by Algis Budrys
Barker looked down at her in twisted amusement. He ran the fingers of one hand into her hair. "You mustn't let Claire put you off, Doctor," he said. "It's only her little way." He seemed unaware that his fingers were clenched around the sun-bleached strands of hair, and that they were twisting slightly and remorselessly. "Claire likes to test people. Sometimes she does it by throwing herself at them. It doesn't mean anything."
"Yes," Hawks said. "But I came here to see you."
Barker seemed not to have heard. He looked at Hawks with a level deadliness. "It's interesting how Claire and I met. Seven years ago, I was on a mountain in the Alps. I rounded a sheer face — it had taken a courte échelle from another man's shoulders, and a piton traverse, to negotiate it — and she was there." Now his hand was toying tenderly. "She was sitting with one leg over a spur, staring down into the valley and dreaming to herself. Like that. I had no warning. It was as if she'd been there since the mountain was made."
Claire laughed softly, lying back against Barker and looking up at Hawks. "Actually," she said, "I'd come 'round by an easier route with a couple of French officers. I'd wanted to go down the way Al had come up, but they'd said it was too dangerous, and refused." She shrugged. "So I went back down the mountain with Al. I'm really not very complicated, Ed."
"Before she went, I had to knock the Frenchmen about a little bit," Barker said, and now his meaning was clear. "I believe one of them had to be taken off by helicopter. And I've never forgotten how one goes about keeping one's hold on her."
Claire smiled. "I'm a warrior's woman, Ed." Suddenly she moved her body, and Barker let his hand fall. "Or at least we like to think so." Her nails ran down Barker's torso. "It's been seven years, and nobody's taken me away yet." She smiled fondly up at Barker for an instant, and then her expression became challenging again. "Why don't you tell Al about this new job, Ed?"
"New job?" Barker smiled in a practiced way. "You mean Connie actually came up here on business?"
Hawks studied Claire and Barker for a moment. Then he made up his mind. "All right. I understand you have clearance, Mr. Barker?"
Barker nodded. "I do." He smiled reminiscently. "I've worked for the government off and on before this."
"I'd like to speak to you privately, in that case."
Claire stood up lazily, smoothing her swim suit over her hips. "I'll go stretch out on the diving board for a while. Of course, if I were an efficient Soviet spy, I'd have microphones buried all over the lawn."
Hawks shook his head. "No. If you were a really efficient spy, you'd have one directional microphone-perhaps on the diving board. You wouldn't need anything better. I'd be glad to show you how to set one up, sometime, if you're interested."
Claire laughed. "Nobody ever steals a march on Dr. Hawks. I'll have to remember that." She walked slowly away, her hips swaying.
Barker turned to follow her with his eyes until she had reached the far end of the pool and arranged herself on the board. Then he turned back to Hawks. "'She walks in beauty, like the night' — even in blaze of day, Doctor."
"I assume that's to your taste," Hawks said.
Barker nodded. "Oh, yes, Doctor — I meant what I said earlier. Don't let anything she does or says let you forget. She's mine. And not because I have money, or good manners, or charm. I do have money, but she's mine by right of conquest."
Hawks sighed. "Mr. Barker, I need you to do something very few men in the world seem to be qualified to do. That is, if there are any at all besides yourself. I have very little time in which to look for others. So would you mind just looking at these photographs?"
Hawks reached into his inside breast pocket and brought out the small manila envelope. He undid the clasp, turned back the flap, and pulled out a thin sheaf of photographs. He looked at them carefully, on edge so that only he could see what they showed, selected one, and passed it to Barker.
Barker looked at it curiously, frowned, and, after a moment, handed it back to Hawks. Hawks put it behind the other pictures. It showed a landscape that at first seemed to be heaped up of black obsidian blocks and clouds of silver. In the background there were other clouds of dust, and looming asymmetric shadows. New complexities continued to catch the eye, until the eye could not follow them all and had to begin again.
"What is it?" Barker asked. "It's beautiful."
