Thunder and Roses (12 page)

“Mother, sweetheart, hasn’t it occurred to you at all that I don’t
want
to get married? Not yet, anyway.”

“Of course it has. That doesn’t alter the fact that a woman is only forty percent a woman until someone loves her, and only eighty percent a woman until she has children. As for you and your precious career, I seem to remember something about a certain Marie Sklodowska who didn’t mind marrying a fellow called Curie, science or no science.”

“Darling,” said Alistair a little tiredly as they mounted the steps and went into the cool house, “once and for all, get this straight. The career, as such, doesn’t matter at all. The work does. I like it. I don’t see the sense of being married purely for the sake of being married.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, neither do I,” said Mrs. Forsythe quickly. Then, casting a critical eye over her daughter, she sighed, “But it’s such a waste.”

“What do you mean?”

Her mother shook her head. “If you don’t get it, it’s because there’s something wrong with your sense of values, in which case there’s no point in arguing. I love your furniture. Now, for pity’s sake feed me and tell me about this canine Carnera of yours.”

Moving deftly about the kitchen while her mother perched like a bright-eyed bird on a utility ladder, Alistair told the story of her letters from Alec and Tiny’s arrival.

“At first he was just a dog. A very wonderful dog, of course, and extremely well trained. We got along beautifully. There was nothing remarkable about him but his history, as far as I could see, and certainly no indication of … of anything. I mean, he might have responded to my name the way he did because the syllabic content pleased him.”

“It should,” said her mother complacently. “Dan and I spent weeks at a sound laboratory graphing a suitable name for you. Alistair
Forsythe. Has a beat, you know. Keep that in mind when you change it.”

“Mother!”

“All right, dear. Go on with the story.”

“For all I knew, the whole thing was a crazy coincidence. Tiny didn’t respond particularly to the sound of my name after he got here. He seemed to take a perfectly normal, doggy pleasure in sticking around, that was all.

“Then, one evening after he had been with me about a month, I found out he could read.”

“Read!” Mrs. Forsythe toppled, clutched the edge of the sink, and righted herself.

“Well, practically that. I used to study a lot in the evenings, and Tiny used to stretch out in front of the fire with his nose between his paws and watch me. I was tickled by that. I even got the habit of talking to him while I studied. I mean, about the work. He always seemed to be paying very close attention, which, of course, was silly. And maybe it was my imagination, but the times he’d get up and nuzzle me always seemed to be the times when my mind was wandering or when I would quit working and go on to something else.

“This particular evening I was working on the permeability mathematics of certain of the rare-earth group. I put down my pencil and reached for my
Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
and found nothing but a big hole in the bookcase. The book wasn’t on the desk, either. So I swung around to Tiny and said, just for something to say, ‘Tiny, what have you done with my handbook?’

“He went
whuff
, in the most startled tone of voice, leaped to his feet, and went over to his bed. He turned up the mattress with his paw and scooped out the book. He picked it up in his jaws—I wonder what he would have done if he were a Scotty; that’s a chunky piece of literature!—and brought it to me.

“I just didn’t know what to do. I took the book and riffled it. It was pretty well shoved around. Apparently he had been trying to leaf through it with those big splay feet of his. I put the book down and took him by the muzzle. I called him nine kinds of a rascal and
asked him what he was looking for.” She paused, building a sandwich.

“Well?”

“Oh,” said Alistair, as if coming back from a far distance. “He didn’t say.”

There was a thoughtful silence. Finally Mrs. Forsythe looked up with her odd birdlike glance and said, “You’re kidding. That dog isn’t shaggy enough.”

“You don’t believe me.” It wasn’t a question.

The older woman got up to put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Honey-lamb, your daddy used to say that the only things worth believing were things you learned from people you trusted. Of course I believe you. Thing is—do
you
believe you?”

“I’m not—sick, Mum, if that’s what you mean. Let me tell you the rest of it.”

“You mean there’s more?”

“Plenty more.” She put the stack of sandwiches on the sideboard where her mother could reach it. Mrs. Forsythe fell to with a will. “Tiny has been goading me to do research. A particular kind of research.”

“Hut hine uffefa?”

“Mother! I didn’t give you those sandwiches just to feed you. The idea was to soundproof you a bit, too, while I talked.”

“Hohay!” said her mother cheerfully.

