"Yes." Clara's voice was a thin treble that could have been a shriek
had it continued.
"This is Medicorps Headquarters. A routine check discloses you have
delayed your shift two hours. To maintain the statistical record of
deviations, please give us a full explanation."
"I ..." Clara had to swallow before she could talk. "I must have taken
too much sleeping compound."
"Mrs. Manz, our records indicate that you have been delaying your shift
consistently for several periods now. We made a check of this as a
routine follow up on any such deviation, but the discovery is quite
serious." There was a harsh silence, a silence that demanded a logical
answer. But how could there be a logical answer?
"My hyperalter hasn't complained and I--well, I have just let a bad
habit develop. I'll see that it--doesn't happen again."
The machine voiced several platitudes about the responsibilities of one
personality to another and the duty of all to society before Clara was
able to shut it off.
Both of them sat as they were for a long, long time while the tide of
terror subsided. When at last they looked at each other across the dim
and silent room, both of them knew there could be at least one more
time together before they were caught.
* * * * *
Five days later, on the last day of her shift, Mary Walden wrote the
address of her appointed father's hypoalter, Conrad Manz, with an
indelible pencil on the skin just below her armpit.
During the morning, her father and mother had spoiled the family rest
day by quarreling. It was about Helen's hypoalter delaying so many
shifts. Bill did not think it very important, but her mother was angry
and threatened to complain to the Medicorps.
The lunch was eaten in silence, except that at one point Bill said, "It
seems to me Conrad and Clara Manz are guilty of a peculiar marriage,
not us. Yet they seem perfectly happy with it and you're the one who is
made unhappy. The woman has probably just developed a habit of taking
too much sleeping compound for her rest day naps. Why don't you drop
her a note?"
Helen made only one remark. It was said through her teeth and very
softly. "Bill, I would just as soon the child did not realize her
relationship to this sordid situation."
Mary cringed over the way Helen disregarded her hearing, the
possibility that she might be capable of understanding, or her feelings
about being shut out of their mutual world.
After the lunch Mary cleared the table, throwing the remains of the
meal and the plastiplates into the flash trash disposer. Her father had
retreated to the library room and Helen was getting ready to attend
a Citizen's Meeting. Mary heard her mother enter the room to say
good-bye while she was wiping the dining table. She knew that Helen was
standing, well-dressed and a little impatient, just behind her, but she
pretended she did not know.
"Darling, I'm leaving now for the Citizen's Meeting."
"Oh ... yes."
"Be a good girl and don't be late for your shift. You only have an hour
now." Helen's patrician face smiled.
"I won't be late."
"Don't pay any attention to the things Bill and I discussed this
morning, will you?"
"No."
And she was gone. She did not say good-bye to Bill.
Mary was very conscious of her father in the house. He continued to sit
in the library. She walked by the door and she could see him sitting in
a chair, staring at the floor. Mary stood in the sun room for a long
while. If he had risen from his chair, if he had rustled a page, if he
had sighed, she would have heard him.
It grew closer and closer to the time she would have to leave if Susan
Shorrs was to catch the first school hours of her shift. Why did
children have to shift half a day before adults?
Finally, Mary thought of something to say. She could let him know she
was old enough to understand what the quarrel had been about if only it
were explained to her.
Mary went into the library and hesitantly sat on the edge, of a couch
near him. He did not look at her and his face seemed gray in the midday
light. Then she knew that he was lonely, too. But a great feeling of
tenderness for him went through her.
"Sometimes I think you and Clara Manz must be the only people in the
world," she said abruptly, "who aren't so silly about shifting right
on the dot. Why, I don't _care_ if Susan Shorrs _is_ an hour late for
classes!"
Those first moments when he seized her in his arms, it seemed her heart
would shake loose. It was as though she had uttered some magic formula,
one that had abruptly opened the doors to his love. It was only after
he had explained to her why he was always late on the first day of the
family shift that she knew something was wrong. He _did_ tell her, over
and over, that he knew she was unhappy and that it was his fault. But
he was at the same time soothing her, petting her, as if _he was afraid
of her_.
He talked on and on. Gradually, Mary understood in his trembling body,
in his perspiring palms, in his pleading eyes, that he was afraid of
dying, that he was afraid _she_ would kill him with the merest thing
she said, with her very presence.
This was not painful to Mary, because, suddenly, something came with
ponderous enormity to stand before her: _I would just as soon the child
did not realize her relationship to this sordid situation._
Her relationship. It was some kind of relationship to Conrad and Clara
Manz, because those were the people they had been talking about.
