Chapter Eleven

Libby Allison was kneeling on the floor playing googly-goo with the tow-headed baby in the playpen when Julian Bahr walked in, threw his coat on the bed-couch, and walked a-round a few seconds impatiently while she continued to ignore him. Then his impatience seemed to evaporate, and he sat heavily on the edge of the relaxo, and with a half-groan, half-sigh began to pound his fist into the palm of his left hand.

Libby looked up then. "Trouble?" she asked.

Bahr's only answer was a sudden vicious smack of fist against palm, as if in his mind he had just driven his knuckles into the fragile bone-structure of somebody's face.

"DEPCO?"

"That too."

She put the youngster back in the playpen, and brushed her hair back where his small hands had been pulling at it. "What else?" she said.

He didn't answer for a minute or more. His jaw was knotted in anger, his huge body tense, but there was something else in his face, perhaps just in his eyes, when he looked at her. Then he shook his head helplessly. "The elephant, again."

Libby turned sharply, the baby forgotten, her heart suddenly thumping wildly, her trained psychologist's mind focusing abruptly on an almost simultaneous kaleidoscope of incidents, remarks, mannerisms, and the few desperate grudging revelations that formed in her mind the clinical picture of Julian Bahr.

"Last night," he said angrily. "Actually this morning, just before I woke up." He held out his left hand for her to see. The knuckles were cut and bruised.

"Julian . . ."

"I was hitting the wall. I hurt my hand, I guess that was what woke me up." He sat quiedy for a moment, his breathing shallow and rapid. Holding his hand, she could feel the furious pounding of his pulse, watch the slow tensing of back and shoulder muscles as if he were trying by sheer physical force to throw off an ugly, frightening memory.

Finally he stood up, jammed his hands in his pockets, walked around the room once, then came back and sat down. "All right," he said. "It's the first time in two years. Why did it come back, Libby? I went to sleep all right. I worked until I was ready to collapse, I can always get to sleep then, but I woke up at three in the morning beating my fist on the wall, and all I can remember is the elephant."

"Did it start out the same way? Out in the street?"

"Yes, the same way. The same woman, too. Some man was looking for her, and she had to hide, so I went into the building with her. There was the long hall with doors all up and down, and little rooms opening into it, and the elephant was at the end of the hall."

She nodded wearily. It was the same, detail for detail. "And the elephant picked her up?"

"Just like before—in his trunk. He wasn't hurting her any but he was going to carry her off, and she screamed for me to get a blanket and put it over his eyes so he couldn't see. So I took the blanket and threw it over the elephant's eyes, but it stuck on his tusks and only partly covered his eyes. He started to come down the hall, and I knew he could see me, and I had to run, only I couldn't run fast enough, so I went into one of the little rooms and closed the door. The elephant went right on by, but when he got to the end of the corridor he started back, with people going past him like he wasn't there. There was no way out of the room, and I

couldn't jump, and the elephant began pushing in the door »

He stopped for breath, and straightened his back for a moment. "Then I woke up. I was hitting the wall and I woke up." He sighed again, his breathing deep and labored.

"The woman," Libby said. "Did you know her?"

"No."

"Was she with the elephant when he was chasing you?"

"No," Bahr said. "After I started to run she wasn't there at all." He looked up at her, suffering in his face and eyes. "What does it mean, Libby? Why does it . . . scare me like that? Why does it start coming back now? I haven't had it in two years."

She sat down, shaking her head and holding his hand between hers. "Julian, the last time, I told you . . ."

"But what have I got to be scared of?" he roared, jerking to his feet. "You want to dig and poke and scrape things open in my mind, but those things are all gone now, they aren't ever going to come back again; I won't let them come back!" He collapsed into the seat again, the anger fading as suddenly as it flared. "It's no good, Libby, it's just no good. I can't do it your way."

"It's the only way I can help you. And I want to help you, you know that."

"I know." He leaned back, breathing slower again, more relaxed. "Thank God I can come here sometimes," he said, almost to himself. "Sometimes things start pressing in until it's more than I can stand. Here I can rest."

"How do you feel now?" she asked.

"Better, I guess. Pretty good. God, I'm hungry! Haven't you got something to eat?"

"I'll make some sandwiches and coffee," she said, and went out into the tiny kitchenette.

Bahr paced up and down the room a few times as she put the coffee on the sonic unit. Then she didn't hear him walking any more, and she glanced out to see if he had left.

He was crouched, one knee on the floor beside the playpen, poking his huge finger at the child, who struggled to thrust it aside, and then grabbed onto it with small un-co-ordinated hands. Finally Bahr chuckled and picked up the baby in his huge hands. He began to swing the child up and down, toss him in the air, the pale blue eyes regarding him with wide surprise, and each time Bahr caught him he would whisper a soft "Ahhhhhh . . ."

Then Bahr, the lesser, began to squall, and the big man glanced around the room guiltily, and seeing that no one was looking, lowered the loud one back into the playpen.

"The kid's crying," Bahr said roughly. "Why don't you feed him?"

"I will," Libby said. When he's alone, she thought, when he's alone he's different. He's almost human until he thinks people are looking at him.

Suddenly Bahr was behind her, jabbing his thumb into her ribs, laughing as she jumped. "What's the matter?" he said. "I'm starving, and you let the coffee boil over."

"Just thinking," she said, but there were tears in her eyes.

She waited until he had finished his coffee before she told him about Adams' visit during the afternoon.

"You must have been out of your mind," she said. "I told you DEPCO would be watching that announcement speech. And then you stood up there and shouted to the world that we were being invaded."

Bahr looked at her and grinned. "I hope they got plenty to see. I put it on the line, all right. Somebody had to."

"Oh, you put it on the line, all right. Do you know what you looked like, out there with all those cameras? Like Marc Antony doing 'friends and Romans.' Do you think the people in DEPCO are idiots?"

"The ones I know."

"Julian, you cut your own throat with that speech. DEPCO doesn't have to wait until they interview you. They can slap an injunction on your job on plain suspicion of Instability and schedule you for interview when they have time."

"They aren't going to have die time," Bahr said. "Look . . . they're scared. They can pull that Instability bunk and