The Carnelian Cube

Seven:

The train proceeded with some of the moderation that had affected the Strawberry House automobile. Finch was without reading matter and bored with watching the landscape that ambled slowly past through the July heat. He had leaned back in his seat with closed eyes, trying to recall the fragments of his real world—if this were not indeed his real world—^;when a voice asked:

"Are you Finch Arthur Genealogist?"

He opened his eyes. Behind the voice were the familiar brass buttons of the Proctorate, with two other Proctors looming behind. The one in front held a photograph and a warrant.

"Don't tell me," said Finch, sourly. "Let me guess. I'm arrested again. Right?"

"Shore thing, brother. Sorry, but that's how it is." "What for this time?"

The Proctor frowned over his warrant. "District change. Sort of complicated—innovation, secondary responsibility for atrocious breach of the peace, avoidance of a decree of the District Court. I cain't rightly explain it all, but I'm afraid it's a fertilizing charge if they make it stick. Want to resist arrest?"

"All right," said Finch. He was sorely tempted to make the resistance a real one, but decided that would probably hamper things instead of helping.

A police car carried them at the usual thirty miles an hour to one of the vast beehives in the center of Louisville, but the arrangement within was no different than that at Strawberry House—the same three cells and the clerkly-looking police sergeant.

"I'd like to get word to Sullivan Michael Politician of Strawberry House," said Finch. "He'll understand about this charge."

The sergeant looked mildly surprised. "You think so? I'll send for him ef you insist, but it might not turn out good. He hasn't got no jurisdiction here. This is a District matter; charge brought by a District Politician, that's over Sullivan."

Finch wrinkled his forehead. "A District Politician? Why, what did I ever do to one of them? Who is he?"

The sergeant frowned at the warrant. "Montague Claude District Politician," he read. "Know him? Charges supported by Orange William Banker of Strawberry House, that's a friend of his."

"Oh." It was becoming clearer. "Why didn't Orange bring the charge himself?"

"Couldn't support it in court, I guess, with that busted jaw."

"Busted jaw? How?"

"That's in the charge. The busted jaw your agent Armstrong Terry gave him."

"Armstrong Terry? Look, will you start at the beginning and tell me what sort of a feast of the Lapithae has been going on here? I've been away for a couple of weeks in Richmond, I don't understand this innovation business, and I can't see how I came to be mixed up in it while I was miles away."

The sergeant seemed to be experiencing difficulty in sitting still. "Reckon you better get that from somebody who knows the whole story. I wouldn't want to take the responsibility of telling you something wrong and prejudicing your defense."

"Okay. Where's Armstrong Terry? In jail, too?"

"O' corse not. He was under enfeoffment to you."

More light was breaking. "Then can you please send for him," said Finch.

"Maybe he won't want to come. You see, he's in kind of an embarrassing position—"

"Then tell him I order him, as my bondservant or whatever else it is, to come to me. And—oh, yes, one other thing. I'm planning an active career in district politics when I get out of this absurd business. You understand me?" "

"Yep, reckon I do. Put him in the middle cell, boys."

It was several hours before a subdued Terry arrived, to stand nervously in a corner of the cell, hands in pants pockets, shuffling his feet like an oversized schoolboy.

"Well?" said Finch sharply, "what's this all about?"

"Now looky hyear, Arthur, I never meant you no harm; no sir, not a teensy bit. You've always been a good friend to me ..."

"Yes, I know. You can skip that and get on with the story," said Finch.

"Please, less noise," came a voice from an adjoining cell.

"All right," said Finch. "What am I really in here for? Aside from the fact that Orange wants me here."

"I'm 'fraid," said Armstrong Terry, "they done got you for jest about everything there is, excep' maybe worshipping graven images."

"No doubt. How am I responsible for—what was it?— atrocious breach of the peace?"

"Well, you see, Arthur,—gee, I wouldn't never have done it ef I'd stop to think that it would do to you—"

"Never mind; what did you do?"

"Hit that ol' Orange Bill on the jaw; and him my patron, too."

"Yes, I heard about that. Why did you hit him?"

"On account he was goin' to th'ow your big ashtray at me."

"And why was he going to bounce my ashtray off that Neanderthal head of yours?"

"Well, hit was land of complicated, but the way I look at it, he was under a false impression. Yes sir, a false impression."

"What false impression? Damn it, you're, driving me nuts with your evasions. Can't you tell me a straight story?"

"Well—" Terry squirmed like a hooked worm. "You know when you went away, you sort of left me to take care of things for you, and I figgered Eulalie would be one of the things you wanted me to take care of."

"No doubt."

"Well, the day after you lef, Eulalie says to me she's all stiff in the muscles from nervousness, worrying about you way off there in Virginia."

