Authors: Theodore Sturgeon
“Could be,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll tell you, hon—I like women. Without question there’s a woman somewhere on earth that will make me go pitty-pat, quit drinking, write nothing but happy endings, and eat what’s given to me instead of what I want. Maybe I’ve
already met her and don’t realize it. But one thing I’m sure of is that you’re not that woman.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The same thing that makes you sure of it. You had a momentary lapse, it seems, but—come now; do you love me?”
“I wish Manuel would get here.”
“Isn’t that irrelevant?
“No.”
Then the coffee boiled over and the thread was lost.
They talked about Dran’s book until Manuel arrived. The book was a strange one—one of those which captivates or infuriates, with no reader-reactions between the extremes. There were probably far more people who were annoyed by it than not, “which,” said Dran, “is one of the few things the book has in common with its author.”
“That remark,” laughed Vaughn, “is the first you have made which sounded the way your picture in the
Literary Review
looked. It was awful. The decadent dilettante—the bored and viceful youth.”
“It sells books,” he said. “It’s the only male answer to the busty book-jacket, or breast seller. I call it my frontispiece pose; separate but uplifted.”
“And doubly false,” snapped Vaughn. When he had quieted, she said, “but the book, Dran. There was one thing in there really worth mentioning—between us. The thing the critics liked the least.”
“Oh—the dancer? Yes—they all said she was always present, never seen. Too little character for such a big influence.”
“That’s what I meant,” said Vaughn. “I know and you know—and Manuel? We’ll ask him—that the dancer wasn’t a person at all, but an omnipresent idea, a pressure. Right?”
“Something like that cosmic search theme that keeps pushing you around in your work,” he agreed. “I wonder what Manuel’s counterpart is. It would have to be something he’d turn on a lathe.”
Vaughn smiled. And then there was a heavy tread on the porch, the front door flew open, and the room was full of Manuel. “Hi, Dran. Where’s the runt? Come out from under the furniture, you
little—oh. There you are. Holy cow,” he bellowed. “Holy sufferin’ sepoys! You’ve shrunk!”
Dran threw up his hands. “Sepoys. Foreign background. Authentic touch.”
Vaughn came forward and put out a demure hand. “I haven’t shrunk, Manuel. It’s you. You’re thicker and wider than ever.”
He took her hand, squeezed it, apologized when she yelped, rubbed his knuckles into her scalp until she yelped again, and threw himself onto the divan. “Lord, it’s cold. Let’s get going. Do something about this New Year’s Eve and welcome home and stuff.”
“Can’t we just stay here and talk awhile?” asked Vaughn in rumpled petulance.
“What’s the matter, runt?” Manuel asked in sudden concern, for Vaughn’s eyes were filling.
Dran grinned. “I come in here, ice-cold and intellectual, and kiss the lass soundly. You come flying through the door, Lochinvar, shake hands with her and then proceed to roll her around like a puppy. Like the song says—try a little tenderness.”
“You be quiet!” Vaughn almost shouted.
“Oh, so that’s what you want.” He strode across to Vaughn, brushed aside her protecting arms, and kissed her carefully in the exact center of the forehead. “Consider yourself smootched,” he growled, “and we’ll have no more of this lollygagging. Vaughn, you’re acting like an abandoned woman.”
Vaughn laced her anger with laughter as she said, “Abandoned is right. Now wait while I get my coat.”
“I brought something back with me,” Manuel said.
They were at a corner table at Enrique’s, immersed in the privacy of noise, lights, and people. “What is it?” asked Vaughn. “Something special in costume jewelry?”
“Always want gilding, don’t you, lily? Yes, I have the usual cargo. But that’s not what I mean.”
“Quell your greed,” said Dran. “What is it, Manny?”
“It’s a …” He swizzled his drink. “It’s a machine. I don’t know what it is.”
“You don’t—but what does it do? What’s it made of?”
“Wire and a casting and a machined tube and ceramics, and I built it myself and I don’t know what it does.”
“I hate guessing games,” said Dran petulantly.
Vaughn touched his arm, “Leave him alone, Dran. Can’t you see he’s bothered about it?” She turned quickly to the Marine, stroked the ribbons on his chest. “Talk about something else if you want to. What are these for?” she asked solicitously.
