A reporter, tall, lean, experienced, rose to his feet and said drawlingly, “Has it occurred to TERPLAN just to leave this moon alone? To treat its culture as you would any other culture, respecting its values and customs?”
Haltingly, Mary said, “We don’t know enough yet. Perhaps when we know more—” She broke off, floundering. “But it’s not a subculture,” she said. “It has no tradition. It’s a society of mentally ill individuals and their offspring that came into existence only twenty-five years ago… you can’t dignify that by comparing it with, say, the Ganymedean or Ionian cultures. What values could mentally ill people develop? And in such a short time.”
“But you said yourself,” the reporter purred, “that at this point you know nothing about them. For all you know—”
McRae, speaking into the microphone, said sharply, “If they’ve developed any kind of a stable, viable culture, we’ll leave them alone. But that determination is up to experts such as Dr. Rittersdorf, not to you or to me or the American public. Frankly, we feel there’s nothing more potentially explosive than a society in which psychotics dominate, define the values, control the means of communication. Almost anything you want to name can come out of it—a new, fanatical religious cult, a paranoiac nationalistic state-concept, barbaric destructiveness of a manic sort—these possibilities alone justify our investigation of Alpha III M2. This project is in defense of our own lives and values.”
The homeopape reporters were silent, evidently convinced by what McRae had said. And certainly Mary agreed.
Later, as she and McRae left the room, Mary said, “Was that actually the reason?”
Glancing at her McRae said, “You mean, are we going into Alpha III M2 because we fear the consequences to us of a mentally deranged social enclave, because a deranged society, as such, makes us uneasy? I think either reason is sufficient; certainly for you it ought to be.”
“I’m not supposed to ask?” She stared at the young cleancut TERPLAN official. “I’m just supposed to—”
“You’re supposed to do your therapeutic task and that’s it. I don’t tell you how to cure sick people; why should you tell me how to handle a political situation?” He faced her coolly. “However I’ll give you one further purpose for Operation Fifty-minutes that you might not have thought of. It’s entirely possible that in twenty-five years a society of mentally ill people may have come up with technological ideas we can use, especially the manics—that most active class.” He pressed the elevator button. “I understand they’re inventive. As are the paranoids.”
Mary said, “Does this explain why Terra hasn’t sent anyone in there sooner? You wanted to see how their ideas developed?”
Smiling, McRae waited for the elevator; he did not answer. He looked, she decided, absolutely sure of himself. And that, as far as the knowledge of psychotics went, was a mistake. Possibly a grave one.
It was almost an hour later, as she was returning to her house in Marin County to resume packing her things, that she realized the basic contradiction in the government’s position. First, they were probing into the culture of Alpha III M2 because they feared it might be lethal, and then they were probing to see if it had developed something of use. Almost a century ago Freud had showed how spurious such double logic was; in actual fact each proposition canceled the other. The government simply could not have it both ways.
Psychoanalysis had shown that generally, when two mutually contradicting reasons for an act were given, the genuine underlying motive was neither, was a third drive which the person—or in this case a body of governing officials—was unaware of.
She wondered what, in this case, the real motive was.
In any event the project for which she had volunteered her services no longer seemed so idealistic, so free of ulterior purpose.
Whatever the government’s actual motive, she had one clear intuition about it: the motive was a good, hard, selfish one.
And, in addition, she had one more intuition.
She would probably never know what that motive was.
She was absorbed in the task of packing her drawerful of sweaters when all at once she realized that she was no longer alone. Two men stood in the doorway; swiftly she turned, hopped to her feet.
“Where is Mr. Rittersdorf?” the older man said. He held out a flat black ID packet; the two men, she saw, were from her husband’s office, from the San Francisco branch of the CIA.
“He moved out,” she said. “I’ll give you his address.”
“We got a tip,” the older man said, “from an unidentified informant, that your husband might be planning suicide.”
