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enzyme that hydrated polythene into what they had every reason to believe was
a standard food substance, since the Host had been observed to ingest it with
some frequency. There is no wrong-doing there, Chief. Alcohols are standard
foods for many organic beings, as you know. And a gift of food has been held
to satisfy the second
Directive. And add to that they were half out of their plexuses with empathy
deprivation.
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Nevertheless I admit the gift failed in a fairly basic way, since it seems to
have damaged artifacts the
Hosts hold valuable.
So I accept the responsibility, Chief. Wipe this expedition off the records.
We've failed, and we'll never see our home breeding-slings again.
Please notify our descendants and former co-parents and, if you can, try to
let them think we died heroically, won't you?
Garigolli
Shirl has defeated the wrath of far more complex 'Creatures than Mr.
Bermingham by offering them coffee-me, for instance. While she got him the
clean cup and the spoon and the milk out of the pitcher in the refrigerator, I
had time to think.
Mr. Horgan would be interested in what had happened to our plastics Econ-Bin.
Not only Mr. Horgan.
The Fourteenth Floor would be interested. The ecology freaks themselves would
be interested, and maybe would forget about liking buzzards better than babies
long enough to say a good word for
International Plastics Co.
I mean, this was significant. It was big, by which I mean it wasn't little. It
was a sort of whole new horizon for plastics. The thing about plastics, as
everyone knows, is that once you convert them into trash they stay trash. Bury
a maple syrup jug hi your back yard and five thousand years from now some
descendant operating a radar-controlled peony-planter from his back porch will
grub it up as shiny as new. But the gunk in our eco-bin was making these
plastics, or at least the polythene parts of them, bio-
degradable.
What was the gunk? I had no idea. Some random chemical combination between
Butchie's oatmeal and his vitamins? I didn't care. It was there, and it
worked. If we could isolate the stuff, I had no doubt that
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-%20Critical%20Mass.txt the world-famous scientists who gave us the plastic
storm window and the popup Eco-Bin could duplicate it. And if we could
duplicate it we could sell it to hard-pressed garbagemen all over the world.
The Fourteenth Floor would be very pleased.
With me to think was ever to act. I rinsed out one of Butchie's baby-food jars
in the sink, scraped some of the stickiest parts of the melting plastic into
it and capped it tightly. I couldn't wait to get it to the office.
Mr. Bermingham was staring at me with his mouth open. "Good Lord," he
muttered, "playing with filth at his age. What psychic damage we wreak with
bad early toilet training."
I had lost interest in Mr. Bermingham. I stood up and told him, "I've got to
go to work. I'd be happy, to walk you as far as the bus."
"You aren't going anywhere, Dupoir! Came here to talk to you. Going to do it,
too. Behavior was absolutely inexcusable, and I demand- Say, Dupoir, you don't
have a drink anywhere about the house, do you?"
"More coffee, Mr. Bermingham?" Shirl said politely. "I'm afraid we don't have
anything stronger to offer you. We don't keep alcoholic beverages here, or at
least not very long. Mr. Dupoir drinks them."
"Thought so," snarled Bermingham. "Recognize a drunk when I see one: shifty
eyes, irrational behavior, duplicity-oh, the duplicity! Got all the signs."
"Oh, he's not like my brother, really," Shirl said thoughtfully. "My husband
doesn't go out breaking into liquor stores when he runs out, you know. But I
don't drink, and Butchie doesn't drink, and so about all we ever have in the
house is some cans of beer, and there aren't any of those now."
Bermingham looked at her with angry disbelief. "You too! I smell it," he said.
"You going to tell me
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I don't know what good old ethyl alcohol smells like?"
"That's the bin, Mr. Bermingham. It's a terrible mess, I know."
"Funny place to keep the creature," he muttered to himself, dropping to his
knees. He dipped a finger into the drippings, smelled it, tasted it and
nodded. "Alcohol, all right. Add a few congeners, couple drops of food
coloring, and you've got the finest Chivas Regal a bellboy ever sold you out
of a bottle with the tax stamp broken." He stood up and glared at me. "What's
the matter with you, Dupoir? You not only don't pay your honest debts, you
don't want to pay the bartenders either?"
I said, "It's more or less an accident."
"Accident?"
Then illumination struck. "Accident you should find us like this," I
corrected. "You see, it's a secret new process. We're not ready to announce it
yet. Making alcohol out of old plastic scraps.".
He questioned Shirl with his eyes. Getting her consent, he poured some of
Butchie's baby-food orange juice into a glass, scooped in some of the
drippings from the bin, closed his eyes and tasted. "Mmm," he said
judiciously. "Sell it for vodka just the way it stands."
"Glad to have an expert opinion," I said. "We think there's millions in it."
He took another taste. "Plastic scraps, you say? Listen, Dupoir. Think we can
clear all this up in no tune.
That fool Klaw, I've told him over and over, ask politely, don't make trouble
for people. But no, he's got that crazy lawyer's drive for revenge. Apologize
for him, old boy, I really do apologize for him. Now look," he said, putting
down the glass to rub his hands. "You'll need help in putting this process on
the market. Business acumen, you know? Wise counsel from man of experience.
Like me. And capital. Can help you there. I'm loaded."
Shirl put in, "Then what do you want our house for?"
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"House? My dear Mrs. Dupoir," cried Mr. Bermingham, laughing heartily, "I'm
not going to take your house! Your husband and I will work out the details in
no time. Let me have a little more of that delightful orange juice and we can
talk some business."
Garigolli to Home Base
Joy, joy
Chief!
Cancel all I said. WeVe met Directive Two, the Host is happy, and we're on our
way Home!
Warm up the breeding slings, there's going to be a hot time in the old
hammocks tonight.
Garigotti
Straight as the flight of Ung-Glitch, the soaring vulture, that is the code of
the jungle. I was straight with
Mr. Bermingham. I didn't cheat him. I made a handshake deal with him over the
ruins of our Eco-Bin, and honored it when we got to his lawyers. I traded him
40 percent of the beverage rights to the stuff that came out of our bin, and
he wrote off that little matter of $14,752.03., Of course, the beverage rights
turned out not to be worth all that much, because the stuff in the bin was
organic and alive and capable of reproduction, and it did indeed reproduce
itself enthusiastically. Six months later you could buy a starter drop of it
for a quarter on any street corner, and what that has done to the vintners of
the world you know as well as I do. But Bermingham came out ahead. He divided
his
40 percent interest into forty parts and sold them for $500 each to the alumni
of his drunk tank. And Mr.
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Horgan- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]