The first time he saw me, I was driving a different make and model, with Massachusetts plates on it. He was sure of that, because he had copied it down when he left the luncheonette, the first time we met.
Larry had never told me very clearly about the kind of work he did. I knew it was something more or less "classified," having to do with aircraft—jet planes or experimental rockets, or something like that. And I knew, without his telling me, that the work—not just thejob, but the work he did at it—was more important to him than anything else ever had been. More important, certainly, than he had ever expected any woman to be.
So, naturally, when he met me that day, and knew he wanted to see me again, but couldn't get my address or any other identifying information out of me, he had copied down the license number of my car, and turned it in, with my name, to the Security Officer on the Project. A man who has spent almost every waking moment from the age of nine planning and preparing to fit himself for a role in humanity's first big fling into space doesn't endanger his security status by risking involuntary contamination from an attractive girl. The little aircraft plant on the fringes of town was actually a top-secret key division in the Satellite project, and if you worked there, you took precautions.
The second time I met him at the luncheonette, he had been waiting so long, and had so nearly given up any hope of my coming, that he was no longer watching the road or the door when I finally got there—and when he left, he was so pleased at having gotten a dinner date with me, that he didn't notice much of anything at all. Not except out of the corner of one eye, and with only the slightest edge of subconscious recognition: just enough so that some niggling detail that was out-of-place kept bothering him thereafter; and just enough so that he made a point of stopping in the Security Office again that afternoon to add my new motel address to the information he'd given them the day before.
The three-mile drive in back of my Colorado plates was just about long enough, finally, to make the discrepancy register consciously.
Larry went home and spent a bad night. His feelings toward me, as I could hardly understand at the time, were a great deal stronger, or at least more clearly defined, than mine about him. But since he was more certain just what it was he wanted, and less certain whatIdid, every time he tried to fit my attitude in the car into the rest of what he knew, he'd come up with a different answer, and nine answers out of ten were angry and suspicious and agonizing.
"Now look, babe," he said, "you've got to see this. I trustedyou; really, all the time, I did trust you. But I didn't trustme. By the time I went to work this morning, I was half-nuts. I didn't knowwhatto think, that's all. And I finally sold myself on the idea that if you were what you said you were, nobody would get hurt, and—well, if youweren'ton the level, I better find out, quick. You see that?"
"Yes," I said.
"Okay. So I told them about the license plates, and about—the other stuff."
"What other stuff?" What else was there? How stupid could I be?
"I mean, the—in the car. The way you—Listen, kid," he said, his face grim and demanding again. "It's still just as true as it was then. Istilldon't know. They called me this evening, and said when they got around to the motel to question you, you'd skipped out. They also said that Massachusetts car was stolen. And there were a couple of other things they'd picked up that they wouldn't tell me, but they've got half the National Guard and all the Boy Scouts out after you by now. They wanted me to tell them anything I could think of that might help them find this place. I couldn't think of anything while I was talking to them. Right afterwards, I remembered plenty of things—which roads you were familiar with, and what you'd seen before and what you hadn't, stuff like that, so—"
"So you—?"
"So I came out myself. I wanted to find you first. Listen, babe, I love you. Maybe I'm a sucker, and maybe I'm nuts, and maybe I-don't-know-what. But I figured maybe I could find out more, and easier on you, than they could. And honey, it better be good, because I don't think I've got what it would take to turn you in, and now I've found you—"
He let it go there, but that was plenty. He was willing to listen. He wanted to believe in me, because he wanted me. And finding me in the house I'd described, where I'd said it was, had him half-convinced. But I still had to explain those Massachusetts plates. And I couldn't.
I was psychologically incapable of telling him another lie, now, when I knew I would never see him again, that this was the last time I could ever possibly be close to him in any way. I couldn't estrange myself by lying.
And I wasalsopsychologically incapable—I found out—of telling the truth. They'd seen to that.
It was the first time I'd ever hated them. The first time, I suppose, that I fully realized my position with them.
I could not tell the truth, and I would not tell a lie; all I could do was explain this, and hope he would believe me. I could explain, too, that I was no spy, no enemy; that those who had prevented me from telling what I wanted to tell were no menace to his government or his people.
He believed me.
It was just that simple. He believed me, because I suppose he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that it was truth. Humans are not incapable of communication; they are simply unaware of it.
I told him, also, that they were coming for me, that I had called them, and—regretfully—that he had better leave before they came.
"You said they weren't enemies or criminals. You were telling the truth, weren't you?"
"Yes, I was. They won'tharmyou. But they might...." I couldn't say it. I didn't know the words when I tried to say it.Might take you away with them ... with us....
"Might what?"
"Might ... oh, I don'tknow!"
Now he was suspicious again. "All right," he said. "I'll leave. You come with me."
It was just that simple. Go back with him. Let them come and not find me. What could they do? Their own rules would keep them from hunting for me. They couldn't come down among the people of Earth. Go back. Stop running.
We got into his car, and he turned around and smiled at me again, like the other time.
I smiled back, seeing him through a shiny kind of mist which must have been tears. I reached for him, and he reached for me at the same time.
