Maelstrom (8 page)

Odd, then, that the man who studied it so intently through the glass was not one of the richly dressed tourists or silk-suited businessmen strolling this street of galleries and decorators’ salons in the blue summer evening. He was not one of the leaner, hungrier-looking students from the nearby technical schools and outlying classrooms of the Sorbonne; he was hungrier even than these.

His cheeks were hollow below the high bones of what must once have been a handsome Eurasian face. His jaw was darkly fuzzed and his auburn-tinged black hair was greasy-bright, of an odd length, not quite long enough for the pigtail that sprouted from the back of his dirty neck. His shirt was in shreds and his plastic pants were too tight and too short, more badly glued patches than original fabric, with holes in the wrong places. His antic figure–teetering on high-heeled, high-topped shoes, its gaunt waist cinched in by a strip of yellow neoprene tubing–was that of a dilapidated jester.

The proprietor of the Librairie de l’Egypte did not seem amused. Several times he had looked up from his bits of stone and scroll, his cases of scarabs and amulets, to find the eyes of the starving fellow staring at him, while well-dressed men and women, quite possibly potential customers, looked askance and walked too quickly past the shop’s open door. And this had been going on every night at this time for the past three days. The proprietor decided enough was enough.

“Get along,” he said. “Go, go.”

 

The bum looked ostentatiously around. “This your sidewalk,
mon cher?
”

 

“Want to sit on it? Come on, move. Quick, quick.”

 

“Trou de balle, toi.”
He resumed his calm inspection of the papyrus.

The proprietor’s beefy face reddened; his fists clenched. He had no doubt he could have knocked the fellow off his ridiculous high heels with a swift backhanded slap, but the mockery on the bum’s face gave him pause. Why risk a lawsuit? In five minutes the
flics
would hustle this
type
off to work-shelter without wasting breath on him.

He turned abruptly and walked into his shop, closing the door behind him. He put his hand to the commlink in his ear.

The bum watched and grinned; then his darkeyed glance darted sidelong to the woman who had been watching the show from the corner of the rue Bonaparte. She’d been watching his show for two days now, she and her friend. He was a long-haired guy in a black plastic jacket who looked like he’d be at home in a prize ring.

The evening promenade filled the narrow rue Jacob from sidewalk to sidewalk, a tide of stylish humanity. Aside from the occasional bleat of a superped’s horn no vehicular noise interrupted the soft babble, so it was easy to hear the burp of the police van’s oscillator while it was still around the corner a block away, clearing a path for itself. Inside the Librairie de l’Egypte the proprietor took his hand from his ear and sneered at the bum.

A hand touched his sleeve; he jerked it away and stumbled back, his face twisting in a snarl. “Don’t touch.”

“Don’t be frightened. All is well.” It was the woman. Up close, her height was impressive. Her face was tan and round, with high Slavic cheekbones and gray almond-shaped eyes under invisibly fine brows. Whiteblond hair, straight and unfettered, fell to the waist of her white cotton dress. She was muscular, leggy, with a predatory beauty emphasized by lips that seemed swollen from sucking at her slightly protruding incisors.

“We can help you.” “I don’t need your . . .”

“They’re almost here.” She pointed her round chin at the blue light bouncing off the street’s stucco walls and shuttered windows; the police oscillator burped again, closer, impatient with the crowds. “We can help you better than they can.”

“So? How?”

 

“All is ours to give,” she said. Her voice was pitched low; she spoke urgently and intimately, only to him. “Food, a place to live, friends if you want them–other things. Don’t be afraid.”

 

She touched his sleeve, grasped the soiled fabric with her colorless fingertips. She tugged gently, and he took an awkward step forward.

 

“Don’t let them take you,” she said. “You were meant to be free.”

 

“Where are we going?”

 

Her companion had watched expressionlessly until now. He said, “With me. Stay close.”

 

They turned and pushed into the crowded street. The man opened the way and the woman followed, holding the bum’s arm in a tighter grip, her fingers surprisingly strong around his elbow as she steered him.

