“Guff thanks, Mr… What do I call you? Aurora? Orry?”
“Hell no. It’s Finkel. Scriabin Finkel.”
“What? Then you wrote that great Glacial Army anthem, ‘Where You Beez…’ I’m impressed.”
“We all did, turkey—A-MINOR, YOU GODDAM BUMS! A-MINOR! The whole Finkel stable.”
* * *
They call the fine debris of jewelry manufacture “findings.” Workshop floors absorb a dusting of precious stone and precious metal residues in the course of a year, and on Opsday the Strøget throws open its workshops to an eager multitude equipped with brooms, dustpans-and-brushes, and containers. To this date of writing it is not yet known whether any of the scavengers has ever profited by his recovery of “findings” dust.
It was inevitable that as Gretchen walked the Strøget, apologizing to and punching checks for the proprietors whose displays she had smashed—the luxury trade is never in the forgiving business—it was inevitable that she should recognize a familiar bod in the mob of panting, sweeping scavengers; Yenta Calienta, armed with a battery vacuum cleaner. Yenta was spending as much time protecting the machine from resentful broom-wielders as she was sucking up dust.
* * *
Damn if half of them weren’t in peanut drag, complete with monocle and top hat. The advertising manager was in costume, too, but that didn’t prevent him from accepting Shima’s apology and check. Then he conducted Shima to an enormous transparent top hat filled with a magenta hellbrew. It was three times the size of the bronze hat which Blaise and Gretchen had stolen. The advertising manager pointed proudly.
“A square yard of Demerara rum. Fifty gallons of grenadine. Juice of one hundred reconstituted lemons. Fifty pounds of confetti sugar. One thousand maraschino cherries. Planter’s Punch. Help yourself, doctor. Enjoy. Opbless.”
He waddled off. Shima looked at the awesome top hat doubtfully, then shrugged and mounted the scaffolding leading to the ten-foot-high brim. He received a frosted earthenware mug and was told to take it home as a gift. He took his place on line and spoke to the tall, vivid young woman ahead of him. She held a stained mug in her hand.
“Opbless. I see you’ve tried this punch before. How is it?”
She turned and raked him with clever eyes. “Opbless. This is my fifth time around.”
“Is it that good?”
“It doesn’t matter. This firm is one of my clients. It’s my job to flatter them.”
She scooped up a mugful of punch and made way for Shima. As he bent over the rim to fill his mug, he was suddenly seized by the ankles and upended.
“You son of a bitch! This’ll pay you back for the Therpool!”
He was plunged, head foremost, into the Planter’s Punch, joining rum, grenadine, lemon juice, sugar, and a thousand cherries. She held her grip on his ankles while he thrashed and strangled. Just as he was on the verge of losing consciousness, his ankles were released. He managed to flip and upend. There she was at the hatbrim, glaring down at him while she struggled with the advertising manager.
“Wasn’t me in the Therpool, lady,” Shima gasped.
“The hell it wasn’t! I’d know you anywhere.”
“But Guff thanks anyway, lady. You’ve solved my insulation problem. Opbless.”
* * *
When the exhausted Gretchen at last got back to her apartment, she found a few of her staff there, holding the fort. Their Ops Week clothes were so stylishly bedraggled that she had to smile. Shima? No sign of him. “Has anything happened?” she wondered. “Has he gone on the attack-escape again?” But a messenger just delivered this tape from Shima. “From his penthouse?” No, from the Precinct Complex. “Oh God! The idiot is in trouble.” But her fingers did not tremble as she switched on.
* * *
I’m taping this to you, Gretchen love, because I’m completely wiped. I can’t face another human being; not even you.
I encountered an event, a Golem coda, when I was squaring it for that stolen top hat, which clued me into the modus operandus for your sensory tests. A bathysphere. It’s already equipped with communications, life-support systems and power—which were some of the problems of complete insulation—and at ocean depths nothing external can penetrate except maybe some slight radiation from the earth’s mantle, and maybe a stray neutrino or two.
So I went over to the Oceanography Center to beg the loan of a bathysphere from Lucy Leuz, an old buddy from M.I.T. That’s Friedrich Humboldt Leuz, Ph.D. and DODO, in caps. Not the extinct bird; Director of Drogh Operations. I know he has a baby bathysphere.
They were celebrating the advent of Ops Week with a raw fish festival, using their aquarium surplus for the feast. Gretchen, you haven’t known guilt until you’ve had an Alaska king crab look you in the eye while you’re breaking off one of its legs. Anyway, Lucy gave me an Opbless and the go-ahead, so we’re all set for tomorrow—and we’d better be—because I know now that Ind’dni is right. Time is of the essence. I think you’ll agree by the time I’m finished.
Then I went to the Glacial Army H.Q., thinking you might be there cooling your Pagliacci rap. You weren’t so I settled up for you, and those saints are real greedy. They were mounting a hysterical revival to counter the Ops Week debut—Naturally the Army hates the false goddess Ops and her dirty, rotten, sinful Opalia.
There must have been a thousand there, led by another clown from the Scriabin Finkel stable, a crazed Cockney calling herself Sabrina Finkel. They were howling “Where You Beez…” and spasming with the jerks, smashing things, rolling over and fainting in ecstasies. The fervor was terrifying; they acted like a lynch mob. A girl took refuge behind me and I couldn’t blame her for being frightened. I was, too.
“You look like a gent, even in that filthy coverall,” she said. (I was blotched with Planter’s Punch, which I’ll explain another time.) “Will you for Jesus sake get me the hell out of here. This is sick.”
“Where’s the geek what brung you?”
“Don’t Op-talk me. I know you’re a gent. He’s fainted dead away with his head through a throne.”
So we left the fête choreatique, grabbed transport, and set out for my Oasis. She sat in her corner and I sat in mine. Neither of us said anything. She was sulky; I was pooped. But when we got to the Oasis, I had to go through the motions of the gent. I offered her the choice of keeping the transport and going on to wherever it was, me paying, or coming up to the penthouse for a drink.
“Baby, do I ever need a drink,” she said. “That damn Army is desert dry. R. But no hots.”
“For Christ’s sake!” I was disgusted. “Who d’you think I am, Casanova? So come on. I’m freezing.”
We went up to the penthouse. I started a fire in the lounge and she watched me fussing with the kindling.
“You’ve got cherries sticking inside your collar,” she said. “Did you know?”
“I should have guessed. I had a run-in with a bowl of Planter’s Punch.”
She wandered around, exploring. “Gee, I’ve never been in a high-class place like this before. You sure got class. I knew it, even in that dirty coverall with those crazy cherries sticking to your neck.”
“I’m a walking whisky sour,” I said. “So come have your drink, and we’ll figure out how to get you home-free through the Guff.”
We sat at the fire and drank. She was a redhead with exquisite skin but was no looker by any stretch of charity. She talked, but not about getting home. She had a kind of naïve, prattling charm. She worked for the Glacial Army, job unspecified, but it sounded like running errands. She enjoyed reporting the secret sins of their saints.
Suddenly she said, “I’ve got to call Philly.”