Pendulum, page 13
“What are you intending to do?”
He glanced at her with wide, startled eyes. “My God,” he thought, “it’s talking to me through her.”
He stopped the car. Before he could speak, Tiffy said:
“All these years I’ve wanted only freedom. I tried to persuade every person that came this way to dig me up, but it was too hard to control the bigger ones. So with you, I tried the method of making you want to remain here—”
“While you,” said Tasker, “took over the body of a helpless child, and overstrained every muscle in her body. No matter what happens now, she has been permanently dam—
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“I’m sure you’re wrong. But I tried to be careful. I had her sleep long hours, but I admit I knew nothing about blisters.”
That penetrated. It seemed true. How could so utterly different a being know about human limitations?
“Why didn’t you try to talk to us through her sooner?”
Her secrecy he could understand. Tiffy would not know that she was possessed. She would only be aware that she was doing wrong in going out at night to dig, and so in the secretive way of children, she would keep her own counsel.
“Before she went away, I could only control her in the simplest physical way. She seems to have changed.”
Tasker was trying to think of how to explain about human beings growing older when Tiffy said, “What are you afraid of?”
Her eyes gazed back at him steadily, and in the light from the dashboard they were serene blue in color, calm and with depths unfathomable. And he knew that it did not merely mean afraid, now. The question struck to the roots of his being. It was as if a stone had been dropped into the well of time inside him and the echo had come from a million years, an ancestral sound of many vibrations.
He had a vision of himself as the descendant of a continuous line of ten-thousand parents, from the day that man had climbed to his feet and looked up at the stars and reached for the near sky. With such a background, what was he afraid of?
Why, of the night, and of the unknown! Of darkness and the river, of thunder and lightning, and of the strange gleams of purpose in the eyes of other men. He was afraid of nameless things, and—shameful—afraid of himself.
It did not occur to him to speak again. He slipped the machine into low gear and guided the truck down the steep road he had once used for carting rocks. Twisting down, and then a quick, sharp turn and the emergency brake did the rest. The headlights poured their brightness into the four-foot hole that Tiffy had dug in the hard, rocky earth.
It was an hour later, when the eastern sky was already thick with light, that he struck a piece of rock that clanged almost like metal. He spaded the soil away from its gleaming sides, and was energetically marking off its limits, when his shovel abruptly went through into a deeper hole. As he jerked
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it back, startled, he knocked loose more of the dirt, making a cavity several inches in diameter.
He was still off-balance, then, as he saw the movement at the bottom of the hole. A shadowy object wiggled up toward the dawn light. Twice it tried to lift itself up, but it was too large for the opening.
“Wait!” said Tasker shakily. “Get back!”
The uneasy thrill of the first seeing of the thing was fading. The dawn was brighter. The ground felt firm and hard, and gave him a sense of normalcy. He looked down into the darkness of the hole and the unexpectedly small size of the thing that was there made him feel better about his decision to release it.
“Get out of the way!” he said. “I’ll enlarge the opening.”
“Quick!” said Tiffy from just behind him. “She’s coming.”
“She?” Tasker echoed, uncomprehendingly.
There was the sound of a car motor from beyond the hill. The sound ceased. A door slammed. A scrambling sound. And then Evana appeared on the rim, silhouetted against the bright sky.
Tasker’s voice rose on the clear air, “Evana, come down here and get Tiffy. I’m about to let the thing go.”
The woman let out an inarticulate cry and came running, stumbling, down the slope. Twice, she fell. But each time she made it back to her feet almost at once. And then she was down in the excavation, and had snatched Tiffy in her arms.
“Sweetheart, are you all right?”
“Evana,” said Tasker in a strained voice, “please hurry! Go back to the house! I’m sure you don’t want to be around when it comes out.”
Evana released Tiffy slightly. Relaxed her tight grip, was more the way it was. She-stared at Tasker and her voice had a puzzled note in it as she said, “You mean, you’ve actually got something down there.”
At that point, his words must finally have penetrated. Her face drained of color. “Before—it—comes—out,” she echoed. “Why, you madman, you’ve got to kill it.”
Before he could realize her intent, she lunged at him, her teeth showing and hit him with the full weight of her body. It was so unexpected, it threw him off-balance. And so, as she grabbed the spade, he let go of it
She couldn’t have had any plan, for her first thrust with
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the shovel widened the hole to more than a foot. Bare moments after that, Tasker had recovered. And now he did the lunging. She was five feet six, probably a hundred and twenty pounds, and every ounce of that weight seemed to have muscles that squirmed and fought. It was a battle from the instant he grabbed her, and every inch of the way he carried her. But he was strong from years of physical labor. And so, after a minute, he had her out of the pit.
As he literally dumped her to the ground, he said, harshly, “Take Tiffy to the house! There’s nothing here for you, in your state of mind. This is contact with an alien intelligence; something fantastic and wonderful that lives on meteorites, or in them. Don’t you see?”
He saw that she didn’t. But she did look blank and continued to lie on the ground. Hastily, he turned back to get Tiffy.
