The Day it Rained Forever (18 page)

‘It'd be boring. We'd go crazy.'

‘No,' Koestler said, smiling. ‘If life got too soft, all we'd have to do is repeat a few times what Chatterton said:
“Here there be tygers.”
Listen!'

Far away, wasn't there the faintest roar of a giant cat, hidden in the twilight forest?

The men shivered.

‘A versatile world,' said Koestler dryly. ‘A woman who'll do anything to please her guests, as long as we're kind to her. Chatterton wasn't kind.'

‘Chatterton. What about him?'

As if to answer this, someone cried from a distance. The two men who had flown off to find Chatterton were waving at the edge of the woods.

Forester, Driscoll, and Koestler flew down alone.

‘What's up?'

The men pointed into the forest. ‘Thought you'd want to see this, Captain. It's damned eerie.' One of the men indicated a pathway. ‘Look here, sir.'

The marks of great claws stood on the path, fresh and clear.

‘And over here.'

A few drops of blood.

A heavy smell of some feline animal hung in the air.

‘Chatterton?'

‘I don't think we'll ever find him, Captain.'

Faintly, faintly, moving away, now gone in the breathing silence of twilight, came the roar of a tiger.

The men lay on the resilient grass by the rocket and the night was warm. ‘Reminds me of nights when I was a kid,' said Driscoll. ‘My brother and I waited for the hottest night in July and then we slept on the Court House lawn, counting the stars, talking; it was a great night, the best night of the year, and now, when I think back on it, the best night of my life.' Then he added, ‘Not counting tonight, of course.'

‘I keep thinking about Chatterton,' said Koestler.

‘Don't,' said Forester. ‘We'll sleep a few hours and take off. We can't chance staying here another day. I don't mean the danger that got Chatterton. No. I mean, if we stayed on we'd get to liking this world too much. We'd never want to leave.'

A soft wind blew over them.

‘I don't want to leave now.' Driscoll put his hands behind his head, lying quietly. ‘And it doesn't want us to leave.'

‘If we go back to Earth and tell everyone what a lovely planet it is, what then, Captain? They'll come smashing in here and ruin it.'

‘No,' said Forester, idly. ‘First, this planet wouldn't put up with a full-scale invasion. I don't know what it'd do, but it could probably think of some interesting things. Secondly, I like this planet too much; I respect it. We'll go back to Earth and lie about it. Say it's hostile. Which it would be to the average man, like Chatterton, jumping in here to hurt it. I guess we won't be lying after all.'

‘Funny thing,' said Koestler. ‘I'm not afraid. Chatterton vanishes, is killed most horribly, perhaps, yet we lie here, no one runs, no one trembles. It's idiotic. Yet it's right. We trust it, and it trusts us.'

‘Did you notice, after you drank just so much of the wine-water, you didn't want more? A world of moderation.'

They lay listening to something like the great heart of this earth beating slowly and warmly under their bodies.

Forester thought, I'm thirsty.

A drop of rain splashed on his lips.

He laughed quietly.

I'm lonely, he thought.

Distantly, he heard soft high voices.

He turned his eyes in upon a vision. There was a group of hills from which flowed a clear river, and in the shallows of that river, sending up spray, their faces shimmering, were the beautiful women. They played like children on the shore. And it came to Forester to know about them and their life. They were nomads, roaming the face of this world as was their desire. There were no highways or cities, there were only hills and plains and winds to carry them like white feathers where they wished. As Forester shaped the question, some invisible answerer whispered the answers. There were no men. These women, alone, produced their race. The men had vanished fifty thousand years ago. And where were these women now? A mile down from the green forest, a mile over on the wine-stream by the six white stones, and a third mile to the large river. There, in the shallows, were the women who would make fine wives, and raise beautiful children.

Forester opened his eyes. The other men were sitting up.

‘I had a dream.'

They had all dreamed.

‘A mile down from the green forest …'

"… a mile over on the wine-stream …'

‘… by the six white stones …' said Koestler.

‘… and a third mile to the large river,' said Driscoll, sitting there.

Nobody spoke again for a moment. They looked at the silver rocket standing there in the starlight.

