Nothing So Strange (38 page)

About six thousand feet he closed the throttle.

“Well?” he shouted, over his shoulder.

“Fine,” I answered.

In case he wanted to talk I chose one of the many topics, but not the most
abstruse. “I like what you told me about Sanstrom,” I said. “I wish I’d been
in time to know him in London.”

“Yes, he’s a good fellow. A bit technicolored for a scientist, if you know
what I mean, but perhaps that’s not always a fault. Some of us are too
black-and-white.”

“You ought to keep in touch with him. Where is he now?”

“I think in the Galápagos Islands.”

“
What
?”

“They’re about a thousand miles off the coast of Ecuador—”

“Yes, I know, but what on earth made him go there?”

“He was sent. They suddenly put him in the army—he was only thirty
and unmarried, so I suppose there was reason enough…. And the Galápagos
Islands are quite interesting scientifically. Anyhow, he’ll be back when the
war ends. I’ll see him then.”

“Are you hinting that because he met and talked to you—”

“I’m hinting nothing. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. We were watched, I
suppose.”

“Watched in the hotel?”

“Probably. After all, why not? If they distrusted me they’d want to keep
an eye on whom I contacted. Just as they took a look at you after I wrote you
the postcard.”

He throttled up and made a steep left bank till we were facing the distant
snow line. We climbed again to make up for lost height, crossing the valley
over ridges of nearer hills. It would be dusk soon and I was puzzled by his
change of direction. I shouted once to ask the reason for it, but either he
didn’t hear or chose not to reply. I didn’t ask again, because what he had
said about Sanstrom had made me feel icily indifferent to whatever happened
so long as I was with him. The thought even came that he might have some
strange idea in mind, and if he had I believed I could make terms with it
without rebellion. As the sky grew darker and the last glow left the
snowpeaks I felt easier, almost cozier, than I had ever felt on earth. He
looked round once, as if expecting me to say something, but I didn’t. Then
abruptly he made the turn.

We almost had trouble at Lost Water, it was so dark. But Mr. Murdoch had
turned on the headlights of several cars, so that we made a rough but
satisfactory landing. He cursed us, threatened to report us, and finally
asked us to remember that when the war was over he could put us in the way of
good bargains in used planes.

Brad drove the car—another symbol, I hoped, of his own self-
conquest. We were several miles along the straight stretch before either of
us spoke. Then I told him very simply that I wanted to go on helping him.

“Okay,” he answered, matter-of-factly. “But you might wish you hadn’t
taken on the job.”

“I’m not scared. They can’t send
me
to any islands.”

“Now listen,” he said, embarrassedly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you
that about Sanstrom. I’ve no proof—and besides, if they really
suspected me I can see their problem. I wouldn’t have minded being sent there
myself—might have been a good place to think things out. I’m an odd
creature—you ought to be warned about it. I don’t seem to have the
knack of being most likely to succeed, and some people won’t ever be sure I’m
not in the pay of the enemy, whoever the enemy is, but I guess there’ll
always be an enemy.”

“Then you’ll always have me to sort things out and put things straight.
Even with Mr. Small.”

“You think you could? And with Newby too?”

“Sure … but why him particularly?”

“It’s a good deal up to him when I get let out of the hospital.”

I was glad he had brought up a matter which had been heavily on my mind; I
had been chary of broaching it myself lest the question of getting a
discharge might begin to worry him. I didn’t myself know yet whether he would
find it hard or not.

I said guardedly: “Does the idea of going back to the hospital bother
you?”

“Not especially, but I’ve a feeling I don’t want to waste any more
time.”

I thought that was the best kind of answer he could have given, so I
promised as much as I dared. “You won’t have to. I think you can count on
that. So far as I can see, you’re cured.”

We drove on another mile or so, and I wondered whether what I had said was
true. Perhaps true enough. We’re none of us cured, in any strict sense. And
if he still had a complex, of guilt or persecution, or whatever it was,
hadn’t we all … or if we hadn’t, shouldn’t we have?

