Bright Segment (15 page)

Her autonomic nervous system was damaged. When she began to convalesce, he started drug therapy. He kept her paralyzed and at the edge of unconsciousness, so that the slow business of repair could proceed without hindrance. He fed her intravenously.

And still he kept his job, and no one knew.

And then one day there was a knock on his door. One room and bath; to open the door was to open the whole room to an outsider. He ignored the knock and it came again, and then again, timidly but insistently. He extrapolated, as always, and disliked his conclusion. A woman in his bachelor quarters created a situation which could only mean people and people, and talk and talk—and the repeated, attenuated annoyance which, of all things, he feared most.

He picked her up and carried her into the bathroom and shut the door. Then he answered the knock. It was nothing important—a chirping little bird of a woman who was taking up a collection for a Thanksgiving party for the orphans in town. He wrote her a check and got rid of her, snarling suddenly that she must never bother him again—and pass the word. That, and the size of the check, took care of her and anyone like her.

He nearly collapsed from reaction after she had gone. He knew he could not possibly outguess the exigencies which might arise to bring other people on other errands. A power failure, a fire, even curious boys or a peeping Tom; the law of averages dictated that in spite of his reputation for being a recluse, in spite of the isolation of his quarters, somebody had to discover his secret. She had been with him for four months now. How could he explain her? Doctors would know she had been under treatment for some time; the Air Force people at the Base, and their cackling wives, would make God only knew what sort of racket about it.

So he married her.

It took another six weeks to build her up sufficiently to be moved.
He drove her to a town a hundred and fifty miles away and married her in a hotel room. She was under a skilfully applied hypnotic, and carefully instructed. She knew nothing about it at the time and remembered nothing afterward. Reger then applied for married quarters, moved her back to the Base and continued her therapy. Let them pry. He had married, and his bride was not only ill but as anti-social as he.

“There’s your androphobe,” said Mrs. Reger. “He could have let me die. He could have turned me over to the doctors.”

“You’re a very attractive woman,” he pointed out. “You were that, plus a challenge … two kinds of challenge. Could he keep you alive? Could he do it while doing his job? A man who won’t compete with people generally finds something else to pit himself against.”

“You’re quite impartial while you wait for all the facts,” she said bitterly.

“No, I’m not,” he said, and quite astonished himself by adding, “It’s just that I can’t lie to you.” There was a slight emphasis on the last word which he wished he could go back and erase.

She let it pass and went on with her story.

She must have had consciousness of a sort long before he was aware of it. She was born again, slowly, aware of comfort and safety, an alteration of light and dark, a dim appreciation of the way in which her needs were met, a half-conscious anticipation of his return when she found herself alone.

He surrounded her with music—the automatic phonograph when he was away, the piano when he was home and not busy. Music was his greatest escape, and he escaped deeply into it. She had been musical all her life, and recognized an astonishing sensitivity in the silent man. Security and the wordless reaches of music broadened her consciousness from a thin line to a wide swath, forward and back, past and future. The more she fumbled her way back, the more she appreciated her present, and the more it mystified her. Because of this she lay quiet for many days when she could have spoken to him, trying to understand. When at last she was
ready, she frightened him badly. She had never dreamed that anyone could be quite so shy, so self-abasing. She had not known that a human being could dislike himself so much. Yet he had an inner strength and unlimited resourcefulness. He was completely efficient in everything he did except in his effort to talk with her.

He told her, with terror in his eyes, of their marriage, and he begged her pardon for it. It was as if a harsh word from her would destroy him. And she smiled and thanked him. He went silently away and sat down at the piano, though he did not play it again while she was there.

She convalesced very quickly after that. She tried her very best to understand him. She succeeded in making him talk about himself, and was careful not to help him, ever, nor to work with him at anything. He never touched her. She divined that he never should, until he was quite ready, and so she never forced the issue. She fell completely in love with him.

