Filtered! As if I were a virus.
"But they must be harmless," I say. "No harm has come to anyone."
"We don't know that for a fact," Arnie replies.
"You look tired," I say, and he comes to me to be soothed, to be loved in his flesh, his single form, his search for the truth in the darkness of the viewing cubicle. At present he's doing studies of murger birds. Their spinal cavities are large, air-filled ovals, and their bone is extremely porous, which permits them to soar to great heights.
The koota no longer races on the wind-blown beaches; she lies at our feet, looking into the distance. The wall must be transparent to her eyes; I feel that beyond it she sees clearly how the racers go, down the long, bright curve of sand in the morning sun. She sighs and lays her head down on her narrow, delicate paws. I look into the distance, too: bright beaches and Arnie, carrying me from his ship. But he will not carry me again.
Arnie says, "I seem to be tired all the time." He puts his head on my breast. "I don't think the food's agreeing with me lately."
"Do you suffer pains?" I ask him curiously.
"Suffer," he mutters. "What kind of nonsense is that, with analgesics. No, I don't suffer. I just don't feel well."
He's absorbed in murger birds, kaku wood. He descends into the bottom of the dark and rises up like a rocket across the horizon into the thin clarity above while I float. I no longer dare to breathe. I'm afraid of disturbing everything. I do not want anything. His head lies gently on my breast, and I will not disturb him.
"Oh. My God," Arnie says, and I know what it's come to even before he begins to choke and his muscles leap although I hold him in my arms. I know his heart is choking on massive doses of blood; the brilliance fades from his eyes, and they begin to go dark while I tightly hold him. If he doesn't see me as he dies, will I be here?
I can feel, under my fingers, how rapidly his skin cools. I must put him down, here with his carvings and his papers, and I must go home. But I lift Arnie in my arms and call the koota, who gets up rather stiffly. It's long after dark, and I carry him slowly, carefully, home to what he called a crystal palace, where the Warden and my Uncle are teaching each other to play chess with a set some space captain gave them in exchange for seed crystals. They sit in a bloom of light, sparkling, their old brains bent over the chessmen, as I breathe open the door and carry Arnie in.
First my Uncle gives me just a glance, but then another glance, and a hard stare. "Is that the Doctor?" he asks.
I put Arnie down and hold one of his cold hands. "Warden," I say, on my knees, at eye level with the chessboard and its carved men. "Warden, can you put him in one of the banks?"
The Warden turns to look at me, as hard as my Uncle. "You've become deranged, trying to maintain two lobes," he says. "You cannot reconstitute or recreate a Terran by our methods, and you must know it."
"Over the edge, over the edge," my Uncle says, now a blond, six-foot, hearty male Terran, often at the Laugh Tree with one of the joy babies. He enjoys life, his own or someone else's. I have, too, I suppose. Am I fading? I am, really, just one of Arnie's projections, a form on a screen in his mind. I am not, really, Martha. Though I tried.
"We can't have him here," the Warden says. "You better get him out of here. You couldn't explain a corpse like that to the colonists, if they come looking for him. They'll think we did something to him. It's nearly time for my next conjunction; do you want your nephew to arrive in disgrace? The Uncles will drain his bank."
The Warden gets up and comes over to me. He takes hold of my dark curls and pulls me to my feet. It hurts my physical me, which is Martha. God knows, Arnie, I'm Martha, it seems to me. "Take him back to his quarters," the Warden says to me. "And come back here immediately. I'll try to see you back to your own pattern, but it may be too late. In part, I blame myself. If you must know. So I will try."
Yes, yes, I want to say to him; as I was, dedicated, free; turn me back into myself. I never wanted to be anyone else, and now I don't know if I am anyone at all. The light's gone from his eyes, and he doesn't see me, or see anything, does he?
I pick him up and breathe the door out and go back through the night to his quarters, where the lamp still burns. I'm going to leave him here, where he belongs. Before I go, I pick up the small carving of the murger bird and take it with me, home to my glass bridge where at the edge of the mirrors the decimals are still clicking perfectly, clicking out known facts: an octagon can be reduced; the planet turns at such a degree on its axis; to see the truth, you must have light of some sort, but to see the light, you must have darkness of some sort. I can no longer float on the horizon between the two because that horizon has disappeared. I've learned to descend, and to rise, and descend again.
I'm able to revert without help to my own free form, to re-absorb the extra brain tissue. The sun comes up and it's bright. The night comes down and it's dark. I'm becoming somber, and a brilliant student. Even my Uncle says I'll be a good Warden when the time comes.
The Warden goes to conjunction; from the cell banks a nephew is lifted out. The koota lies dreaming of races she has run in the wind. It is our life, and it goes on, like the life of other creatures.
The End
© 1966 by Galaxy publishing Corporation. Originally published in Galaxy. Reprinted by Permission of the author, Sonya Dorman Hess.
Touchstone
Terry Carr
For thirty-two years, during which he watched with growing perplexity and horror the ways of the world and the dull gropings of men reaching for love and security, Randolph Helgar had told himself that there was a simple answer to all of it—somehow it was possible to get a hand-hold on life, to hold it close and cherish it without fear. And on a Saturday morning in early March, when the clouds had disappeared and the sun came forth pale in the sky, he found what he had been looking for.
