Authors: Richard Matheson

Duel (32 page)

BOOK: Duel

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No answer. She stared at him.

“Baby, what
is
it? Why can't you cry?”

Something crossed her face, then slipped away.

“Baby, you should cry.”

“I don't want to cry.”

“Why not?”

“He won't let me,” she blurted out.

Suddenly, they were both silent, staring at each other and, he knew, in an instant, that they were very close to the answer.

“
He
?” he asked.

“No,” she said suddenly, “I don't mean it. I don't mean that. I don't mean
he
, I mean something else.”

For a long time they sat there looking at each other. Then speaking no more, he made her lie down and covered her up. He got a blanket and stayed the rest of the night in the chair by the bureau. When he woke up in the morning, cramped and cold, he saw that she'd thrown off the blankets again.

Kleinman told him that Ann had adjusted to cold. There seemed to be something added to her system which was sending out heat to her when she needed it.

“And all this salt she takes.” Kleinman threw up his hands. “It is beyond sense. You would think the child thrives on a saline diet. Yet she no longer gains excess weight. She does not drink water to combat the thirst. What does she do to ease the thirst?”

“Nothing,” Collier said. “She's always thirsty.”

“And the reading, it goes on?”

“Yes,” said Collier.

“And the talking in her sleep?”

“Yes.”

Kleinman shook his head.

“Never in my life,” he said, “have I seen a pregnancy like this.”

She finished up the last of the huge pile she'd been constantly augmenting. She took all the books back to the library.

A new development began.

She was seven months pregnant. It was May and Collier noticed that the car's oil was filthy, the tires were unnaturally worn, and a dent was in the left rear fender.

“Have you been using the car?” he asked her one Saturday morning. It was in the living room, the phonograph was playing Brahms.

“Why?” she asked. He told her and she said irritably, “If you already know, why do you ask me?”

“Have you?”

“Yes. I've been using the car. Is that permissible?”

“You needn't be sarcastic.”

“Oh no,” she said angrily. “I needn't get sarcastic. I've been pregnant seven months and not once have you believed that some other man isn't the father. No matter how many times I've told you that I'm innocent, you still won't sayâI believe you. And
I'm
sarcastic. Oh, honest, David, you're a panic, a real panic.”

She stamped over to the phonograph and turned it off.

“I'm
listening
to it,” he said.

“That's too bad. I don't like it.”

“Since when?”

“Oh, leave me alone.”

He caught her by the wrist as she turned away.

“Listen,” he said, “maybe you think the whole thing has been a vacation for me. I come home from six months research and find you pregnant. Not by me! I don't care what you say, I'm not the father and I nor anyone else knows any way but one for a woman to get pregnant. Still I haven't left. I've watched you turn into a book-reading machine. I've had to clean the house when I could, cook most of the meals, take care of our clothesâas well as teach every day at the college. I've had to look over you as I would a child, keeping you from kicking off the blankets, keeping you from eating too much salt, from drinking too much water, too much coffee, from smoking too much â¦”

“I've stopped smoking myself,” she said, pulling away.

“Why?” he threw at her suddenly. She looked blank.

“Go ahead,” he said, “say it. Because
he
doesn't like it.”

“I stopped smoking myself,” she repeated. “I can't stand them.”

“And now you don't like music.”

“It â¦ hurts my stomach,” she said, vaguely.

“Nonsense,” he said.

Before he could stop her, she'd gone out the front door into the blazing sunlight. He went to the door and watched her get into the car clumsily. He started to call to her but she'd started the motor and couldn't hear him. He watched the car disappear up the block doing fifty in second gear.

“How long has she been gone now?” Johnny asked.

Collier glanced nervously at his watch.

“I don't know exactly,” he said. “Since around nine-thirty, I guess. We'd argued, as I said â¦”

He broke off nervously and checked his watch again. It was past midnight.

“How long has she been driving like this?” Johnny asked.

“I don't know, Johnny. I told you I just found out.”

“Doesn't her size â¦ ?” started Johnny.

“No, the baby isn't big anymore.” Collier spoke the astounding now in a matter-of-fact voice. He ran a shaky hand through his hair.

“You think we should call the police?” he asked.

“Wait a little.”

“What if she's had an accident?” Collier said. “She's not the best driver in the world. Why in God's name did I let her go? Seven months pregnant and I let her go driving. Oh, I ought to be â¦”

He felt himself getting ready to crack. All this tension in his house, this strange and endlessly distressing pregnancyâit was getting to him. A man couldn't hold onto tension for seven months and not feel it. He could not keep his hands from shaking anymore. He'd developed a habit of persistent blinking to use up some of the nervous energy.

He paced across the rug to the fireplace and stood there tapping his nails nervously on the shelf.

“I think we should call the police,” he said.

“Take it easy,” Johnny warned.

“What would you advise?” Collier snapped.

“Sit down. Right there. That's it. Now, relax. She's all right, believe me. I'm not worried about Ann. She's probably had a flat or an engine failure somewhere in the middle of nowhere. How many times have I heard you go on about needing a new battery? It probably died, that's all.”

