Mission Earth Volume 2: Black Genesis Read online

  “Haven’t you got any leftovers? Please look.”

  Mr. Twaddle, being a good fellow, opened a drawer and got out a tattered list. He dropped it on the desk before him and made the motions of going over it. “No. They’ve been snapped up.”

  Heller inched his chair forward to the desk. He pointed a finger halfway down the list. I hadn’t known he could read upside down. But he couldn’t read very well because the name had a lot of marks and cross-outs after it.

  “There’s one that isn’t marked assigned,” said Heller.

  Mr. Twaddle laughed. “That’s Israel Epstein. He didn’t graduate. Thesis not accepted. I’m acquainted with this one. Oh, too well acquainted. You know what he tried to hand in? Despite all cautions and warnings? A thesis called ‘Is Government Necessary?’ But that isn’t why they refused to re-enroll him.”

  “But he’s over twenty-one,” said Heller.

  “I should say he is. He has been flunked out on his doctorate for three consecutive years. Wister, this young fellow is an activist! A deviant. A revolutionary of the most disturbing sort. He simply will not conform. He even boycotted the Young Communist League! He’s a roaring, ranting tiger! A wild-eyed, howling anarchist, of all things! Quite out of fashion. But that wasn’t why they refused to re-enroll him. The government cut off his student loans and demanded immediate repayment.”

  “Why would they do that?” said Heller.

  “Why, he was doing all the income tax forms for students and the faculty and he was costing the Internal Revenue Service a fortune!”

  “Is that his address?” said Heller. “That number on 125th Street?”

  Mr. Twaddle said, “It probably was up to a few minutes ago. Ten IRS agents were just here demanding that address. So he will soon be beyond reach entirely.”

  “Thank you for your help, Mr. Twaddle,” said Heller.

  “Always glad to assist, Wister. Drop in anytime.”

  Heller closed the door behind him. Then he started to run.

  PART EIGHTEEN

  Chapter 2

  Heller was down 116th Street and up Broadway like a quarter horse. If anyone noticed he was going faster than was usual, he wasn’t looking at them—but New Yorkers never notice anything. And, factually, I don’t think he was moving at any exceptional speed: some cars were going faster than he was. I was glad to note that gravity differences had not given him any phenomenal powers. Things to him weighed only a sixth less than usual.

  Judging by the scenery flow, he was probably only doing twenty.

  I was, of course, a little bit puzzled by his obvious antagonism to an anarchist. Or did he fear for the IRS agents, faced by a maniacal wild man of huge powers? Perhaps his contact with the FBI had inclined him to defect to the Earth government. I know that in his place, I would have been seeking political asylum.

  He came to 125th Street and raced along, looking for the address. But he found it because of three double-parked government cars. There was no one in them.

  Heller checked the building. The street number was almost indecipherable. It was one of those innumerable abandoned apartment houses with which New York is strewn. The taxes are high, the tenants destructive. If the owner tries to repair the building, the tax rates go up and the tenants tear it down again. So owners simply abandon them to rot. And this one was so bad off that not even tenants had to wreck it. Obviously no one in his right mind would try to live there. The front entrance looked like it had been an artillery target.

  He circumvented fallen debris and went in. He stopped. Noise was coming from the second floor—ripping sounds.

  Heller went up what was left of the stairs.

  A government agent was standing outside a door, picking his teeth.

  Heller walked up to the agent. “I’m looking for Israel Epstein,” he said.

  The agent found a particularly succulent morsel in his teeth, ate it and said, “Yeah? We ain’t got a warrant out for him yet, so that don’t make you an accomplice. But as soon as they get through planting the evidence in there, we’ll be able to get one.”

  “Where is he?” demanded Heller.

  “Oh, him. Well, if we let him escape first, then he becomes a fugitive and we can send him up for that if for nothing else.”

  “Where did he go?” demanded Heller.

  “Oh, he ran off down 125th Street,” said the IRS agent, pointing west. “Said he was going to drown himself in the Hudson River.”

