The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (24 page)

"Holiday says I'm generally all right, now, everything
considered. But someone must drive me home." His mouth curled. "D'you
want the job, Hawks?"

"Yes, I do." Hawks took off his smock and laid it
folded down atop the cabinet. "You might as well set up for another shot
tomorrow, Sam."

"Don't count on me for it!" Barker sawed.

"We can always cancel, you know." He said to
Latourette: "I'll call early tomorrow and let you know."

Barker stumbled forward as Hawks fell into step beside him.
They slowly crossed the laboratory floor and went out through the stairwell
doors, side by side.

Connington was waiting for them in the upstairs hall,
lounging in one of the bright orange plastic-upholstered armchairs that lined
the foyer wall. His eyes flicked once over Barker, and once over Hawks.
"Have some trouble?" he asked as they came abreast of him. "I
hear you had some trouble down in the lab," he repeated, his eyes
glinting.

"God damn you, Connington—" Barker began with the
high, tearing note in his voice.

"So I was right." Connington grinned consciously.
"Goin' back to Claire, now?" He blew out cigar smoke. "The two
of you?"

"Something like that," Hawks said.

Connington scratched the lapel of his jacket. "Think
I'll come along and watch." He smiled fondly at Barker, his head to one
side. "Why not, Al? You might as well have the company of
all
the
people that're trying to kill you."

Hawks looked at Barker. The man's hands fumbled as though
dealing with something invisible in the air just in front of his stomach. He
was staring right through Connington, and the personnel man squinted momentarily.

Then Barker said lamely: "There isn't room in the
car."

Connington chuckled warmly and mellifluously. "I'll
drive it, and you can sit on Hawks' lap. Just like Charlie McCarthy."

Hawks pulled his glance away from Barker's face and said
sharply: "I'll drive it."

Connington chuckled again. "There's going to be a
meeting of the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon tomorrow. They got the report on
Rogan, and a long memorandum from Cobey and the Con El legal department.
There's going to be a decision made on whether to cancel the project contracts.
I'll drive." He turned back toward the double plate-glass doors and began
walking out. He looked back over his shoulder. "Come along, friends,"
he said.

Claire Pack stood watching them from the head of the steps
up to the lawn. She was wearing a one-piece skirtless cotton swimsuit cut high
at the tops of her thighs, and was resting her hands lightly on her hips. As
Connington shut off the engine and the three of them got out of the car, she
raised her eyebrows.

"Well, Doctor!" she said with low-voiced gravity
and a pucker of her lips, "I'd been wondering when you'd drop by
again."

Connington, coming around the other side of the car, smiled
watchfully at her and said: "He had to chaperone Al home. Seems there was
a little hitch in the proceedings today."

She glanced aside at Barker, who was closing the garage
doors. She ran her tongue over the edges of her teeth. "What kind?"

"Now, I wouldn't know as to that. Why don't you ask
Hawks?" Connington took a fresh cigar out of his case. "I like that
suit, Claire," he said. He trotted quickly up the steps, brushing by her.

"It's a hot day. Think I'll go find a pair of trunks
and take a dip myself. You and the boys have a nice chat meanwhile." He
walked quickly up the path to the house, stopped, lit the cigar, glanced
sideward over his cupped hands, and stepped out of sight inside.

"I think Al will be all right," Hawks said.

Claire looked down at him. She focussed her expression into
an open-faced innocence. "Oh? You mean, he'll be back to normal?"

Barker brought the garage doors down and passed Hawks with
his head bent, striding intendy as he thrust the ignition keys into his pocket.
His face jerked up toward Claire as he climbed the steps. "I'm going
upstairs. I may sack out. Don't wake me." He half-turned and looked at
Hawks. "I guess you're stuck here, unless you want to take another hike.
Did you think of that, Doctor?"

"Did you? I'll stay until you're up. I'll want to talk
to you."

"I wish you joy of it, Doctor," Barker said, and
walked away, with Claire watching him. Then she looked back down at Hawks.
Through all this, she had not moved her feet or hands.

Hawks said: "Something happened. I don't know how much
it means."

"You worry about it, Ed," she said, her lower lip
glistening. "In the meantime, you're the only one left standing down
there."

Hawks sighed. "I'll come up."

Claire Pack grinned.

