DEMON LOVERS V1.0, page 18
Bamaby Codd stared at himself in the mirror and himself stared back with the impassivity of death. He was calm now. Calm as if in a coma. Coma, comma, Lake Como, Lake Perry Como, comme si, comme ça, come wind, come rain, come hell or high water, come Dancer and Blitzen and Prancer and Rudolph the Rednosed Can Opener. Damn it to hell, where was the can opener, where was the magic key that opened the silver portals that led to the regal banquet of beans for His Majesty’s pleasure?
It was very funny. No reason for him to cry. And yet he was crying, suddenly. The mirror was blurring, the room was beginning to spin, and there was a ringing in his ears.
“Telephone” Mrs. Bixby, calling him. “Telephone, Mister Codd!”
Barnaby Codd rubbed his eyes, groped his way down the hall, answered the phone. “Hello … yes … yes … why, sure . .. yes, that would be fine . .. glad to … thanks.”
He hung up. This was it, this was the reprieve, this was the last-minute call from the governor as they strapped him into the chair.
He was going to a party. A cocktail party, with a buffet supper. There’d be food, food, food—lots of food. And there’d be drink, drink, drink—lots of drink. And people. People like Hank Olcott, who’d invited him. People who still thought of him as a creative talent, who would introduce him, with a certain flourish of pride: “This is my friend Barnaby Codd, the writer.”
Yes, he still had a clean suit. And he could shave the hollow cheeks. He would go, and he would glow, and he could talk to others instead of to himself, and he could eat something better than beans and drink something better than cheap gin.
So Barnaby Codd washed and shaved and dressed and combed his hair. He turned off the electric grill. He picked up his hat and started for the door. Then he paused, turned back.
He went over to the washstand, grabbed up the can of baked beans and hurled it into the wastebasket.
II
Hank Olcott led him across the room and introduced him vith a certain flourish. “This is my friend, Bamaby Codd, the writer.” He did it once, he did it twice, he did it half a dozen times;-
Codd kept feeling better and better. All that food, all that liquor, all these people milling around. A chance to talk, to notice and be noticed. Everything was becoming quite real once more, and Codd felt very much alive.
There must be at least forty people in the apartment, he estimated; they kept arriving and departing—the elegant, the effete, the eccentric and the egocentric. Where Olcott picked them up he didn’t know. He had some odd friends, Codd mused. He himself was a good example.
As time passed, the character of the crowd changed. Some strangers had appeared; apparently the word was going around. It was the old story. Olcott told his friends he was holding a party, and they told their friends, and they told their friends, acquaintances, even their enemies.
Hank Olcott wasn’t introducing him to very many people now. He didn’t know very many people in this crowd. Codd speculated about making his departure. He felt very good, quite self-assured. Better quit now while he was ahead. Another drink might be one too many. Another introduction might be boring. But—
Then he saw the crimson poppy.
It swayed on its long green stem, its scarlet petals unfurled. It stood in slender splendor near the far windows, and Codd felt irresistibly drawn to its aura. He bent his head as if to inhale the perfume of its presence.
“My name is Barnaby Codd,” he whispered.
“I’m Cleo Fane,” said the crimson poppy.
Codd stared at the sheathing green gown, at the flowing red hair. This was no poppy, but a far more exotic flower. Face of Grecian Marble, eyes cut from Chinese jade—Codd checked himself abruptly. He was letting go again, he realized; all this business of flowers, sculpture, purple prose. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen—wasn’t that enough?
And she was staring up at him with something very much like admiration in her slanted oval eyes.
“Do you belong here?” she was asking.
“Belong here?”
“Do you know these people?”
“Why—yes. That is, I know Olcott, our host. Great patron of the arts—dilettante, really. That’s how I got in. I’m a writer.”
She nodded. “I know.”
A warm glow came over Codd. He smiled. “What do you do?” he asked.
“I don’t belong here.”
“Then let’s leave, shall we?”
She put her arm on his. “Very well.”
And that’s all there was to it. In one minute he’d met the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and walked away with her.
Olcott was standing at the portable bar, surrounded by an assortment of longhairs and crewcuts, and Codd made no effort to bid him goodbye.
Instead he walked out, floated out, flew out into the night with the ravishing redhead. Ravishing—
“Won’t you be my guest for a few moments?” she was asking. “I have a place. It isn’t far.”
Codd had difficulty in comprehending her invitation. It was just too good to be true. This was the way it happened in stories; the way it happened in some of the stories he used to write.
Elation combined with alcohol within him to produce a strange alchemy. He knew he was drunk, he knew he couldn’t walk very well, he knew that he had only a blurred awareness of the street, of movement, of entering a tall building and being ushered into a large room. A dim lamp glowed in the comer. Codd smelt a perfume that might have been incense, might have been the woman who stood close beside him, sat close beside him now on the long, low divan.
And then she turned to him, and it was like the surge of the sea, the warm tide flowing over him and bearing him up on its crest, and all at once he could talk, and the formless phrases and wild words made a certain sense.
