I got the smile again, and nothing else.
Possibly, I thought, she was many, many years older than she looked. This
close, I had an opportunity to see that the flawlessness common to
all the young strangers was absolute. I don't mean that they were all
handsome or beautiful. But like Miranda, they had no hair out of place,
no scars, no scratches, perfect teeth, perfectly manicured hands. In the
heat of a summer day, she didn't sweat. She appeared to have no makeup
on, yet I was sure she had. Right through history, women had gilded the
lily. Even in a different history, I was sure they would do the same.
I asked her: "Are you wearing makeup?"
"Yes."
Her gray dress was at the same time unremarkable and scarcely possible. No
creases or marks. Its fit was several degrees beyond currently known
perfection.
Ordinary dresses worn by ordinary girls weren't like Miranda's. Either
the machinery showed, or the absence of machinery.
"You can't," I said thoughtfully, "be wearing a bra."
"No."
"Then how . . . ?" Well, romantic myth aside, women needed something to
provide the shape they wanted.
"Selective tension," she said easily. "Different degrees of elasticity
in different places."
And at sight of my expression, she laughed for the first time.
She stopped when I said: "You do come from the future."
"Listen;" she said. "I'll tell you one thing, and it's the truth. Then
we'll talk about something else. We come from the
present
, and we come
from
here
."
"Yet you say 'come,'" I answered quickly.
A flicker in her eyes registered appreciation of the point. Since she
didn't reply, I pursued: "Another dimension, then?"
"Dimension?" she said. "What's that?"
I tried to convey my own rather fuzzy idea of the theory of co-existent
worlds. She seemed interested.
"This is only a theory?" she asked. "There's no proof?"
"None. But you might know whether it's more than a theory, I think."
The faint smile again. "Now," she said firmly, "we'll talk about you."
After a pause she added: "And Jota."
"No," I said. Although I'd had my chance, and lost it, I might get it back.
"We'll talk about Greg. And you."
I
had
lost it. She had regained her control. She wasn't going to ask
what had happened between Greg and me. She wouldn't discuss it.
So I told her about Jota and Gil and me. Every time I tried to turn the
conversation back to her and the giants, she promptly turned it back. I
told her briefly about Sheila, but not about Dina or Mary.
Only three times, briefly, did the talk swerve from the path along which
Miranda was casually driving it.
The first time, after telling her about the days when Jota, Gil and
I were the Terrible Three, I asked what she and her friends called
themselves. She thought for a minute and then said: "Well, what would
you call us? Any ideas?"
"Snow White and the giants."
She stared and laughed rather uncertainly. She thought she ought to know
what I was talking about, but didn't. She was off balance, so I said:
"Greg said 'as fair as any,' instead of 'as good as any.' He said 'how
in fisk' . . . ?"
Miranda iumped, nearly spilling gravy over herself.
"I presumed," I said casually, "that meant something like 'how in hell.'"
"It means rather more than that," said Miranda. "There are sexual
connotations."
"I'm not surprisecL He said 'up on the quicktake.'"
Miranda was silent.
"A simple mistake," I went on, "if you read a phrase in a book. Quick on
the uptake. Up on the quicktake. Unimportant . . . except that nobody
born between 1860 and 1960 could say such a thing . . . Then there was
'most,' apparently a term of general approbation. 'Grossing,' meaning
fattening. I may have missed a few."
"Greg is careless," said Miranda. "Very careless."
"And you're not, I noticed. Except in wearing a luxon suit."
"I won't do it again."
"Pity."
The second time was when the sweet came up. I asked about the food,
and she said, in slight surprise: "It's only food," and though she
instantly turned the conversation again, I was left with another strange
impression: Miranda and the giants ate and drank as we stoked a fire or
filled an oil heater. It had to be done, but the quality of the fuel,
so long as it came up to certain minimum standards, was immaterial.
The last time was when we left. As she stood up I noticed something I'd
have seen before if I'd been reasonably observant. She carried no handbag,
and she had no pockets.
"Where do you carry things?" I asked.
"What things?"
"Money, cosmetics, a handkerchief, keys -- that sort of thing."
"Why would I need them?" she asked mildly.
We had emerged into bright sunlight. It was as hot as usual.
