Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume Two (4 page)

Eliot nodded. “Yeah. Except I wasn’t asleep. I saw it, down on the beach. I hadn’t gone home yet.”

No one moved or spoke. Mary paled, then she flushed crimson, and finally broke the silence with a sound that was meant to be a laugh but sounded more like a sob. She picked up her wine glass and choked on a swallow. Without looking at Eliot she said, “Well, if you saw what Lee and I dreamed, you must have had quite a show.”

“It wasn’t on the beach,” Ed Delizzio said hoarsely. “It was back by the ruins, between the fort and the tower. We had a fire, and a ceremony. Rites of some kind.” He stared ahead as if seeing it again. “I searched for ashes, for a scorched place. I got down on my knees the next morning and searched for a sign.… Nothing.”

Eliot looked at him curiously, wondering how he had missed noting the haggard appearance of the younger man. Ed’s eyes appeared sunken, haunted, as if there were only darkness before him that he was trying to pierce.

“It’s her fault,” Mary said softly. “I don’t know how or why, what she has done, anything. But I know she’s to blame. Night after night I wake up listening and I don’t know what for.”

“Hey, knock off talk like that,” Lee said, and while his voice was light, his hand that closed over hers on the table made her wince.

Mary looked at Lee and there was certainty on her face. Eliot stood up. “Is there coffee, Mary? I have an appointment with Pitcock later on. Can’t dawdle here all night.”

Lee looked relieved as Mary’s face relaxed and she smiled a genuine smile and stood up. “Sorry, Eliot. Pie? Cherry pie and coffee coming up.”

They all helped her clear the table and ate pie and drank coffee. Mary refilled the cups, then asked, “Are you quitting, Eliot? Is that why you have to see Mr. Pitcock?”

“Mary!” Lee looked at Eliot and shrugged eloquently. Eliot laughed.

“No, dear heart, I’m not quitting. In fact I might write a book for the old goat.”

Mary looked disappointed. “She thinks that if you’d just quit then the whole thing will fold and I won’t have to actually do anything,” Lee said.

“You really want to go, don’t you?” Eliot asked her.

“I was willing to stay, wasn’t I, Lee? I never mentioned leaving, did I? But now, after this week, I’m afraid and I don’t know why. I don’t like that.”

“Mary, relax. We were all together at dinner. Maybe the lobster was a little off. Or the wrong kind of mushroom in something or other. I mean, I was a lot more worried when I thought it was just me than I am now knowing that everyone experienced something like that.”

She studied his face for a long time, then nodded. “You could be right, Eliot. I guess it must have been something like that.”

Lee sighed, and even Ed seemed relieved. Soon after that Eliot left them and walked over to Pitcock’s house.

“I decided to do the book,” he said without preamble.

Pitcock was on the terrace alone. There was a touch of day­light remaining, enough to make the water look like flowing silver. “Would you mind telling me why you decided to do it?” Pitcock said after a moment.

“Mainly because I feel like there’s something trying its damned­est to keep me from doing it.” Eliot was surprised at his own words. He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t thought it consciously.

“I should warn you, Eliot, that it could be dangerous. Especially if you really feel that way.”

“Dangerous how? Psychologically?”

“Sometimes I forget how bright you are. Sit down, Eliot. Sit down. Have you had dinner?”

Eliot refused another dinner and left the old man on his terrace. They would talk the next day. All my life, he thought, always drifting, everything too easy, too meaningless to become involved with any of it. Like a cork on the stream, this way and that, touching reality now and then, then bobbing away again. Never mattered if I got waterlogged and sank, or if I kept on floating along. Just didn’t matter. Then that crazy old man pulled me into his madness, and now I don’t feel like I’m floating with the current at all. I’m bucking it and I don’t know why, or where I’m going, what I’ll find when I get there. And I don’t want to get out. I won’t get out, and it, that mysterious it that I feel now, it will get in my way, and maybe even try to hurt me… He laughed sud­denly, but his laughter was not harsh, or cynical, but light with amusement and wonder.

Sunday afternoon. “Some things I should tell you, Eliot. There’s a trust already set up, to continue this research. It’s your baby.”

“When did you do that?”

“Almost as soon as you came here I started making the arrangements. It doesn’t have to be here, you understand. You can move the operations if you want to.”

“And if I decide to quit, then what?”