‘Do we walk or fly, Captain?'

Forester said nothing.

Driscoll said, ‘Captain, let's stay. Let's never go back to Earth. They'll never come and investigate to see what happened to us, they'll think we were destroyed here. What do you say?'

Forester's face was perspiring. His tongue moved again and again on his lips. His hands twitched over his knees. The crew sat waiting.

‘It'd be nice,' said the captain.

‘Sure.'

‘But …' Forester sighed. ‘We've got our job to do. People invested in our ship. We owe it to them to go back.'

Forester got up. The men still sat on the ground, not listening to him.

‘It's such a goddamn nice night,' said Koestler.

They stared at the soft hills and the trees and the river running off to other horizons.

‘Let's get aboard ship,' said Forester, with difficulty.

‘Captain …'

‘Get aboard,' he said.

The rocket rose into the sky. Looking back, Forester saw every valley and every tiny lake.

‘We should've stayed,' said Koestler.

‘Yes, I know.'

‘It's not too late to turn back.'

‘I'm afraid it is.' Forester made an adjustment on the port telescope. ‘Look now.'

Koestler looked.

The face of the world was changed. Tigers, dinosaurs, mammoths appeared. Volcanoes erupted, cyclones and hurricanes tore over the hills in a welter and fury of weather.

‘Yes, she was a woman all right,' said Forester. ‘Waiting for visitors for millions of years, preparing herself, making herself beautiful. She put on her best face for us. When Chatterton treated her badly, she warned him a few times, and then, when he tried to ruin her beauty, she eliminated him. She wanted to be loved, like every woman, for herself, not for her wealth. So now, after she had offered us everything, we turn our backs. She's the woman scorned. She let us go, yes, but we can never come back. She'll be waiting for us with
those …
' He nodded to the tigers and the cyclones and the boiling seas.

‘Captain,' said Koestler.

‘Yes.'

‘It's a little late to tell you this. But just before we took off, I was in charge of the air-lock. I let Driscoll slip away from the ship. He wanted to go. I couldn't refuse him. I'm responsible. He's back there now on mat planet.'

They both turned to the viewing port.

After a long while, Forester said, ‘I'm glad. I'm glad one of us had enough sense to stay.'

‘But he's dead by now!'

‘No, that display down there is for us, perhaps a visual hallucination. Underneath all the tigers and lions and hurricanes, Driscoll is quite safe and alive, because he's her only audience now. Oh, she'll spoil him rotten. He'll lead a wonderful life, he will, while we're slugging it out up and down the system looking for but never finding a planet quite like this again. No, we won't try to go back and rescue Driscoll. I don't think "she" would let us anyway. Full speed ahead, Koestler, make it full speed.'

The rocket leaped forward into greater acceleration.

And just before the planet dwindled away in brightness and mist, Forester imagined he could see Driscoll very clearly, walking away down from the green forest, whistling quietly, all of the fresh planet around him, a wine-creek flowing for him, baked fish lolling in the hot springs, fruit ripening in the midnight trees, and distant forests and lakes waiting for him to happen by. Driscoll walked away across the endless green lawns, near the six white stones, beyond the forest to the edge of the large bright river.

T
HE
parcel arrived in the late afternoon mail. Mr Andrew Lemon knew what was inside by shaking it. It whispered in there like a large hairy tarantula.

It took him some time to get up his courage, tremble the wrappings open, and remove the lid from the white cardboard box.

There the bristly thing lay on its snowy tissue bed, as impersonal as the black horsechair clock-springs stuffed in an old sofa. Andrew Lemon chuckled.

‘Indians come and gone, left this piece of a massacre behind as a sign, a warning. Well.
There
!'

And he fitted the new patent-leather black shining toupee to his naked scalp. He tugged at it like someone touching his cap to passers-by.

The toupee fitted perfectly, covering the neat coin-round hole which marred the top of his brow. Andrew Lemon gazed at the strange man in the mirror and yelled with delight.

‘Hey there, who're you? Face's familiar, but, by gosh now, pass you on the street without looking twice! Why? Because,
it's
gone! Darn hole's covered, nobody'd guess it was ever there. Happy New Year, man, that's what it is, Happy New Year!'

