“So I am neither a prude nor a libertine,” he chuckled to himself. His fancy veered to wonder how far he could have beaten down the asking price. J steadied himself and steered away from some ribald wordplay. “Well, he hadn’t wanted that woman at any price. On the other hand, neither had he been compelled to take her in order to prove something or other. Maybe he wasn’t normal.
Oh, come on, given another time, another place, another woman, another mood, and not quite so much wine … “Humph,” J chuckled to himself, “I’ll bet I’m neither normal nor abnormal. I must be somewhere in the middle.” He knew there was something wrong with the logic of this, but he was in no mood to be logical in so ridiculous a world as this one.
He had gone a few yards, talking to himself, smiling to himself, when he saw Avery Gardner mooching along toward him. J hailed the tall lad.
“Oh, hi,” said Avery, drifting to a halt. He must have just come from the beach, but he was not sunburned. J, looking at this chap with eyes refreshed, thought that the sun didn’t seem to be interested in Avery. (Neither would the moon be, alas!) The boy didn’t look healthy to J. Too white, too skinny, too wispy. Eyes red-rimmed behind thick lenses. Posture poor. Thin neck, too slight a stalk for the heavy blossom of that skull. Poor kid, J thought.
“Wait a minute, Avery,” he said briskly, fishing for his checkbook. “How are you by the way?” J made this a true question.
“’M ’K,” said Avery dully.
“Let me use your shoulder,” said J, turning him with a gentle shove. “I want to write another little check here, and then I want you to make an appointment with a regular doctor, over and above the eye man. Mind now! And you do what the doctor says.”
Resting the checkbook on Avery’s shoulder blade, J began to write out a check for the sum of a hundred dollars. Meantime Avery stood with his neck in a violent twist, not seeming to know what J was doing or whether Avery ought not to shy away in animal alarm.
“Okay, thanks,” J tore out the check. “This is for you, yourself,” he said sternly. “Tell Amy …” J had been going to say “I worked very hard for it,” but he thought that was pretty smart-alecky. “Tell Amy,” he substituted, “that I might take some understanding, too.” J winced at what he had said. But better words failed him, and Avery probably wasn’t listening anyway. So J gave up, patted the lad’s shoulder, and went striding off toward the sea.
Although Avery had heard the words, he had scarcely seen J’s face. Numbed by pain-killers, he walked on, went upstairs, in at his own door, and said to Amy, “Look. Your father said he could take some understanding.” Avery wasn’t in the habit of struggling to figure out (with his brain) why other people did as they did. He sank down, took off his glasses, put his palms over his eyes, and paid not even bewildered heed to what Amy did now.
She took one swift glance at the check in her hand. Her mouth contorted. “Buying, eh?” She snatched the other check out of her book and tore it, with the second one, into little pieces and threw all the pieces at the ceiling.
J found himself leaning, bemused, against a chest-high stone wall, gazing across the sands toward the mirror-bright sea, watching the tiny human creatures frisking along its edge as if an ocean were a plaything invented for their holiday.
Well, he didn’t understand what Avery Gardner was up to in this world. But had his daughter Amy never understood what J was up to, at all?
Since when is a soul negotiable in the marketplace? he mused. Who sets out to buy one of those? A man might market his strength, his skill, his knowledge, or even his mere presence in a certain place (from nine to five), but it’s his own fault if he gets his soul tangled up in the package. Who needs it? What the devil would Herman Bringgold want with any soul of mine?
J sighed. What a strange conception Amy had of business. As if every business weren’t in a state of snafu, 90 percent of the time, so that the marvel is that anything gets done. What with the unreliability of even those who intend to be reliable, the personalities clashing within, not to mention the outside factors, the tides and the winds that flow and blow in history. Shocks and surprises that no man, by selling his soul or anything else, could prevent or often even anticipate. To J the whole raft of seemingly hardheaded occupations subsumed under the word “business” floated in a sea of chance on a mass of emotional jelly.
