Gil nodded with reluctant respect. "And why didn't I point it out?"
"Because you're responsible. This might mean trouble. If you let it go, it can't possibly mean trouble."
"Clever," he sneered. "Now tell me why it was done."
"They needed money, so they made it," I said.
He sniffed, but didn't pursue the topic. Instead, he said: "Tell me what you know."
I told him. I came last to the brief encounter with Miranda.
His eyes gleamed.
"The ultimate in provocation," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Could it be simpler? The impact of any outfit any girl wears lasts about five minutes. After she's taken off her jacket and you see the lowest low-cut neckline you ever saw, after you've had a good look, she might as well put the jacket on."
I must have looked unimpressed for he went on in a torrent of words to develop the theme.
"Does anybody stare at the Grammar School senior girls in their little white pants, except wistful old men? But let them put on skirts and ride bicycles in a breeze . . . A pretty girl peels to a bikinl, and every man on the beach stares. For a while. Then she puts on a beach wrap, leaves it unfastened, and they stare again every time it falls open."
"I never thought of that," I said.
He gaped at me. "You never thought of it? Ten minutes after viewing the delectable Miranda you've just been describing?"
"I was too busy doubting my own sanity. But I see what you mean now."
And I did. Successful strippers don't just take their clothes off. They tantalize, And what could be more tantalizing than a luxon dress? What greater inducement to look could there be than not knowing what you're liable to see?
Gil had hit on a good phrase -- 'the ultimate in provocation.'
Current fashion wasn't anywhere near the ultimate in provocation. Indeed, with untidy, too-long hair, tight jeans and loose sweaters, long pointed flat shoes, unnatural makeup and too-short skirts on the wrong girls, teenage glamour had never hit a lower low.
This kind of thing was nothing remotely like current fashion.
"Where are they from?" I murmured. "Outer space?"
The complete absence of reaction showed that I was not expressing any idea completely new to Gil. And he was the most confirmed skeptic in Shuteley . . .
I had meant to go home for lunch and ask Dina if she'd like to go and stay with the Carswells for a while, but I hadn't phoned Sheila to warn her, and it was just as well.
As I left the office, Miranda fell into step with me and asked: "Care to buy me lunch?"
It was a question that needed no answer.
I took her to the Red Lion, partly through lack of choice and partly because the idea of sitting opposite her in a stall all to ourselves was anything but unattractive.
She was not wearing the pink suit. She wore a silvery gray dress that didn't disappear, and she was still sensational.
She must, if the camp was the giants only base, have gone straight there and come straight back.
As we sat down, I said: "I waited."
"For what?"
"An invitation."
She smiled a faint smile and said: "This is a different kind of invitation."
"What are you going to tell me, Miranda?" I asked.
"Why are you so sure I'm going to tell you anything?"
"Because the only reasons you could have for being here with me now are to tell me something or ask me something -- and I have a feeling that I couldn't tell you much you don't know."
"There could be another."
"Such as?"
"Interest in you. I might be curious what you're like. Anyway -- what would you like to know?"
"Where do you and your friends come from?"
"Here," she said, as Greg had done.
The waitress interrupted us then, and when she left with our order Miranda moved back a square.
"I'll tell you one reason why I wanted to lunch with you, if you like."
"Why?"
"I want you to introduce me to Jota."
I might have guessed. In this crazy business, one thing could be expected to be unchanged -- that Snow White would instantly be drawn to the prince.
"What do you know about Jota?" I said.
She merely smiled and shrugged.
"Greg called him Clarence Mulliner," I observed.
She sat up quickly. "Greg? When were you talking to Greg?"
"This morning. He came to see me."
She was angry, I saw, and perhaps afraid. It was an excellent chance, and I hoped I'd be able to take it. The possibility that I might be able to play Snow White against Giant No. 1 had not until that moment occurred to me.
The less I said, and the more Miranda said, the better.
"What did he want?" she asked sharply.
"Amusement, I suppose. He wanted to insure against catastrophe here in Shuteley in the next twenty-four hours."
"The vandal," she breathed.
"Vandal?" That was interesting. It hadn't eccurred to me that Greg might be trying to insure against disaster and then cause it.
"You wouldn't understand."
"Of course not. I understand very little."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude."
And then, with a baffling switch that took the wind out of my sails, she smiled and said: "It doesn't matter anyway. Greg's a fool, a dangerous, megalomaniac, irresponsible fool . . . but it doesn't matter."
Rallying, I said: "Why not? Because we don't matter? Because we don't live in the same country as you? The same world? The same dimension? The same time?"
