Ballroom of the Skies

Fourteen

A nurse with a heavy, placid face met him at the door of Patrice’s cottage on the fenced grounds of Glendon Farms and took his visitor’s card and asked him politely to follow her. Her starched uniform rustled, blinding white in the sunshine.

There was a long slope behind the cottage, down to a small formal garden. Patrice lay on a dark blue blanket spread on the tailored grass. She wore a brief black sun-suit.

The nurse paused with him, out of earshot, and said, “Please don’t say anything to disturb or excite her. If you see her beginning to get nervous, call me. I’ll wait here.”

Dake walked down to her. Patrice was face down, her back deep gold in the sunlight. He sat on his heels beside the blanket and said, “Patrice?”

She turned quickly, raising herself on her elbows, a sheaf of the bright hair masking her eye for a moment before she threw it back with a toss of her head.

“Dake, darling,” she said warmly. “How good to see you!”

“You look well, Patrice.”

“I’m very well, dear.”

He studied her curiously. There was something subtly wrong about her face, about her expression. A bland childishness. Her mouth and eyes were soft, but something had gone, utterly. He saw what it was. There was no firmness, no resolution, no strength of will or character left.

“Patrice,” he said uneasily, “do you remember the... last time we saw each other?”

“That night when I got sick? They told me you were there, dear. Was I too awful?”

“No. I mean, you weren’t really sick, Patrice. You just saw something you couldn’t explain to yourself. But I could explain it to you.”

She glanced up to where the nurse stood fifty feet away, guardian white against the green of the clipped grass.

She said in a low tone, “Don’t let her know that I wasn’t really sick. They’re doing this for the money.”

“What do you mean?”

She gave him a childish smile. “Don’t be dull. If they find out I know what their little game is, they’ll kill me. You certainly know that.” Her voice was perfectly calm, matter-of-fact.

“What... do you plan to do?”

“Oh, there are too many of them! I can’t do anything. You know that! But I have to let them all think I believe them. They give me warnings, you know. They put electricity in my head, and keep telling me it’s going to help me, but it’s just a warning about how they’ll kill me if I don’t do exactly what they say. Now you’re in here and they won’t let you out either. Because now you know, and you could tell about what they’re doing. You were silly to come here, Dake, dear. Terribly silly. There are too many of them.”

“Patrice, I...”

She sat up all the way and her voice became shrill, and her eyes were filled with sharp excitement. “Run, Dake! Run before the men come!”

The nurse came quickly down the lawn. Dake stood up and backed away from Patrice. The nurse said, “Now lie down and get some more sun, Patrice. That’s a good girl.”

Patrice smiled at her and stretched out obediently. She yawned and closed her eyes, said in a sleepy mumble, “ ’Bye, Dake, darling.”

He walked back to the cottage with the nurse. “How is she?”

The nurse shrugged. “She’ll improve for a time, and then retrogress overnight. There seems to be something, some memory she won’t face up to. She’s had two full series of shock treatments. They seem to help for a time, but the effects aren’t lasting. She’s sweet, really. Mild and cooperative. We never have to use restraint, except when she realizes she’s due for another shock treatment. She thinks she’s some sort of a prisoner here. That isn’t uncommon, you know.”

“She always had such... enormous energy.”

“She seems quite content to vegetate, sir. That is common, too. A complete avoiding of decisions, or the reasons for making any.”

He went back to Philadelphia, back to the cheap room. Branson might have understood. He was gone. Patrice was gone. Oliver Krindle was gone. In a sense, Karen was gone.

He sat on the corner of the desk, lean ankles crossed, and tried to plot his future actions. “They” would be spread quite thin. There would be many places in the world, many places in this country, where he’d be out of range, free to work out some plan of what to do with the rest of his life.

Someone had to believe! Odd, how important that had become. He could not risk it with anyone he had known. It would have to be a stranger. Someone carefully selected. And the demonstration of his abilities would have to be carried on where the chance of detection was remote.

He walked in the city, looking at faces, looking into the eyes of strangers with an intentness that made them uneasy. His training had made faces more readable. He saw shallow concerns, and fear, and aimlessness. He walked long miles through the city. He found no one in whose stability he could believe. At dusk he walked out on the rusting mass of the Delaware River Bridge, wondering if all the cities would be like this, if there would not be a face in all the world to trust, instinctively.

