“No, no, you don’t owe me anything,” Illar said. “I—I just don’t understand.”
“Well, you love that girl you live with, don’t you?”
LOVE Tarina? The thought was preposterous, but, curiously, not repulsive. “I suppose so,” he said, because he didn’t want to admit his ignorance. “But love means different things to different people. What does it mean to you?” She laughed and flopped down on the edge of the bed. “I’m a screwball about things like that,” she said. “I loved a guy once because he frowned when he read the funny papers. Can you beat that?”
“It’s—illogical.”
“Sure. I used to sit and giggle at him while he read the funnies on Sunday morning, and he’d tell me to shut up, glaring at me, and I’d go on laughing. Then he’d get mad and come over to teach me some manners, and somehow he’d forget all about giving me a spanking, and we’d be better friends than ever in a little while.”
“What happened to him?”
“He walked out. With a waitress. They run a gas station and lunch counter out west somewhere.”
Illar looked down at her for a few seconds, disturbed and miserable, and then he patted her on the head and walked out of the room.
He didn’t understand any of this, what she’d told him, or his own feelings. Was it possible, he wondered, that these people existed on a plane below the reach of his intelligence?
After this crisis Illar became a headache to everyone connected with the show.
Webster tried to talk to him, but got nowhere. He respected Illar’s genius, and understood what he thought to be swell-headedness. He let Illar have his way, hoping he’d snap out of it, and meanwhile looked around for another lead. It was that, or close the show, and he didn’t want to close the show for the excellent reason that it was playing to SRO.
Illar drank heavily, taking a perverse delight in this primitive habit, and treated Tarina with cold indifference.
TARINA’S composure was shaken. Once, it had been enough to know that soon they would leave, that soon they would be back in their silent, shining sphere, but now she wondered what that would be like. Here she could at least shop and buy clothes when he was in a particularly vile temper, but how would it be when they were locked together once again in their unassailable prison? He’d change, of course; but supposing he didn’t? The implications in that were frightening.
And so, casting about wildly for assurance, she called Jeremy Webster and asked if she could see him. He was surprised to hear from her, but told her to come over to his apartment.
“I’ll split a benzedrine tablet with you,” he said.
Webster’s apartment was the penthouse of a hotel in the Fifties. From the terrace, where dinner was served, they had a splendid view of the city, laced lengthwise with gleaming threads of traffic. They stood together, drinks in hand, and looked out into the night.
“This used to be my apple,” Webster said. “Now only the core is left.” He grinned sadly at her. “Watch it, you’ll fall into a cynical cesspool if you stick around here. You want to talk about Pembroke, eh? That’s my fate. Glamorous women tell me about their husbands now. They used to deny they were married. Well, what goes?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, he’s got an occupational disease known as big-headitis. It hits us all, I’m afraid. And he drinks.”
“But why?”
Webster looked at her sharply. “Look, I’m a simple guy at heart. I make two hundred thousand a year, and I keep a sleep-in psychiatrist the way a failure would have a sleep-in valet. The psychiatrist tells me how I am in the morning. He’s never wrong. He always says lousy. But I stray. The point is, in spite of my fancy background, I’m a simple guy. I look for simple answers. And when a guy behaves like Pembroke I decide that he ain’t getting—” He stopped as Tarina’s cheeks began to burn.
“I embarrass you?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“Well—no.”
“That’s too bad. I thought I had our answer for a second. Well, put it this way. A guy who starts blowing off energy the way Pembroke is doing, is a guy whose release valve ain’t working right. He ain’t living normally. There’s nothing missing. There’s something he ain’t getting. Okay. Now what’s Pembroke missing? What ain’t he getting?”
“You mean—?” She couldn’t use the words.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” Webster said slowly. “Look, what did you do today?”
“What?”
“Answer my question.”
“Well, lots of things.”
“Tell me.”
