Margaret St. Clair (2 page)

That night he was drinking, and playing dar ts for the drinks, with a friend in a nondescript bar at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf. Sven was in his late twenties, with excellent coordination, but he had never been able to master the knack of dart throwing —which, I suppose, is why he played the game s o persistently.

He and Frank had already had a good deal to drink. They were playing the simplified form of darts in which each player throws four darts and the player with the highest total score wins. Frank, who was pretty good at the game, had just ma de a score of three hundred and twenty-five.

Sven picked up one of his darts and balanced it. He positioned his feet and tested the distribution of his weight. Once more he balanced the dart. Then he let fly.

The dart struck dead in the center of the b oard and stuck there, quivering.

“Pretty good,” said Frank.

“Just a fluke,” Sven answered. “Wait’ll you see what I do next time.”

He threw the second dart. It joined its brother unerringly in the center of the board.

“Keep it up,” Frank said approv ingly. “If I can.”

Sven threw the last two darts. Both went in the bull’s-eye to make him the maximum possible score, four hundred points.

“Pretty good, old pal, old pal,” Frank said. “I didn’t know you could throw like that.”

“Neither did I. I don’t understand it. It’s the first time they’ve ever gone where I wanted them to.” He frowned, and looked down at his right hand. It seemed to him that his will, and not his hand, had propelled the darts to their home in the target, and he had an exhilarating sense of having stepped momentarily from the real world, where the will is powerless, into the sphere where the will governs everything.

“It’s getting late,” Frank said. “Let’s have one more drink, and then go home. Want to play fo r it??”

“Sure, why not?”

This time Frank was more careful with his throws than usual. He scored three hundred and fifty. But again Sven’s four darts went dead to the center, for a total of four hundred points.

“I don’t know why you say you can’t play darts,” Frank said, a little aggrieved.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Sven replied.

They finished their drinks and left the bar. “The war seems to be hotting up,” Frank remarked, stopping to scan the headlines on the newspaper racks.

“Yeah. You know, Frank, sometimes I hate people.”

“I don’t like them very well myself. Good night, boy.”

“Good night.”

They parted. Sven started along the Embarcadero. He lived in a rooming house at the foot of Bay Street.

The Embarcadero at two-thirty in the morning is not precisely unsafe, but it is not very well lighted. Sven did not anticipate any trouble. There was less than four dollars in his pockets, and he was dressed in dungarees, sneakers and a sweatshirt. He did n ‘t think anybody would bother him.

He walked along steadily, his hands thrust in his pockets. He was thinking about his future. It didn’t look very good. What was he going to do with himself?

Some six months ago, he had finished a hitch in the army, se rving in the Middle East, the latest part of the world in which his country had seen fit to embroil itself militarily. Sven had been a demolitions expert. He had performed his duties conscientiously, but with an increasing distaste that ended being almost nausea. He had thought he would feel better after his discharge, once he was home again, but he hadn’t. Mildred had married somebody else while he was gone. Maybe he ought to get married himself. But he was afraid it wouldn’t help.

The real trouble, as he had indicated to Frank, was that the army had made him feel he hated people. What good were they? All their pretensions ended in trying to inflict damage on one another. Maybe he was just drunk. But it seemed to him that Homo sapiens was the only animal that was habitually merciless toward itself.

His shadow kept pace with him steadily, disappearing when he entered a shadow and springing out again when he passed under a light. —Oh, the hell with it! Tomorrow he’d go down to the hiring hall and see about getting a work permit. Bethlehem was said to be hiring fitters now.

Just as he passed Pier Nineteen, he caught a flicker of motion behind him. He turned his head quickly. His movement caused the blow that was aimed at him to go wild; instead of the sap falling hard on the back of Sven’s head, it struck the bulge behind his right temple, and only glancingly. Sven was dazed, but by no means knocked out.

He turned to grapple with his attacker. The man —somewhat smaller than Sven, and dressed in black —made another attempt to hit him with the sap. Sven dodged and, remembering an old army lesson, levered the man’s arm over and out. There was a whimper. The sap fell on the pavement. The mugger regarded Sven loweringly for an instant, but when Sven moved toward him, he turned and ran. Sven was left alone in the street.