The moment her father left the apartment, she went to his desk and
took out the file of family records. After she found the address of
Conrad Manz, the idea occurred to her to write it on her body. Mary was
certain that Susan Shorrs never bathed and she thought this a clever
idea. Sometime on Susan's rest day, five days from now, she would try
to force the shift and go to see Conrad and Clara Manz. Her plan was
simple in execution, but totally vague as to goal.
Mary was already late when she hurried to the children's section of a
public shifting station. A Children's Transfer Bus was waiting, and
Mary registered on it for Susan Shorrs to be taken to school. After
that she found a shifting room and opened it with her wristband. She
changed into a shifting costume and sent her own clothes and belongings
home.
Children her age did not wear makeup, but Mary always stood at the
mirror during the shift. She always tried as hard as she could to
see what Susan Shorrs looked like. She giggled over a verse that was
scrawled beside the mirror ...
Rouge your hair and comb your face;
Many a third head is lost in this place.
... and then the shift came, doubly frightening because of what she
knew she was going to do.
* * * * *
Especially if you were a hyperalter like Mary, you were supposed to
have some sense of the passage of time while you were out of shift. Of
course, you did not know what was going on, but it was as though a more
or less accurate chronometer kept running when you went out of shift.
Apparently Mary's was highly inaccurate, because, to her horror, she
found herself sitting bolt upright in one of Mrs. Harris's classes, not
out on the playgrounds, where she had expected Susan Shorrs to be.
Mary was terrified, and the ugly school dress Susan had been wearing
accented, by its strangeness, the seriousness of her premature shift.
Children weren't supposed to show much difference from hyperalter to
hypoalter, but when she raised her eyes, her fright grew. Children did
change. She hardly recognized anyone in the room, though most of them
must be the alters of her own classmates. Mrs. Harris was a B-shift and
overlapped both Mary and Susan, but otherwise Mary recognized only Carl
Blair's hypoalter because of his freckles.
Mary knew she had to get out of there or Mrs. Harris would eventually
recognize her. If she left the room quietly, Mrs. Harris would not
question her unless she recognized her. It was no use trying to guess
how Susan would walk.
Mary stood and went toward the door, glad that it turned her back to
Mrs. Harris. It seemed to her that she could feel the teacher's eyes
stabbing through her back.
But she walked safely from the room. She dashed down the school
corridor and out into the street. So great was her fear of what she was
doing that her hypoalter's world actually seemed like a different one.
It was a long way for Mary to walk across town, and when she rang the
bell, Conrad Manz was already home from work. He smiled at her and she
loved him at once.
"Well, what do you want, young lady?" he asked.
Mary couldn't answer him. She just smiled back.
"What's your name, eh?"
Mary went right on smiling, but suddenly he blurred in front of her.
"Here, here! There's nothing to cry about. Come on in and let's see if
we can help you. Clara! We have a visitor, a very sentimental visitor."
Mary let him put his big arm around her shoulder and draw her, crying,
into the apartment. Then she saw Clara swimming before her, looking
like her mother, but ... no, not at all like her mother.
"Now, see here, chicken, what is it you've come for?" Conrad asked when
her crying stopped.
Mary had to stare hard at the floor to be able to say it. "I want to
live with you."
Clara was twisting and untwisting a handkerchief. "But, child, we have
already had our first baby appointed to us. He'll be with us next
shift, and after that I have to bear a baby for someone else to keep.
We wouldn't be allowed to take care of you."
"I thought maybe I was your real child." Mary said it helplessly,
knowing in advance what the answer would be.
"Darling," Clara soothed, "children don't live with their natural
parents. It's neither practical nor civilized. I have had a child
conceived and borne on my shift, and this baby is my exchange, so you
see that you are much too old to be my conception. Whoever your natural
parents may be, it is just something on record with the Medicorps
Genetic Division and isn't important."
"But you're a special case," Mary pressed. "I thought because it was a
special arrangement that you were my real parents." She looked up and
she saw that Clara had turned white.
And now Conrad Manz was agitated, too. "What do you mean, we're a
special case?" He was staring hard at her.
"Because...." And now for the first time Mary realized how special this
case was, how sensitive they would be about it.
He grasped her by the shoulders and turned her so she faced his
unblinking eyes. "I said, what do you mean, we're a special case?
Clara, what in thirty heads does this kid mean?"
His grip hurt her and she began to cry again. She broke away. "You're
the hypoalters of my appointed father and mother. I thought maybe when
it was like that, I might be your real child ... and you might want me.
