The Ultimate Egoist

by Theodore Sturgeon

  As it grew dark he went home. All during that nuptial meal Bianca’s hands twisted about one of his while he ate with the other, and Bianca’s mother fed the girl. The fingers twined about each other and about his own, so that three hands seemed to be wrought of one flesh, to become a thing of lovely weight at his arm’s end. When it was quite dark they went to the beautiful room and lay where he and the hands could watch, through the window, the clean, bright stars swim up out of the forest. The house and the room were dark and silent. Ran was so happy that he hardly dared to breathe.

  A hand fluttered up over his hair, down his cheek, and crawled into the hollow of his throat. Its pulsing matched the beat of his heart. He opened his own hands wide and clenched his fingers, as though to catch and hold this moment.

  Soon the other hand crept up and joined the first. For perhaps an hour they lay there passive with their coolness against Ran’s warm neck. He felt them with his throat, each smooth convolution, each firm small expanse. He concentrated, with his mind and his heart on his throat, on each part of the hands that touched him, feeling with all his being first one touch and then another, though the contact was there unmoving. And he knew it would be soon now, soon.

  As if at a command, he turned on his back and dug his head into the pillow. Staring up at the vague dark hangings on the wall, he began to realize what it was for which he had been working and dreaming so long. He put his head back yet farther and smiled, waiting. This would be possession, completion. He breathed deeply, twice, and the hands began to move.

  The thumbs crossed over his throat and the fingertips settled one by one under his ears. For a long moment they lay there, gathering strength. Together, then, in perfect harmony, each co-operating with the other, they became rigid, rock-hard. Their touch was still light upon him, still light … no, now they were passing their rigidity to him, turning it to a contraction. They settled to it slowly, their pressure measured and equal. Ran lay silent. He could not breathe now, and did not want to. His great arms were crossed on his chest, his knotted fists under his armpits, his mind knowing a great peace. Soon, now …

  Wave after wave of engulfing, glorious pain spread and receded. He saw color impossible, without light. He arched his back, up, up … the hands bore down with all their hidden strength, and Ran’s body bent like a bow, resting on feet and shoulders. Up, up …

  Something burst within him—his lungs, his heart—no matter. It was complete.

  There was blood on the hands of Bianca’s mother when they found her in the morning in the beautiful room, trying to soothe Ran’s neck. They took Bianca away, and they buried Ran, but they hanged Bianca’s mother because she tried to make them believe Bianca had done it, Bianca whose hands were quite dead, drooping like brown leaves from her wrists.

  Derm Fool

  I AM NOT generally a fussy man. A bit of litter around my two-and-a-half-room dugout on the West Side seldom bothers me. What trash that isn’t big enough to be pushed out in the hallway can be kicked around till it gets lost. But today was different. Myra was coming, and I couldn’t have Myra see the place this way.

  Not that she cared particularly. She knew me well enough by this time not to mind. But the particular kind of litter might be a bit—disturbing.

  After I had swept the floor I began looking in odd corners. I didn’t want any vagrant breeze to send unexplainable evidence fluttering out into the midst of the room—not while Myra was there. Thinking about her, I was almost tempted to leave one of the things where she could see it. She was generally so imperturbable—it might be amusing to see her hysterical.

  I put the unchivalrous thought from me. Myra had always been very decent to me. I was a bit annoyed at her for making me like her so much when she was definitely not my type. Crawling under the bed, I found my slippers. My feet were still in them. I set one on top of the mantel and went into the other room, where I could sit down and wrench the foot out of the other slipper. They were odd slippers; the left was much bigger than the right. I swore and tugged at that right foot. It came out with a rustle; I rolled it up in a ball and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. Now let’s see—oh, yes, there was a hand still clutching the handle of one of the bureau drawers. I went and pried it off. Why the deuce hadn’t Myra called me up instead of wiring? No chance to head her off now. She’d just drift in, as usual. And me with all this on my mind—

  I got the index finger off the piano and threw it and the left foot away, too. I wondered if I should get rid of the torso hanging in the hall closet, but decided against it. That was a fine piece. I might be able to make something good out of it; a suitcase, perhaps, or a rainproof sports jacket. Now that I had all this raw material, I might as well turn it to my advantage.

