Hellflower (1957)

by George O. Smith

  Farradyne spent the remaining time of his trip from Pluto to Terra building the gizmo and practising with it until he could make a very odd moaning cry in three notes. Meanwhile he wondered whether Carolyn Niles would actually be on Terra to meet him.

  12

  Farradyne wondered how soon the fuss would start once the drums of refined thorium went under some hidden beams of ultra-violet light. He watched the drums being trundled off, and they disappeared, and Farradyne waited and watched until it was evening in that part of New Jersey, but no one came on the double-run to ask him leading questions.

  He took off about nine o’clock, finally, and made the looping run from New Jersey to Los Angeles in time to get him there just about dusk.

  He checked into the control tower.

  “Regular listing?” asked the registration clerk, looking at the license without turning an eyebrow.

  “No, I’ve a charter run,” said Farradyne.

  “Then why register here?”

  Farradyne thought fast. “This is one of those things,” he said. “A darned good hope but no down payment. I was told to land here this evening and if nothing had changed while I was on the run to Pluto and back, I could have a rider to Mercury. But if this passenger does not show up, I want to be registered for anything heading Mercury-ward. I’ll be going there in two days anyway, but I’d rather go loaded.”

  “Reasonable. Tell you what, Farradyne, I’ll make yours a tentative listing. If your passenger doesn’t show by tomorrow morning, you’ll go up on the board as having registered tonight.”

  “Thanks,” said Farradyne. He took the opened license back and slid a finger into an inside slip-pocket. “Got a picture here you might be interested in. A portrait of one of our early presidents.”

  “I’m a bit of a collector,” said the clerk.

  “Well, in that case, you can have it for the favor. I just keep it around for a curiosity.”

  The clerk pocketed the bill easily and Farradyne went over to the mail-listing window. “Anything for Charles Farradyne?”

  “Expecting something?”

  “At least one, a payment voucher from Eastern Atomic. Come yet?”

  The mail clerk disappeared; came back with one envelope. “Nothing from Eastern Atomic,” he said. “But here’s a letter for Charles Farradyne, Pilot of ship’s registry Six-Eight-Three, a Lancaster Eighty-One. That must be yours.”

  “It’s mine. But keep an eye peeled for a landwire payment voucher, will you? I had to leave Newark before it was ready and the guy at the shipping office said he’d notify the company that the stuff was received at port, and that I’d be in Los Angeles. Okay?”

  “Aye-firm.”

  The letter was from Carolyn. A brief note telling him that she would be ready for the trip on the morning of the fifth. This suited Farradyne; he had been afraid that Carolyn might be waiting at the spaceport for him, and that they’d be taking off before Clevis had a chance to find out about the washed drum-ends.

  She also suggested as a postscript that she might possibly be at her hotel and free about nine any evening, and there was some reference to her being a bit squeamish about the dark. Farradyne was half-inclined to believe her. Carolyn Niles lived on Mercury—a planet that knew no night He looked at his watch, he had a couple of idle hours left He started to wander the streets of Los Angeles, wondering just how a man went about buying a hellflower. He had done that before, but that was on Mercury where such things might be more difficult to find. There were two places in America where, for generations, a man could get anything he had enough money to buy and knew where to look. He was in one; the other was three thousand miles across the continent, in New York. All that remained was the problem of finding out where to look.

  Farradyne had to admit he had a difficulty. He was in a position similar to a teetotaler in a prohibition area who suddenly decides to buy a drink and cannot, from lack of experience, locate a speakeasy. And dope, which had been with the human race ever since the first caveman took a bite out of a bit of saw-toothed weed, and was sold on the street by peddlers, was singularly hidden from the clutch of a man who just casually wanted to collect a packet.

  So Farradyne spent some time wandering. He went into a florist shop and tried to buy a corsage. He could buy a corsage for a few dollars, but not for fifty. At least, for fifty he could get nothing smaller than a garland.

  In one place Farradyne tried his tonal throat gadget. The florist eyed him curiously and asked him if he had something wrong with his throat.

