The Perfect Host (45 page)

What a strange person she was! It was inconceivable that she should not have questioned Dr. Ponder more about her foot—yet she had not. His prognosis was that the condition would stop at her ankle, and may or may not be permanent, and, for her, that was that. In the same situation anyone else on Earth would be scrambling around from specialist to specialist between trips to a wailing wall. Not Claire. She accepted it and was not afraid.

A patch of sun the size of a kitten crept up the edge of her sleeping bag and nestled in her hair. After a pause to warm and brighten itself, it thrust a golden pseudopod around the curve of her cheek and touched her eyelid. She stirred, smiled briefly at what must have been a most tender dream, and woke.

“Good morning.”

She looked at me mistily, and smiled a different smile. “I fell asleep.”

“You did. Come on—stir your stumps. I want to show you something that I’ve discovered.”

She stretched and yawned. “I was talking to you and I fell asleep right in the middle of it. I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad. You got your beauty sleep.” Her face softened, so I added, “You need it.”

“You’re so sweet, Thad,” she said. “Much sweeter than gall. ’Bout like vinegar, when you try hard.” She slid out of the sleeping bag and idly scratched her hairy ankle. “If I had to choose between this thing with you, and my ordinary old foot without you, I think I’d keep the hoof. How do you make that noise with it?”

I showed her. She tried it. All she could get was a muffled pop, like fingers snapping with gloves on. She laughed and said I was a genius, and rose and climbed into her flying suit. She had half-length
boots, padded inside to support her hoof. Once they were on, no one could have guessed. While she was about these small chores, and others concerning folding and stowing the sleeping bag and breaking out some C and K rations, I rescued my amputated shoe from the bear-trap and, by cutting and piecing the leather straps, made a sort of stirrup that would hold it together once it was on.

When that was done, Claire, looking shapeless and tousled in the loose-fitting coverall, handed me one of the sticky-rich candy bars from the rations. “Thad,” she said with her mouth full, “you just
wouldn’t
go to see Dr. Ponder. Why not? Don’t you trust him?”

“Sure I trust him,” I said shortly. Why mention that I was keeping away from him because of Luana? “Come on,” I said.

We crossed through a neck of the forest to the rolling scrub-meadow on the other side, and down and across the first little valley.

“This is where I was last night. There’s something just over the next rise that I want you to see. Last night I was afraid you’d see it.”

“What’s so different about today, then?”

“I found out last night you’re not afraid of anything.”

She did not answer. I looked back at her. She was grinning. “You said something nice about me,” she half-sang.

“Not necessarily. Sometimes fearlessness is nothing more than rank stupidity.”

She swallowed that silently. As we climbed the rise she asked, “Will you tell me about the time you saw me be beautiful?”

“Later,” I said.

Abruptly she clutched my arm.
“Look!”

“Where? What?”

“There!” She pointed. “No—there—there, see?” She pointed rapidly to the ground, to a rock, to a spot in midair to our left. “See?”

“What is it, Claire? A deer-fly? Or spots in the eyes?”

“Just watch,” she said with exaggerated patience. “The little animal I fell on that time—remember? It’s all around here, and moving so
fast
!”

There are certain optical illusions where a missing object becomes vividly clear as soon as you know what to look for. I focused my mind’s eye on what she had described as a tapering, fan-tailed
monstrosity with two front legs and a blue-black hide, and suddenly, fleetingly, there it was, crouching against the sheer side of the bluff. It blinked at me, and then disappeared, only to pop into sight for a fraction of a second right in front of us. We moved back with alacrity as if pulled by the same string.

“I want out!” I gasped. “That’s the thing that gave you the fancy boot!”

Somehow we were twenty feet back and still backing. Claire laughed. “I thought that was your specialty.”

“You pick the dog-gonnedest times … get back, Claire! Heaven knows what will happen to you if it gets to you again!”

She stood still, peering. The thing, whatever it was, appeared twice, once a little to the right, once—and this time, for a full two or three seconds—over against the side-hill. It balanced on two forelegs, its head thrust out, its wide fluked tail curled up over its back, and it blinked rapidly. Its eyes were the same color as its skin, but shiny. It disappeared. Claire said, “It can’t hurt us. Dr. Ponder said the condition would be arrested where it is.”

