The Very Black Part 5

And then I heard him speak to somebody else--he must have been speaking to somebody else, he couldn't have meant me--"Crissake, give me a cigarette. The guy's still alive."

I suppose I was grinning when they unstrapped me and slid me out of the hatch. They were grinning back at any rate. The ground held me up surprisingly--like it always had all my life before. They'd stopped grinning now, their eyes were eating the inside of the ship. They weren't interested in me anymore--all they wanted was the instruments'

readings.

My feet could still move me. Knew where to go. Knew where to find the door that had the simple word _Plotting_ on it.

The Doll was there with her father. The two of them didn't say anything, just looked at me--just stared at me. I said, "He tried d.a.m.ned hard. He put everything he had in it. He got me. He had me down and there wasn't any up again for the rest of the world. For me there wasn't."

They stared. Pop stared. The Doll stared.

"Just one thing he forgot," I muttered. "He gave me the tip-off himself and then he forgot it. He told me I wasn't all me anymore, that a part of me had gone out to you since I was supposed to be in love with you. And that's where the tip-off lies. I wasn't all me anymore but I hadn't lost anything. You know why, Doll?"

They stared.

"Simple--any d.a.m.n fool would tumble. If I wasn't all me, then you weren't all you. Part of you was me--get it? And _you_ weren't scheduled to bust out today. Not you--me! And that's what he couldn't work over. That's what brought me down again. He couldn't touch that."

I stopped for a moment.

I said suddenly, "What the h.e.l.l you guys staring at?" I growled.

"That's my Baby," said the Doll.

"No strings," I said.

"Like we said." Her words were soft petals. "Like we said, Baby. Just like we said."

"Sure. Only d.a.m.n it, I don't like it that way. I _want_ strings, see?

I want meshes of 'em, b.a.l.l.s of 'em, like what comes in yarn--get it?"

The Doll grinned. "Sure, Baby--you're sure you want it that way?"

"Sure I'm sure. I just said it, didn't I? _Didn't_ I?"

"You just said it, Baby." She left her father's side, came over to me, put her arm in mine, pulled close. We turned, started to go out the door.

"Where you guys going?" asked Pop. We turned again. He looked like something was skipped somewhere on a sound track he'd been listening to. I grinned.

"Gotta look for a Brown Bess," I said. "Museum just lost one."