  And then, about fifteen minutes before he reached Carolyn’s hotel a man sidled up alongside him and said, “Say, Jack, lookin’ for somethin’?”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “Might be able to fix you up, Jack. Got five?”

  Farradyne knew that this was not the price, so he looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got fifteen.”

  “Won’t take that long. Try the stand in the Essex Lounge.”

  Farradyne blinked. The Essex was no more than six years old, right in the middle of the city, and considered one of the plush joints of Terra. Selling hellflowers at the Essex was like selling the things on the steps of the Terran Capitol Building.

  “Yeah?” he asked sourly.

  “Yeah. Tell ‘em Lovejoy sent you to pick up his flowers. Cost you fifty, Jack. Willin’ to pay?”

  “I’ve got it; and I’m willing.”

  “See ya, Jack.”

  The character sidled away, leaving a slight scent of decaying cloth mingled with a faint fragrance of gardenia. It was, according to Farradyne’s standards, one god-awful mixture.

  Farradyne went to the Essex and into the florist shop. A girl who was undeniably beautiful came forward. Farradyne smiled knowingly.

  “I’m a friend of Mr. Lovejoy,” he said. “He asked me to stop by and pick up his corsage.”

  “Of course.” The girl disappeared and returned with a transparent plastic box containing a gardenia—or a love lotus. “That will be five dollars,” she said with a piercing look at Farradyne.

  Farradyne took a fifty out of his wallet and handed it to her. She rang up five on the register, and Farradyne walked out, wondering if anybody ever considered that Mr. Lovejoy must have a number of peculiar habits and rather easy-going friends that could be imposed upon.

  At Carolyn’s hotel a few minutes later, the desk clerk informed him that Miss Niles was expecting him and he should go right up.

  Carolyn greeted him warmly, took him by the hand and drew him into the hotel room. Once the door was closed she came into his arms and kissed him, not too fervently, but very pleasantly, with her body pressing his briefly. Then she moved out of his arms and accepted the flower. “Lovely,” she said.

  She opened it and breathed the fragrance deeply. She held the white flower at arm’s length, admiring its beauty. Then she held it to her nose and took a deep breath, letting the fragrance fill her lungs.

  Farradyne’s mind did a flip-flop. First he felt like a louse, as she smiled at him over the edge of the flower and then took another sniff of the fifty-dollar blossom. “Maybe,” she said archly, “I shouldn’t do this.”

  Well, she was immune—or she wasn’t. Could be that it wasn’t even a hellblossom. But she should know. He hoped his smile was honest-looking. “You are stuck already,” he grinned wolfishly.

  Carolyn took another luxuriant breath and tucked the blossom in her hair. She came into his arms and kissed him sweetly. Then she relaxed, leaning back in his arms to look into his eyes. “I’m not afraid of you, Charles,” she said in a low, throaty voice.

  “No?”

  She laughed at him and then turned out of his arms. She went to a tiny sideboard and waved a hand at glasses and a bottle of Farradyne’s favorite liquor. He nodded, and she mixed. “Don’t disappoint me, Charles,” she said.

  “How?” he asked, wondering what she was driving at, and feeling that this had nothing to do with hellflowers.

  She handed him the high
ball.

  She sipped at her drink and flirted with him over the top of the glass for a moment. “I don’t think anybody will call me overinflated if I admit for a moment that my family is a long way from poverty; if, for an instant, I admit that I know that I am very well equipped with physical charm. I also flatter myself that I have a mind large enough to absorb some of the interesting factors of this rather awesomely beautiful universe.”

  “I will grant you the truth of all three.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a sly-looking smile. “But the point is, Charles, that a girl with a bit of money in the top of her stocking—and a brain in her head—wonders whether the gentleman is interested in the money, or the shape of her stocking. She is more interested in having the man want her for the aforementioned brain, I think. She’d like to feel that the gentleman in question would still be interested if the shape of the stocking changed for the worst with age and the money disappeared.”

