Slowly, Chris shook his head. "Strange reasoning. Aweaponwill put an end to war."
"An absolute weapon, man! The world will never again risk going to war. Never again dare take the risk!"
"It will fear too much, you think?"
"Precisely."
"But isn't it fear, doctor, that has always caused men to wage war? Fear in this form today—tomorrow in that form—?"
"Can you think of a better means of ending wars—foolish wastes!—than an absolute weapon? We have changed the whole picture of war!"
"But not changed men!"
There ensued a moment without talk.
Chris presently said, "This weapon. Where it falls, the genes of men will be broken. Perhaps their children—perhaps their grandchildren—will carry the heritage. Headlessbodies. Eyeless faces. There—teeth everywhere. And yonder—no voice. Generation after generation, for a thousand years—this great invention will go on waging your present war, doctor, against the unborn."
The colonel grabbed the scientist's arm. "Is that true?"
Sopho shrugged. "In a certain per cent of cases, where radiation is extreme but not fatal—naturally, the reproductive capacity will display unpredictable, permanent damage. Recessive damage. When, however, two persons mate who exhibit matching gene deterioriation—then—as this man says—"
The colonel's hand dropped. "I didn't know," he murmured. "Not certainly. I didn't even know that you men were sure."
Learned spoke. "War against the generations! Good—!" He checked himself.
Chris said, "Have you that right?"
Sopho replied angrily, "That's a right implicit in any war! If you kill a soldier—you destroyallhis potential progeny—not simply endanger a few of them. The same fact applies to civilians."
"You do not," Chris answered, "corrupt the children of the survivors for centuries to come. No." He meditated a moment. "If the salt of the earth shall lose its savor, wherewith shall ye resavor it?"
Sopho said, "If changing man's environment will not change the evil of war—"
"Evil?" Chris repeated questioningly. "But does not man always believe his wars are just? Whatever cause—whichever side?"
Sopho ignored the inquiry. "—how do we change man?"
"Love one another," Chris said.
A slow smile came upon the physicist's face. "We should have loved the Nazis? And love the Jap who lies ahead?"
"Of course." Chris nodded soberly. "If you had loved them, you would never have let them sink into the pit oftheir despair—arm—turn upon yourselves. Had you loved them, you would have assisted them—before you were compelled to restrain them by such violence."
"The rights of nations—" Sopho began.
"—exist in the minds of men. You did not love them. You loved yourselves. You saw torment born in them all, and saw it grow, and feared it—and stood, like any Pharisee, reciting your virtues but not lifting a finger to assist them."
"He's right." Learned shook his head ruefully. "How right he is!"
"Love!" Sopho said the word scornfully. "Little you know of Nature. Little of love you'll see there!"
"It's strange," Chris answered, "that I see in Nature nothingelsebut love. Pain—yes. Sorrow—yes. Tragedy—yes. To every individual. Yet—in the sum of Nature—only love."
Sopho's eyebrows arched skeptically. "Do you really believe that the primitive phrases of a man who possibly existed—some two thousand years ago—could fix the attention of a modern scientist?"
"Evidently they do not." Chris bent and peered through the round, bowed window of the ship as if he could orient himself even among the traceless clouds. He looked at them again. "I talked in very simple words, doctor, to very simple people. The extreme simplicity of the formulations should—I thought—make the concepts increasingly understandable, as men pursued truth. I advised them, remember, to know the truth. I meant all of truth. I warned them that an excessive fascination with worldly goods—to the exclusion of inner goodness—would undo all peace of mind—"
Sopho chuckled. "Surely—we've pursued truth? What we carry today represents a great accumulation of truth! And I'll also agree that most men who merely amass worldly goods—the rich—aren't greatly interested in science. In truth. In anything but money. Still—"
Chris had raised his hand. "This ship—the bomb it carries—all the equipment and paraphernalia of the universities which lie behind it—the projects undertaken and achieved there—what are they, too, doctor—if not worldly goods?"
"Then you would have us put science aside? Stop seeking such truth—?"
"Seek truth in two ways, doctor. Within—and without." He drew a breath, frowned and spoke again. "Love—in man—takes various forms. Love of self. Love of woman. Love of other men. Love of cosmos. Each is an altruism so designed that, through love, man shall preserve himself in dignity, procreate, and preserve all others even at the cost of his own life. Greater love hath no man than this last. Not one of these altruisms can be peacefully maintained unless the others also are given their proportionate due. The conscience of a man rises from the relatedness of these loves and is his power to interpret how valuable, relatively, each one is—not to him alone, but to all men, as each man is beholden to all. To reason only in the mind is to express the love of worldly goods, alone. Have you ever reasoned in your heart, doctor?"
"Irrational emotions! Reason has no place there!"
"But it has. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. You scientists refuse to study how your hearts think. Repent, I said. Confess, the churches say—and worldliness encompasses them! Join, they say. But I say, when you have yielded up your vanity you will contain the immortal love. My time is short, gentlemen. I thought to remind you."
"I remember—!" the colonel's lips pronounced the inaudible words.
Learned looked at the floor. "How do you tell them—now?"
Sopho said disgustedly, "Metaphysics!"
"Light was the symbol I tried to give them," Chris went on gently. "The Cross was the symbol they adopted.The pain of self-sacrifice was obvious to them. The subjective reward—incomprehensible. Thus they changed it all. I told them of many mansions. They chose this mansion or that—and scoured each other off the earth, to set one heaven in place of the heaven of those they defeated. Holy wars! Is such a thing conceivable to God as a holy war? Alas. The words—the images—the effort is still uncomprehended. I said Light. I said Truth. I said Freedom. I meant enlightenment. Yet nearly every church that uses my name is a wall against light and a rampart against enlightenment, using fear, not love, to chain the generations in terror and pain and ignorance." He pointed again. "And now—this is called civilization, and in my name, also! Enlightenment! Knowledge!" He fell silent; but at last, smiled a little. "A few knew. A few will always know. Francis of Assisi—he guessed. Thomas à Kempis. Most who knew were church heretics in their day—as I was in mine. And what I say is still heresy."
He became silent again. He looked from face to face. "Colonel. You are a soldier. You are ready by your profession to die for other men. It is a noble readiness. Will you turn back?"
