"She murdered her father," Blake said.
Smith guffawed. "I should have known it would be something like that.
Ties in perfectly. By the way, what's her name?"
"Sabrina York--not that it's any of your business."
"Oh, but it is my business--as much my business as yours. As a matter
of fact, I'm going to help you find her."
Blake stood up. "No, you're not," he said. "You're going to get out of
my mind and you're going to stay out--"
He paused as a knock sounded on the door. Smith answered it, and a
moment later Miss Stoddart, Officer Finch and Vera Velvetskin filed
into the room and arrayed themselves before Blake. Again three arms
were raised; again three forefingers were pointed accusingly at his
chest. "Wretched creature!" said Miss Stoddart. "Consorting with so
foul a fiend!" said Officer Finch. "And in so vile a den of iniquity!"
said Vera Velvetskin.
* * * * *
For a while Smith just stood there staring at the three visitors. Then
he turned toward Blake. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said. "You really
do have an overactive conscience, don't you!" He faced the three women
again. "Get off his back, you creeps! Can't you see he's got enough
troubles without you dogging his footsteps?" He opened the door. "Out,
all of you, before I throw you out!"
Three frightened looks settled on the three thin faces, but neither
Miss Stoddart nor Officer Finch nor Vera Velvetskin made a move in
the direction of the door till Smith advanced upon them with lowering
countenance. Then they fairly scampered from the room. Officer Finch
was the last in line, and Smith helped her along with the toe of one
of Blake's cracked boots. The shriek she emitted coincided with the
slamming of the door.
Smith leaned weakly against the door and began to laugh. "Shut up,"
Blake said, "and tell me who they are!"
Tears were rolling down Smith's blotchy cheeks. "_You_ know who they
are. You created them, didn't you? The skinny one is the one who told
you about Moses in the bulrushes and the husky one is the one who saw
to it that you didn't step out of line in school and the one with the
nice shape is the one you associate with the immaculateness of your
mother's kitchen sink. Spiritual virtue, civil virtue--and physical
virtue!"
"But why did I create them?" Blake demanded. "And why are they
following me around like a bunch of vindictive harpies?"
"There!" Smith said. "You almost had it. Not harpies, though--Furies.
Erinyes. Tisiphone, Megaera, Alecto. You created them because you
wanted to punish yourself. You created them because you can't accept
yourself for what you are. You created them because even after putting
me in exile you're still conscience-crazy, and they're following you
around and bugging you because you want them to follow you around and
bug you--because you want to be reminded of what a heel you think you
are! You always were a Puritan in wolfs clothing, Blake."
The remark angered Blake to the extent that it dispelled his amazement.
He shoved Smith away from the door and opened it. "All that may be,"
he said, "and maybe I did know you once upon a time. But don't let me
find you here when I get back. Understand?" He paused in the doorway,
frowning. "Tell me one more thing, though. Why Burns's birthplace? Why
should a memory-image like this appeal to a mind-comber?"
Smith grinned. "Bobby Burns has always fascinated me--just as he has
you. Or should I say 'us'?" The grin turned into a leer, and he picked
up the bottle and waved it back and forth like a baton--
My love, she's but a lassie yet,
My love, she's but a lassie yet;
We'll let her stand a year or twa,
She'll no be half sae saucy yet;
I rue the day I sought her O!
I rue the day I sought her O!
Wha gets her needs na say he's woo'd,
But he may say he has bought her O.
Furious, Blake strode down the path. Smith's taunting laughter sounding
in his wake.
The three Erinyes were waiting for him at the gate, and fell in behind
him when he turned down the lane. He lost Sabrina's trail in front of
the farmhouse where Coleridge wrote _Kubla Khan_, picked it up again
opposite the Mitre Tavern. Presently it veered right, passed between
Milton's birthplace and Stratford-on-Avon, and entered a night-image.
He was halfway down a dim-lit street, the Erinyes just behind him,
before he realized where he was.
* * * * *
Disciplined trees stood at attention along two suburban strips of
lawn. Beyond them, half-remembered houses showed. One of them stood
out vividly--a round, modernesque affair surrounded by a quarter-acre
of grass and shrubs and flowers. It was the house he had rented while
Deirdre Eldoria was attending high school. It was a house he had hoped
never to see again.
