Дэймон Найт - Orbit 11

“Father is going to sit there until he’s done. He said this is his lifework, his only chance for immortality. He doesn’t believe in life after death, you know. He says that a man’s only chance for immortality is in the deeds he does or the works of art he produces.

“Yes, I know it’s a peculiar situation, and he’s a peculiar man, and I should be at school.”

And you, Mrs. Coombs, she thought, you think I’m a very peculiar little girl, and you don’t really care that I’m not at school today. In fact, you like it that I’m not there because you get chills every time you see me.

“Yes, Mrs. Coombs, I know you’ll have to take some action, and I don’t blame you for it. You’ll send somebody out to check; you have to do it because the rules say you have to, not because you think I’m lying.

“But you can hear my father typing, can’t you? You surely don’t think that’s a recording of a typist, do you?”

She shouldn’t have said that, because now Mrs. Coombs would be thinking exactly that.

She went into the kitchen and made more coffee. Pop had forbidden her coffee until she was fourteen, but she needed it to keep going. Besides, he wouldn’t know anything about it. He had told her, just before he had felt the first pain, that he could finish the Work in eighty-four to ninety-six hours if he were uninterrupted and did not have to stop because of exhaustion or another attack.

“I’ve got it all composed up here,” he had said, pointing a finger at his temple. “It’s just a matter of sitting down and staying down, and that’s what I’m going to do, come hell or high water, come infraction or infarction. In ten minutes, I’m going down into my burrow, and I’m not coming back up until I’m finished.”

“But, Pop,” Millie had said, “I don’t see how you can. Exercise or excitement is what brings on an attack. . . .”

“I got my pills, and I’ll rest if I have to and take longer,” he had said. “So it takes two weeks? But I don’t think it will. Listen, Millie,” and he had taken her hand in his and looked into her eyes as if they were binoculars pointing into a fourth dimension, “I’m depending on you more than on my pills or even on myself. You’ll not let anybody or anything interfere, will you? I know I shouldn’t ask you to stay home from school, but this is more important than school. I really need you. I can’t afford to put this off any longer. I don’t have the time. You know that.”

He had released her hand and started toward the basement door, saying, “This is it; here goes,” when his face had twisted and he had grabbed his chest.

But that had not stopped him.

The phone rang. It was, she knew, Mrs. Coombs again.

Mrs. Coombs’ voice was as thin as river ice in late March.

“You tell your father that officers will be on their way to your house within a few minutes. They’ll have a warrant to enter.”

“You’re causing a lot of trouble and for no good reason,” Millie said. “Just because you don’t like me...”

“Well, I never!” Mrs. Coombs said. “You know very well that I’m doing what I have to and, in fact, I’ve been overly lenient in this case. There’s no reason in the world why your father can’t come to the phone. . . .”

“I told you he had to finish his novel,” Millie said. “That’s all the reason he needs.”

She hung up the phone and then stood by the door for a moment, listening to the typing below. She turned and looked through the kitchen door at the clock on the wall. It was almost twelve. She doubted that anybody would come during the lunch hour, despite what Mrs. Coombs said. That gave her—her father, rather—another hour, And then she would see what she could do.

She tried to eat but could get down only half the liverwurst and lettuce sandwich. She wrapped the other half and put it back into the refrigerator. She looked at herself in the small mirror near the wall clock. She, who could not afford to lose an ounce, had shed pounds during the past three and a half days. As if they were on scales, her cheekbones had risen while her eyes had sunk. The dark brown irises and the bloodshot whites of her eyes looked like two fried eggs with ketchup that someone had thrown against a wall.

She smiled slightly at the thought, but it hurt to see her face. She looked like a witch and always would.

“But you’re only eleven!” her father had boomed to her. “Is it a tragedy at eleven because the boys haven’t asked you for a date yet? My God, when I was eleven, we didn’t ask girls for dates. We hated girls!”

Yet his Great Work started with the first-love agonies of a boy of eleven, and he had admitted long ago that the boy was himself.

Millie sighed again and left the mirror. She cleaned the front room but did not use the vacuum cleaner because she wanted to hear the typewriter keys. The hour passed, and the doorbell rang.

She sat down in a chair. The doorbell rang again and again. Then there was silence for a minute, followed by a fist pounding on the door.

Millie got up from the chair but went to the door at the top of the basement steps and opened it. She breathed deeply, made a face, went down the wooden steps and around the corner at the bottom and looked down the long room with its white-painted cement blocks and pine paneling. She could not see her father because a tall and broad dark-mahogany bookcase in the middle of the room formed the back of what he called his office. The chair and desk were on the other side, but she could see the file basket on the edge of the desk. Her practiced eye told her that the basket held almost five hundred pages, not counting the carbon copies.

The typewriter clattered away. After a while, she went back up the steps and across to the front door. She opened the peephole and looked through. Two of the three looked as if they could be plainclothesmen. The third was the tall, beefy, red-faced truant officer.

“Hello, Mr. Tavistock,” she said through the peephole. “What can I do for you?”

“You can open the door and let me in to talk to your father,” he growled. “Maybe he can explain what’s been going on, since you won’t.”

“I told Mrs. Coombs all about it,” Millie said. “She’s a complete ass, making all this fuss about nothing.”

“That’s no way for a lady to talk, Millie,” Mr. Tavistock said. “Especially an eleven-year-old. Open the door. I got a warrant.”

He waved a paper in his huge hand.

“My father’ll have you in court for trampling on his civil rights,” Millie said. “I’ll come to school tomorrow. I promise. But not today. My father mustn’t be bothered.”

“Let me in now, or we break the door down!” Mr. Tavistock shouted. “There’s something funny going on, Millie, otherwise your father would’ve contacted the school long ago!”

“You people always think there’s something funny about me, that’s all!” Millie shouted back.

“Yeah, and Mrs. Coombs fell down over the wastebasket and wrenched her back right after she phoned you,” Tavistock said. “Are you going to open that door?”

It would take them only a minute or so to kick the door open even if she chained it. She might as well let them in. Still, two more minutes might be all that were needed.

She reached for the knob and then dropped her hand. The typing had stopped.

She walked to the top of the basement steps.

“Pop! Are you through?”

She heard the squeaking of the swivel chair, then a shuffling sound. The house shook, and there was a crash as someone struck the front door with his body. A few seconds later, another crash was followed by the bang of the door against the inner wall. Mr. Tavistock said, “All right, boys! I’ll lead the way!”