I chuckled. ". . . And then," I said, "you were suddenly to find yourself the subject of an inquiry by the local Bar a.s.sociation?"
He sprang to his feet.
"You _are_ a madman."
"Are you sure? I don"t know what the charges would be," I said, "yet. But you know that even an inquiry would give you some trouble--and then if you started running into difficulties finding another place . . ." I didn"t like doing things this way, but I was in a hurry. So, "Are you sure? Are you very sure that I"m a madman?" I finished.
Then, "No," he said, "I"m not."
"Then, if you"ve nothing to hide, why not tell me how the arrangements were made? I"m not interested in the substance of any privileged communications, simply the circ.u.mstances surrounding the house"s being put up for sale. It puzzles me that Ruth didn"t leave a message of any sort."
He leaned his head against the back of his chair and studied me through smoke.
"The arrangements were made by phone--"
"She could have been drugged, threatened . . ."
"That is ridiculous," he said. "What is your interest in this, anyway?"
"Like I said, she"s an old friend."
His eyes widened and then narrowed. A few people still knew who one of Ruth"s old friends had been.
". . . Also," I continued, "I received a message from her recently, asking me to come see her on a matter of some urgency. She is not here and there is no message, no forwarding address. It smells funny. I am going to find her, Mister DuBois."
He was not blind to the cut and therefore the cost of my suit, and maybe my voice has a somewhat authoritarian edge from years of giving orders. At any rate, he didn"t switch on the phone and call for the cops.
"All the arrangements were made over the phone and through the mails," he said. "I honestly do not know where she is presently. She simply said that she was leaving town and wanted me to dispose of the place and everything in it, the money to be deposited in her account at Artists Trust. So I agreed to handle the matter and turned it over to Sunspray." He looked away, looked back. "Now, she did leave a message with me, to be delivered to someone other than yourself should he call here for it. If not, I am to transmit it to that individual after thirty days have elapsed from the time I received it."
"May I inquire as to the ident.i.ty of that individual?"
"That, sir, _is_ privileged."
"Switch on the phone," I said, "and call 73737373 in Glencoe, reversing the charges. Make it person-to-person to Domenic Malisti, the director of Our Thing Enterprises on this planet. Identify yourself, say to him, "Baa baa blacksheep" and ask him to identify Lawrence John Conner for you."
DuBois did this, and when he hung up he rose to his feet, crossed the office, opened a small wall safe, removed an envelope and handed it to me. It was sealed, and across the face of it lay the name "Francis Sandow," typewritten.
"Thank you," I said and tore it open.
I fought down my feelings as I regarded the three items the envelope contained. There was another picture of Kathy, different pose, slightly different background, a picture of Ruth, older and a bit heavier but still attractive, and a note.
The note was written in Pei"an. Its salutation named me and was followed by a small sign which is used in holy texts to designate Shimbo, Shrugger of Thunders. It was signed "Green Green," and followed by the ideogram for Belion, who was not one of the twenty-seven Names which lived.
I was perplexed. Very few know the ident.i.ties of the Name-bearers, and Belion is the traditional enemy of Shimbo. He is the fire G.o.d who lives under the earth. He and Shimbo take turns hacking one another up between resurrections.
I read the note. It said, _If you want your women, seek them on the Isle of the Dead. Bodgis, Dan go, Shandon and the dwarf are also waiting_.
Back on Homefree there were tri-dees of Bodgis, Dango, Shandon, Nick, Lady Karle (who might qualify as one of my women) and Kathy. Those were the six pictures I"d received. Now he"d taken Ruth.
Who?
I did not know Green Green from anywhere that I could recall, but of course I knew the Isle of the Dead.
"Thank you," I said again.
"Is something wrong, Mister Sandow?"
"Yes," I said, "but I"ll set it right. Don"t worry, you"re not involved. Forget my name."
"Yes, Mister Conner."
"Good evening."
"Good evening."
I entered the place on Nuage. I walked through the foyer, the various living rooms. I found her bedroom and searched it. She had left the place completely furnished. She"d also heft several closets and dressers full of clothing, and all sorts of little personal items that you just don"t leave behind when you move. It was a funny feeling, walking through that place which had replaced the other place and every now and then seeing something familiar--an antique clock, a painted screen, an inlaid cigarette box--reminding me how life redistributes what once was meaningful amidst- the always to be foreign, killing its personal magic, save in a memory you carry of the time and the place where once it stood, until you meet it again, it troubles you briefly, surrealistically, and then that magic, too, dies away as, punctured by the encounter, emotions you had forgotten are drained from the pictures inside your head. At least, it happened to me that way, as I searched for clues as to what might have occurred. As the hours pa.s.sed and, one by one, each item in the place was pa.s.sed through the sieve of my scrutiny, the realization which had come upon me in DuBois" office, the thing that had ridden with me from Homefree since the day the first picture had arrived, completed its circuit: brain to intestines to brain.
