Thunder and Roses (23 page)

“Shut up. I can’t hear her.”

“The hell with her! You can hear her some other time. You didn’t hear a thing I said!”

“She’s dead.”

“Yeah. Well, I figure I’ll pull that handle. What can I lose? It’ll give those murderin’ … 
what?
”

“She’s dead.”

“Dead? Starr Anthim?” His young face twisted, Sonny sank down to the cot. “You’re half asleep. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“She’s dead,” Pete said hoarsely. “She got burned by one of the first bombs. I was with her when she … she—Shut up, now, and get out of here and let me listen!” he bellowed hoarsely.

Sonny stood up slowly. “They killed her, too. They killed her. That does it. That just fixes it up.” His face was white. He went out.

Pete got up. His legs weren’t working right. He almost fell. He brought up against the console with a crash, his outflung arm sending the pickup skittering across the record. He put it on again and turned up the gain, then lay down to listen.

His head was all mixed up. Sonny talked too much. Bomb launchers, automatic code machines—

“You gave me your heart,”
sang Starr.
“You gave me your heart. You gave me your heart. You—”

Pete heaved himself up again and moved the pickup arm. Anger, not at himself, but at Sonny for causing him to cut the disk that way, welled up.

Starr was talking, stupidly, her face going through the same expression over and over again.
“Struck from the east and from the Struck from the east and from the—”

He got up again wearily and moved the pickup.

“You gave me your heart. You gave me—”

Pete made an agonized sound that was not a word at all, bent, lifted, and sent the console crashing over. In the bludgeoning silence he said, “I did, too.”

Then, “Sonny.” He waited.

“Sonny!”

His eyes went wide then, and he cursed and bolted for the corridor.

The panel was closed when he reached it. He kicked at it. It flew open, discovering darkness.

“Hey!” bellowed Sonny. “Shut it! You turned off the lights!”

Pete shut it behind him. The lights blazed.

“Pete! What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter, Son’,” croaked Pete.

“What are you looking at?” said Sonny uneasily.

“I’m sorry,” said Pete as gently as he could. “I just wanted to find something out, is all. Did you tell anyone else about this?” He pointed to the lever.

“Why, no. I only just figured it out while you were sleeping, just now.”

Pete looked around carefully while Sonny shifted his weight. Pete moved toward a tool rack. “Something you haven’t noticed yet, Sonny,” he said softly, and pointed. “Up there, on the wall behind you. High up. See?”

Sonny turned. In one fluid movement Pete plucked off a fourteen-inch box wrench and hit Sonny with it as hard as he could.

Afterward he went to work systematically on the power supplies. He pulled the plugs on the gas engines and cracked their cylinders with a maul. He knocked off the tubing of the Diesel starters—the tanks let go explosively—and he cut all the cables with bolt cutters. Then he broke up the relay rack and its lever. When he was quite finished, he put away his tools and bent and stroked Sonny’s tousled hair.

He went out and closed the partition carefully. It certainly was a wonderful piece of camouflage. He sat down heavily on a workbench nearby.

“You’ll have your chance,” he said into the far future. “And by heaven, you’d better make good.”

After that he just waited.

B
ETTER NOT READ
it. I mean it. No—this isn’t one of those “perhaps it will happen to you” things. It’s a lot worse than that. It might very possibly be happening to you right now. And you won’t know until it’s over. You can’t, by the very nature of things.

(I wonder what the population really is?)

On the other hand, maybe it won’t make any difference if I do tell you about it. Once you get used to the idea, you might even be able to relax and enjoy it. Heaven knows there’s plenty to enjoy—and again I say it—by the very nature of things.

All right, then, if you think you can take it …

I met her in a restaurant. You may know the place—Murphy’s. It has a big oval bar and then a partition. On the other side of the partition are small tables, then an aisle, then booths.

Gloria was sitting at one of the small tables. All of the booths but two were empty; all the other small tables but one were unoccupied, so there was plenty of room in the place for me.

