Psychomech (8 page)

He knew the German’s aftershave, knew the strength of the arms that held him. ‘Out of my way, Willy,’ he snarled. ‘I’ve had this shit up to here. I’ll have no more of it!’

‘Be quiet!’ Koenig growled. ‘Listen…’

Behind Garrison Schroeder tore into the specialist. He gave him hell. And all in an especially virulent German, so that Garrison would know he was not merely whitewashing. Then there came a crash of hurled instruments—an entire caseful—and finally the hoarse, still guttural protests of the specialist himself:

‘Viertzig tausend Marks!’
the man was moaning.
‘Viertzig tausend—’

‘Raiis!’
Schroeder finally roared, a strength in his voice Garrison would not have believed possible. The specialist gathered up his things and departed.

A few moments later Schroeder came up to Garrison and Koenig on foot. His voice was pained, his breathing erratic. He took Garrison’s arm in a trembling hand. ‘It was a mistake, Richard. My mistake. I wanted to do too much, too fast. And that idiot—he was like an alien. Mechanical, uncaring. A mind thinking only in terms of money. And today has been—too much. Even a seeing man would have found it… too…’ He started to cough and Koenig immediately went to him. ‘Too much.’

Garrison felt idiotic. A small child. Spoiled. He supported Schroeder, said to Koenig: ‘Willy, the chair…’ Koenig ran off.

‘I always try to do too much,’ Schroeder said. ‘And always too fast. It’s a mistake. You can burn yourself out. Everything I have, what is it worth? And you—no hangups, no neuroses—and here am I smothering you in hopes, aspirations. Offering you false gods. Except that… I feel you are extraordinary!’ He gripped Garrison’s arm and the blind man could feel the strength flowing back into Schroeder’s fingers, almost as if drawn from his own body.

‘What is it you want from me, Thomas?’ he asked.

‘I only want to give, pay my debt.’

‘No, you want something. I know it.’

The other nodded. ‘All right. You are right. But tomorrow will be time enough. For now, all I want is your patience. Then you will understand, and then you will have to be patient again.’

Garrison sighed. ‘Very well, I’ll be patient.’

‘For six months, maybe a little longer?’

‘What?’ Garrison frowned. ‘Why? What happens in six months?’

‘Exit one old man,’ Schroeder told him. ‘A worn out old man with scrambled guts.’

‘You? You’ll live forever,’ Garrison tried to laugh it off.

‘Oh? Willy says so too. But tell the grass it must not bend in the wind nor wither in the drought, eh?’

‘What is this?’ Garrison cried. ‘You don’t want my pity, for God’s sake! You’re not grass to bend so easily.’

‘But I feel the wind blowing, Richard.’

‘You’ll live forever!’ Garrison shouted, angry again.

Schroeder gripped his arm tighter still, digging in his nails. ‘It’s just possible,’ he said. ‘Yes, maybe I will. With your help, Richard Garrison, with your help…’

What was left of the evening and early night was strangely empty. Koenig helped Garrison change into a grey shirt and crisp new light-blue suit flamboyantly cut. With open collar, handkerchief flopping from breast pocket, his feet clad in Wue suedes which were surely out of fashion, Garrison felt better than he had felt for years—and yet at the same time he felt somehow empty, like the night.

At 9.30 after a small late meal, he and Koenig went to the bar. This was in Schroeder’s own private suite, where low moody music was carried on a cooling breeze from open windows. There was bad brandy for Garrison and tiny glasses of sweet, sticky Commanderia, another reminder of his Cyprus days.

But still the night was empty and Garrison began to feel depressed. Maybe it was the drink. He drank too much, chatted too much, put on too much of a show. Yes, he was putting on a show—for Schroeder. Anything, just so long as the industrialist (surely much more than any common or garden industrialist) remained calm and did not get overheated or excited.

Mina, Schroeder’s cool, efficient secretary, sat with Garrison at the bar, held his hand, talked a pidgin-English that both attracted and repulsed him. He was attracted, too, by her sensuality; and also repulsed by her easy, casual manner. She was simply amusing him, as she had doubtless been ordered to do. Pretending, as he was pretending. It meant nothing, served only to deepen the emptiness.

Vicki, on the other hand, seemed to be avoiding him. She sat with Schroeder at a small table, spoke German all night (in which Garrison was not especially well versed), finally excused herself but without saying goodnight, and did not return. Only Willy Koenig held the thing together at all, until about 11.30 when he suddenly said:

‘Herr Garrison, you have had enough!’