He was seeing it now, though, and he was going to see it at much closer
quarters, for Sabrina's footprints led straight across the remembered
lawn to the very doorstep. She had not gone in, however, he discovered
presently; instead, she had forsaken the door for a concave picture
window through which bright light streamed out onto the grass. The
depth of a pair of her footprints showed that she had stood there for a
long time, peeking into his past. Despite himself, Blake peeked too. So
did the three Erinyes.
The room was a far cry from the one he had just left. The hearth
was built of meticulously mortared red bricks. The thick rug was a
two-dimensional garden of multicolored flowers. There were exquisite
tables and flower-petal stools. There were deep chairs that begged to
be sat in. A sybaritic sofa occupied an entire wall.
On the sofa sat a man and a girl. The man was himself at the age of
thirty-four. The girl was Deirdre Eldoria at the age of seventeen.
Blake Past was helping her with her lessons. The moment was a composite
of a hundred similar scenes. Now she raised her eyes from the book
on her lap, and Blake Past caught her girlish profile ... and Blake
Present, standing in the soft and scented darkness of the remembered
spring night with the three Erinyes breathing down the back of his
neck, caught it too, and both Blakes knew pain. Now she returned
her attention to the book, and Blake Past leaned forward in order
to read the passage that she was in doubt about. And as he did so,
her copper-colored hair touched his cheek and the warm tingle of the
contact traveled down through the years to Blake Present.
Overcome by the poignancy of the moment, he stepped back from the
window, colliding with the three Erinyes as he did so. They moved a
little distance away, arrayed themselves, and started to raise their
right arms. "Oh, can it!" Blake said disgustedly. In the darkness
behind him, someone laughed. "_My love, she's but a lassie yet_," Smith
sang in a cracked baritone. "_We'll let her stand a year or twa,
she'll no be half sae saucy yet!_"
Blake whirled, and flashed his light into the shadows. The light picked
up Smith's retreating figure. "Get out of my mind!" Blake shouted. "Do
you hear me? Get out of my mind!"
Laughter danced in the darkness, silence ensued. Turning back toward
the window, Blake saw that Blake Past and Deirdre Yesterday were
leaving the living room. He watched them come out the front door, walk
around the corner of the house and start down a starlit garden path.
Forsaking Sabrina's trail, he followed them along the path, the Erinyes
at his heels, and watched them sit down on a little white bench beside
a rose-riotous trellis. As he watched, Blake Past broke one of the
roses free and pinned it in Deirdre's cupreous hair.
Blake Present plunged away from the moment and picked up Sabrina's
trail again. _Why did I sit there beside her?_ he demanded silently
of the remembered stars. _Sit there beside her like her lover when
the roses were in bloom? Father-protector--father-fool! I slept with
her mistress, and I would have been her Naoise! Within earshot of her
conched ear I lay with her black whore-mother, and when the satyr in me
was replete I stepped over her thin child's body and ran away!_
Behind him in the night, the Erinyes hissed and murmured to each other
gloatingly.
* * * * *
Sabrina's trail had been erratic before. Now it became even more so.
It approached this boundary and that, only to veer off in another
direction. Sometimes it doubled back upon itself, and each time
Blake was able to cut down on her lead. He should have been elated.
Strangely, however, he was not. Instead, a feeling of uneasiness
afflicted him, increasing as the distance between them shrank.
At length, after detouring around an impassable memory-image of deep
space, the trail extended into what at first appeared to be a vast
woodland park. It was not a park, though. It was a Dubhe 4 rubber
plantation. Blake groaned. Did he have to relive this sequence too?
Apparently he did. Sabrina's footprints were deep and undeniable in
the soft earth. They pointed unerringly in the remembered direction.
Had she discovered that he was following her? Was she deliberately
torturing him by making him back-track along a mental trail that he
wanted desperately to avoid? It would certainly seem so.
He forced himself to move forward among the gray ghosts of trees. He
crossed a shallow, scum-covered stream, leaping from rock to rock, and
afterward climbed a hill. Hearing a loud splash behind him, he turned
and looked back.
