Great Photography: The world at war.

Great Photography: The world at war.: Chinese guerrilla fighter Cheng Benhua smiling moment before execution by the Japanese, she was 24. Camouflage Japanese Mitsubishi...

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

My last night of childhood began with a visit home. T’Gatoi’s sister had given us two sterile eggs. T’Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. It didn’t matter. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. Almost everyone. My mother wouldn’t take any. She sat, watching everyone drifting and dreaming without her. Most of the time she watched me.

I lay against T’Gatoi’s long, velvet underside, sipping from my egg now and then, wondering why my mother denied herself such a harmless pleasure. Less of her hair would be gray if she indulged now and then. The eggs prolonged life, prolonged vigor. My father, who had never refused one in his life, had lived more than twice as long as he should have. And toward the end of his life, when he should have been slowing down, he had married my mother and fathered four children.

But my mother seemed content to age before she had to. I saw her turn away as several of T’Gatoi’s limbs secured me closer. T’Gatoi liked our body heat and took advantage of it whenever she could. When I was little and at home more, MY mother used to try to tell me how to behave with T’Gatoi—how to be respectful and always obedient because T’Gatoi was the Tlic government official in charge of the Preserve, and thus the most important of her kind to deal directly with Terrans. It was an honor, my mother said, that such a person had chosen to come into the family. My mother was at her most formal and severe when she was lying.

I had no idea why she was lying, or even what she was lying about. It was an honor to have T’Gatoi in the family, but it was hardly a novelty. T’Gatoi and my mother had been friends all my mother’s life, and T’Gatoi was not interested in being honored in the house she considered her second home. She simply came in, climbed onto one of her special couches, and called me over to keep her warm. It was impossible to be formal with her while lying against her and hearing her complain as usual that I was too skinny. “You’re better,” she said this time, probing me with six or seven of her limbs.

 “You’re gaining weight finally.

Thinness is dangerous.” The probing changed subtly, became a series of caresses. “He’s still too thin,” my mother said sharply T’Gatoi lifted her head and perhaps a meter of her body off the couch as though she were sitting up. She looked at my mother, and my mother, her face lined and old looking, turned away. “Lien, I would like you to have what’s left of Gan’s egg.” “The eggs are for the children,” my mother said. “They are for the family. Please take it.” Unwillingly obedient, my mother took it from me and put it to her mouth. There were only a few drops left in the now-shrunken, elastic shell, but she squeezed them out, swallowed, them, and after a few moments some of the lines of tension began to smooth from her face. “It’s good,” she whispered. “Sometimes I forget how good it is.” “You should take more,” T’Gatoi said. “Why are you in such a hurry to be old?” My mother said nothing. “I like being able to come here, T’Gatoi said. “This place is a refuge because of you, yet you won’t take care of yourself”

