The Others, page 18
She glanced at the top picture, flipped it over, scribbled on the back, and went through die rest of the sheaf in the same way.
When he took them, she gave him a look of unwilling respect and said, “What for?”
He didn’t answer. The effort was too much; he was half-drowned again in the surge of voices, staggering out into the hall, down the murmurous stairs, into the night.
The world-famous director was not at home. Neither was the foreign-bom, much-married writer, and Angelica’s notation for the rising young beauty queen said only “H’wood Hills, off Cahuenga.” But Taylor Spotswood III was asleep in his bed.
Spotswood, dark-haired and muscled like a swimmer, was built on a scale that dwarfed Kip, and the bed was big enough for six of him. Kip inched across the laundry-slick sheets and got the chloroform-soaked pad over his mouth and nose.
When his breathing slackened, the room was very qui-£t. Silver moonlight dappled the floor. It was a big sturdy house that stood on its own hundred acres, the servants were off in another wing, and the only voices Kip could hear came from the unconscious man’s body. “… verna effrenata mmmmmmm tant pis, on ne peut pas mmmm captus membris mmmmmmm delenda est”
“Come out,” said Kip through dry lips. “I want to talk to you.” He put the point of his open claspknife to the sleeping giant’s chest and exerted a gentle pressure.
Three tiny heads popped into sight, glowing a swamp-fire blue in the darkness. They might have been brothers; all three had the same spiderweb tracery of microsharp wrinkles, the same lipless mouths, the same brilliant eyes. One turned to the others and remarked. “Nequissimus” Another answered, “Heu nefas!"’ and added a short sentence in a totally unfamiliar language, at which all three briefly showed smiles like half-healed wounds; and the third asked coolly, “What do you wish?”
“You know what I want,” said Kip, his hand white-knuckled on the knife handle. “Don’t waste time.”
“We have all the time in the world,” said the spokesman simply. “You cannot cut any of it away with that tool. Therefore, be more respectful.” And his eyes glowed like spectral cigarette ends.
“I can send you house hunting, though,” said Kip. “But the knife is just to make sure you hold still and listen.
This is what I brought to bargain with.” He showed them a little bottle that had once contained sedative capsules; now it was full of a murky brown fluid.
The three glared at him, but the spokesman’s voice was as cold and dry as ever. “Even supposing that the power to grant your desire exists, which is absurd, we are only three retired gentlemen; we could not help you. What have you done with the rest of that, by the way?”
“Mailed it to myself,” said Kip. “The power to make me and my friends invisible to every living soul in the City of Los Angeles exists, and if that’s absurd, laugh now and get it over with. Somebody was afraid I’d tell what this stuff does. The same somebody only has to say frog and every spook in sight jumps twice. And if you’re not that somebody, you’re as near as I can get and you’ll have to do. I think you are. I think the longer a tenant hangs around, the more he learns about possession and dispossession, till the oldest ones can kick anybody out who doesn’t toe the line. I think you’re the oldest; if there were ever any older than you, they broke down into ash and stink a long time ago. But whether I’m right or wrong, either there’ll be a new system of housing allotments— with everybody getting the tenants who’ll do him the least harm and the most good—or I’ll pour this stuff down the throat of your friend here. And when you move, as you’ll have to, I’ll follow you wherever you go. I’ll find you. I’ll find you and I’ll do it again. If I run out of the vitamin, I’ll make more. And even if you do get out of my reach, I’ll make such a stink and I’ll give so many people the sight and the hearing that I’ll pull your whole damned applecart down around your ears. Now. Yes or no.”
The three whispered together with a sound like dry twigs cracking and rattling in the wind. The spokesman said, “We are disposed to deal gently with you, but a bargain that is all upon one side is no bargain. Next, the terms you propose are beyond reason and your need. We will restore yourself and the two women, no more, in exchange for certain services. Think how you answer; the offer will be made only once. And eternity is long.”
“Longer than common to a houseless haunt,” said Kip.
“Don’t talk barroom law to me; this is a pactum donation-is, since you like Latin, or you can call it blackmail, I don’t care. All or nothing. One.” He pried open the sleeping man’s jaws. “Two.” He lifted the bottle and twirled the cap loose with his thumb.
The three consulted with a glance.
“We agree,” said the spokesman. ’
It was too easy. “Swear,” said Kip, “by—” By what?
A whisper stirred in his mind, perhaps from the same— person—who had spoken through Madame Rayma; and he thought: George?
“Swear,” he said, “by your hope of oblivion.”
The old ones had their ounce of revenge, after all; nature abhors a pactum donationis. The quarantine lifted when Kip left the house, newly equipped with a set of four chatty but good-natured ghosts; the caretaker spotted him, chased him to his car, and the State cops ran him down just outside the city limits. Nancy and Angelica were discovered by an astonished bellhop, and they were all three a one-day wonder in the newspapers: LAW STUDENT BURGLES ESTATE WHILE SWEETHEARTS SQUAT IN BRIDAL SUITE. Kip and Angelica lost their jobs; Nancy’s mother threw seventeen successive cat-fits and placed herself under the care of a gentleman who combined Scientology with Yoga.