I seated myself and lit a cigarette. This was the room where the photo of Ruth had been taken; hers hadn"t been the rocks-and-blue-sky setting of the others. I had searched though and found nothing: no evidence of violence, no clue as to the ident.i.ty of my enemy. I said the words aloud, "My enemy," the first words I had spoken since "Good evening" to the suddenly cooperative, white-haired attorney, and the words sounded strange in that big fishbowl of a place. My enemy.
It was out in the open now. I was wanted, for what I wasn"t sure. Offhand, I"d say death. It would have been helpful if I could have known which of my many enemies was behind it. I searched my mind. I considered my enemy"s odd choice of rendezvous-point, battlefield. I thought back upon my dream of the place.
It was a foolish place for anyone to lure me if he wished to harm me, unless he knew nothing whatsoever concerning my power once I set foot upon any world I"ve made. Everything would be my ally if I went back to Illyria, the world I"d put where it was, many centuries ago, the world which held the Isle of the Dead, my Isle of the Dead.
. . . And I would go back. I knew that. Ruth, and the possibility of Kathy . . . These required my return to that strange Eden I"d once laid out. Ruth and Kathy . . . Two images which I did not like to juxtapose, but had to. They had never existed simultaneously for me, and I did not like the feeling now. I"d go, and whoever had baited the trap in this fashion would be sorry for a brief time only, and then he would dwell upon the Isle of the Dead forever.
I crushed out my cigarette, locked the ruddy castle gate and drove back to the Spectrum. I was suddenly hungry.
I dressed for dinner and descended to the lobby. I"d noticed a decent-looking little restaurant off to the left. Unfortunately, it had just closed a few minutes before. So I inquired at the desk after a good eating place that was still open.
"Bartol Towers, on the Bay," said the night clerk, smothering a yawn. "They"ll be open for several hours yet."
So I took his directions on how to get there, and went out and nailed down a piece of the briar business. Ridiculous is a better word than strange, but then everybody lives in the shade of the Big Tree, remember?
I drove over, and I left the slip-sled to be parked by a uniform which I see wherever I go, smiling face above it, opening before me doors which I can open for myself, handing me a towel I don"t want, s.n.a.t.c.hing at a briefcase I don"t care to check, right hand held at waist-level and ready to turn palm up at the first glint of metal or the crinkling of the proper type paper, large pockets to hold these items. It has followed me for over a thousand years, and it"s not really the uniform that I resent. It"s that d.a.m.ned smile, which is turned on by one thing only. My car went from here to there and was dropped between a pair of painted lines. Because we are all tourists.
At one time, tips were given only for things you logically would want to have done efficiently and promptly, and they served to supplement a lower payscale for certain cla.s.ses of employment. This was understood, accepted. It was tourism, back in the century of my birth, cluing in the underdeveloped countries to the fact that all tourists are marks, that set the precedent, which then spread to all countries, even back to the tourists" own, of the benefits which might be gained by those who wear uniforms and render the undesired and the unrequested with a smile. This is the army that conquered the world. After their quiet revolution in the twentieth century, we all became tourists the minute we set foot outside our front doors, second-cla.s.s citizens, to be ruthlessly exploited by the smiling legions who had taken over, slyly, completely.
Now, in every city into which I venture, uniforms rush upon me, dust dandruff from my collar, press a brochure into my hand, recite the latest weather report, pray for my soul, throw walk-shields over nearby puddles, wipe off my windshield, hold an umbrella over my head on sunny or rainy days, or shine an ultra-infra flashlight before me on cloudy ones, pick lint from my belly-b.u.t.ton, scrub my back, shave my neck, zip up my fly, shine my shoes and smile--all before I can protest-- right hand held at waist-level. What a G.o.dd.a.m.n happy place the universe would be if everyone wore uniforms that glinted and crinkled. Then we"d all have to smile at each other.
I took the elevator up to the sixtieth floor, where the big place was. Then I realized that I should have called ahead from the hotel for a reservation. It was crowded. I"d forgotten that the following day was a holiday on Driscoll. The hostess took my name and told me fifteen or twenty minutes, so I went into one of a pair of bars and ordered a beer.
I looked about me as I sipped, and across the little foyer in the matching bar on the other side, hovering in the gloom, I saw a fat face that looked somewhat familiar. I slipped on a pair of special gla.s.ses which act like telescopes, and I studied the face, now in profile. The nose and the ears were the same. The hair was the wrong color and the complexion darker, but that"s easily done.
I got up and started to walk that way when a waiter stopped me and told me that I couldn"t carry a drink out of the place. When I told him I was going to the other bar, he offered to carry the drink for me, smiling, right hand at waist-level. I figured it would be cheaper to buy another one, so I told him he could drink it for me, too.
He was alone, a tiny gla.s.s of something bright before him. I folded my gla.s.ses and tucked them away as I approached his table, and in a fake-falsetto said, "May I join you, Mister Bayner?"