  Farradyne looked at her and wondered again what she was and what she was after. It nothing else, Carolyn was a consummate actress. He wanted very much to take his face in his hands and ponder this problem deeply, but there was no time. He had to reply at once or have the appearance of a man who must make a careful answer. He walked across the room and took Carolyn by the shoulders and shook her gently. He bent down and kissed her and he found that the warm and eager response was back again, even though he touched her only with his lips and his hands on her warm shoulders.

  “Let’s leave it just that way,” he told her. “Sooner or later something will give me away—and then you will know whether I am after your body, your money or your mind.” Farradyne kissed her again, and again lightly. “Until you know, nothing I say will convince you of anything.”

  Farradyne still had her shoulders under his palms; Carolyn moved forward into his arms and rested against him. She put up her face for his kiss, and held herself against him, close. Then she said dreamily, “You’re a nice sort of guy, Charles, and I’ll be very happy to leave it that way. Maybe you’ll be the one who stays.”

  Farradyne recoiled mentally and hoped that his instinctive revulsion was not noticed. It was too easy to forget what Carolyn represented when Carolyn went soft and sweet and eager. He wanted to be a male Mata Hari; he wanted to lure her on, to caress her into breathless acquiescence and then walk out with a cold smile to show his contempt Then he relaxed—and hoped that the muscles of his body had not undergone the change that his mind had—and decided if this were part of the game he had to play to cut the hellblossom-hellflower-love lotus ring out of the human culture, it was nice work. He recalled reading in history, as a child, another, but mild drug, marijuana, had multiple names … His job would have been infinitely more difficult if Carolyn had been a gawky ugly duckling with buck teeth and a pasty complexion.

  “Charles,” she breathed, “take me out into the dark?” He laughed lightly. “Where?”

  She leaned way back, arching her fine back. “I want to go out to some dark gin mill and dance among the smoke and the natives and the throbbing of tomtoms.”

  Their evening was a repetition of the evening on Mercury except that on Terra it was dark outside. They danced and there was a steak dinner at midnight and there was Carolyn relaxed in his arms in the taxi on the way back to her hotel at three.

  He took her up to her room, and Carolyn came into his arms again, soft and sweet. Her response was deep and passionate in a mature way that Farradyne was not prepared for. The woman in his arms was all woman and there could be no mistaking the fact, but there was also the mysterious ability of the woman to know when to call a halt. She smiled softly and put her head on his chest.

  “It’s been wonderful again, Charles,” she said quietly. “I hope it always is.”

  Farradyne rubbed his chin against the top of her head. Then Carolyn swirled away. “It’s incredibly late again. I’m going to come aboard your ship at seven tomorrow night so we can take off before the crack of dawn. This much I’ll tell you and no more, now.”

  “But—”

  “Easy, sweetheart, easy. Take it slow and lovely. Tomorrow night Tonight I need my beauty sleep.” He eyed her humorously.

  “Think it doesn’t help?” Then she laughed happily. “Charles, do me a favor. Put this gardenia in your refrigerator for me. Please?”

  Farradyne nodded dumbly. He watched Carolyn put the thing into its plastic box, he watched her tie it up in the original ribbon. She handed it to him, and then, chuckling because he had one hand full, she came into his arms again for one last caress.

  “Go,” she told him with a wistful smile. “Go and dream about tomorrow night.”

  Farradyne went half-propelled by her hands, his reluctance partly honest and partly curious. But he went.

  On the street he hailed a taxi and spent the time on the way to the spaceport wondering whether sharpers had clipped him for fifty for a five-dollar gardenia. He wanted to toss the thing out of the cab window, but he did not because Carolyn would ask for it tomorrow. He even cursed himself for being willing to save it for her.

  Farradyne walked into his spacer feeling like a man who had put his last dollar on the turn of a card, and lost. Lost at least until he could get somewhere and draw another stake from the bank. Futility and wonder confused him; in one moment he was on top of the world with everything going according to plan and the next his world was kicked out from underneath him and he was dropped back into the mire of fumbling, helpless ignorance again.

