‘Me?’ Molinari said. ‘I wouldn’t be company, Sweetscent, for you or anybody else. I’m a creature that’s flayed alive at night. I retire at ten o’clock and then I’m back up, usually by eleven; I—’ He broke off, meditatively. ‘No, night is not a good time for me; not at all.’
It could clearly be seen in the man’s face.
FIVE
On the night of his return from Wash-35 Eric Sweetscent encountered his wife at their conapt across the border in San Diego. Kathy had arrived before him. The meeting, of course, was inevitable.
‘Back from little red Mars,’ she observed as she shut the living room door after him. ‘Two days doing what? Shooting your agate into the ring and beating all the other boys and girls? Or exposing sun pictures of Tom Mix?’ Kathy sat in the center of the couch, a drink in one hand, her hair swept back and tied, giving her the look of a teen-ager; she wore a plain black dress and her legs were long and smooth, strikingly tapered at the ankles. Her feet were bare and each toenail bore a shiny decal depicting – he bent to see – a scene in color of the Norman Conquest. The smallest nail on each foot glittered with a picture too obscene for him to contemplate; he went to hang his coat in the closet.
‘We pulled out of the war,’ he said.
‘Did we? You and Phyllis Ackerman? Or you and somebody else?’
‘Everybody was there. Not just Phyllis.’ He wondered what he could fix for dinner; his stomach was empty and in a state of complaint. As yet, however, there were no pains. Perhaps that came later.
‘Any special reason why I wasn’t asked along?’ Her voice snapped like a lethal whip, making his flesh cringe; the natural biochemical animal in him dreaded the exchange which was in store for him – and also for her. Obviously she, like himself, was compelled to press head on; she was as much caught up and helpless as he.
‘No special reason.’ He wandered into the kitchen, feeling a little dulled, as if Kathy’s opening had flattened his senses. Many such encounters had taught him to shield himself on the somatic level, if at all possible. Only old husbands, tired, experienced husbands, knew to do this. The newcomers… they’re forced on by diencephalic responses, he reflected. And it’s harder on them.
‘I want an answer,’ Kathy said, appearing at the door. ‘As to why I was deliberately excluded.’
God, how physically appealing his wife was; she wore nothing, of course, under the black dress and each curved line of her confronted him with its savory familiarity. But where was the smooth, yielding, familiar mentality to go with this tactile form? The furies had seen to it that the curse – the curse in the house of Sweetscent, as he occasionally thought of it — had arrived full force; he faced a creature which on a physiological level was sexual perfection itself and on the mental level—
Someday the hardness, the inflexibility, would pervade her; the anatomical bounty would calcify. And then what? Already her voice contained it, different now from what he remembered of a few years back, even a few months. Poor Kathy, he thought. Because when the death-dealing powers of ice and cold reach your loins, your breasts and hips and buttocks as well as your heart – it was already deep in her heart, surely – then there will be no more woman. And you won’t survive that. No matter what I or any man chooses to do.
‘You were excluded,’ he said carefully, ‘because you’re a pest.’
Her eyes flew open wide; for an instant they filled with alarm and simple wonder. She did not understand. Fleetingly, she had been brought back to the level of the merely human; the goading ancestral pressure in her had abated.
‘Like you are now,’ he said. ‘So leave me alone; I want to fix myself some dinner.’
‘Get Phyllis Ackerman to fix it for you,’ Kathy said. The super-personal authority, the derision conjured up from the malformed crypto-wisdom of the ages, had returned. Almost psionically, with a woman’s talent, she had intuited his slight romantic brush with Phyllis on the trip to Mars. And on Mars itself, during their overnight stay—
Calmly, he assumed that her heightened faculties could not genuinely ferret out that. Ignoring her, he began, in a methodical manner, to heat a frozen chicken dinner in the infrared oven, his back to his wife.
‘Guess what I did,’ Kathy said. ‘While you were gone.’
‘You took on a lover.’
