“About what, dear?”
“About you. You see, I never believed you were dead. I remember flatly denying it when I was told. I think I went on denying it, though I learned I couldn’t talk about you even to Mother Sophia. I knew all along that the ‘Waldstein,’ at the recital — that it was for you. You know, they didn’t want me to program it — even Mother Sophia didn’t like having it follow the Carr suite. But it had to be there. As I knew three years ago when I started serious toiling over it….” She added, so softly that I barely heard it above an idle chord I had touched: “You want me to see him?”
“Only if you want to.”
“I’m afraid to, Ben.”
“Then let it wait. But he hasn’t left Goyalantis.”
“Do you know that?”
“Almost.”
“But maybe he ought to leave it. It’s good country for me. I live with dream stuff, and now they’re beginning to pay me for it, bless ’em. But for Angelo? You said he was trying for music.”
“Miserably. Fighting it. Like this.” I spoiled a few measures of the Two-Part Invention as Abraham had done. Sharon winced. “Then goes back and plays it again — same way, du lieber Gott!”
“That won’t help,” said Sharon Brand. “Think he’s reaching for what he can’t ever have?”
“Kid with both hands full of cake reaches for a plum and drops the cake. But you could judge of that better than I.”
She laughed, not happily. “You get sort of wicked now and then. Oh, you know I’ll see him — sometime soon. Feminine curiosity.”
“I’ll settle for feminine curiosity.”
I left early, for I learned that Sharon had been working hard that day. An appearance with the Philharmonic, in response to popular demand, had been arranged for April, a first fruit of her triumph. Time to prepare for it was short. She was to give the Franck Symphonic Variations, and told me she still had the thing only three-quarters memorized. Wasn’t worried about it either — brr!
The door of my apartment was locked. But I had left it off the latch, on the chance that Abraham might come while I was away — sneering at myself for such a hope but compelled to act on it. Now I had trouble with the key.
The light was off when I opened the door and glimpsed the coal of his cigarette. He knocked a lamp over by groping, laughed helplessly as I found the wall switch. “Graceful,” he said, and lost his cigarette trying to retrieve the lamp. We got straightened around. He was glad to see me, ashamed, scared. He said: “The c-cat came back. Kind of singed.”
“Did you think I was sore?”
“You had a right to be.”
“Nah. Hold everything.” I mixed him my Double Grenade: three fingers brandy to one of applejack. Nobody can like it, but if you already feel ghastly, it likes you. Abraham gasped and commented: “Why’d they bother to split the atom?”
“Go another?”
“Soon as I get the burnt meat out of my throat, not right away….”
“I read about Walker in the paper.”
He shuddered, not at the drink. “What’re they saying?”
“They quote Max: nervous breakdown from overwork.”
“And that’s all?”
“His speech was incoherent, it says here.”
“It wasn’t, Ben. I was there.”
“Will — Will Meisel. Get used to it. Could be important.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try. I’ve thought of you the other way.”
I built a milder drink. “Take this one slow. It’s supposed to glaze over the charred spots.” He was looking at horror, and words wouldn’t come. But his young face was not, as it had been this morning, a battleground. It was the face of a sleeper beginning to wake — to a most ugly day, but at least waking. “Abe, suppose I run through what I know or guess. You catch me up if I have any facts wrong.” He nodded gratefully. “Daniel Walker is — was — a man for big emotional conversions. He couldn’t just step out of the Organic Unity Party. If he fell out of love with it he’d have to hate it, probably with a phase of hating the whole world and everyone in it. Call him manic-depressive, for a label. No middle ground: all black and white for Daniel Walker. I was at the Party office twice yesterday. Walker slipped up, told me something that was out of favor, already obsolete when I went back in the afternoon. Keller jumped on him for it. Walker’s mind flopped over on its other side. Much faithful service and then a kick in the teeth—”
“Bill? Bill jumped on him?”
“Yes. Had him on the phone, and I happened to see Walker afterward on my way out. Looked sandbagged. So — Walker, in his tailspin, and Dr. Hodding, pie-eyed drunk, conferred last night. I saw ’em at Max’s, among the pretty toy soldiers. Then Walker got into Hodding’s laboratory and took — something.” Abraham whitened under his tan; I was afraid the glass would jump from his hand. “Just guessing: a new virus?”
He managed to set his glass on the floor. “New. Can be airborne. Indefinitely viable, and no defenses in the human — no, no! — mammalian organism, that’s what Dr. Hodding was mumbling when — well, Mr. Nicholas gave him sleeping powders, after you left, but, poor devil, he wasn’t quite out, he started mumbling and tossing on the bed after Mr. Nicholas went upstairs and left me with him. Mammalian — it isn’t just us, Ben — Will — it’s everything. Medium of distribution too — some stuff like pollen — green—”
“Slow down, boy. Walker did get it, then?”
“Yes.”
“Contagious-plus, of course.”
“Respiratory system. He kept muttering about his monkeys and hamsters. Kept saying: ‘Macacus rhesus eighty-five per cent.’ I don’t know if that meant mortality. I think it did. Neurotoxin. Reaches the nervous system through the respiratory. Spinal paralysis….”
“And Walker?”
“Had it with him this afternoon. I stayed with Hodding — hours, I guess — chewing my damn nails, not knowing anything to do. Bill came home early, at three. Hodding was sound asleep then. Bill went up to Max’s. I tagged along, don’t think he wanted me to. They were out on the roof garden: Senator Galt sounding off about nothing much, Max pretending to listen. Miriam was there. That drip Peter Fry. Mr. Nicholas” — Abraham was shaking all over, reaching toward the drink but not taking it up — “Nicholas, taking it easy in a lounge chair built to hold him. God, what a beautiful afternoon! Warm…. I don’t think Galt and Fry knew Walker was there in the penthouse. I saw Miriam was worried about something, got her alone a second and asked. She started to tell me something about Walker in there building up a jag, but right then he came tearing out, ran to the parapet. Nobody could’ve stopped him, but nobody tried. He was balancing there with that — that damned peewee test tube, looked like green powder. Waved it at us. He was yelling: ‘Airborne! Airborne!’ He wasn’t incoherent. Laughing like crazy, but wasn’t incoherent. He flung it out over the Esplanade — must’ve shattered into dust, you wouldn’t even find the cork. Then he went after it. Not like jumping. Like floating out, as if he thought he could fly…. Max — Max had some kind of fit. Heart maybe. Turned white and started to fold. I think Miriam took care of him. Mr. Nicholas said: ‘Get the kid out of here!’ And Bill hustled me downstairs. I didn’t see the police. The others must have agreed to say nothing about me, I don’t know why they bothered. Police didn’t hear about Bill’s being there either, I think. He stayed with me, couple of hours, I guess, until somebody phoned down from Max’s and he went back up there. Then I — then I—”