The Arm of the Starfish

by Madeleine L'engle

  Kali continued: “Of course his going to the Embassy was a front, and a rather clever one, I must admit that. But never make the mistake of thinking O’Keefe’s a fool. He isn’t. What he wants to do is keep the child out of the way until … . And he’s ruthless, Adam. If something happens to her then something happens to her. When I think of daddy and me—Well, O’Keefe gives me the shudders. Now come on, Adam. Get dressed and let’s go. I hope I have made myself clear.”

  “As mud,” Adam said. “But I’ll get dressed. Let me take a quick shower. It’ll help me wake up a bit.” It seemed he had been doing nothing but take showers to wake up since the bus had taken him to the Plaza Hotel in Madrid.

  When Adam and Kali emerged onto the sidewalk dawn was beginning to lighten the sky; the dim street lamps became even dimmer. The rain had stopped but the air was wet and heavy. A dark limousine was waiting in the courtyard of the hotel and Kali walked quickly toward it. A uniformed chauffeur climbed out and opened the door for them.

  “Take us home, Molèc, please,” Kali said. She sat back in the upholstered seat as though she were very tired. “I don’t know why I’m taking so much trouble about you, Adam, I really don’t.”

  “Well, why are you, then?” Adam demanded.

  “Not for your own sake, I assure you. At least not to start out with, I wasn’t. But you’re like a half-grown puppy. There’s something endearing about your clumsiness. I have to admit that I am doing it for you, too. But that’s wrong, of course.”

  “Wrong?”

  “Adam, we simply cannot let people matter to us or we won’t get anywhere. Letting people matter is nothing but sentimentality.”

  —Then I have become rather quickly sentimental about Polyhymnia, Adam thought.—Only there’s something wrong here. ‘Sentimental’ is not the right word. If only I could have slept a few hours longer.

  He tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.

  Kali put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry I had to wake you up. But you do see, don’t you, how desperately urgent it is?”

  Yes, he saw, though there was something wrong with this, too.

  The limousine drove a narrow and winding way. Some streets were barely wide enough for the car. Others were as steep as San Francisco. They went under arches, into streets wide enough for buses, under more arches into alleys, finally drawing up before a whitewashed wall. The chauffeur, Molèc, got out and opened the door, and Adam climbed out after Kali. She opened a gate in the wall and went down a steep flight of steps to a pale pink house with a deeper pink door which she unlocked. As she shut the door behind them she held her finger to her lips and took Adam down a softly carpeted hall.

  The room into which she led him was already beginning to fill with light which flooded in from a great sweep of windows overlooking the harbor and the dawn. The view was so enormous that at first Adam did not notice the room itself, a room striking in stark blacks and whites. The long wall of windows was curtainless, but the opposite wall was hung with black velvet. Against the background of velvet was only one thing, a picture, an unframed portrait (for the great sweep of velvet was the frame) of the most handsome young man Adam had ever seen. It was a young man with the bearing of an angel, hair the same pale gold as Kali’s, heavily fringed eyes, the mouth slightly opened as though in eagerness to meet life.

  “Adam,” Kali said, and he turned from the portrait to follow her across the black marble floor.

  Silhouetted against the dawn was the dark figure of a man who stood, motionless, staring out across the bay, a man big in both height and bulk.

  “Daddy,” Kali said, and the man turned around.

  Because he stood between Adam and the light he was still only a silhouette as he stretched out his hand in greeting. “Adam, you’re safely here.” He took the boy’s hand in a grip of steel. His voice was high, and light for the bulk of his body, but it, too, had the quality of steel, the steel of a spool of fine wire. He dropped Adam’s hand and crossed to a desk made of a great slab of black-and-white marble, and sat in a black leather chair, leaning back so that at last the light struck his face. It was a powerful face: there were pouches of fatigue under the dark eyes, and the thin lips were closed in tight control. He impatiently pushed back a strand of thinning, pale gold hair. Involuntarily Adam glanced at the portrait.

