Bright Segment

by Theodore Sturgeon

  He sprang to his feet joyously, and grasped her shoulders. “You mean it, don’t you? You really mean it?”

  “My specialty,” she said through a tight throat, “is sick kittens.”

  “You’re an angel,” he said hoarsely, and kissed her. It was a surprisingly gentle kiss, just between her left temple and her eye.

  “Now sit down and pull yourself together, Lee. I’ve promised. You’d better tell me what this is all about.”

  “I killed a man,” said Lee. Keeping his eyes on her face he moved backward and sank down on the settee. “I killed him when he was asleep. I hit him with a bronze book-end and then I opened the side of his neck with a little knife. His skin was tough,” he added, “and the knife wasn’t very sharp. It seemed to go on for hours.”

  “I see,” said Tina, holding tight to herself. She began to force a smile but decided against it; her cheeks might crack. “And it left you with a psychic trauma.”

  “I suppose so,” he said seriously, ignoring the weak attempt at facetiousness. “But that wouldn’t be anything by itself. I’d be glad if that were all. But, you see, after I did it, I had to get away, and I couldn’t. People knew me. I was one of those noticeable individuals, I suppose.”

  “You are.”

  “Am I? Well, it doesn’t matter now. I’m not what I was then. I’ve changed. I sold my—my soul.”

  “What kind of mad talk is that?” said Tina, straightening in alarm.

  “Go ahead. Take it for granted that I’m a psychopath. But you’re going to help me, and you’ll see. Don’t you know that there are more forms of life on earth than the ones you read about in the biology books? You deal in shells. You know the shapes and forms they take. You know the differences in the substances shellfish feed on. You know the peculiar variations that occur. Do you know there’s a shellfish in the Great Lakes that makes its shell—”

  “—out of strontium carbonate instead of calcium carbonate. Of course I know. So far this is my lecture, not yours.”

  “Please listen,” he said, “I don’t know how much time I have … There are creatures which feed exclusively on cellulose, and creatures which feed on the excreta of the cellulose-eaters.”

  “You’ve got termites there,” said Tina. She was beginning to feel a little better. She knew enough about abnormal psychology to be able to pigeonhole some of this.

  He ignored her. “There are creatures which eat granite, and lichens which live on them. But why go on? The world is full of this symbiosis, even in human beings. There are microbes living in us without which we would die. And I tell you that there are creatures on earth which can’t develop a soul any more than a termite can digest cellulose. These creatures feed on the souls which we humans build!”

  “That’s at least logical,” said Tina. “Even if it happens to be untrue.”

  “We can no more understand them and their motives and methods and hungers than can the hungers, and dark biological urges of a bass be understood by the intestinal microbes of a minnow which it may have swallowed.”

  “Very clear reasoning,” said Tina, hoping that her mental reservation did not show. “How do you know that such a creature wants to eat your soul?”

  “I promised it,” said Lee miserably. “You’ve heard the tales of selling your soul to the devil. They’re poppycock, believe me. What I promised to give up, though, must be called a soul, because there is no other name for it. All those legends are true in essence. Heaven knows how many people lose their essence, their vitality—whatever you want to call it. These soul-eaters are psychic creatures. The psychic pressure of—you may call it the ethics, if you like—of a true promise, is binding. They give you what you want, in exchange for the promise of your soul.”

  “That’s a little nonsensical,” said Tina flatly. “If they had access to souls at all, why don’t they just gobble them up and have done with it?”

  “Do you,” he asked, his voice too patient, “gobble up a steak in the butcher store? No. You carry it home. You store it for a while. You season it. You cook it—so much on this side, so much on the other. You serve it. Perhaps you add a touch of salt, or sauce, or tabasco. Only then do you eat it.”

  “And what, pray tell me, are these psychic sauces?”

  “Emotions,” he said. “Fear. Humor. Terror. Disgust. Pity.”

  “I see. And you’re convinced that you are now basted for the last time and ready to take out of the oven?”

  “If you want to put it that way,” he said, unhappily.

  “Don’t mind my flippancy,” she said with sudden gentleness.

