And then, perhaps, something would have to be done.
"Do thou therefore perform right and obligatory actions," he quoted to himself under his breath, "for action is superior to inaction."
With a sudden violent gesture he thrust away his plate. He linked his brown thin fingers together so tightly the knuckles paled. His teeth threatened to chatter, so that he had to knot his jaw-muscles to hold them still.
Magda! For pity's sake hurry back!
I'm scared!
Lora Turpin had had all she could take, and said so to her mother. Her mother, with her usual infuriating white satin calmness-out of a bottle with "White Satin" on the label--called her a misbegotten moron and suggested that 5 radiation must have affected the ovum from which she was conceived. That finished the discussion. Theatrically Lora stormed out of the room, out of the apartment, out of the building, and into a hovercar going anywhere. ,
If it had been night, she would have driven; there were five cars in the basement garage she could get the keys for. But she hated sawing through slow day-time traffic, and what was more she was forbidden to ride the hover line, which was why she did it when she was in a bad temper.
This time it didn't lead to the anticipated result. Naturally, because she was very pretty, several men leered at her, but they were all reeky ancients, at least forty, and the only hand that did try stroking her bare waist belonged to a fat mannish woman who got off at the second halt. It was around then that she realized, as the redwood trees loomed ahead, that this car was heading in the wrong direction. She'd meant to get off at a halt by one of the yacht-pools and pick up a boy with a boat. She hadn't had a boy for over a week.
Almost, she made to leave the car. But she changed her mind. What the hell. She'd never ridden a Cowville line to the end.
Curious, she watched the squalid city slide beneath, and then around, as the line approached the monstrous mausoleum of Energetics General, and then beneath again: an area of lower buildings, harking vainly back to the foundation of the city, to the pioneering image of the original cow-town. A mobile illuminated figure shamelessly copied from "Vegas Vic" beckoned customers to a block crowded with twenty-four-hour bars and sex clubs. That passed behind too, and the line descended to ground- .` level-or, more likely, the ground rose to meet the line.
By the time a mechanical-sounding voice announced the terminus, the city was petering away to shabby tenements intermingled with warehouses. A distant roaring indicated that she was close to the airport through which EG dispatched its products, but that was out of sight behind a hill. There was a thick industrial stench in the sir.
Uncertainly, she got out, last of the passengers to do so. There had only been three others in the car, a tired eyed black woman and two black kids about twelve. Litter crunched under her sandals as she stepped onto the platform. Before her extended a street of gray buildings. Signs here and there -identified small manufacturing companies making sanitary tampons, plastic cups, door-furniture. At the end of the street was a scrap yard where a tall crane was picking up metal on a magnet. The only person visible was pushing a hand-truck laden with garbage-cans, a sour-faced black.
She hesitated, glancing around. Nearby was a sales kiosk offering candies, cigarettes, and porn. Its display window was of the old-fashioned intermittent-mirror type, and she caught sight of herself in it as it went into the reflecting phase. She stared with annoyance at her image. Her hair was exquisite, honey-gold; her face was oval, though not so perfect as to be dull. But there was an ill-tempered twist to her mouth, which she detested, yet which she could not help. She felt so furious with the world today.
Of course, she had come straight out of the apartment in what she happened to be wearing: play top, shorts, sandals, and literally nothing else. It had been sheer luck that she'd had a pocketful of change. It would have been unbearable to go back for her wrist-purse.
Then the window cleared, and she realized she was being stared at by the owner of the kiosk, a fat middle-aged black. A tooth was missing in the center of his grin. She spun on her heel at random and started down the street. She was just a little afraid. Yet the sensation was somehow stimulating. She felt she needed to do something terrible. Something that would shock the living shit out of her parents. Anything.