‘D’you think so, Willy?’ Garrison patted Mina’s hand. ‘Do you think so, Mina?’

‘They
both
think so,’ said Schroeder, who now sat behind the bar performing Koenig’s duties. ‘And so do I. Besides, it’s well past bar-closing time.’

‘Bar-closing time?’ Garrison repeated. ‘I thought we only did silly things like that in England!’

‘Hexen stunden!’ said Mina, mysteriously.

‘Witching hour? Midnight?’ Suddenly Garrison realized how late it was. Suddenly, too, he wondered why he felt the effect of his drinking more than the others felt theirs. When was the last time he’d drunk—or even wanted to drink—to this extent? Damn it, he had not had too much—he simply wasn’t used to it any more, that’s all.

‘Is it at all possible,’ he chose his words carefully and used them with the deliberate dexterity of a man close to inebriation, ‘that I might have a coffee? Or even… a pot of coffee?’

Koenig chuckled and went out of the room.

‘Well,’ said Schroeder. ‘Day One, Richard.’

‘Eh?’

‘Here’s to a new life.’ There came the chink of glasses tilted together, but Garrison’s glass was empty. He lifted it to his lips anyway, then frowned and asked:

‘Anew life? What the hell am I drinking to?’

‘To tomorrow!’ said Schroeder.

‘Morgen und Morgen und Morgen!’ said Mina, who might also be a little drunk…

Garrison drank a great deal of coffee but was still a little unsteady on his feet when he finally got down from his stool. He had committed the layout of the place to memory, however, and no one offered him assistance when he said goodnight and left the bar.

Moments later he was in his room. The first odd thing he noticed was a fresh, pleasing scent of jasmine which he first took to be night-blooming flowers in the gardens. Finding his windows closed, he sniffed the air again and decided that perhaps the fragrance was merely a very expensive air-freshener. It could be a perfume, of course, but not even the most slatternly housemaid would wear
that
much! And anyway, that was not the sort of menial Schroeder would ever employ or even tolerate. On the other hand, his bed had been made and the place tidied up a little…

His pillows were laid out in the- shape of a V.

Vicki.

She said that maybe there would be clues. OK, so she had been here, fooled with his pillows, left her calling card… and a scent for him to follow!

There were nine suites on this floor, and since this seemed the obvious place to start…

He left his bedroom and closed the door, cat-footed along the corridor from middle to end and back, then cat-footed in the opposite direction. At the last door he caught a faint whiff of jasmine. When he inclined his head towards the door the smell grew heavy and heady. A tingle of excitement thrilled him, set his scalp acrawl.

He entered quietly, closed the door after him, touched the light switch and found it in the off position. Hopefully the layout of the room was the same as his own. He made his way to the bed, undressed, piled his clothes haphazardly on the floor, reached to turn back the covers. There was utter silence, not even the ticking of a watch or the sound of his own firmly controlled breathing.

A cool hand touched his thigh and froze him rigid. It traced a path across his front, found and held him. Trembling slightly, he felt lips kiss him there, the merest touch.

‘Shower,’ she whispered. ‘I already have, and so must you.’

‘Do I smell?’ The words came out clotted and thick as sour cream.

‘You smell… beautiful,’ Vicki’s voice husked. ‘But wash the alcohol off your skin and the nicotine from your fingers. Men always smoke too much when they drink.’ She moved her fingers languidly, back and forth, back and forth, her grip firm for a moment or two before releasing him. ‘Go on, now. Do as you’re told.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Garrison wanted to say, but nothing came out.

He showered quickly, sober as a judge now, finishing with a burst of icy water which shrank him in a moment, for a moment, and returned to her not quite dry. Getting into bed, he said, ‘Vicki, no cliches. If you tell me to be gentle with you I’m sure I’ll scream.’

She gave a low laugh, her mouth burning as she kissed his chest, tasting him from nipples to navel. There she paused, with Garrison completely immobilized beneath her hands and mouth. ‘Richard, if you even gave a thought to being gentle with me, I would scream!’

She turned her body, opened her warm thighs for him. Inverted, they let their pulses pound as they began to feast upon each other…

‘You see?’ said Thomas Schroeder to Mina. ‘I was absolutely right. I guessed it might be like this. No, I was sure. We think alike, Garrison and I.’

