“Funny,” Madison said with a glance at Lyla. “I don’t see a vuset out there in the corridor. See a gang of other stuff, though. Yours?”
“Mine and Dan’s!” Lyla burst out before Berry could reply.
“Ah-hah.” Madison walked forward, brushing past Berry as though he didn’t exist, and peered into the living room. “It’s very kind of your friend, Miss Clay! I see he’s given you a working bed in place of the broken one out there on the landing, and the place looks all kind of neat and clean and tidy. Must be a relief to know you have friends like this, when you were expecting to come home and find everything had been smashed by kids, or pilfered, because the busies didn’t lock up behind them when they took you to the Ginsberg. Place looks fine!”
“You goddamned—!” Berry began, raising the chair as though to make a club of it instead of a shield. But Madison freed the hand steadying his bag long enough to jerk the thumb towards the deadfall which he had so casually caught and lifted, all one hundred kilograms of it, and the movement spoke clearer than words. Berry lowered the chair very slowly to the floor.
Sidling, all the blood drained from his face, he moved towards the door where Lyla stood like a marble statue. When he came within arm’s reach, he said tentatively, “It’s great to find that it wasn’t true about your being shut up in the Ginsberg—”
At that point she lost control and slapped his face; the noise was like a gunshot.
“Bitch!” he shouted, and his fist came up bound for the point of her jaw—and missed, because while it was still coming Madison had kicked him accurately at the base of the spine and lifted him bodily past Lyla, through the door and across the corridor to slump against the opposite wall, moaning.
Carefully he closed the door and turned to her.
“Is there anything out there you’d like brought back in?” he inquired.
“Leave it,” Lyla sighed. “I don’t—oh, yes. There’s two thousand to come back on the Lar! I don’t dare let him corner me on that, the bastard. The bastard! And I thought he was a friend of Dan’s! He must have heard Dan was dead and I’d been arrested and thought he’d grab the chance to move in—he’s been living with his girl in one room for months and this place does at least have a separate kitchen though it’s pretty crummy otherwise. … What are you doing?”
Madison had his head bent close to the door, listening. A moment more, and he whipped it open, one hand poised to strike in precisely the right spot. Berry yelled as his wrist was seized and pressure applied on nerves which sprang his fingers open. A Punch key fell tinkling and Madison said ironically, “Good of you to return the key—I guess Miss Clay will be needing it.”
But in the other hand Berry held a knife, and that he disposed of with neither irony nor delay; the frantic upward blade destined for his belly ended against the armor of the metal door, skidded with a squeal, and was twisted economically by the hilt out of Berry’s grasp into his own. For the second time in less than a minute Berry’s jaw gaped in disbelief. A long moment they stood face to face; then his nerve broke and he ran blindly for the elevator.
Madison slid the knife into his bag and said, “Tell me what you want brought back in, Miss Clay.”
Staring at him, she essayed a laugh. It wasn’t a great success. “You weren’t kidding when you said you knew how to look after yourself, were you?” she said. “Did the Army teach you all that?”
“I haven’t had too much to do in the Ginsberg,” Madison shrugged. “Time to think about it, and practice.”
“But—but you got through that door without a key!” Lyla persisted. “It was locked, wasn’t it?”
“Ah … Yes, it was locked.” Madison’s dark face betrayed no emotion.
“But you can’t open a Punch lock without the right key! I mean, not without blowing the door down!”
Madison didn’t say anything.
“All right, I guess you can. You just did it. What did you use?”
Silence.
“Okay, trade secret. But tell me this, then.” She hesitated, a listening look on her face as though she were hearing her own words and doubting that they could possibly make sense. “Do they use Punch locks in the Ginsberg?”
Madison nodded.
“And you could have opened them any time you wanted to? Just walked out?”
“I guess so.”
“Then why in hell didn’t you?” Her voice grew ragged with hysteria.
“I wasn’t meant to, Miss Clay,” Madison said. “Not till I got the legal certificate that I’d been discharged and had a guardian to answer for me for the first twelve months, you see.”
Lyla felt for a chair without looking and lowered herself to its seat, very carefully. “Are you serious? Yes, of course you are—you give me the impression you couldn’t be anything but serious.”
Another pause.
“Well … Well, thanks very much, anyway. I don’t know what I’d have done if that bastard Berry had been here and I’d arrived on my own. I mean, if I’d just found the door locked and got no reply I’d have gone looking for him first because I thought he was Dan’s best friend.” She put her head in her hands and rocked back and forth. “Do you have any friends, Harry? Can I call you Harry? I don’t like calling people mister and missus and miss all the time.”
“Sure, you call me what you like,” Madison said, peering through the door to see that the corridor was empty, then briskly going to bring back the things Berry had tossed out. Carrying the bed cautiously through the door, he said, “Like I should clean this up and fix it? You wouldn’t want to be indebted to him for that one he brought in, would you?”
“No!” Lyla raised her head. “No, sling everything out that he brought here—let him drag it home, if he still has a home!”