“I would ask that you personally supervise finding the right man to carry on. I won’t issue directives, anything like that, if that’s what you mean. At your own discretion.”

Eliot stared at him coldly. “No ties, of any sort. What I want goes. If I change the direction, whatever.”

“Whatever.”

They stopped to listen. Loud voices from the next house, Ed’s house that he shared with Marty. Pitcock was staring toward the sound intently, not surprised, not startled.

Eliot left him and trotted along the boardwalk to Ed’s house. Marty was backing Ed up against the screened porch. There was a cut on Ed’s cheek. Marty’s fists were hanging at his sides and at that moment neither was speaking. Off to one side Donna was pressed against the door of the house, holding her hands over her mouth hard.

“Knock it off, you two. What in Christ’s name is going on?”

Neither of them paid any attention to Eliot. From nowhere a knife had appeared in Ed’s hand. “Okay, Marty, baby. Come on in and get it. Come on, baby. Come on.” Ed’s voice was low.

Marty hesitated, his eyes on the knife. Before he could move again Eliot jumped him, knocking him to the ground. He brought his knee up sharply under Marty’s chin, snapping his head back, then hit him hard just under the ribs. Marty gagged, doubled up gasping.

“Ed! Oh, Ed, he might have killed you! I thought he was going to kill you!” Donna ran to Ed and held him, sobbing.

Eliot watched, mystified. He helped Marty up, keeping a firm grasp on his arm. Marty had no fight left in him. He looked at Ed and Donna and from them to Eliot, his face twisted with contempt and hatred. Furiously he jerked loose from Eliot and turned away to go around the house, not speaking. A second later the front door slammed.

“Ed, come over to my house. You’re hurt! You’re bleeding. He was going to kill you!” Donna was tugging at Ed’s arm.

“Is anyone going to fill me in? What was that all about?”

Donna looked blank. “I don’t know. He went out of his mind. He started to scream and yell at me and I made him bring me back. Then he went at Ed. Over nothing. Nothing at all.”

Ed shrugged. The knife was gone. Eliot wondered if he had even seen a knife. “Damned if I know,” Ed said. He was breath­ing fast now, as if fighting off shock or fear. “He came at me call­ing me names like I haven’t heard since I left the Bronx.” Donna started to sob again and he put his arm about her shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “Hey. Don’t do that. It wasn’t your fault.” He led her toward her house.

“So,” Eliot told Pitcock later, “I tried to get something out of Marty. He was packing. He cursed me out and finished throwing his stuff into his suitcases, then left. Period.”

Beatrice had returned, was waiting with Pitcock. Neither seemed at all surprised. “It was bound to happen,” she said. “They were deadly rivals. That togetherness was too openly self-protective. Donna should have been twins.” She shivered. “I didn’t know Ed carried a knife out here. He’s an expert, you know. It’s in his file.”

Eliot walked home with her later; at her door he said, “Some­thing else, Beatrice. Something happened here last week, some­thing inexplicable that has affected us all. A mass hallucination, a mass dream. That’s all it was, a psychic event of some sort, not explained yet, but not real.”

They had been standing close together; she drew away. “Are you certain, Eliot? Absolutely certain? Anything strong enough to touch every one of us, change us somehow, must have some reality of its own.” Then she went inside.

They reorganized and rescheduled work on Monday. Without Marty at the computer there was much that would have to be postponed until they got a replacement. Donna and Ed smiled softly at each other and wandered off down the beach when it was lunchtime. Eliot watched and tried to see her as Marty must have seen here, as Ed obviously saw her. All he saw was the bulgy figure, sagging breasts in too-tight dresses, or halters. The thick legs and arms. Indentable flesh, skin that didn’t tan but looked mottled, with red highlights. Thursday night he had dinner with Beatrice on her porch. She lived next to Mary and Lee Moore. They had no lights on yet when they heard Mary calling to Beatrice in a muffled but urgent voice.

“Damn,” Beatrice said. She left Eliot. After a moment he followed her.

“…your friend. Just do something. I won’t have her crying on Lee’s shoulder. Take her home, or something.” Mary’s voice was too controlled, too tight.

“For heaven’s sake, Mary. Tell her to clear out. It’s your house. Where’s Ed?”

“He went for a walk, she said. I don’t know. All I know is that she’s in there crying on Lee’s shoulder and they won’t even hear me.”

