The Calm Man Page 3

Street," thecab driver was saying.

  Sally shivered, remembering her husband's voice on the phone,remembering where she was ... "_Come to the office, Sally! Hurry,hurry--or it will be too late!_"

  Too late for what? Too late to recapture a happiness she had neverpossessed?

  "This is it, lady!" the cab driver insisted. "Do you want me to wait?"

  "No," Sally said, fumbling for her change purse. She descended from thetaxi, paid the driver and hurried across the pavement to the big officebuilding with its mirroring frontage of plate glass and black onyxtiles.

  The firm's name was on the directory board in the lobby, white on blackin beautifully embossed lettering. White for hope, and black fordespair, mourning ...

  The elevator opened and closed and Sally was whisked up eight storiesbehind a man in a checkered suit.

  "Eighth floor!" Sally whispered, in sudden alarm. The elevator jolted toan abrupt halt and the operator swung about to glare at her.

  "You should have told me when you got on, Miss!" he complained.

  "Sorry," Sally muttered, stumbling out into the corridor. How horribleit must be to go to business every day, she thought wildly. To sit in anoffice, to thumb through papers, to bark orders, to be a machine.

  Sally stood very still for an instant, startled, feeling her sanitythreatened by the very absurdity of the thought. People who worked inoffices could turn for escape to a cottage in the sunset's glow, whenthey were set free by the moving hands of a clock. There could be afierce joy at the thought of deliverance, at the prospect of going homeat five o'clock.

  But for Sally was the brightness, the deliverance withheld. The corridorwas wide and deserted and the black tiles with their gold borders seemedto converge upon her, hemming her into a cool magnificence asstructurally somber as the architectural embellishments of a costlymausoleum.

  She found the office with her surface mind, working at cross-purposeswith the confusion and swiftly mounting dread which made her footstepsfalter, her mouth go dry.

  _Steady, Sally! Here's the office, here's the door. Turn the knob andget it over with ..._

  Sally opened the door and stepped into a small, deserted reception room.Beyond the reception desk was a gate, and beyond the gate a largecentral office branched off into several smaller offices.

  Sally paused only an instant. It seemed quite natural to her that abusiness office should be deserted so late in the afternoon.

  She crossed the reception room to the gate, passed through it, utterdesperation giving her courage.

  Something within her whispered that she had only to walk across thecentral office, open the first door she came to to find her husband ...

  The first door combined privacy with easy accessibility. The instant sheopened the door she knew that she had been right to trust her instincts.This was his office ...

  He was sitting at a desk by the window, a patch of sunset sky visibleover his right shoulder. His elbows rested on the desk and his handswere tightly locked as if he had just stopped wringing them.

  He was looking straight at her, his eyes wide and staring.

  "Jim!" Sally breathed. "Jim, what's wrong?"

  He did not answer, did not move or attempt to greet her in any way.There was no color at all in his face. His lips were parted, his whiteteeth gleamed. And he was more stiffly controlled than usual--a controlso intense that for once Sally felt more alarm than bitterness.

  There was a rising terror in her now. And a slowly dawning horror. Thesunlight streamed in, gleaming redly on his hair, his shoulders. Heseemed to be the center of a flaming red ball ...

  _He sent for you, Sally. Why doesn't he get up and speak to you, if onlyto pour salt on the wounds you've borne for eight long years?_

  _Poor Sally! You wanted a strong, protective, old-fashioned husband.What have you got instead?_

  Sally went up to the desk and looked steadily into eyes so calm andblank that they seemed like the eyes of a child lost in some dreamywonderland barred forever to adult understanding.

  For an instant her terror ebbed and she felt almost reassured. Then shemade the mistake of bending more closely above him, brushing his rightelbow with her sleeve.

  * * * * *

  That single light woman's touch unsettled him. He started to fall,sideways and very fast. Topple a dead weight and it crashes with aswiftness no opposing force can counter-balance.