“Well, Tiny won’t let me work on any other project but the one he’s interested in. Mum, I can’t talk if you’re going to gape like that! No … I can’t say he won’t let me do
any
work. But there’s a certain line of endeavor that he approves. If I do anything else, he snuffles around, joggles my elbow, grunts, whimpers, and generally carries on until I lose my temper and tell him to go away. Then he’ll walk over to the fireplace and flop down and sulk. Never takes his eyes off me. So, of course, I get all soft-hearted and repentant and apologize to him and get on with what he wants done.”

Mrs. Forsythe swallowed, coughed, gulped some milk, and exploded, “Wait a minute, you’re away too fast for me! What is it that he wants done? How do you know he wants it? Can he read, or can’t he? Make some sense, child!”

Alistair laughed richly. “Poor Mum. I don’t blame you, darling. No, I don’t think he can really read. He shows no interest at all in books or pictures. The episode with the handbook seemed to be an experiment that didn’t bring any results.
But
—he knows the difference between my books, even books that are bound alike, even when I shift them around in the bookcase. Tiny!”

The Great Dane scrambled to his feet from the corner of the kitchen, his paws skidding on the waxed linoleum. “Get me Hoag’s
Basic Radio
, old feller, will you?”

Tiny turned and padded out. They heard him going up the stairs. “I was afraid he wouldn’t do it while you were here,” she said. “He generally warns me not to say anything about his powers. He growls. He did that when Dr. Nowland dropped out for lunch one Saturday. I started to talk about Tiny and just couldn’t. He acted disgracefully. First he growled and then he barked. It was the first time I’ve ever known him to bark in the house. Poor Dr. Nowland. He was scared half out of his wits.”

Tiny thudded down the stairs and entered the kitchen. “Give it to Mum,” said Alistair. Tiny walked sedately over to the stool and stood before the astonished Mrs. Forsythe. She took the volume from his jaws.

“Basic Radio,”
she breathed.

“I asked him for that because I have a whole row of technical books up there, all from the same publisher, all the same color and about the same size,” said Alistair calmly.

“But … but … how does he do it?”

Alistair shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t read the titles. That I’m sure of. He can’t read anything. I’ve tried to get him to do it a dozen different ways. I’ve lettered instructions on pieces of paper and shown them to him—you know, ‘Go to the door’ and ‘Give me a kiss’ and so on. He just looks at them and wags his tail. But if I read them first—”

“You mean, read them aloud?”

“No. Oh, he’ll do anything I ask him to, sure. But I don’t have to say it. Just read it, and he turns and does it. That’s the way he makes me study what he wants studied.”

“Are you telling me that behemoth can read your mind?”

“What do you think? Here, I’ll show you. Give me the book.”

Tiny’s ears went up. “There’s something in here about the electrical flux in supercooled copper that I don’t quite remember. Let’s see if Tiny’s interested.”

She sat on the kitchen table and began to leaf through the book. Tiny came and sat in front of her, his tongue lolling out, his big brown eyes fixed on her face. There was silence as she turned pages, read a little, turned some more. And suddenly Tiny whimpered urgently.

“See what I mean, Mum? All right, Tiny. I’ll read it over.”

Silence again, while Alistair’s long green eyes traveled over the page. All at once Tiny stood up and nuzzled her leg.

“Hm-m-m? The reference? Want me to go back?”

Tiny sat again, expectantly. “There’s a reference here to a passage in the first section on basic electric theory that he wants,” she explained. She looked up. “Mother, you read it to him.” She jumped off the table, handed the book over. “Here. Section forty-five. Tiny! Go listen to Mum. Go on,” and she shoved him towards Mrs. Forsythe, who said in an awed voice, “When I was a little girl, I used to read bedtime stories to my dolls. I thought I’d quit that kind of thing altogether, and now I’m reading technical literature to this … this canine catastrophe here. Shall I read aloud?”

“No, don’t. See if he gets it.”

But Mrs. Forsythe didn’t get the chance. Before she had read two lines Tiny was frantic. He ran to Mrs. Forsythe and back to Alistair. He reared up like a frightened horse, rolled his eyes, and panted. He whimpered. He growled a little.

“For pity’s sakes, what’s wrong?”