When we let go, he tried to start the car, and it wouldn't work. Of course. I'd forgotten till then. I started laughing and crying at the same time in a sort of a crazy way, and took him back inside and showed him the projector. They'd forgotten to give me any commands about not doing that, I guess. Or they thought it wouldn't matter.
It did matter. Larry looked it over, and puzzled over it a little, and fooled around, and asked me some questions. I didn't have much technical knowledge, but I knew what it did, and he figured out the way it did it. Nothing with an electro-magnetic motor was going to work while that thing was turned on, not within a mile or so in any direction. And there wasn't any way to turn it off. It was a homing beam, and it was on to stay—foolproof.
That was when he looked at me, and said slowly, "You got here three days ago, didn't you, babe?"
I nodded.
"There was—God-damn it, it's too foolish! There was a—aflying saucerstory in the paper that day. Somebody saw it land on a hilltop somewhere. Some crackpot. Some ... how about it, kid?"
I couldn't say yes and I couldn't say no, and I did the only thing that was left, which was to get hysterical. In a big way.
He had to calm me down, of course. And I found out why the television shows stop with the kiss. The rest is very private and personal.
Author's note: This story was dictated to me by a five-year-old boy—word-for-word, except for a very few editorial changes of my own. He is a very charming and bright youngster who plays with my own five-year-old daughter. One day he wandered into my office, and watched me typing for a while, then asked what I was doing. I answered (somewhat irritably, because the children are supposed to stay out of the room when I'm working) that I was trying to write a story.
"What kind of a story?"
"A grown-up story."
"But whatkind?"
"A science-fiction story." The next thing I was going to do was to call my daughter, and ask her to take her company back to the playroom. I had my mouth open, but I never got a syllable out. Teddy was talking.
"I don't know where they got the car," he said. "They made three or four stops before the last...." He had a funny look on his face, and his eyes were glazed-looking.
I had seen some experimental work with hypnosis and post-hypnotic performance. After the first couple of sentences, I led Teddy into the living-room, and switched on the tape-recorder. I left it on as long as he kept talking. I had to change tapes once, and missed a few more sentences. When he was done, I asked him, with the tape still running, where he had heard that story.
"What story?" he asked. He looked perfectly normal again.
"The story you just told me."
He was obviously puzzled.
"Thescience-fictionstory,"I said.
"I don't know where they got the car," he began; his face was set and his eyes were blank.
I kept the tape running, and picked up the parts I'd missed before. Then I sent Teddy off to the playroom, and played back the tape, and thought for a while.
There was a little more, besides what you've read. Parts of it were confused, with some strange words mixed in, and with sentences half-completed, and a feeling of ambivalence or censorship or inhibition of some kind preventing much clarity. Other parts were quite clear. Of these, the only section I have omitted so far that seems to me to belong in the story is this one:—
The baby will have to be born on Earth! They have decided that themselves. And for the first time, I am glad that they cannot communicate with me as perfectly as they do among themselves. I can think some things they do not know about.
We are not coming back. I do not think that I will like it on Earth for very long, and I do not know—neither does Larry—what will happen to us when the Security people find us, and we cannot answer their questions. But—
I am a woman now, and I love like a woman. Larry will not be their pet; so I cannot be. I am not sure that I am fit to be what Larry thinks of as a "human being." He says I must learn to be "my own master." I am not at all sure I could do this, if it were necessary, but fortunately, this is one of Larry's areas of semantic confusion. The feminine ofmasterismistress, which has various meanings.
Also, there is the distinct possibility, from what Larry says, that we will not,eitherof us, be allowed even as much liberty as we have here.
There is also the matter of gratitude.Theybrought me up, took care of me, taught me, loved me, gave me a way of life, and a knowledge of myself, infinitely richer than I could ever have had on Earth. Perhaps they even saved my life, healing me when I was quite possibly beyond the power of Earthly medical science to save. But against all this—
Theycaused the damage to start with. It wastheirforce-field that wrecked the car and killed my parents.Theyhave paid for it;theyare paying for it yet.Theywill continue to pay, for more years than make sense in terms of a human lifetime.Theywill continue to wander from planet to planet and system to system, becausetheyhave brokentheirown law, and now may never go home.
ButIcan.
I am a woman, and Larry is a man. We will go home and have our baby. And perhaps the baby will be the means of our freedom, some day. If we cannot speak to save ourselves, he may some day be able to speak for us.
I do not think the blocks they set in us will penetrate my womb as my own thoughts, I hope, already have.
Author's note: Before writing this story—as a story—I talked with Johnny's parents. I approached them cautiously. His mother is a big woman, and a brunette. His father is a friendly fat redhead. I already knew that neither of them reads science-fiction. The word is not likely to be mentioned in their household.
They moved to town about three years ago. Nobody here knew them before that, but there are rumors that Johnny is adopted. They did not volunteer any confirmation of that information when I talked to them, and they did not pick up on any of the leads I offered about his recitation.
Johnny himself is small and fair-haired. He takes after his paternal grandmother, his mother says....