crisis before
he was completely ready to handle it.
"Well -- anytime she works up the nerve to say what she's thinking, I'll
be ready to hear her out." A look of schoolboyish truculence passed over
John's square face, and Jack realized his own instincts had been right
all along. No man would ever willingly give up a prize like Kate. The
only solution to the triangle problem lay in two pieces of machinery --
the pistol hidden upstairs in his room, and the matter disrupter drill
along the Silverstream highway.
"Is it important for you to get Kate to make the first move?"
"If you don't analyze me, I won't analyze you," John said significantly.
Jack smiled at him, calmly. The reference to analysis made him think of
John's body converted to micro-dust, completely anonymous, defying any
kind of investigation.
When John had returned to the office, Jack waited hungrily for Kate to
come downstairs to him, but she appeared dressed in a tweed suit with
tied belt and a high fur collar.
"Going out?" He tried to mask his disappointment.
"Shopping," she said in a businesslike voice which hurt him in some
obscure fashion.
"Don't go.
"But we still have to eat." Her voice carried what he recognized as a
trace of antagonism, and he suddenly realized she had been virtually
avoiding him since their single physical encounter. The idea that she
might be feeling guilt -- and associating him with it -- filled Breton
with an unreasoning panic.
"John's talking about pulling out." He was unable to prevent himself
blurting the lie like a love-sick adolescent, in spite of his awareness
of the need to prepare her mind for John's disappearance more carefully
than he had ever done anything in his entire life. Kate hesitated between
him and the door. The down on her cheekbones caught the light like frost,
and he seemed to see the mortuary drawer supporting her on its efficient
cantilever. He became afraid.
"John's entitled to leave if he wants," she said finally, and went out.
A minute later he heard her MG booming in the garage. He waited at the
window to see her go by, but the car was fitted with its hardtop and
Kate's face was an impersonal blur behind the chiseled sky-fragments of
the windows.
Breton turned away from the window, suddenly filled with a sense of
outrage. Both his creations -- the people he had brought into being
as surely as if he had stalked the Earth amid Biblical lightnings,
putting breath into inert clay -- had lived independently of him for nine
years. Now, in spite of what they had learned, they were insisting on
pursuing their courses, ignoring him when necessary, leaving him alone
in a house where he hated to be alone. Breton moved with clenched fists
through the silences of the empty rooms. He had been prepared to wait
a week, but things had changed and were still doing so. It would be
necessary to act more quickly, more decisively.
From a rear window he glimpsed the silvery dome of the observatory
beyond the beech trees, and felt a grudging curiosity about its
construction. Right from the moment of his arrival there had been a
tacit, instinctive agreement that nobody outside the house should get
any clue about the existence of the two Bretons -- so he could not
justify going outside. But the rear garden was well shielded from the
neighboring houses, and it would take him only a few seconds to reach
the observatory and get inside.
He went down into the kitchen, peered through the curtained door and
went out onto the roofed patio. The lemon-tinted sunlight of an October
afternoon streamed through the trees in slowly merging beams, and from
the distance came the patient, regular sound of a lawn mower. Breton
walked towards the observatory.
"Ho there! Not working today?"
Breton spun as the voice came from behind him. The speaker was a tall,
fit-looking man of about forty who had just come around the side of the
house. He was dressed in neat sport clothes, worn the way
he was completely ready to handle it.
"Well -- anytime she works up the nerve to say what she's thinking, I'll
be ready to hear her out." A look of schoolboyish truculence passed over
John's square face, and Jack realized his own instincts had been right
all along. No man would ever willingly give up a prize like Kate. The
only solution to the triangle problem lay in two pieces of machinery --
the pistol hidden upstairs in his room, and the matter disrupter drill
along the Silverstream highway.
"Is it important for you to get Kate to make the first move?"
"If you don't analyze me, I won't analyze you," John said significantly.
Jack smiled at him, calmly. The reference to analysis made him think of
John's body converted to micro-dust, completely anonymous, defying any
kind of investigation.
When John had returned to the office, Jack waited hungrily for Kate to
come downstairs to him, but she appeared dressed in a tweed suit with
tied belt and a high fur collar.
"Going out?" He tried to mask his disappointment.
"Shopping," she said in a businesslike voice which hurt him in some
obscure fashion.
"Don't go.
"But we still have to eat." Her voice carried what he recognized as a
trace of antagonism, and he suddenly realized she had been virtually
avoiding him since their single physical encounter. The idea that she
might be feeling guilt -- and associating him with it -- filled Breton
with an unreasoning panic.
"John's talking about pulling out." He was unable to prevent himself
blurting the lie like a love-sick adolescent, in spite of his awareness
of the need to prepare her mind for John's disappearance more carefully
than he had ever done anything in his entire life. Kate hesitated between
him and the door. The down on her cheekbones caught the light like frost,
and he seemed to see the mortuary drawer supporting her on its efficient
cantilever. He became afraid.
"John's entitled to leave if he wants," she said finally, and went out.
A minute later he heard her MG booming in the garage. He waited at the
window to see her go by, but the car was fitted with its hardtop and
Kate's face was an impersonal blur behind the chiseled sky-fragments of
the windows.
Breton turned away from the window, suddenly filled with a sense of
outrage. Both his creations -- the people he had brought into being
as surely as if he had stalked the Earth amid Biblical lightnings,
putting breath into inert clay -- had lived independently of him for nine
years. Now, in spite of what they had learned, they were insisting on
pursuing their courses, ignoring him when necessary, leaving him alone
in a house where he hated to be alone. Breton moved with clenched fists
through the silences of the empty rooms. He had been prepared to wait
a week, but things had changed and were still doing so. It would be
necessary to act more quickly, more decisively.
From a rear window he glimpsed the silvery dome of the observatory
beyond the beech trees, and felt a grudging curiosity about its
construction. Right from the moment of his arrival there had been a
tacit, instinctive agreement that nobody outside the house should get
any clue about the existence of the two Bretons -- so he could not
justify going outside. But the rear garden was well shielded from the
neighboring houses, and it would take him only a few seconds to reach
the observatory and get inside.
He went down into the kitchen, peered through the curtained door and
went out onto the roofed patio. The lemon-tinted sunlight of an October
afternoon streamed through the trees in slowly merging beams, and from
the distance came the patient, regular sound of a lawn mower. Breton
walked towards the observatory.
"Ho there! Not working today?"
Breton spun as the voice came from behind him. The speaker was a tall,
fit-looking man of about forty who had just come around the side of the
house. He was dressed in neat sport clothes, worn the way
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