  I checked carefully. My feet were gone, so I wouldn’t have to worry about them until the morning. My right hand, too; that was good. It would be awful to shake hands with Myra and have her find herself clinging to a disembodied hand. I pulled at the left. It seemed a little loose, but I didn’t want to force it. This wasn’t a painful disease as long as you let it have its own way. My face would come off any minute now. I’d try not to laugh too much; maybe I could keep it on until she had gone.

  I put both hands around my throat and squeezed a little. My neck popped and the skin sloughed dryly off. Now that was all right. If I wore a necktie, Myra wouldn’t be able to see the crinkling edges of skin just above my collarbone.

  The doorbell buzzed and I started violently. As I stood up, the skin of my calf parted and fell off like a cellophane gaiter. I snatched it up and stuffed it under a sofa pillow and ran for the door. As I reached it, one of my ears gave a warning crackle; I tore it off and put it in my pocket and swung the door wide.

  “David!” She said that, and it meant that she was glad to see me, and that it had been eight months since the last time, and she was feeling fine, and she was sorry she hadn’t written, but then she never wrote letters—not to anybody.

  She swooped past me into the room, paused as if she were folding wings, shrugged out of her coat without looking to see if I were there behind her to take it, because she knew I was, crossed her long legs and three-pointed gently on the rug. I put a cigarette into one extended hand and a kiss in the palm of the other, and it wasn’t until then that she looked at me.

  “Why—David! You’re looking splendid! Come here. What have you done to your face? It’s all crinkly. It looks sweet. You’ve been working too hard. Do I look nice? I feel nice. Look, new shoes. Snakeskin. Speaking of snakes, how are you, anyway?”

  “Speaking of snakes, Myra, I’m going to pieces. Little pieces, that detach themselves from me and flutter in the gusts of my furious laboring. Something has gotten under my skin.”

  “How awful,” she said, not really hearing me. She was looking at her nails, which were perfect. “It isn’t because of me, is it? Have you been pining away for me, David? David, you still can’t marry me, in case you were going to ask.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask, but it’s nice to know, anyway,” I said. My face fell, and I grabbed it and hid it under my coat. She hadn’t seen, thank heavens! There remained only my left hand. If I could get rid of it—good heavens! It was already gone!

  It might be on the doorknob. Oh, she mustn’t see it! I went to the foyer and searched hurriedly. I couldn’t find it anywhere. Suppose it had caught in her wraps? Suppose it were on the floor somewhere near where she was sitting? Now that I was faced with it, I knew I couldn’t bear to see her hysterical. She was such a—a happy person to have around. For the millionth time since that skinning knife had slipped, I muttered, “Now, why did this have to happen to me?”

  I went back into the living room. Myra was still on the floor, though she had moved over under the light. She was toying curiously with the hand, and the smile on her face was something to see. I stood there speechless, waiting for the storm. I was used to it by this time, but Myra—

  She looked up at me swiftly, in the birdlike way she had. Sh
e threw her glances so quickly that you never knew just how much she had seen—under all her chatter and her glittering idiosyncrasies was as calm and astute a brain as ever hid behind glamour.

  The hand—it was not really a hand, but just the skin of one—was like a cellophane glove. Myra slipped it on her own and peeped through the fingers at me. “Hiya, fellow reptile,” she giggled; and suddenly the giggles changed into frightened little squeaks, and she was holding out her arms to me, and her lovely face was distorted by tears so that it wasn’t lovely any more, but sweet—oh, so darned sweet! She clung close to me and cried pitifully, “David, what are we going to do?”

