Chapter 13
In the cold light of morning the idea didn’t look any more attractive—or any less true. I could do it, or not do it, as I chose. There could be no doubting the wild tinge of insanity that colored Angelina’s life. Every one of our contacts had been marked by a ruthless indifference to human life. She killed with coldness or with pleasure—as when she had shot me—but always with total disregard for people. I doubt if even she had any idea of how many murders she had committed in her lifetime. By her standards I was a rank amateur. I hadn’t killed more than—that kind of violence was rarely necessary in my type of operation—surely no more than… none?
Well, well—old chicken-hearted revealed at last. Rough and tough diGriz the Killer who never killed! It was nothing to be ashamed of, quite the opposite in fact. I placed a value on human life, the one unchanging value in existence. Angelina valued herself and her desires, and nothing else. To follow her down the twisted path of her own making I would have to place myself in the same mental state that she lived in.
This is not as difficult as it sounds—at least in theory. I have had some experience with the psychotomimetic drugs and was well aware of their potency. Centuries of research have produced drugs that can simulate any mental condition in the user.Like to be paranoid for a day?Take a pill. You too can go around the bend, friend. It is a matter of record that people have actually tried these concoctions for kicks, but that bored with life I don’t want to be. There would have to be a lot stronger reason before I would subject my delicate gray cells to this kind of jarring around.Like finding Angelina, for instance.
About the only good thing about these pixilation producers is the accepted fact that the effects are only temporary. When the drug wears off so do the hallucinations. I hoped. Nowhere in the texts I studied did they mention a devil’s brew such as the one I was concocting. It was a laborious task hunting down all of Angelina’s fascinating symptoms in the textbooks and trying to fit them to an inclusive psychotic pattern. I even called in some professional help to aid in analyzing her case, not mentioning, of course, to what use I intended to put the information. In the end I had a bottle of slightly smoky liquid and a taped recording of auto-hypnotic suggestions to play into my ears while the shot was taking effect. All that remained was screwing my courage to the sticking-place as they say in the classics. Not really all that remained—I wanted to take some precautions first. I rented a room in a cheap hotel and left orders not to be disturbed at any time. This was the first time I had ever tried this particular type of nonsense and since I had no idea of how foggy my memory would be I left a few notes around to remind me of the job. After a half day of this kind of preparation I realized I was making excuses.
“Well it’s not easy to deliberately go insane,” I told my rather pale reflection in the mirror. The reflection agreed but that didn’t stop either of us from rolling up our sleeves and filling large hypodermic needles with murky madness.
“Here’s looking at you,” I said, and slipped the needle gently in the vein and slowly pushed the plunger home.
The results were anticlimactic to say the least. Outside of a ringing in my ears and a twinge of headache that quickly passed I felt nothing. I knew better than to go out though, so I read the newspaper for a while, until I felt tired. The whole thing seemed a little foolish and pretty much of a letdown. I went to sleep with the tape player whispering softly in my ears such ego-building epigrams as, “You are better than everyone else and you know it, and people who don’t know it had better watch out,” and “They are all fools and if you were in charge things would be different, and why aren’t you in charge, it’s easy enough.”
Waking up was uncomfortable because of the pain in my ears where the earphones were still plugged in, my own stupid voice droning away at me. Nothing had changed and the whole futile experiment was a waste and waste makes me angry. The earphones broke in my hands and I felt better, felt muchbetterstill when I had stamped the tape player into a tangle of rubble.
My face rasped when I ran my hand over it; I had been days without a shave. Rubbing in the dip cream I looked into the mirror over the sink and an odd fact struck me for the first time. This new facefitted[?] me a lot better than the old one. A fault of birth or the ugliness of my parents—whom I hated deeply, the only right thing they ever did was to produce me—had given me a face that didn’t fit my personality. The new one was better, handsomer for one thing and a lot stronger. I should have thanked that fumble-finger quack Vulff for producing a masterpiece. I should have thanked him with a bullet. That would guarantee that no one would ever be able to trace me through him. It must have been a warm day and I was suffering a fever when I let him get safely away like that.
On the table was a piece of paper with a single word written on it, my own handwriting though I can’t imagine why the hell I left it there. Angelina it said. Angelina, how I would love to get that tender white throat between my hands and squeeze until your eyeballs popped. Hah! I had to laugh at the thought, made a funny picture indeed. Yet I shouldn’t be so flippant about it. Angelina was important. I was going to find her and nothing was going to stop me. She had made a fool of me and had tried to kill me. If anyone deserved to die it was her. It was an awful waste in some ways yet it had to be done. I shredded the note into fine pieces.
All at once the room was very oppressing and I wanted out. What made me doubly angry was the fact the key was missing. I remember taking it out, but had no idea where I had put it. The slob at the desk was slow at answering and I was tempted to tell him justWhatI thought of the service, but I refrained. There is only one permanent cure for these types. A spare key rattled into the basket of the pneumo and I let myself out. I needed some food and I needed some drink and most of all I needed a quiet place for some thought.
A nearby spot provided all three—after I had chased the hookers away. They were all dogs, and Angelina just playing a role had been better than this entire crowd lumped together. Angelina. She was on my mind tonight with a vengeance. The drinks warmed my gut and Angelina warmed my memory.To think that I had actually once considered turning her in or possibly killing her.What a waste! The only intelligent woman I had ever run across. And all woman—I’ll never forget the way she walked in that dress. Once she had been tamed a bit—what a team we could make! This thought was so mentally aphrodisiac that my skin burned and I drained my glass at a single swallow.
Something had to be done; I had to find her. She would never have left a ripe plum of a planet like this one. A girl with her ambition could go right to the top here, nothing could stop her. And that’s of course where she would be—eventually if not now. She must spend her life feeling damned because she was a woman, knowing she was better than the rest of the cruds around,thenproving it to herself and them over and over again. My arrival would be the biggest favor Angelina could have. I didn’t have to prove myself better than the hicks on this rubeified planet—just one look did that. When Angelina hooked up with me she could stop fighting, relax and take orders. The contest would be over for all time.
While I sat there something was nagging at me, some vital fact I had to remember—yet couldn’t. For a second I fumbled with the memory before I realized what it was. The injection would be wearing off soon! I had to get back to the room, quickly. There had been some fear about the danger of this business, but I realized now that was just my earlier cowardice. This stuff was no more dangerous than aspirin. And at the same time it was the galaxy’s greatest pick-up. New worlds of possibilities were opening up tome,my mind was clearer and my thoughts more logical. I wasn’t going back to the old muddled-head stuff. At the bar I paid the bartender, my fingers tapping impatiently while he slothfully made change for me.