“You think it might be one of the lepers? It’s possible.
But don’t worry,” said the doctor, rolling over on his back and putting his hands behind his head. “Don’t let a little Hansen’s disease scare you; we suffer from an infection far worse than that.” He yawned and said drowsily, “You know, in the old days I used to work on pest-control for the Public Health Service. We sure knocked off a lot of rats and fleas. I never thought I’d be one of them….”
He was silent. Chandler looked at him more closely and admired his courage very much. The man had fallen asleep.
Chandler looked at the others. “You going to let them kill us without a struggle?” he demanded.
The remaining Hawaiian was the only one to answer.
“Malihini,” he said, “you just don’t know how much pilikia you’re in. It isn’t what we let them do.”
“We’ll see,” Chandler promised grimly. “They’re only human. I haven’t given up yet.”
But in the end he could not save himself; it was the girl who saved him.
That night Chandler tossed in troubled sleep, and woke to find himself standing, walking toward the Tri-Pacer.
The sun was just beginning to pink the sky and no one else was moving. “Sorry, love,” he apologized to himself.
“You probably need to bathe and shave, but I don’t know how. Shave, I mean.” He giggled. “Anyway, you’ll find everything you need at my house.”
He climbed into the plane. “Ever fly before?” he asked himself. “Well, you’ll love it. Here we goclose the door … snap the belt … turn the switch.” He admired the practiced ease with which his body started the motor, raced it with a critical eye on the instruments, turned the plane and lifted it off, up, into the rising sun.
“Oh, dear. You do need a bath,” he told himself, wrinkling his nose humorously. “No harm. I’ve the nicest tubpink, deepand nine kinds of bath salts. But I wish you weren’t so tired, love, because it’s a long flight and you’re wearing me out.” He was silent as he bent to the correct compass heading and cranked a handle over his head to adjust the trim. “Koitska’s going to be so huhlt,” he said, smiling. “Never fear, love, I can calm him down. But it’s easier to do with you in one piece, you know, the other way’s too late.”
He was silent for a long time, and then his voice began to sing.
“They were songs from Rosalie’s own musical comedies.
Even with so poor an instrument as Chandler’s voice to work with, she sang well enough to keep both of them entertained while his body brought the plane in for a landing; and so Chandler went to live in the villa that belonged to Rosalie Pan.
XIV
“LOVE,” SHE said, “there are worse things in the world than keeping me amused, when I’m not busy. We’ll go to the beach again one day soon, I promise.” And she was gone again.
It was like that every day.
Chandler was a concubinenot even that; he was a male geisha, convenient to play gin rummy with, or for company on the surfboards, or to make a drink.
He did not quite know what to make of himself. In bad times one hopes for survival. He had hoped; and now he had survival, perfumed and cushioned, but on what mad terms! Rosalie was apretty girl, and a good-humored one.
She was right. There were worse things in the world than being her companion; but Chandler could not adjust himself to the role.
It angered him when she got up from the garden swing and locked herself in her roomfor he knew that she was not sleeping as she lay there, though her eyes were closed and she was motionless. It infuriated him when she casually usurped his body to bring an ashtray to her side, or to stop him when his hands presumed. And it drove him nearly wild to be a puppet with her friends working his strings.
He was that most of all. One exec who wished to communicate with another cast about for an available human proxy nearby. Chandler served for Rosie Pan: her telephone, her social secretary, and on occasion he was the garment her dates put on. For Rosalie was one of the few execs who cared to conduct any major part of her life in her own skin. She liked dancing. She enjoyed dining out.
It was her pleasure to display herself to the worshippers at Luigi the Wharf Rat’s and to speed down the long combers on a surfboard. When another exec chose to accompa-ny her, it was Chandler’s body which gave the remote “date” flesh.
He ate very well indeedin surprising variety. He drank heavily sometimes and abstained others. Once, in the person of a Moroccan Exec, he smoked an opium pipe; once he dined on roasted puppy. He saw many interesting things and, when Rosalie was occupied without him, he had the run of her house, her music library, her pantry and her books. He was not mistreated. He was pampered and praised, and every night she kissed him before she retired to her own room with the snap-lock on the door.
He was miserable.
He prowled the house in the nights after she had left him, unable to sleep. It had been bad enough on Hilo, under the hanging threat of death. But then, though he was only a slave, he was working at something that used his skill and training.
Now? Now a Pekingese could do nearly all she wanted of him. He despised in himself the knowledge that with a Pekingese’s cunning he was contriving to make himself indispensable to herher slippers fetched in his teeth, his silky mane by her hand to strokeif not these things in actuality, then their very near equivalents.
But what else was there for him?
There was nothing. She had spared his life from Koitska, and if he offended her Koitska’s sentence would be carried out.
Even dying might be better than this, he thought.
Indeed, it might be better, even, to go back to Honolulu and life.
In the morning he woke to find himself climbing the wide, carpeted steps to her room. She was not asleep; it was her mind that was guiding him.
He opened the door. She lay with a feathery coverlet pulled up to her chin, eyes open, head propped on three pillows; as she looked at him he was free. “Something the matter, love? You fell asleep sitting up.”
“Sorry.”
She would not be put off. She made him tell her his resentments. She was very understanding and very sure as she said, “You’re not a dog, love. I won’t have you thinking that way. You’re my friend. Don’t you think I need a friend?” She leaned forward. Her nightgown was very sheer; but Chandler had tasted that trap before and he averted his eyes. “You think it’s all fun for us. I understand. Tell me, if you thought I was doing important workoh, crucial work, lovewould you feel a little easier? Because I am. We’ve got the whole work of the island to do, and I do my share. We’ve got our plans to make and our future to provide for. There are so few of us. A single H-bomb could kill us all. Do you think it isn’t work, keeping that bomb from ever coming here?
There’s all Honolulu to monitor, for they know about us there. We can’t let some disgusting nitwits like your Society of Slaves destroy us. There’s the problems of the world to see to. Why,” she said with pride, “we’ve solved the whole Indian-Pakistani population problem in the last two months. They’ll not have to worry about famine again for a dozen generations! We’re working on China now; next Japan; nextoh, all the world. Well have three-quarters of the lumps gone soon, and the rest will have space to breathe in. It’s work!”
She saw his expression and said earnestly, “No, don’t think that! You call it murder. It is, of course. But it’s the surgeon’s knife. We’re quicker and less painful than starva-tion, love… and if some of us enjoy the work of weeding out the unfit, does that change anything? It does not! I admit some of us are, well, mean. But not all. And we’re improving. The new people we take in are better than the old.”
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.
Then she shook her head. “Never mind,” she said apparently to herself. “Forget it, love. Go like an angel and fetch us both some coffee.”
Like an angel he went… not, he thought bitterly, like a man.
She was keeping something from him, and he was too stubborn to let her tease him out of his mood. “Everything’s a secret,” he complained, and she patted his cheek.
“It has to be that way.” She was quite serious. “This is the biggest thing in the world. I’m fond of you, love, but I can’t let that interfere with my duty.”