Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. 08: Bright Segment [S.S. Col.] by Sturgeon Theodore

Author:Sturgeon, Theodore [Sturgeon, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Modern Classics, Sci-fi, Short Stories
ISBN: 978-1-58394-752-4
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2002-01-16T02:00:00+00:00

When You’re Smiling

Never tell the truth to humans.

I can’t recall having formulated that precept; I do know I’ve lived under it all my life.

But Henry?

It couldn’t matter with Henry.

You might say Henry didn’t count.

And who would blame me? Being me, I’d found, was a lonely job. Doing better things than other people—and doing them better to boot—is its own reward, up to a point. But to find out about those murders, those dozens and dozens of beautiful scot-free murders, and then not to be able to tell anyone … well, I act like a human being in so many other ways—

And besides, it’s only Henry.

When I was a kid in school, I had three miles to go and used roller skates except when it was snowing. Sometimes it got pretty cold, occasionally too hot, and often wet; but rain or shine, Henry was there when I got to the building. That was twenty years ago, but all I have to do is close my eyes to bring it all back, him and his homely, doggy face, his odd flexible mouth atwist with laughter and welcome. He’d take my books and set them by the wall and rub one of my hands between his two if it was cold, or toss me a locker-room towel if it was wet or very hot.

I never could figure out why he did it. It was more than just plain hero-worship, yet Lord knows he got little enough from me.

That went on for years, until he graduated. I didn’t do so well and it took me longer to get out. I don’t think I really tried to graduate until after Henry did; the school suddenly seemed pretty bleak, so I did some work and got clear of it.

After that, I kicked around a whole lot looking for a regular income without specializing in anything, and found it writing features for the Sunday supplement of one of those newspapers whose editorial policies are abhorrent to decent people, but it’s all right; no decent person reads them.

I write about floods, convincingly describing America’s certain watery grave, and I write about drought and the vanishing water table, visualizing our grandchildren expiring on barren plains that are as dry as a potato-chip. Then there’s the perennial collision with a wandering planet, and features about nuts who predict the end of the world, and biographies of great patriots cut to size so they won’t conflict with the editorial page. It’s a living, and when you can compartment it away from what you think, none of it bothers you.

So a lot of things happened and twenty years went by, and all of a sudden I ran into Henry.

The first thing about him was that he hadn’t changed. I don’t think he had even grown much. He still had the coarse hair and the ugly wide mouth and the hot happy eyes. The second funny thing was the way he was dressed, like always, in hand-me-downs: a collar four sizes too large,

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