Thunder and Roses Page 10

  Mrs. Forsythe swallowed, coughed, gulped some milk, and exploded, “Wait a minute, you’re away too fast for me! What is it that he wants done? How do you know he wants it? Can he read, or can’t he? Make some sense, child!”

  Alistair laughed richly. “Poor Mum. I don’t blame you, darling. No, I don’t think he can really read. He shows no interest at all in books or pictures. The episode with the handbook seemed to be an experiment that didn’t bring any results. But—he knows the difference between my books, even books that are bound alike, even when I shift them around in the bookcase. Tiny!”

  The Great Dane scrambled to his feet from the corner of the kitchen, his paws skidding on the waxed linoleum. “Get me Hoag’s Basic Radio, old feller, will you?”

  Tiny turned and padded out. They heard him going up the stairs. “I was afraid he wouldn’t do it while you were here,” she said. “He generally warns me not to say anything about his powers. He growls. He did that when Dr. Nowland dropped out for lunch one Saturday. I started to talk about Tiny and just couldn’t. He acted disgracefully. First he growled and then he barked. It was the first time I’ve ever known him to bark in the house. Poor Dr. Nowland. He was scared half out of his wits.”

  Tiny thudded down the stairs and entered the kitchen. “Give it to Mum,” said Alistair. Tiny walked sedately over to the stool and stood before the astonished Mrs. Forsythe. She took the volume from his jaws.

  “Basic Radio,” she breathed.

  “I asked him for that because I have a whole row of technical books up there, all from the same publisher, all the same color and about the same size,” said Alistair calmly.

  “But … but … how does he do it?”

  Alistair shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t read the titles. That I’m sure of. He can’t read anything. I’ve tried to get him to do it a dozen different ways. I’ve lettered instructions on pieces of paper and shown them to him—you know, ‘Go to the door’ and ‘Give me a kiss’ and so on. He just looks at them and wags his tail. But if I read them first—”

  “You mean, read them aloud?”

  “No. Oh, he’ll do anything I ask him to, sure. But I don’t have to say it. Just read it, and he turns and does it. That’s the way he makes me study what he wants studied.”

  “Are you telling me that behemoth can read your mind?”

  “What do you think? Here, I’ll show you. Give me the book.”

  Tiny’s ears went up. “There’s something in here about the electrical flux in supercooled copper that I don’t quite remember. Let’s see if Tiny’s interested.”

  She sat on the kitchen table and began to leaf through the book. Tiny came and sat in front of her, his tongue lolling out, his big brown eyes fixed on her face. There was silence as she turned pages, read a little, turned some more. And suddenly Tiny whimpered urgently.

  “See what I mean, Mum? All right, Tiny. I’ll read it over.”

  Silence again, while Alistair’s long green eyes traveled over the page. All at once Tiny stood up and nuzzled her leg.

  “Hm-m-m? The reference? Want me to go back?”

  Tiny sat again, expectantly. “There’s a reference here to a passage in the first section on basic electric theory that he wants,” she explained. She looked up. “Mother, you read it to him.” She jumped off the table, handed the book over. “Here. Section forty-five. Tiny! Go listen to Mum. Go on,” and she shoved him towards Mrs. Forsythe, who said in an awed voice, “When I was a little girl, I used to read bedtime stories to my dolls. I thought I’d quit that kind of thing altogether, and now I’m reading technical literature to this … this canine catastrophe here. Shall I read aloud?”

  “No, don’t. See if he gets it.”

  But Mrs. Forsythe didn’t get the chance. Before she had read two lines Tiny was frantic. He ran to Mrs. Forsythe and back to Alistair. He reared up like a frightened horse, rolled his eyes, and panted. He whimpered. He growled a little.

  “For pity’s sakes, what’s wrong?”

  “I guess he can’t get it from you,” said Alistair. “I’ve had the idea before that he’s tuned to me in more ways than one, and this clinches it. All right, then. Give me back the—”

  But before she could ask him, Tiny had bounded to Mrs. Forsythe, taken the book gently out of her hands, and carried it to his mistress. Alistair smiled at her paling mother, took the book, and read until Tiny suddenly seemed to lose interest. He went back to his station by the kitchen cabinet and lay down, yawning.

