Dreaming Jewels

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Meanwhile I don’t know what’s happening back home. I’m sort of holding my breath until I hear something. I’m going to wait, though. We have time, and in the meantime, I’m all right. I’m not going to give you my address, honey, though I’ll write often. Judge Bluett just might be able to get his hands on mail, some way. I think it pays to be careful. He’s dangerous.

  So, honey, that’s the situation as far as it’s gone. What next? I’ll watch the home town papers for any item about His Dishonor the Surrogate, and hope for the best. As for you, don’t worry your little square head about me, darling. I’m doing fine. I’m only making a few dollars a week less than I was at home and I’m a lot safer here. And the work isn’t hard; some of the nicest people like music. I’m sorry I can’t give you my exact address, but I do think it’s better not to just now. We can let this thing ride for a year if we have to, and small loss. Work hard, baby; I’m behind you a thousand percent. I’ll write often.

  XXX

  Your loving

  Big Sis Kay.

  (This is the letter that Armand Bluett’s hired second-story man found in Undergraduate Robert Hallowell’s room at the State Medical School.)

  12

  “YES—I AM PIERRE Monetre. Come in.” He stood aside and the girl entered.

  “This is good of you, Mr. Monetre. I know you must be terribly busy. And probably you won’t be able to help me at all.”

  “I might not if I were able,” he said. “Sit down.”

  She took a molded plywood chair which stood at the end of the half desk, half lab bench which took up almost an end wall of the trailer. He looked at her coldly. Soft yellow hair, eyes sometimes slate-blue, sometimes a shade darker than sky-blue; a studied coolness through which he, with his schooled perceptions, could readily see. She is disturbed, he thought; frightened and ashamed of it. He waited.

  She said, “There’s something I’ve got to find out. It happened years ago. I’d almost forgotten about it, and then saw your posters, and I remembered… I could be wrong, but if only—” She kneaded her hands together. Monetre watched them, and then returned his cold stare to her face.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Monetre. I can’t seem to get to the point. It’s all so vague and so—terribly important. The thing is, when I was a little girl, seven or eight years old, there was a boy in my class in school who ran away. He was about my age, and had some sort of horrible run-in with his stepfather. I think he was hurt. His hand. I don’t know how badly. I was probably the last one in town to see him. No one ever saw him again.”

  Monetre picked up some papers, shifted them, put them down again. “I really don’t know what I can do about that, Miss—”

  “Hallowell. Kay Hallowell. Please hear me out, Mr. Monetre. I’ve come thirty miles just to see you, because I can’t afford to pass up the slightest chance—”

  “If you cry, you’ll have to get out,” he rasped. His voice was so rough that she started. Then he said, with gentleness, “Please go on.”

  “Th-thank you. I’ll be quick… it was just after dark, a rainy, misty night. We lived by the highway, and I went out back for something… I forget… anyway, he was there, by the traffic light. I spoke to him. He asked me not to tell anyone that I had seen him, and I never have, till now. Then—” she closed her eyes, obviously trying to bring back every detail of the memory—“—I think someone called me. I turned to the gate and left him. But I peeped out again, and saw him climbing on the back of a truck that was stopped for the light. It was one of your trucks. I’m sure it was. The way it was painted… and yesterday, when I saw your posters, I thought of it.”

  Monetre waited, his deep-set eyes expressionless. He seemed to realize, suddenly, that she had finished. “That happened twelve years ago? And, I suppose, you want to know if that boy reached the carnival.”

  “Yes.”

  “He did not. If he had, I should certainly have known of it.”

  “Oh…” It was a faint sound, stricken, yet resigned; apparently she had not expected anything else. She pulled herself together visibly, and said, “He was small for his age. He had very dark hair and eyes and a pointed face. His name was Horty—Horton.”

  “Horty…” Monetre searched his memory. There was a familiar ring to those two syllables, somehow. Now, where… He shook his head. “I don’t remember any boy called Horty.”

  “Please try. Please! You see—” She looked at him searchingly, her eyes asking a question. He answered it, saying, “You can trust me.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. Well, there’s a man, a horrible person. He was once responsible for that boy. He’s doing a terrible thing to me; it’s something to do with an old law case, and he might be able to keep me from getting some money that is due me when I come of age. I need it. Not for myself; it’s for my brother. He’s going to be a doctor, and—”

  “I don’t like doctors,” said Monetre. If there is a great bell for hatred as there is one for freedom, it rang in his voice as he said that. He stood up. “I know nothing about any boy named Horty, who disappeared twelve years ago. I am not interested in finding him in any case, particularly if doing so would help a man make a parasite of himself and fools of his patients. I am not a kidnapper, and will have nothing to do with a search which reeks of that and blackmail to boot. Good-by.”

  She had risen with him. Her eyes were round. “I—I’m sorry. Really, I—”

  “Good-by.” It was the velvet this time, used with care, used to show her that his gentleness was a virtuosity, an overlay. She turned to the door, opened it. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “May I leave you my address, just in case, some day, you—”

  “You may not,” he said. He turned his back on her and sat down. He heard the door close.

