The Best Of Lester Del Rey Part 24

She wasn't only in fine physical shape-she was like a woman fifteen years younger than her age. And she'd even remembered to call me Andrew, instead of the various nicknames she'd used during my growing up. That wasn't senility! A senile woman would have turned back to the earliest one, as I remembered it- particularly since I'd had to work hard to get her to drop the childhood names. Yet the house ...

She bustled about the kitchen, dis.h.i.+ng out some of the rich, hot soup. She hadn't been a good cook when I was a kid, but she'd grown steadily better, and this was superlative. "I guess Doc must have p.r.o.nounced Jimmy well," she said casually. "He's gone running off somewhere now. Well, after two weeks cooped up here with the measles, I can't blame him. I remember how you were when you had them. Notice how I had the house fixed up, Andrew?"

I nodded, puzzling over her words. "I noticed the old furniture. But this Jimmy . . . ?"

"Oh, you never met him, did you? Never mind, you will. How long you staying, Andrew?"

I tried to figure things out, cursing Matthews for not warning me of this. Of course, I'd heard somehow that one of my various nephews had lost his wife.

Was he the one who'd had the young boy? And hadn't he gone up to Alaska? No, that was Frank's son. And why would anyone hand over a youngster to Mother, anyhow? There were enough younger women in the family.

I caught her eyes on me, and pulled myself together. "I'll be leaving in a couple of hours, Mother. I just. . ."

"It was real nice of you to drop over," she interrupted me, as she had always cut into our answers. Tve been meaning to see you and Liza soon, but fixing the house kept me kind of busy. Two men carried the furniture down, but I did the rest myself. Makes me feel younger somehow, having the old furniture here."

She dished out a quarter of a peach cobbler and put it in front of me, with a cup of steaming coffee. She took another quarter for herself and filled her big cup. I had a mental picture of Liza with her vitamins and diets. Who was senile?

"Jimmy's going to school now," she said. "He's got a crush on his teacher, too. More pie, Andrew? Ill have to save a piece for little Jimmy, but there are two left."1From outside, there was a sudden noise, and she jumped up, to walk quickly toward the back door. Then she came into the kitchen again. "Just a neighbor kid taking a short cut. I wish they'd be a little nicer, though, and play with Jimmy. He gets lonesome sometimes. Like my kitchen, Andrew?"

"Nice," I said carefully, trying to keep track of the threads of conversation.

"But it's kind of modern."

"That and the television set," she agreed cheerfully. "Some new things are nice. And some old ones. I've got a foam rubber mattress for my bed, but the rest of the room . . . Andrew, you come up. 111 show you something I flunk's real elegant."

The house was clean, and no rooms were closed off. I wondered about that as we climbed the stairs. I hadn't seen a maid. But she sniffed in contempt when I mentioned it. "Of course I take care of it myself. That's a woman's job, ain't it? And then, little Jimmy helps some. He's getting to be mighty handy."

The bedroom was something to see. It reminded me of what I'd seen of the nineties in pictures and movies, complete with frills and fripperies. The years had faded the upholstery and wallpaper in the rest of the house. But here everything seemed bright and new.

"Had a young decorator fellow from Chicago fix it," she explained proudly.

"Like what I always wanted when I was a young girl. Cost a fortune, but Jimmy told me I had to do it, because I wanted it." She chuckled fondly. "Sit down,1, Andrew. How are you and Liza making out? StfH fighting over that young hussy she caught you with, or did she take my advice? Silly, letting you know she knew. Nothing makes a man more loving than a little guilt, I always found- especially if the woman gets real sweet about then."

We spent a solid hour discussing things, and it felt good. I told her how they were finally s.h.i.+pping my youngest back to us. I let her bawl me out for the way the oldest boy was using me and for what she called my snootiness about my son-in-law. But her idea of making him only junior partner in the trucking line at first wasn't bad. I should have thought of it myself. She also told me all the gossip about the family. Somehow, she'd kept track of things. I hadn't even known that Pete had died, though I had heard of the other two deaths. I'd meant to go to the funerals, but there'd been that big deal with Midcity Asphalt and then that trouble getting our man into Congress. Things like that had a habit of coming up at the wrong tunes.

When I finally stood up to go, I wasn't worried about any danger of a family scandal through Mother. If Matthews thought I'd be bothered about her switching back to the old furniture and having this room decorated period style-no matter what it cost-he was the senile one. I felt good, in fact. It had been better than a full round of golf, with me winning. I started to tell her I'd get back soon. I was even thinking of "bringing Liza and the family out for our vacation, instead of taking the trip to Bermuda we'd talked about.

