American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (84 page)

The espresso machine dominated the room. When Lucas Maggiore first opened his trattoria, he had bought a secondhand but nearly new modern electric machine, shining in chrome, looking a good deal like the manifold of a liquidcooled aircraft engine, with
ATALANTO
proclaiming the maker’s name in raised block letters across the topmost tube. When the store was redecorated, the new machine was sold to a kaffeneikon and another machine—one of the old gas-fired models—was put up in its place. This was a great vertical cylinder with a bell top, nickel-plated, with the heads of cherubim bolted to its sides and an eagle rampant atop its bell. Rich with its ornamentation, its sides covered by engraved scrollwork, with spigots protruding from its base, the machine sat on the counter and screamed hisses as it forced steam through the charges of coffee. From noon to three a.m. each day except Monday, gathering thickest around midnight, Villagers and tourists crowded
Espresso Maggiore
, sitting in the wire-back chairs, most of them drinking capuccino in preference to true espresso, which is bitter, and interrupting their conversations whenever the machine hissed.

Besides Lucas, there were four other employees of
Espresso Maggiore
.

Carlo, the manager, was a heavy-set, almost unspeaking man of about thirty-five, cut from the same cloth as Lucas Maggiore and hired for that reason. He handled the machine, usually took cash, and supervised the work and cleaning up. He showed Lucas how to grind the coffee, told him to keep the tables wiped and the sugarbowls full, taught him how to wash cups and saucers with the greatest efficiency, and left him alone after that, since the youngster did his work well.

There were three waitresses. Two of them were more or less typical Village girls, one from the Midwest and the other from Schenectady, who were studying drama and came in to work from eight to one. The third waitress was a neighborhood girl, Barbara Costa, who was about seventeen or eighteen and worked the full shift every day. She was a pretty, thinnish girl who did her work expertly and wasted no time talking to the Village young men, who came in during the afternoons and sat for hours over their one cup of coffee because nobody minded as long as the store wasn’t crowded. Because she was there all day, Lucas got to know her better than the other two girls. They got along well, and during the first few days she took the trouble to teach him the tricks of balancing four and five cups at a time, remembering complicated orders, and keeping a running tab in his head. Lucas liked her for her friendliness, respected her skill because it was organized in a way he understood, and was grateful for having one person he could talk to in the rare moments when he felt a desire to do so.

In a month, Lucas had acclimated himself to the city. He memorized the complicated network of straggling, unnumbered streets below Washington Square, knew the principal subway routes, found a good, inexpensive laundry and a delicatessen where he bought what few groceries he felt he needed. He had investigated the registration system and entrance requirements at City College, sent a letter of inquiry to Massachusetts, and registered with the local Selective Service Board, where his grade in the Technical Aptitude Examination gave him his conditional deferment. He’d have to be a registered physical sciences student within a year, but that was what he was in New York for. So, by and large, he had succeeded in arranging his circumstances to fit his needs.

But what his uncle had hinted at on his first day in the city was beginning to turn itself over in Lucas’ mind. He sat down and thought it out systematically.

He was eighteen, and at or near his physical peak. His body was an excellently designed mechanism, with definite needs and functions. This particular year was the last even partly-free time he could expect for the next eight years.

Yes, he decided, if he was ever going to get himself a girl, there was no better time for it than now. He had the time, the means, and even the desire. Logic pointed the way, and so he began to look around.

The plane went into its final downward glide over Long Island, slipping into the New York International landing pattern, and the lounge hostess asked Rogers and the man to take their seats.

The man lifted his highball gracefully, set the edge against the lip of his mouth, and finished his drink. He put the glass down, and the grille moved back into place. He dabbed at his chin with a paper cocktail napkin. “Alcohol is very bad for high-carbon steel, you know,” he remarked to the hostess.

He had spent most of the trip in the lounge, occasionally ordering a drink, smoking at intervals, holding glass or cigarette in his metal hand. The passengers and crew had been forced to grow accustomed to him.

“Yes, sir,” the hostess said politely.

Rogers shook his head to himself. As he followed the man down the aisle to their seats, he said, “Not if it’s stainless steel, Mr. Martino. I’ve seen the metallurgical analyses on you.”