  I held her tight and just didn’t know what to say. She began talking brokenly: “Did it bite you, too, David? It bit m-me, the little beast. The Indians worship it. Th-they say its bite will ch-change you into a snake … I was afraid … Next morning I began shedding my skin every twenty-four hours—and I have ever since.” She snuggled even closer, and her voice calmed a little. It was a lovely voice, even now. “I could have killed the snake, but I didn’t because I had never seen anything like it, and I thought you might like to have it—so I sent it, and now it’s bitten you, and you’re losing your skin all the time, too, and—oh-h-h!”

  “Myra, don’t. Please, don’t. It didn’t bite me. I was skinning it, and my knife slipped. I cut myself. The snake was dead when I got it. So—you’re the one who sent it! I might have known. It came with no card or letter; of course it was you! How … how long have you been this way?”

  “F-four months.” She sniffed, and blew her pink nose on my lapel because I had forgotten to put a handkerchief in my breast pocket. “I didn’t care after … after I found out that it didn’t hurt, and that I could count on when parts of my skin would come off. I—thought it would go away after a while. And then I saw your hand in a store window in Albuquerque. It was a belt buckle—a hand holding a stick, with the wrist fastened to one end of the belt and the stick to the other; and I bought it and saw what it was, because the hand was stuffed with the perfumed moulage you always use for your hummingbird brooches and things—and anyway, you were the only one who could have designed such a fascinating belt, or who would have thought to use your own skin just because … because you happened to have it around—and I hated myself then and l-loved you for it—” She twisted out of my arms and stared into my eyes, amazement written on her face, and joy. “And I do love you for it, right now, David, now, and I never loved anyone else before and I don’t care”—she plucked my other ear, and the skin rustled away in her hand—“if you are all dilapidated!”

  I saw it all now. Myra’s crazy desire to climb a mesa, one of those island tableaux of the desert, where flora and fauna have gone their own ways these thousand thousand years; her discovering the snake, and catching it for me because I was a combination taxidermist and jeweler, and she had never seen anything like it and thought I might want it. Crazy, brave thing; she had been bitten and had said nothing to anybody because “it didn’t hurt”; and then, when she found out that I had the same trouble, she had come streaking to New York to tell me it was her fault!

  “If you feel that way about it, Myra,” I said gently, “then I don’t care at all about this … this dry rot … little snake in the grass—” I kissed her.

  Amazing stuff, this cast-off skin. Regularly as clockwork, every twenty-four hours, the epidermis would toughen, loosen and slip off. It was astonishingly cohesive. My feet would leave their skin inside my slippers, keeping the exact shape of the limb on which it had grown. Flex the dead skin a couple of times, and it would wrinkle in a million places, become limp and flexible. The nails would come off, too, but only the topmost layer of cells. Treated with tannic acid and afterward with wool oil, it was strong, translucent and soft. It took shellac nicely, and a finish of Vandyke-brown oil paint mixed with bronze powder gave a beautiful old-gold effect. I didn’t know whether I had an affliction or a commodity.

  That snake— It was about four feet long, thicker at head and tail than it was in the middle. It was a lusterless orange, darker underneath than it was on top, but it was highly fluorescent. It smelled strongly of honey and formic acid, if you can imagine that for yourself. It had two fangs, but one was on top of its mouth and the other on the lower jaw. Its tongue was forked, but at the roots only; it had an epiglottis, seven sets of rudimentary limbs and no scales. I call it a snake because it was more nearly a snake than anything else. I think that’s fair. Myra is mostly a Puckish angel, but you can still call her a woman. See? The snake was a little of this and a little of that, but I’ll swear its origin was not of this earth. We stood there hand in hand, Myra and I, staring at the beast, and wondering what to do about it all.

  “We might get rich by renting it to side shows,” said Myra.

  “Nobody would believe it. How about renting ourselves to the A.M.A.?” I asked.

  She wrinkled her nose and that was out. Tough on the A.M.A.

