"Remember when we met? In Santa Monica--right there, next to the beach.
You didn't have a thing but the clothes on your back and a bagful of
diamonds. Was it a sub that brought you that far, Fred?"
"No," I said, "and you wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me, and see," she said. She was rigid, and near hysteria.
"All right. I came there in a space sphere from Venus."
She started to sob, a wild, lonely sound and I moved forward to take her
in my arms.
Her fingers clawed my face, her high heel smashed my instep. "Get out,"
she screamed, "get out, get out, get out--"
I got out. I went to the first floor washroom and cleaned up my bloody
face, and then went into the bar. This was one habit I'd picked up on
the planet.
When I came up to the suite, later, I didn't even check to see if she
was in the washroom. I flopped down on the davenport and didn't know
anything for the next twelve hours.
She was gone, when I came to. She'd checked out before I'd come back to
the room, the night before.
I missed the plane she took from France. I missed her by a day in New
York. I went back to the big house with the high pillars on Sunset
Boulevard.
And she wasn't there.
She'd come back to it, I knew. I moved in, to wait. I wasn't going home
without her; I wasn't even sure I was going home with her. I was
involved, now, in this planet, almost as crazy as the rest of them.
I sat. I did some drinking, but mostly I sat, going back over all our
days, reading nothing, enjoying nothing, just remembering.
The Korean business started and the headlines grew uglier, and the
jackals screamed and the people grew more confused.
One day, the maid told me I had a visitor. I was in the library and I
told her to send him back.
When he came in, he closed the door behind him. I'd never seen him,
before, but he said, "We've been looking for three weeks."
"We?"
"Thirty of us," he said. "What happened? Jars sent me."
"Oh," I said. "I can't come, now. I'm--married--"
He smiled. "If you knew what a mess it's been. We've got men all over
the planet. Does your wife--know?"
"She thinks I'm crazy," I said. "Look, I--"
"I'm not going to argue," he said. "Just make your report, and I'll pick
it up, tonight."
Five minutes after he was gone, I was packing. I knew he wasn't coming
back for any report. He was coming back for _me_, and it didn't much
matter to him if I wanted to come, or not. I was coming, or staying
here--dead.
What I didn't realize is that they wanted me to run, to get out where I
could be taken with a minimum of interference.
They got me the other side of Blythe, in the middle of nowhere. A clear
night in the desert, and headlights coming up from behind and then the
big, black car crowding me off the flat road, into the sand.... And
darkness.
* * * * *
Deering sighed and shook his head. "Corruption, Werig? Was it the
corruption, or the girl?"
"I've made my report," I said. "Don't worry about them. They've got
enough to worry about without worrying about us."
"Another war, it looks like," Deering said. "It could be the last one,
you know. What was the girl--your wife like, Fred? Was she pretty?"
"Beautiful," I said.
"And the people--fear, is it fear?"
"I don't know. Their vice is fear, but they have some virtues."
Deering's voice was quiet. "Jars wanted me to ask you--about your wife.
Where is she? Is she coming with you? It was forbidden."
"I don't know where she is, she's not coming with me, and I know it was
forbidden. But where is Jars? He has been avoiding me, hasn't he? Why?"
"He has been pleading for you, before the assembly." Deering rose, and
went to the window, to look out. "Who will win this war that's shaping
up among the huddlers, Fred?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure I give a damn."
Deering continued to look out the window. "The gray nation, the mixed
nation, this America; they have some promise of the light, have they
not?"
"Some."
"But this black nation, this nation of robots, there is no chance of of
light there?"
"Not under their present leaders. If they should win the war the planet
would be set back five hundred years."
Deering shook his head, and turned to face me sadly. "It would be worse
than that. If they should win this war shaping up, there would be no
planet for them to rule."
I stared at him, not believing, still so bound up in my trip I couldn't
believe his words. _Love,--faith, fear, Jean_--were running through my
mind. And Jean...?
Deering answered everything for me. "We can't take the chance," he said.
"We will abolish the planet. The assembly so decided this morning."