T’Gatoi was hounded on the outside. Her people wanted more of us made available. Only she and her political faction stood between us and the hordes who did not understand why there was a Preserve—why any Terran could not be courted, paid, drafted, in some way made available to them. Or they did understand, but in their desperation, they did not care. She parceled us out to the desperate and sold us to the rich and powerful for their political support. Thus, we were necessities, status symbols, and an independent people. She oversaw the joining of families, putting an end to the final remnants of the earlier system of breaking up Terran ,families to suit impatient Tlic. I had lived outside with her. I had seen the desperate eagerness in the way some people looked at me. It was a little frightening to know that only she stood between us and that desperation that could so easily swallow us. My mother would look at her sometimes and say to me, “Take care of her.” And I would remember that she too had been outside, had seen. Now T’Gatoi used four of her limbs to push me away from her onto the floor. “Go on, Gan, she said. “Sit down there with your sisters and enjoy not being sober. You had most of the egg. Lien, come warm me.” My mother hesitated for no reason that I could see. One of my earliest memories is of my mother stretched alongside T’Gatoi, talking about things I could not understand, picking me up from the floor and laughing as she sat me on one of T’Gatoi’s segments. She ate her share of eggs then. I wondered when she had stopped, and why, She lay down now against T’Gatoi, and the whole left row of T’Gatoi’s limbs closed around her, holding her loosely, but securely. I had always found it comfortable to lie that way, but except for my older Sister, no one else in the family liked it. They said it made them feel caged. T’Gatoi meant to cage my mother. Once she had, she moved her tall slightly, then spoke. “Not enough egg, Lien. You should have taken it when it was passed to you. You need it badly now.” T’Gatoi’s tail moved once more, its whip motion so swift I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been watching for it. Her sting drew only a single drop of blood from my mother’s bare leg. My mother cried out—probably in surprise. Being stung doesn’t hurt. Then she sighed and I could see her body relax. She moved languidly into a more comfortable position within the cage of T’Gatoi’s limbs. “Why did you do that?” she asked, sounding half asleep. I could not watch you sitting and suffering any longer.” My mother managed to move her shoulders in a small shrug. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Yes. Tomorrow you will resume your suffering—if you must. But just now, just for now, lie here and warm me and let me ease your way a little.” “He’s still mine, you know,” my mother said suddenly. “Nothing can buy him. from me.” Sober, she would not have permitted herself to refer to such things. “Nothing,” T’Gatoi agreed, humoring her. “Did you think I would sell him for eggs? For long life? My son?” “Not for anything,” T’Gatoi said, stroking my mother’s shoulders, toying with her long, graying hair. I would like to have touched my mother, shared that moment with her. She would take my hand if I touched her now. Freed by the egg and the sting, she would smile and perhaps say things long held in. But tomorrow, she would remember all this as a humiliation. I did not want to be part of a remembered humiliation. Best just be still and know she loved me under all the duty and pride and pain. “Xuan Hoa, take off her shoes,” T’Gatoi said. “In a little while I’ll sting her again and she can sleep.” My older sister obeyed, swaying drunkenly as she stood up. When she had finished, she sat down beside me and took my hand. We had always been a unit, she and I. My mother put the back of her head against T’Gatoi’s. underside and tried from that impossible angle to look up into the broad, round face. “You’re going to sting me again?” “Yes, Lien.” “I’ll sleep until tomorrow noon.” “Good. You need it. When did you sleep last?” My mother made a wordless sound of annoyance. “I should have stepped on you when you were small enough,” she muttered. It was an old joke between them. They had grown up together, sort of, though T’Gatoi had not, in my mother’s life time, been small enough for any Terran to step on. She was nearly three time my mother’s present age, yet would still be young when my mother died of age. But T’Gatoi and my mother had met as T’Gatoi was coming into a period of rapid development—a kind of The adolescence. My mother was only a child, but for a while they developed at the same rate and had no better friends than each other. T’Gatoi had even introduced my mother to the man who became my father. My parents, pleased with each other in spite of their different ages, married as T’Gatoi was going into her family’s business—politics. She and my mother saw each other less. But sometime before my older sister was born, my mother promised T’Gatoi one of her children. She would have to give one of us to someone, and she preferred T’Gatoi to some stranger. Years passed. T’Gatoi traveled and increased her influence. The Preserve was hers by the time she came back to my mother to collect what she probably saw as her just reward for her hard work. My older sister took an instant liking to her and wanted to be chosen, but my mother was just coming to term with me and T’Gatoi liked the idea of choosing an infant and watching and taking part in all the phases of development. I’m told I was first caged within T’Gatoi’s many limbs only three minutes after my birth. A few days later, I was given my first taste of egg. I tell Terrans that when they ask whether I was ever afraid of her. And I tell it to Tlic when T’Gatoi suggests a young Terran child for them and they, anxious and ignorant, demand an adolescent. Even my brother who had somehow grown up to fear and distrust the Tlic could probably have gone smoothly into one of their families if he had been adopted early enough. Sometimes, I think for his sake he should have been. I looked at him, stretched out on the floor across the room, his eyes open, but glazed as he dreamed his egg dream. No matter what he felt toward the Tlic, he always demanded his share of egg. “Lien, can you stand up?” T’Gatoi asked suddenly. “Stand?” my mother said. “I thought I was going to sleep.” “Later. Something sounds wrong outside.” The cage was abruptly gone. “What?” “Up, Lien!” MY mother recognized her tone and got up just in time to avoid being dumped on the floor. T’Gatoi whipped her three meters of body off her couch, toward the door, and out at full speed. She had bones—ribs, a long spine, a skull, four sets of limb bones per segment. But when she moved that way, twisting, hurling herself into controlled falls, landing running, she seemed not only boneless, but aquatic—something swimming through the air as though it were water. I loved watching her move. I left my sister and started to follow her out the door, though I wasn’t very steady on my own feet. It would have been better to sit and dream, better yet to find a girl and share a waking dream with her. Back when the Tlic saw us as not much more than convenient, big, warm-blooded animals, they would pen several of us together, male and female, and feed us only eggs. That way they could be sure of getting another generation of us no matter how we tried to hold out. We were lucky that didn’t go on long. A few generations of it and we would have been little more than convenient, big animals. “Hold the door open, Gan,” T’Gatoi said. “And tell the family to stay back.” “What is it?” I asked. “N’Tlic.” I shrank back against the door. “Here? Alone?” “He was trying to reach a call box, I suppose.” She carried the man past me, unconscious, folded like a coat over some of her limbs. He looked young—my brother’s age perhaps—and he was thinner than he should have been. What T’Gatoi would have called dangerously thin. “Gan, go to the call box,” she said. She put the man on the floor and began stripping off his clothing. I did not move. After a moment, she looked up at me, her sudden stillness a sign of deep impatience. “Send Qui,” I told her. “I’ll stay here. Maybe I can help.” She let her limbs begin to move again, lifting the man and pulling his shirt over his head. “You don’t want to see this,” she said. “It will be hard. I can’t help this man the way his Tlic could.” “I know. But send Qui. He won’t want to be of any help here. I’m at least willing to try.” She looked at my brother—older, bigger, stronger, certainly more able to help her here. He was sitting up now, braced against the wall, staring at the man on the floor with undisguised fear and revulsion. Even she could see that he would be useless. “Qui, go!” she said. He didn’t argue. He stood up, swayed briefly, then steadied, frightened sober. “This man’s name is Bram Lomas,” she told him, reading from the man’s armband. I fingered my own armband in sympathy. “He needs T’Khotgif Teh. Do you hear?” “Bram Lomas, T’Khotgif Teh,” my brother said. “I’m going.” He edged around Lomas and ran out the door. Lomas began to regain consciousness. He only moaned at first and clutched spasmodically at a pair of T’Gatoi’s limbs. My younger sister, finally awake from her egg dream, came close to look at him, until my mother pulled her back. T’Gatoi removed the man’s shoes, then his pants, all the while leaving him two of her limbs to grip. Except for the final few, all her limbs were equally dexterous. “I want no argument from you this time, Gan,” she said. I straightened. “What shall I do?” “Go out and slaughter an animal that is at least half your size.” Slaughter? But I’ve never—” She knocked me across the room. Her tail was an efficient weapon whether she exposed the sting or not. I got up, feeling stupid for having ignored her warning, and went into the kitchen. Maybe I could kill something with a knife or an ax. My mother raised a few Terran animals for the table and several thousand local ones for