The concept took root in her mind, without words. It had the appeal of the suicide's note: "You'll be sorry for what you made me dot"
And they had made her do it, hadn't they? Grandmother
with her wood-rasp voice and her endless condemnation of young people today-well, she'd endured that all her life. But add in the nuisance of this newly arrived Canadian, Holtzer, and the information that her abominable brother Peter was going to be crowded into her bedroom they got on each other's nerves, and he was a reeky waster, and he'd left it until this morning to admit that he'd overspent his allowance and couldn't afford a hotel while Holtzer was here . . Not that it was Holtzer's fault, of course; he seemed rather nice, with his square face, curly brown hair, and ready smile. But-damnation! If there was only one guest-room, and Grandmother was in it, and Dad insisted on accommodating this Canuck, why couldn't he move in with Mom? Lots of married people had gone back to sharing a room!
When she suggested it, her mother had given her a long, steady stare. "I shouldn't mention that to your father if I were you," she'd said.
"Well, aren't you married?" had been Lora's caustic retort. And that began the row that drove her out.
She realized suddenly that while she was brooding, a trio of young blacks had appeared at the end of the street, near the scrap yard gate, and they'd spotted her. For an instant she was minded to rash back on the platform; the car was warming up for its return trip. Then she realized this was just the kind of thing she was after. She'd never had a black boy, let alone three of them at once.
Pausing after getting out of the hovercar, Magda Hansen looked down at the narrow concrete landing outside her apartment. There was a woman there-smartly dressed in dark blue, age indeterminate, heavily made-up, obviously wealthy and more likely to live in Lakonia than Cowville-who was wavering back and forth before the door. She poised her hand to press the bell, drew back, looked at the card saying CONSULTATIONS, made to turn away, and went through the whole cycle again.
Magda hoped fervently she would give up. But she didn't.
"Are you-are you Magda Hansen?" the woman said hesitantly, seeing her come down the stairs from the hoverhalt.
"Yes." Magda shook back her coarse black hair and
felt in her pocket for her key, the twin of Danty's. "Why?.
"Well-uh-I'm Fenella Clarke. Avice Donnelly said I should come to you. She says you're absolutely wonderful."
"Kind of her," Magda sighed. "So what do you want?"
"Help." was the pathetic answer. "And I don't know what kind." She began to twist a platinum wedding-band around and around on her finger. "It's-it's the way it was with Avice. more or less."
It would be. But Magda kept her face straight.
"So I thought-uh-I ought to talk to you, too."
"Very well. Shall we say Monday at three?'"
Mrs. Clarke's face fell. She said. "I was hoping . . ."
"No I'm sorry," Magda cut in. "You must know from Avice that I can't work a one-day miracle, and I have someone waiting inside right now."
"But my husband . . . 1 Fluttering her hands. "You see. he's gone to the West Coast, but he comes back Monday!"
"He wouldn't approve?"
A helpless head-shake. Yes, that figured. If he was typical he'd say at once, "You're not to waste my money on a quack!"
"Perhaps you'd rather leave it until the next time he's away," Magda suggested. "Otherwise Monday really is the earliest I can offer."
"Very well," Mrs. Clarke sighed, and turned away.
Danty was lying on one of the couches, eyes closed. Thinking him asleep. she entered quietly, but he heard her and called a greeting. She blew him a kiss and headed for the shower-stall. As she began to hang her clothes on a chair, she said, "How was it, Danty? Was it right?"
"Too right," he answered, frowning. "A man came out of the sea. And there was another man waiting to take him away in a car."
"Wasn't that what you expected?"
"Yell" Danty sat upright with a jerk. "Yes, exactly! Magda, it's getting so accurate, I'm worried!"
"You'd be a lot more worried if you'd gone to that much trouble for something that didn't work out," Magda said, and stepped into the shower. For the next couple
of minutes the noise of water was too loud for conversation; besides, another hovercar pulled up and the building trembled.
Then she emerged, wrapped a towel around her, and sat down facing him. She said, "I guess you've had enough time to make sense of what you saw?"
"Not really," Danty muttered. "What do you think?"
"An East Bloc agent being landed?"
