“Do you understand what I am offering you? To your ancestors I revealed myself, yes; I subjugated them. But I would make you my bride, Julie. I would share with you my power. Come with me. I will not take you against your will, but can you turn away?”
Again I heard my own scream. My hands were on his cool white skin, and his lips were gentle yet hungry, his eyes yielding and ever young. Father’s angry countenance blazed before me as if I, too, had the power to conjure. Unspeakable horror. I covered my face.
He stood against the backdrop of the window, against the distant drift of pale clouds. The candlelight glimmered in his eyes. Immense and sad and wise, they seemed—and oh, yes, innocent, as I have said again and again. “You are their fairest flower, Julie. To them I gave my protection always. To you I give my love. Come to me, dearest, and Rampling Gate will truly be yours, and it wall finally, truly be mine.”
❖
Nights of argument, but finally Richard had come around. He would sign over Rampling Gate to me and I should absolutely refuse to allow the place to be torn down. There would be nothing he could do then to obey Father’s command. I had given him the legal impediment he needed, and of course I told him I would leave the house to his male heirs. It should always be in Rampling hands.
A clever solution, it seemed to me, since Father had not told me to destroy the place. I had no scruples in the matter now at all.
And what remained was for him to take me to the little train station and see me off for London, and not worry about my going home to Mayfair on my own.
“You stay here as long as you wish and do not worry,” I said. I felt more tenderly toward him than I could ever express. “You knew as soon as you set foot in the place that Father was quite wrong.”
The great black locomotive was chugging past us, the passenger cars slowing to a stop.
“Must go now, darling—kiss me,” I said.
“But what came over you, Julie—what convinced you so quickly...?”
“We’ve been through all that, Richard,” I said. “What matters is that Rampling Gate is safe and we are both happy, my dear.”
I waved until I couldn’t see him anymore. The flickering lamps of the town were lost in the deep lavender light of the early evening, and the dark hulk of Rampling Gate appeared for one uncertain moment like the ghost of itself on the nearby rise.
I sat back and closed my eyes. Then I opened them slowly, savoring this moment for which I had waited so long.
He was smiling, seated in the far corner of the leather seat opposite, as he had been all along, and now he rose with a swift, almost delicate movement and sat beside me and enfolded me in his arms.
“It’s five hours to London,” he whispered.
“I can wait,” I said, feeling the thirst like a fever as I held tight to him, feeling his lips against my eyelids and my hair. “I want to hunt the London streets tonight,” I confessed a little shyly, but I saw only approbation in his eyes.
“Beautiful Julie, my Julie...” he whispered.
“You’ll love the house in Mayfair,” I said.
“Yes...” he said.
“And when Richard finally tires of Rampling Gate, we shall go home.”
Theodore Sturgeon
The Deadly Ratio
Here is another remarkable tale by Theodore Sturgeon (1918-85), International Fantasy Award winner (for More Than Human) and author of such popular novels and short story collections as The Cosmic Rape, The Dreaming Jewels, E Pluribus Unicorn and Without Sorcery. Like “The Perfect Host,” included in Weird Tales, the Magazine that Never Dies, “The Deadly Ratio” is a Ted Sturgeon tour de force that, according to its protagonist, might actually happen to you-the-reader.
BETTER NOT READ IT. I mean it. No—this isn’t one of those “perhaps it will happen to you” things. It’s a lot worse than that. It might very possibly be happening to you right now. And you won’t know until it’s over. You can’t, by the very nature of things.
(I wonder what the population really is?)
On the other hand, maybe it won’t make any difference if I do tell you about it. Once you got used to the idea, you might even be able to relax and enjoy it. Heaven knows there’s plenty to enjoy—and again I say it—by the very nature of things.
All right, then, if you think you can take it....
I met her in a restaurant. You may know the place—Murphy’s. It has a big oval bar and then a partition. On the other side of the partition are small tables, then an aisle, then booths.
