Far down, walking in a business-like way on the hard, damp part of the sand, three men were coming toward them.
“You got your wrench?” Ben asked. “Put it just under the blanket and sit down by it, but keep your knees under you.”
He put his tee shirt back on, leaving it hanging out, and he hooked the hammer under his belt in back, the top covered by the shirt. Then he stood and waited for them to come.
They were all three bald and shirtless. Two wore jeans cut off at the knees and thick belts, and the other had checked shorts and a red leather cap and a pistol stuck in his belt in the middle of the front at the buckle. He was older. The others looked like kids and they held back as they neared and let the older one come up alone. He was a small man, but looked tough. “You got gas,” he said, a flat-voiced statement of fact.
“Just enough to get home.”
“I don’t mean right here. You got gas at home is what I mean.”
Myra sat stiffly, her hand on the blanket on top of where the wrench was. Ben was a little in front of her and she could see his curving, forward-sloping shoulders and the lump of the hammer-head at the small of his back. If he stood up straight, she thought, and held his shoulders like they ought to be, he would look broad and even taller and he would show that little man, but the other had the pistol. Her eyes kept coming back to its shining black.
Ben took a step forward. “Don’t move,” the little man said. He shifted his weight to one leg, looking relaxed, and put his hand on his hip near the pistol. “Where you got the gas to get you home? Maybe we’ll come with you and you might lend us a little of that gas you got there at your house. Where’d you hide the stuff to get you back, or I’ll let my boys play a bit with your little one and you might not like it.”
Littleboy, she saw, had edged down, away from them, and he crouched now, watching with his wide-eyed stare. She could see the tense, stringy muscles along his arms and legs and he reminded her of gibbons she had seen at the zoo long ago. His poor little face looks old, she thought, too old for three years. Her fingers closed over the blanket-covered wrench. They’d better not hurt Littleboy.
She heard her husband say, “I don’t know.”
“Oh, Ben,” she said, “oh, Ben.”
The man made a motion and the two youths started out, but Littleboy had started first, she saw. She pulled at her wrench and then had to stop and fumble with the blanket, and it took a long time because she kept her eyes on Littleboy and the two others chasing.
She heard a shout and a grunt beside her. “Oh, Ben,” she said again, and turned, but it was Ben on top attacking the other, and the small man was trying to use his pistol as a club but he had hold of the wrong end for that, and Ben had the hammer and he was much bigger.
He was finished in a minute. She watched, empty-eyed, the whole of it, holding the wrench in a white-knuckled hand in case he needed her.
Afterward, he moved from the body into a crouching run, hammer in one hand and pistbl, by the barrel, in the other. “You stay here,” he shouted back.
She looked at the sea a few minutes, and listened to it, but her own feelings seemed more important than the stoic sea now. She turned and followed, walking along the marks where the feet had swept at the soft sand.
Where the bushes began she saw him loping back. “What happened?”
“They ran off when they saw me after them with the other guy’s gun. No bullets though. You’ll have to help look now.”
“He’s lost!”
“He won’t come when you call. We’ll just have to look. He could be way out. I’ll try that and you stay close and look here. The gas is buried under that bush there, if you need it.”
“We’ve got to find him, Ben. He doesn’t know his way home from here.”
He came to her and kissed her and held her firmly across the shoulders with one arm. She could feel his muscles bunch into her neck as hard almost as the head of his hammer that pressed against her arm. She remembered a time four years ago when his embrace had been soft and comfortable. He had had hair then, but he had been quite fat, and now he was hard and bald, having gained something and lost something.
He turned and started off, but looked back and she smiled and nodded to show him she felt better from his arm around her and the kiss.
I would die if anything happened and we would lose Littleboy, she thought, but mostly I would hate to lose Ben. Then the world would really be lost altogether, and everything would be ended.
She looked, calling in a whisper, knowing she had to peer under each bush and watch behind and ahead for scampering things. He’s so small when he huddles into a ball and he can sit so still. Sometimes I wish there was another three-year-old around to judge him by. I forget so much about how it used to be, before. Sometimes I just wonder about him.
“Littleboy, Littleboy. Mommy wants you,” she called softly. “Come. There’s still time to play in the sand and there are apples left.” She leaned forward, and her hand reached to touch the bushes.
Later the breeze began to cool and a few clouds gathered. She shivered in just her shorts and halter, but it was mostly an inner coldness. She felt she had circled, hunting, for well over an hour, but she had no watch, and at a time like this she wasn’t sure of her judgment. Still, the sun seemed low. They should go home soon. She kept watching now, too, for silhouettes of people who might not be Ben or Littleboy, and she probed the bushes with her wrench with less care. Every now and then she went back to look at the blanket and the basket and the pail and shovel, lying alone and far from the water, and the body there, with the red leather cap beside it.
And then, when she came back another time to see if all the things were still there, undisturbed, she saw a tall, two-headed seeming monster walking briskly down the beach, and one head, bouncing directly over the other one, had hair and was Littleboy’s.