  Farradyne walked into the salon of the Lancaster and stopped short. The last peg had been pulled out of the creaky ladder of his success.

  “What’s the matter, Farradyne? Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  There was plenty the matter and he was not glad to see her.

  Her eyes widened a bit and she came up out of her chair and toward him. “Farradyne,” she said, with more eagerness in her voice than he had ever heard before, “you’ve brought me a love lotus!”

  He let her have it, and watched as her rapid fingers tore away the ribbon.

  Norma lifted the flower from its nest in the box, buried her nose deep in the center of the blossom and inhaled with a deep shuddering sob. Her eyes closed, then opened serenely to look up at Farradyne from beneath half-closed lids. She relaxed. The tension went out of her body and she sank back against the cushions. She put her head back and rested. And now Farradyne could see her face more clearly. Her features had lost their chiseled immobility and her eyes had lost the glassy stare. Her face became alive, and pleasant color flooded it. Her muscles took on tone and Norma became alive and young-bodied and beautiful. She was a new person.

  Her lips parted slightly and curved into sweet lines. The hand that held the flower lay idly on the seat beside her, the other lay palm up on the other side. She looked like a young girl who had just been kissed. Slowly, Norma lifted the blossom to her face and inhaled again the fragrance from the center of the flower.

  “Thanks, Farradyne,” she said softly. Farradyne’s mouth was open and his mind refused to work on any but the single thought, It was a hellflower. It had had no visible effect on Carolyn—why? Then the attitude of the woman sitting on the divan forced the other thought from his mind.

  Not that Norma’s attitude had changed in the past minute or so. She was still relaxed, alive and obviously at peace with both the world and herself. But Farradyne had been expecting much more; he had expected an onslaught of passion, of hate, of violence, of emotion. It might be either a demanding lust or the pleading languor of a woman bereft of her defenses. Or … But in any case Farradyne expected passion, of a wanton depth.

  He was wholly unprepared for this calm return to young and healthy womanhood.

  He wondered whether Norma would react normally to a gesture of affection and absently he took a step toward her. He felt once again that flush of pity for her and righteous anger for the rotten devils that had done this to her; he wanted to comfort her. She had changed visibly from a hardened w
oman whose beauty was stiff and unnatural to a girl whose loveliness was vivid enough to shine through the hard facade of heavy makeup. “Norma,” he said.

  She smiled at him warmly but shook her head. Her arms raised as she tucked the hellflower in the heavy hair over one ear. The gesture slimmed her waist and raised her breasts, and through the triangle of her arms he could see her eyes. They were sultry as they contemplated him, but she shook her head.

  “No,” she said and Farradyne stopped. “You are a nice sort of fumbling idiot, Charles, and I’ve stopped hating you for the moment, but that doesn’t mean I want any part of your caresses.”

  “I—”

  She smiled at him knowingly. “You were, Charles. You were. But don’t.” The order of the love lotus, identical to the heady perfume of a gardenia, permeated the room and Norma sniffed at the air, lifting her face as she inhaled. “The smell of this is all I want”

  Farradyne looked down at her and swore under his breath. This was the story then. The future under such conditions must be insufferable. He contemplated a man with an addicted wife; he would go on slaving night and day to buy this damnable and beautiful hellflower for her just to see her make this swift sweet return to the normal woman he had once known, only to discover time and again that she had no use for him.

  A smile crossed her face and Farradyne realized that Norma had dozed off in an ecstasy of relaxation. He wondered what to do next; his mind was mingled with the desire to protect her by letting her sleep the effects of the love lotus off, and the certain knowledge that if he did, Norma would never leave him in time for his meeting with Carolyn Niles. Of the two, the latter was by far the more important

  13

  As Farradyne stood there wondering what to do, a knuckle-on-metal rap came at the spacelock and he turned to see Clevis standing there. He waved Clevis in.

  Clevis came through the inner lock and caught sight of Norma. He stopped stock-still and looked the woman over from head to toe and back again. His eyes were bleak, his face bitter and hard as he turned away from Norma to face the other man.