  “That’s that,” said Alistair, closing the book. “In other words, class dismissed. Well, Mum?”

  Mrs. Forsythe opened her mouth, closed it again, and shook her head. Alistair loosed a peal of laughter.

  “Oh, Mum,” she gurgled through her laughter. “History has been made. Mum, darling, you’re speechless!”

  “I am not,” said Mrs. Forsythe gruffly. “I … I think … well, what do you know! You’re right! I am!”

  When they had their breath back—yes, Mrs. Forsythe joined in, for Alistair’s statement was indeed true—Alistair picked up the book and said, “Now look, Mum, it’s almost time for my session with Tiny. Oh, yes; it’s a regular thing, and he certainly is leading me into some fascinating byways.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the old impossible problem of casting tungsten, for example. You know, there is a way to do it.”

  “You don’t say! What do you cast it in—a play?”

  Alistair wrinkled her straight nose. “Did you ever hear of pressure ice? Water compressed until it forms a solid at what is usually its boiling point?”

  “I remember some such.”

  “Well, all you need is enough pressure, and a chamber that can take that kind of pressure, and a couple of details like a high-intensity field of umpteen megacycles phased with … I forget the figures; anyhow, that’s the way to go about it.”

  “ ‘If we had some eggs we could have some ham and eggs if we had some ham,’ ” quoted Mrs. Forsythe. “And besides, I seem to remember something about that pressure ice melting pretty much right now, like so,” and she snapped her fingers. “How do you know your molded tungsten—that’s what it would be, not cast at all—wouldn’t change state the same way?”

  “That’s what I’m working on now,” said Alistair calmly. “Come along, Tiny. Mum, you can find your way around all right, can’t you? If you need anything, just sing out. This isn’t a séance, you know.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” muttered Mrs. Forsythe as her lithe daughter and the dog bounded up the stairs. She shook her head, went into the kitchen, drew a bucket of water, and carried it down to her car, which had cooled to a simmer. She was dashing careful handfuls of it onto the radiator before beginning to pour when her quick ear caught the scrunching of boots on the steep drive.

  She looked up to see a young man trudging wearily in the mid-morning heat. He wore an old sharkskin suit and carried his coat. In spite of his wilted appearance, his step was firm and his golden hair was crisp in the sunlight. He swung up to Mrs. Forsythe and gave her a grin, all deep-blue eyes and good teeth. “Forsythe’s?” he asked in a resonant baritone.

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Forsythe, finding that she had to turn her head from side to side to see both of his shoulders. And yet she could have swapped belts with him. “You must feel like the Blue Kangaroo here,” she added, slapping her miniature mount on its broiling flank. “Boiled dry.”

  “You cahl de cyah de Blue Kangaroo?” he repeated, draping his coat over the door and mopping his forehead with what seemed to Mrs. Forsythe’s discerning eye a pure linen handkerchief.

  “I do,” she replied, forcing herself not to comment on the young man’s slight but strange accent. “It’s strictly a dry-clutch job and acts like a castellated one. Let the pedal out, she races. Let it out three thirty-seconds of an inch more, and you’re gone from there. Always stopping to walk back and pick up your head. Snaps right off, you know. Carry a bottle of collodion and a couple o
f splints to put your head back on. Starve to death without a head to eat with. What brings you here?”

  In answer he held out a yellow envelope, looking solemnly at her head and neck, then at the car, his face quiet, his eyes crinkling with a huge enjoyment.

  Mrs. Forsythe glanced at the envelope. “Oh. Telegram. She’s inside. I’ll give it to her. Come on in and have a drink. It’s hotter than the hinges of Hail Columbia, Happy Land. Don’t go wiping your feet like that! By jeepers, that’s enough to give you an inferiority complex! Invite a man in, invite the dust on his feet, too. It’s good, honest dirt and we don’t run to white broadlooms here. Are you afraid of dogs?”

  The young man laughed. “Dahgs talk to me, ma’am.”

  She glanced at him sharply, opened her mouth to tell him he might just be taken at his word around here, then thought better of it. “Sit down,” she ordered. She bustled up a foaming glass of beer and set it beside him. “I’ll get her down to sign for the wire,” she said. The man half lowered the glass into which he had been jowls-deep, began to speak, found he was alone in the room, laughed suddenly and richly, wiped off the mustache of suds, and dived down for a new one.

