Talked about what? Again, he couldn’t recall clearly. Anything. Whatever was on his mind that could be talked about. His work—some of it; most of it couldn’t be expressed in words; it was conceptual, or technical, or mathematical, or all three. His feelings—some of them; most of them couldn’t be expressed in words, either; they were too conceptual, or unidentified, or occluded, or all three.
“We go to the movies sometimes,” he said at length. And, “It’s nice sometimes to have somebody to talk to.” He said that, not “talk with.” He would have wondered why, but his mother interrupted his thinking the way people always did.
“I know this is no time to discuss it,” she said in that urgent whisper, “but what’s she want? I mean are you, do you, are you planning to, you know.” She finished it like a statement, not a question.
“I—never thought about it.”
“You better. The way she acts.”
“All right. But like you say, Mom, it’s not the time to think about it now.” The limited irritation was back again. He turned to the door which exploded inward and struck him a stinging blow on the right pelvis.
“Now what’s going on in th’ black hole?” Billy roared. “You engineers precessin’ my gyros again?”
“Tell Mom what you want to eat,” said Chris painfully. He walked stiffly back to the table and sat down. He rubbed his hip covertly. He didn’t look at Tess Milburn. He couldn’t.
He picked at his food. She picked at her food. Mr. Magruder, who drank tea with his meals, drank his tea. And all the while, voices came from the kitchen. Chris was acutely embarrassed, but at the same time he was wondering about the filtering effect of the swinging door, because it passed Miz Binns’ high frequencies—the sibilants and the hiss of her stage whisper—and Billy’s lows, the woofs, the chest tones—all without transmitting a single intelligible syllable. But when Billy laughed, he understood it. He had heard that laugh before.
Billy bumped the door and surged through without touching it again as it swung open and back. His mother caught it and held it open on her side and bleated, “No, Billy, no!” and Billy laughed again and said, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, Mom. Billy fix.” Miz Binns stood in the doorway wringing her hands, then sighed and went back in to get Billy’s dinner.
Billy plumped down at the table and passed Chris a wide wink. “Well, Tess,” he said expansively. “So long since I’ve seen you. Grown a bit, filled out a bit. Hell around a bit too, I bet.” He ignored the silent drop of her jaw and the quick frightened smile that followed it. “You’ve been walled up in this haymow too long, girl. A little hurry an’ noise will do you a world of good. How about you and me, we couple up right after chow and buzz this burg?”
Stricken, she looked at Chris.
Chris said, “Look, Billy, we—”
Just then, Miz Binns came in with a plate heaped and steaming. Serving dishes on the table not good enough for little Billee, Chris thought bitterly. Cold by now.
“Mom, what do you know! Tess and I got a date for right away!” Billy announced.
“Oh, now, Billy!” said Miz Binns in that he’s-naughty-but-he’s-so-sweet tone. “Your very first night and we haven’t had a chance to chat even, and you have so little time, and—”
“Mom,” the cadet said cheerfully, “you and I, we have two solid weeks in the daytime to blow tubes and scavenge tanks to our hearts’ delight, in the daytime when all good slaves are out digging gold. I hate to deprive you tonight, but gosh, Mom, don’t be stingy. Spread it around. It’s okay, isn’t it Chris?”
It’s okay, isn’t it, Chris? All his life, that special laugh and then this question. For a while, when he was nine and Billy was seven, he used to burst into tears when he heard that question. For a while before that and afterward, he had responded with a resounding “No!” And a little later on, he had reasoned, argued, or silently shaken his head. Nothing ever made any difference. Billy would watch him and smile happily through his countermeasure, no matter what, and when he was finished would go right ahead and take, or do, or not do whatever the thing was that he wanted and Chris didn’t. He had outweighed Chris since he was four years old, outtalked him always.
But this one time, this one lousy time, he wasn’t going to get away with it.
Chris looked at his mother’s anxious face, at Tess with a spot of pink on each of her sallow cheeks, a shine in her eyes that he had never been able to put there. No, by God, no.