She got up to kiss me again. Then she caught herself. "Goodness! Here you're going, and you haven't met Jimmy yet. You sit down a minute, Andrew!"

She threw up the window quickly, letting in the scent of roses from the back.

"Jimmy! Oh, Jimmy! It's getting late. Come on in. And wash your face before you come up. I want you to meet your Uncle Andrew."

She turned back, smiling a little apologetically. "He's my pet, Andrew. I always tried to be fair about my children, but I guess I like Jimmy sort of special!"

Downstairs, I could hear a door close faintly, and the m.u.f.fled sounds of a boy's steps moving toward the kitchen. Mother sat beaming, happier than I'd seen her for years-since Dad died, in fact. Then the steps sounded on the stairs. I grinned myself, realizing that little Jimmy must be taking two steps at a time, using the banister to pull himself up. I'd always done that when I was a kid. I was musing on how alike boys are wlien the footsteps reached thelanding and headed toward the room.

I started to look toward the door, but the transformation on Mother's face caught my attention. She suddenly looked almost young, and her eyes were s.h.i.+ning, while her gaze was riveted on the door behind.

There was a faint sound of it opening and closing, and I started to turn.

Something p.r.i.c.kled up my backbone. Something was wrong! And then, as I turned completely, I recognized it. When a door opens, the air in the room stirs. We never notice it, unless it doesn't happen. Then the stillness tells us at once the door can't have really opened. This time, the air hadn't moved.

In front of me, the steps sounded, uncertainly, like those of a somewhat shy boy of six. But there was no one there! The thick carpet didn't even flatten as the soft sound of the steps came closer and stopped, just in front of me!

"This is Uncle Andrew, Jimmy," Mother announced happily, "Shake hands like a good boy, now. He came all the way from Des Moines to see you."

I put my hand out, dictated by some vague desire to please her, while I could feel cold sweat running down my arms and legs. I even moved my hand as if it were being shaken. Then I stumbled to the door, yanked it open, and started down the stairs.

Behind me, the boy's footsteps sounded uncertainly, following out to the landing. Then Mother's steps drowned them, as she came quickly down the stairs after me.

"Andrew, I think you're shy around boys! You're not fooling me. You're just running off because you don't know how to talk to little Jimmy!" She was grin- ning in amus.e.m.e.nt. Then she caught my hand again. "You come again s$al Soon, Andrew."

I must have1" said the right things, somehow. She turned to go up the stairs, just as I heard the steps creak from above, where no one was standing! Then I stumbled out and into my car. I was lucky enough to find a few ounces of whisky in a bottle in the glove compartment. But the liquor didn't help much.

I avoided Matthews' place. I cut onto the main highway and opened the big engine all the way, not caring about cops. I wanted all the distance I could get between myself and the ghost steps of little Jimmy. Ghost? Not even that!

Just steps and the weak sound of a door that didn't open. Jimmy wasn't even a ghost-he couldn't be.

I had to slow down as the first laughter tore out of my throat. I swung off the road and let it rip out of me, until the pain in my side finally cut it off.

Things were better after that. And when I started the Cadillac again, I was beginning to think. By the tune I reached the outskirts of Des Moines, I had it licked.

It was hallucination, of-course. Matthews had tried to warn me that Mother was going through a form of dotage. She'd created a child for herself, going back to her youth for it. The school that wasn't there, the crush on the teacher, the measles-all were real things she was reliving through little Jimmy. But because she was so unlike other women in keeping firmly sane about everything except this one fantasy, she'd fooled me. She'd made me think she was completely rational. When she'd explained the return of the old furniture, she'd wiped out all my doubts, which had centered on that.

She'd made me take it for granted that Jimmy was real. And she had made me expect to hear steps when her own listening had prepared me for them. I'd been cued by her own famt reactions to her imagination-I must have seen some little gesture, and followed her timing. It had been superbly real to her-and my senses had tricked me.

It wasn't impossible. It was the secret of many of the great stage illusions, aided by my own memories of the old house, and given life by the fact that she believed in the steps, as no stage trickster could believe.I convinced myself of it almost completely. I had to do that. And finally I nearly dismissed the steps from my mind, and concentrated on Mother. Matthews'

words came back to me, and I nodded to myself. It was a harmless fantasy, and Mother was ent.i.tled to her pleasure. She was sane enough to care for herself, without any doubt, and physically far better than she had any right to be.

With Matthews' interest in her, there was no reason for me to worry about anything.

By the time I pulled the car into the garage, I was making plans for setting up the trucking concern again, following Mother's advice about making myself the senior partner. It hadn't been a wasted day, after all.

Life went on, pretty much as usual. My younger boy was back home for a while.