The snow had been gone from the streets of Greenwich Village for over a week, leaving behind only the crispness on the sidewalks. Everyone still walked with a tentative step, like sailors on shore leave. Randolph Helgar was out of his apartment by ten, heading west. His straight, sandy hair was ruffled by an easterly wind, giving him the superficial appearance of hurrying, but his quick grey eyes and the faint smile that so often came to his mouth dispelled that. Randolph was busier looking around than walking.
The best thing about the Village, as far as he was concerned, was that you could never chart all of it. As soon as you thought you knew every street, every sandal shop, every hot dog or pizza stand, one day you'd look up and there'd be something new there, where you'd never looked before. A peculiar blindness comes over people who walk through the streets of the Village; they see only where they're going.
The day before, on the bus coming home from work at the travel agency on West 4th, he had looked out the window and seen a bookstore whose dirty windows calmly testified to the length of time it had been there. So of course this morning he was looking for that bookstore. He had written down the address, but there was no need now for him to take the slip of paper from his wallet to look at it; the act of writing it had fixed it in his memory.
The store was just opening when he got there. A large, heavy-shouldered man with thick black hair and prominent veins in the backs of his hands was setting out the bargain table in the front of the store. Randolph glanced at the table, filled with the sun-faded spines of anonymous pocket-books, and nodded at the man. He went inside.
The books were piled high around the walls; here and there were hand-lettered signs saying MUSIC, HISTORY, PSYCHOLOGY, but they must have been put there years ago, because the books in those sections bore no relation to the signs. Near the front was an old cupboard mottled with the light which came through the dirty window; a sign on one of its shelves said $10. Next to it was a small round table which revolved on its base, but there was no price on this.
The owner had come back into the store now, and he stood just inside the door looking at Randolph. After a moment, he said, "You want a
nything special?"
Randolph shook his head, dislodging the shock of hair, which fell over his eyes. He ran his fingers through it, combing it back, and turned to one of the piles of books.
"I think maybe you'd be interested in this section," said the owner, walking heavily over the bending floorboards to stand beside Randolph. He raised a large hand and ran it along one shelf. A sign said MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT.
Randolph glanced at it. "No," he said.
"None of those books are for sale," the man said. "That section is strictly lending-library."
Randolph raised his eyes to meet those of the older man. The man gazed back calmly, waiting.
"Not for sale?" Randolph said.
"No, they're part of my own collection," the man said. "But I lend them out at ten cents a day, if anybody wants to read them, or …"
"Who takes them out?"
The heavy man shrugged, with the faint touch of a smile about his thick lips. "People. People come in, they see the books and think they might like to read them. They always bring them back."
Randolph glanced at the books on the shelves. The spines were crisp and hard, the lettering on them like new. "Do you think they read them?" he asked.
"Of course. So many of them come back and buy other things."
"Other books?"
The man shrugged again, and turned away. He walked slowly to the back of the store. "I sell other things. It's impossible to make a living selling books in this day and age."
Randolph followed him into the darkness in back. "What other things do you sell?"
"Perhaps you should read some of the books first," the man said, watching him beneath his eyebrows.
"Do you sell … love potions? Dried bat's blood? Snake's entrails?"
"No," said the man. "I'm afraid you'd have to search the tobacconist's shop for such things as that. I sell only imperishables."
"Magic charms?" Randolph said.
"Yes," the man said slowly. "Some are real, some are not."
"And I suppose the real ones are more expensive."
"They are all roughly the same price. It's up to you to decide which ones are real."
The man had stooped to reach into a drawer of his desk, and now he brought out a box from which he lifted the lid. He set the open box on the top of his desk and reached up to turn on a naked lightbulb which hung from the shadowed ceiling.
The box contained an assortment of amulets, stones, dried insects encased in glass, carved pieces of wood, and other things. They were all tumbled into the box haphazardly. Randolph stirred the contents with two fingers.
"I don't believe in magic," he said.
The heavy man smiled faintly. "I don't suppose I do, either. But some of these things are quite interesting. Some are of authentic South American workmanship, and others are from Europe and the East. They're worth money, all right."
"What's this?" Randolph asked, picking up a black stone which just fit into the palm of his hand. The configurations of the stone twisted around and in upon themselves, like a lump of baker's dough.
"That's a touchstone. Run your fingers over it."
"It's perfectly smooth," Randolph said.
"It's supposed to have magical powers to make people feel contented. Hold it in your hand."
Randolph closed his fingers around the stone. Perhaps it was the power of suggestion, but the stone did feel very good. So smooth, like skin …
"The man who gave it to me said it was an ancient Indian piece. It embodies Yin and Yang, the opposites that complement and give harmony to the world. You can see a little of the symbol in the way the stone looks." He smiled slowly. "It's also supposed to encase a human soul, like an egg."
"More likely a fossil," Randolph said. He wondered what kind of stone it was.
"It will cost five dollars," the man said.
Randolph hefted the stone in his hand. It settled back into his palm comfortably, like a cat going to sleep. "All right," he said.
