The Unicorn Trade Read online

  Coffee and toast improved his mood. When he sought his car, the air seared him with a cold which had been deepening throughout the night. Silence crackled. Skeleton trees outlined against a sky turning from grey to bloodless white in the east were as stark a sight as he remembered ever seeing. For an instant he wondered if he ought to abandon the kitten in such weather.

  At the back of his mind, the dream-leopard smiled.

  He winced, grimaced, and lifted anger for a shield. What was he supposed to do? Be damned if he’d have this mess machine in his house any longer; and the pound would hardly commence business till nine or ten o’clock, by which time he must be well into the paperwork that the Deere representative had caused him to fall behind on; and—Somebody would find the creature and do something. Or if not, too many stray cats and dogs were running loose.

  Thus the kitten sat on the front seat by him when he drove off, happy till he stopped, several miles from home, opened the right door, and tossed the animal out. It landed on its feet, unhurt though squeaking dismay. The sidewalk must indeed be frigid this morning, hard, barren. Beyond reached a municipal park, snowcrust, leafless boughs, benches like fossil monsters.

  The kitten headed back for the car. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Thonen growled. He slammed the door, refastened his safety belt, and took off fast. His rear view mirror showed him a forlorn spot on the pavement; then soon that was gone.

  “Nuts, I did more than could be expected,” he said under his breath. What a miserable day. The chill had struck into his bones. Blast from the heater passed across him, useless as the first wan sunlight outside. “When I’ve got a tough job, and my wife’s quit on me, and nobody gives an honest shit whether I live or die—”

  No, wait, he told himself, don’t whine. And don’t be unrealistic. You matter to several people, at least. Your superiors want you where you are, fattening their bank accounts; your subordinates want you gone, out of the way of their advancement. It’s forever Number One. Or Number Una? I thought I had an oasis of warmth in her, but she only wanted support while she sifted the dust of people three thousand years cold in death.

  To hell with her. Let’s see, this is Wednesday. Saturday—I can wait till then, I’m not hot now, busy as I am—I’ll run up to the city, a massage parlor, yeah, a straightforward transaction, cash for sex. “Cold as a whore’s heart,” the saying goes. Why not? Next time around, I’ll marry more carefully.

  The plant bulked like a squared-off glacier, its parking lot a moraine where as yet few cars were piled. Tronen hurried to the main door. The night watchman said, “Good morning, sir,” in a mechanical tone, different from his usual heartiness. For a second Tronen thought: What ails Joe? Problems too? I should take time to ask—No. He doesn’t care about me, does he?

  The corridors hollowly echoed his footfalls. His office, paneled and picture-hung by specialists, seemed more hospitable at first. Then its stillness got to him and, for some ridiculous reason, the icicles that hung from a window frame. He turned the thermostat higher. When he settled back at his desk, the papers crackled in his fingers till he thought of frozen puddles underfoot.

  “Good morning, Mr. Tronen,” said his secretary when she arrived at nine. “My! Downright tropical in here.”

  “What?” He blinked at her trimness. “I’m comfortable,” he said. That wasn’t quite true; he still was wearing the jacket he normally discarded when working solo.

  She went to the thermometer. “Eighty degrees?” Catching his glare: “Whatever you say, Mr. Tronen. I’m mostly beyond your door anyway, of course. But—excuse me—do you feel well? You look awfully tired.”

  “I’ll do,” he grunted. “Here,” handing her a sheaf, “answer these according to my notes. I want the letters in the noon mail pickup.”

  “Yes, sir.” Though respectful, she seldom used that honorific. Had he rebuffed her? Who cared?

  His chief of operations came in at midmorning. “Uh, Leo, the John Deere man—not Gustafson; Kruchek, who Gustafson reports to, you remember—he was just on the line. And the questions he was asking about our quality control procedures … Well, I don’t know about that subcontract now, Leo. I don’t.”

  The union steward came in at midafternoon. “Mr. Tronen, you’ve explained to me how inflation means we’ve got to cut corners, and I guess I sympathize, and I’ve passed your word on to the boys. But the heating in the shop is inadequate. This’ll likely be a dog-cold winter, and if you postpone making good on your promise to replace the whole system, I’m afraid you’ll have a strike on your hands.”

