Doorways in the Sand (3 page)

He turned away.

"Wait," I said.

"What?"

"Maybe if you tell me what the problem is . . ."

"No. You can't help me."

"Well, supposing the thing turned up? What should I do with it?"

"If that should happen, put it in a safe place and keep your mouth shut about having it. I'll call you periodically. Tell me about it then."

"What's so important about it?"

"Un-uh," he said, and was gone.

A whispered question from behind me-"Do you see me, red?"-and I turned, but there was no one there, though my ears still rang from the boxing they had taken. I decided then that it was a bad day and I took to the roof for some thinking. A traffic-copter buzzed me later, and I was queried as to suicidal intentions. I told the cop I was refribbing shingles, though, and that seemed to satisfy him.

Incidents and fragments continued-

"I did try phoning you. Three times," he said. "No answer."

"Did you consider stopping by in person?"

"I was about to. Just now. You got here first."

"Did you call the police?"

"No. I've got a wife to worry about as well as myself."

"I see."

"Did you call them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I'm not certain. Well, I guess it's that I'd like a better idea as to what's going on before I blow the whistle on him."

Hal nodded, a dark-eyed study in bruise and Band-aid.

"And you think I know something you don't?"

"That's right."

"Well, I don't," he said, taking a sip, wincing and stirring more sugar into his iced tea. "When I answered the door earlier, there he was. I let him in and he started asking me about that damned stone. I told him everything I could remember, but he still wasn't satisfied. That was when he began pushing me around."

"Then what happened?"

"I remembered some more things."

"Uh-huh. Like you remembered I have it-which I don't-so he'd come rough me up and leave you alone."

"No! That's not it at all!" he said. "I told him the truth. I left it there when I moved out. As to what became of it afterwards, I have no idea."

"Where'd you leave it?"

"Last I remember seeing it, it was on the desk."

"Why didn't you take it with you?"

"I don't know. I was tired of looking at it, I guess."

He got up and paced his living room, paused and looked out the window. Mary was off attending a class, a thing she had also been doing that afternoon when Paul had stopped by, had his conference with Hal and started the ball rolling down the alley that led to me.

"Hal," I said, "are you telling me the whole truth and nothing but?"

"Everything important."

"Come on."

He turned his back to the window, looked at me, looked away.

"Well," he said, "he claimed the thing we had was his."

I ignored the "we."

"It was," I said, "once. But I was there when he gave it to you. Title passed."

But Hal shook his head. "Not that simple," he said.

"Oh?"

He returned to sit with his iced tea. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, took a quick sip, looked at me again.

"No," he said. "You see, the one we had was really his. Remember that night we got it? We played cards in his lab till pretty late. The six stones were on a shelf above the counter. We noticed them early and asked him about them several times. He would just smile and say something mysterious or change the subject. Then, as, the night wore on and after he'd had more to drink, he began talking about them, told us what they were."

"I remember," I said. "He told us he had been to see the star-stone, which had just that week been received from the aliens and put on display in New York. He had taken hundreds of photographs through all sorts of filters, filled a notebook with observations, collected all the data he could. Then he had set out to construct a model of the thing. Said he was going to find a way to produce them cheaply, to sell them as novelty items. The half dozen on his shelf represented his best efforts at that point. He thought they were pretty good."

"Right. Then I noticed that there were several rejects in the waste bin beside the counter. I picked out the bestlooking one and held it up to the light. It was a pretty thing, just like the others. Paul smiled when he saw that I had it, and he said, 'You like it?' I told him that I did. 'Keep it,' he said."

"So you did. That's the way I remember it, too."

"Yes, but there was more to it than that," he said. "I took it back to the table with me and set it down next to my money-so that each time I reached over for some change, I automatically glanced at it. After a time I became aware of a tiny flaw, a little imperfection at the base of one of the limbs. It was quite insignificant, but it irritated me more and more each time that I looked at it. So, when you two left the room later, to bring in more cold beer and sodas, I took it over and switched it with one of those on the shelf."

