The Ultimate Egoist

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “You sleep in there,” I said, nodding toward the bedroom. “I’ll—”

  She put her arms around me. “David—”

  “Mm-m-m?”

  “I’ll—have a nice torso for you at 12:48—”

  So we stuck around and talked until 12:48.

  It must have been about two weeks later, after we were married, that she started breaking bottles in my laboratory. She came into the laboratory one afternoon and caught me cold. I was stirring a thick mass in a beaker and sniffing at it, and was so intent on my work that I never heard her come in. She moved like thistledown when she wanted to.

  “What are you cooking, darling?” she asked as she put away a beautiful pair of arms she had just “manufactured.”

  I put the beaker on the bench and stood in front of it. “Just some … sort of … er … stickum I’m mixing up for— Myra, beat it, will you? I’m busy as—”

  She slid past me and picked up the beaker. “Hm-m-m. Pretty. Snff. Honey and—formic acid. Using the smell of that beast as a lead, are you? Dr. David Worth, trying to find a cure for a gold mine. It’s a cure, isn’t it? Or trying to be?” Her tone was very sweet. Boy, was she sore!

  “Well … yes,” I admitted. I drew a deep breath. “Myra, we can’t go on like this. For myself I don’t care, but to have you spending the rest of your life shedding your epidermis like a … blasted cork oak—it’s too much. You’ve been swell about it, but I can’t take it. You’re too swell, and it’s too much for my conscience. Every time I come in here and start stuffing something of yours, I begin worrying about you. It hasn’t been bad, so far—but, woman, think of it! The rest of your life, sloughing off your hide, worrying about whether or not you can find somewhere to take your face off when you’re not home; trying to remember where you dropped a hand or a leg. You—Myra, you’re not listening.”

  “Of course I’m not. I never listen to you when you’re talking nonsense.”

  “It isn’t nonsense!” I was getting sore.

  “I wonder,” she said dreamily, sloshing the mess around in the beaker, “whether this thing will bounce.” She dropped it on the floor and looked curiously. It didn’t bounce. I stood there fumbling for a cuss word strong enough, and wondering whether or not I could move fast enough to poke her one.

  “David, listen to me. How long have you been a taxidermist?”

  “Oh—eleven years. What’s that got—”

  “Never mind. And how much money have you saved in eleven years?”

  “Well, none, until recently. But lately—”

  “Quiet. And you have eight hundred-odd in the bank now. Those stuffed-skin gadgets sell faster than we can make them. And just because you have some funny idea that I don’t like to give you my—by-products, you want to cut the water off, go back to stuffing squirrels and hummingbirds for buttons. David, you’re a fool—a derm fool.”

  “That’s not very punny.”

  She winced. “But here’s the main thing, David. You’ve got this trouble, and so have I. We’ve been cashing in on it, and will, if only you’ll stop being stupid about it. The thing I like about it is that we’re partners—I’m helping you. I love you. Helping you means more to me than— Oh, David, can’t you see? Can’t you?”

  I kissed her. “And I thought you were just a good sport,” I whispered. “And I thought some of it was mock heroics. Myra—” Oh, well. She won. I lost. Women are funny that way. But I still had an idea or two about a cure—

  I’d been wrong about the indefatigable Inspector Brett. It was Myra who found out that he was tailing us everywhere, parking for hours in a doorway across the street, and sometimes listening at the door. I’d never have known it; but, as I’ve pointed out before, Myra has superhuman qualities. When she told me about it, I was inclined to shrug it off. He didn’t have anything on us. I had to laugh every time I thought of what must have gone on at police headquarters when they checked up on my fingerprints and those of the hands they had bought in the stores.

  The fact that it was human skin, and that the prints were identical in dozens of specimens, must have given them a nasty couple of days. Prove that the axiom about two points and a straight line is false, and where’s your whole science of geometry? And prove that there can be not only identical fingerprints, but dozens of identical ones, and you have a lot of experts walking around in circles and talking to themselves.

