Case and the Dreamer

by Theodore Sturgeon

  A lifelong passion is even better when shared: Paul Williams is one of the few people I ever met who cared about Sturgeon’s work as much as (more than) I do. Paul’s story notes for the previous volumes were a labor of love, and a labor indeed. I deeply wish he were well enough to finish the task; and I thank him for his insights, his patience, and his readiness to involve me in this project of his heart.

  I can’t imagine what it must be like for Noël Sturgeon, to travel a life from being a fictionalized character in your father’s stories to being the editor of your father’s collected stories. Certainly, I knew her name decades before I thought I would ever meet her. She has done a masterful job on these last volumes, and in doing so, she has brought Paul’s and my (and many other people’s) dreams to a most satisfying conclusion. I appreciate that more than I can say.

  Tuesdays are Worse

  He heard Angela’s voice as he let himself in. “… and for heaven’s sake behave yourself tonight. Daddy’ll be very tired.”

  “All right, Mummy,” said the back yard.

  Les stood in the hall, his topcoat off one shoulder, his hat half extended toward the shelf over the umbrella stand. He cursed himself for ever having mentioned this Tuesday business to his wife. He would know better in the future. It was one thing to get sympathy, another to stand for these catechizing silences, this careful consideration.

  He hung up his coat, and as he did so his attention was drawn to the two new scratches on the hardwood floor. They curved around the newel, parallel, bright, and deep. Roller skates again—Oh, what was the good of it? What weapons do you use against such innate destructiveness and stupidity in children, after you’ve tanned their bottoms red and deprived them of everything you can think of that they might value?

  Shuff-shuff across the kitchen. (You’d think she’d get rid of those old slippers, or get a pair that.… He shook his head wearily. Hang on tight. On Tuesday, the tapping of heels would annoy you as much.) “Les, darling! You’re home already!”

  She came close to him. He put his arms around her automatically. His eyes dropped as he held her, and again he saw the scratches. He compressed his lips to keep from mentioning them right away. Why start out the evening with a fuss? She saw the lips, and an answering tightness appeared between her eyes. “Again today?” she asked.

  “It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?”

  She took his hat. “Go on into the living room and relax. Dinner in a jiffy. Roast lamb.”

  He ignored the suggestion about the living room as if it were a pointless joke. “Where’s Rosalind?”

  “Out back.”

  He should have said, “Where’s Bubbles?” “Rosalind” was a name reserved for school, birth certificates, and stern episodes—a prelude to punishment. Angela said quickly, “She’s been very good today.”

  He ignored this, too. Angela always spoke up for the child. He marched through the hall and across the kitchen to the windows, with their red-and-white cottage curtains. He had wanted Venetian blinds and straight drapes.

  He peered outside. Rosalind, who was seven, was standing out there in the dusk, talking with another little girl. Les cast a quick and practiced eye up and down the flower beds. Everything seemed all right. Of course, the light was none too good.…

  There was the faintest of crackles behind him. He whirled. “Don’t do that!”

  “I’m sorry.” Angela said it so swiftly that it was out almost before he had stopped speaking. She stopped pulling her knuckles, dropped her hands to her sides. He squirmed his shoulders and opened the back door.

  “Les.”

  “Be quiet,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I thought,” he said carefully, “that I would get a breath of air. Is that wrong?”

  “No,” she said tiredly. She knelt and opened the oven.

  He watched her. “Why the questions? What did you think I was going to do—spy on a couple of kids?”

  She turned to face him, a two-tined fork in one hand, a basting spoon in the other. She said, “I have no idea,” and went to the door. “Bubbles!”

  It came back like an echo. “Yes, Mummy!” and then, “Last touch!” as she thumped the other child and came pelting into the house. “Here I am, Mummy. Hello, Daddy.” She gave him a quick smile with the lower half of her face. She smiled like Miss Maison, the gaunt receptionist at the office, who smiled like that at him every morning, and who did not like him. Women. They learned their tricks early. Did them no good if you were onto them, though.