The sunset was just beginning. The rosy glow deepened as they neared her and changed the colors of everything. The red plaid of Ben’s shorts seemed more emphatic. The sand turned orangeish. She ran to meet them, laughing and splashing her feet in the shallow water, and she came up and held Ben tight around the waist and Littleboy said, “Aaa.”
“We’ll be home before dark,” she said. “There’s even time for one last splash.”
They packed up finally while Littleboy circled the body by the blanket, touching it sometimes until Ben slapped him for it and he went off and sat down and made little cat sounds to himself.
He fell asleep in her lap on the way home, lying forward against her with his head at her neck the way she liked. The sunset was deep, with reds and purples.
She leaned against Ben. “The beach always makes you tired,” she said. “I remember that from before too. I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
They drove silently along the wide empty parkway. The car had no lights, but that didn’t matter.
“We did have a good day after all,” she said. “I feel renewed.”
“Good,” he said.
It was just dark as they drove up to the house. Ben stopped the car and they sat a moment and held hands before moving to get the things out.
“We had a good day,” she said again. “And Littleboy saw the sea.” She put her hand on the sleeping boy’s hair, gently so as not to disturb him and then she yawned. “I wonder if it really was Saturday.”
* * * *
HOT ARGUMENT by Randall Garrett
from Fantasy and Science Fiction
Willy and his girl-friend, Bea,
While working for the A.E.C.,
Got in a fight and failed to hear
The warning of a bomb test near.
Their friends were sad to hear, no doubt,
That they had had a falling-out.
* * * *
WHAT THE LEFT HAND WAS DOING by Darrel T. Langart
from Astounding Science Fiction
What is human? How different can it be, and still seem “one of us”? How much can one of us change, and not be one of them? (
And who are they? Or are they what?
Earlier selections here have approached the line of definition in a variety of ways. Mr. Langart, an author new to science fiction (so far as I have been able to determine from his tight-lipped agents), here presents an exceptionally thoughtful and convincing examination of one of the potentialities for human development.
* * * *
There is no lie so totally convincing as something the other fellow already knows-for-sure is the truth. And no cover-story so convincing…
The building itself was unprepossessive enough. It was an old-fashioned, six-floor, brick structure that had, over the years, served first as a private home, then as an apartment building, and finally as the headquarters for the organization it presently housed.
It stood among others of its kind in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington, Virginia, within howitzer range of the capitol of the United States, and even closer to the Pentagon. The main door was five steps up from the sidewalk, and the steps were flanked by curving balustrades of ornamental ironwork. The entrance itself was closed by a double door with glass panes, beyond which could be seen a small foyer. On both doors, an identical message was blocked out in neat gold letters: The Society For Mystical and Metaphysical Research, Inc.
It is possible that no more nearly perfect cover, no more misleading front for a secret organization ever existed in the history of man. It possessed two qualities which most other cover-up titles do not have. One, it was so obviously crackpot that no one paid any attention to it except crackpots, and, two, it was perfectly, literally true.
Spencer Candron had seen the building so often that the functional beauty of the whole setup no longer impressed him as it had several years before. Just as a professional actor is not impressed by being allowed backstage, or as a multimillionaire considers expensive luxuries as commonplace, so Spencer Candron thought of nothing more than his own personal work as he climbed the five steps and pushed open the glass-paned doors.
Perhaps, too, his matter-of-fact attitude was caused partially by the analogical resemblance between himself and the organization. Physically, Candron, too, was unprepossessing. He was a shade less than five eight, and his weight fluctuated between a hundred and forty and a hundred and forty-five, depending on the season and his state of mind. His face consisted of a well-formed snub nose, a pair of introspective gray eyes, a rather wide, thin-lipped mouth that tended to smile even when relaxed, a high, smooth forehead, and a firm cleft chin, plus the rest of the normal equipment that normally goes to make up a face. The skin was slightly tanned, but it was the tan of a man who goes to the beach on summer weekends, not that of an outdoorsman. His hands were strong and wide and rather large; the palms were uncalloused and the fingernails were clean and neatly trimmed. His hair was straight and light brown, with a pronounced widow’s peak, and he wore it combed back and rather long to conceal the fact that a thin spot had appeared on the top rear of his scalp. His clothing was conservative and a little out of style, having been bought in 1981, and thus three years past being up-to-date.
Physically, then, Spencer Candron, was a fine analog of the Society. He looked unimportant. On the outside, he was just another average man whom no one would bother to look twice at.
The analogy between himself and the S.M.M.R. was completed by the fact that his interior resources were vastly greater than anything that showed on the outside.
The doors swung shut behind him, and he walked into the foyer, then turned left into the receptionist’s office. The woman behind the desk smiled her eager smile and said, “Good morning, Mr. Candron!”
Candron smiled back. He liked the woman, in spite of her semifanatic overeagerness, which made her every declarative sentence seem to end with an exclamation point.
“Morning, Mrs. Jesser,” he said, pausing at the desk for a moment. “How have things been?”
Mrs. Jesser was a stout matron in her early forties who would have been perfectly happy to work for the Society for nothing, as a hobby. That she was paid a reasonable salary made her job almost heaven for her.