The colonel retreated a step and leaned against the riveted bulkhead. Sweat once more broke upon his countenance, poured down; he crossed himself again and Chris sadly shook his head.
Finally the colonel could speak. "You ask me to be disloyal."
"I ask you—only to decide in your own self—what loyalty is."
"I cannot turn, then."
"Learned?"
The journalist's eyes were steady—and tragic. "Nothing would be gained. Others would merely follow in place of us."
"I but asked you to decide for yourself—not for them."
The journalist flushed. "In my profession we do not even agree to stand ready to die for other men. I am here not to determine, but merely to report."
"Sopho?"
The physicist's eyes blazed suddenly. "Yes," he said. "I'll go back! I was never certain. I am always ready to re-study a problem!"
Chris put his arm around the old man. "You!"
But the scientist pulled away. "On one condition."
"And that?"
"Prove yourself!"
"But, doctor, it is you who must provide the testimony—!"
"Empirical evidence is my condition. Something measurable. Suspend, for one moment, one natural principle—"
Ruefuly, Chris laughed. "To simple men—fishermen, farmers, tax collectors—the power of any genuine conviction seemed miraculous because of its accomplishments. I healed the neurotics of my day. By suggestion, I added to the innocent gaiety of many a gathering. But even that poor, positive procedure is inverted now; many churches find their miracles in the hysterics of their own sick—bleeding, stigmata, fits!" He sighed. "Surely you, doctor, a miracle-maker in reality—are not naïve enough to ask that the very heart of truth be magically violated so you mayaccepttruth? The evidence is—within you. I never said more. Find it there, man!"
"I thought so," the doctor replied in a cold voice.
Chris spoke persuasively. "Youcould work a miracle of transformation withinyourself. But—even if I should suspend the very forces upon which that possibility depends—you would exert the last resource of your ingenuity to find out by what mechanical trick I achieved your illusion, as you'd call it! Prove, doctor, that you would not!"
"Let's see the experiment." Sopho's eyes were hard.
The stranger thought a moment and presently chuckled to himself. "The unsolved riddle of thecause—thesource—the nature—of the energy in your atoms, doctor! Would you like to understand that next step in your science?"
"Impossible!"
Chris looked ardently at the old man.
A moment later, the scientist's eyes shut. An expression of immense concentration came upon his features. Perspiration welled and trickled on his countenance—as on the colonel's. Suddenly his eyes opened again. He grabbed the colonel's arm. "Great God, man! I've cracked the toughest problem in physics! The thing just came to me this moment! Why! With this equation—we'll be able to make bombs that will assure American domination for a century! I'll win my second Nobel Prize! Every nuclear physicist's head will swim with envy! The financial possibilities—billions!—trillions! I'll just get it on paper—!" He broke off. "Wasn't there—somebody else—standing here?" he said perplexedly. "Never mind! Lend me a pencil, Learned!"
"Somebody else?" The colonel shook his head. "Nobody but the three of us. And the gunners. Jesus, I wish this mission was ended! I've been having a terrible struggle in my conscience about it!"
Learned said, "Have you? Me—too. I kind of hate humanity today. I kept wishing—something would break down, and stop the whole thing. I get a choked-up feeling when I think of those people."
The scientist was crouching, now—gazing at the streaming gray desolation beyond the windows. "Funny," he said to the gunner at his side. "A minute ago—I was sure I'd got a new insight into a very complex problem. Now—I can't even remember my approach."
The gunner, who held palaver of the brass and all VIPs to be but one more nuisance of war, said, "Yeah?"
The B-29 flew on toward its as yet unspecified destination.
The City of Horror and Shame.
Back at the base, the brass was laying plans for a second run—to the City of Naked Sorrow.
9
A scorcher.
It was my father's phrase and came back to me as familiarly, when I opened my eyes, as the heard reveille of my childhood. The sun glared on the dark window-blinds, penetrating them at myriad pinpoints. I remembered summer mornings in Massachusetts, Ohio, North Dakota, Jersey, and on the cool, bright shores of Lake George.
"Rise and shine, everybody! It's a scorcher!"
The buoyant baritone of a man of God, excited by his life, frustrated in every excitement by his Faith; a man in there, as we used to say, trying.
The room was a fumarole—its atmosphere spent by my breathing and stained with the carbonic reek of yesterday's cigarettes. Nothing came through the windows; they were open to the eye—but invisibly walled by the heat. A stratum of smoke and dust lay across a sunbeam; the light pierced it, struck the corner of a mirror, broke, and rebounded to the ceiling in a prismatic dazzle: red, green, blue, yellow, purple.
The little awl had ceased pecking my throat. I swallowed—without unnatural sensation—reached for the phone, ordered coffee, and sat up naked on the bed's edge, leaving a damp plaster cast of myself in the sheet. I took a short shower and picked up the Sunday papers cautiously.
Karl didn't speak.
Saving his strength for the exhaustion of the day.
Ten-fifteen.
The coffee set my nerves dancing like a swarm of gnats, without bringing relief from the deadness, the ache, the recollection of sleep in every cell—fatiguing sleep—and the yearn for youth's restful slumber.
I dialed Paul's Brooklyn number on the private line.
The phone rattled in his heat-trap and not even a ghost took it up to listen.
Lint on the divan—lint and threads—and I began to pick compulsively.
Nothing much in the papers.
The airlift.
(How could we, the American people, take pride in our freight flights when we had permitted ourselves to be euchered into the extravagance—only to meet force again in sillier forms? The effort was without dignity, without principle, without understanding, without sense.)
The pennant race.
(I remembered Babe Ruth.)
A call girl had been arrested, after the cops had tapped her telephone and listened. I viewed her attractive face in the tabloids and read the elaborate report of her dialogue with her clients.
(Since when had freedom stooped to tap the phones of prostitutes? What excellence of police was this, in a world community where hardly an honest man or woman remained, where half a billion people slowly starved, where thieves and cheats were commoner than spots of oil or horse-dung in streets? And how the cops enwhored Lady Liberty when they invaded the life of that busy lass! Truly dirty deeds bought their own big privacies: corporations burned their books and politicians lost their records. Mere tarts, however, had their phones tapped and their words recorded. What a splendid free nation I had come to live in! With what marvels of detective science!)
