Selections

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “Or?”

  He shrugged, suddenly, and smiled. “Or make sense.”

  The smile, apparently, worked. She smiled too, and it was the first time. He’d seen a lot of wonderful things today, but nothing like this.

  “Pour us a drink, and I’ll talk sense.”

  “I haven’t got any liq—” he began, and then caught the bare suggestion of an amused crinkle at the corners of her age-old eyes. He opened the top drawer, then remembered what he had done with the bottle. He scooped it up out of the wastepaper basket and held it up. It had about two fingers in it. He raised his eyebrows resignedly and found a couple of shot-glasses under “G” in the filing cabinet. He poured. There was just enough to fill both glasses, and when he put the bottle down there was about two fingers of liquor surging around the bottom.

  They lifted their glasses. It didn’t look like any rye he had ever seen. It had gold flecks which were in constant, dazzling motion, and it seemed to have an elusive blue cast to its gleaming amber. Her glass touched his, and one of her fingers, and he experienced a distinct and pleasant shock.

  He drank.

  For a split second he thought he had swallowed nothing at all, so smoothly did it go down. Then his earlobes warmed up like radiant heaters, and there came a feeling in his throat as if it had grown an internal pelt of finest mink.

  “This you get for nothing?”

  She shook her head. “From nothing. But it isn’t easy.”

  “It’s worth the trouble.” He poured again. “Talk.”

  She lowered her eyes for a moment, then said, “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

  “I thought it was a stone you were looking for.”

  “Oh, it is. But you’re the only man who can find it.”

  “There’re a lot of private eyes.”

  “There’s only one like you.”

  He turned on her suddenly. “You were smelling around the hospital records.”

  She nodded. “I had to find something out.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you know why I’m so lucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know the old stories about the seventh son of a seventh son,” he said harshly. “Well, like a guy called Geosmith once said, I’m the seventh bastard of a seventh bastard.”

  “Why do you make jokes that hurt you?”

  “I like to be the first one to make ‘em. You get your nose rubbed in a thing like that.”

  “And things like your real name?”

  “You did snoop.”

  “I had to know.”

  “Why? To find that stone?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You have it.”

  “Not unless you planted it on me, like this cabbage.” He flicked the banknotes with his fingernail.

  “You can be ever so sure I didn’t,” she said seriously. “I want it too badly. I just want to…” Her fingers curled. She had long slender, strong fingers. “…to hold that cup. Just to hold it in these two hands.”

  He looked at her tense face wondering where all the cold poise had gone. “Well, it ought to be a snap. I have it, you want it. Tell me where I’ve hidden it and I’ll hand it over.”

  “I can’t tell you where it is. You’ve got to find it yourself.”

  “I thought you were going to talk sense.”

  She sighed. “Has it dawned on you yet that this is a slightly unusual case?”

  He glanced again at the money. “Seems so.”

  “Then you have to take what comes as sense. Guinn, is a radio set magic?”

  “Not to me it isn’t.”

  “But it would be to a bushman.”

  “Mmm. So now I’m a bushman. I see what you mean. You’re using my own arguments on me. If there’s anything I don’t understand in all this, it’s because I don’t have the background for it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get superstitious.”

  “All right. But a lot of this is going to demand new thinking—a new kind of thinking from you.”

  “Do it to me.”

  “All right. You went up on the Hill today. You picked up a girl called Lynn. She’d had some trouble with a man named Mordi. When you got to Percival, you found him in terrible shape. He talked to you and then died. When you got back to your friend Garry, you found him wounded by this same Mordi. You then—”

  “Now, wait. Were you there?”

  “No.”

