Lovers and Other Monsters Read online

  “Sure.”—maybe that is the worst: sharing sorrow and unable to help & only able to give him a light for his cigaret—

  Kane put the matches back in his pocket and went on up University, pausing again at Oxford. A pair of large campus buildings jutted up to the left; others were visible ahead and to the right, through a screen of eucalyptus trees. Sunlight and shadow damascened the grass. From a passing student’s mind he discovered where the library was. A good big library—perhaps it held a clue, buried somewhere in the periodical files He had already arranged for permission to use the facilities: prominent young author doing research for his next novel.

  Crossing wistfully-named Oxford Street, Kane smiled to himself. Writing was really the only possible occupation: he could live in the country and be remote from the jammed urgency of his fellow men. And with such an understanding of the soul as was his, with any five minutes on a corner giving him a dozen stories, he made good money at it. The only drawback was the trouble of avoiding publicity, editorial summons to New York, autographing parties, literary teas... he didn’t like those. But you could remain faceless if you insisted.

  They said nobody but his agent knew who B. Traven was. It had occurred, wildly, to Kane that Traven might be another like himself. He had gone on a long journey to find out.... No. He was alone on earth, a singular and solitary mutant, except for—

  It shivered in him, again he sat on the train. It had been three years ago, he was in the club car having a nightcap while the streamliner ran eastward through the Wyoming darkness. They passed a westbound train, not so elegant a one. His drink leaped from his hind to the floor and he sat for a moment in stinging blindness. That flicker of thought, brushing his mind and coming aflame with recognition and then borne away again... Damn it, damn it, he should have pulled the emergency cord and so should she. They should have halted both trains and stumbled through cinders and sagebrush and found each other’s arms.

  Too late. Three years yielded only a further emptiness. Somewhere in the land there was, or there had been, a young woman, and she was a telepath and the startled touch of her mind had been gentle. There had not been time to learn anything else. Since then he had given up on private detectives. (How could you tell them: “I’m looking for a girl who was on such-and-such a train the night of—”?) Personal ads in all the major papers had brought him nothing but a few crank letters. Probably she didn’t read the personals; he’d never done so till his search began, there was too much unhappiness to be found in them if you understood humankind as well as he did.

  Maybe this library here, some unnoticed item... but if there are two points in a finite space and one moves about so as to pass through every infinitesimal volume dV, it will encounter the other one in finite time provided that the other point is not moving too.

  Kane shrugged and went along the curving way to the gatehouse. It was slightly uphill. There was a bored cop in the shelter, to make sure that only authorized cars were parked on campus. The progress paradox a ton or so of steel, burning irreplaceable petroleum to shift one or two human bodies around, and doing the job so well that it becomes universal and chokes the cities which spawned it. A telepathic society would be more rational. When every little wound in the child’s soul could be felt and healed... when the thick burden of guilt was laid down, because everyone knew that everyone else had done the same... when men could not kill, because soldier and murderer felt the victim die...

  —adam & eve? you can’t breed a healthy race out of two people, but if we had telepathic children/ & we would be bound to do so i think because the mutation is obviously recessive! then we could study the heredity of it & the gift would be passed on to other bloodlines in logical distribution & every generation there would be mow of our kind until we could come out openly & even the mind mutes could be helped by our psychiatrists & priests & earth would be fair and clean and sane—

  There were students sitting on the grass, walking under the Portland Cement Romanesque of the buildings, calling and laughing and talking. The day was near an end. Now there would be dinner, a date, a show, maybe some beer at Robbie’s or a drive up into the hills to neck and watch the lights below like trapped stars and the mighty constellation of the Bay Bridge... or perhaps, with a face-saving grumble about midterms, an evening of books, a world suddenly opened. It must be good to be young and mindmute. A dog trotted down the walk and Kane relaxed into the simple wordless pleasure of being a healthy and admired collie.