  He closed his eyes, and his arched, slit nostrils expanded until they were round holes. Humans, humans, and their complex, useless, unimportant machinations. There was no mystery about humans; no puzzle. Everything human could be brought to light by asking simply, “What does it gain you?”… What could humans know of a life-form to which the idea of gain was alien? What could a human say of his crystal-kin, the living jewels which could communicate with each other and did not dare to, which could co-operate with each other and scorned to?

  And what—he let himself smile—what would humans do when they had to fight the alien? When they were up against an enemy which would make an advance and then scorn to consolidate it—and then make a different kind of advance, in a different way, in another place?

  He sank into an esoteric reverie, marshaling his crystallines against teeming, stupid mankind; losing, in his thoughts, the pointless perturbations of a girl in a search for a child long missing, for some petty gainful reason of her own.

  “Hey—Maneater.”

  “Damn it! What now?”

  The door opened diffidently. “Maneater, there’s—”

  “Come in, Havana, and speak up. I don’t like mumblers.”

  Havana edged in, after setting his cigar down on the step. “There’s a man outside wants to see you.”

  Monetre glowered over his shoulder. “Your hair’s getting gray. What’s left of it. Dye it.”

  “Okay, okay. Right away, this afternoon. I’m sorry.” He shifted his feet miserably. “About this man—”

  “I’ve had my quota for today,” said Monetre. “Useless people wanting impossible things of no importance. Did you see that girl go out of here?”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. So did this guy. See, he was waiting to see you. He asked Johnward where he could find you, and—”

  “I think I’ll fire Johnward. He’s an advance man, not an usher. What business has he, bringing people to annoy me?”

  “I guess he thought you ought to see this one. A big-shot,” said Havana timidly. “So when he got your trailer, he asked me were you busy. I told him yes, you were talking to someone. He said he’d wait. About then the door opens, and that girl comes out. She puts a hand on
the side and turns back to say something to you, and this guy, this big-shot, he blows a fuse. No kidding, Maneater, I never seen anything like it. He grabs my shoulder. I’ll have a bruise there for a week. He says, ‘It’s her! It’s her!’ and I says ‘Who?’ and he says, ‘She mustn’t see me! She’s a devil! She cut those fingers off, and they’ve grown back again!’”

  Monetre sat bolt upright and turned in his swivel chair to face the midget. “Go on, Havana,” he said in his gentle voice.

  “Well, that’s all. ’Cept he ducked back behind Gogol’s bally-platform and hunkered down out of sight, and peeped out at that girl as she walked past him. She never saw him.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Havana glanced through the door. “Still right there. Looks pretty bad. I think he’s having some kind of a fit.”

  Monetre left his chair and shot through the door, leaving it completely up to Havana whether he got out of the way or not. The midget leaped to the side, out of Monetre’s direct path, but not far enough to avoid the bony edge of Monetre’s pelvis, which glanced stunningly off Havana’s pudgy cheekbone.

  Monetre bounded to the side of the man who cowered down behind the bally platform. He knelt and placed a sure hand on the man’s forehead, which was clammy and cold.

  “It’s all right now, sir,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “You’ll be perfectly safe with me.” He urged the idea “safe,” because, whatever the cause might be, the man was sodden, trembling, all but ecstatic with fear. Monetre asked no questions, but kept crooning, “You’re in good hands now, sir. Quite safe. Nothing can happen now. Come along; we’ll have a drink. You’ll be all right.”

  The man’s watery eyes fixed themselves on him, slowly. Awareness crept into them, and a certain embarrassment. He said, “Hm. Uh—slight attack of—hm… vertigo, you know. Sorry to be… hm.”

  Monetre courteously helped him up, picked up a brown homburg and dusted it off. “My office is just there. Do come in and sit down.”

  Monetre kept a firm hand on the man’s elbow, led him to the trailer, handed him up the two steps, reached past him and opened the door. “Would you like to lie down for a few minutes?”

  “No, no. Thank you; you’re very kind.”

  “Sit here, then. I think you’ll find it comfortable. I’ll get you something that will make you feel better.” He fingered a simple combination latch, chose a bottle of tawny port. From a desk drawer he took a small phial and put two drops of liquid into a glass, filling it with the wine. “Drink this. It will make you feel better. A little sodium amytal—just enough to quiet your nerves.”

  “Thank you, thank—” He drank it greedily, “—you. Are you Mr. Monetre?”

  “At your service.”

  “I am Judge Bluett. Surrogate, you know. Hm.”

  “I am honored.”

  “Not at all, not at all. I am the one who… I drove fifty miles to see you, sir, and would gladly have done twice that. You have a wide reputation.”

  “I hadn’t realized it,” said Monetre, and thought, this deflated creature is as insincere as I am. “What can I do for you?”

  “Hm. Well, now. Matter of—ah—scientific interest. I read about you in a magazine, you know. Said you know more about fr—ah, strange people, and things like that, than anyone alive.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Monetre. “I have worked with them for a great many years, of course. What was it you wanted to know?”

  “Oh… the kind of thing you can’t get out of reference books. Or ask any so-called scientist, for that matter; they just laugh at things that aren’t in some book, somewhere.”

  “I have experienced that, Judge. I do not laugh readily.”

