Drunkard's Walk

CHAPTER VI

Ten thousand miles away, in the early afternoon, Locille was not very close to Egerd at all. 'Sorry,' she said. 'I would like to. But—'

Egerd stood huffily up. 'What's the record?' he said angrily. 'Ten weeks? Good enough. I'll be around to see you again along about the first of the month.' He stalked out of the girls' dayroom.

Locille sighed, but as she did not know what to do about Egerd's jealousy, she did nothing. It was rather difficult to be a girl sometimes.

For here's Locille, a girl, pretty enough, full of a girl's problems. It is a girl's business to keep her problems to herself. It is a girl's business to look poised and lovely. And available.

It is not true that girls are made of sugar and spice. These mysterious creatures, enamelled of complexion faintly scented with distant flower-fields and musk, constricted here and enlarged there - they are animals, as men are animals, sustained by the same sludgy trickle of partly fermented organic matter; and indeed with a host of earthy problems men need never know; the oestral flow, the burgeoning cells that replenish the race. Womanhood has always been a triumph of artifice over the animal within.

And here, as we say, is Locille. Twenty years old, student, child of a retired subway engineer and his retired social-worker wife. She is young, she is nubile. The state of her health is a ploughmare's. What can she know of mysteries?

But she knew.

On the night the Field Expedition was due to return, Locille was excused from all her evening classes. She took advantage of an hour of freedom to telephone her parents, out on the texas. She discovered as she had discovered a hundred times before that there was nothing to say between them; and returned to the kitchens of the Faculty Mess in time to take up her duties for the evening.

The occasion was the return of the Field Expedition. It promised to be a monstrous feast.

More than two hundred visiting notables would be present, as well as most of the upper faculty of the University itself. The kitchens were buzzing with activity. All six C. E.s were on duty, all busy; the culinary engineer in charge of sauces and gravies spied Locille first and drafted her to help him, but there was a struggle; the engineer whose charge was pastries knew her and wanted her too. Sauces and gravies won out, and Locille found herself emulsifying caked steer blood and powdered spices in a huge metal vat; the sonic whine of the emulsifier and the staccato hiss of the steam as she valved it expertly into the mixture drowned out the settling roar of the jet; the party had returned without her knowing it; the first clue she had was when there was a commotion at one end of the kitchens, and she turned, and there was Egerd, dourly shepherding three short, sallow persons she didn't recognize.

He saw her. 'Locille! Come on over and meet the aborigines!'

She hesitated and glanced at her C. E., who pantomimed take-ten-if-it-won't-spoil-the-gravy. Locille slipped off her gauntlets, set the automatic timers and thermostats and ducked past the kneading, baking, pressure-cooking machines of the Faculty Kitchen towards Egerd and his trophies.

'They're Japanese,' he said proudly. 'You've heard of War Two? They were abandoned on an island, and their descendants have been there ever since. Say, Locille—'

She took her eyes off the aborigines to look at Egerd. He seemed both angry and proud. 'I have to go to Valparaiso,' he said. 'There are six other aborigines who are going to South America, and Master Carl picked me to go along.'

She started to answer, but Cornut was wandering into the room, looking thoughtful.

Egerd looked thoughtfully, back at him.

'I wondered why Carl picked me for this,' he said, not bitterly but with comprehension. 'All right.' He turned to leave through another door. 'He can have his chance - for the next sixteen days,' he said.

Thoughtful Cornut was. He had never proposed marriage before. 'Hello, Locille,' he said formally.

She said, 'Hello, Master Cornut.'

He said, 'I, uh, want to ask you something.'

She said nothing. He looked around the kitchen as though he had never been in it before, which was probably so. He said, 'Would you like to - ah, would you like to meet me on Overlook Tower tomorrow?' 'Certainly, Master Cornut.'

'That's fine,' he said politely, nodding, and was halfway into the dining-room before he realized he hadn't told her when. Maybe she thought he expected her to stand there all day long! He hurried back. 'At noon?'

'All right.'

'And don't make any plans for the evening,' he commanded, hurrying away. It was embarrassing. He had never proposed marriage before, and had not succeeded in proposing now, he thought. But he was wrong. He had. He didn't know it, but Locille did.

The rest of the evening passed very rapidly for Cornut. The dinner was a great success. The aborigines were a howl. They passed among the guests, smoking their pipe of peace with everyone who cared to try it, which was everyone, and as the guests got drunker the aborigines, responding to every toast with a loud Banzai!, then a hoarse one, then a simper -the aborigines got drunker still.

Cornut had a ball. He caught glimpses of Locille from time to time at first, then not. He asked after her, asked the waitresses, asked the aborigines, finally found himself asking - or telling - about Locille with his arm around the flaccid shoulders of Master Wahl. He was quite drunk early, and he kept on drinking. He had moments of clarity: Master Carl listened patiently while Cornut tried to demonstrate Brownian motion in a rye-and-ginger-ale; a queer, alone moment when he realized he was staggering around the empty kitchen, calling Locille's name to the cold copper cauldrons. Somehow, God knows how, he found himself in the elevators of Math Tower, when it must have been very late, and Egerd in a cream-coloured robe was trying to help him into his room. He knew he said something to Egerd that must have been either coarse or cruel, because the boy turned away from him and did not protest when Cornut locked his door, but he did not know what. Had he mentioned Locille? When had he not! He fell sprawled on his bed, giggling. He had mentioned Locille a thousand times, he knew, and stroked the pillow beside him. He drifted off to sleep.

He drifted off to sleep and halted, for a moment sober, for a moment terrified, knowing that he was on the verge of sleep, again alone. But he could not stop.

He could not stop because he was a molecule in a sea of soapy soup and Master Carl was hurling him into the arms of Locille.

Master Carl was hurling him away because Egerd had hurled him at Master Carl; Locille thrust him at St Cyr and St Cyr, voicelessly chuckling, hurled him clear out of the jar, and he could not stop.

He could not stop because St Cyr told him: You are a molecule, drunken molecule, you are a molecule, drunk and random, without path, you are a drunken molecule and you cannot stop.

He could not stop though the greatest voice in the world was shouting at him: YOU CAN ONLY DIE, DRUNKEN MOLECULE, YOU CAN DIE, YOU CANNOT STOP.

He could not stop because the world was reeling, reeling, he tried to open his eyes to halt it, but it would not stop.

He was a molecule.

He saw that he was a molecule and he saw he could not stop. Then -the molecule. - stopped.