The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (25 page)

"A man should fight, Hawks," Barker said softly,
his eyes distant. "A man should show he is never afraid to die. He should
go into the midst of his enemies, singing his death song, and he should kill or
be killed; he must never be afraid to meet the tests of his manhood. A man who
turns his back—who lurks at the edge of the battle, and pushes others in to
face his enemies—" Barker looked suddenly and obviously at Hawks.
"That's not a man. That's some kind of crawling, wriggling thing."

Hawks got up, flexing his hands uncertainly, his arms
awkward, his face lost in the shadows above the lamp's level. "Is that
what you wanted me here for? So no one could say you wouldn't clasp the snake
to your bosom?" He bent his head forward, peering down at Barker.

"Is that it, warrior?" he asked inquisitively.
"One more initiation rite? A truly brave man wouldn't hesitate to lodge
assassins in his house, and offer them food and drink, would he? Let Connington
the back-stabber come into your house. Let Hawks the murderer do his worst. Let
Claire egg you on from one suicidal thing to the next, ripping off a leg here,
another piece of flesh another time. What do you care? You're Barker, the
Mimbreno warrior. Is that it?

"But now you won't fight. Suddenly, you don't want to
go back into the formation. Death was too impersonal for you. It didn't care
how brave you were, or what preparatory rites you'd passed through. That was
what you said, wasn't it? You were outraged, Barker. You still are. What is
Death, to think nothing of a full-fledged Mimbreno warrior?

"Are
you a warrior?" he demanded.
"Explain that part of it to me. What have you ever done to any of us? When
have you ever lifted a finger to defend yourself? You see what we're about, but
you do nothing. You're afraid to be thought a man who wouldn't fight, but what
do you fight? The only thing you've ever done to me is threaten to pick up your
marbles and go home.

"Do you know why you're still sane after today, Barker?
I think I do. I think it's because you have Claire and Connington and me. I
think it was because you had us to run to. It isn't really Death that tests
your worth for you; it's the menace of dying. Not Death, but murderers. So long
as you have us about you, your vital parts are safe."

Barker was moving toward him, his hands half-raised. Hawks
said:

"It's no use, Barker. You can't do anything to me. If
you were to kill me, you would have proved you were afraid to deal with
me."

"That's not true," Barker said, high-voiced.
"A warrior kills his enemies."

Hawks watched Barker's eyes. "You're not a warrior,
Al," he said regretfully.

Barker's arms began to tremble. His head tilted sideward,
and he looked at Hawks crookedly, his eyes blinking. "You're so
smart!" he panted. "You know so damned much! You know more about me
than I do. How is that, Hawks—who touched your brow with a golden wand?"

"I'm a man, too, Al."

"Yes?" Barker's arms sank down to his sides. The
trembling swept over his entire body. "Yes? Well, I don't like you any better
for it. Get out of here, man, while you still can." He whirled and crossed
the room with short, quick, jerking steps. He flung open the door. "Leave
me to my old, familiar assassins!"

Hawks looked at him and said nothing. His expression was
troubled. Then he walked forward. He stopped in the doorway and stood face to
face with Barker.

"I have to have you," he said. "I need your
report to wire to Washington in the morning, and I need you to send up there
into that thing, again."

"Get out, Hawks," Barker answered.

"I told you," Hawks said, and stepped out into the
darkness.

Barker slapped the door shut. He turned away toward the
corridor leading into the other wing of the house, his neck taut and his mouth
opening in a shout. It came inaudibly through the glass between himself and
Hawks: "Claire? Claire!"

Hawks walked out across the rectangle of light lying upon
the lawn, until he came to the ragged edge that was the brink of the cliff
above the sea. He stood looking out over the unseen surf, with the loom of
sea-mist filling the night before him.

"An dark," he said aloud. "An dark an nowhere
starlights." Then he began walking, head down, along the edge of the
cliff, his hands in his pockets.

When he came to the flagstoned patio between the swimming
pool and the far wing of the house, he walked toward the metal table and chairs
in its center, picking his way in the indistinct light.