Well—not for long.
My weary effort would soon peter out.
Maybe then I could go and watch Kipling splash on his big-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair.
I pondered for a while over those hairy comets.
Well. All of us had short arms. We all reached too far.
I dialed Dave.
Veto said he was asleep and would call me when he woke.
When will Monday come?
Never?
Why be impatient? Isn't it better to not-know?
Not for Joe! No, no, no.
Finally, I got my chassis, frame, machine, chemical factory, over to the bridge table and, though my pilot was still missing, I began to fly better on my iron mike.
(Isn't it great to be up-to-date?)
At noon, the phone screamed.
"Hi, boy!"
"Hey. Thanks."
(I should have used those roses in mycrise. They were there. I wasn't.)
Dave took a fraction of a second to decide not to say what he had been about to say. Perhaps that he was afraid I'd think him foolish.
I looked at the flowers and the pilot was sitting amongst them.
"Any news of our Paul?" he asked.
"My agent lost the trail around midnight."
"I've got bulletins up to threeA.M.—last time he called. He'd been to Madam Blaine's—and she'd given him the runaround."
"Marcia's there," I said.
"I know. I called after that and Hattie put her on. Rough gal."
"Yeah."
"In a bad mood. Wanted me to come up."
"I went there and caught her act, personally."
Dave said, "I honest-to-God didn't think there was any need of putting a tail on the lad. Maybe I should have. Now what?"
"Now we wait till he gets hungry, sleepy, or runs out of dough."
"I'll keep you posted from my end. I'll send Charlie over to Paul's apartment again. Do a couple of other things. And stop by later."
"If he checks with me, I'll let you know."
"Good. I've got a meeting with my moguls right after lunch. They are trying to dream up a cycle. Yesterday—they ran through the Frankenstein possibilities and then got in your territory—animal horror. You should have been there! You would have yorked parade floats."
"You might suggest phallic worship. Remember? They could put it in the past. You know, Mu, Atlantis, Lemuria, Ancient Rome. I doubt if the censors would gather what it was. Think it was educational. How about a documentary of Pompeii?"
"I'll enter it on my agenda." Dave whistled down the scale. "Some weather! I took in my human head. It had stopped shrinking. I was afraid it might explode."
"You better pack a little dry ice in your own hat!"
"How you feeling?"
"About like Utah."
He considered that. "Jesus," he said. "Take it easy! Be over by and by."
I got dressed and went downstairs.
There were people—maybe two dozen—in the Knight's Bar, for lunch, resuscitation, or the pelt of the dog that bit them.
Not Yvonne, though. A bit early.
The city was shockingly quiet. When the traffic lights changed, sometimes, nothing else did. You could hear one car pass on the street. Even the buses seemed enfeebled: their special arrangements for traumatizing man roared, ground, and hammered only at long intervals.
The Musak was trying hymns, or an unreasonable facsimile thereof.
With twenty-one cold shrimps, a couple of ounces of mayonnaise, some lettuce, and a few gills of iced coffee inside me, I felt better.
When I got out on the sixteenth soaking pit I discovered Yvonne knocking on my door—my hall door, for a wonder. After a little bickering, I went back to the cold restaurant with her. Not too much bickering.
It was the New Yvonne. Anybody could see that. She was dressed up in dark-blue linen and she ordered crustaceans, too, on my recommendation. Then she began to talk.
"I'm going back to Pasadena on the afternoon plane," she said. "I've been talking to Rol about half the morning. I talked away a fortune. But it was worth it. I told him—everything."
"Everything?"
She nodded. Her gray eyes were gentle, inaccessible, fixed on a plane-landing a couple of thousand miles away, and night in the lamplit, lower hills of California, where the eucalyptus trees grow. She repeated the opening gambit on Long Distance:
It's me, Rol. I want to come back.... I know you want me to.... But I don't know if you will when.... Look! Think of why I went.... Don't apologize! Don'tbelike that! Because—Rol—me, too!
He didn't believe her.
Then he thought it was—masochistic experiment.
Don't you see, darling, that's why I was so extra frantic? So weirdly angry? I had to find that out.
"Then he was jealous!" Yvonne laughed softly—happily. "I think that was good for him."
"No doubt."
"In the end—all he could say was, 'Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!'"
"And you feel like hurrying?"
She spoke reproachfully. "Wouldn't you?"
"Yes."
"I want to have eighteen kids," she said. "And I want them all to grow up florists and nurserymen and horticulturists. I understand me. Us. He had to spend all his time in the greenhouses because I spoiled the whole rest of his world. I'll get him out oftener, now. Not too much. Enough."
I looked at her—the clear amethyst irises, the gilded cascade of her hair, the expectation of her body. "You sure will."
"I'm so—full—so—complete. So—ready."
"There are other girls like Gwen," I said. "Some."
"I'll be busy. Don't you think? The children, for one thing. And my libido will be preoccupied, I imagine. Don't you? And suppose I had a small emotional accident some foggy afternoon at Malibu?"
"Rol would raise hell."
Her dimples showed. "I would try to make certain he never found out about it. My privacy. And I am quoting you, Dr. Wylie! Oh, I could hug you right here and now! And anyway—it isn't so much something you do. It's something to know is unlocked, that's all. When you can—you probably never do; when you can't—you hardly do anything but yearn; and never know for what. You know that—don't you? That's why Gwen—?"
I picked up her hand and looked at the big, square diamond.
"Pin none of your flowers on me, cooky. It was a dangerous prescription. I tried to weasel out of the charge that I'd compounded it. But I did. Mr. Wylie's toxic monologue."
"Mr. Wylie's elixir for the self-righteous."
"America," I said, "is the wrong climate for taking a capsule of that so-called sin and expecting a cure. In some other country—or age—"
"Don't orate today. I couldn't listen." She ate a shrimp. "I wish I knew more about you."
"Me, too." I went on, "Be good to Rol. Remember—these high tides run out. And remember—they always come in again."
"You going?" She said it almost without interest. She didn't need company any more.
I nodded. "The last installment is passing through the chopper. Here's another item, cooky. People who live in greenhouses mustn't cast the first stone."
For a moment, her gaze faltered.
