Cliff stepped to the small bar at the end of the room and mixed two
very Herculean drinks before answering. Then he said--after Ava had
tasted and approved: "They thought I had the cards marked. I didn't; I
was playing a formula."
"But aren't formula players usually losers?"
Maculay laughed. "Baby doll," he laughed, "when you've been trained
by the best mathematician in the solar system, you remember the
sequence of the cards, evolve a formula of probabilities regarding the
shuffling, and then play them according to absolute mathematics. In Red
Dog, if there's a Heart Six to beat, each and every card played changes
the formula as it lands; if you know your mathematics, you can compute
your chances about as well as the Interplanetary Life Insurance Company
can compute your expectancy."
"But I spoiled your game."
"That game was ruined anyway."
"It was fun," said Ava, taking a fine pull at the drink.
"A nice shindy, m'lady. And far more better than the game they'd have
played once they grabbed me."
"But where will we play tomorrow night?"
"Venus is full of places," chuckled Maculay. "Fact is, the evening is
young. Wait'll I collect me a fresh shirt; and I'll have to forget the
white jacket since it's a mess. But we can see a bit more Venusian
Night Life."
"Done!"
Maculay emerged from the dressing room a few moments later. "By the
way, m'lady, what's your name?"
"Ava Longacre."
"I'm--"
"I know. Cliff Maculay."
"Such is fame," sighed Cliff. "You know me?"
Ava nodded. "I've met you before," she said. A faint, subdued
recollection of her previous meeting with Clifford Maculay stirred her.
She recalled, very dimly, the upsurge of emotion, the pounding of her
heart, the complete relaxation of defensive mechanism. Something had
been started but never finished, before. Now it was all past, gone, and
a new day was yet to be born. "Someone gave me a message for you, but
I've forgotten it."
"Maybe we can bring it back," chuckled Maculay. He took her by the arm
and led her from the room.
4
Hanson had committed one pardonable error; pardonable because Hanson,
for all of his years and his experience, was no worker of miracles, to
whom nothing is hidden, and who can be called omniscient.
For all of his experience in wending his way through the hidden
recesses of the labyrinth we call the human mind, Hanson did not know
everything and would have been the first to admit this honestly. But
he did know that the trouble with both Maculay and Ava Longacre laid
in the subsurfaces of the conscious mind. Blocks, inhibitions, and
fears instilled as a youth had driven Maculay to seek his excellence
in mathematics as a goal rather than as the means to the normal goal
of a happy, balanced life. In the filing-cabinet of the mind, however;
in the subconscious mind of Clifford Maculay was all of the data of
the life he should have led, held there subdued by the blocks of the
conscious mind. Hanson had opened the doorway by removing these blocks,
and he had done a fine job.
In much the same fashion he had removed the blocks and impediments from
Ava Longacre's mind.
Both had suffered from too puritanical an upbringing. In the long
distance that lies between white saint and black evil, there is a long
dimension lying just below center that is the despair of reformers and
do-gooders. This region contains many people and many ideals that are
_mal in dictu_. Some impractical reformer had decided, for instance,
that liquor is to be abhorred; ergo it is against the desires of
society for a man to take a drink. Just one. The idea is, of course,
to create a race of saints and Little Lord Fauntleroy sweetness--which
probably wouldn't last out the century since the desire to poke someone
in the nose for stepping on your rights--or your toe--is the same
belligerency that has made mankind fight its way up from the swamps to
seek the stars.
Below this region of morals or ethics lies the _mal in facto_
behaviour. It is bad in fact and practice to murder, steal, and lie.
Hanson had opened the minds of his pair to the enjoyment of the middle
region after a short life of the stilted upper bracket. Like the swing
of the pendulum, both Ava and Clifford had dropped about as far as they
could go without getting into the truly evil region.
But the doctor's error was in not realizing that the human mind,
once released of its inhibitions, can make a shrewd calculation. In
the case of Ava Longacre, whose mental blocks would have rendered
her undesirable to Cliff Maculay; when once released, the woman's
mind reversed its tactics. Where the conscious mind had the balanced
life distorted into undesirability, now her mind distorted into
undesirability--the more responsible way of living--because she was
beginning to enjoy excitement.
All of her quiet life she had been suppressing the love of excitement;
now released, Ava Longacre's mind refused to consider the task she had
been sent to do; once it was finished, she would be returned to the
quiet, unexciting life that she no longer wanted.
So instead of employing her woman's wiles to involve Maculay and bring
him back to earth where Hanson could get him to go back to work on his
negative space, Ava was helping Cliff cut a wide, rosy-hued swathe
through the not-too-holy city of Melaxis.
They consumed a bit more alcohol than was necessary; they danced a bit
more close together than would have been called proper at a Boston
cotillion, and hazarded sums of money on the roll of a pair of dice or
the turn of a card just for the thrill of high blood pressure.
* * * * *
It was near dawn when Ava lifted her head from Cliff's shoulder in
the taxicab and wiped the lipstick from his cheek with a caressing
forefinger. Cliff smiled down at her.
"Baby doll," he said, "let's get married or something."