  Heller turned to leave. Two IRS agents stood squarely behind with drawn guns.

  “Sucker,” said the tooth-picking one. “Hey, McGuire!” he yelled into the apartment, “Here’s one of his friends!”

  The two agents in the hall pushed Heller ahead of them with their guns. They shoved him well into the apartment.

  The place might have been a wreck before. It was an emergency disaster now. It was torn to splinters!

  IRS agents were using jimmies to pry up boards, hammers to smash furniture.

  A huge hulking brute out of a horror film stood, hands on hips, glaring at Heller. “So, an accomplice! Sit down in that chair!”

  It was pretty broken up but Heller managed it.

  “Say SIR when you’re spoken to!” said McGuire.

  “Sir?” said Heller. “You a nobleman or something?”

  “We’re a hell of a lot more important than that, kid. We’re Internal Revenue Service agents. We run this country and don’t you forget it!”

  “Sir?” said Heller.

  “Now, where are the books you and Epstein cooked? Where are they hidden?” demanded McGuire.

  “Sir?” said Heller.

  “We know god (bleeped) well that you had actual IRS manuals! Copies of the real law and everything. Where are they hidden?”

  “Sir?” said Heller.

  “Do you realize,” said McGuire, “if they got into public hands it would ruin us? Do you realize this is treason? Do you know what the penalty for treason is? Death! It says so right in the Constitution!”

  “Sir?” said Heller.

  “I don’t think he’ll talk,” said another agent.

  McGuire said, “I’ll handle this, Malone.”

  “There ain’t any manuals here,” said still another agent.

  McGuire said, “Shut up, O’Brien. I’ll handle this. This kid is a red-hot suspect. I got to read him his rights. Now listen carefully. You have to testify to whatever IRS wants you to testify to. You have to swear to anything IRS tells you to swear to and sign anything you are told by IRS to sign. If you fail to do so you will be charged with conspiring to conspire with conspirators regardless of race, color or creed. Sign here.”

  Heller had a slip of paper under his nose. “What’s this?”

  “By the Miranda Rule,” said McGuire, “the prisoner must be informed of his rights. I have just informed you of yours. The IRS is totally legal, always. This attests you have been warned. So sign here.”

  Heller signed, “J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “Good,” said McGuire. “Now, where are the god (bleeped) cooked account books and where are the god (bleeped) IRS manuals and regulations?”

  “Sir?” said Heller.

  “He ain’t going to talk,” said Malone.

  “I better just plant this Commie literature and these bags of heroin and we can get going,” said O’Brien.

  “You know what’s going to happen to you, kid?” said McGuire with obvious satisfaction. “We’re going to force you to report downtown to the Federal Building. We’re going to cross-examine you, kid. We’re going to put you under the hot lights and we’re going to find out all about you. Everything. When we get through with you, there won’t be a thing about you we don’t know. Take this.”

  McGuire had been scribbling a name on a legal document. He handed it to Heller. It said:

  SUBPOENA!

  THE PEOPLE VERSUS EPSTEIN.

  J. Edgar Hoover is hereby summoned to appear at 0900 hours at the Federal Building, Room 22222, Permanent Federal Grand
Jury, Internal Revenue Courts.

  “Cross-examination?” said Heller.

  “Correct.”

  “You find out everything there is to know about me?”

  “Correct.”

  “Actually, I think,” said Heller, “that under that board over there is a good hiding place.”

  “That’s better,” said McGuire. “Which board?”

  Heller got up. He went over. He knelt down.

  And out of his pocket, his action hidden from them by his body, he took a red and white piece of candy. I recognized it. It was the candy he had been making aboard the tug! It had a wrapper that looked like paper. With a thumbnail and a twist, he pushed the paper down into the candy. He put it under a board.

  He stood up. “There are no manuals there now.”

  “Shows the right spirit. You can go now but you show up! Federal Building, nine hundred hours!”

  Heller walked out.

  He walked down the remains of the steps.

