"But-uh-what excuse do they have for . . .?" Sheklov let the question trail away, thinking of the days when that had been the perennial nightmare of anyone on the other side who had dared to reveal an original turn of mind.
Magda gave a shrug. "Oh, they always say 'suspicion of illegal drugs,' you know. But that's so much shit. It's just the thing they don't need a warrant for. Fact is, they hate rebs, and that's all there is to it."
"I see," Sheklov said, for want of any better comment. He felt at a loss. This woman, much older than Danty, had a similar disconcerting quality in her dark gaze and in her tone of voice. He could almost imagine himself saying something to her, as he had done to Danty. that would be a betrayal of his cover, and without being able to help it even though he realized it was happening.
Still, he had to put some questions about Danty because of what had already happened. He said, "Ah . . . 1 Well, if it's Danty they're after, I can't see why. I talked to him a bit at the party last night. and he seemed to be veryuh-serious. Sort of thoughtful. And well-read, too," he added as an afterthought.
"Yell" Lora chimed in. "That's why Don wanted to see him again. Wasn't it, Don?"
"Yes. Yes, of course."
There was a dead silence, during which Magda looked -not discourteously, just searchingly-at both of them in turn for long seconds. She said at last, "And, of course, the pigs don't like foster-rebs, either."
Meaning herself, Sheklov deduced. The term had been included in his briefings. It applied to an older person who actively encouraged the young to drop out of society in search of some allegedly superior truth. A few states had incorporated it into their criminal codes, making such encouragement an offence for which the parents of minors
could sue by analogy with "alienation of affection" in the old British common law.
Shades of Socrates and the hemlockl "Corrupting our youthl"
"I get the impression," Sheklov said slowly, not looking directly at Magda, "that over the border we-you know I'm Canadian?"
"Danty did mention it."
Was there mockery in those dark eyes? Had she seen through his pretence?-He couldn't tell. He ploughed doggedly on.
"Well, we seem to understand something different by the word reb. I mean, it's not something the police would -uh . . ." A wave of his hand.
"Down here the police pounce on anyone who's in the slightest degree different," Magda said. "Anyone who tries to think for himself, to begin with-they're the most dangerous of all. Every loyal citizen is convinced that the government is right, even if today it says the exact opposite of what it said yesterday. Not that that happens so much any more. We've decayed into what they call a consensus." She made the word sound fairly obscene.
"You mean-" Lora began. Magda cut her short.
"What I mean is that the government of this country is killing us. Stone-dead. By slow strangulation."
She jolted forward on her couch, her face suddenly animated, and Sheklov realized with a start that she was beautiful-not in the conventional American, or even the conventional Russian, sense, which had more to do with mere glamour, but in the ancient sense of the Gioconda or the Venus di Milo. It was as though a light had been switched on inside her head that illuminated her true personality. Also, in contrast with the shrill whine of almost every other woman he had met since his arival-most notably, Sophie Turpin and her mother-her voice was a resonant contralto, cello-forceful.
"And it's a tough job for them," she said. "Because in every generation you get a handful of people who won't just be crushed into the regulation mould. Don't you? The ones who want to be--oh-inventors rather than engineers, or poets rather than copywriters, or architects rather than building-contractors. Peg it?"
"I guess so," Sheklov said, and added wryly, "likewise, ecologists rather than timber-salesmen."
"You peg," she said. and this time smiled at him-just with her eyes. wrinkling the lids humorously. "So what happens when you block off all their opportunities to explore and experiment as they want to? You get rebs. Hell, you're bound to."
"Well-sure you are!" Sheklov said, blinking. "So . . .?"
"So they get stamped on," Magda said. "Like I said."
"But--21
"But why? Oh, I know it's crazy. I know we're so rich we ooze monev like-like fat dripping off roast pork. I know we ought to be able to tolerate a fraction of 1 per cent of young people who'd rather sit and think than fit into the machine. But people seem to resent their need to do that, don't they?"