their fur. T’Gatoi would probably prefer something local. An achti, perhaps. Some of those were the right size, though they had about three times as many teeth as I did and a real love of using them. My mother, Hoa, and Qui could kill them with knives. I had never killed one at all, had never slaughtered any animal. I had spent most of my time with T’Gatoi while my brother and sisters were learning the family business. T’Gatoi had been right. I should have been the one to go to the call box. At least I could do that. I went to the corner cabinet where my mother kept her large house and garden tools. At the back of the cabinet there was a pipe that carried off waste water from the kitchen—except that it didn’t anymore. My father had rerouted the waste water below before I was born. Now the pipe could be turned so that one half slid around the other and a rifle could be stored inside. This wasn’t our only gun, but it was our most easily accessible one. I would have to use it to shoot one of the biggest of the achti. Then T’Gatoi would probably confiscate it. Firearms were illegal in the Preserve. There had been incidents right after the Preserve was established—Terrans shooting Tlic, shooting N’Tlic. This was before the joining of families began, before everyone had a personal stake in keeping the peace. No one had shot a Tlic in my lifetime or my mother’s, but the law still stood—for our protection, we were told. There were stories of whole Terran families wiped out in reprisal back during the assassinations. I went out to the cages and shot the biggest achti I could find. It was a handsome breeding male, and my mother would not be pleased to see me bring it in. But it was the right size, and I was in a hurry. I put the achti’s long, warm body over my shoulder—glad that some of the weight I’d gained was muscle—and took it to the kitchen. There, I put the gun back in its hiding place. If T’Gatoi noticed the achti’s wounds and demanded the gun, I would give it to her. Otherwise, let it stay where my father wanted it. I turned to take the achti to her, then hesitated. For several seconds, I stood in front of the closed door wondering why I was suddenly afraid. I knew what was going to happen. I hadn’t seen it before but T’Gatoi had shown me diagrams and drawings. She had made sure I knew the truth as soon as I was old enough to understand it. Yet I did not want to go into that room. I wasted a little time choosing a knife from the carved, wooden box in which my mother kept them. T’Gatoi might want one, I told myself, for the tough, heavily furred hide of the achti. “Gan!” T’Gatoi called, her voice harsh with urgency. I swallowed. I had not imagined a single moving of the feet could be so difficult. I realized I was trembling and that shamed me. Shame impelled me through the door. I put the achti down near T’Gatoi and saw that Lomas was unconscious again. She, Lomas, and I were alone in the room—my mother and sisters probably sent out so they would not have to watch. I envied them. But my mother came back into the room as T’Gatoi seized the achti. Ignoring the knife I offered her, she extended claws from several of her limbs and slit the achti from throat to anus. She looked at me, her yellow eyes intent. “Hold this man’s shoulders, Gan.” I stared at Lomas in panic, realizing that I did not want to touch him, let alone hold him. This would not be like shooting an animal. Not as quick, not as merciful, and, I hoped, not as final, but there was nothing I wanted less than to be part of it. My mother came forward. “Gan, you hold his right side, she said. “I’ll hold his left.” And if he came to, he would throw her off without realizing he had done it. She was a tiny woman. She often wondered aloud how she had produced, as she said, such “huge” children. “Never mind,” I told her, taking the man’s shoulders. “I’ll do it.” She hovered nearby. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t shame you. You don’t have to stay and watch.” She looked at me uncertainly, then touched my face in a rare caress. Finally, she went back to her bedroom. T’Gatoi lowered her head in relief “Thank you, Gan,” she said with courtesy more Terran than Tlic. “That one . . . she is always finding new ways for me to make her suffer.” Lomas began to groan and make choked sounds. I had hoped he would stay unconscious. T’Gatoi put her face near his so that he focused on her. “I’ve stung you as much as I dare for now,” she told him. “When this is over, I’ll sting you to sleep and you won’t hurt anymore. “Please,” the man begged. “Wait . . . “There’s no more time, Bram. I’ll sting you as soon as it’s over. When TKhotgif arrives she’ll give you eggs to help you heal. It will be over soon.” “T’Khotgif!” the man shouted, straining against my hands. “Soon, Bram.” T’Gatoi glanced at me, then placed a claw against his abdomen slightly to the right of the middle, just below the left rib. There was movement on the right side—tiny, seemingly random pulsations moving his brown flesh, creating a concavity here, a convexity there, over and over until I could see the rhythm of it and knew where the next pulse would be. Lomas’s entire body stiffened under T’Gatoi’s claw, though she merely rested it against him as she wound the rear section of her body around his legs. He might break my grip, but he would not break hers. He wept helplessly as she used his pants to tie his hands, then pushed his hands above his head so that I could kneel on the cloth between them and pin them in place. She rolled up his shirt and gave it to him to bite down on. And she opened him. His body convulsed with the first cut. He almost tore himself away from me. The sound he made . . . I had never heard such sounds come from anything human. T’Gatoi seemed to pay no attention as she lengthened and deepened the cut, now and then pausing to lick away blood. His blood vessels contracted, reacting to the chemistry of her saliva, and the bleeding slowed. I felt as though I were helping her torture him, helping her consume him. I knew I would vomit soon, didn’t know why I hadn’t already. I couldn’t possibly last until she was finished. She found the first grub. It was fat and deep red with his blood—both inside and out. It had already eaten its own egg case but apparently had not yet begun to eat its host. At this stage, it would eat any flesh except its mother’s. Let alone, it would have gone on excreting the poisons that had both sickened and alerted Lomas. Eventually it would have begun to eat. By the time it ate its way out of Lomas’s flesh, Lomas would be dead or dying—and unable to take revenge on the thing that was killing him. There was always a grace period between the time the host sickened and the time the grubs began to eat him. T’Gatoi picked up the writhing grub carefully and looked at it, somehow ignoring the terrible groans of the man. Abruptly, the man lost consciousness. “Good,” T’Gatoi looked down at him. “I wish you Terrans could do that at will.” She felt nothing. And the thing she held . . . It was limbless and boneless at this stage, perhaps fifteen centimeters long and two thick, blind and slimy with blood. It was like a large worm. TGatoi put it into the belly of the achti, and it began at once to burrow. It would stay there and eat as long as there was anything to eat. Probing through Lomas’s flesh, she found two more, one of them smaller and more vigorous. “A male!” she said happily. He would be dead before I would. He would be through his metamorphosis and screwing everything that would hold still before his sisters even had limbs. He was the only one to make a serious effort to bite T’Gatoi as she placed him in the achti. Paler worms oozed to visibility in Lomas’s flesh. I closed my eyes. It was worse than finding something dead, rotting, and filled with tiny animal grubs. And it was far worse than any drawing or diagram. “Ah, there are more,” T’Gatoi said, plucking out two long, thick grubs. You may have to kill another animal, Gan. Everything lives inside you Terrans.” I had been told all my life that this was a good and necessary thing The and Terran did together—a kind of birth. I had believed it until now. I knew birth was painful and bloody, no matter what. But this was something else, something worse. And I wasn’t ready to see it. Maybe I never would be. Yet I couldn’t not see it. Closing my eyes didn’t help. T’Gatoi found a grub still eating its egg case. The remains of the case were still wired into a blood vessel by their own little tube or hook or whatever. That was the way the grubs were anchored and the way they fed. They took only blood until they were ready to emerge. Then they ate their stretched, elastic egg cases. Then they ate their hosts. T’Gatoi bit away the egg case, licked away the blood. Did she like the taste? Did childhood habits die hard—or not die at all? The whole procedure was wrong, alien. I wouldn’t have thought anything about her could seem alien to me. “One more, I think,” she said. “Perhaps two. A good family. In a host animal these days, we would be happy to find one or two alive.” She glanced at me. “Go outside, Gan, and empty your stomach. Go now while the man is unconscious.” I staggered out, barely made it. Beneath the tree just beyond the front door, I vomited until there was nothing left to bring up. Finally, I stood shaking, tears streaming down my face. I did not know why I was crying, but I could not stop. I went further from the house to avoid being seen. Every time I closed my eyes I saw red worms crawling over redder human flesh. There was a car coming toward the house. Since Terrans were forbidden motorized vehicles except for certain farm equipment, I knew this must be Lomas’s Tlic with Qui and perhaps a Terran doctor. I wiped my face on my shirt, struggled for control. “Gan,” Qui called as the car stopped. “What happened?” He crawled out of the low, round, Tlic-convenient car door. Another Terran crawled out the other side and went into the house without speaking to me. The doctor. With his help and a few eggs, Lomas might make it.

