Lady Slings the Booze Read online

  “For instance?”

  “Oh, many things…your choice of damping material, for instance.”

  “Damping material?” Arethusa asked.

  “Neutron reflector. A nuclear explosion occurs when you bring two barely subcritical masses of fissionable material together, very rapidly. If you are to make your bomb as small and inconspicuous as possible, the two masses of fissionable material must be quite close to each other—so close that there is danger their combined radioactivity will cause them to go critical before you wish them to.”

  “What happens then?”

  “It is called a ‘fizzle yield.’ Heat; much radioactivity; but no explosion. To prevent this, you encase both masses in a damping material, to inhibit their radioactivity. When the masses are slapped together, the damping material then helps contain their neutrons long enough for supercriticality to occur. The better a damping substance you use, the more powerful a bomb you can tuck into a small space. The problem is, the best damping agents are often heavy. This is why the ‘suitcase nukes’ one finds in fiction are rather improbable. You could build an atom bomb that would fit into a suitcase—but you could not lift the suitcase.”

  I was hanging on by my fingernails. But I really wanted to try and get as good an image as I could of what I was looking for. I had a dim but intimidating grasp of the size of the haystack; I could only hope it might be useful to know what a needle looked like. “What are good damping materials?” I asked.

  “Lithium is one of the classic choices. But there are many others. Natural uranium, steel, copper, lead, aluminum. Solder will do nicely, and can be purchased in large quantities without notice. Even water will serve, actually—ordinary tap water. Damp damping, if you will. Or a few inches of wax. Whatever you select will affect the physical shape and dimensions of the bomb. So will other factors: where it is to be placed, and its desired effect. It is possible, for instance, to shape or direct a nuclear explosion. Taylor created the Orion Project, which tried to build a spaceship propelled by shaped hydrogen bombs.”

  Orion! My God—I had read about that mad scheme. Freeman Dyson had been involved in it. They’d actually built a model, with conventional high explosive, that worked like a charm: dropped bombs out its anus and goosed itself gently into the sky on a series of bangs. It must have sounded a little like an old one-lung gasoline motor. Then, as they were gearing up to build a real one—a spaceship powerful enough to lift a small town into orbit!—the US and USSR signed a treaty banning nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, and the project died. So Taylor had been behind that…

  I opened my mouth to say something…and somehow as I saw Tesla I found myself thinking of his mechanical oscillator story, and the Hell’s Angels with their mortar, and what he had just said about bomb design and the problem of selecting a damper substance—where in New York would you get a lot of copper, lead, solder, even water, without attracting attention?—and the practical placement problem facing a terrorist who wanted to produce maximum destruction with the least detectible bomb…and all of a sudden, a hammer hit me, painlessly but quite hard, between the eyes.

  Lady Sally sat bolt upright. “Mark his face, Nikky!” she said. “That’s the look you get when you have one of your white light visions. Ken’s got something; I’ve seen him do this before.” Tesla looked at me with great interest.

  My voice came from far away. “I think I know where the mines are,” I said.

  “What’d I tell you?” she said, and then her jaw dropped.

  “In general terms, anyway,” I went on. “I can’t pinpoint them, but I can tell you where we’ll find them. If we do. When we do.” I could actually feel blood draining out of my head. “Oh dear Jesus, we better find them.”

  Arethusa took my hand in both of hers and squeezed it tightly. “Where, Ken?”

  “Water pipes. They’re inside municipal water pipes.”

  FIVE seconds of horrid silence. Then everyone’s eyes widened at once as they began to understand.