"Come over and sit by the pool with me," she said
when he reached the top of the steps. She turned away before he could answer,
and walked slowly in front of him, her right arm hanging at her side. Her hand
trailed back, and reached up to touch his own. She slackened her pace so that
they were walking side by side, and looked up at him. "You don't mind, do
you?" she said gently.

Hawks looked down at their hands for a moment, and as he
did, she put the backs of her fingers inside his palm. She smiled and said:
"There, now," in an almost childishly soft voice.

They walked to the edge of the pool and stood looking down
into the water. Then her mouth parted in a low, whispered laugh. She swayed her
upper body toward him, and put her other hand on his arm.

Hawks put his right hand around his own left wrist and held
it, his arm crossed awkwardly in front of his body.

She looked down at his arm. "You know, if I get too
close to you, you can always dive into the pool." Then she grinned to
herself again, keeping her face toward him to let him see it, and, taking her
hands away, sank down to lie on one hip in the grass. "I'm sorry,"
she said, looking up. "I said that just to see if you'd twitch. Connie's
right about me, you know."

Hawks squatted angularly down next to her. "In what
way?"

She put one hand down into the blue water and stirred it
back and forth, silvery bubbles trailing out between her spread fingers.
"I can't know a man more than a few minutes without trying to get under
his skin," she said in a pondering voice. "I have to do it."

Hawks continued to look at her gravely, and she slowly lost
the vivacity behind her expression. She rolled over suddenly on her back, her
ankles crossed stiffly, and put her hands down flat on her thigh muscles.

"What's happening to Al?" she said, moving only
her lips. "What are you doing to him?"

"I don't know exactly," Hawks said. "I'm
waiting to find out."

She sat up and twisted to face him, her breasts moving under
the loose top. "Do you have any kind of a conscience?" she asked.
"Is there anyone who can hurt you?"

He shook his head. "That kind of question doesn't
apply. I do what I have to do."

She seemed to be almost hypnotized. She leaned closer.

"I want to see if Al's all right," Hawks said,
getting up.

Claire arched her neck and stared up at him.
"Hawks," she whispered.

"Excuse me, Claire." He stepped around her
drawn-up legs and moved toward the house.

"Hawks," she said hoarsely. The top of the
swimsuit was almost completely off the upper faces of her breasts. "You
have to take me tonight."

He continued to walk away.

"Hawks—I'm warning you!"

Hawks flung open the house door and disappeared behind the
sun-washed glass.

"How'd it go?" Connington laughed from the shadows
of the bar at the other end of the living room. He came forward, dressed in a
pair of printed trunks, his stomach cinched by the tight waistband. He was
carrying a folded beach shirt over his arm and holding a pewter pitcher and two
glasses. "It's a little like a silent movie, from here," he said,
nodding toward the glass wall facing out onto the lawn and the pool. "Hell
for action, but short on dialogue."

Hawks turned and looked. Claire was still sitting up,
staring intently at what must have been a barricade of flashing reflections of
herself.

"Gets to a man, doesn't she?" Connington chuckled.
"Forewarned is not forearmed, with her. She's an elemental—the rise of the
tides, the coming of the seasons, an eclipse of the Sun." He looked down
into the pitcher, where the ice at the top of the mixture had suddenly begun to
tinkle. "Woe to us, Hawks. Woe to us who would pursue them on their
cometary track."

"Where's Barker?"

Connington gestured with the pitcher. "Upstairs. Took a
shower, threatened to disembowel me if I didn't get out of his way in the hall,
went to bed. Set the alarm for eight o'clock. Put down a tumbler full of gin to
help him. Where's Barker?" Connington repeated. "Dreamland,
Hawks—whatever dreamland it was that awaited him."

Hawks looked at his wristwatch.

"Three hours, Hawks," Connington said. "Three
hours, and there is no Master in this house." He moved around Hawks to the
outside door. "Yoicks!" he yapped twistedly, raising the pitcher in
Claire's direction. He pushed clumsily at the door with his shoulder, leaving a
damp smear on the glass. "Tally ho."

Hawks moved farther into the room, toward the bar. He
searched behind it, and found a bottle of Scotch. When he looked up from
putting ice and water into a glass, he saw that Connington had reached Claire
and was standing over her. She lay on her stomach, facing the pool, her chin
resting on her crossed forearms. Connington held the pitcher, saying something
and pouring awkwardly into the two glasses in his other hand.

