Robert Sheckley - Mindswap

These were Marvin's thoughts as he stood on the bridge. And a great longing overcame him, a desire to be finished with desire, to forgo pleasure and pain, to quit the petty modes of achievement and failure, to have done with distractions, and get on with the business of life, which was death.

Slowly he climbed to the rail, and there stood poised over the twisting currents of sand. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow detach itself from a pillar, move tentatively to the rail, stand erect, poise itself over the abyss and lean precariously outwards-

'Stop! Wait!' Marvin cried. His own desire for destruction had been abruptly terminated. He saw only a fellow creature in peril.

The shadowy figure gasped, and abruptly lunged towards the yawning river below. Marvin moved simultaneously and managed to catch an ankle.

The ensuing wrench almost pulled him over the rail. But recovering quickly, Marvin attached suckers to the porous stone sidewalk, spread his lower limbs for maximum purchase, wrapped two upper limbs around a light pole, and maintained a tenacious grip with his remaining two arms.

There was a moment of charged equilibrium; then Marvin's strength prevailed over the weight of the would-be suicide. Slowly, carefully, Marvin pulled, shifting his grip from tarsus to tibia, hauling without respite until he had brought that person to a point of safety on the roadbed of the bridge.

All recollection of his own self-destructive desires had left him. He strode forward and grasped the suicider by the shoulders, shaking fiercely.

'You damned fool!' Marvin shouted. 'What kind of a coward are you? Only an idiot or a madman takes an out like that. Haven't you any guts at all, you darnned-'

He stopped in mid-expletive. The would-be suicide was facing him, trembling, eyes averted. And now Marvin perceived, for the first time, that he had rescued a woman.

Later, in a private booth in a bridgeside restaurant, Marvin apologized for his harsh words, which had been torn from him by shock rather than conviction. But the woman, gracefully clicking her claw, refused to accept his apology.

'Because you are right,' she said. 'My attempt was the act of an idiot or a madwoman, or both. Your analysis was correct, I fear. You should have let me jump.'

Marvin perceived how fair she was. A small woman, coming barely to his upper thorax, she was exquisitely made. Her midbody had the true sweet cylinder curves, and her proud head sat slightly forward of her body at a heartwrenching five degrees from the vertical. Her features were perfection, from the nicely bulged forehead to the angular sweep of jaw. Her twin ovipositors were modestly hidden behind a white satin sash, cut in princess style and revealing just a tantalizing suggestion of the shining green flesh beneath them. Her legs, all of them, were clad in orange windings, draped to reveal the lissome segmentation of the joints.

A would-be suicide she may have been; but she was also the most stunning beauty that Marvin had seen on Celsus. His throat went dry at the sight of her, and his pulse began to race. He found that he was staring at the white satin that concealed and revealed her high-tilted ovipositors. He turned away, and found that he was looking at the sensual marvel of a long, segmented limb. Blushing furiously, he forced himself to look at the puckered beauty scar on her forehead.

She seemed unconscious of his fervent attention. Unselfconsciously she said, 'Perhaps we should introduce ourselves – under the circumstances!'

They both laughed immoderately at her witticism. 'My name is Marvin Flynn,' Marvin said.

'Mine is Phthistia Held,' the young woman said.

'I'll call you Cathy, if you don't mind,' Marvin said.

They both laughed again. Then Cathy grew serious. Taking note of the too-quick passage of time, she said, 'I must thank you again. And now I must leave.'

'Of course,' Marvin said, rising. 'When may I see you again?'

'Never,' she said in a low voice.

'But I must!' Marvin said. 'I mean to say, now that I've found you I can never let you go.'

She shook her head sadly. 'Once in a while,' she murmured, 'will you give one little thought to me?'

'We must not say goodbye!' Marvin said.

'Oh, you'll get by,' she replied, not cruelly.

'I'll never smile again,' Marvin told her.

'Somebody else will be taking my place,' she predicted.

'You are temptation!' he shouted in a fury.

'We are like two ships that pass in the night,' she corrected.

'Will we never meet again?' Marvin queried.

'Time alone can tell.'

'My prayer is to be there with you,' Marvin said hopefully.

'East of the Sun and West of the Moon,' she intoned.

'You're mean to me,' Marvin pouted.

'I didn't know what time it was,' she said. 'But I know what time it is now!' And so saying, she whirled and darted out the door.

Marvin watched her leave, then sat down at the bar. 'One for my baby, and one for the road' he told the bartender.

'A woman's a two-face,' the bartender commented sympathetically, pouring a drink.

'I got the mad-about-her-sad-without-her blues,' Marvin replied.

'A fellow needs a girl,' the bartender told him.

Marvin finished his drink and held out his glass. 'A pink cocktail for a blue lady,' he ordered.

'She may be weary,' the bartender suggested.

'I don't know why I love her like I do,' Marvin stated. 'But at least I do know why there's no sun up in the sky. In my solitude she haunts me like a tinkling piano in the next apartment. But I'll be around no matter how she treats me now. Maybe it was just one of those things; yet I'll remember April and her, and the evening breeze caressed the trees but not for me, and-'

There is no telling how long Marvin might have continued his lament had not a voice at the level of his ribs and two feet to his left whispered, 'Hey, meester.'

Marvin turned and saw a small, plump, raggedly dressed Celsian sitting on the next bar stool.

'What is it?' Marvin asked brusquely.

'You maybe want see thees muchacha so beautiful other time?'

'Yes, I do. But what can you-'

'I am private investigator tracer of lost persons satisfaction guaranteed or not one cent in tribute.'

'What kind of an accent have you got?' Marvin asked.

'Lambrobian,' the investigator said. 'My name is Juan Valdez and I come from the fiesta lands below the border to make my fortune here in big city of the Norte.'

'Sandback,' the bartender snarled.

'What thees theeng you call me?' the little Lombrobian said, with suspicious mildness.

'I called you a sandback, you lousy little sandback,' the bartender snarled.

'That ees what I thought,' said Valdez. He reached into his cummerbund, took out a long, double-edged knife, and drove it into the bartender's heart, killing him instantly.

'I am a mild man, señor,' he said to Marvin. 'I am not a man quickly to take offence. Indeed, in my home village of Montana Verde de los Tres Picos, I am considered a harmless man. I ask nothing more than to be allowed to cultivate my peyote buds in the high mountains of Lombrobia under the shade of that tree which we call "the sun hat", for these are the bes' peyote buds in all the world.'

'I can understand that,' Marvin said.

'Yet still,' Valdez said, more sternly, 'when an exploitator del norte insults me, and by implication, defames those who gave me birth and nurtured me – why then, señor, a blinding red mist descends over my field of vision and my knife springs to my hand unaided, and proceeds from there non-stop to the heart of the betrayer of the children of the poor.'

'It could happen to anyone,' Marvin said.

'And yet,' Valdez said, 'despite my keen sense of honour, I am essentially childlike, intuitive, and easygoing.'