Callahan's Secret Part 3

Finn's voice was bleak. "I wish greatly that I had the ability. That is one of the parts that did not suit them."

I was as horrified as Mary. As a rule, Finn is disinclined to talk about his past, and of course none of us had ever tried to pry. I'd always wondered how he'd gotten into his former profession. Now I was sorry I knew.

(Still, I was tempted to ask him the other thing that had always puzzled me: why the body he wore looked human. Was human stock ubiquitous through the Galaxy? Had his Masters designed him specifically to come here? Or did he somehow reform his body for each new planet, each new culture? I knew that at least half his body was organic- but did that half have anything in -common- with the body he had been born into?

Perhaps the answer was equally horrifying. In any case, my Mend Finn was in pain: This was no time to be snoopy.) "Mickey," Mary said softly, "if you are unable to hate your Masters ... then you are unable to love them. Yes? That's why you were able to betray them."

"Yes. They do not wish to be loved. They would find the idea disgusting. Love baffles and repels them, they stamp it out wherever they find it in the Galaxy. The Masters are motivated by self-interest."

"So are most humans," Mary said.

Finn actually laughed. "Excuse me, Mary my new friend, but what you said is funny. All humans-without exception-want to love. No organic or emotional or psychological damage can remove that need. Humans can survive, albeit in pain, without being loved-but lock a man in a dungeon and he will find an ant to love, or try. The sociopath, who feels no emotions, wishes he could, and is driven mad by his inability. Love is the condition in which the happiness and welfare of another are essential to your own. To any rational selfish mind, this is insanity. To a Master it would be obscenity: perhaps the corresponding horror for a human being would be ego-death."

"Love is ego-death," Mary whispered.

"The Masters have run across love from time to time in their expansion through the Galaxy. They're not at all afraid that it might infect them, nor do I believe that to be a possibility, but they always exterminate it with a special pleasure, a frisson of horror, a small thrill of disgust." Finn closed his eyes briefly. "It was the flaw for which my race died."

The Place was silent. Mary's fingers were digging painfully into my arm, and I couldn't protest because I was gripping her arm just as hard. Why was she glaring at Callahan?

"When first we encountered the Masters, we considered the problem they represented and evolved two possible solutions. One involved their complete annihilation, root, stock, and branch; the other was more risky. We loved Life, and especially Sentience, and they were sentient. We took the risk and were destroyed. Perhaps it was the wrong choice.

"In any case, I am nearly all that remains of my race, and so I am disinclined to die. I can neither love nor hate my Masters, but I can fear them and do."

"It must have been hard for you to quit them," Mary said.

"Yes, but not because of the fear. That came later. It was hard because I am only partly organic. I contain installations, which were programmed by the Masters. Betrayal was almost a physical impossibility for me: I was counter-programmed. With an effort that burned out small components and may have taken a century off my lifespan, I was barely able to hint at how my programming might be circ.u.mvented-and these my friends were able to interpret my hints and act on them."

"Aren't your ... Mick, I'm sorry, I just can't use that word-Aren't the c.o.c.kroaches likely to notice you're gone and come looking for you?"

"No, Mary. The Galaxy is a big dark place, and the ... c.o.c.kroaches, being rational, are cautious. if a scout fails to report in, the area he was exploring is left alone. My defensive systems are mighty; it would take a powerful enemy to destroy me without my consent."

Callahan set up another five shots. "Finn," he asked, "tell me if it's none o' my business, but is it possible for you to suicide?"

"No, Michael. Or I would have done so, before I ever came to your tavern that first night." He downed two of the shots. "But, as with my loyalty to the c.o.c.kroaches ... thank you for that name, Mary ... my will to live can be tampered with slightly. I could not suicide-but given the right conditions and a strong enough motivation, I could cooperate in my a.s.sa.s.sination." He finished the remaining shots. "You will recall that on that first night here, I begged you all to kill me."

"No, Mickey," Callahan said softly. "I don't recall that." He trod his cigar underfoot and lit a new one. "I don't ever plan to, either. One more personal question?"

"Of course, Michael."

It was a ten-cent cigar or worse, but Mike took his time getting it lit. properly. "You said, 'strong enough motivation." Puff. "Tell me, buddy ... " Puff. " ... is loneliness a strong enough motivation?"

Not a chair creaked; not a sleeve rustled; not a gla.s.s clinked. The fire seemed to quiet in the hearth; the rain seemed to have stopped. Somewhere in there Mary and I had lost our grip on each other's arm; I wanted to get mine back, but something told me to stay still.

