Long After Midnight (12 page)

 
          
The
old man sat once again on the floor.

 
          
"Mr.
Shaw." Willis shook his head, snorting softly. "Hell. Why is it you
seem more alive to me than anyone I have ever known?"

 
          
"Why,
my dear young friend," replied the old man, gently, "what you warm
your hands at are Ideas, eh? I am a walking monument of concepts, scrimshaws of
thought, electric deliriums of philosophy and wonder. You love concepts. I am their
receptacle. You love dreams, in motion. I move. You love palaver and jabber. I
am the consummate
palaverer
and jabberer. You and I,
together, masticate Alpha Centauri and spit forth universal myths. We chew upon
the tail of Halley's Comet and worry the
Horsehead
Nebula until it cries a monstrous Uncle and gives over to our creation. You
love libraries. I am a library. Tickle my ribs and I vomit forth Melville's
Whale, Spirit Spout and all. Tic my ear and I'll build Plato's
Republic
with my tongue for you to run
and live in. You love Toys. I am a Toy, a fabulous plaything, a computerized—"

 
          
"—friend,"
said Willis, quietly.

 
          
Mr.
Shaw gave him a look less of fire than of hearth.

 
          
"Friend,"
he said.

 
          
Willis
turned to leave, then stopped to gaze back at that strange old figure propped
against the dark storage wall.

 
          
"I—I'm
afraid to go. I have this fear something may
happen
to you."

 
          
"I
shall survive," replied Shaw tartly, "but if you warn your Captain
that a vast meteor shower approaches. He must shift course a few hundred
thousand miles. Done?"

 
          
"Done."
But still Willis did not leave.

 
          
"Mr.
Shaw," he said, at last. "What... what do you
do
while the rest of us sleep?"

 
          
"Do?
Why, bless you. I listen to my tuning fork. Then, I write symphonies between my
ears."

 
          
Willis
was gone.

 
          
In
the dark, alone, the old man bent his head. A soft hive of dark bees began to
hum under his honey-sweet breath.

 
          
Four
hours later, Willis, off watch, crept into his sleep-cubicle.

 
          
In
half-light, the mouth was waiting for him.

 
          
Clive's
mouth. It licked its lips and whispered:

 
          
"Everyone's
talking. About you making an ass out of yourself visiting a
two-hundred-year-old intellectual relic, you, you, you. Jesus, the psycho-
med'll
be out tomorrow to X-ray your stupid skull!"

 
          
"Better
that than what you men do all night every night," said Willis.

 
          
"What
we do is us."

 
          
"Then
why not let me be me?"

 
          
"Because
it's unnatural." The tongue licked and darted. "We all
miss
you. Tonight we piled all the grand
toys in the midst of the wild room and—"

 
          
"I
don't want to hear it!"

 
          
"Well,
then," said the mouth, "I might just trot down and tell all this to
your old gentleman friend—"

 
          
"Don't
go
near
him!"

 
          
"I
might." The lips moved in the shadows. "You can't stand guard on him
forever. Some night soon, when you're asleep, someone might—tamper with him,
eh? Scramble his electronic eggs so he'll talk vaudeville instead of Saint
Joan?
Ha, yes. Think. Long journey.
Crew's bored. Practical joke like that, worth a million to see you froth.
Beware, Charlie. Best come play with us."

 
          
Willis,
eyes shut, let the blaze out of him.

 
          
"Whoever
dares to touch Mr. Shaw, so help me God, I'll kill!"

 
          
He
turned violently on his side, gnawing the back of his fist.

 
          
In
the half-dark, he could sense Clive's mouth still moving.

 
          
"Kill?
Well, well. Pity. Sweet dreams."

 
          
An
hour later, Willis gulped two pills and fell stunned into sleep.

 
          
In
the middle of the night he dreamed that they were burning good Saint Joan at the
stake and, in the midst of burning, the plain-potato maiden turned to an old
man stoically wrapped around with ropes and vines. The old man's beard was
fiery red even before the flames reached it, and his bright blue eyes were
fixed fiercely upon Eternity, ignoring the fire.

 
          
"Recant!"
cried a voice. "Confess and recant! Recant!"

 
          
"There
is nothing to confess, therefore no need for recantation," said the old
man quietly.

 
          
The
flames leaped up his body like a mob of insane and burning mice.

 
          
"Mr.
Shaw!" screamed Willis.

 
          
He
sprang awake.

 
          
Mr. Shaw.

 
          
The
cabin was silent. Clive lay asleep.

 
          
On
his face was a smile.

 
          
The
smile made Willis pull back, with a cry. He dressed. He ran.

