by Algis Budrys
"Do you know why you're still sane, Barker? I think I do. I think it's because you have Claire, and Connington, and myself. I think it was because you had us to run to. It isn't really Death that tests your worth for you; it's the menace of dying. Not Death, but murderers. So long as you have us about you, your vital parts are safe."
Barker was moving toward him, his hands half-raised.
Hawks said, "It's no use, Barker. You can't do anything to me. If you were to kill me, you would have proved you were afraid to deal with me."
"That's not true," Barker said, high-voiced. "A warrior kills his enemies."
Hawks watched Barker's eyes. "You're not a warrior, Al," he said regretfully. "Not the kind of warrior you think you want to be. You're a man, that's all. You want to be a worthy man — a man who satisfies his own standards, a man whose stature is his own. That's all. That's enough."
Barker's arms began to tremble. His head tilted to one side, and he looked at Hawks crookedly, his eyes blinking. "You're so smart!" he panted. "You know so damned much! You know more about me than I do. How is that, Hawks — who touched your brow with a golden wand?"
"I'm a man, too, Al."
"Yes?" Barker's arms sank down to his sides. "Yes? Well, I don't like you any better for it. Get out of here, man, while you still can." He whirled and crossed the room with short, quick, jerking steps. He flung open the door. "Leave me to my old, familiar assassins!"
Hawks looked at him and said nothing. His expression was troubled. Then he set himself into motion and walked forward. He stopped in the doorway and stood face to face with Barker.
"I have to have you," he said. "I need your report in the morning, and I need you to send up there into that thing, again."
"Get out, Hawks," Barker answered.
"I told you," Hawks said, and stepped out into the darkness.
Barker slapped the door shut. He turned away toward the corridor leading into the other wing of the house, his neck taut and his mouth opening in a shout. It came almost inaudibly through the glass between himself and Hawks: "Claire? Claire!"
7
Hawks walked out across the rectangle of light lying upon the lawn, until he came to the ragged edge that was the brink of the cliff above the sea. He stood looking out over the unseen surf, with the loom of sea mist filling the night before him.
"An dark," he said aloud. "An dark and nowhere starlights." Then he began walking, head down, along the edge of the cliff, his hands in his pockets.
When he came to the flagstoned patio between the swimming pool and the far wing of the house, he passed by the metal table and chairs in its center, picking his way in the indistinct light.
"Well, Ed," Claire said sadly from her chair on the other side of the table. "Come to join me?"
He turned his head in surprise, then sat down. "I suppose."
Claire had changed into a dress, and was drinking a cup of coffee. "Want some of this?" she offered in a soft, uncertain voice. "It's a chilly evening."
"Thank you." He took the cup as she reached it out to him, and drank from the side away from the thick smear of lipstick. "I didn't know you'd be out here."
She chuckled ironically. "I get tired of opening doors and finding Connie on the other side. I've been waiting for Al to wake up."
"He's up."
"I know."
He passed the coffee cup back to her. "Did you hear it all?"
"I was in the kitchen. It — it was quite an experience, hearing myself talked about like that." She put the coffee down with a chatter of the cup against the saucer, and hugged herself, her shoulders bent, while she stared down toward the ground.
Hawks said nothing. It was almost too dark to see facial expressions across the table's diameter, and he closed his eyes for a moment, holding them tightly shut, before he opened them again and turned sideways in his chair, one hand resting on the table with its fingers arched as he leaned toward her.
"I don't know why I do it, Hawks," she said. "I don't know. But I do treat him as if I hated him. I do it to everybody. I can't meet anybody without turning into a bitch."
"Women, too?"
She turned her face toward him. "What woman would stay around me long enough for me to really get started? And what man is going to ignore the female part of me? But I'm a human being, too; I'm not just something that — that's all physical. But nobody likes me, Hawks — nobody ever shows any interest in the human being part of me!"