"I begin to see."

"Okay, okay! I probably shouldn't have done it. I didn't see any harm in it at the time. They were just prototype souvenirs he was fooling with, and the difference wasn't even noticeable unless you were looking hard."

"He'd noticed it the first time around."

"Which was good reason for him to consider them perfect and not be looking again. And what difference did it make, really? Even in the absence of a six-pack the answer seems obvious."

"It sounds all right, I'll give you that. But the fact is that he did check-and it also seems that they were more important than he had indicated. I wonder why?"

"I've been doing a lot of thinking," he said. "The first thing that occurred to me was that the souvenir business was just a story he made up because he wanted to show them off to us and he had to tell us something. Supposing he had been approached by someone from the UN to produce a model-several models-for them? The original is priceless, irreplaceable and on display to the public. To guard against theft or someone with a compulsion and a sledgehammer, it would seem wisest to keep it locked away and put a phony one in the showcase. Paul would be a logical choice for the job. Whenever anyone talks crystallography, his name comes up."

"I could buy parts of that," I said, "but the whole thing doesn't hang together. Why get so upset over the flawed specimen when he could just manufacture another? Why not simply write off the one we've lost?"

"Security?"

"If that's so, we didn't break it. He did. Why shove us around and bring it to mind when we were doing a good job forgetting about it? No, that doesn't seem to jibe."

"All right, what then?"

I shrugged.

"Insufficient data," I said, getting to my feet. "If you decide to call the police, be sure to tell them that the thing he was looking for was something you'd stolen from him."

"Aw, Fred, that's hitting below the belt."

"It's true, though. I wonder what the intrinsic value of the thing was? I forget where they draw the misdemeanor felony line."

"Okay, you've made your point. What are you going to do?"

I shrugged. "Nothing, I guess. Wait and see what happens, I suppose. Let me know if you think of anything else."

"All right. You do the same?"

"Yes." I started toward the door.

"Sure you won't stay for dinner?" he said.

"No, thanks. I've got to run."

"See you, then."

"Right. Take it easy."

Walking past a darkened bakery. Play of night and light on glass. DO YOU TASTE ME BRED? I read. I hesitated, turned, saw where shadows had anagrammatized a bake sale, sniffed, hurried on.

Bits and pieces-

Near midnight, as I was trying a new route up the cathedral, I thought that I counted an extra gargoyle. As I moved closer, though, I saw that it was Professor Dobson atop the buttress. Drunk again and counting stars, I guessed.

I continued, coming to rest on a nearby ledge.

"Good evening. Professor."

"Hello, Fred. Yes, it is, isn't it? Beautiful night I was hoping you'd pass this way. Have a drink."

"Low tolerance," I said. "I seldom indulge."

"Special occasion," he suggested.

"Well, a little then."

I accepted the bottle he extended, took a sip.

"Good. Very good," I said, passing it back. "What is it? And what's the occasion?"

"A very, very special cognac I've been saving for over twenty years, for tonight. The stars have finally run their fiery routes to the proper places, positioned with elegant cunning, possessed of noble portent."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm retiring, getting out of this lousy rat race."

"Oh, congratulations. I hadn't heard."

"That was by design. Mine. I can't stand formal goodbyes. Just a few more loose ends to splice, and I'll be ready to go. Next week probably."

"Well, I hope you have an enjoyable time of it. It is not often that I meet someone with the interest we share. I'll miss you."

He took a sip from his bottle, nodded, grew silent. I lit a cigarette, looked out across the sleeping town, up at the stars. The night was cool, the breeze more than a little damp. Small traffic sounds came and went, distant, insectlike. An occasional bat interrupted my tracing of constellations.

"Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth," I murmured, "Megrez, Phecda..."

"Merak and Dubhe," he said, finishing off the Big Dipper and surprising me, both for having overheard and for knowing the rest.