 
          
Like
a leaf in autumn he fell down the air-tube, growing older and heavier with each
long instant.

 
          
The
storage pit where the old man "slept" was much more quiet than it had
a right to be.

 
          
Willis
bent. His hand trembled. At last, he touched the old man.

 
          
"Sir-?"

 
          
There
was no motion. The beard did not bristle. Nor the eyes fire themselves to blue
flames. Nor the mouth tremble with gentle blasphemies . . .

 
          
"Oh,
Mr. Shaw," he said. "Are you dead, then, oh God, are you really
dead?"

 
          
The
old man was what they called dead when a machine no longer spoke or tuned an
electric thought or moved. His dreams and philosophies were snow in his shut
mouth.

 
          
Willis
turned the body this way and that, looking for some cut, wound, or bruise on
the skin.

 
          
He
thought of the years ahead, the long traveling years and no Mr. Shaw to walk
with, gibber with, laugh with. Women in the storage shelves, yes, women in the
cots late at night, laughing their strange taped
laughters
and moving their strange machined motions, and saying the same dumb things that
were said on a thousand worlds on a thousand nights.

 
          
To
be alone. To fall.

 
          
"Oh,
Mr. Shaw," he murmured at last "Who
did
this to you?"

 
          
Silly
boy, whispered Mr. Shaw's memory voice. You
know.

 
          
I
know, thought Willis.

 
          
He
whispered a name and ran away.

 
          
"Damn
you, you killed him!"

 
          
Willis
seized Clive's bedclothes, at which instant Clive, like a robot, popped wide
his eyes. The smile remained constant.

 
          
"You
can't kill what was never alive," he said.

 
          
"Son
of a bitch!"

 
          
He
struck Clive once in the mouth, after which Clive was on his feet, laughing in
some strange wild way, wiping blood from his lips.

 
          
"What
did you do to him?" cried Willis.

 
          
"Not
much, just—"

 
          
But
that was the end of their conversation.

 
          
"On
posts!" a voice cried. "Collision course!"

 
          
Bells
rang. Sirens shrieked.

 
          
In
the midst of their shared rage, Willis and Clive turned cursing to seize
emergency spacesuits and helmets off the cabin walls.

 
          
"Damn,
oh, damn, oh—d—"

 
          
Half-through
his last damn, Clive gasped. He vanished out a sudden hole in the side of the rocket.

 
          
The
meteor had come and gone in a billionth of a second. On its way out, it had
taken all the air in the ship with it through a hole the size of a small car.

 
          
My
God, thought Willis, he's gone forever.

 
          
What
saved Willis was a ladder he stood near, against which the swift river of air
crushed him on its way into Space. For a moment he could not move or breathe.
Then the suction was finished, all the air in the ship gone. There was only
time to adjust the pressure in his suit and helmet, and glance wildly around at
the veering ship which was being bombarded now as in a space war. Men ran, or
rather floated, shouting wildly, everywhere.

 
          
Shaw,
thought Willis unreasonably, and had to laugh. Shaw.

 
          
A
final meteor in a tribe of meteors struck the motor section of the rocket and
blew the entire ship apart. Shaw, Shaw, oh, Shaw, thought Willis.

 
          
He
saw the rocket fly apart like a shredded balloon, all its gases only impelling
it to more disintegration. With the bits and pieces went wild crowds of men, dismissed
from school, from life, from all and everything, never to meet face to face
again, not even to say farewell, the dismissal was so abrupt and their deaths
and isolation such a swift surprise.

 
          
Good-bye,
thought Willis.

 
          
But
there was no true good-bye. He could hear no weeping and no laments over his
radio. Of all the crew, he was the last and final and only one alive, because
of his suit, his helmet, his oxygen, miraculously spared. For what? To be alone
and fall?

 
          
Oh,
Mr. Shaw, oh, sir, he thought.

 
          
"No
sooner called than delivered," whispered a voice.

 
          
It
was impossible, but. . .

 
          
Drifting,
spinning, the ancient doll with the wild red beard and blazing blue eyes fell
across darkness as if impelled by God's breath, on a whim.

 
          
Instinctively,
Willis opened his arms.

 
          
And
the old party landed there, smiling, breathing heavily, or pretending to
breathe heavily, as was his bent.

 
          
"Well,
well, Willis! Quite a treat, eh?"

 
          
"Mr.
Shaw! You were
dead?'

 
          
"Poppycock!
Someone bent some wires in me. The collision knocked things back together. The
disconnection is here below my chin. A villain cut me there. So if I fall dead
again, jiggle under my jaw and wire me up, eh?"