Twinkle, Twinkle Read online

  Fell glanced around the hall. It was quiet and deserted. He looked to the winding staircase that ascended to the second floor, where all the staff were billeted. No one on the landing. He looked around the hall again, at the fixed and myriad lifelike effigies of the old master vampire, of Bela Slovik as he’d appeared in his various movie roles. Then shivered slightly, walked down the hall, pushed open the door to Kane’s office and stepped inside.

  The new commanding officer was unpacking some books. His back was to Fell, but as the door slid open silently, he turned with the cunning grace of a middle-aged panther. Eyes like a panther as well, thought Fell, and closed the door behind him. He strode over to Kane, who had a hand in a valise that was open on his desk. Above the desk, in matching frames, were portraits of Slovik and General Lastrade, posed in attitudes suggesting that they were no longer speaking.

  “Hi,” chirped Fell thickly. “Brought you a little present.” He tossed the folder onto the desk. “File on Manfred Cutshaw. Better read it, old shoe.”

  Kane eyed him inscrutably. “Do you intend to get dressed?”

  “Well, now, how can I get dressed when Sergeant Fromme won’t surrender my pants!” growled Fell, projecting wounded innocence. “Colonel, you surely don’t expect me to rip them off!”

  “No, no—of course. We mustn’t use force.”

  “We mustn’t wrinkle the pants!” Fell slurped noisily from his cup and abruptly subsided. “He’ll take them off neatly soon as Cutshaw gives the order.”

  “As soon as Cutshaw gives the order!”

  Fell’s eye fell inadvertently on a book in Kane’s valise. It was a Roman Catholic missal. For only the briefest instant he pondered its implications; then looked up again at Kane.

  “May I give you some advice?” said Fell as he made an abortive effort to sit gracefully on the edge of the desk. He slipped, barely recovered, then pretended that nothing had happened as Kane looked to his coffee mug, then up again at the medic.

  “Get Cutshaw to like you,” imparted Fell with heavy wisdom. “Humor him. Pamper him. The inmates won’t listen to anyone else. Get Cutshaw on your side and you’ve really got it made. But get him on your back and you can kiss the game good—”

  Fell never finished. The door flew open with the suddenness of a horrible realization, banged with a crash against the wall. In bounced Cutshaw like a jack-in-the-box, a pixie on springs. “It is I—Manfred Cutshaw!” he announced with sparkling grandeur; then slammed the door behind him and marched up to Kane, fronting his new commander with a challenging posture, arms akimbo. “So—you’re the ‘new boy’!”

  Kane sat on the desk edge. His gaze never left Cutshaw’s as his hand reached for his file. “Yes,” he answered mildly. “I’m Colonel Hudson Kane.”

  “Do I call you Hud?”

  “Why not call me Colonel?”

  “Why not call you Shirley MacLaine! Why are we quibbling? You’re on the way out! I’ve been deputized to inform you that we refuse to be led by a sissy!” Cutshaw’s gaze flicked over at Fell. “Captain Fell,” he demanded severely, “are those my jockey shorts?”

  “Friend,” intervened Kane, “by whom were you deputized?”

  “Angels and archangels! Cherubim and seraphim! Unseen forces too numerous to enumerate!” Cutshaw boldly snatched the file from out of Kane’s grasp, flipped it open to page one and then thrust it rudely back at him. “There! It’s all in the file! Read the file, the file, the file!” His finger stabbed at a paragraph. “There, Colonel, there! Under ‘Mysterious Voices’! You think Joan of Arc was crazy? Well, you’re bloody well out of your mind! She had acutely sensitive hearing, Hud! Like me, your adorable astronaut! The file, Hud, read it! Read the file! Read the file!”

  Kane glanced down at the page.

  “Out loud, out loud! It’s part of my therapy!”

  Fell had moved to a window where he watched the two men silently. Kane looked to him and he nodded. “Very well,” said Kane. “Sit down.”

  Cutshaw sat. Putting an arm around Kane’s neck, he leaped nimbly onto his lap. And froze; waiting; staring deep into Kane’s eyes.

  Kane’s expression was unreadable. “On a chair,” he said softly.

  Cutshaw glided swiftly into a chair by the desk, assuming there a posture much like that of Rodin’s Thinker, staring intently and unblinkingly up at Kane. Fell hiccupped gently.

