Triumph (2 page)

The Yankee Turnpike, where Faith fought out a series of accelerations to gain the opposite lane, led to a cloverleaf that took them onto a blazing stretch that became asphalt and dived under trees and had a new name: Wandering Hills Road. The Jaguar slowed on a bridge beneath which water charged and foamed. Faith said, "The Lute River."

"Lovely name!"

"Isn't it!" The car moved ahead. "When I was little, I thought that lute meant

'flute,' or something like it. So I used to listen for whistling sounds. It never had any.

Winter or summer, nearby or in the distance, it always either tinkled or jangled, sort of, in deep tones.
Like
a lute." She smiled.

He saw her momentarily a child, pert-nosed, wide-eyed, each metallic filament of her hair disordered by play--sweaty, perhaps, in summer--her then-flat chest bared (or, in winter, wearing ski pants, probably) listening for a river to make sounds it couldn't, or didn't, or wouldn't. He banished the picture, almost as an angered man might douse the fire of a cigarette.

The Jaguar now rose on the spirals that terraced Sachem's Watch: sheer stone on the inside of the rising turns with, soon, treetops, opposite and below. They both noticed, when a random sunray set spinning color flying about the leather-upholstered car from her ring. Both looked at the ring.

"Mother," Faith said, "is ecstatic. Naturally. She's plugged Kit since he was eight and I was six--when the Barlow family built their place. On a slope of this hill. We'll pass it, soon. Dad's indignant."

"Indignant?" Ben's voice showed surprise.

She laughed. "Why not? He knows Kit and I have bored each other, off and on, for ages."

"People do," he responded gently. "Married people. Always. From time to time."

"Oh . . . that. Sure. But Dad thinks Kit is a 'lightweight,' mentally. A Little Leaguer, Dad calls him, who never grew. Dad sometimes refers to him also as"--she giggled--"'what you find on the other end of golf clubs.' Still--" she didn't sigh, though she would have, if she'd been given to self-dramatization, "Kit's big and easygoing and comfortable and familiar and
very
tolerant!" The wide eyes cut toward him.

He ignored them. "I'm anxious to meet Kit."

"I'll bet!"
Faith's laughter was short and she followed it with a question. "Why didn't
you
ever ask me to marry you?"

A joke? Sadism? Did she
mean
it? Ben felt twenty billion electron volts could not have shocked him more. But he felt he had to hurry with some sort of reply. He took an attitude seemingly, at first, very solemn:

"Let's consider that question, Faith. First, the man's looks. Mine. I have been called a bean pole. Even, 'the Israelite Ichabod Crane.' My ears have been described as squashed paper cups set at right angles to a head that is often said to be more equine than human. Horselike. This beaky and elongated nose has been claimed as the equal of anything Modigliani ever painted. My eyes are held to be the same 'blue-clay blue' that the pre-Roman cannibals of Britain daubed themselves with."

She gurgled with mirth.
"Homely,"
she finally agreed. "But
how!
Yet, when you smile, it's like a Christmas tree coming on in the dark! Next fact. All the people who work for you, with you, over you--everybody I ever heard of who knew you--loves you.

Including me. So
there!"

He nodded soberly but went on. "You are Money, Miss Farr. Also, Society, Café Society,
and
Blue Blood--
not
mud-blue, either. The McCoy. My old man is a Jewish shop-owner in Newark. I'm exactly one generation from going to church in a yarmulke."

"Oh, fiddle! You're as religious as Dad. Nil. Nix. None."

"Then there is the matter of my métier."

"Math? Physics? I was damned good at math in college! Our prof literally implored me to go on, after calculus."

"But you studied opisthotonos dancing, instead."

"You fool! Wait a sec!
Opisthotonos.
That's the spinal back-bend you get in your dying agonies if you take strychnine. Or if you die of tetanus."

He nodded, his expression unimpressed. "Next on the agenda. My present plans.

Along about mid-October I'm scheduled to leave for Antarctica--"

"Ben! You're
not!"

"--a thing you'd know I recently agreed to do, if you read the
science
news. Some special studies to be conducted down there, of the magnetosphere, certain new missiles, and communications. Some low-temperature work: laser phenomena at near-absolute zero."

"Near-absolute zero is right! How long will you be gone?"

"Two years," he said quietly.