  “Splendid. Then I shall ask you. Namely, do you know anything about—ah—regeneration?”

  Monetre cloaked his eyes. Would the fool ever get to the point? “What kind of regeneration? The girdle of the nematodes? Cellular healing? Or are you talking about old-time radio receivers?”

  “Please,” said the judge, and made a flabby gesture. “I’m quite the layman, Mr. Monetre. You’ll have to use simple language. What I want to know is—how much of a restoration is possible after a serious cut?”

  “How serious a cut?”

  “Hm. Call it an amputation.”

  “Well, now. That depends, Judge. A fingertip, possibly. A chipped bone can grow surprisingly. You—you know of a case where a regeneration has been, shall we say, a bit more than normal?”

  There was a long pause. Monetre noticed that the Judge was paling. He poured him more port, and filled a glass for himself. Excitement mounted within him.

  “I do know of such a case. At least, I mean… hm. Well, it seemed so to me. That is, I saw the amputation.”

  “An arm? A leg, perhaps, or a foot?”

  “Three fingers. Three whole fingers,” said the Judge. “It would seem that they grew back. And in forty-eight hours. A well-known osteologist treated the whole thing as a great joke when I asked him about it. Refused to believe I was serious.” Suddenly he leaned forward so abruptly that the loose skin of his jaw quivered. “Who was the girl who just left here?”

  “An autograph hound,” said Monetre in a bored tone. “A person of no importance. Do proceed.”

  The Judge swallowed with difficulty. “Her name is—Kay Hallowell.”

  “Perhaps so, perhaps so. Have you changed the subject?” asked Monetre impatiently.

  “I have not, sir,” the Judge answered hotly. “That girl, that monster—in good light, and right before my eyes, chopped off three fingers of her left hand!” He nodded, pushing his lower lip out, and sat back.

  If he expected a sharp reaction, he was not disappointed. Monetre leaped to his feet and bellowed, “Havana!” He strode to the door and yelled again. “Where is that little fat—oh; there you are, Havana. Go and find that girl who just left here. Understand? Find her and bring her back. I don’t care what you tell her; find her and bring her back here.” He clapped his hands explosively. “Run!”

  He returned to his chair, his face working. He looked at his hands, then at the judge. “You’re quite sure of this.”

  “I am.”

  “Which hand?”

  “The left.” The Judge ran a finger around his collar. “Ah—Mr. Monetre. If that boy should bring her back here, why, ah—I, that is—”

  “I gather you are afraid of her.”

  “Now, ah—I wouldn’t say that,” said the Judge. “Startled, yes. Hm. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “No,” said Monetre. “You are lying, sir.”

  “I? Lying?” Bluett puffed up his chest and glowered at the carny boss.

  Monetre half-closed his eyes and began ticking off items on his fingers. “It would seem that what frightened you a few minutes ago was the sight of that girl’s left hand. You told the midget that the fingers had grown back. It was obviously the first time you had seen the hand regenerated. And yet you tell me that you have already consulted an osteologist about it.”

  “There are no lies involved,” said Bluett stiffly. “True, I did see the restored hand when she stood in this doorway, and it was the first time. But I also saw her cut those fingers off!”

  “Then why,” asked Monetre, “come to me to ask questions about regeneration?” Watching the Judge flounder about for an answer, he added, “Come now, Judge Bluett. Either you have not stated your original purpose in coming here, or—you have seen a case of this regeneration before. Ah. I see that’s it.” His eyes began to burn. “I think you’d better tell me the whole story.”

  “That isn’t it!” the Judge protested. “Really, sir, I am not enjoying this cross-questioning. I fail to see—”

  Shrewdly, Monetre reached out to touch the fear which hovered so close to this wet-eyed man. “You are in greater danger than you suspect,” he interrupted. “I know what that danger is, and I am probably the only man in the world who can help you. You will co-operate with me, sir, or you will leave this instant—and
take the consequences.” He said this with his flexible voice toned down to a soft, resonating diapason, which apparently frightened the Judge half out of his wits. The chain of imaginary horrors which mirrored themselves on Bluett’s paling face must have been colorful, to say the least. Smiling slightly, Monetre leaned back in his chair and waited.

  “M-may I…” The Judge poured himself more wine. “Ah. Now, sir. I must tell you at the outset that this whole matter has been one of—ah—conjecture on my part. That is, up until I saw the girl just now. By the way—I do not want to have her see me. Could you—”

  “When Havana brings her back, I’ll get you out of sight. Go on.”

  “Good. Thank you, sir. Well, some years ago I brought a child into my house. Ugly little monster. When he was seven or eight years old, he ran away from home. I have not heard of him since. I imagine he would be nineteen or so by this time—if he’s alive. And—and there seems to be some connection between him and this girl.”

  “What connection?” Monetre prompted.

  “Well, sh-she seemed to know something about him.” As Monetre shifted his feet impatiently, he blurted, “Fact is, there was a little trouble. The boy was downright rebellious. I thrashed him and shoved him into a closet. His hand—quite accidentally, you realize—his hand was crushed in the hinge of the door. Hm. Yes—very unpleasant.”