Selections

by Theodore Sturgeon

  'The circuit breaker!" cried Kelly.

  He threw the holder up on the deck plate of the Seven in front of the seat, and ran across the little beach to the welder. He reached behind the switchboard, got his thumb on the contact hinge and jammed it down.

  Daisy Etta leaped again, and then again, and suddenly her motor stopped. Heat in turbulent waves blurred the air over her. The little gas tank for the starting motor went out with a cannon's roar, and the big fuel tank, still holding thirty-odd gallons of Diesel oil, followed. It puffed itself open rather than exploded, and threw a great curtain of flame over the ground behind the machine. Motor or no motor, then, Kelly distinctly saw the tractor shudder convulsively. There was a crawling movement of the whole frame, a slight wave of motion away from the fuel tank, approaching the front of the machine, and moving upward from the tracks. It culminated in the crown of the radiator core, just in front of the radiator cap; and suddenly an area of six or seven square inches literally blurred around the edges. For a second, then, it was normal, and finally it slumped molten, and liquid metal ran down the sides, throwing out little sparks as it encountered what was left of the charred paint. And only then was Kelly conscious of agony in his left hand. He looked down. The welding machine's generator had stopped, though the motor was still turning, having smashed the friable coupling on its drive shaft. Smoke poured from the generator, which had become little more than a heap of slag. Kelly did not scream, though, until he looked and saw what had happened to his hand—

  When he could see straight again, he called for Tom, and there was no answer. At last he saw something out in the water, and plunged in after it. The splash of cold salt water on his left hand he hardly felt, for the numbness of shock had set in. He grabbed at Tom's shirt with his good hand, and then the ground seemed to pull itself out from under his feet. That was it, then—a deep hole right off the beach. The Seven had run right to the edge of it, had kept Tom there out of his depth and—

  He flailed wildly, struck out for the beach, so near and so hard to get to. He gulped a stinging lungful of brine, and only the lovely shock of his knee striking solid beach kept him from giving up to the luxury of choking to death. Sobbing with effort, he dragged Tom's dead weight inshore and clear of the surf. It was then that he became conscious of a child's shrill weeping; for a mad moment he thought it was he himself, and then he looked and saw that it was Al Knowles. He left Tom and went over to the broken creature.

  'Get up, you," he snarled. The weeping only got louder. Kelly rolled him over on his back—he was quite unresisting—and belted him back and forth across the mouth until Al began to choke. Then he hauled him to his feet and led him over to Tom.

  'Kneel down, scum. Put one of your knees between his knees." Al stood still. Kelly hit him again and he did as he was told.

  'Put your hands on his lower ribs. There. O.K. Lean, you rat. Now sit back." He sat down, holding his left wrist in his right hand, letting the blood drop from the ruined hand. "Lean. Hold it—sit back. Lean.

  Sit. Lean. Sit."

  Soon Tom sighed and began to vomit weakly, and after that he was all right.

  This is the story of Daisy Etta, the bulldozer that went mad and had a life of its own, and not the story of the missile test that they don't talk about except to refer to it as the missile test that they don't talk about.

  But you may have heard about it for all that—rumors, anyway. The rumor has it that an early IRBM tested out a radically new controls system by proving conclusively that it did not work. It was a big bird and contained much juice, and flew far, far afield. Rumor goes on to assert that (a) it alighted somewhere in the unmapped rain forests of South America and that (b) there were no casualties. What they really don't talk about is the closely guarded report asserting that both (a) and (b) are false. There are only two people (aside from yourself, now) who know for sure that though (a) is certainly false, (b) is strangely true, and there were indeed no casualties.

  Al Knowles may well know it too, but he doesn't count.

  It happened two days after the death of Daisy Etta, as Tom and Kelly sat in (of all places) the cool of the ruined temple. They were poring over paper and pencil, trying to complete the impossible task of making a written statement of what had happened on the island, and why they and their company had failed to complete their contract. They had found Chub and Harris, and had buried them next to the other three. Al Knowles was back in the shadows, tied up, because they had heard him raving in his sleep, and it seemed he could not believe Daisy was dead and he still wanted to go around killing operators for her.

  They knew that there must be an investigation, and they knew just how far their story would go; and having escaped a monster like Daisy Etta, they found life too sweet to want any part of it spent under observation or in jail.

  The warhead of the missile struck near the edge of their camp, just between the pyramid of fuel drums and the dynamite stores. The second stage alighted a moment later two miles away, in the vicinity of the five graves. Kelly and Tom stumbled out to the rim of the mesa, and for a long while watched the jetsam fall and the flotsam rise. It was Kelly who guessed what must have happened, and "Bless their clumsy little hearts," he said happily. And he took the scribbled papers from Tom and tore them across.

  But Tom shook his head, and thumbed back at the mound. " He'll talk."

  'Him?" said Kelly, with such profound eloquence in his tone that he clearly evoked the image of Al Knowles, with his mumbling voice and his drooling mouth and his wide glazed eyes. "Let him," Kelly said, and tore the papers again.