“So you just tell me what’s his and what’s yours,” Madison invited, and propped the bed against the nearest wall.
The job was done in twenty minutes, the door closed, the deadfall set again for fear Berry might return with reinforcements, the bed thoroughly washed down with hot water—for once the supply was plentiful, and among the things Berry had brought which had not been dumped in the corridor was some detergent—and the gash in the cushion repaired with adhesive tape from Madison’s bag. It was like a Santa Claus sack, Lyla thought, detachedly watching him at work; she could believe that if she opened it at random and enumerated its contents she’d find only what might be expected: clothing, toilet articles, perhaps a few books or souvenirs. But whatever the problem, if Madison himself reached in, he would produce the necessary article to cope. …
Tested, reinflated, the bed was back in place and the Lar was in its niche and everything else was as it had been. Madison slung his bag over his shoulder again and headed for the door.
“Glad to have been of help, Miss Clay,” he said. “I’ll go locate that hotel now, I guess.”
“No, wait!” Lyla jumped up. “Please don’t go. I …” She had been about to reach out and catch hold of his arm; she canceled the gesture in mid-air. Some knees were very sensitive about blanks touching them without permission, and she was frightened of this man who could open locks without explosives and walk under a heavy deadfall to catch it with one arm. To cover her abortive faux pas she started to talk very rapidly and randomly.
“You see, like I was saying, if I hadn’t found out it was Berry here I’d have turned to him because I thought he was Dan’s friend and I don’t come from New York, not even from inside the state, so I don’t have too many friends and … Do you have any friends, Harry?”
“No.”
“None? None at all? Family, anything?”
He shook his head.
“You come from this part of the country?”
“Nevada.”
“You’re a long way from home, then, aren’t you? I only come from Virginia, but either way, it’s not New York …” She bit down hard on her lower lip; it was trembling like an advance warning of tears.
“Suppose Berry waits to
catch me alone,” she said finally.
“You know him,” Madison said. “Do you think he might try?”
“I don’t know!” The words peaked in a cry. “I never even thought of him as an enemy before! He’s the last person in the world I’d ever have thought of as an enemy! Oh God, why can’t we have friends any more like they used to in the old days?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Madison said. “I expected that the doctors at the Ginsberg might, but they don’t.”
“Yes, I guess you would expect psychologists to be able to answer it,” Lyla said, falling into the game with a lightheaded, floating sensation like the very late stages of a Ladromide trip. “What did they put you in there for, anyway—if you don’t mind my asking?”
“For too many questions,” Madison said. “That kind of question you just asked. They put a gun in my hand and said go kill that naked savage with a stone spear, he’s the enemy, and I said why is he the enemy and they said because he’s been got at by the communists and I said does he even have a word in his language for ‘communism’ and they said if you don’t go kill him you’ll be under arrest. So they arrested me. I went on asking questions and I never got an answer, and I didn’t feel inclined to stop until I did. So they discharged me and put me in the Ginsberg—or rather, in another hospital first off, but when the Ginsberg was opened they transferred me. Because I’m a knee, I guess. It was a time when it wouldn’t have looked right to have a black man in a bad old-fashioned hospital.”
Lyla started to say something, changed her mind, changed it back again. “Harry, tell me honestly: do you think they were justified to put you in there? Do you think you were crazy? Because you certainly don’t sound it, to me.”
“I have a certificate,” Madison said with a wry smile. It was the first trace of expression she had seen on his face, even when he was confronting Berry, and it was gone in a flash.
“Yes. Yes, of course.” She cast around for words. “Well, look … Look, it’s like this. I don’t want to be alone. I’m frightened. I don’t have a gun any more—it was stolen by the block Gottschalk, the one we saw by the elevator. I’d have to go out and get food or something and … Well, look, can you stand to keep me company for a few hours at least? Just so long as necessary? Till I feel …”
Her voice died and her hands hung lax at her sides and her head bowed. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “You’ve done much more already than I had any right to expect.”
“Your talk of food is a good idea,” Madison said. “I think you’ll be okay later, but not right now. With a meal down you and a few drinks maybe, or a joint, you’ll be able to manage. It’ll make things seem more normal.”
“That’s exactly what I want,” she said gratefully. “To make things seem normal, just for a while, even though I know they aren’t and never will be again. Look, let’s go eat right away so I don’t hold you up for too long. I’ll get my yash and put on some sockasins so nobody can tell I’m blank walking along the street, and I know some restaurants that don’t mind mixed clientele.”
She reached for the yash, which was on its regular peg; apparently Berry hadn’t yet got around to throwing that out. On the point of ducking into the concealing garment, she hesitated.
“Harry, was it you?” she said suddenly, and was prepared to elucidate: “who drove me into that echo-trap, who wished a hangover on me so that I spoke an oracle out of trance.”
But she didn’t have to. He gave a matter-of-fact nod and held out the key he had taken from Berry for her to put in her pocket.
“Sorry,” he added, and opened the door.
