The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

And he had the gall to try and argue with me. To make excuses for himself. He said something like, “I’m sorry, but I got so worried I couldn’t stand it any longer. I made sure everything was all right, and I only meant to be out for a little while, and—”

My wife had caught up by now, and she turned it on. I never suspected before that she knew so many dirty words, but she did, and she used them, and she finished up by slapping him across the face with her purse before leading me into a dash for the car. All the way home she was telling me what an idiot I’d been to get tangled up with Mack, and I was saying what was perfectly true—that I did the guy a favor because I didn’t think anyone should have to be lonely and without a Contact any more—but true or not it sounded hollow.

The most terrifying sound I ever heard was the noise of those two kids squalling as we came in. But nothing was wrong with either of them except they were lonely and miserable, and we comforted them and made a fuss of them till they quietened down.

The outside door opened while we were breathing sighs of relief and there he was again. Of course, we’d left him a key to the door while we were out, in case he had to step round the corner or anything. Well, a few minutes is one thing—but tracking us to the movie house and then sitting through the show was another altogether.

I was practically speechless when I saw who it was. I let him get the first few words in because of that. He said, “Please, you must understand! All I wanted was to make sure nothing happened to you! Suppose you’d had a crash on the way to the movie, and I didn’t know—where would I be then? I sat there and worried about it till I just couldn’t stand any more, and all I meant to do was make sure you were safe, but when I got down to the movie house I got worried about your coming home safe and—”

I still hadn’t found any words because I was so blind angry. So, since I couldn’t take any more, I wound up and let him have it on the chin. He went halfway backwards through the open door behind him, catching at the jamb to stop himself falling, and his face screwed up like a mommy’s darling who’s got in a game too rough for him and he started to snivel.

“Don’t drive me away!” he moaned. “You’re the only friend I have in the world! Don’t drive me away!”

“Friend!” I said. “After what you did this evening I wouldn’t call you my friend if you were the last guy on Earth! I did you a favor and you’ve, paid it back exactly the way Mary said you would. Get the hell out of here and don’t try to come back, and first thing in the morning I’m going to stop by at a Contact agency and have you expunged!”

“No!” he shrieked. I never thought a man could scream like that— as though red-hot irons had been put against his face. “No! You can’t do that! It’s inhuman! It’s—”

I grabbed hold of him and twisted the key out of his fingers, and for all he tried to cling to me and went on blubbering I pushed him out of the door and slammed it in his face.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay tossing and turning, staring up into the darkness. After half an hour of this, I heard my wife sit up in the other bed.

“What’s the trouble, honey?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess maybe I feel ashamed of myself for kicking Mack out the way I did.”

“Nonsense!” she said sharply. “You’re too soft-hearted. You couldn’t have done anything else. Lonely, or not lonely, he played a disgusting, wicked trick on us—leaving the twins alone like that after he’d promised! You didn’t promise him anything. You said you were doing him a favor. You couldn’t know what sort of a person he’d turn out to be. Now you relax and go to sleep. I’m going to wake you early and make sure of getting you to a Contact agency before you go in to work.”

At that precise moment, as though he’d been listening, I picked him up.

I could never describe—not if I tried for twenty lifetimes—the slimy, underhand, snivelly triumph that was in his mind when it happened. I couldn’t convey the sensation of “Yah, tricked you again!” Or the undertone of “You treated me badly, see how badly I can treat you.”

I think I screamed a few times when I realized what had happened. Of course. He’d conned me into making a Contact with him, just as he’d done to a lot of other people before—only they’d seen through him in good time and expunged without telling him, so that when he found out, it was too late to cheat on the deal the way he’d cheated me.

I’d told him I was going to expunge him in the morning —that’s a unilateral decision, as they call it, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop me. Something in my voice must have shown that I really meant it. Because, though he couldn’t stop me, he could forestall me, and he’d done exactly that.

He’d shot himself in the heart.

I went on hoping for a little while. I fought the nastiness that had come into my mind—sent my wife and kids off to her parents again over the weekend—and tried to sweat it out by myself. I didn’t make it. I was preoccupied for a while finding out exactly how many lies Mack had told me —about his reform school, his time in jail, his undiscovered thefts and shabby tricks played on people he called friends like the one he’d played on me—but then it snapped, and I had to go and call up my father-in-law and find out if my wife had arrived yet, and she hadn’t, and I chewed my nails to the knuckle and called up my old friend Hank, who said hullo, yes of course I still have your Contact you old so-and-so and how are you and say I may be flying up to New York next weekend—

I was horrified. I couldn’t help it. I guess he thought I was crazy or at any rate idiotically rude, when I tried to talk him out of flying up, and we had a first-rate argument which practically finished with him saying he’d expunge the Contact if that was the way I was going to talk to an old pal.

Then I panicked and had to call my kid brother Joe, and he wasn’t home—gone somewhere for the weekend, my part of my mind told me, and nothing to worry about. But Mack’s part of my mind said he was probably dead and my old friend was going to desert me and pretty soon I wouldn’t have a Contact at all and then I’d be permanently dead and how about that movie last night with people being killed and having no Contacts at all?

So I called my father-in-law again and yes my wife and the twins were there now and they were going on the lake in a boat belonging to a friend and I was appalled and tried to say that it was too dangerous and don’t let them and I’d come up myself and hold them back if I had to and—

It hasn’t stopped. It’s been quite a time blending Mack in with the rest of me; I hoped and hoped that when the click came things would be better. But they’re worse.

Worse?

Well—I can’t be sure about that. I mean, it’s true that until now I was taking the most appalling risks. Like going out to work all day and leaving my wife at home alone— why, anything might have happened to her! And not seeing Hank for months on end. And not checking with Joe every chance I got, so that if he was killed I could have time to fix up another Contact to take his place.

It’s safer now, though. Now 1 have this gun, and I don’t go out to work, and I don’t let my wife out of my sight at all, and we’re going to drive very carefully down to Joe’s place, and stop him doing foolish things too, and when I’ve got him lined up, we’ll go to Hank’s and prevent him from making that insanely risky flight to New York and then maybe things will be okay.

The thing that worries me, though, is that I’ll have to go to sleep some time, and—what if something happens to them all when I’m asleep?