by Pat Frank
I called the Press Club, located Finney, and got him on the phone. “Look, Oscar,” I said, “that bimbo of yours is out with my boy Homer, and it smells ungood.”
“Oh, is that where she went?” Oscar said. “I’ve been trying to reach her all morning, because I’m going to New York.”
“You know damn well that’s where she is,” I said.
“No. Honest, Steve, I didn’t.” He sounded like he was telling the truth.
“Oscar,” I warned him, “don’t try to pull any stunts with Adam. This business is too fundamental to mess it up just for the sake of a little publicity.”
Finney hesitated a moment before he answered. Finally he said, “Steve, I’ll lay it on the line. Kathy herself suggested it would be a smart pitch to hook her up with Adam. She’s been after me about it for days. Last night when I saw you and Adam in the Blue Room I thought I’d go ahead with it. Then I thought, no, I’d better not. For one thing, from now on Kathy’s got to make her name on the screen, and not in the papers. And it might have bad repercussions, especially with the women. She’s not too popular with the women now, for a number of obvious reasons, and if it looked as if she were trying to snag the only whole male on earth, she might get decidedly unpopular. You saw how that amateur Borgia acted last night. I told Riddell to lay off. I told her that grabbing Adam would be like stealing the U.S. Mint, and it would be bad box office. So she said okay, and if she’s out with Adam, then it’s news to me. Do you know where they are?”
“Haven’t the foggiest notion,” I said, and added, “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind Homer seeing Kitty—or Kathy—so long as it doesn’t break into print. It might be good for Homer.”
“Have you ever seen a pregnant starlet?” Oscar inquired.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured him, “Homer is shy and harmless. Nothing like that is going to happen.”
“Riddell isn’t harmless,” Oscar said. “Furthermore, she might get ideas. All the women seem to be crazy nowadays. There are plenty of girls out on the Coast who wouldn’t think of spoiling their figures by having babies when babies could be begat by their own husbands with no trouble at all. Now that they can’t have ’em, they all want ’em.”
I told Oscar I would be responsible. It occurred to me that for a newspaperman who had always watched other people carrying the world’s burdens I was making myself responsible for a lot of things.
It wasn’t hard to locate Adam and The Frame, for as I pointed out he was not a person who could vanish into the stream of humanity without a ripple. The doorman at the Shoreham remembered that Mr. Adam had taken a cab to the Smithsonian Institute. Jane wondered why, and I told her about the archeological mating of Homer and The Frame.
At the Smithsonian we went to the South American annex. It was a good guess. We found Homer and the girl sitting on a stone bench, her tawny hair barely brushing his shoulder, staring steadfastly at what appeared to be a large and ornately carved stone altar. Behind them, glaring from the wall, was a horrid wooden mask, with tusks, which could frighten large adults.
I will say this for The Frame. She not only had a shape on which to hang clothes, but apparently she possessed an instinct for what clothes to hang on the shape. Now she looked as if she had just been voted the Best Dressed Senior in her college. I don’t recall exactly what she wore, except that it was something with a wide belt and a flaring skirt, and it gave her that collegiate look which blends so well with an interest in archeology.
“Hello, people,” I greeted them. “If you want to be alone I can think of more comfy places, without goons like that.” I nodded at the mask.
They didn’t appear particularly happy to see us. “I hope you don’t mind, Steve,” Homer protested. “You’re not going to be a Phelps-Smythe, are you? You said I could do whatever I wanted, you know.”
“Of course, Homer,” I soothed him, “but just let me know what’s going on. If you start wandering off, and I don’t know where you are, people might not understand. First thing you know you’ll find yourself being tailed by the FBI and the Secret Service and Army G-2, and maybe Abel Pumphrey himself—it would frighten him so.”
“We were followed,” said The Frame. “I’m sure of it.”
“Honest?”
“Absolutely,” said Homer.
“By who?”
“I don’t know. Kathy noticed him first. I never got a good look at him. But he’s somewhere in the building now.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll find out about it. So long as you don’t get in a jam, what the hell? People can’t object to you taking an interest in some old stones or mummy cases.”
Jane Zitter looked worried. “That might depend,” she observed, “as to who’s acting as guide.” I noticed that Jane and The Frame were eyeing each other like a pair of strange tabbies, and remembered the introductions. Then I asked, casually:
“And how is archeology today?”
“We were just discussing the legend of Tezcatlipoca,” The Frame remarked coolly. “Although one cannot really call it a legend, since it has been so well authenticated.”
“It must be fascinating.”
“It is for poor Homer,” said The Frame, “because he can see himself in it.”
Homer’s lips smiled, but his eyes were sad as a spaniel’s. “That is quite true,” he said, and explained.
It seems that one of the most bizarre Aztec rites was in honor of the god Tezcatlipoca, the god of fertility and creation. He was depicted as a young man, and handsome. Once each year the Aztecs picked a young man to represent the god. For a year he lived in splendor, and led the most exotic kind of life. His clothes were the finest, he was sprinkled daily with perfume, and flowers were thrown in his path when he went abroad. He was attended by the royal pages, and the people prostrated themselves when they saw him.
