The point of the blade dropped to within inches of my throat as this blow collapsed a big piece of my resistance. Still aching, I was able to turn my hip to prevent another ball-buster, simultaneous with casting my right forearm beneath his wrist and cutting my hand in the process. Then I pushed with my right, pulled with my left and rolled to the left with the force of the turn. His arm was jerked free from my still-weakened grasp, and he rolled off to the side and I tried to recover — and then I heard him scream.
Coming up onto my knees, I saw that he lay upon his left side where he had come to a stop and the knife was several feet beyond him, caught in a tangle of broken branches. Both hands were raised to his face, and his cries were wordless, animal-like bleats.
I made my way over to him to see what had happened, with Frakir held ready to wrap about his throat in case it were some sort of trick he was playing.
But it was not. When I reached him I saw that a sharp limb of a fallen branch had pierced his right eye. There was blood on his cheek and the side of his nose.
“Stop jerking around!” I said. “You’ll make it worse. Let me get it out.”
“Keep your damn hands off me!” he cried.
Then, clenching his teeth and grimacing horribly, he caught hold of the limb with his right hand and drew his head back. I had to look away. He made a whimpering noise several moments later and collapsed, unconscious. I ripped off my left shirt sleeve, tore a strip from it, folded it into a pad and placed it over his damaged eye. With another strip, I tied it into place there. Frakir found her way back about my wrist, as usual.
Then I dug out the Trump that would take us home and raised him in my arms. Mom wasn’t going to like this.
Power.
It was a Saturday. Luke and I had been hang gliding all morning. Then we met Julia and Gail for lunch, and afterward we took the Starburst out and sailed all afternoon. Later, we’d hit the bar and grill at the marina where I bought the beers while we waited for steaks, because Luke had slammed my right arm flat against the tabletop when we’d wrist wrestled to see who paid for drinks.
Someone at the next table said, “If I had a million dollars, tax free, I’d…” and Julia had laughed as she listened.
“What’s funny?” I asked her.
“His wish list,” she said. “I’d want a closet full of designer dresses and some elegant jewelry to go with them. Put the closet in a really nice house, and put the house someplace where I’d be important…”
Luke smiled. “I detect a shift from money to power,” he said.
“Maybe so,” she replied. “But what’s the difference, really?”
“Money buys things,” Luke said. “Power makes things happen. If you ever have a choice, take the power.”
Gail’s usual faint smile had faded, and she wore a very serious expression.
“I don’t believe power should be an end in itself,” she said. “One has it only to use it in certain ways.”
Julia laughed. “What’s wrong with a power trip?” she asked. “It sounds like fun to me.”
“Only till you run into a greater power,” Luke said.
“Then you have to think big,” Julia answered.
“That’s not right,” Gail said. “One has duties and they come first.”
Luke was studying her now, and he nodded.
“You can keep morality out of it,” Julia said.
“No, you can’t,” Luke responded.
“I disagree,” she said.
Luke shrugged.
“She’s right,” Gail said suddenly. “I don’t see that duty and morality are the same thing.”
“Well, if you’ve got a duty,” Luke said, “something you absolutely must do — a matter of honor, say — then that becomes your morality.”
Julia looked at Luke, looked at Gail. “Does that mean we just agreed on something?” she asked.
“No,” Luke said, “I don’t think so.”
Gail took a drink. “You’re talking about a personal code that need not have anything to do with conventional morality.”
“Right,” Luke said.
“Then it’s not really morality. You’re just talking duty,” she said.
“You’re right on the duty,” Luke answered. “But it’s still morality.”
“Morality is the values of a civilization,” she said.
“There is no such thing as civilization,” Luke replied. “The word just means the art of living in cities.”
“All right, then. Of a culture,” she said.
“Cultural values are relative things,” Luke said, smiling, “and mine say I’m right.”
“Where do yours come from?” Gail asked, studying him carefully.
“Let’s keep this pure and philosophical, huh?” he said.
“Then maybe we should drop the term entirely,” Gail said, “and just stick with duty.”
“What happened to power?” Julia asked.
“It’s in there somewhere,” I said.
Suddenly Gail looked perplexed, as if our discussion were not something which had been repeated a thousand times in different forms, as if it had actually given rise to some new turn of thought.
“If they are two different things,” she said slowly, “which one is more important?
“They’re not,” Luke said. “They’re the same.”
“I don’t think so,” Julia told him. “But duties tend to be clear-cut, and it sounds as if you can choose your own morality. So if I had to have one I’d go with the morality.”
“I like things that are clear-cut,” Gail said.
Luke chugged his beer, belched lightly. “Shit!” he said. “Philosophy class isn’t till Tuesday. This is the weekend. Who gets the next round, Merle?”
I placed my left elbow on the tabletop and opened my hand.
While we pushed together, the tension building and building between us, he said through clenched teeth, “I was right, wasn’t I?”
“You were right,” I said, just before I forced his arm all the way down.
Power.
I removed my mail from the little locked box in the hallway and carried it upstairs to my apartment. There were two bills, some circulars and something thick and first class without a return address on it.
I closed the door behind me, pocketed my keys and dropped my briefcase onto a nearby chair. I had started toward the sofa when the telephone in the kitchen rang.
Tossing the mail toward the coffee table, I turned and started for the kitchen. The blast that occurred behind me might or might not have been strong enough to knock me over. I don’t know, because I dove forward of my own volition as soon as it occurred. I hit my head on the leg of the kitchen table. It dazed me somewhat, but I was otherwise undamaged. All the damage was in the other room. By the time I got to my feet the phone had stopped ringing.
I already knew there were lots of easier ways to dispose of junk mail, but I wondered for a long time afterward who it was that had been on the telephone.
I sometimes remembered the first of the series, too, the truck that had come rushing toward me. I had only caught a glimpse of the driver’s face before I’d moved — inert, he was completely expressionless, as if he were dead, hypnotized, drugged or somehow possessed. Choose any of the above, I decided, and maybe more than one.
And then there was the night of the muggers. They had attacked me without a word. When it was all over and I was heading away, I had glanced back once. I thought I’d glimpsed a shadowy figure draw back into a doorway up the street — a smart precaution, I’d say, in light of what had been going on. But of course it could have been someone connected with the attack, too. I was torn. The person was too far off to have been able to give a good description of me. If I went back and it turned out to be an innocent bystander, there would then be a witness capable of identifying me. Not that I didn’t think it was an open-and-shut case of selfdefense, but there’d be a lot of hassle. So I said the hell with it, and I walked on. Another interesting April 30.