  Mrs. Forsythe grinned and shook her head as she heard the laughter, and went straight to Alistair’s study. “Alistair!”

  “Stop pushing me about the ductility of tungsten, Tiny! You know better than that. Figures are figures, and facts are facts. I think I see what you’re trying to lead me to. All I can say is that if such a thing is possible, I never heard of any equipment that could handle it. Stick around a few years and I’ll hire you a nuclear power plant. Until then, I’m afraid—”

  “Alistair!”

  “—there just isn’t … hm-m-m? Yes, Mother?”

  “Telegram.”

  “Oh. Who from?”

  “I don’t know, being only one fortieth of one percent as psychic as that doghouse Dunninger you have there. In other words, I didn’t open it.”

  “Oh, Mum, you’re silly. Of course you could have … oh, well, let’s have it.”

  “I haven’t got it. It’s downstairs with Discobolus Junior, who brought it. No one,” she said ecstatically, “has a right to be so tanned with hair that color.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Go on down and sign for the telegram and see for yourself. You will find the maiden’s dream with his golden head in a bucket of suds, all hot and sweaty from his noble efforts in attaining this peak without spikes or alpenstock, with nothing but his pure heart and Western Union to guide him.”

  “This maiden’s dream happens to be tungsten treatment,” said Alistair with some irritation. She looked longingly at her work sheet, put down her pencil, and rose. “Stay here, Tiny. I’ll be right back as soon as I have successfully resisted my conniving mother’s latest scheme to drag my red hairing across some young buck’s path to matrimony.” She paused at the door. “Aren’t you staying up here, Mum?”

  “Get that hair away from your face,” said her mother grimly. “I am not. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. And don’t pun in front of that young man. It’s practically the only thing in the world I consider vulgar.”

  Alistair led the way down the stairs and through the corridor to the kitchen, with her mother crowding her heels, once fluffing out her daughter’s blazing hair, once taking a swift tuck in the back of the girl’s halter. They spilled through the door almost together. Alistair stopped and frankly stared.

  For the young man had risen and, still with the traces of beer foam on his modeled lips, stood with his jaws stupidly open, his head a little back, his eyes partly closed as if against a bright light. And it seemed as if everyone in the room forgot to breathe for a moment.

  “Well!” Mrs. Forsythe exploded after a moment. “Honey, you’ve made a conquest. Hey, you, chin up, chest out.”

  “I beg your humble pardon,” muttered the young man, and the phrase seemed more a colloquialism than an affectation.

  Alistair, visibly pulling herself together, said, “Mother, please,” and drifted forward to pick up the telegram that lay on the kitchen table. Her mother knew her well enough to realize that her hands and her eyes were steady only by a powerful effort. Whether the effort was in control of annoyance, embarrassment, or out-and-out biochemistry was a matter for later thought. At the moment Mrs. Forsythe was enjoying the situation tremendously.

  “Please wait,” said Alistair coolly. “There may be an answer to this.” The young man simply bobbed his head. He was still a little wall-eyed with the impact of seeing Alistair, as many a young man had been before. But there were the beginnings of his astonishing smile around his lips as he watched her rip the envelope open.

  “Mother! Listen!

  ARRIVED THIS MORNING AND HOPE I CAN CATCH YOU AT HOME. OLD DEBBIL KILLED IN ACCIDENT BUT FOUND HIS MEMORY BEFORE HE DIED. HAVE INFORMATION WHICH MAY CLEAR UP MYSTERY—OR DEEPEN IT. HOPE I CAN SEE YOU FOR I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO THINK.

  ALEC.

  “How old is this tropical savage?” asked Mrs. Forsythe.

  “He’s not a savage and I don’t know how old he is and I can’t see what that has to do with it. I think he’s about my age or a little older.” She looked up and her eyes were shining.

  “Deadly rival,” said Mrs. Forsythe to the messenger consolingly. “Rotten timing here, somewhere.”

  “I—” said the young man.

  “Mother, we’ve got to fix something to eat. Do you suppose he’ll be able to stay over? Where’s my green dress with the … oh, you wouldn’t know. It’s new.”