I snorted. “That’s like saying you’re immunized against being bumped by a truck because one ran over you once. Let’s get out of here.”

She laughed at me again. “Why, Thad! I’ve never seen you like this! You’re pale as milk!”

“You have so seen me like this,” I quavered. “The last time you called me sensible. Remember?”

The blue-black thing appeared again almost under my feet. I squeaked and jumped. Then it was by Claire, inches away. She bent toward it, hand outstretched, but it vanished.

“Thad, it seems terribly excited. I think it wants something.”

“That I don’t doubt,” I said through clenched teeth. “Claire. Listen to me. Either you will hightail with me out of this imp-ridden corner of hell, or you and that monstrosity can stay here and watch me dwindle.”

“Oh,
Thad!
stop blithering. The poor little thing is probably ten times as frightened as you are.”

“Oh no it isn’t,” I said with authority. “It’s alive, isn’t it?”

She snorted and squatted down in the grass, her hands out and close together. Simultaneously with my warning cry, the creature appeared between her hands. Very slowly she moved them together. I stood petrified, babbling. “Claire, don’t, please don’t, just this once how do you know what that thing might do, Claire … Okay—it’s small, Claire. So is a
fer de lance
. So is a forty-five slug. Please, Claire …”

“
Will
you stop that infernal chattering!” she snapped. And just before her closing hands could touch the beast it was gone, to reappear six inches to the left.

She rose and stepped forward gently, stooping. The poised animal—if it was an animal—waited until she was a fraction of an inch away and again bounded out of visibility and in again, this time a yard away, where it waited, blinking violently.

“I think it wants us to follow it,” said Claire. “Come on, Thad!”

It moved again, farther away, and bounced up and down.

“Oh, Claire,” I said at last, “I give up. We’re in this together and we’ve got to depend on each other. Maybe you’re right after all.”

Surprisingly, there were tears in her eyes as she said, “I feel as if you had been away a long time and just got back.”

I thumped her shoulder, and we went on. We followed the strange creature up the slope to its crest, where the creature disappeared again, this time, apparently, for good.

Claire had been right, we found a moment later. Distantly, sunlight flashed on the windshield of Ponder’s parked convertible, which was parked where the Wood road skirted the desolate flatland. Nearing the foothills where we stood were two plodding figures, and it was easy to spot Ponder, for no one else in the area had his stooped height and breadth. He was so perfectly in proportion that he made normal people look underdone. The other, I noticed with a gulp, was Luana, with her contained, erect posture, and the sunlight, after its cold journey through space, reveling in the heat of her hair.

We went to meet them. I looked once at Claire, catching her at the woman’s trick of swift comparative appraisal of Luana’s trim plaid skirt and snug windbreaker, and I smiled. Claire’s coverall was not a company garment.

“Thad!” the doctor boomed. He had an organ voice; in conversation it always seemed to be throttled down, and his shout was a relaxation rather an effort. “And Claire … we were worried.”

“Why?” asked Claire. We reached them. I buzzed right on past the doctor—“Hi, Doc,”—and took both Luana’s hands. “Lu.”

She looked up at me and smiled. Those lips, so taut, so filled with what strange honey … when they smiled they grew still fuller. She said Hello, and I thought, what’s language for? what’s poetry for? when two small syllables can mean so much … I held her hands so hard and so long that it may have been embarrassing. It was for me, anyway, when Claire’s voice broke into my ardent scansion of Luana’s eyes with “Hey! Svengali! Got her hypnotized yet?”

I released Luana, who looked Claire’s rumpled flying suit up and down. “Hello, Claire,” she purred. “Hunting?”

“Just walking the dog,” said Claire through her teeth.

I met the doctor’s eyes and he grinned. “Good of you to take all this trouble over Claire’s trouble,” he said. “She just told me you knew about it. Does anyone else?”

I shook my head, but said, “Why all the mystery, Doctor?”

“I certainly don’t have to tell you that this is not an ordinary medical matter.”

Claire said, “Let’s go on up to the Wood and sit down and talk. It’s getting hot.”

“I’ll tote that if it’s heavy,” I offered, indicating Ponder’s black bag.

“Oh no. Just a couple of things I brought with me, just in case.”