  —so perhaps it is better to be a dog than a man? no /surely not/ for if a man knows more grief he also knows more joy & so it is to be a telepath: more easily hurt yes but /god/ think of the mindmutes always locked away in aloneness and think of sharing not only a kiss but a soul with your beloved—

  The uphill trend grew steeper as he approached the library, but Kane was in fair shape and rather enjoyed the extra effort. At the foot of the stairs he paused for a quick cigaret before entering. A passing woman flicked eyes across him and he learned that he could also smoke in the lobby. Mind-reading had its everyday uses. But it was good to stand here in the sunlight. He stretched, reaching out physically and mentally.

  —let’s see now the integral of log x dx well make a substitution suppose we call y equal to log x then this is interesting i wonder who wrote that line about euclid has looked on beauty bare—

  Kane’s cigaret fell from his mouth.

  It seemed that the wild hammering of his heart must drown out the double thought that rivered in his brain, the thought of a physics student, a very ordinary young man save that he was quite wrapped up in the primitive satisfaction of hounding down a problem, and the other thought, the one that was listening in.

  —she—

  He stood with closed eyes, asway on his feet, breathing as if he ran up a mountain.—are You there? are You there?—

  —not daring to believe: what do i feel?—

  —i was the man on the train—

  —& i was the woman—

  A shuddering togetherness.

  “Hey! Hey, mister, is anything wrong?”

  Almost Kane snarled. Her thought was so remote, on the very rim of indetectability, he could get nothing but subvocalized words, nothing of the self, and this busybody—“No, thanks, I’m OK, just a, a little winded.”—where are You, where can i find You o my darling?—

  —image of a large white building right over here & they call it dwindle hall & i am sitting on the bench outside & please come quickly please be here i never thought this could become real—

  Kane broke into a run. For the first time in fifteen years, he was unaware of his human surroundings. There were startled looks, he didn’t see them, he was running to her and she was running too.

  —my name is norman kane & i was not born to that name but took it from people who adopted me because i fled my father (horrible how mother died in darkness & he would not let her have drugs though it was cancer & he said drugs were sinful and pain was good for the soul & he really honestly believed that) & when the power first appeared i made slips and he heat me and said it was witchcraft & i have searched all my life since & i am a writer but only because i must live but it was not aliveness until this moment—

  —o my poor kicked beloyed/ i had it better/ in me the power grew more slowly and i learned to cover it & i am 20 years old & came here to study but what are books at this moment—

  He could see her now. She was not conventionally beautiful, but neither was she ugly, and there was kindness in her eyes and on her mouth.

  —what shall i call you? to me you will always be You but there must be a name for the mindmutes & i have a place in the country among old trees & such few people as live nearby are good folk/ as good as life will allow them to be—

  —then let me come there with you & never leave again—

  They reached each other and stood a foot apart. There was no need for a kiss or even a handclasp... not yet. It was the minds which leaped out and enfolded and became one.

>   —I REMEMBER THAT AT THE ACE OF THREE I DRANK OUT OF THE TOILET BOWL/ THERE WAS A PECULIAR FASCINATION TO IT & I USED TO STEAL LOOSE CHANGE FROM MY MOTHER THOUGH SHE HAD LITTLE ENOUGH TO CALL HER OWN SO I COULD SNEAK DOWN TO THE DRUGSTORE FOR ICE CREAM & I SQUIRMED OUT OF THE DRAFT & THESE ARE THE DIRTY EPISODES INVOLVING WOMEN—

  —AS A CHILD I WAS NOT FOND OF MY GRANDMOTHER THOUGH SHE LOVED ME AND ONCE I PLAYED THE FOLLOWING FIENDISH TRICK ON HER & AT THE AGE OK SIXTEEN I MADE AN UTTER FOOL OF MYSELF IN HIE FOLLOWING MANNER & I HAVE BEEN PHYSICALLY CHASTE CHIEFLY BECAUSE OK FEAR BUT MY VICARIOUS EXPERIENCES ARK NUMBERED IN THE THOUSANDS—

  Eyes watched eyes with horror.

  —it is not that you have sinned for i know everyone has done the same or similar things or would if they had our gift & i know too that it is nothing serious or abnormal & of course you have decent instincts & are ashamed——just sol it is that you know what i have done & you know every last little wish & thought & buried uncleanness & in the top of my head i know it doesn’t mean anything but down underneath is all which was drilled into me when i was just a baby & i will not admit to anyone else that such things exist in me—

  A car whispered by, homeward bound. The trees tailed in the light sunny wind.

