Selections

by Theodore Sturgeon

  She opened the door. “Hurry back,” she said.

  He watched her cross the road shoulder and enter the woods. He shrugged into his damp jacket. It was clammy, but would cover his holster. Then he pulled into the drive. He turned at the parking court, wondering about the mental processes of landscapers who built graceful curves into a road which so often would have life or death at the end of it, and swung in under the brightly-lit port-cochere.

  A grizzled guard hobbled over to him, peered. “Had Guinn! Back again?”

  “With a customer. Get a couple of butchers out here with a stretcher, will you, Jerry?”

  He followed the old man in and went over to the registration window. “Hello, Cheryl.”

  A blonde woman with a face like the most comfortable of sofa pillows looked up through the glass. When she saw him she smiled. It was like the kind of lamplight that goes with that kind of pillow. “Hadley!”

  “I brought Garry in,” he said bluntly. “Someone creased his head.”

  She rose. “Is he—”

  “Doesn’t look too bad. But I’d like to know right away. I’m on a case. Will you take care of the gunshot report for me?”

  “Oh, yes.” She got out the form, slid it through to him.

  He signed it on the bottom line. “One more thing. I know you people do the best you can, but I’d like you to think up something even better for Garry. Whatever he needs, hear? I mean anything.”

  He got his wallet out and thumbed through its inside compartment. An expression of almost stupid astonishment slackened his features.

  Cheryl said, “What is it, Hadley? You been robbed?”

  “No…” His eyes came back to earth. “No, Cheryl, I should say not.” He pulled bills out of the wallet.

  C-notes. Five of them.

  He closed his eyes. There was that center drawer of his desk. In it, the telephone company’s envelope. In the envelope, three of the C-notes the Morgan chick had given him. Five minus three left two. There ought to be two hundred in the wallet. There were five.

  “What is it, Hadley?”

  He looked at her. “Just trying to figure out whether or not I’d tipped a waiter. Here.” He slid two of the bills through the hole. They settled to her desk like a couple of pigeons on a roof. That’s extra, over the bill. I got more.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I do have to. I just want to know he’s a bit more than all right. Uh…you don’t have to talk to him about it.”

  She smiled. “The way you treat him, he thinks you hate him.” She picked up the money.

  “So he keeps on trying hard to make me happy. If he thought I was happy, why should he bother?”

  “You’re a softy, Hadley Guinn.”

  “You’re a pretty hard character yourself.” He winked at her. “Oh. Cheryl—”

  “Yes, Had.”

  “Can you dredge me up a nurse’s uniform? Not the starched job—one of those lab wraparounds.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “My Sunday school’s putting on a pageant,” he explained. “I’m to be Florence Nightingale.”

  “Idiot. What size?”

  “About Miss Roark and a half.” Miss Roark was the trim one in the super’s office.

  “Sure, Hadley.” She went through a door at the back of the office. Guinn turned. They were bringing Garry in. He looked very white. Guinn followed the interns into the receiving ward. A tired man with wakeful eyes waved the interns toward an examining table. “Hello, Jim.”

  The doctor thumped his shoulder. “Good to see you. That’s your Number One boy, isn’t it? Garry what’s-his-name?”

  “Yeah. Can you give me a verdict quickly. I got to go.”

  “What happened to him?”

  The doctor bent over Garry’s head while Guinn told him. Then he rolled Garry’s lids back, peered at the eyes. He put on his stethoscope and prodded around with it.

  “He might need a transfusion. Concussion possibly. Shock certainly. He might have trouble with the hearing on that side for a while. He’s a lucky boy.”

  “How long will the transfusion take me?”

  “No time at all. Not for you, Guinn. He’s Type B, you’re A. Don’t worry about it. We have lots in the bank. You won’t do.”

  “You can tell by my astral vibrations?”

  The doctor laughed. “I can tell by memory. The last time you two gave blood for the Red Cross he asked me what your blood type was, and swore a blue streak when he found out his was different. He thought he might be useful to you some time.”