He and Claire started back up toward the Wood. I put my hand on Luana’s forearm and checked her.

“What is it, Thad?”

“I just want them to get a little way ahead. Luana, this is wonderful. What on earth made him come out here? And with you?”

“I don’t know. He’s a strange man, Thad. Sometimes I think he knows everything. Nothing surprises him.” We began to walk. “We were working this morning—he was dictating some letters—and he all of a sudden stopped as if he was listening to something. Next thing I knew we were on our way.”

“Does he really know what’s the matter with Claire’s foot?”

She looked at me. Her eyes were auburn and most disturbing. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“She told me. It turned into a cloven hoof. I’ve seen it.”

“Oh. Then why ask?”

I hadn’t expected this kind of resistance. “I mean, does he know
why
it happened?”

“Of course he does.”

“Well, why?” I asked impatiently.

“Why not ask him?” She shrugged. “He’s the doctor. I’m not.”

“Sorry I asked,” I said glumly. I was annoyed—I think at myself. I don’t know why, subconsciously, I always expected this vision to melt into my arms, and was always sticking my neck out. But that’s the way it is when you get fireworks

We walked on in silence. Claire and the doctor had disappeared into the Wood when we entered the edge of it. We stopped for a moment to look about. There was, of course, no path, and the windless growth muffled and absorbed sounds, so it was difficult to know which way they had gone. I started in, but Luana held me back. “I don’t think they’re that way.”

“I’ll yell,” I said, but she put a hand to her mouth. “Oh,
no!
”

“Why not, Lu?”

“I’m—I don’t know. You shouldn’t, in here.” She looked about the silent halls of the forest. “Please, Thad. Go look for them. I’ll wait. But don’t shout, please.”

Completely puzzled, I said, “Well, sure, honey. But I don’t get it. Is something the matter?”

“No. Nothing.” Her arched nostrils twitched. “Go look for them, Thad. I’ll wait here, in case they come back for us.”

“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”

“Go on. Go on,” she said urgently. I suddenly thought that for certain reasons I might be behaving tactlessly. I must have blushed like a schoolgirl. “Well, sure. I’ll be right back. I mean, I’ll find ’em and call you.” I flapped a good-bye self-consciously and blundered off through the woods. That girl really threw me for a loss.

I followed the level ground until I emerged from the Wood at the
other side of its narrow neck—just what I should have done in the first place. Doctor Ponder and Claire were out in the open fifty yards away, apparently waiting for us. I went to them. “We lost you,” I said. “Luana’s waiting back there. She didn’t want to thrash around in the woods hunting for you. Hold on and I’ll get her.”

Ponder’s big head went up, and his eyes seemed to focus on something I couldn’t see for a moment. Then, “Don’t bother,” he said. “She’s all right. I wanted to talk to you two anyway. Let’s go in the shade and sit down.”

“But—will she be all right?”

“She’ll be all right,” he grinned. He had good teeth.

I shrugged. “Everybody seems to know what’s right around here but me,” I said petulantly. “All right.” I led the way to a thicket at the edge of the wood and plumped down with my back against a tree. Claire and the doctor joined me, Ponder setting his bag carefully within his reach.

“Now for heaven’s sake tell us,” said Claire, who had kept an amused silence during my jitterings about Luana. She turned to me. “He wouldn’t say a thing until you got here.”

“Tell us about what? Who knows anything?” I said resignedly.

“You know about her foot,” said Dr. Ponder. He looked down. “What, speaking of feet, has happened to your boot?”

I happened to be looking at Claire, and microscopically shook my head. “Oh,” I said casually, “I left it on a railroad track while I was frog hunting in a culvert. Go on about Claire.” Claire’s eyes widened in astonishment at this continued deception, but she said nothing. I was pleased.

Ponder leaned back. He had a long head and a big jaw. The touch of gray at his temples and the stretched smoothness of his skin told lies about each other. He said, “First, I want to thank you both—you, Claire, because you have trusted me in this matter, when I had every reason to expect nothing but hysteria from you, and you, Thad, for having kept your own counsel. Now I’ll tell you what I know. Please don’t mind if I seem to wander a bit. I want you to get this straight in your minds.” He closed his eyes for a moment, his brow furrowed. Then he wet his lips and continued.