  A boy and girl went hand in hand.

  The thought hung cold under the sky, a single thought in two minds.—-get out. i hate your bloody guts.—

  NOTES

  1 Refers to Sam Cobean, cartoonist-ink

  Jerome Bixby

  and Joe E. Dean

  Share Alike

  One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most remarkable films, Lifeboat, concerns the fate of a boatload of shipwreck survivors, one of whom is a murderous Nazi. The hapless protagonist of “Share Alike” would have envied their plight, trapped as he is with a single companion—a vampire. Coauthor of this tale of psychological homosexuality, Jerome Bixby has contributed to Galaxy, Planet Stories and Startling Stories under a variety of pseudonyms, including Jay B. Drexel, Harry Neal and Alger Rome (the latter in collaboration with Algis Budrys), and wrote several films, including It, the Terror from Beyond Space.

  THEY SPREAD-EAGLED THEMSELVES in the lifeboat, bracing hands and feet against the gunwales.

  Above them, the pitted and barnacled stern of the S.S. Luciano, two days out of Palermo and now headed (or hell, reared up hugely into the overcast of oily black smoke that boiled from ports and superstructure. Craig had time to note that the screws were still slowly turning, and that a woman was screaming from the crazily-tilted afterdeck. Then the smoke intervened—a dark pall that lowered about the lifeboat as the wind shifted, blotting out the sky, the ship.

  Fire met water. One roared; the other hissed. Gouts of blazing gasoline flared through the smoke like flame demons dancing on the waves.

  Groaning, shuddering, complaining with extreme bitterness, the ship plunged.

  Sky and smoke became a sickening whirl, as the lifeboat tore into the churning water in a suicidal effort to follow the parent ship to the bottom. Spray flew; waves loomed, broke, fell away; the lifeboat shipped water. Craig cursed aloud, making rage a substitute for terror. Facing him, Hofmanstahal grinned sourly.

  The small boat righted itself. It was still in violent motion, lurching aimlessly across a sea jagged with whitecaps; but Craig knew that the crisis was past. He lifted his face into the cold wind, pulling himself up from the water-slopping bottom of the boat until his chin rested on the gunwale.

  A wide patch of brownish foam and oil-scum spread slowly from the vortex of exploding bubbles that rose from the vanished ship.

  The sea quieted. A gull swooped down and lit on an orange crate that had bobbed to the surface.

  “Well,” said Craig. “Well. That’s that.”

  Hofmanstahal peeled off his shirt, wrung it out over the side. The hair that matted his thick chest and peeped from his armpits had a golden sheen that was highlighted by the sun. A small cut was under his left eye, a streak of oil across his forehead.

  “You were of the crew?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But not an A. B. You are too spindly for that.”

  “I was navigator.”

  Hofmanstahal chuckled, a deep sound that told of large lungs. “Do you think you can navigate us out of this, my friend?”

  “I won’t have to. We’re in a well-travelled shipping lane. Well be picked up soon enough.”

  “How soon might that be?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if we got an SOS out; it all happened so fast.” Craig sighed, rolled over so that he sat with his back curved against the side of the boat. “I doubt if we did, though. The tanks right under the radio shack were the first to go. I wonder who got careless with a cigarette.”

  “M’m. So we’ll eventually be picked up. And in the meantime, do we starve?”

  Craig got up tiredly. “You underestimate the Merchant Marine.” He sloshed to the stern of the lifeboat, threw open the food locker. They saw kegs of water, tins of biscuits and salt meat, canned juices, a first-aid kit.

  “More than enough,” Craig said. He turned, searched the surrounding swells. “I wonder if any others survived...”

  Hofmanstahal shook his head. “I have been looking too. No others. All were sucked down with the ship.”

  Craig kept looking. Smoke, heaving stained water, debris, a few dying gasoline-flames—that was all.

  Hofmanstahal said, “At least we shall be well fed. Did you have any close friends aboard?”

  “No.” Craig sat down, pushed wet hair back from his forehead, let his hands fall to his lap. “And you?”

