Night Gallery 1 (10 page)

In the small cubicle of a room in the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Lt. Commander Jonathan Cornelius Evans looked up at the ceiling. He saw neither the nurse nor Colonel Appleby nor the stricken, pinched white features of his wife hovering over him. Every now and then his teeth would clench.

"I was the first," he murmured. "I swear to God I was the first. In the whole history of man . . . nobody was ahead of me."

Then the glazed, empty eyes traversed the room. That little wraith of truth buried so deep, chained and broken-winged, fluttered briefly to the surface.

"Does the name Grimsby do anything to you?" his voice asked, as if in a tomb. "Does it? Does it mean anything to you? Grimsby?"

And at the Cape, Apollo II stood straight and tall in its launching pad . . .. an eager cylinder waiting to cut its bonds, waiting to carry yet a third man for a walk on the moon.

"After dinner," Colonel Dittman said to his son, sitting at the far end of the long, thirty-foot oaken table, "we'll show Mr. Pierce my Hunting Room."

Dittman, Jr., pale, silent, simply nodded.

Pierce, sitting halfway between the two, called on his poor stretched tired mouth to smile once again, as he'd been smiling all through the painful evening. The venison, tough, gamy, stringy, sat heavy inside of him, shoveled down with effort. The wine was a flinty Moselle—tart and too warm, but he'd had five glasses of it—and he felt his eyes heavy-lidded, his attention wandering out of sight. He looked from his host to his host's son and wondered vaguely about the genetic vagaries that produced offspring so different from their fathers.

Colonel Archie Dittman sat there at the head of the table, lean and erect, white hair cropped over a long-jawed patrician face. He wore a smoking jacket, baroque, but perfectly tailored. Throughout the two-hour dinner he had kept the conversation moving—directing it like traffic—short sporadic thrusts into conversational areas, jabbed at, then left behind. Taxes. (They were confiscatory.) Campus dissent. (Kick those spoiled, self-indulgent weirdos in the ass and draft them.) Race relations. (The mistake had not been slavery—the black bastards shouldn't have been brought over here in the first place.) And through it all Pierce had sat there with a fixed, strained smile—as befitting the youngest member of a law firm that handled Colonel Dittman's legal affairs at fifty thousand dollars a year retainer. Pierce then turned to look in the opposite direction at the son. Dittman, Jr., had his father's lankiness, but there was no other resemblance. That he deferred to the father was altogether obvious. Only when the older Dittman used the word "nigger" did Dittman, Jr., seem to flinch perceptively, but he had not uttered a word during the entire meal. Earlier, Pierce had tried to draw him out, asking him about his graduation from college that spring, his plans, his interests. The pale, washed-out blue eyes simply fixed on Pierce—the broad but bony shoulders shrugging as if to say to Pierce that any and all decisions came from the other end of the table. Dittman, Sr., verified this. What was his son planning to do? They would think about this. What was his interest? He, Dittman, Sr., was currently taking that under advisement. How had he liked college? Colonel Dittman had allowed that college nowadays was obviously a monumental waste of time.

"Your average university nowadays, Mr. Pierce," Colonel Dittman had said, "produces a somewhat formless mass of jellied consomme; a generation of social workers, better equipped to play a tambourine at a Salvation Army soup kitchen than to roll up their sleeves and do an honest-to-God day's work, turning an honest profit."

Dittman had glared across the table at his son—not just in anger, Pierce noted, but with naked dislike that was beginning to turn a painful evening into an unbearable one. But the boy had not responded. Those pale, spiritless blue eyes looked downward to his plate like flags dipped in surrender. And the Colonel had looked across at Pierce with a thin, hating little smile as if to say, "And there, Mr. Pierce, you observe the scion of the family—that silent, cheek-turning embarrassment sitting at the opposite end of the table."

All three had a brandy glass in their hands as Dittman led the way into the Hunting Room.