  “I know why you do it,” he answered, understandingly.

  “Now,” she said, “tell me all about this thing, and skip the theory. You killed this fellow. I imagine you had reason for it.”

  “I had,” he said briefly, with such terrible emphasis that she all but tangibly felt the wave of hatred. “After I killed him, there was nothing I could do, no place I could go. I’d be seen leaving the house. I’d be remembered at the depot, at the airport. Sooner or later I’d be found.

  “I was pacing back and forth in the library, trying to think of a way out, when I heard somebody cough. I was frightened out of my wits. There was a little man standing in the corner, smiling at me and rubbing his hands together. He looked perfectly ordinary. In fact, you see thousands of faces like that every day, and never remember them. The only thing unusual about him was his hair. He hadn’t much, but, in that shadowy corner, it glowed.

  “He told me not to be frightened. He said he knew what I had done, and the position I was in. He said he could help me. I believed him. I was desperate, frantic, ready to believe anything. He said that he could tell me just what I could do to get out of my trouble, and be free. He said I need never pay the legal penalty for what I had done.”

  Lee paused and moistened his lips. “I begged him to tell me. He played with me for a while, wanting to know how much I would give him. Finally I shrieked at him to tell me what he wanted. He told me. He gave me two years. Two full years. That looked like forever to me. I agreed. He got my solemn promise, and believe me, I was sincere. Then he taught me how to change.”

  Tina waited while Lee sat brooding. She realized that he was finished. “What sort of change?”

  “I—don’t want to tell you that. You wouldn’t believe it. Nevertheless, I changed, and he kept his promise. I got away free, and came to New York. You know how I make my living. Of course, I don’t push my luck. I think I could go to the top. I won’t, though, unless I can live out the two years and beyond. I am morally certain if I can keep my—my—what it is he wants, I’ll be safe from him and from the law for the rest of my life.”

  “Quite a tale,” said Tina. “Now you’d better tell me how the silver cigarette case enters into it.”

  “I got it the night I promised,” said Lee. “I—I can’t seem to dance without it. I’ve tried, but without it I am no good at all. It seems to be just an ordinary cigarette case, but—”

  “But indeed,” shuddered Tina. “Still—I don’t know. Lots of actors carry around a charm or a rabbit’s foot. Tell me—what about those fantastic threats you made a moment ago?”

  “I’m glad I won’t have to do any of those things,” he said. “You see, when the Eaters feed, they do not take all of a person’s essence. The body dies, of course, and what they want is eaten. But there is a good deal left over.”

  “Bones and suet, kind of,” she said helpfully.

  “Kind of.” He smiled, but she could see it was an outward smile solely. “That remnant still has a life of its own. Much of it is ugly and evil. I imagine most ‘haunts’ are exactly those left-overs, drifting around the places where they used to live and, depending on their quality, clinging to places where something bad has happened, or to the places where they were happy.”

  “Hm. And which would I be, if you haunted me?”

  “If you had refused to help me, it would have been bad. Bad.”

&nb
sp; “Okay, Lee. Now suppose we go back to my original question. What must I do?”

  “It’s very simple. Just go with me when the time comes. You may not know what a remarkable person you are. You positively radiate goodness, and courage, and humor. Perhaps I’m hypersensitive, done to a turn—” he smiled—“but I feel it vividly. I get it from you, and I think I re-radiate it. I think that if you were with me, with your wry wit and your psychic strength, and if I opened myself to you, I would prove distasteful to the Eater, and he would discard me.”

  “Burn the roast, hey? Too much salt in the cabbage? Is that all I have to do? Stay with you?”

  “That’s absolutely all. And in the good clean outdoors, too, right here in the city. At the corner of Bleecker and Commerce. No pentagrams, no witch’s brew, no dark caverns. You heard the cigarette case a while ago. I have until ten o’clock.”

  “You want me to stay with you until then?” she asked.

  “It won’t be necessary,” he assured her. “What time do you close?”

  “On Tuesdays, about nine.”

