He shut off the engine. The sigh of wind in the cedar was very mournful. He turned in his seat, pushed his sheepskin cap onto the back of his head and waited for me to speak. He obviously could see that I was troubled.
"I've got to do something about Utanc," I said.
He digested that. He thoughtfully lit a cheap Hisar cigarette. "You can't get anything out of a trade-in," he said. "The bottom is out of the market. Things have gotten even worse behind the Iron Curtain. Hundreds of thousands of girls have come over the border. Threatened with rape from the Red Army, it was a case of either infection or defection. They chose the latter. Can't say as I blame them. You ever feel the beard on one of those Ivans? Or see the body lice? Fleas, too. No, Officer Gris, we're stuck with her."
"I don't mean to make a big thing out of it," I said. "But a long look at it has convinced me the matter isn't going to settle down."
"Well," he said, "you never can tell what you're getting into in these things."
"You've got to come up with something," I said. After all, he was the only one who seemed to care what happened to me. And the criminals on Modon are a pretty smart lot. "The situation is wide open to suggestions."
The cedar sighed. Three camel loads of opium went by, led by a farmer and a donkey, heading toward the Agricultural School. The farmer looked at us curiously.
Deplor, alias Ahmed, waited until they were out of sight. Then he threw away his cigarette in sudden decision. "I don't want to get you into any tight spots you can't get out of, Officer Gris. I have your best interests at heart. So, I tell you what you better do. You better give me some money and I'll get some women for you."
"No more slaves!" I said hastily.
"No, no," he said. "I got you into a hole on that one. And you don't want any prostitutes, either. The type I have in mind are just women who need money for a dowry. They need money to get married. You can get a one-night stand with such a woman. Good lookers, too. Lots of variety. Different one every night. Spread it around. And they're real hot, too."
Oh, that sounded good!
He continued, "Now, to do this right, you should have a big car. Women go in for big things and that includes a big car. You remember that bulletproof limousine I told you about? The ex-general's car? The one who got shot? It's still for sale up in Istanbul."
A snag suddenly occurred to me. "Wait. You can't get women on a credit card. And I'm trying to swear off, anyway."
"On women?" he said, astonished.
"No. Credit cards. I hate the things."
"Well, you don't need to use credit cards," he said. "Just deal in cash. So if you'll just give me some money..."
It was time to confess. He was, after all, my friend. "I'm stone-broke," I said. "I don't have any money at all."
The taxi driver started up the car rather quickly, I thought. He dropped me off at the villa up the road. He didn't even say good-bye.
I stared after him.
(Bleep)!
It was all too plain to me that it took money to get things done. Life without money, as I had always known, was death.
I limped back to my room with this awful ache.
(Bleep) Prahd!
I decided some physical work might take my mind off my plight. I warmed up my secret office, stripped myself down and began to clean guns, sweep away old clothes and, by late afternoon, began to straighten up the mess of fake gold bars and the boxes.
Puttering around, I was mostly done when I saw that one of the cases had fallen onto some packages of unexamined mail.
Idly, and with no thought, I picked up some of the letters. They had been forwarded from the Section 451 office on Voltar and had come in on recent freighters. Faht's orderly had slipped them through the slot in the tunnel door.
Routine stuff. A notice that I'd been dropped from the Academy Alumnus Association for the nonpayment of dues. A bill from a gun dealer on Flisten—years old and I didn't intend to be on duty on Flisten soon. An advertisement for new General Services officer caps "that would remain undamaged under the hardest blows of troops' cudgels." An ad for the latest release of "the ever more popular sweetheart of Homeview, Hightee Heller," song strips, featuring hits from the new musical show that was "jamming Voltar theaters nightly: Bold Prince Caucalsia." A warning that I had not acknowledged reading the latest general Apparatus order about filling in forms that listed the correct sequences of forms and must fill in the attached form at once. A new type of chank-pop that "totally eradicated for seconds at a time the gaseous odors of troops." A special offer to Apparatus officers only—a fun gift for their friends —exploding boots. An electronic bird whistle, available in dozen lots, that called in selected types of female songbirds for breeding purposes.
What's this?
Two personal postcards? The kind you send to friends and are wide open in the mails for anyone to read. Who could this be? I didn't have any friends.
I looked at the signature and gaped. The Widow Tayl!
The first card said:
Soltan Gris Section 451 Please Forward.
Yoo-Hoo. Wherever you are. I'm just coming along great.
What shall we name it? Why don't you write?
The lovey-dovey woman you heartlessly abandoned,
Pratia
Return to Pratia Tayl
Minx Estate
Pausch Hills
Oh, my Gods! Open like that right through the office for anyone to read! You could be cashiered for knocking somebody up and not marrying them! The law was all on her side.
The second card was worse! It said:
Soltan Gris
Officer of the Apparatus still, unless his commanding officer finds out he didn't marry me if he didn't the next time I see him.
Yoo-Hoo! Wherever you are.
He is just coming along fine. It is too soon to feel him kick yet. What schools shall we send him to when he is born? How about the Academy like his father? And maybe buy him a commission in the Fleet. Please waste no time in writing me quickly so as to save all the tedious trouble of hiring lawyers which is so time wasting when one could be so nicely busy doing other things.
The loving pregnant girl you left behind,
Pratia Tayl
Minx Estate
Turn right off the main road at the
Inn of the Rutting Beast.
Pausch Hills
PS: Young officers are always welcome, in or out of uniform, to look into this case. (You can also use the landing pad day or night.)
(Bleep) her!
She was trying to get me into trouble! The one thing I had vowed from earliest youth was never, never, NEVER to get married! Who wanted cooking utensils sizzling through the air around one's head? Who wanted all the killings that followed digging brother officers out of your wife's bed?
And, curse it all, Prahd said he had certified and registered her pregnancy before he left Voltar!
(Bleep), (bleep), (BLEEP) Prahd! It was a good thing he was legally dead. Otherwise, I would have shot him out of hand!
Bad off as I might be for women, it could never include the Widow Tayl! She murdered husbands at the slightest pretext. But I had to be honest. That wasn't the real reason.
I could just plain never, never forgive her for her fixation on Heller. The nerve of her, with me right there, having automatic (bleeps) just at the thought of that (bleeped) Heller! And even when she had only seen him just once for less than a minute. Never even talked to him!
Oh, the Widow Tayl was not for me! I might be hard up but not THAT hard up!
Let her go on dreaming of Heller all she liked. I was safely twenty-two and more light-years away!
But it served to cool my ardor off a bit. I almost stopped aching in the place where it hurt. To Hells with her and to Hells with Heller!