you're all mixed up. You don't know--" Hank faltered, butwithout conviction of any sort.
"Just test him," Effie repeated with utter confidence, ignoring--noteven noticing--Patrick's warning nudge.
"All right," Hank mumbled. He looked at the stranger dully. "Can youcount?" he asked.
Patrick's face was a complete enigma. Then he suddenly spoke, and hisvoice was like a fencer's foil--light, bright, alert, constantlyplaying, yet utterly on guard.
"Can I count? Do you take me for a complete simpleton, man? Of course Ican count!"
"Then count yourself," Hank said, barely indicating the table.
"Count myself, should I?" the other retorted with a quick facetiouslaugh. "Is this a kindergarten? But if you want me to, I'm willing." Hisvoice was rapid. "I've two arms, and two legs, that's four. And tenfingers and ten toes--you'll take my word for them?--that's twenty-four.A head, twenty-five. And two eyes and a nose and a mouth--"
"With this, I mean," Hank said heavily, advanced to the table, picked upthe Geiger counter, switched it on, and handed it across the table tothe other man.
But while it was still an arm's length from Patrick, the clicks began tomount furiously, until they were like the chatter of a pigmy machinegun. Abruptly the clicks slowed, but that was only the counter shiftingto a new scaling circuit, in which each click stood for 512 of the oldones.
* * * * *
With those horrid, rattling little volleys, fear cascaded into the roomand filled it, smashing like so much colored glass all the brightbarriers of words Effie had raised against it. For no dreams can standagainst the Geiger counter, the Twentieth Century's mouthpiece ofultimate truth. It was as if the dust and all the terrors of the dusthad incarnated themselves in one dread invading shape that said in wordsstronger than audible speech, "Those were illusions, whistles in thedark. This is reality, the dreary, pitiless reality of the BurrowingYears."
Hank scuttled back to the wall. Through chattering teeth he babbled,"... enough radioactives ... kill a thousand men ... freak ... afreak ..." In his agitation he forgot for a moment to inhale throughthe respirator.
Even Effie--taken off guard, all the fears that had been drilled intoher twanging like piano wires--shrank from the skeletal-seeming shapebeside her, held herself to it only by desperation.
Patrick did it for her. He disengaged her arm and stepped briskly away.Then he whirled on them, smiling sardonically, and started to speak, butinstead looked with distaste at the chattering Geiger counter he heldbetween fingers and thumb.
"Have we listened to this racket long enough?" he asked.
Without waiting for an answer, he put down the instrument on the table.The cat hurried over to it curiously and the clicks began again tomount in a minor crescendo. Effie lunged for it frantically, switched itoff, darted back.
"That's right," Patrick said with another chilling smile. "You do wellto cringe, for I'm death itself. Even in death I could kill you, like asnake." And with that his voice took on the tones of a circus barker."Yes, I'm a freak, as the gentleman so wisely said. That's what onedoctor who dared talk with me for a minute told me before he kicked meout. He couldn't tell me why, but somehow the dust doesn't kill me.Because I'm a freak, you see, just like the men who ate nails and walkedon fire and ate arsenic and stuck themselves through with pins. Stepright up, ladies and gentlemen--only not too close!--and examine the manthe dust can't harm. Rappaccini's child, brought up to date; hisembrace, death!
"And now," he said, breathing heavily, "I'll get out and leave you inyour damned lead cave."
He started toward the window. Hank's gun followed him shakingly.
"Wait!" Effie called in an agonized voice. He obeyed. She continuedfalteringly, "When we were together earlier, you didn't act as if ..."
"When we were together earlier, I wanted what I wanted," he snarled ather. "You don't suppose I'm a bloody saint, do you?"
"And all the beautiful things you told me?"
"That," he said cruelly, "is just a line I've found that women fall for.They're all so bored and so starved for beauty--as _they_ generally putit."
"Even the garden?" Her question was barely audible through the sobs thatthreatened to suffocate her.
He looked at her and perhaps his expression softened just a trifle.
"What's outside," he said flatly, "is just a little worse than either ofyou can imagine." He tapped his temple. "The garden's all here."
"You've killed it," she wept. "You've killed it in me. You've bothkilled everything that's beautiful. But you're worse," she screamed atPatrick, "because he only killed beauty once, but you brought it to lifejust so you could kill it again. Oh, I can't stand it! I won't standit!" And she began to scream.
Patrick started toward her, but she broke off and whirled away from himto the window, her eyes crazy.
"You've been lying to us," she cried. "The garden's there. I know it is.But you don't want to share it with anyone."
"No, no, Euphemia," Patrick protested anxiously. "It's hell out there,believe me. I wouldn't lie to you about it."
"Wouldn't lie to me!" she mocked. "Are you afraid, too?"
With a sudden pull, she jerked open the window and stood before theblank green-tinged oblong of darkness that seemed to press into the roomlike a menacing, heavy, wind-urged curtain.
At that Hank cried out a shocked, pleading, "Effie!"
She ignored him. "I can't be cooped up here any longer," she said. "AndI won't, now that I know. I'm going to the garden."
Both men sprang at her, but they were too late. She leaped lightly tothe sill, and by the time they had flung themselves against it, herfootsteps were already hurrying off into the darkness.
"Effie, come back! Come back!" Hank shouted after her desperately, nolonger thinking to cringe from the man beside him, or how the gun waspointed. "I love you, Effie. Come back!"
Patrick added his voice. "Come back, Euphemia. You'll be safe if youcome back right away. Come back to your home."
No answer to that at all.
They both strained their eyes through the greenish murk. They couldbarely make out a shadowy figure about half a block down the near-blackcanyon of the dismal, dust-blown street, into which the greenishmoonlight hardly reached. It seemed to them that the figure was scoopingsomething up from the pavement and letting it sift down along its armsand over its bosom.
"Go out and get her, man," Patrick urged the other. "For if I go out forher, I warn you I won't bring her back. She said something about havingstood the dust better than most, and that's enough for me."
But Hank, chained by his painfully learned habits and by something else,could not move.
And then a ghostly voice came whispering down the street, chanting,"Fire can hurt me, or water, or the weight of Earth. But the dust is myfriend."
Patrick spared the other man one more look. Then, without a word, hevaulted up and ran off.
Hank stood there. After perhaps a half minute he remembered to close hismouth when he inhaled. Finally he was sure the street was empty. As hestarted to close the window, there was a little _mew_.
He picked up the cat and gently put it outside. Then he did close thewindow, and the shutters, and bolted them, and took up the Geigercounter, and mechanically began to count himself.
--FRITZ LEIBER
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ April 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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