'I'll never smile again,' Marvin told her.
'Somebody else will be taking my place,' she predicted.
'You are temptation!' he shouted in a fury.
'We are like two ships that pass in the night,' she corrected.
'Will we never meet again?' Marvin queried.
'Time alone can tell.'
'My prayer is to be there with you,' Marvin said hopefully.
'East of the Sun and West of the Moon,' she intoned.
'You're mean to me,' Marvin pouted.
'I didn't know what time it was,' she said. 'But I know what time it is now!' And so saying, she whirled and darted out the door.
Marvin watched her leave, then sat down at the bar. 'One for my baby, and one for the road' he told the bartender.
'A woman's a two-face,' the bartender commented sympathetically, pouring a drink.
'I got the mad-about-her-sad-without-her blues,' Marvin replied.
'A fellow needs a girl,' the bartender told him.
Marvin finished his drink and held out his glass. 'A pink cocktail for a blue lady,' he ordered.
'She may be weary,' the bartender suggested.
'I don't know why I love her like I do,' Marvin stated. 'But at least I do know why there's no sun up in the sky. In my solitude she haunts me like a tinkling piano in the next apartment. But I'll be around no matter how she treats me now. Maybe it was just one of those things; yet I'll remember April and her, and the evening breeze caressed the trees but not for me, and-'
There is no telling how long Marvin might have continued his lament had not a voice at the level of his ribs and two feet to his left whispered, 'Hey, meester.'
Marvin turned and saw a small, plump, raggedly dressed Celsian sitting on the next bar stool.
'What is it?' Marvin asked brusquely.
'You maybe want see thees muchacha so beautiful other time?'
'Yes, I do. But what can you-'
'I am private investigator tracer of lost persons satisfaction guaranteed or not one cent in tribute.'
'What kind of an accent have you got?' Marvin asked.
'Lambrobian,' the investigator said. 'My name is Juan Valdez and I come from the fiesta lands below the border to make my fortune here in big city of the Norte.'
'Sandback,' the bartender snarled.
'What thees theeng you call me?' the little Lombrobian said, with suspicious mildness.
'I called you a sandback, you lousy little sandback,' the bartender snarled.
'That ees what I thought,' said Valdez. He reached into his cummerbund, took out a long, double-edged knife, and drove it into the bartender's heart, killing him instantly.
'I am a mild man, senor,' he said to Marvin. 'I am not a man quickly to take offence. Indeed, in my home village of Montana Verde de los Tres Picos, I am considered a harmless man. I ask nothing more than to be allowed to cultivate my peyote buds in the high mountains of Lombrobia under the shade of that tree which we call "the sun hat", for these are the bes' peyote buds in all the world.'
'I can understand that,' Marvin said.
'Yet still,' Valdez said, more sternly, 'when an exploitator del norte insults me, and by implication, defames those who gave me birth and nurtured me – why then, senor, a blinding red mist descends over my field of vision and my knife springs to my hand unaided, and proceeds from there non-stop to the heart of the betrayer of the children of the poor.'
'It could happen to anyone,' Marvin said.
'And yet,' Valdez said, 'despite my keen sense of honour, I am essentially childlike, intuitive, and easygoing.'
'I had noticed that, as a matter of fact,' Marvin said.
'But yet. Enough of that. Now, you wish hire me investigation find girl? But of course. El buen pano en el arca se vende, verdad?'
'Si, hombre,' Marvin replied, laughing. 'Y el deseo vence al miedo!'
'Pues, adelante!' And arm in arm the two comrades marched out into the night of a thousand brilliant stars like the lance points of a mighty host.
Chapter 19
Once outside the restaurant, Valdez turned his moustached brown face to the heavens and located the constellation Invidius, which, in northern latitudes, points unerringly to the north-north-east. With this as a base line, he established cross-references, using the wind on his cheek (blowing west at five miles per hour), and the moss on the trees (growing on the northerly sides of decidupis trunks at one millimetre per diem). He allowed for a westerly error of one foot per mile (drift), and a southerly error of five inches per hundred yards (combined tropism effects). Then, with all factors accounted for, he began walking in a south-south-westerly direction.