"Back where I left them so many years ago," he went on. "I've a very peculiar feeling now-the thing I set out to analyze tonight. Did you ever look back at some moment in your past and have it suddenly grow so vivid that all the intervening years seemed brief, dreamlike, impersonal-the motions of a May afternoon surrendered to routine?"

"No," I said.

"One day, when you do, remember-the cognac," he said, and he took another sip and passed me the bottle. I had some more and returned it to him.

"They did actually creep, though, those thousands of days. Petty pace, and all that," he continued. "I know this intellectually, though something else is currently denying it. I am aware of it particularly, because I am especially conscious of the difference between that earlier time and this present. It was a cumulative thing, the change. Space travel, cities under the sea, the advances in medicine-even our first contact with the aliens-all of these things occurred at different times and everything else seemed unchanged when they did. Petty pace. Life pretty much the same but for this one new thing. Then another, at another time. Then another. No massive revolution. An incremental process is what it was. Then suddenly a man is ready to retire, and this gives rise to reflection. He looks back, back to Cambridge, where a young man is climbing a building. He sees those stars. He feels the texture of that roof. Everything that follows is a blur, a kaleidoscopic monochrome. He is here and he is there. Everything else is unreal. But they are two different worlds, Fred-two completely different worlds-and he didn't really see it happen, never actually caught either one in the act of going or coming. And that is the feeling that accompanies me tonight."

"Is it a good feeling or a bad one?" I said.

"I don't really know. I haven't worked up an emotion to go with it yet."

"Let me know when you do, will you? You've got me curious." He chuckled. I did, too.

"You know, it's funny," I said, "that you never stopped climbing."

He was silent for a while, then said, "About the climbing, it's rather peculiar . . . Of course, it was somewhat in the nature of a tradition where I was a student, though I believe I liked it more than most. I kept at it for several years after I left the university, and then it became a more or less sporadic thing with changes of residence and lack of opportunity. I would get spells, though-compulsions, actually-when I just had to climb. I would take a holiday, then, to someplace where the architecture was congenial. I'd spend my nights scaling the buildings, clambering about rooftops and spires."

"Acrophilia," I said.

"True. Baptizing a thing doesn't explain it, though. I never understood why I did it. Still don't, for that matter. I did finally stop it for a long while, though. Middle-age hormone shift perhaps. Who knows? Then I came here to teach. It was when I heard of your own activities that I began thinking about it again. This led to the desire, the act, the return of the compulsion. It has been with me ever since. I've spent more time wondering why people quit climbing things than why they start."

"It does seem the natural thing to do."

"Exactly."

He took another drink, offered me one. I would have liked to but I know my limits, and sitting there on the ledge, I was not about to push them. So he gestured with the bottle, skyward, then: "To the lady with the smile," he said, and drank it for me.

"To the rocks of empire," he added a moment later, with a swing and a swig to another starry sector. The wrong one, but no matter. He knew as well as I that it was still below the horizon.

He settled back, found a cigar, lit it, mused: "How many eyes per head, I wonder, in the place they regard the 'Mona Lisa'? Are they faceted? Fixed? And of what color?"

"Only two. You know that. And sort of hazel-in the pictures, anyway."

"Must you deflate romantic rhetoric? Besides, the Astabigans have plenty of visitors from other worlds who will be viewing her."

"True. And for that matter, the British Crown Jewels are in the custody of people with crescent-shaped pupils. Kind of lavender-eyed, I believe."

"Sufficient," he said. "Redeeming. Thank you."

A shooting star burned its way earthward. My cigarette butt followed it.

"I wonder if it was a fair trade?" he said. "We don't understand the Rhennius machine, and even the aliens aren't certain what the star-stone represents."

"It wasn't exactly a trade."

"Two of the treasures of Earth are gone and we have a couple of theirs in return. What else would you call it?"

"A link in a kula chain," I said.

"I am not familiar with the term. Tell me about it."