Final Reckonings (30 page)

The long, thin face was even longer and thinner today. The cheeks seemed to be slightly sunken — where had he seen that particular conformation before?

The eyes were bright blue but slightly glazed, and this phenomenon, too, was familiar.

His brown hair was plastered back on his forehead, and it lay dully and without luster. Somehow, he recognized a similarity here, also.

His skin was pale. Waxy pale. He knew that pallor. It was somehow tied in with the sunken cheeks and the glazed eyes and the dully plastered hair, because it was associated with the look of a —

"Corpse!" he whispered. "You look like a corpse. You're dead. Dead, or dying. Got to do something. Got to."

Yes, he had to do something, but what? Drinking hadn't helped. And he couldn't drink any more, anyway, because the last of the money was gone. He couldn't get out of this dingy little furnished room, either — not until the end of the month. Then he'd be thrown out.

And worst of all, he couldn't write.

That was the crux of the problem. He couldn't write. The portable typewriter rested on the card table. It rested. But he didn't rest. He couldn't rest. He couldn't rest because he couldn't write, and then he drank because he couldn't rest, and when he drank he couldn't write, either. Not writing led to drinking which led to not writing which led to — looking like a corpse. Becoming a corpse. If he didn't go mad first.

"Save me," he whispered to himself in the mirror. "Save me!" But the face staring back was impassive. The face knew all there was to know about him.

Barnaby Codd, aged thirty. Occupation, writer. Status, single. Future, dubious. Or all too certain.

And the face knew the facts behind the facts. Knew about the seven years of work, the stories rejected, the stories sold, the brave beginnings and the bitter end. It knew about Peggy and the broken engagement — about the furnished apartment with its five rooms when the writing came easily. It knew about the cases of bonded whiskey when the stuff was selling to the better markets, and it knew about the empty bottle of the cheapest gin (going crazy, how can there be an
empty
bottle of cheapest anything?) when he hit the slump. When the slump hit him, which was now, now, now. When he couldn't rest, couldn't keep from drinking, couldn't start the writing. When he got into this horrible habit of talking to himself and his brain ran away with the words and the thoughts and left nothing but a morass of maudlin self-pity.

Barnaby Codd stared at himself in the mirror and himself stared back with the impassivity of death. He was calm now. Calm as if in a coma. Coma, comma, Lake Como, Lake Perry Como, comme cj, comme ca, come wind, come rain, come hell or high water, come Dunder and Blitzen and Prancer and Rudolph the Rednosed Can Opener. Damn it to hell, where was the can opener, where was the magic key that opened the silver portals that led to the regal banquet of beans for His Majesty's pleasure?

It was very funny. No reason for him to cry. And yet he was crying, suddenly. The mirror was blurring, the room was beginning to spin, and there was a ringing in his ears.

"Telephone!" Mrs. Bixby, calling him. "Telephone, Mister Codd!"

Barnaby Codd rubbed his eyes, groped his way down the hall, answered the phone. "Hello . . . yes . . . yes . . . why, sure . . . yes, that would be fine . . . glad to . . . thanks."

He hung up. This was it, this was the reprieve, this was the last-minute call from the governor as they strapped him into the chair.

He was going to a party. A cocktail party, with a buffet supper. There'd be food, food, food — lots of food. And there'd be drink, drink, drink — lots of drink. And people. People like Hank Olcott, who'd invited him. People who still thought of him as a creative talent, who would introduce him, with a certain flourish of pride: "This is my friend, Barnaby Codd, the writer."

Yes, he still had a clean suit. And he could shave the hollow cheeks. He would go, and he would glow, and he could talk to others instead of to himself, and he could eat something better than beans and drink something better than cheap gin.

So Barnaby Codd washed and shaved and dressed and combed his hair. He turned off the electric grill. He picked up his hat and started for the door. Then he paused, turned back.

He went over to the washstand, grabbed up the can of baked beans and hurled it into the wastebasket.

2

Hank Olcott led him across the room and introduced him with a certain flourish. "This is my friend, Barnaby Codd, the writer." He did it once, he did it twice, he did it half a dozen times.