  “Me? No one. I have outlived all my friends. I content myself with being a man of the crowd. A select group of bon vivants for drinking and conversation... it is enough.”

  Sitting with a seat between them, as if each somehow wanted to be alone, the men exchanged backgrounds. By his own account, Hofmanstahal was an adventurer. No locality could hold him for long, and he seldom revisited a place he already knew. He had been secretary to a former Resident in Malaya, and concerned himself with gems in Borneo, with teak in China; a few of his paintings had been displayed in the Galerie des Arts in Paris. He had been en route to Damascus to examine some old manuscripts which he believed might contain references to one of his ancestors.

  “Although I was born in Brashov,” he said, “family records indicate that we had our beginnings elsewhere. You may think it snobbish, this delving into my background, but it is a hobby which has absorbed me for many years. I am not looking for glory; only for facts.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Craig said. “I envy you your colorful past.”

  “Is yours so dull, then?”

  “Not dull... the colors just aren’t so nice. I grew up in the Atlanta slums. Things were pretty rough when I was a kid—”

  “You weren’t big enough to be tough.”

  Craig nodded, wondering why he didn’t resent this second reference to his small size. He decided that it was because he liked the big man. Hofmanstahal wasn’t insolent, just candid and direct.

  “I read a lot,” Craig went on. “My interest in astronomy led me into navigation while I was in the Navy. After I was mustered out I stayed at sea rather than go back to what I’d left.”

  They continued to converse in low, earnest voices for the remainder of the afternoon. Always above them the white gulls circled.

  “Beautiful aren’t they?” asked Craig.

  Hofmanstahal looked up. His pale eyes narrowed. “Scavengers! See the wicked eyes, the cruel beaks! Pah!”

  Craig shrugged. “Let’s eat. And hadn’t you better do something for that cut under your eye?”

  Hofmanstahal shook his massive head. “You eat, if you wish. I am not hungry.” He touched his tongue to the dribble of blood that ran down his cheek.

  They kept track of the days by cutting notches in the gunwale. There were two notches when Craig first began to wonder about Hofmanstahal.

  They had arrange
d a system of rationing for food and water. It was far from being a strict ration, for there was plenty for both of them.

  But Craig never saw Hofmanstahal eat.

  The Rumanian, Craig thought, was a big man, he should certainly have an equally big appetite.

  “I prefer,” said Hofmanstahal, when Craig asked about it, “to take my meals at night.”

  Craig let it pass, assuming that the big man bad a digestive disorder, or perhaps was one of those unfortunates who possess inhibitions about eating in front of others. Not that the latter seemed likely, considering Hofmanstahal’s amiably aggressive personality and the present unusual circumstances but, on the other hand, what did it matter? Let him eat standing on his head if he wanted to.

  Next morning, when Craig opened the food locker to get his share, the food supply was apparently undiniinished.

  The morning after that, the same thing.

  Another notch. Five days, now. And Craig found something else to puzzle about. He was eating well; yet he felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into a strange, uncaring lethargy, as if he were well on his way toward starvation.

  He took advantage of the abundance of food to eat more than was his wont. It didn’t help.

  Hofmanstahal, on the other hand, greeted each day with a sparkling eye and a spate of good-humored talk.

  Both men by now had beards. Craig detested his, for it itched. Hofmanstahal was favoring his, combing it with his fingers, already training the mustache with insistent twiddlings of thumb and forefinger.

  Craig lay wearily in the bow and watched.

  “Hofmanstahal,” he said. “You’re not starving yourself on my account, are you? It isn’t necessary, you know.”

  “No, my friend. I have never eaten better.”

  “But you’ve hardly touched the stores.”

  “Ah!” Hofmanstahal flexed his big muscles. Sunlight flickered along the golden hair that fuzzed his torso. “It is the inactivity. My appetite suffers.”

  Another notch. Craig continued to wonder. Each day, each hour, found him weaker, more listless. He lay in the bow of the boat, soaking in the warmth of the sun, his eyes opaque, his body limp. Sometimes he let one hand dangle in the cool water; but the appearance of ugly, triangular shark fins put a stop to that.