Kip got out of jail last; they hadn’t been able to prove that he had entered the building or chloroformed the owner, but they had thrown the book at him for concealed weapons (the claspknife), leaving the scene of an accident (a broken gate), and resisting arrest.
He found Angelica packing. She had, she told him curtly, been offered a wonderful job with a trade mission in Chile. It was a great opportunity; it could lead almost anywhere. She was the same heart squeezing Angelica, compact, graceful, honest, assured. But there was something wrong. She had hardened; she was a bisque doll with Swiss watchworks inside.
He listened to the voices that came from her—he had been waiting for just that; he wanted to be sure. And there was nothing wrong with the voices.
The bargain had been kept; there was no one inside Angelica whispering songs of ambition to her inner ear.
There never had been.
That was Angelica; that was what she was really like in the deepest deep of herself, and only the difference now was that she was free to be it without scruples or hesitations.
And the ounce of revenge wa& a pound.
… Until he met a redhead waiting in the pro shop at the country club when he went back to collect his things.
She had red hair: not carrot-color and not henna-color, but the real, dark, glossy mahogany red that you see once in a lifetime. And she had the pale skin that goes with it, clear and fine, with that rose-in-snow flush glowing through it. And her eyes were big and bright and about to brim over.
He took a step toward her; there was a hurting in his throat. He said, “Nancy?”
She said, “Kip,” the one word, and he knew; it was all there. It was the same voice that had said “f of f* when it meant more than “the love of God”; those were the same hands, hardly changed though they were. slender now where they had been thin, that had been about him all the time, praying, yearning to help. It was the same love, not bottled up now but flowing free.
A little later he took the bottle out of his pocket; the police had given it back to him finally, not being able to find any poison, illegal drug, or other contraband in it. It had just about a mouthful in it: one drink.
He had listened to Nancy’s voices; he knew all he had to know.
He swallowed it.
Three drinks is no drink….
The voices stopped.
They
by Robert A. Heinlein
They would not let him alone.
They would never let him alone. He realized that that was part of the plot against him—never to leave him in peace, never to give him a chance to mull over the lies they had told him, time enough to pick out the flaws and to figure out the truth for himself.
That damned attendant this morning! He had come busting in with his breakfast tray, waking him, and causing him to forget his dream. If only he could remember that dream—
Someone was unlocking the door. He ignored it.
“Howdy, old boy. They tell me you refused your breakfast?” Dr. Hayward’s professionally kindly mask hung over his bed.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“But we can’t have that. You’ll get weak, and then I won’t be able to get you well completely. Now, get up and get your clothes on and Til order an eggnog for you. Come on, that’s a good fellow!”
Unwilling, but still less willing at that moment to enter into any conflict of wills, he got out of bed and slipped on his bathrobe. “That’s better,” Hayward approved. “Have a cigarette?”
“No, thank you.”
The doctor shook his head in a puzzled fashion. “Darned if I can figure you out. Loss of interest in physical pleasures does not fit your type of case.”
“What is my type of case?” he inquired in flat tones.
“Tut! Tut!” Hayward tried to appear roguish. “If medicos told their professional secrets, they might have to work for a living.”
“What is my type of case?”
“Well—the label doesn’t matter, does it? Suppose you tell me. I really know nothing about your case as yet. Don’t you think it is about time you talked?”
“I’ll play chess with you.”
“All right, all right.” Hayward made a gesture of impatient concession. “We’ve played chess every day for a week. If you will talk, I’ll play chess.”
What could it matter? If he was right, they already understood perfectly that he had discovered their plot; there was nothing to be gained by concealing the obvious. Let them try to argue him out of it. Let the tail go with the hide! To hell with it!
He got out the chessmen and commenced setting them up. “What do you know of my case so far?”
“Very little. Physical examination, negative. Past history, negative. High intelligence, as shown by your record in school and your success in your profession. Occasional fits of moodiness but nothing exceptional. The only positive information was the incident that caused you to come here for treatment.”
“To be brought here, you mean. Why should it cause comment?”
“Well, good gracious, man—if you barricade yourself in your room and insist that your wife is plotting against you, don’t you expect people to notice?”
“But she was plotting against me—and so are you. White or black?”
“Black—it’s your turn to attack. Why do you think we are plotting against you?”
“It’s an involved story and goes way back into my early childhood. There was an immediate incident, however—”
He opened by advancing the white king’s knight to KB3. Hayward’s eyebrows raised.
“You make a piano attack?”
“Why not? You know that it is not safe for me to risk a gambit with you.”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders and answered the opening. “Suppose we start with your early childhood. It may shed more light than more recent incidents. Did you feel that you were being persecuted as a child?”
“No!” He half rose from his chair. “When I was a child, I was sure of myself. I knew then, I tell you; I knew! Life was worthwhile, and I knew it. I was at peace with myself and my surroundings. Life was good and I was good and I assumed that the creatures around me were like myself.”
“And weren’t they?”