"It's a place," Hawks answered. "Or perhaps not. Perhaps it's an artifact — or else a living thing. But it's in a definite location, readily accessible. As for beauty, please bear in mind that this is a still photograph, taken at one five-hundredth of a second, and, furthermore, eight days ago." He began handing more photographs to Barker. "I'd like you to look at these others. These are of men who have been there."
Barker was looking oddly at his face. Hawks went on. "That first one is the first man who went in. At the time, we were taking no more precautions than any hazardous expedition would require. That is, he had the best special equipment we could provide."
Barker looked in fascination at the photograph, now. His fingers jerked, and he almost dropped it. He tightened his grip until the edge of the paper was bent, and when he handed it back the damp imprint of his fingers was on it.
Hawks handed Barker the next. "Those are two men," he said remorselessly. "We thought that perhaps a team might survive." He took the picture back and handed over another. "Those are four." He took it back and paused. "We changed our methods thereafter. We devised a piece of special equipment, and after that we didn't lose a man. Here's the most recent one." He passed Barker the remaining photograph. "That's a man named Rogan." He waited.
Barker looked up from the photograph. His eyes were intent. "Have you a suicide guard over this man?"
Hawks shook his head. He watched Barker. "He'd rather do anything than die again." He gathered up the photographs and put them back into his pocket. "I'm here to offer you the job he had."
Barker nodded. "Of course." He frowned. "I don't know. Or, rather, I don't know enough. Where is this place?"
Hawks stopped to think. "I can tell you that much, before you agree to take the assignment. But nothing further. It's on the Moon."
"Moon? So we do have man-carrying rockets, and all this Sputnik panic is a blind?"
Hawks said nothing, and after a moment Barker shrugged and said, "How long do I have to reach a decision?"
"As long as you like. But I'll be asking Connington to put me in touch with any other prospects tomorrow."
"So I have until tomorrow."
Hawks shook his head. "I don't think he'll be able to deliver. He wants it to be you. I don't know why."
Barker smiled. "Connie's always making plans for people."
"You don't take him very seriously."
"Do you? There are the people in this world who act, and the people who scheme. The ones who act get things done, and the ones who scheme try to take credit for it. You must know that as well as I do. A man doesn't arrive at your position without delivering results." He looked knowingly and, for a moment, warmly, at Hawks. "Does he?"
"Connington is also a vice president of Continental Electronics."
Barker spat on the grass. "Personnel recruiting. An expert at bribing engineers away from your competitors. Something any other skulker could do."
Hawks shrugged.
"What is he?" Barker demanded. "A sort of legitimate confidence man? A mumbo-jumbo spouter with a wad of psychological tests in his back pocket? I've been mumbled at by experts, Doctor, and they're all the same. What they can't do themselves, they label abnormal. What they're ashamed of wanting to do, they condemn others for. They cover themselves with one of those fancy social science diplomas, and talk in educated phrases, and pretend they're actually doing something of value. Well, I've got an education too, and I know what the world is like, and I can give Connington cards and spades, Doctor — cards and spades — and still beat him out. Where has he been? What has he seen? What has he done? He's nothing, Hawks — nothing, compared to a real man."
Barker's lips were pulled back from his glistening teeth. The skin of his face was stretched by the taut muscles at the hinges of his jaws. "He thinks he's entitled to make plans for me. He thinks to himself: 'There's another clod I can use wherever I need him, and get rid of when I'm done with him.' But that's not the way it is. Would you care to discuss art with me, Doctor? Western or Oriental. Or music? Pick your slice of civilized culture. I know 'em all. I'm a whole man, Hawks —" Barker got clumsily up to his feet. "A better man than anybody else I know. Now let's go join the lady."
He began walking away across the lawn, and Hawks slowly got to his feet and followed him.
Claire looked up from where she lay flat on the diving board, and leisurely turned her body until she was sitting upright. She extended her hands behind her, bracing her back, and said, "How did it work out?"
"Oh, don't worry," Barker answered her. "You'll be the first to know."
Claire smiled. "Then you haven't made up your mind yet? Isn't the job attractive enough?"