“I had breakfast, I showered, I went to the beauty salon. I shopped. I came home. I—Pembroke was there, in a very disagreeable mood.”
“What did you do at the beauty parlor?”
“I—I had a facial, and I had my legs waxed.”
“What did you shop for?”
“Well, some perfume, some bath powders, I think. And some nighties.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why buy perfume and bath powder, and have your legs waxed, and all the rest of it? What’s the sense of buying things that don’t get used?”
“That’s a disgusting idea.”
“Poor Pembroke,” Webster said, shaking his head. “No wonder he drinks.”
“But do you seriously think that—” She blushed violently. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but that wasn’t what embarrassed her. What embarrassed her, and sent a shivery hot and cold tremor from her head to toes, was the realization that the words, and their implications, were suddenly rather heady and delicious. She wanted to use them; they, didn’t repulse or frighten her anymore.
Webster grinned and looked at his watch. “The show breaks at eleven twenty. I’ll see that Pembroke goes right home. You’ll be there?”
“Yes, yes.”
Illar came into the bedroom of their suite at a quarter of twelve. One bedside lamp glowed softly. Tarina lay under a silken sheet which had molded itself to the graceful lines of her body. She smiled at Illar.
“Webster said you wanted to see me,” Illar said.
“I was lonesome.”
“For what?”
“You.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, frowning faintly. She put her hands under her head and her legs moved under the light coverlet.
“Give me a kiss,” she said.
He felt as clumsy as a schoolboy. “I’ve never kissed anyone,” he said.
“Neither have I.”
“You won’t laugh if I don’t do it right?”
She giggled. “How would I know?”
He kissed her tentatively at first, and then with more authority. Her arms went around him and pulled him closer to her, and after a while he turned out the light.
Illar and Tarina were supremely good at anything they put their minds to, and that night they put their minds to the problem at hand with rare efficiency and enthusiasm . . .
THE NEXT morning he looked into her smiling face and shook his head slowly.
“Do you imagine—do you suppose it’s the same with all of them?”
“I don’t see why not.”
He knew the answer to the question he had asked himself when he had left Dawn’s room. These people weren’t below the reach of his intelligence; they were above it.
“One thing, darling,” he said, and his voice was suddenly grave. “If we had, well, a child, we could never go back. It would be human. It couldn’t come with us, of course.”
“You want to go back, naturally.”
“But certainly,” he said, in a very confident voice. “We’re going on tour in a few months, and I’ll have to accompany the show, but after that—”
“There may be movie offers.”
“Yes, I can see a few delays, but—”
“But we’ll definitely go back?”
“Surely. That is, if you’re smart about—well, that other thing I mentioned.”
“I’
ll be very smart,” she said.
He grinned at her and kissed her on the lips. After a bit he said, in a worried voice, “Do you suppose, I mean, well, does the time make any difference? Do they—well all the time?”
“I’m sure they do,” she said.
She felt very smart as she lay beside him, smart enough in fact to be very dumb.
NEVER MIND A MARTIAN
First published in the November-December 1953 issue of Fantastic.
AFTER THE revolution had been put down, violently and efficiently, the Djehrians—who were the fiercest rebels—continued to meet and plot in the vast windy darkness of the caves outside the city of Dar.
Dar was the largest metropolis of the planet Mars, the capital of the incumbent administration. It was ringed by massive black mountains, and these were honeycombed with an intricate network of tunnels, rivers, waterfalls, caves and chambers. Here—in this black labyrinth—the Djehrians met to plan their fight against the Rulers.
It was dangerous business. Guard troops of the Rulers prowled the caves and tunnels, their ruthless efficiency heightened by the bounty that had been placed on the heads of the rebel cabal. The meeting place was changed nightly, and the rebels flitted to the appointed cave singly or in pairs, taking the utmost care to make certain that they were not observed or followed.
But still there were leaks. Informers thronged the city of Dar, willing and eager to sell out the rebels to the Rulers. And eventually and inevitably the identity of the Djehrians’ leader was disclosed to the Guards. And the Guards prepared to pounce on him.