‘I tried a new hallucinogenic drug. I got it from Chris Plout; we had a jink session at his place and none other than the world-famous Marm Hastings was there. He made a pass at me while we were under the influence of the drug and it was – well, it was a pure vision.’
‘Did he,’ Eric said, setting a place for himself at the table.
‘How I’d adore to bear his child,’ Kathy said.
‘”Adore to.” Christ, what decadent English.’ Ensnared, he turned to face her. ‘Did you and he—’
Kathy smiled. ‘Well maybe it was an hallucination. But I don’t think so. I’ll tell you why. When I got home—’
‘Spare me!’ He found himself shaking.
In the living room the vidphone chimed.
Eric went to get it and when he lifted the receiver he saw on the small gray screen the features of a man named Captain Otto Dorf, a military adviser to Gino Molinari. Dorf had been at Wash-35, assisting in security measures; he was a thin-faced man with narrow melancholy eyes, a man utterly dedicated to the protection of the Secretary. ‘Dr Sweetscent?’
‘Yes,’ Eric said.’But I haven’t—’
‘Will an hour be enough? We’d like to send a ‘copter to pick you up at eight o’clock your time.’
‘An hour will do,’ Eric said. ‘I’ll have my things packed and will be waiting in the lobby of my conapt building.’
After he had rung off he returned to the kitchen.
Kathy said, ‘Oh my God. Oh Eric – can’t we talk? Oh dear.’ She slumped at the table and buried her head in her arms. ‘I didn’t do anything with Marm Hastings; he is handsome and I did take the drug, but—’
‘Listen,’ he said, continuing to prepare his meal. This was all arranged earlier today at Wash-35. Virgil wants me to do it. We had a long, quiet talk, Molinari’s needs are at present greater than Virgil’s. And actually I can still serve Virgil in org-trans situations but I’ll be stationed at Cheyenne.’ He added, ‘I’ve been drafted; as of tomorrow I’m a medic in the UN military forces, attached to Secretary Molinari’s staff. There’s nothing I can do to change it; Molinari signed the decree to that effect last night.’
‘Why?’ Terror-stricken, she gazed up at him.
‘So I can get out of this. Before one of us—’
‘I won’t spend any more money.’
‘There’s a war on. Men are being killed. Molinari is sick and he needs medical help. Whether you spend money or not—’
‘But you asked for this job.’
Presently he said, ‘I begged for it, as a matter of fact. I gave Virgil the greatest line of hot fizz ever strung together at one time in one place.’
She had drawn herself together now; she had become poised. ‘What sort of pay will you receive?’
‘Plenty. And I’ll continue to draw a salary from TF&D, too.’
‘Is there any way I can come with you?’
‘No.’ He had seen to that.
‘I knew you’d dump me when you finally became a success – you’ve been trying to extricate yourself ever since we met.’ Kathy’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Listen, Eric; I’m afraid that that drug I took is addictive. I’m terribly scared. You have no idea what it does; I think it comes from somewhere off Earth, maybe Lilistar. What if I kept taking it? What if because of your leaving—’
Bending, he picked her up in his arms. ‘You ought to keep away from those people; I’ve told you so goddam many times—’ it was futile talking to her; he could see what lay ahead for both of them. Kathy had a weapon by which she could draw him back to her once more. Without him she would be destroyed by her involvement with Plout, Hastings, and company; leaving her would simply make the situation worse. The sickness that had entered them over the years could not be nullified by the act he had in mind, and only in the Martian babyland could he have imagined otherwise.
He carried her into the bedroom and set her gently on the bed.
‘Ah,’ she said, and shut her eyes. ‘Oh Eric—’ She sighed.
However, he couldn’t. This, too. Miserably, he moved from her, sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I have to leave TF&D,’ he said presently. ‘And you have to accept it.’ He stroked her hair. ‘Molinari is cracking up; maybe I can’t help him but at least I can try. See? That’s the real—’