by C. L. Moore
So we went jolting on through the hot night. I nursed my warm buzzing that blanketed thought. Cropping isn't bad. You eat. You sleep. You get whiskey very cheap. You're told what to do and you do it, and everything goes along fine and easy. You never think. You never remember, if you keep the bottle handy. You go rolling along in your own little magical room which the whiskey builds around you, its walls as far on every side as the buzz extends. Inside it, pleasant anesthesia. Inside it also dirt and, dust and discomfort. I itched. I needed a shave. I didn't care. I didn't have to in my portable magic room.
But then the bus slowed again. We were pulling into the bright, clean, richly colored belt of a check station and the top signal was on, so I knew Comus was combing the roads for somebody or something. Or else it was just feeling inquisitive about things in general and wanted to take a random sampling of how people feel about things. You never know with Comus. The bus got in line. I hoped my bottle would last.
Somebody called, "All out. Stay in line. Follow the guard."
I put the bottle back in my pocket and shuffled out with the rest. If I took things easy the buzz ought to stay with me. I balanced it around me like a big intangible balloon. When the line stopped so did I, trying not very hard to keep my eyes open.
The check station was big and bright and flashy. It probably dated from the height of the Raleigh regime, about fifteen years ago, when the fad first came in for ornateness and ostentation. I'd seen even flashier places than this, with even more colored glass and even bigger Raleigh emblems, shield-shaped, with the AR monogram in neon tubes full of moving bubbles. And if the AR looks like ANDREW, REX, a man can't help the initials he's got, can he?
The light shining across the highway was blue and yellow and purple around its edges from the colored glass that bordered the windows of the station, but a strong, clear glare beat down on the cars before the door, where interrogations went on. I could hear the music of a dance band playing from some far-off ballroom, the sound turned low inside the station. I could hear the metallic voice of Comus inside, too, talking with the voice of authority from some central ganglion to this peripheral nerve ending out hem in the dark on the highway.
A couple of the big Prowlers were drawn up in the parking lot beside the station. You could see how red they were even with green and purple light from the colored windows bathing them. Two or three hedgehoppers stood quivering a little on their long bent legs with a queasy motion I hate to watch. They are dishonest little cars. They can go wherever a tank can, and they slip through the grass almost without leaving a track. Antennae whipped gently above them, feeling out messages with a sort of senseless, inanimate eagerness.
Overhead as the line shuffled on I thought I could hear a helicopter hum, a heavy buzzing that could be right in my own head. Comus monitors every Prowler squad with a helicopter, so taking side roads or cutting across country gets you nowhere if the call is out and Comus really wants the traffic sampled. In my mind's eye I climbed a little higher than the helicopters and watched how their blood-red backs caught the starlight from a long way up, looking deep black-red in the darkness. I gazed down on them and they gazed down on their little broods of Prowlers, and there was a controlled, orderly feeling about it all. Every thing in its place. Everything predictable. I was safe and untouchable in my little buzzing room floating high up in the middle of the air.
But while I waited a hedgehopper came rocking up the road and pulled into the pool of colored light beside the station. A man got out and went into the station, bright and immaculate in his red coat. The cross-country 'hopper stood there rocking like an uneasy spider. I was thinking about sneaking another drink.
Then I heard my own name called.
I felt a familiar, automatic response run out along my muscles at the cue. But I didn't answer. I just stood there swaying a little.
"Howard Rohan. Step forward."
Heads turned toward me. I stepped forward. A guard came down the line, neat and authoritative in his red uniform. He looked me up and down, taking in my faded denims, my dust, my stubbled chin. He took in my breath too.
"Right," he said. "Follow me, Rohan."
Inside the station everything seemed very bright and busy. My guard took me up to a counter with an imitation marble top made out of some synthetic. "We've found Rohan, sir," he said to the man behind the marble.
The man was looking at my identification card. He bent it back and forth between his fingers. The plastic snapped every time he did it. Finally he said, "Better use a Prowler, I guess. It's faster." He stamped a plastic disc and handed it to the guard with my card. "Straight through by fast plane," he said. "Priority. Check the prints first."
So we went away to another counter, where my finger and retina prints were taken. I could have got mad. I could feel the anger hovering up inside me, waiting its cue. This was part of the life I had got away from, at a cost nobody but I could know. I had sunk without a trace into the particular oblivion I had chosen. I liked it down here. I couldn't see that they had any right to haul me up again. But they had the power to do it. I didn't doubt that. I decided to save the anger for somebody near the top, where it might do some good. These boys were just following orders. So I did what I was told, and not a thing more. I made my arm limp when they took the prints. I focused on nothing when they flashed the retina pattern. Then they looked at me and I looked at nothing, carefully balancing the anger in me to keep it from spouting up and getting me into trouble.
"Think we ought to clean him up first?" somebody asked.
"They want him fast," somebody else said.
I just stood there breathing quietly, not even wondering. Of course they'd made some kind of mistake. They wanted some other Howard Rohan. (With my fingerprints and retina patterns? Never mind. It's got to be some other Rohan ...)