“He always is,” she said as she wrote down the address of the miserable hovel in which Chuck now lived. “I wouldn’t worry about him; he’s chronically ill but never quite dead.”
The older CIA man regarded her with bleak hostility. “I understand you and Mr. Rittersdorf are separating.”
“That’s right. If it’s any of your business.” She gave him a brief, professional smile. “Now, may I continue packing?”
“Our office,” the CIA man said, “tends to extend a certain protection to its employees. If your husband turns up a suicide there’ll be an investigation—to determine to what extent you’re involved.” He added, “And in view of your status as marital counselor, it might prove embarrassing, don’t you agree?”
After a pause Mary said, “Yes, I suppose so.”
The younger crew-cut CIA man said, “Just consider this an informal warning. Go slow, Mrs. Rittersdorf; don’t put the pressure on your husband. You understand?” His eyes were lifeless, frigid.
She nodded. And shivered.
“Meanwhile,” the older man said, “if he should show up here, have him call in. He’s on a three-day leave of absence but we’d like to talk to him.” Both men moved from the room, to the front door of the house.
She returned to her packing, gasping in relief, now that the two CIA men had gone.
The CIA isn’t going to tell me what to do, she said to herself. I’ll say anything I want to my husband, do anything I want. They’re not going to protect you, Chuck, she said to herself as she packed sweater after sweater, pressing them down savagely into the suitcase. In fact, she said to herself, it’s going to be worse on you because you involved them; so be prepared.
Laughing, she thought, You poor frightened snink. Thinking you had a good idea in intimidating me by sending your co-workers around. You may be frightened of them, but I’m not. They’re just stupid, fat-headed cops.
As she packed she toyed with the idea of calling her attorney to tell him of the CIA’s pressure-tactics. No, she decided, I won’t do that now; I’ll wait until the divorce action comes up before Judge Brizzolara. And then I’ll give that as evidence; it’ll show the sort of life I’ve been forced to lead, married to such a man. Exposed to police harassment, constantly. And, in helping find him a job, propositioned.
Gleefully she placed the last sweater in the suitcase, closed it, and with a rapid turn of her fingers, locked it tight.
Poor Chuck, she said to herself, you don’t stand a chance, once I get you into court. You’ll never know what hit you; you’ll be paying out for the rest of your life. As long as you live, darling, you’ll never really be free of me; it’ll always cost you something.
She began, with care, to fold her many dresses, packing them into the large trunk with the special hangers.
It will cost you, she said to herself, more than you can afford to pay.
FOUR
The girl in the doorway said in a soft, hesitant voice, “Um, I’m Joan Trieste. Lord Running Clam said you just moved in here.” Her eyes roved; she was looking past Chuck Rittersdorf at the apt. “You don’t have any of your things moved in yet, do you? Can I help? I can put up curtains and clean the shelves in the kitchen, if you want.”
Chuck said, “Thanks. But I’m okay.” It touched him that the slime mold had done this, rounded up this girl.
She was, he
decided, not even twenty; she wore her hair in one large massive braid down her back, and it was brown hair, without particular color, really just ordinary hair. And quite white, much too pale. And, it seemed to him, her neck was a trifle too long. She had no figure at all to speak of, although she was at least slender. Joan Trieste wore skin-tight dark pants and slippers and a cotton man’s-style shirt; as far as he could tell, she had on no bra, as fashion dictated, but her nipples were merely flat dark circles beneath the white cotton fabric of her shirt: she could not afford or did not care to have the currently-popular dilation operation. It came to him then that she was poor. Possibly a student.
“Lord Running Clam,” she explained, “is from Ganymede; he lives across the hall.” She smiled slightly; she had, he saw, very fine small even white teeth, quite regular, well-formed. Almost perfect, in fact.
“Yes,” Chuck said. “He flowed in here under the door an hour or so ago.” He added, “He said he was sending someone. Apparently he thought—”
“Did you really try to kill yourself?”
After a pause he shrugged. “The slime mold thought so.”
