Slow Sculpture by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online Page B

put it down, and closed the door. She got into bed and put out the light without even looking at the window.
V
    “Aw, you shouldn’t!” cried Bitty with a joyous sort of chagrin as she pushed open Sue Martin’s door. “Here I’ve got all your fresh linen and you’ve went and made the bed!”
    Sue Martin, sleep-tousled and lovely in a dark negligee, rose from the writing desk. “I’m sorry, Bitty. I forgot it was Thursday.”
    “Well, Thursday it is,” the older woman scolded, “and now I’ll have to do it up all over again. Young lady, I’ve told and
told
you I’ll take care of the room.”
    “You have plenty to do,” Sue smiled. “Here, I’ll help. What’s Robin up to?”
    Together they took down the spread, the light blanket, then the sheets from the big double bed. “Kidnapped by that young idiot O’Banion again. He’s driving out to the new project over Huttonville way and thought Robin might want to see the bulldozers.”
    “Robin loves bulldozers. He’s not an idiot.”
    “He’s an idiot,” said Bitty gruffly, apparently needing no translation of the two parts of Sue’s statement. “Time this was turned, since we’re both here,” she said, swatting the mattress.
    “All right,” Sue Martin loosely folded the spread and blanket and carried them to the chest. “Robin just loves him.”
    “So do you.”
    Sue’s eyes widened. She shot a look at the other woman, but Bitty’s back was turned as she bent over the bed. When she spoke, her voice was perfectly controlled. “Yes, for some time.” She went to stand beside Bitty and they laid hold of the mattress straps. “Ready?” Together they heaved and the mattress rose up, teetered for a moment on edge, and fell back the other way. They pulled it straight.
    “Well, what are you doing about it?” Bitty demanded.
    Sue found her eyes captured by Bitty’s for a strange moment. She saw herself, in a flash of analog, walking purposefully away from some tired, dark place toward something she wanted; and as she walked there appeared humming softly behind her, around her, something like a moving wall. She had a deep certainty that she could not stop nor turn aside; but that as long as she kept moving at the same speed, in the same direction, the moving wall could not affect her. She—and it—were moving toward what she wanted, just as fast as she cared to go. While this was the case, she was not being restrained or compelled, helped nor hindered. So she would not fear this thing, fight it or even question it. It could not possibly change anything. In effect, irresistible as it might be, it need not and therefore did not exist for her. Here and now, some inexplicable something had happened to make it impossible not to answer Bitty’s questions—and this compulsion was of no moment at all for her as long as Bitty asked questions she wanted to answer. “What are you doing about it?” was such a question.
    “Everything I should do,” said Sue Martin. “Nothing at all.” Bittygrunted noncommittally. She took a folded sheet from the top of the highboy and shook it out across the bed. Sue Martin went round to the other side and caught it. She said, “He has to know why, that’s all, and he can’t do anything or say anything until he does know.”
    “Why what?” Bitty asked bluntly.
    “Why he loves me.”
    “Oh—you know that, do you?”
    This was one question, compulsion or no, that Sue Martin did not bother to answer. It was on the order of “Is this really a bed?” or “Is it Thursday?” So Bitty asked another: “And you’re just waiting, like a little edelweiss on an Alp, for him to climb the mountain and pick you?”
    “Waiting?” Sue repeated, puzzled.
    “You’re not doing anything about it, are you?”
    “I’m being myself,” said Sue Martin. “I’m living my life. What I have to give him—anyone who’s
right
for me—is all I am, all I do for the rest of my life. As long as he wants something more, or