Hurricane Trio

by Theodore Sturgeon

  They had a drink, and another, and then some superlative New England chowder, and beer, and another drink. And then it was over, and Yancey, paying the check, was telling himself glumly, "You did fine, boy; so if you're a little on the silent side for a day or two, what's that? I'm glad it's over. But I wish . . . "

  Rising, Beverly said, "You're staying, here?"

  Lois smiled oddly. "There's nothing they can do about it."

  Before he could stop himself Yancey said, "Now what exactly does that mean?"

  Lois laughed quietly. "I just got in an hour and a half ago. I never dreamed I'd need a reservation -- funny, isn't it, after my experience? Anyway, they're full up. I shall just sit here until they want to close the place. I will then be a problem, and be up to them to solve it." She laughed again. "I've solved worse ones in my time."

  "Oh, Lois, you can't! They'll make you sleep on the bar!"

  She shrugged, really not caring.

  "Yancey," said Beverly. She was flushed and urgent. "Do you remember a time when two wet strangers couldn't find their beds, and what happened to them?"

  He did meet Lois' eyes this time. This was when his heart began hammering.

  Beverly said, "It's our turn. We're going down the coast. We'll find a place. Come on. Come on , Lois!"

  Yancey thought, listen to her, takin~ the bit in her teeth. Doesn't she usually find out first what I want? And he answered himself, no; most of the time she just does what I want with out asking. And he told himself further, stop talking like a damned fool.

  Ten miles south there was a town with a hotel. Full up. Four miles further, a motel. Packed to the eaves. The next stretch was twenty miles, and it was getting late. It was raining the kind of rain they had slogged through to Lois' cabin two years before, but this time they had a howling gale along with it.

  And by the time they reached the next town, the warnings were in; the hurricane, true to its unpredictable breed, had swung east leaving rain and a maddened sea, but no further danger. So they drove into the slick shining streets of a city still quaking in its boots, but vastly relieved.

  Here and there a store was open. There were three hotels, two of them full. They stopped at an all-night drugstore to ask directions to the third and Lois bought cigarettes and Beverly found a book-club edition of "Anna Karenina" and scooped it up with joy; she said she'd always wanted to read it.

  The third hotel had one double with bath.

  "Twin beds?"

  The clerk nodded. Yancey looked at Lois but her eyes were cloaked. He looked at Beverly and she said, "Why not? We can fit in a twin bed. I'm not very big."

  No, Bev, he thought, you're not.

  Lois said, "Beverly -- "

  "Shh," said Beverly. "We'll take it," she said to the clerk.

  Lois turned again. Now she was looking up at the ceiling with him. Think of that! he thought addly, here we are sharing some antiseptic moonbeams.

  His biting thought was protection for a very brief while. His heart began again. It shook him with each beat. It shook the bed, the walls, the building, the beaten cliff outside, making it hurl back the sea with even greater violence.

  There was the softest butterfly-wing touch on his chest. Beverly had opened her eyes.

  Yancey thought madly, it's like one of those meaningless conjugations they give you in first-year French. I stare up into the darkness, you stare up into the darkness, she stares up into the darkness . . .

  Beverly moved. She wriggled up closer. She put her hand behind his head, pulling it toward her. She put her mouth on his ear. He felt her warm breath. Barely audible, her breath said, "'Darling. What is it? What do you want?"

  What did he want? Nothing, of course. Nothing he could have. Nothing, certainly, that he should have. He shook his head.

  Beverly crept back until her head was on his shoulder again. She lay still. She slid one hand over his chest, to rest lightly on his hammering heart.

  Lois sighed quietly and turned over, away from them. The wind laughed and laughed outside, and another breaker smashed and spouted. The room grew black, then silver again.

  Abruptly Beverly sat up. "I can't sleep," she said clearly.

  Lois was silent. Yancey watched Beverly. The silver light made everything in the room look like an overexposed photograph, but Beverly's flesh seemed pink -- the only thing in the whole mad, pulsing world that had any color but grey or black.

  Beverly swung her legs out, stood up, and stretched in the moonlight. She was small and firm and -- pink? Was she really pink, or was that a memory too?