“T’Khotgif Teh?” I said. The Tlic driver surged out of her car, reared up half her length before me. She was paler and smaller than T’Gatoi—probably born from the body of an animal. The Tlic born from Terran bodies were always larger as well as more numerous. “Six young,” I told her. “Maybe seven, all alive. At least one male.” “Lomas?” she said harshly. I liked her for the question and the concern in her voice when she asked it. The last coherent thing he had said was her name. “He’s alive,” I said. She surged away to the house without another word. “She’s been sick,” my brother said, watching her go. “When I called, I could hear people telling her she wasn’t well enough to go out even for this.” I said nothing. I had extended courtesy to the Tlic. Now I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I hoped he would go in—out of curiosity if nothing else. “Finally found out more than you wanted to know, eh?” I looked at him. “Don’t give me one of her looks,” he said. “You’re not her. You’re just her property.” One of her looks. Had I picked up even an ability to imitate her expressions? “What’d you do, puke?” He sniffed the air. “So now you know what you’re in for.” I walked away from him. He and I had been close when we were kids. He would let me follow him around when I was home, and sometimes T’Gatoi would let me bring him along when she took me into the city. But something had happened when he reached adolescence. I never knew what. He began keeping out of T’Gatoi’s way. Then he began running away—until he realized there was no “away.” Not in the Preserve. Certainly not outside. After that he concentrated on getting his share of every egg that came into the house and on looking out for me in a way that made me all but hate him—a way that clearly said, as long as I was all right, he was safe from the Tlic. “ How was it, really?” he demanded, following me. “I killed an achti. The young ate it.” “You didn’t run out of the house and puke because they ate an achti.” “I had . . . never seen a person cut open before.” That was true, and enough for him to know. I couldn’t talk about the other. Not with him. “Oh,” he said. He glanced at me as though he wanted to say more, but he kept quiet. We walked, not really headed anywhere. Toward the back, toward the cages, toward the fields. “Did he say anything?” Qui asked. “Lomas, I mean.” Who else would he mean? “He said ‘T’Khotgif.’ “ Qui shuddered. “If she had done that to me, she’d be the last person I’d call for.” “You’d call for her. Her sting would ease your pain without killing the grubs in you.” “You think I’d care if they died?” No. Of course he wouldn’t. Would I? “Shit!” He drew a deep breath. “I’ve seen what they do. You think this thing with Lomas was bad? It was nothing.” I didn’t argue. He didn’t know what he was talking about. “I saw them eat a man,” he said. I turned to face him. “You’re lying!” “I saw them eat a man.” He paused. “It was when I was little. I had been to the Hartmund house and I was on my way home. Halfway here, I saw a man and a Tlic, and the man was N’Tlic. The ground was hilly. I was able to hide from them and watch. The Tlic wouldn’t open the man because she had nothing to feed the grubs. The man couldn’t go any further and there were no houses around. He was in so much pain, he told her to kill him. He begged her to kill him. Finally, she did. She cut his throat. One swipe of one claw. I saw the grubs eat their way out, then burrow in again, still eating.” His words made me see Lomas’s flesh again, parasitized, crawling. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I whispered. He looked startled as though he’d forgotten I was listening. “I don’t know.” “You started to run away not long after that, didn’t you?” “Yeah. Stupid. Running inside the Preserve. Running in a cage. I shook my head, said what I should have said to him long ago. “She wouldn’t take you, Qui. You don’t have to worry.” “She would . . . if anything happened to you.” “No. She’d take Xuan Hoa. Hoa . . . wants it.” She wouldn’t if she had stayed to watch Lomas. “They don’t take women,” he said with contempt. “They do sometimes.” I glanced at him. “Actually, they prefer women. You should be around them when they talk among themselves. They say women have more body fat to protect the grubs. But they usually take men to leave the women free to bear their own young.” “To provide the next generation of host animals,” he said, switching from contempt to bitterness. “It’s more than that!” I countered. Was it? “If it were going to happen to me, I’d want to believe it was more, too. “It is more!” I felt like a kid. Stupid argument. “Did you think so while T’Gatoi was picking worms out of that guy’s guts?” “It’s not supposed to happen that way.” “Sure it is. You weren’t supposed to see it, that’s all. And his Tlic was supposed to do it. She could sting him unconscious and the operation wouldn’t have been as painful. But she’d still open him, pick out the grubs, and if she missed even one, it would poison him and eat him from the inside out.” There was actually a time when my mother told me to show respect for Qui because he was my older brother. I walked away, hating him. In his way, he was gloating. He was safe and I wasn’t. I could have hit him, but I didn’t think I would be able to stand it when he refused to hit back, when he looked at me with contempt and pity. He wouldn’t let me get away. Longer legged, he swung ahead of me and made me feel as though I were following him. “I’m sorry,” he said. I strode on, sick and furious. “Look, it probably won’t be that bad with you. T’Gatoi likes you. She’ll be careful.” I turned back toward the house, almost running from him. Has she done it to you yet?” he asked, keeping up easily. “I mean, you’re about the right age for implantation. Has she—” I hit him. I didn’t know I was going to do it, but I think I meant to kill him. If he hadn’t been bigger and stronger, I think I would have. He tried to hold me off, but in the end, had to defend himself. He only hit me a couple of times. That was plenty. I don’t remember going down, but when I came to, he was gone. It was worth the pain to be rid of him. I got up and walked slowly toward the house. The back was dark. No one was in the kitchen. My mother and sisters were sleeping in their bedrooms—or pretending to. Once I was in the kitchen, I could hear voices—Tlic and Terran from the next room. I couldn’t make out what they were saying—didn’t want to make it out. I sat down at my mother’s table, waiting for quiet. The table was smooth and worn, heavy and well crafted. My father had made it for her just before he died. I remembered hanging around underfoot when he built it. He didn’t mind. Now I sat leaning on it, missing him. I could have talked to him. He had done it three times in his long life. Three clutches of eggs, three times being opened up and sewed up. How had he done it? How did anyone do it? I got up, took the rifle from its hiding place, and sat down again with it. It needed cleaning, oiling. All I did was load it. “Gan?” She made a lot of little clicking sounds when she walked on bare floor, each limb clicking in succession as it touched down. Waves of little clicks. She came to the table, raised the front half of her body above it, and surged onto it. Sometimes she moved so smoothly she seemed to flow like water itself. She coiled herself into a small hill in the middle of the table and looked at me. “That was bad,” she said softly. “You should not have seen it. It need not be that way.” “I know.” “T’Khotgif—Ch’Khotgif now—she will die of her disease. She will not live to raise her children. But her sister will provide for them, and for Bram Lomas.” Sterile sister. One fertile female in every lot: One to keep the family going. That sister owed Lomas more than she could ever repay. “He’ll live then?” “Yes.” “I wonder if he would do it again.” “No one would ask him to do that again.” I looked into the yellow eyes, wondering how much I saw and understood there, and how much I only imagined. “No one ever asks us,” I said. “You never asked me.” She moved her head slightly. “What’s the matter with your face?” “Nothing. Nothing important.” Human eyes probably wouldn’t have noticed the swelling in the darkness. The only light was from one of the moons, shining through a window across the room. “Did you use the rifle to shoot the achti?” “Yes.” “And do you mean to use it to shoot me?” I stared at her, outlined in the moonlight—coiled, graceful body. “What does Terran blood taste like to you?” She said nothing. “What are you?” I whispered. “What are we to you?” She lay still, rested her head on her topmost coil. “You know me as no other does,” she said softly. “You must decide.” “That’s what happened to my face,” I told her. “What?” “Qui goaded me into deciding to do something. It didn’t turn out very well.” I moved the gun slightly, brought the barrel up diagonally under my own chin. “At least it was a decision I made.” “As this will be.” “Ask me, Gatoi.” “For my children’s lives?” She would say something like that. She knew how to manipulate people, Terran and Tlic. But not this time. I don’t want to be a host animal , I said. “Not even yours. It took her a long time to answer. “We use almost no host animals these days,” she said. “You know that.” “You use us.” “We do. We wait long years for you and teach you and join our families to yours.” She moved restlessly. “You know you aren’t animals to us.” I stared at her, saying nothing. “The animals we once used began killing most of our eggs after implantation long before your ancestors arrived,” she said softly. “You know these things, Gan. Because your people arrived, we are relearning what it means to be a healthy, thriving people. And your ancestors, fleeing from their homeworld, from their own kind who would have killed or enslaved them—they survived because of us. We saw them as people and gave them the Preserve when they still tried to kill us as worms. At the word “worms,” I jumped. I couldn’t help it, and she couldn’t help noticing it. “I see,” she said quietly. “Would you really rather die than bear my young, Gan?” I didn’t answer. “Shall I go to Xuan Hoa?” “Yes!” Hoa wanted it. Let her have it. She hadn’t had to watch Lomas. She’d be proud. . . . Not terrified. T’Gatoi flowed off the table onto the floor, startling me almost too much. “I’ll sleep in Hoa’s room tonight,” she said. “And sometime tonight or in the morning, I’ll tell her.” This was going too fast. My sister Hoa had had almost as much to do with raising me as my mother. I was still close to her—not like Qui. She could want T’Gatoi and still love me. “Wait! Gatoi!” She looked back, then raised nearly half her length off the floor and turned to face me. “These are adult things, Gan. This is my life, my family!” “But she’s . . . my sister.” “I have done what you demanded. I have asked you!” “But—” “It will be easier for Hoa. She has always expected to carry other lives inside her.” Human lives. Human young who should someday drink at her breasts, not at her veins. I shook my head. “Don’t do it to her, Gatoi.” I was not Qui. It seemed I could become him, though, with no effort at all. I could make Xuan Hoa my shield. Would it be easier to know that red worms were growing in her flesh instead of mine? “Don’t do it to Hoa,” I repeated. She stared at me, utterly still. I looked away, then back at her. “Do it to me.” I lowered the gun from my throat and she leaned forward to take it. “No,” I told her. “It’s the law,” she said. “Leave it for the family. One of them might use it to save my life someday.” She grasped the rifle barrel, but I wouldn’t let go. I was pulled into a standing position over her. “Leave it here!” I repeated. “If we’re not your animals, if these are adult things, accept the risk. There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner.” It was clearly hard for her to let go of the rifle. A shudder went through her and she made a hissing sound of distress. It occurred to me that she was afraid. She was old enough to have seen what guns could do to people. Now her young and this gun would be together in the same house. She did not know about the other guns. In this dispute, they did not matter. I will implant the first egg tonight,” she said as I put the gun away. “Do you hear, Gan?” Why else had I been given a whole egg to eat while the rest of the family was left to share one? Why else had my mother kept looking at me as though I were going away from her, going where she could not follow? Did T’Gatoi imagine I hadn’t known? “ I hear.” “Now!” I let her push me out of the kitchen, then walked ahead of her toward my bedroom. The sudden urgency in her voice sounded real. “You would have done it to Hoa tonight!” I accused. I must do it to someone tonight.” I stopped in spite of her urgency and stood in her way. “Don’t you care who?” She flowed around me and into my bedroom. I found her waiting on the couch we shared. There was nothing in Hoa’s room that she could have used. She would have done it to Hoa on the floor. The thought of her doing it to Hoa at all disturbed me in a different way now, and I was suddenly angry. Yet I undressed and lay down beside her. I knew what to do, what to expect. I had been told all my life. I felt the familiar sting, narcotic, mildly pleasant. Then the blind probing of her ovipositor. The puncture was painless, easy. So easy going in. She undulated slowly against me, her muscles forcing the egg from her body into mine. I held on to a pair of her limbs until I remembered Lomas holding her that way. Then I let go, moved inadvertently, and hurt her. She gave a low cry of pain and I expected to be caged at once within her limbs. When I wasn’t, I held on to her again, feeling oddly ashamed. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. She rubbed my shoulders with four of her limbs. “Do you care?” I asked. “Do you care that it’s me?” She did not answer for some time. Finally, “You were the one making the choices tonight, Gan. I made mine long ago. “ Would you have gone to Hoa?” “Yes. How could I put my children into the care of one who hates them?” “It wasn’t . . . hate.” “I know what it was.” “I was afraid.” Silence. “I still am.” I could admit it to her here, now. “But you came to me . . . to save Hoa.” “Yes.” I leaned my forehead against her. She was cool velvet, deceptively soft. “And to keep you for myself,” I said. It was so. I didn’t understand it, but it was so. She made a soft hum of contentment. “I couldn’t believe I had made such a mistake with you,” she said. “I chose you. I believed you had grown to choose me.” “I had, but . . . “Lomas.” “Yes.” “I had never known a Terran to see a birth and take it well. Qui has seen one, hasn’t he?” “Yes. “ “Terrans should be protected from seeing.” I didn’t like the sound of that—and I doubted that it was possible. “Not protected , I said. “Shown. Shown when we’re young kids, and shown more than once. Gatoi, no Terran ever sees a birth that goes right. All we see is N’Tlic—pain and terror and maybe death.” She looked down at me. “It is a private thing. It has always been a private thing.” Her tone kept me from insisting—that and the knowledge that if she changed her mind, I might be the first public example. But I had planted the thought in her mind. Chances were it would grow, and eventually she would experiment. “You won’t see it again, she said. “I don’t want you thinking any more about shooting me.” The small amount of fluid that came into me with her egg relaxed me as completely as a sterile egg would have, so that I could remember the rifle in my hands and my feelings of fear and revulsion, anger and despair. I could remember the feelings without reviving them. I could talk about them. “I wouldn’t have shot you, “ I said. “Not you.” She had been taken from my father’s flesh when he was my age. You could have, she insisted. “Not you.” She stood between us and her own people, protecting, interweaving. “Would you have destroyed yourself?” I moved carefully, uncomfortable. “I could have done that. I nearly did. That’s Qui’s ‘away.’ I wonder if he knows.” “What?” I did not answer. “You will live now.” “Yes.” Take care of her, my mother used to say. Yes. “I’m healthy and young,” she said. “I won’t leave you as Lomas was left—alone, N’Tlic. I’ll take care of you.”

