A Scatter of Stardust (8 page)

He engaged the gears and let in the clutch. He didn’t speak on the way back and I had plenty of time to think. I did a lot of thinking, too, not about what he had said but about something quite different.

About Ginney.

*

It’s funny how you can get used to a thing. Once you convince yourself that what you are doing is right then the rest comes automatically. Actors have a name for it. They call an actor who can really live the part a
darfstella
. Only such an actor doesn’t really act at all. If he’s supposed to be an old man, then he is an old man. He walks, talks, even thinks like one. It makes for wonderful acting but it’s hard on the nerves. To do what I had to do I had to believe in a ghost. So I believed in it. I got so that I could really see Ginney, sense when she was near me, consider her in everything I did. I accepted the professor’s delusion and in so doing it became my own.

We stayed at the hotel for ten days and the professor worked all the time. While he was working I took charge of Ginney, taking her out and showing her the town. It was a small town with a little old mission built during the Spanish occupation, the usual markets, the usual things for tourists to see. We saw them all. There were snags, of course, like the time I bought two ice cream cones, one for me and one for Ginney. I passed it to her and, naturally, it fell to the ground. It was a mistake, and I was lucky that the professor wasn’t with me. I wasn’t so lucky the time we all went out to eat.

Maybe security had fallen down on the job or maybe it was one of those things, but the restaurant we chose was pretty busy and seats were at a premium. We had a table and three chairs, one for the professor, one for me and, of course, the other for Ginney. We ordered. Ginney wasn’t hungry so she just sat and watched, and while we were eating a man came up and started to sit in the empty chair. I stopped him just in time.

“Sorry, mister, but that seat’s taken.”

“Is it?” He looked at the empty place, then at the crowded floor, then back at the empty seat. He was a big man, arrogant, and I could see that he was going to argue. I rose and pulled him away as he reached for the chair.

“I said that it’s taken.”

“In a pig’s eye it is! Look, mister, I’m hungry and I’m going to eat.” He reached for the back of the chair.

I thought of Cottrell and what he had said about the fragility of a delusion. I could have compromised. I could have asked Ginney to sit on my lap or go out to play or done any of a dozen things to make the incident a logical outcome of a crowded restaurant. But I thought of the professor and how he would feel at seeing his little girl pushed around. And I wasn’t keen on the idea myself. I jerked the man away from the chair.

It was a mistake. It was hot, he was bad tempered and he didn’t like being pulled. He swung at me, his fist driving low into my stomach, and I gagged as the air rushed out of my lungs. He grinned and drew back his fist to finish the job, and I cursed my crippled leg as I tried to brace myself. It wasn’t necessary. A waiter came rushing up, full of apologies, and caught the man by the arm. He didn’t look strong, but there must have been something in the way his fingers dug against the nerves because the man winced and allowed himself to be led to a suddenly vacant table. Security, of course, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

The professor was very quiet during the remainder of the meal.

“You know, Tom,” he said over coffee, and I was glad that he’d broken the silence, “the world is full of nasty people.”

“That character?” I shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Forget him.” I winked at Ginney, very small and quiet in her chair. The professor took no notice.

“Your leg,” he said. “Pardon me if it is a delicate subject, but how did it happen?”

“Hit-and-run driver,” I lied curtly, “I never did find out who it was.”

“You, too?” His knuckles turned white as he gripped his cup. “You know, Tom, the world is full of murderers and criminals who will never be punished. Sometimes I wish that something would happen so that they would all die. All of them!”

I was surprised at the emotion in his voice. It was the first time I had seen him really angry, and he was, burning with that helpless, frustrated rage which makes you feel all sick and twisted inside. I tried to change the subject.

“Don’t think about it, professor. It takes all kinds to make a world. How’s the work progressing?”

“It’s finished.” He didn’t sound like a man glad to have ended a chore. “You can have the final results after we’ve eaten.” He smiled at my expression. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? The last set of equations so that they can begin the tests for controllable fission of nonradioactive materials. Bigger and better bombs at a fraction of the cost. The fools!”

“Please!” I’d begun to sweat. There was no way of telling who could be listening, but one thing I was sure of. This was information which I wasn’t supposed to know about. I crushed out my cigarette. “Let’s get out of here and go for a walk or something.”

“Yes,” he said and rose from the table. “I’ll give you the papers and tomorrow we’ll leave. Will you buy a car? I want to drive myself for a change.”

I nodded and we left. It wasn’t until after he had given me the papers covered with their potential dynamite and I’d passed them on to my contact that I began to get worried. Not about the information. That would be flown straight back to the laboratories where they stood by to make the first tests. Not about the incident in the restaurant. Not even about the fact that we were leaving in the morning. But about Ginney.

The professor seemed to have forgotten all about her.

*

We left the hotel early next morning in a cheap coupé guaranteed to fall apart after ten thousand miles. It wasn’t important. The car, like the professor, like me, like Ginney, was expendable. As long as it did its job I couldn’t complain. The professor drove, handling the wheel with a surprising skill, and I slumped in the seat beside him, my hat over my eyes and those eyes glancing from time to time in the rear view mirror. Somewhere behind us, a spurt of dust on the horizon, Cottrell was still on the job. He would stay on until he received word that the tests had proved satisfactory, and then he would move in and take over.

Once I’d satisfied myself that the professor could handle the car I relaxed and busied myself with thoughts. I was still worried by the professor’s lack of attention to his little girl. For the first time since I’d been with him he hadn’t kissed her good night. He hadn’t asked after her this morning, either, though I had made a point of settling her in the dickey with the baggage and asking her whether or not she was comfortable. But the professor seemed to have something else on his mind.

