Our Friends From Frolix 8 (28 page)

‘And you’ll get lots of presents,’ Nick said.

Ild said, ‘I just want one thing. I want—’ He became silent. ‘There’s an empty place in my mind; I wish it would go away. It didn’t used to be there.’

‘The Great Ear,’ Nick said. ‘Do you remember that? Building that?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ild said. ‘I did that. It’s going to hear everyone’s thoughts and then’ – a pause – ‘we can put people into camps. Relocation camps.’

‘Is that nice to do?’ Nick asked.

‘I – don’t know.’ Ild put his hands to his temples and shut his eyes. ‘What are other people? Maybe there aren’t any others; maybe they’re make-believe. Like you – maybe I made you up. Maybe I can make you do anything I want.’

‘What would you want me to do?’ Nick asked.

‘Pick me up,’ Amos Ild said. ‘I like to be picked up and then there’s a game – you spin around, holding me by my hands. And cen – trifugal force —’ He stumbled over the word, gave up. ‘You make me fly out horizon—’ Again he
stumbled. ‘Could you pick me up?’ he asked plaintively, looking down at Nick.

‘I can’t, Mr. Ild,’ Nick said. ‘Because of my broken arm.’

‘Thank you, anyway,’ Amos Ild said. He shuffled meditatively over to the window of the room, gazed out at the night sky. ‘Stars,’ he said. ‘People go there. Mr. Provoni went there.’

‘Yes,’ Nick said. ‘He certainly did.’

‘Is Mr. Provoni a nice man?’

Nick said, ‘He is a man who did what had to be done. No, he isn’t a nice man – he’s a mean man. But he wanted to help.’

‘Is that good, to help?’

‘Most people think so,’ Nick said.

‘Mr. Appleton,’ Amos Ild asked, ‘do you have a mother?’

‘No, not living.’

‘I don’t either. Do you have a wife?’

‘Not really. Not anymore.’

‘Mr. Appleton, do you have a girl friend?’

‘No,’ he said, harshly.

‘Did she die?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just a little while ago?’

‘Yes,’ he grated.

‘You must get a new one,’ Amos Ild said.

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think so – I don’t think I ever want a girl friend again.’

‘You need one that’ll worry about you.’

‘This one worried about me. It killed her.’

‘How wonderful,’ Amos Ild said.

‘Why?’ Nick stared at him.

‘Think how much she loved you. Imagine anybody loving you that much. I wish someone loved me that much.’

‘Is that important?’ Nick asked. ‘Is that what it’s all about, instead of invasions by aliens, the destruction of ten million superlative brains, the transfer of political power – all power – by an elite group—’

‘I don’t understand those things,’ Amos Ild said. ‘I just know how it’s wonderful, someone loving you that much.
And if someone loved you that much, you must be worth loving, so pretty soon someone else will love you that way, too, and you’ll love them the same way. Do you see?’

‘I think so,’ Nick said.

‘Nothing exceeds that, where if a man gives his life for a friend,’ Amos Ild said. ‘I wish I could do that.’ He pondered, seated, now, on a swivel chair. ‘Mr. Appleton,’ he asked, ‘are there other grown-ups like me?’

‘Like you in what way?’ he asked, stalling.

‘That can’t think. That have an empty place there.’ He placed his hand on his forehead.

‘Yes,’ Nick said.

‘Will one of them love me?’

‘Yes.’ Nick said.

The door opened; there stood the black trooper with a paper cup of water and a morphine tablet. ‘Five more minutes, fella,’ the trooper said, ‘and then you’re going to the infirmary.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the pill at once.

‘Brother, you really are in pain,’ the trooper said. ‘And you look like you’re about to topple over. It wouldn’t be good for that kid’ – he paused, corrected himself – ‘for Mr. Ild to see that: it’d worry him, and Gram doesn’t want him worried.’

‘There’ll be camps for them,’ Nick said. ‘Where they can relate on their own level. Instead of trying to be like us.’

