Four for Tomorrow Part 22

"The dope's getting to him."

"Yeah."

"What about Miss Luharich?"

"What about her?"

"She must be half dead."

"Probably."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"She signed the contract for this. She knew what might happen. It did."

"I think you could land him."

"So do I."

"So does she."

"Then let her ask me."

Ikky was drafting lethargically, at thirty fathoms.

I took another walk and happened to pa.s.s behind the Slider. She wasn't looking my way.

"Carl, come in here!"

Eyes of Pica.s.so, that's what, and a conspiracy to make me Slide . . .

"Is that an order?"

"Yes-No! Please."

I dashed inside and monitored. He was rising.

"Push or pull?"

I slammed the "wind" and he came like a kitten.

"Make up your own mind now."

He balked at ten fathoms.

126 "Play him?"

"No!"

She wound him upwards-five fathoms, four . . .

She hit the extensors at two, and they caught him. Then the graffles.

Cries without and a heat lightning of flashbulbs.

The crew saw Ikky.

He began to struggle. She kept the cables tight, raised the graffles . . .

Up.

168.

Another two feet and the graffles began pus.h.i.+ng.

Screams and fast footfalls.

Giant beanstalk in the wind, his neck, waving. The green hills of his shoulders grew.

"He's big, Carll" she cried.

And he grew, and grew, and grew uneasy . . .

"NowF fie looked down.

He looked down, as the G.o.d of our most ancient an- cestors might have looked down. Fear, shame, and mock- ing laughter rang in my head. Her head, too?

"Nowl"

She looked up at the nascent earthquake.

"I can't!"

It was going to be so d.a.m.nably simple this time, now the rabbit had died. I reached out I stopped, "Push it yourself."

"I can't. Tou do it. Land him, Carll"

"No. If I do, you'll wonder for the rest of your life whether you could have. You'll throw away your soul finding out. I know you will, because we're alike, and I did it that way. Find out nowl"

She stared.

I gripped her shoulders.

"Could be that's me out there," I offered. "I am a green sea serpent, a hateful, monstrous beast, and out to destroy 127 you. I am answerable to no one. Push the Inject."

Her hand moved to the b.u.t.ton, jerked back.

"Now!"

She pushed it.

I lowered her still form to the floor and finished things up with Ikky.

It was a good seven hours before I awakened to the steady, sea-chewing grind of Tensquare's blades.

"You're sick," commented Mike.

169.

"How's Jean?"

"The same."

"Where's the beast?"

"Here."

"Good." I rolled over. ". . . Didn't get away this time."

So that's the way it was. No one is born a baitman, I don't think, but the rings of Saturn sing epithalamium the sea-beast's dower.

A ROSE FOR ECCLESIASTES.

I was busy translating one of my Madrigals Macabre into Martian on the morning I was found acceptable. The in- tercom had buzzed briefly, and I dropped my pencil and flipped on the toggle in a single motion.

"Mister G," piped Moi ton's youthful contralto, "the old man says I should 'get hold of that d.a.m.ned conceited rhymer' right away, and send him to his cabin. Since - there's only one d.a.m.ned conceited rhymer . . ."

"Let not ambition mock thy useful toil." I cut him off.

So, the Martians had finally made up their minds! I knocked an inch and a half of ash from a smoldering b.u.t.t, and took my first drag since I had lit it. The entire month's antic.i.p.ation tried hard to crowd itself into the moment, but could not quite make it. I was frightened to walk those forty feet and hear Emory say the words I already knew he would say, and that feeling elbowed the other one into the background. ^ So I finished the stanza I was translating before I got up.

It took only a moment to reach Emory's door. I knocked twice and opened it, just as he growled, "Come in."

128 171.

"You wanted to see me?" I sat down quickly to save him the trouble of offering me a seat.

"That was fast. What did you do, run?"

I regarded his paternal discontent: Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and an Irish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone else's. . . .

Hamlet to Claudius: "1 was working."

"Hah!" he snorted. "Come off it. No one's ever seen you do any of that stuff."

I shrugged my shoulders and started to rise.

"If that's what you called me down here-"

"Sit downl"

He stood up. He walked around his desk. He hovered above me and glared down.A hard trick, even when .I'm in a low chair.) "You are undoubtedly the most antagonistic b.a.s.t.a.r.d I've ever had to work with!" he bellowed, like a belly- stung buffalo. "Why the h.e.l.l don't you act like a human being sometime and surprise everybody? I'm willing to admit you're smart, maybe even a genius, but-oh, h.e.l.l!"

He made a heaving gesture with both hands and walked back to his chair.

"Betty has finally talked them into letting you go in."

His voice was normal again. "They'll receive you this afternoon. Draw one of the jeepsters after lunch, and get down there."

"Okay," I said.

"That's all, then."

I nodded, got to my feet. My hand was on the door- k.n.o.b when he said: "I don't have to tell you how important this is. Don't treat them the way you treat us."

I closed the door behind me.

I don't remember what I had for lunch. I was nervous, 172.

but I knew instinctively that I wouldn't m.u.f.f it. My Bos- ton publishers expected a Martian Idyll, or at least a 129 Saint-Exupery job on s.p.a.ce flight. The National Science a.s.sociation wanted a complete report on the Rise and Fall of the Martian Empire.

They would both be pleased. I knew.

That's the reason everyone is jealous-why they hate me. I always come through, and I can come through better than anyone else.

I shoveled in a final anthill of slop, and made my way to our car barn. I drew one jeepster and headed it toward Tirellian.

Flames of sand, lousy with iron oxide, set fire to the buggy. They swarmed over the open top and bit through my scarf; they set to work pitting my goggles.

The jeepster, swaying and panting like a little donkey I once rode through the Himalayas, kept kicking me in the seat of the pants. The Moimtains of Tirellian shuf- fled their feet and moved toward me at a c.o.c.keyed angle.

Suddenly I was heading uphill, and I s.h.i.+fted gears to accommodate the engine's braying. Not like Gobi, not like the Great Southwestern Desert, I mused. Just red, just dead . . . without even a cactus.

I reached the crest of the hill, but I had raised too much dust to see what was ahead. It didn't matter, though; I have a head full of maps. I bore to the left and downhill, adjusting the throttle. A cross-wind and solid ground beat down the fires. I felt like Ulysses in Mele- bolge-with a terza-rima speech in one hand and an eye out for Dante.

I rounded a rock paG.o.da and arrived.

Betty waved as I crunched to a halt, then jumped down.

Hi," I choked, unwinding my scarf and shaking out a pound and a half of grit. "Like, where do I go and who do I see?"

173.