“And the nurse. She was the same, a sort of composite.
Like all the nurses you ever saw.”
Pondering, Hamilton gazed out the car window at the
night. “It’s the result of mass communication,” he
con
jectured. “People model themselves
after ads. Don’t they,
Miss
Reiss?”
Miss Reiss said, “I wanted to ask you something. There
was something I noticed that made me wonder.”
“What’s that?” Hamilton asked suspiciously; Miss Reiss
couldn’t possibly know what they were
talking about.
“The
policeman on the platform … just before it
collapsed. Why was he there?”
“He came with us,” Hamilton said, annoyed.
Miss Reiss eyed him intently. “Did he? I thought per
haps …” Her voice trailed off vaguely. “It
seemed to me that he turned and started back just before it fell.”
“He
did,” Hamilton agreed. “He felt it going. So did I, but I hurried the
other way.”
“You
mean you deliberately came back? When you could have saved yourself?”
“My wife,” Hamilton told her testily.
Miss Reiss
nodded, apparently satisfied. “I’m sorry
…
all this shock and strain. We were fortunate. Some weren’t. Isn’t it odd: some
of us got out with almost no
injuries, and
that poor soldier, Mr. Silvester, with a broken back. It makes you
wonder.”
“I
meant to tell you,” the physician driving the car
spoke up. “Arthur Silvester doesn’t have a broken spinal
column.
It seems to be a chipped vertebra and a dam
aged
spleen.”
“Great,”
Hamilton muttered. “What about the guide?
Nobody’s mentioned him.”
“Some internal injuries,” the physician answered. “They
haven’t released the diagnosis yet.”
“Is he waiting out in the supply shack?” Marsha asked.
The doctor
laughed. “You mean Bill Laws? He was the first one they carted out; he’s
got friends on the
staff.”
“And another thing,” Marsha said abruptly. “Considering
how far we fell and all that radiation—none of us was really hurt. Here the
three of us are running around again as if nothing had happened. It’s unreal.
It was too
easy.”
Exasperated, Hamilton said, “We probably fell into a
bunch of safety gadgets. Goddam it—”
There was
more he wanted to say, but he never got
it
out. At that moment, a stark, fierce pain lashed up his
right leg. With
a yell, he leaped up, banging his head on the roof of the car. Pawing
frantically, he yanked
up his trouser leg
in time to see a
small, winged creature
scuttle off.
“What is it?” Marsha demand anxiously. And then she,
too, saw it. “A bee!”
Furiously,
Hamilton stepped on the bee, grinding it
under
his shoe. “It stung me. Right on the calf.” Already,
an ugly
red swelling was taking shape. “Haven’t I had
enough trouble?”
The
physician had pulled the car quickly to the side
of the road. “You killed it? Those things get in while the
car’s parked. I’m sorry—will you be all right? I
have some
salve we can put on it.”
“Ill live,” Hamilton muttered, gingerly massaging the
welt. “A bee. As if we hadn’t had enough trouble for
one day.”
“We’ll be home, soon,” Marsha said soothingly, peering
out the car window. “Miss Reiss,
come on in and have a
drink
with us.”
“Well,”
Miss Reiss equivocated, plucking at her lip with a thin, bony finger, “I
could use a cup of coffee. If you can spare it”
“We
certainly can,” Marsha said quickly. “We ought to stick together, all
eight of us. We’ve had such an aw
ful
experience.”
“Let’s
hope it’s over,” Miss Reiss said uneasily.
“Amen
to that,” Hamilton added. A moment later, the car pulled up to the curb
and halted: they were
home.
* * * * *
“What
a nice little place you have,” Miss Reiss commented as they clambered
from the car. In the evening
twilight, the
modern two-bedroom California ranch-
style house sat quietly waiting for
them to ascend the path to the front porch. And sitting on the porch, also
waiting, was a large yellow tomcat, his paws tucked under his bosom.
There’s
Jack’s cat,” Marsha said, fishing in her purse for her key. “He wants
to be fed.” To the cat she instructed, “Go on inside, Ninny Numbcat.
You don’t get fed out here.”
“What
a quaint name,” Miss Reiss observed, with a touch of aversion. “Why
do you call him that?”
“Because
he’s stupid,” Hamilton answered briefly.
“Jack
has names like that for all his cats,” Marsha explained. “The last
one was called Parnassus Nump.”
The big,
disreputable-looking tomcat had got to his feet and jumped down onto the walk.
Sidling up to Hamilton, he rubbed loudly against his leg. Miss Reiss retreated
with overt distaste. “I never could get used to
cats,” she revealed. “They’re so sneaky and underhanded.”
Normally, Hamilton would have delivered a short sermon on stereotypy. But at the moment, he didn’t
particularly care what Miss Reiss thought about cats. Sticking his key in the
lock, he pushed open the front door and clicked on the living room lights. The
bright little house flooded into being, and the ladies entered. After them came
Ninny Numbcat, heading straight for the kitchen, his ragged tail stuck up like
a yellow ramrod.
Still in
her hospital smock, Marsha opened the refrigerator and got out a green plastic
bowl of boiled beef hearts. As she cut up the meat and dropped the pieces to
the cat, she commented: “Most electronics geniuses have mechanical pets—those
phototropic moths and the like, things that go running and bumping around. Jack
built one when we were first married, one that caught mice and flies. But that
wasn’t good enough; he had to build another that caught
it.”
“Cosmic
justice,” Hamilton said, taking off his hat and coat. “I didn’t want
them to populate the world.”
While
Ninny Numbcat greedily finished his dinner, Marsha went into the bedroom to
change. Miss Reiss prowled around the living room, expertly inspecting the vases,
prints, furnishings.