CRAZY SUNDAY. A short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  

IT WAS Sunday not a day, but rather a gap between two other

days. Behind, for all of them, lay sets and sequences, the long waits

under the crane that swung the microphone, the hundred miles a day

by automobiles to and fro across a county, the struggles of rival in-

genuities in the conference rooms, the ceaseless compromise, the

clash and strain of many personalities fighting for their lives. And

now Sunday, with individual life starting up again, with a glow

kindling in eyes that had been glazed with monotony the afternoon

before. Slowly as the hours waned they came awake like "Puppen-

feen" in a toy shop: an intense colloquy in a corner, lovers disap-

pearing to neck in a hall. And the feeling of "Hurry, it's not too late,

but for God's sake hurry before the blessed forty hours of leisure

are over."

Joel Coles was writing continuity. He was twenty-eight and not

yet broken by Hollywood. He had had what were considered nice

assignments since his arrival six months before and he submitted

his scenes and sequences with enthusiasm. He referred to himself

modestly as a hack but really did not think of it that way. His

mother had been a successful actress ; Joel had spent his childhood

between London and New York trying to separate the real from the

unreal, or at least to keep one guess ahead. He was a handsome man

with the pleasant cow-brown eyes that in 1913 had gazed out at

Broadway audiences from his mother's face.

When the invitation came it made him sure that he was getting

somewhere. Ordinarily he did not go out on Sundays but stayed

sober and took work home with him. Recently they had given him a

Eugene O'Neill play destined for a very important lady indeed.

Everything he had done so far had pleased Miles Caiman, and Miles

Caiman was the only director on the lot who did not work under a

supervisor and was responsible to the money men alone. Everything

was clicking into place in Joel's career. ("This is Mr. Caiman's

secretary. Will you come to tea from four to six Sunday he lives in

Beverly Hills, number .")

403

Joel was flattered. It would be a party out of the top-drawer. It

was a tribute to himself as a young man of promise. The Marion

Davies crowd, the high-hats, the big currency numbers, perhaps

even Dietrich and Garbo and the Marquise, people who were not

seen everywhere, would probably be at Caiman's.

"I won't take anything to drink," he assured himself. Caiman was

audibly tired of rummies, and thought it was a pity the industry

could not get along without them.

Joel agreed that writers drank too much he did himself, but he

wouldn't this afternoon. He wished Miles would be within hearing

when the cocktails were passed to hear his succinct, unobtrusive,

"No, thank you."

Miles Caiman's house was built for great emotional moments

there was an air of listening, as if the far silences of its vistas hid

an audience, but this afternoon it was thronged, as though people

had been bidden rather than asked. Joel noted with pride that only

two other writers from the studio were in the crowd, an ennobled

limey and, somewhat to his surprise, Nat Keogh, who had evoked

Caiman's impatient comment on drunks.

Stella Caiman (Stella Walker, of course) did not move on to her

other guests after she spoke to Joel. She lingered she looked at

him with the sort of beautiful look that demands some sort of ac-

knowledgment and Joel drew quickly on the dramatic adequacy in-

herited from his mother :

"Well, you look about sixteen! Where's your kiddy car?"

She was visibly pleased ; she lingered. He felt that he should say

something more, something confident and easy he had first met her

when she was struggling for bits in New York. At the moment a

tray slid up and Stella put a cocktail glass into his hand.

"Everybody's afraid, aren't they?" he said, looking at it absently.

"Everybody watches for everybody else's blunders, or tries to make

sure they're with people that'll do them credit. Of course that's not

true in your house," he covered himself hastily. "I just meant gen-

erally in Hollywood."

Stella agreed. She presented several people to Joel as if he were

very important. Reassuring himself that Miles was at the other side

of the room, Joel drank the cocktail.

"So you have a baby?" he said. "That's the time to look out.

After a pretty woman has had her first child, she's very vulnerable,

because she wants to be reassured about her own charm. She's got

to have some new man's unqualified devotion to prove to herself

she hasn't lost anything."

"I never get anybody's unqualified devotion," Stella said rather

resentfully.

"They're afraid of your husband."

"You think that's it?" She wrinkled her brow over the idea; then

the conversation was interrupted at the exact moment Joel would

have chosen.

Her attentions had given him confidence. Not for him to join safe

groups, to slink to refuge under the wings of such acquaintances as

he saw about the room. He walked to the window and looked out

toward the Pacific, colorless under its sluggish sunset. It was good

here the American Riviera and all that, if there were ever time to

enjoy it. The handsome, well-dressed people in the room, the lovely

girls, and the well, the lovely girls. You couldn't have every-

thing.

He saw Stella's fresh boyish face, with the tired eyelid that always

drooped a little over one eye, moving about among her guests and

he wanted to sit with her and talk a long time as if she were a girl

instead of a name ; he followed her to see if she paid anyone as much

attention as she had paid him. He took another cocktail not be-

cause he needed confidence but because she had given him so much

of it. Then he sat down beside the director's mother.

"Your son's gotten to be a legend, Mrs. Caiman Oracle and a

Man of Destiny and all that. Personally, I'm against him but I'm in

a minority. What do you think of him? Are you impressed? Are

you surprised how far he's gone?"

"No, I'm not surprised," she said calmly. "We always expected a

lot from Miles."

"Well now, that's unusual," remarked Joel. "I always think all

mothers are like Napoleon's mother. My mother didn't want me to

have anything to do with the entertainment business. She wanted

me to go to West Point and be safe."

"We always had every confidence in Miles." . . .

He stood by the built-in bar of the dining room with the good-

humored, heavy-drinking, highly paid Nat Keogh.

" I made a hundred grand during the year and lost forty grand

gambling, so now I've hired a manager."

"You mean an agent," suggested Joel.

"No, I've got that too. I mean a manager. I make over everything

to my wife and then he and my wife get together and hand me out

the money. I pay him five thousand a year to hand me out my

money."

"You mean your agent."

"No, I mean my manager, and I'm not the only one a lot of

other irresponsible people have him."

"Well, if you're irresponsible why are you responsible enough to

hire a manager?"

"I'm just irresponsible about gambling. Look here "

A singer performed ; Joel and Nat went forward with the others to

listen.

II

The singing reached Joel vaguely; he felt happy and friendly

toward all the people gathered there, people of bravery and industry,

superior to a bourgeoisie that outdid them in ignorance and loose

living, risen to a position of the highest prominence in a nation that

for a decade had wanted only to be entertained. He liked them he

loved them. Great waves of good feeling flowed through him.

As the singer finished his number and there was a drift toward

the hostess to say good-by, Joel had an idea. He would give them

" Building It Up," his own composition. It was his only parlor trick,

it had amused several parties and it might please Stella Walker. Pos-

sessed by the hunch, his blood throbbing with the scarlet corpuscles

of exhibitionism, he sought her.

