Recruit for Andromeda. Marlowe Stephen
I’m late, Mr. Jones.”
“Hardly, Mr. Smith. Hardly. Three minutes late.”
“I’ve come in response to your ad.”
“I know. You look old.”
“I am over twenty-six. Do you mind?”
“Not if you don’t, Mr. Smith. Let me look at you. Umm, you seem the right height, the right build.”
“I meet the specifications exactly.”
“Good, Mr. Smith. And your price.”
“No haggling,” said Smith. “I have a price which must be met.”
“Your price, Mr. Smith?”
“Ten million dollars.”
The man called Jones coughed nervously. “That’s high.”
“Very. Take it or leave it.”
“In cash?”
“Definitely. Small unmarked bills.”
“You’d need a moving van!”
“Then I’ll get one.”
“Ten million dollars,” said Jones, “is quite a price. Admittedly, I haven’t dealt in this sort of traffic before, but—”
“But nothing. Were your name Jones, really and truly Jones, I might ask less.”
“Sir?”
“You are Jones exactly as much as I am Smith.”
“Sir?” Jones gasped again.
Smith coughed discreetly. “But I have one advantage. I know you. You don’t know me, Mr. Arkalion.”
“Eh? Eh?”
“Arkalion. The North American Carpet King. Right?”
“How did you know?” the man whose name was not Jones but Arkalion asked the man whose name was not Smith but might as well have been.
“When I saw your ad,” said not-Smith, “I said to myself, ‘now here must be a very rich, influential man.’ It only remained for me to study a series of photographs readily obtainable—I have a fine memory for that, Mr. Arkalion—and here you are; here is Arkalion the Carpet King.”
“What will you do with the ten million dollars?” demanded Arkalion, not minding the loss nearly so much as the ultimate disposition of his fortune.
“Why, what does anyone do with ten million dollars? Treasure it. Invest it. Spend it.”
“I mean, what will you do with it if you are going in place of my—” Arkalion bit his tongue.
“Your son, were you saying, Mr. Arkalion? Alaric Arkalion the Third. Did you know that I was able to boil my list of men down to thirty when I studied their family ties?”
“Brilliant, Mr. Smith. Alaric is so young—”
“Aren’t they all? Twenty-one to twenty-six. Who was it who once said something about the flower of our young manhood?”
“Shakespeare?” said Mr. Arkalion realizing that most quotes of lasting importance came from the bard.
“Sophocles,” said Smith. “But no matter. I will take young Alaric’s place for ten million dollars.”
Motives always troubled Mr. Arkalion, and thus he pursued what might have been a dangerous conversation. “You’ll never get a chance to spend it on the Nowhere Journey.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“No one ever returns.”
“My worry, not yours.”
“It is forever—as if you dropped out of existence. Alaric is so young.”
“I have always gambled, Mr. Arkalion. If I do not return in five years, you are to put the money in a trust fund for certain designated individuals, said fund to be terminated the moment I return. If I come back within the five years, you are merely to give the money over to me. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll want it in writing, of course.”
“Of course. A plastic surgeon is due here in about ten minutes, Mr. Smith, and we can get on with.... But if I don’t know your name, how can I put it in writing?”
Smith smiled. “I changed my name to Smith for the occasion. Perfectly legal. My name is John X. Smith—now!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Mr. Arkalion as the plastic surgeon entered. “Your name is Alaric Arkalion III—now.”
The plastic surgeon skittered around Smith, examining him minutely with the casual expertness that comes with experience.
“Have to shorten the cheek bones.”
“For ten million dollars,” said Smith, “you can take the damned things out altogether and hang them on your wall.”
* * * *
Sophia Androvna Petrovitch made her way downtown through the bustle of tired workers and the occasional sprinkling of Comrades. She crushed her ersatz cigarette underfoot at number 616 Stalin Avenue, paused for the space of five heartbeats at the door, went inside.
“What do you want?” The man at the desk was myopic but bull-necked.
Sophia showed her party card.
“Oh, Comrade. Still, you are a woman.”
“You’re terribly observant, Comrade,” said Sophia coldly. “I am here to volunteer.”
“But a woman.”
“There is nothing in the law which says a woman cannot volunteer.”
“We don’t make women volunteer.”
“I mean really volunteer, of her own free will.”
“Her—own—free will?” The bull-necked man removed his spectacles, scratched his balding head with the ear-pieces. “You mean volunteer without—”
“Without coercion. I want to volunteer. I am here to volunteer. I want to sign on for the next Stalintrek.”
“Stalintrek, a woman?”
“That is what I said.”
“We don’t force women to volunteer.” The man scratched some more.
“Oh, really,” said Sophia. “This is 1992, not mid-century, Comrade. Did not Stalin say, ‘Woman was created to share the glorious destiny of Mother Russia with her mate?’” Sophia created the quote randomly.
“Yes, if Stalin said—”
“He did.”
“Still, I do not recall—”
“What?” Sophia cried. “Stalin dead these thirty-nine years and you don’t recall his speeches? What is your name, Comrade?”
“Please, Comrade. Now that you remind me, I remember.”
“What is your name.”
“Here, I will give you the volunteer papers to sign. If you pass the exams, you will embark on the next Stalintrek, though why a beautiful young woman like you—”
“Shut your mouth and hand me those papers.”
There, sitting behind that desk, was precisely why. Why should she, Sophia Androvna Petrovitch, wish to volunteer for the Stalintrek? Better to ask why a bird flies south in the winter, one day ahead of the first icy gale. Or why a lemming plunges recklessly into the sea with his multitudes of fellows, if, indeed, the venture were to turn out grimly.
But there, behind