“… don’t know how long I’ve been looking for someone like you… not someone like you, but you, though I never knew it … never thought anyone like you existed … never believed in Fate … or that Fate was a woman with red hair and green eyes and lips shaped as strange gateways to dreams…”
“What do you write?” She sat up suddenly, and her voice was almost crisp.
“Why—I—I—” Codd fumbled for reality. “What do I write? That’s an odd question. I write many things. Poetry, and short stories, and there are two novels, half of a third— but that was over a year ago, when I stopped.” He gulped, then took the plunge. “I’ll be honest. I was a writer. But I can hardly claim to be one now. For a year I’ve been in a slump. Something happened to me, I don’t know how to explain it. I can’t write any more.”
. Cleo nodded in private affirmation. “That’s why I wanted to meet you. I knew you needed help.”
“What do you mean?”
For answer, Cleo rose. She disappeared somewhere in the dimness of the room. Codd sat there, wondering and waiting. He felt quite drunk now. Things were happening too quickly, and he had no way of evaluating the reality of events. On one level, it seemed like years since he’d been crying in front of the washstand mirror. On another, no time had elapsed at all.
Then Cleo was back. She was holding something in her hand, but the hand was below the level of the divan and Codd couldn’t see anything from where he sat.
“This writing problem,” she said. “Would you say you had established some sort of mental block?”
Codd sat up stiffly. “Say, what is this—are you a lady psychiatrist?”
Cleo laughed, a soft laugh of darkness and musk. “No. But I understand something about creation and its problems.” Her voice became a persuasive purr. “1 want to help you, you know.”
“I know. And I’m trying to answer honestly. I just can’t seem to function as a writer any more. I can’t seem to grasp ideas properly, coherently. Everything flies apart into words, phrases, sentences. There’s nothing consistent or coherent—I can’t seem to concentrate.” Codd’s voice sunk to a whisper. “Sometimes, lately, I wonder if I’m losing my mind.”
“Losing your mind.” Cleo smiled a smile of her own. “Odd that you should use that particular phrase.”
“Why is it odd?”
“Have you ever stopped to think of what it means, what image it conveys? If you lose your mind, that indicates it has been mislaid—that it’s somewhere else. Where is your mind now, Mr. Bamaby Codd?”
“Lost in flames,” Codd whispered, as intoxication flooded over him again. “Lost in the flames of your hair and your eyes and your lips and—”
“Not now.” She pushed him away. “This is important To you. To me. And to someone else.”
“Someone else?”
“Of course. I’m only what you might call an emissary. An agent. I couldn’t invent something like this.”
The hand came up from below the divan’s level now. It came up in all its shining silver slimness, holding the odd looking object
“What in the world—or out of the world—is that?” Codd breathed.
“What does it look like?”
“Well, I’d say it was some kind of headdress, or helmet.” “You’re correct. It is meant to be worn on the head.”
“And those antennae, with the coiled tubing between them —make me think of television, and space pilots, and all that kid stuff.”
“Let me assure you there is nothing childish about this invention. As you will soon learn, to your profit.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You will. I was directed to go out and find a subject for the experiment. A creative artist—painter, sculptor, musician, writer. Someone possessing a sensitive imagination, but unchanneled, undisciplined. To be blunt, an unsuccessful creative artist. A successful artist, in any field, wouldn’t want or need to wear the helmet. You will.”
“You mean somebody invented this and wants me to put it on my head?”
“Exactly.”
“Now, wait a minute.” Codd was suddenly quite sober. “This doesn’t make sense. I may be going crazy, but I’m not that crazy. A beautiful woman comes to me and asks me to wear a Buck Rogers helmet invented by some mysterious screwball, and I’m supposed to go along with the gag.”
“This is serious. You cannot begin to imagine just how serious. However, I am beginning to see I made a mistake. Yours is not the temperament I had judged it to be. I think you had better leave now.”
Cleo stood up, moved away. And every inch of retreat was agony to Codd, every movement of withdrawal was poignant with pain. He couldn’t lose her, he’d do anything, anything— “Wait! Perhaps if you’d explain to me what this is all about, what the helmet is supposed to do, I’d understand.”
“No. You are not the man I want.”
“Please!” He was frankly begging her now. “Ill do anything you ask, anything.”
She smiled and came closer. “That’s better. Much, much better.” •
She held out the helmet. “Here, put it on.”
“Now?”
“Exactly.”
He held it in his hand. The metal was cool but oddly light and malleable. In the dim light he could not discern the nature of the coiled tubing or the antennae to which it was attached.
“What—what am I supposed to do when I wear it?”
“You’ll understand everything. Just put it on.” Her smile was mocking, now. “What’s the matter? Afraid I’m going to harm you?”
It was the proper challenge for the moment Bamaby Codd lifted the helmet. He placed it on his head firmly—Napoleon grasping the coronet from the Pope and crowning himself emperor. The helmet fitted snugly over his skull. At the point where the two antennae were based, something began to bore into his brain.
