by Algis Budrys
“That’s not important,” she said quickly. “And it doesn’t matter what you look like, as long as I know it’s you. Would you like some coffee?”
The man’s voice was troubled. “All right, Edith Thank you. We can’t seem to stop being strangers somehow, can we?”
“What makes you say that — No. You’re right. I’m trying very hard, but I can’t even fool myself. I’ll start the water boiling.” Her footsteps, quick and erratic faded into the kitchen.
The man sighed, sitting by himself in the living room.
“Well, now do you think?” Finchley demanded “Does that sound like Secret Operative X-Eight hatching a plan to blow up Geneva?”
“It sounds like a high school boy,” Rogers answered.
“He’s lived behind walls all his life. They all sound like this. They know enough to split the world open like a rotten orange, and they’ve been allowed to mature to the age of sixteen.”
“We aren’t here to set up new rules for handling scientists. We’re here to find out if this man’s Lucas Martino.”
“And we’ve found out.”
“We’ve found out, maybe, that a clever man can take a few bits of specific information, add what he’s learned about some kinds of people being a great deal alike, talk generalities, and fool a woman who hasn’t seen the original in twenty years.”
“You sound like a man backing into the last ditch with a lost argument.”
“Never mind what I sound like.”
“Just what do you suppose he’s doing this for, if he isn’t Martino?”
“A place to stay. Someone to run errands for him while he stays under cover. A base of operations.”
“Jesus Christ, man, don’t you ever give up?”
“Finch, I’m dealing with a man who’s smarter than I am.”
“Maybe a man with deeper emotions, too.”
“You think so?”
“No. No — sorry, Shawn.”
The woman’s footsteps came back from the kitchen. She seemed to have used the time to gather herself. Her voice was firmer when she spoke once more.
“Lucas, is this your first day in New York?”
“Yes.”
“And the first thing you thought of was to come here. Why?”
“I’m not sure,” the man said, sounding more as if he didn’t want to answer her. “I told you I thought a great deal about us. Perhaps it became an obsession with me. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have done it, I suppose.”
“Why not? I must be the only person you know in New York, by now. You’ve been badly hurt, and you want someone to talk to. Why shouldn’t you have come here?”
“I don’t know.” The man sounded helpless. “They’re going to investigate you now, you know. They’ll scrape through your past to find out where I belong. I hope you won’t feel bad about that — I wouldn’t have done it if I thought they’d find something to hurt you. I thought about it. But that wouldn’t have stopped me from coming. That didn’t seem as important as something else.”
“As what, Lucas?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you afraid I’d hate you? For what? For the way you look?”
“No! I don’t think that little of you. You haven’t even stared at me, or asked sneaking questions. And I knew you wouldn’t.”
“Then — ” The woman’s voice was gentle, and calm, as though nothing could shake her for long. “Then, did you think I’d hate you because you broke my heart?”
The man didn’t answer.
“I was in love with you,” the woman said. “If you thought I was, you were right. And when nothing ever came of it, you hurt me.”
Down in the car, Rogers grimaced with discomfort. The FBI technician turned his head briefly. “Don’t let this kind of stuff throw you, Mr. Rogers,” he said. “We hear it all the time. It bothered me when I started, too. But after a while you come to realize that people shouldn’t be ashamed to have this kind of thing listened to. It’s honest, isn’t it? It’s what people talk about all over the world. They’re not ashamed when they say it to each other, so you shouldn’t feel funny about listening.”
“All right,” Finchley said, “then suppose we all shut up and listen.”
“That’s O.K., Mr. Finchley,” the technician said. “It’s all going down on tape. We can play it back as often as we want to.” He turned back to his instruments. “Besides, the man hasn’t answered her yet. He’s still thinking it over.”
“I’m sorry, Edith.”
“You’ve already apologized once tonight, Lucas.” The woman’s chair scraped as she stood up. “I don’t want to see you crawling. I don’t want you to feel you have to. I don’t hate you — I never did. I loved you. I had found somebody to come alive to. When I met Sam, I knew how.”
“If you feel that way, Edith, I’m very glad for you.”
Her voice had a rueful smile in it. “I didn’t always feel that way about it. But you can do a great deal of thinking in twenty years.”
“Yes, you can.”
“It’s odd. When you play the past over and over in your head, you can begin to see things in it that you missed when you were living it. You come to realize that there were moments when one word said differently, or one thing done at just the right time, would have changed everything.”
“That’s true.”
“Of course, you have to remind yourself that you might be seeing things that were never there. You might be maneuvering your memories to bring them into line with what you’d want them to be. You can’t be sure you’re not just daydreaming.”
“I suppose so.”
“A memory can be that way. It can become a perfect thing. The people in it become the people you’d like best, and never grow old — never change, never live twenty years away from you that turn them into somebody you can’t recognize. The people in a memory are always just as you want them, and you can always go back to them and start exactly where you stopped, except that now you know where the mistakes were, and what should have been done. No friend is as good as the friend in a memory. No love is quite as wonderful.”
“Yes.”
“The — the water’s boiling in the kitchen. I’ll bring the coffee.”