  So they let him.

  NEVER UNDERESTIMATE

  First appeared in Worlds of IF, March 1952

  “She was brazen, of course,” said Luanda, passing the marmalade, “but the brass was beautifully polished. The whole thing made me quite angry, though at the same time I was delighted.”

  Meticulously Dr. Lefferts closed the newly-arrived Journal of the Microbiological Institute, placed it on the copy of Strength of Materials in Various Radioisotopic Alloys which lay beside his plate, and carefully removed his pince-nez. “You begin in mid-sequence,” he said, picking up a butter knife. “Your thought is a predicate without a stated subject. Finally, your description of your reactions contains parts which appear mutually exclusive.” He attacked the marmalade. “Will you elucidate?”

  Lucinda laughed good-naturedly. “Of course, darling. Where would you like me to begin?”

  “Oh…” Dr. Lefferts made a vague gesture. “Practically anywhere. Anywhere at all. Simply supply more relative data in order that I may extrapolate the entire episode and thereby dispose of it. Otherwise I shall certainly keep returning to it all day long. Lucinda, why do you continually do this to me?”

  “Do what, dear?”

  “Present me with colorful trivialities in just such amounts as will make me demand to hear you out. I have a trained mind, Lucinda; a fine-honed, logical mind. It must think things through. You know that. Why do you continually do this to me?”

  “Because,” said Lucinda placidly, “if I started at the beginning and went right through to the end, you wouldn’t listen.”

  “I most certainly…eh. Perhaps you’re right.” He laid marmalade onto an English muffin in three parallel bands, and began smoothing them together at right angles to their original lay. “You are right, my dear. That must be rather difficult for you from time to time…yes?”

  “No indeed,” said Lucinda, and smiled. “Not as long as I can get your full attention when I want it. And I can.”

  Dr. Lefferts chewed her statement with his muffin. At last he said, “I admit that in your inimitable—uh—I think one calls it female way, you can. At least in regard to small issues. Now do me the kindness to explain to me what stimuli could cause you to”—his voice supplied the punctuation—”feel ‘quite angry’ and ‘delighted’ simultaneously.”

  Lucinda leaned forward to pour fresh coffee into his cooling cup. She was an ample woman,
with an almost tailored combination of svelteness and relaxation. Her voice was like sofa-pillows and her eyes like blued steel. “It was on the Boulevard,” she said. “I was waiting to cross when this girl drove through a red light under the nose of a policeman. It was like watching a magazine illustration come to life—the bright yellow convertible and the blazing blonde in the bright yellow dress…darling, I do think you should call this year’s bra manufacturers for consultation in your Anti-Gravity Research division. They achieve the most baffling effects…anyway, there she was and there by the car was the traffic cop, as red-faced and Hibernian a piece of typecasting as you could wish. He came blustering over to her demanding to know begorry—I think he actually did say begorry—was she color-blind now, or did she perhaps not give a care this marnin’?”

  “In albinos,” said Dr. Lefferts, “color perception is—”

  Lucinda raised her smooth voice just sufficiently to override him without a break in continuity. “Now, here was an errant violation of the law, flagrantly committed under the eyes of an enforcement officer. I don’t have to tell you what should have happened. What did happen was that the girl kept her head turned away from him until his hands were on the car door. In the sun that hair of hers was positively dazzling. When he was close enough—within range, that is—she tossed her hair back and was face to face with him. You could see that great lump of bog-peat turn to putty. And she said to him (and if I’d had a musical notebook with me I could have jotted down her voice in sharps and flats)—she said, ‘Why, officer, I did it on purpose just so I could see you up close.’”

  Dr. Lefferts made a slight, disgusted sound. “He arrested her.”

  “He did not,” said Lucinda. “He shook a big thick finger at her as if she were a naughty but beloved child, and the push-button blarney that oozed out of him was as easy to see as the wink he gave her. That’s what made me mad.”

  “And well it should.” He folded his napkin. “Violations of the law should be immediately pun—”

  “The law had little to do with it,” Lucinda said warmly. “I was angry because I know what would have happened to you or to me in that same situation. We’re just not equipped.”

  “I begin to see.” He put his pince-nez back on and peered at her. “And what was it that delighted you?”

  She stretched easily and half-closed her eyes. “The—what you have called the femaleness of it. It’s good to be a woman, darling, and to watch another woman be female skillfully.”

  “I quarrel with your use of the term ‘skillfully,’” he said, folding his napkin. “Her ‘skill’ is analogous to an odor of musk or other such exudation in the lower animals.”

  “It is not,” she said flatly. “With the lower animals, bait of that kind means one thing and one thing only, complete and final. With a woman, it means nothing of the kind. Never mind what it might mean; consider what it does mean. Do you think for a moment that the blonde in the convertible was making herself available to the policeman?”