But there was only one place I could sit—at her table. That was because, when I saw Gloria, there wasn’t anything else in the world. I have never been through anything like that. I just stopped dead. I dropped my briefcase and stared at her. She had gleaming auburn hair and olive skin. She had delicate high-arched nostrils and a carved mouth, lips that were curved above like gull’s wings on the downbeat, and full below. Her eyes were as sealed and spice-toned as a hot buttered rum, and as deep as a mountain night.

Without taking my eyes from her face, I groped for a chair and sat opposite her. I’d forgotten everything. Even about being hungry. Helen hadn’t, though. Helen was the head waitress and a swell person. She was fortyish and happy. She didn’t know my name but used to call me “The Hungry Fella.” I never had to order. When I came
in she’d fill me a bar-glass full of beer and pile up two orders of that day’s Chef’s Special on a steak platter. She arrived with the beer, picked up my briefcase, and went for the fodder. I just kept on looking at Gloria, who, by this time, was registering considerable amazement, and a little awe. The awe, she told me later, was conceived only at the size of the beer-glass, but I have my doubts about that.

She spoke first. “Taking an inventory?”

She had one of those rare voices which makes noises out of all other sounds. I nodded. Her chin was rounded, with the barest suggestion of a cleft, but the hinges of her jaw were square.

I think she was a little flustered. She dropped her eyes—I was glad, because I could see then how very long and thick her lashes were—and poked at her salad. She looked up again, half smiling. Her teeth met, tip to tip. I’d read about that but had never actually seen it before. “What is it?” she asked. “Have I made a conquest?”

I nodded again. “You certainly have.”

“Well!” she breathed.

“Your name’s Gloria,” I said positively.

“How did you know?”

“It had to be, that’s all.”

She looked at me carefully, at my eyes, my forehead, my shoulders. “If your name is Leo, I’ll scream.”

“Scream then. But why?”

“I—I’ve always thought I’d meet a man named Leo and—”

Helen canceled the effects of months of good relations between herself and me, by bringing my lunch just then. Gloria’s eyes widened when she saw it. “You must be very fond of lobster hollandaise.”

“I’m very fond of all subtle things,” I said, “and I like them in great masses.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said candidly.

“No one like you ever has.”

“Oh?”

I picked up my fork. “Obviously not, or there’d be a race of us.” I scooped up some lobster. “Would you be good enough to watch carefully while I eat? I can’t seem to stop looking at you, and I’m
afraid I might stab my face with the fork.”

She chortled. It wasn’t a chuckle, or a gargle. It was a true Lewis Carroll chortle. They’re very rare. “I’ll watch.”

“Thank you. And while you watch, tell me what you don’t like.”

“What I
don’t
like? Why?”

“I’ll probably spend the rest of my life finding out the things you do like, and doing them with you. So let’s get rid of the nonessentials.”

She laughed. “All right. I don’t like tapioca because it makes me feel conspicuous, staring that way. I don’t like furniture with buttons on the upholstery; lace curtains that cross each other; small flower-prints; hooks-and-eyes and snap fasteners where zippers ought to be; that orchestra leader with the candy saxophones and the yodeling brother; tweedy men who smoke pipes; people who can’t look me in the eye when they’re lying; night clothes; people who make mixed drinks with Scotch—my, you eat fast.”

“I just do it to get rid of my appetite so I can begin eating for esthetic reasons. I like that list.”

“What don’t
you
like?”

“I don’t like literary intellectuals with their conversations all dressed up in overquotes. I don’t like bathing-suits that don’t let the sun in and I don’t like weather that keeps bathing-suits in. I don’t like salty food; clinging-vine girls; music that doesn’t go anywhere or build anything; people who have forgotten how to wonder like children; automobiles designed to be better streamlined going backwards than going forward; people who will try anything once but are afraid to try it twice and acquire a taste; and professional skeptics.” I went back to my lunch.

“You bat a thousand,” she said. “Something remarkable is happening here.”

“Let it happen,” I cautioned. “Never mind what it is or why. Don’t be like the guy who threw a light-bulb on the floor to find out if it was brittle.” Helen passed and I ordered a Slivovitz.

“Prune brandy!” cried Gloria. “I love it!”