  Kane began to read: “Captain Manfred Cutshaw…”

  “Dammit stop that whispering!” Cutshaw interrupted. “Do it right! Do it right! It’s supposed to sound massive!” Then, “Mannnnnfred Cutshaw!” he demonstrated stentorianly.

  Kane raised his voice. “Mannnnnnnfred Cutshaw…”

  “Beautiful! Beautiful! Go on! Go on!”

  Cutshaw silently formed the words with his lips as Kane read aloud: “… Two days prior to a scheduled space shot, subject officer Cutshaw, while dining on base, was observed to pick up a plastic catsup bottle, squeeze a thin red line across his throat, and then stagger and fall heavily across a table then occupied by the Director of the National Space Administration, gurgling, ‘Don’t order the swordfish!’…”

  There ensued a silence of several beats while Kane ingested this information, staring dully at the file. Then he continued with his reading: “On the following afternoon, subject officer quite uncharacteristically knocked a gas station manager into extended insensibility when the latter refused to deduct a cost equivalent in lieu of trading stamps. Later that same day, subject officer suggested to his commanding general that he ‘shave off his mustache’ because it looked ‘silly.’ In his general remarks at the time, subject officer also alluded to his ‘firm and unshakable opinion’ that ‘people with weak chins should not attempt to con a foolish but trusting puplic.’” Kane could not refrain from looking up. “Did you really say—?”

  Kane halted in mid-sentence, startled by what he saw: a white mouse crawling up the astronaut’s shirt front. Cutshaw’s hand flew up to a medal that hung from his neck. “You’re looking at my medal!” he snapped. “Stop looking at my medal!”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are! You covet it!”

  Kane looked down at the file. Once more he began to read: “On the following…”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Kane again looked up. Cutshaw was holding his medal, fondly admiring it, head bent over. It looked to Kane like St. Christopher. “Yes,” said Kane, “it is.”

  “There, I knew it!” raged Cutshaw. “You were looking at it!”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you were!”

  “Then, I’m sorry.”

  “Sure, you’re sorry!” fumed the astronaut. “What good is ‘sorry’? The damage is done, you envious swine! How can I eat! How can I sleep! I’ll be a quivering, nervous wreck waiting for you to make your move! For a kleptomaniac colonel to come padding up to my bedside and rip away my medal!”

  “If I were to try something like that you would awaken,” reasoned Kane.

  Cutshaw would have none of it. “Powerful drugs,” he gritted, “could be insinuated into my soup. You could—” Kane, he suddenly noticed, was staring at the mouse. “Aha! You want the mouse! Here, Hud, take him! Leave me the medal!”

  “I do not want the mouse or the medal,” said Kane.

  “Who the hell offered them?” Cutshaw rebutted, smoothly pocketing the mouse. “Now read! And eat your heart out!”

  Kane’s eyes brushed over him, then returned to the dossier. “The following morning at—”

  “Your hands are very large,” interrupted the astronaut.

  The comment drew Fell’s attention to the Colonel’s hands. Yes, noted the medic; they are rather large.

  “I know,” said Kane mildly.

  “Congratulations!” rasped Cutshaw. “Now spare me the interruptions and get on with my therapy. I haven’t got all day. There are mice to be fed!”

  Kane resumed his reading: “The following morning at 0500, subject officer entered hi
s space capsule, but on receiving instructions from Control to begin his countdown, was heard instead to say, ‘I am sick unto the death of being used!’ While being carried out of the capsule, subject officer plainly announced that if ‘nominated’ he ‘would not run, and if elected would not serve.’ He later expressed his ‘profound conviction’ that going to the Moon was ‘naughty, not suave,’ and in any case bad for his skin. Political affiliation: Anarchist; professes to hate officers…” Here, Kane looked up, puzzlement prowling his eyebrows. “Cutshaw, you are an officer.”

  “That’s all very well for you to say; you’re sane!” responded Cutshaw.

  “Aren’t you?” parried Kane.

  “If I were, would I still be sitting here playing ‘Youth Wants To Know’ with a pansy?”

