The Ultimate Egoist

by Theodore Sturgeon

  You dirty coward.

  You win, Davy Jones. That sea stove in the midship house. Carried away the aerial. Smashed the lifeboats. Tore out the stack. Broke the ship’s back.

  There is kerosene and salt on my lips.

  A Noose of Light

  TERRY HAD BEAUTY and Florence had brains. Terry was all silk and brilliance, Florence was small and brown and neat. Terry sacrificed clarity to magnificence; Florence sacrificed nothing to cold logic. Therefore Terry was a very popular young lady, and Florence was not. But they were both happy, for they both had what they wanted from life. Popularity meant as little to Florence as did limited scientific recognition to Terry. For Florence was a research scientist, in spite of her mere twenty-odd years, and her paper on the comparative values of certain sub-visible radiations in the vicinity of ultraviolet had brought her wide acclaim in the small circle in which she moved.

  They were sisters; and Florence’s steady indifference to men and bright lights and sweet music was a source of constant exasperation to the younger girl. Terry was as analytical as her more serious sister; but to her, the ripples cast by a chance remark, the effect of a half-casual gesture, the reaction to slight nuances of tone and phrase—these were matters of profound interest. Being a woman, and an intensely feminine and beautiful woman at that, she simply could not understand Florence’s passion for her work. When Florence made some new, small discovery, Terry shared her radiant happiness; but she could no more understand why Florence was happy than she could grasp the complex scientific phenomenon that had caused that happiness.

  Terry’s anxiety about Florence was not returned. In spite of her voluntary seclusion, Florence knew something about the human personality—knew that Terry was following the line for which she was best fitted. She translated the situation into scientific terms for herself, by likening Terry to a color; say, orange. Orange had a place in the spectrum; it occurred between red and yellow. It would be ridiculous to try to build a spectrum that would show orange between indigo and violet. It would be equally ridiculous to try to move Terry from her proper place in the world: it would not be logical. That last conclusion was all Florence ever needed to convince herself about anything. Logic … in logic, Florence would say, is all the adventure, all the beauty, the glory, the poetry in the universe. Socrates once said that a well-ordered mind, given a single pertinent fact, and time for thought, could visualize the entire universe and all that it contained. It was that sort of mind that was Florence’s ideal: her scientist’s brain told her that her ideal was perfection, and therefore impossible; her realization of this impossibility gave her her brand of yearning, provocative happiness. The search for facts; the logical, symphonic regimentation of those facts into their predetermined patterns; the harmonization of these patterns with contrasting and correlative patterns to take their place in the rhythmic whole; this was her life and her reason for living.

  Terry burst into their little apartment one afternoon to find Florence pacing worriedly about, the complete neatness of her bearing marred by a tiny annoyed frown between her eyes.

  “Darling! Oh, it’s good to be back! How are you? You’ve been working too hard. I wish you’d—how do I look? See—new shoes. Boa. Oh Florence, I met the most marvelous man! He’s just your type. Look, we can arrange a little party. We’ll get you a nice fluffy organdy. Powder-blue. He talks beautifully about the most amazing things. His name’s Ben. Youngish, with a face like a very nice horse. Frightfully clever. Ph.D. and all that. Oh dear, your hair’s all straggly. If only you’d let me set it—just once; you’d see how it would be—what have you been doing all this time?”

  Florence smiled. Sometimes she almost envied Terry her bewildering personality, the vibrant dynamism with which she attacked life. Look at this; a weekend house party; three days of no doubt violent exercise; probably no little wear and tear on her emotional setup; yet she was as fresh and crisp-looking as a frozen lettuce leaf. “I’ve been trying the impossible and learning a great deal from it,” she said. “I’ve a suspicion that the velocity of light is not, after all, a constant. I think that there are greater speeds in the deep ultraviolet. That’s why I have this new gear-wheel light-interrupter; but it will take some close figuring. Any difference will be fractional—very small. I can’t do a thing until I get that new rheostat. The one I’ve got is too clumsy; I haven’t control enough. It’s like the old gag about a drugstore sandwich: the first bite and you haven’t reached the filling, the next bite and you’re past it. When they get around to delivering the new ’stat—it’s a micro-vernier, variable to three twenty-five thousandths of—”

  Terry, listening vaguely, felt again that surge of impatience with her sister. Meeting Ben at the house party had filled her with plans. She was sure that if Florence and Ben ever met, they would hit it off beautifully. She was equally sure that it would take a stroke of genius—or a stick of dynamite—to pry Florence loose from her little laboratory long enough to spend a whole evening with him.