"Of course," she cried. "Please! Do you need anything?"

"Someone has to be the secretary that I'm supposed to be dictating

to."

"I'll be her."

As the word spread, the guests in the hall, already putting on their

coats to leave, drifted back and Joel faced the eyes of many

strangers. He had a dim foreboding, realizing that the man who had

just performed was a famous radio entertainer. Then someone said

"Sh I " and he was alone with Stella, the center of a sinister Indian-

like half-circle. Stella smiled up at him expectantly he began.

His burlesque was based upon the cultural limitations of Mr. Dave

Silverstein, an independent producer ; Silverstein was presumed to be

dictating a letter outlining a treatment of a story he had bought.

" a story of divorce, the younger generators and the Foreign

Legion," he heard his voice saying, with the intonations of Mr. Silver-

stein. "But we got to build it up, see?"

A sharp pang of doubt struck through him. The faces surrounding

him in the gently molded light were intent and curious, but there

was no ghost of a smile anywhere ; directly in front the Great Lover

of the screen glared at him with an eye as keen as the eye of a

potato. Only Stella Walker looked up at him with a radiant, never

faltering smile.

"If we make him a Menjou type, then we get a sort of Michael

Arlen only with a Honolulu atmosphere."

Still not a ripple in front, but in the rear a rustling, a perceptible

shift toward the left, toward the front door.

" then she says she feels this sex appil for him and he burns out

and says 'Oh, go on destroy yourself ' "

At some point he heard Nat Keogh snicker and here and there were

a few encouraging faces, but as he finished he had the sickening real-

ization that he had made a fool of himself in view of an important

section of the picture world, upon whose favor depended his career.

For a moment he existed in the midst of a confused silence, broken

by a general trek for the door. He felt the undercqrrent of derision

that rolled through the gossip ; then all this was in the space of ten

seconds the Great Lover, his eye hard and empty as the eye of a

needle, shouted "Boo ! Boo ! " voicing in an overtone what he felt was

the mood of the crowd. It was the resentment of the professional

toward the amateur, of the community toward the stranger, the

thumbs-down of the clan.

Only Stella Walker was still standing near and thanking him as

if he had been an unparalleled success, as if it hadn't occurred to

her that anyone hadn't liked it. As Nat Keogh helped him into his

overcoat, a great wave of self-disgust swept over him and he clung

desperately to his rule of never betraying an inferior emotion until

he no longer felt it.

"I was a flop," he said lightly, to Stella. "Never mind, it's a good

number when appreciated. Thanks for your cooperation.''

The smile did not leave her face he bowed rather drunkenly and

Nat drew him toward the door. . . .

The arrival of his breakfast awakened him into a broken and

ruined world. Yesterday he was himself, a point of fire against an

industry, today he felt that he was pitted under an enormous dis-

advantage, against those faces, against individual contempt and col-

lective sneer. Worse than that, to Miles Caiman he was become one

of those rummies, stripped of dignity, whom Caiman regretted he

was compelled to use. To Stella Walker on whom he had forced a

martyrdom to preserve the courtesy of her house her opinion he

did not dare to guess. His gastric juices ceased to flow and he set his

poached eggs back on the telephone table. He wrote :

"DEAR MILES: You can imagine my profound self-disgust. I con-

fess to a taint of exhibitionism, but at six o'clock in the afternoon,

in broad daylight ! Good God I My apologies to your wife.

"Yours ever,

"JOEL COLES."

Joel emerged from his office on the lot only to slink like a male-

factor to the tobacco store. So suspicious was his manner that one

of the studio police asked to see his admission card. He had decided

to eat lunch outside when Nat Keogh, confident and cheerful, over*

took him.

"What do you mean you're in permanent retirement? What if

that Three-Piece Suit did boo you?

"Why, listen," he continued, drawing Joel into the studio restau-

rant. "The night of one of his premieres at Grauman's, Joe Squires

kicked his tail while he was bowing to the crowd. The ham said

Joe'd hear from him later but when Joe called him up at eight o'clock

next day and said, 'I thought I was going to hear from you/ he hung

up the phone."

The preposterous story cheered Joel, and he found a gloomy con-

solation in staring at the group at the next table, the sad, lovely

Siamese twins, the mean dwarfs, the proud giant from the circus pic-

ture. But looking beyond at the yellow-stained faces of pretty

women, their eyes all melancholy and startling with mascara, their

ball gowns garish in full day, he saw a group who had been at Cai-

man's and winced.

"Never again," he exclaimed aloud, "absolutely my last social

appearance in Hollywood 1 "

The following morning a telegram was waiting for him at his

office:

"You were one of the most agreeable people at our party. Expect

you at my sister June's buffet supper next Sunday. v

"STELLA WALKER CALMAN."

The blood rushed fast through his veins for a feverish minute.

Incredulously he read the telegram over.

"Well, that's the sweetest thing I ever heard of in my life ! "

III

Crazy Sunday again. Joel slept until eleven, then he read a news-

paper to catch up with the past week. He lunched in his room on

trout, avocado salad and a pint of California wine. Dressing for the

tea, he selected a pin-check suit, a blue shirt, a burnt orange tie.

There were dark circles of fatigue under his eyes. In his second-hand

car he drove to the Riviera apartments. As he was introducing him-

self to Stella's sister, Miles and Stella arrived in riding clothes

they had been quarreling fiercely most of the afternoon on all the

dirt roads back of Beverly Hills.

Miles Caiman, tall, nervous, with a desperate humor and the un-

happiest eyes Joel ever saw, was an artist from the top of his curi-

ously shaped head to his niggerish feet. Upon these last he stood

firmly he had never made a cheap picture though he had sometimes

paid heavily for the luxury of making experimental flops. In spite

of his excellent company, one could not be with him long without

realizing that he was not a well man.

From the moment of their entrance Joel's day bound itself up in-

extricably with theirs. As he joined the group around them Stella

turned away from it with an impatient little tongue click and

Miles Caiman said to the man who happened to be next to him :

"Go easy on Eva Goebel. There's hell to pay about her at home."

Miles turned to Joel, "I'm sorry I missed you at the office yesterday.

I spent the afternoon at the analyst's."

"You being psychoanalyzed?"

"I have been for months. First I went for claustrophobia, now

I'm trying to get my whole life cleared up. They say it'll take over

a year."

"There's nothing the matter with your life," Joel assured him.

"Oh, no? Well, Stella seems to think so. Ask anybody they can

all tell you about it," he said bitterly.

A girl perched herself on the arm of Miles' chair ; Joel crossed to

Stella, who stood disconsolately by the fire.

"Thank you for your telegram," he said. "It was darn sweet. I

can't imagine anybody as good-looking as you are being so good-

humored."

She was a little lovelier than he had ever seen her and perhaps the

unstinted admiration in his eyes prompted her to unload on him it

did not take long, for she was obviously at the emotional bursting*

point.

" and Miles has been carrying on this thing for two years, and

I never knew. Why, she was one of my best friends, always in the

house. Finally when people began to come to me, Miles had to admit

it."

She sat down vehemently on the arm of Joel's chair. Her riding

breeches were the color of the chair and Joel saw that the mass of

her hair was made up of some strands of red gold and some of pale

gold, so that it could not be dyed, and that she had on no make-up.

She was that good-looking

Still quivering with the shock of her discovery, Stella found un-

bearable the spectacle of a new girl hovering over Miles; she led

Joel into a bedroom, and seated at either end of a big bed they went

on talking. People on their way to the washroom glanced in and

made wisecracks, but Stella, emptying out her story, paid no atten-

tion. After a while Miles stuck his head in the door and said, "There's

no use trying to explain something to Joel in half an hour that I

don't understand myself and the psychoanalyst says will take a

whole year to understand."

She talked on as if Miles were not there. She loved Miles, she

said under considerable difficulties she had always been faithful

to him.

"The psychoanalyst told Miles that he had a mother complex. In

his first marriage he transferred his mother complex to his wife, you

see and then his sex turned to me. But when we married the thing

repeated itself he transferred his mother complex to me and all his

libido turned toward this other woman."