He lay on his back, naked and stretched full length on his bed. His abdomen was criss-crossed with new scar-tissue that extended up under his rib-cage, round his left side and was continued on his back. His body was brown, however, and his tan masked the scar-tissue a little, so that his body was not completely unsightly. In fact he might have been ten to fifteen years younger than his actual age; but the suntan and the apparently trim physique could not disguise or compensate for the ravages within. In one respect, however—in one very important respect—Thomas Schroeder had escaped the blast. It had not robbed him of his sex. Not entirely.

Mina was blonde and blue-eyed. Her hair at this moment fell like a golden veil over Schroeder’s genitals; but her eyes were fixed like glinting diamonds on a large CCTV wall screen, as were those of her employer. The picture was fairly good but had a reddish blur, an effect of the infrared camera in Vicki’s ceiling.

Mina was naked, too, her body in much the same position as Vicki’s against Garrison on the screen; but Schroeder was passive, his hand motionless where it fell on her V of pubic hair. She leaned on one elbow, her free hand lightly on Schroeder, gently mobile, none of her weight resting upon him. She watched Garrison and Vicki for a few more minutes, said: ‘You’re not concentrating, Thomas.’

‘Oh? Well, perhaps I’m not, but what you’re doing is good anyway.’

‘You’ll never get what you want this way.’

‘Impatience? I should have thought that was my prerogative.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Mina, be a sweet and keep quiet. I’m watching Garrison. Oh, and I assure you, this is probably the
only
way I’ll get what I want.’

‘But you’ll not come.’

He sighed and looked at her. ‘Mina, I believe you really do think I’m a voyeur.’

‘Aren’t you? Then why are you watching them?’

‘Why are you?’

She shrugged. ‘I wanted to.’

‘Then you are the voyeur, Mina, not I. You see the sex is incidental; and our simultaneous sex is coincidental. I am simply studying Garrison. Everything he does.’

‘Why?’

‘My concern, Mina. Yours, at the moment, is to pleasure me.’

Suddenly Schroeder was erect. Mina had been looking at him as they talked but now she glanced at the screen. Vicki was on her knees, legs spread, her face down in her pillows, panting. Garrison kneeled upright between her legs, his hands on her hips, thrusting himself deep into her. His breathing was harsh as he drove to climax, made harsher by the microphone relaying the sound to Schroeder’s room.

Mina took what she saw as a golden opportunity, her mouth and hand working expertly as she coaxed Schroeder towards his peak—to no avail. For as Garrison and Vicki disengaged and collapsed in each other’s arms, so Schroeder relaxed and his erection slackened. Mina made no complaint (she had probably already said too much) but Schroeder sensed her disappointment anyway and patted her bush of tightly curled hair.

‘Have patience, Mina. The night is young—and so are they.’ He nodded at the screen, then glanced at his mistress. ‘And so are you. Tell me, what do you think of Garrison?’

‘Honestly?’

‘Of course, honestly.’

‘I think—that if you will not concentrate on your own pleasure until he has taken all of his—then we shall be here until 3.30 in the morning!’

Schroeder chuckled.’5.00, I think! Yes, he has a good body. And he’s hungry.’

‘Vicki, too,’ Mina observed. ‘See, she wants to eat him again.’

‘And he reacts! And now she rides him! They are splendid.’

‘She surprises me,’ Mina admitted. ‘I had thought—’

‘A nice girl like her? You are all nice, my dear. But occasionally one of you finds a special man, and then you have to do it. Because it is right and you
must
do it. Yes, and when that happens all taboos collapse. Then of course there are others who do not count the man at all but the zeroes at the end of his bank account.’

‘Thomas, that is cruel,’ she sounded genuinely hurt. ‘Do you mean me? But you know I like you. I’m your mistress.’

‘My paid mistress, yes. But—’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s why I don’t come—but perhaps not. You see, to concentrate is to strain, and for this damaged body of mine to strain is to hurt, so maybe
that’s
why I don’t come.’

He stared harder at the screen, its images mirrored in his spectacles. He listened intently to the soft slapping sounds of love approaching another eruption. ‘But Garrison… he knows none of this. At this moment he knows nothing but his need, his lust. And perhaps something of Vicki’s. He is almost automatic. He does not have to concentrate, does not strain, feels no pain. Well, perhaps a little pain—the final sweet agony which is his reward, the incentive to start the sequence all over again.’