Marvin followed. Within an hour they had left the city, and were proceeding through a stubbled farming district. Another hour put them beyond the last signs of civilization, in a wilderness of tumbled granite and greasy feldspar.
Valdez showed no signs of stopping, and Marvin began to feel vague stirrings of doubt.
'Just where, exactly, are we going?' he asked at last.
'To find your Cathy,' Valdez replied, his teeth flashing white in his good-humoured burnt-sienna face.
'Does she really live this far from the city?'
'I have no idea where she lives,' Valdez replied, shrugging.
'You don't?'
'No, I don't.'
Marvin stopped abruptly. 'But you said that you did know!'
'I never said or implied that,' Valdez said, his umber forehead wrinkling. 'I said that I would help you find her.'
'But if you don't know where she lives-'
'It is quite unimportant,' Valdez said, holding up a stern musteline forefinger. 'Our quest has nothing to do with finding where Cathy lives; our quest, pure and simple, is to find Cathy. That, at least, was my understanding.'
'Yes, of course,' Marvin said. 'But if we're not going to where she lives, then where are we going?'
'To where she weel be,' Valdez replied serenely.
'Oh,' Marvin said.
They walked on through towering mineral marvels, coming at last into scrubby foothills that lay like tired walruses around the gleaming blue whale of a lofty mountain range. Another hour passed, and Marvin again grew disquieted. But this time he expressed his anxiety in a roundabout fashion, hoping by guile to gain insight.
'Have you known Cathy long?' he asked.
'I have never had the good fortune to meet her,' Valdez replied.
'Then you saw her for the first time in the restaurant with me?'
'Unfortunately I did not even see her there, since I was in the men's room passing a kidney stone during the time of your conversation with her. I may have caught a glimpse of her as she turned from you and departed, but more likely I saw only the Doppler effect produced by the swinging red door.'
'Then you know nothing whatsoever about Cathy?'
'Only the little I have heard from you, which, frankly, amounts to practically nothing.'
'Then how,' Marvin asked, 'can you possibly take me to where she will be?'
'It is simple enough,' Valdez said. 'A moment's reflection should clear the matter for you.'
Marvin reflected for several moments, but the matter stayed refractory.
'Consider it logically,' Valdez said. 'What is my problem? To find Cathy. What do I know about Cathy? Nothing.'
'That doesn't sound so good,' Marvin said.
'But it is only half of the problem. Granted that I know nothing about Cathy, what do I know about Finding?'
'What?' Marvin asked.
'It happens that I know everything about Finding,' Valdez said triumphantly, gesturing with his graceful terracotta hands. 'For it happens that I am an expert in the Theory of Searches!'
'The what?' Marvin asked.
'The Theory of Searches!' Valdez said, a little less triumphantly.
'I see.' Marvin said, unimpressed. 'Well … that's great, and I'm sure it's a very good theory. But if you don't know anything about Cathy, I don't see how any theory wi
ll help.'
Valdez sighed, not unpleasantly, and touched his moustache with a puce-coloured hand. 'My friend, if you knew all about Cathy – her habits, friends, desires, dislikes, hopes, fears, dreams, intentions. and the like – do you think you would be able to find her?'
'I'm sure I could,' Marvin said.
'Even without knowing the Theory of Searches?'
'Yes.'
'Well then,' Valdez said, 'apply that same reasoning to the reverse condition. I know all there is to know about the Theory of Searches, and therefore I need to know nothing about Cathy.'
'Are you sure it's the same thing?' Marvin asked.
'It has to be. After all, an equation is an equation. Solving from one end may take longer than from the other end, but cannot affect the outcome. In fact, we are really quite fortunate to know nothing about Cathy. Specific data sometimes has a way of interfering with the well-wrought operation of a theory. But we shall suffer no such discomfiture in this instance.'