  “Hell.” Guinn looked at the still face. “Take care of him, Jim.”

  “Sure.” He bent over the patient again. Guinn read that one casual syllable all the way through, and in it found what sort of care Garry was going to get. He said, “Thanks, Jim,” and went out.

  Cheryl was waiting for him with a neatly folded paper package. “Hadley…”

  “Oh, thanks, Cheryl. The uniform.” He took it.

  She said, “I think I ought to tell you. There was someone here today boning through the hospital records. Yours especially.”

  “Looking for what? That bone operation?”

  She shook her head. “That’s in the journals—how they picked a .44 slug piece by piece out of your bone marrow. No, Hadley, the birth records.”

  His face went absolutely expressionless. “Who was it?”

  “A girl. A really beautiful girl.”

  “Probably from a matrimonial agency trying to answer some maiden’s prayer. What kind of authority did she have?” Cheryl recoiled at the way the last words grated out. Guinn touched her shoulder. “Sorry. Well?”

  “She had identification from the State Census. Strictly kosher. I just thought you ought to know.” Her eyes were very soft. “Hadley, it makes more difference than it should to you. Not the investigator. You know.”

  “My birth records. Yes, I know. Maybe it does. It makes a difference to any of us.” He looked down at the package, crinkled the paper. “Hey, I got to get out of here. Thanks for everything, Cheryl.”

  “For nothing, honey. Hadley, I won’t ask you about your business, but if you’ve got to go near any more gun fights, let’s not have any more hospital cases on your side. Hm?”

  He went to the door, waved. “I’ll be good.” She cared. She gave a damn. It’s fine to know somebody gives a damn. “By the way, what was the name of the nosy chick?”

  Cheryl said, “Morgan.”

  Hadley steered through the pylon-guarded entrance, wheeled across the highway, and stopped. He waited.

  Nothing happened.

  He slid across the seat and peered into the black wall of the forest. Nothing.

  He got back behind the wheel. He lit a cigarette. That took a little time. He opened the package, wadded up the paper and tossed it back over the seat, unfolded the crisp white dress and draped it over the seat next to him. That took some time too.

  She didn’t come.

  He uttered a sudden snort of disgust. Of course! The lights. He shifted, angled the car close in to the ditch, and shut off the lights and motor.

  It was very quiet out there. The forest slept, but for all its sleep it was alive with little creaks and whisperings. He climbed out, and something made him close the door very quietly.

  There was no wind. Somewhere a train uttered a two-toned cry, and the mountains threw it back like a wailing wall. The hospital was a gold-checkered garment tossed carelessly on a hassock, with the checks showing randomly back, up, across. The emergency entrance blazed defiantly at the patient blackness, and from the whole structure came a hum of power; machines turning, water running, life flowing, coming in, going out.

  The woods had their low, live sound, too, but it was at odds with the hospital and everything it represented. The forest had its light, too.

  It took Guinn a while to see the light, because his pupils were still tensed from the brilliance of the receiving ward. It was not firelight, and it wasn’t
a flashlight. It looked like the third or fourth reflection of a welder’s arc, but without an arc’s flicker. Nor was it steady, like a magnesium flare; it waxed and waned irregularly, like the sound of a crowd at a prize fight. And it was very, very dim.

  Guinn hesitated. Had Lynn seen the light? Probably. She had been very alone and very watchful, crouching naked in the dark. Had she then gone to investigate? It could be. She had more guts than most regiments. If he went in there, he might miss her. If she got to the car and he wasn’t there, would she wait for him?

  What else? He reached in the window, got his keys out of the ignition and the dress from the front seat. His clothes were still damp, but the night was very warm. He folded the dress and tucked it inside his jacket, on the right side. Then he headed for the brush.