' "In a reserved area? Under the nose of radar and nuclear missiles? Jesus why? For all their talk of security, the borders aren't tight-why not bring an agent in through Alaska, or Canada? The Cubans send theirs in through Mexico, don't they? Hell, the guy came out of the biggest submarine I ever saw, and if I-"
He stopped dead in mid-sentence. Magda tensed.
"Go on!" she encouraged.
He gave her a blank, helpless stare. "I . . . oh, I think sometimes I shall go insane! Do you know what I did? When I got through the fence, I-I felt out the equipment. I found the central switch-house, this little round thing made of that artificial ruby they use over in Lakonia, and I sneaked in and turned everything off. It's sort of complicated, but when you do it in a certain order .... Well, never mind; I can't explain the details.
"But when I came away I left the site turned off!"
"Then they'll find out!" Magda exclaimed. "They service those sites all the time-you see the helicopters taking off from the airport!"
"Yes, of course," Danta said, staring miserably down at his hands. "And I can feel that they'll find out soon. I had a reason for doing what I did, I'm sure of that. But I'll be radiated if I can remember what it was!"
"You're shaking, baby" Magda said. "Here. Let me wind you down." She rose and began to strip off her towel.
"Uh-uh," Danty sighed. "It goes on."
"What comes next?"
"I'm not sure. I only feel I have to be somewhere-out by the scrap yards on the west end of town. I'll know the spot when I get there." He checked his watch. "In fact it's about time I got started."
"Have some pot, at least-or a trank, if you're really in a hurry!"
"No, I daren't risk it. I have to be as keyed up as I can."
She stared at him for a long moment. Before she could say anything else, however, he had read her mind.
"You think I'm going to burn myself out, don't you?"
She gave a nod. A very slight nod, as though limiting the gesture could soften the truth behind it.
"Yes: Yes, I think so too," Danty muttered. "But not doing what I feel I have to do-that would be worse." A faint smile followed the words. "But thank you anyhow. If there wasn't someone I could talk to, someone, who cares about me, I'd have gone insane long ago."
He rose, stretching. "Although it's arguable, I guess," he added, "that I already am crazy. Poor Magdal"
"What?"
"'Poor Magdal' I said. Landed with one case for which you can't see any hopeful outcome!"
She pondered that, then shook her head. "No, that's not true. You may burn yourself out, that's a fact. But it would be a very special kind of burning. Goodbye, Danty."
"What ch'waiting fo'?" Potatohead muttered, staring at the addle cock blonde with the bare chowbag. He nudged ;, Josh Tatum.
"Poke me one more," Josh said, "I cut out yo' Idaho eyes. She walking this way? She climbing walls? Shee-it."
Josh wasn't a reb and if you'd called him one he'd have carved you for it. They were tight on guns in Cowville but knives, everybody had knives. He was slick from neck to a heel in plastic blacker than his skin, and shinier, and his scalp fuzzed an eighty-eight force-grown natural. Same with other, Shark Bance. -Potatohead was shaved and ashamed. But something wrong with the follicles.
"Lakonia," Shark said under his breath.
"Where the shit else? 1 know her."
"What?"
"Name? Name? Piss her name. Peg it, peg it! Chow bare, zip-crotch shorts-eyes, use yo' eyes!"
"Pegged," Potatohead said. "Po' li'1 rich, due fo' kindaha surprise." He grabbed Shark's hand and kissed it.
"Kill it! Wannah-a see that? She grunt pig! Spread an' bar-a walk. Makun quick!"
"Iota scrap yard?" Shark inquired.
"Scrap yard, yea."
In spite of her resolution Lora felt- nervous as she approached the young blacks. There was something so statue-like about them: all three tall, all three dead-faced, all three in that strange tight muscle-hugging plastic .... She liked to feel a boy's skin before she let him unzip the crotch of her shorts, which was why she preferred `: the beach, or in winter the dansoteks where it was always
too hot for heavy clothing.
But this was the thing she had set her mind to, so she kept on going.
The nearest of them, with the shaven head, stepped into . her path. She smiled sunnily at him and said, "Hil"
He looked at her with eyes as dull as pebbles. Then he