Beyond This Horizon (21 page)

Master Reynolds did not consider it an intrusion, no. Yes, he recalled the occasion—jolly brawl. Yes, he had escorted his cousin from Sanfrisco. Why, yes, her name was Marion—Hartnett Marion. How had he known her name?

Say, that’s interesting—done something like that himself once. Thought he’d lost track of the girl, only she turned up the following week at another party. Married, though, and in love with her husband—fortunately.

No, he didn’t mean that Marion was married, but this other girl—kid named Francine. Did he have a picture of his cousin? Well, now, let me see, he didn’t think so. Wait now, he might have a flat pic, taken when they were kids, in a scrapbook somewhere. Where would that be? He was going to clean out this flat some day and throw away a lot of this junk—never could find anything when he wanted it.

Here it is—that’s Marion, in the front row, second from the left. Was that the girl?

It was she! It was
she!

How fast can a skyracer be pushed? How many corners can a man cut without being patrolled? Go…go…go!

He paused for a moment and tried to still his racing heart, before signalling at the door. The scanner investigated him and the door dilated.

He found her alone.

He stopped when he saw her, unable to move, unable to speak, face white.

“Come in,” she said.

“You…you’ll receive me?”

“Of course. I’ve been waiting.”

He searched her eyes. They were warm and tender still, albeit troubled. “I don’t understand. I tried to burn you.”

“You didn’t mean to. You didn’t want to.”

“I—But… Oh, Marion, Marion!” He stumbled forward toward her, and half fell. His head was in her lap. He shook with the racking sobs of one who has not learned how to cry.

She patted his shoulder. “My dear. My dear.”

He looked up at last and found that her face was wet, even though he had heard no sound of tears. “I love you,” he said. He said it tragically, as if it were an irreparable harm.

“I know. I love you.”

Much later, she said to him, “Come with me.”

He followed her on out into another room, where she busied herself at her wardrobe. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve a few things to take care of first.”

“First?”

“This time I’m coming with you.”

On the way back he used the phrase “—after we’re married.”

“You intend to marry me?”

“Of course. If you’ll have me!”

“You would marry a control natural?”

“Why not?” He met the issue bravely, even casually.

Why not? Well, Roman citizens, proud of their patrician Latin blood, could have told him. The white aristocracy of the Old South could have, in their little day, explained to him in detail why not. “Aryan” race-myth apologists could have defined the reasons. Of course, in each case the persons giving the reasons would have had a different “race” in mind when explaining the obscene horror he contemplated committing, but their reasons would have been the same. Even Johnson-Smith Estaire could have explained to him “Why not”—and she would most certainly cut him off her list for stooping to such an alliance.

After all, kings and emperors have lost their thrones for lesser miscegenations.

“That’s all I wanted to know,” she said. “Come here, Clifford.”

He came, a little mystified. She raised her left arm; he read the little figures tattooed there. The registration number was—no matter. But the classification letter was neither the “B” of a basic type, such as he bore, nor the CN of a control natural. It was X—experimental.

She told him about it a little later. Her hyper-dexter great grandparents had both been control naturals. “Of course it shows a little,” she said. “I
do
catch colds…if I don’t take my pills. And sometimes I forget. I’m a sloppy person, Clifford.”

A child of these two, her dexter grandfather, had been identified, rather late in life, as a mutation, probably favorable—almost certainly favorable. His mutation was no gross matter, easily recognized, but was subtle and subliminal. It had to do with emotional stability. Perhaps it would be easiest to say that he was more civilized than any man can be expected to be.

Naturally, an attempt was made to conserve the mutation. She was one of the conservators.

“No more privacy than a guppy in an aquarium”

P
HYLLIS squealed at him as he got home.

“Felix!”

He chucked aside the file case he had been carrying and kissed her. “What’s the trouble, Flutterbrain?”

“This. Look. Read it.” “It” was a stat of a handwritten message. He read aloud:

“‘Espartero Carvala presents her compliments to Madame Longcourt Phyllis and prays permission to call on the morrow at half after sixteen hundred.’ Hummm… You’re shooting high, darling.”