As the police van halted in front of the Librairie de l’Egypte it was immediately surrounded by curious onlookers. Meanwhile, half a block away, the fugitive and his rescuers ducked into a courtyard off the rue Bonaparte and hurried across the cobbles to a black-enameled door. A brass plaque identified the offices of Editions Lequeu. The man pushed it open and they went quickly in.

The narrow hall was paved with gray marble. To the right were tall double doors, firmly closed; on one, an engraved card in a small brass frame bore the words “Societé des Athanasians.” To the left, a warped staircase wound around the shaft of a caged elevator, which stood open.

They got in, pulled the grille closed, and waited silently as the two-hundred-year-old car ascended; it sang softly as it passed each floor, its squeaking electrical contacts sounding like the call of a dove.

 

“Where’s this?” the bum demanded edgily.

 

“We’re going to the registrar,” said the woman. “Then we’ll get you something to eat.”

 

“Rather have something to drink,” he said.

“We don’t mind that. Let us feed you first.” They stopped at the top floor. The black-jacketed man pulled back the grille and let the other two off, then closed it and rode the elevator down, his chores apparently complete.

The woman led her charge to the end of the hall, where a doorway stood open. They entered a highceilinged office lined with bookshelves. Tall windows opened onto a balcony; the tower of Saint Germain des Pres was prettily framed by lace curtains.

“Ah, here is our scholar.” The man lounged comfortably against the corner of an Empire desk, swinging a polished slipper at the end of a corduroy-clad leg. He was fifty-ish, sun-tanned, elegant in a white knit shirt. “And what would his name be?”

The woman said, “I’m afraid we didn’t have time to become acquainted.”

 

The bum stared at the man. “You call me a scholar?”

 

“You are a student of Egyptian antiquities, are you not? You have been studying the poor objects in our friend Monsieur Bovinet’s window with such passion these several evenings now.”

 

The bum blinked. A perplexed look crossed his face, wiping off the belligerence. “There’s something about them,” he mumbled.

 

“They speak to you, perhaps?”

 

“I don’t read that writing.”

 

“But you would like to,” the older man said, confirming what had been left unspoken. “Because you believe some secret is hidden there, some secret that might save your life, set you free.”

 

The bum’s expression hardened. “What do you know? You don’t know me.”

“Well . . .” The man’s smile was very alluring and very cool. “You are right, of course”–he leaned back across the desk and tapped the keys of a filescreen–“Idon’t know your name. And if we are to enroll you we will need that, won’t we?”

The bum stared at him suspiciously. The woman, whose hand had never left his arm, leaned close, encouraging him. “I’m Catherine. This is Monsieur Lequeu. What is your name?”

 

He blurted it out: “My name is Guy.”

 

“Don’t worry, Guy,” said Lequeu. “All will be well.”

Unlike the purse-seining tactics that other fishers of men have employed since antiquity, Lequeu and the Athanasians were highly selective. They were uninterested in anyone over thirty, anyone badly sick, anyone with an apparent physical or mental disability, or anyone so far gone into drugs or drink that organic damage was likely. They cared nothing for repentance, and hardly more for need. The Athanasians proselytized not so much as a fisherman fishes but as a rancher buys calves. Had Blake’s derelict disguise been too persuasive, they might have passed him over completely, and Monsieur Bovinet of the Librairie de l’Egypte might not have bothered to alert Lequeu before calling in the police–a move that had the desired effect of forcing Blake into a quick choice, or so the Athanasians thought.

The first thing “Guy’s” saviors did for him, after they fed him and gave him a glass of rather good red wine and showed him to a room in the limestone-walled basement with a bed, a locker, and a change of clothes, was to escort him to a nearby clinic for a thorough physical examination. The technicians treated him with that special Parisian hauteur Blake had to get reaccustomed to every time he visited Paris, but they quickly declared him grade-A beef.

Then came long days as a pampered guest of the Athanasians, spent getting to know the staff and his fellow inmates, who were also referred to as “guests.” There were five other guests in the basement dormitory, two women and three men. One had been there for six weeks, one for only a few days. Blake gathered that the basement was a staging area; after a period of time one passed on to greater things–or went back to the streets.

