American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (85 page)

“He went right out in public again. Just to prove he hadn’t lost his nerve.”

“It looks that way. He stirred up a mild fuss—people turning around to look at him, and a few people pointing. That was all there was to that. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t ignore. Of course, he hasn’t looked for a place to stay yet, either. I’d say he was feeling a little lost right now. The next report’s due within the next half hour—sooner if something drastic happens. We’ll see. We’re checking out the luncheonette.”

Finchley looked up from his chair. “You know this whole business stinks, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Rogers frowned. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“You saw him on the plane. He was dying by inches, and it never showed. He put himself up in front of sixty-odd people and rubbed their faces in what he was, just to prove to himself and to us, and to them, too, that he wasn’t going to crawl into a hole. He fooled them, and he fooled us. He looks like nothing that ever walked this earth, and he proved he was as good a man as any of us.”

“We knew that all along.”

“And then, just when he’d done it, the world came up and hit him too hard. He saw himself being spread all over the whole Allied world in full-page color, and he saw himself being branded a freak for good and all. Well, who hasn’t been hit too hard to stand? It’s happened to me in my life, and I guess it’s happened to you.”

“I imagine it has.”

“But he got up from it. He put himself on the sidewalk for everybody in New York to look at, and he got away with it. He knew what being hit felt like, and he went back for more. That’s a man, Rogers—God damn it, that’s a man!”

“What man?”

“Damn it, Rogers, give them a little time and the right chance, and there isn’t an ID the Soviets couldn’t fake! We don’t have a man they couldn’t replace with a ringer if they really wanted to. Nobody—nobody in this whole world—can prove who he is, but we’re expecting this one man to do it.”

“We have to. You can’t do anything about it. This one man has to prove who he is.”

“He could have just been put somewhere where he’d be harmless.”

Rogers stood up and walked over to the window. His fingers played with the blind cord. “No man is harmless anywhere in this world. He may sit and do nothing, but he’s there, and every other man has to solve the problem of who he is and what he’s thinking, because until that problem’s solved, that man is dangerous.

“The A.N.G. could have decided to put this man on a desert island, yes. And he might never have done anything. But the Soviets may have the K-Eighty-eight. And the real Martino might still be on their side of the line. By that much, this man on his desert island might be the most dangerous man in the world. And until we get evidence, that’s exactly what he is, and equally so no matter where he is. If we’re ever going to get evidence, it’s going to be here. If we don’t get it, then we’ll stay close enough to stop him if he turns out not to be our Martino. That’s the job, Finchley, and neither you nor I can get out of it. Neither of us’ll be old enough for retirement before he dies.”

“Look, damn it, Rogers, I know all that! I’m not trying to crawl out of the job. But we’ve been watching this man ever since he came back over the line. We’ve watched him, we’ve seen what he’s going through—damn it, it’s not going to make any difference in my work, but as far as I’m concerned—” “You think he’s Martino?”

Finchley stopped. “I don’t have any evidence for it.”

“But you can’t help thinking he’s Martino. Because he bleeds? Because he’d cry if he had tears? Because he’s afraid, and desperate, and knows he has no place to go?” Rogers’ hands jerked at the blind cord. “Don’t we all? Aren’t we all human beings?”

Young Lucas Martino turned away from the freshlycleaned table, holding four dirty cups and saucers in his left hand, each cup in its saucer the way Barbara had taught him, with two saucers held overlapping between his fingers and the other two sets stacked on top. He carried his wiping sponge in his right hand, ready to clean up any dirty spots on tables he passed on the way to the counter. He liked working this way— it was efficient, it wasted no time, and it made no real difference that there was plenty of time, now that the late afternoon rush was over.

He wondered what created these freak rushes, as he set the cups and saucers down in the basket under the counter, first flipping the spoons into a smaller tray. There was no overt reason why, on indeterminate days,
Espresso Maggiore
should suddenly become crowded at four o’clock. Logically, people ought to have been working, or looking forward to supper, or walking in the park on a beautiful day like this. But, instead, they came here—all of them at almost the same time—and for half an hour, the store was crowded. Now, at a quarter of five, it was empty again, and the chairs were once more set in order against the clean tables. But it had been a busy time—so busy, with only Barbara and himself on shift, that Carlo had waited on some tables himself.