“Not at all! Particularly the children. I didn’t know what viciousness was until I was turned loose with other children. The little devils! And I was expected to be like them and play with them.”
The doctor nodded. “I know. The herd compulsion. Children can be pretty savage at times.”
“You’ve missed the point. This wasn’t any healthy roughness; these creatures were different—not like myself at all. They looked like me, but they were not like me. If I tried to say anything to one of them about anything that mattered to me, all I could get was a stare and a scornful laugh. Then they would find some way to punish me for having said it.”
Hayward nodded. “I see what you mean. How about grownups?”
“That is somewhat different. Adults don’t matter to children at first—or, rather, they did not matter to me. They were too big, and they did not bother me, and they were busy with things that did not enter into my considerations. It was only when I noticed that my presence affected them that I began to wonder about them.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, they never did the things when I was around that they did when I was not around.”
Hayward looked at him carefully. “Won’t that statement take quite a lot of justifying? How do you know what they did when you weren’t around?”
He acknowledged the point. “But I used to catch them just stopping. If I came into a room, the conversation would stop suddenly, and then it would pick up about the weather or something equally inane. Then I took to hiding and listening and looking. Adults did not behave the same way in my presence as out of it.”
“Your move, I believe. But see here, old man—that was when you were a child. Every child passes through that phase. Now that you are a man, you must see the adult point of view. Children are strange creatures and have to be protected—at least, we do protect them—from many adult interests. There is a whole code of conventions in the matter that-”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted impatiently, “I know all that. Nevertheless, I noticed enough and remembered enough that was never clear to me later. And it put me on my guard to notice the next thing.”
“Which was?” He noticed that the doctor’s eyes were averted as he adjusted a castle’s position.
“The things I saw people doing and heard them talking about were never of any importance. They must be doing something else.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You don’t choose to follow me. I’m telling this to you in exchange for a game of chess.”
“Why do you like to play chess so well?”
“Because it is the only thing in the world where I can see all the factors and understand all the rules. Never mind—I saw all around me this enormous plant, cities, farms, factories, churches, schools, homes, railroads, luggage, roller coasters, trees, saxophones, libraries, people, and animals. People that looked like me and who should have felt very much like me, if what I was told was the truth. But what did they appear to be doing? ‘They went to work to earn the money to buy the food to get the strength to go to work to earn the money to buy the food to get the strength to go to work to get the strength to buy the food to earn the money to go to—’ until they fell over dead. Any slight variation in the basic pattern did not matter, for they always fell over dead. And everybody tried to tell me that I should be doing the same thing. I knew better!” The doctor gave him a look apparently intended to denote helpless surrender and laughed. “I can’t argue with you. Life does look like that and maybe it is just that futile. But it is the only life we have. Why not make up your mind to enjoy it as much as possible?”
“Oh, no!” He looked both sulky and stubborn. “You can’t peddle nonsense to me by claiming to be fresh out of sense. How do I know? Because all this complex stage setting, all these swarms of actors, could not have been put here just to make idiot noises at each other. Some other explanation but not that one. An insanity as enormous, as complex, as the one around me had to be planned. I’ve found the plan!”
“Which is?”
He noticed that the doctor’s eyes were again averted.
“It is a play intended to divert me, to occupy my mind and confuse me, to keep me so busy with details that I will not have time to think about the meaning. You are all in it, every one of you.” He shook his finger in the doctor’s face. “Most of them may be helpless automatons, but you’re not. You are one of the conspirators. You’ve been sent in as a troubleshooter to try to force me to go back to playing the role assigned to me!”
He saw that the doctor was waiting for him to quiet down.
“Take it easy,” Hayward finally managed to say. “Maybe it is all a conspiracy, but why do you think that you have been singled out for special attention? Maybe it is a joke on all of us. Why couldn’t I be one of the victims as well as yourself?”
“Got you!” He pointed a long finger at Hayward. “That is the essence of the plot. All of these creatures have been set up to look like me in order to prevent me from realizing that I was the center of the arrangements. But I have noticed the key fact, the mathematically inescapable fact, that I am unique. Here am I, sitting on the inside.
The world extends outward from me. I am the center-”
“Easy, man, easy! Don’t you realize that the world looks that way to me, too. We are each the center of the universe-”
“Not so! That is what you have tried to make me believe, that I am just one of millions more just like me. Wrong! If they were like me, then I could get into communication with them. I can’t. I have tried and tried and I can’t. I’ve sent out my inner thoughts, seeking some one other being who has them, too. What have I gotten back? Wrong answers, jarring incongruities, meaningless obscenity. I’ve tried, I tell you. God!—how I’ve tried! But there is nothing out there to speak to me—nothing but emptiness and otherness!”
“Wait a minute. Do you mean to say that you think there is nobody home at my end of the line? Don’t you believe that I am alive and conscious?”
He regarded the doctor soberly. “Yes, I think you are .probably alive, but you are one of the others—my antagonists. But you have set thousands of others around me whose faces are blank, not lived in, and whose speech is a meaningless reflex of noise.”
