The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II

by David G. Hartwell

  Anna wanted to lift a warning hand, cry out to the man that he was going too far, that the humiliation he was preparing for his wife was unnecessary, unjust, and would but thicken the wall of hatred that cemented their antipodal souls together.

  But it was too late. Martha Jacques was already walking toward the Fourier piano, and within seconds had set up the polar-defined data and had flipped the toggle switch. The psychiatrist found her mind and tongue to be literally paralyzed by the swift movement of this unwitting drama, which was now toppling over the brink of its tragicomic climax.

  A deep silence fell over the room.

  Anna caught an impression of avid faces, most of whom – Jacques’ most intimate friends – would understand the nature of his little playlet and would rub salt into the abraded wound he was delivering his wife.

  Then in the space of three seconds, it was over.

  The Fourier piano had synthesized the seven equations, six short, one long, into their tonal equivalents, and it was over.

  Dorran, the orchestra leader, broke the uneasy stillness that followed. “I say, Ruy old chap,” he blurted, “just what is the difference in Jacques’ Law of Stellar Radiation’ and ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’?”

  Anna, in mingled amusement and sympathy, watched the face of Martha Jacques slowly turn crimson.

  The artist replied in amazement. “Why, now that you mention it, there does seem to be a little resemblance.”

  “It’s a dead ringer!” cried a voice.

  “‘Twinkle, twinkle’ is an old continental folk tune,” volunteered another. “I once traced it from Haydn’s ‘Surprise Symphony’ back to the fourteenth century.”

  “Oh, but that’s quite impossible,” protested Jacques. “Martha has just stated that science discovered it first, only two hundred years ago.”

  The woman’s voice dripped aqua regia. “You planned this deliberately, just to humiliate me in front of these . . . these clowns.”

  “Martha, I assure you . . . !”

  “I’m warning you for the last time, Ruy. If you ever again humiliate me, I’ll probably kill you!”

  Jacques backed away in mock alarm until he was swallowed up in a swirl of laughter.

  The group broke up, leaving the two women alone. Suddenly aware of Martha Jacques’ bitter scrutiny, Anna flushed and turned toward her.

  Martha Jacques said: “Why can’t you make him come to his senses? I’m paying you enough.”

  Anna gave her a slow wry smile. “Then I’ll need your help. And you aren’t helping when you deprecate his sense of values – odd though they may seem to you.

  “But Art is really so foolish! Science – ”

  Anna laughed shortly. “You see? Do you wonder he avoids you?”

  “What would you do?”

  “I?” Anna swallowed dryly.

  Martha Jacques was watching her with narrowed eyes. “Yes, you. If you wanted him?”

  Anna hesitated, breathing uneasily. Then gradually her eyes widened, became dreamy and full, like moons rising over the edge of some unknown, exotic land. Her lips opened with a nerveless fatalism. She didn’t care what she said:

  “I’d forget that I want, above all things, to be beautiful. I would think only of him. I’d wonder what he’s thinking, and I’d forsake my mental integrity and try to think as he thinks. I’d learn to see through his eyes, and to hear through his ears. I’d sing over his successes, and hold my tongue when he failed. When he’s moody and depressed, I wouldn’t probe or insist that-I-could-help-you-if-you’d-only-let-me. Then – ”

  Martha Jacques snorted. “In short, you’d be nothing but a selfless shadow, devoid of personality or any mind or individuality of your own. That might be all right for one of your type. But for a scientist, the very thought is ridiculous!”

  The psychiatrist lifted her shoulders delicately. “I agree. It is ridiculous. What sane woman at the peak of her profession would suddenly toss up her career to merge – you’d say ‘submerge’ – her identity, her very existence, with that of an utterly alien male mentality?”

  “What woman, indeed?”

  Anna mused to herself, and did not answer. Finally she said: “And yet, that’s the price; take it or leave it, they say. What’s a girl to do?”

  “Stick up for her rights!” declared Martha Jacques spiritedly.