I don't want to be where I am. I want somebody...."
Clara was calm now, her sudden fear gone. "But, darling, if you're
unhappy where you are, only the Medicorps can reappoint you. Besides,
maybe your appointed parents are just having some personal problems
right now. Maybe if you tried to understand them, you would see that
they really love you."
Conrad's face showed that he did not understand. He spoke with a stiff,
quiet voice and without taking his eyes from Mary. "What are you doing
here? My own hyperalter's kid in my house, throwing it up to me that
I'm married to his wife's hypoalter!"
They did not feel the earth move, as she fearfully did. They sat there,
staring at her, as though they might sit forever while she backed away,
out of the apartment, and ran into her collapsing world.
* * * * *
Conrad Manz's rest day fell the day after Bill Walden's kid showed
up at his apartment. It was ten days since that strait jacket of a
conference on Santa Fe had lost him a chance to blast off a rocket
racer. This time, on the practical knowledge that emergency business
conferences were seldom called after lunch, Conrad had placed his
reservation for a racer in the afternoon. The visit from Mary Walden
had upset him every time he thought of it. Since it was his rest day,
he had no intention of thinking about it and Conrad's scrupulously
drugged mind was capable of just that.
So now, in the lavish coolness of the lounge at the Rocket Club, Conrad
sipped his drink contentedly and made no contribution to the gloomy
conversation going on around him.
"Look at it this way," the melancholy face of Alberts, a pilot from
England, morosely emphasized his tone. "It takes about 10,000 economic
units to jack a forty ton ship up to satellite level and snap it around
the course six times. That's just practice for us. On the other hand,
an intellectual fellow who spends his spare time at a microfilm library
doesn't use up 1,000 units in a year. In fact, his spare time activity
may turn up as units gained. The Economic Board doesn't argue that all
pastime should be gainful. They just say rocket racing wastes more
economic units than most pilots make on their work days. I tell you the
day is almost here when they ban the rockets."
"That's just it," another pilot put in. "There was a time when you
could show that rocket races were necessary for better spaceship
design. Design has gone way beyond that. From their point of view we
just burn up units as fast as other people create them. And it's no use
trying to argue for the television shows. The Board can prove people
would rather see a jet-skiing meet at a cost of about one-hundredth
that of a rocket race."
Conrad Manz grinned into his drink. He had been aware for several
minutes that pert little Angela, Alberts' soft-eyed, husky-voiced wife,
was trying to catch his eye. But stranded as she was in the buzzing
traffic of rockets, she was trying to hail the wrong rescuer. He had
about fifteen minutes till the ramp boys would have a ship ready for
him. Much as he liked Angela, he wasn't going to miss that race.
Still, he let his grin broaden and, looking up at her, he lied
maliciously by nodding. She interpreted this signal as he knew she
would. Well, at least he would afford her a graceful exit from the
boring conversation.
He got up and went over and took her hand. Her full lips parted a
little and she kissed him on the mouth.
Conrad turned to Alberts and interrupted him. "Angela and I would like
to spend a little time together. Do you mind?"
Alberts was annoyed at having his train of thought broken and rather
snapped out the usual courtesy. "Of course not. I'm glad for both of
you."
Conrad looked the group over with a bland stare. "Have you lads ever
tried jet-skiing? There's more genuine excitement in ten minutes of it
than an hour of rocket racing. Personally, I don't care if the Board
does ban the rockets soon. I'll just hop out to the Rocky Mountains on
rest days."
* * * * *
Conrad knew perfectly well that if he had made this assertion before
asking Alberts for his wife, the man would have found some excuse to
have her remain. All the faces present displayed the _aficionado's_
disdain for one who has just demonstrated he doesn't _belong_. What the
straitjacket did they think they were--some ancient order of noblemen?
Conrad took Angela's yielding arm and led her serenely away before
Alberts could think of anything to detain her.
On the way out of the lounge, she stroked his arm with frank
admiration. "I'm so glad you were agreeable. Honestly, Harold could
talk rockets till I died."
Conrad bent and kissed her. "Angela, I'm sorry, but this isn't going
to be what you think. I have a ship to take off in just a few minutes."
She flared and dug into his arm now. "Oh, Conrad Manz! You ... you made
me believe...."
He laughed and grabbed her wrists. "Now, now. I'm neglecting you to
_fly_ a rocket, not just to talk about them. I won't let you die."
At that she could not suppress her husky musical laugh. "I found that
out the last time you and I were together. Clara and I had a drink the
other day at the Citizen's Club. I don't often use dirty language, but
I told Clara she must be keeping you in a _straitjacket_ at home."