  The thicket just over the ditch was like an ancient boxwood, tangled and impenetrable. He cast to the right until he found what looked like an opening. He had to fight the branches, and he did so quietly. He got through, and found himself in a patch of wood that was very like virgin forest—a solid roof overhead and very little underbrush. He could see the light much better now, waxing and waning through the stark trunks. The going was good, and the possibility of Lynn’s being back here made a lot more sense. The first thing she would have done would be to get through the hedge; after that, the light must have beckoned her strongly.

  He forged ahead, unconsciously taking on the sliding stride of a natural woodsman, finding and avoiding projecting roots and rocks. His eyes were wide; he felt that an infrared picture would show his pupils almost as big as his irises. Bigger, maybe. His lips twitched at the fantastic thought, and he switched it out of his mind.

  He began to hear the voice.

  There is a passage in Ravel’s Bolero where the composer, either through a thorough scientific knowledge of vibratory physics or instinctively, under the guidance of his trained ears, gives the great droning solo theme to the clarinet, and adds a piccolo part. That piccolo, on paper, is sheer nonsense. It plays the same theme at the same intervals, but in a different and totally unrelated key. It makes almost as little sense on the piano. Orchestrated, it creates one of the most astonishing effects known to music. Its compulsion, as it restates the already hypnotic theme, is indescribable—and largely a function of the psychological susceptibilities of the listener. In acoustical terms, what is happening is that the clarinet, more than most instruments, projects harmonics with its basic tone. Ravel’s amazing treatment uses a piccolo, which is very stingy with its overtones, to reinforce the usually inaudible fifth harmonic of the clarinet. The effect is that of a new voice, never heard before, speaking with the familiar tones of a friend.

  This little-known piece of musicology flashed through Guinn’s mind as he heard the voice. The analogy was an exact one, for that was precisely what was happening, except that the voice which stated the basic tone was something more than human. It was certainly a single voice, but it had the quality of a great many ranges, from the highest tenor to the most shattering basso profundo, all speaking in unison. The second voice, the one pitched in a disharmony that served to reinforce a single one of the qualities of the main voice—that second one was familiar. In the rare moments that his acute ear could tune it away from its accompanying diapason, Guinn knew that he had heard those full, high, sweet tones before.

  Something began to bother him. He had moved forward a hundred feet before he realized what it was. His legs; the voice; the light—they were meshing too closely in their movements. Furiously, he identified it; he was walking in time to a beat which was created by the sound and the changing light. Not that they changed with any predictable regularity. Far from it. But as if they were part of some incredibly complex, rigidly fixed ritual, they touched and fled from and syncopated a basic beat—a beat faster than a quiet heart, forcefully held slower than a frightened and guarded one. He broke stride, fiercely defending his independence.

  The light seemed to have its source in a circular area of the forest floor, and the voice was born somewhere in the light. The ground rose gently as he walked; suddenly, then, he saw it all.

  There was a dip in the forest, a saucer-like depression thirty yards or so across. As he reached its lip, the entire scene below was revealed to him, suddenly, completely, as if a great curtain had parted.

  A tremendous oak stood in the center of the depression. Its mighty spread had waned off anything but moss that had tried to grow around it, so that there was a smooth clearing around it. Standing at its base was the biggest man Guinn had ever seen.

  He was standing in the clearing, his face upturned, his arms out toward the oak. He looked like an old oak himself. His skin was dark brown, his face gnarled, his arms knotted and powerful. They stretched out like winter limbs from the dazzlingly white sleeveless robe which covered him from his shoulders to his bare feet. The light-source was his robe, and his lips were the source of the great voice.

  Behind him knelt Lynn, sitting on her heels, with her back arched and her hands on the ground behind her. Her head was up, her tangled, fine hair thrown back. Her teeth shone and her eyes blazed. Her lips moved. The second, harmonic voice was hers, in its highest register. It was modulated exactly to his magnificent chanting; she spoke so perfectly in concert with him that they might both have been controlled by the same mind, like two pipes of an organ under the knowing hand of a master.

