Exile from Space Page 8

to communicate with anyone. Never,ever, be entirely honest with anyone.

  Then I remembered what it was like to be in Larry's arms, and wonderedwhat kind of communication I could want that might surpass that. ThenI went inside and took a shower and began to dress for the evening.

  It was too early to get dressed. I was ready too soon. I went out andgot in the car, and pulled out onto the highway and started driving. Iwas halfway up the mountain before I knew where I was going, and thenI doubled my speed.

  I was scared. I ran away.

  * * * * *

  There was still some snow on the mountain top. Down below, it would bewarm yet, but up there it was cold. The big empty house was full ofdust and chill and I brought fear in with me. I wished I had knownwhere I was going when I left my room; I wanted my coat. I wantedsomething to read while I waited. I remembered the library book andalmost went back. Instead, I went to the dark room in back that hadonce been somebody's kitchen, and opened the cupboard and found theprojector and yelled for help.

  I didn't know where they were, how far away, whether cruising orlanded somewhere, or how long it would take. All I could be sure ofwas that they couldn't come till after dark, full dark, and that wouldbe, on the mountain top, at least another four hours.

  There was a big round black stove in a front room, that looked as ifit could burn wood safely. I went out and gathered up everything Icould find nearby that looked to be combustible, and started a fire,and began to feel better. I beat the dust off a big soft chair, andpulled it over close to the stove, and curled up in it, warm anddrowsy and knowing that help was on the way.

  I fell asleep, and I was in the car with Larry again, in front of thathotel, every cell of my body tinglingly awake, and I woke up, andmoved the chair farther back away from the fire, and watched the sunset through the window--till I fell asleep again, and dreamed again,and when I woke, the sun was gone, but the mountain top was brightlylit. I had forgotten about the moon.

  I tried to remember what time it rose and when it set, but all I knewwas it had shone as bright last night in the Garden of the Gods.

  I walked around, and went outside, and got more wood, and when it washot in the room again, I fell asleep, and Larry's hands were on myshoulders, but he wasn't kissing me.

  He was shouting at me. He sounded furious, but I couldn't feel anyanger. "You God-damn little idiot!" he shouted. "What in the name ofall that's holy...? ... put you over my knee and.... For God's sake,baby," he stopped shouting, "what did you pull a dumb trick like thisfor?"

  "I was scared. I didn't even plan to do it. I just did."

  "Scared? My God, I should think you would be! Now listen, babe. Idon't know yet what's going on, and I don't think I'm going to like itwhen I find out. I don't like it already that you told me a pack oflies last night. Just the same, God help me, I don't think it's whatit sounds like. But I'm the only one who doesn't. Now you better giveit to me straight, because they've got half the security personnel ofthis entire area out hunting for you, and nobody else is going to caremuch what the truth is. My God, on top of everything else, you had to_run away_! Now, give out, kid, and make it good. This one has got tostick."

  I didn't understand a lot of what he said. I started trying toexplain, but he wouldn't listen. He wanted something else, and Ididn't know what.

  Finally, he made me understand.

  He'd almost believed my story the night before. Almost, but there wasa detail somewhere that bothered him. He couldn't remember it atfirst; it kept nudging around the edge of his mind, but he didn't knowwhat it was. He forgot about it for a while. Then, in the Garden, Imade my second big mistake. (He didn't explain all of this then; hejust accused, and I didn't understand this part completely untillater.) I wanted him to park the car.

  Any girl on Earth, no matter how sheltered, how inexperienced, wouldhave known better than that. As he saw it, he had to decide whether Iwas just so carried away by the night and the mood and the momentthat I didn't _care_--or whether my apparent innocence was a pose allalong.

  When we separated in front of the hotel that night, we both had totake the same road for a while. Larry was driving right behind me fora good three miles, before I turned off at the motel. And that waswhen he realized what the detail was that had been bothering him: mycar.

  The first time he saw me, I was driving a different make and model,with Massachusetts plates on it. He was sure of that, because he hadcopied it down when he left the luncheonette, the first time we met.

  Larry had never told me very clearly about the kind of work he did. Iknew it was something more or less "classified," having to do withaircraft--jet planes or experimental rockets, or something like that.And I knew, without his telling me, that the work--not just the _job_,but the work he did at it--was more important to him than anythingelse ever had been. More important, certainly, than he had everexpected any woman to be.

  So, naturally, when he met me that day, and knew he wanted to see meagain, but couldn't get my address or any other identifyinginformation out of me, he had copied down the license number of mycar, and turned it in, with my name, to the Security Officer on theProject. A man who has spent almost every waking moment from the ageof nine planning and preparing to fit himself for a role in humanity'sfirst big fling into space doesn't endanger his security status byrisking involuntary contamination from an attractive girl. The littleaircraft plant on the fringes of town was actually a top-secret keydivision in the Satellite project, and if you worked there, you tookprecautions.

  The second time I met him at the luncheonette, he had been waiting solong, and had so nearly given up any hope of my coming, that he was nolonger watching the road or the door when I finally got there--andwhen he left, he was so pleased at having gotten a dinner date withme, that he didn't notice much of anything at all. Not except out ofthe corner of one eye, and with only the slightest edge ofsubconscious recognition: just enough so that some niggling detailthat was out-of-place kept bothering him thereafter; and just enoughso that he made a point of stopping in the Security Office again thatafternoon to add my new motel address to the information he'd giventhem the day before.

  The three-mile drive in back of my Colorado plates was just about longenough, finally, to make the discrepancy register consciously.

  Larry went home and spent a bad night. His feelings toward me, as Icould hardly understand at the time, were a great deal stronger, or atleast more clearly defined, than mine about him. But since he wasmore certain just what it was he wanted, and less certain what _I_did, every time he tried to fit my attitude in the car into the restof what he knew, he'd come up with a different answer, and nineanswers out of ten were angry and suspicious and agonizing.

  "Now look, babe," he said, "you've got to see this. I trusted _you_;really, all the time, I did trust you. But I didn't trust _me_. By thetime I went to work this morning, I was half-nuts. I didn't know_what_ to think, that's all. And I finally sold myself on the ideathat if you were what you said you were, nobody would get hurt,and--well, if you _weren't_ on the level, I better find out, quick.You see that?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Okay. So I told them about the license plates, and about--the otherstuff."

  "What other stuff?" What else was there? How stupid could I be?

  "I mean, the--in the car. The way you--Listen, kid," he said, his facegrim and demanding again. "It's still just as true as it was then. I_still_ don't know. They called me this evening, and said when theygot around to the motel to question you, you'd skipped out. They alsosaid that Massachusetts car was stolen. And there were a couple ofother things they'd picked up that they wouldn't tell me, but they'vegot half the National Guard and all the Boy Scouts out after you bynow. They wanted me to tell them anything I could think of that mighthelp them find this place. I couldn't think of anything while I wastalking to them. Right afterwards, I remembered plenty ofthings--which roads you were familiar with, and what you'd seen beforeand what you hadn't, stuff like t
hat, so--"

  "So you--?"

  "So I came out myself. I wanted to find you first. Listen, babe, Ilove you. Maybe I'm a sucker, and maybe I'm nuts, and maybeI-don't-know-what. But I figured maybe I could find out more, andeasier on you, than they could. And honey, it better be good, becauseI don't think I've got what it would take to turn you in, and now I'vefound you--"

  He let it go there, but that was plenty. He was willing to listen. Hewanted to believe in me, because he wanted me. And finding me in thehouse I'd described, where I'd said it was, had him half-convinced.But I still had to explain those Massachusetts plates. And I couldn't.

  I was psychologically incapable of telling