  “That’s daddy,” Kali said, with pride. “Wasn’t he beautiful?”

  The man laughed. “Yes. Nothing of Dorian Gray about Typhon Cutter, is there, Adam? I am marked by the inroads of time. Time and experience. And this is something you lack, is it not?”

  “I’m getting it,” Adam said, warily.

  “And learning from it?”

  “I hope so.”

  Typhon Cutter looked thoughtfully at the portrait. “The years make their marks on ordinary, hardworking mortals, and I can assure you that my work is hard. And now you have become part of it.” He looked from the portrait to Adam, and Adam looked back, saying nothing, swaying slightly with fatigue.

  Typhon Cutter picked up a black marble paperweight and appeared to study it. He crossed his legs, and as he did this Adam realized that although the great body was ponderous with weight, the arms and legs were thin and bony, but again giving the effect of steel. Typhon Cutter, sitting at his desk in a black satin dressing gown, was one of the most extraordinary men Adam had ever seen.

  “Tired?” Cutter asked in his surprising tenor voice.

  “Yes, sir. I haven’t had much sleep.”

  Typhon Cutter motioned to a stiff ebony chair on the opposite side of the desk. “You may sit there as long as you stay awake. I’m sorry not to be able to let you sleep, but there’s no time now for anything but business. And we do have business, you and I.”

  In a daze of fatigue Adam staggered to the chair. Typhon Cutter leaned across the desk and snapped his fingers in the boy’s face. “Wake up.”

  “I’m sorry,” Adam mumbled.

  “Kali, see about coffee.”

  “Yes, daddy.” In quick and loving obedience Kali slipped from the room.

  “Now, Adam.”

  “Sir?”

  “How much has Kali told you?”

  “That you’ll help me to find Poly—Dr. O’Keefe’s daughter.”

  Typhon Cutter nodded, for a moment speaking almost absently. “Yes. We’ll cope with that.” Then, sharply, “Wake up. What else?”

  “About what, sir?”

  “How much has Kali told you? Perhaps you may have thought that she seemed a little wild, or even a little hysterical, but she never does so without cause.”

  “I didn’t think she seemed hysterical, sir.”

  “Good boy. I assume she warned you about Tallis and O’Keefe?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you take her warning seriously?”

  “Mr. Cutter, I’m too confused to know what to think. I’m too tired.”

  Again the fingers were snapped in Adam’s face. “Wake up. Why did you come with Kali now, then?”

  “Because I have to find Polyhymn———”

  “Yes. All right, Adam, try to stay awake while we get down to business. You are to be working as laboratory assistant to O’Keefe this summer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “O’Keefe is a great scientist. In that respect you are very privileged.”

  “Yes, sir,” Adam responded automatically, knowing that each time Typhon Cutter paused he was expected to make a response to prove that he was awake, that he was listening.

  “Do you know what your work will be? I mean by that, do you know the experiment O’Keefe is involved in?”

  “I believe it’s the regenerative process of the arm of the starfish, sir.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “Well, if a starfish loses an arm it can simply grow one back.”

  “How?”

  “That’s the point. No one knows. I mean, the starfish is still pretty much a mystery even to the people who know most about it.”

  “Tha
t is true. I, for instance, know as much about the starfish as any layman, and I am the first to admit that this is not much. But I fancy you’ll find that the starfish is less of an enigma to O’Keefe than to anybody else in the world.”

  The door opened and Kali came in followed by a white-jacketed servant bearing a silver tray which he set down on the desk. Typhon Cutter waited until the door was closed again, then picked up a silver coffeepot and poured. He handed a cup across the desk to Adam. “I don’t know how you usually drink it, but this time it will have to be black. You must wake up.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “All right, Adam. Now tell me something. If O’Keefe is learning new things about the regenerative process of the arm of the starfish, why is this of such importance?”

