleichem,” she answered.
“Who you?” The slam of cartridges into rifle chambers meant business.
“Gretchen Nunn. Shalom aleichem.”
“You speak Jew. You Jew?”
“Vudden? Frig mir nicht kein narrische fragen.”
“You? Jew? No.”
“Ich bin a Yid.”
“You no look Jew.”
“Nudnick! Ich bin Falasha Yid.”
There was a blank pause. Then a face brightened. “Ah? Ah! Black Jew. I hear. Never see. You pretty black Jew. Come in.” To the rest of the squad. “She okay real Jew. Let her.”
Gretchen’s first ploy had worked. She was passed into an enormous hall of unspeakable filth and fetor, echoing with the bilious belches of twenty tethered camels. There were tents. There were naked children playing in the mica sands who stopped and stared at her. There were veiled women in black, tending small fires of dried dung, who stared but did not stop. The cathedral ceiling was clouded with acrid smoke.
A bearded sheikh in splendid robes advanced and greeted her. “Shalom aleichem.”
“Aleichem shalom.”
“Good morning, Miz Nunn. How nice of you to pay us a call.”
“Good morning, sir. I’m afraid you have the advantage.”
“Sheikh Omar ben Omar. No, we’ve never met but of course you are one of the Guff celebrateds. Ours the honor, Miz Nunn.”
“Yours the grace, Sheikh Omar.”
“I see you are acquainted with our polite forms, and I thank you. Will you take coffee?”
Over the ceremonial coffee taken cross-legged in a tent, alone except for hordes of urchins peeping in, and after the endless courtesy exchanges, Gretchen began inching up on her business with a confession of her deception of the Oasis guards. Sheikh Omar laughed.
“Yes, they reported to me that a Jew was entering, which is why I gave you the Israeli greeting. We recruit and train our guards for strength, not I.Q. I’m amazed that even one of them has even heard of the Falasha. Our guards are, after all, an equivalent of the old Mafia ‘soldiers.’”
“Just as you, of course, are the powerful new Mafia.”
Omar gracefully shrugged off the compliment and continued to delay the impending business with a scholarly diversion. “Yes, the Falasha,” he chatted. “Black Jews from Ethiopia. They claim to be descended from Solomon and Sheba who was black, it is said. More coffee?”
“Thank you.”
“Actually, they were simple natives converted to Judaism long before Christ. Then some went over to the new Christianity, and many more later found the True Faith. A vacillating people. Our dear friends, the Israelis, had much trouble with the Falasha when they were founding their magnificent nation.”
Gretchen smiled to herself; her second ploy was gearing into action. When the Palestine Liberation Organization had at last taken over the United Arab Republic, it was just in time to see the last of the fat-cat rich oil reserves exhausted. The P.L.O. very sensibly switched to opium culture and the illegal sale of its derivatives. This was fat-cat until drugs and addiction were legalized; then the bottom fell out of their profits. The one nation still denouncing drugs and fighting furiously to have them outlawed was stiff-necked, puritanical Israel. This made Israelis the beloved of the P.L.O. Mafia.
“So perhaps it would be best to continue the deception, Miz Nunn,” Sheikh Omar said. “I’m sure our soldiers have spread the word already. We won’t contradict them. We do not take kindly to strangers, but we do to Jews. It will make matters easier for you.”
“Yours the honor.”
“Yours the grace. And now, if you will forgive my impetuosity, what matter has brought the celebrated Gretchen Nunn to our humble Oasis?”
“A most unusual contract. It requires that I ask El Plo a question.”
“El Plo! You actually have come for an audience with El Plo?”
“With the PloFather himself. Yes.”
“Unheard of! Will I not serve?”
“All honor to you, Sheikh Omar, but I’m afraid not. The information I need must come from the very top.”