The bridge lights were out and the girl was a vague gray shadow a dozen yards away. There was a pale hint of her face, and then she began to climb the parapet. He ran as quickly and silently as he could. She heard him and tried to move more quickly. He caught a thin wrist, pulled her firmly back and down to stand by him, his arm around her slim body. She stood very quietly, her head bowed, trembling slightly.

“Are you certain you want to do that?”

“Yes.” It was a whisper, barely audible.

He took out a match, struck it, shielding it from the fitful wind, tilting her chin up calmly to study her face. It was a young face, haggard, frail, vulnerable. She turned away from him.

“I’ll do it anyway,” she said. “Sooner or later.”

“The reason is good?”

“Of course.”

“I won’t try to question you about it. I’ll accept that. Your reason is good. Do you have a name?”

“Mary.”

“Suppose you were given a chance to do something... that might be constructive, and then be permitted, later, to destroy yourself. Would that interest you?”

“Constructive. That seems an odd word for you to use.” Her voice was low, the inflection good, articulation crisp, clean.

“You would have to take it on faith. I can’t explain, yet.”

“Hold a light by your face. I want to look at you.”

He lit another match. She looked up at him. “The heavy sorrow of all the world,” she said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“In your face. In your eyes. I work... used to work, in wood and stone and clay, and anything else that will take a form.” In the last dusk light he saw her hold her hands out, clench her fists. “Your face would fit a heroic figure. There aren’t many faces left like that. It’s a good face. Do you have a name?”

“Dake.”

“I’ll do what you want. But no questions. Will it take long?”

“A week, perhaps less. I don’t know.”

“I didn’t know it would take that long.”

“I have to tell you one thing, Mary. You have to be a person who... has very little to lose.”

“I have one question. Is it something criminal?”

“No.”

“All right. But first you better buy me something to eat. I’m pretty shaky.”

In the small, lamp-lit restaurant he had his first chance to look at her. Her hair was straight, dark, worn long. She wore a gray suit, a white blouse, both of casual good quality, but rumpled. She wore no makeup. He sensed her lack of pretense and vanity. She had a style of her own, a directness. It was her hands that interested him most. Good square firm hands, with short, competent-looking fingers. They were as immaculate as a surgeon’s.

She ate with controlled hunger, and with the precision of a starved house cat. He sat, smoking, and watched her.

At last he said, “I’m not asking questions about you. But in order to explain my position, I have to refer it to your customary frames of reference. Otherwise I might make myself meaningless to you. How do you... think about life, about the place of man in his environment?”

She made a face over her sip of substitute coffee. “Man,” she said, “as a free spirit, has never had the freedom he deserves in his environment. He just drifts from one form of collectivism to the next. Taboos change — lack of freedom of expression is a constant.”

“What causes his lack of freedom?”

She shrugged. “Ignorance, I suppose. Superstitions. The yen for the master-slave relationship. Or maybe plain bullheaded perversity. Let any person stand out as an individual, and the herd pulls him down and tramples him.”

“Progress?”

“We wiggle back and forth in a groove, like a phonograph needle. On a flat surface.”

“What if that’s the plan?”

“Are you being a mystic?”

“No. Suppose it is an arbitrary plan, a definite supression, for an unknown reason?”

“Presumably, then, by some definite entity, some thinking aura of fire-ball or nine-legged Venusian?”

“By men who have been trained in... abilities you would think impossible.”

She clapped her hands once. “What a lovely excuse for all defeatism! We can’t possibly get anywhere because we’re... breeding stock, or something. A rather poorly run stock farm, I might add.”

“I have been trained on another planet.”

She stared hard at him in a long silence. She picked up her spoon, put it down again. “This is where I should say I’m Mary, Queen of Scots, I suppose.”

“If you’d like.”

“They say madmen come in the most credible shapes and forms. I’m supposed to be mad, too. Suicidal. By the way, did you know the list of living creatures who do away with themselves? Lemmings, of course. That’s common. And man, bless him. A scorpion, when infuriated beyond reason, will sting himself to death. And there is a species of white butterfly that flies straight out to sea. Those are the non-functional deaths, as opposed to the dying of, say, the male spider, or the winged ant. Yet... somehow I cannot believe that either of us is mad, Dake.” She smiled and took a small glossy photograph from her pocket, slid it across the table to him.

