And Now the News (45 page)

Her face looked like a death mask, its tissues sunken and sagging. It was flushed and sick-looking. There was a little of the deep regular breathing, but only a little. There was a bit of the fluttering contractions at the midriff, but only a bit. Then—nothing.

Slim backed away from the peephole and sat up. He felt very bad about this. He had been only curious; he hadn't wanted her to get sick, to die. For he was sure she had died. How could he know what sort of sleep-surrogate an organism like this might require, or what might be the results of a delay in changing? What could he know of the chemistry of such a being? He had thought vaguely of slipping down the next day while she was out and returning her property. Just to see. Just to know
what if
. Just out of curiosity.

Should he call a doctor?

She hadn't. She hadn't even tried, though she must have known much better than he did how serious her predicament was. (Yet if a species depended for its existence on secrecy, it would be species-survival to let an individual die undetected.) Well, maybe not calling a doctor meant that she'd be all right, after all. Doctors would have a lot of silly questions to ask. She might even tell the doctor about her other skin, and if Slim was the one who had fetched the doctor, Slim might be questioned about that.

Slim didn't want to get involved with anything. He just wanted to know things.

He thought, “I'll take another look.”

He crawled back into the closet and put his head in the hole. Celia Sarton, he knew instantly, would not survive this. Her face was swollen, her eyes protruded, and her purpled tongue lolled far—
too far—from the corner of her mouth. Even as he watched, her face darkened still more and the skin of it crinkled until it looked like carbon paper which has been balled up tight and then smoothed out.

The very beginnings of an impulse to snatch the thing she needed out of his shirt drawer and rush it down to her died within him, for he saw a wisp of smoke emerge from her nostrils and then—

Slim cried out, snatched his head from the hole, bumping it cruelly, and clapped his hands over his eyes. Put the biggest size flash bulb an inch from your nose, and fire it, and you might get a flare approaching the one he got through his little slot in the tin ceiling.

He sat grunting in pain and watching, on the insides of his eyelids, migrations of flaming worms. At last they faded and he tentatively opened his eyes. They hurt and the after-image of the slot hung before him, but at least he could see.

Feet pounded on the stairs. He smelled smoke and a burned, oily unpleasant something which he could not identify. Someone shouted. Someone hammered on a door. Then someone screamed and screamed.

It was in the papers next day. Mysterious, the story said. Charles Fort, in
Lo!
, had reported many such cases and there had been others since—people burned to a crisp by a fierce heat which had nevertheless not destroyed clothes or bedding, while leaving nothing for autopsy. This was, said the paper, either an unknown kind of heat or heat of such intensity and such brevity that it would do such a thing. No known relatives, it said. Police mystified—no clues or suspects.

Slim didn't say anything to anybody. He wasn't curious about the matter any more. He closed up the hole in the closet that same night, and next day, after he read the story, he used the newspaper to wrap up the thing in his shirt drawer. It smelled pretty bad and, even that early, was too far gone to be unfolded. He dropped it into a garbage can on the way to the lawyer's office on Wednesday.

They settled his lawsuit that afternoon and he moved.

T
HERE WAS THIS TRAINED NURSE
who retired at twenty-four to marry a big guy, six foot seven, top brass in a Government agency. He was home only weekends. His name was Fritz Rhys. About sick people, wrong people, different people, he was a very understanding guy. It was his business to understand them.

So one night he went for a walk with his wife Alma down to this little park on the riverfront where they could get some air. There was a fountain and a bench where they could sit and see the lights across the water and flowerbeds and all that, and this particular Sunday night there was a bunch of punks, eight of them, kicking someone to death over by the railing. Fritz Rhys understood right away what was happening and what to do, and in three big jumps he was right in the middle of it. He snatched a hunk of broom-handle away from one of the kids just before it got buried in the victim, and then they all saw him and that was the end of that. They cut out of there, ducking around Alma where she stood as if she was dangerous too.

Alma ran over to where Fritz knelt and helped him turn the man over. She got Fritz's display handkerchief and sponged the blood and broken teeth out of the slack mouth and turned the head to one side, and did the other things trained nurses are trained to do.