Sheklov swallowed hard, wondering what Holtzer ought to say, and was saved the trouble. Lora spoke up.
"I know just what you mean!" she exclaimed. "Lots of times I think inside my head there's something going on that isn't in the books they make you read in school. It makes me want to do crazy things now and then, really crazy, just to shake everybody up. And they don't even notice!" The last word was almost a cry.
"So what do you do about it?" Magda said.
"I . -. ." She licked her lips. Eventually she shook her head and stared down at her hands, folded in her lap.
"See. Don?" Magda said. "That's what a foster-reb like me is trying to stop. Someone like Lora ought to be able to-to go somewhere, do something, stack up new experience and dig around among it in case the answer's somewhere underneath."
"I-uh-I guess I can see you have a case there," Sheklov said cautiously. "But what one hears about the result ."
• "You mean the popular picture of a reb?" Magda interrupted. "I guess if you're Canadian" (did she lay too much stress on that or was his imagination working overtime?) "you've been fooled by the media. I'm not talking about fakes, phoneys, borderline psychopaths, what they used to wrap up under one handy label like `beat' or `hippie.' That went out of style when the courts started holding that long hair was prima-facie proof of vagrancy because it meant you couldn't pay the barber, and the pigs grunted with joy and reached for their guns!"
Reflexively Sheklov touched his chin. Back There he'd
sported a beard. Why not, in an area where the winter temperatures regularly dipped to -30° Centigrade?
"Yeah beards too," Magda agreed. "And when that happened the phoneys folded up and went home. Leaving just the few, just the handful, who couldn't be folded up. And what can they do? If they apply for a passport, the pigs come running and turn over their homes. grill their families, their friends, until no one wants to know them any more. 'Everything's great here, why should you want to leave?'-that's the principle, and saying you're curious about the rest of the world is no excuse. You've been told all your life that this country is the best, the finest, the most wonderful. So they want to know why you aren't satisfied. And how can you say why you aren't? You haven't done the things that might tell youl"
"But if you do try and leave, you have to leave for good!" Lora burst out. "I've thought about it, and-and I just daren'tl I might get shot at the borderl"
"A lot of people do," Magda sighed. "Which is why most rebs go exploring in a different direction altogether."
Sheklov looked at the ouija board, the tarot deck, various other significant items on display. He said at last, "You must mean-inside their heads."
"Yes." Magda gave him a puzzled look. "I usually have to spell that out to people when I'm defending the rebs. I guess north of the border you aren't quite so calcified, hm? But that's the long and short of it, yes."
"How did you get involved with these rebs?" Sheklov queried. "If you don't mind my asking."
Magda seemed to be overcome with a fit of self-consciousness. She said, avoiding his eyes, "Oh . . . 1 Oh, I guess I was one of the half-and-half cases. Sometimes I felt I ought to stand up for what I believed in, and sometimes I was just lazy enough to coast along with the gang, and I drifted into a marriage on that basis. Which turned sour, and taught me-much too late-that my laziness was a crime against myself. And, too, I found out that I have
"Yes?" Sheklov prompted.
"I have a talent," Magda said after a brief hesitation, and pointed at the card in the window. It was so thin the word CONSULTATIONS could be read on it, backwards, against the light sky of late afternoon. "You see," she continued, licking her lips, "I do have more-uh-empathy
than some people. I trained as a nurse when I quit college, thinking maybe I'd go to work for the Red Cross or some other international aid organisation, in some broken-backed poverty-stricken country. It turned out I wasn't allowed to, because-well, because I'd been kind of wild as a kid and they wouldn't give a passport to anyone with a drug-bust on their record. Smoking pot was all, but quite enough. So here I am, a professional shoulder to weep on in an age when most people won't admit they can cry. Won't even confide in their best friends. It doesn't require a licence, so that's cool."
Sheklov was framing his next question when Lora spoke up again unexpectedly. She said, "Say-uh-Magda! Does Danty have any kind of talent? I kind of wondered when . . . . Did he tell you how we met? He saved my lifel"
Sheklov rounded on her in astonishment. There was something so brittle and superficial about this girl, hearing her utter a statement like that jolted him.