Out of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Culver City, California, Pierce thought as they entered the vast, paneled mausoleum with the high cathedraled ceiling. Thirty-foot oak beams butterflied up to a point almost two stories high. There was a sunken fireplace with a mantel ten feet off the ground. The roaring fire was an animated cartoon, too big and too hot to be real. Above, and surrounding it, were two rows of sawed-off animal heads ornately mounted on polished plaques, each with its own glass-eyed resignation to both violent death and permanent exhibition. On the opposite side of the room were perhaps twenty glass cabinets housing rifles and pistols of every description. But if any man had a special milieu—a private province of his own—this room bore the imprimatur of Colonel Archie Dittman. He seemed to blend with it as he entered the room. Standing underneath the mounted head of a lion, it was as if he were posing right after the hunt, and the truncated beast over his head had been ordained to spend his eternity on that very wall.

Pierce's father had told him about the room and had tried to brief him on Dittman.

"An oddball, Bill," his father had said. "Sinew that walks like a man. Willful, cruel—a suit of armor come to life long after his time." That had been his father's description. But somewhat apologetically he had added, "But the son of a bitch pays a lot of salaries around here, and with the son coming of age, you're going to have to sit down with that miserable old fart of a tyrant and discuss the trust with him. He'll no doubt ask you for the weekend. He used to ask me when his wife was alive."

Pierce recalled the conversation. Standing there in the overheated room with his stomach sending up nauseous little waves of protest, he made a mental note that on Monday he would tell his father that no amount of retainer would ever allow him to be a weekend guest again of a nineteenth-century land baron who obviously spent his days killing animals and his nights emasculating his son.

Pierce looked across at the son, who had sat quietly down in a chair several feet from the fireplace.

Dittman, Jr., sipped briefly at his brandy, then put the glass down. He stared into the fire. The flames formed illuminated patterns on his face.

Pierce was at that moment struck by the pain that showed on that face. Not just discomfort. Pain. To be a weekend guest of Colonel Archie Dittman was a prolonged discomfort. To be his son—this had to be a special kind of agony.

"How is your father, Mr. Pierce?" Colonel Dittman asked.

"Still very active," Pierce answered.

"I've no doubt. And an altogether competent lawyer.''

There was a silence as Dittman inventoried Pierce. "Are you as good as he is?"

A slightly deeper hue of color appeared on Pierce's face. Embarrassment added to the wine and brandy. "Probably not," he admitted. "My father handles pretty much everything. But mostly trial stuff. My work is limited to trusts." As he said this, he had a secret hope that this might remind Dittman of the purpose of his visit. Archie, Jr., would be twenty-one on the first of the following month. Something in the neighborhood of two and a half million dollars' worth of stocks and bonds would revert to the boy as of that date. But Dittman had turned his back and was walking the length of one of the walls. Pierce felt the urgent need to sit down. The nausea had become a burning thing inside, and he was beginning to feel sick.

Dittman stopped underneath the head of a horned animal. He pointed to it. "Know anything about guns, Pierce, or hunting?"

"I'm afraid not." Pierce looked up and down tho walls. "I take it that's your hobby."

Dittman smiled. "My . . . my hobby?" He emphasized the word "hobby" as if it were some kind of an effete variation on croquet played on girls' schools' lawns. "It's hardly a hobby," he said. "It's what I do with my life." He reached up to tap the plaque underneath the animal. "I don't think there's any game on earth I haven't stalked," he said. "Stalked and killed. The baby above me is a thomson's gazelle. I got that in the Nyeri Forest. The horns are sixteen and three-quarter inches long. It's mentioned in
Ward's Records of Big Game.
"

Pierce nodded politely, then looked past the unfortunate gazelle to the big lion's head alongside.

Dittman noted the look. "Like that one?" he asked.

Pierce nodded and thought about how one responded to a question like that. Could someone "like" the remnants of a dead animal? Would you express admiration, or just how the hell would one make comment on the trophies of a kill?

Dittman did not allow him to ponder the etiquette of the situation. He moved a few steps over to stand underneath the lion.

"I'll tell you about this son of a bitch" he said, pointing to it. "He gave me trouble. He gave me all kinds of trouble."

Pierce looked at the slit glass eyes. Even counterfeit and manufactured, they still looked fierce and enraged.

"I got him on a rainy day," Dittman said, sipping on his brandy. "Lions are temperamental beasts—subject to moods. Rainy weather makes them nervous. And darkness stimulates them." He nodded toward the lion's head again. "They hunt at night. And I hunted
him
at night."

