Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (3 page)

“Sure thing,” said Callahan. “Sometimes I do it too. But I generally run someplace I can find my way back from.” It was said so gently that the kid couldn’t take offense, though he tried.

“Run away from what, son?” asked Slippery Joe.

The kid had been bottled up tight too long; he exploded. “From what?” he yelled. “Jesus, where do I start? There was this war they wanted me to go and fight, see? And there’s this place called college, I mean they want you to care, dig it, care about this education trip, and they don’t care enough themselves to make it as attractive as the crap game across the street. There’s this air I hear is unfit to breathe, and water that ain’t fit to drink, and food that wouldn’t nourish a vulture and a grand outlook for the future. You can’t get to a job without the car you couldn’t afford to run even if you were working, and if you found a job it’d pay five dollars less than the rent. The T. V . advertises karate classes for four-year-olds and up, the President’s New Clothes didn’t wear very well, the next depression’s around the corner and you ask me what in the name of God I’m running from?

“Man, I’ve been straight for seven months, what I mean, and in that seven god damned months I have been over this island like a fungus and there is nothing for me. No jobs, no friends, no place to live long enough to get the floor dirty, no money and nobody that doesn’t point and say “Junkie” when I go by for seven months and you ask me what am I running from? Man, everything is all, just everything.”

It was right then that I noticed that guy in the corner, the one with the eyes. Remember him? He was leaning forward in rapt attention, his mouth a black slash in a face pulled tight as a drumhead. Those ghastly eyes of his never left the Janssen kid, but somehow I was sure that his awareness included all of us, everyone in the room.

And no one had an answer for the Janssen boy. I could see, all around the room, men who had learned to listen Callahan’s Place, men who had learned to empathize, to want to understand and share the pain of another. And no one had a word to say. They were thinking past the blurted words of a haunted boy, wondering if this crazy world of confusion might not after all be one holy hell of a place to grow up. Most of them already had reason to know damn well that society never forgives the sinner, but they were realizing to their dismay how thin and uncomforting the straight and narrow has become these last few years.

Sure, they’d heard these things before, often enough to make them into clichés. But now I could see the boys reflecting that these were the clichés that made a young man say he liked to feel dead, and the same thought was mirrored on the face of each of them: My God, when did we let these things become clichés? The Problems of Today’s Youth were no longer a Sunday supplement or a news broadcast or anything so remote and intangible, they were suddenly become a dirty, shivering boy who told us that in this world we had built for him with our sweat and our blood he was not only tired of living, but so unscared of dying that he did it daily, sometimes, for recreation.

And silence held court in Callahan’s Place. No one had a single thing to say, and that guy with the eyes seemed to know it, and to derive some crazy kind of bitter inner satisfaction from the knowledge. He started to settle back in his chair, when Callahan broke the silence.

“So run,” he said.

Just like that, flat, no expression, just, “So run.” It hung there for about ten seconds, while he and the kid locked eyes.

The kid’s forehead started to bead with sweat. Slowly, with shaking fingers, he reached under his leather vest to his shirt pocket. Knuckles white, he hauled out a flat, shiny black case about four inches by two. His eyes never left Callahan’s as he opened it and held it up so that we could all see the gleaming hypodermic. It didn’t look like it had ever been used; he must have just stolen it.

He held it up to the light for a moment, looking up his bare, unmarked arm at it, and then he whirled and flung it case and all into the giant fireplace. Almost as it shattered he sent a cellophane bag of white powder after it, and the powder burned green while the sudden stillness hung in the air. The guy with the eyes looked oddly stricken in some interior way, and he sat absolutely rigid in his seat.

And Callahan was around the bar in an instant, handing the Janssen kid a beer that grew out of his fist and roaring, “Welcome home, Tommy!” and no one in the place was very startled to realize that only Callahan of all of us knew the kid’s first name.

We all sort of swarmed around then and swatted the kid on the arm some and he even cried a little until we poured some beer over his head and pretty soon it began to look like the night was going to get merry again after all.