  “Oh, Florrie!” she interrupted. “Don’t you ever want to have any fun? Work all day and most of the night, puttering around with your beams and rays and colors; if you stopped for just a little while you’d see what I mean …”

  Florence had a very lovely laugh. “Terry, look. I haven’t been working all afternoon; can’t, until I get my rheostat. And I’m all worn out fretting about it. When it gets here, then I’ll have my fun … What would you like to eat?”

  They both recognized that as the signal to drop the matter; and drop it they did. Florence, of course, promptly lost the subject in the maze of mathematics that constituted her own private dreamland; but Terry worried the problem tenaciously. This sort of thing had been going on too long. Why, Florrie was an old maid! Terry was frightened of that phrase …

  In the next ten days Terry saw Ben Pastene four times. Each time she saw him she liked him better—for Florence, of course. Oh, of course. Ben’s tall, serious, slightly stoop-shouldered self was a bit out of her field … but then he was awfully sweet. Oh, if only Florence—but no, Florence had refused point blank to come with her and meet him, had refused even to pretty up and let Terry bring him home. Some other time, perhaps; but this new stroboscopic effect … and the convention next month; she had to have her paper ready; and oh, Terry darling, please don’t be such a little schemer.

  Terry’s light, laughing efforts began to be just the slightest bit grim.

  It came to a head one evening, with Terry standing near the foyer, instinctively choosing the one spot in the room where the lights would bring out to advantage her firm delicate profile. She had an innate dramatic sense; and in this last plea to her sister she played it for all it was worth. And the more she talked, the funnier it seemed to Florence. She had everything in the world she wanted—now that her micro-vernier rheostat had arrived!—and her beloved sister was trying to palm off one of her glamour-boys on her.

  “You’re wrong, Terry,” she said steadily, when at last she could get a word in. “I don’t live an unhealthy life, and I am not determined to be a spinster. Neither am I determined to marry. Can’t you see that, you idiot? I’ve got more important things to think about!”

  “Important?” shrilled her sister. “What could be more important that a husband, and a home, and—and the p-protection he could give you—” Terry was near the breaking point.

  Florence’s voice was very soft. “Sweetheart, I have a home. And I don’t need protection. Now, please—”

  Terry flung out of the room. “Sometimes, Florence, for a girl with so many brains, you can be un-ut-ter-ab-ly STUPID!” The door slammed, and Terry was gone for the evening. Florence shrugged. She hated scenes, but she knew that it was worth going through one every now and then: they cleared the air. Life would be peaceful for six or seven weeks, for two of which Terry would probably sulk. Ah, well. Now that Doppler effect with the interrupter at .065 … and back she went into her laboratory.

  Hours later the doorbell buzzed discreetly
. Florence started, then sent her mind racing after the formula she had almost stumbled on. “N to the fifth power over this cosine, take the mantissa of the log of the denom— darn it!” she said with emphasis. She threw down her pencil and marched to the door, making up her mind that hereafter the buzzer would be choked with absorbent cotton. She threw the door open and found herself staring at a collar and tie—a very tasteful tie, she had to admit, and she knew something about color-value … her gaze travelled up to a pointed chin with just the suggestion of a cleft on it, up to a well-shaped mouth, up past cheeks that were a bit too thin, up to a pair of friendly, green-flecked brown eyes. The eyes had it, she quipped to herself … “it” … “Oh,” she said, feeling very silly.

  “I do hope I haven’t bothered you,” he said in a voice that matched the eyes, for it was warm and friendly, too. “Your sister said you’d be working … I’m Ben Pastene. She said you’d remember the name.” He waited patiently. Florence let the silence build agonizingly before she collected wits enough to invite him in. She did, though; and they stood there in the middle of the room, staring at each other. He was very tall and gentle-looking, and she was very appealing in the tan lab smock, though she didn’t know it. Ben Pastene had a sudden impulse to brush her soft-looking hair back from her face, and laughed at the thought. That broke the ice; she laughed too, and she did have a very lovely laugh.

