The Knights of Arthur by Frederik Pohl (free ebook novel txt) š
- Author: Frederik Pohl
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With one suitcase as his domain, Arthur was desperately in need of armed henchmen ā¦ for his keys to a kingdom were typewriter keys!
There was three of usāI mean if you count Arthur. We split up to avoid attracting attention. Engdahl just came in over the big bridge, but I had Arthur with me so I had to come the long way around.
When I registered at the desk, I said I was from Chicago. You know how it is. If you say youāre from Philadelphia, itās like saying youāre from St. Louis or DetroitāI mean nobody lives in Philadelphia any more. Shows how things change. A couple years ago, Philadelphia was all the fashion. But not now, and I wanted to make a good impression.
I even tipped the bellboy a hundred and fifty dollars. I said: āDo me a favor. Iāve got my baggage booby-trappedāā
āNatch,ā he said, only mildly impressed by the bill and a half, even less impressed by me.
āI mean really booby-trapped. Not just a burglar alarm. Besides the alarm, thereās a little surprise on a short fuse. So what I want you to do, if you hear the alarm go off, is come running. Right?ā
āAnd get my head blown off?ā He slammed my bags onto the floor. āMister, you can take your damn money andāā
āWait a minute, friend.ā I passed over another hundred. āPlease? Itās only a shaped charge. It wonāt hurt anything except anybody who messes around, see? But I donāt want it to go off. So you come running when you hear the alarm and scare him away andāā
āNo!ā But he was less positive. I gave him two hundred more and he said grudgingly: āAll right. If I hear it. Say, whatās in there thatās worth all that trouble?ā
āPapers,ā I lied.
He leered. āSure.ā
āNo fooling, itās just personal stuff. Not worth a penny to anybody but me, understand? So donāt get any ideasāā
He said in an injured tone: āMister, naturally the staff wonāt bother your stuff. What kind of a hotel do you think this is?ā
āOf course, of course,ā I said. But I knew he was lying, because I knew what kind of hotel it was. The staff was there only because being there gave them a chance to knock down more money than they could make any other way. What other kind of hotel was there?
Anyway, the way to keep the staff on my side was by bribery, and when he left I figured I had him at least temporarily bought. He promised to keep an eye on the room and he would be on duty for four more hoursāwhich gave me plenty of time for my errands.
I made sure Arthur was plugged in and cleaned myself up. They had water runningāNew Yorkās very good that way; they always have water running. It was even hot, or nearly hot. I let the shower splash over me for a while, because there was a lot of dust and dirt from the Bronx that I had to get off me. The way it looked, hardly anybody had been up that way since it happened.
I dried myself, got dressed and looked out the window. We were fairly high upāfifteenth floor. I could see the Hudson and the big bridge up north of us. There was a huge cloud of smoke coming from somewhere near the bridge on the other side of the river, but outside of that everything looked normal. You would have thought there were people in all those houses. Even the streets looked pretty good, until you noticed that hardly any of the cars were moving.
I opened the little bag and loaded my pockets with enough money to run my errands. At the door, I stopped and called over my shoulder to Arthur: āDonāt worry if Iām gone an hour or so. Iāll be back.ā
I didnāt wait for an answer. That would have been pointless under the circumstances.
After Philadelphia, this place seemed to be bustling with activity. There were four or five people in the lobby and a couple of dozen more out in the street.
I tarried at the desk for several reasons. In the first place, I was expecting Vern Engdahl to try to contact me and I didnāt want him messing with the luggageānot while Arthur might get nervous. So I told the desk clerk that in case anybody came inquiring for Mr. Schlaepfer, which was the name I was usingāmy real name being Sam Dunlapāhe was to be told that on no account was he to go to my room but to wait in the lobby; and in any case I would be back in an hour.
āSure,ā said the desk clerk, holding out his hand.
I crossed it with paper. āOne other thing,ā I said. āI need to buy an electric typewriter and some other stuff. Where can I get them?ā
āPX,ā he said promptly.
āPX?ā
āWhat used to be Macyās,ā he explained. āYou go out that door and turn right. Itās only about a block. Youāll see the sign.ā
āThanks.ā That cost me a hundred more, but it was worth it. After all, money wasnāt a problemānot when we had just come from Philadelphia.
The big sign read āPX,ā but it wasnāt big enough to hide an older sign underneath that said āMacyās.ā I looked it over from across the street.
Somebody had organized it pretty well. I had to admire them. I mean I donāt like New Yorkāwouldnāt live there if you gave me the placeābut it showed a sort of go-getting spirit. It was no easy job getting a full staff together to run a department store operation, when any city the size of New York must have a couple thousand stores. You know what I mean? Itās like running a hotel or anything elseāhow are you going to get people to work for you when they can just as easily walk down the street, find a vacant store and set up their own operation?
But Macyās was fully manned. There was a guard at every door and a walking patrol along the block-front between the entrances to make sure nobody broke in through the windows. They all wore green armbands and uniformsāwell, lots of people wore uniforms.
I walked over.
āAfternoon,ā I said affably to the guard. āI want to pick up some stuff. Typewriter, maybe a gun, you know. How do you work it here? Flat rate for all you can carry, prices marked on everything, or what is it?ā
He stared at me suspiciously. He was a monster; six inches taller than I, he must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He didnāt look very smart, which might explain why he was working for somebody else these days. But he was smart enough for what he had to do.