And that’s when the guy with the eyes stood up, and everybody in the joint shut up and turned to look at him. That sounds melodramatic, but it’s the effect he had on us. When he moved, he was the center of attention. He was tall, unreasonably tall, near seven foot, and I’ll never know why we hadn’t all noticed him right off. He was dressed in a black suit that fit worse than a Joliet Special, and his shoes didn’t look right either. After a moment you realized that he had the left shoe on the right foot, and vice-versa, but it didn’t surprise you. He was thin and deeply tanned and his mouth was twisted up tight but mostly he was eyes, and I still dream of those eyes and wake up sweating now and again. They were like windows into hell, the very personal and private hell of a man faced with a dilemma he cannot resolve. They did not blink, not once.

He shambled to the bar, and something was wrong with his walk, too, like he was walking sideways on the wall with magnetic shoes and hadn’t quite caught the knack yet. He took ten new singles out of his jacket pocket -which struck me as an odd place to keep cash-and laid them on the bar.

Callahan seemed to come back from a far place, and hustled around behind the bar again. He looked the stranger up and down and then placed ten shot glasses on the counter. He filled each with rye and stood back silently, running a big red hand through his thinning hair and regarding the stranger with clinical interest.

The dark giant tossed off the first shot, shuffled to the chalk line, and said in oddly-accented English, “To my profession,” and hurled the glass into the fireplace.

Then he walked back to the bar and repeated the entire procedure. Ten times.

By the last glass, brick was chipping in the fireplace.

When the last, “To my profession,” echoed in empty air; he turned and faced us. He waited, tensely, for question or challenge. There was none. He half turned away, paused, then swung back and took a couple of deep breaths. When he spoke his voice made you hurt to hear it.

“My profession, gentlemen,” he said with that funny accent I couldn’t place, “is that of advance scout. For a race whose home is many light-years from here. Many, many light-years from here.” He paused, looking for our reactions.

Well, I thought, ten whiskeys and he’s a Martian. Indeed. Pleased to meet you, I’m Popeye the Sailor. I guess it was pretty obvious we were all thinking the same way, because he looked tired and said, “it would take far more ethanol than that to befuddle me, gentlemen.” Nobody said a word to that, and he turned to Callahan. “You know I am not intoxicated,” he stated.

Callahan considered him professionally and said finally, “Nope. You’re not tight. I’ll be a son of a bitch, but you’re not tight.”

The stranger nodded thanks, spoke thereafter directly to Callahan. “I am here now three days. In two hours I shall be finished. When I am finished I shall go home. After I have gone your planet will be vaporized. I have accumulated data which will ensure the annihilation of your species when they are assimilated by my Masters. To them, you will seem as cancerous cells, in danger of infecting all you touch. You will not be permitted to exist. You will be cured. And I repent me of my profession.”

Maybe I wouldn’t have believed it anywhere else. But at Callahan’s Place anything can happen. Hell, we all believed him. Fast Eddie sang out, “Anyt’ing we can do about it?” and he was serious for sure. You can tell with Fast Eddie.

“I am helpless,” the giant alien said dispassionately. “I contain … installations … which are beyond my influencing-or yours. They have recorded all the data I have perceived in these three days; in two hours a preset mechanism will be triggered and will transmit their contents to the Masters.” I looked at my watch: it was eleven-fifteen. “The conclusions of the Masters are foregone. I cannot prevent the transmission; I cannot even attempt to. I am counterprogrammed.”

“Why are you in this line of work if it bugs you so much?” Callahan wanted to know. No hostility, no panic. He was trying to understand.

“I am accustomed to take pride in my work,” the alien said. “I make safe the paths of the Masters. They must not be threatened by warlike species. I go before, to identify danger, and see to its neutralization. It is a good profession, I think. I thought.”

“What changed your mind?” asked Doc Webster sympathetically.

“This place, this … `bar’ place we are in-this is not like the rest I have seen. Outside are hatred, competition, morals elevated to the status of ethics, prejudices elevated to the status of morals, whims elevated to the status of prejudices, all things with which I am wearily familiar, the classic symptoms of disease.

