“Only what he really said,” the travel man explained, “is, ‘She’s come here every night for a month now.’ ”
“But why?” the doctor asked. “What’s it all about? You’d have to know the story back of it to do anything with it.”
“Don’t you see? It was his wife that he’d murdered.”
“That’s screwy,” said the reporter. “It was his daughter. She was coming home from school and was killed in an accident at that spot and was trying to finish her journey home. That’s why the suitcase.”
“It was his daughter all right,” the travel man said, “but the way I heard it, she’d taken poison and then changed her mind and tried to get home, only she was dead.”
“Humph,” the doctor said.
“You see,” Martin explained, “you’ve got your choice. Anything will do for your picture. That’s the way with legends.”
“It is indeed a curious legend,” the professor observed, “and one deserving scholarly study. Mr. Woollcott, I believe, dealt with it on the air, and I happen to have given it some further attention myself. I think I might be able to reconcile your variant versions.”
“Ooh,” said the actress. “Go on.”
The fire crackled and shone on the glasses. “It is basically a Berkeley legend,” the professor said, “though it seems to have spread far from there. In the original form, the suitcase is correct, and so is the girl’s lying down. The people in the car are variously described—I think because it occurred to various people.”
The actress gave a stage shudder. “You mean it’s real?’
“He means it may have several independent sources,” Martin enlightened her.
“Of the explanations, yours, sir, is the most nearly accurate,” the professor continued, nodding to the travel man. “It was the suicide of a daughter. She had been driven from her home because of the father’s madly melodramatic suspicions of her affair with his assistant—which proved to have been quite innocent, if terribly sincere. She had loved her father dearly. Sorrow overcame her, and she took poison. But afterwards, she wanted to get home—to tell her father that he was forgiven.”
“And did she ever tell him, if she never got there?”
“The visitations ceased,” the professor said pedantically.
“And you found out all this from your researches?”
“Yes”—in a toneless voice.
The fire had almost died down. Now it flared up brightly and for a moment Martin could see the professor’s face. He saw . . . and sat in shocked silence. He should have realized it before. There was no other way a man could know so much about it. Through the darkness, he could half see a smile on the old man’s lips now. The old man was remembering that, after all, his daughter had forgiven him.
“It’s a fair enough story,” the doctor said at last. “But I still can’t see it as a picture.”
The Star Dummy
“. . . It’s something—outside of me,” Paul Peters found himself saying. “I’ve read stories, Father, about . . . losing control. It sounded absurd. But this is real. It . . . he talks to me.”
It was close and dark in the booth, but Paul could almost see the slow smile spreading from the Paulist priest. “My son, I know that anonymity is usual in the confessional booth. But since there is only one professional ventriloquist in this parish, it’s a little hard to maintain in this case, isn’t it? And knowing you as I do outside of the confessional, Paul, does make a difference in advising you. You say that your dummy—”
“Chuck Woodchuck,” Paul muttered venomously.
“Chuck talks back to you, says things not in your mind?”
“Yes.”
“Not even in your subconscious mind?”
“Can my conscious mind answer that?”
“Question withdrawn. Paul, to certain souls I might say simply fast and pray. To others I might suggest consulting with the Archbishop for permission for a formal exorcism. To you, however, I think I might make a more materialistic recommendation: see an analyst.”
Paul groaned in the darkness. “It’s more than that. It’s something outside of me . . .”
“Occam’s razor,” the Paulist murmured. “With your fondness for science fiction, you’ll appreciate that. See if the simplest answer works. If it doesn’t, we can discuss less materialistic causes. See an analyst. And perhaps you needn’t offend the good doctor by telling him that I also advise prayer along with his treatment.”
“. . . and I see no reason,” the eminent analyst concluded, “why we should not dispel your demon in a relatively brief time. In fact, young man, we’ll leave you in better shape than when you started having these hallucinations. Your choice of profession is of course highly symptomatic. A predilection for ventriloquism clearly indicates a basically schizoid personality, which chooses to externalize one portion of itself.”