  “Good. I’ll drop by—”

  “No,” said Tina, suddenly thinking of Eddy Southworth and the big, strong, misunderstanding feet he would put into this if he knew about it. Eddy would have to be stalled off. “I’ll meet you at the drug store at the corner.”

  “It’s a date,” he said.

  He got quickly to his feet, looking younger than he should with his stubble and his hollow eyes, and went into the front of the shop. She followed him with deep concern in her eyes.

  “Aren’t you afraid of whatever it was you were hiding from?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m not afraid of anything any more, thanks to you.” He opened the door, and stepped gallantly aside. Urged by reflex, she preceded him through. The chime hummed. She stood in the doorway as he slipped past her.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. She realized only after he was gone that for the second time he had been in and out of the place without activating the chime. On both occasions she had just happened to be standing in the beam when he went out. She shrugged and went inside.

  The store seemed unusually deserted, chill and spiritless, as though in departing he had stripped away its individuality.

  V

  “I think I can,” said Eddy Southworth. He called to the pancake artist on the early shift. “Joe! Can you hang on a little longer? Tina wants to talk something over.”

  “For you, no,” said Joe, flashing a large smile. “For Tina, yes. Take your time, Eddy.”

  Eddy steered her to a booth in the back. “What is it?” he asked.

  She began her reply with an apology. “Eddy, hon, I’m sorry I barked at you this morning,” she said. “But if there’s anything I can’t stand it’s some good-hearted bumbling man being protective and laying down the law.”

  “All right, Tina. I’m sorry, too. But I happen to be fond of you—all of you, including your neck.”

  “My neck?”

  “The thing you stick out.”

  “Oh, that. Well, you’ll see that I am doing nothing of the kind. This Lee Brokaw business is coming to a head tonight, and I don’t want you messing around with it. Now sit quietly and I’ll tell you all about it from the very start. Maybe then you’ll see it’s all right and let me handle it my way.”

  “All right. I’m listening.”

  She told him everything, from the face in her bedroom up until Lee’s departure that noon. Early in the account Eddy began to sputter. She frowned at him until he stopped. Very soon afterward his jaw began to swing slackly. She stopped talking and aped him until he closed it. Finally she was through. It had been quite a recital, since her memory was good and her language vivid.

  “And just what are you going to do?” Eddy demanded.

  “Exactly what he asked me to do,” was her instant reply.

  “But Tina!” Eddy protested. “You’re crazy! The man’s a confessed murderer!”

  “Which would hold up in court only if supported by the evidence,” she told him. “And if there were any evidence, he’d have been caught. You know what passes for evidence nowadays. A trace of dust, a couple of hairs … No, I don’t think there was any murder.”

  “Then what about this fantastic business of the face in your bedroom, and the cigarette case, and all that?”

  “Those faces I saw—well, I told you about his act, Eddy. Why don’t you jump to the conclusion that I’m a poor impressionable female when you have the chance? I’m quite convinced that I’m seeing things.”

  “I must admit it sounds like it. But why must you concern yourself with this at all? You say that Brokaw doesn’t mean anything to you.”

  “Every human being should mean something to us, Eddy. Lee’s a dancer—better than good. He’s great. He’s a very sensitive boy. He’s gotten a weird fixation, but fortunately there’s a very definite time limit on it. If my not being with him means that he goes off his rocker, perhaps permanently, I don’t want it on my conscience.”

  Eddy looked at her with troubled eyes. “There is still one thing that troubles me. Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Eddy, I’ve made my own way since I was a kid, and when I marry it’s going to be because the man I love and a girl named Tina are traveling together in the same direction at approximately the same speed, and each under his own power. I won’t be steered, towed, nor provided with an icebreaker. This business with Brokaw is for the record. It wouldn’t do any good to tell you about it afterward.”

  He looked at her in awe. “Hi, tension,” he grinned. “That was a speech!”

  “I’m just telling you, Eddy—if I see you at the corner of Bleecker and Commerce Streets at ten o’clock, so help me, I’ll never see you again as long as I live.”

  “You won’t,” he promised. “It’s a quarter to nine now. Will you drop back here around eleven?”