  “What you said earlier, Nikola,” I went on, “about seismic shock being worst further from the epicenter. A terrorist wants the gaudiest effect he can get. Sure, you could knock down the World Trade Center. But that only impresses the people who live in sight of the World Trade Center. Everybody in a city lives near a water pipe. Neutron reflector provided for you, free: all the water and lead and tin and solder you want. And all cities keep their water pipes underground—so when it goes boom you get seismic shock and hydrostatic shock at the same time. Maximum bang for your buck. As a bonus you poison the city water supply—for decades to come.” I was beginning to babble, from sheer horror. “Not to mention the comedy value! Faucets and hoses spraying live steam, hot both ways; fire hydrants flying like champagne corks, geysers of neutrons; water coolers going off like flashbulbs; thousands of bare asses instantly steam-cooked by boiling toilets—” Arethusa’s fingernails were trying to meet through my hand. I shut up and pulled her up to sit beside me on the bed, freed my hand, and put my arm around her. As we clutched at each other, she sat down on my other side and I put my other arm around her. All three of us rocked together. It helped.

  Tesla was pale, but nodding vigorously. “I think you are right, Ken. That is where I would put nuclear mines. The pipes would be fairly similar from city to city. Here in New York, I would probably choose a site somewhere in Tunnel One or Tunnel Two, which convey all the city’s water from upstate. Possibly both.”

  “That narrows the search area,” Lady Sally said grimly.

  “Not enough,” I said. “Those are two damn big damn long tunnels. You could fit a submarine into either one of them with no trouble, and they go on for miles. Not to mention any of several dozen tributaries that’d serve almost as well. And that’s just this city. We still need another conceptual breakthrough.”

  “I do not think so,” Tesla said quietly. “I believe I can locate them.”

  We all stared at him.

  “Nikola,” I said, “I yield to no one in my respect for you. But how the he…” He hated profanity. “Excuse me. How on earth can you do it? The da…the things have to be shielded. Sure, they’ve got water outside them and maybe damping water inside, but the two won’t mix: there’ll be no radioactivity to trace. Wait a minute: they’ll be warm, won’t they? Heat-warm, I mean. Lady Sally, have you got infrared gear good enough to pick up small hot spots in the city water system?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But Ken—there are millions of them.”

  “True.”

  Tesla spoke. “You overlook the obvious, friend Ken.”

  “A specialty of mine,” I agreed bitterly. “It’s only the obscure I see at once. Okay, what did I miss?”

  “Assume you are one of these terrorists. You have nuclear mines set up all over the country. What do you plan to do with them?”

  “Threaten to set them off.”

  “And for this threat to be credible, you must in fact be able to set them off. How will you do so?”

  “Why, by—”

  If I hadn’t had both arms around Arethusas, I’d have smacked myself in the forehead.

  “—by radio,” he finished. “You will perhaps recall that, a little less than ninety years ago—”

  “—you invented radio, of course. Stupid of me. You mean you…what do you mean?”

  “It would be a simple matter, for me at any rate, to build a device which would register the existence and location of every radio receiver in the metropolitan New York area, whether they happen to be functioning at the time or not.”

  I did not point out that this would yield quite a few more targets than the total population of the city. I just said, “And?”

  “And I would be able to distinguish those which are located underwater.”

  Had I been holding my breath? There seemed to be a lot of air in my chest to exhale. I felt myself smiling. Arethusa was hugging me tightly on both sides. “Could you tell what frequency they’re tuned to receive?”

  �
��Or pattern of frequencies, yes, I believe so.” He frowned. “Given enough time, I could even learn the precise code which, transmitted over that frequency, would arm and trigger the mines. Unfortunately, the only way I could do that would be to stumble across it—triggering the mines.”

  “Never mind that, Nikola,” I assured him. “You find me a mine, even one of them, and I’ll get the code.”

  “Attaboy!” Arethusa said, in stereo.

  “Your Ladyship?” I said.

  “Yes, Ken?”

  “I need to put together a task force. I want the names of everyone cleared to be on it.”