I watched delicate changes of her color; she had beautiful skin. I watched the old stain reappear in her eyes. Her chin thrust out a little and shook a little and was firm. Her eyes turned amethyst again. "I'll remember," she said.
I thought she would, maybe.
"Do me a favor?" She was opening her handbag. "I haven't told dad I was flying back. I don't want to go through all the argument. Will you call him—after five-thirty?"
"If I don't forget."
She closed the bag. "I bet you would! So thanks anyhow. I can wire him—from La Guardia."
"Safer."
She said, "Good-bye, Phil."
I kissed her.
10
It didn't seem possible to work.
For half an hour I fussed around—trying to feel cooler—looking at my throat in the living room mirror and then the mirror on the medicine chest in the bathroom—hunting for a sunless spot in the forest-green sitting room—shunting the bridge table about.
I condensed the opening of Part Six in my mind, then tapped out the result on the portable. I thought Durfree would like it. Editors are fond—overfond of brevity. I took a shower and tried to write wet, but it ran down me, and my tail itched on the turkish towel. Finally, I got cutting again.
Paul showed up around four—when I had about ten pages—an hour—left to go.
He looked like an adolescent registering despair in an amateur play.
"Nothing," he said, and he sat down listlessly in an over-stuffed easy chair that was covered with chintz in full leaf. He didn't bother even to loosen his tie.
I looked at him and compassion melted out of me.
"Eaten?"
He nodded. "Had to. Have to keep going."
I said, "Nuts."
It was time, I thought, for Dr. Wylie to reverse the field. We had been running with sympathy too long.
Tears filled his eyes. "I hate to make such a spectacle of myself!"
"Howrightyou are!"
"Phil—I'm caving in! I can't think of another thing to do. My guts are full of ground glass. All I see—is Marcia—in my mind. I can't go on this way—"
"Want to quit—going on that way?"
"How can I?" It sounded as if he didn't want to quit.
I said, "Listen, Paul, if you care to go to the cleaner, the dentist and down a gantlet all at once—you can quit."
"What do you mean?"
"Want a look at the real score? Or do you prefer to carry the torch of your slap-happy illusions forever?"
He stared. "You know something you've kept from me!"
"Certainly. I know a lot I couldn't tell you if I tried."
"For Christ's sake—!"
"All right. And remember, you asked. You went up to Hattie's last night—"
"That fat she-fiend—!"
"—and they said Marcia wasn't there. But she was."
He leaped to his feet. "I'll grab a cab—"
I got to my feet, too—not by leaping, and stood in frontof him. "You'll grab no cab, Paul. Sit down—or shall I sit you down?"
"Go on—" he said. "Tell me, then."
"Marcia is up at Hattie's—working."
He looked at me dementedly and snatched the phone.
"You won't get them to put her on," I said. "She doesn't want to talk to you."
"I'm calling the cops," he answered. "I'll bust that joint wide open and get her out, if it's the last thing—!"
I hung up his telephone by reaching out with my foot. "Listen, Paulo. Listen good, once. You've made a lot of mistakes. Some, you admit. Some, you haven't caught on to—in spite of the infallible, scientific mind. And others—you haven't the empirical data to guess."
"For the love of God, say what you're going to say!"
"Marcia is a whore. Was, is, and always will be. Sit still. I am giving you the advantage of a certain amount of background. And I am not the kind of guy who says that a girl who sells her body always sells her soul. You know it! The trouble with you isn't Marcia—it's neurotic stubbornness. Trying with all your might to make a cheesy setup turn beautiful. Chopping yourself down at the knees. Then—when you're on your knees—chopping off the stump where your manhood ought to be. And so on up—through the guts and the heart. All that's left is a crazed beezer. I had a long talk with your Marcia yesterday. If you'll try to stay in one piece, I'll tell you about it, in a sec. But—meanwhile—somebody ought to brief you on the fact that there may be only one kind of love in the folklore of the U.S.A.—but there are five thousand kinds in people. Marcia had a kind for you that didn't match your sentiments for her. Look at it that way."
Then I told him about my séance with his lambent, incorrigible girl friend.
He did listen.
I have to say that.
He listened like a man in the hands of the Gestapo trying to see if, perhaps, keeping quiet and not moving a muscle will help the pain.
When I wound it up, my compassion was coming back:
"I'm sick of it, Paul! Dave's sweating over you when he already has plenty to keep him busy. We've chased around for you the whole damned weekend—both of us with other things to do, and troubles of our own. Why? We think a lot of you. Because you're having the rough end of the rough time, we are, too. You were shot from worrying about the state of the world. A damned good-looking babe moved in on you and made it twice as rough. And you don't understand yourself. But the time has come to shut the book, Paul. The chapter's finished. There's no epilogue. It isn't one of my stories, boy. No happy ending. You couldn't get her back if you were the chief of police. Youcouldget her back if you were Midas—and that way you wouldn't want her. She got a big throb out of you. She was as honest as she's able to be—for a time. Her mother instinct kept her going awhile. But she was soon laying the boys in the back room even though she was doing your cooking, nights. She offered me a deal—and if that doesn't cure you, son—" I racked the brain for a conclusion—"well, go on up and buy a hunk."
He didn't say anything.
I suppose he sat for five minutes.
His face was just—sweaty, like everybody's—and gray, and apparently relaxed.
When he walked over to the window, I thought I'd won, and my nerves gave an inch or two—so I could go on living a little while longer, myself.
But he leaned way down, lifted his long, slatty leg, stepped out on the terrace, and hopped up on the parapet. Sixteen stories of straight wall.
I went after the God-damned fool.
He turned around and sat there.
"Don't come any nearer," he said. His voice was like bad brakes.
So I leaned against the sill.
He saw, quicker than I, that his ankles were in range of a dive. He pulled them up, pivoted, and stretched out on the top of the wall. It was cement—about a foot wide. And baking hot. He rocked and wriggled for a minute, took off his coat, folded it, and stuffed it under himself. While doing that, he almost lost his balance. He caught a fingerhold on the inside edge of the concrete, which stuck out over the bricks a half or three-quarters of an inch.
"Paul," I said, "for God's sake, come in."
"I like it here."
"Okay."
"I want to think."
"Help yourself."
