Robert Silverberg - A Tip on a Turtle

“No,” Denise said. “No accounting for it at all.”

It was cocktail time before she found him: the hour when the guests gathered on the garden patio where the turtle races were held to have a daiquiri or two before the tote counter opened for business. Denise drifted down there automatically, despite what Thompkins had told her about the cancelation of the races. Most of the other guests had done the same. She saw Holt’s lanky figure looming up out of a group of them. They had surrounded him, they were gesturing and waving their daiquiris around as they talked.

It was easy enough to guess that they were trying to talk him into refraining from playing the turtles so that they could have their daily amusement back.

When she came closer she saw the message chalked across the tote board in an ornate Jamaican hand, all curlicues and flourishes:

TECHNICAL PROBLEM

NO RACES TODAY

YOUR KIND INDULGENCE IS ASKED

“Nicholas?” she called, as though they had a prearranged date.

He smiled at her gratefully. “Excuse me,” he said in his genteel way to the cluster around him, and moved smoothly through them to her side. “How lovely you look tonight, Denise.”

“I’ve heard that the hotel’s putting pressure on you about the races.”

“Yes. Yes.” He seemed to be speaking to her from another galaxy. “So they are. They’re quite upset, matter of fact. But if there’s going to be racing, I have a right to play. If they choose to cancel, that’s their business.”

In a low voice she said, “You aren’t involved in any sort of collusion with the hotel boys, are you?”

“You asked me that before. You know that that isn’t possible.”

“Then how are you always able to tell which turtle’s going to win?”

“I know,” he said sadly. “I simply do.”

“You always know what’s about to happen, don’t you? Always.”

“Would you like a daiquiri, Denise?”

“Answer me. Please.”

“I have a knack, yes.”

“It’s more than a knack.”

“A gift, then. A special—something.”

“A something, yes.” They were walking as they talked; already they were past the bougainvillea hedge, heading down the steps toward the beachfront promenade, leaving the angry guests and the racing pool and the turtle tank behind.

“A very reliable something,” she said.

“Yes. I suppose it is.”

“You said that you knew, the first night when you offered me that tip, that I wasn’t going to take you up on it. Why did you offer it to me, then?”

“I told you. It seemed like a friendly gesture.”

“We weren’t friends then. We’d hardly spoken. Why’d you bother?”

“Just because.”

“Because you wanted to test your special something?” she asked him. “Because you wanted to see whether it was working right?”

He stared at her intently. He looked almost frightened, she thought. She had broken through.

“Perhaps I did,” he said.

“Yes. You check up on it now and then, don’t you? You try something that you know won’t pan out, like tipping a strange woman to the outcome of the turtle race even though your gift tells you that she won’t bet your tip. Just to see whether your guess was on the mark. But what would you have done if I had put a bet down that night, Nicholas?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“You were certain of that.”

“Virtually certain, yes. But you’re right: I test it now and then, just to see.”

“And it always turns out the way you expect?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“You’re scary, Nicholas. How long have you been able to do stuff like this?”

“Does that matter?” he asked. “Does it really?”

He asked her to have dinner with him again, but there was something perfunctory about the invitation, as though he were offering it only because the hour was getting toward dinnertime and they happened to be standing next to each other just then. She accepted quickly, perhaps too quickly. But the dining terrace was practically empty when they reached it—they were very early, on account of the cancelation of the races—and the meal was a stiff, uncomfortable affair. He was so obviously bothered by her persistent inquiries about his baffling skill, his special something, that she quickly backed off, but that left little to talk about except the unchanging perfect weather, the beauty of the hotel grounds, the rumors of racial tension elsewhere on the island. He toyed with his food and ate very little. They ordered no wine. It was like sitting across the table from a stranger who was dining with her purely by chance. And yet less than twenty-four hours before she had spent a night in this man’s bed.

She didn’t understand him at all. He was alien and mysterious and a little frightening. But somehow, strangely, that made him all the more desirable.

As they were sipping their coffee she looked straight at him and sent him a message with her mind:

Ask me to come dancing with you, next. And then let’s go to your cottage again, you bastard.

But instead he said abruptly, “Would you excuse me, Denise?”

She was nonplussed. “Why—yes—if—”

He looked at his watch. “I’ve rented a glass-bottomed boat for eight o’clock. To have a look at the night life out on the reef.”

The night was when the reef came alive. The little coral creatures awoke and unfolded their brilliant little tentacles; phosphorescent organisms began to glow; octopuses and eels came out of their dark crannies to forage for their meals; sharks and rays and other big predators set forth on the hunt. You could take a boat out there that was equipped with bottom-mounted arc lights and watch the show, but very few of the hotel guests actually did. The waters that were so crystalline and inviting by day looked ominous and menacing in the dark, with sinister coral humps rising like black ogres’ heads above the lapping wavelets. She had never even thought of going.

But now she heard herself saying, in a desperate attempt at salvaging something out of the evening, “Can I go with you?”

“I’m sorry. No.”

“I’m really eager to see what the reef looks like at—”

“No,” he said, quietly but with real finality. “It’s something I’d rather do by myself, if you don’t mind. Or even if you do mind, I have to tell you. Is that all right, Denise?”

“Will I see you afterward?” she asked, wishing instantly that she hadn’t. But he had already risen and given her a gentlemanly little smile of farewell and was striding down the terrace toward the steps that led to the beachfront promenade.

She stared after him, astounded by the swiftness of his disappearance, the unexpectedness of it.

She sat almost without moving, contemplating her bewildering abandonment. Five minutes went by, maybe ten. The waiter unobtrusively brought her another coffee. She held the cup in her hand without drinking from it.

Jeffrey Thompkins materialized from somewhere, hideously cheerful. “If you’re free,” he said, “how about an after-dinner liqueur?” He was wearing a white dinner jacket, very natty, and sharply pressed black trousers. But his round neckless head and the blaze of sunburn across his bare scalp spoiled the elegant effect. “A Strega, a Galliano, a nice cognac, maybe?” He pronounced it coneyac.

“Something weird’s going on,” she said.

“Oh?”

“He went out on the reef in one of those boats, by himself. Holt. Just got up and walked away from the table, said he’d rented a boat for eight o’clock. Poof. Gone.”

“I’m heartbroken to hear it.”

“No, be serious. He was acting really strange. I asked to go with him, and he said no, I absolutely couldn’t. He sounded almost like some sort of a machine. You could hear the gears clicking.”