Beyond the End of Time (1952) Anthology

by Frederik Pohl (ed. )

  He was, and breathing. She undressed in no great hurry, finally accustomed to the peeping sensation. But when she was under the covers, she screamed suddenly and scrambled out. Mark was awake by the lime she turned on the light.

  "Now what?" he grumbled.

  She goggled at him in alarm. "It wasn’t you?" she “What wasn’t me?"

  She sat tentatively on the edge ol the bed and rubbed her arm. "Somebody—I thought it was you—I could feel his fingers on my arm just as plain—’’

  "Whom," Mark asked, confused, "are you talking about?”

  She put her chin out. “Somebody tried to gr

  "M-mm," Mark nodded solemnly, acting not at all astonished. He put his plump, white, flat feet into slippers and wrestled into a bathrobe. lie said anxiously, "Now don't get alarmed, Livy. We'll see this thing through."

  "Don’t bother,", she said. "As long as I know it wasn't you. I'm satisfied.”

  "I am not in the habit of slinking."

  “No,” she admitted, looking at him appraisingly. "You haven't the physique. Then again, if you did have, you wouldn't have to slink." She gave her head a shake. “I don't know what to think." And she began to cry.

  "Now, none of that," he said. "We'll have you all right in a jiffy.”

  She stood up, ready to run over the beds, if necessary. “Oh, no, not now, you're not."

  "I don't know what you mean," he said, and he went to the telephone extension and called Ben Dashman. He agreed with Ben that it was rather late, but added, "It's urgent, Ben, and you're the only one I can turn to. It's Livy's nerves. They've—snapped! You’ll have to get your clothes on and come right over."

  "Ben Dashman," said Livy scornfully. “Here’s one consumer whose resistance that business psychologist can't break down. The two of you will just get to your offices all tired out tomorrow, and for what?”

  “When there is a crisis, sleep is a secondary consideration," Mark said. "Ben and I arc men of action. This will not be the first time we've worked through the night."

  But Ben, when he arrived, sat on a chair at one side of her bed, and Mark sat on his own bed and explained to Ben, over Livy's indignant body, the little he knew of what he referred to as her case. Though the information didn’t amount to much, it made her just as embarrassed as the first peeping incident.

  If Mark Random was pompous .and oratorical, and he was, lien Dashman could claim the doubtful credit. Mark had modeled himself alter that successful expert on business psychology, who had read his way up to the vice-presidency-in-charge-of-sales. Ben could quote whole chapters of inspirational and analytical studies, whereas Mark had mastered no more than brief sentences and paragraphs. The voice had a lot to do with Ben's sensational rise, however. Mark had a slightly petulant voice, about Middle C, while Ben had learned to pitch his a full octave below comfort and to propel his words like strung spitballs.

  Physically. Ben was even less appetizing than Mark. He had a bigger stomach, wider hips, rounder shoulders, white hair split in the center and stuck damply to his pink head, heavy lips that he loved to pucker thoughtfully, and pince-nez. Mark would have paid a lot for a pince-nez that would stay on him, but they either stopped his circulation or fell off.

  ‘'Well," said Ben when Mark was through. Livy won the bet she had made with herself that that would be his first response; it gave him lime to think. "Do you have anything to add, Livy?"

  "Sure. Co home, or take Mark out to a bar. I want to go to sleep.”

  “I mean about your—strange feeling," Ben persisted.

  "I recommend it to all women," she said. “II I knew how, I'd manufacture and sell these dream admirers on the installment plan, and give them free to the needy. It's made me ten years younger. Now go away. I’ve a date with my delusion."

  "Listen," said Mark earnestly. "Ben got out of bed and came over here to help you. We both want to help you. Ben has read all there is to know about mental cases."

  "I'm not a mental case." Livy said. “I was until now. but I'm not any more. If you both want to help me. you

  can develop amnesia and wander out of my life. For good. If I’m sick, it’s of you."

  Mark’s face went purple, but Ben pacified him hastily: “Don't answer her, Mark. She doesn't know what she's saying. You know how it is with these things.”