I said presently: “We’ve talked each other nearly hoarse, but there’s one
other thing that’s been a puzzle ever since you mentioned it. You said you
never told anyone else about the way you faked the results for Framm. I know
that makes it a great compliment to me—”

“No—not really—”

“No? Well, never mind. But it does seem to me that if you
had
told
others—when they questioned you—it might have been better…. Or
were you afraid they wouldn’t believe you?”

“They mightn’t have, that’s true. But I was more afraid that they
might.”

“I don’t understand—”

“They might have thought well of me.”

“Exactly. And wouldn’t that—”

He interrupted: “No, no—I’d hate to be thought well of for something
that’s on my conscience.”

“But you still don’t regret what you did?”

“I’d probably do it again in the same circumstances.”

“Then why should you have it on your conscience?”

“Don’t ask me. It’s irrational, no doubt. I told you I was an odd
creature.”

“You also told me it was a sin against the scientist’s holy ghost, but I
thought that was just the way you felt immediately after you did it.”

He smiled. “Perhaps the ghost still haunts…. You know, Jane, choosing
between God and Mammon gets all the publicity, but it’s easy compared with
some of the other choices….”

He looked at me as if he thought I wouldn’t catch that, and as if he
wouldn’t mind if I didn’t.

“Don’t you worry about me,” he went on. “I’ll never be any
different—I mean, about certain things.”

“I don’t want you to be. Just tell me about them. As you have been doing.
That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

His mind was still on the one thing, for after a considerable pause he
answered: “It was certainly easier than telling a fellow like Sanstrom. The
idea of deliberately falsifying results, no matter what the reason, would
seem a bit unprofessional to a scientist. At least I hope it would.”

“In other words, you told me because you didn’t care what
I
thought
of you?”

He was thoughtful for another moment. Then he said: “D’you know, in a sort
of way that’s true. And yet, in another way….”

“Yes?”

He laughed. “Damned if I can explain exactly how I do feel about you.”

“Can’t you? I can explain how I feel about you. It’s simple. I love
you.”

I had often wondered what he would say if I told him, but since afternoon
I had found out enough not to be apprehensive—only a little more
curious.

He said nothing for a while, then he slowed down and put his arm round me.
“That’s nice,” he said quietly.

I wasn’t sure whether he meant what I had said or what he was doing till
he added: “Because I love you, too.”

“I’m glad you mentioned it,” I said, half laughing because I found it
impossible from then on to speak in a level voice.

“Well, you knew, didn’t you, Jane?”

“Yes, but—it’s—it’s made me so—so very happy to be
told.”

We drove on another mile or so before he said: “There was always something
between us.”

And till now there had always been
somebody
between us, I thought,
but did not say.

He went on musingly: “The right mixture of caring and not caring—I
suppose that’s what love is.”

Oh well, if he wanted to diagnose, analyze, dissect, interpret—all
that was all right with me. His mind might be up there, but his arm wasn’t;
and we had actually said, once and in those words, that we loved each other.
But words were my field, just as analysis was his, so we were both putting
happiness to the test we valued most; perhaps even in mathematical terms I
could be somewhere in his mind, just as he would be somehow in my next book,
whatever it was.

Oh God, I was happy as we drove on. It was like coming home after a winter
walk, expecting a fire in a warm house, yet not realizing how warm and bright
it could be … and how dark the night outside.

When we left the desert and climbed into the hills there
was a mist that
covered everything but the section of road ahead and the white line down the
middle of it. Brad drove slowly and the miles crept by as if we should never
get to Vista Grande at all. I couldn’t help recalling Mr. Chandos and his
story of the road that went nowhere, and my own suggestion of the voice on
the radio reading the psalm that began—“Teach me, O Lord, the way of
thy statutes”; and this, I suppose, made me switch on the car radio there and
then. It was very faint—a news bulletin from somewhere—I could
only catch the phrase: “This morning, on the Japanese city of
Hiroshima….”