Strange about a delusion. I’d known others who had their own private belief, and to me it had always seemed that they had a trick of justifying or rationalizing away anything which tended to shatter it. Cottrell had said that the professor was different. He had warned me that a word could shatter his belief in Ginney and I wanted to discover why. The answer was surprisingly simple.

It was me.

My interference, my bolstering of the delusion, my own playacting so as to make fantasy a concrete reality. I had taken over as nursemaid, and by so doing I had relieved the professor of the need to adapt what wasn’t to what was. I believed in Ginney. To me she was alive and so to the professor she was alive, too. No need for him to convince himself any longer. He could sit back and watch me do all the little things he’d had to do and, naturally, just as a mother with a trusted nurse no longer worries about her child, so the professor had ceased to work at his delusion. Because to him it was nothing but the proven truth. I saw her, didn’t I? I talked to her, played with her, protected her. So he had returned to work freed of his anxiety and left me with the burden. But if I let him down, showed him that I thought it was all stark lunacy and that I’d been acting with my tongue in my cheek in order to get him to work then...?

I straightened with a vague impression that something was wrong. I opened my eyes and stared at the speedometer. We were going fast, too fast, but I didn’t realize just how much too fast until I looked at the scenery.

We were on a narrow road winding down the side of a succession of hills which, without any straining of the imagination, could have been called baby mountains. The road was bad and to one side it fell away toward the rocky bottom of a gorge. The car was slithering from side to side as the wheels strained to hold the loose surface of the road. Even as I watched we veered to the wrong side, sent dirt pluming over the edge, then drifted back to the stony verge. And we were going faster all the time.

What I did then was dictated by instinct. I cut the ignition and hauled on the hand brake. I grabbed the wheel and jammed my foot against the gear lever so that it couldn’t slip out. I hung on while the engine compression helped to slow the car, and while I clung to the wheel, I prayed. We stopped three inches from eternity.

“You were going too fast,” I said stupidly. “You might have killed both of us.”

“I know.” His face was dripping with perspiration.

“I’m sorry.”

I took over the wheel. He didn’t argue about it and neither did I. He was shaken but not anywhere near as badly as I was, and I had the impression that he was disappointed about something. I drove slowly after that, handling the car like a matron on her first time out on the public highway, and it wasn’t until almost dark that we came to a village tucked away in the foothills. I stopped the car before an apology of a hotel and climbed stiffly from behind the wheel.

The proprietor was more dark than white but he made us welcome, and the native cooking blended with the local wine as good cooking should. After the meal the professor excused himself and went up to bed. I saw him to his room then went back downstairs and sat on the veranda, smoking, thinking and waiting for Cottrell to catch up. Something must have delayed him because it was almost midnight before he arrived.

“What happened?” He was hot, tired and annoyed. “It’s a miracle I found you. You left the main road and buried yourself in these hills. I almost went over the edge twice following your trail.”

“I know.” I told him what had happened and his face went white.

“Are you sure?”

“You think that I could ever forget?” I dropped my cigarette and lit another. A moth, a wide-winged thing, came fluttering toward the match and I knocked it aside. “I tell you he almost killed the pair of us. Hell! If I hadn’t grabbed that wheel we’d both have been mincemeat.”

“And after you stopped the car, what then?”

“I told him he was driving too fast and took over.”

“Anything else?” He growled his impatience. “Did you say anything, do anything?”

I frowned, trying to remember. “No. I said that he was driving too fast and could have killed both of us. He agreed and apologized. I — ” I broke off, staring at his expression. “What’s the matter?”

“Both of us,” he repeated sickly. “
Both
of us!”

And then it hit me right smack in the face. I’d totally ignored Ginney — and so had the professor.

“The death wish,” said Cottrell. “He wanted to die but has the normal indoctrination against conscious suicide. Subconsciously he tried to commit self-destruction by driving so fast down the trail that an accident was certain. You stopped him just in time. But why should he want to die? Why?” He bit his lip then looked at me. “Did you do anything, say anything to shatter his delusion?”

“Not that I know of.” I told him about the incident in the restaurant. “It’s a funny thing though. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to Ginney after that. I thought that it was because he’d left her to me.”

“Maybe, or it could be that something reminded him that she was dead.” He looked even more worried. “He gave you the finished work after that, didn’t he?”

“Yes.” I stared at the tip of my cigarette and felt as guilty as hell. Because I’d remembered something. I’d remembered the way he’d looked when I lied about my accident. If he liked me, and I was sure that he did, then that was just one more black mark for him to list against humanity. Or the coincidence may have reminded him of what had happened to Ginney. “Is it important?”

“I don’t know. It’s too late now anyway. The papers have arrived and they’ll be hard at work making the tests.” Cottrell shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t like the way he tried to kill himself.” He rose to his feet. “I want to see the professor.”

*

It was very quiet upstairs. The proprietor had gone to bed like an honest man and we seemed to be the only living beings in the entire universe. I led the way, favoring my bad leg and striking matches to guide Cottrell. We heard the voice just as I opened the door of the professor’s room. Cottrell gripped my arm as I was about to call out and we stood there, alone in the darkness, listening.

“Ginney...Ginney...Ginney...” A mutter and a restless movement on the bed. “...with you soon, darling. We’ll all be with you soon...me...mummy...Tom...you like Tom, don’t you?” I started to say something and then changed my mind. “...world’s rotten, darling. Murderers...criminals...fools...all rotten. Better dead...all dead...all the same...all together...”

I stepped forward and almost cried out with the pain in my arm. Cottrell gripped me without knowing what he was doing, and after I had pulled him back into the passage and lit a match, I could see his face ghastly white and shining with sweat. He didn’t speak until we were back downstairs and then only after he had seared his throat with raw tequila.