  It did Sally no good to clutch frantically at his arm as he fell, to tugand jerk at the slackening folds of his suit. The heaviness of hisdescending bulk dragged him down and away from her, the awful inertia oflifeless flesh.

  He thudded to the floor and rolled over on his back, seeming to shrinkas Sally widened her eyes upon him. He lay in a grotesque sprawl at herfeet, his jaw hanging open on the gaping black orifice of his mouth ...

  Sally might have screamed and gone right on screaming--if she had been adifferent kind of woman. On seeing her husband lying dead her impulsemight have been to throw herself down beside him, give way to her griefin a wild fit of sobbing.

  But where there was no grief there could be no sobbing ...

  One thing only she did before she left. She unloosed the collar of theunmoving form on the floor and looked for the small brown mole she didnot really expect to find. The mole she knew to be on her husband'sshoulder, high up on the left side.

  She had noticed things that made her doubt her sanity; she needed to seethe little black mole to reassure her ...

  She had noticed the difference in the hair-line, the strange slant ofthe eyebrows, the crinkly texture of the skin where it should have beensmooth ...

  Something was wrong ... horribly, weirdly wrong ...

  Even the hands of the sprawled form seemed larger and hairier than thehands of her husband. Nevertheless it was important to be sure ...

  The absence of the mole clinched it.

  Sally crouched beside the body, carefully readjusting the collar. Thenshe got up and walked out of the office.

  Some homecomings are joyful, others cruel. Sitting in the taxi,clenching and unclenching her hands, Sally had no plan that could becalled a plan, no hope that was more than a dim flickering in a vastwasteland, bleak and unexplored.

  But it was strange how one light burning brightly in a cottage windowcould make even a wasteland seem small, could shrink and diminish ituntil it became no more than a patch of darkness that anyone withcourage might cross.

  The light was in Tommy's room and there was a whispering behind thedoor. Sally could hear the whispering as she tiptoed upstairs, could seethe light streaming out into the hall.

  She paused for an instant at the head of the stairs, listening. Therewere two voices in the room, and they were talking back and forth.

  Sally tiptoed down the hall, stood with wildly beating heart justoutside the door.

  "She knows now, Tommy," the deepest of the two voices said. "We are veryclose, your mother and I. She knows now that I sent her to the office tofind my 'stand in.' Oh, it's an amusing term, Tommy--an Earth term we'dhardly use on Mars. But it's a term your mother would understand."

  A pause, then the voice went on, "You see, my son, it has taken me eightyears to repair the ship. And in eight years a man can wither up and dieby inches if he does not have a growing son to go adventuring with himin the end."

  "Adventuring, father?"

  "You have read a good many Earth books, my son, written especially forboys. _Treasure Island_, _Robinson Crusoe_, _Twenty Thousand LeaguesUnder The Sea_. What paltry books they are! But in them there is alittle of the fire, a little of the glow of _our_ world."

  "No, father. I started them but I threw them away for I did not likethem."

  "As you and I must throw away all Earth things, my son. I tried to bekind to your mother, to be a good husband as husbands go on Earth. Buthow could I feel proud and strong and reckless by her side? How could Ishare her paltry joys and sorrows, chirp with delight as a sparrow mightchirp hopping about in the grass? C
an an eagle pretend to be a sparrow?Can the thunder muffle its voice when two white-crested clouds collidein the shining depths of the night sky?"

  "You tried, father. You did your best."

  "Yes, my son, I did try. But if I had attempted to feign emotions I didnot feel your mother would have seen through the pretense. She wouldthen have turned from me completely. Without her I could not have hadyou, my son."

  "And now, father, what will we do?"

  "Now the ship has been repaired and is waiting for us. Every day foreight years I went to the hill and worked on the ship. It was badlywrecked, my son, but now my patience has been rewarded, and everydamaged astronavigation instrument has been replaced."

  "You never went to the office, father? You never went at all?"

  "No, my son. My stand-in worked at the office in my place. I instilledin your mother's mind an intense dislike and fear of the office to keepher from ever