  “All hail to unrewarding perseverance!” Ruy Jacques was back, swaying slightly. He pointed his half-filled glass toward the ceiling and shouted: “Friends! A toast! Let us drink to the two charter members of the Knights of the Crimson Grail.” He bowed in saturnine mockery to his glowering wife. “To Martha! May she soon solve the Jacques Rosette and blast humanity into the heavens!”

  Simultaneously he drank and held up a hand to silence the sudden spate of jeers and laughter. Then, turning toward the now apprehensive psychiatrist, he essayed a second bow of such sweeping grandiosity that his glass was upset. As he straightened, however, he calmly traded glasses with her. “To my old schoolteacher, Dr. van Tuyl. A nightingale whose secret ambition is to become as beautiful as a red red red rose. May Allah grant her prayers.” He blinked at her beatifically in a sudden silence. “What was that comment, doctor?”

  “I said you were a drunken idiot,” replied Anna. “But let it pass.” She was panting, her head whirling. She raised her voice to the growing cluster of faces. “Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you the third seeker of the grail! A truly great artist. Ruy Jacques, a child of the coming epoch, whose sole aim is not aimlessness, as he would like you to think, but a certain marvellous rose. Her curling petals shall be of subtle texture, yet firm withal, and brilliant red. It is this rose that he must find, to save his mind and body, and to put a soul in him.”

  “She’s right!” cried the artist in dark glee. “To Ruy Jacques, then! Join in, everybody. The party’s on Martha!”

  He downed his glass, then turned a suddenly grave face to his audience. “But it’s really such a pity in Anna’s case, isn’t it? Because her cure is so simple.”

  The psychiatrist listened; her head was throbbing dizzily.

  “As any competent psychiatrist could tell her,” continued the artist mercilessly, “she has identified herself with the nightingale in her ballet. The nightingale isn’t much to look at. On top it’s a dirty brown; at bottom, you might say it’s a drab grey. But ah! The soul of this plain little bird! Look into my soul, she pleads. Hold me in your strong arms, look into my soul, and think me as lovely as a red rose.”

  Even before he put his wineglass down on the table, Anna knew what was coming. She didn’t need to watch the stiffening cheeks and flaring nostrils of Martha Jacques, nor the sudden flash of fear in Bell’s eyes, to know what was going to happen next.

  He held out his arms to her, his swart satyr-face nearly impassive save for its eternal suggestion of sardonic mockery.

  “You’re right,” she whispered, half to him, half to some other part of her, listening, watching. “I do want you to hold me in your arms and think me beautiful. But you can’t, because you don’t love me. It won’t work. Not yet. Here, I’ll prove it.”

  As from miles and centuries away, she heard Grade’s horrified gurgle.

  But her trance held. She entered the embrace of Ruy Jacques, and held her face up to his as much as her spine would permit, and closed her eyes.

  He kissed her quickly on the forehead and released her. “There! Cured!”

  She stood back and surveyed him thoughtfully. “I wanted you to see for yourself, that nothing can be beautiful to you – at least not until you learn to regard someone else as highly as you do Ruy Jacques.”

  Bell had drawn close. His face was wet, grey. He whispered: “Are you two insane? Couldn’t you save this sort of thing for a less crowded occasion?”

  But Anna was rolling rudderless in a fatalistic calm. “I had to show him something. Here. Now. He might never have tried it if he hadn’t had an audience. Can you take me home now?”

  “Worst thi
ng possible,” replied Bell agitatedly. “That’d just confirm Martha’s suspicions.” He looked around nervously. “She’s gone. Don’t know whether that’s good or bad. But Grade’s watching us. Ruy, if you’ve got the faintest intimations of decency, you’ll wander over to that group of ladies and kiss a few of them. May throw Martha off the scent. Anna, you stay here. Keep talking. Try to toss it off as an amusing incident.” He gave a short strained laugh. “Otherwise you’re going to wind up as the First Martyr in the Cause of Art.”

  “I beg your pardon, Dr. van Tuyl.”

  It was Grade. His voice was brutally cold, and the syllables were clipped from his lips with a spine-tingling finality.

  “Yes, Colonel?” said Anna nervously.