She accelerated so savagely she had to brake hard and instantly, afterward, to keep from leaving the road and flying onto the roofs of Candlewood Manor Apartments, visible below. She flushed, then grew slightly pale, bit her lip, glanced at a vast mansion set far back from the road, and did not tell Ben it was the Barlow home--did not need to.

Finally, she said, "Do--are you--allowed visitors?"

"Like in penitentiaries?" He chuckled. "Sometimes."

"Women?"

"Sometimes. Wives, at least. After all, it was--oh, in the Kennedy Administration, I guess--second term, I think--when they started building a genuine, domed city in Marie Byrd land--and it's as comfortable as your family's Park Avenue penthouse, indoors, even at minus seventy outdoors."

"Goody! Then the very first time Kit and I fight-after we're married, I mean--I'll come down and see you!"

"Do that! You'd really be an ornament--in a military jail!"

She responded forlornly, "Oh,
Ben!"

Then the trees under which they'd climbed opened up. Ahead he saw a stone gateway. On its summit stood an exact replica of the "tiger" god found deep inside the largest pyramid at Chichen Itza--complete, even, to glowing green eyes of Chinese jade that somehow the Toltecs had imported centuries before the Spaniards had crossed the Atlantic to smash their idols and steal their treasure in the Holy Name of a different deity.

This great cat--a panther, Ben thought-[was beautifully modeled in what would be accepted as a most "modernistic" style.

Beyond the gate lay a sort of plaza-as big as the game courts of Uxmal or Chichen Itza, Ben thought--surrounded by the temple-like edifices of stone, timber, and glass which were living rooms, dining chambers, and guest quarters, connected by closed passageways and looking out, on all four exterior faces, across a moat swimming pool where cool-looking water shimmered in sun or drowsed in shade. The car stopped on bluestone beside a building where half a dozen other cars glittered in the shade, and there was room for many more.

From a door came a slender, white-uniformed Negro of middle age. "This," Faith said, "is Paulus, Dr. Bernman. Paulus Davey, our butler.
Lord!
It's
hot!"

To Ben's great surprise, the butler held out a confident hand. Instantly, Ben took it, aware that Faith had watched to see what he would do. Paulus Davey said, "Pleased to meet you, Doctor," and picked up the luggage.

Faith had already started for a near door. She turned. "Wear shorts, if you like. A bathing suit'd be even better! Swim down to the terrace. Mama'll be in the front room--"

she pointed--"and I'll meet you in a mo'."

Ben studied the man at his side and said, "She has no imagination." Paulus Davey protested. "Miss Farr? She has
too much,
if you take some of her friends' attitudes."

"None at all," Ben argued calmly. "Otherwise she'd never have suggested shorts for me. If the girl had imagination, she'd even have realized I brought no such garment!

Shorts, indeed!"

The butler laughed with a deep sound and in agreeable amusement. Then, quickly, he moved toward a different door. Ben followed. It was cool, mercifully so: air-conditioned--even the passageways. They went up a short flight of steps, along a flagged corridor, and were about to descend a longer flight when Paulus Davey halted, set down his burden, whipped open a door, and called, "Glyph! Get out of there!"

Looking over his shoulder, Ben saw a large collie stop its bemused swim in the moat and turn, reluctantly, to the stone edge only inches above the water surface. The dog heaved itself out and shook, filling the air with brilliance and marking the stones with falling spray. Davey went on. Ben repeated, "Cliff?"

"Glyph," the butler replied, and spelled it. "He has a funny patch of white on his chest--"

"I noticed."

"--that Mrs. Farr says is exactly like a Mayan glyph."

"Oh."

"Here we are."

Ben had been ready for anything in the matter of guest accommodations at Uxmal: an Egyptian room, say, or something with a roof of corbeled arches, all stone, with feather decorations that might even have actually once been the cloak of some cruel, gaudy Aztec. Instead, he was led into a suite--living room, writing alcove, library alcove, bedroom, and bath. It made him think of the "best" suites in the newest motels. The prevailing color scheme was yellow and brown; but blue-green ornaments, bath towels and mats, curtains and small rugs cooled that rather too-warm combination.

It was the sort of place that, save for variation in color scheme (and a book-lined anteroom), one could enjoy everywhere in America--at a price. Living quarters in which you knew exactly where to find the phone, extract ice cubes, tum on lights, press the switch that would cause a panel to slide back and expose the fifty-inch screen of a color television set, and where you'd know how to operate the light-dimmer and the electric blanket--not needed, now.

