Doorways in the Sand (12 page)

I awoke to discover that Woof had stolen the blankets and was sleeping on them off in the corner by the potting kiln. Snarling, I went over and recovered them. He tried to pretend it was all a misunderstanding, the son of a bitch, but I knew better and I told him so. When I glanced over later, all that I could see was his tail and a mournful expression among the dust and the potsherds.

They were waiting for me to say something, to do something. But there was nothing to say, nothing to do. We were going to die, and that was that. I glanced out the window and along the beach to the place where the sea stacked slate on the shore and pulled it down again. I was reminded of my last day and night in Australia. Only then Ragma had come along and provided a way out. In fair puzzles there should always be a way out. But I saw no doorways in the sand, and try as I might I could not make the puzzle fall fair.

"Well, Fred? Do you have something for us? Or should we go ahead? It is up to you now."

I looked at Mary, tied there in the chair. I tried not to look at her frightened face, look into her eyes, but I did. At my side, I heard Hal's heavy breathing stop short, as though he were tensing to spring. But Jamie Buckler noted this also, and the gun twitched slightly in his hand. Hal did not spring.

"Mister Zeemeister," I said, "if I had that stone, I would tie a bright ribbon around it and hand it to you. If I knew where it was, I would go get it for you or tell you where to find it. I do not want to see Mary dead, Hal dead, me dead. Ask me anything else and it's yours."

"Nothing else will do," he said, and he picked up the pliers.

We would be tortured and killed, if we just waited our turns. If we had had the answer and we gave it to them we would still be killed, though. Either way . . .

But we would not stand there and watch. We all knew that. We would try to rush them, and Mary and Hal and I would be the losers.

Wherever you are, whatever you are, I said in my shrillest thoughts, if you can do something, do it now!

Zeemeister had taken hold of Mary's wrist and forced her hand upward. As he reached for a finger with the pliers, the Ghost of Christmas Past or one of those guys drifted into the room behind him.

Stamping out of Jefferson Hall, cursing under my breath, I decided that a State Department official named Theodore Nadler was the next man I was going to punch in the eye. Making my way around the phountain and heading off toward the Student Union, however, I recalled that I had been remiss concerning my promise to call Hal in a day or so. I decided to phone him before I tried the Nadler number Wexroth had given me.

I picked up a coffee and doughnut before I made my way to the phone, realizing after thirteen years that all it took to make the Union's brew palatable was a reversal of every molecule in it, or in the drinker. I saw Ginny at a table off in the corner and my good intentions evaporated. I halted, started to turn in that direction. But then somebody moved and I saw that she was with a guy I didn't know. I decided to catch her another time, went on into the alcove. All the phones were in use, though, so I sipped my coffee and waited. Pace, pace. Sip, sip.

From behind my back I heard, "Hey, Cassidy! Come on, it's the guy I was telling you about!"

Turning, I saw Rick Liddy, an English major with an answer for everything except what to do with his degree come June. With him was a taller version of himself in a Yale sweatshirt.

"Fred, this is my brother Paul. He's come slumming," he said.

"Hi, Paul."

I put my coffee on the ledge and started to extend the wrong hand. I caught myself, shook hands, felt foolish.

"He's the one," Rick said, "like the Wandering Jew or the Wild Huntsman. The man who will never graduate. Subject of countless ballads and limericks: Fred Cassidy-the Eternal Student."

"You left out the Flying Dutchman," I said, "and it's Doctor Cassidy, damn it!"

Rick began to laugh.

"Is it true about you being a night climber?" Paul said.

"Sometimes," I said, feeling a peculiar gulf opening between us. That damned sheepskin was already taking its toll. "Yeah, it's true."

"That's great," he said. "That's really great. I've always wanted to meet the real Fred Cassidy-the climber."

"I'm afraid you have," I said.

Then someone hung up and I grabbed for the phone.

"Excuse me."

"Yeah. See you later, Fred. Pardon me-Doc."

"Nice meeting you."