Hawks walked slowly to the leather-covered settee facing the
windows, and sat down.

Claire rolled half-over and stretched up an arm to take the
glass Connington handed down. She perfunctorily saluted Connington's glass and
took a drink, her neck arching. Then she rolled back, resting her raised upper
body on her elbows.

Connington sat down on the edge of the pool beside her,
dropping his legs into the water. Claire reached over and wiped her arm.
Connington raised his glass again, held it up in a toast, and waited for Claire
to take another drink. With a twist of her shoulders, she did, pressing the
flat of her other hand against the top of her suit.

Connington refilled their glasses.

Claire sipped at hers. Connington touched her shoulder and
bent his head to say something. Her mouth opened in laughter. She reached out
and touched his waist. Her fingers pinched the roll of flesh around his
stomach. Her shoulder rose and her elbow stiffened. Connington clutched her
wrist, then moved up to her arm, pushing back. He twisted away, hurriedly set
his glass down, and splashed into the pool. His hands shot out and took her
arm, pulling them forward.

Claire came sliding into the water on top of him, and they
weltered down out of sight under the surface. A moment later, her head and
shoulders broke out a few feet away, and she stroked evenly to the ladder,
climbing out and stopping at the poolside to pull the top of her suit back up.
She picked her towel from the grass with one swoop of her arm, threw it around
her shoulders, and walked quickly off out of sight toward the other wing of the
house.

Connington stood in the pool, watching her.

Then he swam forward, toward the diving board. For some time
afterward, until the low sun was entirely in sight and the room where Hawks was
sitting was filled with red, the sound of the thrumming board came vibrating
into the timbers of the house at sporadic intervals.

At ten minutes of eight, a radio began playing loud jazz
upstairs. Ten minutes later, the electric blat of the radio's alarm roiled the
music, and a moment after that there was a brittle crash, and then only the
occasional sound of Barker stumbling about and getting dressed.

Hawks went over to the bar, washed out his empty glass, and
put it back in its rack.

Barker came down carrying a half-filled squareface bottle.
He saw Hawks, grunted, hefted the bottle and said: "I hate the stuff. It
tastes lousy, it makes me gag, it stinks, and it burns my mouth. But they keep
putting it in your hands. And they fill their folklore with it. They talk
gentleman talk about it—ages and flavors and brands and blends, as if it wasn't
all ethanol in one concentration or another. Have you ever heard two Martini
drinkers in a bar, Hawks? Have you ever heard two shamans swooping magic?"
He dropped into an easy chair and laughed. "Neither have I. I synthesize
my heritage. I look at two drunks in a saloon, and I extrapolate toward
dignity. I suppose that's sacrilege."

He lit a cigarette, and said through the smoke: "But
it's the best I can do, Hawks. My father's dead, and I once thought there was
something good in shucking off my other kin. I wish I could remember what that
was. I have a place in me that needs the pain."

Hawks went back to the settee and sat down. He put his hands
on his knees and watched Barker.

"And talk," Barker said. "You're not fit
company for them if you don't say 'eyther' and 'nyther' and 'tomahto.' If
you've got a Dad, you're out. They only permit gentlemen with fathers in their
society. And, yeah, I know they licked me on that. I wanted to belong—Oh, God,
Hawks, how much I wanted to belong—and I learned all the passwords. What did it
get me? Claire's right, you know—what did it get me?

"If she could see me, Hawks—if she could
see
me
in that place!" Barker's face was aglow. "She wouldn't be playing
footsie with you and Connington tonight—no, not if she could see what I do up
there . . . how I dodge, and duck, and twist, and inch, and spring, and wait
for the-the-"

"Easy, Barker!"

"Yeah. Easy. Slack off. Back away. It bites."
Barker coughed out bitterly: "What're you doing here, anyway, Hawks? Why
aren't you marching down that road again with your ass stiff and your nose in
the air? You think it's going to do you any good, you sitting around here? What're
you waiting for? For me to tell you sure, a little sleep and a little gin and
I'm fine, just fine, Doctor, and what time do you want me back tomorrow? Call
Washington, tell 'em the show's back on the road? Or do you want me to crack
wide open, so you can really move in on Claire?