He filled his lungs to say it out loud when the impossible happened. A hard hand closed on his left wrist, under the table. A voice spoke in his left ear: “Let him!”—soft but commanding. He looked down at the hand, but it had already gone. He looked at the face to his left, and Mr. Magruder impassively poured more tea. No one else seemed to have seen or heard.
It was Mr. Magruder, all right, with some knack of directional, perfectly controlled speech, two syllables formed and aimed from the side of the thin dry lips for Chris and Chris alone. It was unusual for the old man to say anything at all beyond “Pass the salt.” It was unprecedented for him to enter a conversation, advise.
Chris looked at Tess’s troubled, almost beseeching face, the pink, the shine. “You want to go?”
She looked at Billy and back to him, and then dropped her eyes. Chris felt rather than saw the slightest movement of Mr. Magruder’s foot against the floor. He did not touch Chris, but the movement was another syllable of command; there was no question about that. “Go ahead if you want to.”
Mr. Magruder nodded, or simply dropped his chin to watch his hands fold a napkin. Miz Binns said, “I still think you’re awful, Billy,” and did not quite add, “dear boy.” Tess Milburn giggled.
Billy began to eat heartily, and what might have been a very strained silence indeed was canceled before it could become a problem.
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Chris said relievedly. He got up and turned to the open, screened doorway.
It must be a trick of the light was the thought that flashed through his mind, but there wasn’t time to pursue it. “Yes?”
“I’m Gerda Stein. Mr. Magruder—”
“Oh, it’s Miss Stein,” his mother called. “Come in, do come in.”
It had been no trick of the light. Chris opened the screen door and stood back, speechless. He had known there were human beings like this. TV and the movies were full of them. They smiled from magazines and book-jackets, crooned and called and sold coffee, crockery and cosmetics on the car radio. All these are the proper and established places for such creatures; they don’t, they just don’t stand breathtakingly under the porch light on warm summer evenings and then walk into your own familiar house.
Someone nudged him out of his daze—Miz Binns. “Dinner’s on, I can warm up something, and your room’s all, my son from the Space Academy just, no, this is Chris. Billy’s the—”
“How do you do, Chris,” said Gerda Stein.
“Uh,” said Chris. He followed the girl and his mother through the foyer into the dining room.
“You already know Mr. Magruder and this, this is Billy.”
Billy shot up out of his chair like one of the Base rockets, and again Mr. Magruder steadied his water glass.
“Well-l-l,” Billy breathed, a sound like the last descending tones of a mighty alert siren.
Gerda Stein smiled at him and Chris could see him blink. “No,” she said in answer to something Miz Binns was saying, “I’ve had dinner.”
Chris came around the table and found his eyes on Tess Milburn’s face. It was wistful. “And this is Tess Milburn,” he blurted. In that instant of empathy for the ignored girl, so shadowed by the great light cast by the newcomer, he fairly shouted. He looked like a fool and knew it.
Gerda Stein smiled warmly and took Tess’s hand. Surprisingly, Tess smiled, too, and went on smiling after she had been released—a real smile, for once, substitute for nothing.
Chris felt embarrassed to see it—a str
ange embarrassment, starting with the consciousness of how hot his ears were, then going through a lightning intuitive chain to the insight that he was embarrassed when he made someone happy, and that it had been worth the effort of thought because it was so rare, and then the conclusion that anyone who made people happy so rarely couldn’t be worth much. Which led him, of course, to look at his younger brother.
Billy had stopped chewing when Gerda Stein came in and he had not swallowed. He seemed for these long seconds as preoccupied as Chris was most of the time, and the slight flick of his blue eyes from Tess’s face to Gerda Stein’s indicated the source of his deep perplexity. And suddenly Chris saw it, as if it had been imprinted across the golden tan of the cadet’s bland forehead in moving lights.
If Billy now went on with his idea of a date with Tess, this vision would be left here with Chris and Mom and Mr. Magruder and—very soon now, Mr. Magruder and Mom would retire, and …
On the other hand, Billy shared with his mother a deep reluctance to face anyone with “Beat it, I don’t need you around,” or any variation thereof.
