“Can I get up?” Hamilton demanded, trying to climb to a sitting position. His head swam dizzily; all at once he was prone again, and gasping for breath. Bits of darkness danced and swirled around him; closing his eyes he waited apprehensively for them to pass.
“You’ll be weak for a time,” the doctor informed him. “Shock, and loss of blood.” He touched Hamilton’s arm. “You were pretty badly cut Torn metal, but we got the pieces out.”
“Who’s the worst off?” Hamilton asked, eyes shut.
“Arthur Silvester, the old soldier. He never lost consciousness, but I wish he had. Broken back, apparently. He’s down in surgery.”
“Brittle, I suppose,” Hamilton said, exploring his arm. It was done up in a vast white-plastic bandage.
“I was the least hurt,” Marsha said haltingly. “But I was knocked cold. I mean, the radiation did it. I fell right into the main beam; all I saw were sparks and lightning. They cut it right off, of course. It didn’t really last over a fraction of a second.” Plaintively, she added, “It seemed like a million years.”
The doctor, a neat-appearing young man, pushed the covers back and took Hamilton’s pulse. At the edge of the bed, a tall nurse hovered efficiently. Equipment was pulled up at Hamilton’s elbow. Things seemed to be under control.
Seemed . . . but something was wrong. He could feel it. Deep inside him, there was a nagging sense that something basic was out of phase.
“Marsha,” he said suddenly, “you feel it?”
Hesitantly, Marsha came over beside him. “Feel what, darling?”
“I don’t know. But it’s there.”
After an anxious, undecided moment, Marsha turned to the doctor. “I told you something’s the matter. Didn’t I say that when I came back?”
“Everybody coming out of shock has a sense of unreality,” the doctor informed her. “It’s a common feeling. After a day or so it should fade. Remember, both of you have been given sedative injections. And you’ve had a terrible ordeal; that was highly charged stuff that hit you.”
Neither Hamilton nor his wife spoke. They gazed at each other, each trying to read the expression on the other’s face.
“I guess we were lucky,” Hamilton said tentatively. His prayer of joy had faded to a doubtful uncertainty. What was it? The awareness was not rational; he couldn’t pin it down. Glancing around the room he saw nothing odd, nothing out of place.
“Very lucky,” the nurse put in. Proudly, as if she had been personally responsible.
“How long do I have to stay here?”
The doctor meditated. “You can go home tonight, I think. But you should be in bed a day or so. Both of you are going to need a lot of rest, the next week or so. I suggest a trained nurse.”
Hamilton said thoughtfully, “We can’t afford it”
“You’ll be covered, of course.” The doctor sounded offended. “The Federal Government manages this. If I were you, I’d spend my time worrying about getting back on my feet”
“Maybe I like it better this way,” Hamilton said tartly. He didn’t amplify; for a time he sank into somber reflections about his situation.
Accident or no accident, it hadn’t changed. Unless, while he lay unconscious, Colonel T. E. Edwards had died of a heart attack. It didn’t seem likely.
When the doctor and nurse had been persuaded to leave, Hamilton said to his wife, “Well, now we have an excuse. Something we can tell the neighbors, to explain why I’m not at work.”
Forlornly, Marsha nodded. “I forgot about that.”
“I’m going to have to find something that doesn’t involve classified material. Something that doesn’t bring in national defense.” Somberly, he reflected, “Like Einstein said, back in ‘54. Maybe I’ll be a plumber. Or a TV repairman; that’s more along my line.”
“Remember what you always wanted to do?” Perched on the edge of the bed, Marsha sat soberly examining her shortened, somewhat ragged hair. “You wanted to design new tape recorder circuits. And FM circuits. You wanted to be a big name in high fidelity, like Bogen and Thorens and Scott.”
“That’s right,” he agreed, with as much conviction as possible. “The Hamilton Trinaural Sound System. Remember the night we dreamed that up? Three cartridges, needles, amplifiers, speakers. Mounted in three rooms. A man in each room, listening to each rig. Each rig is playing a different composition.”
“One plays the Brahms double concerto,” Marsha put in, with feeble enthusiasm. “I remember that.”