He jumped, just slightly, within his skin, and the fat only quivered for an instant. He photographed me with his magpie eyes in the following second, and I knew that the machine that lay behind them was already spinning its wheels like a demon on an exercise-bike.
"You must be mistaken--" he began, and smiled then, and followed that with a frown. "No, _I_ am," he corrected himself, "but then it"s been a long time, Frank, and we"ve both changed."
". . . Into our traveling clothes, yes," I said in my normal voice, seating myself across from him.
He caught the attention of a waiter as easily as if he"d had a lariat, and he asked me, "What are you drinking?"
"Beer," I said, "any brand."
The waiter overheard me, nodded, departed.
"Have you eaten?"
"No, I was waiting for a table, across the way there, when I spotted you."
"I"ve already eaten," he said. "If I hadn"t indulged a sudden desire for an after-dinner drink on my way out, I might have missed you."
"Strange," I said, then, "Green Green."
"What?"
"_Verde Verde. Grun. Grun_."
"I"m afraid I don"t follow you. Is that some kind of code-phrase I"m supposed to recognize?"
I shrugged.
"Call it a prayer for th-e confoundment of my enemies. What"s new?"
"Now that you"re here," he said, "I"ve got to talk with you, of course. May I join you?"
"Surely."
So, when they called for Larry Conner, we moved to a table in one of the countless dining rooms that filled that floor of the tower. We"d have had a pleasant view of the bay on a clear night, but the sky was overcast and an occasional buoy-light and an unpleasantly rapid searchlight were all that shone above the dark swells of the ocean. Bayner decided that he had a bit of an appet.i.te left and ordered a full meal. He shoveled away a mound of spaghetti and a mess of b.l.o.o.d.y looking sausages before I"d half-finished my steak, and he moved on to shortcake, cheesecake and coffee.
"Ah, that was good!" he said, and he immediately inserted a toothpick into the upper portion of the first smile I"d seen him smile in, say, forty years.
"Cigar?" I offered.
"Thank you, I believe I will."
The toothpick went away, the cigars were lit, the check arrived. I always do that in crowded places when they"re slow to bring me the check. A lit stogie, a quick blue haze and they"re right beside me with the tab.
"This is on me," he announced as I accepted the bill.
"Nonsense. You"re my guest."
"Well . . . All right."
After all, Bill Bayner is the forty-fifth wealthiest man in the galaxy. It isn"t every day I get a chance to dine with successful people.
As we left, he said, "I"ve got a place where we can talk. I"ll drive."
So we took his car, leaving a uniform and a frown behind us, and spent about twenty minutes driving around the city, shaking off hypothetical tails, and we finally arrived at an apartment building about eight blocks from Bartol Towers. As we entered the lobby, he nodded to the doorman, who nodded back to him.
"Think it"ll rain tomorrow?" he asked.
"Clear," said the doorman.
Then we rode up to the sixth floor. The wainscotting in the hallway was full of artificial gems, some of which had to be eyes. We stopped and he knocked at an ordinary-looking door: three, pause, two, pause, two. He"d change it tomorrow, I knew. A dour-faced young man in a dark suit answered the door, nodded, and departed when Bayner gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. Inside, he secured the door, but not before I"d noticed from its edge that a metal plate was sandwiched between its inner and outer veneers of fake wood. For the next five or ten minutes, he tested the room with an amazing variety of bug-detection equipment, after giving me a keep-quiet sign, and then set several bug-scramblers into operation as an added precaution, sighed, removed his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair, turned to me and said, "It"s okay to talk now. Can I fix you a drink?"
"Are you sure it"ll be safe?"
He thought about it for a moment, then said, "Yes."
"Then I"ll have bourbon and water if you"ve got it."
He withdrew into the next room and returned after about a minute with two gla.s.ses. His was probably filled with tea if he was planning on talking any kind of business with me. I couldn"t have cared less.
"So what"s up?" I asked him.
"d.a.m.n it, the stories they tell about you are true, aren"t they? How"d you find out?"
I shrugged.
"But you"re not going to move in on me on this one, not the way you did on those Vegan mining franchises."
"I don"t know what you"re talking about," I said.
"Six years ago."
I laughed.
"Listen," I told him, "I don"t pay much attention to what my money does, so long as it"s there when I want it. I trust various people to handle it for me. If I got a good deal in the Vegan system six years ago, it"s because some good man in my employ lined it up. I don"t run around shepherding money the way you do. I"ve delegated all that."
"Sure, sure, Frank," he said. "So you"re incognito on Driscoll and you arrange to run into me the night before I deal. Who"d you buy on my staff?"
"n.o.body, believe me."
He looked hurt.
"I"d tell _you_," he said. "I won"t hurt him. I"ll just transfer him somewhere where he won"t do any more harm."
"I"m really not here on business," I said, "and I ran into you by pure chance."
"Well, you"re not going to grab the whole thing this time, whatever you"ve got up your sleeve," he said.
"I"m not even in the running. Honest."