“Yes,” came back the faintest of faraway whispers, inside his head.
I am dying. I must know. Did she love me?
“She went on without you, so much did she love you. She let you go, for your sake, not for hers. She really loved you. More than death. More than life. More than time. You will never be apart.”
Never apart?
“No, not in the memory of man,” said the voice, and was then still.
Jestocost lay back on his pillow and waited for the day to end.
BABY IS THREE
by Theodore Sturgeon
I finally got in to see this Stern. He wasn’t an old man at all. He looked up from his desk, flicked his eyes over me once, and picked up a pencil. “Sit over there, Sonny.”
I stood where I was until he looked up again. Then I said, “Look, if a midget walks in here, what do you say—sit over there, Shorty?”
He put the pencil down again and stood up. He smiled. His smile was as quick and sharp as his eyes. “I was wrong,” he said, “but how am I supposed to know you don’t want to be called Sonny?”
That was better, but I was still mad. “I’m fifteen and I don’t have to like it. Don’t rub my nose in it.”
He smiled again and said okay, and I went and sat down.
“What’s your name?”
“Gerard.”
“First or last?”
“Both,” I said.
“Is that the truth?”
I said, “No. And don’t ask me where I live either.”
He put down his pencil. “We’re not going to get very far this way.”
“That’s up to you. What are you worried about? I got feelings of hostility? Well, sure I have. I got lots more things than that wrong with me or I wouldn’t be here. Are you going to let that stop you?”
“Well, no, but —”
“So what else is bothering you? How you’re going to get paid?” I took out a thousand-dollar bill and laid it on the desk. “That’s so you won’t have to bill me. You keep track of it. Tell me when it’s used up and I’ll give you more. So you don’t need my address. Wait,” I said, when he reached toward the money. “Let it lay there. I want to be sure you and I are going to get along.”
He folded his hands. “I don’t do business this way, Son—I mean, Gerard.”
“Gerry,” I told him. “You do, if you do business with me.”
“You make things difficult, don’t you? Where did you get a thousand dollars?”
“I won a contest. Twenty-five words or less about how much fun it is to do my daintier underthings with Sudso.” I leaned forward. “This time it’s the truth.”
“All right,” he said.
I was surprised. I think he knew it, but he didn’t say anything more. Just waited for me to go ahead.
“Before we start—if we start,” I said, “I got to know something. The things I say to you—what comes out while you’re working on me—is that just between us, like a priest or a lawyer?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
I watched him when he said it. I believed him.
“Pick up your money,” I said. “You’re on.”
He didn’t do it. He said, “As you remarked a minute ago, that is up to me. You can’t buy these treatments like a candy bar. We have to work together. If either one of us can’t do that, it’s useless. You can’t walk in on the first psychotherapist you find in the phone book and make any demand that occurs to you just because you can pay for it.”
I said tiredly, “I didn’t get you put of the phone book and I’m not just guessing that you can help me. I winnowed through a dozen or more head-shrinkers before I decided on you.”
“Thanks,” he said, and it looked as if he was going to laugh at me, which I never like. “Winnowed, did you say? Just how?”
“Things you hear, things you read. You know. I’m not saying, so just file that with my street address.”
He looked at me for a long time. It was the first time he’d used those eyes on me for anything but a flash glance. Then he picked up the bill.
