“And the world was a place of light!” Blue light, flickering in the contaminated air.
The enemy. The red-topped lever. Bonze. “They pray and starve and kill themselves and die in the fires.”
What creatures were these, these corrupted, violent, murdering humans? What right had they to another chance? What was in them that was good?
Starr was good. Starr was crying. Only a human being could cry like that. Starr was a human being.
Had humanity anything of Starr Anthim in it?
Starr was a human being.
He looked down through the darkness for his hands. No planet, no universe, is greater to a man than his own ego, his own observing self. These hands were the hands of all history, and like the hands of all men, they could by their small acts make human history or end it. Whether this power of hands was that of a billion hands, or whether it came to a focus in these two—this was suddenly unimportant to the eternities which now infolded him.
He put humanity’s hands deep in his pockets and walked slowly back to the bleachers.
“Starr.”
She responded with a sleepy-child, interrogative whimper.
“They’ll get their chance, Starr. I won’t touch the key.”
She sat straight. She rose, and came to him, smiling. He could see her smile because, very faintly in this air, her teeth fluoresced. She put her hands on his shoulders. “Pete.”
He held her very close for a moment. Her knees buckled then, and he had to carry her.
There was no one in the Officers’ Club, which was the nearest building. He stumbled in, moved clawing along the wall until he found a switch. The light hurt him. He carried her to a settee and put her down gently. She did not move. One side of her face was as pale as milk.
There was blood on his hands.
He stood looking stupidly at it, wiped it on the sides of his trousers, looking dully at Starr. There was blood on her shirt.
The echo of no’s came back to him from the far walls of the big room before he knew he had spoken. Starr wouldn’t do this. She couldn’t!
A doctor. But there was no doctor. Not since Anders had hung himself. Get somebody. Do something.
He dropped to his knees and gently unbuttoned her shirt. Between the sturdy, unfeminine GI bra and the top of her slacks, there was blood on her side. He whipped out a clean handkerchief and began to wipe it away. There was no wound, no puncture. But abruptly there was blood again. He blotted it carefully. And again there was blood.
It was like trying to dry a piece of ice with a towel.
He ran to the water cooler, wrung out the bloody handkerchief and ran back to her. He bathed her face carefully, the pale right side, the flushed left side. The handkerchief reddened again, this time with cosmetics, and then her face was pale all over, with great blue shadows under the eyes. While he watched, blood appeared on her left cheek.
There must be somebody—He fled to the door.
“Pete!”
Running, turning at the sound of her voice, he hit the doorpost stunningly, caromed off, flailed for his balance, and then was back at her side. “Starr! Hang on, now! I’ll get a doctor as quick as—”
Her hand strayed over her left cheek. “You found out. Nobody else knew, but Feldman. It got hard to cover properly.” Her hand went up to her hair.
“Starr, I’ll get a—”
“Pete, darling, promise me something?”
“Why, sure; certainly, Starr.”
“Don’t disturb my hair. It isn’t—all mine, you see.” She sounded like a seven-year-old, playing a game. “It all came out on this side, you see? I don’t want you to see me that way.”
He was on his knees beside her again. “What is it? What happened to you?” he asked hoarsely.
“Philadelphia,” she murmured. “Right at the beginning. The mushroom went up a half mile away. The studio caved in. I came to the next day. I didn’t know I was burned, then. It didn’t show. My left side. It doesn’t matter, Pete. It doesn’t hurt at all, now.”
He sprang to his feet again. “I’m going for a doctor.”
“Don’t go away. Please don’t go away and leave me. Please don’t.” There were tears in her eyes. “Wait just a little while. Not very long, Pete.”
He sank to his knees again. She gathered both his hands in hers and held them tightly. She smiled happily. “You’re good, Pete. You’re so good.”
(She couldn’t hear the blood in his ears, the roar of the whirlpool of hate and fear and anguish that spun inside him.)
She talked to him in a low voice, and then in whispers. Sometimes he hated himself because he couldn’t quite follow her. She talked about school, and her first audition. “I was so scared that I got a vibrato in my voice. I’d never had one before. I always let myself get a little scared when I sing now. It’s easy.” There was something about a windowbox when she was four years old. “Two real live tulips and a pitcherplant. I used to be sorry for the flies.”
There was a long period of silence after that, during which his muscles throbbed with cramp and stiffness, and gradually became numb. He must have dozed; he awoke with a violent start, feeling her fingers on his face. She was propped up on one elbow. She said clearly, “I just wanted to tell you, darling. Let me go first, and get everything ready for you. It’s going to be wonderful. I’ll fix you a special tossed salad. I’ll make you a steamed chocolate pudding and keep it hot for you.”
Too muddled to understand what she was saying, he smiled and pressed her back on the settee. She took his hands again.
The next time he awoke it was broad daylight, and she was dead.
Sonny Weisefreund was sitting on his cot when he got back to the barracks. He handed over the recording he had picked up from the parade ground on the way back. “Dew on it. Dry it off. Good boy,” he croaked, and fell face downward on the cot Bonze had used.
Sonny stared at him. “Pete! Where’ve you been? What happened? Are you all right?”