He drew a deep breath. He felt sick and dizzy. In a minute, he realized, he was going to vomit.

With some foggy idea of not fouling up the sidewalk, Sven walked wobblingly over to the edge of t he dock. Much better, if one had to vomit, to do it in the water.

There was a wooden railing, not quite waist-high, at the edge of the concrete. Sven leaned on it, waiting for the spasm to take him. He must have black ed out for a moment. The next thing he knew, he was struggling in the cold, filthy water of the slip.

He got to the surface and gasped for air. He must have struck his head on a floating piece of wood; there was a sharp pain behind his ear, and he wen t under once more.

He tried for the surface again, but couldn’t make it. A noise of roaring filled his ears. Impersonally, he decided that he was going to drown. The knowledge did not bother him. He felt objective and detached about the whole thing.

Abruptly he was borne up from below. A broad smooth curving surface was between his legs. A voice —high-pitched, quick, and slightly gobbling —said, ‘Take it easy, now. You’re all right.”

Dazed and half-drowned as he was, Sven felt a thrill run down his spin e. It must be the night watchman, attracted by the sound of his splashing. But the voice had seemed to come from below him.

He drew in air pantingly. When he could talk, he said, “Who are you? Where are you speaking from?”

“I’m in the water,” the voice answered. “My name is Djuna. I was following you.”

“Following? But—”

“Can you hold on now?” said the voice. “Lean forward and put your hands under my flukes. You’ll be better balanced that way.”

Sven obeyed. The flukes must be those triangular flesh y flaps, and that meant —“Why, you’re a dolphin!” he said. He did not know why the realization should please him so much.

“Yesss. We call ourselves the sea people, though.”

“You can talk!”

“Yes. The navy was training me. But I managed to get away.”

The dolphin had turned around, noiselessly and effortlessly, and was swimming out through the slip into the bay. “Where are you taking me?” Sven asked.

“Where do you want to go?” Djuna replied.

“To Fisherman’s Wharf, I guess. I think I could climb up o n the pier there. Or —where are you going?”

“To the Farallons, to meet some —” The animal was moving more slowly now. “I know quite a lot about you,” it said in what seemed to be a thoughtful tone. “When you were playing darts in the bar, I was helping you .”

“You were? Well, I’m not surprised. I didn’t think I could throw that well by myself. But I don’t know how you did it.”

“It’s called Udra,” Djuna answered. “We can do it with people sometimes, the right kind of people. You don’t like human beings very much, do you?”

“No. Whatever we do, it always seems to end up in hurting somebody. With the best motives, of course. But I ‘m sick of it.”

“If you only hurt other human beings, Splits, it wouldn’t matter.” Djuna was swimming even more slowly now.

Abruptly the animal seemed to have made up its —her?—mind. “Look here, would you like to come with me?” it said. “We won’t hurt anybody if we can possibly help it But the sea people are in danger. We need allies.”

For a moment Sven hesitated. He didn’t know what he might be letting himself in for, and —then his caution was washed out by an irresistible attraction. “Yes, I’d like t o go with you,” he said. “I’ll help you all I can. Yes.”

They got to Noonday Rock about four, when the late-rising moon was filling the sky with light. Djuna had been unable to make her accustomed speed with Sven on her back, and she had had to make wide detours around shipping for fear he might be seen.

“Here we are,” she said in her high, somewhat gobbling voice. “This is Noonday Rock. Nobody comes here, ordinarily.” Sven felt sand under his feet. He put his legs down, and Djuna slid out from under hi m. “Is there anybody else here now?” he asked the animal as he regarded the rock’s black, steep bulk.

“Lots of sea people. Only one other Split. Here she comes now.”

A girl was coming toward him. She wore a white dress; her pale hair was loose about he r shoulders; in the moonlight she seemed made of silver.

“Hello,” she said. “Djuna brought you?”

“Yes. My name is Sven Erickson.”

“You’ll help us? My name is Madelaine. The world is at the hinge of time, I think.”

-

Dr. Lawrence’s case was the strangest of the three. When it became plain that Madelaine Paxton had disappeared (she did not show up for work at the research station, she was not at her apartment, and her car had been found abandoned at Drake’s Bay), the n a vy assigned an investigator to try to find out what had become of her. This was not because Madelaine’s work had brought her into contact with anything in the least secret —the investigation was routine, part of a general navy policy.