"Well, Ed," Claire said from her chair on the
other side of the table. "Come to join me?"

He turned his head in surprise, then sat down. "I
suppose."

Claire had changed into a dress, and was drinking a cup of
coffee. "Want some of this?" she offered. "It's a chilly
evening."

"Thank you." He took the cup as she reached it out
to him, and drank from the side away from the thick smear of lipstick. "I
didn't know you'd be out here."

She chuckled. "I get tired of opening doors and finding
Connie on the other side. I've been waiting for better company."

"Al's up."

"Is he?"

He passed the coffee cup back to her. "I thought you
might like to see him."

She reached across the table and took his hand. "Ed, do
you have any idea of how lonely I get? How much I wish I wasn't me at
all?" She tugged at his hand. "But what can I do about it?"

She rose to her feet, still holding his hand, and came around
to stand in front of him, bent forward, clasping his fingers in both hands.
"You could tell me you like me, Ed," she whispered. "You're the
only one of them who could look past my outsides and
like
me!"

He stood up as she pulled at his hand. "Claire—"
he began.

"No, no, no, Ed!" she said, putting her arms
around him. "I don't want to talk. I want to just
be.
I want
someone to just hold me and not think about me being a woman. I just want to
feel warm, for once in my life—just have another human being near me!" Her
arms went up behind his back, and her hands cupped his neck and the back of his
head. "Please, Ed," she murmured, her face so close that her eyes
brimmed and glittered in the faraway light, and so that in another moment her wet
cheek touched his, "give me that if you can."

She began kissing his cheeks and eyes, her nails combing the
back of his head. "Hawks," she choked, "Hawks, I'm so lost. . .
."

His head bent, her fingers rigid behind it, the tendons
standing out in cords on the backs of her hands. Her lips parted, and her
leather sandals made a shuffling noise on the patio stones. "Forget
everything," she whispered as she kissed his mouth. "Think only of
me."

Then she broke away suddenly, and stood a foot away from
him, the back of one hand against her upper lip, her shoulders and hips lax.
She was sighing rhythmically, her eyes shining. "No—no, I can't hold out.
. . not with you. You're too much for me, Ed." Her shoulders rose, and she
moved half a step toward him. "Forget about liking me," she said from
deep in her throat as she reached toward him. "Just take me. I can always
get someone else to like me."

Hawks did not move. She looked at him, arms outstretched,
her face hungry. Then she sobbed sharply and cried out: "I don't blame
you! I couldn't help it, but I don't blame you for what you're thinking. You
think I'm some kind of nympho."

"Oh, no, Claire—I think you're just afraid of men. And
you don't want them to find that out. Particularly not the ones you're most
afraid of. You tell them they frighten you, but no one's supposed to think it's
true, are they?"

She stared at him for a moment. Then her back arched, and
her head was flung back. She laughed stridently: "Who're you trying to
sell that to?" She straightened and took one or two aimless steps.
"You're
afraid, Hawks!" Her fingers dug into the dress fabric over her tensed
thighs. "You're scared, Hawks. You're scared of a real woman, like so many
of them are."

"If you were a real woman, would you blame me? I'm
frightened of many things. People who waste things are among them."

"Why don't you just
shut up,
Hawks?" she
cried. "What do you do, go through life making speeches? You know what you
are, Hawks? You're a creep. A bore and a
creep.
A first class bore. I
don't want you around any more. I don't want to ever see you again."

"I'm sorry you don't want to be any different, Claire.
Tell me something. You almost succeeded, a moment ago. You came very close. It
would be foolish for me to deny it. If you had done what you tried to do with
me, would I still be a creep? And what would you be, making up to a man you
despise, for safety's sake?"

"Oh, get
out
of here, Hawks!"

"Does my being a creep make me incompetent to see
things?"

"When are you going to stop trying? I don't want any of
your
stinking
help!"

"I didn't think you did. I said so. That's really all
I've said." He turned away toward the house. "I'm going to see if Al
will let me use his phone. I need a ride away from here. I'm getting too old to
walk."

"Go to
Hell,
Hawks!" she cried out,
following him at his own pace, a yard or two behind him.