“But here is difference. Here in this place I sense qualities, attributes I did not know your species possessed, attributes which everywhere else in the known universe are mutually exclusive of the things I have perceived here tonight. They are good things … they cause me great anguish for your passing. They fill me with hurt.

“Oh, that I might lay down my geas,” he cried. “I did not know that you had love!”

In the echoing stillness, Callahan said simply, “Sure we do, son. It’s mebbe spread a little thin these days, but we’ve got it all right. Sure would be a shame if it all went up in smoke.” He looked down at the rye bottle he still held in his big hand, and absently drank off a couple ounces. “Any chance that your masters might feel the same way?”

“None. Even I can still see that you must be destroyed if the Masters are to be safe. But for the first time in some thousands of years, I regret my profession. I fear I can do no more.”

“No way you can gum up the works?”

“None. So long as I am alive and conscious, the transmission will take place. I could not assemble the volition to stop it. I have said: I am counterprogrammed.”

I saw Noah Gonzalez’ expression soften, heard him say, “Geez, buddy, that’s hard lines.” A mumbled agreement rose, and Callahan nodded slowly.

“That’s tough, brother. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

He looked at us with absolute astonishment, the hurt in those terrible eyes of his mixed now with bewilderment. Shorty handed him another drink and it was like he didn’t know what to do with it.

“You tell us how much it will take, mister,” Shorty said respectfully, “and we’ll get you drunk.”

The tall man with star-burned skin groaned from deep within himself and backed away until the fireplace contained him. He and the flames ignored each other, and no one found it surprising.

“What is your matter?” he cried. “Why are you not destroying me? You fools, you need only destroy me and you are saved. I am your judge. I am your jury. I will be your executioner.”

“You didn’t ask for the job,” Shorty said gently. “It ain’t your doing.”

“But you do not understand! If my data are not transmitted, the Masters will assume my destruction and avoid this system forever. Only the equal or superior of a Master could overcome my defenses, but I can control them. I will not use them. Do you comprehend me? I will not activate my defenses-you can destroy me and save yourselves and your species, and I will not hinder you.

“Kill me!” he shrieked.

There was a long, long pause, maybe a second or two, and then Callahan pointed to the drink Shorty still held out and growled, “You better drink that, friend. You need it. Talkin’ of killin’ in my joint. Wash your mouth out with bourbon and get outta that fireplace, I want to use it.”

“Yeah, me too!” came the cry on all sides, and the big guy looked like he was gonna cry. Conversations started up again and Fast Eddie began playing “I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire,” in very bad taste indeed.

Some of the boys wandered thoughtfully out, going home to tell their families, or settle their affairs. The rest of us, lacking either concern, drifted over to console the alien. I mean, where else would I want to be on Judgement Day?

He was sitting down, now, with booze of all kinds on the table before him. He looked up at us like a wounded giant. But none of us knew how to begin, and Callahan spoke first.

“You never did tell us your name, friend.”

The alien looked startled, and he sat absolutely still, rigid as a fence post, for a long, long moment. His face twisted up awful, as though he was waging some titanic inner battle with himself, and cords of muscle stood up on his neck in what didn’t seem to be the right places. Doc Webster began to talk to himself softly.

Then the alien went all blue and shivered like a steel cable under strain, and very suddenly relaxed all over with an audible gasp. He twitched his shoulders experimentally a few times, like he was making sure they were still there, and then he turned to Callahan and said, clear as a bell, “My name is Michael Finn.”

It hung in the air for a very long time, while we all stood petrified, suspended.

Then Callahan’s face split in a wide grin, and he bellowed, “Why of course! Why yes, yes of course, Mickey Finn. I didn’t recognize you for a moment, Mr. Finn,” as he trotted behind the bar. His big hands worked busily beneath the counter, and as he emerged with a tall glass of dark fluid the last of us got it. We made way eagerly as Callahan set the glass down before the alien, and stood back with the utmost deference and respect.

He regarded us for a moment, and to see his eyes now was to feel warm and proud. For all the despair and guilt and anguish and horror and most of all the hopelessness were gone from them now, and they were just eyes. Just like yours and mine.