  In between, while he lunched at his desk on a sandwich sent up from the cafeteria, the television brought him a newscast. Some government spokesmen admitted the country was already in a recession, and a few dared hint at an outright depression to come. Experts predicted a fuel shortage that would make last year’s feel like a Hawaiian holiday.

  Driving home through twilight, he recalled the kitten. He’d been too busy for that, throughout this day when trouble after trouble thrust at him and never a moment came to ease off and swap a bit of inconsequential friendship. Not that anybody had made overtures to him; he had no friends. Puss, he thought, whatever’s happened to you this past ten or a dozen hours, be you alive or be you dead, you don’t know what coldness is.

  The garage machinery greeted him. He walked around to his front door. On the mat, a white blur, barely visible in dusk, was the kitten.

  “What!” Tronen jumped back, off the porch, onto frozen snow beneath frozen stars. His heart lurched. Sweat prickled forth. This wasn’t possible.

  After a minute’s harsh breath, he mastered the fear that he knew was irrational. He, scared of a nasty whimpering piece of flesh? If anything, that was the fact which should worry him. He advanced. The shape at his shoes barely stirred, barely mewed. He unlocked the door, reached around and switched on the porch light, squatted for a closer look. Yes, this was the same animal, though dreadfully weakened by cold and hunger, eyes dim, frost in fur and whiskers.

  Cats come back. This one had simply had more staying power than was reasonable.

  Tronen straightened. Under no circumstances would he let the thing inside, even for a single night. He wondered why he felt such loathing. At first he hadn’t minded, and as for messiness, he could take due precautions. However … Ah, damn, he decided, I can’t be bothered, with everything else I’ve got to plague me. Una would get sticky sentimental, but I—

  The thought of having to dispose of an ice-hard corpse in the morning was distasteful. Tronen collected his will. He’d take care of the matter right now.

  In the garage he fetched a bucket, which he filled from an outside tap. The metal of the faucet bit him with chill, the water rushed forth with a somehow horrible sound, a noise in this night like the flow of the Styx. He set his teeth, brought the bucket under the porch light, removed overcoat and jacket, rolled back his sleeves. The kitten stirred where it lay, as if trying to rise and lick his fingers. Hastily he plunged the small form under.

  He hadn’t known the squirming would go on so long. When at last he grasped stillness, it was as if something squirmed yet in his brain.

  Or swirled, roiled, made a maelstrom? God, but he needed a drink! He fished out the body, laid it down, sloshed forth the water—a cataract, dim to see, loud to hear. Worst was to take the sodden object again, fumble around the far side of the garage, toss it into a garbage can and clatter the lid in place. When he had returned the bucket he hurried indoors to the nearest bathroom, flicking on every light along the way. There he washed his hands under the hottest stream they could endure.

  Why was he squeamish? He’d never been before. His head felt wrong in every respect, dizzy and darkened, as if he were being sucked around and down in a whirlpool.

  Well, he was short on sleep, and Una’s desertion had maybe been more of a shock than he realized; and what about that drink?

  At the liquor cabinet—how loudly Scotch gurgled out across ice. Tronen bore the glass to
his easy chair. His grip shook till cubes chinked together and liquid splashed. The taste proved unappealing, and he had a crazy fear that he might send a swallow down the wrong throat and choke to death. Could be I’ve been mistaken to oppose legalizing marijuana, he thought through torrents. A relaxer that isn’t liquid …

  The phone shrilled. He jerked. The tumbler flew free, whisky rivered across the carpet, ice promptly began making brooks. Una? He stumbled to snatch the receiver. “Hello, who’s this?” amidst wild waters.

  “Harry Quarters here,” said a male voice. “Hi, Leo. How are you?”

  Tronen choked on a gob of saliva and coughed. But meanwhile he might almost have had a picturephone: before him stood yonder teacher, tall, bespectacled, rumple-clothed, diffident, pipe-sucking, detestable. The picturephone wasn’t working right; the image wavered like a stone seen at the bottom of a rapid stream.

