Marten drove on. 'There's a Lefkowitz in the building. With a W. You know, Lef-COW-itz.'
'Oh?'
'Room 701. This is not the same one?'
'Jerry doesn't work in this building. He's got a place across the street. I don't know this other one. This is a big building, you know. I don't keep tabs on everyone in it. What is all this, anyway?'
Marten shook his head and sat back. He didn't know what all this was, anyway. Or at least, if he did, it was nothing he dared explain. Could he say: I'm being haunted by all manner of Lefkowitzes today.
He said, 'We were talking about wiring.'
Naylor said, 'Yes. Well, as I said, I've been considering your company. I've got to talk it over with the production boys, you understand. I'll let you know.'
'Sure,' said Marten, infinitely depressed. Naylor wouldn't let him know. The whole thing was shot.
And yet, through and beyond his depression, there was still that restlessness.
The hell with Naylor. All Marten wanted was to break this up and get on with it. (Get on with what? But the question was only a whisper. Whatever did the questioning inside him was ebbing away, dying down . . .)
The lunch frayed to an ending. If they had greeted each other like long-separated friends at last reunited, they parted like strangers*
Marten felt only relief.
He left with pulses thudding, threading through the tables, out of the haunted building, onto the haunted street.
Haunted? Madison Avenue at 1:20 P.M. in an early fall afternoon with the sun shining brightly and ten thousand men and women be-hiving its long straight stretch.
But Marten felt the haunting. He tucked his briefcase under his arm and headed desperately northward. A last sigh of the normal within him warned him he had a three o'clock appointment on 36th Street. Never mind. He headed uptown. Northward.
At 54th Street, he crossed Madison and walked west, came abruptly to a halt and looked upward.
There was a sign on the window, three stories up. He could make it out clearly: A. s. LEFKOWICH, CERTIFIED ACCOUNTANT.
It had an F and an OW, but it was the first '-ich' ending he had seen. The first one. He was getting closer. He turned north again on Fifth Avenue, hurrying through the unreal streets of an unreal city, panting with the chase of something, while the crowds about him began to fade.
A sign in a ground floor window, M. R. LEFKOWICZ, M.D.
A small gold-leaf semi-circle of letters in a candy-store window: JACOB LEVKOW.
(Half a name, he thought savagely. Why is he disturbing me with half a name?)
The streets were empty now except for the varying clan of Lefkowitz, Levkowitz, Lefkowicz to stand out in the vacuum.
He was dimly aware of the park ahead, standing out in painted motionless green. He turned west. A piece of newspaper fluttered at the corner of his eyes, the only movement in a dead world. He veered, stooped, and picked it up, without slackening his pace.
It was in Yiddish, a torn half-page.
He couldn't read it. He couldn't make out the blurred Hebrew letters, and could not have read it if they were clear. But one word was clear. It stood out in dark letters in the center of the page, each letter clear in its every serif. And it said Lefkovitsch, he knew, and as he said it to himself, he placed its accent on the second syllable: Lef-KUH-vich.
He let the paper flutter away and entered the empty park.
The trees were still and the leaves hung in odd, suspended attitudes. The sunlight was a dead weight upon him and gave no warmth.
He was running, but his feet kicked up no dust and a tuft of grass on which he placed his weight did not bend.
And there on a bench was an old man; the only man in the desolate park. He wore a dark felt cap, with a visor shading his eyes. From underneath it, tufts of gray hair protruded His grizzled beard reached the uppermost but-
ton of his rougb jacket. His old trousers were patched, and a strip of burlap was wrapped about each worn and shapeless shoe.
Marten stopped. It was difficult to breathe. He could only say one word and he used it to ask his question: 'Levkovich?'
He stood there, while the old man rose slowly to his feet; brown old eyes peering close.
'Marten,' he sighed. 'Samuel Marten. You have come.' The words sounded with an effect of double exposure, for under the English, Marten heard the faint sigh of a foreign tongue. Under the 'Samuel' was the unheard shadow of a 'Schmu-el.'
The old man's rough, veined hands reached out, then withdrew as though he were afraid to touch. 'I have been looking but there are so many people in this wilderness of a city-that-is-to-come. So many Martins and Martines and Mortons and Mertons. I stopped at last when I found greenery, but for a moment only-I would not commit the sin of losing faith. And then you came.'
'It is I,' said Marten, and knew it was. 'And you are Phinehas Levkovich. Why are we here?'
