The Mantooth Part 44

'Yes..... Are you angry with me?'

The man-child studied the face of the other, finding nothing but friendship, sensitivity and good intentions. 'No,' he said sadly.

'I don't know what to feel.'

'Should we talk about this another time?'

'What would it change?'

'Probably nothing,' said Smith ruefully. 'You understand that I'm only speaking for the good of the group. We're a family, really.'

'But one without children,' added Kalus sympathetically.

'Yes. We need them. . .or everything we do dies with us. Along with all hope for the future.' He took another drink to keep from betraying emotion. But this only augmented, rather than submerging the yearning for life that so overwhelmed him. 'The sound of their laughter,' he began again, his eyes welling. The wail of newborn life. . .would be such blessed relief from the dry, sterile sound of our own voices.'

At this Kalus eyes' misted as well, remembering Shama, and the Child on the sh.o.r.e. 'I would give everything I have to hear it,' he said, surprised by his own words, and the thoughts that lay behind them.

'Me, too.' And the young scientist put a hand on Kalus'

shoulder. 'What I'm trying to tell you is that according to our tests, only Rawlings, myself and the Commander, still have the ability to father a child. And in your case, of course, there would be no reason for the sterility.' At Kalus' questioning look he added.

'Oh, the others can still make love, it just doesn't get them anywhere..... No pregnancy. No kids.'

'What are you asking me to do?'

Smith sighed, knowing it was now or never. 'Look down there. You see that beautiful, slender reed in the black dress?'

'Kataya.'

'Yes..... She's twenty-six, and in the full flower of womanhood.

She desperately wants a child, but apparently the rest of us don't do anything for her. And then Dr. Welles, there.' He pointed. 'Thirty-four, and married to a man who can't give her children. Should they both be punished for it? And your own Sylviana.

Wouldn't the two of you, at least, consider having a child?'

But Kalus' mind was reeling. The concept of free love was so incredible to him, at once both desirable and unthinkable..... He gave voice to only one of the myriad questions that confronted him.

'Is there no other way?'

'There's always artificial insemination: taking a man's sperm and a woman's egg and placing them together, either in the uterus, or in the laboratory. But that's so cold and mechanical. Also, we're trying to stay a little closer to nature than our predecessors, hoping to avoid some of their mistakes. And for me, at least, there's a ?spiritual' side to it: which sperm cell is MEANT to fertilize which egg. Can you see what I'm driving at?'

Kalus, who had understood very little, could only say. 'I have made love to only two women in my life. And I should have been more than content with the one, if she..... Well if..... I don't know if I can help you,' he finished weakly. But then, whether because of the alcohol, the other man's openness, or the sheer physical need to let it out, he told him.

'I made love to Kataya last night.'

'Good,' said Smith warmly. 'Good for you.'

'Not good for me. . .or Sylviana. She learned of it, and cast me out.' He lowered his face, bitter and ashamed. 'I feel as if I'm already dead.'

Smith was quiet for a moment, allowing the other to gather himself, then simply said what he thought.

'You did nothing wrong, Kalus. I see in you no more of the user and the taker than I do in myself---probably the reason we've both slept with so few women. But as for Sylviana. . .maybe she won't understand. But maybe, in time, she will. Welles is probably giving her the same talk right now.'

At this Kalus looked down into the bowl once more, and saw to his relief and glimmering hope that Dr. Welles was in fact speaking seriously with Sylviana, who blushed, looking down, then up at him uncertainly.

'In the meantime,' Smith continued, 'Try not to isolate yourself so much. Loneliness will kill you by itself. Throw in alienation and remorse, and it's no wonder you feel the way you do.' He looked the man-child straight in the eye, and said sincerely.

'Be my friend, Kalus. The rest of us aren't so bad. But if you have trouble being open with them, then start with me. I'm not nearly as shallow and glib as I come across---a defense mechanism I guess, to keep myself from being hurt. But I do care, and I'd be honored.' And he gave Kalus his hand on it.

Kalus took it in his own, finding unexpected relief, as Sylviana watched him, and listened to Dr. Welles, and felt her hard resolve begin to waver.

