"Hot--?"
"Stolen--you know what I mean."
"Stolen? Jean, you didn"t mean to accuse me of that."
Skepticism was ugly on her lovely face. "Fred, what"s your angle? You step out of the darkness like some man from Mars in a strange suit, with no money, but a diamond that must be worth--"
"We"ll learn what it"s worth," I said. "Mars isn"t inhabited, Jean.
Don"t you trust me? Have I done anything to cause you to distrust me?"
"Nothing," she said.
"Do you distrust all men, Jean?"
"No. Just the ones I"ve met. Oh, baby, and I thought you were a farmer."
She was crushing out her cigarette. "You haven"t a place to stay, but I"ve got a guest house, and you"ll stay there, tonight. You aren"t stepping back into the darkness, tonight, Fred Werig. You, I want to know about."
The words held a threat, but not her meaning, I was sure. And what better way to orient myself than in the home of a friend?
That was some home she had. Ma.s.sive, in an architecture I"d a.s.sumed was confined to the south-eastern United States. Two-story place, with huge, two-story pillars and a house-wide front porch, the great lawn studded with giant trees.
And she lived there alone, excepting for the servants. She was no huddler, and I told her that.
"Dad owned a lot of property in this town," she said. "He was a great believer in the future of this town."
At the time I didn"t understand what that had to do with her lack of huddling.
The guest house was small, but very comfortable, a place of three bedrooms and two baths and a square living room with a natural stone fireplace.
I had my first night of sleep on this planet, and slept very well. I woke to a cloudy morning, and the sound of someone knocking on the front door.
It was a servant, and she said, "Miss Decker sent me to inform you that breakfast will be ready any time you want it, sir. We are eating inside, this morning, because of the cold."
"I"ll be there, soon, thank you," I said, and she went away.
Showering, I was thinking of Akers for some reason and his directed theory and what was that other theory he"d had? Oh, yes, the twin planets. Senile, he was, by that time and not much listened to, but a mind like that? And who had he been a.s.sociated with at that time? It was before my birth, but I"d read about it, long ago. The Visitor, Akers had called this man. The Earth man who had come to Venus. And what had his name been?
Beer--? Beers--? No, but like that--and it came.
Ambrose Bierce.
Jean wore a light green robe, for breakfast, and it was difficult for me to take my eyes away from her.
"I"m not usually this informal at mixed breakfasts," she told me, smiling, "but I thought it might warm up enough for a swim a little later."
She threw the robe aside, and I saw she was wearing a scanty garment beneath it. Evidently the huddlers didn"t swim naked, and I wondered at a moral code that sanctioned drinking alcohol but was ashamed of the human body.
I was glad the house had been cold when I answered the maid"s summons, for I had worn a robe I"d found there.
Fruit juice and wheat cakes and sausage and toast and jelly and eggs and milk. We ate in a small room, off a larger dining room, a small room whose walls were gla.s.s on two sides.
"It"s too old a house to modernize completely," Jean told me. "I grew up in this house."
"You don"t--work, Jean?"
"No. Should I?"
"Work or study. Life must be very dull if you don"t do one of those."
"You might have a point there," she said. "I tried everything from the movies to sculpture. I wasn"t very good at anything. What do you do, Fred?"
"I"m a perpetual guest," I said lightly. "Do you read much, Jean?"
"Too much, though nothing very heavy, I grant you."
"Have you ever read about a man named Ambrose Bierce?"
"I"ve read everything he ever wrote. Why did you ask that, Fred?"
"I--heard about him. I wondered who he was."
"Where did you hear about him, Fred? In Mexico?"
"No. I don"t remember where I heard about him."
"He disappeared," she said quietly, "some time right before the first world war. I"ve forgotten the exact year. I think it was 1914."
Before the war, before the "first" war.... And I thought of Jars" wife, who had come to us just before this last planetary war--the "second"
world war. And what was his pet name for her? Guest, he called her, and joked about her coming from another world. But didn"t Jars defend the discredited late-in-life theories of Akers? I tried to remember the name of Jars" wife, and then it came.
I asked, "And Amelia Earhart?"
Jean"s voice was rough. "July 2nd, 1937. I guess I"ll never forget that, when my G.o.d died. What are you trying to say? Is it some new d.a.m.ned cult you"re promoting, Fred?"
"You called her a G.o.d. Why, Jean?"
"I don"t know. I was only thirteen when she died. But she was so clean, so--so free and windswept, so--oh, what the spirit of America should be--and isn"t."
I looked up to see tears in her eyes. Why was she moved? This girl who certainly knew corruption, this worldly, lovely girl. I smiled at her.
She wiped the tears with the back of her hand. "Fred, you are the strangest--I know this town"s a zoo, but you, Fred--"
I continued to smile at her. "I"m just a guy trying to learn. May I repeat something I said last night? You"re beautiful, Jean."
"You"re no three-headed calf, yourself," she said.
Twin planets and parallel evolution.... Parallel destiny? Not with a third planetary war shaping up here. Three major wars in less than fifty years. Why, why, why....