Four beautiful girls, each bearing the name of a goddess—or more if he wanted them—were his.
Things went along like this for a year, but at the end of a year they took him to the top of their highest pyramid, and stretched him naked on a sacrificial stone of jasper. “Just like this one,” Homer said.
Then a red-robed priest zipped open his chest and cut out his heart with a volcanic stone knife, holding it aloft towards the sun. The corpse was thrown to the foot of the pyramid. “And then,” Homer continued, shuddering, “they ate him!”
“I would not worry too much about that last part,” I told him. “They might find some soup bones on you, but I don’t see any steaks.”
The Frame leaned against Homer. “I think he is perfectly fine as he is,” she said. “You are just trying to fatten him up so you can use him for your own purposes—all of you.”
“Miss Riddell,” I asked, “are you against A.I.?”
“Theoretically, no,” replied The Frame. “I suppose the human race must be perpetuated, although sometimes”—she glanced at Jane Zitter—“I don’t see why. But I don’t think we are going about it properly, nor do I believe proper consideration is given to Homer’s feelings.”
“I know things aren’t perfect,” I admitted. “Naturally Homer suffers some inconvenience. But can you think of a better way than A.I. to accomplish our purpose?”
“I certainly can!” The Frame said defiantly.
I said we’d talk it over again sometime, and I told Homer I’d see him at dinner, and Jane and I left them to whatever it was they found in the South American annex.
That afternoon Jane persuaded me to go to my office while she initialed memos. It was quite an office I had, as a Special Assistant to the Director of N.R.P., and I was surprised to find that in the really few hours I had been in Washington it was already filling up with letters and telegrams. While Jane did her paperwork, I read a few of them.
There was a letter from Senator Frogham. He congratulated me on my appointment, and hoped he could be of service when a bill for continuing N.R.P. came to the Senate floor—a gentle hint that N.R.P. could not continue forever by pr
esidential order alone.
He went on to say that many of his constituents had written concerning the possibility of bearing an Adam child, and he felt the needs of his state should be considered when the question of first priorities arose.
There was a long, carefully composed, registered letter from the president of the National Insurance Council. He started by saying that the country was on disaster’s brink. People were not buying new insurance policies, because as things presently stood, the future of their progeny was uncertain. If this kept up, thousands of salesmen would be thrown out of work, the companies themselves might collapse, there would be inflation, depression, and the insurance business generally would go to hell. In that case, the country was doomed.
The answer, he said, obviously was to take the sound view that Adam’s children be allotted to people willing to insure the future of those children—the holders of insurance policies. Furthermore, any family which applied for the seed of Adam should be forced to take out policies on whatever children Adam’s seed produced. Thus could disaster be averted.
There was a telegram from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urging that an optimistic note be given to official releases on the health and well-being of Mr. Adam. Whenever rumors spread that Mr. Adam was ill, or that there was friction within N.R.P., or that Mr. Adam had been found unsuitable for A.I.—and naturally such rumors kept cropping up—securities collapsed. The Chamber of Commerce felt that above all, everybody should be optimistic.
Both the C.I.O. and the A.F. of L. sent notes that they were confident the rights of feminine union members would be protected when the time came for A.I. to commence. Otherwise, there would be very real and concrete danger of a wholly capitalistic world.
There was a letter from a Hellenic society pointing out that Greece’s population had been greatly reduced by war casualties, outlining Greece’s long record of service to mankind, and requesting priority for Greece when the rights of small nations came under consideration. There was the same type of request from the Poles, the Moslem League, the Armenians, and the Daughters of the American Revolution.
It appeared that there was hardly a group of any kind in all the world—and certainly none which maintained offices in Washington—which couldn’t present a good argument for special attention from the N.R.P. I realized I had become a target, albeit a moving target, for lobbyists and pressure groups. The announcement of my appointment automatically set me up as a clay pigeon. The question of allotting the seed of Adam was one I decided to duck.
Jane Zitter, who had been bulldozing her way through pink, green, and red piles of paper on her desk, suddenly lifted her head and said, “She’s up to something. I can’t figure it out.”
“Who?”
“That girl—The Frame. She’s clever.”
“Sure she’s clever,” I admitted. “But it’s perfectly obvious what she wants. She wants Homer Adam. But then, so does everybody else, and most of them are pretty damn selfish. You can tell by reading my mail. You’ve got to hand it to The Frame. She goes out to get him, personally. She doesn’t write letters explaining why she, and no other woman, is entitled to first crack at Homer. She has drive, and initiative.”
Jane shook her head. “No, I think you’re wrong. I suspect her of everything. She might even be a Communist agent. Hollywood is full of Communists, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I always thought Washington was full of Commies. For all I know you might be a Communist.”
“She’s an actress,” Jane said. “She’s playing a part. She practically ambushes Mr. Adam in the Blue Room, and then she attacks him on his only vulnerable front, which is archeology. It is too perfect.”
“I would not worry,” I said. “Homer has a perfectly good wife in Tarrytown, and only yesterday he was begging me to let him see her.”
“He won’t beg any more,” Jane predicted.