“You did. I can tell even now; I can see it about you.” She walked past him and into the apt. “I’m a—you know. A Psi.”
“What kind of Psi?” He left the hall door open, went to get his pack of Pall Malls to light up. “There’re all kinds. From those who can move mountains to those who can only—”
Joan broke in, “I have a very meager power, but look.” Turning, she raised the lapel of her shirt. “See my button? Bona fide member of Psi-men, Incorporated, of America.” She explained, “What I can do is, I can make time flow backward. In a limited area, say twelve by nine, about the size of your living room. Up to a period of five minutes.” She smiled, and once again he marveled at her teeth; they transformed her face, made it beautiful; as long as she smiled she was delightful to behold, and it seemed to Chuck that this told something about her. The quality of beauty arose from within; inside, she was lovely, and he realized that over the years, as she aged, it would gradually work its way outward, influence the surface. By the time she was thirty or thirty-five she would be radiant. Right now she was still a child.
“Is that a useful talent?” he asked.
“It has a limited use.” Perching on the arm of his archaic Danish-style sofa she stuck her fingers in the pockets of her tight pants and explained, “I work for the Ross Police Department; they rush me to bad traffic accidents and—you’ll laugh, but it really works—I turn time back to before the accident, or if I’m too late, if more than five minutes has gone by, sometimes instead I can bring back a person who’s just died. See?”
“I see,” he said.
“It doesn’t pay much. And worse than that, I have to be on call twenty-four hours of the day. They notify me at my conapt and I go by high-speed jet hopper to the spot. See?” She turned her head, pointed to her right ear; he saw a small stubby cylinder embedded in her ear and realized that it was a police receiver. “I’m always tuned in. That means I can’t be more than a few seconds run from transportation, of course; I can go to restaurants and theaters and other people’s houses, but—”
“Well,” he said, “maybe you can save my life sometime.” He thought, If I had jumped you could have forced me back into existence again. What a great service.…
“I’ve saved many lives.” Joan held out her hand. “May I have a cigarette, too?”
He gave her one, lit it, feeling—as usual—guilty of his lapse.
“What do you do?” Joan asked.
With reluctance—not because it was classified but because it held so low a status in the ladder of public esteem—he described his job with the CIA. Joan Trieste listened intently.
“Then you help keep our government from falling,” she said, with a smile of delight. “How wonderful!”
Charmed, he said, “Thanks.”
“But you do! Just think—right this moment hundreds of simulacra all over the Communist world are saying your words, halting people at street corners and in jungles…” Her eyes shone. “And all I do is help the Ross Police Department.”
“There’s a law,” Chuck said, “which I call Rittersdorf’s Third Law of Diminished Returns, which states that proportional to how long you hold a job you imagine that it has progressively less and less importance in the scheme of things.” He smiled back at her; the glow in her eyes, the sparkle of white teeth, made smiling easy. He was beginning to forget his burdening, despairing mood of a short while ago.
Joan roamed about the conapt. “Are you going to move a lot of personal things in? Or are you going to live just like this? I’ll help decorate it for you, and Lord Running Clam will, too, to the extent he can. And down the hall there’s a molten metal life form from Jupiter called Edgar; he’s hibernating these days, but when he comes back to life he’ll want to pitch in. And in the apt to your left there’s a wiz-bird from Mars; you know, with the multicolored headdress… it has no hands but it can move objects by psychokinesis; it’ll want to help, except that for today it’s hatching; it’s on an egg.”
“God,” Chuck said. “What a polygenetic building.” He was a little stunned to hear all this.
“And,” Joan said, “on the floor below you is a greebsloth from Callisto; it’s all wound around a three-way floor lamp that’s standard equipment in these conapts… circa 1960. It’ll wake up as soon as the sun sets; then it goes out and shops for food. And you already met the slime mold.” She puffed vigorously—and a trifle inexpertly—on her cigarette. “I like this place; you meet all sorts of life forms. Before you a Venusian moss inhabited this apt. I saved its life once; it had dried out… they’ve got to keep moist, you know. In the end this climate here in Marin County was too dry for it; finally it moved north to Oregon where it rains all the time.” Turning, she halted and surveyed him. “You look like you’ve had a lot of trouble.”