Finn sighed finally, and put ten more singles on the bartop. Callahan handed him a fresh fifth, and while he was drinking off the top quarter of it, Callahan said quickly and quietly, "Mickey, once upon a time you had a problem you couldn't solve, and dying looked like the only way out. But you kept on looking for another way out, and in the proverbial nick of time you found one."

Finn wiped his mouth with his long forearm. "Michael, I have been looking for a solution to this problem for a long time. All the time I have been on Earth. I think very quickly. In the same amount of time I could have deduced this solar system from one of your cigar stubs."

"Mickey," Mary began, and then caught herself .."Mickey Finn isn't your real name, is it?"

"Yes, it is, but in the sense you mean you are correct: it is not the birthname my father gave me."

'What is your birthname?"

Finn smiled sadly. "You couldn't p.r.o.nounce it."

"Try me."

He started to argue but gave in and spoke his name. When I'd heard it I agreed with him. The closest I can render it is "Txffu Mpwfs." Whatever Finn's people had been like, I was sure their mouths were constructed differently than ours.

Mary got it dead-bang perfect the first time. "Txffu," she said, "weren't you just as lonely, or lonelier, when you worked for the Roaches? It must be a long time between star systems."

Finn blinked at hearing his name on another's lips for the first time in-how long? -but was distracted by her question. "For one thing, there was always the tiny but measurable possibility that the ... the Roaches might have reactivated others of my race to become scouts, that I might, if I lived long enough, chance to meet such a one eventually, that we might-" He broke off and did more damage to his fifth. "There was hope. Microscopic hope, perhaps, but hope. But now I must stay here, and no other of my race will ever come, and there is no hope."

He looked at the bottle. It was almost empty. Perhaps he sympathized with it; he put it down unfinished. "And when I worked for the Mas-for the c.o.c.kroaches, I had a job. A function. A purpose. A less than totally desirable one, admittedly. But I was part of something greater than myself, and I had a role to play. What is my role here on Earth? I have tried to anchor myself to this planet, to 'put down roots'-! have pursued farming and fis.h.i.+ng and hunting and several other most basic trades. I can imitate a terrestrial organism in general and a human in particular.

"But I am alien. I have no purpose here, no job which needs me to do it. This makes my loneliness all the sharper. Perhaps I could stand loneliness if I were not useless; perhaps I could stand uselessness if I were not lonely." His voice was eerily calm and flat as he finished, "The two together are more than I can bear."

The silence that ensued then was a familiar one. Someone names a problem-an act similar in many ways to giving birth-and then the rest of us sit around a while in respectful, sympathetic, contemplative silence, admiring-the newborn little monster and meditating ways to kill it. Although it's difficult to read a man who has facial and vocal expressions and body language only when he remembers to, I felt that Finn had completed his birthing, and I put my mind on solutions for his problems. This was going to be one of the longer silences.

I've tried my hand at matchmaking a few times, and learned that you should approach it like walking into a chemistry lab and mixing two unidentified-beakers of chemicals: you might luck into a stable compound, or you might blow your hands off. I'm willing to take the risk for a good enough Mend, and Finn qualified-but where do you find a mate for someone as uniquely alien as him? And in today's job market, how much demand was there for a fellow whose princ.i.p.al prior job experience involved locating and sterilizing planetary systems? I came up with a few dozen trial solutions, rejected them all, realized how little chance I had of finding one that Finn had not considered and rejected months or years ago.

But I was being premature. "Txffu," Mary said, "that isn't all of it, is it?"

He spun his head to look at her. Those eyes of his seemed to smolder..

"Mary," Callahan said reproachfully, "That's all he chose to tell us. We don't pry in here, you know that."

"He's asking us to fix two legs of a three-legged stool, Mike. I don't do work like that."

"Then sit this one out. But no pryin' questions in my joint. It's up to him whether to show you his legs or not."

She turned back to Finn. "As a card-carrying Sophist, I will now proceed to make some prying statements, and if you choose to react to any of them it won't be my place to stop you.

"The third leg of your stool, you stool, is called fear. I don't mean your fear of the c.o.c.kroaches, you've learned to live with that. Something else has you scared, and for some reason you don't want to talk about it. Not because you're afraid to admit you're afraid, like human males; it's something else. I for one would certainly like to hear about it."

Finn tilted his head slightly to one side. "I see further into the infrared than humans, hear an extra octave on either side of human range. Do you see emotions others cannot perceive?"