"You wouldn't understand."
I went back through the window and into my apartment. I was quivering like a broken spring and my mind wasn't tracking. I shoved into the bathroom and poured a glass of water. Equal parts of fright and fury—as intense as I'd ever felt—slopped the water. I drank what was left. Then I went back to the window.
"Listen," I said. "I can't stop you, if you want to knock yourself off. But this is my apartment. Jump from somewhere else, will you?"
"I haven't decided."
"Well, then, come on in and make up your mind. I'm high-shy. I don't like to stand on that terrace. And seeing a guy—even you—silhouetted against my skyline makes me sick at the stomach."
"It's the only thing I ever heard of that makes you sick! New experience for you. You like new experiences. Try to get a kick out of it."
"Okay," I said. "Jump, then, you yellow sissy."
He nearly did. He swung around so his legs dangled inthe air—all those stories above the sidewalk. His fingers on the concrete rim turned white and his muscles vibrated.
"Paul!" I moaned at the fool.
He pulled back. "I'm not afraid," he said—as if to himself and in a surprised tone. "It's just that—I haven't quite decided."
"Please, cooky!" I put all the begging I have into it.
He shrugged. "Maybe—later."
He let go and fished in his pockets.
"Wait," I said.
I climbed out again with the cigarettes. Possibly—
"Toss 'em!"
I threw one—he reached—and it sailed out of sight, the sun catching it at the top of its arc. I tossed another. He got that one.
"Better go back inside," he said.
He lighted up and commenced to smoke.
I went in.
By then I was beginning to think a little. If I had a rope, I might get it over him. Only I didn't have a rope. And I might fail on the first try—in which case there probably would not be a second chance. If I could distract him for a bit, I still might grab him. Only, if there was any slip-up about that—he'd dive the sixteen floors. Well, then—what did you try to remind them of? How bright they were? How young? Or did you keep taunting them until they either went, or gave up? It looked as if that last wasn't right for Paul.
My phone rang.
"Mr. Wylie? This is Mr. Harrison—at the desk." He sounded upset. He's a nice guy—the assistant manager.
I said, "Yes."
His sigh seemed relieved. "Would you mind looking out your window? A woman has just come into the lobby who says there's a man in shirt sleeves sitting on the parapet."
"There is," I said. "It's my nephew, Paul Wilson."
Mr. Harrison laughed uneasily. "Pretty dangerous—"
I glanced at Paul. He was staring straight down again. "He's on the verge of jumping."
"Jumping!"
"And I can't get near enough to grab him. Whatever you do in a case like this—for God's sake start doing it quick! Only—if anybody tries to snatch him and he knows it—he'll probably go."
"Oh-my-God!"
"It's a mess. I'm sorry. And I need help. Intelligent help—quick."
"Do what I can."
I went back to the window.
"Who was that?" Paul asked. "Another whore?"
"The management," I said. "You're attracting attention."
He grinned acidly. "I know. Quite a few people already."
"Showing off?"
"Not giving a damn."
I sat down in a chair. I needed to sit down. Presently I called out to him, "If I get Marcia on the phone, will you talk to her?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because things are past that." He looked up Madison Avenue toward nothing. "Way, way past that."
I smoked a couple of cigarettes.
Nothing happened. The sun went down a few more inches. I suppose the top of the parapet got cooler. Big, square shadows began to ride up the buildings across the street.
"Paul, come on in! Let's talk. You're in no condition to be doing what you imagine is thinking—and you know it! Anybody can put a period after his life, any time. What you need is a vacation. A decent one—with jack to spend—maybe at the seashore or up at Lake George. I'll give it to you. I'll persuade Brink you need the time off—"
He laughed—laughed like somebody masticating gravel. "All the dough in the world couldn't buy me off this perch."
"Nobody's trying to buy you. I'm trying to—"
"Oh, shut up. I want to think."
There was a light knock on my door, at that point. I opened it. A cop stood out there and a fireman behind him and Mr. Harrison behind them. The cop had a tough, smart face and he whispered. "Will he jump if we come in?"
"Search me."
"You okay?"
"More or less."
"Can you keep him talking? We're rigging a net in the apartment below there. We've got a couple of experts on the way, besides. Leave this door ajar—so they can get to your bedroom."
I nodded.
They slipped away.
Paul asked, when I came back, "Who was it?"
"The maid."
He accepted that.
"Cigarette?"
"Thanks."
I got outside and sat on my windowsill, about ten feet from him.
"I remember," I said, "the first time it happened to me."
"What happened?"
"The first time I was really in love. Her name was Ruth. She was a little gal. Light-brown hair and the kind of eyes that look up at you. Little breasts and shy, inquisitive hands. I—"
"Save it for the magazines."
"I was crazy about her. But I had to go to college and I couldn't afford to see her often. Couldn't afford to take herto the proms. A Christmas vacation came around and we threw a party at the house of a friend whose folks had gone south. We all got tight. I missed her when I was dancing—and started looking. I found her upstairs—in a bedroom—with a guy in my class. After that—"
"—you knew they were just like trolley cars."
"When I was working on theNew Yorker—I fell again. A gal from Holyoke—"
"Horse manure to Holyoke."
"Paul. What are we supposed to think—to do—when we spend all the energy and time and dough to make a brilliant adult out of a promising kid? By 'we'—I mean at least a hundred men and women. The kid turns out to be super-good. Everybody chips in to make sure he has every possible opportunity. He is tops in his class. He gets an inside hot spot on the most important project in his nation. Every single person who ever knew him—loves him—and is button-popping proud of him. But one day he has his feelings hurt badly—and there's not one thing we can do for him. We try. But it's no dice. So he climbs out of a window and slams about a billion dollars' worth of brains and the time and energy, and hope of other people, to smithereens, on the curb. We bury what's left of him. And then we sit around asking each other what the use is. Our best wasn't good enough for him or for us. We keep asking ourselves what the hell he did expect of life—and of us—that he didn't get."
Paul at least listened—which was a clue: he'd listen to a piece about himself.
But he said coldly, "Your values are pretty sleazy, Phil. Only a day or two ago, you were telling me that we physicists had sinned. That we deserved to be punished. That all we'd done was evil. Now—because you're in a corner—physics is suddenly the most important thing in the nation. May I repeat—horse manure!"