He demanded: āYou new in town?ā
I nodded.
He thought for a minute. āAll right, buddy. Go on in. You pick out what you want, see? Weāll straighten out the price when you come out.ā
āFair enough.ā I started past him.
He grabbed me by the arm. āNo tricks,ā he ordered. āYou come out the same door you went in, understand?ā
āSure,ā I said, āif thatās the way you want it.ā
That figuredāone way or another: either they got a commission, or, like everybody else, they lived on what they could knock down. I filed that for further consideration.
Inside, the store smelled pretty bad. It wasnāt just rot, though there was plenty of that; it was musty and stale and old. It was dark, or nearly. About one light in twenty was turned on, in order to conserve power. Naturally the escalators and so on werenāt running at all.
I passed a counter with pencils and ball-point pens in a case. Most of them were goneāsomebody hadnāt bothered to go around in back and had simply knocked the glass outābut I found one that worked and an old order pad to write on. Over by the elevators there was a store directory, so I went over and checked it, making a list of the departments worth visiting.
Office Supplies would be the typewriter. Garden & Home was a good betāmaybe I could find a little wheelbarrow to save carrying the typewriter in my arms. What I wanted was one of the big ones where all the keys are solenoid-operated instead of the cam-and-roller arrangementāthat was all Arthur could operate. And those things were heavy, as I knew. That was why we had ditched the old one in the Bronx.
Sporting Goodsāthat would be for a gun, if there were any left. Naturally, they were about the first to go after it happened, when everybody wanted a gun. I mean everybody who lived through it. I thought about clothesāit was pretty hot in New Yorkāand decided I might as well take a look.
Typewriter, clothes, gun, wheelbarrow. I made one more note on the padātry the tobacco counter, but I didnāt have much hope for that. They had used cigarettes for currency around this area for a while, until they got enough bank vaults open to supply big bills. It made cigarettes scarce.
I turned away and noticed for the first time that one of the elevators was stopped on the main floor. The doors were closed, but they were glass doors, and although there wasnāt any light inside, I could see the elevator was full. There must have been thirty or forty people in the car when it happened.
Iād been thinking that, if nothing else, these New Yorkers were pretty neatāI mean if you donāt count the Bronx. But here were thirty or forty skeletons that nobody had even bothered to clear away.
You call that neat? Right in plain view on the ground floor, where everybody who came into the place would be sure to goāI mean if it had been on one of the upper floors, what difference would it have made?
I began to wish we were out of the city. But naturally that would have to wait until we finished what we came here to doāotherwise, what was the point of coming all the way here in the first place?
The tobacco counter was bare. I got the wheelbarrow easily enoughāthere were plenty of those, all sizes; I picked out a nice light red-and-yellow one with rubber-tired wheel. I rolled it over to Sporting Goods on the same floor, but that didnāt work out too well. I found a 30-30 with telescopic sights, only there werenāt any cartridges to fit itāor anything else. I took the gun anyway; Engdahl would probably have some extra ammunition.
Menās Clothing was a waste of time, tooāI guess these New Yorkers were too lazy to do laundry. But I found the typewriter I wanted.
I put the whole load into the wheelbarrow, along with a couple of odds and ends that caught my eye as I passed through Housewares, and I bumped as gently as I could down the shallow steps of the motionless escalator to the ground floor.
I came down the back way, and that was a mistake. It led me right past the food department. Well, I donāt have to tell you what that was like, with all the exploded cans and the rats as big as poodles. But I found some cologne and soaked a handkerchief in it, and with that over my nose, and some fast footwork for the rats, I managed to get to one of the doors.
It wasnāt the one I had come in, but that was all right. I sized up the guard. He looked smart enough for a little bargaining, but not too smart; and if I didnāt like his price, I could always remember that I was supposed to go out the other door.
I said: āPsst!ā
When he turned around, I said rapidly: āListen, this isnāt the way I came in, but if you want to do business, itāll be the way I come out.ā
He thought for a second, and then he smiled craftily and said: āAll right, come on.ā
Well, we haggled. The gun was the big thingāhe wanted five thousand for that and he wouldnāt come down. The wheelbarrow he was willing to let go for five hundred. And the typewriterāhe scowled at the typewriter as though it were contagious.
āWhat you want that for?ā he asked suspiciously. I shrugged.
āWellāā he scratched his headāāa thousand?ā
I shook my head.
āFive hundred?ā
I kept on shaking.
āAll right, all right,ā he grumbled. āLook, you take the other things for six thousandāincluding what you got in your pockets that you donāt think I know about, see? And Iāll throw this in. How about it?ā
That was fine as far as I was concerned, but just on principle I pushed him a little further. āForget it,ā I said. āIāll give you fifty bills for the lot, take it or leave it. Otherwise Iāll walk right down the street to Gimbelās andāā
He guffawed.
āWhats the matter?ā I demanded.
āPal,ā he said, āyou kill me. Stranger in town, hey? You canāt go anyplace but here.ā
āWhy not?ā
āAccount of there aināt anyplace else. See, the chief here donāt like competition. So we donāt have to worry about anybody taking their trade elsewhere,
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