He walked around and around his little apartment, smiling, needing to do something, but not yet ready to open the door and surprise the world. He walked by the mirror, glancing sidewise at someone going past there, and each time laughed and shook his head. Then he sat down in the rocker and rocked, grinning, and tried to look at a couple of copies of
Wild West Weekly
and then
Thrilling Movie Magazine
. But he couldn't keep his right hand from crawling up along his face, tremulously, to feel at the rim of that crisp new sedge above his ears.

‘Let me buy you a drink, young fellow!'

He opened the fly-specked medicine cabinet and took three gulps from a bottle. Eyes watering, he was on the verge of cutting himself a chew of tobacco when he stopped, listening.

Outside, in the dark hallway, there was a sound like a field-mouse moving softly, daintily on the threadbare carpeting.

‘Miss Fremwell!' he said to the mirror.

Suddenly the toupee was off his head and into the box as if, frightened, it had scuttled back there of itself. He clapped the lid down, sweating cold, afraid of even the sound that woman made moving by like a summer breeze.

He tiptoed to the door that was nailed shut in one wall and bent his raw and now furiously blushing head. He heard Miss Fremwell unlock her door and shut it and move delicately about her room with little tinkles of chinaware and chimes of cutlery, turning in a merry-go-round to make her dinner. He backed away from that door that was bolted, locked, latched, and driven shut with its four-inch hard-steel nails. He thought of the nights he had flinched in bed, thinking he heard her quietly pulling out the nails, pulling out the nails, touching at the bolts and slithering the latch…. And how it always took him an hour to turn away towards sleep after that.

Now she would rustle about her room for an hour or so. It would grow dark. The stars would be out and shining when he tapped on her door and asked if she'd sit on the porch or walk in the park. Then the only way she could possibly know of this third blind and staring eye in his head would be to run her hand in a Braille-like motion there. But her small white fingers had never moved within a thousand miles of that scar which was no more to her than, well, one of those pockmarks off on the full moon tonight. His toe brushed a copy of
Wonder Science Tales
. He snorted. Perhaps if she thought at all of his damaged head – she wrote songs and poems, didn't she, once in a while? – she figured that a long time back a meteor had run and hit him and vanished up there where there were no shrubs or trees, where it was just white, above his eyes. He snorted again and shook his head. Perhaps, perhaps. But however she thought, he would see her only when the sun had set.

He waited another hour, from time to time spitting out the window into the warm summer night.

‘Eight-thirty. Here goes.'

He opened the hall door and stood for a moment looking back at that nice new toupee hidden in its box. No, he still could not bring himself to wear it.

He stepped along the hall to Miss Naomi Fremwell's door, a door so thinly made it seemed to beat with the sound of her small heart there behind it.

‘Miss Fremwell,' he whispered.

He wanted to cup her like a small white bird in his great bowled hands, speak soft to her quietness. But then, in wiping the sudden perspiration from his brow, he found again the pit and only at the last quick moment saved himself from falling over, in, and screaming, down! He clapped his hand to that place to cover that emptiness. After he had held his hand tight tight to the hole for a long moment he was then afraid to pull his hand away. It had changed. Instead of being afraid he might fall in there, he was afraid something terrible, something secret, something private, might gush out and drown him.

He brushed his free hand across her door, disturbing little more than dust.

‘Miss Fremwell?'

He looked to see if there were too many lamps lit under her doorsill, the light of which might strike out at him when she swung the door wide. The very thrust of lamplight alone might knock his hand away, and reveal that sunken wound. Then mightn't she peer through it like a keyhole, into his life?

The light was dim under the doorsill.

He made a fist of one hand and brought it down gently, three times, on Miss Fremwell's door.

The door opened and moved slowly back.

Later, on the front porch, feverishly adjusting and re-adjusting his senseless legs, perspiring, he tried to work around to asking her to marry him. When the moon rose high, the hole in his brow looked like a leaf-shadow fallen there. If he kept one profile to her, the crater did not show, it was hidden away over on the other side of his world. It seemed that when he did this, though, he only had half as many words and felt only half a man.