In an instant he had sped across the living room to the front door—then, for reasons obscure to him but somehow important, he snatched up the two records from the phonograph, stuffed them into their jackets, carried them with him through the front door of the house, out into the bright warm sun of midday.
“Leaving, sir?” the brown-uniformed private cop asked, noticing him standing there, his chest heaving.
“I’m sick,” Jason said.
“Sorry to hear that, sir. Can I get you anything?”
“The keys to the quibble.”
“Miss Buckman usually leaves the keys in the ignition,” the cop said.
“I looked,” Jason said, panting.
The cop said, “I’ll go ask Miss Buckman for you.”
“No,” Jason said, and then thought, But if it’s the mescaline it’s okay. Isn’t it?
“ ‘No’?” the cop said, and all at once his expression changed. “Stay where you are,” he said. “Don’t head toward that quibble.” Spinning, he dashed into the house.
Jason sprinted across the grass, to the asphalt square and the parked quibble. The keys; were they in the ignition? No. Her purse. He seized it and dumped everything out on the seats. A thousand objects, but no keys. And then, crushing him, a hoarse scream.
At the front gate of the house the cop appeared, his face distorted. He stood sideways, reflexively, lifted his gun, held it with both hands, and fired at Jason. But the gun wavered; the cop was trembling too badly.
Crawling out of the far side of the quibble, Jason lurched across the thick moist lawn, toward the nearby oak trees. Again the cop fired. Again he missed. Jason heard him curse; the cop started to run toward him, trying to get closer to him; then all at once the cop spun and sped back into the house.
Jason reached the trees. He crashed through dry underbrush, limbs of bushes snapping as he forced his way through. A high adobe wall … and what had Alys said? Broken bottles cemented on top? He crawled along the base of the wall, fighting the thick underbrush, then abruptly found himself facing a broken wooden door; it hung partially open, and beyond it he saw other houses and a street.
It was not the mescaline, he realized. The cop saw it, too. Her lying there. The ancient skeleton. As if dead all these years.
On the far side of the street a woman, with an armload of packages, was unlocking the door of her flipflap.
Jason made his way across the street, forcing his mind to work, forcing the dregs of the mescaline away. “Miss,” he said, gasping.
Startled, the woman looked up. Young, heavy-set, but with beautiful auburn hair. “Yes?” she said nervously, surveying him.
“I’ve been given a toxic dose of some drug,” Jason said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Will you drive me to a hospital?”
Silence. She continued to stare at him wide-eyed; he said nothing—he merely stood panting, waiting. Yes or no; it had to be one or the other.
The heavy-set girl with the auburn hair said, “I—I’m not a very good driver. I just got my license last week.”
“I’ll drive,” Jason said.
“But I won’t come along.” She backed away, clutching her armload of badly-wrapped brown-paper parcels. Probably she had been on her way to the post office.
“Can I have the keys?” he said; he extended his hand. Waited.
“But you might pass out and then my flipflap—”
“Come with me then,” he said.
She handed him the keys and crept into the rear seat of the flipflap. Jason, his heart pulsing with relief, got in behind the wheel, stuck the key into the ignition, turned the motor on, and, in a moment, sent the flipflap flipflapping up into the sky, at its maximum speed of forty knots an hour. It was, he noted for some odd reason, a very inexpensive model flipflap: a Ford Greyhound. An economy flipflap. And not new.
“Are you in great pain?” the girl asked anxiously; her face, in his rear-view mirror, still showed nervousness, even panic. The situation was too much for her.
“No,” he said.
“What was the drug?”
“They didn’t say.” The mescaline had virtually worn off, now; thank God his six physiology had the strength to combat it: he did not relish the idea of piloting a slow-moving flipflap through the midday Los Angeles traffic while on a hit of mescaline. And, he thought savagely, a big hit. Despite what she said.
She. Alys. Why are the records blank? he asked silently. The records—where were they? He peered about, stricken. Oh. On the seat beside him; automatically he had thrust them in as he himself got into the flipflap. So they’re okay. I can try to play them again on another phonograph.
“The nearest hospital,” the heavy-set girl said, “is St. Martin’s at Thirty-fifth and Webster. It’s small, but I went there to have a wart removed from my hand, and they seemed very conscientious and kind.”
“We’ll go there,” Jason said.
“Are you feeling worse or better?”
“Better,” he said.
“Did you come from the Buckman’s house?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
The girl said, “Is it true that they’re brother and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Buckman? I mean—”
“Twins,” he said.
“I understand that,” the girl said. “But you know, it’s strange; when you see them together it’s as if they’re husband and wife. They kiss and hold hands, and he’s very deferential to her and then sometimes they have terrible fights.” The girl remained silent a moment and then leaning forward said, “My name is Mary Anne Dominic. What is your name?”
“Jason Taverner,” he informed her. Not that it meant anything. After all. After what had seemed for a moment—but then the girl’s voice broke into his thoughts.
“I’m a potter,” she said shyly. “These are pots I’m taking to the post office to mail to stores in northern California, especially to Gump’s in San Francisco and Frazer’s in Berkeley.”
“Do you do good work?” he asked; almost all of his mind, his faculties, remained fixed in time, fixed at the instant he had opened the bathroom door and seen her—it—on the floor. He barely heard Miss Dominic’s voice.
“I try to. But you never know. Anyhow, they sell.”
“You have strong hands,” he said, for want of anything better to say; his words still emerged semi-reflexively, as if he were uttering them with only a fragment of his mind.
“Thank you,” Mary Anne Dominic said.
Silence.
“You passed the hospital,” Mary Anne Dominic said. “It’s back a little way and to the left.” Her original anxiety had now crawled back into her voice. “Are you really going there or is this some—”
“Don’t be scared,” he said, and this time he paid attention to what he said; he used all his ability to make his tone kind and reassuring. “I’m not an escaped student. Nor am I an escapee from a forced-labor camp.” He turned his head and looked directly into her face. “But I am in trouble.”
“Then you didn’t take a toxic drug.” Her voice wavered. It was as if that which she had most feared throughout her whole life had finally overtaken her.
“I’ll land us,” he said. “To make you feel safer. This is far enough for me. Please don’t freak; I won’t hurt you.” But the girl sat rigid and stricken, waiting for—well, neither of them knew.
At an intersection, a busy one, he landed at the curb, quickly opened the door. But then, on impulse, he remained within the flipflap for a moment, turned still in the girl’s direction.
“Please get out,” she quavered. “I don’t mean to be impolite, but I’m really scared. You hear about hunger-crazed students who somehow get through the barricades around the campuses—”
“Listen to me,” he said sharply, breaking into her flow of speech.
“Okay.” She composed herself, hands on her lapful of packages, dutifully—and fearfully—waiting.
Jason said, “You shouldn’t be frightened so easily. Or life is going to be too much for you.”
“I see.” She nodded humbly, listening, paying attention as if she were at a college classroom lecture.