Yet there was an uneasiness in the park, and it wasn’t just that the crowd was light. Barkers called out too suddenly and stopped too soon. Customers hesitated uncomfortable in front of concessions, then shuffled morosely on. Over-age glamor girls ready to dodge rubber rocks, or have their bedclothes or skirts jerked off when a spaceball hit its planet-simulating target, were a trifle hysterical in the challenges they shrilled at passing patrons. The cries coming faintly from the top of the 1,000 foot drop in the Spaceship Ride weren’t the usual terrified but delighted squeals; they sounded more like wails.
Perhaps the fall of Fun Incorporated had caused people who pathetically treasured their thrills, or the money to be made from them, to wonder, “What next?” Perhaps President Barnes’s rambling apocalyptic speeches had finally taken effect, making people ask themselves what they were getting from the so-called pleasures of life, especially the more highly advertised ones. Perhaps the government directive just now being barked from the public news-speakers for the destruction of all cats had given people a “We’d be safer at home” feeling.
Or it may have been that the uneasiness at Double AP was part of a general feeling gripping America, a feeling that had been gathering power in the unconscious and just now burst into thought, a feeling that something that even the government couldn’t handle was stalking invisibly, whether for good or ill, behind each man.
Of course, for Phil the menacing stalkers were two very definite figures: Carstairs and Buck, who at the moment were shepherding their unwilling assistants through the pupil of one of several surrealistic eyes that served as the entrances to the Bug-Eyed Bar.
Tonight the gaudy tavern was emptier than the Park outside. Its famous Ten-G Highballs and Stun-Gun Cocktails were going begging. Its notoriously drink-hungry hostesses were conspicuous by their absence. The only two customers were being served soda pop by the smaller of the two bartenders, making it very simple for Juno, Phil, Mary and Dion to climb onto pneumo-barstools in front of the other bartender. Carstairs and Buck stood close behind them.
Phil found it difficult to believe that the man in front of them was Moe Brimstine. For one thing, his hair was red, even to the stubble on his cheeks and chin. For another, the eyes that Moe had always kept behind dark glasses were as small and squinting as a pig’s. And although the fugitive from the FBL must recognize several of them, he didn’t show it in any way that Phil could discern. He looked them all over stolidly, polishing the speckless bar with the immemorial soiled towel. For that matter, the whole bar looked much as a bar might have looked fifty or a hundred years before; robots could not supervise B-girls, nor had they ever been legalized as bouncers.
“What’s your pleasure?” the big red-head asked.
Phil felt Carstairs’ gun dig his ribs. He tried to wet his lips.
“Mrs. Brimstine, I want my green cat,” he croaked.
Moe Brimstine wrinkled his forehead. “That made with creme de menthe, chartreuse, or green fire?”
“I mean my live green cat,” Phil told him.
“We don’t serve drunks here,” Brimstine said evenly. “Your friend’s had one too many. What would you ladies and gentlemen care for?”
Mary Akeley opened her handbag and laid the Moe Brimstine doll on the counter before her. She looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and with deliberate finickiness took off its tiny dark glasses. Its eyes were piggy. She smiled. She replaced the glasses and fished out of her handbag a hatpin, a pair of scissors, a small knife, a little pair of pliers, a sample size flame-pack, a tiny iron with insulated handle, and a white crusted black bottle, and lined them up in a neat row.
“This isn’t a powder room, lady,” Brimstine said. “Order your drinks.”
Phil couldn’t help but be impressed by the big man’s composure, and then without warning he felt a gust of terror that he knew at once had nothing to do with guns behind him and could hardly stem from the childish paraphernalia for black magic Mary Akeley had set out.
He could tell that the gust had hit Moe Brimstine too, for the big man dropped the towel and backed up against the shelves of bottles behind him.
Mary Akeley said, “Mr. Brimstine, you stole the Green One, whom my husband adores as Bast. You are going to suffer until you return him.” Her voice shook a little at first, then settled down to a cold and cruel monotone. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring my little rack and iron maiden, but these implements are quite adequate.” She ignited the flame-pack and held the tiny iron over it.
Phil heard Juno draw in her breath and Carstairs give a funny grunt behind him. The end of the iron grew red. Mary Akeley turned the doll over on its face and touched it lightly with the iron. Its pants smoked.
Moe Brimstine gasped loudly and clapped his hand behind him. Then he grabbed tremblingly at the doll, but Mary Akeley closed her hand around its two arms and its middle. Instantly Brimstine’s arms clamped down against his sides and stayed there. Mary stood the doll up. Brimstine straightened. She moved it away from her a few inches. Brimstine backed up into the shelves. Sweat beaded his forehead. Mary unexpectedly flicked the doll on the cheek with the hot iron. Moe Brimstine gasped again in pain and jerked his head back.
“This sort of thing is going to go on until you give us the Green One,” the young witch said matter of factly. Phil saw that a red spot had appeared on Moe Brimstine’s ashen cheek.
“Only it’s going to get much worse fast,” she amplified, reaching for the white crusted bottle. Moe Brimstine started to say something, but she clamped the thumb of the hand holding the doll over its little mouth.
“After a while I’ll be much more apt to trust the things you say,” she explained. Moe Brimstine’s face grew red and his eyes bulged.
Then a shadow came strolling softly along the top of the bar. Turning fearfully as he shrank away from it, Phil saw that it was green and silken and had a wise and winsome face. In a split second of realization Phil knew that it was Lucky who had breathed supernatural terror at them, just as he had at the Humberford Foundation; Lucky. who had opened Moe Brimstine’s mind and built a bridge between it and Mary’s, so that suggestion had made him experience everything happening to the doll.
And then Phil realized that no further unpleasant things were going to happen to Moe Brimstine and that no one was going to cause any trouble, even Carstairs or Buck, for suddenly all terror vanished and friendliness and invincible good will began to pour out of Lucky like Scotch from a bottle. Phil could feel it enter and fill at the others. There were little sighs and chuckles. Mary Akeley’s lean finger shrank from the white crusted bottle, then hurriedly swept all the implements off the bar into her bag.
Lucky stood in front of Phil and stretched, slowly and luxuriantly working the muscles of his neck and back. Moe Brimstine beamed at the green cat, and the happy creases around his little eyes suggested those of Santa Claus. With an “If you don’t mind?” to Phil, he reached out his big hand and softly and wonderingly stroked the silky fur.
“You sure rescued Uncle Moe in the nick,” he told Lucky, scratching behind his ears. “I’m sincerely sorry for the things I did to you. I don’t understand them now, and I’m sure glad you got yourself unstunned, though I don’t understand how you did.”
Then he straightened up and boomed out, “What’ll it be, friends? The drinks are on the house!” And they were, too – several quick, happy rounds of them. Even Lucky got a cocktail compounded of milk, egg white, powdered sugar and gin. On Phil’s advice Moe put it behind the bar so Lucky could consume it in private.
Buck let out an adolescent guffaw and handed two guns, butt-first, to Brimstine.