Infinity One (15 page)

That meant that soon Honey must leave too. She would go away with the show, and he would never see her again. He did not even know her name, or how to find her after she had gone. His anger dropped from him; he looked at the silent girl, his heart full.

“Watch,” she said again. Bart waited for the rest of the visitors to leave. At least there would be a minute then to say goodbye, time perhaps for a first and last kiss. He stared impatiently at the tent.

And then in an instant it wasn’t there.

Torches, ticket booth, tent, the trainer, the tiger, the people in the cage, simply ceased to be. There was nothing before his eyes but the grassy field beside the railroad tracks.

Bewildered, aghast, he turned to the girl.

“I could not let you,” she said through stiff lips. “I had to save you . . . how could it happen? In one day, I come to like you, as if you were one of my own kind.”

“I don’t—where have they gone?”

“Where we go always—to another town. It is the way we travel. But first they—those in the cage with . . . my father and the tiger—they will be delivered to the portal and taken away.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said gently. “I will try to explain, and then you must leave me at once. I do not ask you not to repeat this—nobody would believe you; they would think you were crazed.

“There will be six people missing forever, who will never be found. They will question us and search us— they always do—but they will find nothing and learn nothing. If searchers become dangerous to us, we shall disappear immediately, for good.”

“You mean . . . those people will be
killed?”

“Of course not; they will live a long time, we hope, where they are taken. It is very like their own home. We are collectors.”

“Collectors?”

“For a . . . for something like what you call a zoo, such as we pretend we bought the tiger from. You have them for strange creatures from far places; so do we, but from still farther ones. They will be well cared for. But of course they can never come back.”

“You and your father are making this . . . collection?” If he had not seen, he would have been certain that the girl must be a lunatic.

“No, we are only employees. We work for . . . for him you call the tiger.”

“The tiger?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “That is our proper shape.

“We cannot keep long in yours; when our employer sees that we are tired, he gives the signal for the last show. I did not think that one would be the last, or I would not have risked your entering, but my father is not young any longer and sometimes he tires soon.

“If anyone had ever imagined that one of us could fall into liking with a being from an alien world! I shall be sent home now, and I shall be punished.”

Bart’s head was whirling.

“Honey!” he cried, his arms out for her. She drew away.

“No, my dear one.” The tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I cannot vanish in our way unless I too am in the tent. I must find them; no matter how they punish me at home I could not live here like one of you.

“I cannot last much longer in this form tonight. Go ... please go. Go at once.”

Her whole body shuddered. Speechless, Bart gazed at her. His legs would not obey him; he could not stir.

There was a gasp and a shimmer.

In the moonlight a young tiger sped swiftly away across the fields.

R. A. Lafferty made his permanent mark on science fiction with the appearance of his first novel,
Past Master.
In this touching (in more than one sense) tale of a far tomorrow, he proves that the old ways . . . and the old cons ... are frequently best...

His forearms were like a lion’s, sinuewed and corded and mountainous. One could hardly help looking at them, and he was looking at them himself. His hands, no less remarkable than his forearms, lay palm-up on the bar.

The hands of the man were intricately and powerfully fashioned; on one of the lesser fingers of the left hand there was a heavy gold band three-quarters of an inch thick, and wide. The rest of him was a stocky skyman, fair and freckled. He was blue-eyed and lightly lashed and browed, and he gazed at his hands like a boy.

It was a tavern frequented by skymen and traveling men of all sorts. A spotter had seen the man; and now he came and they talked.

“You are very interested in something,” said the spotter Henry Hazelman.

“Not at all,” the skyman said. “A man who is deeply interested has the same appearance as one who is completely absent-minded, as was my case. I was staring at my hands, and both they and my mind were empty. But before I had left off thinking, I was musing on the contrast between the two of them.”

The skyman was named Hodl Oskanian, and the name was the least odd thing about him.

“I was looking at my left hand which I was born with,” continued Hodl, “and at my right hand which I made myself. It is the saying of the palmists that we form the lines of our right hand by the tide of our lives.

