Then, when he got home, Louise cornered him in the kitchen, insisting that he go back to the Center to finish the tests. She’d work, they’d put Beth in a nursery. It would work out fine. Her voice was firm in the beginning, obdurate; then it broke and all the withheld terror and unhappiness flooded from her.
He stood by her side, arm around her back, wanting to comfort her but able only to look up at her face and struggle futilely against the depleted feeling he had at being so much shorter than she. All right, he’d told her, all right, I’ll go back. I will. Don’t cry.
And the next morning the letter arrived from the Center, telling him that “because of the unusual nature of your disorder, the investigation of which might prove of inestimable value to medical knowledge,” the doctors were willing to continue the tests free of charge.
And the return to the Center; he remembered that. And the discovery.
Scott blinked his eyes back into focus.
Sighing, he pushed himself to a standing position, one supporting hand holding onto the table leg.
From that point on, the two twining strips left the leg entirely and flared up at opposing angles, paralleled by bolstering spars until they reached the bottom side of the tabletop. Along each upward sweep, three vertical rods were spaced like giant banisters. He would not need the thread any more. He started up the seventy-degree incline, first lurching at the vertical rod and, catching hold of it, pulled himself up to it, sandals slipping and squeaking along the spar. Then he lunged up at the next spar and pulled himself to it. By concentrating on the strenuous effort he was able to blank away all thoughts and sink into a mechanical apathy for many minutes, only the gnawing of hunger tending to remind him of his plight. At last, puffing, breath scratching hotly at his throat, he reached the end of the incline and sat there wedged between the spar and the last vertical rod, staring at the wide overhang of the tabletop.
His face tightened.
“No.” The mutter was a crusty, dry sound as his pain-smitten eyes looked around. There was a three-foot jump to the bottom edge of the tabletop. But there was no handhold there. “No!”
Had he come all this way for nothing? He couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t let himself believe it. His eyes fell shut. I’ll push myself off, he thought. I’ll let myself fall to the floor. This is too much.
He opened his eyes again, the small bones under his cheeks moving as he ground his teeth together. He wasn’t going to push himself off anything. If he fell, it would be in jumping for the edge of the tabletop. He wasn’t going down by his own volition under any circumstances.
He clambered along the top of the horizontal spar just below the tabletop, searching. There had to be a way. There had to be.
Turning the corner of the spar, he saw it.
Running along the under edge of the tabletop was a strip of wood about double the thickness of his arm. It was fastened to the tabletop with nails a trifle shorter than he was.
Two of these nails had pulled out, and at that point the strip sagged about a quarter of an inch below the tabletop edge. A quarter of an inch—almost three feet to him. If he could jump to that gap he could catch hold of the strip and have a chance to pull himself up to the top of the table.
He perched there, breathing deeply, staring at the sagging strip and at the space he’d have to jump. It was at least four feet to him. Four feet of empty space.
He licked his dry lips. Outside, the rain was falling harder; he heard its heavy splattering at the windowpanes. Swirls of graying light swam on his face. He looked across the quartermile that separated him from the window over the log pile.
The way the rain water ran twistingly over the glass panes made it appear as if great, hollow eyes were watching him. He turned away from that. There was no use in standing here. He had to eat. Going back down now was out of the question. He had to go on.
He braced himself for the leap. It may be now, he thought, strangely unalarmed. This may be the end of my long, fantastic journey.
His lips pressed together. “So be it,” he whispered then, and sprang out into space.
His arms banged so hard on the wooden bar that they were almost numbed beyond the ability to hold. I’m falling! his mind screamed. Then his arms wrapped themselves around the wood and he hung there gasping, legs swinging back and forth over the tremendous void.
He dangled there for a long moment, catching his breath, letting feeling return to his arms. Then, carefully, with agonizing slowness, he turned himself around on the bar so that he faced the spar arrangement. That done, he dragged himself up to a sitting position on the bar, holding on overhead for support. He sat there, limbs palsied with exhaustion.