  “The only reason he married me was to save money on a housekeeper," she said in a deliberate tone.

  “That's right—" Ben encouraged her, patronizingly.

  “Are you agreeing with her?" Mark shouted.

  “I mean that's right—let her get things off her chest," Ben explained. "It releases tension."

  So Livy kept talking and it was wonderful. She said the most insultingly true things about Mark and he didn't dare turn them into argument. She didn't know much about psychiatry, but she accused him of all the terms she could remember. It was the first time she had examined out loud the facts of her limitation marriage.

  "Come to think of it," she concluded, "I don't know why I stayed here this long. As soon as I can get some money together, or a job, I’ll let you know my forwarding

  Then she went to sleep. Ben assured Mark that she seemed to have unburdened her grievances and should have no further disturbances. Her threat to leave he considered mere bravado. He advised rest and a sympathetic attitude.

  Taking Ben to the door, Mark thanked him abjectly: “I don't know what I would have done without you.”

  “Forget it,” said Ben. “If we didn't all pitch in and help each other when the footing gets rocky, there'd be no cooperation in this world.”

  “That’s right," Mark said, brightening. "Wasn’t it Emerson who pointed out that cooperation is the foundation of civilization?”

  "It's always safe to give Emerson the credit," Ben answered. "Now just don’t worry about Livy. If she shows any alarming signs ol tension, call me up, day or night, and I'll be glad to do what I can.”

  It was two months before Livy moved out, actually, and then only because she had no real choice. Finding a job had been harder than she anticipated. She had no experience and the best part of the day to go job-hunting had usually been taken up by cooking, cleaning, shopping. sending out the laundry, and reading. For she had begun consuming psychology books—both normal and abnormal—searching for a parallel to her condition.

  She found roughly similar cases, some which were almost identical in unimportant respects. But the really significant symptom, which urged her on in her hunt, she found nowhere.

  None of the systematically deluded women had ever had a baby by an imaginary sweetheart. And Livy, her doctor had told her after die usual tests, was indisputably pregnant.

  "But that’s impossible,” she had protested.

  ”I thought so myself,” the doctor, who was Mark’s physician also, had confessed. "But, you see, the profession is full of surprises."

  "That isn't what I mean,” Livy said in a panic.

  She asked for some aromatic spirits in water. She wanted a chance to rehearse her answer. It sounded absurd even to herself.

  She and Mark had not changed the basis of her marriage. Mark couldn't be the father of her child. He wasn’t. It was impossible. Under the circumstances, it was absolutely impossible. Yet it was also impossible for her to be pregnant. She had an alibi for every minute of their marriage.

  But these days, she realized numbly, when a doctor tells a woman she is going to have a baby, she can start

  buying a layette. So she shuffled out of the doctor's office, clutching her list of medical instructions, and that night she told Mark.

  Mark didn't bark or howl; he called Ben Dashman instead. Ben understood the situation instantly.

  "Livy's conscience caused those delusions," he said. “She has obviously been having an affair."

  "There was nothing obvious about it,” Livy said. "It was so unobvious, in fact, that I didn't know about it

  This time Ben Dashman’s presence didn’t stop Mark from losing his temper. "A
re you denying," he yelled, "that you have been having an affair?"

  "Certainly,” said Livy. "I’d know about it, wouldn't I?"

  “Well, that's a point, Mark," Ben said ponderously. "In the condition Livy's been in lately, she might not have been responsible.”

  “I’m not going to be responsible, and that's for sure,” Mark said. "We'll find out who the man is if we have to dig clean through her unconscious and down to her pituitary gland!"

  Mark threw his glasses, the big black-rimmed ones, on the door and trampled on them. Livy felt a little proud. She had never seen him so angry before. She had never suspected that she could have such an effect on him, or she might have tried it long ago.

  "Livy," Ben said gently, “you do know who the man was, don't you?”

  "Sure," she said. “It was my dreamboat, my lover boy —the one who ogled me while I was undressing, the one who tried to get into bed widi me. I didn't let him until you convinced me he wasn't real. Then I didn’t see any reason to be afraid."