“But whatever am I to
do?
”

“Do? Why, you put out your hand, say ‘How do you fare?’ and then serve her something—tea, I suppose, though they say she drinks like a fish.”

“Filthy!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Don’t joke with me. What am I to
do?
I can’t entertain her. She’s a Policy Maker—I wouldn’t know what to
say
to her.”

“Suppose she is on the Policy Board. She’s human, ain’t she? Our home is all right, isn’t it? Go down and buy yourself a new gown—then you’ll feel fit for anything.”

Instead of brightening up, she began to cry. He took her in his arms, and said, “There, there! What’s the trouble? Did I say something wrong?”

She stopped and dabbed at her eyes. “No. Just nerves, I guess. I’m all right.”

“You startled me. You never did anything like that before.”

“No. But I never had a baby before, either.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Well, cry, if it makes you feel better. But don’t let this old fossil get under your skin, kid. You don’t have to receive her, you know. I’ll call her and tell her you can’t.”

She seemed quite recovered from her unease. “No, don’t do that. I’d really like to see her. I’m curious and I’m flattered.”

They had discussed with each other the question as to whether Madame Espartero Carvala had intended to call on both of them, or Phyllis only. Felix was reluctant to be present if his presence was not expected; he was equally reluctant to fail to show proper urbanity by not being present to receive a distinguished visitor. As he pointed out to Phyllis, it was his home as well as hers.

He telephoned Mordan, since he knew that Mordan was much closer to such mighty and remote people than himself. Mordan gave him no help. “She’s a rule unto herself, Felix. She’s quite capable of breaking every custom of polite conduct, if she chooses.”

“Any idea why she’s coming?”

“Not the slightest. Sorry.” Mordan himself wondered, but was honest enough to admit that his guesses were unsound—no data; he simply did not understand the old girl, and knew it.

Madame Espartero Carvala settled the matter herself. She came stumping in, supporting herself with a heavy cane. Clutched in her left hand was a lighted cigar. Hamilton approached her, bowed, “Madame—” he began.

She peered at him. “You’re Hamilton Felix. Where’s your wife?”

“If Madame will come with me.” He attempted to offer her his arm for support.

“I can manage,” she said rather ungraciously. Nevertheless she clamped the cigar in her teeth and took his arm. He was amazed to find how little she weighed, judging by the pressure on his arm—but the grip of her fingers was firm. Once in the lounging room, in the presence of Phyllis, she said, “Come here, child. Let me look at you.”

Hamilton stood by foolishly, not knowing whether to seat himself or leave. The old lady turned, noticing that he was still there and said, “You were very gracious to escort me in to your wife. I thank you.” The formal politeness of the words were oddly at variance with her first, brittle remarks, but they were not delivered in warm tones. Felix realized that he had been clearly and unmistakably dismissed. He got out.

He went to his retiring room, selected a scrollscript, fitted it into the reader, and prepared to kill time until Carvala should leave. But he found himself unable to fix his attention on the story he selected. He found that he had used the rewind button three times and still had no notion of how the story started.

Damn! He thought—I might as well have gone to the office.

For he had an office—now. The thought made him smile a little. He was the man who was never going to be tied down, who had split his profits with a man-of-affairs rather than be troubled with business worries. Yet here he was, married, an expectant father, actually living at the same address as his wife, and—possessing an office! True, the office had nothing to do with his business affairs.

He found himself actually engaged in the Great Research which Mordan had promised. Carruthers Alfred, former member of the Board of Policy until he had retired to pursue his studies, had been co-opted as instigator for the enlarged project. He in turn had co-opted Hamilton. He had protested to Carruthers that he was no synthesist, nor scientist. Nevertheless Carruthers wanted him. “You have an erratic and unorthodox imagination,” he had said. “This job calls for imagination, the more heterodox the better. You needn’t do routine research, if you don’t want to—plenty of patient technicians for that.”