“One plays the Stravinsky Wedding. And one plays Dowland music for the lute. Then the brains of the three men are removed and wired together by the core of the Hamilton Trinaural Sound System, the Hamilton Musiphonic Ortho-Circuit. The sensations of the three brains are mingled in a strict mathematical relationship, based on Planck’s Constant.” His arm had begun to throb; harshly, he finished: “The resultant combination is fed into a tape recorder and played back at 3:14 times the original speed.”
“And listened to on a crystal set.” Marsha bent quickly down and hugged him. “Darling, when I came around I thought you were a corpse. So help me—you looked like a corpse, all white and silent and not moving. I thought my heart would break.”
“I’m insured,” he said gravely. “You’d be rich.”
“I don’t want to be rich.” Rocking miserably back and forth, still hugging him, Marsha whispered: “Look what I’ve done to you. Because I’m bored and curious and fooling around with political freaks, you’ve lost your job and your future. I could kick myself. I should have known I couldn’t sign the Stockholm Peace thing with you working on guided missiles. But whenever anybody hands me a petition, I always get carried away. The poor, downtrodden masses.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he told her shortly. “If this were back in 1943, you’d be normal and McFeyffe would be out of a job. As a dangerous fascist.”
“He is,” Marsha said fervently. “He is a dangerous fascist”
Hamilton shoved the woman away from him. “McFeyffe is a rabid patriot and a reactionary. But that doesn’t make him a fascist. Unless you believe that anybody who isn’t—”
“Let’s not talk about it,” Marsha broke in. “You’re not supposed to thrash around—right?” Intensely, feverishly, she kissed him on the mouth. “Wait until you’re home.”
As she moved away, he grabbed hold of her by the shoulder. “What is it? What’s gone wrong?”
Numbly, she shook her head. “I can’t tell. I can’t figure it out. Since I came around, it always seems to be just behind me. I’ve felt it. As if—” She gestured. “I expect to turn around and see—I don’t know what. Something hiding. Something awful” She shivered apprehensively. “It scares me.”
“It scares me too.”
“Maybe well find out,” Marsha said faintly. “Maybe it isn’t anything … just the shock and the sedatives, like the doctor said.”
Hamilton didn’t believe it. And neither did she.
* * * * *
They were driven home by a staff physician, along with the severe young businesswoman. She, too, wore a plain hospital smock. The three of them sat quietly in the back seat, as the Packard jitney made its way along the dark streets of Belmont.
“They think I’ve got a couple of cracked ribs,” the woman told them dispassionately. Presently, she added, “My name’s Joan Reiss. I’ve seen both of you before … you’ve been in my store.”
“What store is that?” Hamilton asked, after he had sketchily introduced himself and his wife.
“The book and art supply shop on El Camino. Last August you bought a Skira folio of Chagall.”
“That’s so,” Marsha admitted. “It was Jack’s birthday … we put them up on the wall. Downstairs, in the audiophile room.”
“The cellar,” Hamilton explained.
“There was one thing,” Marsha said suddenly, her fingers digging convulsively into her purse. “Did you notice the doctor?”
“Notice?” He was puzzled. “No, not
particularly.”
“That’s what I mean. He was just sort of—well, a blob. Like doctors you see in toothpaste ads.”
Joan Reiss was listening intently. “What’s this?”
“Nothing,” Hamilton told her shortly. “A private conversation.”
“And the nurse. She was the same, a sort of composite. Like all the nurses you ever saw.”
Pondering, Hamilton gazed out the car window at the night. “It’s the result of mass communication,” he conjectured. “People model themselves after ads. Don’t they, Miss Reiss?”
Miss Reiss said, “I wanted to ask you something. There was something I noticed that made me wonder.”
“What’s that?” Hamilton asked suspiciously; Miss Reiss couldn’t possibly know what they were talking about.
“The policeman on the platform … just before it collapsed. Why was he there?”
“He came with us,” Hamilton said, annoyed.
Miss Reiss eyed him intently. “Did he? I thought perhaps …” Her voice trailed off vaguely. “It seemed to me that he turned and started back just before it fell.”