We got into a Prowler. I leaned back and shut my eyes. When I opened them the lights of an airfield shone into them. We got into a plane, not a jet, so we probably weren't going very far. I felt my stomach complain when we took to the air. I had another drink. My guard looked at me uneasily, but he didn't interfere. He had his orders. I didn't wonder what they were.
We sat near the tail of the plane, with a couple of seats between us and the other passengers. So I wouldn't contaminate anybody, I thought, admitting that they had a point there as I scratched myself. The TV screen at the front of the plane showed us a comedy whose timing was lousy. I used to think I was pretty good myself in comedy. I had a long run in the lead role of the new Shakespeare comedy they dug up in '94, though just possibly the author's name contributed something. Miranda always said—
Never mind. Don't think about Miranda.
But, going back to civilization, here in the clean-smelling, gently humming plane, in the flowered plush seats, is it possible not to think of Miranda? God knows I didn't think enough about her when she was alive. Maybe she still would be if I'd listened when she wanted to talk to me. If I'd thought more of her as a woman and less as a beautiful puppet to act as I wanted her to on stage.
Don't think about Miranda.
My image in the window beside me caught my eye. I seemed to be flying along out there effortlessly, keeping pace with the plane, transparent though I was with the stars shining through me. I looked at myself out there and tried to think of anything but Miranda. It wasn't any good. The thought of that last day was moving up on me inexorably, smooth and relentless, and how could I stop it? Once it starts, there's nothing you can do.
It's funny how quick a memory can be. I couldn't get the bottle to my mouth fast enough to keep that last day, that last night from flashing back through my mind, completed from start to finish, the end simultaneous with the beginning and everything in between as clear and perfect as if I'd just finished living them, every detail there.
Life and the drowning man. That's what they mean. The whole picture can flash by that fast. While the whiskey ran down my throat it went by again, retracing the well-worn groove of memory I ha
d spent three years trying to wipe out.
Scene, backstage at the Andrew Raleigh Theater, New York's best and newest. Characters, the cast and crews that were staging Beautiful Dreamer for a rerun, starring, of course, Howard and Miranda Rohan. Lead character, Rohan himself, husband, director, and co-star of the beautiful dreamer. Curtain rises on Rohan projecting frenzy better than Stanislavsky could have done it. Louder, anyhow.
Absent from stage, Miranda. Desperate search going on. Her understudy rehearsing hopefully while the search grows more and more desperate. No luck. Miranda missing from morning appointments, missing from her matinee, missing from rehearsal, missing from the night's performance. Rohan going on with half a dozen drinks in him, too frantic to feel them. Rohan snatching drinks every time he steps off stage. Rohan, sober as a judge from start to finish.
Finish—phone call just after the second-act curtain. The police have found—them. Them? Them? There must be some mistake. Who could Miranda be with that she'd miss two performances in a row without a word to me? I forgot about the play. I walked out on the last act. That's me, never-do-anything-by-halves Rohan. Drive yourself and your cast crazy working for impossible perfection, sure, but drop it flat and leave the audience buzzing and be all husband, desperate and bewildered, when word like this comes in. I guess I never was as good as I'd thought as actor, director, or husband if I could turn in a performance like that.
Actually I really did forget about the last act. Our two understudies struggled through it in front of a house frill of whispers and rumors while Rohan in a police car, with the siren making the kind of noise he felt like making, headed for the Saw Mill River Parkway and the wreck that had killed both of them. Miranda and her lover. The man I had never heard of.
Sometimes, now, I wonder if I'd ever really seen or heard of Miranda. The real one. If this could happen without my guessing, had I ever known her as she was? Thinking back over and over and over, I could remember times when she was moody and withdrawn, times when it seemed to me she was about to say something she never quite got out. Because I was busy and preoccupied. Because there was never a time for relaxation between jobs and the job at hand filled my whole mind. I can remember now the many times she almost told me—something. But she put it off too long.
The photographers hadn't got there yet when the police car and I arrived. I saw her as they found her. She was lying half out of the smashed car, and except for the back of her head there was hardly a mark on her. She had nothing at all on except a Japanese kimono I had never seen before in my life. Why she had gone out that way, what unknown apartment they had left, where they were going, I never knew.
She looked beautiful. She always did look beautiful. Even when there was nothing remaining any more to control her body and arrange her gestures, she lay against the hillside in her flowery kimono as if a portrait painter had arranged her to show her beauty best. The kimono covered her very decently, considering. You had the feeling that Miranda's ghost must have paused, looked back, and stooped to twitch the brightly colored silk into place, wanting her to look her best even now.
Did they ever find out who the man was? I think so. I'm not sure. It didn't matter. Just a man of no special importance in the world to anyone except—perhaps—Miranda. I don't remember how he looked at all.
What I remember is standing there wondering just when Miranda had made the decision that had led to this moment. It might have been any of the times when she had been on the verge of saying—something—to me and I hadn't waited to listen.
