Herds

CHAPTER 1-2

“Not any more.” Already she could feel the inside corners of her eyes starting to warm up, and she tried to check her emotions. Crying now would do no good, and might defeat her purpose. Besides, she had learned from painful experience that Wesley Stoneham was not affected by tears.

“You are until the law says otherwise.” He strode across the room to her in two large steps, grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. “And you are going to look at me when you talk to me.”

Stella tried to shake herself out of his grip, but his fingers just tightened all the more into her skin, one of them (did he do it intentionally?) hitting a nerve, so that a streak of pain raced across her shoulders. She stopped twisting and eventually he took his arms away again.

“That’s a little better,” he said. “The least a man can expect is a little civility from his own wife.”

“I’m sorry,” she said sweetly. There was a slight crack in her voice as she tried to force some gaiety into it. “I should go over to the stove and bake my big, strong mansy-wansy a welcome home cake.”

“Save the sarcasm for someone who likes that s**t, Stella,” Stoneham growled. “I want to know why you want a divorce.”

“Why, my most precious one, it’s—” she began in the same saccharine tones. Stoneham gave her a hard slap against the cheek. “I told you to can that,” he said.

“I think my reasons should be more than apparent,” Stella said bitterly. There was a flush creeping slowly into the cheek where she’d been hit. She raised her hand to the spot, more out of self-consciousness than pain.

Stoneham’s nostrils flared, and his stare was supercold. Stella averted her eyes, but stubbornly stood her ground. There was ice on her husband’s words as be asked, “Have you been having an affair with that overaged. hippie?”

It took a moment for her to realize who he meant. About a mile from the cabin, in Totido Canyon, a group of young people had moved into an abandoned summer camp and formed what they proudly called the “Totido Commune.” Because of their unconventional behavior and dress, they were thought of by the surrounding residents as hippies and condemned accordingly. Their leader was an older man, at least in his late thirties, and he seemed to keep his group in order just this side of the law.

“Are you talking about Carl Polaski?” Stella asked incredulously.

“I don’t mean Santa Claus.”

Despite her nervousness, Stella laughed. “That’s preposterous. And besides, he’s not a hippie; he’s a psychology professor doing research on the drop-out phenomenon.”

“People tell me he’s been hanging around this cabin a lot, Stell. I don’t like that.”

“There’s nothing immoral about it. He runs some errands for me and does a few odd jobs. I pay him back by letting him use the cabin for writing. He types over here, because he can’t get enough privacy to say what be really thinks at the commune. Sometimes we’ve talked. He’s a very interesting man, Wes. But no, I haven’t had any affairs with him, nor am I likely to.”

“Then what’s eating you? Why do you want a divorce?” He went to the sofa and sat down, never taking his eyes from her for an instant.

Stella paced back and forth in front of him a few times. She folded and unfolded her hands, and finally let them hang at her sides. “I want to be able to have some self-respect,” she said at last.

“You have that now. You can hold your head up to anyone in the country.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’d like, just once, to be able to sign my name ‘Stella Stoneham’ instead of ‘Mrs. Wesley Stoneham.’ Maybe give a party for the people I like, instead of your political cronies. Wes, I want to feel like I’m an equal partner in this marriage, not just another tasteful accessory to your home.”

“I don’t understand you. I’ve given you everything any woman could possibly want—”

“Except identity. As far as you’re concerned, I’m not a human being, just a wife. I decorate your arm at hundred-dollar-a-plate dinners and make charming noises at the wives of other would-be politicians. I make a corporate lawyer socially respectable enough to think of running for office. And, when you’re not using me, you forget about me, send me away to the little cabin by the sea or leave me to walk by myself around the fifteen rooms of the mansion, slowly rotting away. I can’t live this way, Wes. I want out.”

“What about a trial separation, maybe a month or so—”

“I said ‘out,’ O-U-T. A separation wouldn’t do any good. The fault, dear husband, is not in our stars but in ourselves. I know you too well, and I know you’ll never change into something that is acceptable to me. And I’ll never be satisfied with being an ornament. So a separation would do us no good at all. I want a divorce.”

Stoneham crossed his legs. “Have you told anyone about this yet?”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, I was planning to see Larry tomorrow, but I felt you should be told first.”

“Good,” Stoneham said in a barely audible whisper.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Stella asked sharply. Her hands were fidgeting, which was her cue to fumble through her purse on the writing desk for her pack of cigarettes. She needed one badly at this point.

But it wasn’t until she got a cigarette between her lips that she realized she was out of matches. “Got a light?”

“Sure.” Stoneham fished around in his coat pocket and pulled out a book of matches. “Keep them,” he said as he flipped them to his wife.

Stella caught them and examined them with interest. The outside of the book was smooth silver, with red and blue stars around the border. In the center were words that proclaimed:

WESLEY STONEHAM

SUPERVISOR

SAN MARCOS COUNTY

Inside, the paper matches alternated red, white and blue.

She looked quizzically up at her husband, who was grinning at her. “Like them?” he asked. “I just got them back from the printer’s this afternoon.”

“Isn’t it a bit premature?” she asked sarcastically.