Most inopportunely, the waitress brought our soup (brown windsor, of course).
When she had gone, I asked: "How old are you, Miranda?"
I got the smile again, and nothing else.
Possibly, I thought, she was many, many years older than she looked. This close, I had an opportunity to see that the flawlessness common to all the young strangers was absolute. I don't mean that they were all handsome or beautiful. But like Miranda, they had no hair out of place, no scars, no scratches, perfect teeth, perfectly manicured hands. In the heat of a summer day, she didn't sweat. She appeared to have no makeup on, yet I was sure she had. Right through history, women had gilded the lily. Even in a different history, I was sure they would do the same.
I asked her: "Are you wearing makeup?"
"Yes."
Her gray dress was at the same time unremarkable and scarcely possible. No creases or marks. Its fit was several degrees beyond currently known perfection.
Ordinary dresses worn by ordinary girls weren't like Miranda's. Either the machinery showed, or the absence of machinery.
"You can't," I said thoughtfully, "be wearing a bra."
"No."
"Then how . . . ?" Well, romantic myth aside, women needed something to provide the shape they wanted.
"Selective tension," she said easily. "Different degrees of elasticity in different places."
And at sight of my expression, she laughed for the first time.
She stopped when I said: "You do come from the future."
"Listen;" she said. "I'll tell you one thing, and it's the truth. Then we'll talk about something else. We come from the present , and we come from here ."
"Yet you say 'come,'" I answered quickly.
A flicker in her eyes registered appreciation of the point. Since she didn't reply, I pursued: "Another dimension, then?"
"Dimension?" she said. "What's that?"
I tried to convey my own rather fuzzy idea of the theory of co-existent worlds. She seemed interested.
"This is only a theory?" she asked. "There's no proof?"
"None. But you might know whether it's more than a theory, I think."
The faint smile again. "Now," she said firmly, "we'll talk about you." After a pause she added: "And Jota."
"No," I said. Although I'd had my chance, and lost it, I might get it back. "We'll talk about Gr
eg. And you."
I had lost it. She had regained her control. She wasn't going to ask what had happened between Greg and me. She wouldn't discuss it.
So I told her about Jota and Gil and me. Every time I tried to turn the conversation back to her and the giants, she promptly turned it back. I told her briefly about Sheila, but not about Dina or Mary.
Only three times, briefly, did the talk swerve from the path along which Miranda was casually driving it.
The first time, after telling her about the days when Jota, Gil and I were the Terrible Three, I asked what she and her friends called themselves. She thought for a minute and then said: "Well, what would you call us? Any ideas?"
"Snow White and the giants."
She stared and laughed rather uncertainly. She thought she ought to know what I was talking about, but didn't. She was off balance, so I said:
"Greg said 'as fair as any,' instead of 'as good as any.' He said 'how in fisk' . . . ?"
Miranda iumped, nearly spilling gravy over herself.
"I presumed," I said casually, "that meant something like 'how in hell.'"
"It means rather more than that," said Miranda. "There are sexual connotations."
"I'm not surprisecL He said 'up on the quicktake.'"
Miranda was silent.
"A simple mistake," I went on, "if you read a phrase in a book. Quick on the uptake. Up on the quicktake. Unimportant . . . except that nobody born between 1860 and 1960 could say such a thing . . . Then there was 'most,' apparently a term of general approbation. 'Grossing,' meaning fattening. I may have missed a few."
"Greg is careless," said Miranda. "Very careless."
"And you're not, I noticed. Except in wearing a luxon suit."
"I won't do it again."
"Pity."
The second time was when the sweet came up. I asked about the food, and she said, in slight surprise: "It's only food," and though she instantly turned the conversation again, I was left with another strange impression: Miranda and the giants ate and drank as we stoked a fire or filled an oil heater. It had to be done, but the quality of the fuel, so long as it came up to certain minimum standards, was immaterial.
The last time was when we left. As she stood up I noticed something I'd have seen before if I'd been reasonably observant. She carried no handbag, and she had no pockets.
"Where do you carry things?" I asked.
"What things?"
"Money, cosmetics, a handkerchief, keys -- that sort of thing."
"Why would I need them?" she asked mildly.
We had emerged into bright sunlight. It was as hot as usual.
"Thanks for the lunch, Val," Miranda said. "I'll see you later."
And she strode off so abruptly that even to attempt to detain her I'd have had to shout or run after her.
From the way she walked, I knew she could run faster than I could.
Looking after her, I decided that Miranda, in her way, was as careless as she thought Greg was. True, it was a different way.
We had lunched together, man and girl. And we might have been robots.