  “Wash your hands, honey. Apricot pie.” Les wondered obscurely how this particle of menu affected the child. Angela’s “Dinner in a jiffy—roast lamb,” had struck him as inane. Rosalind went to wash, and came back—she seems clean, he thought—with a tuneless mum-mum-num-num which he bore with wordless fortitude. Finally, “Let’s eat it,” Angela said with her usual phrase.

  Les wondered vaguely why he should be annoyed with any idea connected with “always.” It was possibly because he was beginning to doubt the “always” idea. There is no always. You may not always be master of your own house. You may not always have a job. Angela … there seemed an “always” about Angela, somehow, this pretty, inarticulate person who could always have dinner on time and refused to argue. He let his mind drift back to their meeting, where she sang. Sang.… She never sang any more. Hadn’t for weeks, at any rate. He shrugged, watching her.

  Rosalind danced around her mother as dinner was served. She had Angela’s small wide-spaced eyes and placid brow, Angela’s carven mouth and emotional nostrils. All this was built onto a miniature of his own square frame.

  Les took his place at the table, his eyes flicking over the setting. He did not like his napkin under his fork. His napkin was not under his fork. He did not like butter on his bread plate. There was no butter on his bread plate. He exhaled, waited for Angela to begin, and started to eat.

  It was a delicious and interminable meal. Once Rosalind reached for salt, bumped her milk glass. It teetered. Les watched it and stopped chewing. Angela stopped breathing. Nothing spilled. Things went on. Rosalind, who usually talked too much, too loudly, and with her mouth full, talked not at all, and watched Les between bites.

  And then Angela committed the real enormity of tactlessness. Possibly it was an attempt—any attempt—to fill the silence with small talk. It certainly could mean nothing—his office affairs were beyond her, or at least he considered them so, which amounted to the same thing. She said, “How’s Parks?”

  How’s Parks. Parks, with his high forehead and large white teeth and pleasant, unshakable secretiveness. How’s Parks, who came to his office every Tuesday, and watched while Les entered and sub-balanced the Stockton account—the most important account the firm had, the account for which he had been groomed and promoted. Parks was there on Mr. Bryce’s orders. Parks was authorized to ask any question, to question any method. Today had been the ninth consecutive Tuesday on which Parks had spent the afternoon with him.

  Once, weeks ago, he had asked Parks why he was there. Parks was very pleasant about it. He smiled, tapped Les on the shoulder, and said, “You’ll find out in time, old man. I really can’t tell you. I would if I could.”

  Les could have gone to Mr. Bryce and asked him, but he didn’t dare, because of what he might find out. He racked his brains for some reason for which he might be fired—some little oversight in eleven years of steady work for the firm—and could find none. But bosses didn’t need a reason. The axe could fall at any time, on anyone. On any little man in the firm. And now, when he had come home, relieved at last of the pressure of the long hours with Parks, Angela was pushing it all back on him with her “How’s Parks?”

  He glared at her, a lightning glance, a bullet of a glance. He said, “He’s fine.” That should stop it. And later, after the child was in bed, Angela would get a very careful exposition of the uses of diplomacy.

  Angela said, “Still haven’t found out why
he’s been sent to your office?”

  Les put down his fork with great care. He lifted his napkin, dabbed at his lips, put the napkin down. He looked at his hands, front and back, and put them on the table, one at a time, one on each side of his plate. He opened his mouth to speak. Angela closed her eyes.

  Rosalind cut piecrust with the side of her fork, lifted the piece she had cut without changing her grip. The sight had, on Les, the effect of a relay, switching in a new circuit. Almost joyfully, he barked, “Rosalind!”

  The child jumped, blinked, and her face began to pucker up. “Be good enough to hold your fork like a civilized human being. It is not a shovel.”

  Angela’s face became carefully bland. She reached out and touched the child’s shoulder. “Do hold it properly, darling,” she said, her voice like her hand, gentle. Her voice was different, though no louder, when she said, “I knew you’d manage to find something.…”

  “No trouble at all,” said Les nastily.

  “All gone,” said Rosalind, still using, at seven, the first phrase she had ever spoken. “MayIbescuzed?”

  “Yes, honey. Hop into the bath, now, and come down for your good-nights when you’re all clean and shiny.”