I felt strangely depressed as I wandered through the backward digits of Hal's number. As it was, the line proved busy. I tried the Nadler number then. An answering-service girl asked me for the number where I could be reached, for a message or for both. I gave her neither. I tried Hal's number again. This time I got through-within a fraction of a second, it seemed, from the time it commenced ringing.

"Yes? Hello?"

"You couldn't have run all that far," I said. "How come you're out of breath?"

"Fred! At last, damn it!"

"Sorry I didn't call sooner. There were a lot of things-"

"I've got to see you!"

"That's what I had in mind, too."

"Where are you?"

"At the Student Union."

"Stay there. No! Wait a minute."

I waited. Ten or fifteen seconds fell or were pushed.

"I'm trying to think of someplace you'll remember," he said. Then: "Listen. Don't say it if you do, but do you recall where we were about two months ago when you got in an argument with that med student named Ken? Thin guy, always very serious?"

"No," I said.

"I don't remember the argument, but I remember the ending: You said that Doctor Richard Jordan Gatling had done more for the development of modern surgery than Halsted. He asked you what techniques Doctor Gatling had developed and you told him that Gatling had invented the machine gun. He told you that wasn't funny and walked away. You told me he was an ass who believed he was going to get the Holy Grail when he finished rather than a license to help people. Do you remember where that was?"

"Now I do."

"Good. Go there, please. And wait."

"All right. I understand."

He hung up, then I did. Weird. And troubling. An obvious attempt to circumvent an eavesdropper's discovering where we were going to meet. Who? Why? And how many?

I departed the Union quickly, since I had mentioned it in our conversation. Headed north from the campus, three blocks. Then two blocks over and part way up a side street. It was a little bookstore I liked to visit about once a week, just to see what new titles had come in. Hal used to go along with me every now and then.

I browsed for perhaps half an hour, regarding the reversed titles in the backward shop. Occasionally, I paused to read a page or so of text for the practice of doing it that way-just in case things stayed topsy-turvy for any great length of time. The first sentence in one of maerD ehT sgnoS by namyrreB nhoJ took on a peculiar, personal meaning:

rodirroc siht nwod rorrim ym klats I

. . . rettil seceip ym

And I began thinking of the pieces of myself, scattered all over, from dronehood to raisinhood and thereafter. Was it worth it to stalk the mirror? I wondered. I had never really tried. But then-

I was considering buying the book when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Fred, come on."

"Hi, Hal. I was wondering-"

"Hurry," he said. "Please. I'm double-parked."

"Okay."

I restored the book to its rack and followed him out. I saw the car, went to it, got in. Hal climbed in his side and began driving. He did not say anything as he worked his way through the traffic, and since it was obvious that length of time. The first sentence in one of Songs Dream was ready to tell me about it. I lit a cigarette and stared out the window.

It took him several minutes to get us out of the sprawl and onto a more sedate stretch of road. It was only then that he spoke.

"In the note that you left you said that you had had a peculiar idea and were going to check it out. I take it that this involved the stone?"

"It involved the whole mess," I said, "so I guess the stone figures in, somehow. I am not at all sure how."

"Will you start at the beginning and tell me about it?"

"What about this urgent business of yours?"

"I want to hear everything that happened to you first. All right?"

"All right. Where are we going, anyway?"

"Just driving for now. Please, tell me everything, from the time you left my place through today."

So I did. I talked and I talked and the buildings all ran away after a time and the grasses rushed up to the roadside, grew taller, were joined by shrubbery, tentative trees, an occasional cow, boulders and random jack rabbits. Hal listened, nodded, asked a question every now and then, kept driving.

"Then, say, right now, it looks to you as if I'm driving from the wrong side of the car?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Fascinating."

I saw then that we were nearing the ocean, moving through an area dotted by summer cottages, mostly deserted this time of year. I had gotten so involved in my story that I had not realized we had been driving for close to an hour.

"And you've got a bona fide doctorate now?"

"That's what I said."

"Very strange."

"Hal, you're stalling. What's the matter? What is it that you don't want to tell me?"

"Look in the back seat," he said.