  “Then the letters weren’t all about the dog,” said Mrs. Forsythe with a Cheshire grin.

  “Mum, you’re impossible. This is … is important. Alec is … is …”

  Her mother nodded. “Important. That’s all I was pointing out.”

  The young man said, “I—”

  Alistair turned to him. “I do hope you don’t think we’re totally mad. I’m sorry you had such a climb.” She went to the sideboard and took a quarter out of a sugar bowl. He took it gravely.

  Thank you, ma’am. If you don’t min’, I’ll keep this piece of silver for the rest o’ my everlahstin’.”

  “You’re wel—What?”

  The young man seemed to get even taller. “I greatly appreciate your hospitality, Miss Forsythe. I have you at a disadvantage, ma’am, and one I shall correct.” He put a crooked forefinger between his lips and blew out an incredible blast of sound.

  “Tiny!” he roared. “Here to me, dahg, an’ mek me known!”

  There was an answering roar from upstairs, and Tiny came tumbling down, scrabbling wildly as he took the turn at the foot of the stairs and hurtled over the slick flooring to crash joyfully into the young man.

  “Ah, you beast,” crooned the man, cuffing the dog happily. His accent thickened. “You thrive yourself here wid de lady-dem, you gray-yut styoupid harse. You glad me, mon, you glad me.” He grinned at the two astonished women. “Forgive me,” he said as he pummeled Tiny, pulled his ears, shoved him away, and caught him by the jaws. “For true, I couldn’t get in the first word with Mrs. Forsythe, and after that I couldn’t help meself. Alec my name is, and the telegram I took from the true messenger, finding him sighing and sweating at the sight of the hill there.”

  Alistair covered her face with her hands and said, “Oooh.”

  Mrs. Forsythe whooped with laughter. When she found her voice she demanded, “Young man, what is your last name?”

  “Sundersen, ma’am.”

  “Mother! Why did you ask him that?”

  “For reasons of euphony,” said Mrs. Forsythe with a twinkle. “Alexander Sundersen. Very good. Alistair—”

  “Stop! Mum, don’t you dare—”

  “I was going to say, Alistair, if you and our guest will excuse me, I’ll have to get back to my knitting.” She went to the door.

  Alistair threw an appalled look at Alec and cried, “Mother! What are you knitting?”

  “My brows
, darling. See you later.” Mrs. Forsythe chuckled and went out.

  It took almost a week for Alec to get caught up with the latest developments in Tiny, for he got the story in the most meticulous detail. There never seemed to be enough time to get in all the explanations and anecdotes, so swiftly did it fly when he and Alistair were together. Some days he went into the city with Alistair in the morning and spent the day buying tools and equipment for his estate. New York was a wonder city to him—he had been there only once before—and Alistair found herself getting quite possessive about the place, showing it off like the contents of a jewel box. And then Alec stayed at the house a couple of days. He endeared himself forever to Mrs. Forsythe by removing, cleaning, and refacing the clutch on the Blue Kangaroo, simplifying the controls on the gas refrigerator so it could be defrosted without a major operation, and putting a building jack under the corner of the porch that threatened to sag.

  And the sessions with Tiny were resumed and intensified. At first he seemed a little uneasy when Alec joined one of them, but within half an hour he relaxed. Thereafter, more and more he would interrupt Alistair to turn to Alec. Although he apparently could not understand Alec’s thoughts at all, he seemed to comprehend perfectly when Alec spoke to Alistair. And within a few days she learned to accept these interruptions, for they speeded up the research they were doing. Alec was almost totally ignorant of the advanced theory with which Alistair worked, but his mind was clear, quick, and very direct. He was no theorist, and that was good. He was one of those rare grease-monkey geniuses, with a grasp of the laws of cause and effect that amounted to intuition. Tiny’s reaction to this seemed to be approval. At any rate, the occasions when Alistair lost track of what Tiny was after occurred less and less frequently. Alec instinctively knew just how far to go back, and then how to spot the turning at which they had gone astray. And bit by bit they began to identify what it was that Tiny was after. As to why—and how—he was after it, Alec’s experience with old Debbil seemed a clue. It was certainly sufficient to keep Alec plugging away at a possible solution to the strange animal’s stranger need.