"You were living on the South Side?"
"Yes. And just after the underpass at 53rd Street . .. a crazy car, passing another one in that fog. He came up against us, at full speed. I saw him coming when he was practically crashing into us. All three cars, smashed. Four people, badly cut up. Only Martha was dead."
"And you felt that you killed her."
"I certainly did. And I still don't understand how. Look, it was she or I. if the car had swerved to the right—as it should—I would have been killed; she wounded. But it swerved to the left. God knows how. I think, when she saw what was going on, she herself grabbed the wheel and pushed it over. Or perhaps I did it, I really don't know."
"Just like the fight between Will and me. And that moment of indecision."
"Indecision on things long since decided."
"It was he or I. And I don't know, still don't know, how it was that it was he ..."
"And his left side cut up and my right, in the process."
"That is the way it had to be. Wait a moment: Can you explain to me why?"
"Karma. It all was there. Nothing to be done about it. And one half and one half made one."
"You know, I think it does something to your mind, the mere fact of having been born in the Orient."
"Sure does. Just look at Harry Luce."
"Thank you, Doctor Rosselli, Martha is getting much much better. And I am so glad that you think the material at our disposal is shaping up so promisingly."
"I think Mr. McDermott's statement will be very useful. After all, he has known Martha for a long long time and seen her practically until the day of the ... accident."
"And the maid is ready to testify."
"That'll be helpful too."
"I, myself, have prepared a little statement, avvocato. I don't know whether it will be of any use to you. Just some thoughts I had on the whole thing—the way I see it. And so I put them down. Here, at any rate, avvocato, here it is."
You are trying Martha Egan Sailor for murder while everyone says she is such a good girl, but the more they talk about her and the more she talks about herself, the wronger her case gets, and she's just a plain murderess.
Why didn't any one try me for murder? I killed Martha in a crash and took to the deed all the ingredients my brother used but plus one: the grace of God.
If it is a grace to live. Cain lived, but Abel died. There was Cain in Will, much Cain, but some Abel, for he died. There was Abel in me, much able Abel, but some Cain; for I live.
I was quite a regular fellow, standing on my own two feet, with a regular career and a successful one; I thought that was my merit and a bit of luck. With a marriage that miscarried: I thought that was my fault and a bit of disgrace.
It stopped there and made sense: a closed system of information.
Will too was a typical fellow, standing on his own two feet, with a typical career that made sense absolute, and a marriage that failed and ended in violence, an old and self-sufficient story.
Another closed system of information, and if you stop there, his murderess is a murderess.
But extrapolate the facts and interpolate the systems, and differentiate and integrate, which is not enough: who knows how much to interpolate, to extegrate and communate to get the whole, complex, infiniplex truth to the nth potential. Somehow no value can be assigned to Guilt in these equations. It whittles down, infinitesimal.
A wretched wrecked girl pulling a trigger is such a trivial factor in this factura. Incogent to think you'll bring down the crushing structure of incognita by sawing away at that thin leg of my cognita cognate. Let her alone. Whatever her part of how do you call it, Guilt, in the context of her own closed system, she was certainly expiated. The fact is that what happened here had to happen and did happen because it happened another time far away. Our wills are tied through the ages across spaces, and what I did, or had done to, my right hand was but a reflex of what he did with, or had done to, his left. It always was like that between us and was all written down. (Exhibit A, attached.)
That knocks out the girl, altogether, her only fault being that her name is Martha. Calling all Marthas, suing all Marthas, if you wish.
Blind chance has once more shown its foresight in permitting us to reason this out at Villa Igea, an insane asylum providing undoubtedly the most suitable setting for suchlike revelations. I am putting them down because, whereas it is of course possible that we are freaks of nature, half-men, conditioned by one another, it is, on the other hand, equally possible that our experience, though extreme, is yet more or less typical, and that men proud of their achievements or crushed by their guilt are equally presumptuous, for thinking they are free—they are not. With kindest regards, very sincerely yours.
"Oh, Phil, dear, the news is a little bit too good."
"It never can be too good, Martha. Why, what did he say, Doctor Comedger?"
"He said I was fine. General condition, excellent. Blood count, satisfactory. Weight, satisfactory. But, Phil, brace yourself for the good news ... "
"Well, what could it be?"
"Phil, it's twins."
WILLIAM MORRISON
Country Doctor
Joseph Samachson, Ph.D., is a quiet and industrious chemist who translates technical works from difficult languages, does complicated things on the research staff of a major New York hospital and, in spare time, writes books about archeology and the ballet with his wife, Dorothy. There is, however, another area of extreme competence in the man. Under the pseudonym of "William Morrison," Dr. Samachson has for years been among the foremost writers of science fiction. When the two halves of his personality fuse, when the biochemist meets the science fictioneer, we reap such a splendid hybrid harvest as—
He had long resigned himself to thinking that opportunity had passed him by for life. Now, when it struck so unexpectedly and so belatedly, he wasn't sure that it was welcome.
He had gone to sleep early, after an unusually hectic day. As if the need for immunizing against the threat of an epidemic hadn't been enough, he had also had to treat the usual aches and pains, and to deliver one baby, plus two premature Marsopolis calves. Even as he pulled the covers over himself, the phone was ringing, but he let Maida answer it. Nothing short of a genuine first-class emergency was going to drag him out of the house again before morning if he could help it. Evidently the call wasn't that important, for Maida hadn't come in to bother him about it, and his last feeling, before dropping off to sleep, was one of gratitude for her common sense.
He wasn't feeling grateful when the phone rang again. He awoke with a start. The dark of night still lay around the house, and from alongside him came the sound of his wife's slow breathing. In the next room, one of the kids, he couldn't tell which, said drowsily, "Turn off the alarm." Evidently the sound of the ringing hadn't produced complete wakefulness.
While he lay there, feeling too heavy to move, Maida moaned slightly in her sleep, and he said to himself, "If that's old Bender, calling about his constipation again, I'll feed him dynamite pills." Then he reached over to the night table and forced himself to pick up the phone. "Who is it?"
"Doctor Meltzer?" He recognized the hoarse and excited tones of Tom Linton, the city peace officer. "You better get over here right away!"