"Sins of omission," I said. "You guys think of yourselves as honest—and you are, in one way. About science, you don'tcheat or lie, ever. It's the solitary triumph of our age. And look at the results. Progress in objectivity accelerates by a factor of hundreds—thousands—in a couple of centuries. I'm for that. But that—alone—isn't enough. You birds look at your objective integrity as if it were all there is to virtue. It's not. Listen, Paulo. There are two functions of virtue: one is to find new truths; the other is to dispel old lies; the whole man practices both, equally."
"Grant that—but don't we educate people as fast as we can?"
I shook my head. "Look at you. The scientific description of your situation on this bloody shelf is known to tens of thousands. But not to you. You're the victim of old lies. You're about to toss yourself into the late afternoon because you were so busy learning new truths in physics that you never bothered to dispel the old lies in your psychology. You're a damned anachronism! A burnt offering to Woman. You're a puppet of a lot of myths and legends and poor child training. You might as well be a pagan male virgin—offered up to some fat, female goddess by your tribe. A man that isn't a man. A scientist from the neck up—and a howling heathen from the waist down. Unaware of the fact. A pretty picture!"
"I suppose," he said with the utmost bitterness, "that I would be sitting in your apartment chortling happily—if I had ideals like yours. The scientific integrity of a whore-master."
"My ideals," I said, "at least keep a mediocre author plugging to the end. Yours, apparently won't save one of the world's top mathematicians from one lousy pair of legs."
"That's all you feel about a woman!"
"That's allyoufeel! Fate took away your candy and now you won't play. It was public candy, anyhow—and only good for all the boys. You wouldn't face that. But if you want to love women realistically, that's just what you'll have to face, among a lot of other things. Love lies a long way beyond Marcia's behavior." I tried to grin at him. "I'm supposed to be a psychologist, myself. There should be a way by which I could persuade what's left of your senses to stop playing Prometheus and get off your rock."
"Outsmart me?"
"Shouldn't I be able? If my dope's any good?"
"It isn't any good, though. Just a flashy bunch of extrapolation and phony biology. You're no real philosopher, Phil."
"Maybe not. Still—it isn't my product. It's Jung's. He's something of a brain."
"Horse manure."
"There is plenty of it down there in the street," I said. "If you want to add yourself—by a method that will make you indistinguishable from the rest of it—"
He doubled up his fist and smacked the concrete. "Can't you see I'm tormented—?"
I shook my head a few times. "Yeah. Everybody can—for blocks."
He began to sob. I inched up from the sill and braced myself. All it would take was about one tear-blinded second—
He must have heard something on the floor below because he stopped gasping, suddenly, and leaned way out. Then he began hitching along the wall. He hitched right past me—his eyes on mine the whole way—and I have never seen any eyes exactly like that, before. They knew what was going on behind them—and didn't know. They weren't maniacal—but they were not sane, either.
When he was well beyond my reach, he looked down again and then hitched some more. He passed the corner of my apartment and came to the end of the parapet. A flat brick wall, rising for fifteen feet, made a backstop for him. He was in a corner. And there weren't any windows below him—because that was how the architect had designed the building. The net idea was out. And so, I thought, was the idea of some sort of expert jump at him from an unexpectedangle. Unless the roof offered possibilities. I'd never been up there.
I walked down the terrace.
"That's near enough," Paul said.
I leaned on the hot parapet and looked down. About a thousand people had gathered in Madison Avenue—though it had been almost empty an hour before. In spite of the heat wave, in spite of the desertedness of the whole city, there they were—like bugs spilled out of a tin can. Cops among them—hollering and waving traffic through.
Every insect was white on top where the neck had craned the face up toward us.
I let myself absorb the vertical drop until I was weak.
Vertigo gets to me fast. My psychiatrist said he thought it was a symbol—in my case—for striving. I spent too much effort trying to get to some summit where skill, not effort, alone could take anybody. And the struggle was reflected as a physical horror of high places. There must have been something in it, because after assimilating the idea, I was at least able to live in high rooms without feeling queasy. But there may be even more in it—since I still get sick, hanging around the edge of sixteen-story walls.
Paul also was looking down at all the people and the people constantly arriving.
"I'm going in," I said.
He hardly paid any attention.
Such clothes as I had on were soaked clear through again. I was thinking about changing when the door knocked and the cop stood there with some other men—in and out of uniforms.
"He's moved."
"I know."
"We can't get at him good, there. A net won't be possible. We've got some guys looking over the picture on the roof. But it's risky. Twice, that squad has gotten a line around somebody—and had them get loose and go. Onebird threw the rope off before they could pull it tight. And a woman cut it while she was hanging over the street. Can we come in?"
I opened the door. They looked at me. "My name's Black," one said. "Captain—your precinct." He introduced the rest the way an undertaker presents pallbearers to each other. They all went over near the windows and knelt and peeked furtively at Paul.
"Should I stay out there?" I asked.
The tough, bright-looking cop gave me the once-over. "High-shy?"
"Some."
"Do you think he's likely to go?"
"Christ knows! I'm not an expert in this sort of thing."
"Still—you do know him. Mr. Harrison, here, says he works on the atom bomb."
"That's right."
Black swore. "Make dandy headlines. Police allow suicide of scientist."
The younger cop said, "What sort of kid is he? Determined? Gutty? He looks that way."
"Yeah. And a little spoiled."
The cop whistled without making any sound. "Girl?"
I nodded.
"Where's she?"
"Hattie Blaine's," I replied, after thinking it over.
He looked out the window and shook his head. "Jesus!"
I sketched in a little. The men listened.
Black said, "I could send a cruise car up for her—and get her back here—"
I shook my head. "I suspect—he'd bail out for sure, then. His life plan was based on the idea that what she had been—would be rubbed out. Forgotten. If you understand. But she went back to work."
"The higher they are the harder they fall!" Black was grimly amused at the accuracy of the cliché.
And the younger cop said, "It isn't possible to be smart all ways at once, is it?"
"What do we do?" I asked.
He looked at me some more. "Take a shower and put on dry clothes, Mr. Wylie. We'll figure for a while. These things can last hours."
I did that.
