“There – there’s another one,” said Constant, holding out the second photograph to Rumfoord.
Rumfoord made no move to take the photograph. He didn’t even bother to look at it. He looked instead into Constant’s eyes and grinned roguishly.
Constant looked down at the photograph that had been ignored. He found that it was not a photograph of Miss Canal Zone’s predecessor. It was a photograph that Rumfoord had slipped to him. It was no ordinary photograph, though its surface was glossy and its margins white.
Within the margins lay shimmering depths. The effect was much like that of a rectangular glass window in the surface of a clear, shallow, coral bay. At the bottom of that seeming coral bay were three women – one white, one gold, one brown. They looked up at Constant, begging him to come to them, to make them whole with love.
Their beauty was to the beauty of Miss Canal Zone as the glory of the Sun was to the glory of a lightning bug.
Constant sank into a wing chair again. He had to look away from all that beauty in order to keep from bursting into tears.
“You can keep that picture, if you like,” said Rumfoord. “It’s wallet size.”
Constant could think of nothing to say.
“My wife will still be with you when you get to Titan,” said Rumfoord, “but she won’t interfere if you want to frolic with these three young ladies. Your son will be with you, too, but he’ll be quite as broadminded as Beatrice.”
“Son?” said Constant. He had no son.
“Yes – a fine boy named Chrono,” said Rumfoord.
“Chrono?” said Constant.
“A Martian name,” said Rumfoord. “He’s born on Mars – by you, out of Beatrice.”
“Beatrice?” said Constant.
“My wife,” said Rumfoord. He had become quite transparent. His voice was becoming tinny, too, as though coming from a cheap radio. “Things fly this way and that, my boy,” he said, “with or without messages. It’s chaos, and no mistake, for the Universe is just being born. It’s the great becoming that makes the light and the heat and the motion, and bangs you from hither to yon.
“Predictions, predictions, predictions,” said Rumfoord musingly. “Is there anything else I should tell you? Ohhhhh – yes, yes, yes. This child of yours, this boy named Chrono – “Chrono will pick up a little strip of metal on Mars – ” said Rumfoord, “and he will call it his ‘goodluck piece.’ Keep your eye on that goodluck piece, Mr. Constant. It’s unbelievably important.”
Winston Niles Rumfoord vanished slowly, beginning with the ends of his fingers, and ending with his grin. The grin remained some time after the rest of him had gone.
“See you on Titan,” said the grin. And then it was gone.
“Is it all over, Moncrief?” Mrs. Winston Niles Rumfoord called down to the butler from the top of the spiral staircase.
“Yes, Mum – he’s left,” said the butler, “and the dog, too.”
“And that Mr. Constant?” said Mrs. Rumfoord – said Beatrice. She was behaving like an invalid – tottering, blinking hard, making her voice like wind in the treetops. She wore a long white dressing gown whose soft folds formed a counter-clockwise spiral in harmony with the white staircase. The train of the gown cascaded down the top riser, making Beatrice Continuous with the architecture of the mansion.
It was her tall, straight figure that mattered most in the display. The details of her face were insignificant. A cannonball, substituted for her head, would have suited the grand composition as well.
But Beatrice did have a face – and an interesting one. It could be said that she looked like a bucktoothed Indian brave. But anyone who said that would have to add quickly that she looked marvelous. Her face, like the face of Malachi Constant, was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme – a variation that made observers think, Yes – that would be another very nice way for people to look. What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She had overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.
“Yes,” said Constant from below, “that Mr. Constant is still here.” He was in plain view, leaning against a column in the arch that opened onto the foyer. But he was so low in the composition, so lost in architectural details as to be almost invisible.
“Oh!” said Beatrice. “How do you do.” It was a very empty greeting.
“How do you do,” said Constant.
“I can only appeal to your gentlemanly instincts,” said Beatrice, “in asking you not to spread the story of your meeting with my husband far and wide. I can well understand how tremendous the temptation to do so must be.”
“Yes – ” said Constant, “I could sell my story for a lot of money, pay off the mortgage on the homestead, and become an internationally famous figure. I could hob-nob with the great and near-great, and perform before the crowned heads of Europe.”
“You’ll pardon me,” said Beatrice, “if I fail to appreciate sarcasm and all the other brilliant nuances of your no doubt famous wit, Mr. Constant. These visits of my husband’s make me ill.”
“You never see him any more, do you?” said Constant.
“I saw him the first time he materialized,” said Beatrice, “and that was enough to make me ill for the rest of my days.”
“I liked him very much,” said Constant.
“The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms,” said Beatrice.
“Insane?” said Constant.
“As a man of the world, Mr. Constant,” said Beatrice, “wouldn’t you say that any person who made complicated and highly improbable prophecies was mad?”
“Well – ” said Constant, “is it really very crazy to tell a man who has access to the biggest space ship ever built that he’s going out into space?”
This bit of news, about the accessibility of a space ship to Constant, startled Beatrice. It startled her so much that she took a step back from the head of the staircase, separated herself from the rising spiral. The small step backward transformed her into what she was – a frightened, lonely woman in a tremendous house.
“You have a space ship, do you?” she said.
“A company I control has custody of one,” said Constant. “You’ve heard of The Whale?”
“Yes,” said Beatrice.
“My company sold it to the Government,” said Constant. “I think they’d be delighted if someone would buy it back at five cents on the dollar.”
“Much luck to you on your expedition,” said Beatrice.
Constant bowed. “Much luck to you on yours,” he said.
He left without another word. In crossing the bright zodiac on the foyer floor, he sensed that the spiral staircase now swept down rather than up. Constant became the bottommost point in a whirlpool of fate. As he walked out the door, he was delightfully aware of pull. lug the aplomb of the Rumfoord mansion right out with him.
Since it was foreordained that he and Beatrice were to come together again, to produce a child named Chrono, Constant was under no compunction to seek and woo her, to send her so much as a get-well card. He could go about his business, he thought, and the haughty Beatrice would have to damn well come to him – like any other bimbo.
He was laughing when he put on his dark glasses and false beard and let himself out through the little iron door in the wall.
The limousine was back, and so was the crowd.
The police held open a narrow path to the limousine door. Constant scuttled down it, reached the limousine. The path closed like the Red Sea behind the Children of Israel. The cries of the crowd, taken together, were a collective cry of indignation and pain. The crowd, having been promised nothing, felt cheated, having received nothing.
Men and boys began to rock Constant’s limousine. The chauffeur put the limousine in gear, made it creep through the sea of raging flesh.
A bald man made an attempt on Constant’s life with a hot dog, stabbed at the window glass with it, splayed the bun, broke the frankfurter – left a sickly sunburst of mustard and relish.
“Yah, yah, yah!” yelled a pretty young woman, and she showed Constant what she had probably never showed any other man. She showed him that her two upper front teeth were false. She let those two front teeth fall out of place. She shrieked like a witch.
A boy climbed on the hood, blocking the chauffeur’s view. He ripped off the windshield wipers, threw them to the crowd. It took the limousine three-quarters of an hour to reach a fringe of the crowd. And on the fringe were not the lunatics but the nearly sane.
Only on the fringe did the shouts become coherent.