“You will notice, my friend, that all the lines of my left hand are graven so deeply that a coin could be stood up in any of them when the hand is flat. Get a hold on your emotions, man, and then look at that Head Line! Should it not betoken genius! You would say that a man with a Head Line like that would be capable of anything, and you would be right. Hold onto your eyeballs with both hands when you take a look at that Heart Line! Notice the Generosity Passage where it goes between the Mountains of Integrity and Nobility. Doesn’t it shake you a little to stand beside a man with a Heart Line like that?"

“Yes, something does shake me a little,” Henry Hazel-man said.

“Look at that Humility Bump!” Hodl all but sang. “I’ll bet I’ve got more humility than any man in creation! If I ever met a man with a hand like mine I’d follow him to the end of the universes just to shake it. Steady yourself now, friend. Look at that Life Line! It curves clear around the heel of my hand like the Ocean-River circling the ancient world. I couldn’t die at less than a hundred and twenty with a Life Line like that.”

“Yes, it is quite a hand,” said Henry Hazelman.

“But not the right hand,” said Hodl. “Notice that, while it also is one of the most fascinating hands in the worlds, it is not up to the left which I was born with. It is the hand of a compromised genius. Is there any other kind? It is like the hand of a Leonardo or an Aquinas or an Eoin Dinneen or an Aristotle or a Willy McGilly—the hand of a man capable of reaching the ultimates, but perhaps not of surpassing them. This comparative fuzziness of line is to be found in the right hands of all really great men. Even
ive
fall short of our destiny. Have you the price of a beer?”

“Yes, here, give my friend a beer,” Henry cried to the bar-man. It was the green beer recently introduced from

Barathron, and it had become a favorite of the skymen.

And when the left hand of Hodl flicked out to take the beer, Henry Hazelman saw what he had been waiting to see. He went away.

Henry went to David Daumier the diamond factor.

“It’s as big as a hen’s egg, David, my word on it,” Henry was insisting.

‘‘To you all rocks are as big as hens’ eggs,” David said. “I wonder I never see such small eggs. It would take a hundred of them to make a dozen.”

“I’ve never given you a wrong turn, David, and I never saw the like of this one.”

“And probably glass.”

“Wouldn’t I know the difference?”

“Yes, you would know the difference.” And already David Daumier was going along with Henry the spotter.

“There are little islands in that Head Line.” Hodl still talked to himself and to several who listened in both amusement and admiration. “In anyone but myself it would mean that a person with such islands in his Head Line was a little peculiar. Good afternoon, sir, is my conversation worth a beer to you? I have said it myself a hundred times that I’m the most interesting person I ever listened to.”

“Yes, your talk is worth that,” said David Daumier. “Bar-man, fill my friend again. That is a gaudy little ring you have there, skyman. The stone is simulated, of course.”

It was the finest diamond that David had ever seen, and he had traded as many diamonds as any man in the universes.”

“There’s deception in you,” Hodl rebuked him. “Let us be open. You are a professional. There’s a little blue light that appears behind the eyes of a professional when he sees a stone like this. Did you know that? You sparkle from it. And the stone is not simulated.”

“A little too yellow.”

“Golden rather. All great diamonds are golden. The small blue ones are for children.”

“We will assume it is hot. Fortunately I can handle it, at somewhat of a discount, of course.”

“If it were hot and of this size, would you not know about it?”

“It isn’t from Earth,” said David. “I doubt that it’s of any trabant or asteroid. It hasn’t the orange cast of those of Ganymede, and I’d know a diamond from Hokey Planet anywhere. Is it from Astrobe? Pudibundia? Bellota?”

“No, it isn’t from any of the Hundred Worlds, nor from any licensed planet. I didn’t pick it up in any such backyards. It’s from a distance.”

“Has it a name?”

“A private name only.”

“Likely it has a flaw.” •

“If it had a dozen it would still be peerless. But it has none.”

“Not even a built-in curse?”

“I have worn it in health. I believe it is lucky.”

“Since we admit it has value, why are you not afraid to wear it openly?”

“I’m a full-sized man, and armed, and in my wits. I would not be easily taken.