They marched steadily upwards, across the steepening face of a mountain slope. A bitter wind screamed and buffeted at them, and patches of hoar-frost began to appear underfoot. Valdez talked about his researches into the Theory of Searches, citing the following typical cases: Hector looking for Lysander, Adam questing after Eve, Galahad reconnoitering for the Holy Grail, Fred C. Dobbs' seeking the Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Edwin Arlington Robinson's perquisitions for colloquial self-expression in a typically American milieu, Gordon Sly's investigations of Naiad McCarthy, energy's pursuit of entropy, God's hunt for man, and Yang's pursual of Yin.
'From these specifics,' Valdez said, 'we derive the general notion of Search and its most important corollaries.'
Marvin was too miserable to answer. It had suddenly occurred to him that one could die in this chill and waterless wasteland.
'Amusingly enough,' Valdez said, 'the Theory of Searches forces upon us the immediate conclusion that nothing can be truly (or ideally) lost. Consider: for a thing to be lost, it would require a place to be lost in. But no such place can be found, since simple multiplicity carries no implication of qualitative differentiation. In Search terms, every place is like every other place. Therefore, we replace the concept Lost with the concept of indeterminate placement, which, of course, is susceptible to logico-mathematical analysis.'
'But if Cathy isn't really lost,' Marvin said, 'then we can't really find her.'
'That statement is true, as far as it goes,' Valdez said. 'But of course, it is merely Ideal notion, and of little value in this instance. For operational purposes we must modify the Theory of Searches. In fact, we must reverse the major premise of the theory and reaccept the original concepts of Lost and Found.'
'It sounds very complicated,' Marvin said.
'The complication is more apparent than real,' Valdez reassured him. 'An analysis of the problem yields the result. We take the proposition: "Marvin searches for Cathy." That seems fairly to describe our situation, does it not?'
'I think it does,' Marvin said cautiously.
'Well then, what does the statement imply?'
'It implies – it implies that I search for Cathy.'
Valdez shook his nut-brown head in annoyance. 'Look deeper, my impatient young friend! Identity is not inference! The statement expresses the activity of your quest, and therefore implies the passivity of Cathy's state-of-being-lost. But this cannot be true. Her passivity is unacceptable, since ultimately one searches for oneself, and no one is exempt from that search. We must accept Cathy's search for you (herself), just as we accept your search for her (yourself). Thus we achieve our primary permutation: "Marvin searches for Cathy who searches for Marvin." '
'Do you really think she's looking for me?' Marvin asked.
'Of course she is, whether she knows it or not. After all, she is a person in her own right; she cannot be considered an Object, a mere something-lost.We must grant her autonomy, and realize that if you find her, then, equally, she finds you.'
'I never thought of that.' Marvin said,
'Well, it's simple enough once you understand the theory,' Valdez said. 'Now, to ensure our success, we must decide upon the optimum form of Search. Obviously, if both of you are actively questing, your chances of finding each other are considerably lessened. Consider two people seeking one another up and down the endless crowded aisles of a great department store, and contrast that with the improved strategy of one seeking, and the other standing at a fixed position and waiting to be found. The mathematics are a little intricate, so you will just have to take my word for it. The best chance of you/her finding her/you will be for one to search, and the other to allow himself /herself to be searched for. Our deepest folk wisdom has always known this, of course.'
'So what do we do?'
'I have just told you!' Valdez cried. 'One must search, the other must wait. Since we have no control over Cathy's actions, we assume that she is following her instincts and looking for you. Therefore you must fight down your instincts and wait, thereby allowing her to find you.'
'All I do is wait?'
'That's right.'
'And you really think she'll find me?'
'I would stake my life on it.'
'Well … all right. But in that case, where are we going now?'
'To a place where you will wait. Technically, it is called a Location-Point.'
Marvin looked confused, so Valdez explained further. 'Mathematically, all places are of equal potentiality insofar as the chances of her finding you are concerned. Therefore we are able to choose an arbitrary Location-Point.'
'What Location-Point have you chosen?' Marvin asked.
'Since it made no real difference,' Valdez said, 'I selected the village of Montana Verde de los Tres Picos, in Adelante Province, in the country of Lombrobia.'
'That's your home town, isn't it?' Marvin asked.