The last step to the tabletop was the hardest.
He’d have to stand up on the smooth, circular top of the bar and, lurching up, throw his arm over the end of the tabletop. As far as he knew, there would be nothing there to hang onto. It would be entirely a matter of pressing his arms and hands so tightly to the surface that friction would hold him there. Then he’d have to climb over the edge.
For a moment the entire grotesque spectacle of it swept over him forcibly—the insanity of a world where he could be killed trying to climb to the top of a table that any normal man could lift and carry with one hand.
He let it go. Forget it, he ordered himself.
He drew in long breaths until the shaking of his arm and leg muscles slackened. Then slowly he eased himself up to a crouch on the smooth wood, balancing himself by holding onto the bottom edge of the tabletop.
The bottoms of his sandals were too smooth. He couldn’t grip the wood well enough. As cold as it was, he’d have to take them off. Gingerly he shook them off one at a time and, after a moment, heard the faint slap as they struck the floor below. He wavered for a moment, steadied himself, then drew in a long, chest-filling breath. He paused.
Now.
He lunged up into empty air and slapped his arms across the end of the tabletop. A broad vista of huge, piled-up objects met his eyes. Then he began slipping, and he clutched at the wood, digging his nails into it. He kept sliding toward the edge, his body moving into space, dragging him.
“No,” he whimpered in a strangled voice.
He managed to lurch forward again, fingertips scraping at the wood surface, arms pressing down tightly, desperately. He saw the curving metal rod.
It was hanging a quarter of an inch from his fingers. He had to reach it or he’d fall. Leaving one hand down, splinters gouging under its nails, he raised the other hand toward the rod. Look out!
His raised hand slapped down again and clawed frantically at the wood. He began slipping back again.
With a last, frenzied lunge, he grabbed for the curving rod and his hands clamped over its icy thickness.
He dragged himself, kicking and struggling, over the edge of the tabletop. Then his hands dropped from the metal— which was the hanging handle of a paint can—and he collapsed heavily on his chest and stomach.
He lay there for a long time, unable to move, shaking with the remains of dread and exertion, sucking in lungfuls of the cold air. I made it, he thought. It was all he could think. I made it, I made it!
As exhausted as he was, it gave him a warming pride to think it.
Chapter Five
After a while he got up shakily and looked around.
The tabletop’s expanse was littered with massive paint cans, bottles and jars. Scott walked along their mammoth shapes, stepping over the jagged-toothed edge of a saw blade and racing acrosss its icy surface to the tabletop again.
Orange paint. He strode past the luridly streaked can, the top of his head barely as high as the bottom edge of the can’s label. He remembered painting the lawn chairs during one of the many hours he’d spent in the cellar before his last, irrevocable, snow-caked plunge into it.
Head back, he gazed up at an orange-spotted brush handle sticking out of an elephantine jar. One day—not so long ago— he’d held that handle in his fingers. Now
it was ten times as long as he was; a huge, knife-pointed length of glossy yellow wood.
There was a loud clicking noise and then the ocean-like roar of the oil burner filled the air again. His heartbeat raced, then slowed once more. No, he’d never get used to its thundering suddenness. Well, there’d be only four more days of it, anyway, he thought.
His feet were getting cold; there was no time to waste. Between the barren hulks of paint cans he walked until he’d reached the body-thick rope that hung down in twisted loops from the top of the refrigerator.
A stroke of fortune. He found a crumpled pink rag lying next to a towering brown bottle of turpentine. Impulsively he drew part of it around himself, tucked it under his feet, then sank back into the rest of its wrinkled softness. The cloth reeked of paint and turpentine, but that didn’t matter. The held-in warmth of his body began surrounding him comfortingly.
Reclining there, he squinted up at the distant refrigerator top. There was still the equivalent of a seventy-five foot climb to make, and without footholds except for those he could manage to find on the rope itself. He would, virtually, have to pull himself all the way up.