Certainly some apparently personal things had been said. I'd said a lot. I had acted more or less like a human being.
But Miranda . . .
Everything she had said and done she might have said and done from ten thousand miles and ten thousand years away.
"You don't really believe it, do you?" Gil sneered. A sneer was the only way to describe it. Where anyone else would have expressed polite surprise, Gil's reaction was incredulity that anyone could be so stupid, even you.
"I do," I said.
"You mean one of these -- giants tells you Jota will arrive at 3:10, and you expect him on the dot?"
I looked at my watch. It was eight after three.
"You can believe what you like, Gil," I said. "But these giants are no ordinary kids. I've been trying to figure out how Miranda was able to make me talk like that an hour or so ago, without ever letting the conversation get more than two or three degrees above absolute zero, and now I see it. She knew the questions to ask."
Gil started to say something, but I hadn't finished. "Maybe Greg meant Jota would arrive in Shuteley at 3:10 exactly, he didn't say. But I think he meant here. I think he meant that wherever I was, whether I went home or stayed in the Red Lion or came back here, Jota would walk in at 3:10."
"Of all the fatuous, ridiculous, superstitious . . . " Gil began.
He'd probably have found quite a few more adjectives before he had to cap them with a noun. But just then the door opened.
I'd given instructions for anyone who called on me after three to be sent straight in. That was why Miranda found it so easy.
"Why look surprised?" she said. "I told you I wanted you to introduce me to Jota.'
"I'm surprised," I observed, "that you should consider an introduction necessary. You didn't with me."
She smiled and turned to Gil. "Hello, Gil," she said. "Has Garry's flush gone yet?"
Although Gil didn't answer, I could see he was startled. Garry evidently had had a flush, and it wouldn't have surprised me to learn that there was no apparent way for the giants to know about it.
Miranda sat down, primly arranging her skirt the way girls do (though I suspected she had had to practice ). And the very instant that she turned and looked at the door, Jota came in.
He had never been handsome. I never knew any lady-killer who was really goodlooking. Women seem to go for men of the oddest shapes and sizes. Jota had a long nose, very deep-set eyes, hollow cheeks and black hair nearly, but not quite, as dark as Miranda's. He was tall and very thin. He looked like a fanatic or visionary, and this impression wasn't wrong, though fanaticism was only part of his complex makeup.
He didn't look at Gil or me. He went straight to Miranda, took her hand gently and pulled her to her feet and said, from his nine-inch advantage in height: "You're exquisite."
"I know," said Mirand~ coolly. "But thanks for noticing."
"Your name must be Venus."
"If you say so," said Miranda.
There was a lot more of this, and I realized as I watched that Jota, for only the second time, was annoying me far more than Gil ever could.
It's strange about old friends, people you know from way back -- you've forgotten long ago whether you like them or not. The question has ceased to be relevant.
Gil, now . . . He had not made a friend in the last fifteen years. He would die without making another friend. He had become an amalgam of armor and anger and acid and antagonism, a fortress on an island that no army would ever want to storm. On the mainland, they'd march past the defenses against nothing with scarcely a derisive smile.
Only Jota and I (and Barbara, in a different but not warmer way) would ever put up with Gil.
Jota . . . I had admired and envied him. He had done and was still doing many things I wished I could do, and his amatory success was the least of these. He was, after all, a Jack of all trades (even if master of none). There was nothing he couldn't turn his hand to. He had the courage or selfishness or brute insensitiveness to do what he liked and invariably get away with it. Most people treat you as your own attitude and expectation invites them to treat you. And Jota got what he wanted -- whatever it was. Always. Everywhere.
I had had every right to object when Jota's roving eye lighted on Sheila. I had no right to object when Miranda caught his eye, but I did.
Surprisingly, the meeting was brought to order by Miranda. She suddenly said: "I must be going," and walked out as abruptly as she had left me outside the Red Lion.
"That girl," said Jota, "fills me with a quite irresistible desire to see that dark head on a white pillow. It will not be resisted. Now -- what's going on?"
He hadn't changed. He had never, I suspected, been in love; he had a completely mistaken idea of what love was. Stumbling and imperfect as our connubial relations were, I believed that both Gil and I knew far more about love than Jota would have learned by the time he
died.
Although a great deal of his time and too much of his energy were expended on women, he was always able to dismiss them completely as he did now. Once or twice, long ago, I had heard him make passionate word-love to a girl whom he knew, in the Biblical sense, make another date with her, and then say cheerfully, the moment she was gone: "Thank God that's the last I'll see of that cow."
Snow White and the Giants Page 5