Paul brought his attention back from the splendid view of the Bay. “And you’ll fix that up?”
The analyst deigned to smile. “Easily, I hope.”
“I don’t know,” Paul ventured, “if you’ve heard of a friend of mine named Joe Henderson? Writes science fiction?”
“That escapist dianetics-spawning rubbish?” the analyst exclaimed, as if each word were spelled with four letters.
“As you say. My friend went to an analyst, and in the course of the first interview mentioned his profession. Aha!’ said the doctor gleefully. ‘We’ll soon put a stop to that nonsense!’ ”
“Sound attitude,” the analyst agreed.
“Only it occurred to Joe that then how was he going to pay his bills—including, of course, the doctor’s. So somehow Joe never did get himself analyzed . . .”
Paul got up hesitantly. “I’m a professional ventriloquist, Doctor. I’m a good one. I make good money. At least, I used to when . . .” his voice became a little unsteady for a trained ventriloquist, or even for a normal man . . . “when Chuck was nothing more than an amusingly carved piece of wood. It’s the only business I know. If you ‘cure’ me of it, well—Othello’s occupation’s gone.”
“This Othello.” The analyst’s eyes sharpened. “Another externalization? Does he speak to you too?”
“Tell you what,” said Paul. “I’ll send Chuck in to see you. He’ll tell you more about me than I can.”
Which was perfectly true, Paul thought as he rode down fifteen stories. Could anyone, even the psychiatrist—even the priest—imagine what it was like to sit there awake all night in the dark room with the carved wood telling you all about yourself? All the little indecencies, the degradations of humanity hidden deep under your thoughts. Taunting you with the baseness of your flesh viewed with a cold contempt which only wood could feel. Sitting there listening, listening and feeling the contempt probe ever more deeply, ever more accurately.
Somehow he was on the sidewalk in front of the office building, shaking so violently that he suddenly had to force his hands around the standard of a No-Parking sign to keep himself erect.
Fortunately, this was San Francisco, where no one is ever far from a bar. When he was capable again of freeing one hand from the standard, he made the sign of the cross and moved off. A brief wordless prayer and two wordless straight bourbons later he knew, since he could not return to the room where the wood lay, the best place for him that afternoon.
The zoo is a perfect place for relaxation, for undoing internal knots. Paul had often found it so when baffled by script problems, or by the idiosyncrasies of agencies and sponsors. Here are minds of a different order, a cleaner, freer creation to which you can abandon yourself, oblivious of human complexities.
He knew most of the animals by sight as individuals, and he had even acquired a better-than-nodding acquaintance with many of the attendants. It was one of these who literally bumped into him as he stood in front of the parrot cage, and proceeded to make the afternoon far more distracting than he had ever anticipated.
“Tim!” Paul exclaimed. “Where on earth are you runni
ng to? Or from? Lion escaped or what?”
“Mr. Peters!” the attendant gasped. “I been chasing all over the place making phone calls to God knows who all. There’s something screwy going on over in the wombats’.”
“It couldn’t pick a better place,” Paul smiled. “Catch your breath a minute and tell me what gives.”
“Got a cigarette? Thanks. Well, Mr. Peters, I’ll tell you: Couple of times lately some of the boys they say they see something funny in one of the cages. Somebody checks up, it’s always gone. Only today it’s in there with the wombats and everybody’s looking at it and nobody knows what—”
Paul Peters had always had a highly developed sense of curiosity. (Schizoid externalization? he reflected. No, cancel that. You’re forgetting things. This may be fun.) He was already walking toward the wombats’ enclosure as he asked. “This thing. What does it look like?”
‘Well, Mr. Peters, it’s pretty much like a koala,” Tim explained, “except for where it’s like an anteater.”