  “The Security Bureau would like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Yes?”

  Grade turned and stared icily at Bell. “It is preferred that the interrogation be conducted in private. It should not take long. If the lady would kindly step into the model’s dressing room, my assistant will take over from there.”

  “Dr. van Tuyl was just leaving,” said Bell huskily. “Did you have a coat, Anna?”

  With a smooth unobtrusive motion Grade unsnapped the guard on his hip holster. “If Dr. van Tuyl leaves the dressing room within ten minutes, alone, she may depart from the studio in any manner she pleases.”

  Anna watched her friend’s face become even paler. He wet his lips, then whispered, “I think you’d better go, Anna. Be careful.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The room was small and nearly bare. Its sole furnishings were an ancient calendar, a clothes tree, a few stacks of dusty books, a table (bare save for a roll of canvas patching tape) and three chairs.

  In one of the chairs, across the table, sat Martha Jacques.

  She seemed almost to smile at Anna; but the amused curl of her beautiful lips was totally belied by her eyes, which pulsed hate with the paralyzing force of physical blows.

  In the other chair sat Willie the Cork, almost unrecognizable in his groomed neatness.

  The psychiatrist brought her hand to her throat as though to restore her voice, and at the movement, she saw from the corner of her eye that Willie, in a lightning motion, had simultaneously thrust his hand into his coat pocket, invisible below the table. She slowly understood that he held a gun on her.

  The man was the first to speak, and his voice was so crisp and incisive that she doubted her first intuitive recognition. “Obviously, I shall kill you if you attempt any unwise action. So please sit down, Dr. van Tuyl. Let us put our cards on the table.”

  It was too incredible, too unreal, to arouse any immediate sense of fear. In numb amazement she pulled out the chair and sat down.

  “As you may have suspected for some time,” continued the man curtly, “I am a Security agent.”

  Anna found her voice. “I know only that I am being forcibly detained. What do you want?”

  “Information, doctor. What government do you represent?”

  “None.”

  The man fairly purred. “Don’t you realize, doctor, that as soon as you cease to answer responsively, I shall kill you?”

  Anna van Tuyl looked from the man to the woman. She thought of circling hawks, and felt the intimations of terror. What could she have done to attract such wrathful attention? She didn’t know. But then, they couldn’t be sure about her, either. This man didn’t want to kill her until he found out more. And by that time surely he’d see that it was all a mistake.

  She said: “Either I am a psychiatrist attending a special case, or I am not. I am in no position to prove the positive. Yet, by syllogistic law, you must accept it as a possibility until you prove the negative. Therefore, until you have given me an opportunity to explain or disprove any evidence to the contrary, you can never be certain in your own mind that I am other than what I claim to be.”

  The man smiled, almost genially. “Well put, doctor. I hope they’ve been paying you what you are worth.” He bent forward suddenly. “Why are you trying to make Ruy Jacques fall in love with you?”

  She stared back with widening eyes. “What did you say?”

  “Why are you trying to make Ruy Jacques fall in love with you?”

  She could meet his eyes squarely enough, but her voice was now very faint: “I didn’t understand you at first. You said . . . that I’m trying to make him fall in love with me.” She pondered this for a long wondering moment, as though the idea were utterly new. “And I guess . . . it’s true.”

  The man looked blank, then smiled with sudden appreciation. “You are clever. Certainly, you’re the first to try that line. Though I don’t know what you expect to gain with your false candour.”

  “False? Didn’t you mean it yourself? No, I see you didn’t. But Mrs. Jacques does. And she hates me for it. But I’m just part of the bigger hate she keeps for him. Even her Sciomnia equation is just part of that hate. She isn’t working on a biophysical weapon just because she’s a patriot, but more to spite him, to show him that her science is superior to – ”

  Martha Jacques’ hand lashed viciously across the little table and struck Anna in the mouth.

  The man merely murmured: “Please control yourself a bit longer, Mrs. Jacques. Interruptions from outside would be most inconvenient at this point.” His humorless eyes returned to Anna. “One evening a week ago, when Mr. Jacques was under your care at the clinic, you left stylus and paper with him.”