'As a matter of fact, it is,' Valdez said, mildly surprised and amused. 'That, I suppose, is why it came so quickly to my mind.'
'Isn't Lombrobia a long way off?'
'A considerable distance,' Valdez admitted. 'But our time will not be wasted, since I will teach you logic, and also the folksongs of my country.'
'It isn't fair,' Marvin muttered.
'My friend,' Valdez told him, 'when you accept help, you must be prepared to take what one is capable of giving, not what you would like to receive. I have never denied my human limitations; but it is ungrateful of you to refer to them.'
Marvin had to be content with that, since he didn't think he could find his way back to the city unaided. So they marched on through the mountains, and they sang many folksongs, but it was too cold for logic.
Chapter 20
Onwards they marched, up the polished mirror face of a vast mountain. The wind whistled and screamed, tore at their clothing and tugged at their straining fingers. Treacherous honeycomb ice crumpled under their feet as they struggled for footholds, their buffeted bodies plastered to the icy mountain wall and moving leechlike up its dazzling surface.
Valdez bore up through it all with a saintlike equanimity. 'Eet ees deefecult,' he grinned. 'And yet – for the love which you bear for thees woman – eet ees all worthwhile, si?'
'Yeah, sure,' Marvin mumbled. 'I guess it is.' But in truth, he was beginning to doubt it. After all, he had known Cathy only for less than an hour.
An avelanche thundered past them, and tons of white death screamed past – inches from their strained and clinging bodies. Valdez smiled with serenity. Flynn frowned with anxiety.
'Beyond all obstacles,' Valdez intoned, 'lies that summit of accomplishment which is the face and form of the beloved.'
'Yeah, sure,' Marvin said.
Spears of ice, shaken loose from a high dokalma, whirled and flashed around them. Marvin thought about Cathy and found that he was unable to remember what she looked like. It struck him that love at first sight was overrated.
A high precipice loomed before them. Marvin looked at it, and at the shimmering i
ce fields beyond, and came to the conclusion that the game was really not worth the candle.
'I think,' Marvin said, 'that we should turn back.'
Valdez smiled subtly, pausing on the very edge of the vertiginous descent into that wintry hell of suicidally shaped snow slides.
'My frien',' he said, 'I know why you say this.'
'You do?' Marvin asked.
'Of course. It is obvious that you do not wish me to risk my life on the continuance of your insensate and magnificent quest. And it is equally obvious that you intend to plunge on, alone.'
'It is?' Marvin asked.
'Certainly. It would be apparent to the most casual observer that you are driven to seek your love through any and all dangers, by virtue of the unyielding nature of your personality. And it is equally clear that your generous and high-spirited mentality would be disturbed at the idea of involving one whom you consider a close friend and bosom companion in so perilous a venture.'
'Well,' Marvin began, 'I'm not sure-'
'But I am sure,' Valdez said. 'And I reply to your unspoken question as follows: Friendship bears this similarity to love: it transcends all limits.'
'Huh,' Marvin said.
'Therefore,' Valdez said, 'I shall not abandon you. We shall go on together, into the maw of death, if need be, for the sake of your beloved Cathy.'
'Well, that's very nice of you,' Marvin said, eyeing the precipice ahead. 'But I really didn't know Cathy very well, and I don't know how well suited we would be; so all in all, maybe it would be best if we got out of here-'
'Your words lack conviction, my young friend,' Valdez laughed. 'I beg of you not to worry about my safety.'
'As a matter of fact,' Marvin said, 'I was worrying about my safety.'
'No use!' Valdez cried gaily. 'Hot passion betrays the studied coolness of your words. Forward, my friend!'
Valdez seemed determined to force him to Cathy's side whether he wanted to go or not. The only solution seemed to be a quick blow to the jaw, after which he would drag Valdez and himself back to civilization. He edged forward.
Valdez edged back. 'Ah no, my friend!' he cried. 'Again, overweening love has rendered your motives transparent. To knock me out, is it not? Then, after making sure I was safe and comfortable and well provisioned, you would plunge alone into the white wilderness. But I refuse to comply. We go on together, compadre!'
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