Paul was never able to better that description. With the exception, of course, that neither koalas nor anteaters have six-digited forepaws with opposing thumbs. But that factor was not obvious on first glance.
He could see the thing now, and it was in body very much like an outsize koala— that oddly charming Australian eucalyptus-climber after whom the Teddy bear was patterned. It had no visible pouch—but then it might be a male—and its ears were less prominent. Its body was about two feet long. And its face was nothing like the flat and permanently startled visage of the koala, but a hairless expanse sloping from a high forehead, past sharp bright eyes, to a protracted proboscis which did indeed resemble nothing so much as the snout of an anteater.
The buzz through which they pushed their way consisted chiefly of “What is that?” and “I don’t know,” with an occasional treble obbligato of “Why don’t you know, Daddy?”
But it was not what it was so much as what it was doing that fascinated Paul. It concentrated on rubbing its right forepaw in circles on the ground, abruptly looking up from time to time at the nearest wombat, while those stumpy marsupials either stared at it detachedly or backed away with suspicion.
“When the other boys saw it,” Paul asked, “what was it doing then?”
“It’s funny you ask that, Mr. Peters, on account of that’s one of the things that’s funny about it. What it was doing, I mean. One time when it was in with the llamas it was doing like this, just playing in the dirt.”
“Playing?” Paul wondered softly.
“Only when it was in with the monkeys it was chattering at them something fierce, just like a monkey too, this guy said. And when it was in with the lions, well I’m not asking you to believe this and God knows I didn’t yesterday and I don’t know as I do now, but this other guy says it gives a roar just like a lion. Only not just like, of course, because look at it, but like as if you didn’t have your radio turned up quite enough.”
“Wombats don’t make much noise, do they? Or llamas?” All right, Paul said to himself. You’re crazy. This is worse than wood talking; but it’s nicer. And there is a pattern. “Tim,” he said abruptly, “can you let me in the wombat enclosure?”
“Jeez, Mr. Peters, there’s bigshots coming from the University and . . . But you did give us that show for free at the pension benefit and . . . And,” Tim concluded more firmly as he tucked the five unobtrusively into his pocket, “can do, I guess. O.K., everybody! Let’s have a little room here. Got to let Dr. Peters in!”
Paul hesitated at the gate. This was unquestionably either the most momentous or the most ridiculous effort he had made in a reasonably momentousridiculous life. “Joe Henderson, thou shouldst be with me at this hour!” he breathed, and went in.
He walked up to where the creature squatted by its circles.
He knelt down beside it and pointed his forefinger, first at the small central circle with the lines sticking out all around it, then up at the sun. Next he tapped his finger insistently on the unmarked ground, then thrust it at the large dot on the third of the bigger concentric circles.
The creature looked up at him, and for the first time in his life Paul understood just what Keats had meant by a wild surmise. He saw it on the creature’s face, and he felt it thrill through his own being.
An animal who can draw, an animal who can recognize a crude diagram of the solar system, is rational—is not merely a beast like the numbly staring wombats.
Hastily the creature held up a single digit of one forepaw and then drew a straight line in the dirt. Paul did the same, with an amused sudden realization of the fact that the figure one is probably a straight line in almost any system.
The creature held up two fingers and made an odd squiggle. Paul held up two fingers and made our own particular odd squiggle which is shaped 2. They almost raced each other through the next three numbers.
At the squiggle shape 5, the creature looked at Paul’s five fingers, hesitated, then advanced by a daring step. It held up both its hands, each with its six digits, and made a straight line followed by an S-shaped curve.
Paul thought frantically, and wished that he had majored in mathematics. He held up his ten fingers, then marked down a straight line followed by a circle. The creature paused a moment, as if rapidly calculating. Then it nodded, looked carefully at Paul’s 2 squiggle, held up its own twelve fingers again, and wrote down 12.
Paul sank back on his heels. This twelve-fingered being had, as was plausible, a duodecimal system, based on twelve as our decimal system is on ten. And it had almost instantaneously grasped the human ten-system so well as to write down its twelve in our method.