He looked at the stacks of dirty cups in the basket. There was a strong possibility, it seemed to him, that most of the customers had ordered the same thing, as well. Not capuccino, for a change, but plain espresso, and that was curious, too, as though a majority of people in the neighborhood had felt a need for a stimulant, rather than something sweet to drink.

But they all did different things—some were tavern-keepers, some were their employees, some were artists, some were idlers, some were tourists. Were there days when everyone simply grew tired, no matter what they did? Lucas frowned to himself. He tried to recall if he’d ever felt anything of the sort in himself. But one case provided no conclusive evidence. He’d have to file it away and think about it—check back when it happened again.

He let the thought drift to the back of his mind as Barbara cleaned up the last of her tables and came to the counter. She smiled ruefully, shook her head, and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. “Whew! Be glad when this day’s over, Tedeschino?”

Lucas grinned. “Wait’ll the night rush.” He watched her bend to add her cups to the basket, and he blushed faintly as her uniform skirt tightened over her slight hips. He caught himself, and hastily pulled out the silverware tray to take into the small back room where the sink was.

“Night rush me no night rushes, Ted. Alice and Gloria’ll be here—it won’t be half as bad.” Barbara winked at him. “I bet you’ll be glad to see that Alice.”

“Alice? Why?” Alice was an intense, sharp-faced girl who barely paid attention to her work and none at all to either the customers or the people she worked with.

Barbara put the tip of her tongue in her cheek and looked down at the floor. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, pursing her lips. “But she was telling me just yesterday how much she liked you.”

Lucas frowned over that. “I didn’t know you and Alice talked to each other that much.” It didn’t sound like Alice at all. But he’d have to think about it. If it was true, it meant trouble. Getting involved with a girl where you worked never made sense—or so he’d heard, and he could plainly see the logic of it. Besides, he knew exactly what kind of girl he wanted for his present purposes. It couldn’t be anybody he’d fall in love with—Alice fit that part of it well enough—but she also had to be fairly easy, because his time was limited, and she had to live far enough away so he’d never see her during the ordinary course of the day, when he’d be working or studying. “You don’t like Alice, huh?”

“What makes you say that?” He kept his eyes off Barbara’s face.

“You got a look. Your eyes looked like you were thinking of something complicated, and your mouth got an expression that showed you didn’t like it.”

“You watch me pretty close, don’t you?”

“Maybe. All right, if Alice doesn’t suit, how about Gloria? Gloria’s pretty.”

“And not very bright.” His girl would at least have to be somebody he could talk to sometimes.

“Well. You don’t like Alice, you don’t like Gloria—who do you like? Got a girl tucked away somewhere? Going to take her out tomorrow? Tomorrow’s the big day to howl, you know. Monday.”

Lucas shrugged. He knew. For the past three Mondays, he’d been cruising the city. “No. I hadn’t even thought about the store being closed tomorrow, to tell you the truth.” 

“We got paid today, didn’t we? Don’t think
I
didn’t know it. Mmm, boy—big date tomorrow, and everything.”

Lucas felt his mouth twitch. “Steady boy?”

“Not yet. But he may be—he just may. Tell you what it is—he’s the nicest fellow I ever had take me out. Smooth, good dancer, polite, and grown up. A girl doesn’t meet very many fellows like that. When one comes along, she kind of gets taken up with him. But you wonder, sometimes, if you waited a little longer, maybe somebody nicer would come along—if you gave him a chance.” She looked squarely at Lucas. “I guess you can imagine how it is.”

“Yes—well, I guess I can.” He gnawed his upper lip, looking down, and then blurted out, “I have to wash these now.” He turned, carrying the silverware tray, and walked quickly into the back room. He spilled the silverware into the sink, slammed the hot water handle over, and stood staring down, his hands curled over the edge of the sink. But after a little while he felt better, even though he could not bring himself to ignore the thought of Barbara’s having a steady.