“Yes,” the man said, buckling his seatbelt and resting his hands lightly on his kneecaps. “You have. But that hostess hasn’t.” He put a cigarette in his mouth and let it dangle there, unlit, while the plane banked and steadied on its new heading. He looked out the window beside him. “Odd,” he said. “You wouldn’t expect it to still be too early for daylight.”

The moment the plane touched the runway, slowed, and began to taxi toward the offloading ramp, the man unfastened his seatbelt and lit his cigarette. “We seem to be here,” he said conversationally, and stood up. “It’s been a pleasant trip.”

“Pretty good,” Rogers said, unfastening his own belt. He looked toward Finchley, across the aisle, and shook his head helplessly as the F.B.I. man raised his eyebrows. There was no doubt about it—whoever this man was, Martino or not, they were going to have a bad time with him.

“Well,” the man said, “I don’t suppose we’ll be meeting socially again, Mr. Rogers. I hardly know whether it’s proper to say good-bye or not.”

Rogers held out his hand wordlessly.

The man’s right hand was warm and firm. “It’ll be good to see New York again. I haven’t been here in nearly twenty years. And you, Mr. Rogers?”

“Twelve, about. I was born here.”

“Oh, were you?” They moved slowly along the aisle toward the rear door, with the man walking ahead of Rogers. “Then you’ll be glad to get back.”

Rogers shrugged uncomfortably.

The man’s chuckle was rueful. “Pardon me—do you know, for a moment I actually forgot this was hardly a pleasure trip for either of us.”

Rogers had no answer. He followed the man down the aisle to where the stewardesses gave them their coats. They stepped out on the escalator, with Rogers’ eyes on a level with the top of the man’s bare head.

The man half-turned, as though for another casual remark.

The first flashbulb exploded down at the foot of the escalator, and the man recoiled. He stumbled back against Rogers, and for a moment he was pressed against him. Rogers suddenly caught the stale, acrid smell of the perspiration that had been soaking the man’s shirt for hours.

There was a cluster of photographers down on the apron, pointing their cameras at the man and firing their flashguns in a ripple of sharp light.

The man tried to turn on the escalator. His hard hand closed on Rogers’ shoulder as he tried to get him out of the way. The gaskets behind his mouth grille were up out of sight. Rogers heard his two food-grinding blades clash together.

Then Finchley somehow got past both of them, clattering down the escalator. He was reaching for his wallet as he went, and then the F.B.I. shield glittered briefly in the puffballs of light. The photographers stopped.

Rogers took a deep breath and pried the man’s hand off his shoulder. “All right,” he said gently, lowering the hand carefully as though it were no longer attached to anything. “It’s all right, man, it’s under control. The damned pilot must have radioed ahead or something. Finchley’ll have a talk with the newspaper editors and the wire service chiefs. You won’t get spread all over the world.”

The man got his footing back, and stepped unsteadily off the escalator as they reached the ground. He mumbled something that had to be either thanks or a stumbling apology. Rogers was just as glad not to have heard it.

“We’ll take care of the news media. The only thing you’ll have left to worry about is the people you meet, but from what I’ve seen you can do a damn fine job of handling those.”

The man’s glittering eyes swung on Rogers savagely. “Just don’t watch me too closely,” he growled.

Rogers stood in the local A.N.G. Security office that afternoon, massaging his shoulder from time to time while he talked. Twenty-two men sat in orderly rows of classroom chairs facing him, taking notes on standard pads rested on the broad right arms of the chairs.

“All right,” Rogers said in a tired voice. “You’ve all got offset copies of the dossier on Martino. It’s pretty complete, but that’s only where we start. You’ll get your individual assignments as you file out, but I want you all to know what the team’s supposed to be doing as a whole. Any one of you may come up with something that’ll seem unimportant unless we have the whole picture.

