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back among human beings again but still--" I broke off. That was not the reason, her lurid history.
"I'll tell you the truth. I'm in love with you."
"You're lying."
Amending my statement I said, "I could be in love with you."
"If what?" She seemed terribly nervous; her voice shook.
"I don't know. Something holds me back."
"Fear."
"Maybe so," I said. "Maybe it's plain simple fear."
"Are you kidding me, Louis? When you said that? Love, I mean?"
"No, I'm not kidding."
She laughed tremulously. "If you could conquer your fear you could win a woman; not me but
some woman. I can't get over you saying that to me. Louis, you and I are opposites, did you know
that? You show your feelings, I always keep mine in. I'm much deeper. If we had a child, what
would it be like? I can't understand women who are always having children, they're like mother dogs
. . . a litter every year. It must be nice to be biological and earthy like that." She glanced at me out of
the corner of her eye. "That's a closed book to me. They fulfill themselves through their reproductive
system, don't they? Golly, I've known women like that but I could never be that way. I'm never
happy unless I'm doing things with my hands. Why is that, I wonder?"
"No knowing."
"There has to be an explanation; everything has a cause. Louis, I can't remember for sure, but I
don't think any boy ever said he was in love with me before."
"Oh, they must have. Boys in school."
"No, you're the first. I hardly know how to act. . . I'm not even sure if I like it. It feels strange."
"Accept it," I said.
"Love and creativity," Pris said, half to herself. "It's birth we're bringing about with the Stanton
and the Lincoln; love and birth--the two are tied together, aren't they? You love what you give birth
to, and since you love me, Louis, you must want to join me in bringing something new to life, don't
you?"
"Guess so."
"We're like gods," Pris said, "in what we've done, this task of ours, this great labor. Stanton and
Lincoln, the new race . . . and yet by giving them life we empty ourselves. Don't you feel hollow,
now?"
"Heck no."
"Well, you're so different from me. You have no real sense of this task. Coming here to this bar. .
. it was a momentary impulse that you yielded to. Maury and Bob and your dad and the Stanton are
back at MASA with the Lincoln--you have no consciousness of that because you want to sit in a
bar and have a drink." She smiled at me genially, tolerantly.
"Suppose so," I said.
"I'm boring you, aren't I? You really have no interest in me; you're only interested in yourself."
"That's so. I realize you're right."
49
"Why did you say you wanted to know everything about me? Why did you say you were almost
in love with me except that fear held you back?"
"I dunno."
"Don't you ever try to look yourself in the face and understand your own motives? I'm always
analyzing myself."
I said, "Pris, be sensible for a moment. You're only one person among many, no better and no
worse. Thousands of Americans go to--are right now in--mental health clinics, get schizophrenia and
are committed under the McHeston Act. You're attractive, I'll admit, but any number of movie
starlets in Sweden and Italy are more so. Your intelligence is--"
"It's yourself you're trying to convince."
"Pardon?" I said, taken aback.
"You're the one who idolizes me and is fighting against recognizing it," Pris said calmly.
I pushed away my drink. "Let's get back to MASA." The alcohol made my cut lip burn searingly.
"Did I say the wrong thing?" For a moment she looked disconcerted; she was thinking back over
what she had said, amending it, improving it. "I mean, you're ambivalent about me . . ."
I took hold of her arm. "Finish your beer and let's leave."
As we left the bar she said wanly, "You're sore at me again."
"No."
"I try to be nice to you but I always rub people the wrong way when I make a deliberate effort to
be polite to them and say what I ought to say . . . it's wrong of me to be artificial. I told you I
shouldn't adopt a set of behavior-patterns that are false to me. It never works out." She spoke
accusingly, as if it had been my idea.
"Listen," I said, as we got back into the car and set out into the traffic. "We'll go back and resume
our dedicated task of making Sam Barrows the core of all that we do-- right?"
"No," Pris said. "Only I can do that. That's not within your power."
I patted her on the shoulder. "You know, I'm much more sympathetic to you, too, than I was. I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]