By all logic, Barbara was the wrong girl.

On that particular Monday, the weather held good. The sun shone down just warmly enough to make the streets comfortable, and the narrow Village sidewalks were crowded by the chairs that the old people sat on beside their front stoops, talking to each other and their old friends passing by. The younger men who did not have to go to work leaned against parked cars and sat on their fenders, and the Village girls walked by self-consciously. People brought their dogs out on the grass of Washington Square Park, and on the back streets there was laundry drying on the lines strung between fire escapes. The handball and tennis courts in the Parks Department enclosure were busy.

Lucas Martino came up to the street from his apartment a little past two-thirty, wearing a light shirt and trousers, and stepped into the midst of this life. He walked head-down to the subway station, not looking to either side, feeling restless and troubled. He hoped he’d find the right girl today, and at the same time he was nervous about how he’d approach her. He’d observed the manner in which the high school operators had handled the problem, and he was fairly confident of his ability to do as well. Furthermore, he had once or twice taken a girl to the movies, so he was not a complete novice at the particular social code that applied to girls and young men. But it was not a social partner he was looking for.

There was the matter of Barbara, as well, and it seemed that only self-discipline would be of any use there. He could not afford to become involved with any sort of long-term thing. He could not afford to leave a girl waiting while he went through all the years of training that were ahead of him. And after that, with this business in Asia last year, it looked very much as though, more than ever, any physical sciences specialist would go into government work. It meant a long time of living on a project base somewhere, with limited housing facilities and very little time for anything but work. He knew himself—once started working, he would plunge into it to the exclusion of everything else.

No, he thought, remembering his mother’s look when he told her he was going to New York. No, a man with people depending on him had no choice, often, but to hurt either them or himself—and many times, both. Barbara couldn’t be asked to place herself in a situation like that.

Besides, he reminded himself, that wasn’t what he was looking for now. That wasn’t what he needed.

He reached the subway station and took an uptown train to Columbus Circle, and not until he reached there did he raise his head and begin looking at girls.

He walked slowly into Central Park, moving in the general direction of Fifth Avenue. He walked a little self-consciously, sure that at least some of the people sitting on the benches must wonder what he was doing.

There were quite a few girls out in the park, mostly in pairs, and they paid him no attention. Most of them were walking toward the roller-skating rink, where he imagined they would have prearranged dates, or else were hoping to meet a pair of young men. He toyed with the notion of going down to the rink himself, but there was something so desperately purposeless in skating around and around in a circle to sticky organ music that he dropped the idea almost immediately. Instead, he cut up another path and skirted the bird sanctuary, without knowing what it was or what the high fence was for. When he suddenly saw a peacock step out into a glade, spreading its plumes like an unfolding dream, he stopped, entranced. He stood motionless for ten minutes before the bird walked away. Then he unhooked his fingers from the steel mesh and resumed his slow walk, still moving east.

The park was full of people in the clear sunshine. Every row of benches he passed was crowded, baby carriages jutting out into the path and small children trotting after the pigeons. Nursemaids sat talking together in white huddles, and old men read newspapers. Old women in black sat with their purses in their laps, looking out across the lake and working their empty fingers as though they were sewing.

There were a few girls out walking alone. He looked at them cautiously, out of the corners of his eyes, but there wasn’t one who looked right for him. He always turned his head to the side of the path and walked by them quickly, or else he stopped and looked carefully at his wristwatch while they passed him in the other direction.

He felt that the right kind of girl for him ought to have a look about her—a way of dressing, or walking, or looking around, that would be different from most girls’. It seemed logical to him that a girl who would let strange young men speak to her in the park would have a special kind of attitude, a mark of identification that he couldn’t describe but would certainly recognize. And, once or twice in his wanderings around the city, he had thought he’d found a girl like that. But when he walked closer to one of these girls, she was always chewing gum, or had thick orange lipstick, or in some other way gave him a peculiar feeling in the pit of the stomach that made him walk by her as quickly as he could without attracting attention.