His image was getting away from him, and someone seemed to have come up beside him and was now leaning on the wall near enough so that he could sense the warmth of the body. This was odd, considering the expanse of leaning space.
A female voice said, “Nice day for Ark launching. Maybe Noah didn’t have to launch. Did he? Or just sit and watch the water coming up? What do you think, Mr. Little?”
CHAPTER 15
Tuesday Afternoon Continued
J turned a startled head. She was probably a very pretty girl. She wore all the labels to say so. As young, or younger, than Amy. Her hair a saucy artificial silver. Gray eyes painted around with blues and purples saying, “SEE … THE … GIRL.… IS … SHE … NOT … DESIRABLE?”
“I believe Tony Thees told you to expect me,” she said. “I have something for you.”
J cast a look around at the wide sand, the sea, the sky, and the gray, deserted line of the wall. “How did you know I was here?” he gasped. He had never been exactly here in his whole life before.
“Oh, Tony called and told me to rush on down,” she said, leaning gracefully, gazing out to sea now. “He said you were calling on your daughter, and it might be a good chance to catch you alone.”
J felt caught, all right. He didn’t like it. “How did this Tony know?” he demanded.
“Tony keeps his eye on,” the girl said. “By the way, Mr. Barry Goodrick was keeping his eye on, so Tony had to bop him one in the fender, outside your doctor’s office.”
“Wha …” said J, staggering. “Listen … who is everybody?”
“My name is Annette Woods,” she said. “I am supposed to help Tony help you. Tony is afraid Goodrick knows his face, but Goodrick doesn’t know mine.”
“Neither do I,” said J.
She turned her head and smiled up at him.
“Did Goodrick try to talk to you on the plane?” she asked.
J reeled again and clutched the wall. He had the disagreeable feeling that he was in the presence of omniscience.
“Uh-huh,” he groaned.
“Please tell me the whole conversation.”
“How come you don’t already know every damn word that was said?” barked J. “Listen, I don’t want people keeping an eye on me.”
“Oh, please don’t think …” The girl’s crisp outline seemed to blur. Her voice became—what? Wistful? (Full of wist, eh? thought J.) “I’m not suspecting you of talking too much. I know you wouldn’t do that. It’s just that this Goodrick is an awful tricky man, Tony says.”
“I can’t stand him,” said J. “He said he used to work for Bark … for Doctor Willing, but he got fired.”
“That’s true, I believe.” Now she was listening gravely, sweetly.
“And he implied that Bark—Doctor Willing was up to something—scientific, I guess—that he knew all about.”
“I doubt he does.”
“So did I,” said J. “The idea was that since I knew, too, we could have a nice chat about it.”
“But you didn’t?”
“Of course not.”
“So then?” she prompted.
“He said he worked undercover for the U.S.A.”
“Not true.”
“He said it was a security problem. They were scared this Bark—the doctor would say too much.”
“You didn’t believe that?” Her eye was adding slyly, You’re too smart, aren’t you?
“I neither believed nor disbelieved,” said J stiffly. “I’m lost in the shuffle, believe me.”
“And that was all you said, Mr. Little?”
“Well, we discussed Hamlet.”
“Hamlet!”
“Well, we didn’t exactly discuss Hamlet. Listen,” said J, “I wish you’d tell me why I’m standing here answering all your questions? How do I know you’re on the right side, whatever that is?”
“I am here to carry out Doctor Willing’s wishes,” she said. “So I am on your side, sir.”
“What is he to you?” snapped J, because she was now a shade too young, too pure, too deferential.
“An older man,” she said with innocent eyes, “I admired very, very much.”
J looked out to sea.
“This is for you,” she said softly. She took a small package out of her handbag, wrapped in newspaper. She put it on the wall before him, and J picked it up. He slid the string off the package, noting the genuine Chicago newspaper, and unwrapped a metal plaque about the size and shape of a playing card. The color was a dull silver. One side was plain. The other side was embossed with a design. It might have been a paperweight.