“Oh, just fine, Mr. Candron!” she said. “Just fine!” Then her voice lowered, and her face took on a serious, half conspiratorial expression. “Do you know what?”
“No,” said Candron, imitating her manner. “What?”
“We have a gentleman … he came in yesterday … a very nice man … and very intelligent, too. And, you know what?”
Candron shook his head. “No,” he repeated. “What?”
Mrs. Jesser’s face took on the self-pleased look of one who has important inside knowledge to impart. “He has actual photographs … three-D, full-color photographs … of the control room of a flying saucer! And one of the Saucerites, too!”
“Really?” Candron’s expression was that of a man who was both impressed and interested. “What did Mr. Balfour say?”
“Well—” Mrs. Jesser looked rather miffed. “I don’t really know! But the gentleman is supposed to be back tomorrow! With some more pictures!”
“Well,” said Candron. “Well. That’s really fine. I hope he has something. Is Mr. Taggert in?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Candron! He said you should go on up!” She waved a plump hand toward the stairway. It made Mrs. Jesser happy to think that she was the sole controller of the only way, except for the fire escape, that anyone could get to the upper floors of the building. And as long as she thought that, among other things, she was useful to the Society. Someone had to handle the crackpots and lunatic-fringe fanatics that came to the Society, and one of their own kind could do the job better than anyone else. As long as Mrs. Jesser and Mr. Balfour were on duty, the Society’s camouflage would remain intact.
Spencer Candron gave Mrs. Jesser a friendly gesture with one hand and then headed up the stairs. He would rather not have bothered to take the stairway all the way up to the fifth floor, but Mrs. Jesser had sharp ears, and she might wonder why his foot-steps were not heard all the way up. Nothing—but nothing—must ever be done to make Mrs. Jesser wonder about anything that went on here.
* * *
The door to Brian Taggert’s office was open when Candron finally reached the fifth floor. Taggert, of course, was not only expecting him, but had long been aware of his approach.
Candron went in, closed the door, and said, “Hi, Brian,” to the dark-haired, dark-eyed, hawk-nosed man who was sprawled on the couch that stood against one corner of the room. There was a desk at the other rear corner, but Brian Taggert wasn’t a desk man. He looked like a heavy-weight boxer, but he preferred relaxation to exercise.
But he did take his feet from the couch and lift himself to a sitting position as Candron entered. And, at the same time, the one resemblance between Taggert and Candron manifested itself—a warm, truly human smile.
“Spence,” he said warmly, “you look as though you were bored. Want a job?”
“No,” said Candron, “but I’ll take it. Who do I kill?”
“Nobody, unless you absolutely have to,” said Taggert.
Spencer Candron understood. The one thing that characterized the real members of The Society for Mystical and Metaphysical Research—not the “front” members, like Balfour and Mrs. Jesser, not the hundreds of “honorable” members who constituted the crackpot portion of the membership, but the real core of the group—the thing that characterized them could be summed up in one word: understanding. Without that one essential property, no human mind can be completely free. Unless a human mind is capable of understanding the only forces that can be pitted against it—the forces of other human minds—that mind cannot avail itself of the power that lies within it.
Of course, it is elementary that such understanding must also apply to oneself. Understanding of self must come before understanding of others. Total understanding is not necessary—indeed, utter totality is very likely impossible to any human mind. But the greater the understanding, the freer the mind, and, at a point which might be called the “critical point,” c
ertain abilities inherent in the individual human mind become controllable. A change, not only in quantity, but in quality, occurs.
A cube of ice in a glass of water at zero degrees Celsius exhibits certain properties and performs certain actions at its surface. Some of the molecules drift away, to become one with the liquid. Other molecules from the liquid become attached to the crystalline ice. But, the ice cube remains essentially an entity. Over a period of time, it may change slowly, since dissolution takes place faster than crystallization at the corners of the cube. Eventually, the cube will become a sphere, or something very closely approximating it. But the change is slow, and, once it reaches that state, the situation becomes static.
But, if you add heat, more and more and more, the ice cube will change, not only its shape, but its state. What it was previously capable of doing only slightly and impermanently, it can now do completely. The critical point has been passed.
Roughly—for the analog itself is rough—the same things occurs in the human mind. The psionic abilities of the human mind are, to a greater or lesser degree, there to begin with, just as an ice cube has the ability to melt if the proper conditions are met with.
The analogy hardly extends beyond that. Unlike an ice cube, the human mind is capable of changing the forces outside it—as if the ice could seek out its own heat in order to melt. And, too, human minds vary in their inherent ability to absorb understanding. Some do so easily, others do so only in spotty areas, still others cannot reach the critical point before they break. And still others can never really understand at all.
No one who had not reached his own critical point could become a “core” member of the S.M.M.R. It was not snobbery on their part; they understood other human beings too well to be snobbish. It was more as though a Society for Expert Mountain Climbers met each year on the peak of Mount Everest—anyone who can get up there to attend the meeting is automatically a member.
Spencer Candron sat down in a nearby chair. “All right, so I refrain from doing any more damage than I have to. What’s the objective?”
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