“He did,” Hamilton agreed. “He felt it going. So did I, but I hurried the other way.”
“You mean you deliberately came back? When you could have saved yourself?”
“My wife,” Hamilton told her testily.
Miss Reiss nodded, apparently satisfied. “I’m sorry … all this shock and strain. We were fortunate. Some weren’t. Isn’t it odd: some of us got out with almost no injuries, and that poor soldier, Mr. Silvester, with a broken back. It makes you wonder.”
“I meant to tell you,” the physician driving the car spoke up. “Arthur Silvester doesn’t have a broken spinal column. It seems to be a chipped vertebra and a damaged spleen.”
“Great,” Hamilton muttered. “What about the guide? Nobody’s mentioned him.”
“Some internal injuries,” the physician answered. “They haven’t released the diagnosis yet.”
“Is he waiting out in the supply shack?” Marsha asked.
The doctor laughed. “You mean Bill Laws? He was the first one they carted out; he’s got friends on the staff.”
“And another thing,” Marsha said abruptly. “Considering how far we fell and all that radiation—none of us was really hurt. Here the three of us are running around again as if nothing had happened. It’s unreal. It was too easy.”
Exasperated, Hamilton said, “We probably fell into a bunch of safety gadgets. Goddam it—”
There was more he wanted to say, but he never got it out. At that moment, a stark, fierce pain lashed up his right leg. With a yell, he leaped up, banging his head on the roof of the car. Pawing frantically, he yanked up his trouser leg in time to see a small, winged creature scuttle off.
“What is it?” Marsha demand anxiously. And then she, too, saw it. “A bee!”
Furiously, Hamilton stepped on the bee, grinding it under his shoe. “It stung me. Right on the calf.” Already, an ugly red swelling was taking shape. “Haven’t I had enough trouble?”
The physician had pulled the car quickly to the side of the road. “You killed it? Those things get in while the car’s parked. I’m sorry—will you be all right? I have some salve we can put on it.”
“Ill live,” Hamilton muttered, gingerly massaging the welt. “A bee. As if we hadn’t had enough trouble for one day.”
“We’ll be home, soon,” Marsha said soothingly, peering out the car window. “Miss Reiss, come on in and have a drink with us.”
“Well,” Miss Reiss equivocated, plucking at her lip with a thin, bony finger, “I could use a cup of coffee. If you can spare it”
“We certainly can,” Marsha said quickly. “We ought to stick together, all eight of us. We’ve had such an awful experience.”
“Let’s hope it’s over,” Miss Reiss said uneasily.
“Amen to that,” Hamilton added. A moment later, the car pulled up to the curb and halted: they were home.
* * * * *
“What a nice little place you have,” Miss Reiss commented as they clambered from the car. In the evening twilight, the modern two-bedroom California ranch-style house sat quietly waiting for them to ascend the path to the front porch. And sitting on the porch, also waiting, was a large yellow tomcat, his paws tucked under his bosom.
There’s Jack’s cat,” Marsha said, fishing in her purse for her key. “He wants to be fed.” To the cat she instructed, “Go on inside, Ninny Numbcat. You don’t get fed out here.”
“What a quaint name,” Miss Reiss observed, with a touch of aversion. “Why do you call him that?”
“Because he’s stupid,” Hamilton answered briefly.
“Jack has names like that for all his cats,” Marsha explained. “The last one was called Parnassus Nump.”
The big, disreputable-looking tomcat had got to his feet and jumped down onto the walk. Sidling up to Hamilton, he rubbed loudly against his leg. Miss Reiss retreated with overt distaste. “I never could get used to cats,” she revealed. “They’re so sneaky and underhanded.”
Normally, Hamilton would have delivered a short sermon on stereotypy. But at the moment, he didn’t particularly care what Miss Reiss thought about cats. Sticking his key in the lock, he pushed open the front door and clicked on the living room lights. The bright little house flooded into being, and the ladies entered. After them came Ninny Numbcat, heading straight for the kitchen, his ragged tail stuck up like a yellow ramrod.