Paulus Davey adjusted an air-conditioning control after glancing at a thermometer. He had put the briefcase and the shiny, magnesium suitcase on two luggage racks at the feet of twin beds. After Ben had thanked him and said he needed nothing more, the butler departed.

Ben walked to the exterior wall and pulled cords which drew back yellow traverse curtains lined in brown. He had expected a vista but not so grand a one.

From his position in the center of a glass wall he could see far, far away a black-brown opacity where the air was smoky, and, vaguely, in that, verticles which were the faint, sun-illumined edges of Manhattan skyscrapers. In front of the floor-to-ceiling, crystal-clear plate-glass wall was a table which, he thought, had been placed there to prevent people from bumping into the invisible surface. Looking down at it, however, he saw a map under glass on the table top, a map marked with ruled lines pointing from Sachem's Watch to the old Empire State Building, the new Pan-American Building, Bridgeport, and other objects and places.

Distances were marked on the lines:

Forty-three and seven-tenths miles to the Empire State, a mere shimmer in the heated smog now; forty-two and three-tenths miles to the Pan-Am tower; a bit less than forty to the bluish haze that in clear weather would be Long Island Sound.

His eyes lifted and moved among the steeples and trees and flashing clapboard walls of Fenwich Village. Five and three-tenths miles to--apparently--the steeple of the Congregational Church. In that drooping, dusty greenery he caught sight of a frothy rainbow where the Lute River splashed down a short falls. Nearer still was the titanic tailing, the down-slide of boulders new-blasted from the cliff on Sachem's Watch.

What were they mining? Mining, because this was not evidence of quarrying.

This colossal slide of limestone had not been taken from the hill for itself: the rock lay unused and there was no sign of machinery to cut, trim, or otherwise work the vast stones. Still, perhaps he was wrong. For he noticed a railroad spur that went, evidently, to the foot of the cliff. The rails shone in the sun, blue and recently-used. He gave up.

Probably they hauled off the stuff, after dynamiting it again into manageable size.

His thoughts turned to Faith.

Her stunning question echoed in his mind. He wondered how long it would go on echoing there. And he could not quite explain it. Faith was impulsive, but not mean. She enjoyed jokes, but it hadn't been said in jest, exactly. She was curious, yet not idly and inconsiderately curious. So,
why?

He began to unpack. Then to change into slacks, a sports shirt, and loafers. He thought of the Priscilla-John-Alden-Miles-Standish classic:
Speak for yourself, John.

He grinned, and without realizing it, said aloud, "Pfui!"

CHAPTER 2

When he entered the Farr living room he heard Faith's mother but, at first, could not see her. She was talking on the phone. A fountain was busy making muted cascade noises somewhere, too. And music was issuing from an unseen loudspeaker.

"Too bad, Vance!" Valerie said. "Of course, I understand. You'll be late. And bring Mr. Lee with you. What's that?"

Mrs. Farr's voice was a good deal like her daughter's: deep and deft and broad-A-ed. But she talked more rapidly and she now slurred an occasional word slightly.

It was, Ben reflected, after five. And the sun went over the yardarm, for Mrs.

Valerie Farr, about four, he knew. All day long the tall, dark woman who didn't look her fifty years and did look attractive would be integrated, busy, sober. But by six o'clock she would be a bit squiffy. By eleven or twelve, every night, plain drunk. Faith's mother was an alcoholic, a fact he'd learned in the days when Faith had been mending in the hospital on Long Island, not far from Brookhaven National Laboratories or from the spot where he'd found the young woman under the snow.

He knew Mrs. Farr that well, and her husband, too, for they had liked him, he was certain, from the first. But he had not presumed. After Faith had been discharged--

limping, still, for a while, but healed--Ben had seen her several times in New York City.

He'd had a lunch or two with Vance. However, this invitation to the Connecticut place was Ben's first, of its sort, and the first time he'd seen any member of the family since late May. Still, he knew about Valerie Farr . . . and her drinking.

She now repeated, "What's that?" And paused. Then she said, lightly, amiably,

"All right, dear. We'll expect Miss Lee for dinner. And I'll have a guest room ready for her, and one for her father, whenever you both come in." She added, not quite sincerely,