Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon

She nodded vehemently. “Oh, I’m sorry — I thought you worked here!” she mimicked herself.

“No — uh — I don’t,” he supplied.

“Well — uh — is anybody here?”

“I don’t know. Do you suppose we should call out, or something… ?”

“What should we say?”

“’Hey, You!’?”

“Perhaps we should tap a coin on the counter?”

“I — uh — I only have a five-dollar bill.”

“Well, then…” he trailed away in a tense imitation of an embarrassed mumble.

The girl thumped her left foot impatiently against the floorboards. “Yes, that’s exactly how it would have been! And now we’re doing it here, instead of there! Can’t you do something about it?”

Hawks took a deep breath. “My name is Edward Hawks. I’m forty-two years old, unmarried, and I’m a college graduate. I work for Continental Electronics.”

The girl said, “I’m Elizabeth Cummings. I’m just getting started as a fashion designer. Single. I’m twenty-five.” She glanced aside at him. “Why were you walking?”

“I often walked when I was a boy,” he said. “I had many things to think about. I couldn’t understand the world, and I kept trying to discover the secret of living successfully in it. If I sat in a chair at home and thought, it worried my parents. There were times when they thought it was laziness, and times when they thought there was something wrong with me. I didn’t know what it was. If I went somewhere else, there were other people who had to be accounted to. So I walked to be alone with myself. I walked miles. And I couldn’t discover the secret of the world, or what was wrong with me. But I felt I was coming closer and closer. Then, when enough rime had passed, I gradually learned how I could behave properly in the world as I saw it.” He smiled. “That’s why I was walking this afternoon.”

“And where are you going now?”

“Back to work. I have to do some preliminary setting-up on a project we’re starting tomorrow.” He looked briefly out through the window, and then brought his glance back to Elizabeth. “Where are you going?”

“I have a studio downtown. I have to work late tonight, too.”

“Will you give me your address and phone number, so I can call you tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she said. “Tomorrow night?”

“If I may.”

She said, “Don’t ask me questions if you know the answers.” She looked at him. “Don’t tell me unimportant things just to pass the time.”

“Then I’ll have many more things to tell you.”

She stopped the car in front of Continental Electronics’ main gate, to let him out. “You’re the Edward Hawks,” she said.

“And you’re the Elizabeth Cummings.”

She gestured toward the sprawled white buildings. “You know what I mean.”

He looked at her gravely. “I’m the Edward Hawks who’s important to another human being. You’re the Elizabeth Cummings.”

She reached out and touched his sleeve as he opened the car door. “That’s too hot to wear on a day like this.”

He stopped beside the car, opened the jacket, took it off, and again folded it over his arm. Then he smiled, raised his hand in a tentative gesture, turned, and walked through the gate that a guard was holding open for him.

In the morning, at a quarter to nine, the phone rang in the laboratory. Sam Latourette took it from the technician who’d picked it up. He said, “Well, if he’s like that, don’t take any crap from him, Tom. Tell him to wait. I’ll notify Ed Hawks.” He hung up and padded in his old shoes across the floor, to where Hawks was with the crew of Navy dressers laying out the equipment Barker would wear.

The suit lay open on its long, adjustable table like a sectioned lobster, trailing disconnected air hoses from its sides, its crenelated joints bulging arthritically because of the embedded electric motors and hydraulic pistons that would move them. Hawks had run leads from a test power supply into the joints; the suit flexed and twitched, scraping its legs ponderously on the table’s plastic facing, writhing the tool and pincer clusters at the ends of its arms. One of the Navy men wheeled up a compressed air cylinder and snapped the air hoses to it. At Hawks’ nod, the helmet, crested with reinforcing ridges, its faceplate barred by a crosshatch of steel rods, hissed shrilly through its intakes while the table surface groaned.

“Leave it, Ed,” Sam Latourette said. “These men can handle that.”

Hawks looked apologetically at the Navy men, who had all turned their eyes on Latourette. “I know that, Sam.”

“Are you going to wear it? Leave it alone!” Latourette burst out. “Nothing ever goes wrong with any of the equipment!”

Hawks said patiently, “I want to do it. The boys, here—” he gestured toward the dressers — “the boys don’t mind my playing with their Erector set.”

“Well, this fellow Barker’s down at the gate. Give me his pass and stuff, and I’ll go down and get him. He sounds like a real prize.”

“No, I’ll do that, Sam.” Hawks stepped back from the table and nodded toward the dressers. “It’s in fine shape. Thank you.” He left the laboratory and went up the stairs to the ground floor, preoccupied.

Outside, he walked along the fog-wet, black asphalt driveway toward the gate, which was at first barely visible through the acrid mist. He looked at his wrist watch, and smiled faintly.

Barker had left his car in the outer parking lot and was standing on the other side of the small pedestrian gate, staring coldly through it at the guard, who ignored him stiffly. Barker’s cheekbones were flushed red, and his poplin windbreaker was curled over his left forearm as though he expected to begin a knife fight.

“Morning, Dr. Hawks,” the guard said as Hawks came up. “This man’s been tryin’ to talk me into lettin’ him in without a pass. And he’s been tryin’ to pump me about what you’re doin’.”

Hawks nodded and looked thoughtfully at Barker. “I’m not surprised.” He reached into his suit pocket, under his smock, and banded over the company pass and security O.K. slip from the FBI. The guard took them into his cubicle to record the numbers on his log sheet.

Barker looked defiantly at Hawks. “What’s in this place? Another atom bomb project?”

“There’s no need to fish for information,” Hawks said quietly. “And no purpose in doing it with a man who lacks it. Stop wasting your energy. I’d be happier if I hadn’t guessed exactly how you’d act here.” Hawks said, “Thank you, Tom,” as the guard came out and unlocked the gate. He turned back to Barker. “You’ll always be told everything you need to know.”

Barker said, “Sometimes it’s better for me if I’m allowed to judge what I need, or don’t. But—” He bowed deeply from the hips. “At your service.” He straightened and glanced up at the length of heavy-gauge pipe forming the lintel of the gate in the Cyclone fencing. He twisted his pinched lips into a smile. “Well, morituri te salutamus , Doctor,” he said as he stepped through. “We signify your status at the point of our death.”

Hawks’ face twitched. “I’ve also read a book,” he said softly, and turned away. “Put on your badge and come with me.”

Barker took it from the guard, who was holding it out patiently, and clipped it to his Basque shirt pocket. “And thank you, Tom,” he said over his shoulder, falling into step with Hawks.

“Claire didn’t want me to come,” he said, cocking his head up to glance significantly at Hawks. “She’s afraid.”

“Of what I might do to you, or of what might happen to her because of it?” Hawks answered, keeping his eyes on the buildings.