Or it may be that Moreland returned secretly and took it away with him.
But I am certain that it was not made on earth.
And although there are reasons to fear the contrary, I feel that somewhere—in some cheap boarding house or lodging place, or in some madhouse—Albert Moreland, if the game is not already lost and the forfeiture begun, is still playing that unbelievable game for stakes it is unwholesome to contemplate.
GAME FOR MOTEL ROOM
Sonya moved around the warm, deeply carpeted motel room in the first gray trickle of dawn as if to demonstrate how endlessly beautiful a body can be if its owner will only let it. Even the body of a woman in, well, perhaps, her forties, Burton judged, smiling at himself in lazy reproof for having thought that grudging word “even.” It occurred to him that bodies do not automatically grow less beautiful with age, but that a lot of bodies are neglected, abused and even hated by their owners: women in particular are apt to grow contemptuous and ashamed of their flesh, and this always shows. They start thinking old and ugly and pretty soon they look it. Like a car, a body needs tender constant care, regular tuneups, an occasional small repair and above all it needs to be intimately loved by its owner and from time to time by an admiring second party, and then it never loses beauty and dignity, even when it corrupts in the end and dies.
Oh, the dawn's a cold hour for philosophy, Burton told himself, and somehow philosophy always gets around to cold topics, just as love-making and all the rest of the best of life make one remember death and even worse things. His lean arm snaked out to a bedside table, came back with a cigarette and an empty folder of matches.
Sonya noticed. She rummaged in her pale ivory traveling case and tossed him a black, pear-shaped lighter. Burton caught the thing, lit his cigarette, and then studied it. It seemed to be made of black ivory and shaped rather like the grip of a revolver, while the striking mechanism was of blued steel. The effect was sinister.
“Like it?” Sonya asked from across the room.
“Frankly, no. Doesn't suit you."
“You show good taste—or sound instinct. It's a vacation present from my husband."
“He has bad taste? But he married you."
“He has bad everything. Hush, Baby,"
Burton didn't mind. Not talking let him concentrate on watching Sonya. Slim and crop-haired, she looked as trimly beautiful as her classic cream-colored, hard-topped Italian sports car, in which she had driven him to this cozy hideaway from the bar where they'd picked each other up. Her movements now, stooping to retrieve a smoke-blue stocking and trail it across a chair, momentarily teasing apart two ribs in the upward-slanting Venetian blinds to peer at the cold gray world outside, executing a fraction of a dance figure, stopping to smile at emptiness ... these movements added up to nothing but the rhythms and symbolisms of a dream, yet it was the sort of dream in which actor and onlooker might float forever. In the morning twilight she looked now like a schoolgirl, now like a witch, now like an age-outwitting ballerina out for her twenty-fifth season but still in every way the premiere danseuse. As she moved she hummed in a deep contralto voice a tune that Burton didn't recognize, and as she hummed the dim air in front of her lower face seemed to change color very faintly, the deep purple and blues and browns matching the tones of the melody. Pure illusion, Burton was sure, like that which some hashish-eaters and weed-smokers experience during their ecstasy when they hear words as colors, but most enjoyable.
To exercise his mind, now that his body had its fill and while his eyes were satisfyingly occupied,
Burton began to set in order the reasons why a mature lover is preferable to one within yoohooing distance of twenty in either direction. Reason One: she does quite as much of the approach work as you do. Sonya had been both heartwarmingly straightforward and remarkably intuitive at the bar last night. Reason Two: she is generally well-equipped for adventure. Sonya had provided both sports car and motel room. Reason Three: she does not go into an emotional tailspin after the act of love even if her thoughts trend toward death then, like yours do. Sonya seemed both lovely and sensible—the sort of woman it was good to think of getting married to and having children by.
Sonya turned to him with a smile, saying in her husky voice that still had a trace of the hum in it, “Sorry, Baby, but it's quite impossible. Especially your second notion."
“Did you really read my mind?” Burton demanded. “Why couldn't we have children?"
Sonya's smile deepened. She said, “I think I will take a little chance and tell you why.” She came over and sat on the bed beside him and bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
“That was nice,” Burton said lazily. “Did it mean something special?"
She nodded gravely. “It was to make you forget everything I'm going to tell you."
“How—if I'm to understand what you tell?” he asked.
“After a while I will kiss you again on the forehead and then you will forget everything I have told you in between. Or if you're very good, I'll kiss you on the nose and then you'll remember—but be unable to tell anyone else."
“If you say so,” Burton smiled. “But what is it you're going to tell me?"
“Oh,” she said, “just that I'm from another planet in a distant star cluster. I belong to a totally different species. We could no more start a child than a Chihauhau and a cat or a giraffe and a rhinoceros. Unlike the mare and the donkey we could not even get a cute little sterile mule with glossy fur and blue bows on his ears."
Burton grinned. He had just thought of Reason Four: a really grown-up lover plays the most delightfully childish nonsense games.
“Go on,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “superficially of course I'm very like an Earth woman. I have two arms and two legs and this and these ..."
“For which I am eternally grateful,” he said.
“You like them, eh?"
“Oh yes—especially these ."
“Well, watch out—they don't even give milk, they're used in espying. You see, inside I'm very different,” she said. “My mind is different too. It can do mathematics faster and better than one of your electric calculating machines—"
“What's two and two?” Burton wanted to know.
“Twenty-two,” she told him, “and also one hundred in the binary system and eleven in the trinary and four in duodecimal. I have perfect recall—I can remember every least thing I've ever done and every word of every book I've leafed through. I can read unshielded minds—in fact anything up to triple shielding—and hum in colors. I can direct my body heat so that I never really need clothes to keep me warm at temperatures above freezing. I can walk on water if I concentrate, and even fly—though I don't do it here because it would make me conspicuous."
“Especially at the present moment,” Burton agreed, “though it would be a grand sight. Why are you here, by the way, and not behaving yourself on your home planet?"
“I'm on vacation,” she grinned. “Oh yes, we use your rather primitive planet for vacations—like you do Africa and the Canadian forests. A little machine teaches us during one night's sleep several of your languages and implants in our brains the necessary background information. My husband surprised me by giving me the money for this vacation—same time he gave me the lighter. Usually he's very stingy. But perhaps he had some little plot—an affair with his chief nuclear chemist, I'd guess—of his own in mind and wanted me out of the way. I can't be sure though, because he always keeps his mind quadruple- shielded, even from me."