They didn't figure much.
"The best we can do," Black informed me, "is to get set up there on the roof. The angle's bad—but we have two good men. If he shows signs of definitely going, we'll take a chance and try to rope him."
They'd been out on the narrow terrace, talking to him. The young cop was fascinated. "He told us that he was working out a personal problem against a background germane to the problem and equivalent to the other stresses of his life. Something like that. What the hell does 'germane' mean?"
"Appropriate," I said. It was near enough.
"When those double-domes go nuts—they still keep talking in their double-dome lingo."
"The nut," I said, "never realizes he's nutty. He thinks you are. That's why there're so many of them."
The cop nodded. "I'd say—the majority of people, sometimes." He shrugged. "I guess when you get into the atom-bomb class of brains, you get pretty chinchy everywhere else."
I shook my head. "The fact is otherwise. The brighter they are—the less likely they are to pull one like this. Only—they still do, occasionally."
Captain Black absently tossed his smoking cigar butt into the artificial fireplace and stepped over the windowsill. We could hear him, down the terrace, talking to Paul—but not the words.
"He got a family we could send for? Anything like that?" the young cop asked.
I shook my head. "His mother died—not by what's called suicide, but by the psychological means that amounted to the same thing. He's a case of a dame-starved kid growing up with too much emphasis on dames and too little knowledge about what they're really like."
The cop gazed at me with a different speculation. "Tough for you."
"I can stand it. I like him. It makes me angry. And it's—embarrassing."
"I'll say."
Time passed.
"They ought to have a gadget!" I talked to pass more time. "Something that they could shoot at a man on such a spot. A light, large net discharged by a Very pistol—maybe—that went too fast to duck and tangled you all up."
The cop wiggled his chin affirmatively. "The number of good, practical ideas buried in Headquarters runs to thousands."
Captain Black came in. "No dice."
Then Dave Berne arrived.
His eyes were the same faithful blue, but unnaturally vivid. He patted my back and shook hands with Black, whom he knew. He stood in the room a moment, peeling off a light-weight jacket and looking at the yellow roses. Then he went over and leaned out the window.
"Hi, Paul!"
"Et tu?" Paul called back.
Dave chuckled. "You've got quite a crowd down there. Had trouble pushing through!" He pulled his head back and said to us, "What gives?"
We told him such plans as existed.
Dave listened and smelled the flowers and moved his eyes to whoever was talking. Finally we'd finished and he grinned. "Well," he said, sighing a little, "let's go and get the damned fool in."
He went and I went after him and the others stayed, peering into the fading light.
Dave whispered to me to hang back a little and I did and he moved on along the parapet till he came to a point just out of range. Paul was watching him with a wary, scornful expression. Dave leaned over the parapet and looked down—and Paul took a look, too.
"Funny," Dave said. "All those yokels. I suppose most of 'em will go along home pretty soon. Suppertime. And soon be too dark to see the fun, anyhow. But some of 'em would hang around all night—even though the street is a God-damned stove-top. Waiting. Waiting and hoping. Hoping. Imagine it! Hoping to see a human being come sixteen stories in slow somersaults. Hoping to see him hit and spatter. Hoping his feet will burst and his shoes will fly off—the way they do, sometimes. Hoping they'll be a Christ-to-be-Jesus big puddle of blood to tell the family about—and blood spattered up to the second story. And a dent in the sidewalk. What the hell is wrong with a bunch of yahoos that'll stand around for hours on account of a hope like that?"
"Very graphic," Paul said.
Dave took a long look, then, at the surrounding roofs—the vertical rows of windows, some now electrically lighted, and some flared with the last copper rays of a sun that was going down in Jersey behind the Orange Mountains where I used to make field maps when I was a Boy Scout. He took still another look at the blue-powder sky, drew one deep breath, and hopped lightly up astride the parapet.
Paul was startled.
So was I.
And so were the cops. They yelled, "Hey!"
Dave made a "cease-fire" gesture behind his back. He inched along the parapet toward Paul, a ways. "You're going inside in a bit, son," he said quietly.
"I haven't decided. And don't rush me."
"But you will. Look, Paul. You know me—pretty well. And you know a good deal about me. From Phil. So listen. I'm a no-account yid bastard who never got—and will never get—a fair shot at using the ability he thinks he has. All I can do is outsmart other corporation lawyers—and get paid big dough for it."
Paul said sneeringly, "If you want to start a self-pity contest—"
"Nope. I was thinking about something else. Pride. Real pride. Things to be proud of. One's you. You weren't born behind any eight-ball. You've got ten times the brains of Phil, here, and me put together. You're in there fighting. And you're a guy—one of the guys who run about three in a hundred—who can look at a yid like me and not see that two thousand year old, imaginary eight-ball. I appreciate that. I'm proud some people can be like that."
"Don't be childish."
"I'm not. I'm just pointing out that—potentially—you're valuable. I have no value. You—and the guys like you—can probably figure out the stuff we need to go on fighting for freedom. You can probably lick the new tyranny, and maybe even without carving holes in the country and paying out the best young blood. And then we'll have a chance to go on with the liberty scrap. That's what you can do. It means a lot to guys like me—who never had a chance to draw one free-and-equal breath in his life. Not you as a person. You as ideas. So all right. That's that. Maybe you hate your job. Maybe it's a wrong thing. Maybe all the world has left, for now, is a choice among wrong ways. Personally—if that's so—I take our choice. America's. I'm no Stephen Decatur—but that's how my feelings go."
"If you don't mind," Paul said, "I'd just as soon be spared the patriotic harangue."
"Sure. I'm through. And you're coming in, soon, now." Dave let go of the ledge, pulled back his shirt sleeve, and peered at his wrist watch. "You're coming in—or I'm bailingout. In five minutes, Paul, my son, if you don't get off—I take off."
I was listening to Dave's voice and a terrible fear possessed me. But Paul heard only the shouting of agony within himself. "Wiseguy," he said.
Dave smiled a slow, gentle smile. "Wiseguy? Maybe so. But how long this wiseguy lives—is up to you, now."
"Do you think I believe you? Do you think I'm so stupid?"
"I mean it." Dave looked up from his watch and his eyes fixed on Paul. "I'm not kidding, son."