She ignored the question. "You're stalling."

He closed his eyes briefly-I welcomed the momentary respite-and made his decision.

"Very well. I am afraid of the same thing that everyone in this room is afraid of."

Long-Drink McGonnigle nodded. "Death."

"No, Drink my friend. I do not fear death. Neither do some others in this room. I fear Apocalypse. Armageddon. Ragnarok and Fimbulwinter. I fear nuclear holocaust."

There was a murmur in Callahan's Place.

"Finn," Doc Webster said, "do you have reason to believe that it's coming?" - "No more reason than anyone else here, Sam," Finn a.s.sured him. "Is that not sufficient?"

"What's it to you, Mickey?" Mary asked suddenly.

"Mary!" I said, scandalized-no, shocked and dismayed.

If was her tone of voice, you see, the way she was coming on strong with Finn. If Callahan had said those words, in that tone, it would have been different. Lots of times I've seen him appear to bully someone into solving their own problem, adopt a gruff, belligerent manner as a way of getting through their self-involvement.. The rest of us are a mite too sympathetic sometimes. But when he does it, we all know that it's just Callahan, that he's simply using rudeness, as a way-an effective way-of loving.

But Mary was a stranger here. In a sense she had not yet earned the right to talk that way in here, to a friend of ours. Perhaps if she herself had already opened up to us in some way, aired some problem and been adopted by us, it would have been different. (But that sounded silly even as I was thinking it: what, did people have to show a scab at the door to get admitted to Callahan's Place?) All I knew was that it wasn't right for her to be using that harsh, challenging, almost cruel tone of voice with my Mend Finn.

And that dismayed me, because it was my first suggestion that maybe I did not know Mary as well as I thought I did.

"I just want to get it straight," Mary insisted. "Mick, Jake told me earlier you've studied a few stars-from inside. If you can survive in the heart of a fusion furnace, what do you care about a little thing like Armageddon?"

"It would destroy you and all your kind!" Finn said.

"So? You told us just a few minutes ago that the c.o.c.kroaches left you unable to hate or love."

"They left me unable to hate or love them!" he said forcefully. "I can love. I can love humankind. I do."

"Uh-huh," she said nastily, and Finn's face twisted and my heart turned over within me.

"Mary," I said quickly, "You don't know what you're talking about-?"

"Shut up, please, Jake," she said. "Mick, why-"

"No, you shut up," I snapped. "He betrayed his Masters for us, he exiled himself here to save us, he proved his love-and again when the Knmndai came, he fought for us! You don't know, you weren't here, you have no right, you don't know him-"

"Mick is your friend, and you told me about him for fifteen minutes-if you forgot to tell me the important parts it's not my fault. Now I asked you to shut up, and I said 'please'. Look here, Finn, you n.o.ble s.p.a.ceman-"

I shut up and let her browbeat my friend. I was busy trying to fall out of love.

(A rotten little voice in the back of my head was asking, are you sure you want to lose a body like that just to keep your self-respect? and I had to admit it was a good, if swinish, question.) "-if you claim you quit your job out of love for humanity, and you claim to be scared of Apocalypse on our account, ~then why the h.e.l.l is it that you haven't done one G.o.dd.a.m.n thing to prevent it?"

Finn opened his mouth.

"And if you give me the Star Trek Prime Directive," she cut him off, "I'll spit right in your eye. n.o.body who really cared about the ethics of interfering in the destinies of primitive cultures could ever have worked as an interstellar hit man-conditioning and counter-programming be d.a.m.ned!"

"It is not that I would not prevent nuclear catastrophe," Finn said. "I cannot."

"Bulls.h.i.+t."

"I can destroy nuclear weapons easily. But I cannot destroy everyone, simultaneously, and anything less would only trigger the calamity."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Mick-you're not that dumb. You could think your way around the problem in about thirty seconds flat ... if you weren't hamstrung by guilt."

"Guilt?"

"That's right. Resolve the conflict in your conscience, and everything else will fall into place, you wait and see."

"-'conflict?'-"

"For years, now, ever since you first walked into this dump, you've been taking credit for saving the world out of love of humanity-and these chumps here bought it." She glared around at all of us, ignored the glares she got in return, and turned back to Finn. "Why don't you tell us the real reason?"

And she got him! I was watching his face, and Finn may not have much human expression, but I know a direct hit when I see one. She knew something, she'd seen something we hadn't. I tried to do an emotional one-eighty, and got so disoriented I nearly missed Finn's reply.