"Okay. It's full of junk, as usual. You should really clean it out some-"

"The jacket in the comer. It's wrapped in my jacket."

I brought the jacket up front and unrolled it.

"The stone! Then you had it all along!"

"No, I didn't" he said.

"Then where did you find it? Where was it?"

Hal turned up a side road. A pair of gulls dipped past.

"Study it," he said. "Look at it carefully. That's it, isn't it?"

"Sure looks like it. But I never really scrutinized it before."

"It has to be it," he said. "Believe that I just found it in the bottom of a trunk I hadn't unpacked till now. Stick to that."

"What do you mean, 'Stick to that'?"

"I got into Byler's lab last night and took it from the shelf. There were several. It's just as good as the one he gave us. You can't tell the difference, can you?"

"No. but I'm no expert. What's going on?"

"Mary has been kidnaped," he said.

I looked over at him. His face was expressionless, which was the way I knew it would be if something like that were true.

"When? How?"

"We'd had a misunderstanding and she had gone home to her mother's, that night you stopped over . . ."

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, I was going to call the next day and try to smooth things over. But the more I considered it the more I kept thinking how much nicer it would be if she called me first. I'd have some sort of little moral victory that way, I decided. So I waited. I came close to phoning a number of times, but I'd always put it off just a little longer-hoping she would call. She didn't, though, and I had let it get fairly late. Too late, really. So I decided to give it another night. I did, and then I called her mother's place in the morning. Not only was she not there, but she hadn't been there at all. Her mother hadn't even heard from her. I figured, okay, she has good sense. She had had second thoughts, didn't want to turn the thing into a family issue. She had changed her mind and gone to stay with one of her girl friends. I started calling them. Nothing.

"Then, between calls," he went on, "someone called me. It was a man, and he asked if I knew where my wife was. My first thought was that there had been an accident of some sort. But he said that she was all right, that he would even let me talk to her in a minute. They were holding her. They had held her for a day to make me sweat. Now they were going to tell me what they wanted in return for her release, unharmed."

"The stone, of course."

"Of course. And also, of course, he did not believe me when I said I did not have it. He told me they would give me a day in which to get hold of it, and when they got in touch with me again they would tell me what to do with it. Then he let me talk to Mary. She said she was all right, but she sounded scared. I told him not to hurt her, and I promised to look for it. Then I started searching. I looked through everything that I have. No stone. Then I tried your place. I still have my key."

"Anybody there toasting the Queen?"

"No signs of your visitors at all. Then I proceeded to look for the stone in every possible place. Finally, I gave up. It's just gone, that's all."

He grew silent. We twisted along the narrow road, occasional glimpses of the sea appearing through gaps in the foliage off to my left/his right.

"So?" I said. "What then?"

"He called again the next day, asked if I had it. I told him I did not-and he said they were going to kill Mary. I pleaded with him, said I'd do anything-"

"Wait. You did not call the police?"

He shook his head.

"He told me not to-the first time that we talked. Any sort of police involvement, he said, and I would never see her again. I thought about calling the cops, but I was scared. If I called the police and he found out . . . I just couldn't take the chance. What would you have done?"

"I don't know," I said. "But go ahead. What happened next?"

"He asked me if I knew where you were, said you could probably help find it-"

"Ha! Sorry. Go on."

"Again, I had to tell him I did not know but that I was expecting to hear from you soon. He said they would give me another day to find the stone or to find you. Then he hung up. Later, I thought about the stones in Paul's lab, got to wondering whether any of them were still there. If they were, why not try to pass one off as the real thing? They were obviously good fakes. The man who made them had even been fooled by one himself for a time. I was able to force the lock and get into his lab later in the day. I was desperate enough to try anything. There were four of them on the shelf, and I took the one you are holding now. I took it home with me and I waited. He phoned me again this morning-right before you called-and I told him I had come across it in the bottom of an old trunk. He sounded happy then. He even let me talk to Mary again and she said she was still okay. He told me where to take the stone, said they would meet me and make the exchange-her for it."