“I guess he can’t get it from you,” said Alistair. “I’ve had the idea before that he’s tuned to me in more ways than one, and this clinches it. All right, then. Give me back the—”

But before she could ask him, Tiny had bounded to Mrs. Forsythe, taken the book gently out of her hands, and carried it to his mistress. Alistair smiled at her paling mother, took the book, and read until Tiny suddenly seemed to lose interest. He went back to his
station by the kitchen cabinet and lay down, yawning.

“That’s that,” said Alistair, closing the book. “In other words, class dismissed. Well, Mum?”

Mrs. Forsythe opened her mouth, closed it again, and shook her head. Alistair loosed a peal of laughter.

“Oh, Mum,” she gurgled through her laughter. “History has been made. Mum, darling, you’re speechless!”

“I am not,” said Mrs. Forsythe gruffly. “I … I think … well, what do you know! You’re right! I
am!
”

When they had their breath back—yes, Mrs. Forsythe joined in, for Alistair’s statement was indeed true—Alistair picked up the book and said, “Now look, Mum, it’s almost time for my session with Tiny. Oh, yes; it’s a regular thing, and he certainly is leading me into some fascinating byways.”

“Like what?”

“Like the old impossible problem of casting tungsten, for example. You know, there is a way to do it.”

“You don’t say! What do you cast it in—a play?”

Alistair wrinkled her straight nose. “Did you ever hear of pressure ice? Water compressed until it forms a solid at what is usually its boiling point?”

“I remember some such.”

“Well, all you need is enough pressure, and a chamber that can take that kind of pressure, and a couple of details like a high-intensity field of umpteen megacycles phased with … I forget the figures; anyhow, that’s the way to go about it.”

“ ‘If we had some eggs we could have some ham and eggs if we had some ham,’ ” quoted Mrs. Forsythe. “And besides, I seem to remember something about that pressure ice melting pretty much right now, like so,” and she snapped her fingers. “How do you know your molded tungsten—that’s what it would be, not cast at all—wouldn’t change state the same way?”

“That’s what I’m working on now,” said Alistair calmly. “Come along, Tiny. Mum, you can find your way around all right, can’t you? If you need anything, just sing out. This isn’t a séance, you know.”

“Isn’t it, though?” muttered Mrs. Forsythe as her lithe daughter and the dog bounded up the stairs. She shook her head, went into the kitchen, drew a bucket of water, and carried it down to her car, which had cooled to a simmer. She was dashing careful handfuls of it onto the radiator before beginning to pour when her quick ear caught the scrunching of boots on the steep drive.

She looked up to see a young man trudging wearily in the mid-morning heat. He wore an old sharkskin suit and carried his coat. In spite of his wilted appearance, his step was firm and his golden hair was crisp in the sunlight. He swung up to Mrs. Forsythe and gave her a grin, all deep-blue eyes and good teeth. “Forsythe’s?” he asked in a resonant baritone.

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Forsythe, finding that she had to turn her head from side to side to see both of his shoulders. And yet she could have swapped belts with him. “You must feel like the Blue Kangaroo here,” she added, slapping her miniature mount on its broiling flank. “Boiled dry.”

“You cahl de cyah de Blue Kangaroo?” he repeated, draping his coat over the door and mopping his forehead with what seemed to Mrs. Forsythe’s discerning eye a pure linen handkerchief.

“I do,” she replied, forcing herself not to comment on the young man’s slight but strange accent. “It’s strictly a dry-clutch job and acts like a castellated one. Let the pedal out, she races. Let it out three thirty-seconds of an inch more, and you’re gone from there. Always stopping to walk back and pick up your head. Snaps right off, you know. Carry a bottle of collodion and a couple of splints to put your head back on. Starve to death without a head to eat with. What brings you here?”

In answer he held out a yellow envelope, looking solemnly at her head and neck, then at the car, his face quiet, his eyes crinkling with a huge enjoyment.

Mrs. Forsythe glanced at the envelope. “Oh. Telegram. She’s inside. I’ll give it to her. Come on in and have a drink. It’s hotter than the hinges of Hail Columbia, Happy Land. Don’t go wiping your feet like that! By jeepers, that’s enough to give you an inferiority complex! Invite a man in, invite the dust on his feet, too. It’s
good, honest dirt and we don’t run to white broadlooms here. Are you afraid of dogs?”

The young man laughed. “Dahgs talk to me, ma’am.”