  “Then—”

  “It was just something you had to go through.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Shall I start again from the beginning? You are a very special person, Hadley Guinn. You, and only you can find that cup. And the stone on it. Unless and until you find out who you are, you won’t know where that cup is or how to find it. You can’t be told—it’s absolutely essential that you figure it out for yourself. In order to be able to figure it out, you’ve got to go through certain things. You’ll keep on going through these things until you do figure it out—or die in the attempt. You already have all the evidence you need, but you won’t look in the right direction. You’ve got a psychological block as big as a house that keeps you from it. You’ll have to find it, or die. And if you’re going to find it, it damn well better be soon!”

  “Suppose I don’t?”

  “We…you…won’t have to worry anymore.”

  “I’m not worried now.”

  “Yes you are.”

  He studied his hands. “Yeah,” he grunted. “You’re right about that.” He thought for a moment. “Those things I have to…go through. You mean like finding old Percival that way?”

  She nodded. “And everything else that’s happened since I walked in here.”

  “Sort of…staged?”

  “You can call it that.”

  He pushed back his chair and stood up, looming over her like a cliff. “Did you have something to do with it?”

  “Something.”

  “With what happened to Percival? To Garry?” His voice was rich with self-control.

  She looked up at him with perfect composure. “Percival volunteered.”

  “Volun—for that!”

  “He knew who you were. He’s known for years. He’s watched over you and guided you more than you’ll ever know. He knew what you were before I did—and I’ve known it for a long time. As for Garry, what happened to him had to happen, because you had to feel just that way about something. You’re in a bigger play than you think you are. Now, sit down and stop blowing up like a sea squab, or I’ll stick a pin in you and bust you.”

  Slowly, he sat down. “You better talk some more.”

  “I will. Lynn was in it for the same reason. Don’t you see? Percival was the symbol of a lot of large issues to you. I don’t have to draw you a diagram about them. They all came to a focus in him, and with his death they came front and center.”

  “Did he have to die that way?” growled Guinn.

  “He did.” She held up a commanding hand. “I told you—I’m ‘talking sense’, just as you asked me to. Damn you, you’ll hold still for it. Garry is something you protect and teach, and he matters very much to you on those terms. You saved his life by your quick thinking, taking the car down the mountain face that way, getting him to the hospital in time—”

  “You’ll remember I stopped on the way.”

  “That was on the agenda. You had a choice to make, and you gave it to Lynn. You let her danger be more important to you than either Mordi or Garry’s life.”

  “I suppose that strip act was part of it.”

  “Of course it was! You had to see how she reacted to you under circumstances that would have had her hysterical with anyone else. She trusted you because she could trust you—because you are you.”

  “Go on.” His eyes were closed, his vision turned inwards.

  “Cheryl,” said the girl. “Someone who cared. Doctor Jim. Someone you trusted. And the ritual of the oak. Something you had to se
e.”

  “Why that?”

  “Because, with a mind that refuses to see anything that isn’t straight cause and effect, you had to witness effects with causes you’ll never understand—and trust your own eyes! The same goes for the money and this liquor. Pour me some more, by the way.”

  There wasn’t much in the bottle—only a couple of fingers. Resignedly, he poured, and filled his own glass.

  “Miss Morgan,” he said carefully, “you are very beautiful and you have a great bag of tricks. But your story is as full of holes as a yard of cheesecloth. I don’t know what you’re after, but from where I sit you’re a rich bitch with a warped sense of humor and an army of spies. Shut up!” he barked as her extraordinary eyes flamed with indignation.

  “I still think Percival died because you’ve been wandering around yammering about some secret treasure he’s supposed to’ve been on to. That’s the kind of story that gets believed about eccentrics like him who’ve never given a hoot about money. I think you’re responsible for his murder because of it. I don’t know but what you hired Lynn to help you pull the wool over my eyes, to slip extra money into my wallet, to pull that fancy performance in the woods. I haven’t figured out yet how half this sleight-of-hand was pulled, but I will. I’ll sweat some of it out of Lynn and dope the rest out for myself.”