"Well, Claire …"
"It doesn't feel good, Hawks, hearing yourself talked about like that. 'I know what she is — by God, I know what she is.' How does he know? When has he ever tried to know me? What's he ever done to find out what I think, what I feel? And Connington — trying to maneuver me, trying to work things around so I'll give in to him. Getting Al involved in something he's sure will foul him up so badly I won't want him any longer. What gives him the idea it's got to be Connington for me if I go away from Al? Just because Connie's around all the time — because he doesn't have sense enough to go away after he's been licked? Is it my fault he hangs around? He doesn't get anything for it. All it does is get Al angry once in a while."
"Doesn't that make him useful to you?" Hawks asked.
"And you —" Claire burst out. "So damned sure nothing can touch you without permission! Making smart cracks. 'Egging' Al on is what I'm supposed to be doing! Well, listen, could I make a brick fly? Could I turn an ostrich into a swan? If he wasn't the way he was, what could I do to him? I don't tell him to go out and do these things. And I tried to keep him away from you — after you left, that first day, I tried to get him to quit! But all he did was get jealous. And that wasn't what I was trying to do! I've never made a pass at you before today — not a real pass — I was just, I don't know, just doing business as usual, you could say — and you know that!"
She reached across the table with a swift gesture and took his hand. "Do you have any idea of how lonely I get? How much I wish I wasn't me at all?" She pulled blindly at his hand. "But what can I do about it? How am I going to change anything now?"
"I don't know, Claire," Hawks said. "It's very hard for people to change themselves."
"But I don't want to hate myself, Hawks! Not all my life, like this! What do all of you think I am — blind, deaf, stupid? I know how decent people act — I know what bitchiness is, and what not being bitchy is. I was a child, once — I went to school, I was taught ethics, and morals, and understanding. I'm not something from Mars — do you all think I'm this way because I don't know any better?"
Hawks said haltingly, "All of us know better, I think. And yet each of us forgets, now and then. Some of us sometimes think we have to, for the sake of something we think needs it." His face was a mixture of expressions. "If that doesn't seem to make sense, I'm sorry. I don't know what else to tell you, Claire."
She jumped to her feet, still holding his hand, and came around to stand in front of him, bent forward, clasping his fingers in both hands. "You could tell me you like me, Ed," she whispered. "You're the only one of them who could look past my outsides and like me!"
He stood up as she pulled at his hand. "Claire —" he began.
"No, no, no, Ed!" she said, putting her arms around him. "I don't want to talk. I want to just be. I want someone to just hold me and not think about me being a woman. I just want to feel warm, for once in my life — just have another human being near me!" Her arms went up behind his back, and her hands cupped his neck and the back of his head. "Please, Ed," she murmured, her face so close that her eyes brimmed and glittered in the faraway light, and so that in another moment her wet cheek touched his. "Give me that if you can."
"I don't know, Claire …" he said uncertainly. "I'm not sure you —"
She began kissing his cheeks and eyes, her nails combing the back of his head. "Hawks," she choked, "Hawks, I'm so lost …"
His head bent, her fingers rigid behind it, the tendons standing out in cords on the backs of her hands. Her lips parted, and
her leather sandals made a shuffling noise on the patio stones. "Forget everything," she whispered as she kissed his mouth. "Think only of me."
Then she broke away suddenly, and stood a foot away from him, the back of one hand against her upper lip, her shoulders and hips lax. She was sighing rhythmically, her eyes shining. "No — no, I can't hold out … not with you. You're too much for me, Ed." Her shoulders rose, and she moved half a step toward him. "Forget about liking me," she said from deep in her throat as she reached toward him. "Just take me. I can always get someone else to like me."