“I know. It’s for you.”

“Some day you’re going to be wrong,” she said, suddenly somber, “and that will be bad.”

“That will be good. It’ll be the difference between harmony and contrast, that’s all.”

“Leo—”

“Mm?”

She brought her gaze squarely to me, and it was so warm I could feel it on my face. “Nothing. I was just saying it, Leo.
Leo!
”

Something choked me—not the lobster. It was all gone.

“I have no gag for that. I can’t top it. I can match it, Gloria.”

Another thing was said, but without words.

There are still no words for it. Afterward she reached across and touched my hand with her fingertips. I saw colors.

I got up to go, after scribbling on a piece of the menu. “Here’s my phone number. Call me up when there’s no other way out.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you want my phone, or my address, or anything?”

“No,” I said.

“But—”

“This means too much,” I said. “I’m sorry if I seem to be dropping it in your lap like this. But any time you are with me, I want it to be because you want to be with me, not because you think it’s what I might want. We’ve got to be together because we are traveling in the same direction at approximately the same speed, each under his own power. If I call you up and make all the arrangements, it could be that I was acting on a conditioned reflex, like any other wolf. If you call, we can both be sure.”

“It makes sense.” She raised those deep eyes to me. Leaving her was coming up out of those eyes hand over hand. A long haul. I only just made it.

Out on the street I tried valiantly to get some sense of proportion. The most remarkable thing about the whole remarkable business was simply this: that in all my life before, I had never been able to talk to anyone like that. I had always been diffident, easy-going, unaggressive to a fault, and rather slow on the uptake.

I felt like the daydreams of the much advertised 97-pound weakling as he clipped that coupon.

“Hey—you!”

I generally answered to that as well as anything else. I looked up and recoiled violently. There was a human head floating in midair next to me. I was so startled I couldn’t even stop walking. The head drifted along beside me, bobbing slightly as if invisible legs carried an invisible body to which the visible head was attached. The face was middle-aged, bookish, dryly humorous.

“You’re quite a hell of a fellow, aren’t you?”

Oddly, my tongue loosened from the roof of my mouth. “Some pretty nice people think so,” I faltered. I looked around nervously, expecting a stampede when other people saw this congenial horror.

“No one can see me but you,” said the head. “No one that’s likely to make a fuss, at any rate.”

“Wh-what do you want?”

“Just wanted to tell you something,” said the head. It must have had a throat somewhere because it cleared it. “Parthenogenesis,” it said didactically, “has little survival value, even with syzygy. Without it—” The head disappeared. A little lower down, two bony, bare shoulders appeared, shrugged expressively, and vanished. The head reappeared. “—there isn’t a chance.”

“You don’t say,” I quavered.

It didn’t say. Not any more, just then. It was gone.

I stopped, spun around, looking for it. What it had told me made as little sense to me, then, as its very appearance. It took quite a while for me to discover that it had told me the heart of the thing I’m telling you. I do hope I’m being a little more lucid than the head was.

Anyway, that was the first manifestation of all. By itself, it wasn’t enough to make me doubt my sanity. As I said, it was only the first.

I might as well tell you something about Gloria. Her folks had been poor enough to evaluate good things, well enough off to be able to have a sample or two of these good things. So Gloria could appreciate what was good as well as the effort that was necessary to get it. At twenty-two she was the assistant buyer of a men’s department store. (This was toward the end of the war.) She needed some extra money for a pet project, so she sang at a club every night. In her “spare” time she practiced and studied and at the end of a year she
had her commercial pilot’s license. She spent the rest of the war ferrying airplanes.

Do you begin to get the idea of what kind of people she was?

She was one of the most dynamic women who ever lived. She was thoughtful and articulate and completely un-phony. She was strong. You can have no idea—no; some of you do know how strong. I had forgotten.… She radiated her strength. Her strength surrounded her like a cloud rather than like armor, for she was tangible through it. She influenced everything and everyone she came near. I felt, sometimes, that the pieces of ground which bore her footprints, the chairs she used, the doors she touched and the books she held, continued to radiate for weeks afterward, like the Bikini ships.