I'd looked forward to that, but somehow the Army had broken the old bonds between us. Even when I had time, there wasn't much we could talk about. I guess it was something of a relief when he left for some job in New York; anyhow, I was busy straightening out a brawl the older one got mixed up in. My daughter was expecting again, and her husband was showing a complete inability to cooperate with me. I didn't have much time to think about little Jimmy.

Mercifully, Liza hadn't asked me about my trip; there was nothing to keep me from forgetting most of it.

I wrote Mother once in a while, now. Her letters grew longer, and sometimes Jimmy's name appeared, along with quite a bit of advice on the trucking business. Most of that was useless, naturally, but she knew more than I'd suspected about the ways of business. It gave me something to write back about.

I paid a fat fee to a psychiatrist for a while, but mostly he only confirmed what I'd already reasoned out. I wasn't interested in some of the other nonsense he tried to sell me, so I stopped going after a while.

And then I forgot the whole thing when the first tentative feeler from New Mode Roofing and Asphalt suggested a merger. I'd been planting the seed for the idea for months, but getting it set to put in my control was a tricky problem. I finally Jiad to compromise by agreeing to move the headguilters to Akron, tearing up my roots overnight and resettling. Liza made a scene over that, and my daughter flatly refused to come. I had to agree to turn the trucking concern over to my son-in-law completely, just when it was beginning to show a profit. But the rift had been coming ever since he'd refused to fire my oldest boy from the job of driving one of the trailers.

Maybe it was just as well. The boy seemed to like it. We'd be in Akron, n.o.body would know about it, and he'd be better off than he was hanging around with some of the friends he'd had before. I meant to write Mother about that, since she'd suggested it once, and I suspected she'd had something to do with it.

But the move took all my attention. After that, there was the problem of organizing the new firm.

I decided to see Mother, instead of writing to her. I wasn't going to be fooled again with the same hallucination. The new psychiatrist a.s.sured me of that, and advised the trip. I had already marked off the date on my calendar for the visit next month.

It didn't work out. Matthews called me at two o'clock in the morning with the news, after wasting two days tracing me down through acquaintances. n.o.body thought of looking me up in a business directory, of course.

Mother had pneumonia and the prognosis was unfavorable.

"At her age, these things are serious," he said. His voice wasn't professional this time. "You'd better get here as quickly as you can. She's been asking for you."

"I'll charter a plane at once," I told him. This would raise the deuce with the voting of stock we'd scheduled, but I couldn't stay away, obviously. I'd almost convinced myself Mother would go on for another twenty years. Now . . .

"How'd it happen?""The big storm last week. She went out in it with rubbers and an umbrella to fetch little Jimmy from school! She got sopping wet. When I reached her, she already had a fever. I've been trying everything, but . . ."

I hung up, sick. Little Jimmy! For a minute, I wanted him to be real enough to strangle.

I pounded on Liza's door and got her to charter the plane while I packed and roused out my secretary on the other phone. Liza drove me to the airport where the plane was warmed up and waiting. I turned to say good-by, but she was dragging out a second bag from the back.

"I'm going," she announced flatly.

I started to argue, saw her expression, and gave up. A few minutes later, we took off.

Most of the rest of the family was already there, hovering around outside the newly decorated bedroom where Mother lay under an oxygen tent; huddles of the family and their children were in every other room on the second floor, staring at the closed door and discussing things in the harsh whispers people use for a scene of death.

Matthews motioned them back and came over to me at once. "No hope, I'm afraid, Andrew," he said, and there were tears in his eyes.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Liza asked, her voice dropping to the hoa.r.s.e whisper of the others. "Anything at all, Doctor?"

He shook his head. "I've already talked to the best men in the country. We've tried everything. Even prayer."

From one side of the hall, Agnes sniffed loudly. Her militant atheism couldn't be downed by anything, it seemed. It didn't matter. There was death in the house, thick enough to smell. I had always hated the waste and futility of dying. Now it had a personal meaning, and it was worse. Behind that closed door, Mother lay dying, and nothing I could do would help.

"Can I go in?" I asked, against my wishes.

Matthews nodded. "It can't hurt now. And she wanted to see you.-"

I went in after him, with the eyes of the others thrusting at me. Matthews waved the nurse out and went over to the window; the chpking sound from his throat was louder than the, ffwnt hiss of the oxygen. I hesitated, then drew near the bed.

Mother lay there, and her eyes were open. She turned them toward me, but there was no recognition.in them. One of her thin hands was poking at the transparent tent over her. I looked toward Matthews, who nodded slowly. "It won't matter now."