  “Sure, Eddy.”

  “Tina—”

  She waited.

  “Good luck.”

  She smiled, put a kiss on her fingertips and brushed them across his mouth.

  When she had gone, Eddy walked to the front. “Joe,” he called.

  “Huh.”

  “I’ll give you five bucks if you hang on for a couple of hours.”

  “Nope.”

  “Ten, Joe. This is important.”

  “Nope. I’ll do it for nuttin’. I know when a guy’s got trouble.”

  “Gosh, Joe. You’re a real pal. If there’s ever anything I can—”

  “Beat it,” growled Joe. Eddy did, clasping, in his pocket, Tina’s keycase, which he had filched from her purse.

  VI

  Tina and Lee Brokaw walked down Barrow Street. They had spent most of the past hour in a quiet bar and Lee still had not shaved. He was reserved and apparently in excellent control of himself. He spoke in monosyllables. As they turned into Commerce Street, Tina slipped her hand around his arm.

  “Do you feel all right?” she asked.

  “I feel fine,” he assured her. But he was trembling, ever so slightly. He walked slowly, gazing ahead, his eyes flickering over the four corners of Commerce and Bleecker. There were a few people around, but apparently no one was waiting on the corner.

  “Maybe he’s late,” murmured Tina.

  “He won’t be late,” said Lee. He looked at his watch. “Four more minutes.”

  One and a half of the minutes were used up in reaching the corner. Tina felt as if she were carrying a bier.

  “Did you hear about the nudist who went to the fancy dress ball with an egg-beater over his shoulder?” she asked.

  “No,” said Lee, smiling. “What was he masquerading as?”

  “An outboard motor,” said Tina, and added wildly, “that’s the whole thing in a shellhole. My brain is certainly working on all fours tonight.”

  “Tina, Tina, hold on to yourself. I’ll be all right. Just as soon—” He broke off with a sharp intake of breath. Before them
stood a slender little man with a partially bald head and a very ordinary expression on his face, who looked from one to the other of them.

  “Is this the girl you were talking about?” he asked mildly.

  “Here she is,” said Lee, and viciously shoved Tina forward.

  “Lee!” she cried, utterly shocked.

  The bald man put out a hand—to stop her, to catch her, to ward her off, she did not know. She twisted away from him, almost fell, staggered upright. Lee Brokaw was sprinting away down Commerce Street. She started after him.

  Over her shoulder she saw the bald man coming after her, a bewildered and anxious expression on his mild little face. She put on a burst of speed, blessing her good sense in wearing ballet shoes, and for a brief moment gained on Brokaw.

  “Lee!” she called.

  Suddenly something big and black leaped out of a doorway and shouldered into Lee Brokaw. Caught in midstride, he caromed off into a lamp-post with bone-shaking force. The shadow caught him up, pinioning his arms behind his back and lifting him clear of the ground, bore him grimly along toward Tina.

  Tina tried her best to stop, but skidded past. Brokaw, dangling in that relentless grip, lashed his body about, biting and spitting like a cat. Suddenly he began to scream—terrible, high-pitched screams.

  The man carrying him said gruffly: “This is the one you want,” and flung Brokaw down at the panting bald man’s feet.

  The bald man bent and grasped Lee’s shoulder. Lee screamed again as if the hand were made of white-hot metal. He screamed twice more, writhing and twisting on the ground, and then lay still.

  The big man said, “Tina, are you all right?”

  “Eddy! Oh, Eddy, Eddy darling!” She flew into his arms like a bird into a large tree. He put his face in her hair. “I told you so, you idiot,” he said, “and I promise not to say it again.”

  The bald man said hesitantly, “I have a warrant here for the arrest of a suspect in the case of Homer Sykes.”

  “Never heard of him,” said Eddy.

  “Take me home, Eddy.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said the bald man. “You’ll have to come with me.”

  Through the gathering crowd loomed a policeman. The little man rapped out instructions about a radio car and an ambulance. Another policeman rounded the corner. The man gave him orders about staying with Lee Brokaw until the ambulance arrived. Both policemen saluted.