Ten From Infinity by Paul W. Fairman (top ten books of all time TXT) 📗

"Ducky. Just ducky."

Porter laughed. "Just called to say, 'Good job well done.'"[Pg 135]

"Thanks."

"Want to give you a little tip, too. They want you upstairs. A commendation. Not generally known, though. And you deserve it. You'll be called up tomorrow."

"You never know the day or the hour."

The laugh came again. "You're humor is priceless, old man."

"Isn't it?"

"Another thing—I got pretty hot when I got wind of how the ground was being cut out from under you. I made it my business to do something about it. I hate to see a good man pushed around. Of course I okayed the orders cutting you down—a matter of routine—I had to follow through. But then I got busy. A thing like that won't happen again."

"Thanks, Porter. It warms a man to know he's got a friend—a friend like you."

"Just between us, old man, I'm one of your admirers." Porter laughed and sprayed charm through the phone like perfume from an atomizer. "But if you quote me, I'll deny it."

"Oh, I wouldn't think of quoting you, old man," Taber replied in a kindly voice and put down the phone.

He sat back and closed his eyes. Three people dead. One person maimed. Blood in the streets.

Good job well done.

He opened a drawer of his desk and reached for the Scotch bottle.

At the Newark Airport he would not trust his suitcase to a porter because the leather loop holding one side of the handle was very thin and he was afraid it would break.

Once he had been ashamed of the shabbiness of the bag and had planned to buy a new one, but now there was an affinity between them, a kind of warmth.

Were they companions in misery?

He asked the question with a quick smile and then realized he was not miserable. A little bleak of mind, perhaps, with Minnesota and what lay ahead affording no glow of[Pg 136] anticipation in his mind. But that would pass. No, he had relegated the hurt to a mental pigeonhole; maybe he would bring it out and look at it once in a while, after enough time had passed.

But he was not miserable.

He went to the counter, checked in, and they told him his plane would take off on time. He glanced at his watch. Thirty-two minutes.

He went back to the bench and found Rhoda Kane sitting beside his suitcase.

She wore a plain, black suit with a ridiculous little black hat and she was so beautiful he was angry with her. He hated her. This good-bye wasn't necessary. Why had she come?

Her face was pale and drawn; her smile was as abstract as the mystery on the lips of the Mona Lisa. She laid a hand on the suitcase.

"We had our first quarrel over it, remember? We went to Puerto Rico for that week and I wanted to use mine but you said, 'Goddamn it, if you're ashamed of my suitcase you're ashamed of me, so the hell with it.'"

"I remember."

He sat down beside her, lit a cigarette, and then dropped it on the floor and stepped on it. They both looked straight ahead.

"Take me with you, Frank."

"That's impossible."

"I know, but take me with you."

"There will be no money. I'll live in a stuffy room somewhere."

"What difference does that make? Take me."

"You have your job. You're on the way up. It would be unthinkable."

"I don't have any job. I quit. I was halfway through a piece of copy—very important copy—and I got up and walked into Mr. Frankel's office. I said, 'Mr. Frankel, it's been very nice working for you. I appreciate all you've done but I'm leaving now. The pencils are all sharpened on my desk and the next girl can have the new leather-bound address book in the lower right hand drawer that[Pg 137] I bought but never used! That was a silly thing to say, wasn't it?"

"I suppose so."

"And the way I phrased it. I actually said I'd bought the lower right hand drawer and hadn't used it—take me with you, Frank."

"Rhoda, I was so wrong in—"

"I was wrong, Frank. I was trying to mold you into my way of life. I wanted you, but only as a part of my own eager little world. I had money so I furnished my apartment. I put this here and that there, and hung a toothbrush over the sink as necessarily functional, and then I decided I needed a man in the same way and so I picked you.

"But I found out that the man in the bed was the most important part of it and without him there wasn't anything. Without him I didn't want any of the other. Now ... I want to be a wife. A wife is a person who goes where her husband goes and lives where he lives and shares what he has. You don't barter and trade—this for that—give up this part to get that. You give up everything and yet it isn't like that at all because you're really getting everything."

He took out another cigarette.

"Oh, Frank, it's all mixed up and I'm going to cry, I think."

"It's not mixed up at all," he said quietly. He turned to look at her, half frowning, half smiling. "Now why in the hell couldn't you have given me a little notice? Twenty minutes to plane time and I've got to get another reservation."

"I'm sorry, Frank."

"Maybe there isn't a seat."

"Wouldn't that be terrible?"

"Then we'll have to wait over."

"Why don't you go and see?"

Five minutes later they were walking down the west tunnel to gate twenty-six.

Frank Corson grinned. "Come on, woman, I'm going to take you across state lines for immoral purposes."[Pg 138]

"How wonderful," she breathed.

Brent Taber was human and his triumph had been a thing of satisfaction to him—but only momentarily. Now it had a slightly sour taste.

Not that he was unhappy. He was content and almost relaxed as he sat in Doctor Entman's patio and worked on a Scotch and soda.

"A nice night," Entman said.

"Beautiful. Those stars are about ready to fall into our laps."

"Menace out there? It seems unthinkable."

"Doesn't it?"

"The human animal is a strange creature. He's so capable of refusing to believe what he doesn't want to believe."

"Maybe he's smarter than we think. Maybe there's no point in looking at a pending disaster from every angle. The what-will-be-will-be attitude isn't necessarily like that of the ostrich which sticks its head in the sand."

"Do the people inside really believe?" Entman asked.

"It's pretty difficult to tell. Sometimes I wonder what my own real feelings are."

"I wasn't completely briefed on how it ended," Entman said delicately.

"I think the phony specifications got through."

"If they did—if things are really as they appear—"

Taber smiled in the darkness. "Are you beginning to doubt, Doctor?"

"Oh, be quiet," Entman said with friendly petulance. "I was going to say that I was rather proud of those details. If our hostiles out there follow my specifications, they'll create androids with much smaller lungs and non-porous skin that will give them no end of trouble when they start chasing frightened householders down the streets of the world."

Taber chuckled. "I remember a story about the Japanese Navy. They were supposed to have built some ships to specifications stolen in England. When launched, they slid out into the bay and tipped over."

Entman sighed. "I wish I could get some of the data[Pg 139] those creatures used in the construction of the androids."

"You'd like to make one of your own?"

"It would solve the servant problem. Terrible here in Washington."

"Labor unions would holler bloody murder."

"You can't stop progress."

Suddenly Entman got to his feet. He walked to the edge of the patio and looked upward. Taber saw his face in the light streaming from the living room—he seemed frightened.

"Brent! It's such a helpless feeling. What do we do?"

Brent Taber got up and went over and stood beside Entman. He, too, looked up into the velvet night; the beautiful, quiet, impersonal night.

The sinister night.

"We watch the stars," Brent said. "And we wait."

[Pg 140]