As the days went by, it turned out she was correct. Homer didn’t mention Mary Ellen again. He took The Frame to the Aztec Gardens in the Pan-American Union, and they spent hours deep under the stacks of the Library of Congress, and in the basement of the Archives Building, and in the gloomy reading rooms of the Pan-Hispanic Library. On the surface it all looked like good, wholesome, scholarly companionship, but this seemed hardly believable.
Whatever it was, I did not try to discourage it, for Homer visibly blossomed. His face no longer resembled that of a fresh-dug cadaver, and in a week he gained eight pounds, although when you distributed eight pounds up and down the length of his frame it did not seem very much.
While they spent their days in the pursuit of Aztec culture, that wasn’t the way they spent their evenings. They went out together every night, and each night Homer faithfully told me where they were going. It was always the Footlight Club, a little place on Connecticut Avenue where the steaks weren’t bad, the drinks cheap, and you could dance to a five-piece band. Of this I approved. I didn’t want him trotting The Frame around to any of the big places where they’d be conspicuous and get their names in the papers.
But one evening Homer came home more mussed than usual. Ordinarily we played a couple of games of gin before we turned in, but this night Homer played two hands as if he had been knocked on the head. Then he got up from the table and poured himself a drink. He turned to me and said, “Kathy is going back to Hollywood tomorrow.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I think she’s been good for you.”
He ran a hand through his hair, and I could see that he was trembling. This was not encouraging. I thought he was finished with the shakes. “Steve,” he said, “is it possible for a man to be in love with two women at the same time?”
“It has been done,” I said.
“I think I am in love with Kathy.”
When a man says he is in love with a woman there is nothing you can tell him, except to congratulate him, and it did not seem that Homer should be congratulated, considering the circumstances. I kept quiet.
“I suppose I love Mary Ellen, too,” he went on. “At least I ought to. She is my wife and until tonight I always thought I loved her very much. But I’m not sure that I love Mary Ellen the way I love Kathy.”
“No?”
“No. I think Mary Ellen and I got married because we were both a little lonesome. We were two strays wandering around in a world where everyone else was paired off. But with Kathy it is different. We were made for each other. It isn’t only archeology.”
“It is rarely archeology.”
Homer began to pace up and down. “It isn’t only archeology,” he repeated. “It is everything. We were made for each other.”
“Now what gave you that idea?”
“Kathy told me. We didn’t go to the Footlight Club tonight. We went up to Kathy’s room in her hotel.”
“Pardon me a moment,” I said. I went into the bathroom, shut the door, and banged my head against the wall. I came out again and asked Homer to tell me exactly how far things had gone, and what happened, in detail. He stammered, and cracked his knuckles, and got red in the face, and finally said that things had gone as far as they could go, but that it wasn’t his fault.
“Now, look, Homer,” I said, “you weren’t raped, were you?”
“Well, not exactly,” he said. “I’m not sure. Nothing like that ever happened to me before. One minute we were discussing the Toltecs, and the next minute we had all our clothes off.”
I said the fatuous thing that mothers tell their daughters and fathers their sons and husbands tell their wives: “Homer, this sounds like a mere infatuation.”
“Perhaps,” Homer said miserably. “I don’t know. I’m all mixed up.”
I shoved Homer into a chair, sat down opposite him, put my hands on his shoulders, and glared into his eyes like an optometrist. “Homer,” I said, “you are not going to like what I have to say, but I must tell it to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Homer, you are one of those rare men chosen for real sacrif
ice to the world. You are a fine man, Homer, and certainly no one can blame you for your personal feelings. But it is your destiny to be sacrificed, like that Aztec god, what’s his name—”
“Tezcatlipoca,” Homer provided.
“No man has ever been sacrificed for so great a cause,” I continued. “Homer, first you must do your duty to mankind, and then remember your wife and little Eleanor. After that, you can think of The Frame—Kathy. I hardly need to tell you what the repercussions would be if your affair with Kathy became public.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Homer said. “I know. That’s what I don’t understand. Kathy doesn’t seem to appreciate my position. She wanted me to run away with her.”
“Wanted you to run away! Where?”
“She didn’t say. Just away. It scared me. I told her I couldn’t do it—that I had my obligations, and she said to think it over, and that obviously we were destined to be together always, and that when I decided I should call her.”
“And you said?”
“I said I would think it over.”
I began to breathe again. “Thank goodness, Homer, you are being sensible. You have done a very noble thing, and it is a shame it will forever be hidden from history.”
That night I lay awake thinking. I really felt very solemn about it. Plenty of men would have told the world to take a flying leap at a galloping goose, and would have proceeded to do their own re-fertilization in their own way. But Homer was a very decent, public-spirited citizen. On the other hand I didn’t quite understand The Frame’s procedure. She was a smart girl—smart enough to know that she couldn’t possibly get away with eloping with Homer permanently. Or could she, say, if they got out of the country? The thought worried me.
I decided that the best way for Homer to keep his balance, and forget about The Frame, was to bring Mary Ellen to Washington. I was afraid that as soon as The Frame left, Homer would start pining away again, and sink into his melancholia.