But Magda was nodding as though it was perfectly natural to say such things. "Oh, that Danty!" she said, in a tone that cross-bred cynicism with affection. "He has a talent, sure has. Know what he always says about himself?"
Lora shook her head, her eyes hungry.
"Ever read The Sword in the Stone? Yes? Remember Merlin the magician?"
"Yes, of coursel"
"Well, Danty always says he's in the same mess, born at the wrong end of time. You see, he-"
There came a scratching at the door, the sound of a key being fumbled into the lock. She broke off and swung around to face that way. So did the others. The door flew wide.
Danty stood there, swaying drunkenly, lips drawn back in a grimace of pain, eyes almost closed, a crusting cut on his forehead, and a great blood-gushing slash on his left arm that now, letting fall his key, he struggled again to staunch with his red right hand.
"Help me," he whispered faintly, and fell headlong.
Lora screamed.
Galvanised by the sound, Sheklov leapt from his chair. He slapped the door shut at the full reach of his arm and dropped to his knees beside Danty.
"Shut up!" he rasped at Lora. "Go find a phone, call a doctor! Magda, help me get him on the couchl We'll need ice-scissors-bandages-"
Coolly she undercut him, bending over his shoulder to inspect Danty's wound. "I did train as a nurse, remember?" she murmured. And put one hand accurately on a pressure-point that reduced the surging leakage of blood to an ooze.
"Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry." Sheklov rose. too?"
"And you?" she pursued. "Are you trained in medicine,
What have 1 said now? Sheklov's mind raced. But almost , at once he hit on a good reason for Holtzer to know firstaid.
"Hell, of course! Do you have any idea how many lumbermen lose arms and legs to power-saws every year? Must be hundredsl"
"Good, then." Magda said. "Lora, bring ice-cubes, will you? And you'll find a box in the corner of the kitchen- 3 top shelf-marked with a red cross. I'll need that."
"What about calling a doctor?" Sheklov snapped. "Don't you have a phone?"
Magda gave him a steady look. "Think I can afford indemnity insurance?"
.. fit?" .j
"It's very clear you're not American! You want a doctor who makes house-calls, you have to pay insurance against his being mugged or robbed on the way to you. In Cowville the going rate's a thousand a month." She added after a moment, "Anyway, Danty's black. and no white doctor would treat him, and I wouldn't dare call a black one. Help me lift him to that couch-no, just a moment, I'll put a sheet on it."
He left a bloody trail on the floor.
After that Sheklov reacted mechanically as Magda efficiently cut away Danty's sleeve, wiped the knife-woundthat was what it had to be, an inch wide and more than that deep-and sprayed it in turn with an analgesic, an -antibiotic powder, and finally with a clear solution from an aerosol can. Reading the label on this last before Lora dutifully returned it to the first-aid kit, Sheklov learned that it was intended to create a film impervious to airborne infection that would contract as it dried and draw the edges of a cut together, obviating the need to insert stitches.
Hmm! That would be useful at home! A fine invention)
On the other hand, he wouldn't care to live in a society that found it necessary to include such a product in a home first-aid kit . . .
Then the final touches: rinsing of Danty's face-his cut forehead was minor, hardly more than a scratch, although his eyes would be puffy for a day or two, Magda predicted-and the job of clearing up, which Lora undertook silently, despite her faintly green cheeks and look of incipient nausea. Magda complimented her a couple of times on being so helpful, and she flashed smiles of gratitude in response.
Sheklov recalled what she had said about her parents not taking an interest in their children.
At some point during all this-Sheklov did not notice exactly when-Danty regained consciousness, but apparently figured out what was going on and went on lying quite still. His first word, when Magda had done with him, was, "Thanks)"
"You're all right, Danty?" Lora exploded, and almost let the bowl of pink water she was carying to the kitchen fall to the floor. Barely in time she recovered, parked it on the table, and fell on her knees at his side.