At the time, the
Starscout
was in the ways, and they were running final tests on it. Reger was forced to spend more and more time out at the gantry area. Sometimes he would work fifty or sixty consecutive hours, and though she hated to see him stumble home, drawn and tired, she looked forward to these times. For in his deepest sleep, she could tiptoe into his room and sit near and watch his face, study it with the stiffness of control gone, find in it the terrified eight-year-old with blood spouting from his wrist, watching a playmate with a cut throat. She could isolate the poet, the painter, in him, speaking and creating and expressing only in music, for words and shapes could not be trusted. She loved him. She could wait. Those who love love, and those who love themselves, cannot wait. Those who love another can and do. So she watched him silently and tiptoed out when he stirred.

His extrapolations never ceased, and he was aware before she was that, not being a Wolf Reger, her needs were different from his. He suggested that she walk in the sun when he was away. He told her where the commissary was, and left money for shopping. She did as he expected her to do.

Then he didn’t come back from the gantry area any more, and
when the fifty or sixty hours got to be seventy and eighty, she made up her mind to find him. She knew quite a few people at the Base by that time. She walked in, stopping at the post office on the way. The divorce papers were waiting for her there.

The Major dropped his pencil.

“You didn’t know about that.”

“Not yet. We’d have found out anyway.” He stooped, groping for the pencil, and cracked his head noisily on the coffee table. He demanded, “Why? Why did he divorce you?”

“He didn’t. He filed suit. It has to be put on the court calendar and then heard, and then adjudicated, and then there’s a ninety-day wait … you know. I went to a dance.”

“A—oh.” He understood that this was in answer to his question. “He divorced you because you went to a dance?”

“No!… well, yes.” She closed her eyes. “I used to go to the Base movie once in a while when Wolf was working. I went down there and there was a dance going on instead. I sat with one of the women from the commissary and watched, and after a while her husband asked me to dance. I did. I knew Wolf would have let me if he’d been there—not that he ever would.

“And I happened to glance through the door as we danced past, and Wolf was standing just outside. His face …”

She rose and went to the mantel. She put out her hand very slowly, watching it move, and trailed the tips of her fingers along the polished wood. “All twisted. All …

“As soon as the music stopped,” she whispered, “I ran out to him. He was still there.”

The Major thought,
Don’t break, for God’s sake don’t. Not while I’m here
.

“Extrapolation,” she said. “Everything he saw, he computed and projected. I was dancing. I suppose I was smiling. Wolf never learned to dance, Major. Can you imagine how important that can be to a man who can do anything?

“When I got outside he was just the same as always, quiet and controlled. What he was going through inside, I hate to think. We
walked home and the only thing that was said was when I told him I was sorry. He looked at me with such astonishment that I didn’t dare say anything else. Two days later he left.”

“On the
Starscout
. Didn’t you know he was a crewmember?”

“No. I found out later. Wolf had so many skills that he was nine-tenths of a crew all by himself. They’d wanted him for the longest time, but he’d always refused. I guess because he couldn’t bear sharing space with someone.”

“He did, with you.”

“Did he?”

The Major did not answer. She said, “That was going to end. He was sure of that. It could end any time. But space flight’s something else again.”

“Why did he divorce you?”

She seemed to shake herself awake. “Have I been talking out loud?” she asked.

“What? Yes!”

“Then I’ve told you.”

“Perhaps you have,” he conceded. He poised his pencil.

“What are you going to write?” When he would not answer, she said, “Not telling the truth any more, Major?”

“Not now,” he said firmly.

For the second time she gave him that searching inspection, really seeing him. “I wonder what you’re thinking,” she murmured.

He wrote, closed the book and rose. “Thank you very much for cooperating like this,” he said stiffly.

She nodded. He picked up his hat and went to the door. He opened it, hesitated, closed it again. “Mrs. Reger—”

She waited, unbelievably still—her body, her mouth.

“In your own words—why did he file suit?”

She almost smiled. “You think my words are better than what you wrote?” Then, soberly, “He saw me dancing and it hurt him. He was shocked to the core. He hadn’t known it would hurt. He hadn’t realized until then that he loved me. He couldn’t face that—he was afraid we might be close. And one day he’d lose his temper, and I’d be dead. So he went out into space.”