  She didn’t hesitate. “All of us in this room. Michael. Priscilla. Willard and Sherry. Tim, Doctor Kate, Father Newman. Ralph Von Wau Wau. Robin. And Mistress Cynthia, of course: Robin has no secrets at all from her. Mary, if you really need her. I have taken one or two others into my confidence who are not presently in this area; I could probably round most of them up if you need them. And there are others in my employ who may have figured out things about me, and kept it to themselves. I can provide perhaps another twenty effectives who will fight for me without asking questions.”

  “My Lady,” Arethusa said, “any artist in this House will fight for you without asking questions. And at least half the clients.”

  “Thank you, dear. How big a task force do you envision, Ken?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m making this up as I go along. I just wanted to know how many troops I could call on. Let me make sure I’ve got it right. Fifteen who can be told everything, and twenty or more who can be given limited objectives, but not the whole picture?”

  “If you find it necessary,” she said, “you may tell anything you wish to any member of my staff. I don’t employ anyone I don’t trust that much. I’ve done my best not to burden any of them with my secrets…but over the years, one thing and another have forced me to break cover to some fifteen of them, yes.”

  “And you say you’ve got good contacts in the DIA and FBI?”

  She looked briefly nostalgic; her nipples came up. “And in the Komitet Gosudarstvenno Bezopasnosti as well.”

  “Not for more troops; we hand them a fait accompli or nothing. I just mean, you can get information to the right people once we have it?”

  “You may always leave the little things to me,” she said. “As the bishop said to the actress.”

  “Well, hell,” I said dizzily, “these guys are candy!”

  “You think so, Ken?” Lady Sally asked.

  I quoted her friend Lord Buckley. “‘Take it off your mind, Nazz: it’s covered.’ We’re gonna tangle these murkies, make it from tea.”

  Lady Sally blinked. “Beg pardon?”

  “We’ll nick ’em in the cuts.”

  Arethusa stood up on my right. “I’ll get Kate,” she said.

  “It was bound to happen Spooner or later,” Lady Sally agreed.

  Things got fuzzy after that. Doctor Kate arrived, and did something wonderful; after that everyone melted away like the Wicked Witch. Except for Arethusa.

  You know how, when you’re sleeping with someone you love, and making a spoon, it’s hard sometimes to decide whether you’d rather be on the inside or the outside of the spoon? Boy, is it nice not to have to make a choice…

  13. Radio Drama

  Wives are not property.

  —LAZARUS LONG

  HALFWAY through shaving, whistling Louis Jordan’s “Blue Light Boogie,” I looked at myself in the mirror and asked, What’s wrong with this picture?

  Well, I replied, nothing much that I can see. Or no more than usual. Naked white male in pretty good shape, happy, loved, and recently laid. Not so much as a pimple, or a—

  —or a scar! Smooth, unblemished skin, from my scalp down as far as the mirror showed, about hip height. No sign of the two bullet scars in my arm and shoulder, no trace of the old razor scar across my right pec or the shrapnel tracks on the left one…and especially, no sign of a recent puncture wound in my side…

  It dawned on me for the first time that the vigorous and glorious sex I had woken in the middle of, some ten minutes ago, should not have been possible for a post-op patient—dope or no dope.

  I pawed at my side, as though I might pull aside some flap of meat and locate the missing wound. I prodded the area, gently at first, and then harder. Soon I was punching at it with the side of my fist.

  I was so pissed I stormed out of the bathroom and barked at Arethusa. “Where the hell is Lady Sally? I’m gonna kill her!”

  “What’s wrong, Joe?” she said, wide-eyed. There was only one of her present, dressed in perspiration and glory.

  “What’s wrong? God damn it, nothing. That’s what’s wrong! Oh, Kate probably actually did it—but the orders came from Sally. The rotten bitch went and healed me…without so much as a ‘By your leave’! I’m not going to stand for this—”

  She burst out laughing, strove at once to stop.

  “Dammit to hell, I earned those scars. She had no right—”

  She had it under control now. Way under control. “Joe Quigley, did you or did you not verbally acknowledge recruitment into an army, just yesterday?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Did you or did you not verbally acknowledge, just yesterday, that the crisis in your war could come at any moment?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Soldier, shut up and soldier. The Lady did what she had to.”

