"Better lie down," Sarah Belle said. "Johnny, I've never seen you look so beaten; I can't understand it. What happened to you?"
He sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette.
"What can I do for you?" she asked, with anxiety.
"Nothing," he said.
"Is that Louis Sarapis on all the TV and phones? It sounds like him. I was talking with the Nelsons and they said it's Louis's exact voice."
"No," he said. "It's not Louis. Louis is dead."
"But his period of half-life -"
"No," he said. "He's dead. Forget about it."
"You know who the Nelsons are, don't you? They're the new people who moved into the apartment that -"
"I don't want to talk," he said. "Or be talked at."
Sarah Belle was silent, for a minute. And then she said, "One thing they said – you won't like to hear it, I guess. The Nelsons are plain, quite commonplace people… they said even if Alfonse Gam got the nomination they wouldn't vote for him. They just don't like him."
He grunted.
"Does that made you feel bad?" Sarah Belle asked. "I think they're reacting to the pressure, Louis's pressure on the TV and phones; they just don't care for it. I think you've been excessive in your campaign, Johnny." She glanced at him hesitantly. "That's the truth; I have to say it."
Rising to his feet, he said, "I'm going to visit Phil Harvey. I'll be back later on."
She watched him go out the door, her eyes darkened with concern.
When he was admitted to Phil Harvey's house he found Phil and Gertrude Harvey and Claude St. Cyr sitting together in the living room, each with a glass in hand, but no one speaking. Harvey glanced up briefly, saw him, and then looked away.
"Are we going to give up?" he asked Harvey.
Harvey said, "I'm in touch with Kent Margrave. We're going to try to knock out the transmitter. But it's a million to one shot, at that distance. And with even the fastest missile it'll take a month."
"But that's at least something," Johnny said. It would at least be before the election; it would give them several weeks in which to campaign. "Does Margrave understand the situation?"
"Yes," Claude St. Cyr said. "We told him virtually everything."
"But that's not enough," Phil Harvey said. "There's one more thing we must do. You want to be in on it? Draw for the shortest match?" He pointed to the coffee table; on it Johnny saw three matches, one of them broken in half. Now Phil Harvey added a fourth match, a whole one.
St. Cyr said, "Her first. Her right away, as soon as possible. And then later on if necessary, Alfonse Gam."
Weary, cold fright filled Johnny Barefoot.
"Take a match," Harvey said, picking up the four matches, arranging and rearranging them in his hand and then holding out the four even tops to the people in the room. "Go ahead, Johnny. You got here last so I'll have you go first."
"Not me," he said.
"Then we'll draw without you," Gertrude Harvey said, and picked a match. Phil held the remaining ones out to St. Cyr and he drew one also. Two remained in Phil Harvey's hand.
"I was in love with her," Johnny said. "I still am."
Nodding, Phil Harvey said, "Yes, I know."
His heart leaden, Johnny said, "Okay. I'll draw." Reaching, he selected one of the two matches.
It was the broken one.
"I got it," he said. "It's me."
"Can you do it?" Claude St. Cyr asked him.
He was silent for a time. And then he shrugged and said, "Sure. I can do it. Why not?" Why not indeed? he asked himself. A woman that I was falling in love with; certainly I can murder her. Because it has to be done. There is no other way out for us.
"It may not be as difficult as we think," St. Cyr said. "We've consulted some of Phil's technicians and we picked up some interesting advice. Most of their transmissions are coming from nearby, not a light-week away by any means. I'll tell you how we know. Their transmissions have kept up with changing events. For example, your suicide-attempt at the Antler Hotel. There was no time-lapse there or anywhere else!'
"And they're not supernatural, Johnny," Gertrude Harvey said.
"So the first thing to do," St. Cyr continued, "is to find their base here on Earth or at least here in the solar system. It could be Gam's guinea fowl ranch on Io. Try there, if you find she's left the hospital."
"Okay," Johnny said, nodding slightly.
"How about a drink?" Phil Harvey said to him.
Johnny nodded.
The four of them, seated in a circle, drank, slowly and in silence.
"Do you have a gun?" St. Cyr asked.
"Yes." Rising to his feet he set his glass down.
"Good luck," Gertrude said, after him.
Johnny opened the front door and stepped outside alone, out into the dark, cold evening.
Orpheus With Clay Feet
At the offices of Concord Military Service Consultants, Jesse Slade looked through the window at the street below and saw everything denied him in the way of freedom, flowers and grass, the opportunity for a long and unencumbered walk into new places. He sighed.
"Sorry, sir," the client opposite his desk mumbled apologetically. "I guess I'm boring you."
"Not at all," Slade said, reawakening to his onerous duties. "Let's see…" He examined the papers which the client, a Mr. Walter Grossbein, had presented to him. "Now you feel, Mr. Grossbein, that your most favorable chance to elude military service lies in the area of a chronic ear-trouble deemed by civilian doctors in the past acute labyrinthitis. Hmmm." Slade studied the pertinent documents.
His duties – and he did not enjoy them – lay in locating for clients of the firm a way out of military service. The war against the Things had not been conducted properly, of late; many casualties from the Proxima region had been reported – and with the reports had come a rush of business for Concord Military Service Consultants.
"Mr. Grossbein," Slade said thoughtfully, "I noticed when you entered my office that you tended to list to one side."
"Did I?" Mr. Grossbein asked, surprised.
"Yes, and I thought to myself, That man has a severe impairment of his sense of balance. That's related to the ear, you know, Mr. Grossbein. Hearing, from an evolutionary standpoint, is an outgrowth of the sense of balance. Some water creatures of a low order incorporate a grain of sand and make use of it as a drop-weight within their fluid body, and by that method tell if they're going up or down."
Mr. Grossbein said, "I believe I understand."
"Say it, then," Jesse Slade said.
"I – frequently list to one side or another as I walk."
"And at night?"
Mr. Grossbein frowned, and then said happily, "I, uh, find it almost impossible to orient myself at night, in the dark, when I can't see."
"Fine," Jesse Slade said, and begin writing on the client's military service form B-30. "I think this will get you an exemption," he said.
Happily, the client said, "I can't thank you enough."
Oh yes you can, Jesse Slade thought to himself. You can thank us to the tune of fifty dollars. After all, without us you might be a pale, lifeless corpse in some gully on a distant planet, not far from now.
And, thinking about distant planets, Jesse Slade felt once more the yearning. The need to escape from his small office and the process of dealing with gold-bricking clients whom he had to face, day after day.
There must be another life than this, Slade said to himself. Can this really be all there is to existence?
Far down the street outside his office window a neon sign glowed night and day. Muse Enterprises, the sign read, and Jesse Slade knew what it meant. I'm going in there, he said to himself. Today. When I'm on my ten-thirty coffee break; I won't even wait for lunch time.