Chris sat down slowly before his cold dinner and waited. He felt some things which taught him a great deal. One of them was that it was good to be involved with Billy in a situation where Billy couldn’t win. If Billy backed out of the date, Chris would go; if not, not; and by this Chris learned that the date didn’t really matter to him. This was a great relief to him. His mother’s questions had disturbed him more than he had known until he felt the relief.
Billy sighed through his nostrils and finally swallowed his mouthful. “I’m backin’ off my gantry, girl,” he said to Tess, “so start the count-down.”
Chris caught a quick puzzled flicker of expression on Gerda Stein’s face. Miz Binns said, “He always talks like that. He means he and Tess are going out. Space talk.” Chris thought she was going to run and hug him, but with obvious effort she controlled her feelings and said to Miss Stein, “Well, come settle in the parlor until I can take you up to your room.”
“Have fun, kids,” said Chris, and got up and followed to the parlor.
In the foyer, he turned and glanced back. He met Mr. Magruder’s penetrating gaze, a startling experience for one used to seeing only the man’s cheek or lowered eyelid. He wished he could get some message, some communication from it, but this time he couldn’t. He felt very strange, as if he had been given absolute alternatives: chaos, or obedience to an orderly unknown. He knew he had chosen obedience and he was inexpressibly excited.
“Always wanted a spaceman in the family,” Miz Binns was saying proudly to Gerda Stein, “and Billy’s always wanted to be one, and now look.”
From the couch, Gerda Stein said politely, “He seems to be doing very well.”
“Well? Why, he’s in the top twentieth of his class, nobody ever did that before except one fellow that was an air marshal’s son, Billy’s born for it, that’s what he is, born for it.”
Chris said, “He was running around in a space helmet when he was two years old.”
At his voice, Gerda Stein turned and smiled, “Oh, hello.”
“I declare I don’t know how I could’ve had two boys so different,” said Miz Binns. “Years, I just couldn’t guess what Chris here would end up doing, he’s nicely settled down though, fixing adding machines.”
“Computers,” Chris said mildly.
“Really! That must be very interesting. I use a computer.”
“What kind?”
“KCI. It’s only a very simple little one.”
“I know it. Mechanical binary. Clever little machine,” said Chris and, to his intense annoyance, found himself blushing again.
“Oh, well, you have something in common,” said Miz Binns. “I’ll just scoot along upstairs and see that your room’s just right. You keep Miss Stein happy till I call, Chris.”
“Don’t go to any—” the girl began, but Miz Binns had fluttered out.
Chris thought, we have something in common, have we? He was absolutely tongue-tied. Keep Miss Stein happy, hah! He flicked a glance at her and found with something like horror that she was watching him. He dropped his eyes, wet his lips, and sat tensely wishing somebody would say something.
Billy said something. Leaving Tess standing in the foyer, he stepped into the parlor, winked at Gerda Stein and said to Chris, “I heard that last test-firing of yours, shipmate—’Have fun!’ Well, you have fun.” He looked at Gerda Stein with open admiration. “Just remember, brer pawn—first move don’t win the game; it’s only an advantage. You told me that yourself.”
“Shucks,” Chris said inanely.
“I’ll see you soon,” said Billy, stabbing a forefinger toward her.
“Good night,” Gerda Stein said courteously.
Billy left the room, bellowing, “C’mon Venus-bird, let’s go git depraved.” Tess Milburn squeaked, then tittered, and they went out. Miz Binns came downstairs just then and stopped at the front door.
“You Tess Milburn,” she called in what she apparently hoped was mock severity, “you don’t go keepin’ that boy up until all hours!” From the warm dark came Billy’s rich laughter.
“That boy,” breathed Miz Binns, coming into the parlor, “I do declare, he’s a caution, come on upstairs now if you want to and see your room, Miss Stein. That your bags out there on the stoop? Chris, just nip out and get Miss Stein’s bags in like a good boy.”
“All right, Mom.” He was glad to have something to do. He went out and found the bags, two of them, a large suitcase and what looked like an overnight case. The suitcase was no trouble, but the little one weighed perhaps fifty pounds and he grunted noisily when he lifted it.