“Now—what we want is a diagram of a man, down to the last capillary and—” His lips twitched. “Rivet. Out of your individual reports, we’re going to put together a master description of him that’ll tell us everything from the day he was born to the day the lab went up. We want to know what foods he liked, what cigarettes he smoked, what vices he had, what kind of women he favored—and why. We want a list of the books he’s read—and what he agreed with in them. Almost all of you are going to do nothing but intensive research on him. When we’re through, we want to have read a man’s mind.” Rogers let his hand fall to his side. “Because his mind is all we have left to recognize him by.

“Some of you are going to be assigned to direct surveillance. It’ll be your reports we’ll check against the research. They’ll have to be just as detailed, just as precise. Remember that he knows you’re watching. That means his gross actions may very well be intended to mislead you. It’ll be the small things that might trip him up. Watch who he talks to—but pay just as much attention to the way he lights his cigarettes.

“But remember you’re dealing with a genius. He’s either Lucas Martino or a Soviet ringer, but, whichever it is, he’s sharper than any one of us. You’ll have to face that, keep it in mind, and just remember there’re more of us and we’ve got the system. Of course”—Rogers heard the frustrated undertone in his voice—“he may be part of a system, too. But it’d be much smarter of them to let him go it alone.

“As to what he’s here for if he is a ringer: it might be anything. They might seriously have expected him to get back into the technological development program. If so, he’s in a hole right now, with no place to go. He may make a break to get out of the Allied Sphere. Watch out for that. Again, he may be here for something else, figuring the Soviets expected us to handle him just the way we have. If so, there’re all kinds of rabbits he could start pulling out of his hat. We’re positive he isn’t a human bomb or a walking arsenal full of hidden death-rays and other stuff out of the funnies. We’re positive, but, Lord knows, we could be wrong. Watch out for him if he starts trying to buy electronic parts, or
anything
he could build something out of.

“Those of you who’re going to dig into his history—if he ever fiddled with things in his cellar, or tossed an idea for some kind of nasty gimmick into a discussion, I want to hear about it quick. I don’t know what this K-Eighty-eight thing he worked up was—I do know it must have had an awful punch. I think we’d all appreciate it if he didn’t put one together in a back room somewhere.”

Rogers sighed. “All right. Questions.”

A man raised his hand. “Mr. Rogers?”

“Yes.”

“How about the other end of this problem? I presume there’re teams in Europe trying to penetrate the Soviet organization that worked on him?”

“There are. But they’re only doing it because we’re supposed to cover all loose ends for the record. They’re not getting anywhere. The Soviets have a fellow named Azarin who’s their equivalent to a sector security chief. He’s good at his work. He’s a stone wall. If we get anything out past him, it’ll be pure luck. If I know him, everybody connected in any way with whatever happened is in Uzbekistan by now, and the records have been destroyed—if they were ever kept. I know one thing—we had some people I thought I’d planted over there. They’re gone. Other questions?”

“Yes, sir. How long do you think it’ll be before we can say for sure about this fellow?”

Rogers simply looked at the man.

Rogers was sitting alone in his office when Finchley came in. It was growing dark again outside, and the room was gloomy in spite of the lamp on Rogers’ desk. Finchley took a chair and waited while Rogers folded his reading glasses and put them back in his breast pocket.

“How’d you make out?” Rogers asked.

“I covered them all. Press, newsreel, and TV. He’s not going to get publicity.”

Rogers nodded. “Good. If we’d let him become a seven days’ wonder, we’d have lost our last chance. It’ll be tough enough as it is. Thanks for doing all the work, Finchley. We’d never have gotten any accurate observations on him.”

“I don’t think he’d have enjoyed it, either,” Finchley said.

Rogers looked at him for a moment, and then let it pass. “So as far as anyone connected with the news media is concerned, this isn’t any higher up than F.B.I. level?”

“That’s right. I kept the A.N.G. out of it.”

“Fine. Thanks.”

“That’s one of the things I’m here for. What did Martino do after what happened at the airport?”

“He took a cab downtown and got off at the corner of Twelfth Street and Seventh Avenue. There’s a luncheonette there. He had a hamburger and a glass of milk. Then he walked down to Greenwich Avenue, and down Greenwich to Sixth Avenue. He went down Sixth to Fourth Street. As of a few hours ago, he was walking back and forth on those streets down there.”