“Well â¦ wouldn't the police be able to find her a lot quicker?”

“All right, boy, if it'll make you happier, I'll call them.”

Collier nodded, then started up as a car passed in the street. He rushed to the window and drew back the blinds. Then he bit his lips and turned back. He went back to the fireplace while Johnny moved for the hall phone. He listened to Johnny dialing, then twitched as the receiver was put down hurriedly.

“Here she is,” Johnny said.

They led her into the front room, dizzy and confused. She didn't answer Collier's frantic questions. She headed straight for the kitchen as if she didn't notice them.

“Coffee,” she said in a guttural voice.

At first Collier tried to stop her, then he felt Johnny's hand on his arm.

“Let her go,” Johnny said. “It's time we got to the bottom of this.”

She stood in front of the stove and turned the flame up high under the coffee pot. She ladled in careless spoonfuls, then slammed on the lid, and stood looking down at it studiedly.

Collier started to say something but, once more, Johnny restrained him. Collier stood restively in the kitchen doorway, watching his wife.

When the brown liquid started popping up into the dome, Ann grabbed the pot off the stove without using a potholder. Collier drew in his breath and gritted his teeth.

She poured out the steaming liquid and it sloshed up the sides of the used cup on the table. Then she slammed down the pot and reached hungrily for the cup.

She finished the whole pot in ten minutes.

She drank without cream or sugar, as if she didn't care what it tasted like. As if she didn't taste it at all.

Only when she'd finished did her face relax. She slumped back in the chair and sat there a long time. They watched her in silence.

Then she looked up at them and giggled.

She pushed up and fell against the table. Collier heard Johnny draw in sudden breath.

“My God,” he said, “she's
drunk!
”

She was a heavy unwieldy form to get up the stairs, especially since she gave them no assistance. She kept humming to herselfâa strange, discordant melody that seemed to move in indefinable tone steps, repeated and repeated like the sound of low wind. There was a beatific smile on her face.

“A lot of good that did,” Collier muttered.

“Be patient, be patient,” Johnny whispered back.

“Easy enough for you to â¦”

“Shhh,” Johnny quieted him but Ann didn't hear a word they said.

She stopped humming as soon as they put her down on the bed and fell into a deep sleep before they straightened up. Collier drew a thin blanket over her and put a pillow under her head. She didn't stir as he lifted her head.

Then the two men stood in silence beside the bed. Collier looked down at the wife he no longer understood. His mind swam with painful discordances and, through them all, burned the horrible strain of doubt that had never left him. Who was the father of her child? Even though he couldn't leave her, even though he felt a great loving pity for herâthey could never be close again until he knew.

“I wonder where she goes?” Johnny asked. “When she drives, I mean.

“I don't know.” Sullenly.

“She must have gone pretty far to wear down the tires so much. I wonder if â¦”

That was when she started again.

“Send me not,”
she said.

Johnny gripped Collier's arm.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“I don't know yet.”

“Black, black, drive me out, horror in these shores, heavy, heavy.”

Collier shuddered.

“That's it,” he said.

Johnny knelt hurriedly beside the bed and listened carefully.

“Breathe me, implore my fathers, seek me out in washing pain, send me not to make the way.”

Johnny stared at Ann's taut features. She looked as if she were in pain again. And yet it was not her face, Collier suddenly realized. The expression wasn't hers.

Ann threw off the blanket and thrashed on the bed, sweat breaking out on her face.

“To walk on shores of orange sea, cool, to tread the crimson fields, cool, to raft on silent waters, cool, to ride upon the desertland, cool, return me fathers of my fathers, Rhyuio Gklemmo Fglwo.”

Then she was silent except for tiny groans. At her sides, her hands clutched the sheets and her breaths were labored and uneven.

Johnny straightened up and looked at Collier. Neither of them spoke a word.

They sat with Kleinman.

“What you suggest is fantastic,” the doctor said.

“Listen,” Johnny said. “Let's run it down. Oneâthe excess saline requirements, not the requirements of a normal pregnancy. Twoâthe cold, the way Ann's body adjusted to it, the way she was cured of pneumonia in minutes.”

Collier sat staring numbly at his friend.

“All right,” Johnny said, “first the salt. In the beginning it made Ann drink too much water. She gained weight and then her weight endangered
the child. What happened? She no longer was allowed to drink water.”

“Allowed?” Collier asked.

“Let me finish,” Johnny said. “About the cold; it was as if the child needed cold and forced Ann to stay coldâuntil it realized that by acquiring itself some comfort it was endangering the very vessel it lived in. So it cured the vessel of pneumonia. It adjusted the vessel to cold.”

“You talk as though â¦” Kleinman started.

“The effects of cigarettes,” Johnny said. “Excuse me, doctor. Ann might have smoked in moderation without endangering herself or the child. Yet she stopped altogether. It might have been an ethical point, true. Again, it might be that the child reacted violently to nicotine, and, in a sense, forbade her to â¦”

Kleinman interrupted irritably.

“You talk as if the child were directing its mother rather than being helpless, subject to its mother's actions.”

BOOK: Duel

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