He took a bill from his wallet and noticed the paper on which he'd written the store's address the day before. "If I come back here a week from now," he said, "will this store still be here? Or will it have disappeared, like magic shops are supposed to do?"
The man didn't smile. "This isn't that kind of store. I'd go out of business if I kept moving my location."
"Well, then," Randolph said, looking at the black stone in his hand. "When I was young, I used to pick up stones at the beach and carry them around for weeks, just because I loved them. I suppose this stone has some of that sort of magic, anyway."
"If you decide you don't want it, bring it back," said the man.
When he got back to the apartment, Margo was just getting up. Bobby, seven years old, was apparently up and out already. Randolph put yesterday's pot of coffee on the burner to heat and sat at the kitchen table to wait for it. He took the touchstone out of his pocket and ran his fingers over it.
Strange … It was just a black rock, worn smooth probably by water and then maybe by the rubbing of fingers over centuries. Despite what the man at the store had said about an Indian symbol, it had no particular shape.
Yet it did have a peculiar calming effect on him. Maybe, he thought, it's just that people have to have something to do with their hands while they think. It's the hands, the opposable thumb, that has made men what they are, or so the anthropologists say. The hands give men the ability to work with things around them, to make, to do. And we all have a feeling that we've got to be using our hands all the time or somehow we're not living up to our birthright.
That's why so many people smoke. That's why they fidget and rub their chins and drum their fingers on tables. But the touchstone relaxes the hands.
A simple form of magic.
Margo came into the kitchen, combing her long hair back over her shoulders. She hadn't put on any makeup, and her full mouth seemed as pale as clouds. She set out coffee cups and poured, then sat down across the table.
"Did you get the paint?"
"Paint?"
"You were going to paint the kitchen today. The old paint is cracking and falling off."
Randolph looked up at the walls, rubbing the stone in his fingers. They didn't look bad, he decided. They could go for another six months without being redone. After all, it was no calamity if the plaster showed through above the stove.
"I don't think I'll do it today," he said.
Margo didn't say anything. She picked up a book from the chair beside her and found her place in it.
Randolph fingered the touchstone and thought about the beach when he had been a boy.
There was a party that night at Gene Blake's apartment on the floor below, but for once Randolph didn't feel like going down. Blake was four years younger than him, and suddenly today the difference seemed insuperable; Blake told off-center jokes about integration in the South, talked about writers Randolph knew only by the reviews in the Sunday Times, and was given to drinking Scotch and milk. No, not tonight, he told Margo.
After dinner, Randolph settled in front of the television set and, as the washing of dishes sounded from the kitchen and Bobby read a comic book in the corner, watched a rerun of the top comedy show of three seasons past. When the second commercial came on, he dug the touchstone from his pocket and rubbed it idly with his thumb. All it takes, he told himself, is to ignore the commercials.
"Have you ever seen a frog?" Bobby asked him. He looked up and saw the boy standing next to his chair, breathing quickly as boys do when they have something to say.
"Sure," he said.
"Did you ever see a black one? A dead one?"
Randolph thought a minute. He didn't suppose he had. "No," he said.
"Wait a minute!" Bobby said, and bounded out of the room. Randolph turned back to the television screen and saw that the wife had a horse in the living room and was trying to coax it to go upstairs before the husband came home. The horse seemed bored.
"Here!" said Bobby, and dropped the dead frog in his
lap.
Randolph looked at it for two seconds before he realized what it was. One leg and part of the frog's head had been crushed, probably by a car's wheel, and the wide mouth was open. It was grey, not black.
Randolph shook it off him onto the floor. "You'd better throw it away," he said. "It's going to smell bad."
"But I paid sixty marbles for him!" Bobby said. "And I only had twenty-five, and you got to get me some more."
Randolph sighed and shifted the touchstone from one hand to the other. "All right," he said. "Monday. Keep him in your room."
He turned back to the screen, where everyone had got behind the horse and was trying to push him up the stairs.
"Don't you like him?" Bobby asked.
Randolph looked blankly at him.
"My frog," Bobby said.
Randolph thought about it for a moment. "I think you'd better throw him away," he said. "He's going to stink."
Bobby's face fell. "Can I ask Mom?"
Randolph didn't answer, and he supposed Bobby went away. There was another commercial on now, and he was toying idly with the thought of a commercial for touchstones. "For two thousand years mankind has searched for the answer to underarm odor, halitosis, regularity. Now at last …"
"Bobby!" said his wife in the kitchen. Randolph looked up, surprised. "Take that out in the hall and put it in the garbage right now! Not another word!"
In a moment Bobby came trudging through the room, his chin on his chest. But tiny eyes looked at Randolph with a trace of hope.
"She's gonna make me throw him away."
Randolph shrugged. "It would smell up the place," he said.
"Well, I thought you'd like it anyway," Bobby said. "You always keep telling me how you were a boy, and she wasn't." He stopped for a moment, waiting for Randolph to answer, and when he didn't the boy abruptly ran out with the grey, crushed frog in his hand.
Margo came into the living room, drying her hands on a towel. "Ran, why didn't you put your foot down in the first place?"
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 3 Page 6
