Death Qualified Part 55

"I don't know," she said tiredly.

"Just another datum.

Another check in another column."

There was a soft tapping on the sliding gla.s.s door; Barbara jumped up and covered half the distance to it before Frank got out of his chair. She pulled the door open.

"Hi," Mike said.

"Come in."

He took a step forward, inside the house.

"I love you."

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes. Yes, and yes," he said.

She was frozen, afraid to touch him, be touched by him, afraid to reveal herself again, afraid not to. He reached out and took her into his arms. The fear vanished with the kiss, when she knew it was not only her desire but also his that had sprung up around them like a physical bond.

Not just desire, but a need so fierce that she ached from it and knew he felt the same hurting. When she at last drew back from his embrace, she heard her father at the doorway, clearing his throat. She did not look at him.

"We're going to be married." Her voice was almost unrecognizable to her ears.

"And not a minute too soon, from the looks of it," Frank said. His footsteps receded down the hallway, his study door closed.

"I love you," she whispered then.

"I do. I really do. I love you."

"Let's go to bed."

"Yes. Yes, and yes."

They made love with abandon, and again with tenderness.

They got up and wandered hand in hand downstairs, sat hand in hand before the fire. They ate cheese and bread and drank wine, and made love again. They talked sporadically.

"It's always new again," she whispered once during the long night.

"How can that be?"

"We're working past so many layers," he said.

"Self-protective layers on layers. I don't think I have any left."

"I know I don't. I didn't even know this me was in here." She shivered; his arm tightened about her shoulders.

"No more defenses," she said.

"It's scary. Almost scary."

"Scary," he agreed.

Finally they fell asleep entwined, then woke up again after nine in the morning. She opened her eyes to see him looking at her, smiling. She reached out to touch his cheek, and this time she saw the startlement on his face, saw his eyes widen. She laughed.

There was a note on the table from her father. He had gone to town for the newspaper.

"So," she said.

"I make breakfast. Eggs? Fruit? Cereal?"

"All the above. I'll help."

"I thought you never cooked."

"Breakfast doesn't count," he said seriously.

"Okay. Skillet. Eggs." She bent down to get the skillet from a cabinet, groaned, and very slowly straightened up again.

"What's wrong?"

She felt her face go hot.

"Sore. My G.o.d, I'm sore!"

They both laughed.

"You go sit," he said.

"I'll feed you. This one time only, mind you. No habits are to be a.s.sumed from a one-time occurrence."

Gratefully she poured coffee and took it to the table and watched him searching for things, putting things together in a way that seemed strange to her. Scientist at work.

First a.s.semble everything you'll need, then proceed. That was his method apparently, and never hers, at least not with cooking. But that was exactly how she preferred to practice law, and why Nell's case had been such a b.i.t.c.h, she thought. She had not been able to line up things at any time; too much had been out of control, out of her control.

Unpredictable, even unknowable events had intruded too often. She realized with a start that not once since his return had she thought of Mike's experience with the Frobisher program; not a single time had she considered it, much less asked about it.

He was whistling tunelessly, and now stopped and began to chuckle. He became serious again quickly and finished turning sausages, finished the eggs and toast, and brought everything to the table.

"Excuse me a sec," he said and left, to return with one of the legal pads. He jotted something and pa.s.sed it over to her, and began to eat.

She read his scrawl with difficulty: There was a young lady of law, Who, they said, was unlikely to thaw.

When love made things muddle, And she turned into a puddle, He laughed, because he held a straw.

"Oh," she cried.

"Of all the arrogant, self-satisfied, egotistical...." She ripped the page off the pad; he reached across the table and tried to grab it. When she pulled away, he came around the table to retrieve it, and then Frank walked in.

Hurriedly Barbara folded the sheet of paper and thrust it down into her pocket. Mike took his place at the table with a guilty expression. Primly Barbara sat down again and picked up her fork.

"And good morning to you, too," Frank said.

When Barbara glanced at Mike, he was grinning, and she began to laugh, and then said good morning to her father.

Ignoring them both, he got coffee and brought it to the table.

"Got some interesting calls this morning," he said.

"You in the mood for business, or is it still children's hour?"

"Tell us," she said, pleased at how natural the us sounded.

"Right. First, I made a couple of calls and got an answer. What you were speculating about last night, about our mutual friend, is true."

She shook her head impatiently.

"Anything you have to say to me, you might as well just go on and say. You mean Clive?"

"Yep. Not generally known, but there it is. He's discreet. One long-time relationship with one very respect able person who happens to be married, all very quiet, orderly."

"Ah," Barbara said, but she still didn't know what she could do with the information.