Joel knew that this probably wasn't gibberish yet it sounded like

gibberish. He knew Eva Goebel ; she was a motherly person, older

and probably wiser than Stella, who was a golden child.

Miles now suggested impatiently that Joel come back with them

since Stella had so much to say, so they drove out to the mansion in

Beverly Hills. Under the high ceilings the situation seemed more

dignified and tragic. It was an eerie bright night with the dark very

clear outside of all the windows and Stella all rose-gold raging and

crying around the room. Joel did not quite believe in picture

actresses' grief. They have other preoccupations they are beautiful

rose-gold figures blown full of life by writers and directors, and after

hours they sit around and talk in whispers and giggle innuendoes,

and the ends of many adventures flow through them.

Sometimes he pretended to listen and instead thought how well

she was got up sleek breeches with a matched set of legs in them,

an Italian-colored sweater with a little high neck, and a short brown

chamois coat. He couldn't decide whether she was an imitation of an

English lady or an English lady was an imitation of her. She hovered

somewhere between the realest of realities and the most blatant of

impersonations.

"Miles is so jealous of me that he questions everything I do," she

cried scornfully. "When I was in New York I wrote him that I'd

been to the theater with Eddie Baker. Miles was so jealous he

phoned me ten times in one day."

"I was wild," Miles snuffled sharply, a habit he had in times of

stress. "The analyst couldn't get any results for a week."

Stella shook her head despairingly. "Did you expect me just to sit

in the hotel for three weeks ?"

"I don't expect anything. I admit that I'm jealous. I try not to be.

I worked on that with Dr. Bridgebane, but it didn't do any good. I

was jealous of Joel this afternoon when you sat on the arm of his

chair."

"You were?" She started up. "You were! Wasn't there somebody

on the arm of your chair? And did you speak to me for two

hours?"

"You were telling your troubles to Joel in the bedroom."

"When I think that that woman" she seemed to believe that to

omit Eva Goebel's name would be to lessen her reality "used to

come here "

"All right all right," said Miles wearily. "I've admitted every-

thing and I feel as bad about it as you do." Turning to Joel he began

talking about pictures, while Stella moved restlessly along the far

walls, her hands in her breeches pockets.

"They Ve treated Miles terribly," she said, coming suddenly back

into the conversation as if they'd never discussed her personal

affairs. "Dear, tell him about old Beltzer trying to change your

picture."

As she stood hovering protectively over Miles, her eyes flashing

with indignation in his behalf, Joel realized that he was in love with

her. Stifled with excitement he got up to say good night.

With Monday the week resumed its workaday rhythm, in sharp

contrast to the theoretical discussions, the gossip and scandal of

Sunday; there was the endless detail of script revision "Instead of

a lousy dissolve, we can leave her voice on the sound track and cut

to a medium shot of the taxi from Bell's angle or we can simply pull

the camera back to include the station, hold it a minute and then

pam to the row of taxis" by Monday afternoon Joel had again for-

gotten that people whose business was to provide entertainment were

ever privileged to be entertained. In the evening he phoned Miles'

house.- He asked for Miles but Stella came to the phone.

"Do things seem better?"

"Not particularly. What are you doing next Saturday evening?"

"Nothing."

"The Perrys are giving a dinner and theater party and Miles

won't be here he's flying to South Bend to see the Notre Dame-

California game. I thought you might go with me in his place."

After a long moment Joel said, "Why surely. If there's a con-

ference I can't make dinner but I can get to the theater."

"Then I'll say we can come."

Joel walked his office. In view of the strained relations of the Cai-

mans, would Miles be pleased, or did she intend that Miles shouldn't

know of it? That would be out of the question if Miles didn't

mention it Joel would. But it was an hour or more before he could

get down to work again.

Wednesday there was a four-hour wrangle in a conference room

crowded with planets and nebulae of cigarette smoke. Three men and

a woman paced the carpet in turn, suggesting or condemning, speak-

ing sharply or persuasively, confidently or despairingly. At the end

Joel lingered to talk to Miles.

The man was tired not with the exaltation of fatigue but life-

tired, with his lids sagging and his beard prominent over the blue

shadows near his mouth.

"I hear you're flying to the Notre Dame game."

Miles looked beyond him and shook his head.

"I've given up the idea."

"Why?"

"On account of you." Still he did not look at Joel.

"What the hell, Miles?"

"That's why I've given it up." He broke into a perfunctory laugh

at himself. "I can't tell what Stella might do just out of spite

she's invited you to take her to the Perrys', hasn't she? I wouldn't

enjoy the game."

The fine instinct that moved swiftly and confidently on the set,

muddled so weakly and helplessly through his personal life.

"Look, Miles," Joel said frowning. "I've never made any passes

whatsoever at Stella. If you're really seriously canceling your trip

on account of me, I won't go to the Perrys' with her. I won't see her.

You can trust me absolutely."

Miles looked at him, carefully now.

"Maybe." He shrugged his shoulders. "Anyhow there'd just be

somebody else. I wouldn't have any fun."

"You don't seem to have much confidence in Stella. She told me

she'd always been true to you."

"Maybe she has." In the last few minutes several more muscles

had sagged around Miles' mouth. "But how can I ask anything of

her after what's happened? How can I expect her " He broke off

and his face grew harder as he said, "I'll tell you one thing, right or

wrong and no matter what I've done, if I ever had anything on her

I'd divorce her. I can't have my pride hurt that would be the last

straw."

His tone annoyed Joel, but he said:

"Hasn't she calmed down about the Eva Goebel thing?"

"No." Miles snuffled pessimistically. "I can't get over it either."

"I thought it was finished."

"I'm trying not to see Eva again, but you know it isn't easy just

to drop something like that it isn't some girl I kissed last night in

a taxi. The psychoanalyst says "

"I know," Joel interrupted. "Stella told me." This was depressing.

"Well, as far as I'm concerned if you go to the game I won't see

Stella. And I'm sure Stella has nothing on her conscience about any

body."

"Maybe not," Miles repeated listlessly. "Anyhow I'll stay and take

her to the party. Say," he said suddenly, "I wish you'd come too.

I've got to have somebody sympathetic to talk to. That's the trouble

I've influenced Stella in everything. Especially I've influenced her

so that she likes all the men I like it's very difficult."

"It must be," Joel agreed.

IV

Joel could not get to the dinner. Self-conscious in his silk hat

against the unemployment, he waited for the others in front of the

Hollywood Theater and watched the evening parade : obscure replicas

of bright, particular picture stars, spavined men in polo coats, a

stomping dervish with the beard and staff of an apostle, a pair of

chic Filipinos in collegiate clothes, reminder that this corner of the

Republic opened to the seven sas, a long fantastic carnival of young

shouts which proved to be a fraternity initiation. The line split to

pass two smart limousines that stopped at the curb.

There she was, in a dress like ice-water, made in a thousand pale-

blue pieces, with icicles trickling at the throat. He started forward.

"So you like my dress ?"

"Where's Miles?"

"He flew to the game after all. He left yesterday morning at least

I think " She broke off. "I just got a telegram from South Bend

saying that he's starting back. I forgot you know all these people?"

The party of eight moved into the theater.

Miles had gone after all and Joel wondered if he should have

come. But during the performance, with Stella a profile under the

pure grain of light hair, he thought no more about Miles. Once he

turned and looked at her and she looked back at him, smiling and

meeting his eyes for as long as he wanted. Between the acts they

smoked in the lobby and she whispered :

"They're all going to the opening of Jack Johnson's night club

I don't want to go, do you?"

"Do we have to?"

"I suppose not." She hesitated. "I'd like to talk to you. I suppose

we could go to our house if I were only sure "

Again she hesitated and Joel asked :

"Sure of what?"

"Sure that oh, I'm haywire I know, but how can I be sure Miles

went to the game?"

"You mean you think he's with Eva Goebel ?"

"No, not so much that but supposing he was here watching every-

thing I do. You know Miles does odd things sometimes. Once he

wanted a man with a long beard to drink tea with him and he sent

down to the casting agency for one, and drank tea with him all

afternoon."

"That's different. He sent you a wire from South Bend that

proves he's at the game."

After the play they said good night to the others at the curb and

were answered by looks of amusement. They slid off along the

golden garish thoroughfare through the crowd that had gathered

around Stella.