  She took his hat and coat, while he explained his errand. Terry was spending the night with a girlfriend, and her earring had broken, and since he would be passing this way, she had asked him to drop in and tell Florence not to expect her, and to leave the earring.

  Florence was so furious at her sister’s machinations that she laughed; and as soon as she had laughed she stopped being furious. But Terry would hear about this—oh yes indeed!

  “Terry has talked and talked of you,” Ben Pastene said. He offered her a cigarette, which she refused. She liked his hands and the way he handled them … “Terry is given to exaggeration,” she said primly.

  He looked at her so critically that she blushed. “By no means!” he said, and she knew he meant it. She thought it very foolish to be pleased, but she was—terribly. “And she has spoken of you too. She thinks you are quite a paragon. No vices. No objectionable characteristics besides that one. And a Ph.D.”

  He laughed. “She’s more than generous … What is the work she says you bury yourself in, to the exclusion of all worthwhile things in life?”

  “Oh, she’s been talking that way, has she? Oh well—Terry lives in a different world from me. I’m no more fitted for the things she does and wants to do than she is for my particular sphere. I can’t do the rumba—but then I can do wonders with the cube root of minus x.”

  He laughed again and she suddenly had the feeling that she would like to keep him laughing—it was such a pleasant sound … She wondered why she found it almost imperative to defend herself against Terry’s influence with this man.

  “You still haven’t told me about your work, you know.”

  “Oh—I fool around with light that you can’t see, trying to find out if it could be of any use to anybody … I’m afraid it wouldn’t be very interesting. What’s interesting to you?”

  “Languages, mostly. I got my Ph.D. by making a left-hand stab at a thesis on the probable location of Atlantis, as shown by language trends … but I’m interested in light too. Talk about it.”

  “Never mind that,” she smiled. “I want to hear about Atlantis. It sank under the sea, didn’t it?”

  He gave in, for her interest was obviously genuine. As he talked he warmed to his subject, and so did she. He spoke of the dead civilizations of Atlantis and Mu; of the possibilities of a former great civilization in the heart of the Sahara, near the mountains called Atlas; of a sunken continent whose mountain peaks were the Azores; of a people of vast learning who taught the Maya and Incas of Yucatan and Peru how to pronounce the mystic word Atl; of the Greek legends of a land in the West, while west of Greece is the Mediterranean—the midst of the earth. Here were things that could not be seen nor felt, but which were real to those of us today, even as ultraviolet and infrared light … she said as much, and then it was her turn. They went into the laboratory, and she spoke of heat and light and electromagnetic theory. She showed him how infrared rays can be focussed so that they can pass through a man’s hand painlessly and set fire to a piece of paper at the other side. She showed him spectra of plain and polarized light, and initiated him into the mysteries of light that is violet and past violet, coming nearer and nearer to black which is not black, but invisible, vibrant light. In exchange for his stories of things once seen and now invisible, she showed him things once invisible but now seen.

  It grew late, and he had to go. They stood together for a long minute, saying nothing. Florence felt as she had the night she discovered the new ratio of the invisible wavelengths to each other—joy of achievement, joy in adventure. But this was better. It was more—personal. He said, “I’ll see you again soon, won’t I?”

  She nodded because suddenly she couldn’t speak; he went to the door and slipped out. Three seconds later he was back. He pressed Terry’s broken earring into her hand. “I didn’t mean that soon,” he joked. “But it was nice, wasn’t it?”

  “Goodnight, Ben,” she said, using his name for the first time. “Goodnight …” and now he was really gone.

  She stood there a long while, then laughed because she wanted to see if she still could. She went back to her desk in the laboratory and tried to go on with her knotty problem in solid trig. It was too much—not that she couldn’t handle the math. It was only that tonight, somehow, she didn’t give a hoot for her hypothetical light velocities. She went to bed.