His eyes closed and he lay there for a while, breathing slowly, his body as relaxed as possible. If the hunger pangs had not been so severe, he might have gone to sleep. But hunger was a wavelike pressure at his stomach walls, causing it to rumble emptily. He wondered if it could possibly be as empty as it felt.
When he discovered himself beginning to dwell on thoughts of food—of gravy-dripping roasts and broiled steaks inundated with brown-edged mushrooms and onions—he knew it was time to get up. With a last wiggle of his warmed toes, he threw off the smooth covering and stood.
That was when he recognized the cloth.
It was part of Louise’s slip, an old one that she’d torn up and thrown into the rag box. He picked up a corner of it and fingered its softness, a strange, yearning pain in his chest and stomach that was not hunger.
“Lou.” He whispered it, staring at the cloth that had once rested against her warm, fragrant flesh.
Angrily he flung away the cloth edge, his face a hardened mask. He kicked at it.
Shaken, he turned from the cloth, walked stiffly to the edge of the table, and grabbed hold of the rope. It was too thick to get his hands around; he’d have to use his arms. Luckily, it was hanging in such a way that he could almost crawl up the first section of it.
He pulled down on it as hard as he could to see if it was secure. It gave a trifle, then tautened. He pulled again. There was no further give. That ended any chance of dragging the cracker box off the refrigerator. The box was resting on top of the rope coils up there, and he’d thought it a vague possibility that he might pull it down.
“Well,” he said.
And, taking a deep breath, he started climbing again.
He modeled his ascent on the method South Sea natives use in climbing coconut trees—knees high, body arched out, feet gripping at the rope, arms curled around it, fingers clutching. He kept himself moving upward steadily, not looking down.
He gasped and stiffened against the rope spasmodically as it slipped down a few inches—to him, a few feet. Then it stopped and he hung there trembling, the rope swinging back and forth in little arcs.
After a few moments the motion stopped and he began climbing again, this time more cautiously.
Five minutes later he reached the first loop of the hanging rope and eased himself into it. As if it were a swing, he sat there, holding on tightly, leaning back against the refrigerator. The surface of it was cold, but his robe was thick enough to prevent the coldness from penetrating to his skin.
He looked out across the broad vista of the cellar kingdom in which he lived. Far across—almost a mile away—he saw the cliff edge, the stacked lawn chairs, the croquet set. His gaze shifted. There was the vast cavern of the water pump, there the mammoth water heater; underneath it one edge of his box-top shield was visible.
His gaze moved and he saw the magazine cover.
It was lying on a cushion on top of the cross-legged metal table that stood beside the one whose top he’d just left. He hadn’t noticed the magazine before because the paint cans had blocked it from view. On the cover was the photograph of a woman. She was tall, passably beautiful, leaning over on a rock, a look of pleasure on her young face. She was wearing a tight red long-sleeved sweater and a pair of clinging black shorts cut just below the hips.
He stared at the enormous figure of the woman. She was looking at him, smiling.
It was strange, he thought as he sat there, bare feet dangling in space. He hadn’t been conscious of sex for a long time. His body had been something to keep alive, no more—something to feed and clothe and keep warm. His existence in the cellar, since that winter day, had been devoted to one thing—survival. All subtler gradations of desire had been lost to him. Now he had found the fragment of Louise’s slip and seen the huge photograph of the woman.
His eyes ran lingeringly over the giant contours of her body—the high, swelling arches of her breasts, the gentle hill of her stomach, the long, curving taper of her legs.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman. The sunlight was glinting on her dark auburn hair. He could almost sense the feeling of it, soft and silklike. He could almost feel the perfumed warmth of her flesh, almost feel the curved smoothness of her legs as mentally he ran his hands along them. He could almost feel the gelatinous give of her breasts, the sweet taste of her lips, her breath like warm wine trickling in his throat.
He shuddered helplessly, swaying on his loop of rope.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “Oh, God, God, God.”
There were so many hungers.