Hawks walked away more quickly, his arms swinging through
short arcs.

"Did you hear me? Get lost! Go on, get out of
here!"

Hawks came to the kitchen door, and opened it. Connington
was sprawled back against a counter, his beach shirt and his swimming trunks
spattered with blood and saliva from his mouth. Barker's hand, tangled in his
hair, was all that kept him from tipping over the high stool on which he was
being held. Barker's fist was drawn back, smeared and running from deep
tooth-gashes over the bone of his knuckles.

"Just passed out, that's all," Connington was
mumbling desperately. "Just passed out in her bed, that's all-she wasn't
anywhere around."

Barker's forearm whipped out, and his fist slapped into
Conning-ton's face again.

Connington fumbled apathetically behind him for a handhold.
He had made no effort to defend himself at any time. "Only way you ever
would. Find me there." He was crying without seeming to be aware of it.
"I thought I had it figured out, at last. I thought today was the day.
Never been able to make the grade with her. I can find the handle with
everybody else. Everybody's got a weak spot. Everybody cracks, sometime, and
lets me see it. Everybody. Nobody's perfect. That's the great secret. Everybody
but her. She's got to slip sometime, but I've never seen it. Me, the hotshot
personnel man."

"Leave him alone!"
Claire screamed from
behind Hawks. She clawed at Hawks' shoulder until he was out of the doorway,
and then she raked at Barker, who jumped back with his hand clutching the
furrows on his arm. "Get away from him!" she shouted into Barker's
face, crouching with her feet apart and her quivering hands raised. She
snatched up a towel, wet a corner of it in the sink, and went to Connington,
who was slumped back against the stool, staring at her through his watered
eyes.

She bent against Connington and began frantically scrubbing
his face. "There, now, honey," she crooned. "There. There.
Now." Connington put one hand up, palm out, his lax fingers spread, and
she caught it, clutching it and pressing it to the base of her throat, while
she rubbed feverishly at his smashed mouth. "I'll fix it, honey—don't
worry. . . ."

Connington turned his head from side to side, his eyes
looking blindly in her direction, whimpering as the cloth ground across the cuts.

"No, no, honey," she chided him. "No, hold
still, honey. Don't worry. I need you, Connie. Please." She began wiping
his chest, opening the top of the beach shirt and forcing it down over his
arms, like a policeman performing a drunk arrest.

Barker said stiffly: "All right, Claire—that's it. I
want your things out of here tomorrow." His mouth turned down in
revulsion. "I never thought you'd turn carrion-eater."

Hawks turned his back and found a telephone on the wall. He
dialled with clumsy haste. "This—this is Ed," he said, his throat
constricted. "I wonder if you could possibly drive out to that corner on
the highway, where the store is, and pick me up. Yes, I—I need a ride in,
again. Thank you. Yes, I'll be there, waiting."

He hung up, and as he turned back, Barker said to him, his
expression dazed: "How did you do it, Hawks?" He almost cried:
"How did you manage this?"

"Will you be at the laboratory tomorrow?" Hawks
said wearily.

Barker looked at him through his glittering black eyes. He
flung out an arm toward Claire and Connington. "What would I have left,
Hawks, if I lost you now?"

"You look tired," Elizabeth said as the studio's
overhead fluorescents tittered into light and Hawks sat down on the couch.

He shook his head. "I haven't been working very hard.
It's the same old story when I was a boy on the farm, I'd wear myself out with
physical labor, and I'd have no trouble getting to sleep. But now I just sit
around and think. I can't sleep at night, and I wake up in the morning feeling worse
than I did the day before. I look at myself in the mirror, and a sick man looks
back at me—the kind of a man I wouldn't trust to do his share, if we were on a
job together." Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "I think you could use
some coffee." He grimaced. "I'd rather have tea, if you have
some." "I think so. I'll see." She crossed the studio to the
curtained-off corner where the hotplate and cupboard were. . . .

"Or—look," he called after her, "coffee would
be fine, if there's no tea."

They sat on the couch together, drinking tea. Elizabeth put
her cup down on the table. "What happened tonight?"