  “What are we going to do about it, David?” She asked me as if she thought I knew and trusted me because of it, which is a trick that altogether too many women know.

  “Why, we’ll—” And just then came the heavy pounding on the door.

  Now, there is only one animal stupid enough to bang on a door when there is a bell to ring, and that is a policeman. I told Myra to stay there in the lab and wait, so she followed me into the foyer.

  “You David Worth?” asked the man. He was in plain clothes, and he had a very plain face.

  “Come in,” I said.

  He did, and sat down without being asked, eyeing the whiskey decanter with little but evident hope. “M’-name’s Brett. H. Brett.”

  “H. for Halitosis?” asked Myra gently.

  “Naw, Horace. What do I look like, a Greek? Hey, headquarters’s checkin’ on them ornaments o’ y’rs, Mr. Worth.” The man had an astonishing ability to masticate his syllables. “They look like they’re made of human skin. Y’r a taxidoimist, ain’tcha?”

  “I am. So?”

  “So where’dja get th’ ror material? Pleece analysis says it’s human skin. What do you say?”

  I exchanged a glance with Myra. “It is,” I said.

  It was evidently not the answer Brett expected. “Ha!” he said triumphantly. “Where’d you get it, then?”

  “Grew it.”

  Myra began to skip about the room because she was enjoying herself. Brett picked up his hat from the floor and clung to it as if it were the only thing he could trust. I began to take pity on him.

  “What did they do down there, Brett? Microscopic cross-section? Acid and base analyses?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me; what have they got down there—hands?”

  “Yeah, and a pair o’ feet. Bookends.”

  “You always did have beautiful feet, darling,” caroled Myra.

  “Tell you what I’ll do, Brett,” I said. I got a sheet of paper, poured some ink onto a blotter, and used it as a stamp pad. I carefully put each fingertip in the ink and pressed it to the paper. “Take that down to headquarters and give it to your suspicious savants. Tell them to compare these prints with those from the ornaments. Write up your reports and turn them in with a recommendation that the whole business be forgotten; for if it isn’t I shall most certainly sue the city, and you, and anyone else who gets in my way, for defamation of character. I wouldn’t consider it impolite, Mr. Brett, if you got out of here right away, without saying good night.” I crossed the room and held the door open for him.

  His eyes were slightly glazed. He rose and walked carefully around Myra, who was jumping up and down and clapping her hands, and scuttled out. Before I could close the door again he whirled and stuck his foot in it.

  “Lissen. I don’t know what’s goin’ on here, see? Don’t you or that lady try to leave here, see? I’m havin’ the place watched from now on, see? You’ll hear from me soon’s I get to headquarters, see?”

  “You’re a big seesee,” said Myra over my sho
ulder; and before I could stop her she plucked off her nose and threw it in the detective’s face. He moved away, so fast that he left his hat hanging in midair; seconds later we heard the violence of his attempted passage down four flights of stairs when there were only three.

  Myra danced three times around the room and wound up at the top of the piano—no mean feat, for it was a bulky old upright. She sat there laughing and busily peeling off the rest of her face.

  “A certain something tells me,” I said when I could talk, which was after quite a while, “that you shouldn’t have done that. But I’m glad you did. I don’t think Detective Inspector Horace Halitosis Brett will be around any more.”

  Myra gestured vaguely toward her bag. I tossed it to her, and she began dabbing at nose and lips in the skillful, absent way women have. “There,” she said when she had finished. “Off with the old—on with the new.”

  “You’re the first woman in creation who gets beauty treatments in spite of herself. Pretty neat.”

  “Not bad,” she said impersonally to her mirror. “Not bad, Myra!”

  Thinking of her, watching her, made me suddenly acutely conscious of her. It happens that way sometimes. You know you love the gal, and then suddenly you realize it. “Myra—”

  I think she had a gag coming, but when she looked at me she didn’t say anything. She hopped down off the piano and came over to me. We stood there for a long time.