  “You mean,” said Mark, terrible in his self-control, “Right here in the same room with me?"

  “Why not?” she asked reasonably. “It was just a delusion. Do I go around censoring your dreams? Though heaven knows they're probably just about selling campaigns and how to make people battery-conscious!"

  Ben waved Mark to silence. “Then am I to understand," he said, "that your only meetings with your so-called dreamboat have been here in your own bedroom, with your husband asleep in the next bed?"

  “That's right," Livy said. "Exactly."

  Ben stood up and pointed unpleasantly at Mark. “You,” he said nastily, “are an ungrateful, inconsiderate, lying scoundrel.”

  "I am?" Mark asked, baffled out of his outrage. "How do you figure that, Ben?"

  “Because for some obscure reason you're trying to blacken the name of your wife, when it's perfectly clear that the only man who could be the father is you."

  "Oh, nol I can prove it isn't!"

  "I'll bet,” Livy said, "he could at that. But he doesn’t have to, Ben. I’ll give him an affidavit that he isn't.”

  "You see?" Mark cried triumphantly.

  Ben nodded. "I guess I do. Livy, I respect your gallantry, but it's a mistake to protect the guilty party.”

  “You don't catch me getting gallant at a time like this,” Livy said. "I can't tell you his name, because I don’t know it, but I'll be glad to tell you who he is."

  She described the phantom who loved her.

  “Blue leathers!" yelled Mark. “Blond eyes! She isn't crazy, Ben. Oh, no, she thinks we are!"

  Ben stood up. "Mark, I think we need a conference.” Mark followed him unwillingly and when Livy opened the door carefully, a few moments later, she beard Ben say, "I've read about cases like this. It’s a very grave, very deep disturbance—too deep (or me to handle, though l‘d love to try and I believe I’d do pretty well. Hut the first tiling she needs is protection. From herself and this unscrupulous vandal she imagines has blue plumage and blond eyes "

  And Mark asked, "Then you think she really believes this nonsense?"

  And Ben said, “Of course, poor girl. She’s batty. Use your head."

  And Mark said slowly, "I never thought of that. But why would she claim he’s invisible?"

  Livy could picture Ben lifting his fat shoulders. "It might take months or years to find out, and the important thing right now is to protect her. That wouldn't hurt you either, Mark. Nobody puts any stock in what a patient at a rest home says.”

  There was more discussion, but Livy didn’t stay to hear it. She had climbed out the kitchen window and over the low backyard fence. Finding a taxi took a while, but she got downtown and dosed out her savings account.

  Now all the had to do was find a place to live. She couldn’t go back to Mark, of course, and she had some bad moments imagining that her description had been broadcast and that the would be picked up and sent to an asylum. She wasn’t worried for herself. But lover boy might not find her, and she wouldn’t be able to get out and search for him.

  Among the classified ads the came across a two-room furnished apartment. It turned out to be across the street from a lumber yard, far enough away from Mark to be relatively safe; and die rental was low. She could live on her savings until the baby was bom. What would happen after that didn't seem to matter much right now.

  When she went to bed, she fell strangely alone. It wasn't Mark sleeping in the other bed that she missed. She had felt alone in the same room with him up until she thought up Dreamboat. Where waslief She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. No, he wasn't there. Mark's house must have been die special habitat of that particular hallucination.

  She disliked facing Mark again, and perhaps Ben too, but there apparently was no other way to bring back her blue-plumed, stunning mental phantom. She dressed and called a cab.

  There was a light in the bedroom, but she saved investigating that for last. She let herself in with her own key and took off her shoes, then slid through all the other rooms with her eyes firmly shut. Establishing no contact, she opened the bedroom door—and there he was.

  His lips were grim, his deft chin jutted, his blond eyes were savage, and he held his fists in uppercut position as he crouched like a boxer over Mark's raging face. He seemed to be rapping out some harsh words, but even Livy couldn't understand him.

  "You stinker," she heard Mark snarl. "You hit me when I wasn't looking."