The trooper grunted, shut the door after him.

‘Isn’t black the color of death?’ Ild asked.

‘It is, yes,’ Nick said.

‘Then are they death?’

‘Yes,’ Nick said. ‘But they won’t hurt you.’

‘I wasn’t afraid they’d hurt me; I was thinking that you already have a broken arm and maybe they did that.’

‘A girl did that,’ Nick said. ‘A short, snub-nosed little gutter rat. A girl I’d sell my life – make all this unhappen – for. But it’s too late.’

‘She’s your girl friend who died?’

He nodded.

Amos Ild took a black crayon and drew. Nick watched as
stick figures emerged. A man, a woman. And a black, four-legged, sheep-headed animal. And a black sun, a black landscape with black houses and squibs.

‘All black?’ Nick asked. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ Amos Ild said.

‘Is it good that they’re all black?’

After a pause, Amos Ild said, ‘Wait.’ He scribbled over the picture, then tore the paper into strips, wadded them up and threw them away. ‘I can’t think anymore,’ he complained peevishly.

‘But we’re not all black, are we?’ Nick asked. ‘Tell me that, and then you can stop thinking.’

‘I guess the girl is all black. And you’re partly black, like your arm and parts inside you, but I guess the rest isn’t.’

‘Thank you,’ Nick said, standing dizzily up. ‘I think I’d better be going to go see the doctor now,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘No you won’t,’ Amos Ild said.

‘I won’t? Why not?’

‘Because you found out what you wanted. You wanted me to draw the Earth and show you what color it is, if it’s black especially.’ Taking a piece of paper he drew a large circle – in green. ‘It’s alive,’ he said. And smiled at Nick.

Nick said, ‘“I must be gone: there is a grave where daffodil and lily wave, and I would please the hapless faun, buried under the sleepy ground, with mirthful songs before the dawn. His shouting days with mirth were crowned; and still I dream he treads the lawn, walking ghostly in the dew, pierced by my glad singing through.”’

‘Thank you,’ Amos Ild said.

‘Why?’ Nick said.

‘For explaining.’ He began another picture. With his black crayon he drew the woman, underground and horizontal. ‘There’s the grave,’ he said, pointing. ‘That you have to go to. That’s where she is.’

‘Will she hear me?’ Nick asked. ‘Will she know I’m there?’

‘Yes,’ Amos Ild said. ‘If you sing. But you have to sing.’

The door opened and the black trooper said, ‘Come along, mister. To the infirmary.’

He lingered. ‘And should I put daffodils and lilies there?’ he asked Amos Ild.

‘Yes, and you have to remember to call her name.’

‘Charlotte,’ he said.

Amos Ild nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Come on,’ the trooper said, taking him by the shoulder and leading him out of the room. ‘There’s no point in talking to the kiddies.’

‘“Kiddies”?’ Nick asked. ‘Is that what you’re going to call them?’

‘Well, we’ve sort of started to. They’re like children.’

‘No,’ Nick said, ‘they are not like children.’ They are like saints and prophets, he thought. Soothsayers, old wisemen. But we will have to take care of them, they won’t be able to manage by themselves. They won’t even be able to wash themselves.

‘Did he say anything worth hearing?’ the trooper asked him.

Nick said, ‘He said she can hear me.’

They had reached the infirmary. ‘Go on in there,’ the trooper said, pointing. ‘Through that door.’

‘Thanks,’ Nick said. And joined the line of men and women already waiting.

‘What he said,’ the black trooper said, ‘wasn’t very much.’

‘It was enough,’ Nick said.

‘They’re pathetic, aren’t they?’ the trooper asked. ‘I always wished I was a New Man, but now—’ He grimaced.

‘Go away,’ Nick said. ‘I want to be able to think.’

The black-clad trooper strode off.

‘And your name, sir?’ the nurse said to him. She held her pen poised.