Then, as he stared, an Arabic seven came out at the upper left and upside down at the lower right. Next to each J could now see a Roman seven, done in delicate long-legged ridges, similarly reversed. Scattered around there were many small bosses, each dimpled in a familiar shape. Oh, yes, J said to himself—half-moons.
He gave the girl a glance. She smiled. He began to count. Sure enough, there were fourteen half-moons. “Two doesn’t gazinta, eh?” said J, amused. “But, you know, they could have made them full and put the seventh in the middle.” He blinked and looked at her.
“I don’t know why they didn’t,” she said calmly. “That’s seven in your name.”
“Seven what?” he said, testing.
She put her hand on his sleeve and said very softly, “Seven seats to the moon.”
“Well, well, this is pretty cute,” he said, hefting the object. “Somebody sure went to a lot of trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” she said. “I’m all the time taking something to somebody.”
“Who are you?”
“Why, I’m your contact, sir. I am to contact all passengers in this part of the world when the time comes.”
“Are you a passenger?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be going with you.” This was very, very innocent. Was it?
“Any more seats to be had?” said J, frowning.
“I believe not, sir.”
“What are you? A brain?” He turned on her.
“No, sir,” she replied sweetly. “A certain number of healthy young females are to be available.”
J looked to sea to hide his smile. The little object was warming in his hand. (Seven seats to the moon! Could it be? Of course not.) He thought it a pity that this girl had learned to lie so well, so young, but she wasn’t perfect. She’d gone a little bit too far just now.
The girl said, “Uncle J?”
“Huh!”
“Have you a sister?”
“Nope.”
“A grown-up female cousin, then?”
“I used to have.”
“What was her name?”
“Cynthia Hamilton.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Lived in Columbus, Ohio. Taught high school for thirty years. Never married. Has passed away.”
“How long since?”
“Two … two and a half years. Why?”
The girl’s face was twinkling with mischief now. “Well, for goodness sakes!” she said. “Dear old Miss Hamilton! I was a protégé of hers, as good as her daughter. She told me to look you up, Cousin J.”
J shifted uneasily away from her. “No, no. I’m not going to get mixed up in a pack of lies and make things worse than they are now. Listen, I said I wouldn’t talk, and I won’t, and that ain’t easy. So that’s all you’re going to get from me.”
She said nothing.
“I don’t believe a word of it, anyhow,” he grumbled.
The girl bent over the wall. “I wish I could explain the whole thing to you better, Mr. Little,” she said, becoming wistful once more. “I don’t know enough to do that. I just know that it’s terribly important. We’re kind of in the same Ark, wouldn’t you say?”
“In the middle, eh?” he said.
“That’s right.” She widened her eyes in admiration. “But listen,” she went on, putting her small and narrow-fingered hand on his sleeve again, “it’s bothering my … my bosses that this Goodrick keeps following you.”
“He won’t get anything out of me,” said J. “I can’t stand him.”
“But there are ways, you know.”
“What’s this?”
“Oh, if you were drugged.”
“Lady,” said J gently, “fun is fun, but don’t push me too far.”
She seemed startled.
“I know,” she sighed in a moment. “It does sound absolutely fantastic. But—funny things go on. I guess I’ve promised, too.”
“Promised?”
“I’m supposed to help you if I can.”
J couldn’t help being pleased with her at the moment. Her eyes so respectful, her perfume in his nostrils. He patted her bare right hand. “And you’re being a very good girl,” he said as if to reassure her. He saw the tiny leap of suspicion in her eye.
“Say,” he went on, “I’d like to talk to this Tony fellow or somebody who could give me an extension on my original promise.”
“Oh?”
“I think I’d better tell my wife, you see.”
“Oh.” The girl drew away, her mouth in the O still.
“Are you married?” J asked. She shook her head. “Well, then, let me tell you that if I keep on trying to keep a secret from my wife, I’m heading into trouble.”