  Brett must have appointed himself to crack this case. I was quite willing to let him bang his head against a wall. It would feel nice when he stopped. I should have known Myra better. She had a glint in her eye when she talked about that gang buster.

  In the meantime I kept working on that cure. I felt like a heel to skulk around behind Myra’s back that way. You see, she trusted me. We’d had that one row about it, and I’d given in. That was enough for her. She wouldn’t spy on me when I was working alone in the lab; and I knew that if she did realize it, suddenly, she would be deeply hurt. But this thing was too big. I had to do what I was doing, or go nuts.

  I had a lead. The formic-honey idea was out, as a cure, though certain ingredients in them, I was sure, had something to do with the cause. That cause was amazingly simple. I could put it down here in three words. But do you think I would? Heh. I’ve got a corner on this market—

  But this was my lead: My hair never came off! And I wear a minuscule mustache; every time my face came off it left the mustache. I have very little body hair; now, with this trouble, I had none. It came off, for the follicles were comparatively widely separated. First, I thought that this phenomenon was due to a purely physical anchorage of the skin by the hair roots. But, I reasoned, if that had been the case, layer after layer of skin would have formed under my mustache. But that did not happen. Evidently, then, this amazing separative and regenerative process was nullified by something at the hair roots. I could tell you what it was, too, but—I should knife myself in the back!

  I worked like a one-armed pianist playing Mendelssohn’s “Spinning Song.” It took months, but by repeated catalysis and refinement, I finally had a test tube full of clear golden liquid. And—know what it was? Look: I hate to be repetitious, but I’m not saying. Let it suffice that it can be bought by the gallon at your corner drugstore. Nobody knew about it as a cure for my peculiar disease—if you want to call it that—because as far as I know no one had ever seen the disease before. Bueno.

  Then I went to work on the cause. It didn’t take long. As I have said, the most baffling thing about the trouble was its simplicity.

  In the windup, I had it. An injection to cause the trouble, a lotion to cure or isolate it. I got ten gallons of each fluid—no trouble, once I knew what to get—and then began worrying about how to break the news to Myra.

  “Kirro,” I said to her one day, “I want a good face from you tonight. I want to make a life mask of you. Have to get all set first, though. You lose your face at 8:45, don’t you? Well, come into the lab at 8:30. We’ll plaster you with clay, let it dry so that it draws the face off evenly, back it with moulage, and wash the clay off after the moulage has hardened. Am I brilliant?”

  “You scintillate,” she said. “It’s a date.”

  I started mixing the clay, though I knew I wouldn’t use it. Not to take her face off, anyway. I felt like a louse.

  She came in on time as if she hadn’t even looked at a clock—how I envy her that trick!—and sat down. I dipped a cloth in my lotion and swabbed her well with it. It dried immediately, penetrating deeply. She sniffed.

  “What’s that?”

  “Sizing,” I said glibly.

  “Oh. Smells like—”

  “Shh. Someone might be listening.” That for you, dear reader!

  I went behind her with a short length of clothesline. She lay back in the chair with her eyes closed, looking very lovely. I leaned over and kissed her on the lips, drawing her hands behind her. Then I moved fast. There was a noose at each end of the line; I whipped one around her wrists, drew it tight, threw
it under the back rung of the chair, and dropped the other end over her head. “Don’t move, darling,” I whispered. “You’ll be all right if you keep still. Thrash around and you’ll throttle yourself.” I put the clock where she could see it and went out of there. I don’t want to hear my very best beloved using that kind of language.

  She quieted down after about ten minutes. “David!”

  I tried not to listen.

  “David—please!”

  I came to the door. “Oh, David, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I guess it’s all right. Please come here where I can look at you. I … I’m afraid!”

  I should have known better. Myra was never afraid of anything in her life. I walked over and stood in front of her. She smiled at me. I came closer. She kicked me in the stomach. “That’s for tying me up, you … you heel. Now, what goes on?”

  After I got up off the floor and got my gasping done, I said, “What time is it, bl—er, light of my life?”