"You see he could arrange the telegrams," Stella said, "very

easily."

That was true. And with the idea that perhaps her uneasiness was

justified, Joel grew angry: if Miles had trained a camera on them he

felt no obligations toward Miles. Aloud he said :

"That's nonsense."

There were Christmas trees already in the shop windows and the

full moon over the boulevard was only a prop, as scenic as the

giant boudoir lamps of the corners. On into the dark foliage of

Beverly Hills that flamed as eucalyptus by day, Joel saw only the

flash of a white face under his own, the arc of her shoulder. She

pulled away suddenly and looked up at him.

"Your eyes are like your mother's," she said. "I used to have a

scrap book full of pictures of her."

"Your eyes are like your own and not a bit like any other eyes," he

answered.

Something made Joel look out into the grounds as they went into

the house, as if Miles were lurking in the shrubbery. A telegram

Waited on the hall table. She read aloud :

"CHICAGO.

"Home tomorrow night. Thinking of you. Love.

"MILES."

"You see," she said, throwing the slip back on the table, "he

could easily have faked that." She asked the butler for drinks and

sandwiches and ran upstairs, while Joel walked into the empty re-

ception rooms. Strolling about he wandered to the piano where he

had stood in disgrace two Sundays before.

"Then we could put over," he said aloud, "a story of divorce, the

younger generation and the Foreign Legion."

His thoughts jumped to another telegram.

"You were one of the most agreeable people at our party "

An idea occurred to him. If Stella's telegram had been purely a

gesture of courtesy then it was likely that Miles had inspired it, for

it was Miles who had invited him. Probably Miles had said :

"Send him a wire he's miserable he thinks he's queered him-

self."

It fitted in with "I've influenced Stella in everything. Especially

I've influenced her so that she likes all the men I like." A woman

would do a thing like that because she felt sympathetic only a man

would do it because he felt responsible.

When Stella came back into the room he took both her hands.

"I have a strange feeling that I'm a sort of pawn in a spite game

you're playing against Miles," he said.

"Help yourself to a drink."

"And the odd thing is that I'm in love with you anyhow."

The telephone rang and she freed herself to answer it.

"Another wire from Miles," she announced. "He dropped it, or it

says he dropped it, from the airplane at Kansas City."

"I suppose he asked to be remembered to me."

"No, he just said he loved me. I believe he does. He's so very

weak."

"Come sit beside me," Joel urged her.

It was early. And it was still a few minutes short of midnight a

half-hour later, when Joel walked to the cold hearth, and said tersely :

"Meaning that you haven't any curiosity about me?"

"Not at all. You attract me a lot and you know it. The point is

that I suppose I really do love Miles."

"Obviously."

"And tonight I feel uneasy about everything."

He wasn't angry he was even faintly relieved that a possible en-

tanglement was avoided. Still as he looked at her, the warmth and

softness of her body thawing her cold blue costume, he knew she

was one of the things he would always regret.

"I've got to go," he said. "I'll phone a taxi."

"Nonsense there's a chauffeur on duty."

He winced at her readiness to have him go, and seeing this she

kissed him lightly and said, "You're sweet, Joel." Then suddenly

three things happened : he took down his drink at a gulp, the phone

rang loud through the house and a clock in the hall struck in trumpet

notes.

Nine ten eleven twelve

It was Sunday again. Joel realized that he had come to the theater

this evening with the work of the week still hanging about him like

cerements. He had made love to Stella as he might attack some mat-

ter to be cleaned up hurriedly before the day's end. But this was

Sunday the lovely, lazy perspective of the next twenty-four hours

unrolled before him every minute was something to be approached

with lulling indirection, every moment held the germ of innumerable

possibilities. Nothing was impossible everything was just begin-

ning. He poured himself another drink.

With a sharp moan, Stella slipped forward inertly by the tele-

phone. Joel picked her up and laid her on the sofa. He squirted soda-

water on a handkerchief and slapped it over her face. The telephone

mouthpiece was still grinding and he put it to his ear.

" the plane fell just this side of Kansas City. The body of Miles

Caiman has been identified and "

He hung up the receiver.

"Lie still," he said, stalling, as Stella opened her eyes.

"Oh, what's happened?" she whispered. "Call them back. Oh,

what's happened?"

"Ill call them right away. What's your doctor's name?"

"Did they say Miles was dead?"

"Lie quiet is there a servant still up?"

"Hold me I'm frightened."

He put his arm around her.

"I want the name of your doctor," he said sternly. "It may be a

mistake but I want someone here."

"It's Doctor Oh, God, is Miles dead?"

Joel ran upstairs and searched through strange medicine cabinets

for spirits of ammonia. When he came down Stella cried :

"He isn't dead I know he isn't. This is part of his scheme. He's

torturing me. I know he's alive. I can feel he's alive."

"I want to get hold of some close friend of yours, Stella. You

can't stay here alone tonight."

"Oh, no," she cried. "I can't see anybody. You stay. I haven't got

any friend." She got up, tears streaming down her face. "Oh, Miles

is my only friend. He's not dead he can't be dead. I'm going there

right away and see. Get a train. You'll have to come with me."

"You can't. There's nothing to do tonight. I want you to tell me

the name of some woman I can call: Lois? Joan? Carmel? Isn't

there somebody ?"

Stella stared at him blindly.

"Eva Goebel was my best friend," she said.

Joel thought of Miles, his sad and desperate face in the office two

days before. In the awful silence of his death all was clear about

him. He was the only American-born director with both an interest-

ing temperament and an artistic conscience. Meshed in an industry,

he had paid with his ruined nerves for having no resilience, no

healthy cynicism, no refuge only a pitiful and precarious escape.

There was a sound at the outer door it opened suddenly, and

there were footsteps in the hall.

"Miles!" Stella screamed. "Is it you, Miles? Oh, it's Miles."

A telegraph boy appeared in the doorway.

"I couldn't find the bell. I heard you talking inside."

The telegram was a duplicate of the one that had been phoned.

While Stella read it over and over, as though it were a black lie,

Joel telephoned. It was still early and he had difficulty getting any-

one ; when finally he succeeded in finding some friends he made Stella

take a stiff drink.

"You'll stay here, Joel," she whispered, as though she were half-

asleep. "You won't go away. Miles liked you he said you " She

shivered violently, "Oh, my God, you don't know how alone I feel."

Her eyes closed, "Put your arms around me. Miles had a suit like

that." She started bolt upright. "Think of what he must have felt.

He was afraid of almost everything, anyhow."

She shook her head dazedly. Suddenly she seized Joel's face and

held it close to hers.

"You won't go. You like me you love me, don't you? Don't call

up anybody. Tomorrow's time enough. You stay here with me

tonight."

He stared at her, at first incredulously, and then with shocked

understanding. In her dark groping Stella was trying to keep Miles

alive by sustaining a situation in which he had figured as if Miles'

mind could not die so long as the possibilities that had worried him

still existed. It was a distraught and tortured effort to stave off the

realization that he was dead.

Resolutely Joel went to the phone and called a doctor.

"Don't, oh, don't call anybody 1 " Stella cried. "Come back here and

put your arms around me."

"Is Doctor Bales in?"

"Joel," Stella cried. "I thought I could count on you. Miles liked

you. He was jealous of you Joel, come here."

Ah then if he betrayed Miles she would be keeping him alive

for if he were really dead how could he be betrayed?

" has just had a very severe shock. Can you come at once, and

get hold of a nurse?"

"Joel!"

Now the door-bell and the telephone began to ring intermittently,

and automobiles were stopping in front of the door.

"But you're not going," Stella begged him. "You're going to stay,

aren't you?"

"No," he answered. "But I'll be back, if you need me."

Standing on the steps of the house which now hummed and pal-

pitated with the life that flutters around death like protective leaves,

he began to sob a little in his throat.

"Everything he touched he did something magical to," he thought.

"He even brought that little gamin alive and made her a sort of

masterpiece."

And then :

"What a hell of a hole he leaves in this damn wilderness

already!"

And then with a certain bitterness, "Oh, yes, 111 be back I'll be

back!"