Poul Anderson - The Corridors of Time

The guard said, “You got a visitor,” and turned the key.

“What? Who?” Malcolm Lockridge rose from his bunk. He had been lying there for hours, trying to read a textbook—keep up with his course work—but mostly with his gaze held to a crack in the ceiling and his mind awash in bitterness. If nothing else, the noises and stinks from the other cells distracted him too much.

“I dunno.” The guard clicked his tongue. “She’s a dish, though.” His tone was more awed than otherwise.

Puzzled, Lockridge crossed the floor. The guard stepped back a little. One could read his mind: Careful, there, this guy’s a killer. Not that Lockridge appeared vicious. He was of medium height, with crew-cut sandy hair, blue eyes, blunt snub-nosed features that reflected no more than his twenty-six years. But he was wider in chest and shoulders, thicker in arms and legs, than most men, and he moved like a cat.

“Don’t be scared, son,” he sneered.

The guard reddened. “Watch yourself, buster.”

Oh, hell, Lockridge thought. Why take my feelings out on him? He’s been decent enough.—Well, who else is there to hit back at?

Anger died away as he walked down the corridor. In the grindstone sameness of the past two weeks, any break was treasured. Even a talk with his lawyer was an event, though one to be paid for afterward with a sleepless night, raging at the man’s bland unwillingness to fight his case. So he gnawed the question of who this might be today. A woman—his mother had flown hack to Kentucky. A dish—one girl friend had come to see him, and she was kind of pretty, but that had been a morbid “How could you?” scene and he didn’t expect her to return. Some female reporter? No, by now the local papers had all interviewed him.

He came out into the visiting room. A window opened on the city, traffic noises, a park across the street, new-leafed trees and heartbreakingly blue sky full of swift little clouds, a breath of Midwestern springtime that made him doubly aware of the stench he had left. A couple of guards kept watch on those who sat at the long tables and whispered to each other.

“Over there,” said Lockridge’s escort.

He turned and saw her. She stood by the assigned chair. The heart jumped in him. My God!

She was as tall as himself. A dress, simple, subtle, and expensive, showed a figure that might have belonged to a swimming champion, or to Diana the Huntress. Her head was carried high, black hair falling to the shoulders and shimmering with a stray sunbeam. The face—he couldn’t quite tell what part of the world had shaped it: arched brows over long and tilted green eyes, broad cheekbones, straight nose with slightly flaring nostrils, imperious mouth and chin, tawny complexion. For a moment, though the physical resemblance was slight, he recalled certain images from ancient Crete, Our Lady of the Labrys, and then he had time only to think of what was before him. Half frightened, he approached her.

“Mr. Lockridge,” she said, not as a question, He couldn’t place her accent either; perhaps just a too perfect enunciation. The voice was low-pitched and resonant.

“Y-yes,” he faltered. “Uh—”

“I am Storm Darroway. Shall we sit down?” She did so herself, as if accepting a throne, and opened her purse. “Would you like a cigarette?”

“Thanks,” he said automatically. She flared a Tiffany lighter for him but did not smoke herself. Having something to do with his hands steadied his nerves a little. He took his chair and met her gaze across the blank surface that divided them. In some corner of turmoil he wondered what anyone of her appearance was doing with an Anglo-Saxon name. Well, maybe her folks had been unpronounceable immigrants and changed. Yet she had none of the . . . the humbleness, the desire to please, which that suggested.

“I’m afraid I haven’t had the, uh, pleasure of meetin’ you before,” he mumbled. Glancing at her left hand: “—Uh, Miss Darroway.”

“No, of course not.” She fell silent, watching him, her countenance gone expressionless. He began to fidget. Stop that! he told himself, sat straight, looked back and waited.

She smiled with closed lips. “Very good,” she murmured. Crisply: “I saw an item about you in a Chicago paper which interested me. So I came to learn more for myself. You seem to be the victim of circumstances.”

Lockridge shrugged. “I don’t want to give you a sob story,” he said, “but yes, that’s right. Are you a reporter?”

“No. I am only concerned with seeing justice done. Does that surprise you?” she asked on a sardonic note.

He considered. “I reckon so. There’re people like Erle Stanley Gardner, but your kind of lady—”

“Has better ways to spend her time than crusading.” She grinned. “True. I need some help myself. Perhaps you are the one who can give it.”

Lockridge’s world was tilting around him. “Can’t you hire somebody, Ma’m—Miss?”

“Some qualities cannot be bought, they must be given, and I have not the means to search deeply.” Warmth entered her tone. “Tell me about your situation.”

“Why, you saw the papers.”

“In your own words. Please.”

“Well—gosh—there isn’t much. I was headin’ back to my apartment from the library, one night a couple weeks ago. That’s in a kind of run-down district. A bunch of teenagers jumped me. I reckon they figured to beat me up for kicks and for what little money I had. I fought back. One of ’em hit the sidewalk and cracked his head. The rest made off quick, I called the police, and the next thing I knew, I was charged with second degree murder.”

“Can you not claim self-defence?”

“Sure. I do. It doesn’t do me a lot of good. No witnesses. I can’t identify any of those punks; the street was dark. And there’s been a lot of trouble lately between their sort and the college. I was caught up in one small riot before, when some of the high school crowd tried to bust into a picnic. Now they say this fellow and me must’ve had a grudge fight. Me, with combat trainin’, pickin’ on a chee-ild.” Rage welled up in him, tasting of vomit. “Child, hell! He was bigger and hairier than I am. And there were a good dozen of ’em. But we got an ambitious D.A.”

She studied him. He was reminded of his father, long ago on the farm in Kentucky’s hills, watching the ways of a young bull he had acquired. After a pause, she asked, “Are you remorseful?”

“No,” he said. “That’s countin’ against me too. I’m no good at actin’. Oh, I sure didn’t set out to kill anybody. I pulled my punches right along. Pure accident that the punk fell the way he did. I’m sorry it happened. But my conscience feels clear. There I was, mindin’ my own business, and—suppose I hadn’t known how to handle myself. I’d’ve ended in the hospital, or dead. Everybody would’ve said, ‘How awful! We must build still another youth recreation centre.’ ”

Lockridge’s shoulders slumped. He crushed out his cigarette and stared at his hands. “I was foolish enough to say that to the press,” he continued dully. “Along with a few other remarks. They don’t seem to like Southerners much around here, these days. My lawyer says the local liberals are also makin’ me out a racist. Shucks, I hardly ever saw a coloured man where I came from; and you can’t get to be an anthropologist and keep superstitions about race; and those hoodlums were white anyhow. But none of that seems to make any difference to people’s feelin’s.”

His anger turned on himself. “I’m sorry, Miss,” he said. “I didn’t mean to whine.”