  “Ten minutes to ni— David! David, what have you done? Oh, you fool! You utter dope! I told you— Oh, David!” And for the second and last time in my life, I saw her cry. Ten minutes to nine and her face was still on. Cured!—at least, her face. I went behind her where she couldn’t reach me.

  “Myra, I’m sorry I had to do it this way. But—well, I know how you felt about a cure. I’d never have been able to talk you into taking it. This was the only way. What do you think of me now, stubborn creature?”

  “I think you’re a pig. Terribly clever, but still a pig. Untie me. I want to make an exit.”

  I grinned. “Oh, no. Not until the second-act curtain. Don’t go away!” I went over to the bench and got my hypodermic. “Don’t move, now. I don’t want to break this mosquito needle off in your jaw.” I swabbed her gently around the sides of the face with the lotion, to localize the shot.

  “I … hope your intentions are honorable,” she said through clenched teeth as the needle sank into the soft flesh under her jawbone. “I—Oh! Oh! It … itches. David—”

  Her face went suddenly crinkly. I caught her skin at the forehead and gently peeled it off. She stared wide-eyed, then said softly:

  “I can’t kiss you, marvelous man, unless you untie me—”

  So I did, and she did, and we went into the living room where Myra could rejoice without breaking anything of value.

  In the middle of a nip-up she stopped dead, brain wave written all over her face. “David, we’re going to do some entertaining.” She sat there in the middle of the floor and began to scream. And I mean she could scream.

  In thirty seconds flat, heavy footsteps—also flat—pounded on the stairs, and Brett’s voice bellowed: “Op’n up in th’ name o’ th’ law!” He’s the only man I ever met who could mumble at the top of his voice.

  Myra got up and ran to the door. “Oh—Mr. Brett. How nice,” she said in her best hostess voice. “Do come in.”

  He glowered at her. “What’s goin’ on here?”

  She looked at him innocently. “Why, Mr. Brett—”

  “Was you screamin’?”

  She nodded brightly. “I like to scream. Don’t you?”

  “Naw. What’a idear?”

  “Oh, sit down and I’ll tell you about it. Here. Have a drink.” She poured him a tumbler of whiskey so strong I could almost see it raise its dukes. She pushed him into a chair and handed it to him. “Drink up. I’ve missed you.”

  He goggled up at her uncertainly. “Well—I dunno. Gee, t’anks. Here’s how, Miz Worth.” And he threw it down the hatch. It was good stuff. Each of his eyes independently scanned his nose. He blinked twice and regretfully set the glass down. She refilled it, signaling behind her back for me to shut up. I did. When Myra acts this way there is nothing to do but stand by and wonder what’s going to happen next.

  Well, she got Brett started on the history of his life. Every two hundred words he’d empty that glass. Then she started mixing them. I was afraid that would happen. Her pet—for other’s consumption; she wouldn’t touch it—was what she called a “Three-two-one.” Three fingers of whiskey, two of gin, one of soda. Only in Brett’s case she substituted rum for the soda. Poor fellow.

  In just an hour and a half he spread out his arms, said, “Mammy!” and folded up.

  Myra looked down at him and shook her head. “Tsk, tsk. Pity I didn’t have any knockout drops.”

  “Now what?” I breathed.

  “Get your hypo. We’re going to infect John Law here.”

  “Now Myra—wait a minute. We can’t—”

  “Who says? Come on, David—he won’t know a thing. Look—here’s what we’ll do with him.”

  She told me. It was a beautiful idea. I got my mosquito, and we went to work. We gave him a good case; shots of the stuff all over his body. He slept peacefully through it all, even the gales of merriment. The more we thought of it— Ah, poor fellow!

  After we had what we wanted from him I undressed him and swabbed him down with the lotion. He’d be good as new when he came to. I put him to bed in the living room, and Myra and I spent the rest of the night working in the lab.

  When we finished, we took the thing and set it in the living room. Brett’s breathing was no longer stertorous; he was a very strong man. Myra tiptoed in and put the alarm clock beside him. Then we watched from the crack of the laboratory door.