Each guest had a separate cubicle in the lowceilinged basement. There was a shower and water closet at one end of the narrow hall, and at the other end, a kitchen and laundry. Guests were invited to volunteer to help with the work. Blake refused at first; he wanted to see what would happen if he didn’t try to ingratiate himself. No one seemed bothered. Starting the second week, he began doing his share in the laundry. This too was apparently normal, and the only remarks were simple thank-you’s.

Meals were served in the big room on the ground floor, whose windows overlooked the courtyard. The food was good and simple: vegetables, breads, fish, eggs, occasionally meat. People with business in the other buildings that fronted the court were thus assured by a glance inside that the Athanasians were going about their meritorious work of feeding the hungry.

In the same room each morning and afternoon, after the dishes were cleared away, there were “discussions” led by members of the staff–discussions very like group therapy sessions, except that their only stated purpose was to let the guests get to know each other. Blake was not pressed to tell more about himself than he wanted to.

Catherine was never far from Blake’s side in the first days, although the suave Lequeu had vanished from sight. Blake counted three other staff members, the big man who had effected his rescue from the police, whose name was Pierre, and two other men, Jacques and Jean, who along with Catherine led the discussions or sat in to keep one or more of the guests company. All were in their late twenties. Blake had no doubt that all were using assumed names.

Perhaps the guests were, too. Certainly “Guy” was.

Vincent had been there the longest; he was an Austrian, a self-styled troubador who scraped along by playing classical guitar and nine-stringed karroo at various restaurants in the Quarter, singing whatever he thought the patrons were hoping to hear but specializing in the folk songs of the workers who had built the great space stations. “My dream someday is to go into space,” Vincent said, “but the corporations will not take me.”

“Have you applied for the programs?” someone asked.

 

“As I have explained, I do not dare. Because of things, you know, in my past. . . .”

 

“We don’t know, Vincent, you haven’t explained.”

Blake listened to Vincent speak about his dreams and realized that he was a seducer, so well armored behind his charm that no amount of mere talk would reach him. Which is probably why he was still in the anteroom of the program. Blake wondered how much more time the Athanasians were willing to give him.

Salome came from a farm near Verdun. She was a dark, tough girl who had borne her first child at fourteen, married at sixteen, and had three more children but never found enough time for an education. Her mama had the children now; Salome, twenty-one, was making her way in the streets of Paris.

“How?”

 

“Doing what I have to do.”

 

“Stealing?”

 

“When I have to.”

 

“Sleeping with men?”

 

“Only if it feels like the right thing to do.”

And dreaming of joining the theater. Salome was writing a play; she had a manuscript of ragged pages she offered to read. Her aggressive, intelligent style in conversation did not transfer to the page. No one criticized her work, but as the days passed, Salome described a change in her goals, from playwriting (she admitted that her writing was hampered because she did not read that well) to helping spread the good work of the Athanasians.

Salome had arrived in the program only a few days before Blake. He was not surprised when, two weeks after he arrived, she was gone; he knew she’d already been promoted.

“I admit that when you approached me, I hadn’t eaten for four days. I was beginning to hallucinate.” The speaker was Leo, a thin, quick Dane, a wanderer and diarist who sent long letters by radioing to his friends around the world whenever he could scrape up the tolls, and who had washed ashore in Paris after crossing North Africa on foot. “I should worry that I’m not worried, but what can I do?” He gave everyone a sunny smile.

Blake saw that Leo had an ego problem–his ego wasn’t as big as he pretended it was, and he depended absolutely on constantly being rescued. Leo would probably respond quickly to the processes of the group, but whether he was the sort of material the Athanasians were looking for was yet to be seen. Of all the guests, Leo was the only one who did not profess a goal beyond the present. He maintained that he was happy with his life the way it was.

Lokele was muscular and tall, a West African black who’d been brought to the Paris suburbs as an infant. His parents had died in the influenza epidemic of 2075–“And then I met many, many nice people, but never did they stay long enough to let me get to know them,” he said, smiling, “so I began to hit them to keep them from running away”–until at last he ended in a rehabilitation camp after being convicted of robbery and assault. The Athanasians had picked him up a week after his release, after a week of fruitless job hunting, just as his hunger and despair and determination to stay out of work-shelter were tempting him to rob again.