  The chant at first seemed wordless. Guinn slowly realized it was not. It was a series of syllables, most of them long drawn vowel sounds without diphthongs, like those in an Irish brogue. They were separated by unearthly consonants, staccato and clean. The language was like nothing he had ever heard, but it was good to listen to.

  He stood there for uncounted moments, forgetting to breathe, completely entranced. There was an intensity to the light which changed with the quality of the sounds, and there was a quality to the light which changed with the sounds’ pitch. It was a thing which had to be experienced to be understood, and once that understanding occurred, it was inexpressible.

  The huge dark man dropped one of his massive hands to the wide white belt that was clasped around his waist. From it he drew a long, slightly curved dagger that gleamed like gold. He held it point upward in both hands. Guinn followed his gaze, and saw that it was pointed at a cluster of dark green leaves and white berries on the tree-trunk. The dagger began to move upward toward it.

  This, later, was the most inexplicable thing of all to Guinn. For at no time did the man change his position. He did not lose his grasp on the knife; he kept both hands on its hilt. The tree did not move. Yet—

  The knife went out and up, slowly and steadily. It reached the trunk of the oak, turned and sliced off the clump of glossy green. The man, standing twenty feet away from the tree, had bridged the gap between him and a growth twelve feet from the ground. His arms had not stretched; in no way did he seem out of proportion. In fact, the movement seemed utterly right. Guinn felt that he had seen a movement in a new direction, and that he could not be surprised. He seemed to have known of that direction for a long time but never had bothered to look that way before.

  The plant fell. One of the great brown hands was there before it, caught it, laid it on the moss before the knotted feet.

  Then the man turned, stood facing outward, away from the tree. Lynn’s body turned as he turned, and now she knelt with her back toward him, her arms down, her long slim hands palm-upward on the ground.

  Guinn’s eyes flicked to the hand holding the knife, to the smooth white back bowed before him. He reached into his left armpit and eased the .32 out.

  Shockingly, the chant stopped. The silence was deafening, unbearable. The light was unchanging, muted. There was a great expectancy in the wood.

  He looked around the clearing. So compelling had been the tableau by the oak that he hadn’t taken in the edges of the scene at all.

  The bushes around the depression looked as if they were filled with rhinestones—with emeralds, rubies—wi
th…eyes!

  And they were eyes. The low branches held silent birds, their little heads turned sidewise so that one eye could take in the scene. From a tree-fork at his shoulder hung the luxuriously dressed form of a raccoon, which stared fixedly at the big man. Guinn looked down. What he had thought was a small stump was a fox, not six feet away from him. Its black, wet nose tossed delicate spangles of light as it pressed its head down and forward toward the oak. On the ground in front of it—almost between its paws—was a chipmunk, staring brightly, and holding its deft small hands together in frozen ecstasy.

  There was a deep crooning. Guinn looked back at the dark man. He had not moved, but the sound came from him. And Lynn’s high, sweet supplement was there too; he could see the flexing of her rib-cage as she drew breath between the mesmeric phrases.

  Something moved at the lip of the depression, forty-five degrees across from Guinn’s viewpoint, and directly in front of Lynn.

  One…no, two big brown rabbits came toward her. They did not hop. They moved belly-down, like stalking cats. It affected Guinn almost more than anything else had. The animals were in the throes of some strange supplication, and their completely uncharacteristic gait caused a deep pain in him somewhere.

  They reached the girl, and lay down, one across each of her hands. She lifted them. They drooped, motionless except for their hind legs, which were taut, stiff, quivering in rapid spasm.

  Still singing, Lynn rose to her feet and brought the rabbits to the big man. Guinn realized how big he was. Lynn was a tall girl, but her head barely reached the level of the man’s heart. The rabbits were large ones—eight- or nine-pound jacks; but both, lying side by side, barely covered the huge dark hand from thumb-base to fingertips.

  Holding both rabbits in one hand, the man turned to face the tree again. Lynn was suddenly silent. The man shouted four crackling syllables, and with a single sweep of his golden dagger, sliced off the rabbits’ heads.