“Friend,” said Paul softly, pitching his voice too low for the crowds outside the enclosure, “you can’t understand my language; but in the name of God and Man, welcome to Earth.”
“Oh dear,” said the creature, “you communicate only by speech! And otherwise you seem such a highly rational being.”
Paul gulped. “That’s an accusation I haven’t had leveled against me recently.”
“I never dreamed,” it went on, “that the beings shaped like you were the rational ones. I couldn’t get any waves from them. I can from you, though, even enough to pick up the language.”
“And you got waves from the other animals,” Paul mused. “That’s why you chattered like a monkey and roared like a lion-not-turned-up-enough. Only they didn’t understand your diagrams, so you knew they weren’t high enough for you to deal with.”
“But why do you have waves and not the others?”
“I am not,” said Paul hastily, “a mutant. We can figure out why later. The trouble right now, if I know anything about the people-without-waves, is that nobody’s going to believe a word of this scene. As if indeed I did. But it’s nicer than wood . . .”
The creature shuddered, then apologized. “I’m sorry. Something I touched in there. . .”
“I know,” said Paul, abruptly grave and humble. “Maybe we can help each other. God grant. I’m taking a chance—but I think the first thing is to get you out of here before Tim’s ‘bigshots from the University’ show up and maybe decide to dissect you. Will you trust me?”
The pause was a long one—long enough for Paul to think of all the vile weakness of his humanity and know his infinite unworthiness of trust. He could hear the words pouring forth from the wood—and then the creature said simply, “Yes.”
And the wood was silent even in memory.
Never, Paul felt, had he invested twenty dollars more wisely. And never had he discovered such unsuspected inborn acting talent as Tim’s. There was something approaching genius, in a pure vein of Stanislavsky realism, in Tim’s denunciation of Paul as a publicity-seeker—in his explanation to the crowd that the koala-like object was a highly ingenious mechanical dummy planted here by a venal ventriloquist who had planned to “discover” it as some strange being and trade on the good name of the Zoo itself for his own selfish promotional advancement. Bitter las
hings of denunciation followed Paul and the creature as they departed—a matter of minutes, Tim confessed sotto voce, before the professors from across the Bay were due.
Now they were parked by the beach in Paul’s convertible. Sensibly, he felt he should head for home and privacy; but he still could not quite bring himself to enter that room where Chuck Woodchuck waited.
“First of all, I suppose,” he ventured, “comes: what’s your name?”
“The nearest, my dear Paul, that your phonetics can come to it is something like Tarvish.”
“Glad to meet you. Now—how did you know mine? But of course,” he added hastily, “if you can read . . . Well, next: where are you from? Mars?”
Tarvish thought. “Mars . . . Ah, you mean the fourth planet? All that sand . . .” He shuddered as if at a memory of infinite boredom. “No. I’m from a planet called Earth, which revolves around a star called the sun.”
“Look!” Paul exclaimed. “Fun’s fun, but isn’t this a little too much of a muchness? This is Earth. That ball getting low over there is the sun. And you—”
“Don’t you understand?” The tip of Tarvish’s nose twitched faintly. “Then ask me what kind of a creature I am, what race I belong to.”
“All right, Mr. Bones, I’m asking.”
“I,” said Tarvish, twitching violently, “am a man.”
It took Paul a minute to interpret; then his laugh, his first free laugh in days, was as loud as Tarvish’s twitching was vigorous. “Of course. Everybody has a name for everything in the universe—everything else. But there aren’t names for your own race or your own planet or your own star. You’re men, you’re people, you live on the Earth, you’re warmed by the sun. I remember reading that some Indian languages were like that: the name for the tribe meant simply the people and the name for their country was just the land. We’ve smiled at that, and interplanetarily we’re doing the same damned thing. All right—where is your sun?”
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