“Only by a couple of days. Old man Chottman is resigning from the Board because of ill health at the end of the week, and they’re letting him name the man he wants as his successor to fill out his term. It won’t be official, of course, until the governor appoints the man, but I have it from very reliable sources that my name is the one being mentioned. If Chottman says he wants me to fill his term, the governor will listen. Chottman is seventy-three and has a lot of favors to call in.”

An idea began glimmering in Stella’s brain. “So this is why you don’t want a divorce, isn’t it?”

“Stell, you know as well as I do what a puritan that Chottman is,” Stoneham said. “The old guy is still firmly opposed to sin of any kind, and he thinks of divorce as a sin. God only knows why, but he does.” He rose from the couch and went to his wife again, holding her shoulders tenderly this time. “That’s why I’m asking you to wait. It would only be a week or two—”

Stella pulled away, a knowing, triumphant smile on her face. “So that’s it. Now we know why the big, strong Wesley Stoneham comes crawling. You won’t leave me even a vestige of self-respect, will you? You won’t even let me think that you came because you thought there was something in our marriage worth saving. No, you come right out with it. It’s a favor you want.”

She struck a match furiously and began to puff on her cigarette like a steam locomotive climbing a hill. She tossed the used match into the ashtray, and the matchbook down beside it. “Well, I’m sick of your politics, Wesley. I’m tired of doing things so that it will make you look better or more concerned for the citizenry of San Marcos. The only person you ever consider is yourself. I suppose you’d even grant me the divorce uncontested if I were to wait, wouldn’t you?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Sure. The Great Compromiser. Make any deal, as long as it gets you what you want. Well, I’ve got a little surprise for you, Mister Supervisor. I do not make deals. I don’t give a God damn whether you make it in politics or not. I intend to walk into our lawyer’s office tomorrow and start the papers fluttering.”

“Stella—”

“Maybe I’ll even have a little talk with the press about all the milk of human kindness that flows in your veins, husband dear.”

“I’m warning you, Stella—”

“That would be a big tragedy, wouldn’t it, Wes, if you had to actually get elected...”

“STOP IT, STELLA!”

“...by the voters to get into office instead of being appointed all nice and neat by your buddies.”

“STELLA!”

His hands were up to her throat as he screamed her name. He wanted her to stop, but she wouldn’t. Her lips kept moving and moving, and the words were lost in a silencing mist that enveloped the cabin. Normal colorations vanished as the room took on a blood-red hue. He shook her and closed his huge hands tightly around her neck.

The cigarette dropped from her surprised fingers at the unexpected attack, spilling some of its ashes on the floor. Stella raised her hands against her husband’s chest and tried to push him away. For a moment she succeeded, but he kept coming, fighting off her flailing arms to grip her with all the strength at his disposal.

There was a numbness in his fingers as they closed around her throat. He did not feel the soft warmth of her skin yielding under his pressure, the pulsing of the arteries in her neck or the instinctive tightening of her tendons. All he felt was his own muscles, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

Gradually, her struggling subsided. Her facial coloring seemed funny, even through the red haze that clouded his vision. Her bulging eyes looked ready to leap from their sockets, opened wide and staring at him, staring, staring....

He let go. She fell to the ground, but slowly. Slow-motion slow, dream slow. Still there was no sound as she hit the floor. She crumpled, limp as a rag doll tossed aside for fancier toys. Except for that face, that purple, bloated face. Its tongue stuck out like a grotesquerie, the eyes glazed with horror. A tiny trickle of blood leaked from her nose, down her purpled lips and onto the faded brown carpet. A finger on her left hand twitched spasmodically two or three times, then became still.

* * *

The blue-white world was below him, awaiting the touch of his mind. Garnna dipped into the atmosphere and was overwhelmed by the abundance of life. There were creatures in the air, creatures on the land, creatures in the water. The first test, of course, was the search for any Offasii that might be around, but it took only a quick scan to reveal that none were there. The Offasii had not been found on any of the planets yet explored by the Zarticku, but the search had to go on. The Zartic race could not feel truly safe until they discovered what had happened to their former masters.

The primary purpose of the Exploration had now been accomplished. There remained the secondary purpose: to determine what kind of life did inhabit this planet, whether it was intelligent, and whether it might conceivably pose any threat to Zarti.

Garnna established another net, a smaller one this time. He encompassed the entire planet with his mind, probing for signs of intelligence. His search was instantly successful. Lights gleamed in bright patterns on the night side, indicating cities of large size. A profusion of radio waves, artificially modulated, were bouncing all over the atmosphere. He followed them to their sources and found large towers and buildings. And he found the creatures themselves who were responsible for the radio waves and the buildings and the lights. They walked erect on two legs and their bodies were soft, without the armor plating of a Zartic. They were short, perhaps only half as tall as Zarticku, and their fur seemed to be mostly concentrated on their heads. He observed their eating habits and realized with distaste that they were omnivores. To a herbivorous race like the Zarticku, such creatures seemed to have cruel and malicious natures, posing potential threats to a gentler species. But at least they were better than the vicious carnivores. Garnna had seen a couple of carnivore societies, where killing and destruction were everyday occurrences, and the mere thought of them sent imaginary shudders through his mind. He found himself wishing that all life in the universe were herbivorous, then checked himself. He was not supposed to allow his personal prejudices to interfere with the performance of his duties. His task now was to observe these creatures in the short time he had left to him and make a report that would be filed for future study.