  She slept magnificently, waking very late. Terry was home, sitting in the bedroom easy chair, reading. As Florence opened her eyes Terry saw her, came and sat on the bed. She looked perturbed. Good old Terry! She was worried about her shrewd little plan! Well, let her stop worrying. It had worked. It had worked! Florence threw her arms about her sister, drew her close.

  “You’re terribly clever, darling, in spite of your pretty face,” she whispered. “He’s wonderful. I never knew a mere man could be so—so sweet. Oh, thank you, Terry. I’ll never be able to thank you enough …”

  “Did—did he like you, Florrie?”

  “He wants to see me again—soon.”

  Florence lay holding Terry, looking up at a sunbeam, and smiling. She was afraid, and happy, and tremendously excited all at once. Suddenly, “Why—Terry! You’re crying! Sweetheart! I haven’t seen you cry since you lost that great big mama-doll when you were a kid! What is it? Oh, please, Terry!”

  Terry wet Florence’s cheek with her own. “Florence … I didn’t want to. Really I didn’t. I wanted him for you. I lay awake all last night, thinking about you and him here together … oh, why did he have to like you after all? Florrie, say you don’t think I’m a pig. Please, dear …” she collapsed in a gale of sobs.

  Dazed, puzzled, Florence repeated slowly, “Lay awake last … didn’t want to … thinking about—Terry! Terry, tell me! You love Ben! Don’t you? You—” Another storm of weeping was answer enough. “Terry! Snap out of it, child. Come on, imbecile; we have to talk this thing out. Good heavens; with all the men in the world, you have to pick on … and me too … oh, what a miserable, maudlin mess!”

  Terry quieted after a bit; rose calmly and went to the dresser, where she stood with her back to the bed, skillfully applying a new complexion. Finished, she whirled and said suddenly with utter frigidity, “Florence, I love him and I mean to have him. I’m sorry, but I can’t give him up, not even for you. I’ve got to do this!”

  “Do you think you can?” Florence was desperately afraid, but tried not to show it.

  Terry laughed and looked in the mirror, looked at Florence, and laughed again. “What do you think?” And she went out. She was as lovely as ever a woman could be, and they both knew it.

  For w
eeks after that the two of them fought each other desperately. Florence was more than a little hurt at Terry’s action; for Ben was truly Florence’s first; it hit her harder because of that. Terry had hundreds of friends. She would get over it. If Florence didn’t win this crazy battle, she’d never recover. Everything was at stake—her own peace of mind, her hopes of years of intensive work; all would be destroyed if her petulant sister got what she was after. Florence had two things on her side, however. One was a mental level on which she could meet Ben Pastene; the other was a philosophical sense of humor, which made things a bit easier for her. In spite of the agony she went through, she still found herself able to laugh at all three of them. If she thought in emotional headlines the way Terry did, she would no doubt term the conflict as one of science against beauty. An amusing thought … true, though. Now, how catch a man with a noose of light?

  Ben, poor fellow, hovered betwixt and between. True, his world was nearer that of Florence; but that was all the more reason why the brilliant, scintillating Terry appealed. After seeing either he could think of nothing else—until he saw the other. They both knew it, and both worked the harder.

  The showdown came on a Thursday evening. Ben had two tickets to an opening night, and was to call for Terry. Terry took a good two hours dressing, and a beautiful job she did of it. Florence came to the door of the bedroom once to look. Terry had just slipped into a breathtaking gown—golden satin, with a great black sash. Terry’s cornsilk hair artfully matched it, sweeping upward just enough to follow the clinging lines of the gown. Terry glanced up at Florence and said nastily, patting the smooth lines, “Point one for the common people.” Florence made not a sound; she closed the door softly and went and stood in the middle of the living room, pulling her lower lip and thinking like mad. Then she slipped into her little laboratory, did some more thinking, and finally came back with an odd-shaped electric light bulb in her hand. She fitted it into a floor lamp, carried the lamp over to the daybed and adjusted it to throw its light left-center on the pillowed surface. Then she went to the closet and got a rich black velvet spread for the couch. When she had finished she changed the hall light for a pale blue globe, almost daylight. Then she went into her own bedroom, changed quickly into a very chic tailored tweed, and threw on a laboratory smock over it. A dab at face and lips, and she was ready.