'I am Phinehas ben Jehudah, assigned the name Levkovich by the ukase of the Tsar that ordered family names for all. And we are here,' the old man said, softly, 'because I prayed. When I was already old, Leah, my only daughter, the child of my old age, left for America with her husband, left the knouts of the old for the hope of the new. And my sons died, and Sarah, the wife of my bosom, was long dead and I was alone. And the time came when I, too, must die. But I had not seen Leah since her leaving for the far country and word had come but rarely. My soul yearned that I might see sons bom unto her; sons of my seed; sons in whom my soul might yet live and not die.'
His voice was steady and the soundless shadow of sound beneath his words was the stately roll of an ancient language.
'And I was answered and two hours were given me that I might see the first son of my line to be born in a new land and in a new time. My daughter's daughter's daughter's son, have I found you, then, amidst the splendor of this city?'
'But why the search? Why not have brought us together at once?'
'Because there is pleasure in the hope of the seeking, my son,' said the old man, radiantly, 'and in the delight of the finding. I was given two hours in which I might seek, two hours in which I might find . . . and behold, thou art here, and I have found that which I had not looked to see in life.' His voice was old, caressing. 'Is it well with thee, my son?'
'It is well, my father, now that I have found thee,' said Marten, and dropped to his knees. 'Give me thy blessing, my father, that it may be well with me all the days of my life, and with the maid whom I am to take to wife and the little ones yet to be bom of my seed and thine.'
iflP He felt the old hand resting lightly on his head and there was only the
soundless whisper.
Marten rose. The old man's eyes gazed into his yearningly. Were they losing focus?
'I go to my fathers now in peace, my son,' said the old man, and Marten was alone in the empty park.
There was an instant of renewing motion, of the Sun taking up its interrupted task, of the wind reviving, and even with that first instant of sensation, all slipped back-
At ten of noon, Sam Marten hitched his way out of the taxicab, and found himself groping uselessly for his wallet while traffic inched on.
A red truck slowed, then moved on. A white script on its side announced: F. Lewkowitz and Sons, Wholesale Clothiers.
Marten didn't see it. Yet somehow he knew that all would be well with him. Somehow, as never before, he knew. ...
What Is This Thing Called Love?
'But these are two species,' said Captain Garm, peering closely at the creatures that had been brought up from the planet below. His optic organs adjusted focus to maximum sharpness, bulging outwards as they did so. The color patch above them gleamed in quick flashes.
Botax felt warmly comfortable to be following color-changes once again, after months in a spy cell on the planet, trying to make sense out of the modulated sound waves emitted by the natives. Communication by flash was almost like being home in the far-off Perseus arm of the Galaxy. 'Not two species,' he said, 'but two forms of one species.'
'Nonsense, they look quite different. Vaguely Perse-like, thank the Entity, and not as disgusting in appearance as so many out-forms are. Reasonable shape, recognizable limbs. But no color-patch. Can they speak?'
'Yes, Captain Garm,' Botax indulged in a discreetly disapproving prismatic interlude. 'The details are in my report. These creatures form sound waves by way of throat and mouth, something like complicated coughing. I have learned to do it myself.' He was quietly proud. 'It is very difficult.'
'It must be stomach-turning. Well, that accounts for their flat, unexten-sible eyes. Not to speak by color makes eyes largely useless. Meanwhile, how can you insist these are a single species? The one on the left is smaller and has longer tendrils, or whatever it is, and seems differently proportioned. It bulges where this other does not. Are they alive?'
'Alive but not at the moment conscious, Captain. They have been psycho-treated to repress fright in order that they might be studied easily.'
Copyright (c) 1961 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. (Original title: 'Playboy and the Slime God.')
'But are they worth study? We are behind our schedule and have at least five worlds of greater moment than this one to check and explore. Maintaining a Time- stasis unit is expensive and I would like to return them and go on-'
But Botax's moist spindly body was fairly vibrating with anxiety. His tubular tongue flicked out and curved up and over his flat nose, while his eyes sucked inward. His splayed three-fingered hand made a gesture of negation as his speech went almost entirely into the deep red.
'Entity save us, Captain, for no world is of greater moment to us than this one. We may be facing a supreme crisis. These creatures could be the most dangerous life-forms in the Galaxy, Captain, just because there are two forms.'
'I don't follow you.'
'Captain, it has been my job to study this planet, and it has been most difficult, for it is unique. It is so unique that I can scarcely comprehend its facets. For instance, almost all life on the planet consists of species in two forms. There are no words to describe it, no concepts even. I can only speak of them as first form and second form. If I may use their sounds, the little one is called 'female,' and the big one, here, 'male,' so the creatures themselves are aware of the difference.'