  Rosalind slipped from her chair and ran around the table—the opposite side of the table from her father’s chair. It was a longer way to the door. Good heavens, thought Les, does the child think I’ll reach out and clout her if she comes close? “Just a minute, young lady.”

  Rosalind slid to a stop, paling, and put a frightened gaze up to him. In her eyes Les could all but see a catalogue of undiscovered crimes whisking past, as if they were printed on a revolving drum. Certainly there must be one that he could.… Broken flowers? Good clothes torn? Nothing spilled tonight.… Ah. Those scratches … the roller skates. “Rosalind, I am at my wits’ end. I simply do not know what to do with you. You are without doubt the most destruc—”

  Angela clapped her hands. “Hop along, Bubbles! It’s late. Go on now—scoot. Quick!”

  Rosalind waited for no second invitation. She escaped.

  Les sat absolutely thunderstruck. “Angela!” he breathed. “I was speaking to the child.”

  She rose, scraping and piling plates. “You were,” she said. “I saw you, Les. I saw you looking for something—anything—to punish her for. You’ve been looking ever since you got home. You went straight out to hunt for something the instant you got in the door. Just because you have trouble at the office.”

  “You’re mad,” he said. “You’re out of your head. What’s got into you? You’ve never come out with such a thing before!” He forced a calm, felt for something solid in the shifting conversational ground, found it. “By what fantastic intuitive process do you connect my discipline of the child with any events at the office?”

  “Oh—!” she said. “I get so terribly angry.” She rose abruptly and went to the sink. She tried to busy her hands and failed.

  “Do tell me,” he said icily, “about how angry you get.”

  “I get angry because I can’t talk. Because every time I have a thing to say, I cry. Oh, how I envy you your words! You always had words. I fell in love with you and your words. Only a big man, a good man, could think so—so clean, and have all those words.” She stopped, put up her apron and into its folds released one high, broken sob. She tore off a paper towel, blew her nose, threw the towel away and came back to sit opposite him. Her face was blotched and her eyes so bright they looked sick. “I never can say anything,” she half-whispered. “I always have to go and cry. So I don’t talk. It isn’t worth it.”

  “It is in this case,” he said. “You’ve gone too far to stop.”

  “Oh, I’ll go on,” she said miserably. “Yes, I will.…” Something within him twisted, and for a moment he wished he had not forced her, wished he could make her stop.

  She said, “I don’t think you’re big any more. If you were, you’d know it. It wouldn’t need proving. What you were doing this evening, what you do every Tuesday now, was to prove that you were bigger and stronger than—than Bubbles.”

  “That,” he roared, “will be just about enough of …” But she went right on talking. He realized, in the midst of his fury, that she had started and would not stop until she was finished. It did not matter how angry he got. It did not matter, even, whether he listened or not. She crouched on the edge of her chair, her head tipped oddly sidewise. Her eyes seemed not to be seeing, and tears crept down her patchy, flushed cheeks. And she went right on talking, crooning, almost.

  “Fear means everything to you. I never knew it because I never had to be afraid of you. I worked too hard, did too much. You couldn’t be angry at me. Now you are afraid for your job, because of Parks. You are being treated like a little man at work, and it makes you try to be a big man at home. You are afraid.

  “You are afraid and you don’t have to be, because there are other jobs in town besides the one you have, and because you have done nothing to get fired for. Fear means more to you than good sense. You are ruled by fear and you try to rule by fear. Bubbles is the only one in the world you think you can make afraid, and you’re not sure of that so you have to prove it all the time. You were fine and wonderful and big, and now you are small and afraid.”

  “Stop saying that,” he said ominously.

  “You are afraid,” she droned, “You are afraid.”

  He rose and clenched his fist.

  “Mummy?”

  Rosalind entered the kitchen, glowing from her bath. She wore flannel pyjamas and a dressing gown with a crazy zigzag pattern. She went to her mother. “I’m clean,” she confided. “Is Daddy sick?”

  Over the child’s head, Angela said, “Yes, honey.”

  “Bubbles,” said Les hoarsely, “come here.”

