Golden Girl and Other Stories by Vance Jack

Author:Vance, Jack
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780575109902
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

XIII

Cholwell’s face was a mask carved in yellow wax. He said slowly, “What you say is perfectly true…But it’s impossible.” His voice rose into a snarl. “I told you we can’t stand publicity. If we carried out a stunt like that, we’d be known across all space. Angel City would be overrun with journalists, busy-bodies, investigators. The great scheme would be—out of the question.”

“By ‘great scheme’,” asked Jean politely, “you mean the project of making us all mothers?”

“Of course. Naturally. The great scheme.”

“Even if it means sacrificing Cherry? Her life?”

Cholwell looked pained. “You express it in unpleasant terms. I don’t like it in the slightest degree. It means seven instead of eight…But sometimes we are forced to be brave and bear up under setbacks. This is one of those times.”

Jean looked at him with glowing eyes. “Cholwell,” she whispered. She was unable to continue. Finally she said, “Sooner or later—”

The closet door banged open.

A harsh voice said, “Well, I’ve heard all I can stand. More’n enough.”

Out from the closet marched Mollie Salomon, and behind her the tall yellow-faced woman Svenska.

Magic, a miracle, was Jean’s first startled supposition; how else to explain two big women in a broom closet? Cholwell sat like an elegantly dressed statue, his face a brown study. Jean relaxed her breath. Conceivably they had squeezed themselves close; the air, she thought wryly, must have been rich and thick.

Mollie took three swift steps forward, put her hands on her hips, thrust her round white face forward. “You nasty thing, now I know what went on…”

Cholwell rose to his feet, backed away, quick and yellow as a tortoise-shell cat. “You’ve no right here, you’d better get out!”

Everything happened at once—a myriad bedlam jangle of sound, emotion, contorted faces. Farcical, grotesque, terrible—Jean sat back, unknowing whether to laugh madly or run.

Svenska cried in a voice guttural with passion, “You ruined me, you pig—”

“Rare puzzlement,” snarled Mollie, “and all the time it was your fooling and fiddling!”

“—I beat my head, I cry, I think my husband is right, I am no good, I am—”

Cholwell held up his hands. “Ladies, ladies—”

“I’ll ‘ladies’ you.” Mollie snatched a broom from the closet, began whacking Cholwell with the flat of it. He seized hold, tried to tear it away; he and Mollie capered and wrestled across the floor. Svenska stepped in, flung long sinewy arms around his neck, squatted; Cholwell stumbled over backwards. They both sprawled to the floor. Mollie plied the broom.

Cholwell gained his feet, rushed to the desk, came up with Jean’s dart-box. His hair fell lank, his mouth hung open, and he panted heavily. Deliberately he raised the box. Jean slid down in her seat, kicked out at his arm. The dart exploded in the door-frame with a dry clacking sound.

Svenska flung herself on him, Mollie hit his arm with the broom. The dart-box fell to the floor; Jean picked it up.

Mollie threatened him with her broom. “You should be ashamed of yourself for what you did!”

Svenska reached out, gave his shoulder a shake.

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