  “Well, sir, in the evolutionary scale man comes pretty directly from the starfish.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, man is a member of phylum Chordata, and we developed directly from the phylum Echinodermata, or the starfish. We both had an interior spinal column and the same kind of body cavities.”

  Typhon Cutter pressed his thin, strong fingertips together, nodding in satisfaction. “Good. Good. Of course one goes on the assumption that if O’Keefe is willing to employ you, you must have a certain amount of intelligence. Let us proceed to the next step. What is the implication of O’Keefe’s experiments?”

  “Well, sir, that anything he finds out about starfish might also apply to people.”

  Kali perched on the arm of her father’s chair. “Why? Just because we have the same great great great grandpappy? I should think you’d need more than that.”

  “You do,” Adam told her. “We have the same kind of complex nervous system, and we’re the only ones who do—echinoderms and chordates—people and starfish.”

  “So?” Typhon Cutter asked.

  “So if someone could find out how the starfish regenerates then maybe this knowledge could be used for man. But—”

  “No buts,” Typhon Cutter said. “Don’t try to evade what you’ve said. The implications are so staggering that most people will tend to turn away from them or refuse to face them. You’re a bright boy, Adam, and a brave one, or you wouldn’t be here in this room, now. You can be of great help to mankind if you will.”

  Adam’s mind was gritty with fatigue, but he said, “I think I have to know how I am to help.”

  “A perfectly reasonable attitude. Kali has perhaps told you something about me?”

  “That you have business concerns in Portugal—”

  “And—” Typhon Cutter reached across the desk and poured more coffee into Adam’s cup.

  “That you know a great many people at the Embassy.”

  “There’s the key, boy. My business is—business. And a very lucrative one, I might add. But it is also more than business. Just as you are in a position to be useful to me, I am in a position to be useful to the Embassy. More than that, I have been asked by Washington to assist the Embassy and to keep my eye on a group there whose loyalty is not entirely unquestioned. There is nothing I care about more than my country and I hope I am not wrong in assuming that you feel the same way.”

  “Well, of course, sir—” Adam started, and stopped. Abruptly. Listening.

  From somewhere deep in the house he thought he heard a faint, thin wail. A child’s wail.

  7

  Typhon Cutter held up his hand. “It’s all right, Adam. She’s here. We have her, safe and sound.”

  “But—”

  “Wait.” The word lashed at Adam like the flick of a whip. “You will see her in a few minutes. But there are certain things you must know first. Drink your coffee. Wake up.”

  The wailing continued.

  “She is all right,” Typhon Cutter said. “She has only had a frightening experience. She is caught in a web of events that she is too young to understand, and she is being used as a pawn. You will take her back to her father, but you will not say from where.”

  “But—”

  “Be quiet. Listen. I have told you that O’Keefe is a great scientist.”

  “Yes.”

  “But, like many other great scientists his wisdom does not extend beyond his work. You yourself know of scientists who have been spies, who have sold their country down the river.”

  “Well, yes, but—” Abruptly the crying stopped. “Please,” Adam was determined this time not to be cut off. “Why is Poly here? How did you get her?”

  Typhon Cutter held up his hand, speaking tolerantly. “Hold it, boy. One thing at a time.”

  “But how did you get her? Did you get her from the plane?”

  “Not very likely, is it? Has it occurred to you that you may not be the only one interested in her safety?”

  “Her father is! He must be out of his mind with worry.”

  “Oh?” Typhon Cutter gave a thin laugh. “I hardly think so. It was her father and his inconsistencies we were talking about when you interrupted me.” He paused, as though to give the boy a chance to say, ‘Sorry,’ but, as Adam was silent, he continued, “Let us simply say that we managed—and with no little difficulty, I might add—to rescue her.”

  “From whom?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No, sir. I don’t.”

  “Then you’ll have to find out, won’t you? I can hardly spell it out for you more clearly.”

  “But—”

  “This is not, at the moment, the point. The point is what it means—what all of it means—to the United States. To do O’Keefe justice, I do not think that he would betray his country deliberately. But I have been instructed to see that he does not do it even inadvertently. I am asking you to help me.”