Gloria was sitting at one of the small tables. All of the booths but two were empty; all the other small tables but one were unoccupied, so there was plenty of room in the place for me.
But there was only one place I could sit—at her table. That was because, when I saw Gloria, there wasn’t anything else in the world. I have never been through anything like that. I just stopped dead. I dropped my briefcase and stared at her. She had gleaming auburn hair and olive skin. She had delicate high-arched nostrils and a carved mouth, lips that were curved above like gull’s wings on the down-beat, and full below. Her eyes were as sealed and spice-toned as a hot buttered rum, and as deep as a mountain night.
Without taking my eyes from her face, I groped for a chair and sat opposite her. I’d forgotten everything. Even about being hungry. Helen hadn’t, though. Helen was the head waitress and a swell person. She was fortyish and happy. She didn’t know my name but used to call me “The Hungry Fella.” I never had to order. When I came in she’d fill me a bar-glass full of beer and pile up two orders of that day’s Chef’s Special on a steak platter. She arrived with the beer, picked up my briefcase, and went for the fodder. I just kept on looking at Gloria, who by this time, was registering considerable amazement, and a little awe. The awe, she told me later, was conceived only at the size of the beer-glass, but I have my doubts about that.
She spoke first. “Taking an inventory?”
She had one of those rare voices which make noises out of all other sounds. I nodded. Her chin was rounded, with the barest suggestion of a cleft, but the hinges of her jaw were square.
I think she was a little flustered. She dropped her eyes—I was glad, because I could see then how very long and thick her lashes were—and poked at her salad. She looked up again, half-smiling. Her teeth met, tip to tip. I’d read about that but had never actually seen it before. “What is it?” she asked. “Have I made a conquest?”
I nodded again. “You certainly have.”
“Well!” she breathed.
“Your name’s Gloria,” I said positively.
“How did you know?”
“It had to be, that’s all.”
She looked at me carefully, at my eyes, my forehead, my shoulders. “If your name is Leo, I’ll scream.”
“Scream then. But why?”
“I—I’ve always thought I’d meet a man named Leo, and—”
Helen canceled the effects of months of good relations between herself and me, by bringing my lunch just then. Gloria’s eyes widened when she saw it. “You must be very fond of lobster hollandaise.”
“I’m very fond of all subtle things,” I said, “and I like them in great masses.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said candidly.
“No one like you ever has.”
“Oh?”
I picked up my fork. “Obviously not, or there’d be a race of us.” I scooped up some lobster. “Would you be good enough to watch carefully while I eat? I can’t seem to stop looking at you, and I’m afraid I might stab my face with the fork.”
She chortled. It wasn’t a chuckle, or a gurgle. It was a true Lewis Carrol chortle. They’re very rare. “I’ll watch.”
“Thank you. And while you watch, tell me what you don’t like.”
“What I don’t like? Why?”
“I’ll probably spend the rest of my life finding out the things you do like, and doing them with you. So let’s get rid of the nonessentials.”
&nb
sp; She laughed. “All right. I don’t like tapioca because it makes me feel conspicuous, staring that way. I don’t like furniture with buttons on the upholstery; lace curtains that cross each other; small flower-prints, hooks-and-eyes and snap fasteners where zippers ought to be; that orchestra leader with the candy saxophones and the yodelling brother; tweedy men who smoke pipes; people who can’t look me in the eye when they’re lying; night clothes; people who make mixed drinks with Scotch—my, you eat fast.”
“I just do it to get rid of my appetite so I can begin eating for esthetic reasons. I like that list.”
“What don’t you like?”
“I don’t like literary intellectuals with their conversations all dressed up in overquotes. I don’t like bathing-suits that don’t let the sun in and I don’t like weather that keeps bathing-suits in. I don’t like salty food; clinging-vine girls; music that doesn’t go anywhere or build anything; people who have forgotten how to wonder like children; automobiles designed to be better streamlined going backwards than going forward; people who will try anything once but are afraid to try it twice and acquire a taste; and professional sceptics.” I went back to my lunch.
