When her husband left, Brent and Marie Di Costa talked idly on irrelevant topics, they had to, since he had no idea of what might be relevant. You couldn’t walk up to a girl whom you’d met for the first time and ask, “Madam, does your husband paint monsters? Or perhaps you dabble in witchcraft! Is that the secret?”
A quick glance at his watch convinced him it was time to go, before he wore out his welcome.
Turning to light a cigarette his eyes fell on the mantle clock. He registered surprise.
“Why, it’s three-thirty already! I’m afraid I’ll have to be leaving.”
She rose, smiling. “You have been a most delightful guest,” she laughed. “I know I speak for Arthur as well as myself when I say I hope to see you again.”
“I may take you up on that,” Brent said.
Their forward progress was suddenly impeded as the elevator swung open to discharge a small bundle of screaming humanity. Dazed, Brent realized it was a young girl as she swept past. The child collapsed on Marie Di Costa’s shoulder, her golden hair shaking with muffled sobs. A plastic doll with a shattered head gave mute evidence of the source of the disturbance.
Brent stood by self-consciously until the crying was soothed. Marie flashed him an understanding smile while she convinced the child at least to say hello to the visitor. He was rewarded with the sight of the red, tear-stained face.
“Dotty, I want you to meet Mr. Dalgreen.”
“How do you do, Mr. Dalgreen … but Mommy the boy stepped on the doll and he laughed when it broke and …” The thought was once again too much to bear—the tears began to course again through the well-used waterways.
“Cheer up, Dotty. You wouldn’t want your father to see you like this,” Brent suggested.
These seemingly innocent words, while having no affect on the little girl, had a marked affect on her mother. Her face whitened.
“Arthur is not Dotty’s father, Mr. Dalgreen. You see, this is my second marriage. He … I mean we cannot have children.” She spoke the words as if they were a pain, heavy within her.
Brent was slightly embarrassed—yet elated at the same time. This was the first crack in the façade of normality that concealed the occupants of the house. Her sudden change of expression could only mean that there was something troubling her—something he would give his last tube of oil paint to find out. Perhaps it wasn’t the secret hidden in the painting, but there must be a relationship somewhere. He was determined to search it out.
Apartment lights were out all over the city, the daytime world was asleep. Brent stirred in the large chair and reached out for the glass of sparkling Burgundy that was slowly dying on the end table. A little flat—but still very good. It was one of the luxuries he allowed himself. A luxury that might really be called a necessity to one who lived by selling his emotional responses, translated into color.
The wine was going flat, but the view of the city never would. New York, the eternal wonder city. The soft lights of his studio threw no reflections on the window, and his sight travelled easily over the architectural fairyland. Sparkling search-beams swept across the sky, throwing an occasional glint as they slid across a jetcar or a stratoplane. A thousand lights of a thousand hues twinkled in the city below. Even here on the one-hundred-eightieth floor he could hear the throbbing roar of its ceaseless activity. This was the foremost of the cities of man, yet somewhere in that city was a man who was … not quite human.
Brent had the partial answer, he was sure of that. He had found the missing factor in one of his own paintings. It was the only one he was even slightly pleased with. He had turned it out in nine solid hours of work, one of the “dangerous exposures” the doctors talked about. He had it propped on the video console, a stark vista of Mare Imbrium in the afternoon—moon time. It was a canvas touched with the raw grandeur of eternal space. It had a burning quality that reacted on human sight. An alien landscape seen through a human eye. Just as the Di Costa canvases were human scenes seen through a different eye. Perhaps not totally foreign to earth—they weren’t that obvious. Now that he understood, though; the influence was unmistakable.
He also had substantiating evidence. The Law was the Law and genes would always be genes. Man and ape are warm-blooded mammals, close relatives among the anthropoids. Yet even with this close heritage, there could be no interbreeding. Offspring were out of the question; they were a genetic impossibility.
It followed that alienness meant just that. A man who wasn’t Man—Homo sapiens—could never have children with a human wife. Marie Di Costa was human, and had a real tear-soaked human daughter to prove it. Arthur Di Costa had no children.
Brent pressed the window release and it sank into the casement with a soft sigh. The city noises washed in along with the fresh smell of growing things. The light breeze carried the fragrance in from the Jersey woodlands. It seemed a little out of place here above the gleaming city.
Leaning out slightly, he could see the moon riding through the thin clouds and the morning star, Venus, just clearing the eastern horizon. He had been there on the moon. He had watched them assembling the first Venus rocket. Man, the erect biped, was the only sentient life form he had ever seen. If there were others, they were still out there among the stars. All, that is, except one … or could there possibly be others here on Earth?
This was useless thinking though. Don’t invent more monsters until