  Fell slurped from his coffee mug, staring at Kane’s back with a physician’s eye; at his hands clenching the desk edge. The “Little Flower,” he judged, had rather powerful muscles, and they presently seemed to be operating under some sort of massive restraint.

  “Why,” tempered Kane, “do you hate officers, son?”

  “Why do camels have humps and snakes not? Don’t ask the heart for reasons, Hud!” Cutshaw leaped up. “Just pack up and leave!”

  “Why won’t you go to the Moon?”

  Cutshaw sat down again like a flash. “So you’re staying!”

  “Yes, I’m staying.”

  Cutshaw leaned forward portentously. “Schmucks dance after dinner; sheiks sleep,” he intoned; then leaned back.

  “Meaning what?”

  “How do I know? The voices told me to say that!”

  “Cutshaw—”

  “Wait! Wait-wait-wait!” The astronaut’s hand flew to his brow as his eyes pressed tightly shut in thought. “I’m getting a message for—‘H.A.’! Is there an ‘H.A.’ here with us tonight?”

  “No,” sighed Kane and “Wrong!” pounced Cutshaw. “‘Horse’s Ass’ will do quite nicely.” Then with a “Shhhh!”—waving Kane to silence—he closed his eyes in groping frown again. “Attila! It’s Attila the Hun! Wants to know if you’ll accept the charges!”

  “What is the message?”

  “He wants a ball of ‘Silly Putty’ and a ‘Batman Is a Fag’ sticker.”

  “Why won’t you go to the Moon?”

  Cutshaw leaped up. “What’s there?” he demanded. “Viet without Nam? What’s there? What’s there?”

  Kane looked thoughtful. “When Columbus sailed from Spain, did he dream he’d find America?”

  “Columbus was an idiot! Starts out looking for India, winds up in Pismo Beach! Honestly, Hud, I’m starting to worry about you!”

  The door flew open, banging against a wall.

  “Doctor Fell, I need attention.”

  The inmate in the beret stood framed in the doorway. In one hand he held a palette, in the other a brush, and in his mouth a Greek accent.

  Fell weaved toward him. “Blue Cross? Blue Shield? What’s your coverage?”

  “Coverage?” the inmate looked fuddled.

  Kane intervened. “What is ailing you, my boy?”

  “Who but Douglas! Always Douglas!”

  “Lieutenant Douglas Morris Fairbanks, the one with the sword,” explained Fell.

  The beret quivered with outrage. “Once again he has given me that fiendish ‘Mark of Fairbanks’! Look!” he pouted, turning. “I am bleeding!”

  He wasn’t. But slashed into his trouser seat was a very palpable “F.”

  “Only a scratch,” said Fell. “Get a band-aid from the clinic, Corfu.”

  But Corfu was eying Kane, vexed by some problem of weight. “You are Colonel Kane?” he asked.

  “Yes. I am.”

  Corfu rubbed his paint brush into the palette. “Your coloring is bad.”

  “Look out!” cried Fell; but much too late. In a sudden, lightning movement, Corfu had brushed red paint onto both of Kane’s cheeks.

  “There!” Corfu beamed. “Not a ‘Portrait of Jenny,’ but at least not Dorian Gray!” He raised his paint brush high in salute. “Ciao!” he grinned, and left.

  A desk drawer slammed shut. Kane whipped his head around, saw the astronaut tossing a folder onto his desk, declaring, “I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what?” queried Kane.

  “For the ink-blot test. It absolutely flips me!”

  Kane, thought Fell, looked slightly apprehensive.

  Kane spoke flatly, “Ink-blot test?”

  “Yes-yes-yes!” bubbled the astronaut. “Now, while you’re fresh with those roses in your cheeks!” Kane wiped his face with a handkerchief. “Come on, let’s go!” continued Cutshaw. “You’re a psychologist, right?”

  Kane threw a darting glance at Fell. Then quickly looked back at Cutshaw. “Very well—we’ll do just one. And then the rest when I’ve fully unpacked.”

  “No, the batch!” Cutshaw sulked. “I want the batch! The bloody lot!” He scraped his chair to the side of the desk. “Hud, I swear, I’ll be good for a week!”

  Kane saw Fell staring out the window: humming; dreaming; swishing the contents of the mug. “All right,” said Kane. “All right.”