Felix suspected that Mordan had had something to do with his selection, but did not press him about it. Mordan, Hamilton knew, had an over-rated opinion of his ability. He esteemed himself as a second-rater, a competent and high-powered man, but a second-rater nonetheless. That chart that Mordan talked about—you could not compress a man into a diagram and hang him on a wall. He was not that chart. And didn’t he know more about himself, from sitting on the inside, than any genetic technician could learn by peering down the double barrel of a ’scope?

But he had to admit he was glad that he had been invited into the project—it interested him. He had realized quite early that the enlarged project had not been taken up just to circumvent his balkiness—the transcript of authorization had shown him that. But he did not feel cheated—Mordan had delivered everything that he had promised, and Felix had become interested in the project for its own sake—both projects. Both the great public project of the Great Research and the private matter of himself, Phyllis, and their child to come.

He wondered what the little tyke would be like.

Mordan seemed confident that he knew. He had shown them the diploid chromosome chart resulting from their carefully chosen gametes and had expounded on just how the characteristics of the two parents would be combined in the child. Felix was not so sure; in spite of his own reasonably thorough knowledge of genetic theory and technique he was not convinced that all of a human being’s multifold complexity could be wrapped up in a little blob of protoplasm smaller than a pin point. It was not
reasonable
. There had to be more to a man than that.

Mordan had seemed to find it highly desirable that he and Phyllis possessed so many Mendelian characteristics in common. It not only, he pointed out, made the task of selection of gametes much simpler and shorter, but also insured reinforcement of those characteristics, genetically. Paired genes would be similar, instead of opposed.

On the other hand, Hamilton found that Mordan favored the alliance of Monroe-Alpha and Hartnett Marion, although they were obviously as dissimilar as two persons could well be. Hamilton pointed out the inconsistency in reasoning. Mordan had been unperturbed.

“Each genetic case is a discrete individual. No rule in genetics is invariable. They complement each other.”

It was certainly obvious that Marion had made Cliff happy, happier than Felix had ever seen him.

The big dope.

He had long been of the opinion that what Cliff needed was a keeper, to lead him around on a string, fetch him indoors when it rained, and tickle him when he pouted. (Not that the opinion subtracted from his very real devotion to his friend.)

Marion seemed to qualify on all counts. She hardly let him out of her sight.

She worked with him, under the euphemistic title of “special secretary.”

“‘Special secretary’?” Hamilton said, when Monroe-Alpha told him about it. “What does she do? Is she a mathematician?”

“Not at all. She doesn’t know a thing about mathematics—but she thinks I’m wonderful!” He grinned boyishly—Hamilton was startled to see how it changed his face. “Who am I to contradict her?”

“Cliff, if you keep that up, you’ll have a sense of humor yet.”

“
She
thinks I have one now.”

“Perhaps you have. I knew a man who raised warthogs once. He said they made the flowers more beautiful.”

“Why did he think that?” Monroe-Alpha was puzzled and interested.

“Never mind. Just what is it that Marion does?”

“Oh, a lot of little things. Keeps track of things I forget, brings me a cup of tea in the afternoon. Mostly she’s just here when I want her. When a concept won’t come straight and my head feels tired, I look up and there’s Molly, just sitting there, looking at me. Maybe she’s been reading, but when I look up I don’t have to say anything—she’s looking back at me. I tell you it helps, I never get tired anymore.” He smiled again.

Hamilton realized with sudden insight that there never had been anything wrong with Monroe-Alpha except that the poor boob had never been happy. He had no defenses against the world—until now. Marion had enough for both of them.

He had wanted to ask Cliff what Hazel thought of the new arrangements, but hesitated to do so, despite their close friendship. Monroe-Alpha brought it up himself. “You know, Felix, I was a little worried about Hazel.”

“So?”

“Yes. I know she had said she wanted to enter a divorce, but I hadn’t quite believed her.”

“Why not?” Felix had inquired blandly.

Monroe-Alpha had colored. “Now, Felix, you’re just trying to get me mixed up. Anyhow, she seemed positively relieved when I told her about Marion and me. She wants to take up dancing again.”

Felix thought with regret that it was a mistake for an artist, once retired, to attempt a comeback. But Cliff’s next words made him realize he had been hasty. “It was Thorgsen’s idea—”