  And Ben protested, “Don’t be an idiot. Your unconscious is punishing you for the way you treated that sweet, troubled girl. I can show you cases just like yours—"

  And Mark said, "Are you telling me I walked into something?”

  Ben told him in a calm voice, "Every psychiatrist knows about the unconscious wish for punishment.”

  Mark yelled, "There's nothing unconscious about my wish to sock you on that fat jaw." And he did.

  Lover boy looked past the battle and saw her in the doorway. His angry face brought forth a slow, unearthly smile, and he walked carefully around the fighting fat men and took her hand. It may have been her imagination, but she fell the passionately warm, hard flesh.

  She had to open her eyes outside the house and on the way back to her apartment. But she held desperately to his hand.

  It was after she came home from the hospital that Ben found her. He told her lie had heard of mothers radiating, but that this was the first time he had seen it. She could feel the glow in her face as she showed him the empty crib.

  "I know you can't see him,” she said, “but I can when I close my eyes. He's a beautiful baby. He has his father's features.”

  "You caused a little stir at the hospital,” Ben said. "That's how I found you.”

  She laughed. "Oh, you mean the doctor? I thought he'd order himself a straitjacket.”

  "Well, delivering an invisible baby is no joke, especially when you’re called away from a stag party,” Ben said soberly. "He was finally convinced that it was only the liquor, but he hasn't touched a drop since. They never did discover the baby, did they?”

  “I had it in my room all the time. They were afraid I’d sue and give them a lot of bad publicity, but I said it was all right." She turned away from the crib. “I don't suppose Mark minded the Reno divorce, did he?”

  "He knew he was getting off lucky. These kissless-marriage annulments can drive a man to changing his name and moving to another state. But tell me, Livy, how did you arrange the second marriage?"

  "By telephone," she said. ”I guess you've heard the groom’s name and birthplace."

  Ben hissed on his glasses, wiped them meticulously. "There was some mention in die newspapers.”

  "Clrkxsdyl 9SJ16.” she said gaily. "I call him Clark Tor short. And he comes from Alpha Centauri somewhere. I wouldn't have known that, except he learned to use a typewriter—we don't hear the same frequencies, he says."

  Hen's eyes slid away from hers and looked around the shabby apartment. "Well, you do seem happ
y, I must say."

  "There's only one thing that bothers me,” she said. “Clark could have picked any woman on Earth. I'm about as average as you can get without being a freak. Why did he want mef"

  “There’s no explaining love,” Ben evaded uneasily. He put his pudgy hand in his inside pocket and looked directly at her. “Let's not have any false pride," he said. "You haven't asked Mark for a cent, but you have no income and I’d be glad—"

  "Oh, we’re doing fine," said Livy, shaking her hair, which she had let grow long and straight with no sign of a permanent. "We're getting a raise soon."

  "A raise?” Ben was surprised. "From where? For doing what?”

  "I'm supposed to be working for Grant's Detective Agency. But it's really Clark who’s the operative—private eye, he calls it now, after reading all those mystery stories —and he types up the reports. All I have to do is correct his English now and then. Imagine, he's even learning slang. Grant can't figure out how we get information that's so hard to uncover, but it’s easier than pie for Clark.”

  "Sure,” said Ben, going to the door. “But what are you laughing at?"

  “Those blue feathers. They tickle!”

  Although Ben could have dropped the situation there, there was one thing you could say for him: he was conscientious. He made one more investigation "What do you want to know about her for?" Mr. Grant asked coldly and suspiciously.

  “I'm a friend of hers,” Ben explained, handing Grant his business card. "I just want to make sure she’s earning a good living. She divorced a—well, somebody I used to know, and she wouldn't take any alimony I offered to help out, but she said she’s doing all right working for

  Grant’s professionally slitted eyes developed a glint of smug possession. "Oh, I was afraid you might want to hire her away from me,’ he said. "That girl is die best operative I ever had. She could shadow a nervous sparrow. Why, she’s got methods—"

  "Good, huh?”

  "Good?” repeated Grant. "You’d think she was invisible!"

  It was a perfect weapon—obviously it couldn’t be allowed to fall into enemy hands. But who was the enemy ?