SEVENTY-ONE
REPRINTED FROM THE LONDON OBSERVER OF 10TH MARCH 1968
Colour—The Age-Old Conflict by Colin Legum
Having recently spent several months in the United States, I came away sharing the view of those Americans who think that, short of two miracles—an early end to the Vietnam war, and a vast commitment to the public expenditure on the home front—the US is on the point of moving into a period of harsh repression by whites of blacks that could shake its political system to its very foundations.
What would be the likely effects of the West’s leading power engaging in energetic racial repression? It would dramatise and accentuate the world colour crisis as nothing else could do. It would place a far heavier burden on the loyalties of America’s Western allies even than Vietnam. It would have a traumatic effect in Africa, and directly affect the African nationalists with no alternative to inviting Communist support …
If this depressingly dark view turns out to be unduly alarmist, that could only be because the West, having seen the dangers in time, had changed the priorities of its commitments at home and abroad …
If ever American white society should come to feel its economic and security interests in serious jeopardy, it is quite possible that radical changes might take place. But it is not yet possible to foresee what these might be.
Similarly, if the white South African community should ever come to feel itself so isolated and threatened that it could no longer maintain the present policy of white domination, it might become interested in some genuine separation, such as the cantonal system of Switzerland. This type of voluntary separation is currently being discussed by some individuals in Israel as a conceivable solution to the problem of living beside the West Bank Arabs.
Voluntary separation—even separation into different bits of territory—is not always necessarily retrogressive. Although it is suspect to liberal minds—because of the horrors of twentieth-century racialism—liberals were the champions of all the nineteenth-century separatists who wanted independence from the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires and still today react sympathetically to the claims of Scots or of Welsh.
The current demand of Black Power in America for control over their own ghettoes is a move in this direction …
SEVENTY-TWO
ASSUMPTION CONCERNING THE FOREGOING MADE FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS STORY
About the middle of the 1980’s the money and manpower allotted to Internal Security Maintenance began to exceed that committed overseas.
SEVENTY-THREE
IN ACCORDANCE WITH A COMPUTERIZED RECOMMENDATION ABOUT HOW BEST TO ENLIST THE COOPERATION OF A NOTORIOUSLY THORNY PERSONALITY
Xavier Conroy, D.Sc., Ph.D., Hawthorn Professor of Social Psychology, University of North Manitoba: mogshack influence contemporary psychological doctrine held undue by former associate stop seek corroborative/contradictory opinions stop your reply prepaid signed flamen
Flamen Spoolpigeon NYCNY 10036: mogshack influence pernicious but you tilt at overhigh windmill signed conroy
Conroy Univ. N. Manitoba: agree windmill overhigh stop query cooperation in shortening it signed flamen
Flamen Spoolpigeon NYCNY 10036: good luck signed conroy
Conroy Univ. N. Manitoba: come ny weekend expenses paid stop bring axe signed flamen
Flamen Spoolpigeon NYCNY 10036: arriving saturday morning flight 9635 stop dont think hope in hell but hate to miss chance signed conroy
SEVENTY-FOUR
NO ENTRY
Lyla felt she should have been terrified, but she wasn’t, and she was even able to wonder quite calmly why she wasn’t. She decided it was because Madison was so clearly on her side, had just saved her from what must otherwise have been a catastrophe, and moreover knew—regardless of how he knew—what she had meant when she asked that simple question: “Was it you?”
For a while after leaving the apt she didn’t really think very much, but eventually, when they were back at street level, she was able to formulate casual inquiries in a normal friendly tone, and uttered them.
“Matthew Flamen offered you a job, isn’t that right?”
“Yes; apparently he needs someone to cure interference on his vushows, and I know a fair amount about electronics.”
“Are you glad to be—ah—out after such a long time?”
“I don’t know. I’ll wait until I find out
whether the world has improved in the meantime.”
“It’s got worse,” Lyla said positively. “I mean … Well, I’m still pretty young, I guess, but from what I can remember, even, it seems to have got worse. Dr. Reedeth said they had three LR’s yesterday and that was good according to him because once they had nineteen in a single night, but there shouldn’t be any at all!”
There was an interlude during which they walked along side by side without talking, Lyla shrouded in her yash and sockasins so that none of her skin showed, and they were able to make it along the sidewalk without trouble because other people took it for granted she too was knee. There was always a kind of weariness after an outbreak of rioting, a post-tumescent sadness as might be felt by two honest but accidental lovers realizing in the gray dawn that through transient passion they had risked starting another child on the long journey towards death.
Eventually he took up the questioning and said, “What would you have done if you’d arrived home on your own?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I guess I might have called up your new boss. But I don’t think I’d have got much help out of him. I mean … Oh, this is so hard to explain. I mean I like him on the outside, but I don’t like him on the inside. He talks okay, but you don’t get the feeling he’s a man you can trust. Do you catch me?”
“Very clearly,” Madison said. And: “Is that the restaurant you’re taking me to, the one ahead?”