She broke then, suddenly and completely. Eliot couldn’t see them, they were hidden by a fence of yellow oleanders, but he could hear her weeping and Beatrice’s voice trying to soothe her. He circled them and approached the house.

Donna was in Lee’s arms. He was holding her tightly, smoothing her dull hair. His eyes were closed. Their voices were too low to hear any of the words.

“Lee!” They didn’t move apart. Lee opened his eyes and stared at Eliot blankly. “Lee! Snap out of it!”

“They used her,” Lee said dully. “They both used her to get even with each other for some childish thing. They didn’t care what happened to her at all.”

Eliot took a step toward them, stopped again. “Lee, Mary’s hurt. She needs you now. She’s hurt, Lee.”

Lee’s face changed; slowly the life returned, then suddenly he looked like a man waking up. He dropped his arms from Donna and stepped around her without seeing her at all. “Mary? What’s wrong with Mary?”

“She’s out there. Beatrice found her. She needs you right now. By the oleanders.”

Lee ran out of the house. Donna stared after him, her face tear-streaked and ugly. She turned to Eliot. “I was frightened. Ed had a knife, he began to talk crazy, saying if I would repent now and die before I sinned again, my soul would be saved. I was so frightened. He wants to kill me.”

Eliot saw her hopelessness and despair, the overwhelming fear that had driven her to Lee for help. She was so agonizingly young and inexperienced, so susceptible. Her large eyes awash with tears that made eddies and shadows and revealed depths that he hadn’t suspected before, her body hidden now by adolescent fat that would dissolve and reveal a woman with a firm slim figure, protected until she was ready to find union with… He blinked and laughed raucously. “God, you’re good, doll!” He laughed again and now the tears were gone and her eyes were flat and hard, like a reflecting metal polished to a high sheen. Wordlessly she left the house.

He found Mary and Lee. Beatrice was nearby, her back to them. “All of you, come on in. I want to say something.” Inside again he didn’t know what he could say. Nothing that would make any sense.

“Mary, you have to forget this.” Mary looked at the wall, her face composed and set. “I mean it, Mary, or else she will have won. You’re giving her exactly what she came here for. She doesn’t want Lee any more than she wanted Marty or Ed. She wants to drive wedges. To come between people. We all watched it happen. This is the very same thing. You’re intelligent enough to see this, Mary. You too, Lee.”

Lee had been watching him stonily. Now he said, “Hasn’t it occurred to you that you’re butting in on something you don’t know a damn thing about? That girl was frightened. Mary acted like a bitch. Period.”

Eliot sighed. “Oh, Christ.”

“I’m leaving,” Mary said furiously. “I won’t stand by and see you make a fool of yourself. And when she throws you over, you’ll know where to look for me.”

“And you,” Eliot said. “Right on cue. That’s the scenario, all right. For God’s sake, you two idiots, open your eyes and see what you’re doing and why!” He jammed his hands into his pockets. They continued to avoid looking at one another. Finally Eliot shrugged. “Okay. If you really can’t see it, then leave, Mary. It’s the only thing to do. I’ll take you over tonight.”

“What are you talking about?” Lee demanded coldly.

“I mean that if you two are so caught up in this that you believe it’s real, she has to go away, or one of you will kill the other one. Either snap out of it and convince me that you’re aware of what’s happened, or I’ll take Mary to Charleston. I won’t leave you together.”

A new intentness came into Lee’s face. Ignoring Mary, he took a step toward Eliot. “All this crazy talk. You’re the one who started all this.” His eyes narrowed and his hands clenched. “That night, down on the beach, I saw her with you. I let her convince me that it was a dream, but I saw you. I know what I saw. And I’m going to kill you, Kalin. I’m going to choke your lies right back down in your throat.”

Suddenly the screen door was flung open and Ed Delizzio stepped into the room. Mary screamed. Ed had the same knife that he had threatened Marty with. This time he was holding it to throw. His quick look swept the room, stopped at Lee, and in the same instant that his arm rose, Mary moved toward Lee, her hands out. She pushed him hard; the knife flashed; she screamed again, this time in fear and pain. She staggered against Lee and fell. For a second Lee swayed, gray-faced; then he dropped to his knees at her side.

“It’s nothing,” she said shakily. “It touched my arm, that’s all. Lee… Darling, please, don’t. Please, Lee.” He was rocking back and forth, holding her, weeping. When she tried to get up, he gathered her into his arms and lifted her and carried her into the bedroom. Beatrice followed them.