Codd kept feeling better and better. All that food, all that liquor, all these people milling around. A chance to talk, to notice and be noticed. Everything was becoming quite
real
once more, and Codd felt very much alive.

There must be at least forty people in the apartment, he estimated; they kept arriving and departing — the elegant, the effete, the eccentric and the egocentric. Where Olcott picked them up he didn't know. He had some odd friends, Codd mused. He himself was a good example.

As time passed, the character of the crowd changed. Some strangers had appeared; apparently the word was going around. It was the old story. Olcott told his friends he was holding a party, and they told
their
friends, and
they
told their friends, acquaintances, even their enemies.

Hank Olcott wasn't introducing him to very many people now. He didn't know very many people in this crowd. Codd speculated about making his departure. He felt very good, quite self-assured. Better quit now while he was ahead. Another drink might be one too many. Another introduction might be boring. But —

Then he saw the crimson poppy.

It swayed on its long green stem, its scarlet petals unfurled. It stood in slender splendor near the far windows, and Codd felt irresistibly drawn to its aura. He bent his head as if to inhale the perfume of its presence.

"My name is Barnaby Codd," he whispered.

"I'm Cleo Fane," said the crimson poppy.

Codd stared at the sheathing green gown, at the flowing red hair. This was no poppy, but a far more exotic flower. Face of Grecian marble, eyes cut from Chinese jade — Codd checked himself abruptly. He was letting go again, he realized; all this business of flowers, sculpture, purple prose. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen — wasn't that enough?

And she was staring up at him with something very much like admiration in her slanted oval eyes.

"Do you belong here?" she was asking.

"Belong here?"

"Do you know these people?"

"Why—yes. That is, I know Olcott, our host. Great patron of the arts — dilettante, really. That's how I got in. I'm a writer." 

She nodded. "I know."

A warm glow came over Codd. He smiled. "What do you do?" he asked.

"I don't belong here."

"Then let's leave, shall we?"

She put her arm on his. "Very well."

And that's all there was to it. In one minute he'd met the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and walked away with her.

Olcott was standing at the portable bar, surrounded by an assortment of longhairs and crewcuts, and Codd made no effort to bid him goodbye.

Instead he walked out, floated out, flew out into the night with the ravishing redhead. Ravishing—

"Won't you be my guest for a few moments?" she was asking. "I have a place. It isn't far."

Codd had difficulty in comprehending her invitation. It was just too good to be true. This was the way it happened in stories; the way it happened in some of the stories he used to write.

Elation combined with alcohol within him to produce a strange alchemy. He knew he was drunk, he knew he couldn't walk very well, he knew that he had only a blurred awareness of the street, of movement, of entering a tall building and being ushered into a large room. A dim lamp glowed in the corner. Codd smelt a perfume that might have been incense, might have been the woman who stood close beside him, sat close beside him now on the long, low divan.

And then she turned to him, and it was like the surge of the sea, the warm tide flowing over him and bearing him up on its crest, and all at once he could talk, and the formless phrases and wild words made a certain sense.

". . . don't know how long I've been looking for someone like you . . . not someone
like
you, but
you
, though I never knew it. . . never thought anyone like you existed . . . never believed in Fate ... or that Fate was a woman with red hair and green eyes and lips shaped as strange gateways to dreams. . ."

"What do you write?" She sat up suddenly, and her voice was almost crisp.

"Why — I — I — " Codd fumbled for reality. "What do I write? That's an odd question. I write many things. Poetry, and short stories, and there are two novels, half of a third — but that was over a year ago, when I stopped." He gulped, then took the plunge. "I'll be honest. I
was
a writer. But I can hardly claim to be one now. For a year I've been in a slump. Something happened to me, I don't know how to explain it. I can't write any more."

Cleo nodded in private affirmation. "That's why I wanted to meet you. I knew you needed help."

"What do you mean?"

For answer, Cleo rose. She disappeared somewhere in the dimness of the room. Codd sat there, wondering and waiting. He felt quite drunk now. Things were happening too quickly, and he had no way of evaluating the reality of events. On one level, it seemed like years since he'd been crying in front of the washstand mirror. On another, no time had elapsed at all.

