He found her alone. He stopped when he saw her, unable to move, unable to speak, face white.
“Come in,” she said.
“You…you’ll receive me?”
“Of course. I’ve been waiting.”
He searched her eyes. They were warm and tender still, albeit troubled. “I don’t understand. I tried to burn you.”
“You didn’t mean to. You didn’t want to.”
“I — But…Oh, Marion, Marion!” He stumbled forward toward her, and half fell. His head was in her lap. He shook with the racking sobs of one who has not learned how to cry.
She patted his shoulder. “My dear. My dear.”
He looked up at last and found that her face was wet, even though he had heard no sound of tears. “I love you,” he said. He said it tragically, as if it were an irreparable harm.
“I know. I love you.”
Much later, she said to him, “Come with me.”
He followed her on out into another room, where she busied herself at her wardrobe. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve a few things to take care of first.”
“First?”
“This time I’m coming with you.”
On the way back he used the phrase “after we’re married.”
“You intend to marry me?”
“Of course. If you’ll have me!”
“You would marry a control natural?”
“Why not?” He met the issue bravely, even casually.
Why not? Well, Roman citizens, proud of their patrician Latin blood, could have told him. The white aristocracy of the Old South could have, in their little day, explained to him in detail why not. “Aryan” race-myth apologists could have defined the reasons. Of course, in each case the persons giving the reasons would have had a different “race” in mind when explaining the obscene horror he contemplated committing, but their reasons would have been the same. Even Johnson-Smith Estaire could have explained to him “Why not” — and she would most certainly cut him off her list for stooping to such an alliance. After all, kings and emperors have lost their thrones for lesser miscegenations.
“That’s all I wanted to know,” she said. “Come here, Clifford.”
He came, a little mystified. She raised her left arm; he read the little figures tattooed there. The registration number was-no matter. But the classification letter was neither the “B” of a basic type, such as he bore, nor the “C” of a control natural. It was X-experimental.
She told him about it a little later. Her hyper-dexter great-grandparents had both been control naturals. “Of course it shows a little,” she said. “I do catch colds, if I don’t take my pills. And sometimes I forget. I’m a sloppy person, Clifford.” A child of these two, her dexter grandfather, had been identified, rather late in life, as a mutation, probably favorable-almost certainly favorable. His mutation was no gross matter, easily recognized, but was subtle and subliminal. It had to do with emotional stability. Perhaps it would be easiest to say that he was more civilized than any man can be expected to be. Naturally, an attempt was made to conserve the mutation. She was one of the conservators.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“No more privacy than a guppy in an aquarium”
PHYLLIS squealed at him as he got home. “Felix!”
He chucked aside the file case he had been carrying and kissed her. “What’s the trouble, Flutterbrain?”
“This. Look. Read it.” “It” was a stat of a handwritten message. He read aloud: “‘Espartero Carvala presents her compliments to Madame Longcourt Phyllis and prays permission to call on the morrow at half after sixteen hundred.’ Hummm…You’re shooting high, darling.”
“But whatever am I to do?”
“Do? Why, you put out your hand, say ‘How do you fare?’ and then serve her something-tea, I suppose, though they say she drinks like a fish.”
“Filthy!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t joke with me. What am I to do? I can’t entertain her. She’s a Policy Maker-I wouldn’t know what to say to her.”
“Suppose she is on the Policy Board. She’s human, ain’t she? Our home is all right, isn’t it? Go down and buy yourself a new gown-then you’ll feel fit for anything.”
Instead of brightening up, she began to cry. He took her in his arms, and said, “There, there! What’s the trouble? Did I say something wrong?”