Hawks did not move. She looked at him, arms outstretched, her face hungry. Then she lowered her arms slowly and cried out softly, "I don't blame you! I couldn't help it, but I don't blame you for what you're thinking. You think I'm some kind of nympho, who'll go wild for any man. You think because it's happening to me now, it always happens like this. You think that because you could do anything you wanted with me, then what I said about myself before wasn't true. You —"
"No," Hawks said. "But I don't think you believe it's true. You think it's something you can use because it sounds plausible. It does. It's true. And any time you grow afraid that a man may be about to find it out, you try to divert his attention with the only thing about you that you can imagine he'd be interested in. I think you're afraid of being in a world full of creatures called men. No matter how hard you say you try not to be that way, you always have to cut men down to your size." He took the handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped his mouth awkwardly. "I'm sorry," he said. "But that's the way it seems to me. Connington works on the premise that everyone has a weakness he can exploit. I don't know whether he's right or not, but yours is that you only give yourself to men you think will find your weakness. I wonder if you knew that?"
Her fingers dug at the dress fabric over her tensed thighs. "You're scared, Hawks," she said. "You're scared of a woman, just like so many of them are."
"Would you blame me? I'm frightened of many things. People who don't want to be people are among them."
"Why don't you just shut up, Hawks? What do you do, go through life making speeches? You know what you are, Hawks? You're a creep. A bore and a creep. A first-class bore. I don't want you around any more. I don't want to ever see you again."
"I'm sorry you don't want to be any different, Claire. Tell me something. You almost succeeded, a moment ago. You came very close. It would be foolish for me to deny it. If you had done what you tried to do with me, would I still be a creep? And what would you be, making up to a man you despise, for safety's sake?"
"Oh, get out of here, Hawks!"
"Does my being a creep make me incompetent to see things?"
"When are you going to stop trying? I don't want any of your stinking help!"
"I didn't think you did. I said so. That's really all I've said." He turned away toward the house. "I'm going to see if Al will let me use his phone. I need a ride away from here. I'm getting too old to walk."
"Go to hell, Hawks!" she cried out, following him at his own pace, a yard or two behind him.
Hawks walked away more quickly, his legs scissoring stiffly, his arms swinging through short arcs.
"Did you hear me? Get lost! Go on, get out of here!"
Hawks came to the kitchen door and opened it. Connington was sprawled back against a counter, his beach shirt and his swimming trunks spattered with blood and saliva from his mouth. Barker's left hand, tangled in his hair, was all that kept him from tipping over the high stool on which he was being held. Barker's right fist was drawn back, smeared and running from deep tooth-gashes over the bone of his knuckles.
"Just passed out, that's all," Connington was mumbling desperately. "Just passed out in her bed, that's all — she wasn't anywhere around."
Barker's forearm whipped out, and his fist slapped into Connington's face again. He said in a frantic voice, "This is just for wishing, Connie! I'm not going to stand for finding you in my woman's bed. That's all. I just can't let you get away with that!"
Connington fumbled apathetically behind him for a handhold. He made no effort to defend himself. "Only way you ever would. Find me there." He was crying without seeming to be aware of it. "I thought I had it figured out, at last. I thought today was the day. Never been able to make the grade with her. I can find the handle with everybody else. Everybody's got a weak spot. Everybody cracks, sometime, and lets me see it. Everybody. Nobody's perfect. That's the great secret. Everybody but her. She's got to slip sometime, but I've never seen it. Me, the hotshot personnel man."
"Leave him alone!" Claire screamed from behind Hawks. She clawed at Hawks' shoulder until he was out of the doorway, and then she raked at Barker, who jumped back with his hand clutching the furrows on his arm. "Get away from him!" she shouted into Barker's face, crouching with her feet apart and her quivering hands raised. She snatched up a towel, wet a corner of it in the sink, and went to Connington, who was slumped back against the stool, staring at her through his watered eyes.
She bent against Connington and began frantically scrubbing his face. "There, now, honey," she crooned, "There. There. Now." Connington put one hand up, palm out, his lax fingers spread, and she caught it, clutching it and pressing it to the base of her throat, while she rubbed feverishly at his smashed mouth. "I'll fix it, honey — don't worry…"
Connington turned his head from side to side, his eyes looking blindly in her direction, whimpering as the cloth ground across the cuts.