“Cats
have no souls,” Hamilton said morbidly, watching his tomcat avidly feed.
“The most majestic cat in the universe would balance a carrot on his head
for a bite of pork liver.”
“They’re
animals,” Miss Reiss acknowledged from the living room. “Did you get
this Paul Klee print from us?”
“Probably.”
“I’ve
never been able to decide what Klee is trying to
say.”
“Maybe he’s not trying to say anything. Maybe
he’s just having a good time.” Hamilton’s arm had begun to ache; he
wondered how it looked under the bandage.
“You
say you want coffee?”
“Coffee—and strong,” Miss Reiss corroborated. “Can I
help you fix it?”
“Just make yourself comfortable.” Mechanically, Ham
ilton
reached around for the Silex. “The soft-cover edi
tion of Toynbee’s
History
is
stuffed in the magazine rack,
there by the couch.”
“Darling,” Marsha’s voice came from the bedroom,
sharp and urgent “Could you come
here?”
He did so, the Silex in his hand, sloshing water as he
hurried. Marsha stood at the bedroom
window, about to
pull
down the shade. She was gazing out at the night,
a taut, worried frown wrinkling her forehead.
“What’s the matter?” Hamilton demanded.
“Look out there.”
He looked, but all he saw was a vague blur of gloom,
and the indistinct outline of houses.
A few lights glowed
weakly
here and there. The sky was overcast, a low ceil
ing of fog that drifted silently around the roof tops.
Nothing moved. There was no life, no activity. No
pres
ence of people.
“It’s like the Middle Ages,” Marsha said quietly.
Why did it look that way? He could see it, too; but
objectively the scene was prosaic, the
usual sight from
his
bedroom window at nine-thirty on a cold October
night.
“And
we’ve been talking that way,” Marsha said,
shivering. “You said something about Ninny’s soul. You
didn’t talk like that before.”
“Before what?”
“Before we came here.” Turning from the window, she
reached for her checkered shirt: it
hung over the back of a chair. “And—this is silly, of course. But did you
really see the doctor’s car drive
off? Did you say good-
by?
Did
anything
happen?”
“Well, he’s gone,” Hamilton pointed out noncom
mittally.
Eyes large and serious, Marsha buttoned her shirt and
stuffed the tails into her slacks. “I guess I’m
delirious, like they said. The shock, the drugs … but it’s all so
quiet. As if we’re the only people alive. Living
in a gray
bucket, no lights, no colors, just sort of a—primordial place.
Remember the old religions? Before the cosmos came chaos. Before the land was
separated from the
water. Before the
darkness was separated from the light.
And things didn’t have any
names.”
“Ninny
has his name,” Hamilton pointed out gently.
“So do you; so does Miss Reiss. And so does Paul Klee.”
Together,
they returned to the kitchen. Marsha took
over
the job of fixing coffee; in a few moments the Silex
bubbled furiously.
Sitting stiffly upright at the kitchen table, Miss Reiss had a pinched,
strained look; her severe, colorless face was set in rigid concentration, as
if she were deep in turmoil. She was a plain determined-
looking young woman, with a tight bun of mousy, sand-
colored hair
pulled against her skull. Her nose was thin
and
sharp; her lips were pressed into an uncompromising
line. Miss Reiss looked like a woman with whom it
was
better not to trifle.
“What
were you saying in there?” she asked as she
stirred her cup of coffee.
Annoyed,
Hamilton answered, “We were discussing
a
personal situation. Why?”
“Now, darling,” Marsha reproved.
Bluntly facing Miss Reiss, Hamilton demanded, “Are
you always this way? Snooping around, prying into
things?”
There was no emotion visible on the woman’s pinched
face. “I have to be careful,” she explained.
“This accident today has made me especially conscious of the jeopardy I’m
in.” Correcting herself, she added, “So-
called accident, I mean.”
“Why you especially?” Hamilton wanted to know.
Miss Reiss
didn’t answer; she was watching Ninny Numbcat. The big battered torn had
finished his meal; now he was looking for a lap. “What’s the matter with
him?” Miss Reiss asked, in a thin, frightened voice;
“Why’s he looking at me?”
“You’re
sitting down,” Marsha said soothingly. “He
wants to hop up and go to sleep.”
Half-rising
to her feet, Miss Reiss upbraided the cat, “Don’t you come near me! Keep
your dirty body away from me!” To Hamilton she confided, “If they
didn’t
have fleas, it wouldn’t be so
offensive. And this one has
a mean look. I suppose he kills his share of
birds?”
“Six
or seven a day,” Hamilton answering, temper
rising.
“Yes,” Miss Reiss agreed, backing warily away from
the puzzled tomcat. “I can see he’s quite a killer.
Cer
tainly, in the city, there ought to be
some kind of prohib
itive ordinance. Destructive pets, vicious animals that
are a menace, should at least have licenses. And the
city really should—”
“Not
only birds,” Hamilton interrupted, a cold ruthless sadism sliding over
him, “but snakes and gophers. And this morning he showed up with a dead
rabbit.”
“Darling,” Marsha said sharply. Miss Reiss was shrink
ing away in genuine fear. “Some people don’t like
cats.
You can’t expect everybody to share
your tastes.”
“Little
furry mice, too,” Hamilton said brutally. “By the dozen. Part he
eats, part he brings to us. And one
morning
he showed up with the head of an old woman.”
A terrified squeak
escaped from Miss Reiss’ lips. In
panic, she
scrambled back, pathetic and defenseless. In
stantly, Hamilton was
sorry. Ashamed of himself, he
opened his
mouth to apologize, to retract his misplaced
humor… .