"Thanks for the lunch, Val," Miranda said. "I'll see you later."
And she strode off so abruptly that even to attempt to detain her I'd
have had to shout or run after her.
From the way she walked, I knew she could run faster than I could.
Looking after her, I decided that Miranda, in her way, was as careless
as she thought Greg was. True, it was a different way.
We had lunched together, man and girl. And we might have been robots.
Certainly some apparently personal things had been said. I'd said a
lot. I had acted more or less like a human being.
But Miranda . . .
Everything she had said and done she might have said and done from ten
thousand miles and ten thousand years away.
"You don't really believe it, do you?" Gil sneered. A sneer was the
only way to describe it. Where anyone else would have expressed polite
surprise, Gil's reaction was incredulity that anyone could be so stupid,
even you.
"I do," I said.
"You mean one of these -- giants tells you Jota will arrive at 3:10,
and you expect him on the dot?"
I looked at my watch. It was eight after three.
"You can believe what you like, Gil," I said. "But these giants are
no ordinary kids. I've been trying to figure out how Miranda was able
to make me talk like that an hour or so ago, without ever letting the
conversation get more than two or three degrees above absolute zero,
and now I see it. She knew the questions to ask."
Gil started to say something, but I hadn't finished. "Maybe Greg meant
Jota would arrive in Shuteley at 3:10 exactly, he didn't say. But I think
he meant here. I think he meant that wherever I was, whether I went home
or stayed in the Red Lion or came back here, Jota would walk in at 3:10."
"Of all the fatuous, ridiculous, superstitious . . . " Gil began.
He'd probably have found quite a few more adjectives before he had to
cap them with a noun. But just then the door opened.
I'd given instructions for anyone who called on me after three to be
sent straight in. That was why Miranda found it so easy.
"Why look surprised?" she said. "I told you I wanted you to introduce
me to Jota.'
"I'm surprised," I observed, "that you should consider an introduction
necessary. You didn't with me."
She smiled and turned to Gil. "Hello, Gil," she said. "Has Garry's flush
gone yet?"
Although Gil didn't answer, I could see he was startled. Garry evidently
had had a flush, and it wouldn't have surprised me to learn that there
was no apparent way for the giants to know about it.
Miranda sat down, primly arranging her skirt the way girls do (though
I suspected she had had to practice ). And the very instant that she
turned and looked at the door, Jota came in.
He had never been handsome. I never knew any lady-killer who was really
goodlooking. Women seem to go for men of the oddest shapes and sizes. Jota
had a long nose, very deep-set eyes, hollow cheeks and black hair nearly,
but not quite, as dark as Miranda's. He was tall and very thin. He
looked like a fanatic or visionary, and this impression wasn't wrong,
though fanaticism was only part of his complex makeup.
He didn't look at Gil or me. He went straight to Miranda, took her hand
gently and pulled her to her feet and said, from his nine-inch advantage
in height: "You're exquisite."
"I know," said Mirand~ coolly. "But thanks for noticing."
"Your name must be Venus."
"If you say so," said Miranda.
There was a lot more of this, and I realized as I watched that Jota,
for only the second time, was annoying me far more than Gil ever could.
It's strange about old friends, people you know from way back -- you've
forgotten long ago whether you like them or not. The question has ceased
to be relevant.
Gil, now . . . He had not made a friend in the last fifteen years. He
would die without making another friend. He had become an amalgam of
armor and anger and acid and antagonism, a fortress on an island that
no army would ever want to storm. On the mainland, they'd march past
the defenses against nothing with scarcely a derisive smile.
Only Jota and I (and Barbara, in a different but not warmer way) would
ever put up with Gil.
Jota . . . I had admired and envied him. He had done and was still doing
many things I wished I could do, and his amatory success was the least
of these. He was, after all, a Jack of all trades (even if master of none).
There was nothing he couldn't turn his hand to. He had the courage or
selfishness or brute insensitiveness to do what he liked and invariably
get away with it. Most people treat you as your own attitude and
expectation invites them to treat you. And Jota got what he wanted --
whatever it was. Always. Everywhere.
I had had every right to object when Jota's roving eye lighted on
Sheila. I had no right to object when Miranda caught his eye, but I did.