  “Anything wrong, Leo?” Was that anxious note genuine? Hardly.

  “No, nothing,” Tronen overcame his spasm.

  “Uh, could I speak to Una, please?”

  A waterfall thundered. “What do you want with her?”

  Taken aback by the loud response, Quarters stammered, “Why, why, to tell her about a book I found in the city this weekend … Out of print, but I think of interest to her for her research—”

  “She’s not home,” Tronen snapped. “Visiting. An extended visit.”

  “Oh.” Quarters’s surprise suggested that he had expected she’d mention her plans to him. “Where, may I ask? How long?”

  Tronen hung onto self-control as if it were a piece of flotsam. “A relative. Several days at least.”

  “Oh.” After a pause: “Well, you know. if we’re both baching, why don’t we get together? Let me take you out to dinner. Lord knows you’ve had me over often enough.”

  Una has. “No,” said Tronen. “I’m busy. Thanks.” He crashed the receiver onto the hook.

  Briefly, then, he wondered why he had refused. Company might be welcome, might be advisable. And Quarters wasn’t actually too bad a guy. His conversation ranged well beyond Una’s Egyptology into areas like politics and sports that interested her husband more; the man was active in the former on the envelope-stuffing level, and as for the latter, in high school he’d been a star baseball pitcher and still played on a YMCA team. Probably he was in love with Una, but there was no reason to suppose he’d ever tried anything untoward. In fact, if Tronen led the conversation cleverly enough, helpful information about her might develop … No. He couldn’t be clever when he felt afloat, awirl, asink. And the thought of the dial tone if he called back, that rushing ng-ng-ng, was grisly.

  Maybe another day. He’d better mop up his spilled drink before it soaked through the carpet. He decided against a replacement, cooked and bolted whatever was handiest in cans, found that neither newspaper nor television would register on him, and went to bed as early as seemed practical. First he took three sleeping pills.

  His mind spiraled down and down into fluid blackness. For a while he gasped, struggled back, broke surface and panted air into his lungs. But the tide drew him again, again, until at last his strength was spent and he lay on the bottom, the weight of the ocean upon him, and knew for a thousand years that he was dead.

  When the alarm rescued him, his pajamas were sodden with sweat. Nevertheless, the last thing he wanted was a shower. He shuddered his way out of the room, brain still submerged in his nightmare, barely able to think that a lot of coffee might help. The stairs cascaded away from the landing, dangerous; he clutched the bannister as he waded their length. When he reached the kitchen, his bare feet splatted on cold linoleum.

  “Weep,” he heard beyond the door, “weep, weep.”

  Did his hand turn the knob and heave of itself? Merciless light flooded forth. The kitten sprawled on the stoop. Drenched fur clung so tightly to its skin that it resembled a rat.

  “No,” Tronen heard himself gurgle, “no, no.”

  He grasped after sanity. He’d not held the horrible thing long enough under, it had revived, the air had warmed to above freezing, he’d not fitted the lid properly on the trash can either, during the darkness it had crawled over the rubbish inside till it escaped, while he drowned in his dream.…

  This time, he thought somewhere, I’ll do the job right.

  He stooped, clutched feebly struggling sliminess, raised the slight weight, bashed head against concrete. He felt as well as heard a splintering crack. When he let go, the kitten lay motionless, save that blood trickled from pink nose and past tiny teeth. The amber eyes glazed over.

  Tronen rose. The breath sucked in and out of him. He trembled.

  But it was from excitement, anger, release. His delirium had left him. His mind felt sharp and clean as an ax. Catharsis, he thought, underneath, catharsis, is that the word? Whatever, I’m free.

  He rejoiced to carry the body back to the garbage and, this time, ring down the lid loud enough to wake Harry Quarters across town. He scrubbed the blood and rinsed the sponge with a sense of having gotten back some of his own. Oh, he wasn’t a child, he thought in the shower which he had become glad to take. He didn’t blame the kitten personally. It had merely happened along at foul hours. In his confusion, subconscious mind on a rampage and all that stuff, he’d made the creature a symbol. Now he was done. He could cope with reality, the real people and real forces ranged against him. And would, by God! He hardly needed coffee. Wakefulness, anger sang in his veins.