Pete shifted a little and grunted. Sonny shrugged and took the audiovid disk out of its wet envelope. Moisture would not harm it particularly, though it could not be played while wet. It was made of a fine spiral of plastic, insulated between laminations. Electrostatic pickups above and below the turntable would fluctuate with changes in the dielectric constant which had been impressed by the recording, and these changes were amplified for the video. The audio was a conventional hill-and-dale needle. Sonny began to wipe it down carefully.
Pete fought upward out of a vast, green-lit place full of flickering cold fires. Starr was calling him. Something was punching him, too. He fought it weakly, trying to hear what she was saying. But someone else was jabbering too loud for him to hear.
He opened his eyes. Sonny was shaking him, his round face pink with excitement. The audiovid was running. Starr was talking. Sonny got up impatiently and turned down the audio gain. “Pete! Pete! Wake up, will you? I got to tell you something. Listen to me! Wake up, will yuh?”
“Huh?”
“That’s better. Now listen. I’ve just been listening to Starr Anthim—”
“She’s dead,” said Pete. Sonny didn’t hear. He went on explosively, “I’ve figured it out. Starr was sent out here, and all over, to beg someone not to fire any more atom bombs. If the government was sure they wouldn’t strike back, they wouldn’t have taken the trouble. Somewhere, Pete, there’s some way to launch bombs at those murdering cowards—and I’ve got a pret-ty shrewd idea of how to do it.”
Pete strained groggily toward the faint sound of Starr’s voice. Sonny talked on. “Now, s’posing there was a master radio key, an automatic code device something like the alarm signal they have on ships, that rings a bell on any ship within radio range when the operator sends four long dashes. Suppose there’s an automatic code machine to launch bombs, with repeaters, maybe, buried all over the country. What would it be? Just a little lever to pull; thass all. How would the thing be hidden? In the middle of a lot of other equipment, t
hat’s where; in some place where you’d expect to find crazy-looking secret stuff. Like an experiment station. Like right here. You beginning to get the idea?”
“Shut up. I can’t hear her.”
“The hell with her! You can hear her some other time. You didn’t hear a thing I said!”
“She’s dead.”
“Yeah. Well, I figure I’ll pull that handle. What can I lose? It’ll give those murderin’ … what?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead? Starr Anthim?” His young face twisted, Sonny sank down to the cot. “You’re half asleep. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“She’s dead,” Pete said hoarsely. “She got burned by one of the first bombs. I was with her when she … she—Shut up, now, and get out of here and let me listen!” he bellowed hoarsely.
Sonny stood up slowly. “They killed her, too. They killed her. That does it. That just fixes it up.” His face was white. He went out.
Pete got up. His legs weren’t working right. He almost fell. He brought up against the console with a crash, his outflung arm sending the pickup skittering across the record. He put it on again and turned up the gain, then lay down to listen.
His head was all mixed up. Sonny talked too much. Bomb launchers, automatic code machines—
“You gave me your heart,” sang Starr. “You gave me your heart. You gave me your heart. You—”
Pete heaved himself up again and moved the pickup arm. Anger, not at himself, but at Sonny for causing him to cut the disk that way, welled up.
Starr was talking, stupidly, her face going through the same expression over and over again. “Struck from the east and from the Struck from the east and from the—”
He got up again wearily and moved the pickup.
“You gave me your heart. You gave me—”
Pete made an agonized sound that was not a word at all, bent, lifted, and sent the console crashing over. In the bludgeoning silence he said, “I did, too.”
Then, “Sonny.” He waited.
“Sonny!”
His eyes went wide then, and he cursed and bolted for the corridor.
The panel was closed when he reached it. He kicked at it. It flew open, discovering darkness.
“Hey!” bellowed Sonny. “Shut it! You turned off the lights!”
Pete shut it behind him. The lights blazed.
“Pete! What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter, Son’,” croaked Pete.
“What are you looking at?” said Sonny uneasily.
“I’m sorry,” said Pete as gently as he could. “I just wanted to find something out, is all. Did you tell anyone else about this?” He pointed to the lever.
“Why, no. I only just figured it out while you were sleeping, just now.”
Pete looked around carefully while Sonny shifted his weight. Pete moved toward a tool rack. “Something you haven’t noticed yet, Sonny,” he said softly, and pointed. “Up there, on the wall behind you. High up. See?”
Sonny turned. In one fluid movement Pete plucked off a fourteen-inch box wrench and hit Sonny with it as hard as he could.
Afterward he went to work systematically on the power supplies. He pulled the plugs on the gas engines and cracked their cylinders with a maul. He knocked off the tubing of the Diesel starters—the tanks let go explosively—and he cut all the cables with bolt cutters. Then he broke up the relay rack and its lever. When he was quite finished, he put away his tools and bent and stroked Sonny’s tousled hair.
He went out and closed the partition carefully. It certainly was a wonderful piece of camouflage. He sat down heavily on a workbench nearby.
“You’ll have your chance,” he said into the far future. “And by heaven, you’d better make good.”
After that he just waited.
It Wasn’t Syzygy
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 get 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 downbeat, 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 makes 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 gargle. It was a true Lewis Carroll 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 probab
ly 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.”
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 yodeling 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 skeptics.” 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.”
“Some day 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—”
“Mm?”
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!”
Thunder and Roses Page 18