I could see the color change in Paul's cheeks. He'd been pale. He became ghostly. He locked eyes with Dave Berne.
The slightest stir moved the hot, early-evening air.
People sat at windows and on roofs; people stood in penthouse gardens with highballs and binoculars, enjoying the sensation, making a new ritual of it. A flashbulb blazed up and died in the instant, on a setback, across and down the street, where some news cameraman with a telephoto lens was getting a shot for his tabloid.
"I have," Dave said quietly, "about two hundred seconds left."
"What a cheap thing to do!" Paul spoke harshly.
Dave smiled even more and he nodded. "It's all I have—my life. Cheap—I said so."
Paul stood up.
It was horrifying. He'd been sitting that long while. His arms were cramped. His legs must have been asleep. He tottered to his feet, rocked on the near-motionless air, careened his arms, stamped, glanced down with a round and dreadful focus of his eyes, caught his balance, and looked triumphantly at Dave.
"You're kind of forcing my hand," he said.
Dave stood up, too, then—very quickly, and without tottering. Stood up—and looked at his watch. "I mean, too, of course, Paul, that if you go—I'll also go. I'll try for you—and standing, like this—we'll go together. You see—you have no choice but to go in, or take me along. And there's only about a minute left."
I went closer. "Dave, for the love of God!" My voice was a cackle. "If this thing has to be gone through with—I'm the guy. After all, Dave—I've only got a little bit left anyhow! Get down, for Christ's sake—and let me get up—"
Dave hardly glanced at me. "Be quiet, Phil. Stay where you are." He turned again to look at Paul.
And there they stood, swaying slightly, their eyes, their wills fastened together in conflict over the simple stake of life and of death. They defied each other—against the pale-blue heat of the evening sky. A murmur came up from the street, a muddled sob, as the watchers noted the change of position, the new precariousness, and sensed the imminence of climax. The sound boiled and grew and beat the bricks all the way up from the infested thoroughfare.
"Half a minute," Dave said, above the susurration.
I couldn't move.
Paul couldn't tear away his eyes from Dave: each instant stood alone and almost still.
"Ten seconds," Dave said. And he turned around—facing nothing—to jump.
A great cry escaped Paul.
He toppled on the terrace—and passed out.
Dave about-faced and stepped down lightly.
11
It was twenty-one o'clock, which is to say, nine that evening.
Dave had eaten dinner with me and gone off to another meeting of his maestros. To look, he said, for the silver lining of the silver screen.
Not even mentioning Paul.
Not seeming to be affected....
Paul was in a hospital.
A private hospital. The cops had wanted to send him to Bellevue for observation. But Dave had persuaded them and arranged to have my nephew taken on a stretcher down the service elevator and transported by ambulance to a safe place.
I'd called Ricky and told her about it. Told her again that I'd be back in Buffalo by the following evening, in all likelihood.
And I'd called Karen, my daughter, and warned her of what she would see and read when the morning papers reached her country doorstep in Connecticut.
Nine o'clock.
The next day would be Monday.
I waited.
Dr. Adams was late. The charred cigarettes piled up.
At last, he phoned from the lobby.
Come up.
One of those psychiatrists about whom interviewers write:
... nothing of the abnormal about him; he would be mistaken anywhere for a successful businessman....
Because Dr. Adams took considerable pains to look exactly like a successful American businessman who would be mistaken anywhere.
dark, chalk-striped suit, polished brown brogues, foulard tie, fifty-one years old, seventy-one inches high, a hundred and seventy-one pounds, heavy horn-rims in his breast pocket with the Parker 51, smoothly brushed iron-gray hair, smoothly brushed iron-gray eyebrows, smoothly unbrushed iron-gray eyes, the outdoor complexion that is imperative for indoor men of distinction, and the prize already awarded for filling in the last line of the limerick:
Healthy, wealthy and wise.
You couldn't help liking him if you tried, and believe me, I tried. I tried because Adams (Hargrave H.P.) was thehead of the private hospital where Dave had sent Paul and I wouldn't have one of those top-notch third-rate psychiatrists fooling with my nephew.
He said he'd always wanted to meet me and I said I'd never heard of him and he laughed because he was amused, not because he laughed when he didn't know what else to do, like an American businessman.
He sat down in one of my chairs and refused a drink and said, "Tell me all you think I ought to know about Paul."
Three hours and several hundred questions later he left.
Paul was going to be all right.
Not soon—but someday when he'd learned the masochisms, sadisms, castration complexes, repressed homosexual feelings, mistaken anima identification, archetypal possessions, and other data not shown by the meters in his laboratory.
Hargrave H.P. Adams had plenty of what it would take. I wouldn't have minded asking him some of my own questions. He had come up with a few suggestions and formulations unknown to me....
That brought the evening up past midnight.
I felt wretched.
You are apt to, when you think they're going to stand you against the stone wall the next morning.
There were, of course, Tom's pills.
I rolled them out in my hand and just looking at them gave me a fuzzy taste in my mouth so I rolled them back.
It was one to think yourself out of.
I went into the living room and climbed through the window and peered down into the glittering slot of Madison Avenue until, all of a sudden, I began to shake. I almost threw up before I could scramble back into the apartment.
I sat down and stared at the sky.
You could still see a few stars in the haze. The night was as close as a pressure cooker.
My nausea left slowly; my shakes subsided.
In states of this sort I usually try, if possible, to make a list of Things to Do.
Things to Do on Sunday Night in the Big City, after the witching hour.
One can walk the streets.Go to the Park.Read.Eat.(But not sleep.)One can take a sightseeing bus to Chinatown.The taxi dance halls are open.The all-night movies.Any of numerous friends—or my brother—would sit up and talk till morning.I couldby simply lifting the telephone and dialing a numberfill my apartment with assorted pretty girls.Or just Gwen.Why not?The image appearedthe woman-lines, the dry-martini taste of a woman'slibidoGwen's cuprous hair;and it was not Gwen at allbut an image in myself.Who she was, I had no idea.But I knewI'd had enough of the Gwens in this worldto last untilmy next reincarnationor, possibly,the second coming of Christin Anno Double-Domini.(Tomorrow, I thought, beginsanother reincarnation)It was enough of a list.