  Angela held the child’s shoulders while she searched his face. Apparently she found what she was looking for. “Go on, cookie,” she murmured.

  Les picked up his daughter, who was stiff and puzzled. He set her in his lap and put his arms around her. “Bubbles, tell me something. Tell me the truth. I promise I won’t—I won’t spank you.” He cleared his throat. “When you do something wrong, I punish you. Right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Yes. Now, do I always punish you the same? I mean, if you do something bad, like break flowers or spill Mummy’s perfume, do I always punish you just as hard?”

  “I guess so.”

  He licked his lips. “Bubbles, this is awfully important. Tell me the truth. Is there any time when I punish you harder?”

  “Yes,” she said gravely. “It’s worse on Tuesdays.”

  He made a sound that was not a word, and held her tight. He held her so tight that she screwed up her eyes. When he released her she looked at him. “Gee!” she said. She reached over and pulled his nose. She pulled it twice before he could make the noise like the auto horn. How long had it been since they had played that?

  He kissed her. “Come on, honey,” said Angela. They went away and left him alone.

  The phone rang after a time. Angela was still upstairs. He took the call.

  When Angela came back, he was washing the dishes. Angela said nothing. She got a towel and began drying.

  “That call,” he said, in an awestruck voice. “It was Bryce.”

  “Bryce,” she said, without anything but acknowledgment in her tone.

  “He was very polite. The big boss himself.… He asked me what I thought of Parks. I said I thought he was a good accountant. What else could I say? Bryce … thanked me for my opinion. He apologized for disturbing me at home. Then he told me …”

  “Told you what?” asked Angela, when she could stand the choked silence no longer.

  “We’re opening a new branch in Calgary,” he said. “Until tonight only three men knew about it—a top business secret. Parks is slated to manage the new branch, and he’s been around learning all the ropes from … from.…” He shook his head wonderingly, “from ‘the best men in the company.’ �
�

  He looked at Angela. Her face was still, not smiling, not frowning. “He … asked me if I wanted to manage the new branch and I told him.…” His eyes rested on the cottage curtains, which were not Venetian blinds. “I told him no, I like it just the way it is. He was very … relieved. He hoped I’d say that. He needs me here. He said he had to ask me because I deserved it.” He looked down at her tear-stung, waiting eyes, and said again, “Deserved it.” He wagged his head and whispered, “Me.”

  Abruptly he threw his arms around her, with his wet soapy hands, and buried his face in her hair and the side of her neck. She stood acquiescent, not helping, not hindering. He held on to her and was full of words, bursting with words, and could find hardly a one that was any good. He said at last, “You get afraid too.”

  She nodded against his cheek without speaking.

  “You’re pretty small yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  “No you’re not,” he whispered. “No, you’re—” But then the words deserted him altogether.

  Case and the Dreamer

  If, at the very moment Case died, someone had aimed a laser (a tight one, one of the highest intensity ever) at the spot from Earth, and if you could have hidden the beam-front for a thousand years (you couldn’t, of course, and anyway, nobody aimed, nobody knew), you might have seen his coffin.

  It wasn’t meant to be a coffin. Ships have lifeboats when they fail, and the boats have life belts in case they fail, and the coffin had once answered that purpose; but now and for all those centuries, it was and had been Case’s coffin.

  It lay in lightlessness, its wide-spectrum shrieks of distress forever stilled. It tumbled ever so slowly, pressed long ago by light long gone, because it had never been told to stop.

  Case, aged a thousand and some hundred and perhaps a couple of dozen and a fraction (but then, do the dead grow older?), lay in the sealed cylinder, dressed in inboard fatigues (which long ago—even in Case’s long ago—had evolved into practically nothing) consisting of barely enough material to carry his brassard: Senior Grade Lieutenant, and the convoluted symbol of his service branch. Xn, it read, once you got past the art: Ex—on many levels: exploration, extrasolar, extragalactic, extratemporal, and more; plus the possibility matrix; expatriate, ex-serviceman, ex-officio, exit … for on entering Xn, no man made plans for himself—not if they involved any “here,” any “now.” Or anyone.…