Hawks watched Barker frown in annoyance.
The kitchen door of the house sighed shut on its air spring, and Connington broke into a chuckle behind them. None of them had heard him come across the strip of grass between the house and this end of the pool.
He dangled a used glass from one hand, and held a partially emptied bottle in the other. His face was flushed, and his eyes were wide with the impact of a great deal of liquor consumed over a short period of time. "Gonna do it, Al?"
Instantly, Barker's mouth flashed into a bare-toothed, fighting grimace. "Of course!" he exclaimed in a startlingly desperate voice. "I couldn't let it pass — not for the world!"
Claire smiled faintly to herself.
Hawks watched all three of them.
Connington chuckled again. "What else could you've said?" he laughed at Barker. His arm swept out in irony. "Here's a man famous for split-second decisions. Always the same ones." The secret was out. The joke was being delivered. "You don't understand, do you?" he said to the three at the edge of the pool. "Don't see things the way I do. Let me explain.
"A technician — like you, Hawks — sees the whole world as cause an' effect. And the world's consistent, explained that way, so why look for any further? Man like you, Barker, sees the world moved by deeds of strong men. And your way of lookin' at it works out, too.
"But the world's big. Complicated. Part-answer can look like the whole answer and act like the whole answer for a long time. For instance, Hawks can think of himself as manipulating causes an' producing effects he wants. 'N you, Barker, you can think of Hawks and you as s'perior, Overman types. Hawks can think of you as specified factor t' be inserted in new environment, so Hawks can solve new 'vironment. You can think of yourself as indomitable figure slugging it out with th' unknown. And so it goes, roun' and roun', an' who's right? Both of you? Maybe. Maybe. But can you stan' to be on the same job together?"
Connington laughed again, his high heels planted in the lawn. "Me, I'm personnel man. I don't look cause and effect. I don't look heroes. Explain the world in a different way. People — that's all I know. 'S enough. I feel 'em. I know 'em. Like a chemist knows valences. Like a physicist knows particle charges. Positive, negative. Atomic weight, 'tomic number. Attract, repel. I mix 'em. I compound 'em. I take people, an' I find a job for them, the co-workers for 'em. I take a raw handful of people, and I mutate it, and make isotopes out of it — I make solvents, reagents — an' I can make 'splosives, too, when I want. That's my world!
"Sometimes I save people up — save 'em for the right job to make 'em react the right way. Save 'em up for the right people.
"Barker, Hawks — you're gonna be my masterpiece. 'Cause sure as God made little green apples, he made you two to meet… An' me, me, I found you, an' I've done it, I've rammed you two together… an' now it's done, an' nothing'll ever take the critical mass apart, and sooner, later, it's got to 'splode, and who're you gonna run to then, Claire?"
4
Hawks broke the silence. He reached out, pulled the bottle out of Connington's hand, and swung toward the cliff. The bottle flailed away and disappeared over the edge. Then Hawks turned to Barker and said quietly, "There are a few more things I ought to tell you before you definitely accept the job."
Barker's face was strained. He was looking at Connington. His head snapped around in Hawks' direction and he growled, "I said I'd do the damned job!"
Claire reached out and took hold of his hand, pulling him down beside her. She thrust herself forward to kiss the underside of Barker's jaw. "That's the ol' fight, Hardrock." She began nibbling the skin with its faint stubble of beard, gradually inching her mouth down his throat, leaving a row of regularly spaced marks: wet, round, red parentheses of her lipstick, enclosing the sharper, pinker blotches where her incisors had worried his flesh. "He'll do it, Ed," she murmured sidelong. "Or at least he'll give it as much of a try as any man could."
"Don't the three of you care?" Connington blurted, his head jerking back and forth. "Didn't you hear?"
"We heard you," Hawks said.
"Well, what about it?" Connington challenged them incredulously.
"Tell me something, Connington," Hawks said. "Did you make your little speech so we'd stop now? Or could anything make us stop, now things are in motion the way you hoped?"
"Not hoped," Connington said. "Planned."