“Here,” called Miz Binns, “I’ll—”
“No!” he barked. “I can handle it.” Mom wouldn’t learn, couldn’t learn that a man might be humiliated in front of strangers.
He lifted the bags abruptly, knowing just how Bill—how a fellow could walk, sing, surge them up to the landing, lift and surge again to the top, breathing easily. He took a step and swung, and got all tangled with the screen door, and banged the overnight case noisily against the jamb; his arms and back wouldn’t do the easy graceful thing his mind knew how to do with them. So he didn’t lift and swing, or breathe easily, but plodded and hauled, and came into the north bedroom blowing like a grampus. All in the world he hoped for was that he wouldn’t catch Gerda Stein smiling.
He caught Gerda Stein smiling.
He put the bags down by the bed and went blindly back down the stairs. Mr. Magruder was just then pacing his leisurely way into the parlor, his newspaper under his arm, and Chris became painfully aware of how hard he was still breathing and how it must look. He controlled it and fled to the dining room.
He stood against the table for a long moment, pulling himself together, and then, with his glazed eyes fixed on the dish of cold hominy grits, slid gratefully into the familiar aloneness of his conjectures.
Hominy is corn, is dry before cooking; absorbs moisture softens swells steams gets cold loses moisture gets gummy if left long enough would set like concrete anyway until more moisture came along. Deeper he went into a lower level, seeing the hydroscopes, the thirsty molecular matrices, yearning and getting, satiated, yielding, turning again to thirsty corn. Down again to a lower level and the awareness all about him of the silent forces of the capillary, the unreasonable logic of osmosis, the delicate compromise called meniscus.
Water, water, everywhere … in the table-legs and the cloth, water fleeing from the edges of a pool of gravy, flying to the pores of a soda-cracker, all the world sere and soggy, set, slushy, slippery and solid because of water.
Down in this level there were no pipestem arms nor unready tongues nor fumblings for complex behavior codes known reflexively to all the world but Christopher Binns, and he was comforted.
“What you dreaming about, boy, I do declare!”
He came up out of it and faced her. He felt much better. “I’ll give you a hand
washing up, Mom.”
“Now you don’t have to do any such of a thing, Chris. Go on into the parlor and chat with Mr. Magruder.”
He chuckled at the thought and began to stack the dirty plates. His mother went into the kitchen to clear the sink, shaking her head. Her woeful expression, he divined, was only superficial, a habit, an attitude; he could sense the core excitement and delight with which Billy always filled her.
Billy can do no wrong; he syllogized—
Billy does everything well; THEREFORE
Billy does no wrong well.
He carried the plates into the kitchen.
“I’m going to bed, dear.”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Thanks for helping. Chris—”
“You’re not angry at Billy, are you, about Tess, I mean?”
“Why should I be angry?” he asked.
“Well, I’m glad, then.” She thought he had answered her. “He doesn’t mean it, you know that.”
“Sure, Mom.” He wondered dispassionately how her remark could possibly be applied to the situation, and gave up. He wondered also, with considerably more interest, how and why he had been aware that while he was in the kitchen, Gerda Stein had come down and re-entered the parlor and that Mr. Magruder had gone up to bed. He wondered also what use the information would be to him, he who had the Sadim touch. The Sadim touch was a recurrent whimsy with him; it was Midas spelled backward and signified that everything he touched, especially gold, turned to—“Shucks.”
“What, dear?”
“Nothing. Good night, Mom.”
Palely she kissed him and tiredly toiled up the stairs. He stood by the dining room table; looking at the cut-glass sugar bowl, now turned out to pasture in its old age and holding two dozen teaspoons, handles down, looking like something a robot bride in a cartoon might carry for a bouquet. He scanned the orderly place-settings around the table, the clean inverted cups mouthing their saucers, each handle a precise sixty degrees off the line of the near table edge; the bread plates with the guaranteed fourteen-karat, one hundred percent solid gold edging absent from every convexity, wanly present in the concave.
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