He helped me move it aside. Her hand groped out, while the wheezing sound of her breathing grew louder. I tried to follow her pointing finger. But it was Matthews who picked up the small picture of a young boy, put it into her hands for her to clasp to her.

"Mother!" It ripped out of me, louder than I had intended. "Mother, it's Andy!

I'm here!"

Her eyes turned again, and she moved her parched lips. "Andrew?" she asked weakly. Then a touch of a smile came briefly. She shook her head slightly.

"Jimmy! Jimmy!"

The hands lifted the picture until she could see it. "Jimmy!" she repeated.

From below, there was the sound of a door closing weakly, and steps moving across the lower floor. They took the stairs, two steps at a time, but quickly now, without need of the banister. They crossed the landing. The door remained closed, but there was the sound of a k.n.o.b turning, a faint squeak of hinges, then another sound of a door closing. Young footsteps moved across the rug, invisible, a sound that seemed to make all other sounds fade to silence. The steps reached the bed and stopped.

Mother turned her eyes, and the smile quickened again. One hand lifted. Then she dropped back and her breathing stopped.The silence was broken by the sound of feet again- heavier, surer feet that seemed to be planted on the floor beside the bed. Two sets of footsteps sounded. One might have been those of a small boy. The others were the quick, sharp sounds that only a young woman can make as she hurries along with her first-born beside her. They moved across the room.

There was no hesitation at the door this time, nor any sound of opening or closing. The steps went on, across the landing and down the stairs. As Matthews and I followed into the hall, they seemed to pick up speed toward the back door. Now finally there was a soft, deliberate sound of a door closing, and then silence.

I jerked my gaze back, to see the eyes of all the others riveted on the back entrance, while emotions I had never seen washed over the slack faces. Agnes rose slowly, her eyes turned upward. Her thin lips opened, hesitated, and closed into a tight line. She sat down like a stick woman folding, glancing about to see whether the others had noticed.

From below, her daughter came running up the stairs. "Mother! Mother, who was the little boy I heard?"

I didn't wait for the answer, nor the thick words with which Matthews confirmed the news of Mother's death. I was back beside the poor old body, taking the picture from the clasped hands.

Liza had followed me in, with the color just beginning to return to her face.

"Ghosts," she said thickly. Then she shook her head, and her voice softened.

"Mother and one of the babies, come back to get her. I always thought . . ."

"No," I told her. "Not one of my sisters who died too young. Nothing that easy, Liza. Nothing that good. It was a boy. A boy who had measles when he was six, who took the stairs two at a time-a boy named Jimmy. . ."

She stared at me doubtfully, then down at the picture I held-the picture of me when I was six. "But you-" she began. Then she turned away without finis.h.i.+ng, while the others began straggling in.

We had to stay for the ceremony, of course, though I guess Mother didn't need me at the funeral. She already had her Jimmy.

She'd wanted to name me James for her father, and Dad had insisted on Andrew for his. He'd won, and Andrew came first. But until I was ten, I'd always been called Jimmy by Mother. Jimmy, Andy, Andrew, A. J.

A man's name was part of his soul, I remembered, in the old beliefs. % 5 But it didn't^niake sense, no matter how I figured it out by myself. I tried to talk it over with Matthews, but he wouldn't comment. I made another effort with Liza when we were on the plane going back.

"I can believe in Mother's spirit," I finished. I'd been over it all so often hi my own mind that I had accepted that finally. "But who was Jimmy? We all heard him- even Agnes' daughter heard him from downstairs. So he wasn't a delusion. But he can't be a ghost. A ghost is a returned spirit-the soul of a man who has died!"

"Well?" Liza asked coldly. I waited, but she went on staring out of the plane window, not saying another word.

I used to think meeting a ghost would offer rea.s.surance to a man. Now I don't know. If I could only explain little Jimmy . . .

The Seat of Judgment

Night had fallen, but the city gleamed with the angry red of dying fires, and the crowds still fought back and forth across the streets, howling in sorrow and rage. But in front of the barracks beyond the Earth palace, the fighting seemed spent, and the mob had thinned to a scattering of huddled, dazed figures.

Lorg, one of the Ludh mercenaries, broke from a side street in an exhausted attempt to run. Two of his arms hung useless, his clothing was ripped to shreds, his bow was gone, and his body was covered with wounds; he no longer felt them-his mind was filled only with the need for a weapon.He hesitated, listening for pursuit. Then, with a final staggering run, he burst through the barracks door and headed for the bow racks.

* Light hit his eyes, jerking him to a stop. They'd guessed his destination and beaten him here. There were a dozen of them, headed by the renegade, Pars, whose bow was already pulled taut.

Pars' voice was sick as he stared at his fellow Ludh, nodding to the others.