Surprisingly, the meeting was brought to order by Miranda. She suddenly
said: "I must be going," and walked out as abruptly as she had left me
outside the Red Lion.
"That girl," said Jota, "fills me with a quite irresistible desire to
see that dark head on a white pillow. It will not be resisted. Now --
what's going on?"
He hadn't changed. He had never, I suspected, been in love; he had a
completely mistaken idea of what love was. Stumbling and imperfect as
our connubial relations were, I believed that both Gil and I knew far
more about love than Jota would have learned by the time he died.
Although a great deal of his time and too much of his energy were
expended on women, he was always able to dismiss them completely as
he did now. Once or twice, long ago, I had heard him make passionate
word-love to a girl whom he knew, in the Biblical sense, make another
date with her, and then say cheerfully, the moment she was gone: "Thank
God that's the last I'll see of that cow."
He heard our side of the story first. He wanted it that way, and things
were generally done Jota's way.
Gil had nothing fresh to say. The giants had not been near his house
again. I glossed over the fact that I had not yet asked Dina to go and
stay with the Carswells.
In my turn I told them all the facts but not all my guesses.
Then Jota said: "All right, let's call on the giants. We'll go to
the camp."
It was only to he expected that Jota would propose direct action.
Gil was reluctant. He didn't say he was afraid to go. He argued against
the idea in general. But when Jota and I decided to go without him,
Gil stopped arguing and seemed to think it might be a good idea.
So Jota and I went to look at the giants' base.
Chapter Four
I drove home first, taking Jota with me, for he insisted we should change
into dark clothes.
We knew the place where the camp must be: "In a bend on the river about
a mile upstream." It was a piece of wasteland which campers had used
before, but not often, because modern campers had cars or caravans or
bicycles or trucks, and if they hadn't they wanted to be near a road
where they could catch buses. This spot was near no road, and anybody
camping there who wanted to come into Shuteley had to walk all the way.
It was a good place, perhaps the best place in the vicinity, for campers
who wanted privacy. Yet it was also a place where anyone who wanted to
spy on them could do so very easily.
And yet, as I said to Jota just before turning into our drive: "We may
be making fools of ourselves. If they knew the precise second when you'd
walk into my office, don't they know already that we're on our way to
spy on them?"
Such considerations didn't bother Jota. "Then something may develop. And
that's what we want."
I left the car outside the house, and Jota took his one trunk inside
with him.
Sheila met us in the hall, and at sight of Jota she started and shot
a quick glance at me which could only be described as unfriendly. "I
thought I told you . . . " she said.
"Sorry," I said rather awkwardly. "I knew you were going shopping. I
thought you'd have left."
I had to put it that way, because when we came in I knew she hadn't
left. Her Austin mini was still in the drive.
"Hello, Sheila," said Jota easily. "You look more wonderful than ever."
Sheila said nothing. She picked up her shopping bag and went out,
slamming the front door.
"You should have phoned, you know," Jota told me. "Don't you know anything
about women? It's nothing to do with whether she loves me or hates my
guts. Maybe she wouldn't have prettied herself up anyway. You should have
given her the choice, to be here or not, to be dressed up or just -- "
"Let's change," I said irritably. I didn't want a lecture from Jota,
of all people, on Sheila, of all people.
Jota was staring past me at the stairs. I turned. Dina was descending
slowly, dressed in an old pink evening dress of Sheila's.
"She saw an old Goldwyn picture on television the other day," I murmured.
"Beautiful girls coming down wide staircases." Raising my voice, I called:
"Dina -- would you like to go and stay with the Carswells?"
She stopped playacting at once, lifted her long skirt and ran down the
rest of the way. "Now?" she said eagerly.
"If you like."
She turned. "I'll go and pack."
"Wait, Dina. Aren't you going to say hello to Jota?"
"Hello," she said, and started for the stairs.
"She's lovely," Jota 'said. "No change? I mean -- "
"I know what you mean," I said shortly. "No change."
"That," he said, "is a great pity."
"That," I replied,. "is an understatement."
"What I mean is -- "
"I know what you mean."
He seemed to feel I should be more forthcoming. "Naturally I'm interested,"
he said. "Dina's my cousin."