But one of Mr. Lupescu’s friends, now, was captain of a ship, only it went in time, and Mr. Lupescu took trips with him and came back and told you all about what was happening this very minute Five hundred years ago. And another of the friends was a radio engineer, only he could tune in on all the kingdoms of faery and Mr. Lupescu would squidgle up his red nose and twist it like a dial and make noises like all the kingdoms of faery coming in on the set. And then there was Gorgo, only he wasn’t a friend—not exactly; not even to Mr. Lupescu.
They’d been playing for a couple of weeks—only it must’ve been really hours, cause Mamselle hadn’t yelled about supper yet, but Mr. Lupescu says Time is funny—when Mr. Lupescu screwed up his red eyes and said, “Bobby, let’s go in the house.”
“But there’s people in the house, and you don’t—”
“I know I don’t like people. That’s why we’re going in the house. Come on, Bobby, or I’ll—”
So what could you do when you didn’t even want to hear him say Gorgo’s name?
He went into Father’s study through the French window, and it was a strict rule that nobody ever went into Father’s study, but rules weren’t for Mr. Lupescu.
Father was on the telephone telling somebody he’d try to be at a luncheon but there was a committee meeting that same morning but he’d see. While he was talking, Mr. Lupescu went over to a table and opened a drawer and took something out.
When Father hung up, he saw Bobby first and started to be very mad. He said, “Young man, you’ve been trouble enough to your Mother and me with all your stories about your red-winged Mr. Lupescu, and now if you’re to start bursting in—”
You have to be polite and introduce people. “Father, this is Mr. Lupescu. And see, he does too have red wings.”
Mr. Lupescu held out the gun he’d taken from the drawer and shot Father once right through the forehead. It made a little clean hole in front and a big messy hole in back. Father fell down and was dead.
“Now, Bobby,” Mr. Lupescu said, “a lot of people are going to come here and ask you a lot of questions. And if you don’t tell the truth about exactly what happened, I’ll send Gorgo to fetch you.”
Then Mr. Lupescu was gone through the French window.
“It’s a curious case, Lieutenant,” the medical examiner said. “It’s fortunate I’ve dabbled a bit in psychiatry; I can at least give you a lead until you get the experts in. The child’s statement that his fairy godfather shot his father is obviously a simple flight mechanism, susceptible of two interpretations. A, the father shot himself; the child was so horrified by the sight that he refused to accept it and invented this explanation. B, the child shot the father, let us say by accident, and shifted the blame to his imaginary scapegoat. B has, of course, its more sinister implications: if the child had resented his father and created an ideal substitute, he might make the substitute destroy the reality . . . But there’s the solution to your eyewitness testimony; which alternative is true, Lieutenant, I leave up to your researchers into motive and the evidence of ballistics and fingerprints. The angle of the wound jibes with either.”
The man with the red nose and eyes and gloves and wings walked down the back lane to the cottage. As soon as he got inside, he took off his coat and removed the wings and the mechanism of strings and rubber that made them twitch. He laid them on top of the ready pile of kindling and lit the fire. When it was well started, he added the gloves. Then he took off the nose, kneaded the putty until the red of its outside vanished into the neutral brown of the mass, jammed it into a crack in the wall, and smoothed it over. Then he took the red-irised contact lenses out of his brown eyes and went into the kitchen, found a hammer, pounded them to powder, and washed the powder down the sink.
Alan started to pour himself a drink and found, to his pleased surprise, that he didn’t especially need one. But he did feel tired. He could lie down and recapitulate it all, from the invention of Mr. Lupescu (and Gorgo and the man with the Milky Way route) to today’s success and on into the future when Marjorie—pliant, trusting Marjorie—would be more desirable than ever as Robert’s widow and heir. And Bobby would need a man to look after him.
Alan went into the bedroom. Several years passed by in the few seconds it took him to recognize what was waiting on the bed, but then, Time is funny.
Alan said nothing.
“Mr. Lupescu, I presume?” said Gorgo.
Balaam
“What is a “man?” Rabbi Chaim Acosta demanded, turning his back on the window and its view of pink sand and infinite pink boredom. “You and I, Mule, in our respective ways, work for the salvation of man—as you put it, for the brotherhood of men under the fatherhood of God. Very well, let us define our terms: Whom, or more precisely what, are we interested in saving?”
Father Aloysius Malloy shifted uncomfortably and reluctandy closed the American Football Yearbook which had been smuggled in on the last rocket, against all weight regulations, by one of his communicants. I honestly like Chaim, he thought, not merely (or is that the right word?) with brotherly love, nor even out of the deep gratitude I owe him, but with special individual liking; and I respect him. He’s a brilliant man—too brilliant to take a dull post like this in his