At first-it didn't look like there was going to be one. He froze up like a computer that's lost its cursor. People speak of someone "turning to stone"-but I don't think any human being could have come as close as Finn to doing that literally. Three or four seconds went by like zeppelins in a desultory breeze ... and then suddenly he was shouting: "All right, d.a.m.n it: I am not immortal!"

The volume made the windows ring and people wince. Motorists may well have heard him out on 25A, rain and all. As the echo of his shout died away, Mary said, quite softly, "I figured it was something like that. You're going to be needing maintenance pretty soon, aren't you?"

Finn sighed and spoke in his normal voice. "If I do not receive fairly extensive maintenance within approximately two hundred and twenty years, I will experience critical systems failures. I will die. It is a trick of the Masters, another way to prevent their scouts deserting as I've done.

When I arrived on this planet, I estimated that humanity could possess the necessary technological sophistication within a century or two ... if it survived that long. If you had been less advanced, you would have been no use to me; more advanced, and you would have detected my approach and perhaps fired upon me. The 'window' was open. Your political immaturity made you a most dangerous gamble-but you were the best chance I had seen in countless millennia. I staked everything on you."

Callahan poured himself a shot of Bushmill's and tossed it back. "What kind of maintenance, Mickey? Organic or cybernetic?"

"Both, Michael. And one other kind for which your-people do not yet have a name."

"Why'n'cha just teach it to us?"

Finn shook his head. "Could you have taught Leonardo Da Vinci to build a railroad before it was railroading time?"

"So that first night you came in here, all of that was a charade?"

"No, Michael! Not at all. I meant it when I asked you to ... well, you say you don't remember that. In any case, you refused to do it then. I was in agony. I realized that I had a chance to survive on this world-but I was programmed to transmit my observations of humanity to the Masters at a preset time, and I knew that when I had I would receive orders to sterilize your planet. I could not countermand that programming. The irony was crus.h.i.+ng. It was only when you asked me my name that the idea came to me: if I could give you enough hint, you could drug me unconscious and prevent my transmission for me. And I managed to do so, and you took the hint."

"But I mean, you didn't defect and save us for the reason you said, because you learned here that humans have love? You did it because we might get smart enough one day to keep your motor tuned for you? Is that the size of it?"

Finn didn't hang his head; his people must not have had that custom. "My decision was predicated solely on self-interest, Michael. I was pleased to find that you had love- because it would make it easier to get you to help me, when one day you could."

Shorty Steinitz was wearing the same look he'd had the day he broke Weasel Wetzel's face-bone-and Shorty knows that Finn could out-punch an F-ill.

"Let me get this straight, Finn," he said darkly. "You don't love the human race?"

"Oh h.e.l.l, Shorty," Long-Drink said, "I don't love the human race, comes to that. There's an ever-dwindlin' percentage I can tolerate."

"All right," Shorty insisted, "this place, then, these people ... Finn, are you sayin' you got no love for Callahan's Place here? For us?"

Finn started to answer, and paused as Tommy Janssen shouldered his way forward. The kid's voice was low and soft and dangerous. "You came in here the night these guys got me off smack," he said, "and you watched them save me, watched while they sewed my b.a.l.l.s back on, and then you got up and did your little dance because you figured it was cheap medical insurance? I'm the youngest guy here, twenty-five, if I quit smoking I might live another fifty, sixty years-if the G.o.ddam bomb doesn't go off tomorrow. Some of the other people here ... h.e.l.l, Tom Flannerly's died since the night you came in here. And you're worried about Apocalypse because it might cut you back to another two or three centuries of sunrises? Now, where did I put my violin?"

G.o.d help me, I spoke up. "Finn-all these years we've been knockin' our brains out trying to make you feel at home in a strange land, helping you get papers and teaching you about baseball and trying to teach you how to sing and all that ... all that time you were just using us?"

I shut up then, because Finn's feelings had become so violent as to reach the surface of his face. One thing apparently all humanoid life forms have in common: the grimace of extreme anguish.

"This is not fair," he roared, and flung his bottle of rye into the fireplace.

SMAs.h.!.+ Cracks appeared in some of the bricks.

There was a general murmur rising in the room now, but Mary's soft laughter cut right through it, deflating it. I turned, to look at her with new eyes. I resented her for being privy to this intimate matter, for having provoked this ha.s.sle, for being cruel to my friend the rotten son of a b.i.t.c.h. Pushy, and nasty, and castrating, and fat ...