"No, no, honey," she chided him. "No, hold still, honey! Don't worry. I need you, Connie. Please." She began wiping his chest, opening the top of the beach shirt and forcing it down over his arms, like a policeman performing a drunk arrest.
Barker said stiffly, "All right, Claire — that's it. I want your things out of here tomorrow." His mouth turned down in revulsion. "I never thought you'd turn carrion-eater."
Hawks turned his back and found a telephone on the wall. He dialed with clumsy haste. "This — this is Ed," he said, his throat constricted. "I wonder if you could possibly drive out to that corner on the highway, where the store is, and pick me up. Yes, I — I need a ride in, again. Thank you. Yes, I'll be there, waiting."
He hung up, and as he turned back, Barker said to him, his expression dazed, "How did you do it, Hawks?" He almost cried, "How did you manage this?"
"Will you be at the laboratory tomorrow?" Hawks said wearily.
Barker looked at him through his glittering black eyes. He flung out an arm toward Claire and Connington. "What would I have left, Hawks, if I lost you now?"
CHAPTER SIX
"You look tired," Elizabeth said as the studio's overhead fluorescents tittered into light and Hawks sat down on the couch.
He shook his head. "I haven't been working very hard. It's the same old story — when I was a boy on the farm, I'd wear myself out with physical labor, and I'd have no trouble getting to sleep. I'd wake up in the morning, and I'd feel wonderful; I'd be rested, and full of energy, and I'd know exactly what I had ahead of me that day, and I'd do it. Even when I was tired, I felt right; I felt as if what I'd done was proper. Even when I couldn't keep my eyes open after supper, my body was relaxed, and happy. I don't know if that's understandable if you haven't felt it, but that's how it was.
"But now I just sit around and think. I can't sleep at night, and I wake up in the morning feeling worse than I did the day before. It takes me hours before I don't feel as if my body was cranky with me. I sometimes think it gets better during the day only because I go numb, not because the crankiness stops. I never feel right. I'm always full of aches and pains that come from nowhere. I look at myself in the mirror, and a sick man looks back at me — the kind of a man I wouldn't trust to do his share, if we were on a job together."
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "I think you could use some coffee."
He grimaced. "I'd rather have tea, if you have some."
"I think so. I'll see." She crossed the studio to the curtained-off corner where the hotplate a
nd the cupboard were.
"Or — Look," he called after her, "I'm being silly. Coffee would be fine. If you don't have any tea."
They sat on the couch together, drinking tea. Elizabeth put her cup down on the table. "What happened tonight?" she asked.
Hawks shook his head. "I'm not entirely sure. Woman trouble, for one thing."
Elizabeth grunted. "Oh."
"Not the usual kind," Hawks said.
"I didn't think it would be."
"Why?"
"You're not the usual kind of man."
Hawks frowned. "I suppose not. At least, I don't seem to get the usual reactions from people. I don't know why."
"Do you want to know what it is with you and women?"
Hawks blinked at her. "Yes. Very much."
"You treat them like people."
"I do?" He shook his head again. "I don't think so. I've never been able to understand them very well. I don't know why they do most of the things they do. I've — As a matter of fact, I've had a lot of trouble with women."
Elizabeth touched his hand. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised. But that's beside the point. Now, you think about something: I'm a good deal younger than you are."
Hawks nodded, his expression troubled. "I've thought about that."
"Now you think about this, too: you're not charming, dashing, or debonair. You're funny-looking, as a matter of fact. You're too busy to spare much time for me, and even if you did take me out night-clubbing somewhere, you'd be so out of place that I couldn't enjoy it. But you do one thing: you let me feel that my rules are as worthwhile to me as yours are to you. When you ask me to do something, I know you won't be hurt if I refuse. And if I do it, you don't feel that you've scored a point in some kind of complex game. You don't try to use me, cozen me, or change me. I take up as much room in the world, the way you see it, as you do. Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?"
Hawks was puzzled. "I'm glad you feel that way," he said slowly, "but I don't think that's true. Look —" He got up and began pacing back and forth while Elizabeth sat watching, a faint smile on her face.