  “Why, you—”

  “If that fairy story of yours was true, that this whole thing was scripted out to put me through some paces, it’d mean outside circumstances that widen to where you couldn’t have had a damn thing to do with them. What about the timing of that lowboy trailer—was that arranged?”

  “Yes!”

  He snorted. “The effect that old Percival had on me when I was a kid?”

  “Yes!”

  Sarcastically, he said, “The old oak tree growing just there?”

  “Yes, yes, yes! All of it! How can I make you understand? Everything—the big things, like your being born when you were, like the building of the bridge just where it was, just that width—and the little things—like old Joe being asleep when you got here, so that even when you were tired you climbed the steps rather than bother him. Like the first phone call you made being an arrangement to take of Percival’s goats. You’re you, damn it; but today, you’ve had to be more you than ever before. In every way that’s important because you’ve got to realize who you are!”

  Her intensity was like the radiation from a cherry-red ingot, a thing to narrow the eyes, against which to throw up futile hands. He shook his head in bewilderment. “Why do you go on with this?” he asked in genuine curiosity. “What’s in it for you? Lady, how crazy can you get?”

  She wrung her hands. “I can’t tell you who you are,” she mourned. “I can’t, I can’t…because if I did, that little wrinkle in your silly head would kink up and switch out all the circuits. You’ve been holding that knowledge locked up in your stubborn skull for years, and you won’t look at it. You’re born to the part, bred to it, trained for it, and you won’t make the simple admission to yourself.” She knitted her brows. Her full lower lip sucked in and her white teeth came down on it. She lowered her head and sat tensely, and a crystal tear welled out under her long lashes and lay twinkling on her high dark cheekbone.

  He went to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve had a tough time, Miss Morgan,” he said. His voice shook, and he realized with a shot of fury that her breakup had affected him more profoundly than he thought he was capable of.

  She took his hand and pressed it against her wet cheek. “You’re such a wonderful fool,” she said brokenly.

  He didn’t know how his hand slid from her cheek to her throat. Her head came up abruptly and he found his eyes inches away from hers. Down, down in her eyes something glowed and called and promised. In those incredible eyes was a hunger, a yearning, and an overwhelming gladness fighting, fighting to emerge.

  He stood like that for minutes. Finally he said hoarsely, “This won’t gain you a thing. It won’t make me believe a word of that…of yours.” The word he used was filthy, viciously used.

  “I know,” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter…”

  And so the full spectrum was completed, and he was himself more than he had ever been before.

  Lynn yawned. The office was swept. The files were in order, the furniture dusted, the waiting room davenport vacuumed and plumped, the paneling oiled. The bills were paid. The phone almost never rang, and when it did all she could do was note the caller’s name and promise that Mr. Guinn would call back when he returned.

  “Hey—Had! Are you—” There was a step.

  Lynn leapt to her feet, smoothed her hair, and ran to the waiting room.

  He was there, tall, stooped, a patch on his temple and a clump of bandage on his neck looking like a misplaced tuft of his cotton hair.

  “Garry! Garry—oh!”

  She was in his arms before he knew it. She hugged him until he grunted, put him away at arms’ length, ran eager rapid fingers over his lips and cheeks.

  “Wait a minute, hey—” he spluttered. He colored violently. “Lynn, I was hoping…I was thinking of some way to maybe see you again sometime…I didn’t figger that—Gee. Hey.”

  “You idiot, you fool you,” she crooned. “Darling, sit down. You must be tired. I thought you’d be in the hospital for another week. I’ve missed you so! You don’t know, you just—oh, Garry, am I making a fool of myself? Am I?”

  “Gosh,” he said. “I don’t think so.” He put his hands awkwardly on her shoulders. “I think this is all right.”

  She spun in close to him, put her cheek on his chest. His heart was going like a riveting gun. They sat on the davenport and at last he kissed her.

  At length he came up for air. “Ain’t felt like this since I won the sack race at the county fair,” he said. “Where’s Had?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You working here now?”