“All right.”
“You’re still wearing your coat, Lucas.”
“I’ll take it off.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Rogers looked at Finchley. “What do you suppose she’s leading up to?”
Finchley shook his head.
The woman came back from the kitchen. There was a clink of cups. “I remembered not to put any cream or sugar in yours, Lucas.”
The man hesitated. “That’s very good of you, Edith. But — As a matter of fact, I can’t stand it black any more. I’m sorry.”
“For what? For changing? Here — let me take that in the kitchen and do it right.”
“Just a little cream, please, Edith. And two spoons of sugar.”
Finchley asked, “What do we know about Martino’s recent coffee-drinking habits?”
“They can be checked,” Rogers answered.
“We’ll have to be sure and do that.”
The woman brought the man’s coffee. “I hope this is all right, Lucas.”
“It’s very good. I-I hope it doesn’t upset you to watch me drink.”
“Should it? I have no trouble remembering you, Luke.”
They sat quietly for a few moments. Then the woman asked, “Are you feeling better now?”
“Better?”
“You hadn’t relaxed at all. You were as tense as you were that day you first spoke to me. In the zoo.”
“I can’t help it, Edith.”
“I know. You came here hoping for something, but you can’t even put it in words to yourself. You were always that way, Luke.”
“I’ve come to realize that,” the man said with a strained chuckle.
“Does laughing at it help you any, Luke?”
His voice
fell again. “I’m not sure.”
“Luke, if you want to go back to where we stopped and begin it again, it’s all right with me.”
“Edith?”
“If you want to court me.”
The man was deathly quiet for a moment. Then he heaved to his feet with a twang of the chair springs.
“Edith — look at me. Think of the men that’ll follow you and me until I die. And I am going to die. Not soon, but you’d be alone again just when people depend on each other most. I can’t work. I couldn’t even ask you to go anywhere with me. I can’t do that, Edith. That’s not what I came here for.”
“Isn’t it what you thought of when you were lying in the hospital? Didn’t you think of all these things against it, and still hope?”
“Edith — ”
“Nothing could ever have come of it, the first time. And I loved Sam when I met him, and was happy to be his wife. But it’s a different time, now, and I’ve been remembering, too.”
In the car, Finchley muttered softly and with savage intensity. “Don’t mess it up, man. Don’t foul up. Do it right. Take your chance.” Then he realized Rogers was looking at him and went abruptly quiet.
In the apartment, all the man’s tension exploded out of his throat. “I can’t do it!”
“You can if I want you to,” the woman said gently.
The man sighed for one last time, and Rogers could see him in his mind’s eye — the straight, set shoulders loosening a little, the fingers uncurling; the man standing there and opening the clenched fist of himself. Martino or not, traitor or spy, the man had won — or found — a haven.
A door opened inside the apartment. A child’s voice said sleepily, “Mommy — I woke up. I heard a man talking. Mommy — what’s that?”
The woman caught her breath. “This is Luke, Susan,” she said quickly. “He’s an old friend of mine, and he just came back to town. I was going to tell you about him in the morning.” She crossed the room and her voice was lower, as if she were holding the child and speaking softly. But she was still talking very rapidly. “Lucas is a very nice man, honey. He’s been in an accident — a very bad accident — and the doctor had to do that to cure him. But it’s not anything important.”
“He’s just standing there, Mommy. He’s looking at me!”
The man made a sound in his throat.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Susan — I won’t hurt you. Really, I won’t.” The floor thudded to his weight as he moved clumsily toward the child. “See? I’m really a very funny man. Look at me blink my eyes. See all the colors they turn? Aren’t they funny?” He was breathing loudly. It was a continuous, unearthly noise in the microphone. “Now, you’re not afraid of me, are you?”
“Yes! Yes, I am. Get away from me! Mommy, Mommy, don’t let him!”
“But he’s a nice man, Susan. He wants to be your friend.”
“I can do other tricks, Susan. See? See my hand spin? Isn’t that a funny trick? See me close my eyes?” The man’s voice was urgent, now, and trembling under the nervous joviality.
“I don’t like you! I don’t like you! If you’re a nice man, why don’t you smile?”
They heard the man step back.
The woman said clumsily, “He’s smiling inside, honey,” but the man was saying “I’d — I’d better go, Edith. I’ll only upset her more if I stay.”
“Please — Luke — ”
“I’ll come back some other time. I’ll call you.” He fumbled at the door latches.
“Luke — oh, here’s your coat — Luke, I’ll talk to her. I’ll explain. She just woke up — she may have been having a nightmare…” Her voice trailed away.
“Yes.” He opened the door, and the FBI technician barely remembered to pull down his gain control.
“You will come back?”
“Of course, Edith.” He hesitated. “I’ll be in touch with you.”
“Luke — ”
The man was on the stairs, coming down quickly. The crash of his footsteps was loud, then fading as he passed the microphone blindly. Rogers signaled frantically from the car, and the two waiting ANG men began walking briskly in opposite directions away from the building. The man came out, tugging his hat onto his head. As he walked, his footsteps quickened. He turned up his coat collar. He was almost running. He passed one of the ANG men, and the other cut quickly around a corner, circling the block to fall in with his partner.