  Anna nodded. “I wanted him to attempt automatic writing.”

  “What is ‘automatic writing’?”

  “Simply writing done while the conscious mind is absorbed in a completely extraneous activity, such as music. Mr. Jacques was to focus his attention on certain music composed by me while holding stylus and paper in his lap. If his recent inability to read and write was caused by some psychic block, it was quite possible that his subconscious mind might bypass the block, and he would write – just as one ‘doodles’ unconsciously when talking over the visor.”

  He thrust a sheet of paper at her. “Can you identify this?”

  What was he driving at? She examined the sheet hesitantly. “It’s just a blank sheet from my private monogrammed stationery. Where did you get it?”

  “From the pad you left with Mr. Jacques.”

  “So?”

  “We also found another sheet from the same pad under Mr. Jacques’ bed. It had some interesting writing on it.”

  “But Mr. Jacques personally reported nil results.”

  “He was probably right.”

  “But you said he wrote something?” she insisted; momentarily her personal danger faded before her professional interest.

  “I didn’t say he wrote anything.”

  “Wasn’t it written with that same stylus?”

  “It was. But I don’t think he wrote it. It wasn’t in his handwriting.”

  “That’s often the case in automatic writing. The script is modified according to the personality of the dissociated subconscious unit. The alteration is sometimes so great as to be unrecognizable as the m of the subject.”

  He peered at her keenly. “This script was perfectly recognizable, Dr. van Tuyl. I’m afraid you’ve made a grave blunder. Now, shall I tell you in whose handwriting?”

  She listened to her own whisper: “Mine?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it say?”

  “You know very well.”

  “But I don’t.” Her underclothing was sticking to her body with a damp clammy feeling. “At least you ought to give me a chance to explain it. May I see it?”

  He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then reached into his pocket sheaf. “Here’s an electrostat. The paper, texture, ink, everything, is a perfect copy of your original.”

  She studied the sheet with a puzzled frown. There were a few lines of scribblings in purple. But it wasn’t in her handwriting. In fact, it wasn’t even handwriting – just a mass of illegible scrawls!

  Anna felt a t
hrill of fear. She stammered: “What are you trying to do?”

  “You don’t deny you wrote it?”

  “Of course I deny it.” She could no longer control the quaver in her voice. Her lips were leaden masses, her tongue a stone slab. “It’s – unrecognizable . . .”

  The Cork floated with sinister patience. “In the upper left hand corner is your monogram: ‘A. vT.’, the same as on the first sheet. You will admit that, at least?”

  For the first time, Anna really examined the presumed trio of initials enclosed in the familiar ellipse. The ellipse was there. But the print within it was – gibberish. She seized again at the first sheet – the blank one. The feel of the paper, even the smell, stamped it as genuine. It had been hers. But the monogram! “Oh no!” she whispered.

  Her panic-stricken eyes flailed about the room. The calendar . . . same picture of the same cow . . . but the rest . . . ! A stack of books in the corner . . . titled in gold leaf . . . gathering dust for months . . . the label on the roll of patching tape on the table . . . even the watch on her wrist.

  Gibberish. She could no longer read. She had forgotten how. Her ironic gods had chosen this critical moment to blind her with their brilliant bounty.

  Then take it! And play for time!

  She wet trembling lips. “I’m unable to read. My reading glasses are in my bag, outside.” She returned the script. “If you’d read it, I might recognize the contents.”

  The man said: “I thought you might try this, just to get my eyes off you. If you don’t mind, I’ll quote from memory:

  “‘ – what a queer climax for The Dream! Yet, inevitable. Art versus Science decrees that one of us must destroy the Sciomniac weapon; but that could wait until we become more numerous. So, what I do is for him alone, and his future depends on appreciating it. Thus, Science bows to Art, but even Art isn’t all. The Student must know the one greater thing when he sees The Nightingale dead, for only then will he recognize . . .’”

  He paused.

  “Is that all?” asked Anna.

  “That’s all.”

  “Nothing about a . . . rose?”