  His car leaped into the street. He fumed at the need to observe speed limits in more crowded areas where an officious cop might see him. Why couldn’t a leading responsible private citizen, who had urgent business on which a substantial payroll depended, be allowed a siren to clear his path?

  The watchman at the plant looked surly. No doubt he was a sympathizer of the machinists and their strike threat. How in Christ’s name could a man explain the reasons, the elementary economics, behind an executive decision? Sure, the shop was chilly; but their workday ended after a measured eight hours (not that they honestly produced for half that time), unlike his which had no end. And meanwhile, was it impossible for them to wear heavier clothes? Could they absolutely not see that their jobs, their well-being was tied in to the company’s? … No, they couldn’t, because in fact that was not true. Let the company fail and they’d suck unemployment pay out of his taxes.

  Management and capital didn’t breed any race of angels either. In his office, Tronen hunched over papers which made him pound the desk till his fist was sore. What did that Kruchek mean, doubting the quality control here? What the hell did he expect? Gustafson had acted satisfied. Kruchek must have a private motive—unless Gustafson had led him on for reasons that would be very, very interesting to know … And this letter from the regional manager, the veiled complaints and demands, how was Tronen supposed to answer those, how much ass must a man kiss to get anywhere in this rotten system? No wonder it bred radicals and rioters! And then the authorities were too busy pussyfooting to do what was necessary: open fire on a few of those mobs.

  His secretary was almost an hour late. “I’m sorry, my car wouldn’t start—”

  “It would not occur to you to call a taxi, of course, nor to make up the time. Didn’t you mention once that you’re a Lutheran? Ah, well, I suppose your keeping a Protestant work ethic was too much to hope for.” He spoke levelly, reducing her to tears in lieu of the three or four slaps across the chops that the stupid cow deserved.

  In midmorning he summoned his chief of operations. They were bothered by occasional juvenile vandalism in their isolated location, rocks through windows a few times a year, most recently naughty words painted on a wall. “I’ve about decided we need more guards for nights and holidays,” he said. “Issue them shotguns—for use, not show.”

  “Huh?” The man recovered. “You’re joking.”

  “Oh, we’d post conspicuous notices. And a single young hoodlum shot in the belly should end that form of recreation.”
r />   “Leo, do you feel all right? We can’t use extreme violence—on kids—to prevent a few dollars’ worth of damage. Anyhow, you objected yourself, when we” discussed this before, that a chain link fence would cost out of proportion. Have you figured the wages of those extra guards?”

  Tronen yielded. He had no choice. However, the law did not yet forbid him to sit half an hour and visualize what ought to be done.

  The noontime newscast informed him that Arabs and Israelis had exchanged a fresh round of massacres. War seemed thoroughly possible. Well, he thought, let’s get in there, fast, beat those bedouins to their flea-bitten knees, and assure our oil supplies. The Russians will scream, but they won’t act if we catch them by surprise and keep SAC on red alert. Or if they are crazy enough to act, we’ll survive, most of us. They won’t.

  The afternoon was pissed away on a sales engineer from a firm interested in redoing his heating system. No matter argument, the fellow wouldn’t reduce his estimate to a figure that would please the home office and thus help get Tronen out of Senlac. Greedy bastard—on behalf of his employers, true, but his was the smug fat face which must be confronted more or less courteously, while inside, Tronen imagined kicking out those teeth and grinding a boot across that nose.

  He left early. His stomach had become a cauldron of acid and he wasn’t accomplishing anything. Thus daylight lingered when he got home, the sun a blood clot barely above the snowfields it tinged, long shadows of houses like bludgeons and of trees like knives. The cold and the silence had teeth. Judas, but the place felt empty! Why not eat out? No, why pay good money for greasy food and slovenly service?

  Better relax, really relax, take the evening off. A Maalox tablet eased his bellyache, but an eggnog would soothe body and soul, sipped before a hearthfire. He hoped. This rage in him, allowed to strike at nothing, could too readily turn its destructiveness inward. He didn’t want a heart attack; he wanted—wanted—