Pierce nodded politely, not really giving a good Godamn what affected lions or when they hunted, or anything else about them. He was sleepy, bored, ill at ease. Dittman, Jr., he observed, was still sitting silently in the chair across from the fireplace.

"The other problem," Dittman continued, "is that they can see in the dark." He reached up to touch the lion's mane. It was a flowing crown around the head, like a growing thing. "So for openers, my friend here had all the advantage. Night. Rain. And a sense of smell that is damned uncanny."

Pierce found himself staring at those glass eyes and wondering about what advantage an animal ever had when men with guns dedicated themselves to destroying it.

"I had my gun boy throw stones at it," Dittman said. "Then I shouted at it, and it charged me. He was about fifty yards away when he started the charge. Ever see a lion charge, Mr. Pierce?"

Pierce shook his head. The closest he'd ever been to a lion was to look at one through a cage at the San Diego Zoo when he was twelve years old.

"They get up to about forty miles an hour. And, by God, you've only got one chance to do the job. This son of a bitch weighed close to five hundred pounds, Godamned express train. If you don't stop him before he reaches you—you can forget about hunting and everything else."

Pierce nodded. He wanted to look at his watch. The heavy, uncomfortable feeling of too much food and too much drink, and there was that nausea again. He put down his brandy glass. The brandy was getting to him too. He was beginning to feel a little disoriented. Was he being too quiet and too unresponsive? It came to him that perhaps the next comment should be his. He blinked his eyes, forcing them to look at least somewhat interested.

"He's . . . he's beautiful," Pierce said, nodding toward the lion.

Colonel Dittman's smile was a little slit of condescension. "Beautiful," he repeated, as if heating a foreign word. "Beautiful. I guess you could call him beautiful—if a killer can be beautiful. And they're killers, all right, Mr. Pierce. I've seen them stampede a herd of cattle and kill them off one by one in less than five minutes. Do you remember that time, Arch?" For the first time he had directed a question at his son—a belated acknowledgment that he was even in the room.

Young Dittman nodded but continued to stare across at the fire.

Pierce felt light-headed. By God, he thought, I'm getting drunk. I'm actually getting drunk. He picked up his brandy glass and took another sip. "Do they hunt in groups?" he asked. He had decided at that moment that he would let Dittman broach the legal question of the trust. For the time being, he'd simply play the interested guest until such time as this Great White Hunter would run out of his favorite topic. Dittman obviously relished talk of the hunt, but if he received no animated response—how long could the monologue go? Pierce decided that he'd give the old boy a few more minutes to wallow around in his favorite subject.

"A family of lions is called a pride," Dittman explained. "I've seen as many as eighteen or twenty—from the grand old male down to the newborn cubs." He left the lion and sauntered down the line of animal heads. "Zebra, Cape buffalo—and this big black hairy bastard is a gorilla. Illegal, but damned good sport. And his cousin alongside is a baboon. Not many people understand baboons.

Pierce finished the brandy and heard himself chuckle, and he really didn't give a damn. As a matter of fact, he didn't give a damn about the trust fund either, or the silent boy in the chair, or this ramrod host of his—Archie Dittman, Sr. Hunter by avocation. Rich man by inheritance. Colonel by honorary investiture. Then, a quick look across at the son—that silent, defeated next-in-the-Dittman-line. "I don't know too many baboons," he said idiotically. Then he laughed aloud, at the same time finishing what little brandy there was left in his glass.

Just a shade of displeasure crossed the Colonel's face. "They're brave," he said, "and they're intelligent. They're also cruel as hell. I've seen them catch native chickens and amuse themselves by plucking the birds alive just to watch them scream and struggle." He shook his head. "I don't think there are many things as cruel as a jungle animal."

It was the brandy, Pierce decided, that made him feel so suddenly hostile toward Dittman. And it was the brandy, he was quite sure of this, that forced him to speak out at that moment. "Man isn't exactly a humanitarian, Colonel."

Dittman smiled. "Man?" he asked. "You think man is more cruel than the animal?"

It was more than hostility now. Pierce despised the hell out of Dittman. "Man
is
an animal, isn't he?" he said. "And he's the only animal who kills for the pleasure and the sport of it."