Then Cleo was back. She was holding something in her hand, but the hand was below the level of the divan and Codd couldn't see anything from where he sat.

"This writing problem," she said. "Would you say you had established some sort of mental block?"

Codd sat up stiffly. "Say, what is this — are you a lady psychiatrist?"

Cleo laughed, a soft laugh of darkness and musk. "No. But I understand something about creation and its problems." Her voice became a persuasive purr. "I want to help you, you know."

"I know. And I'm trying to answer honestly. I just can't seem to function as a writer any more. I can't seem to grasp ideas properly, coherently. Everything flies apart into words, phrases, sentences. There's nothing consistent or coherent — I can't seem to concentrate." Codd's voice sank to a whisper. "Sometimes, lately, I wonder if I'm losing my mind."

"Losing your mind." Cleo smiled a smile of her own. "Odd that you should use that particular phrase."

"Why is it odd?"

"Have you ever stopped to think of what it means, what image it conveys? If you
lose
your mind, that indicates it has been mislaid — that it's
somewhere else
. Where is your mind now, Mr. Barnaby Codd?"

"Lost in flames," Codd whispered, as intoxication flooded over him again. "Lost in the flames of your hair and your eyes and your lips and — "

"Not now." She pushed him away. "This is important. To you. To me. And to someone else."

"Someone else?"

"Of course. I'm only what you might call an emissary. An agent. I couldn't invent something like this."

The hand came up from below the divan's level now. It came up in all its shining silver slimness, holding the odd-looking object.

"What in the world — or out of the world — is that?" Codd breathed.

"What does it look like?"

"Well, I'd say it was some kind of headdress, or helmet."

"You're correct. It is meant to be worn on the head."

"And those antennae, with the coiled tubing between them — make me think of television, and space pilots, and all that kid stuff."

"Let me assure you there is nothing childish about this invention. As you will soon learn, to your profit."

"1 still don't understand."

"You will. I was directed to go out and find a subject for the experiment. A creative artist — painter, sculptor, musician, writer. Someone possessing a sensitive imagination, but unchanneled, undisciplined. To be blunt, an unsuccessful creative artist. A successful artist, in any field, wouldn't want or need to wear the helmet. You will."

"You mean somebody invented this and wants me to put it on my head?"

"Exactly."

"Now, wait a minute." Codd was suddenly quite sober. "This doesn't make sense. I may be going crazy, but I'm not that crazy. A beautiful woman comes to me and asks me to wear a Buck Rogers helmet invented by some mysterious screwball, and I'm supposed to go along with the gag."

"This is serious. You cannot begin to imagine just how serious. However, I am beginning to see I made a mistake. Yours is not the temperament I had judged it to be. I think you had better leave now."

Cleo stood up, moved away. And every inch of retreat was agony to Codd, every movement of withdrawal was poignant with pain. He couldn't lose her, he'd do anything, anything —

"Wait! Perhaps if you'd explain to me what this is all about, what the helmet is supposed to do, I'd understand."

"No. You are not the man I want."

"Please!" He was frankly begging her now. "I'll do anything you ask, anything."

She smiled and came closer. "That's better. Much, much better."

She held out the helmet. "Here, put it on."

"Now?"

"Exactly."

He held it in his hand. The metal was cool but oddly light and malleable. In the dim light he could not discern the nature of the coiled tubing or the antennae to which it was attached.

"What — what am I supposed to do when I wear it?"

"You'll understand everything. Just put it on." Her smile was mocking, now. "What's the matter? Afraid I'm going to harm you?"

It was the proper challenge for the moment. Barnaby Codd lifted the helmet. He placed it on his head firmly—Napoleon grasping the coronet from the Pope and crowning himself emperor. The helmet fitted snugly over his skull. At the point where the two antennae were based, something began to bore into his brain.

He stared ahead for a moment, looking at Cleo. Her face was rapt, her eyes closed. He had the oddest sensation that her eyes were in the antennae, that the antennae were in his brain, that his brain was in another world. He stared at her hair, and the flames leapt up, and Barnaby Codd drowned in their fire.