  Outside, he walked up to one of the government cars. He bent over.

  He had four sticks of dynamite strapped to his leg!

  He undid the tape.

  He laid the dynamite into the back seat of the car. No cap, no means to explode it. He just laid it there.

  Then he walked very rapidly west on 125th Street.

  The buildings on either side of him shook in concussion!

  A gigantic flash whipped at the sky!

  A roaring blast of sound struck a sledgehammer blow!

  Heller looked back. As the smoke soared, I saw that the whole front of the abandoned apartment house was falling into the street in slow motion. Pieces of the roof were still sailing in the air!

  The government cars, showered with rubble, did not explode. So he wasn’t that good with explosives after all.

  Pieces of apartment house were falling out of the sky. Torrents of flame began to leap up.

  It was the candy!

  I knew what the stuff was now. It was a binary concussion-flame grenade. It didn’t operate until the wrapper, the needful element, was shoved down into the explosive. It had activated on a forty-second dissolve. The Apparatus never used them. They were too risky to carry!

  “What the hell was that?” said an old man near Heller.

  “There were ten terrorists in that building,” said Heller.

  “Oh,” said the old man. “Vandals again.”

  Heller went along 125th Street, first at a casual walk and then at a distance-increasing run.

  Behind him, fire sirens were screaming.

  Heller didn’t look back again. He was headed, apparently, for the river.

  PART EIGHTEEN

  Chapter 3

  Speeding along, Heller could catch glimpses of the river ahead. His view was impeded with underpasses and overpasses of major roads.

  He veered slightly to his left. The river lay just on the other side of some trunk highways along which traffic blurred.

  Heller negotiated the obstacles.

  Before him stretched a long dock, reaching west into the water.

  He slowed, alert. He jumped up to see over some obstacles. Then he went speeding ahead.

  On the end of the dock lay a tangle of something. Heller raced to it.

  Right at the dock end lay a jacket. A pair of horn-rimmed spectacles was sitting on it.

  The Jersey shore, opposite, was a yellow haze of polluted air. The Hudson was blue with sky reflection despite the scum and filth in it.

  Heller was looking up and down the river. Apparently an incoming tide from the ocean was slacking the current for the bits of dunnage and trash were going neither upstream nor down.

  A hat!

  A soggy, dark blue, snap-brim hat, still afloat with the air trapped in it.

  Heller threw off his jacket. He pulled off his shoes. He zipped out of his pants. He threw his cap to the dock.

  In a long dive he went into the water, debris and oil!

  Down he went! Hands grabbing out and back, he was pulling himself toward the bottom.

  The light went from brown to dim gray.

  Yikes! How deep was this river?

  Down, down, down, his eyes sweeping left to right through the murk!

  Ooze!

  He had hit bottom!

  Up he went like a streak.

  He blew to the surface. He treaded water, jumping his head up to look around.

  He inverted.

  Down he went again. Down, down, down, looking left and right.

  Black ooze!

  Around in a circle on the bottom. Old tires and cans.

  Up, up, up! He blew to the surface again.

  More treading water. More jumps to lift his head out.

  A faint sound!

  Heller made a bigger jump, lifting himself out of the water.

  A faint voice, “I’m over here.”

  Heller treaded water and looked toward the dock.

  There in the water, clinging to an old ring sunk in concrete, was somebody, just a hand and head showing.

  Heller struck out in that direction.

  In a minute or two he was beside a very small young man, covered with oil, mostly eyes.

  “I’m a failure,” moaned the pitiful figure. Then he coughed.

  “I lost my nerve. I couldn’t keep my head under long enough to drown.”

  “Are you Israel Epstein?” said Heller.

  “Yes, I’m sorry I can’t shake hands. I’d lose my grip.”

  Heller was surveying the fellow’s plight. The dock end was sheer above him and had no handholds.

  A passing ship engulfed them in waves. Epstein lost his grip on the ring and got banged against the concrete. Heller put Epstein’s hand back on the ring. “Hold on!”

