said to Fauna, âDoc acts like a guy that needs a dame.â
âHe can have the courtesy of the house anytime,â said Fauna.
âI donât mean that,â said Mack. âHe needs a dame around. He needs a dame to fight with. Why, that can keep a guy so goddam busy defending himself he ainât got no time to blame himself.â
Fauna regarded marriage with a benevolent eye. Not only was it a desirable social condition, but it sent her some of her best customers.
âWell, letâs marry him off,â said Fauna.
âOh no,â said Mack. âI wouldnât go that far. My God! Not Doc!â
Doc tried to solve his problem in the ancient way. He took a long, leisurely trip to La Jolla, four hundred miles south. He traveled in the old manner, with lots of beer and a young lady companion whose interest in invertebrate zoology Doc thought might be flexibleâand it was.
The whole trip was a success: weather calm and warm, tides low. Under the weed-wreathed boulders of the intertidal zone Doc found, by great good fortune, twenty-eight baby octopi with tentacles four or five inches long. It was a little bonanza for him if he could keep them alive. He handled them tenderly, put them in a wooden collecting bucket, and floated seaweed over them for protection. An excitement was growing in him.
His companion began to be a little disappointed. Docâs enthusiasm for the octopi indicated that he was not as flexible as she. And no girl likes to lose center stage, particularly to an octopus. The four-hundred-mile trip back to Monterey was made in a series of short dashes, for Doc stopped every few miles to dampen the sack that covered the collecting bucket.
âOctopi canât stand heat,â he said.
He recited no poetry to her. The subject of her eyes, her feelings, her skin, her thought, did not come up. Instead Doc told her about octopiâa subject that would have fascinated her two days before.
Doc said, âTheyâre wonderful animals, delicate and complicated and shy.â
âUgly brutes,â said the girl.
âNo, not ugly,â said Doc. âBut I see why you say it. People have always been repelled and at the same time fascinated by octopi. Their eyes look baleful and cruel. And all kinds of myths have grown up around octopi too. You know the story of the kraken, of course.â
âOf course,â she said shortly.
âOctopi are timid creatures really,â Doc said excitedly. âMost complicated. Iâll show you when I get them in the aquarium. Of course there canât be any likeness, but they do have some traits that seem to be almost human. Mostly they hide and avoid trouble, but Iâve seen one deliberately murder another. They appear to feel terror too, and rage. They change color when theyâre disturbed and angry, almost like the rage blush of a man.â
âVery interesting,â said the girl, and she tucked her skirt in around her knees.
Doc went on, âSometimes they get so mad they collapse and die of something that parallels apoplexy. Theyâre highly emotional animals. Iâm thinking of writing a paper about them.â
âYou might find out what causes human apoplexy,â said the girl, and because he wasnât listening for it, Doc didnât hear the satire in her tone.
Thereâs no need for giving the girl a name. She never came back to Western Biological. Her interest in science blinked out like a candle, but a flame was lighted in Doc.
The flame of conception seems to flare and go out, leaving man shaken, and at once happy and afraid. Thereâs plenty of precedent of course. Everyone knows about Newtonâs apple. Charles Darwin and his Origin of Species flashed complete in one second, and he spent the rest of his life backing it up; and the theory of relativity occurred to Einstein in the time it takes to clap your hands. This is the greatest mystery of the human
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