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Fantasia, v. 1, issue 3, July 1941
Page 4
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4 FANTASIA CONQUEST LOU GOLDSTONE The room was hot; the one small window closed and locked, a cracked and discolored shade pulled down over the unwashed pane, the blast of the mid-summer night slowly pulsing through from outside. The air was almost unbreathable, rancid with human sweat, choked with unsettled dust and blue cigarette smoke. I dropped my bundles on the springless bed and threw my had on one of the two chairs. "Look," I said, "why don't you get out of here?" Finnegan was frying something over a can of Sterno in the far corner of the room. He didn't answer me, and he didn't look up. Finally he said: "Thanks for the stuff." That's what he'd been saying every week for ten weeks, when I came up with a carton of smokes and a couple of bags full of canned food and coffee. That's the kind of junk he'd been living on. He looked -- well, he looked like you'd expect a guy to look who's been hiding out in a lousy tenement furnished-room for ten weeks without once going out the door. "Look," I told him, "the heat's off -- if it's ever been on at all. You're killing yourself here." He grinned a tight, hard grin, and caught a pack of weeds I tossed at him. He lit up and blew smoke in my face. "You think I'm nuts, huh?" "The hell I do, but --" "Forget it," he growled. "I'm staying put. They're after me, and I'm all right as long as they can't find me." "Listen," I said, "I believe you. And I know you're right, even if nobody else in the whole damn world does. But --" Finnegan got up and paced around his dirty little room. "You mind your own business," he told me. "And for God's sake, don't go shooting off about what I told you, or you'll get what I'm getting." Finnegan wasn't batty. He wasn't any saner than a billion and a half other people either. It was just that he happened to know something that they never thought of. And he had good and sufficient reason to shut himself up as he did; the preservation of your life is good and sufficient reason for anything. I knew him when it started. He started it, and I was on the other side of the city desk when he blew in with the biggest scoop that ever hit this old planet. Naturally, it was never printed. It was too big to be believed. Ocean Enterprises, Inc. had gone under. It seems they were piping oil out of submarine strata, when all of a sudden American Oil drilled through to untouched depos-
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4 FANTASIA CONQUEST LOU GOLDSTONE The room was hot; the one small window closed and locked, a cracked and discolored shade pulled down over the unwashed pane, the blast of the mid-summer night slowly pulsing through from outside. The air was almost unbreathable, rancid with human sweat, choked with unsettled dust and blue cigarette smoke. I dropped my bundles on the springless bed and threw my had on one of the two chairs. "Look," I said, "why don't you get out of here?" Finnegan was frying something over a can of Sterno in the far corner of the room. He didn't answer me, and he didn't look up. Finally he said: "Thanks for the stuff." That's what he'd been saying every week for ten weeks, when I came up with a carton of smokes and a couple of bags full of canned food and coffee. That's the kind of junk he'd been living on. He looked -- well, he looked like you'd expect a guy to look who's been hiding out in a lousy tenement furnished-room for ten weeks without once going out the door. "Look," I told him, "the heat's off -- if it's ever been on at all. You're killing yourself here." He grinned a tight, hard grin, and caught a pack of weeds I tossed at him. He lit up and blew smoke in my face. "You think I'm nuts, huh?" "The hell I do, but --" "Forget it," he growled. "I'm staying put. They're after me, and I'm all right as long as they can't find me." "Listen," I said, "I believe you. And I know you're right, even if nobody else in the whole damn world does. But --" Finnegan got up and paced around his dirty little room. "You mind your own business," he told me. "And for God's sake, don't go shooting off about what I told you, or you'll get what I'm getting." Finnegan wasn't batty. He wasn't any saner than a billion and a half other people either. It was just that he happened to know something that they never thought of. And he had good and sufficient reason to shut himself up as he did; the preservation of your life is good and sufficient reason for anything. I knew him when it started. He started it, and I was on the other side of the city desk when he blew in with the biggest scoop that ever hit this old planet. Naturally, it was never printed. It was too big to be believed. Ocean Enterprises, Inc. had gone under. It seems they were piping oil out of submarine strata, when all of a sudden American Oil drilled through to untouched depos-
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