He stared ahead for a moment, looking at Cleo. Her face was rapt, her eyes closed. He had the oddest sensation that her eyes were in the antennae, that the antennae were in his brain, that his brain was in another world. He stared at her hair, and the flames leapt up, and Barnaby Codd drowned in their fire.
Then he didn’t feel the helmet, didn’t see her any more. He was in another world …
III
The Sky was green.
The moons were green too—and there were three of them. The trees and grass and rocks were green. In the distance the green lake rippled, and Codd could see the curious emerald reflection coursing across it
He gazed up at the source of the reflection and perceived the green girl riding the green dog. The dog was something like a poodle, with enormously exaggerated ears. But then, everything about the dog was enormously exaggerated—it must have been five feet high and fifteen feet long. The dog wore one of the curious helmets too, and it bounded in twenty-foot leaps across the greensward.
Riding on the dog’s back was a green girl. A helmet rested on her green curls, and her green eyes glittered lividly. Yes, she had green curls—but she was Cleo!
Codd stared. That was all he could do—simply stare. He wanted to move toward her, wanted to cry out, but he couldn’t. He willed his feet to move. Nothing happened.
Then he glanced down and saw the answer. He had no feet He had no feet no legs, no torso, no arms, nothing. He was wearing the helmet but be had no head. He could see, but he had no eyes.
There was nothing to do but watch and wait—watch and wait as the green girl bounded past on the green dog. Then the rocket roared across the green sky, and Codd blinked. Codd blinked; his eyes didn’t for he had none.
The rocket was not green. It was silver, and an orange jet blasted behind it. If the rocket was not green, that meant it was not of this world. It came from somewhere else. It swooped across the horizon, disappeared. Then, abruptly, it reappeared over the lake. It was lower now, ready to make a landing.
Codd wanted to be close to it when it landed.
Abruptly, he was closer. He watched the landing, watched the men emerge.
Cleo and the dog had disappeared. There were only the men, now: the earthmen of the future on a strange green planet. He found that he could will himself to move closer or away; they could not see him, although he could see them. He found that he could hear them, too, faintly or plainly, as he desired. The sensation was similar to that of watching a motion picture and photographing it simultaneously, choosing the camera angles he wished.
And during the next hour, he saw the picture unreel. The planet was explored by the rocket ship’s crew. The captain and the three leading crewmen enacted a private drama of their own. The crew was going mad. It was the color that did it—the effort of adjusting to a world where everything was green. They mutinied. They tried to steal the ship. The captain alone did not crack. He fought them off. They succumbed, one by one, to the green lure of the lake, to the call of the green jungle, to the green death of the swamp. It was, in a way, an absorbing psychological study—the unpredictable effect of subjecting a normal mind and a normal pair of eyes to a single, unvarying, constant color.
The last crew member died in a crazy attempt to paint the rocket ship green. He succeeded—and failed, for the captain shot him.
V
And now the captain was alone. Alone, and sane, for he wouldn’t yield to his environment. He was stronger than the planet, stronger than the mysterious force of chlorophyll or radiation or combination of both that made everything on its surface conform to its greenness.
His will did not break, his mind did not give way. He prepared to return to earth alone. It was only when he reached the end of his ordeal and found the safety of his cabin that he stared in the mirror—and saw that he had turned green.
The film ended there. Or rather, the green came up. Codd felt himself falling away from it, falling into greenness, falling into blackness, falling into redness… .
Her hair, covering his face. And her voice whispering, “Wake up, now. Wake up. I’ve taken it off.”
He was awake, and she had taken off the helmet. He sat there, dazed, and she handed him a drink. Outside the windows a false dawn paled, then was blotted out in final darkness.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“You tell me,” she suggested. “You wore the helmet.”
Barnaby Codd told her. She nodded from time to time, nodded thoughtfully.
“But I don’t understand it at all,” he concluded. “You were in the dream, and there was a dog, and a spaceship, and everything was green, yet it made a story.”
“That’s the whole point,” said Cleo. “The experiment was successful, because it made a story. Do you think you could write that story, now, and sell it?”
Codd stood up. “Why—yes, I guess so. I’ve never tried anything in science fiction or fantasy before, but the market is there. And this psychological angle, about the effects of color, would work in.”
“Then why don’t you do it?” the woman suggested.
“Because I’ve got to know what happened, first. I’ve got to understand this thing. Where did the story come from?”
“From your own mind, of course,” Cleo told him. “The helmet merely organized the various subconscious images in a coherent form. I don’t pretend to know the mechanism— but the helmet integrates thought patterns. Some of the elements you observed are simple enough to figure out”
“Such as?”
“Well, myself, for example. I belonged in the prelude to the story because I was ‘on your mind,’ you might say. And the dog—” She hesitated.
“Go on,” he prompted.
“The dog was probably a symbol of yourself. You have felt like a dog lately, even told yourself that you were a ‘dog,’ haven’t you?”