Still in her hospital smock, Marsha opened the refrigerator and got out a green plastic bowl of boiled beef hearts. As she cut up the meat and dropped the pieces to the cat, she commented: “Most electronics geniuses have mechanical pets—those phototropic moths and the like, things that go running and bumping around. Jack built one when we were first married, one that caught mice and flies. But that wasn’t good enough; he had to build another that caught it.”
“Cosmic justice,” Hamilton said, taking off his hat and coat. “I didn’t want them to populate the world.”
While Ninny Numbcat greedily finished his dinner, Marsha went into the bedroom to change. Miss Reiss prowled around the living room, expertly inspecting the vases, prints, furnishings.
“Cats have no souls,” Hamilton said morbidly, watching his tomcat avidly feed. “The most majestic cat in the universe would balance a carrot on his head for a bite of pork liver.”
“They’re animals,” Miss Reiss acknowledged from the living room. “Did you get this Paul Klee print from us?”
“Probably.”
“I’ve never been able to decide what Klee is trying to say.” “Maybe he’s not trying to say anything. Maybe he’s just having a good time.” Hamilton’s arm had begun to ache; he wondered how it looked under the bandage. “You say you want coffee?”
“Coffee—and strong,” Miss Reiss corroborated. “Can I help you fix it?”
“Just make yourself comfortable.” Mechanically, Hamilton reached around for the Silex. “The soft-cover edition of Toynbee’s History is stuffed in the magazine rack, there by the couch.”
“Darling,” Marsha’s voice came from the bedroom, sharp and urgent “Could you come here?”
He did so, the Silex in his hand, sloshing water as he hurried. Marsha stood at the bedroom window, about to pull down the shade. She was gazing out at the night, a taut, worried frown wrinkling her forehead. “What’s the matter?” Hamilton demanded.
“Look out there.”
He looked, but all he saw was a vague blur of gloom, and the indistinct outline of houses. A few lights glowed weakly here and there. The sky was overcast, a low ceiling of fog that drifted silently around the roof tops. Nothing moved. There was no life, no activity. No presence of people.
“It’s like the Middle Ages,” Marsha said quietly.
Why did it look that way? He could see it, too; but objectively the scene was prosaic, the usual sight from his bedroom window at nine-thirty on a cold October night.
“
And we’ve been talking that way,” Marsha said, shivering. “You said something about Ninny’s soul. You didn’t talk like that before.”
“Before what?”
“Before we came here.” Turning from the window, she reached for her checkered shirt: it hung over the back of a chair. “And—this is silly, of course. But did you really see the doctor’s car drive off? Did you say good-by? Did anything happen?”
“Well, he’s gone,” Hamilton pointed out noncommittally.
Eyes large and serious, Marsha buttoned her shirt and stuffed the tails into her slacks. “I guess I’m delirious, like they said. The shock, the drugs … but it’s all so quiet. As if we’re the only people alive. Living in a gray bucket, no lights, no colors, just sort of a—primordial place. Remember the old religions? Before the cosmos came chaos. Before the land was separated from the water. Before the darkness was separated from the light. And things didn’t have any names.”
“Ninny has his name,” Hamilton pointed out gently. “So do you; so does Miss Reiss. And so does Paul Klee.”
Together, they returned to the kitchen. Marsha took over the job of fixing coffee; in a few moments the Silex bubbled furiously. Sitting stiffly upright at the kitchen table, Miss Reiss had a pinched, strained look; her severe, colorless face was set in rigid concentration, as if she were deep in turmoil. She was a plain determined-looking young woman, with a tight bun of mousy, sand-colored hair pulled against her skull. Her nose was thin and sharp; her lips were pressed into an uncompromising line. Miss Reiss looked like a woman with whom it was better not to trifle.
“What were you saying in there?” she asked as she stirred her cup of coffee.
Annoyed, Hamilton answered, “We were discussing a personal situation. Why?”
“Now, darling,” Marsha reproved.
Bluntly facing Miss Reiss, Hamilton demanded, “Are you always this way? Snooping around, prying into things?”
There was no emotion visible on the woman’s pinched face. “I have to be careful,” she explained. “This accident today has made me especially conscious of the jeopardy I’m in.” Correcting herself, she added, “So-called accident, I mean.”