Hawks nodded. "All right, then," he said in a tired voice. "I thought so. All you wanted to do was make a speech. I wish you'd chosen another time."
Claire chuckled, a silvery ladder of sound. "Isn't it too bad, Connie? You were so sure we'd all fall down. But it's just like it always was. You still don't know where to push."
Connington backed away incredulously, his arms spread as if to knock their heads together. "Are you three crazy? Do you think I made this stuff up out of my head? Listen to yourselves — even when you tell me it's all malarkey, you have to say it each a certain way. You can't shake loose from yourselves even for a second; you'll go where your feet take you, no matter what — and you're laughing at me? You're laughin' at me?"
He lurched around suddenly. "Go to hell, all of you!" he cried. 'G'wan!" He began to run clumsily across the grass to his car.
Hawks looked after him. "He's not fit to drive back."
Barker grimaced. "He won't. He'll cry himself to sleep in the car for a few hours. Then he'll come in the house, looking for Claire's comfort." He looked down at Claire with a jerk of his head that broke the chain of nibbles. "Isn't that right? Doesn't he always do that?"
Claire's lips pinched together. "I can't help what he does."
"No?" Barker said. "It's me he's after?"
In a vicious, throaty snarl, Claire said, "Maybe he's had you. He's never had me."
Barker's hand cracked over, and Claire fell back, holding her cheek. Then she grinned. "You've done better than that. You used to do a lot better. But that wasn't bad," she admitted.
"Barker," Hawks said, "I want to tell you what you're going to have to face."
"Tell me when I get there!" Barker snapped. "I'm not going to back out now."
Claire said, "Maybe that's what he wants you to say, Al. Putting it that way." She smiled up toward Hawks. "Who says Connington's the only schemer?"
"What's the simplest way for me to get back to town?" Hawks said.
"I'll drive you," Barker said coldly. His eyes locked on Hawks. "If you want to try it."
Claire murmured a chuckle and suddenly rubbed her cheek down the length of Barker's thigh. She did this with a spasm of her entire body; an undulant motion that was completely serpentine. She stared up at Hawks through wide, pleasurably moist eyes, her upstretched arms curled around Barker's waist. "Isn't he grand?" she said huskily to Hawks. "Isn't he a man?"
5
Barker trotted stiffly down to the garage apron and flung up the overhead doors with a crash, as Hawks waited at the head of the flagstone steps. Claire said murmurously behind him, "Look
at him move — look at him do things. He's like a wonderful machine made out of gut and hickory wood. There aren't any other men like him, Ed — nobody's as much of a man as he is!" Hawks' nostrils widened.
An engine came to waspish life in the garage, and then a short, broad, almost square-framed sports car came out in a glower of sound. "This is my new roadster," Barker shouted up from behind the wheel.
Hawks came around, stepped over the doorless flank of the car, and cramped himself into the passenger side. He settled his lower back into the unpadded metal seat, which was slewed around to leave more room for the driver. The entire machine stood perhaps thirty inches high at the peak of its sharply curved dash.
"Hasn't been really wrung out, yet!" Barker shouted into Hawks' ear. Claire stood watching, her eyes ashine. Connington, slumped over the wheel of his Cadillac, facing them at an angle, lifted his swollen face and contorted his lips in a sad grimace.
"Ready?" Barker shouted, running up the engine and edging his right foot away from the center of the brake pedal until only the edge of his cheap shower slipper's cardboard sole was holding it down. "Not frightened, are you?" He stared piercingly into Hawks' face. "Are you?"
Hawks reached over and pulled out the ignition key. "I see," he said quietly.
Barker's hand flashed out and crushed his wrist. "I'm not Connington and that's no bottle — hand over those keys."
Hawks relaxed his fingers until the keys barely kept from falling. He put out his other arm and blocked Barker's awkward, left-handed reach for them. "Use the hand that's holding my wrist," he said.
Barker slowly took the keys. Hawks climbed out of the car.
"How are you going to get to the city?" Claire asked as he walked past the steps.
Hawks said, "I walked long distances when I was a boy. But not to prove my physical endurance."