  “I can’t climb up. I was a failure at drowning myself and now I’m a failure at saving myself. You better go off and leave me. I’m not worth rescuing.”

  Heller swam along the dock and found an iron ladder that reached down into the water. He climbed up.

  He went to his jacket and took out a coil of fishline. He went back to the dock edge above Epstein. “Just hold on,” he called down. A passing tug’s wash engulfed Epstein.

  Heller’s hands were moving rapidly in a strange repeating rhythmic pattern. He was plaiting the fishline into a thin rope!

  He made a nonslip loop in the end of his product. He lowered it down to Epstein. “Put your legs through it and sit on it.”

  Epstein couldn’t do it.

  Heller secured the top end to an old rusty ring and dived back into the water. He paddled over to Epstein, found a piece of driftwood, broke it and forced it into the loop to make a seat and got him onto it and showed him how to hold the upper strands.

  “You shouldn’t go to all this trouble,” said Epstein. “I’ll only come to another bad end.”

  Heller splashed at the water to get oil scum to float away and when he had a clear patch, he used it to get some of the oil off Epstein’s head and shoulders.

  “Now, don’t go away,” said Heller. He swam back to the ladder, got up on the dock and shortly had Epstein up beside him, safely on the concrete.

  PART EIGHTEEN

  Chapter 4

  A pair of cops wandered up. “What are you doing?”

  “Fishing,” said Heller.

  “You sure you’re not swimming?” said one cop.

  “Just fishing,” said Heller.

  “Well, see that you don’t swim,” said the cop and he and his partner wandered away, idly swinging their nightsticks.

  “You didn’t turn me over to them,” said Epstein. “But you might as well. They’ll get me anyway.”

  Heller had recovered his redstar engineer’s rag. He was wiping the oil off Epstein. Then he got Epstein’s shoes off and got him out of his pants and put the articles in the sun, which seemed to be quite hot.

  He took a few more swipes at Epstein’s face and then put the young man’s horn-rimmed glasses on him.

  I
wondered if Heller had made a mistake in identity. According to Mr. Twaddle, this Epstein was a roaring anarchist, a terror and a threat to civilization. But he was quite small, had a narrow face, a beaked nose, weak eyes and was shivering.

  “You cold?” said Heller.

  “No, it is just what I have been through,” said Epstein.

  “What do they want you for, really?” said Heller.

  Epstein looked like he was going to cry. “It all started when I realized that the usual Internal Revenue Service agent just made up regulations as he went along. But one fatal day I was in the law library and found the actual Congressional law and the IRS manual of regulations. I Xeroxed them. I started to do the income tax returns for the faculty and some students with all the correct deductions.” He sighed and was silent a bit. “Oh, the way of the revolutionary is hard! I’m not up to it.”

  “So what happened?” said Heller.

  “The local IRS office lost about two million dollars in illegal collections they’d been getting. And the bonuses of agents McGuire, O’Brien and Malone shrank to nothing.”

  He sighed a long, shuddering sigh. “They will never forgive me. They will persecute me all my days. You shouldn’t have rescued me. I am a lost cause.”

  Heller had gotten some of the oil off of himself. He went over to his jacket and fished out the subpoena. He brought it back and handed it to Epstein. As he sat back down, he said, “What is this?”

  Epstein looked at it, turned it over. “It’s just a subpoena. It tells you to appear before a grand jury and testify.”

  “And what does that consist of?” said Heller.

  “Oh, very simple. You just take the Fifth Amendment—which is to say, refuse in case it incriminates you—and they put you in jail and bring you out every few weeks and you just take the Fifth Amendment again.”

  “Then they really don’t examine you and make you tell all you know?”

  “No, it’s just a method of keeping innocent people in jail.”

  Heller was looking at the water. “Oh, those poor fellows,” he said.

  “What poor fellows?” said Epstein.

  “McGuire, Malone and O’Brien and seven other agents. They’re all dead. I thought I was facing a Code break, you see.”