Miss Stoddart, in trying to cross the stream, had lost her balance
and fallen in, and Officer Finch and Vera Velvetskin were trying to
help her to her feet. As he watched, they too lost their balance and
joined their companion in the greenish water. There followed a period
of hysterical floundering, after which the trio waded dripping and
bedraggled to the bank.
Blake would have laughed, had not the place-time oppressed him.
Descending the opposite slope of the hill, he entered a wide valley.
Presently he glimpsed the buildings of the Great Starway Cartel
processing plant through the trees.
The overseer's bungalow was visible just to the left, and it was toward
this latter structure that Sabrina's footprints pointed. The original
clearing had swarmed with chocolettos. Blake's, however, did not. In
his single-mindedness of six years ago he had had eyes for only two
people--the overseer and Deirdre.
Stepping into the clearing, he saw the man now--the bearded bestial
face, the long arms, the large and hairy hands--and he saw the
fifteen-year old girl lying on the ground where the man had thrown her
after she had slapped his face. After a moment he saw himself of six
years ago step out of the grove of rubber trees and advance white-faced
into the scene.
"No!" the girl lying on the ground cried. "He'll kill you!"
Blake Past ignored her. The overseer had drawn a knife. Now the knife
flashed, and a streak of crimson appeared on Blake Past's arm. The
knife flashed again, but this time it described a large arc and landed
a dozen feet away. Now the overseer's throat was between Blake Past's
hands, and the bearded face was changing colors. It grew green first,
then blue. Blake Past shook the man several times before letting him
slip to the ground. He dropped a handful of _quandoe_-notes on the
heaving chest.
"That's what you paid for her," he said. He withdrew a paper from his
breast pocket, unfolded it and held it before the gasping overseer's
eyes. "Sign it," he said, handing it to him.
* * * * *
The overseer did so, lying on his side. Blake Past pocketed the paper
and helped the girl to her feet. The tarn-blue eyes were wide in the
thin child's face. "Eldoria died," she blurted. "They--"
Blake Past nodded. "I know. But they can't sell you any more. I own you
now."
"I am glad," the girl said. "I knew from the first moment I saw you
that you were noble. I shall like being your slave, and I will serve
you very faithfully."
Blake Past looked away. Blake Present lowered his eyes. "Can you walk?"
Blake Past asked.
"Oh, yes. I am very strong."
She took a step forward, swayed and would have fallen, had not Blake
Past caught her. "I--I guess I am not quite as strong as I thought,"
she said. "But I shall recuperate swiftly. Why did you come back,
_mensakin_ Blake?"
"I came back to buy you from Eldoria," Blake Past said. He did not add
that the memory of her saintly face as he had seen it when he stepped
over her had lasted a whole year, or that his dreams of her had made a
mockery of his sleep. "When I found out that Eldoria had died and that
you had been sold again, I came directly here."
"You will not be sorry. I will make you an excellent slave."
"I didn't buy you for that reason. I bought you to give you your--"
"There is one request I would like to make, however," the girl
interrupted. "I would like to take 'Eldoria' as my surname. She was
very kind to me, and I would like to repay her in some way."
"Very well," Blake Past said. "'Deirdre Eldoria' it will be, then."
He picked her up and carried her into the grove. Blake Present watched
them till they disappeared among the trees. He knew where Blake Past
was taking her--had taken her. Back to the settlement, and from there
to the spaceport, and thence to Ex-earth. Ex-earth and high school,
then college--
She had never been his slave, though. He had been hers.
* * * * *
Sabrina's trail circled back into the grove and left the place-time by
a different route. Immediately it became erratic again. It was evident
to Blake that she was searching for a particular memory-image and that
she was having trouble finding it. Perhaps she knew of some moment in
his past where she would be safe even from him.
When he stepped into the little Dubhe 4 settlement he instinctively
assumed that it was on the same chronological plane as the plantation
place-time. However, the darkness that instantly enclosed him and the
stars that sprang to life in the sky apprised him that such could not
possibly be the case. This was the Dubhe 4 settlement of seven years
ago. This was the night he had sat in the chocoletto cafe and watched
Eldoria dance--the night he had kept a tryst with her in her hut; the
night he had first seen Deirdre.
But why had Sabrina come here? Where in this wretched little
memory-image did she expect to find sanctuary?