  What a beautiful complementation, he thought hotly; how balanced an equation expresses this chaos! Beverly, small and fair; open, simple, direct. Lois, tall, slender, dark, devious, complex. And each so clearly lacking just what the other had.

  Beverly said, "I have nineteen chapters of "Anna Karenina" to read. Take me about an hour." She knelt on Yancey's bed briefly, reached across to the night table, and scooped something up. Then she went to the highboy and got the book. She went into the bathroom. Yellow light appeared starkly under the closed door.

  Yancey lay quite still, looking at the line of yellow light.

  At last he rolled over and looked at her. He could see the sliver of yellow again, across her eyes. She was half sitting, resting her weight on one slender arm. She was looking at him.

  "What was it she picked up from the night table, Yancey?"

  "Her watch."

  Lois made a sound, perhaps "Oh." She sank down slowly, until she rested on her elbow. She was looking at him now.

  He lay still, wondering if Lois could hear his heart. She probably could. Beverly probably could, through the door. He wondered, with shattering inconsequentiality, whether Beverly liked red curtains.

  Lois made a slight motion with her chin toward the yellow gleam. She whispered, "I couldn't do that."

  A great hungry yearning came over him, but at the moment, incredibly, it seemed to have no direction. It yawned somewhere beneath him, waiting to engulf him. A puzzlement plucked at him, and then, seeing the polished yellow lines in Lois' eyes, it came to him which of these women was simple and direct, and which was subtle and deep and complex.

  "I couldn't do that," Lois had said. How many other things could Beverly do that Lois could not?

  What kind of a woman was Beverly?

  For the very first time Yancey Bowman asked himself what had happened to Beverly the day he was killed. He'd assumed she was simply in cold storage while they put him back together. He'd assumed . . . how could he assume such a thing? He had never even asked about her. That was impossible! Unnatural!

  But of course -- he wasn't to ask. He would not have thought of it, and the chances were that he could not have asked her.

  It must be time to think of it. Something had happened to him, permitting him to. Qualifying him to. But he hadn't changed; he couldn't change. He was built and rebuilt and designed and redesigned, to be Yancey-Plus. What change could . . .

  Supposing, he told himself, they had a very young thing to rebuild. Wouldn't they build it so that it could go on growing? Then he could have grown. How? How?

  Well, what would he have done in this same mad situation, two years ago, even after he left the space ship? He wouldn't have lain here these swift seconds, speculating.

  "I couldn't do that." Lois had whispered. Supposing Beverly had been killed too, and changed as he had been changed. He had never told her what he knew; why would she have told him? Wasn't the prime purpose to improve a little, but to change nothing? He was Yancey-Plus; who went right ahead ruling the roost, accepting his wife's quiet variety of slave labor. Wouldn't she go right on being Beverly, giving him always what he wanted?

  And suppose she hadn't been killed, hadn't been changed. What kind of a woman was she, who could do what Lois could not do, what -- it painfully occurred to him -- he himself, with all his powers, could never do? Was the original Beverly a bigger person than Yancey-Plus?

  Then it wa
s, with a surge of relief that made his head spin, that his heart eased and he smiled. He knew now how he had changed, how he had grown. He knew, all at once, what to do now and what to do for the rest of his life with Beverly. Up to now he had not been able to ask her if she was the same Beverly he had married. Now, by choice, he never would ask her. Their marriage would be spiced and underscored and made most beautiful by that one mystery between them.

  All this in seconds, and he became aware again of the yellow lights in Lois' long eyes. Quite changing the subject, he used her exact words. "I couldn't do that." he whispered.

  Lois nodded slowly. She sank back on the pillow and closed her eyes. He thought she trembled. He didn't know. He didn't much care. He turned over and filled his lungs, as he had not been able to do for more than an hour because of his leaping heart; "Beverly!" he bellowed.

  The book fell on the tiles. There was silence for a moment, and then the door opened.

  "Yes, Yance."

  "Get back to bed, idiot. You can read that some other time. You need your sleep."

  "I just -- all right, Yance, if you want."

  She switched off the light and came in. A moonbeam swept across her face as she approached. She was looking across him at Lois, her lips trembling. She got into bed. He put his arms around her, gently, humbly. She turned to him and suddenly held him so tight that he almost cried out.