"About me? I would have said that was about the last thought to enter Eulalie's head."

"Well—"

"God damn it, stop saying 'well' all the time!"

"Okay, Arthur, I'm jest trying to tell you so you won't get too mad. Because I'm your friend, the best friend you ever had. Well, anyway, she said as how she was nervous about you, wondering ef you'd make your trip all right and git the things Sullivan wanted, and she should have gone with you, and things like that. And she says she's all stiff and kin I give her a mass-age. Because she remembers from when we was married—Eulalie and me, that is —I was always good at giving her a mass-age. So I came down to your apartment, and was just goin' to rub her back a bit—now don't get mad, Arthur, there wasn't nothin' wrong—"

Finch suddenly grinned, and the thought flashed across his mind that complacent husbands were often ill-treated by the world's opinion. "I can see what you're so shy about, but don't worry. Making a little hay while the Cat's away, huh?"

"No, I tol" you—"

"I say don't worry. I have no intention of cutting your liver out or expressing jealousy in any other dramatic fashion."

Terry heaved a sigh. "That's good, ef you mean it. Corse, it hain't rational to be jealous, nohow, but I been hearin' so much about this irrationality they're talkin' about you, I was almost beginning to believe it myself."

"All right, now you know."

"Well, me and Eulalie we didn't do nothin' but talk, and I was goin' to rub her up when jest then Orange Bill busts in. He's looking for Eulalie to beg her please to change her mind and go back with him and maybe go off to Alaska. And when he sees Eulalie lyin' there in a condition—a condition of disabilly, he jumps to conclusions—"

"Correct conclusions, apparently."

"Anyway, he jumps to 'em, and turns all red in the face, and starts calling me names. I guess he plumb had a seizure, and it was real serious. That's what I like about you Arthur, you take a sensible attitude—"

"Get back to the story."

"Okay. Bill picks up this big glass ash-tray to bung it at me, so naturally thinkin' he has a seizure and there ain't time to get no Proctors, I gotta sock him one. I didn't mean to bust him too hard though; I thought his jaw would of been stronger than that."

"So then what?"

"Oh, they take Bill to the hospital to mend his pore busted jaw, and me and Eulalie to jail. And Bill he sends for this Montague, seein' that a busted jaw like that is maybe bigger'n what a House Court can handle, and him and this Montague git their heads together. And then they find that enfeoffment agreement you and I got, so that makes you responsible for what I done, and they thought it would be a good chanct to git up some other charges, so they brought up innovation against you on account of that sonnet—"

"What the hell," said Finch. "Isn't that double jeopardy—being tried twice for the same tiling?"

"No, on account of the first time you was tried for advertising, not innovation."

"What's so terrible about innovation?"

Terry shook his head. "You know's well I do. They figger they got everything the way they want it, and trying to change it gits people disturbed or th'own out of their jobs. I did hear tell some of the engineers got plans for a machine that'll sure enough fly, but the authorities won't let 'em build it. Say hit'll be time enough in maybe a hundred years, when the effects of them automobiles all git absorbed."

"I see," said Finch. "Where's Eulalie?"

"She went to Sullivan and got him to trade her off to Los Angeles on account of she didn't want to live in Strawberry House no more with all that unpleasantness."

"Did she divorce me before she left?"

"I dunno. I reckon she most likely did, but I was in jail then, so I can't tell for shore."

"Haven't we—haven't any of our friends—any influence with this Montague?"

"Arthur, you just plumb don't seem to realize, you ain't got no friends any more. Excepting me, that is. Nobody will come 'round to see you, on account of they don't want to git mixed up with a District Politician and a man that's gonna be fertilized. Hit would look bad. Might even interfere with their gitting promoted some day."

"Oh, hell!" said Finch in heartfelt tones.

Terry said: "I feel right down sorry for you, Arthur, honest I do. Too bad I ain't a politician, or had a politician tied up somehow. I could fix all the jedges and examiners and things. Everybody knows it hain't reasonable to expec' them to enforce rules agin the men that control 'em." He sighed. "Nev' mind, Arthur. Here's a cigar I brought for you, and I'll be right there at the trial to be a witness."

He shook hands and departed gloomily. Finch sat down to whatever comfort the cigar could offer and to a set of thoughts that were anything but pleasant. He had doubtless wished himself into a perfectly rational frame of reference, but now that one examined it at close range, he thought he preferred an irrational individualism. These people had no responsibility, no guts; human limpets, each clinging to his little shred of Status, and afraid to budge for fear of being pried loose.

If he could only find that carnelian cube and use it to awake from this serial experience into a world where one-would have some freedom of personality ...