  She nodded. “He wanted me to, since that day. You know. He told me to call him and I did and he wasn’t there. I felt real bad. And about ten in the morning old Sam came around. He brought me a note from Mr. Guinn and the keys. He said Mr. Guinn had sent him up to take care of Percival’s goats—”

  “He would,” said Garry.

  “Yes, and Mr. Guinn had come up early in the morning and told him to go.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “I’ll show you.” She skipped into the office, opened a file drawer and came out with a rumpled piece of paper. “I’ll read it.”

  ” ‘I’ve got some thinking to do. I’ll be back shortly after I arrive. Don’t look for me. Here are the keys. Straighten up the place for me. You’ll find money in the top drawer of the desk. If you find any bills, pay them. If you get any calls, stall them. Take fifty a week for yourself and give Garry anything he needs.’ Garry, I’m to give you anything you need.”

  “Haw!” grinned Garry. “He thinks of everything. That all?”

  “No. ‘If you see that Morgan girl, tell her I still don’t believe her, but…’ Here the writing gets all squiggly. ‘…but I’ll keep looking until I find what she’s after. And I almost think I might.’ That’s all.”

  “Have you seen the girl?”

  “No. She hasn’t so much as called. Who is she?”

  “The most…” He flushed. “I like you better,” he said lamely.

  “You just better!”

  “I bet I know where he is,” said Garry. “Though maybe he wouldn’t want to hang around there now. Still…”

  “Where?”

  “Still up there with the goats. He used to say that if ever he got mixed up in too much detail, that was the place to go. Said nobody could think little things up there.”

  “That’s where we’ll start looking,” said a voice, and it laughed.

  Garry and Lynn sprang apart, and then Lynn cowered up close against Garry.

  Standing in the doorway was a dark, spare man with cold black
eyes. His left arm was in a splint, though not in a sling. His jacket was draped over his left shoulder, and its drape gave him a chilling, vampire look. In his right hand was a heavy automatic.

  “Mordi!”

  “The whole thing suits me fine,” said Mordi. “Nothing’s going sour this time, buster. I want to be the first to congratulate you. You got a chick that will look at you, and I got a gun that will look at the chick. There’s nothing you can do so fast that I can’t—” He described the process of shooting Lynn in terms that made Garry’s lips go white.

  “What do you want?”

  “Same thing your boss wants. Either I get it first or he does. If he does, I get it right afterward. Come on, lovebirds. We’re taking a trip.” His black eyes slitted. “And look, little smarty, you better just follow my instructions and not pull another fast one, because I’m not holding this gun for fun.”

  Garry took a step toward him and Lynn flung her arms around him. “Garry, don’t, don’t…”

  Guinn threw the old book aside and stretched. “Morning, Matty,” he smiled.

  The nanny stretched her long neck further inside the cave. “Eh-eh-eh!” she answered.

  “Okay, okay.”

  He rolled off the goat-hair mattress and stooped to go through the entrance. The nanny skipped away from him and stopped again a few feet out in the clearing. “Eh-eh.”

  “I’m coming, honey.”

  He followed the goat through the neck of woods to the meadow. “Oh, for Pete’s sake! Can’t you stay out of trouble? You want to grow up to be a detective?” He strode over to the ruins of an ancient fieldstone wall. Tangled in a whip-vine was a week-old kid. Its clumsy thrashings had brought it under a flat stone which had fallen across a rock and a stump in such a way that the little animal was caught, painlessly, but effectively, under the stone with its legs spraddled out and its silly head springing up out of the shrubbery like a barrage balloon. “Up you come,” said Guinn, heaving the rock away. He picked up the kid and freed its legs from the vine. It bawled shrilly, and the nanny fretted impatiently beside him. He set the kid down and it staggered to the nanny and hooked on to a teat with exaggerated smackings and droolings and a series of frantic, contented little grunts. Guinn chuckled and walked away.