Dean Koontz: Dark of the Woods

Afterwards, there was a social hour with the traditional lightly alcoholic punch and homemade cookies. Mrs. Bunter had corralled him and was leading him about, showing off. Proteus followed close to his left, constantly on guard.

"I hope he's been recarded," Mrs. Bunter (who kept telling him to please call her Alice) said, eyeing Proteus cautiously. "I'm wearing a new brooch." She raised a protective hand to the live beetle that skittered across her lapel, straining to the end of its tiny golden chain, then back again.

"Yes," Davis assured her, "he has."

Still, they both noticed the way the machine's plasti-plasma sloshed inside whenever he came near the bug.

Up and down the room, back and forth, corner to corner they went until he had met nearly everyone. He was arm in arm with Alice Bunter now as she exhibited him like a mother with a son freshly graduated from college. The light alcoholic punch only served to bolster his spirits and make him quite talkative. These people were really not so bad, he decided. Wasn't that what he usually discovered? Weren't they always nice when he met them personally in the social period after the lecture? He had a fondness for them, a somewhat paternal affection that made their company desirable.

They came, in time, to the mustached Alliance rep who had secured Davis's aviary and grav car and had ordered Matron Salsbury to deliver food once a week. "My wife thanks you for the autograph," he said, his voice level, harsh, cold, and much more self-possessed than it had been previously.

Davis's head was spinning from too much punch. He had drunk so much that the room danced up and down and the rep kept melting and solidifying in front of him. "Think nothing of it," he said magnanimously.

"Don't worry," the rep said, smiling icily. "I think nothing at all of it. You will be moved into the city tomorrow. Be ready when the van comes for your car and equipment in the morning."

Davis stood, dumbfounded even through the liquor haze. "Why?"

"You should not drink in public, Mr. Davis," he snapped. "You like to boast too much."

"Boast?"

"About the book's deep philosophic themes, about the manner in which you will so brilliantly destroy the Alliance policy of genocide."

Had he said that? And why? Why blurt that out after all the work he had gone to, after all the careful planning he had done to get onto this world and receive the cooperation he needed? Why to these Alliance-oriented people of all he might have told?

"We don't have to cooperate with those intent on defaming us," the rep said. "You will get a bill for government services. And I should advise that you act more like a god if you wish to play the part." And he was gone.

"Never mind him," Alice Bunter cooed, tugging at Davis's arm to draw him across the room to meet someone else she had just spied. She was too excited about having a celebrity by the arm to consider the consequences of the revelations he had apparently made about his next book.

But he stopped her, stood swaying like the drunk he was. Was the rep right? Could he possibly have been right? Did Davis the author love the worship of these reading club people? Yes. Yes, he did. He erected a facade of disdain in order to delude himself, acted just the slightest bit snobbish with them in order to give credence to that facade; but the cold hard facts said that he had always accepted lecture requests, had always been more than willing to mingle socially afterwards, had always talked about his work to anyone who would listen. He boasted. Old, successful Nobel-winner, Alliance-Literature-Prize-contender Stauffer Davis was looking for the approval of the masses, though he denied it heartily to the academic world and to himself. But he was seeking the droplets of envy, worship, and appreciation that were to be found in the hearts and minds of his fans, was trying to synthesize love out of that mixture. The Alliance rep had been correct.

"There's Mr. Alsace," Mrs. Bunter said. The beetle crawled on her breast.

Suddenly, whatever these people had done to fill the empty can of his soul was drained away. He felt rusted again, dying. Had that been why he had told Leah he was married? If he fought this in court or smuggled her out of Demos and was discovered, the masses would look down on him, disapprove of his racially mixed marriage. By marrying the winged girl, he would be giving up the worship of the reading club people all over the Alliance worlds. So he had lied to her, trying to hang on to the only thread of appreciation he could rely on. He had chosen the adoration of historical novel fans over the love of a woman.

The ceiling bobbled dangerously close.

Vomit tingled in the back of his throat. He forced it down, tore himself free of Alice Bunter.

"Mr. Davis! Stauffer!"

But he was out the door, staggering, leaving them behind to discuss the strange behavior of the Nobel winner who was long overdue for the Alliance Literature Prize.

Proteus floated next to him.

He found the car, almost closed the robot out. It was fortunate that he had not, for the machine would have vibra-beamed the door away if he had. He pulled the grav car onto the highway, ignoring the coordinates and taking manual control. The port city whizzed away and was replaced by grassy hills. The trees came, still dropping leaves. It began to snow…

How long had he been fooling himself? Years. Many of them. He had played the role of the uncaring, the isolationist without need for human companionship. Give me my typewriter, he cried, and I will converse with my own soul! That is sufficient! he had shouted. But it had never been sufficient, not for a second. He had accepted the adulation of his fans, relied upon it. It had become his only contact with people, and without it he would have been shallow and incomplete. He realized now that he had been searching for love, searching for what two dead parents had never given him, had denied him in their bitterness and their determination to destroy one another no matter what the cost. Stauffer, Stauffer, Stauffer… Wife against husband, both of them against the son. When he had grown and they could not live to see his accomplishments, to see that he had made it despite them, he had turned to the masses, opened his heart and wrote for their pleasure and their praises. That had become so important to him that the true love of a winged girl had been momentarily displaced, lost in the greater need for acceptance. But not now. Not any longer…

He drove faster.

Proteus gurgled noisily.

Snow bulleted the windscreen, danced whitely across the hood. It covered the leaves along the road, began decking the trees in soft shrouds…

What would he say to her? Could he make her reject her winged angel to come with him? Could he convince her that he would love and cherish her more than her Demosian lover? He would have to. There was nothing else he could imagine now. There could be no going back to the reading clubs for a hint of love, admiration, appreciation. He knew the phoniness of that, at last, and it was not going to be possible to delude himself with the same routine any longer.

The gyros whined to keep the car as stable as possible while he poured the stress power from the grav plates into the propelling mechanism.

They swept past the towers of the aviaries and onward toward the Sanctuary. The twin breasts were the breasts of a fair maiden now, frosted with snow. He turned toward the ugly black block of the "orphanage" and accelerated. He was afraid she would say no, would stay with the winged boy, leaving him without anything but his loneliness and longing. He constructed arguments as sound as those required to breach the gates of Hell or Heaven, repeated them to himself to get them perfectly in mind. Somehow, they all sounded like pieces of broken glass dropping off his tongue.