49"
When he came out of the bathroom, damply warm from a shower and shave, he found Lou sitting on the living-room couch, knitting. She’d turned off the television set and there was no sound but the infrequent swish of cars passing in the street below.
He stood in the doorway a moment, looking at her. She was wearing a yellow robe over her nightgown. Both garments were made of silk, clinging to the jut of her rounded breasts, the broadness of her hips, the smooth length of her legs. Electric prickling coursed the lower muscles of his stomach. It had been so long, canceled endlessly by medical tests and work and the weight of constant dread.
Lou looked up, smiling. “You look so nice and clean,” she said.
It was not the words or the look on her face; but, suddenly he was terribly conscious of his size. Lips twitching into the semblance of a smile, he walked over to the couch and sat down beside her, instantly sorry that he had.
She sniffed. “Mmm, you smell nice,” she said. She was referring to his shaving lotion.
He grunted quietly, glancing at her clean-featured face, her wheat-colored hair drawn back into a ribbon-tied horse’s tail. “You look nice,” he said. “Beautiful.”
“Beautiful!” she scoffed. “Not me.”
He leaned over abruptly and kissed her warm throat. She raised her left hand and stroked his cheek slowly.
“So nice and smooth,” she murmured.
He swallowed. Was it just ego-flattened imagination, or was she actually talking to him as if he were a boy? His left hand, which had been lying across the heat of her leg, drew back slowly, and he looked at the white, glazed-skinned band across the bottom of its third finger. He’d been forced to take the ring off almost two weeks before because the finger had become too thin.
He cleared his throat. “What are you making?” he asked disinterestedly.
“Sweater for Beth,” she answered.
“Oh.”
He sat there in silence while he watched her skillful manipulation of the long knitting needles. Then, impulsively, he laid his cheek against her shoulder. Wrong move, his mind said instantly. It made him feel even smaller, like a young boy leaning on his mother. He stayed there, though, thinking it would be too obviously awkward if he straightened up immediately. He felt that even rise an
d fall of her breathing as he rested there, a tensed, unresolved sensation in his stomach.
“Why don’t you go to sleep?” Lou asked quietly.
His lips pressed together. He felt a cold shudder move down his back.
“No,” he said.
Imagination again? Or was his voice as frail as it sounded to him, as devoid of masculinity. He stared somberly at the V-neck of her robe, at the flesh-walled valley between her breasts, and his fingers twitched with his repressed desire to touch her.
“Are you tired?” she asked.
“No.” It sounded too harsh. “A little,” he amended.
“Why don’t you finish up the ice cream?” she asked, after a pause.
He closed his eyes with a sigh. Imagination it might be, but that didn’t prevent him from feeling like a boy—indecisive, withdrawn, much as though he’d conceived the ridiculous notion that he could somehow arouse the physical desire of this full-grown woman.
“Shall I get it for you?” she asked.
“No!” He lifted his head from her shoulder and fell back heavily against a pillow, staring morosely across the room. It was a cheerless room. Their furniture was still stored in Los Angeles and they were using Marty’s attic castoffs. A depressing room, the walls a dark forest green, pictureless, only one window with ugly paper drapes, a pale, thread-worn rug hiding part of the scratched floor.
“What is it, darling?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Have I done something?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Nothing, I said.”
“All right,” she said quietly.
Was she unaware of it? Granted it was torture for her to be living with terrible anxiety, hoping each second to get that phone call from the Center, a telegram, a letter, and the message never coming. Still . .
He looked at her full body again, feeling breath catch in him uncontrollably. It wasn’t just physical desire; it was so much more. It was the dread of tomorrows without her. It was the horror of his plight, which no words could capture.
For it wasn’t a sudden accident removing him from her life. It wasn’t a sudden illness taking him, leaving the memory of him intact, cutting him from her love with merciful swiftness. It wasn’t even a lingering sickness. At least then he’d be himself and, although she could watch him with pity and terror, at least she would be watching the man she knew.
American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Page 68