Judith Merril - The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7

She turned her laughing eyes toward me. They became suddenly grave.

“But he’s a ghost!” she cried.

“A ghost?” asked Seymore. “A ghost? He’s not a ghost He’s just an artist.”

“But he looks so thin,” she said. “I don’t believe he’s eaten for a week. I’m sure he needs a woman to take care of him.”

“It’s not a woman he needs,” said Seymore. “What he needs is talent.”

I didn’t like this crack, especially in front of Mr. Stettheimer. I reached out and grabbed Seymore by one of his satin lapels and pulled him toward me.

“Seymore,” I said, “I want my check.”

“What check?”

“The money for the Pollock.”

“What Pollock?”

“You know what Pollock. Give me my check!”

Seymore looked at me coldly. His face was tense and a little nasty.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about”

“You’re a goddam liar!”

Seymore turned to Mr. Stettheimer. “Would you mind,” he said, “if I threw this creep into your lake?”

Both the girl and Mr. Stettheimer stepped in between us. I heard her saying, “Seymore, darling, couldn’t you try to be a little more agreeable?” And at the same time Mr. Stettheimer said, “You boys should talk business at the office, not at my party.” He grabbed my arm, and with extraordinary vitality for his years, hustled me past the bar, through the dancers, out to the steps that led down to the lake. “You stay here,” he ordered, “and pull yourself together. And keep away from Seymore. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mr. Stettheimer,” I said. “I understand.” After all, he’d always been very nice to me.

The music was getting loud now, the party was moving into high gear. I turned my back on it. Even then, near at hand, I saw the shadows of the dancers jumping in the water. Farther out, the lake was dark and still. A nice place to be in a boat. Then I noticed that there was a boat, hidden in the grasses, its long rope tied to an iron ring on the bottom step.

The knot was complicated, but I solved it. I found the oars, fitted them into the locks, and was about to shove off when I saw against the light the figure of a woman on the steps above me. It wasn’t hard to tell who she was. Silhouettes aren’t cut that way very often.

“How about a ride?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, but she let me take her hand and help her in. I began to row through the grasses, out into the open water. I rowed for quite a while.

“Why didn’t you tell Seymore I was right?” I asked suddenly.

“But how could I?”

“But why couldn’t you?”

“Because you were probably both right!”

“But that’s just not possible,” I said sharply.

I let the boat drift. She sat quietly. The Milky Way was behind her. Its light had gathered in her diamond necklace; a phosphorescent glow fell on her shoulders and her hands. She sighed deeply.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked.

“I’m not for this world,” she said.

“But why not?”

“Because nobody seems to realize that as the ambiance changes, the truth changes.”

I started to row again. The moving figures at Mr. Stettheimer’s party grew smaller and smaller. Pretty soon I couldn’t hear the music. And then I began to hear the pounding of the surf. I realized we were getting near the sand spit that separated the lake from the ocean.

“Let’s go ashore,” I said.

I beached the boat. We climbed out and walked to the high part of the sand. In front of us the ocean waves were breaking heavily; on either side of us there were big dunes. Down the beach, black against the ocean, a man was walking briskly toward us — a member of the Coast Guard on his nightly patrol. We turned back to the boat.

I took her arm in one hand and with the other I pointed out across the lake.

“What can you see?” I asked.

“I can see the Nebula of Andromeda,” she said. “It’s a pity it’s lying on its side. The top view is much more exciting.”

“Oh, I don’t mean way out there. I mean just on the other side of the lake.”

“I can see Mr. Stettheimer’s party. There’s a man, apart from the others, sitting on the balustrade.”

“Can you see what he’s thinking?” I asked.

“Why yes, as a matter of fact, I can. Can you?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s trying to figure out how much he could get for a Rubens from the Art Institute of Chicago.”

She laughed softly.

“Darling,” she whispered. “Why don’t you and I take a little walk in the dunes?”

“Let me tie up the boat first,” I said.

There was a large piece of driftwood at our feet. I got down on my knees and started to dig in the sand under the driftwood so I could get the rope around it.

“Do you know,” she said suddenly, “there’s a very attractive man in a uniform watching us. He’s just on the top of the rise. Who do you think he is? Do you mind if I go over and talk to him?”

Before I could answer she had gone.

David Rome is another new writer, whose work has appeared only in the past year in the two British magazines. New Worlds and Science Fantasy. This is his first American publication.

Drop Parky into a crowd anywhere and he’d stand out like a Roman nose in Basutoland. Tall and excessively thin, with eyes like twin tail-lights — that was Parky. But get him alone, start a conversation, and he’d seem to shrink a foot. His voice was high-pitched, like a woman’s; his baby-white hands never stopped moving.

He was a seer, and I owned him. Leastways, I owned an hour of his time Mondays to Saturdays when he’d sit up there on his rostrum and drone through his act.

Sundays, Parky was free; but he never went anywhere. He’d loll around my caravan drinking warm beer, telling me I should be paying him double his wage. His red eyes would glow and his fingers would tap out a melancholy tune on the side of the can.

‘Listen,’ I said once. ‘Your act is deader than Dodo.’

Dodo was a highwire, no-net, artist I once had.

So Parky would tell me then that because I wasn’t paying him enough he wasn’t getting enough to eat.

‘Reading the future takes energy, Charlie.’

Then he’d finish his beer, poke around in the fridge until he found a leg of chicken, and start chewing it for its energy.

‘Look, Parky,’ I said. ‘You read the future, eh? Well, read it now. See any raise in the ether? Any big money about to materialise?’

He didn’t, and I knew it. His act wasn’t worth half what I was paying him now. I opened another can and avoided his eyes.

‘I could always go elsewhere,’ he said.

Like hell he could. I’d tried to shuffle him out of my hand months ago, but nobody else was having any.

‘Don’t make me laugh,’ I said. ‘And have a beer.’

He took the huff at that. He grabbed the can I was holding out to him, mumbled a word or two under his breath, and off he went. I never saw him again that day. I wrote up my accounts, put the books away in my safe, and started out on my Sunday check of the fairground.

I was halfway around, with two kids and a stray dog to my credit, when I first saw the little guy with yellow hair. Just a glimpse. There, then gone. I changed my direction and went after him.

Rounding a tent, I caught sight of him again. He was walking towards Parky’s pitch, his bright hair shining like a halo under the afternoon sun.

‘Hey!’ I called out.

He turned slowly. Neatly pressed suit; collar-and-tie. He was well dressed. He waited until I was closer, then he said, ‘Yes?’

Funny that. I’d thought he was little; when he spoke, though, he seemed taller than I was.