“It is too large to market,” said David, “and diamonds are down.”

“To the buyer, the market is always down.”

“If you would set a price—to turn the conversation to the point.”

“Oh, if you like it, I’ll give it to you,” Hodl said. David ordered a drink to settle his nerves before he answered.

“For a moment I didn’t recognize your opening,” he told Hodl after he had sipped and swallowed. “Skyman, I would bet that you have haggled prices on Trader Planets.”

“Aye, I’ve dealt with the gentlemen there and found 
them not too sharp,” said Hodl. “I left the Traders, shirtless and barefoot, it’s true, but not much worse than I was when I went there. I’m an easy mark.”

“I wouldn’t like to play poker with you.”

“It is not my game. I am too guileless.”

“Would five thousand interest you?”

“Not very much,” Hodl said looking at the Bump of Rectitude of his right hand. “I wouldn’t stoop to pick it off the floor, but if it were in my pocket I wouldn’t trouble to throw it away.”

“Yes, you have haggled on Trader Planets. I could double it, but that is my limit.”

“That will do nicely, David,” said Hodl.

“What? You will go along with me? You will sell?”

“I will sell nothing. Am I a merchant? I will give it to you as I said that I would. But to salve your feelings, I will accept the small sum you have named. Out of respect to you, I would hardly accept a smaller sum with an easy mind. Bring it here and lay it on the bar.”

“I will send Henry,” said David. He nodded to Henry, and Henry left.

“You have sent Henry, but not for the
_A
money,” Hodl smiled as he studied the Island of Icarus of his right hand. “He has gone to collect some comic strip characters to keep me company. One of them, what we call
homo conventus
or mechanical man, will analyze myself and my gaud. Only after you are satisfied with the reports (and I’m told that they miss nothing nowadays) will you go and get the money. I admire your prudence, for this is the way that gentlemen do business.”

And that is the way that the gentlemen did it Henry Hazelman returned with three comic strip characters, and one of them was a machine—a descendent of Structo the Mechanical Man from the strip of that name.

It was Structo (his name in Hodl’s mind only) who affably and left-handedly shook hands with Hodl and engaged him in conversation.

“It is a fine hand, sir,” said Structo. “(I am told you were saying the same thing about it yourself), and a fine ornament on it. No, do not attempt to withdraw your hand, skyman. It is necessary that I retain my grip in order to analyze yourself and your thing. My own filaments make contact with the crystalline complex, as well as with your own reta. I can read you like a book, to coin a phrase.”

“Look out for a little double phrase in a middle chapter,” said Hodl.

“It’s an anti-bunko machine, skyman,” said David Daumier. “It reads you and your stone at the same time. Well, what do you read, Penetrax Nine?”

“Mr. Daumier, the stone is sound and without flaw,” said Structo (Penta 9), “It rings like a bell.”

“—to coin a phrase,” said Hodl. “How do I ring?”

“Yes, that is the question,” said David. “My device, skyman, has appraised the stone, as my eye has done. But at the same time it can read what is in your mind regarding that stone. Should there be a flaw in the stone to escape both myself and my device, my machine will find it in your mind.”

“Intelligent-looking contrivance, is he not?” said Hodl. “Can he follow a syllogism to the end? Can he recognize a counter-man? Can he count the marbles when the game is over?”

“He can’t, but I can,” said David. “His job is to detect, and he does it well. My contrivance can sniff out every newest trick in the world.”

“Aye, but can he snuffle out the oldest?” Hodl asked. “How do you read me, contrivance?”

“Yes, is there any doubt in the mind of this man about the stone, Penta?” David asked.

“Mr. Daumier, I had to travel some distance into his mind to find the stone,” said Structo. “But his mind is serene about the stone. It is good, and he knows it is good. Only—oh, no sir! Do not attempt to match grips with me, Mr. Skyman, even in fun. I have a grip of iron! I
am
basically iron. You will be injured if you persist. Or do I have it wrong. Why, you have crushed my hand as if it were an eggshell, to coin a phrase. No matter, I 
always carry a spare. Now, if you will release me, Mr. skyman—thank you.”