“I don’t have authority.”
“But you can get in touch with your bosses. So pass my question on like a good girl? And let me know as soon as you can.”
She said in a new voice, low and loaded with awe, “Doctor Willing died. Did you know?”
“Yes, I—”
“He wouldn’t risk saying so much as a word, where even one nurse—one common ordinary nurse—might hear it. Just in case. It’s that important.”
J straightened, feeling his bones creak.
“Of course,” she went on mournfully, “I know it must be awfully difficult to keep a secret from your wife.”
“But pretty common ordinary, compared with jumping out the window, eh?” said J irritably. “Don’t preach to me, please.”
He put the ticket into his pocket and stuffed its wrapping into his pocket, too. She seemed to be watching him warily.
“Who does Goodrick work for?” J demanded.
“Tony says he works for”—she squeezed her eyes shut, and then they flew open—“somebody who isn’t very bright. Who thinks—well—that half the world could blow up without hurting the other half.”
J was startled by an echo here. Hadn’t Barkis said something along these lines?
“Well, well,” he drawled. “So if I tell Goodrick all I know, then this not very bright fellow is going to blow it, and maybe even us chosen few don’t get away. Oh, boy, imagine that.” J shook his head. “Little me, with such great power. Mankind in the palm of my hand. All power corrupts. Who said that?”
The girl swayed suddenly toward him. Her forehead came against his chest. J had to hold her. It wasn’t an unpleasant chore.
“We don’t know enough,” she said, voice muffled, “you and I. But I don’t want them to force you to talk.”
“How come,” said J amiably, “you haven’t got one of those capsules for me to tuck in the back of my tooth? Just in case?”
She swayed away and looked up with a spark of anger.
“It’s okay,” soothed J. “My name is Legion. Now, they don’t ask old Legion, ordinarily, to keep important secrets. Poor old Legion, he usually doesn’t know what’s going on till somebody exposes it twenty years later. But it’s okay. I’m on the side of not letting the world blow up, for what that’s worth. Say, can I give you a lift, or have you got a car?”
/> “I parked behind you,” she said tightly.
J turned her with a touch on her arm. She obeyed. They began to walk away from the beach, along the street. They said nothing. J stopped at his car and put his hand on the door handle.
“You can call me, Miss—uh—”
“Cousin Annette,” she said. Then, there she was, standing in a certain way. J didn’t know how women did it, but this one knew how. A vision of Lily crossed his mind’s eye. J grinned. He put his forefinger on the girl’s nose and pushed it playfully. “I sure feel safer,” he said, “now that you are going to protect me. Good luck with the universe, kitten.”
He got in and drove jauntily away.
From the window above, Amy watched the girl (what girl was this?) get into the other car and leave. She couldn’t understand.
J went his way, convinced that the girl and this Tony-on-the-telephone had, indeed, come from Barkis and were somehow continuing that man’s gambit. So Goodrick must be on another side. But J, who didn’t know what the game really was, could not play. (To whom could he usefully tell what?) He was more like a pawn, he guessed. Well, then, his concern was to slide off the board altogether. He had lived long enough to know, for sure, that if you quietly continue the way that you were going, many problems simply vanish into air, thin air.
But she was pretty cute, that girl, in an insulting kind of way.
CHAPTER 16
Tuesday Evening
By the time J had snatched himself a bite to eat and ambled home at last, the afternoon was waning toward the dinner hour. He came in from the garage, braced for questions, but Marietta, standing at the kitchen counter, cutting carrot sticks, hailed him with a joyous cry. “Company’s coming! Tobias is in town! Oh, J, isn’t that wonderful?”
“What do you know?” drawled J. He looked at Sophia, who was there in the kitchen, very busy, and the moment their eyes met he knew that life had taken one of its mysterious turns for the better. Sophia said, with the skin crinkling around her eyes, that the doctor had called, the tests were fine, the doctor was proud of J.
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