The investigator, after talking to Madelaine’s friends in the office, had an interview with Dr. Lawrence.

“I see by her record that you were giving her psychiatric treatment,” the investigator said.

“Yes. She was suffering from acute amnesia at first. Then she began to he ar voices.”

“What does that indicate?”

“Amnesia, when it’s genuine, is usually the result of a serious psychic conflict. As to the voices, I am inclined to think they were nothing more than a projection onto the external world of Miss Paxton’s thoughts.

“Joan of Arc, for example, claimed to hear voices. Most historians think that she expressed her own sense of her historic mission by speaking of it in this way.”

“I don’t quite understand you.”

“Well, if I feel an impulse to steal something, and my super-ego forbids me to, I may say, ‘My conscience told me not to.’ With most people that’s just a way of speaking. But with certain individuals there may actually be an impression of a voice coming f r om outside.” This was not quite what Dr. Lawrence had said to Madelaine herself about the voices; but, since he was fairly certain his office wasn’t bugged, he saw no reason to strain for consistency.

“Um. You know her car was found abandoned at Drake’s Bay?”

“So I’ve been informed.”

“What do you think happened to her? Do you think she has committed suicide?”

“It’s possible. She didn’t seem suicidal to me the last time I saw her, on the morning of the 26th. She l eft the office saying that she’d remembered what she had to do, which could mean just about anything.”

“Don’t most suicides leave notes?”

“Yes. It’s possible that she decided to go swimming, went out too far, and drowned.”

“No normal person would go swimming in March at Drake’s Bay.”

“I didn’t say she was normal,” Dr. Lawrence replied, scoring a minor point. “I said I didn’t think she was suicidal the last time I saw her.”

The investigator moved uneasily in his chair. “But what do you think has ha ppened, Dr. Lawrence? I mean, what’s your best guess?”

“I think she was on the point of remembering what the conflict was that had caused her amnesia. Perhaps the conflict was too painful for her to handle, and she became amnesiac again. In that case, sh e may have wandered out on the highway, hitched a ride with somebody, and might be anywhere by now.”

The investigator was silent. Perhaps he was reflecting that the fact that Madelaine’s shoes and stockings had been found in her car made it unlikely that she had walked very far. At last he said, “Well, thank you, Doctor. If you think of anything that might be helpful, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry I wasn’t of more use. Goodbye.”

On his way home next evening —he lived in San Bruno —Dr. Lawrence stopped at a pay telephone and called a local number. As I said before, he was a man with an unslaked thirst for marvels, and outside of office hours he knew some unusual people.

Over the telephone he was told to bring something the person he was interested in had handled. An appointment was made for eight the next night.

Next evening, Dr. Lawrence was punctual. He handed Mrs. Casson, the psychometrist, a sheet of paper. “This is the best I could do,” he said. “It’s a drawing the pe rson I’m interested in made when I asked her to draw a picture of herself. I didn’t have access to anything that had belonged to her, like a comb or a piece of jewelry.”

“The picture will do nicely,” Mrs. Casson answered. She was a plump, soft woman who wore her graying hair in two heavy braids down her back. “You haven’t sat with me before, have you, Doctor?”

“No, I haven’t had that pleasure,” Dr. Lawrence replied.

“It’s quite simple. We sit opposite each other, and I hold to my forehead whatever my sitter has brought. Sometimes nothing happens, sometimes I go into a light trance, sometimes I can give information in my normal state. Sit down there, Doctor, and I’ll light some incense. It establishes the atmosphere.”

The incense was lit. It smelled, Dr. Lawrence thought, better than he had expected. Coils of smoke began to roll between him and Mrs. Casson.

They sat in silence. Once or twice Mrs. Casson cleared her throat. She was sitting, as far as he could see in the dull light, with her elbows on the arms of her chair and her forehead resting on the sheet of paper she held in her hands.

The moments passed. Dr. Lawrence began to wonder when Mrs. Casson would say that she was sorry, but she couldn’t get anything. Then he became aware that she was h umming a tune.