Whoever she meant, it had no meaning for him. He said, "It's all right.
You mustn't worry."
"She needs you, Bill, and I take you away from her."
Whatever it was she was talking about was utterly unimportant beside
the fact that she was not happy herself. He soothed her. "Darling, you
mustn't worry about it. Let's be happy the way we used to be."
He led her to a couch and they sat together, her head resting on his
shoulder.
"Conrad is worried about me. He knows something is wrong. Oh, Bill, if
he knew, he'd demand the worst penalty for you."
Bill felt the stone of fear come back in his chest. He thought, too,
of Helen, of how intense her shame would be. Medicorps action would be
machinelike, logical as a set of equation; they were very likely to
take more drastic steps where the complaints would be so strong and no
request for leniency forthcoming. Conrad knew now, of course. Bill had
felt his hate.
It was nearing the end. Death would come to Bill with electronic
fingers. A ghostly probing in his mind and suddenly....
Clara's great unhappiness and the way she turned her head into his
shoulder to cry forced him to calm the rising panic in himself, and
again to caress the fear from her.
Even later, when they lay where the moonlight thrust into the room
an impalpable shaft of alabaster, he loved her only as a succor.
Carefully, slowly, smoothing out her mind, drawing it away from all the
other things, drawing it down into this one thing. Gathering all her
mind into her senses and holding it there. Then quickly taking it away
from her in a moaning spasm so that now she was murmuring, murmuring,
palely drifting. Sleeping like a loved child.
For a long, long time he watched the white moon cut its arc across
their window. He listened with a deep pleasure to her evenly breathing
sleep. But slowly he realized that her breath had changed, that the
body so close to his was tensing. His heart gave a great bound and tiny
moths of horror fluttered along his back. He raised himself and saw
that the eyes were open in the silver light. Even through the makeup he
saw that they were Helen's eyes.
He did the only thing left for him. He shifted. But in that terrible
instant he understood something he had not anticipated. In Helen's eyes
there was not only intense shame over shifting into her hypoalter's
home; there was not only the disgust with himself for breaking
communication codes. He saw that, as a woman of the 20th Century might
have felt, Helen hated Clara as a sexual rival. She hated Clara doubly
because he had turned not to some other woman, but to the other part of
herself whom she could never know.
As he shifted, Bill knew that the next light he saw would be on the
adamant face of the Medicorps.
* * * * *
Major Paul Grey, with two other Medicorps officers, entered the
Walden apartment about two hours after Bill left it to meet Clara.
Major Grey was angry with himself. Important information on a case
of communication-breaks and drug-refusal could be learned by letting
it run its course under observation. But he had not intended Conrad
Manz's life to be endangered, and certainly he would not have taken the
slightest chance on what they found in the Walden apartment if he had
expected it this early.
Major Grey blamed himself for what had happened to Mary Walden. He
should have had the machines watching Susan and Mary at the same time
that they were relaying all wristband data for Bill and Conrad and for
Helen and Clara to his office.
He had not done this because it was Susan's shift and he had not
expected Mary to break it. Now he knew that Helen and Bill Walden
had been quarreling over the fact that Clara was cheating on Helen's
shifts, and their conversations had directed the unhappy child's
attention to the Manz couple. She had broken shift to meet them ...
looking for a loving father, of course.
Still--things would not have turned out so badly if Captain Thiel,
Mary's school officer, had not attributed Susan Shorrs' disappearance
only to poor drug acclimatization. Captain Thiel had naturally known
that Major Grey was in town to prosecute Bill Walden, because the major
had called on him to discuss the case. Yet it had not occurred to him,
until 18 hours after Susan's disappearance, that Mary might have forced
the shift for some reason associated with her aberrant father.
By the time the captain advised him, Major Grey already knew that Bill
had forced the shift on Conrad under desperate circumstances and he had
decided to close in. He fully expected to find the father and daughter
at the apartment, and now ... it sickened him to see the child's
demented condition and realize that Bill had left her there.
Major Grey could see at a glance that Mary Walden would not be
accessible for days even with the best treatment. He left it to the
other two officers to hospitalize the child and set out for the Manz
apartment.
He used his master wristband to open the door there, and found a woman
standing in the middle of the room, wrapped in a sheet. He knew that
this must be Helen Walden. It was odd how ill-fitting Clara Manz's
softly sensual makeup seemed, even to a stranger, on the more rigidly
composed face before him. He guessed that Helen would wear color higher
on her cheeks and the mouth would be done in severe lines. Certainly
the present haughty face struggled with its incongruous makeup as well
as the indignity of her dress.
She pulled the sheet tighter about her and said icily, "I will not wear
that woman's clothes."