What I remember is the feeling that I might have saved her—could have saved her—and I had not saved her. There would never be another chance. The curtain went down then.
The curtain never rose again.
You see how fast it goes through the mind? You can remember in no time at all. From the moment the rot-gut hit my throat to the time it began spreading around the walls of my stomach I lived the twelve tours over.
I drank the rest of my pint in a couple of gulps. There wasn't much, but enough. The Rohan who had stood on the grassy bank above Miranda and the Rohan who floated easily along outside the plane window and the Rohan inside on the deep plush seat all got blurry together. They all passed out at the same moment.
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CHAPTER III
I WOKE UP IN bed.
I was sober and it felt terrible. Everything around me had clarity too explicit to endure without my buzzing walls to filter out reality. The room was an average bedroom, a little on the luxury side. I sat up and began to shake all over. My head felt groggy and there was a sore spot at the inside of the elbow where the vein comes to the surface. Some kind of injection? I couldn't remember a thing, but a dream I'd just been having stirring uneasily around in the back rooms of my mind, insisting it was important. I tried to remember.
It seems the whole population of the United States had shaken me by my shoulder and said they were in grave danger. No, it was President Raleigh, and he told me he'd never meant things to come to this, and after he died there'd be some changes made. No, after all, it was just a man in a red uniform who said his name was Comus. He was just about to kill himself and he wanted me to help. He planned to use a—what was it?
An antic.
That much I remembered clearly. He also told me. I was on my way to California, where I must be sure to look up a Mr. Heiress. I was to give his love to somebody whose name I didn't catch at all. And he also advised me to collect swans. Even in a dream I rejected this kind of logic. I told him to go away.
But he was persistent. He told me a long, complicated tale in a hoarse whisper that tickled my ear, all about what an important man I'd once been and the big things the future might still hold in store if only I——But here a touch of irrational nightmare came in. Whatever it was he wanted me to do scared me. The whole country seemed to go unstable when I thought about it. He said I didn't need to think about it, but he had to have help in killing himself on account of the antic. And don't forget the swans.
I said I had nothing against the Secretary of Communications personally—and how he came into the conversation isn't clear—and the man in the red coat kept whispering about you know what. Only I didn't, and this was the part that scared me. He said I didn't need to think about it now, because I'd remember when the time came—but he had to tell me while he could.
That part was pure nightmare. I wanted to yell at him that he was only a dream and to shut up and get out, but I was too groggy and he kept right on. When I put my hands over my ears he began to talk in letters of fire that hung in the air over his head. Luckily I couldn't read. "And be sure you ask for the swans," he said intensely, and vanished into thin air at the sound of approaching footsteps, leaving the letters of fire behind him. Just in time I reached out and pushed them into a bottomless pit which had been there all the time. They dropped, circling, getting clearer the farther they fell until I could almost read them. But not quite, thank God.
Just before they got too clear to escape, I woke up.
I was sitting there trying to make sense out of all this when a door opened and a man in a white coat came in. I looked up sharply, thinking for one irrational moment it would be a man I knew. The man who had sent for me. Ted Nye. I knew it had to be Ted. Nobody else had quite such connections as this, though the Howard Rohan of three years ago had known a lot of important people. None of whom would remember me now.
It had to be Ted Nye. Which was why the Secretary of Communications played a bit part in my dream. That cleared that much of it up, anyhow. Ted and I started out together a long time ago. I rose high. Ted topped me by a long shot and he was still up there, in the Communications chair in Raleigh's cabinet, and slated to go even higher, for all I knew, when the old man died.
Much too important to be coming into my bedroom in a white coat, of course. The man in the doorway was a stranger. And a doctor, if the white coat meant anything. He took my wrist in a professional grip and looked searching at me. "Feeling all right?"
"I feel terrible. What I need is a drink."
"You'll do," he said. "For now, anyhow. Get dressed."
"What about that drink?"
He just shrugged and walked out, shutting the door. So I got up, shuddering a little. There were ants crawling around just under my skin. I went to the window and looked out. New York Area, Manhattan. Very familiar. By stretching my neck slightly I could probably see the roof of the Raleigh Theater, scene of my rise and fall. I didn't try.
My clothes, neatly laundered, hung ready. In the bathroom was everything I needed to get myself clean and shaved. I settled for brushing my teeth. I felt grimy, but I wasn't going to make concessions to anybody. Whoever had sent for me was going to get me just as I stood.
A guard in a red Comus uniform stood outside my door. Oddly enough, it all tallied with the dream. This was the door the population of the country had come in by. Here on the threshold the bottomless pit had opened. I looked down to see if the letters of fire had left any marks on the floor.
"Good morning, Mr. Rohan," the guard said.
"I need a drink," I told him. "See?" And I held out my hands to show him my shakes.
"Will you come with me, please?" he said politely. "Uh—would you like to clean up a little first?"
"No," I said.
"This way, please," he told me, shrugging.
Five minutes and three floors later he paused in front of a door, spoke briefly into his lapel mike, and then said, "In here, Mr. Rohan." I went in.