“Anything broken?”

She said yes. “His arm. Maybe internal injuries too. We'd better get an ambulance.”

“Home's quicker. Hey boy! You're all right now.
Up
you go!” So by the time the man got his eyes open Fritz had him on his feet.

They half carried him up the steps and over the foot-bridge that crosses the Drive, and Fritz was right, they had him back to their apartment forty minutes sooner than it would have taken to call a wagon.

She was going to phone but he stopped her. “We can handle it.
Get some pajamas.” He looked at the injured man draped over one big arm. “Get some of yours. He won't mind.”

They cleaned him up and splinted the arm. It wasn't so bad. Bruises on the ribs and buttocks, and then the face, but he was lucky. “Give him one week and one dentist and you'll never know it happened.”

“He will.”

“Oh, that,” Fritz said.

She said, “What do you suppose they did it for?”

“Green monkey.”

“Oh,” she said, and they left the man sleeping and went to bed. At five in the morning Fritz rose quietly and got dressed and she didn't wake up until he thumped his suitcase down by the bed and bent over to kiss her goodbye.

She gave him his kiss and then came all the way awake and said, “Fritz! You're not just—leaving, like always?”

He wanted to know why not, and she pointed at the guest room. “Leave me with—”

He laughed at her. “Believe me, honey, you haven't got a thing to worry about.”

“But he … I … oh, Fritz!”

“If anything happens you can call me.”

“In
Washington?
” She sat up and sort of hugged the sheet around her. “Oh, why can't I just send him to a hospital where—”

He had a way sometimes of being so patient it was insulting. He said, “Because I want to talk to him, help him, when he's better, and you know what hospitals are. You just keep him happy and tell him not to leave until I can have a talk with him.” Then he said something so gentle and careful that she knew when to shut up: “And let's say no more about it, shall we?” So she said no more about it and he went back to Washington.

The pajamas were small for him but not much and he was about her age, too. (Fritz Rhys was quite a bit older.) He had a name that she got fond of saying, and small strong hands. All day Monday he was kind of dazed and didn't say much, only smiled thanks for the eggnog and bouillon and bedpan and so on. Tuesday he was up and about. His clothes were back from the cleaners and mended and he
put them on and they sat around the whole day talking. Alma read books a good deal and she read aloud to him. She played a lot of music on the phonograph too. Whatever she liked, he liked even better. Wednesday she took him to the dentist, once in the morning to get the stubs ground down and impressed, and again in the afternoon to have the temporary acrylic caps cemented in. By this time the lip swelling was all but gone, and with the teeth fixed up she found herself spending a lot of time just looking at his mouth. His hair shone in the sun and she half believed it would shine in the dark too. He somehow never answered her when she wanted to know where he came from. Maybe there was too much laughing going on at the time. They laughed a whole lot together. Anyway it was some place where you couldn't get spaghetti. She took him to an Italian restaurant for dinner and had to teach him how to spin it on his fork. They had a lot of fun with that and he ate plenty of it.

On Wednesday night—late—she phoned her husband.

“Alma! What is it? Are you all right?”

She did not answer until he called her name twice again, and then she said, all whispery, “Yes, Fritz. I'm all right. Fritz, I'm
frightened!
”

“Of what?”

She didn't say anything, though he could hear her trying.

“Is it the … what's his name, anyway?”

“Loolyo.”

“Julio?”

She sang: “Lool-yo.”

“Well, then. What's he done?”

“N-nothing.”

“Well then—are you afraid of anything he might do?”

“Oh, no!”

“You're so right. I understood that when I left, or he wouldn't be there. Now then: he hasn't done anything, and you're sure he won't, and I'm sure he won't, so—why call me up this time of night?”

She didn't say anything.

“Alma?”

“Fritz,” she said. She was swift, hoarse: “Come home. Come right home.”

“Act your age!”

“Your three minutes are up. Signal when through please.”

“Yes operator.”

“Alma! Are you calling from an outside phone? Why aren't you home?”