“You bat a thousand,” she said. “Something remarkable is happening here.”
“Let it happen,” I cautioned. “Never mind what it is or why. Don’t be like the guy who threw a light-bulb on the floor to find out if it was brittle.” Helen passed and I ordered a Slivovitz.
“Prune brandy!” cried Gloria. “I love it!”
“I know. It’s for you.”
“Someday you’re going to be wrong,” she said, suddenly somber, “and that will be bad.”
“That will be good. It’ll be the difference between harmony and contrast, that’s all.”
“Leo—”
“Hm?”
She brought her gaze squarely to me, and it was so warm I could feel it on my face. “Nothing. I was just saying it, Leo. Leo.”
Something choked me—not the lobster. It was all gone. “I have no gag for that. I can’t top it. I can match it, Gloria.”
Another thing was said, but without words.
There are still no words for it. Afterward she reached across and touched my hand with her fingertips. I saw colors.
I got up to go, after scribbling on a piece of the menu. “Here’s my phone number. Call me up when there’s no other way out.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you want my phone, or my address, or anything?”
“No,” I said.
“But—”
“This means too much,” I said. “I’m sorry if I seem to be dropping it in your lap like this. But any time you are with me, I want it to be because you want to be with me, not because you think it’s what I might want. We’ve got to be together because we are traveling in the same direction at approximately the same speed, each under his own power. If I call you up and make all the arrangements, it could be that I was acting on a conditioned reflex, like any other wolf. If you call, we can both be sure.”
“It makes sense.” She raised those deep eyes to me. Leaving her was coming up out of those eyes hand over hand. A long haul. I only just made it.
❖
Out on the street I tried valiantly to get some sense of proportion. The most remarkable thing about the whole remarkable business was simply this: that in all my life before, I had never been able to talk to anyone like that. I had always been diffident, easy-going, unaggressive to a fault, and rather slow on the uptake.
I felt like the daydreams of the much advertised 97-pound weakling as he clipped that coupon.
“Hey—you!”
I generally answered to that as well as anything else. I looked up and recoiled violently. There was a human head floating in midair next to me. I was so startled I couldn’t even stop walking. The head drifted along beside me, bobbing slightly as if invisible legs carried an invisible body to which the visible head was attached. The face was middle-aged, bookish, dryly humorous.
“You’re quite a hell of a fellow, aren’t you?”
Oddly, my tongue loosened from the roof of my mouth. “Some pretty nice people think so,” I faltered. I looked around nervously, expecting a stampede when other people saw this congenial horror.
“No one can see me but you,” said the head. “No one that’s likely to make a fuss, at any rate.”
“Wh-what do you want?”
“Just wanted to tell you something,” said the head. It must have had a throat somewhere because it cleared it. “Parthenogenesis,” it said didactically, “has little survival value, even with syzygy. Without it—” The head disappeared. A little lower down, two bony, bare shoulders appeared, shrugged expressively, and vanished. The head reappeared. “—there isn’t a chance.”
“You don’t say,” I quavered.
It didn’t say. Not any more, just then. It was gone.
I stopped, spun around, looking for it. What it had told me made as little sense to me, then, as its very appearance. It took quite a while for me to discover that it had told me the heart of the thing I’m telling you. I do hope I’m being a little more lucid than the head was.
Anyway, that was the first manifestation of all. By itself, it wasn’t enough to make me doubt my sanity. As I said, it was only the first.
❖
I might as well tell you something about Gloria. Her folks had been poor enough to evaluate good things, well enough off to be able to have a sample or two of these good things. So Gloria could appreciate what was good as well as the effort that was necessary to get it. At twenty-two she was the assistant buyer of a men’s department store. (This was toward the end of the war.) She needed some extra money for a pet project, so she sang at a club every night. In her “spare” time she practiced and studied and at the end of a year had her commercial pilot’s license. She spent the rest of the war ferrying airplanes.
