The small man slumped, his arms a-dangle, his thin features slack with tiredness. But this appearance was deceptive. He had a tic. Whenever it convulsed the muscles of his cheek, his dark-circled eyes flashed a penetrating, critical glance, and his fingers curled. It was as if he lurked behind a curtain which small puffs of wind kept twitching aside.
Marcia raised eyebrows at Carr. Carr went resignedly, knowing this must be Keaton Fisher.
But the introduction was hardly over, the dark-circled eyes had only begun to quick-freeze Carr, the limp fingers had not quite finished a pulse-taking handshake—which the tie suddenly converted into a spasmodic grip—when Katy Pendleton, who had been pinning the green orchid to a half-protesting redhead, interrupted.
“Oh, Mr. Fisher, I’ve promised to introduce you to the Wenzels. You’ll excuse us, I know.”
Marcia touched Carr’s arm. “Later.” She hurried off.
Momentarily relieved, Carr found himself a cocktail and drifted into the library, where a number of lively discussions were going on.
Carr recognized several people. But he hesitated at deciding which group to join and the conversation went so fast that his clever remarks were constantly getting outdated. He felt rather like an awkward girl nerving herself for the right moment to start jumping rope.
His uneasiness was fast reaching a peak where he might blurt out any sort of remark just so as to be noticed, when Marcia came along and said she wanted to dance.
As soon as Carr had his arms around her, he realized that here was the only person he wanted to talk to.
His other impulses had been merest camouflage. Why in this world, when something fantastically strange and terrifying had happened to him, should he waste thought or time on this noisy herd? It suddenly struck him that of course he must tell Marcia about his mysterious amnesia attacks. Whatever had made him think otherwise? What was love if you didn’t share? As they circled past the beaming brown faces of the musicians, he got set to tell her.
“Just as well Katy butted in,” Marcia whispered softly and swiftly. “That wasn’t the right time for your talk with Keaton. I’ve spoken to him and arranged things.”
He nodded. “Marcia,” he began with difficulty.
“Now listen carefully, Carr,” she said. “In about ten minutes Keaton will drift away from the library and go into the study. I’ll see to it that he’s alone. You watch for him and make sure not to get tied up with anyone. A few moments later, drift along after him.”
“All right,” he said, “but first, Marcia, there’s something—”
The music ended with a flourish. Marcia gave him a little push. “Now run along and watch Keaton,” she said. “Oh, hello, Guy,” and the next moment her back was turned and she was talking with a lanky, graying Mr. Pendleton.
Miserably, Carr returned to the library, picking up a cocktail on his way. The discussions were still going full tilt. Keaton Fisher was now dominating one of them, timing his points to his tic.
Carr shuffled from the edge of one group to another, smiling and nodding approvingly at some of the remarks, but apparently just enough to get himself accepted without really being noticed. Everyone seemed to have concluded that he was just a vacuous sort of chap who wanted to wander around nursing a drink. He was conscious of a growing wall between him and all the others. A glass wall, perhaps, since it seemed to him that he could no longer hear so well what was being said—there was a humming in his ears.
Just then he noticed Keaton Fisher disappearing into the hallway. As if by magic his anxiety vanished and self-possession returned. Just as earlier he had been filled with relief to get away from Keaton Fisher, now he felt overjoyed at the prospect of getting back to him—anything, so long as it gave him something definite to do.
He veered for a moment toward the table of cocktails, then checked himself and walked straight to the study, pausing outside the door.
Keaton Fisher was inside and along. He had picked up a magazine and was studying the table of contents. He was facing away from Carr. He was motionless—except for the tic.
A childish play on words occurred to Carr, Keaton Fisher had a tic. Therefore Keaton Fisher was ticking. Like a clock.
Dark portraits of bearded men in last century’s clothes looked down on Keaton—masked men like himself who shrewdly eyed profits through the eyeholes in their faces. Carr felt a rush of anxiety and apprehension.
Staring motionless at the same page of the magazine, Keaton Fisher continued to tick.
Motionless—yet all at once he seemed to Carr to double in height, to become a terrifying figure in which was concentrated the quintessence of all the brasher and more predatory qualities of the noisy world around them—the world of out-thinking and out-smarting, come-ons and killings, ads and headlines, slaps and grabs, the world of the super-intelligent business-robots, of the hyper-efficient modern machine-men.
Keaton Fisher went on ticking.
For the moment everything was wiped from Carr’s mind except the question of whether or not to enter this room. He knew that he was faced with a decision that would effect his whole future life. He knew that, as happens much too often with such decisions, he was not making it, it was being made for him by forces stronger than any which consciousness could summon, but it was being made nevertheless.
Keaton Fisher still ticked.
With a little gulping sigh that was almost a whimper of fear, Car ducked back, darted to the cocktail table, drank one, picked up one, then another—he could pretend he was taking it to some woman—walked rapidly into the living room, edged along the wall past the dancers, opened the door to the dark sun porch, saw it was empty, sat down and began to drink in greedy little gulps.
When he put down the second glass beside his chair, reaction struck him a blow that made him writhe. He stared frantically at the dark windows with their reflected gleams of color from the dance floor. What he had done had shut him away from Marcia forever. This had been a last chance, a last test. It would be kidding himself to think differently.
He had scorned a splendid chance to make a real success in the world, a chance to push his head above the level of the nonentities, to clamber up to a level where you had some say about what happened to you.
He had doomed himself to lose his present job, to sneak away from his present environment, to go downhill for God knows how long, until the urges inside him gathered themselves for another try, if they still had the strength for that. Shame and vanity, he knew, would permit no other course.
But most of all, he had lost Marcia.
Perhaps it still wasn’t too late. Perhaps—
He jumped up, hurried back to the living room, sidled past the dancers, entered the study.
It was empty.
He looked in the library. He saw Keaton Fisher talking with some other people. Marcia looked happy, Keaton Fisher also seemed in expansive spirits. As Carr watched, he laughed at something and patted Marcia’s arm—just as his tic came.
Carr jerked back, hurried to the cocktail table, repeated his maneuver with the three drinks, and returned to the sun porch.
But now, as he drank in the darkness with the orchestra moaning behind him, there was a difference. Now that he had taken the irreversible step, or been pushed into it, he hated everything about the surroundings in which the step had been taken. Those idiots! What right had they to create a society in which brashness and machine-efficiency alone counted, in which the unambitious and fleshly-soft were tortured? Blind as bats to the truly important things in life. Jigging and hip-wagging like cogs and pistons while the world went God knows where. Sneering and jibing while time stole days from everyone and wouldn’t give them back. Fighting for crumbs of prestige, while unknown dangers, like black sea monsters, silently circled mankind’s vessel. For a moment Carr felt as if the Pendletons’ apartment were truly a ship, with only one poor drunken fool crouched futilely on the dark and empty bridge. He braced himself against the crash of the rocks.