  Adam nodded, and took another swallow of coffee.

  Typhon Cutter looked at him and smiled tightly. “It has come to my attention that I am sometimes compared to a spider. I do not find the comparison entirely invidious. It is my intention to spin a net and to pull it tight around anyone who does not put the interests of our country first. As for you, my boy, the moment you were chosen to work for O’Keefe you became important. You were important enough to be watched by both sides—our own, and the enemy’s—from the moment you entered the airport in New York. I sent Kali as my personal emissary. I have every faith in my daughter; she has never let me down. I hope that I will be able to say the same thing about you. You do care for your country, don’t you, Adam?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Then you must do as I say.” The thin cry came again, and ceased. “I have told you that O’Keefe’s child is being used as a pawn. For the moment she is safe. She does not know where she is, and she is being blindfolded. This is for her own protection as well as ours. And yours. You are far more useful to us alive than dead, my boy, and I think perhaps you are not quite aware of how many people are aware of you, and the fact that you are going to Gaea. If you will do as I say I think that I can protect you. If not—” Typhon Cutter shrugged.

  —I am half dead with sleep, Adam thought.—I don’t understand anything. I don’t want to understand. I want to sleep.

  Typhon Cutter’s high voice probed like a needle into his fatigue. “Are you going to help us, Adam?”

  “I—”

  “Think. Think about the child.”

  “I am.”

  “If you could not trust me, do you think I could trust you with the child?”

  “But she’s not your child.”

  “No, she’s a pawn of dangerous, ruthless men. As I have said, I do not think that O’Keefe is fully cognizant of what he is doing. But there are others. Men like the egregious canon.”

  “Well, what about him, sir?”

  “Do you think highly of someone who would deliberately send a child onto that plane?”

  “But if she hadn’t gone into the washroom—”

  “Don’t be naive, boy. That simply made it a little easier.”

  Adam looked at Typhon Cutter. Yes, there was indeed the resemblance to a
spider. Then he thought of Canon Tallis, the body portly but firm, the piercing grey eyes, the bald head … .

  —But you can’t go by people’s looks, he thought groggily. —Just because I prefer teddy bears to spiders … .

  “Why does Canon Tallis have no eyebrows?” he asked without thinking.

  “I believe he does what he can to broadcast some story of losing all his hair after some extraordinary physical bravery in Korea; this kind of thing does happen occasionally, I believe. However, I am inclined to doubt it. Tallis, you will find, likes to take the easy way and to receive credit for daydreams. If he has done anything braver than kowtow to the bishop of Gibraltar I have yet to hear of it. Now Adam: I know that you are tired and so for the moment my instructions will be simple. You are to take Poly back to her father at the Avenida Palace. You will be driven to a central point from which you will be able to find your way to the hotel without trouble. I cannot risk taking you directly there, since my chauffeur, Molèc, who is one of my key men, would be recognized. You will tell O’Keefe that you were half asleep when you opened the door to loud knocking, that you were grabbed and blindfolded, that you were taken you know not where, and interrogated. Since you knew nothing—and what you know is nothing, I assure you—there was very little you could tell. You were not in any way abused. You were put into a car, and when you were ungagged and unblindfolded you stood on the street with Polyhymnia O’Keefe. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take her immediately to the Avenida Palace. From there I presume you will proceed to Gaea. Kali or I—probably Kali—will get in touch with you there and give you further instructions. In the meantime you are to learn as much about O’Keefe and what he is doing as possible. Since you will be working with him directly on the starfish experiments this ought to be a good deal. Don’t be afraid. The Embassy knows where you are. If you do as you are told you will be perfectly safe. If you do not do as you are told I cannot answer for the consequences.”

  Swaying, Adam finished the bitter dregs of his coffee.—But I have not done as I was told, he thought.—I opened the door. I let Kali in. And whether I did right or wrong I don’t know. Whether this man is right or wrong I don’t know.