Free Infinity One by Robert Hoskins (Ed.) Page A

admission.
    Suddenly the dogs began to howl. Every dog in Wilmington added his note to the clamor. The dogs howled for a full ear-splitting hour despite every attempt to silence them. The SPCA and the Humane Association, police and firemen, were called in—unsuccessfully—to disband a huge pack of hysterical dogs, cats and tree beasts congregated in Maria’s neighborhood.
    When Maria finally released them, the animals melted away in a matter of moments. Pete and Joe took up a position across from her windows.
    “Maria," said Pete. “I brought Joe with me. He did everything he could to save your father. But you’ve been stealing the wrong kind of drugs. It was one of those that killed your father.”
    I know, said Maria in a flat, hard voice. There was an odd blurring to her projected voice which had always rung so clear and true in Pete’s mind. I’ve been . . . experimenting a little.
    There was a long pause. Pete suddenly experienced wild grief, a sense of terrified guilt which was quickly overlaid by a sullen resentment; and, finally, an irrational feeling of satisfaction.
    He was a nasty old man. He was mean to me. He killed my mother.
    Joe caught Pete’s arm, his eyes wide with repugnance and dread.
    You go away, Pete, Maria said. I’ll set my friends on you.
    “Maria, I don’t care how much you threaten me,” Pete said stolidly. “I have to tell you you’re doing wrong.”
    Bug off, fuzz" Maria snapped. I’m having fun. I never had fun before in my life. I'm living it up good now. You go away.
    “Pete,” cautioned Joe, pulling at his arm urgently.
    “Damn it, Maria ...”

    This time when Pete woke up in the emergency ward, Joe was in the next bed. They managed to talk the interne on duty into entering ‘heat prostration’ as the cause of their collapse. They promised faithfully to go to their respective homes and rest for the next 24 hours. Out on the hot street, Pete suggested that a couple of beers would start their unexpected holiday the right way so they adjourned to the nearest air conditioned bar.
    The dogs began to howl again as they crossed the street.
    “If we’d told anyone why the dogs howled,” Pete said, moodily doodling in the moisture on the beer glass, “they would send us to the funny farm.”
    “Would you believe a hopped-up girl telepath?” Joe asked wistfully, and raised his glass in a mock toast.
    “I only told her the truth,” Pete protested.
    “For truth she puts holes in our heads.”
    “All right, wise guy, what should I have done?”
    “How do I know?” asked Joe with a helpless gesture of his hands. “My specialty’s going to be internal medicine, not head-shrinking or pediatrics. I’m as lousy at this sort of work as you are.” He thought for a while, holding his head.
    “The trouble, Pete, is neither you nor me . . . nor Maria. The trouble is the situation and the circumstances. If she’d had the sense to get born a Dupont instead of a Barres . . . And he made a slicing motion with one hand.
    They got drunker and drunker, somehow agreeing on only one thing: they were both so sensitive in the head-bone that they couldn’t give a j.d. brat the spanking she so richly deserved ...
    Or rescue her from hell.

    Al Finch finally decided that Wilmington offered too little scope for his operation’s potential. Pete got the word from the desk sergeant that Finch had hired a private plane and a private ambulance.
    Pete made a frantic phone call to Joe Lavelle to meet him across from Maria’s at once. Joe arrived in time to watch Maria being carried from the apartment on a stretcher.
    “God Almighty, look,” Pete cried. “Al Finch, framed by canaries!”
    Executing an intricate shuffle step, the gang leader was maneuvering the elaborate five-foot cylindrical triple birdcage through the door, all the while bellowing conflicting orders at his subordinates. That kept them bobbing so solicitously between Al and Maria that they all got royally in each other’s