‘Nick Appleton,’ he said. ‘I’m the tire regroover.’ He added, ‘And I want to think. Maybe if I could just lie down—’

‘There are no beds left, sir,’ the nurse said. ‘But your arm’ – she touched it gingerly – ‘we can set that.’

‘Okay,’ he said. And, leaning against the nearby wall for support, waited. And, as he waited, thought.

Attorney Horace Denfeld briskly entered the outer office of Council Chairman Willis Gram. He had his briefcase with him, and the expression he wore, even unto the way he walked, showed a further development of his sense of negotiating from strength.

‘Tell Mr. Gram that I have further material pertaining to his alimony and property—’

At her desk, Miss Knight glanced up and said, ‘You’re too late, counselor.’

‘I beg your pardon? You mean he’s busy now? I’ll have to wait?’ Denfeld examined his diamond-surrounded wristwatch. ‘I can wait fifteen minutes at the longest. Please convey that news to him.’

‘He’s gone,’ Miss Knight said, folding her fingers beneath her sharp chin, a lazy, confident gesture not lost on Denfeld. ‘All his personal problems, you and Irma in particular – they’re all over with.’

‘You mean because of the invasion.’ Denfeld rubbed the side of his nose irritably. ‘Well, we’ll follow him with a writ issued by the court,’ he said, scowling and looking his most terrible look. ‘Wherever he’s gone.’

‘Willis Gram,’ Miss Knight said, ‘has gone where no writs can follow him.’

‘You mean he’s dead?’

‘He is outside our lives, now. Beyond the Earth we live on. He’s with an enemy, an old enemy, and with what may be a new friend. At least we can hope so.’

‘We’ll find him,’ Denfeld said.

‘Do you want to bet? Fifty pops?’

Denfeld hesitated. ‘I—’

Returning to her typing, Miss Knight said, between peck-pecks, ‘Good day, Mr. Denfeld.’

By her desk, Denfeld stood – something had caught his eye, and he now reached to pick it up: a small plastic statuette of a man in robes. He held it for a time – Miss Knight tried to ignore him but there he was – fingering the statuette, studying it closely, solemnly. On his face an expression of wonder had appeared, as if, with each passing moment, he saw something more in the plastic figure.

‘Who is this?’ he asked Miss Knight.

‘A statue of God,’ Miss Knight said, and paused in her busy typing to study him. ‘Everybody has one, it’s a fad. Haven’t you seen one of those before?’

‘Is that how God looks?’ Denfeld asked.

‘No, of course not; it’s only—’

‘But it is God,’ he said.

‘Well, yes.’ She watched him; she saw the wonder in his eyes, his consciousness narrowed down to this one artifact… and then she realized: Of course,
Denfeld is a New Man
. And I’m seeing the process; he is becoming a kiddy. Rising from her chair, she said, ‘Sit down, Mr. Denfeld.’ She led him over to a couch and got him seated… his briefcase forgotten, she realized. Forgotten now; forgotten forever. ‘Can I get anything for you?’ she asked; she was at a loss as to what to say. ‘Some Coke? Zing?’

Denfeld gazed up at her wide-eyed and hopeful. ‘Could I have this? To keep?’

‘Certainly,’ she said, and felt compassion for him. One of the least and last of the New Men to go, she thought. And where is his arrogance now? Where is everybody’s?

‘Can God fly?’ Denfeld asked. ‘Can He hold out His arms and fly?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Someday—’ He broke off. ‘I think every living thing will fly or anyhow trudge or run; some will go fast, like they do in this life, but most will fly or trudge. Up and up. Forever. Even slugs and snails; they’ll go very slow but they’ll make it sometime. All of them will make it eventually, no matter how slow they go. Leaving a lot behind; that has to be done. You think so?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A very great lot behind.’

‘Thank you,’ Denfeld said.

‘For what?’

‘For giving me God.’

‘Okay,’ she said. And stoically resumed her typing. While Horace Denfeld played endlessly with the plastic statuette. With the vastness of God.