Two hours pa.s.sed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pa.s.s, Malone discovered; he drank two high-b.a.l.l.s slowly, trying not to think about anything. He felt terrible. After a while he made himself a third high-ball and started on it. Maybe this would make him feel better.
Maybe he thought, he ought to break out his cigars and celebrate.
But there didn"t seem to be very much to celebrate somehow. He felt like an amoeba on a slide being congratulated on having successfully conquered the world.
He drank some more bourbon-and-soda. Amoebae, he told himself, didn"t drink bourbon-and-soda. He was better off than an amoeba. He was happier than an amoeba. But somehow he couldn"t imagine any amoeba in the world, no matter how heart-broken, feeling any worse than Kenneth J. Malone.
He looked up. There was another amoeba in the room.
Then he frowned. She wasn"t an amoeba, he thought. She was the scientist the amoeba was supposed to fall in love with, so the scientist could report on everything he did, so all the other scien--psiontists could know all about him. But whoever heard of a scien--psiontist--falling in love with an amoeba? n.o.body. It was fate.
And fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was sure. Now he was looking at things from the amoeba"s side, and fate was terrible.
"No, Ken," the psiontist said. "It needn"t be at all like that."
"Oh, yes, it need," Malone said positively. "It need be even worse.
When I have some more to drink, it"ll _be_ even worse. Wait and see."
"Ken," Luba said softly, "you don"t have to suffer this way."
"No," Malone said agreeably, "I don"t. You could shoot me and then I"d be dead. Just quit all this amoebing around, O.K.?"
"You"re already half shot," Luba said sharply. "Now be quiet and listen. You"re angry because you"ve fallen in love with me and you"re all choked up over the futility of it all."
"Exactly," Malone said. "Ex-positively-actly. You"re a psionic super-man--woman. You can figure things out in your own little head instead of just getting along on dum psionic luck like us amoebae.
You"re too far above me."
"Ken, listen!" Luba snapped. "Look into my mind. You can link up with me: go ahead and do it. You can read me clear down to the subconscious if you want to."
Malone blinked.
"Now, Ken!" Luba said.
Malone looked. For a long time.
Half an hour later, Kenneth J. Malone, alone in his room, was humming happily to himself as he brushed a few specks of dust from the top of his best royal blue bowler. He faced the mirror on the wall, puffed on the cigar clenched between his teeth, and adjusted the bowler to just the right angle.
There was a knock on the door. He went and opened it, carefully disposing of the cigar first. "Oh," he said. "What are you doing here?"
"Just saying h.e.l.lo," Thomas Boyd grinned. "Back at work?"
Boyd didn"t know, of course, what had happened. Nor need he ever know.
"Just about," Malone said. "Spending the evening relaxing, though."
"Hm-m-m," Boyd said. "Let me guess. Her name begins with L?"
"It does not," Malone said flatly.
"But--" Boyd began.
Malone cast about in his mind for an explanation. Telling Boyd the truth--that Luba and Kenneth J. Malone just weren"t equals as far as social intercourse went--would leave him exactly nowhere. But, somehow, it had to be said. "Tom," he said, "suppose you met a beautiful girl--charming, wonderful, brilliant."
"Great," Boyd said. "I like it already."
"Suppose she looked about ... oh ... twenty-three," Malone went on.
"Do any more supposing," Boyd said, "and I"ll be pawing the ground."
"And then," Malone said, very carefully, "suppose you found out, after you"d been out with her ... well, when you took her out, say, you met your grandmother."
"My grandmother," Boyd said virtuously, "doesn"t go to joints like that."
"Use your imagination," Malone snapped. "And suppose your grandmother recognized the girl as an old schoolmate of hers."
Boyd swallowed hard. "As a what?"
"An old schoolmate," Malone said. "Suppose this girl were so charming and everything just because she"d had ... oh, ninety years or so to practice in."
"Malone," Boyd said in a depressed tone, "you can spoil more ideas--"
"Well," Malone said, "would you go out with her again?"
"You kidding?" Boyd said. "Of course not."
"But she"s the same girl," Malone said. "You"ve just found out something new about her, that"s all."
Boyd nodded. "So," he said, "you found out something new about Luba.
Like, maybe, she"s ninety years old?"
"No," Malone said. "Nothing like that. Just--something." He remembered Queen Elizabeth"s theory of politeness toward superiors: people, she"d said, act as if they believed their bosses were superior to them, but they didn"t believe it.
On the other hand, he thought, when a man knows and believes that someone actually _is_ superior--then, he doesn"t mind at all. He can depend on that superiority to help him. And love, ordinary man-and-woman love, just can"t exist.
Nor, Malone told himself, would anyone want it to. It would, after all, be d.a.m.ned uncomfortable.
"So who"s the girl?" Boyd said. "And where? The clubs are all closed, and the streets probably aren"t very safe just now."
"Barbara Wilson," Malone said, "and Yucca Flats. I ought to be able to get a fast plane." He shrugged. "Or maybe teleport," he added.
"Sure," Boyd said. "But on a night with so many troubles--"
"Oh, King Henry," Malone said, "hearken. A man who looks as historical as you do ought to know a little history."
"Such as?" Boyd said, bristling slightly.
"There have always been troubles," Malone said. "In the Eighth Century, it was Saracens; in the Fourteenth, the Black Death. Then there was the Reformation, and the Prussians in 1870, and the Spanish in 1898, and--"
"And?" Boyd said.