Manuel looked down at the ribbons, then thumbed the catch and removed them. He dropped them into Vaughn’s hand. “For you,” he said, his eyes glinting. “As a reward for talking like a hot damned civilian. I won’t need ’em any more. My hitch is up; I’m out.”
“Why, Manuel?”
“It’s … I get—spells, sort of.” He said it as if he were confessing to leprosy or even body odor. “Trances, like. Nobody knows about it. I wanted to get out from under before the brass wised up.”
Vaughn, whose terror of “the ills our flesh is heir to” amounted to a neurosis, gasped and said, “Oh! What is it? Are you sick? What do you think it is? Don’t you think you ought to have an examination right away? Where does it hurt? Maybe it’s a—”
Dran put an arm around her shoulders and his other hand firmly over her mouth. “Go on, Manny.”
“Thanks, Dran. QRM, we call that kind of background noise in the Signal Corps. Shut up, short-change. About those spells … everything seems to sort of—recede, like. And then I work. I don’t know what I’m doing, but my hands do. That’s how I built this thing.”
“What sort of a thing is it?”
Manuel scratched his glossy head. “Not a gun, exactly, but something like it. Sort of a solenoid, with a winding like nothing you ever dreamed of, and a condenser set-up to trigger it.”
“A gun? What about projectiles?”
“I made some of those too. Hollow cylinders with a mechanical bursting arrangement.”
“Filled with what?”
“Filled with nothing. I don’t know what they’re supposed to hold. Something composed of small particles, or a powder, or something.
It wouldn’t be an explosive, because there’s this mechanical arrangement to scatter the stuff.”
“Fuse?”
“Time,” Manuel answered. “You can let her go now. I think she’s stopped.”
Dran said, “Manny, I’ve got the charge for your projectiles.” He raised his hand a fraction of an inch. Vaughn said, “Let me
go!
Dran, let me go! Manuel, maybe you ate too much of that foreign—”
Dran’s hand cut her off again.
Manuel said, “Like holding your hand over a faucet with a busted washer, isn’t it?”
“More like getting a short circuit in a Klaxon. Vaughn, stop wriggling! Go on, Manny. I might as well tell you, something like it has happened to me. But I’ll wait until you’ve finished. What about the fuse timing?”
“Acid vial. Double acting. There’s an impact shield that pops up when a shell is fired, and a rod to be eaten through which starts a watch-movement. That goes for eight days. As for the acid—it’d have to be something really special to chew through that rod. Even good old Aqua Regia would take months to get through it.”
“What acid are you using?”
Manuel shook his head. “That’s one of the things I don’t know,” he said unhappily. “That acid, and the charge, and most of all what the whole damned thing is for—those things I don’t know.”
“I think I’ve got your acid too,” said Dran, shifting his hand a little because Vaughn showed signs of coming up for air. “But where are your specifications? What’s the idea of making a rod so thick you can’t find an acid to eat through it?”
Manuel threw up his hands. “
I
don’t know, Dran. I know when it’s right, that’s all. I know before I rig my lathe or milling machine what I’m after.” His face darkened, and his soft voice took on a tone of fury. “I’m sick and tired of getting pushed around. I’m tired of feeling things I can’t put a name to. For the first time in my life I can’t whip something or get away from it.”
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“What
can
I do? Get out of the service, hole up somewhere, finish this work.”
“How do you know it won’t go on for the rest of your life?”
“I don’t know. But I know this. I know what I’ve done is done right, and that when it’s finished, that’ll be the end of it,” said Manuel positively. “Hey—you better turn her loose. The purple face goes great with the hair, but it’s beginning to turn black.”
Dran released Vaughn, and just then the bells began to ring.
“
Old one—”
The other turned on Torth. “Get out. Get out and leave me alone. Get out!”
Torth got
.
The bells.…
“Not now,” smiled Vaughn. “Not now. I’ll give you rascals the punishment you deserve next year sometime.” She reached out her arms, and they came close to her. She kissed Manuel, then Dran, and said, “Happy New Year, darlings.”
The bells were ringing, and the city spoke with a mighty voice, part hum, part roar, part whistle, part scream, all a unison of joy and hope.
