Unicorn Trade by Anderson, Poul. Part four

The phone shrilled. He jerked. The tumbler flew free, whisky rivered across the carpet, ice promptly began making brooks. Una? He stumbled to snatch the receiver. “Hello, who’s this?” amidst wild waters.

“Harry Quarters here,” said a male voice. “Hi, Leo. How are you?”

Tronen choked on a gob of saliva and coughed. But meanwhile he might almost have had a picturephone: before him stood yonder teacher, tall, bespectacled, rumple-clothed, diffident, pipe-sucking, detestable. The picturephone wasn’t working right; the image wavered like a stone seen at the bottom of a rapid stream.

“Anything wrong, Leo?” Was that anxious note genuine? Hardly.

“No, nothing,” Tronen overcame his spasm.

“Uh, could I speak to Una, please?”

A waterfall thundered. “What do you want with her?”

Taken aback by the loud response. Quarters stammered, “Why, why, to tell her about a book

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I found in the city this weekend .. . Out of print, but I think of interest to her for her research—”

“She’s not home,” Tronen snapped. “Visiting. An extended visit.”

“Oh.” Quarters’s surprise suggested that he had expected she’d mention her plans to him. “Where, may I ask? How long?”

Tronen hung onto self-control as if it were a piece of flotsam. “A relative. Several days at least.”

“Oh.” After a pause: “Well, you know, if we’re both baching, why don’t we get together? Let me take you out to dinner. Lord knows you’ve had me over often enough.”

Una has. “No,” said Tronen. “I’m busy. Thanks.” He crashed the receiver onto the hook.

Briefly, then, he wondered why he had refused. Company might be welcome, might be advisable. And Quarters wasn’t actually too bad a guy. His conversation ranged well beyond Una’s Egyptology into areas like politics and sports that interested her husband more; the man was active in the former on the envelope-stuffing level, and as for the latter, in high school he’d been a star baseball pitcher and still played on a YMCA team. Probably he was in love with Una, but there was no reason to suppose he’d ever tried anything untoward. In fact, if Tronen led the conversation cleverly enough, helpful information about her might develop … No. He couldn’t be clever when he felt afloat, awirl, asink. And the thought of the dial tone if he called back, that rushing ng-ng-ng, was grisly.

Maybe another day. He’d better mop up his

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spilled drink before it soaked through the carpet. He decided against a replacement, cooked and bolted whatever was handiest in cans, found that neither newspaper nor television would register on him, and went to bed as early as seemed practical. First he took three sleeping pills.

His mind spiraled down and down into fluid blackness. For a while he gasped, struggled back, broke surface and panted air into his lungs. But the tide drew him again, again, until at last his strength was spent and he lay on the bottom, the weight of the ocean upon him, and knew for a thousand years that he was dead.

When the alarm rescued him, his pajamas were sodden with sweat. Nevertheless, the last thing he wanted was a shower. He shuddered his way out of the room, brain still submerged in his nightmare, barely able to think that a lot of coffee might help. The stairs cascaded away from the landing, dangerous; he clutched the bannister as he waded their length. When he reached the kitchen, his bare feet splatted on cold linoleum.

“Weep,” he heard beyond the door, “weep, weep.”

Did his hand turn the knob and heave of itself? Merciless light flooded forth. The kitten sprawled on the stoop. Drenched fur clung so tightly to its skin that it resembled a rat.

“No,” Tronen heard himself gurgle, “no, no.”

He grasped .after sanity. He’d not held the horrible thing long enough under, it had revived, the air had warmed to above freezing, he’d not fitted the lid properly on the trash can either,

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during the darkness it had crawled over the rubbish inside till it escaped, while he drowned in his dream.…

This time, he thought somewhere, I’ll do the job right.

He stooped, clutched feebly struggling slimi-ness, raised the slight weight, bashed head against concrete. He felt as well as heard a splintering crack. When he let go, the kitten lay motionless, save that blood trickled from pink nose and past tiny teeth. The amber eyes glazed

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