"What else?"

"Sheriff LeMans called. Said he'll be pa.s.sing by this way and would like to drop in around three. No doubt he wants to know what you have, how good it is." Then Frank looked at Mike and said very deliberately, "Now, how about you? I trust my daughter's judgment more than that of most people I know, but I learned a long time ago not to trust anyone in love where the loved one is involved"

Barbara put her fork down hard, but Mike nodded.

"Fair enough," he said.

"I believe I'm normal, as normal as I ever was, anyway. No lasting effects that I can discern. But I wanted it!" He stared off past Frank for a second or two, then brought his gaze back.

"I wanted it," he said quietly. "I tried to will myself to accept the program the way a kid might will himself to grow another inch or two, or to sprout wings. You will it and will it, and when you check the mirror you almost convince your self that nubbins are forming, that it's working, but you know it isn't and can't. That's how I was. I wanted it more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. I would have given my soul for it to succeed. I thought it was taking, willed it to take, and then.. He shrugged.

"The door closed with me on this side."

"Are you able to leave it alone?" Frank asked bluntly.

"That was Frobisher's problem," Mike said after a pause.

"He couldn't have it. Was he willing to let anyone else? He said no at the end. I don't blame him. It would be inhuman to give all that to someone else knowing you were forever banned yourself. I can even sympathize with Frobisher for killing the boy who made it work. In the end they all turned their backs on it, Frobisher killed himself over it. I'll leave it alone." His voice had turned ragged and harsh. He sounded grief-stricken. Abruptly he stood up and walked across the kitchen with his coffee cup, filled it at the counter, and stood with his back to them for another minute. No one spoke until he lifted his shoulders, let them sag, and faced them again.

"So, quiz over?

What is this about Clive and the sheriff? What have I been missing?"

Frank began to fill him in, but Barbara was thinking what it would be like to hear music in the land of the deaf, to see in the land of the blind, to fly in the land where people crawled. Although she wanted to weep for Mike, she was glad that it had not worked for him. If it had worked, he would not be here, not be hers. For a moment, she too had sympathy for Frobisher, who had seen how ever briefly the glorious handiwork of a demiG.o.d, who had known the power of creation for a brief moment, who had been a G.o.d denied the Eden of his own creation.

"For crying out loud!" Mike exclaimed while they waited for the sheriff.

"Just tell Nell what you suspect and get her away from him."

Frank shook his head.

"Bad move to show your hand before you have all the cards. He could become dangerous to Nell.

He could just take off for Alaska. He could come after Barbara."

"Most likely he would simply get a lawyer and bluff it out," Barbara said.

"Any kid fresh out of law school could get him off with no more than we have at this point."

"He can just get away with it," Mike said in disgust.

"That's what you're saying. But when do you warn Nell?

After the wedding?"

"Now, Mike," Frank said.

"We wouldn't let it go that far. But now's too soon. We need just a smidgeon of hard evidence, which we ain't got." "And if you can't find that hard evidence, he gets away with it." Mike's disgust and disbelief were both undisguised.

"That's how the system works," Barbara said.

"And how it has to work, d.a.m.n it! The state has to prove guilt and a.s.sume innocence, every time."

He threw up his hands.

"That sucks!"

"We need a crystal ball, infallible, indisputable, ever-ready to show what really happened. We need people who are genetically incapable of lying. We need people who would die before they would hurt anyone else, who would die to prevent any harm to anyone else. And until we get that world, the system stinks and always has and always will. We tinker here and we tinker there, but it stinks.

And we don't know how to fix it." Barbara's anger was as deep as Mike's, her helplessness more frustrating because she knew better than he that Clive could walk away from it unscathed and that Nell might have to face yet another trial. Also, she knew the torment Nell was suffering trying to weigh the certainty of a plea bargain against the uncertainty of another trial.

"I'm going back to Doc's and make sure I didn't leave anything," Mike said, still angry, helpless.

"I know there's an unmade bed, and probably a mess in the bath room. Let me know when the sheriff's gone again." He left with an angry expression.

"Way it goes," Frank said.

"System stinks, but it's the only system we have."

"Right. Let's not preach to the choir, all right?" In her head she was crying, Out! I want out!

Sheriff LeMans was late. At twenty after three Barbara stood at the gla.s.s door, looking at the river, which was hiding today under a thick white cover of fog. The fog would creep up the banks later, hide the fishing camp, the store, insinuate its way up to the house, test the windows, the doors without a sound. Under it the river was invisible, secretive, silent. The fog's touch was icy, she knew, like death. She shivered and returned to the living room.