He picked it up and looked at it. It was a photograph of a carving, in some dark wood, of a starving child. Spindle limbs, bloated belly, an expression of dull acceptance, without either pain or fear.

She said quietly, “I wasn’t going to tell you. I planned not to. I’ve been working too hard. I’ve been doing too many things which... disturb my public. Apparently I’ve been critical. And criticism is a Disservice. Yesterday they came with a writ. They smashed my work. Every last bit of it. Hauled it away. Gave me an appointment with the Local Board for this afternoon. I didn’t keep it. Suicide isn’t a gesture of protest. Not in my case, Dake. It is very simply a statement. I refuse to permit myself to live in my environment. Am I mad?”

“I... don’t think so.”

“I’m not afraid of labor. I’m not afraid of being sentenced. You must believe that.”

“I do.”

She lifted her chin with a touching pride. “I’ve never been afraid of anything that walks, creeps or crawls.”

“For myself, I would qualify that.”

“How?”

“I’ve been frightened, but never afraid.”

She tilted her head on one side. “I rather like that, Dake. Now what do you do with this training? Spread your filmy green wings and take off? Forgive me for sounding so flip. The food, I guess. Intoxicating after so long. I ate yesterday, before they came. That was the last time.”

He leaned forward a bit. “You see, I have to make someone believe me.”

“Or cease believing in it yourself? Maybe it’s necessary for you to keep believing in it.”

“That sounds like you’re thinking of insanity again.”

“Blame me?”

“No. But I want you to be... objective about proof.”

“Start proving.”

“I can’t. Not here. I can’t even tell you why I can’t do it here. It will sound like a persecution complex running wild. If you’re through, we’ll leave. We’re going to fly west.”

“By flapping our arms? Oh, forgive me! I feel right on the edge of tears or hysteria or something. Let’s get out of here.”

They sat in the deep comfortable seats of a CIJ flagship awaiting takeoff. Dake noticed that, under the terminal floods, the stairs had been wheeled back into position. Two men boarded the plane and came down the aisle toward them. Mary made a small sound, like a whimper. He saw the pale, flat, expressionless faces of Disservice agents, saw that they were staring at Mary, saw the eyes of the lead one widen as he glanced at Dake. A pink tongue flecked quickly at pale lips, and the hand slid inside the neat dark jacket.

He thought quickly. Takeoff was already seconds behind schedule. The Indian co-pilot glared at his watch.

Dake closed his hand over her thin wrist. “I have to demonstrate sooner than I wanted to,” he said, barely moving his lips.

It would be too puzzling to the other passengers if the two men, whose profession was so obvious, should turn and leave the aircraft without a word. He selected a man across the aisle, an overdressed toothy man with a shyster look. He saw dullness replace alertness as he enfolded their minds in his will, thrusting volition aside ruthlessly. They turned, their movements awkward and poorly coordinated, and grasped the toothy man and hoisted him roughly out of the seat.

“Hey!” the man yelped. “Hey, what are you doing?”

Dake made them shove and thrust him up the aisle. He had to stand to see the wheeled steps. The struggling victim made the task difficult. The balance could not be maintained, and the three of them tumbled down the steps. The victim got up, was grasped again, and marched off toward the main terminal buildings, across the concrete apron.

The steps were wheeled away, the doors slammed and latched. The jets flared and roared, and quickly faded into silence as the flagship, turning above the city, arrowing upward, passed the sonic barrier. He realized he still had hold of Mary’s wrist. He released it. She was looking up at him, her eyes unfrightened.

“They were coming after us, weren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“They wanted you too. I saw it in their eyes.”

“Yes.”

“You hypnotized them. I could see it in their walk. Such an odd walk. Will they... stay that way long?”

“As soon as they were out of range, they got over it.”

“Won’t they have the tower call the plane back?”

“I don’t think so. They don’t like to inconvenience CIJ in any way. And I know how their minds work. That man. I had to pick him quickly. They won’t be able to explain what they did, or why. So they’ll take particular pains to find some recent act of that man which can be classed as a Disservice. I’d be willing to bet that they’ll report that you weren’t on the plane. And they’ll conveniently ignore having seen me. Any failure of a Disservice agent is in itself classed as a Disservice to the State, you know.”