  The first rays of the sun were streaming through the windows, lighting up our masterpiece. The alarm went off explosively; Brett started, groaned, clutched his head. He felt around for the clock, knocked it off the chair. It fell shouting under the daybed. Brett groaned again, blinked his eyes open. He stared at the window first, trying vaguely to find out what was wrong with it. I could almost hear him thinking that, somehow, he didn’t know where he was. The clock petered out. Brett began to stare dazedly about the room. The ceiling, the walls, and—

  There in the geometric center of the room stood Detective Inspector Horace Brett, fully clothed. His shield glittered in the sun. On his face was a murderous leer, and in his hand was a regulation police hogleg, trained right between the eyes of the man on the bed. They stared at each other for ten long seconds, the man with the hangover and the man’s skin with the gun. Then Brett moved.

  Like a streak of light he hurtled past the effigy. My best corduroy bedspread streaming behind him, clad only in underwear and a wrist watch, he shot through the door—and I mean through, because he didn’t stop to open it—and wavered shrieking down the stairs. I’d never have caught him if he hadn’t forgotten again that there were only three flights of stairs there. He brought up sharp against the wall; I was right behind him. I caught him up and toted him back up to the apartment before the neighbors had a chance to come rubbering around. Myra was rolling around on the floor. As I came in with Brett, she jumped up and kissed his gun-toting image, calling it fondly a name that should have been reserved for me.

  We coddled poor Brett and soothed him; healed his wounds and sobered him up. He was sore at first and then grateful; and, to give him due credit, he was a good sport. We explained everything. We didn’t have to swear him to secrecy. We had the goods on him. If I hadn’t caught up with him, he’d have run all the way to headquarters in his snuggies.

  It was not an affliction, then; it was a commodity. The business spread astonishingly. We didn’t let it get too big; but what with a little false front and a bit more ballyhoo, we are really going places. For instance, in Myra’s exclusive beauty shop is a booth reserved for the wealthiest patrons. Myra will use creams and lotions galore on her customer by way of getting her into the mood; then, after isolating the skin on her face, will infect it with a small needle. In a few minutes the skin comes off; a mud pack hides it. The lady has a lovely smooth new face; Myra ships the old one over to my place where my experts mount it. Then, through Myra’s ballyhoo, the old lady generally will come around wanting a life mask. I give her a couple of appointments—they amount to séances—sling a lot of hocus pocus, and in due time delive
r the mask—life-size, neatly tinted. They never know, poor old dears, that they have contracted and been cured of the damnedest thing that ever skipped inclusion in “Materia Medica.” It’s a big business now; we’re coining money.

  Like all big business, of course, it has its little graft. A certain detective comes around three times a week for a thirty-second shave, free of charge. He’s good people. His effigy still menaces our living room, with a toy gun now. Poor fellow.

  He Shuttles

  “Why are you sitting here alone in this little room?” asked the man.

  “I am not alone any more, because you have come,” I told him. He had not been there an hour ago, or a minute ago either, but I was not surprised. That was because it was this man, and no other.

  “Why are you sitting here, looking at a white sheet of paper in your typewriter, pulling your ear with one hand and that fuzzy hair with the other?” he asked.

  “I am doing it because I am a person who writes stories for other people to read,” I said. “But I am not writing now because I can’t think of anything to write about. That makes me unhappy, so I pull my ear and my hair. It isn’t fuzzy.”

  “It is fuzzy.” The man looked at me for a little while. “Are the stories you write true?”

  “No,” I said. “I have never written a story that was true. People don’t like to read things that are true. They only like things that might be true. One must be very clever to write a story that is true and make it seem as if it might be true. And I am not very clever, so I must rely on my imagination.”

  “Oh,” he said, as if he understood me, which was surprising because I’m sure I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “I will tell you a story,” he said. “But it is a true story, and must be believed. If I tell you the story, will you believe it?”

  “If it is a good story, I don’t care whether it is true or not,” I said. “If credence is the price I must pay, I pay it gladly.” I set my margin, lit a cigarette and looked at him.