“Hello,” he greeted her, “is something wrong? You’re almost an hour before your time. But come on in.”
The girl obeyed. “It seemed important,” she said when she had sat down opposite him. “I had such a strange dream. I dreamed…”
“What was the emotional tone of the dream?” Lawrence asked when she had finished.
“Distress, at first. But after the whales came, I felt—more than human. Uplifted. Glorified.”
“A sort of goddess?” Lawrence inquired, covering his mouth to hide a yawn.
“I suppose so. I certainly wasn’t human, in the dream.”
“Have you heard lately the voices that you mentioned?” Lawrence asked.
“No, not for more than a week.”
“If you did hear them, what do you think they’d say?”
Madelaine’s body grew rigid. She shot a startled glance at Lawrence, who was contemplating a hangnail on his thumb. Then she got up from her chair.
“Let me out, please,” she said. She moved toward the door.
“Did I say something to offend you?” Lawrence asked. “Your time’s not nearly up.”
“No. But I’ve remembered.”
“Who you are, you mean?”
“Oh, that!” She laughed. “I’m Madelaine Paxton, and I think I went to high school in east Oakland. That’s enough. No, I mean I’ve remembered what I have to do. Please let me out.”
Silently Dr. Lawrence rose and unlatched the office door for her. He watched her with a slight frown as she hurried down the corridor.
She walked across the parking lot and got back into her car. The guard at the gate gave her a startled look as she drove out.
She headed up the peninsula, toward San Francisco, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. In Marin County, she turned west. Once she stopped for gas. Road signs she, ignored. Her actions were as unhesitating as those of a sleepwalker.
She stopped the car at Drake’s Bay. The beach, at that hour on a weekday, was completely deserted.
Madelaine took off her shoes and stockings and left them on the seat of the car. Her purse she left beside them, but she buttoned her wallet carefully into the pocket of her white linen dress. Then she walked slowly across the sand and out into the water. She was shivering a little. The water was tinglingly cold.
When she was out about waist-deep, she paused and looked about her. I think in a moment she would have tried to call us, but there was no need. The three of us were already swimming toward where she stood.
When she saw us coming, her face cleared. “My darlings, my beautiful darlings!” she cried joyfully. “I was sure you would be here!”
So we knew she remembered the covenant.
We did not call Sven to us personally. He was sensitive to the voices of our distress, and they added to his already existing disquiet and disillusionment. But it took a series, of accidents to bring him to us.
That night he was drinking, and playing darts for the drinks, with a friend in a nondescript bar at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf. Sven was in his late twenties, with excellent coordination, but he had never been able to master the knack of dart throwing—which, I suppose, is why he played the game so persistently.
He and Frank had already had a good deal to drink. They were playing the simplified form of darts in which each player throws four darts and the player with the highest total score wins. Frank, who was pretty good at the game, had just made a score of three hundred and twenty-five.
Sven picked up one of his darts and balanced it. He positioned his feet and tested the distribution of his weight. Once more he balanced the dart. Then he let fly.
The dart struck dead in the center of the board and stuck there, quivering.
“Pretty good,” said Frank.
“Just a fluke,” Sven answered. “Wait’ll you see what I do next time.”
He threw the second dart. It joined its brother unerringly in the center of the board.
“Keep it up,” Frank said approvingly. “If I can.”
Sven threw the last two darts. Both went in the bull’s-eye to make him the maximum possible score, four hundred points.
“Pretty good, old pal, old pal,” Frank said. “I didn’t know you could throw like that.”
“Neither did I. I don’t understand it. It’s the first time they’ve ever gone where I wanted them to.” He frowned, and looked down at his right hand. It seemed to him that his will, and not his hand, had propelled the darts to their home in the target, and he had an exhilarating sense of having stepped momentarily from the real world, where the will is powerless, into the sphere where the will governs everything.
“It’s getting late,” Frank said. “Let’s have one more drink, and then go home. Want to play for it??”
“Sure, why not?”
This time Frank was more careful with his throws than usual. He scored three hundred and fifty. But again Sven’s four darts went dead to the center, for a total of four hundred points.
“I don’t know why you say you can’t play darts,” Frank said, a little aggrieved.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Sven replied.
They finished their drinks and left the bar. “The war seems to be hotting up,” Frank remarked, stopping to scan the headlines on the newspaper racks.
“Yeah. You know, Frank, sometimes I hate people.”
“I don’t like them very well myself. Good night, boy.”
“Good night.”
They parted. Sven started along the Embarcadero. He lived in a rooming house at the foot of Bay Street.
The Embarcadero at two-thirty in the morning is not precisely unsafe, but it is not very well lighted. Sven did not anticipate any trouble. There was less than four dollars in his pockets, and he was dressed in dungarees, sneakers and a sweatshirt. He didn’t think anybody would bother him.
He walked along steadily, his hands thrust in his pockets. He was thinking about his future. It didn’t look very good. What was he going to do with himself?
Some six months ago, he had finished a hitch in the army, serving in the Middle East, the latest part of the world in which his country had seen fit to embroil itself militarily. Sven had been a demolitions expert. He had performed his duties conscientiously, but with an increasing distaste that ended being almost nausea. He had thought he would feel better after his discharge, once he was home again, but he hadn’t. Mildred had married somebody else while he was gone. Maybe he ought to get married himself. But he was afraid it wouldn’t help.
The real trouble, as he had indicated to Frank, was that the army had made him feel he hated people. What good were they? All their pretensions ended in trying to inflict damage on one another. Maybe he was just drunk. But it seemed to him that Homo sapiens was the only animal that was habitually merciless toward itself.
His shadow kept pace with him steadily, disappearing when he entered a shadow and springing out again when he passed under a light.—Oh, the hell with it! Tomorrow he’d go down to the hiring hall and see about getting a work permit. Bethlehem was said to be hiring fitters now.
Just as he passed Pier Nineteen, he caught a flicker of motion behind him. He turned his head quickly. His movement caused the blow that was aimed at him to go wild; instead of the sap falling hard on the back of Sven’s head, it struck the bulge behind his right temple, and only glancingly. Sven was dazed, but by no means knocked out.
He turned to grapple with his attacker. The man—somewhat smaller than Sven, and dressed in black—made another attempt to hit him with the sap. Sven dodged and, remembering an old army lesson, levered the man’s arm over and out. There was a whimper. The sap fell on the pavement. The mugger regarded Sven loweringly for an instant, but when Sven moved toward him, he turned and ran. Sven was left alone in the street.