Free Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon Page A

I have things wrong with me. But I’m not blind. I’m not stupid. You wouldn’t tell me to my face that I couldn’t handle problems that are strictly my own, would you?”
    “I would if I were sure,” I said. “Damn it, I’m not. And I’m not going to pry for details.”
    “I’m glad of that,” he said soberly. “Now we don’t have to talk about it at all, do we?”
    In spite of myself, I laughed aloud.
    “What’s funny?”
    “I am, Jud, boy. I been—handled.”
    He saw the point, and smiled a little with me. “Hell, I know what you’ve been hinting at. But you’re not close enough to the situation to know all the angles. I am. When the time comes, I’ll take care of it. Until then, it’s no one’s problem but my own.”
    He picked up his star-chart reels and I knew that one single word more would be one too many. I squeezed his arm and let him go.
    Five people, I thought: Wold, Judson, Tween, Clinton, Flower. Take away two and that leaves three. Three’s a crowd—in this case, a very explosive kind of crowd.
    Nothing,
nothing
justifies infidelity in a modern marriage. But the ugly rumors kept trickling in.
    “I want my certificate,” Wold said.
    I looked up at him and a bushel of conjecture flipped through my mind. So you want your certificate? Why? And why just now, of all times? What can a man do with a certificate that he can’t do without one—aside from going Out? Because, damn you, you’ll never go Out. Not of your own accord, you won’t.
    All this, but none of it slipped out. I said, “All right. That’s what I’m here for, Wold.” And we got to work.
    He worked hard, and smoothly and easily, the way he talked, the way he moved. I am constantly astonished at how small accomplished people can make themselves at times.
    He was certified easy as breathing. And can you believe it, I worked with him, saw how hard he was working, helped him through, and never realized what it was he was after?
    After going through the routines of certification for him, I wasn’t happy. There was something wrong somewhere … something missing. This was a puzzle that ought to fall together easily, and it wouldn’t. I wish—Lord, how I wish I could have thought a little faster.
    I let a day go by after Wold was certified. I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t eat, and I couldn’t analyze what it was that was bothering me. So I began to cruise, to see if I could find out.
    I went to the archives. “Where’s Judson?”
    The girl told me he hadn’t been there for forty-eight hours.
    I looked in the Recreation Sector, in the libraries, in the stereo and observation rooms. Some kind of rock-bottom good sense kept me from sending out a general call for him. But it began to be obvious that he just wasn’t around. Of course, there were hundreds of rooms and corridors in Curbstone that were unused—they wouldn’t be used until the interplanetary project was completed and the matter transmitters started working. But Jud wasn’t the kind to hide from anything.
    I squared my shoulders and realized that I was doing a lot of speculation to delay looking in the obvious place. I think, more than anything else, I was afraid that he would
not
be there.…
    I passed my hand over the door announcer. In a moment she answered; she had apparently come in from the sun-field and hadn’t bothered to see who it was. She was warm brown from head to toe, all spring-steel and velvet. Her long eyes were sleepy and her mouth was pouty. But when she recognized me, she stood squarely in the doorway.
    I think that in the back of every human mind is a machine that works out all the answers and never makes mistakes. I think mine had had enough data to figure out what was happening, what was going to happen, for a long while now. Only I hadn’t been able to read the answer until now. Seeing Flower, in that split second, opened more than one door for me …
    “You
want something?” she asked. The emphasis was hard and very