But the Djehrians had informers too, and from one of these they learned of the Guards’ plans. They convened in one of the great dark caves within two hours after receiving this ominous information. Their leader Der—who was indistinguishable from the towering, wraith-like figures of his comrades—listened attentively as a variety of countermeasures were proposed and rejected.
Finally one member cried, “Der must flee. Der must not be annihilated. Der must flee.”
A chorus of reedy voices took up this suggestion, repeating it until it swelled to the proportions of a chant.
Then Der raised his arms. “There is no place to flee to,” he said. “The cities of Kara and Mo are crawling with spies. And I am known there. The waters and skies are patrolled by the Guards.”
There was a gloomy, despairing silence until someone said, “Der must leave Mars. There is no other hope.”
This caused a babble of discussion. Flee Mars? But where? To Jupiter? Certainly not! The rulers of Mars were friendly with the rulers of Jupiter. And certainly not to Venus. Der would perish in that wilderness.
Finally someone said, “Earth!” There was a silence. “It is too much to ask of Der,” a voice said at last.
A reedy rumble of agreement followed this.
But after more discussion someone brought the subject back to earth. There was no other place for Der to go, and unless he went there immediately all was lost.
“There is a primitive sort of life on that planet,” one of Der’s chief advisers said. “We could de-materialize you, and ship you there tonight.”
“You could lodge yourself with one of their primitive life forms,” another said.
“We can select one now—”
“And pick you up with the machine in a month’s time—”
“At determined coordinates—”
“It will not be too horrible—”
“You will be saved—”
“It is your only chance,” the top adviser said, cutting firmly through these splintered cries.
Der was silent for a long interval. Then he said, “Very well,” in a small sad voice. Then, with a touch of bitterness, he added: “It is the price we must pay for survival. But it is a high one. To lodge in the brain of a primitive earth unit! It is a monstrous prospect. But I accept it.”
At this demonstration of patriotism, a reverent little sigh swept through the rebels and mingled eerily with the great winds which clawed through the dark caves . . .
Three weeks after this decision had been reached, Reggie van Ameringen was lounging carelessly over the bar in his club, listening with relish to a tale that Ferdie Myrtlehead was telling him about his uncle. Reggie was a tall, slim, elegantly dressed young man, with blond hair and innocent blue eyes. His face was narrow and bony, and its customary expression was one of vacant good-humor. There were lots of people who insisted that Reggie was nobody’s fool; they claimed on the contrary that he was anybody’s fool.
FERDIE MYRTLEHEAD, a plump young man with a round and silly face, had come from a long line of assorted nuts. And he was intensely proud of this. He maintained that he admired anything perfect,; and his family were all perfect asses.
“—Blew all his homes up one summer,” he was saying now, shaking his head and chuckling softly. “Uncle Abner was quite a card.”
“I say!” Reggie said admiringly. “Man of character, what?”
“Full of it, chock full. Thought they were getting surly. Fact! ‘Damndest bunch of surly houses I ever saw’ he used to say. And he wasn’t a man to take a surly house bring down. Hired engineers, dynamite blokes, and went all over the country, everywhere he had a house, and blew them to hell.” Ferdie was choking with laughter now. “Palm Springs, Newport, Bar Harbor—everywhere. Then he’d walked through the rubble shouting, ‘Get surly with me, will you? Imitation damn French manor house, that’s all you are.’ Ever hear of a fool like that, huh?”
Direct questions always startled Reggie. They demanded an answer, which meant you had to know the question. And that was no snap. Things slipped out of Reggie’s mind very easily. Frowning, he clung hard to Ferdie’s question. “Well,” he said, playing the game, “I’ve got a nephew who hates swimmers. Once he filled his swimming pool with jello, and then had a night-time swimming party. Couple of his best friends had to be pulled out by the fire department.” He looked hopefully at Ferdie.