Conrad frowned, wishing she hadn't brought up the subject. It worried
him off and on that something was wrong with Clara, something even
worse than that awful _dreaming_ business ten days ago. For several
shifts now she had been cold, nor was it just a temporary lack of
interest in himself, for she was also cold to the men of their
acquaintance of whom she was usually quite fond. As for himself, he had
had to depend on casual contacts such as Angela. Not that they weren't
pleasant, but a man and wife were supposed to maintain a healthy
love life between themselves, and it usually meant trouble with the
Medicorps when this broke down.
Angela glanced at him. "I didn't think Clara laughed well at my remark.
Is something wrong between you?"
"Oh, no," he declared hastily. "Clara is sometimes that way ... doesn't
catch a joke right off."
A page boy approached them where they stood in the rotunda and advised
Conrad that his ship was ready.
"Honestly, Angela, I'll make it up, I promise."
"I know you will, darling. And at least I'm grateful you saved me from
all those rocket jets in there." Angela raised her lips for a kiss and
afterward, as she pushed him toward the door, her slightly vacant face
smiled at him.
* * * * *
Out on the ramp, Conrad found another pilot ready to take off. They
made two wagers--first to reach the racing course, and winner in a
six-lap heat around the six-hundred-mile hexagonal course.
They fired together and Conrad blasted his ship up on a thunderous
column of flame that squeezed him into his seat. He was good at this
and he knew he would win the lift to the course. On the course,
though, if his opponent was any good at all, Conrad would probably
lose because he enjoyed slamming the ship around the course in his
wasteful, swashbuckling style much more than merely winning the heat.
Conrad kept his drive on till the last possible second and then shot
out his nose jets. The ship shuddered up through another hundred miles
and came to a lolling halt near the starting buoys. The other pilot
gasped when Conrad shouted at him over the intership, "The winner by
all thirty heads!"
It was generally assumed that a race up to the course consisted of
cutting all jets when you had enough lift, and using the nose brakes
only to correct any over-shot. "What did you do, just keep your power
on and flip the ship around?" The other racer coasted up to Conrad's
level and steadied with a brief forward burst.
They got the automatic signal from the starting buoy and went for the
first turn, nose and nose, about half a mile apart. Conrad lost 5000
yards on the first turn by shoving his power too hard against the
starboard steering Jets.
It made a pretty picture when a racer hammered its way around a turn
that way with a fan of outside jets holding it in place. The Other
fellow made his turns cleanly, using mostly the driving jets for
steering. But that didn't look like much to those who happened to
flip on their television while this little heat was in progress. On
every turn, Conrad lost a little in space, but not in the eye of the
automatic televisor on the buoy marking the turn. As usual, he cut
closer to the buoys than regulations allowed, to give the folks a show.
Without the slightest regret, Conrad lost the heat by a full two sides
of the hexagon. He congratulated his opponent and watched the fellow
let his ship down carefully toward earth on its tail jets. For a while
Conrad lolled his ship around near the starting buoy and its probably
watching eye, flipping through a series of complicated maneuvers with
the steering jets.
Conrad did not like the grim countenance of outer space. The lifeless,
gemlike blaze of cloud upon cloud of stars in the perspectiveless black
repelled him. He liked rocket racing only because of the neat timing
necessary, and possibly because the knowledge that he indulged in it
scared poor old Bill Walden half to death.
Today the bleak aspect of the Galaxy harried his mind back upon its
own problems. A particularly nasty association of Clara with Bill
Walden and his sniveling kid kept dogging Conrad's mind and, as soon as
stunting had exhausted his excess of fuel, he turned the ship to earth
and sent it in with a short, spectacular burst.
Now that he stopped to consider it, Clara's strange behavior had begun
at about the same time that Bill Walden started cheating on the shifts.
That kid Mary must have known something was going on, or she would not
have done such a disgusting thing as to come to their apartment.
Conrad had let the rocket fall nose-down, until now it was screaming
into the upper ionosphere. With no time to spare, he swiveled the ship
on its guiding jets and opened the drive blast at the up-rushing earth.
He had just completed this wrenching maneuver when two appalling things
happened together.
Conrad suddenly knew, whether as a momentary leak from Bill's mind to
his, or as a rapid calculation of his own, that Bill Walden and Clara
shared a secret. At the same moment, something tore through his mind
like fingers of chill wind. With seven gravities mashing him into the
bucket-seat, he grunted curses past thin-stretched lips.