  Oof. “But you don’t—”

  “The world is supposed to balance on a knife edge, while you take R&R in a cathouse, just so you can preserve the record of your mistakes, to impress the new meat? It was necessary to heal you quickly.”

  Every prostitute in America knows grunt talk. “Dammit, Arethusa, those scars were my combat ribbons—”

  “Are you the kind of soldier who needs his ribbons? More than he needs to get his job done?”

  Well, if you put it that way…

  After a time, I stopped frowning and sat down beside her. “Thanks for straightening me out, baby,” I said, and put my arm around her.

  “I understand, Joe,” she said, snuggling into me. “I’d have been mad too. But it was necessary. Now that you know Lady Sally’s secret, there was no longer any reason for you to waste time recuperating normally.”

  I glanced down at myself. “I’ll miss them. Most expensive ornaments I ever bought.”

  “You can always have them tattooed back on, after all this is over,” she suggested.

  “No,” I said. “It’s done.”

  She looked hesitant. “Well, if you really have accepted it, I guess I should tell you the rest of it.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Out with it.”

  “Uh…I’m afraid you’re never going to get sick again, darling.”

  You can’t grit your teeth and gape at the same time. “Never? Ever?”

  She shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid not. Your DNA has been optimized. It was an unavoidable side effect of healing you quickly. If it makes you feel any better, it’s been done to me too. If we’re going to die, my love, it’ll have to be accident, murder, or suicide—and even that will have to be a kind that kills instantly.”

  That redheaded bitch, making me immortal without asking me first, why, I oughta…

  “Let me finish shaving, and we’ll go down for some breakfast,” I said. My voice sounded odd to me.

  “Sit there,” she directed, and went into the bathroom. She came back with the electric razor. It harmonized with the buzzing in my ears. I sat passively as she completed my shave.

  How do you wrap your mind around the knowledge that you could safely kiss a leper, or dance naked in snow, or share a needle with a promiscuous Haitian male prostitute? As far as I could get was to wonder if I could somehow get a refund on my Blue Cross and life insurance without blowing Lady Sally’s cover…

  No, maybe I shouldn’t do that. It had only been a few days since the last attempt on my life. And I had new enem
ies…

  “Darling,” my Arethusa said as she ran the razor across my face, “there’s a conversation I think we ought to have before we go down to eat.”

  I raised an eyebrow or two. “Really? How could we possibly be in any hurry about anything? Except saving space and time, I mean.”

  “Maybe we should have had it long before now. Things have been rushed since we met.” Understatement of the century. “I barely found time to propose to you—”

  “I know. I’d been waiting for a chance myself for hours.”

  “—and I’m very glad you’ve agreed to marry me. But perhaps it’s past time we defined what that means. The worst misunderstandings are the unspoken ones. What do you and I expect of each other?”

  I honestly didn’t know what she meant. “A square deal.”

  “Then let’s negotiate the deal. Not necessarily in writing—but explicitly.”

  “That’s easy. You can have anything I’ve got, and I’ll take anything you feel like giving me.”

  She chased down the last bit of stubble, shut off the razor, and smiled. “I’d love to have that reciprocal agreement with you. But have you thought it through?”

  I blinked. “I hadn’t thought of it as something that needed thinking through.”

  She acquired a look of tender exasperation. “I guess I’ll have to spell it out. You know what I do for a living. I have no plans to quit working. Do you anticipate that being a problem for you?”

  At last I got it. By God, she was right. This was certainly something a man ought to think through before climbing into his tux. How could I have failed to wonder about it myself?

  So I thought about it.

  I probed within my heart for jealousy, possessiveness.

  No echo came back.

  Why not? I’d always had the normal male human complement of both vices.

  Think it through, Joe. What are the reasons that make a man unhappy if his love starts having sex with other people?