  Kane sat behind the desk, opened the folder—he’d brought it with him—to the first of a series of Rorschachs. Cutshaw bent his head over it, his nose almost touching the page. He studied the blot intently. Then he looked up at Kane. “Well?” he demanded.

  “Well, what?” responded Kane.

  “Well, ask me what I see.”

  “What do you see?”

  “An elephant on water skis.”

  “Right. Now this one.” Kane turned the page. Fell stared into his coffee mug, then turned to regard the Colonel with a mild look of amazement.

  Cutshaw examined—for barely a moment—the second of the Rorschachs, then firmly announced his judgment: “An old lady in funny clothes blowing poisoned darts at a buffalo.”

  “Right. Right again,” said Kane.

  Cutshaw looked into his eyes. “You’re purely out of your mind, Hud! You’re purely full of shit!”

  “If you say so.”

  “Ingratiating bastard. You’re insane, but I adore you.”

  “Good.”

  “Watch your tongue!”

  Captain Fell had moved in closer. “Listen,” he began, “aren’t Rorschachs supposed to be—”

  “Later we’ll do the rest,” Kane interrupted very firmly. He closed the folder with finality, shoving it back into the drawer.

  “Marvey!” glipped Cutshaw, leaping bolt upright.

  “And now you’ll be good for a week?”

  “No!”

  “Cutshaw, didn’t you tell me that—?”

  “Yes! Yes, I did! But I’m an incorrigible liar!” Cutshaw swept to the door, crouched over like Groucho Marx, and flung it open with a bang. “May I go?” he asked urbanely.

  A corporal in uniform, capped in the hat of a chef, stood revealed in the doorway, his hand gripping a ladle that brimmed with a murky substance. “Colonel, you’ve got to taste this!” he burbled, stepping inside.

  With a swift, birdlike motion, Cutshaw lowered his nose to the ladle, then jerked his head up at Kane, announcing: “Truffles from the Moon, Hud! Dusty, but good for your sex life!” He swept out of view.

  The corporal advanced on Kane, the ladle prowed forward. “Taste it!” he said. “Taste it! I just made it up!”

  Kane eyed him levelly over the ladle. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” retorted the corporal. “Take a taste, take a taste!”

  Kane slurped a taste. The corporal, rather corpulent, jiggled his stomach up and down. “Tell me!” he demanded. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

  “And to whom am I speaking?” asked Kane.

  “Corporal Gower.”

  “You’re the chef?”

  “How did you guess?”

  Kane smiled thinly. “Just a shot in the dark. I think your stew is tasty.”

  “Great!” exulted Gower. “We’ll have
it for dinner!” He jiggled out of the office, gracefully tossing onto the floor, in an absent-minded reflex, the steaming contents of the ladle.

  Fell watched the sinews in the psychologist’s neck as Kane stared down at the splotch the stew had made on the floor. Cutshaw appeared at the door, examined the splotch with concentration. “A lobster eating Johnson grass!” he decided, and crouched away.

  Fell closed the door, dropping some newspaper over the splotch. “The cook, by the way, is not an inmate,” he explained. Then he wandered to a bookshelf, examining its new contents.

  Kane poked aimlessly at a corner of the newspaper with the point of his shoe. He spoke as though to himself. “We all defeat madness in various ways.”

  Fell quietly waited. But Kane said no more.

  The medic pulled a book from the shelf. “This yours? Elementary psych?”

  The psychogist looked up at him. “Yes. Yes it is.”

  Fell flipped through the book, noted some marginal glosses as well as some very heavy underlinings. “You’re a lucky boy, Kane,” he said: “assigned to a job you do best.”

  “Aren’t you? You’re a doctor.”

  “Brain surgeon.”

  “Oh.” Kane moved to his desk, calmly resuming unpacking.

  “I am stunned,” declared Fell, “by your shock and amazement.”

  Kane’s hand was on the missal. He stared at it solemnly. “We’re all miscast—one way or another. Being born into this world: that’s the ultimate miscasting.” He paused and seemed to be brooding over what he had just said, feeling for his thoughts with gentle, surgical fingers. “I—think that’s what drives us mad. I mean—if fish could survive—actually survive out of water—they would go mad.” Kane looked up at Fell. “Do you know what I mean?”