“Not bad, not bad,” Ferdie said with the patronizing tone of a connoisseur.
They ordered two more gin slings and adjusted themselves to new positions at the bar. It was only three in the afternoon, with long hours ahead of them.
“How’s Sari?” Ferdie said, after a grateful sip of his fresh drink.
“Sari?”
“You know. Red-haired girl.”
“Oh, yes. She’s grand,” A thought struck him and he smiled. “We’re getting married, you know.”
“Well, of course. That’s why I asked. Is she lost in bride-like twitterings?”
“She seems frightfully excited about it,” Reggie said. “I can’t imagine why, frankly.” He stared at his long vacant face in the bar mirror. “Girls are strange creatures. Spooky, if you know what I mean.”
“Quite. Did I ever tell you about my Aunt Minerva?” Ferdie swigged his drink, and then began to chuckle. “Now there was a fine, gamy old loon. Wanted to be a policeman. Bought a uniform, whistle, the whole kit and kaboodle. Went around arresting people, dragging them into station houses. Always made fearful rows when they sent her packing.”
“Aunt, uncle,” Reggie said, and snapped his fingers. “Reminds me. I’ve got to dash. Big event this afternoon. Meeting Sari’s uncle. Cheerio, old chap.”
“Oh, I say now,” Ferdie said dejectedly. “You’re leaving me in the lurch. Phone her and tell her you’ll be late. I’ve got a grand story about my Uncle Sisyphus you’ve never heard. Be a good chap. How about it?”
“Righto, I’ll give her a buzz,” Reggie said.
It was at this instant that Reggie felt a peculiar knocking inside his head. Normally he would have ignored it; he was quite used to buzzings, rappings and other varieties of cranial disturbances. There was even a noise like that of escaping steam which he could hear very distinctly after he had drunk too many stingers. But this knocking was followed immediately by a voice which said, “There will be no stories of Uncle Sisyphus. I’ve had enough, do you hear?”
Reggie glanc
ed at Ferdie, somewhat hurt. “Well, old man, if you’re going to be piggish about your stories, I’ll just toddle along.”
“What are you babbling about?” Ferdie said pleasantly.
“Wasn’t babbling,” Reggie said. His voice and manner were stiff. “You said no stories about Uncle Sisyphus. Very well. I’ll bite the bullet, stiff upper lip, and all the rest of it. Chap won’t tell his best friend a little story, well nothing to do but cut the fellow.”
“I say, old fellow, this is pretty thick. I’m going to tell you the story. What gave you the idea I wasn’t?”
“You said you wouldn’t,” Reggie said.
“No, I said that,” the voice said.
Reggie raised his eyebrows. He had been watching Ferdie, and the bloke’s lips hadn’t moved. And they were the only persons at the bar. Good stunt, he thought shrewdly. Tossing the old voice about like a bouncing beanbag.
“Where did you learn that one?” he asked, feeling a little dig of envy.
Ferdie rubbed his chin. “You all right?” he asked. “No hot flashes, pains in the head, flutters in the stomach?”
“Feel fine. Top hole.”
“Let’s start over again. Two drinks, bartender. Well, Uncle Sisyphus thought for a long while that he was an automobile. So one day—”
THERE was a knocking and battering within Reggie’s head that caused a technicolored assortment of lights to blaze before his eyes. And the voice, grim and desperate now, cried, “No! I’ve heard enough of this inane drivel. I can’t stand anymore.”
“Oh I say, shut up,” Reggie said. “You’re turning into a shattering bore.”
Ferdie paused. He twisted his drink about in his fingers slowly. Then he sighed. “Very well,” he said moodily. “It’s all I’ve got though, these little yarns about the bats in the family tree. I suppose it would be different if I had a job, or a dog, or a wife. But I’m all alone.”
“But look, old chap, I wasn’t talking to you,” Reggie said.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 302