“Of course,” I ejaculated, finally; belatedly equating the Foundation with Fundamental Funds. Suzy Scandal said that her Fund had made Mya so much richer that she had been voted Hors Concours, in all further Fortune Polls. When her money, finally, could no longer be counted because there was nothing higher than billions so far, Mya would gain the privilege of keeping out of print entirely. In the meantime, her husband is coming on to me so strong and so fast I can hardly keep up with the message.
“Be a rose among roses; a thorn among thorns.” Who said that? Did he just say that or did I? Or, was that Hamid’s voice? No, Hamid said:
“When I see a prize, I know how to take it. You never do.”
Himmer is swinging his buggy blue eyes back and forth across my face like a lighthouse of brotherly love, and I sense, without any sense of shock, what a holy innocent he looks and probably is. “If I am thine, thou art mine,” I say silently; taking him, I think, like a pawn. If I can believe my ears, this whitey is about to hand me over his wife and, maybe, his life.
“This is the Seal of the Sahara,” he is saying as he flashes a big green stone. “It is carved out of an emerald and I have been instructed to give it to a man whose name is not Hassan. Mya and I believe that man to be you.”
My ears are so tuned that I can hear the emerald crushing stray sugar crystals on the marble top of the table as he pushes it at me with long fingers, like a man making a move in a game. The scarab rolls toward me as relentlessly as a dung-beetle plowing its way over a dune.
“A beautiful bauble, Mr. Himmer,” I admitted uneasily, hefting the bright green stone in the palm of my hand before pushing it back at him, “but I can’t take your queen.” I saw his big blue bug-eyes open even a little wider at that but I had caught sight of a shoeshine boy stopped stock-still in the street, staring at the stone with coffee-cup eyes. “Have a coffee with me, Mr. Himmer,” I offered him grandly while slapping away at the boy.
“Most gracious of you but, no; never!” Himmer protests. I am shocked to see just how flustered he is. “No stimulants ever,” he grins. “I just don’t need them, I guess.”
“Oh, thass all right,” I mumble, realizing with relief that his grin is a purely mechanical reflex of extreme oriental politeness. For a split second there, he looked almost Chinese: quite distinctly, I saw formalized orange and black flames of anguish licking his rictus.
“Welcome aboard,” he is saying: “like a full-gown Dalai Lama found in the beauty of his age. In Present Time, it’s your move, Hassan. You now hold the master-pawn which may well include some sort of claim on Mya herself, for all I know: but always remember that I am Mya’s seventh husband and her last. I have no more to say — ever! — and, now, I must go.”
“Am I supposed to give this jewel to your wife?” I asked, lamely.
“At your risk and peril!” he snapped. “She may try to cozen it out of you: in fact, she most certainly will, but if you give it to her — if you play it over to her, into her full power and possession, that’s the end of that! The Emerald Seal, lawfully, is the Beginning and Ending of words. Having played the Green Beetle on you leaves me speechless. I mean that quite literally: I have only these few last words. Such has been the immutable rule since time immemorial when the Seal was first put on the Word. You can, I imagine, guess why. In Present Time, however, we must avail ourselves of the new knowledge, must we not? I have thought it wise, therefore — although it may not have been wise of me at alclass="underline" it may have been downright criminally insane of me, who knows? to make you a tape! However, I have. Previously, the whole silly old Master-Adept game-situation had to be played out telepathically but Mya and I think that’s so out of date, don’t you? There’s so much static about these days since electronics that most messages get hopelessly garbled. For Mya and me, the message is OUT! This, therefore, my dear Professor Ulys O. Hanson the Third, is our first conversation and our last. What you know, you know, and the rest of the garbage you’ll get from my recorded Last Words when you play back this fiveinch spool of magnetic tape on your UHER.”
With that, he handed me over a red, white and yellow box of “SOUND MAGIC” tape.
Then, he took a little white plastic bronchial inhalator out of his pocket and he opened his mouth round-open, so: like, O. My own so-called mind was working so slowly that, while I registered that Himmer had heavenly good breath, like flowering alpine pastures still half under snow — how rare! probably because his teeth were so wide apart he had no decay and he probably never smoked — no stimulants ever! — all this time, I was politely withdrawing my gaze from this wet open red mouth in order to drop my gaze and, yes, I remembered where I meant to look — at my UHER, still tightly gripped between my two feet.
“Damn!” I sighed. “I wasn’t turned-on.”
When I raised my eyes from the ground, Himmer had inhaled his little puff of vapor and, without a further word, vanished; I suppose, into the noonday crowd on the Boulevard but who knows? I could hardly wait to play back his tape:
5. HE
He who tastes knows; so Mya and I have decided to give you a taste. Just to prove how serious we are, here is the text of the telex we sent to our operational headquarters in Africa; to “Malamut,” the house Mya built way down south on Cape Noon: WITH HASSAN IN PRESENT TIME STOP CHANGE START OPERATION SCARAB PHASE FOUR SIGNED MYA AND THAY. You met Amos Africanus and Rolf Ritterolf in the Hotel Saint Georges in Algut. They manage our whole Stop Change Start device; of which Operation Scarab is, of course, only a part. Since your famous first interview with them, we have detailed them off to you as your personal staff. In Present Time, you are the Operator of Operation Scarab yourself. We hope you will be pleased with their work. They are two of our very best men in Africa or anywhere else, so, you see, we mean business. This is pretty big business even for Mya, who has irons in the fire all over Creation. What we mean to do is to snatch the Sahara right out from under that handful of prune-faced white bastards and their evil monopolistic double-criss-crossed corporations, who are already crunching into the desert like crocodiles cutting up a live camel! We intend to save the Sahara and give it back to itself. Now, you have to admit, a woman can’t be expected to swing a deal like this all alone, Hanson: Mya needs help.
One look in the mirror will tell you why Mya needs someone like you in Africa. The whole trouble with me is that I look just too damned white for Phase Four. I could make it in Mongolia, maybe, but we haven’t got there yet. I dream of the Gobi desert, don’t you? I can make the yellow scene somewhat, having been born out that way and, besides, I’ve been a Brahman as well as a Buddhist in my day but, hard as I’ve tried, I just can’t make Black. Go Black, Jack! Well, short of massive melanin injections, I tried up in Harlem like everybody else in my day but I can’t say it worked. I remember once being at somebody’s piss-elegant Easter cocktail with canapés on Morningside where, from across the crowded room, I caught sight of one nasty pasty-white face. “How did that whitey get in here?” I asked indignantly. It was my own reflection in a mirror over the mantelpiece. Imagine campaigning to be “accepted” by the human race after that!