Suddenly he knew. Eldoria's hut. He would rather die than enter it
again, and somehow Sabrina must have discovered his attitude. Probably
even now she was within those four remembered walls, laughing at him.
Anger kindled in him. The effrontery of her! Daring to pre-empt a
moment that belonged solely to him! He would enter the hut if it killed
him. If he had to, he would tear down its walls and banish its memory
forever from the country of his mind.
With the aid of his pocket torch, he found her footprints in the dust.
He followed them down the street, the three Erinyes tagging doggedly
along behind him. The trail, erratic no longer, led straight to the
labyrinthine alleys of the native sector and thence along the shortest
route to Eldoria's hut. For a person who had never been to Dubhe 4,
Sabrina York certainly knew her way around.
Maybe, though, she had been to Dubhe 4. He knew very little about her.
He knew nothing at all, in fact, save that she had murdered her father.
He did not even know how she had murdered him, or why. Abruptly Blake
shoved the matter from his mind. It wasn't his business to know how or
why she had done the deed. It was his business to find and apprehend
her.
Presently, in the darkness before him, he made out a motionless
white-robed figure. He approached it warily, found to his consternation
that it was frozen in the act of taking a step forward. He shone his
light into the face. It was dark bronze in hue. The eyes were wide
apart, and the teeth showed in a vivid white line between half-parted
purple lips. Eldoria, on her way to keep her tryst with him....
But why didn't she move on? Suddenly Blake knew. In treating a patient,
Trevorite psychologists sometimes froze certain place-times in his past
in order to study them in greater detail. The girl in Blake's mind had
either frozen the Dubhe 4 place-time herself, then, or had hired a
professional to do the job.
Clearly she had something up her sleeve about which Blake knew nothing.
He went on, not quite so confidently now. He had proceeded less than a
dozen steps when he saw the brooch. It was lying in the dust just to
the left of one of Sabrina's footprints, and it threw back the light
of the torch in glittering shards that hurt his eyes. Disbelievingly,
he picked it up. The Erinyes clustered around him to see what he had
found. They were still wet and dishelved and reeked of the piercing
odor of decayed algae. They looked anything but happy.
Blake turned the brooch over in the palm of his hand. The inscription
on the back leaped up and smote him right between the eyes, and he
staggered and nearly fell. _To Deirdre Eldoria_, he read, _from Nathan
Blake._
He stood there numbly for a long while, not thinking--unable to think.
Finally he slipped the brooch into his pocket and moved on.
* * * * *
He was trembling when he reached the door of Eldoria's hut. The
footprints led straight up to the threshold and came to an end.
Diffidently he touched the primitive knob, turned it and pushed the
door open. He stepped inside and closed the door in the faces of the
three Erinyes. The remembered anteroom seemed smaller and more sordid
than the original, but he knew that it was really no different. He had
remembered it accurately enough. It was he who was different, not the
room.
Opposite the door, Deirdre Yesterday sat immobile before the arras.
Equally immobile, Blake Past sat facing her. Deirdre Yesterday's lips
were parted in the midst of uttering a soundless word. The _Anabasis_
lay open on her lap.
Blake Present found it difficult to breathe. The difficulty stemmed
from a physical as well as an emotional source. Someone was burning
incense.
He wiped his forehead. Then, bracing himself, he walked over to the
arras, parted it and stepped into the inner room.
The inner room was empty.
A small notebook lay upon the dais among the scattered scarlet
cushions. Near it was a faint depression in the foamy coverlet. Blake
picked up the notebook. The first page contained a hastily written
message:
_Nate dearest, I've lost my nerve, and by the time you read this I
shall have run away. Please forgive me for disobeying you. I wanted
desperately to fulfill your wishes by going to New Earth and
attending Trevor University, and now I shall, because sitting here
in this little room I have faced at last the very real possibility
that you really do not love me. I had hoped that by entering your
mind and leading you back through our moments together to the
moment when we met and by freezing that moment and letting you find
me in this room, you would be shocked into associating me with
Eldoria rather than with the naive little girl sitting outside the
arras--with sex, rather than with saintliness; that I could bring
you to understand that the little-girl image you have of me is as
unrealistic as the father-image you have of yourself. But the
passing moments have made me realize that all this while I have
been deluding myself with false hopes and that I am merely
hopelessly in love with a man who does not regard me as a woman at
all, who--_
* * * * *
Here the message broke off as abruptly as it had begun. There was a
mist before Blake's eyes, and he could not swallow. He bent down and
felt the depression in the coverlet. It was still warm. There had been
no footprints leading _away_ from the hut, he remembered.