  “She was hypothesizing a situation in which—”

  “She was hypothesizing nothing of the kind. She was blatantly and brazenly getting out of paying a traffic fine, and that was absolutely all. And you can carry it one step further; do you think that for one split second the policeman actually believed that she was inviting him? Of course he didn’t! And yet that situation is one that has obtained through the ages. Women have always been able to get what they wanted from men by pretending to promise a thing which they know men want but will not or cannot take. Mind you, I’m not talking about situations where this yielding is the main issue. I’m talking about the infinitely greater number of occasions where yielding has nothing to do with it. Like weaseling out of traffic tickets.”

  “Or skillfully gaining your husband’s reluctant attention over the breakfast table.”

  Her sudden laughter was like a shower of sparks. “You’d better get down to the Institute,” she said. “You’ll be late.”

  He arose, picked up his book and pamphlet, and walked slowly to the door. Lucinda came with him, hooking her arm through his. Suddenly he stopped, and without looking at her, asked quietly, “That policeman was a manipulated, undignified fool, wasn’t he?”

  “Of course he was, darling, and it made a man of him.”

  He nodded as if accepting a statistic, and, kissing her, walked out of the house.

  Darling, she thought, dear sweet chrome-plated, fine-drawn, high-polished blueprint…I think I’ve found where you keep your vanity. She watched him walk with his even, efficient, unhurried stride to the gate. There he paused and looked back.

  “This has been going on too long,” he called. “I shall alter it.”

  Lucinda stopped smiling.

  “May I come in?”

  “Jenny, of course.” Lucinda went to the kitchen door and unhooked it. “Come in, come in. My, you’re prettier than ever this morning.”

  “I brought you violets,” said Jenny breathlessly. “Just scads of ‘em in the woods behind my place. You took your red curtains down. Is that a new apron? My! You had Canadian bacon for breakfast.”

  She darted in past Lucinda, a small, wiry, vibrant girl with sunlit hair and moonlight eyes. “Can I help with the dishes?”

  “Thank you, you doll.” Lucinda took down a shallow glass bowl for the violets.

  Jenny busily ran hot water into the sink. “I couldn’t help seeing,” she said. “Your big picture window…Lucinda, you never leave the breakfast dishes. I keep telling Bob, someday I’ll have the routines you have, everything always so neat, never running out of anything, never in a hurry, never surprised…anyway, all the way over I could see you just sitting by the table there, and the dishes not done and all…is everything all right? I mean, don’t tell me if I shouldn’t ask, but I couldn’t help…” Her voice trailed off into an ardent and respectful mumble.

  “You’re such a sweetheart,” Lucinda said mistily. She came over to the sink carrying clean dishtowels and stood holding them, staring out past Jenny’s head to the level lawns of the village. “Actually, I did have something on my mind…something…”

  She related the whole conversation over breakfast that morning, from her abrupt and partial mentioning of the anecdote about the blonde and the policeman, to her husband’s extraordinary and unequivocal statement about women’s power over men: This has been going on too long. I shall alter it.

  “Is that all?” Jenny asked when she had finished.

  “Mm. It’s all that was said.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you should worry about that.” She crinkled up her eyes, and Lucinda understood that she was putting herself and her young husband in the place of Lucinda and Dr. Lefferts, and trying to empathize a solution. “I think you might have hurt his feelings a little, maybe,” Jenny said at length. “I mean, you admitted that you handled him in much the same way as that blonde handled the policeman, and then you said the policeman was a fool.”

  Lucinda smiled. “Very shrewd. And what’s your guess about that parting shot?”

  Jenny turned to face her. “You’re not teasing me, asking my opinion, Lucinda? I never thought I’d see the day! Not you—you’re so wise!”

  Lucinda patted her shoulder. “The older I get, the more I feel that among women there is a lowest common denominator of wisdom, and that the chief difference between them is a random scattering of blind spots. No, honey, I’m not teasing you. You may be able to see just where I can’t. Now tell me: what do you think he meant by that?”

  “’I shall alter it,’” Jenny quoted thoughtfully. “Oh, I don’t think he meant anything much. You showed him how you could make him do things, and he didn’t like it. He’s decided not to let you do it anymore, but—but…”

  “But what?”

  “Well, it’s like with Bob. When he gets masterful and lays down the law I just agree with him. He forgets about it soon enough. If you agree with men all the time they can’t get stubborn about anything.”

 
Lucinda laughed aloud. “There’s the wisdom!” she cried. Sobering, she shook her head. “You don’t know the doctor the way I do. He’s a great man—a truly great one, with a great mind. It’s great in a way no other mind has ever been. He’s—different. Jenny, I know how people talk, and what a lot of them say. People wonder why I married him, why I’ve stayed with him all these years. They say he’s stuffy and didactic and that he has no sense of humor. Well, to them he may be; but to me he is a continual challenge. The rules-of-thumb that keep most men in line don’t apply to him.

  “And if he says he can do something, he can. If he says he will do something, he will.”

  Jenny dried her hands and sat down slowly. “He meant,” she said positively, “that he would alter your ability to make him do things. Because the only other thing he could have meant was that he was going to alter the thing that makes it possible for any woman to handle any man. And that just couldn’t be. How could he change human nature?”