The man disappeared into the night, with the surveillance team trying to keep up behind him.
The microphone was still listening.
“Mommy — Mommy, who’s Lucas?”
The woman’s voice was very low. “It doesn’t matter, honey. Not any more.”
6
“All right,” Rogers said harshly, “let’s get going before he gets away from us.” He braced himself as the technician thumbed the starter and lurched the car forward.
Rogers was busy on his own radio, dispatching cover teams to cross the man’s path and pick up the surveillance before he could outwalk the team behind him. Finchley had nothing to say as the car moved up the street. His face, as they passed under a light, was haggard.
The car rolled past the nearest ANG man. He looked upset, trying to walk fast enough to keep the hurrying man in sight and still not walk so fast as to attract attention. He threw a quick glance toward the car. His mouth was set, and his nostrils were flared.
Their headlights touched the bulky figure of their man. He was taking short, quick steps, his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets. He kept his face down.
“Where’s he going now?” Rogers said unnecessarily. He didn’t need Finchley to tell him.
“I don’t think he knows,” Finchley said.
In the darkness, the man was walking uptown on MacDougal Street. The lights of the coffee shops above Bleecker lay waiting for him. He saw them and turned abruptly toward an alley.
A girl had come down the steps of her house beside him, and he brushed by her. He stopped, suddenly, and turned. He raised his head, his mouth falling open. He was frozen in a pantomime of surprise. He said something. The car lights splashed against his face.
The girl screamed. Her throat opened and she clapped her hands to her eyes. The hideous sound she made was trapped in the narrow street.
The man began to run. He swerved into an alley, and even in the car, the sound of his feet was like someone pounding on a hollow box. The girl stood quiet now, bent forward, holding herself as though she were embarrassed.
“Get after him!” Rogers, in turn, was startled by the note his voice had struck. He dug his hands into the back of the front seat as the driver yanked the car into the alley.
The man was running well ahead of them. Their headlights shone on the back of his neck, and the glare of resected light winked in the rippling shadows thrown by the flapping skirt of his trailing coat. He was running clumsily, like an exhausted man, and yet he was moving at fantastic speed.
“My God!” Finchley said. “Look at him!”
“No human being can run like that,” Rogers said. “He doesn’t have to drive his lungs. He won’t feel oxygen starvation as much. He’ll push himself as fast as his heart can stand.”
“Or faster.”
The man threw himself against a wall, breaking his momentum. He thrust himself away, down a cross street, headed back downtown.
“Come on!” Rogers barked at the driver. “Goose this hack.”
They screamed around the corner. The man was still far ahead, running without looking back. The street was lined with loading platforms at the backs of warehouses. There were no house lights, and street lamps only at the corners. A row of traffic lights stretched down toward Canal Street, changing from green to red in a pre-set rhythm that rippled along the length of the street in waves. The man careered down among them like something flapping, driven by a giant wind.
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” Finchley muttered urgently, “He’ll kill himself.”
The
driver jammed speed into the car, flinging them over the truck-broken street. The man was already well past the next corner. Now he turned his head back for an instant and saw them. He threw himself forward even faster, came to a cross street, and flailed around the corner, running toward Sixth Avenue now.
“That’s a one-way street against us!” the driver yelled.
“Take it anyway, you idiot!” Finchley shouted back, and the car plunged west with the driver working frantically at the wheel. “Now, catch him!” Finchley raged. “We can’t let him run to death!”
The street was lined with cars parked at the crowded curbs. The clear space was just wide enough for a single car to squeeze through, and somewhere a few blocks ahead of them another set of headlights was coming toward them, growing closer.
The man was running desperately now. As the car began to catch him, Rogers could see his head turning from side to side, looking for some narrow alleyway between buildings, or some escape of any kind.
When they pulled even with him, Finchley cranked his window down. “Martino! Stop! It’s all right. Stop!”
The man turned his head, looked, and suddenly reversed his stride, squeezing between two parked cars with a rip of his coat and running across the street behind them.
The driver locked his brakes and threw the gear lever into reverse. The transmission broke up, but it held the driveshaft rigid. The car slid on motionless wheels, leaving a plume of smoke upon the street, the tires bursting into flame. Rogers’ face snapped forward into the seat back, and his teeth clicked together. Finchley tore his door open and jumped out.
“Martino!”
The man had reached the opposite sidewalk. Still running west, he did not stop or look behind. Finchley began to run along the street.
As Rogers cleared the doorway on his side, he saw the oncoming car just on the other side of the next street, no more than sixty feet away.
“Finch! Get off the street!”
Their man had reached the corner. Finchley was almost there, still in the street, not daring to waste time and fight his way between the bumper-to-bumper parked cars.
“Martino! Stop! You can’t keep it up — Martino-you’ll die!”
The oncoming car saw them and twisted frantically into the cross street. But another car came around the corner from MacDougal and caught Finchley with its pointed fender. It spun him violently away, his chest already crumpled, and threw him against the side of a parked car.