“Then we’re safe?”

“From the Disservice agents. But not from... another group.”

“Who are they?”

Do you believe me when I say I was trained on another planet?

“Yes, Dake, I— How in the world did you do that?”

In this world but not of it, Mary.

“Hold my wrist again. Hold it tightly. Hurt me with your hand.”

“Why?”

“I have to believe that I didn’t go off that bridge. I have to believe that all this isn’t happening in some... gray place between the last life and the next.”

He held her wrist tightly, made her gasp with pain. She smiled. “That’s better, a little.”

“The other group... they are the people who have been trained in the same things. I think they control the world. I can’t make myself believe in... their motives. I think they are evil. And apparently, the penalty for misplaced loyalty is death.”

“Wasn’t there a myth about a god who left Olympus, who preferred to live with man?”

“Men hate gods and fear them. I learned that quickly.”

“I don’t fear you. I don’t hate you. There’s just... a very definite awe. Can the others... find you?”

“They may be there when this plane lands. The first stop is Denver. So there isn’t much time for us.”

“What else can you do?”

“What did we do while we were waiting for the plane?”

She frowned. “Walked, talked.”

“Did we?”

He took over her mind quickly. The life left her eyes. Her hands rested flaccid in her lap. He gave her a better memory. He brought the memory up out of the good years. A great glittering ballroom, open to the sky, an orchestra, playing for the two of them. He dressed her in silver blue, a dress sheathed perfectly to the uncompromising perfection of her body. Music of Vienna, and a sky with too many stars, and the long dance as he looked down into her eyes.

After a time he released her. Her eyes focused on his with a slow fondness, and then she gave a little shudder and flushed.

“Lovely, Dake. But like dancing in a dream. Light, effortless. I always trample on my partner’s feet.”

“But it was real, Mary. You believe it happened. So it happened.”

She nodded, solemn as a child. “It happened.”

“Would you like more magic?”

“Much more. All there is.”

“Look at your hands.”

He had covered her fingers with great barbaric rings, with the emeralds and fire diamonds of illusion. She touched the stones.

“They... exist.”

“Of course. But all magic isn’t gay.” He dissolved all the rings but one, an emerald. He turned it into a small green snake curled tightly around her finger, its head lifted, eyes unwinking, forked crimson tongue flickering.

She flinched violently and then held her hand steady, stared at it calmly. “Magic doesn’t have to be gay. It has only to be... magic.”

“Do you believe?”

“In legend, Dake, it was necessary for you to sell your soul to the devil to be able to do this.”

“I refused to sell. That’s why there is a forfeit I have to pay.”

“The same forfeit I’m paying voluntarily. When you’re through with me.” She bit her lip and said, “I’m like a child with a new toy. I don’t want it taken away from me. Those two men back there — will they remember what happened?”

“Not what happened while I was controlling them. Just before and after.”

“Would the crew of one of these liners admit they had made an unauthorized landing?”

“They... might not, but...”

“Can you control all the passengers?”

“Not at the same time. I can put them to sleep, one by one, and give them a strong suggestion to remain asleep. But I can’t fly one of these things. I can’t therefore control the man flying it.”

“Could you make him believe he’d heard orders to land somewhere else, the way you made me believe in that... dance?”

He thought it over. “That might be done. It’s a case of erasing the memory later, though.”

There had once been a vast bomber base near Cheyenne Wells. One strip was kept lighted as an emergency strip. The flagship rolled to a stop. Sweat stood on Dake’s forehead with the intensity of his effort, with the diversification of it. He got the doors open. It was a thirty-foot drop to the hard surface. All around them the passengers slept. Up forward the crew slept, heavily. They walked on their toes inside the plane, talked in whispers. Dake let the emergency ladder down, climbed down and held the bottom steady as Mary clambered down.

A light came bobbing and winking toward them. A heavy man in khaki came out of the shadows. “What goes on here?” he asked.

Dake wasted no time on him. He took him over with punishing abruptness, made him stand aside, his eyes glassy. He took Mary by the hand and they ran across the runway. He turned and looked back at the aircraft, at the lighted control room. The crew stirred, came awake, looked around.

Dake and Mary ran and hid in the grass, watchful. After a time the flagship wheeled ponderously around, raced down the runway, lifted toward the stars.