And all might still have been well, but for the sinister and unknown timing of the Stranger, who at that moment descended the rise at a cold distance from the two men, and seeing the strange and alluring new woman, devoted to her all his questionable attention.

Chapter 44

William, who admitted to having no last name, was of slightly less than average height, with dark hair, a rough complexion, and a certain quality of nondescriptness about his face and features.

Until one met the eyes. These were at once both black and pierced with light, aloof and penetrating, as if possessed of some underworld knowledge that rendered all waking truth both poignant and, in the end, utterly meaningless. Once seen, though the rest of the face remained difficult to recall, these darkened orbs were indelibly burned into memory---fierce, desperate, and dying. Restless, fearful, weary of the crumbling bridge that so narrowly separates life from death.....

He had not always been this way. Though his childhood had been tragic enough---abandoned shortly after birth, stored like some kind of hazardous waste in orphanages and foster homes, moving on as he became a troubled adolescent (and who wouldn't be?) to jails and juvenile detention centers---it had not killed him, and that at least was something. He had run away (escaped) at the age of sixteen, and like so many other lost souls without hope or guidance, had gravitated to New York City to be tried by the relentless h.e.l.l-fire of the streets.

But unlike most, he had survived. Here, through various underground activities, ranging from petty theft and burglary to trafficking narcotics, he had somehow managed to keep body and soul together. And no one seemed to take much notice of one more suspected junkie, living in abandoned buildings and selling small quant.i.ties of marijuana, cocaine, and whatever a.s.sorted pills he could buy, make, or steal from dockside warehouses. He was left alone for the most part, and aside from the odd roughing up by the police, given tentative permission to exist.

But as he unknowingly turned the page on his twentieth year (for the date of his birth was known to no one, and his childhood but a blur of pain and abuse without names or numbers for reference), and as he found his heart still beating, his lungs still demanding air, and the various hungers of life giving him no chance to cease his restless moving, a small miracle had occurred. Someone noticed, and more than that, fell in love with him: a fifteen-year-old Chicano girl named Kathy.

Their meeting was chance enough, and would have pa.s.sed like so many others, but for the small compa.s.sion that still lived in him. Finding her tearful and alone on the front steps of a tenement, in which her alcoholic father had beaten and fondled her for perhaps the thirtieth time, refraining from actual rape only because she screamed so loudly and the walls were thin, William sat down beside her, gave her his bandana to wipe the blood from her ear, and offered to take her to a public health clinic that he knew. When she declined as the result of a questionable immigration status (and a desire not to return to the even more brutal life of Guatemala City), he had given her an ounce of marijuana, along with spoken directions to the condemned building in which he slept on the floor on a mattress of flattened cardboard boxes.

If she needed anything, he said, he would try to help.

The next day when he returned to check on her, he found that her father, aided in his spiritual pilgrimage by a fifth of tequila, had fallen from the fire escape, and was now in a City hospital pending deportation.

That was why she had not returned to their room, but remained on the front steps, freed from one h.e.l.l but confident that another awaited her, which no doubt it did: she had no money, and would soon be evicted.

William had bought her breakfast, stolen her a jacket and scarf, then brought her to his mansion of rats, fallen plaster, moldering walls, and warmed by a kerosene heater which only smoked dangerously toward morning.

After waiting for three days to be put to work on the streets, she found to her amazement that he neither demanded she sell herself to others or perform s.e.x tricks for him, and had not put a hand on her except in awkward comfort and rea.s.surance. That night she gave herself to him, they made sweet and tender love; and he had done something even more inexplicable. He had cried, and promised to protect her with his life against the b.i.t.c.heries of poverty and despair that he knew so well.

>From that time on they were inseparable, living where they could, doing what they had to do, to survive. William was not, in fact, a junkie, though he came as close to the line without crossing it as any human being ever could. But for Kathy's sake he gave up hard drugs almost completely, finding that with her he no longer needed the barbiturates to sleep, injected amphetamines to feel alive in the night, or alcohol to keep the spiritual agony from killing him. Without the world's help, or even its consent, he pulled himself and his young woman up out of the gutter, and as she had done for him, gave them both a reason to live.