Something was decidedly queer about the flavor of the cigar. Finch knocked the ash off and looked at the end, probably the last thing he expected in the world was the actual discovery that a small and very hard file was embedded in the tobacco. Good old Terry!—his effusive friendship really meant something. Using it would be easy; the desk sergeant was at some distance from the cell, and these people were so rational that apparently it never occurred to them anyone legally arrested would wish to escape illegally, so there was no guard.

Forty-eight hours later, Arthur Finch wormed his bulk through the window and dropped to the grass below. It was a warm night and the moon, nearly full, was just rising.

"Terry?" he stage-whispered, in half expectation the athlete would be there. No answer.

The moonlight showed a square of paper, folded and stuck into a crack in the masonry. Finch took it out and stole to a little distance before finding shelter in a clump of trees, where he lit a match to read:

Dear Arthur, if you get out when 1 think you will, I will meet you in the woods haf a mile east and I will giv you some food and thengs for you to excape with. Nobody else would have the nerve but you are so difjernt I kno you will perfer to take your chances like you said before. Your pall.

No signature was necessary. Finch walked briskly along the edge of the gently winding roads toward the grove indicated. At the edge of the wood he whistled.

"Hurra up!" came Terry's whisper, and he was there. "I got your automobile on account of hits still yours, but I dunno ef I can drive it so good, so you better do it till we git toward morning. Go straight ahead down this road."

"Where are we bound for?" asked Finch, as the car moved along the smooth highway.

"This," said Terry, "is the road to Frankfort. Ef you turn off after about twenty miles, to the right, you git up in the hill country and by-and-by you come to Shelbyville House, where my old maw and paw live. Hit ain't what you'd call classy like Strawberry House, but they'll take care of you till you kin find somewhere else to go or maybe write to Sullivan to do something for you. You better drive this car in the woods somewhere and leave it before morning and nights you kin git there walking. The grub in this bag ought to last you out."

"Swell," said Finch, "and thanks."

After a period of silent progress, he remarked: "It's gradually beginning to dawn upon my limited intellect that in this world inventors and improvers are about as popular as the harpies were with Phineus."

"Naturally," said Terry. "Anybody kin figure that out. Any change you make is bound to hurt somebody. The professors got that figgered out long ago, so that any change you make, it's bound to upset something. So the only way to stop people gittin' hurt is to stop all them changes, ain't it?"

"Hmmm," said Finch. "How can you stand it?"

"Me?" said Terry in a surprised tone, "I git along.

Once in a while I git in trouble from bein' too sympathetic or shoorin' my mouth off too hard or poking somebody in the jaw or somethin', but that don't make no never-mind with me. I git along."

"You tried to help me, didn't you?" said Finch.

"That's because I'm so sympathetic. But it's reasonable, too. For instance, ef you came up to trial, you might be able to put some of the blame back on me on account of my being lower status. Everybody else would try to do that anyway, even ef you didn't. So I help you escape and kill two possums with one rock."

"Oh," said Finch. "I'm disappointed. I thought you were the world's one simon-pure altruist."

Terry rubbed a hard chin. "Well, maybe I am, now you consider it that way. Lot of things I kin do for you that nobody else kin."

They drove on in silence rill the light began to pale and Terry, with a prodigious yawn, suggested they turn off, abandon the car and get some sleep. "I'll watch while you sleep at first if you want to," said Finch.

"Okay," replied Terry, as they got out of the car and found their way up a grassy bank to the shade of a clump of trees. He yawned again and peeled off the coat of his pajama-like costume. As he did so, something small and hard bounced on the turf. Both men dived for it together, and Finch was first.

"My carnelian cube!" he cried. "So you had it!"

"That hain't no carnelian cube," said Terry indignantly. "That's my lucky stone. Why I most couldn't sleep without it."

"Yours! Where did you get it?"

"Hit was give to me, a long time ago by one of them foreigners that came through here. Thian Appollony Pedler or something like that was his name. I wouldn't have no luck no more ef I lost that."

Finch reluctantly surrendered the trinket and watched Terry stuff it in the breast-pocket of the undergarment.

"All right," he said. "I want to talk to you some more about it, but it can keep till morning."

"Wake me up after a couple hours, will you?" said Terry, and placing his head on the improvised pillow, was snoring almost at once..

Finch looked down at him in the starshine that had succeeded moonlight. Tiridat Ariminian had claimed ownership of the cube too, with perhaps somewhat greater justification. But if the hatchet-faced individual lying on one side were, as Finch suspected, only a representative of something from the real world, then he was a figment of the imagination. It would be no immorality to deprive such a figment of his own, Finch's, only connection with reality. He bent over and, his fingers moving lightly as they ever had in disengaging a delicate fragment of antique clay, worked the carnelian cube out of Terry's pocket; then lay down himself and with his hand holding the cube under his coat-pillowed head, drifted off to sleep, thinking happily of the world where an individual could be himself.