He released her hand and started toward the basement door, saying, "This is it; here goes," when his face had twisted and he had grabbed his chest.
But that had not stopped him.
The phone rang. It was, she knew, Mrs. Coombs again.
Mrs. Coombs's voice was as thin as river ice in late March.
"You tell your father that officers will be on their way to your house within a few minutes. They'll have a warrant to enter."
"You're causing a lot of trouble and for no good reason," Millie said. "Just because you don't like me --"
"Well, I never!" Mrs. Coombs said. "You know very well that I'm doing what I have to and, in fact, I've been overly lenient in this case. There's no reason in the world why your father can't come to the phone --"
"I told you he had to finish his novel," Millie said. "That's all the reason he needs."
She hung up the phone and then stood by the door for a moment, listening to the typing below. She turned and looked through the kitchen door at the clock on the wall. It was almost twelve. She doubted that anybody would come during the lunch hour, despite what Mrs. Coombs said. That gave her -- her father, rather -- another hour. And then she would see what she could do.
She tried to eat but could get down only half the liverwurst and lettuce sandwich. She wrapped the other half and put it back into the refrigerator. She looked at herself in the small mirror near the wall clock. She, who could not afford to lose an ounce, had shed pounds during the past three and a half days. As if they were on scales, her cheekbones had risen while her eyes had sunk. The dark brown irises and the bloodshot whites of her eyes looked like two fried eggs with ketchup that someone had thrown against a wall.
She smiled slightly at the thought, but it hurt her to see her face. She looked like a witch and always would.
"But you're only eleven!" her father had boomed at her. "Is it a tragedy at eleven because the boys haven't asked you for a date yet? My God, when I was eleven, we didn't ask girls for dates. We hated girls!"
Yet his Great Work started with the first-love agonies of a boy of eleven, and he had admitted long ago that the boy was himself.
Millie sighed again and left the mirror. She cleaned the front room but did not use the vacuum cleaner because she wanted to hear the typewriter keys. The hour passed, and the doorbell rang.
She sat down in a chair. The doorbell rang again and again. Then there was silence for a minute, followed by a fist pounding on the door.
Millie got up from the chair but went to the door at the top of the basement steps and opened it. She breathed deeply, made a face, went down the wooden steps and around the corner at the bottom and looked down the long room with its white- painted cement blocks and pine paneling. She could not see her father because a tall and broad dark-mahogany bookcase in the middle of the room formed the back of what he called his office. The chair and desk were on the other side, but she could see the file basket on the edge of the desk. Her practiced eye told her that the basket held almost five hundred pages, not counting the carbon copies.
The typewriter clattered away. After a while, she went back up the steps and across to the front door. She opened the peephole and looked through, Two of the three looked as if they could be plainclothesmen. The third was the tall, beefy, red- faced truant officer.
"Hello, Mr. Tavistock," she said through the peephole. "What can I do for you?"
"You can open the door and let me in to talk to your father," he growled. "Maybe he can explain what's been going on, since you won't."
"I told Mrs. Coombs all about it," Millie said. "She's a complete ass, making all this fuss about nothing."
"That's no way for a lady to talk, Millie," Mr. Tavistock said. "Especially an eleven-year-old. Open the door. I got a warrant."
He waved a paper in his huge hand.
"My father'll have you in court for trampling on his civil rights," Millie said. "I'll come to school tomorrow. I promise. But not today. My father mustn't be bothered."
"Let me in now, or we break the door down!" Mr. Tavistock shouted. "There's something funny going on, Millie, otherwise your father would've contacted the school long ago!"
"You people always think there's something funny about me, that all!" Millie shouted back.
"Yeah, and Mrs. Coombs fell down over the wastebasket and wrenched her back right after she phoned you," Tavistock said. "Are you going to open that door?"
It would take them only a minute or so to kick the door open even if she chained it. She might as well let them in. Still, two more minutes might be all that were needed.
She reached for the knob and then dropped her hand. The typing had stopped.
She walked to the top of the basement steps.
"Pop! Are you through?"
She heard the squeaking of the swivel chair, then a shuffling sound. The house shook, and there was a crash as someone struck the door with his body. A few seconds later, another crash was followed by the bang of the door against the inner wall. Mr. Tavistock said, "All right, boys! I'll lead the way!"
He sounded as if he were raiding a den of bank robbers, she thought.
She went around the corner to the front room and said, "I think my father is through."
"In more ways than one, Millie," Mr. Tavistock said.
She turned away and walked back around the corner, through the door and out onto the landing. Her father was standing at the bottom of the steps. His color was very bad and he looked as if he had gained much weight, though she knew that that was impossible.
He looked up at her from deeply sunken eyes, and he lifted the immense pile of sheets with his two hands.
"All done, Pop?" Millie said, her voice breaking.
He nodded slowly.
Millie heard the three men come up behind her. Mr. Tavistock leaned over her and said, "Whew!"
Millie turned and pushed at him. "Get out of my way! He's finished it!"
Mr. Tavistock glared, but he moved to one side. She walked to a chair and sat down heavily. One of the detectives said, "You look awful, Millie. You look like you haven't slept for a week."
"I don't think I'll ever be able to sleep," she said. She breathed deeply and allowed her muscles to go loose. Her head lolled as if she had given up control over everything inside her. There was a thumping noise from the basement. Mr. Tavistock cried out, "He's fainted!" The shoes of the three men banged on the steps as they ran down. A moment later Mr. Tavistock gave another cry. Then all three men began talking at once.
Millie closed her eyes and wished she could quit trembling. Some time later, she heard the footsteps. She did not want to open her eyes, but there was no use putting it off.
Mr. Tavistock was pale and shaking. He said, "My God! He looks, he smells like..."
One of the detectives said, "His fingertips are worn off, the bones are sticking out, but there wasn't any bleeding."
"I got him through," Millie said. "He finished it. That's all that counts."
Toward the Beloved City
This was written for an anthology of religious science fiction, Signs and Wonders, Fleming H. Revell, edited by Roger Elwood (1972). Revell is a house specializing in books on religion. I developed it as I would any science fiction story, that is, first, "What if...?" and, second, a rigid extrapolation from the basic premise. What if the Book of Revelations were true? What then?