“Take good care of the perfessor, sweetheart,” one of the customers said. Sharan flushed. The room was once again filled with laughter.
She unlocked the car and the agency man edged Bard in onto the seat. As soon as Bard was sitting, he fell asleep again. He was between them as the agency man started the car. “Smells a little strong, don’t he?” the agency man said.
Sharan didn’t answer. The rooming house was in the next block. It was a scabrous building, full of the memories of evil, of the wry ghosts of orgy.
“Second floor front,” the agency man said. He woke Bard up. Bard Lane seemed dazed. There was no more protest in him. Sharan followed them up the stairs, the agency man supporting Bard with an arm around his waist. The door was unlocked. The room was tiny, shabby, and the hall was sour and dim.
“You want I should stay and help you, lady?” the man asked.
“Thank you. I’ll take it from here on,” she said. “And thank you.”
“All in the day’s work. Be careful. Some of them go a little nutty when you start to wring them out.”
He had collapsed on the narrow bed. He snored. She unlocked the door behind her and took the key. In an hour she was back with a complete set of new clothes that would fit him. She turned on the single light, cleaned up some of the litter in the room. The bath was across the hall. No shower. Just a tub.
His shoes were cracked and broken things that could have come from a trash barrel. He wore no socks. His ankles were grubby. She laid out his shaving things, the new clothes, in the bathroom.
Then came the nightmare of waking him, of seeing the eyes open vague in the gray face. He no longer seemed to know her. She supported more than half his weight getting him across the hall. He could not help himself. He sat on the stool with his back against the wall and let himself be undressed, like a child. Getting him into the tub was a major engineering project, and then she had to wait until the cold water revived him enough so that she could be sure he did not drown. She went out and brought back a quart of hot coffee. He drank it and looked at her with a bit more comprehension.
“Bard! Listen to me. Clean up and get dressed.”
“Sure, sure,” he mumbled.
From time to time she went back to the bathroom door and listened. She heard him splashing, moving around. Later she heard the scrape of a razor. She bundled his old clothes in the plastex wrapper that had been around the new clothes.
At last he came slowly into the room. He sat down quickly, cupped trembling hands over his eyes. “How do you feel?” she asked.
“Rotten, Sharan.”
“There’s some coffee beside you. Better have some.” Even with the container held in both hands, some of the hot coffee spilled out onto the back of his hand.
“You didn’t find a very good answer, did you?” she said.
“Is any answer a good one?”
“Giving up isn’t a good answer.”
“Please. Spare me the violin music. I was discarded. It seemed necessary to act the part.”
“Everybody has a streak of martyr, Bard.”
He stared at her. His eyes were hollow, lifeless. “They fixed me good. They tied the can to me, baby. No lab in the country would touch me. You know that. I had some money saved. I was going to show everybody. I interviewed some accident victims — the ones where I suspected Raul and his gang had a part in it. I took a tape recorder. Know the most common expression? ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ they said. I tried to get a newspaper interested. They talked very pleasantly while they sent for the little men with the nets.”
“I read about it, Bard,” she said softly.
“Good article, wasn’t it? Funny as hell.”
“You haven’t been in the news for a month. The public has a short memory. They’ve forgotten you.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“Feel better now?”
He stared at her. “Dr. Inly, the patient refuses treatment. Why don’t you go exercise a few prefrontal lobes or something?”
She smiled at him. “Don’t be childish. Finish the coffee. We’re going to get you a haircut and a steak — in that order.”
His smile was mild acid. “And why do I merit all this attention?”
“Because you are needed. Don’t be defensive, Bard. Just do as I say. I’ll explain later.”
Dusk was over the city and they were in an oak booth at the back of a quiet restaurant. His eyes were brighter and some of the shakiness had gone out of his hands. He pushed his coffee cup aside, lit her cigarette and his own. “Now it’s time to talk, Sharan.”
“We’ll talk about a mistaken premise, Bard. We assumed that a hypnotic device operated from the other side of this world destroyed the Beatty One. After they delicately told me that I was all through and that I’d be called if there was a vacancy for anyone with my rating, I was... contacted again. With the Beatty One gone, there didn’t seem to be much point in it. I jeered at their fantasy of an alien world. I jeered at our friend, Raul, and at his sister. It took them a long time. I brought Lurdorff in on it. He’s too egocentric to ever doubt his own sanity. And now he believes, too. They’re what they say they are.”
He stared at her without expression. “Go on.”
“Everything he told us appeared to be true. It was the girl who destroyed the ship. She took over the A-six technician named Machielson. She had him overpower the guard. The rest of it went just the way you guessed. Bard, do you remember the time I told you that I wished I could fall in love with you?”
“I remember.”
“Someone else did. The sister. She found out too late. She thought we were figments of her dreams. Now she, like Raul, is convinced that we are reality. The logical processes of most women are rather odd. She and her brother have been helping me look for you. I explained about investigation agencies and how expensive they were. The next day a man stopped me in the street and gave me all of the money out of his wallet and walked on. A second and a third man did the same. That’s the way Raul fixed the money angle. And now we’ve found you.”
Bard stubbed out his cigarette. He laughed softly. “Sort of a long range affair, isn’t it? Raul identified their planet as being near Alpha Centauri. If he gave me a picture of what is actually their world, my lady love has a bald and gleaming skull, the body of a twelve year old child. I can hardly wait.”
“Don’t make a joke out of it, Bard!” she said with some heat. “We need you. If we’re ever going to live up to the promise that we had in the Beatty One, you have to help us.”
“I see. Raul gets one billion people to each hand us a dollar and then we start from scratch.”
She stood up quickly and stubbed out her cigarette. “All right, Bard. I thought you might want to help. I’m sorry. I was wrong. It was good to see you again. Good luck.” She turned away.
“Come back and sit down, Sharan. I’m sorry.”
She hesitated, came back. “Then listen. Of all men on this planet, you have the best overall grasp of the problems involved in the actual utilization of Beatty’s formulas. Some forgotten man on Raul’s planet perfected those formulas roughly thirteen thousand years before Beatty did. Raul has gotten to the ships he told you about. He nearly died in the attempt. When he was gone too long the first time, Leesa went out after him and managed to get him back before he froze to death. He has been in one of the ships a dozen times. He thinks that it is still in working condition. He has activated certain parts of it — the air supply, internal heating. But as far as the controls are concerned, you are the only one who can help. He is baffled.”
“How can I help?”
“We discussed that. He can use your hand to draw, from memory, the exact position of every knob and switch, along with a translation of the symbols that appear on them. If the principle is the same, which he is almost certain that it is, then you should be able to figure out the most logical purpose of each control.”