Straightening, he surveyed the golden tapestries that adorned the
room's four walls. It was not at all difficult to pick out the one
behind which she was standing. It was difficult, though, to go over and
raise it. Her face was pale, and the khaki hiking suit she was wearing
made it seem all the more so. She stepped out of her hiding place, and
he let the tapestry fall into place behind her.
She would not meet his eyes. "In another moment I would have been
gone," she said. "Oh, Nate, why did you come so soon!"
Suddenly the arras parted, and Smith stepped into the room. Without
pausing, he advanced across the resilient carpet, shoved Blake aside
and took Deirdre into his arms. He grasped her hair, pulled her head
back and bent his evil face toward hers.
Outraged, Blake seized the man's shoulder, spun him around and struck
him in the mouth. Instantly his own mouth went numb, and he tasted
blood.
He knew who Smith was then.
Glancing into Deirdre's eyes, he saw that she knew too, and realized
that she had known all along.
He had read of the personality-splits that sometimes occurred when
there was an acute conflict between the Puritan and satyr, or the good
and evil, components of the psyche. But never having previously run
across a real-life example he had failed to tumble to the truth when he
had entered Burns's birthplace cottage and seen Smith sitting at the
table.
When such splits occurred, the stronger component took over completely
and the weaker component was exiled to the country of the mind. In
Blake's case, the Puritan component had been the stronger, and the
satyr component the weaker. Hence the latter had had to go. Smith,
therefore, was but another aspect of himself--a flesh-and-blood alter
ego who was overplaying his role in an attempt to force Blake into a
response that would make the two of them one again.
Knowing who Smith was supplied Blake with the answer to who Sabrina
York was.
Unconsciously he had been aware all along of Smith's presence in the
English park image. When he discovered that Deirdre had entered his
mind he had been so utterly horrified over the prospect of her running
into his depraved alter ego that he had unconsciously concealed her
presence from himself by supplying her with a fictitious identity. She
had deliberately ransacked the little office and left her handkerchief
behind in the process in order to apprise him of her whereabouts and to
induce him to follow her, but he had rejected the initials "D. E." on
her handkerchief and substituted the initials of the first name that
came into his mind--Sabrina York. Next he had needed a logical reason
to go after her and bring her back. His profession had supplied part of
it, and his father-complex had supplied the other.
In entering his mind instead of going to New Earth, Deirdre had
disobeyed him and thus, after a fashion, had symbolically destroyed
him. Hence "Sabrina York" had become the murderer of her father, and
Blake had set out in pursuit of her in his capacity as a psycheye.
Deirdre had been careful to leave a clear trail, and the reason she had
dropped her brooch was to assure him that he was on the right track.
Smith was wiping his mouth and grinning at the same time. Now he
advanced upon the girl again. Twenty years fell from Blake's shoulders
as he shoved the man aside. The column of Deirdre's neck was strong and
shapely. Her breasts were in full and virginal bloom. _Who is she that
looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and
terrible as an army with banners?_ Hungrily Blake took her in his arms.
When, a long time later, he released her, Smith had disappeared.
* * * * *
The three Erinyes were standing forlornly in the street when Blake and
Deirdre left the hut. The hatred had vanished from their faces and they
were looking at each other as though they had just lost their last
friend. Certainly they had lost their _raison d'etre_. Blake sighed.
Having created them, he was responsible for their welfare. Now that
they were unemployed it was up to him to do something about it.
Deirdre was regarding them with wide eyes. "Eumenides yet!" she gasped.
"Oh, Nate, if you aren't the darndest!"
Blushing, Blake took her arm and beckoned to the Erinyes to follow
him. He led the way cross-country to the Walden Pond image. Thoreau
was still sitting under the tall pine, gazing raptly up at the blurred
bird. The sunlight was warm and benign. Blake almost wished he could
remain there himself. He had always been partial to Walden Pond.
He faced the three Erinyes.
He left them planning their new way of life.
Being human, he would probably have need of them again.