“I couldn't bear to have him hear me,” she whispered. “Goodbye, Fritz.” He might have said something more to her, but she hung up and went home.

On Thursday she phoned for the car and packed a picnic and they went to the beach. It was too cold to swim but they sat on the sand most of the day and talked, and sang some. “I'm frightened,” she said again, but she said it to herself. Once they talked about Fritz. She asked him why those boys had clobbered him and he said he didn't know. She said Fritz knew. “He says you're a green monkey,” and she explained it: “He says if you catch a monkey in the jungle and paint it green, all the other monkeys will tear it to pieces because it's different. Not dangerous, just different.”

“Different how?” Loolyo asked, in a quiet voice, about himself.

She had a lot of answers to that, but they were all things of her own and she didn't mention them. She just said again that Fritz knew. “He's going to help you.”

He looked at her and said, “He must be a good man.”

She thought that over and said, “He's a very understanding man.”

“What does he do in Washington?”

“He's an expert on rehabilitation programs.”

“Rehabilitation of what?”

“People.”

“Oh.… I'm looking forward to Saturday.”

She told him, “I love you.” He turned to her as she sat round eyed, all her left knuckles in her mouth so that the ring hurt her.

“You don't mean that.”

“I didn't mean to say it.”

After that, and on Friday, they stayed together, but like the wires on your lamp cord, never touching. They went to the zoo, where Loolyo looked at the animals excited as a child, except the monkeys, which made them be quiet and go quickly to something else. The
longer the day got the quieter they were together, and at dinner they said almost nothing, and after that they even stopped looking at each other. That night when it was darkest she went to his room and opened the door and closed it again behind her. She did not turn on the light. She said, “I don't care …” and again, “I don't care,” and wept in a whisper.

Loolyo was alone in the apartment when Fritz came home. “Shopping,” he answered the big man's question. “Good afternoon, Mr. Rhys. I'm glad to see you.”

“Fritz,” instructed Fritz. “You're looking chipper. Alma been good to you?”

Loolyo smiled enough to light up the place.

“What'd you say your name was? Julio? Oh yeh, Loolyo, I remember. Well, Lou m'lad, let's have our little talk. Sit down over there and let me have a good look at you.” He took a good long look and then grunted and nodded, satisfied. “You ashamed of yourself, boy?”

“Wh …? Ashamed? Uh—no, I don't think so.”

“Good! That means this doesn't have to be a long talk at all. Just to make it even shorter, I want you to know from the start that I know what you are and you don't have to hide it and it doesn't matter a damn to me and I'm not going to pry. Okay?”

“You know?”

Fritz boomed a big laugh. “Don't
worry
so, Louie! Everybody you meet doesn't see what I see. It's my business to see these things and understand them.”

Loolyo shifted nervously. “What things are you talking about?”

“Shape of the hands. Way you walk, way you sit, way you show your feelings, sound of your voice. Lots more. All small things, any one or two or six might mean nothing. But all together—I'm on to you, I understand you. I'm not asking, I'm telling. And I don't
care
. It's just that I can tell you how to behave so you don't get mobbed again. You want to hear it or don't you?”

Loolyo didn't look a thing in the world but puzzled. Fritz stood up and pulled off his jacket and shirt and threw them on the corner of the couch and fell back in the big chair, altogether relaxed. He
began to talk like a man who loves talking and who knows what to say because he's said it all before, knows he's right, knows he says it well. “A lot of people live among people all their lives and never find out this one simple thing about people: human beings cease to be human when they congregate, and a mob is a monster. If you think of a mob as a living thing and you want to get its I.Q., take the average intelligence of the people there and divide it by the number of people there. Which means that a mob of fifty has somewhat less intelligence than an earthworm. No one person could sink to its level of cruelty and lack of principle. It thinks that anything that is different is dangerous, and it thinks it's protecting itself by tearing anything that's different to small bloody bits. The difference-which-is-dangerous changes with the times. Men have been mob-murdered for wearing beards, and for not wearing beards. For saying the right series of words in what the mob thinks is the wrong order. For wearing or not wearing this or that article of clothing, or tattoo, or piece of skin.”