“Little boy with a tin bugle, waking up all the forces of decency in the world. Look, people! The cow’s in the meadow, the sheep’s in the corn!”
“I don’t know how to say this. A man does... what he has to do.”
“And if it’s an obsession? If it’s something with its roots imbedded in a childhood catastrophe? Should he continue to destroy himself? Or try to effect a cure?”
“That’s almost what Branson said to me.”
“You told me very emphatically that he was a god walking the earth. It looks as if he remained a god to you until he questioned your... sanity. And then he became a monster. Personally I like his angle of snuggling up to Irania. India has been moving too fast. It balances things off a bit.”
“And gives us more tension, a bigger load of fear.”
“Gives mankind as a whole more fear. I’m an individual. I take my own pride in being able to take care of myself.”
“Anarchy?”
“Why not? That is, if you are faster and have bigger teeth than your neighbor?”
“We can’t talk at all. We never could. We never will.”
Her face softened. “Oh, Dake. We did talk. Lots.”
He sighed. “I know. Sometimes it seems as if we’re... such a damn miserable waste of each other.”
She put the check on the corner of the desk within his reach. “It’s on a rupee account in a branch of the Bank of India. Need it certified?”
“No. I can cash it. No deal then? No bargain?”
She looked down at her folded hands. A strand of the soft hair swung forward, shining gold in the lamplight. “No deal, Dake. I guess it’s for... old time’s sake.”
He put the check in his wallet. “Thanks, Patrice. I thought you’d be... a lot tougher.”
She lifted her head. “I was going to be.”
“Anyway, I appreciate it.”
She stood up quickly, came to him, sat on the arm of the deep leather chair, leaned against him, her arm around his shoulders.
Her smile was crooked, and looked as though it hurt a bit. “I’m like your Darwin Branson,” she whispered.
He looked up at her. “What do you mean?” She turned away, oddly shy.
“I’m practical. I, too, am willing to settle for... half a loaf.”
He took her shoulders, turned her, pulled her back into his lap. Her hair had a clean spicy scent. Her lips were on holiday, from the long year apart. She kissed him with her eyes wide, blue, and terribly near in the lamplight.
Four
Kelly licked his thumb again, winked at Dake, and continued to count. “Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Thirty thousand happy rupees. The page is yours. Got it with you?”
“I want to borrow an office and a typewriter, Kelly. I’ll work the rest of the day and have it for you sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“It will be in Thursday’s edition, then.”
“I want a proof drawn on it, and a chance to check it before you lock it up.”
“At the moment you are my favorite man in all the world. Anything you say.”
“And I want a receipt, Kelly.”
The man scrubbed his red chin with a big knuckle. “My boy, you bring up a fascinating point. Indeed you do. Now we’re both men of the world. How would it be if I give you a receipt for fifteen thousand? It would ease my tax picture considerable.”
“Thirty thousand.”
“Let’s split the difference. I’ll give you back... say, two thousand, and a receipt for twenty. We both gain that way.”
“Suit yourself,” Dake said wearily. “Just show me where I can work.”
“I knew you were a sensible man when I laid eyes on you. Let me see. I can’t give you Carter’s place. The murals would keep your mind off your work. Come on. I know where I can put you.”
The office was small, and it hadn’t been dusted in a long time. The typewriter looked adequate. Dake tried it, using his gunfire four-finger technique. Kelly walked out, whistling. Dake shucked his coat, tossed it on the couch. He poked his hat back onto the back of his head, laid his cigarettes beside the machine, and pondered a lead. He tried a few and tore them up. Finally he found one he was satisfied with:
“This week humanity booted the ball again. It was an infield error. The shadows stretch long across the diamond. The long game is drawing to a close. Death is on the mount. He threw one that President Enfield got a piece of. Enfield’s hit put Darwin Branson on third. He had a chance to come home. He ran nicely most of the way to the plate, and then faltered. They put the tag on him. ‘Yerrout!’ yelled the celestial umpire.
“Now we’re waiting for another decision. We’re waiting to find out whether that was the third and last out, retiring the side. We stand in the long shadows, in the hopelessness of an emptying park, waiting to find out if our long game is over. To find out if, maybe, it is being called on account of darkness.”
He looked at the lines. He had a sense of destiny in him. Once in every age, man and moment meet. And the man brings to that moment some ability that sets the world afire, that brings it lurching back from that last brink of destruction. The typewriter clattered in the dusty office. He worked on at white heat, working with the sure and certain knowledge that what he was writing would lift up the hearts and hopes of men everywhere. The year of leave seemed to have heightened his facility. There was no rustiness, no groping for words, or for effect. He had it, and he was using it with the pride and assurance of a man at the peak of his abilities.
He ripped a sheet out, rolled a fresh one into the machine. He hit the tab set and... came to a shocked standstill on the shoulder of a dusty country road. He could see the countryside clearly, hear the faraway bawling of cattle. And shimmering through it, directly in front of him, he could see the keyboard of the typewriter. It was as though he co-existed in two realities, one superimposed over the other. Standing in one, sitting in the other, visions overlapping. He managed to stand up blindly and move away from the typewriter. The countryside faded and was gone.
He stood at the window of the small office for a time. The experience had made him feel faint and dizzy. He grunted with disgust. This would be a hell of a time to have the strain of the past year pile up on him and destroy his ability to work. This was, perhaps, the ultimate gamble. Lay it on the line for them. Get it all down. Dates, names, people, the delicate machinery of deals and counter deals. Show all the men of good will how close they had come to the political and economic equivalent of the Kingdom of Heaven. Raise the old war cry of “throw the bastards out!” — but this time on a global scale. Pray that copies of the article would be pirated, smuggled through the fine mesh nets of censorship. Patrice, with her “me for me” philosophy could never understand how a man could stake his life on one turn of the card, if he believed in the card. A man could have a sense of destiny — believe in his heart that he could manufacture a pivot-point for the world to turn on. Let us have no more double vision. No time to go mad.
He went back and sat down at the typewriter again, reread his lead, and found it good. He raised his hands a bit above the keys and stopped, shut his eyes hard. Each key had turned into a tiny reproduction of Patrice’s face. With his eyes still shut he put his fingers on the keys, felt the softness of tiny faces under the pads of his fingers. He opened his eyes and looked at the paper in the machine. He began to type and stopped, as horror welled up to the point of nausea. His fingers were bloodied and the little faces were smashed, and he had heard the tiny cries, the rending of tissue. Sweating, he wiped his hands on his thighs as he stood up, knocking the chair over.
He stood with his back to the machine and tightened his muscles until his shoulders ached. He looked cautiously at his fingertips. The blood was gone. Hallucination, then. A minor madness. He thought it out objectively. Self-preservation, probably. Trying to save the organism from disaster. A glandular revolt against dissolution. He looked cautiously over his shoulder. The typewriter was sane, normal, familiar.