“No real trouble. Just the imaginary kind. The avoidable kind.” He thought, Trouble that if I had used my head I never would have become involved with; I never would have married her.
“What’s your wife’s name?”
Startled, he said, “Mary.”
“Don’t kill yourself because you’ve left her,” Joan said. “In a few months or even weeks you’ll feel whole again. Now you feel like one half of an organism that’s split apart. Binary fission always hurts; I know because of a protoplasm that used to live here… it suffered every time it split, but it had to split, it had to grow.”
“I guess growth hurts.” Going to the picture window he once more looked down at the footer runnels and the wheels and jet hoppers below. He had come so close…
“This isn’t a bad place to live,” Joan said. “I know; I’ve lived a lot of places. Of course everybody in the Ross Police Department knows The Discarded Arms,” she added candidly. “There’s been a lot of trouble here, petty thefts, fights, even one homicide. It’s not a clean place… you can see that.”
“And yet—”
“And yet I believe you ought to stay. You’ll have company. Especially at night the non-T life forms that live here begin to circulate, as you’ll find out. And Lord Running Clam is a very good friend to have made; he’s helped a lot of people. Ganymedeans possess what St. Paul called caritas… and remember, Paul said caritas was the greatest of all the virtues.” She added, “The modern word for it would be empathy, I guess.”
The conapt door opened; Chuck turned instantly. And saw two men whom he knew quite well. His boss, Jack Elwood and his co-worker in script-writing, Pete Petri. At the sight of him both men looked relieved.
“Darn it,” Elwood said, “we thought we were too late. We stopped by your house, thinking you might be there.”
Joan Trieste said, speaking to Elwood, “I’m from the Ross Police Department. May I see your ID papers, please?” Her voice was cool.
Elwood and Petri showed her their CIA identification, briefly, then strolled over to Chuck. “What’s the
city police doing here?” Elwood asked.
“A friend,” Chuck said.
Elwood shrugged; obviously he did not intend to press for details. “Couldn’t you’ve found a better apt for yourself?” He surveyed the room. “This place literally smells.”
“It’s only temporary,” Chuck said, uncomfortably.
“Don’t deteriorate,” Pete Petri said. “And your leave; they canceled it. They think you ought to be at work. For your own good. You shouldn’t be alone where you can brood.” He eyed Joan Trieste, clearly wondering if she had interfered with a suicide attempt. No one, however, enlightened him. “So will you come back to the office with us? There’s a hell of a lot to do; you’ll be there all night, the way it looks.”
“Thanks,” Chuck said. “But I’ve got to start moving my things. I need to decorate this apt, to some extent anyhow.” He still wanted to be alone, as much as he appreciated their intentions. It was an instinct, to crawl away, to hide himself; it came from the blood.
To the two CIA men Joan Trieste said, “I can stay with him for a while, at least. Unless I get an emergency call. There’s usually one at around five o’clock, when the heavy commuter traffic starts. But until—”
“Listen,” Chuck said brusquely.
The three of them turned questioningly toward him.
“If someone wants to kill himself,” Chuck said, “you can’t stop him. Maybe you can delay it. Maybe a Psi like Joan here can drag him back. But even if he’s delayed he’ll do it, and even if he’s brought back he’ll find a way to do it again. So leave me alone.” He felt tired. “I’ve got a four o’clock appointment with my attorney—I’ve got many things to do. I can’t stand around talking.”
Looking at his watch Elwood said, “I’ll drive you to your lawyer’s. We can just make it.” He curtly motioned to Petri.
To Joan, Chuck said, “Maybe I’ll see you again. Sometime.” He felt too weary to care one way or another. “Thanks,” he said, vaguely; he did not know precisely what he was thanking her for.