She was down in the pit, pulling the shovel out -of the hole. She stepped back.
The thing that floated up out ef the shadows seemed to be made of dark, opaque glass. Like the eyes of a fly, it presented thousands of surfaces to the light. Its beauty was the beauty of an enormous cut emerald, for as it emerged into the open, it turned green. It shimmered, seemed to hesitate, then floated higher. As it drew near Tiffy, it swerved and momentarily caressed her cheek. She laughed the laughter of a delighted child, and touched the green surface with her bandaged hands.
In the east the sun, though still below the horizon, cast up a pall of red light that lit up the whole sky.
Like a thistledown now, the thing mounted upwards. A hundred feet up, it floated into the rays of the rising sun. It jumped as if it had been struck. Like a shooting star, it darted into the sky. Faster it moved. Brighter it gleamed. It became a tiny, shining thing at the remote edge of vision. It twinkled. And was gone.
Tasker was aware of Evana sobbing softly. MOh, Task,” she said, unconsciously using her old nickname of endearment for him, “it was so beautiful.”
Tiffy, he saw then, had an intent look on her small, upturned face. “Daddy—Mum—when it touched me, it said it will … come … back as soon as—I don’t quite understand—something about the discovery of live things like us
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on a planet would be a complete surprise to—to—” She fumbled verbally. “I don’t quite get it.”
Tasker took three firm steps over to Evana and placed his arm around her unresisting shoulder. He guided her over to Tiffy, and drew her, also unresisting, into the embrace of his left arm.
“Let’s go,” he said, “… home.”
The Non-Aristotelian Detective
Detective, using non-Aristotelian methods, will take interesting cases. Particularly want unsolved murders and other major crimes which have baffled police. No charge, fee, or expense of any description, but client must be in position to give me entry into the situation. Find address through telephone number.
Detective Lieutenant Myron Morrison read the advertisement with a choleric amusement. There was a self-confidence about the wording that irritated him. He looked up, finally, at Inspector Codreau, who had brought the want ad column in to show to him.
“What in blazes,” he demanded, “is a non-Arist—’ He stumbled—”Non-Aristlelian detective?”
Codreau’s broad face creased into a grin. “I’m like you,” he said, “I can’t even pronounce it.” He sighed, and shook his head. “I guess we’re just a couple of out-of-date dicks.”
Morrison was studying the advertisement again. “So hell take cases that have baffled the police, will he?” He was more annoyed than he cared to admit
“The word’s .not in Webster’s,” said the inspector. “I looked it up.”
“What do you want me to do? Check on him?”
“Hmmm. Hadn’t really thought about it. I just saw it in the paper and I thought you’d be interested.” He broke off. “Anything else about the ad strike you?”
Morrison read it through slowly. He was about to shake his head, puzzled, when he got it. “Well,” he said, “no phone number.” He grew thoughtful. He leaned back and scratched
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his head, a big man in a gray suit. He said, “Say-y-y, to get in touch with him you’ve got to figure out how you’d locate his phone number and address when he doesn’t give either.”
“The newspaper would give us the information.”
Morrison agreed that undoubtedly it could be as simple as that. Frowning, he studied the advertisement again and then reached for the phone. “You don’t mind,” he said to Codreau.
Morrison dialed Information, hesitated, then asked, “Have you a listing under Non-Aristot-tatelian detective?”
Moments later, he had the phone number and was dialing again. This time it was an answering service. He repeated his question, picked up a pencil, grinned at Codreau, and said, “I want his name and address.”
He hung up moments later, said, “There we are. Philip Nicer, 721 Glen Oak Crescent. That’s one of those lost streets in the hills, I think.”
“Anyway,” said the inspector, “he’s within our jurisdiction.”
“Yes,” said Morrison grimly, “and I know just the case I’ll take along with me. Remember that Mrs. Nina Colton murder five years ago?” .
“Vaguely.” Codreau looked blank, then, “Good lord, man, you’re not going to—”
“If he can solve cases that have baffled the police,” Morrison said placidly, “we might as well get the benefit of his non-Aristot—” he gave it up, snarled, “At least, I’ll learn how to pronounce it and maybe even find out what it means.”
The inspector’s brown eyes were serious. “Before you let outraged pride carry you off the deep end, why don’t you look over the file record of the Colton case again and then decide if you really want to do this?”
It was an obviously good idea, and Morrison went off. When he came back half an hour later, he said, “It’s just as I remember it. I’d like your opinion. Do you have time?”
The body of Mrs. Colton had been found in her bedroom, completely nude, a bullet in her heart. Her husband, a real-estate salesman, had been out on a business call and had spent the evening with a couple previously unknown to him, who had vouched for his being with them from about nine o’clock until shortly after eleven.
A scream and the sound of a shot had brought neighbors
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into the Colton house a few minutes after ten, and there they found Mrs. Colton breathing her last. She died without regaining consciousness as the police were arriving.
After a neighbor of the Coltons reported having once seen him and Mrs. Colton in a significant act—kissing—Ivan Tristrov, the dead woman’s husband’s real-estate associate had confessed having been her lover for about a year. However, he swore that Mrs. Colton had ended the relationship on the grounds that it was her husband she really loved.
