Demon Box

There were unrippable pajamas with padded mittens to prevent the hallucinator from plucking out an offending eye. There were impact-dispersing skullcaps for the clumsy, disposable looparound mouthpieces for the tongue gnashers, lockfast maxi-Pampers for the thrashing incontinent, and countless kinds of medication reminders that beeped and buzzed and chimed to remind the forgetful. The vast majority of the booths were manned by the many pharmaceutical laboratories supported by this industry. Most of these displays lacked the visual pizazz of the hardware shows. Pills and pamphlets just aren’t as interesting to look at as restraining chairs featuring built-in commodes with automated enemas. The Szaabo display was the exception, attracting far the largest audience of all the booths. Company designers had mocked up a large cocktail lounge complete with plastic plants and free peanuts and waitresses in miniskirts. Above the bar was a big-screen TV monitor that played actual tapes of the company’s products in action. Conventioneers could eat peanuts and drink and cheer like a Monday Night Football crowd as they watched big hyperactive hellraisers get wrestled down and turned meek as mice with a shot. I wondered if the display designers got the idea from the hippo show, or vice versa.

The trouble was once you got into the popular Szaabo lounge, it was next to impossible to get back out through the crush of the boisterous crowd. Harder than that to snag one of the free drinks. I was buffeted back and forth through the smoky clamor until I found myself near an exit along the far wall. It was marked for Emergency Use Only. I felt my smarting eyes and burning throat qualified so I pushed the lockbar and peeked out. To my great relief I saw I had found not only a private balcony with fresh air and a view of the sunset, but a tray of unclaimed martinis.

I squeezed through and heard the big door shut behind me over the noise. I grabbed the push bar but I was too late. “Let it lock,” I decided, releasing the bar. “I can get by on olives if I miss the banquet.”

I noticed these olives were skewered on clever little S-shaped silver swizzles, supposed to look like the Szaabo logo. It was also etched on the martini glasses, in red and yellow, like the crest on Superman’s chest. About halfway through the tray I raised one of the glasses in a toast—to Szaabo Labs, original layers of those tiny blue eggs of enlightenment. Remember when we used to think that every egg would hatch cherubs in every head and that these fledglings would feather into the highest-flying Vision in mankind’s history? Remember our conspiracy, Szaabo? You make ‘em; we’ll take ‘em—as far as the Vision can see. Who’s left to carry the colors of our crusade now? Where’s the robin’s-egg-blue banner of the Vision of Man now? In the hands of one little girl, that’s where, some titless wonder who can see about as far as she can pee, and she’s been captured, probably by now quelled with one of your latest designer formulas and watching a rerun of Happy Days, comparatively happy herself.

But, like Joe says, compared to what?

By the time the drinks were drained and the olives eaten, the din on the other side of the door had gone down considerably. For a keepsake I dropped the last glass in my shoulder bag with my Ching and my leftover ticket books and tried the door. I was able to attract one of the waitresses by rattling the tray between the bar and the metal. She let me back in, apologizing all over herself for not hearing my signal earlier; it had been just too dern noisy. I gave her the tray and a ten spot and told her not to worry—I hadn’t been signaling earlier, anyhow.

The Szaabo bar and the convention hall were both almost empty. Everybody was off getting dressed for the evening’s main event. I swung one more time by the main desk and saw my message to Woofner still folded in his box. The fresh peach behind the desk told me so many folks’d been asking she was curious herself what’d come of this missin’ doctor.

Up in our room Dr. Mortimer was trying to find an answer to the same question. He was pacing to and fro in front of the telephone table in his rumpled tux and untied tie, talking into the receiver in a loud singsong German. I discerned he was a little drunk. When he saw me he put his hand over the receiver and shook his head forlornly.

Joe was also dressed for dinner, more rumpled than his boss and lots drunker. He was tilted back on a wastepaper basket. “You’re burned bright as a beet,” he said squinting at me. He held out the miniature bottle of Beefeater he was drinking. “Use some of this on your head. White wine’s best but gin’ll do.”