“Should auld acHappy-Nooooo Yearzhz-z-zh-h-h …”
said the city, and Manuel pulled Vaughn closer (and Dran with her, because Dran was so close to her) and Manuel said, “This is it. This is right, the three of us. I quit. Whether I like it or not don’t matter. I got it and I’m stuck with it. I …”
EUDICHE!
No one said that. No one shouted it out, but for a split second there was a gasping silence in the club, in the floors above and the floors below, as three abstracts coalesced and a great subetheric emanation took place. It was more joyous than all the joy in the city, and a greater voice than that of all the other voices; and it left in a great wave and went rocketing out to the stars. And then someone started to sing again, and the old song shook the buildings
“… and never brought to mind …”
“
It’s done!” said the old one
.
Torth replied caustically. “I appreciate the news. You realize that not one of us on Titan could have missed that signal.”
“Eudiche has succeeded,” exulted the old one. “A new era for our race … on his next transmission we will start the emigration
.
“And you had doubts of Eudiche.”
“I did—I did. I admit it. But it is of no moment now—he has overcome his defection.”
“What is it, this defection?”
“Stop your ceaseless questions and leave me to my joy!
“Tell me that, decrepit one, and I shall go.”
“Very well, Eudiche was imbalanced. He suffered from an over-broadening of the extrapolative faculty. We call it empathy. It need not concern you. It is an alien concept and a strange disease indeed.”
Eudiche left, still in three parts, but now one. He stopped at the railroad station for a heavy foot-locker, and at a hotel for a large suitcase. And in the long ride in a taxi, Eudiche thought things out—not piecemeal, not single-mindedly in each single field, but with the magnificent interaction of a multiple mind.
“Is it certain that everything will fit together?” asked the mechanical factor.
“It certainly should. The motivation was the same, the drive was almost identical, and the ability in each case was of a high order,” said the intellectual.
The aesthetic was quiet, performing its function of matching and balancing.
The mechanical segment had a complimentary thought for the intellectual. “That spore chest is a mechanical miracle for this planet. Wasn’t it grueling, without a full mechanical aptitude to help?”
“The bipeds have wide resources. Once the design is clear, they can make almost anything. The spores themselves have started lines of research on molds, by the way, that will have far- reaching effects.”
“And good ones,” murmured the aesthetic. “Good ones.”
Far away from the city Eudiche paid the driver and the intellectual
told him to come back in the morning. And then Eudiche struck off through the icy fields, across a frozen brook, and up a starlit slope, carrying with him the spore case, the projector, and the projectiles.
It was cold and clear, and the stars competed with one another—and helped one another, too, the aesthetic pointed out: “… for every star which can’t outshine the others seems to get behind and help another one be bright.”
Eudiche worked swiftly and carefully and set up the projector. The spores were loaded into the projectiles, and the projectiles were primed with the acid and set into the gun.
The aesthetic stood apart with the stars, while the mechanical and the intellectual of Eudiche checked the orbital computations and trained the projector. It was exacting work, but there was not a single wasted motion.
The triggering was left to charge for a while, and Eudiche rested. The aesthetic put a hand to the projector—that seeking hand, always, with her, a gesture of earnestness.
“Back to Titan, and may the race multiply and grow great,” she intoned. “Search the spaces between the stars and find Titan’s path; burst and scatter your blessings at his feet.”
The condensers drank and drank until they had their fill and a little over—
Phup!
It was like the popping of a cork. Far up, seemingly among the stars, there was a faint golden streak, gone instantly.
“Reload,” said the intellectual
Two worked; the third, by her presence, guided and balanced and added proportion to each thought, each directive effort. Eudiche waited, presently, for the projector to charge again. “Earth …” crooned the aesthetic. “Rich, wide, wonderful Earth, rich with true riches, rich in its demonstrations of waste … wealthy Earth, which can afford to squander thousands upon thousands of square miles in bleak hills on which nothing grows … wealthy Earth with its sea-sunk acres, its wandering rivers which curiously seek everything of interest, back and forth, back and backwards and seaward again, seeking in the flatlands. And for all its waste it produces magnificently,
and magnificently its products are used. Humans are its products, and through the eyes of humans are seen worlds beyond worlds … in the dreams of the dullest human are images unimaginable to other species. Through their eyes pour shapes and colors and a hungry hope that has no precedent in the cosmos.”