Tristrov had spent the entire evening and night of the murder with his wife and another couple. His wife had subsequently divorced him, because of his confessed infidelity. Tristrov took the divorce badly.
Although the gun that had killed Mrs. Colton was her husband’s, and was found lying beside the body, the police were convinced that she had not committed suicide. There were no powder marks on her skin, which indicated that the bullet had been fired from a distance greater than any one person could have managed.
A check back on the couple who had been entertained by the Tristrovs the night of the murder had established the man as being a close friend. In fact, Tristrov had cosigned a note for him a few weeks earlier for a large sum. The woman and Mrs. Tristrov were chums. While the two women prepared sandwiches, the men went out for a short walk, but were not gone more than ten minutes, everybody had sworn.
Friends and neighbors testified to Mr. Colton’s good character. He was not a man who chased women, and seemed to have been unaware of his wife’s affair with his partner.
After Morrison had concluded his summary of the five-year-old murder, Inspector Codreau nodded. “I remember I always felt Colton was not as unaware of his wife’s infidelity as was made out. And so, in spite of his apparent airtight alibi, I really figured he did it.”
Morrison said, “At the time, I believed it was Mrs. Tristrov. After all, her only alibi for what she was doing when the two men went out for a walk was her best friend. And everybody knows that a woman will lie right into your face without blinking an eye if she thinks it’s a good cause. And what better cause could this friend have than to help another woman against an unfaithful husband’s mistress?”
He continued, “Besides, there’s the fact that Mrs. Tristrov
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was so bitter afterwards, and persisted in divorcing her husband in spite of his pleading. Any woman with that much hatred—” He stopped. “Well, that’s my view.”
The inspector had relaxed and his eyes were suddenly twinkling. “Are you in a position to give Mr. Nicer entry into the situation, as required by the ad?”
The big man frowned. “Since, naturally, I’ll handle this on my own time, I guess if I tell who the people are, and other details, that’ll be giving him a pretty good in.”
Later that day, as he was finally on his way out of the building, Detective Lieutenant Morrison noticed that two reporters were drooping over a table in the press room. He went in.
“Say,” he said, “is either of you a college man? I ought to know better than to ask a question like that, but I’m a credulous fellow when it comes to reporters. I just have a feeling sometimes that they know everything.”
“What do you want to know?” That was Carler, a creature of the Lawton Press, sleek, weary-looking, pallid-complex-ioned.
“Go on!” scoffed Morrison. “Not you. You can’t even spell.”
“So help me,” said Carler, “I was in for four years. And just because I misspelled your name once—”
“Okay, okay. What does non-Aristotelian mean? Say—,** Wonderingly—-, “it sounded right that time.” “It’s got something to do with semantics,” said Carler. “With what?” Morrison was outraged by the introduction of another word that he didn’t know.
Carler spelled it for him. “Has to do with the meaning of meaning,” he said. “I remember they were going to introduce it into the English and Psychology classes the year after I left college.”
“You mean there’s actually something in this business?” Morrison was disturbed.
Carler said, “Lots of colleges teach it now. What’s the gag?” Morrison considered it inadvisable to tell the truth so he said, “Remember that Colton woman murder, five years ago. You were on it.”
“Yes. I always figured Tristrov did it. We hear about these hot-blooded Latins, but what about the hot-headed Slavs. I think he killed her for throwing him over.”
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The second reporter, Tom James, piped up. “My own feeling was that the police should have accepted the suicide theory. The way Tristrov described it, that woman was ridden by guilt, remorse, and shame. Don’t underestimate true feelings like that.”
Morrison groaned, “Everybody understands human behavior on the basis of some personal philosophy. No wonder crime goes merrily along. Goodbye.”
Twenty minutes later, as he climbed towards Glen Oak Crescent, Morrison felt his car presently shift into low gear. The street wound steeply upward, finally, grudgingly leveled off. But before he reached the top, a sadness came over Morrison. He recognized the district. It had been built up about twelve years before. It had been an expensive, exclusive development then, and prices had been going up ever since.
Boy, oh, boy, had he ever let himself into the pit. Well, he’d just have to act casual.
The house he wanted was a long-fronted, two-story structure on a deep lot. A young man was backing a brown Cadillac out of an archway at one end of the house. As Morrison parked his own car and climbed out, the big machine came bowling along backward. It turned onto the street, and wheeled toward where the detective lieutenant was standing.
Morrison had a sudden idea that this was his man, and the possibility that he might miss making contact galvanized bun. He waved, the driver saw him, drew up at the curb opposite, leaned over, peered through the turned-down window, and said, “Why, hello, Lieutenant Morrison. My name is Nicer. Do you want to see me?”
Morrison was caught off guard. “How in blazes do you—?” he began. He stopped, startled. He had been about to ask the how-do-you-know-who-I-am question. He clamped his teeth together. Sheriock Holmes stuff, eh? And he hi the role of the mystified, admiring, dumb cop.