"Great blue psychiatrists! What in thirty straitjackets is that
three-headed fool trying to do, kill us both?"
Conrad just managed to raise his leaden hand and set the plummeting
racer for automatic pilot before Bill Walden forced him out of the
shift. In his last moment of consciousness, and in the shock of his
overwhelming shame, Conrad felt the bitter irony that he could not cut
the power and kill Bill Walden.
* * * * *
When Bill Walden became conscious of the thunderous clamor of the
braking ship and the awful weight of deceleration into which he had
shifted, the core of him froze. He was so terrified that he could not
have thought of reshifting even had there been time.
His head rolled on the pad in spite of its weight, and he saw the
earth coming at him like a monstrous swatter aimed at a fly. Between
his fright and the inhuman gravity, he lost consciousness without ever
seeing on the control panel the red warning that saved him: _Automatic
Pilot_.
The ship settled itself on the ramp in a mushroom of fire. Bill
regained awareness several seconds later. He was too shaken to do
anything but sit there for a long time.
When at last he felt capable of moving, he struggled with the door till
he found how to open it, and climbed down to the still-hot ramp he had
landed on. It was at least a mile to the Rocket Club across the barren
flat of the field, and he set out on foot. Shortly, however, a truck
came speeding across to him.
The driver leaned out. "Hey, Conrad, what's the matter? Why didn't you
pull the ship over to the hangars?"
With Conrad's makeup on, Bill felt he could probably get by. "Controls
aren't working," he offered noncommittally.
At the club, a place he had never been to before in his life, Bill
found an unused helicopter and started it with his wristband. He flew
the machine into town to the landing station nearest his home.
He was doomed, he knew. Conrad certainly would report him for this.
He had not intended to force the shift so early or so violently.
Perhaps he had not intended to force it at all this time. But there was
something in him more powerful than himself ... a need to break the
shift and be with Clara that now acted almost independently of him and
certainly without regard for his safety.
Bill flew his craft carefully through the city traffic, working his way
between the widely spaced towers with the uncertain hand of one to whom
machines are not an extension of the body. He put the helicopter down
at the landing station with some difficulty.
Clara would not be expecting him so early. From his apartment, as soon
as he had changed makeup, he visiophoned her. It was strange how long
and how carefully they needed to look at each other and how few words
they could say.
Afterward, he seemed calmer and went about getting ready with more
efficiency. But when he found himself addressing the package of
Conrad's clothes to his home, he chuckled bitterly.
It was when he went back to drop the package in the mail chute that he
noticed the storage room door ajar. He disposed of the package and went
over to the door. Then he stood still, listening. He had to stop his
own breathing to hear clearly.
Bill tightened himself and opened the door. He flipped on the light and
saw Mary. The child sat on the floor in the corner with her knees drawn
up against her chest. Between the knees and the chest, the frail wrists
were crossed, the hands closed limply like--like those of a fetus. The
forehead rested on the knees so that, should the closed eyes stray
open, they would be looking at the placid hands.
The sickening sight of the child squeezed down on his heart till the
color drained from his face. He went forward and knelt before her. His
dry throat hammered with the words, _what have I done to you_, but he
could not speak. The question of how long she might have been here, he
could not bear to think.
He put out his hand, but he did not touch her. A shudder of revulsion
shook him and he scrambled to his feet. He hurried back into the
apartment with only one thought. He must get someone to help her. Only
the Medicorps could take care of a situation like this.
As he stood at the visiophone, he knew that this involuntary act of
panic had betrayed all that he had ever thought and done. He had to
call the Medicorps. He could not face the result of his own behavior
without them. Like a ghostly after-image, he saw Clara's face on the
screen. She was lost, cut off, with only himself to depend on.
A part of him, a place where there were no voices and a great tragedy,
had been abruptly shut off. He stood stupidly confused and disturbed
about something he couldn't recall. The emotion in his body suddenly
had no referent. He stood like a badly frightened animal while his
heart slowed and blood seeped again into whitened parenchymas, while
tides of epinephrine burned lower.
Remembering he must hurry, Bill left the apartment. It was an apartment
with its storage room door closed, an apartment without a storage room.
From the moment that he walked in and took Clara in his arms, he was
not worried about being caught. He felt only the great need for her.
There seemed only one difference from the first time and it was a good
difference, because now Clara was so tense and apprehensive. He felt
a new tenderness for her, as one might feel for a child. It seemed to
him that there was no end to the well of gentleness and compassion that
was suddenly in him. He was mystified by the depth of this feeling.
He kissed her again and again and petted her as one might a disturbed
child.