Do you begin to get the idea of what kind of people she was?
She was one of the most dynamic women who ever lived. She was thoughtful and articulate and completely un-phoney.
She was strong. You can have no idea—no; some of you do know how strong. I had forgotten.... She radiated her strength. Her strength surrounded her like a cloud rather than like armor, for she was tangible through it. She influenced everything and everyone she came near. I felt, sometimes that the pieces of ground which bore her footprints, the chairs she used, the door she touched and the books she had held continued to radiate for weeks afterward like the Bikini ships.
She was completely self-sufficient. I had hit the matter squarely when I insisted that she call me before we saw each other again. Her very presence was a compliment. When she was with me, it was, by definition, because that was where she would rather be than any other place on earth. When she was away from me, it was because to be with me at that time would not have been a perfect thing, and in her way she was a perfectionist.
Oh, yes—a perfectionist. I should know!
You ought to know something about me, too, so that you can realize how completely a thing like this is done, and how it is being done to so many of you.
I’m in my twenties and I play guitar for a living. I’ve done a lot of things and I carry around a lot of memories from each of them—things that only I could possibly know. The color of the walls in the rooming house where I stayed when I was “on the beach” in Port Arthur, Texas, when the crew of my ship went out on strike. What kind of flowers that girl was wearing the night she jumped off the cruise ship in Montego Bay, down in Jamaica.
I can remember, hazily, things like my brother’s crying because he was afraid of the vacuum cleaner, when he was four. So I couldn’t have been quite three then. I can remember fighting with a kid called Boaz, when I was seven. I remember Harriet, whom I kissed under a fragrant tulip poplar one summer dusk when I was twelve. I remember the odd little lick that drummer used to tear off when, and only when he was really riding, while I was playing at the hotel, and the way the trumpet man�
�s eyes used to close when he heard it. I remember the exact smell of the tiger’s wagon when I was pulling ropes on the Barnes Circus, and the one-armed roustabout who used to chantey us along when we drove the stakes, he swinging a twelve-pound maul with the rest of us—
“Hit down, slap it down, Haul back, snub, bub,
“Halfback, quarterback, allback, whoa!”—he used to cry, with the mauls rat-tatting on the steelbound peg and the peg melting into the ground, and the snubber grunting over his taut half-hitch while the six of us stood in a circle around the peg. And those other hammers, in the blacksmith’s shop in Puerto Rico, with the youngster swinging a sledge in great full circles, clanging on the anvil, while the old smith touched the work almost delicately with his shaping hammer and then tinkled out every syncopation known to man by bouncing it on the anvil’s horn and face between his own strokes and those of the great metronomic sledge. I remember the laboring and servile response of a power shovel under my hands as they shifted from hoist to crowd to swing to rehaul controls, and the tang of burning drum-frictions and hot crater compound. That was at the same quarry where the big Finnish blast foreman was killed by a premature shot. He was out in the open and knew he couldn’t get clear. He stood straight and still and let it come, since it was bound to come, and he raised his right hand to his head. My mechanic said he was trying to protect his face but I thought at the time he was saluting something.
Details; that’s what I’m trying to get over to you. My head was full of details that were intimately my own.
❖
It was a little over two weeks—sixteen days, three hours, and twenty-three minutes, to be exact—before Gloria called. During that time I nearly lost my mind. I was jealous, I was worried, I was frantic. I cursed myself for not having gotten her number—why, I didn’t even know her last name! There were times when I determined to hang up on her if I heard her voice, I was so sore. There were times when I stopped work—I did a lot of arranging for small orchestras—and sat before the silent phone, begging it to ring. I had a routine worked out: I’d demand a statement as to how she felt about me before I let her say another thing. I’d demand an explanation of her silence. I’d act casual and disinterested. I’d—
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