“Because he loved you.”

“Because he loved me enough,” she said quietly.

He looked away from her because he must, and saw the report still lying on the coffee table. “I’d better take this along.”

“Oh yes, do.” She picked it up, handed it to him. “It’s the same thing as that story I told you—about the man knocking me down.”

“Man—oh. Yes, that one. What was that about?”

“It really happened,” she said. “He knocked me down and beat me, right in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, and everything I said about it is true.”

“Bastard,” growled the Major, and then blushed like a girl. “I’m sorry.”

She did smile, this time. “There was a loading-dock there, in front of a warehouse. A piece of machinery in a crate got loose and slid down a chute toward the street. It hit a drum of gasoline and struck a spark. The first thing I knew, I was all over flames. That man knocked me down and beat them out with his bare hands. He saved my life.”

Slowly, his jaw dropped. She said, “It makes a difference, when you know all the facts, doesn’t it? Even when the first facts you got are all true?” She rapped the TOP SECRET stamp with her fingernails. “I said this was all a lie. Well, maybe it’s all true. But if it is, it’s like the first part of that little story. You need the rest of it. I don’t. You don’t know Wolf Reger. I do. Goodbye, Major.”

He sat in his office at Headquarters and slowly pounded the fresh copy of his transcribed notes.
I have to send them the way they are
, he thought, and
but I can’t. I can’t
.

He swore violently and got up. He went to the water-cooler, punched out a paper cup, filled it, and hurled it into the wastebasket.
All I have is facts. She has faith
.

The world was full of women, and a perfectly normal percentage of them were capable of knocking him for a loop. He wasn’t immune. But surely he was old enough and wise enough by now not to let it interfere with facts. Especially in this case. If the world knew what was in that TOP SECRET report, the world would know how
to feel about Wolf Reger. And then Reger’s wife would be one against three and a quarter billion. How could a man in his right mind worry about a choice, with odds like that?

He cursed again and snatched up his briefcase, unlocked it, and took out the secret report. He slammed it down on top of his transcript.
One more look. One more look at the facts
.

He read:

This is the fourth time I’ve erased this tape and now I got no time for officialese if I’m going to get it all on here. A tape designed for hull-inspection reports in space wasn’t designed for a description of a planetary invasion. But that’s what it’s got to be. So, for the record, this is Jerry Wain
, Starscout
navigator, captive on one of the cruisers that’s going to invade Earth. First contact with extra-terrestrials. Supposed to be a great moment in human history. Likely to be one of the last moments, too
.

The Starscout’s
gone and Minelli, Joe Cook, and the Captain are dead. That leaves me and that bastard Reger. The aliens had us bracketed before we knew it, out past Jupiter. They cut up the
’scout
with some sort of field or something that powdered the hull in lines as broad as your hand. No heat, no impact. Just fine powder, and she fell apart. Joe never got to a suit. The Captain went forward, to stay with the ship I guess, and couldn’t have lived long after they sliced the dome off the control room. The three of us got clear and they took us in. They cut Minelli up to see what his guts looked like. I haven’t seen Reger, but he’s alive, all right. Reger, he can take care of himself
.

I’ve only seen two of the aliens, or maybe I saw one of ’em twice. If you can imagine a horseshoe crab made out of blue airfoam, a wide skirt all the way around it, the whole works about four and a half meters across, that’s close. I’m not a biologist, so I guess I can’t be much help on the details. That skirt sort of undulates front to back when it moves. I’d say it swims through the air—hop and glide, hop and glide. It can crawl too. First I thought it slid along like a snail, but once I saw a whole mess of little legs, some with pincers on them. I don’t know how many. Too many, anyhow. No eyes that I could spot, although it must have ’em; it’s light in here, grayish,
like on a snowfield on an overcast day. It comes from the bulkhead. Floor, too—everywhere
.