Roadmarks (15 page)

"No, no. It's nothing like what you're implying. I've never thought of myself as suicidal, or even accident prone. This is something more in the nature of a premonition
—
I guess that's the best way to put it. It's just that I feel now that this is what must happen. I also feel that it can't be just any old place or time or means. There is a proper manner in which the translation must occur, and it has to happen at just the right spot."

"Do you know the time and the place and the means?"

"No."

"Well, that's something, anyway. Maybe you'll have a revised premonition before long."

"I don't think so."

"Whatever, I am glad you told me. Now, to answer your question finally
—
No, I am not leaving you."

"But you might be damaged, destroyed when it occurs."

"Life is uncertain. I will take my chances. Mondamay would never forgive me if I left you, either."

"You have an understanding or something?"

"Yes."

"Interesting . . . "

"You are the curiosity under discussion at the moment. My decisions are governed mainly by facts and logic, you know."

"I know. But
—
”

" 'But,' hell! Shut up a minute while
I
rationalize. I have no facts to run through the chopper. Everything you've told me is subjective and smacks of the paranormal. Now, I am willing to acknowledge the paranormal under certain circumstances. But I have no way to test it. All I really have to go on is my knowledge of you, gathered during our strange relationship as transporters and occasional time-meddlers. I find myself wanting to believe that you know what you are doing at the same time that I fear you are making a mistake."

"So?"

"All I can conclude is that if I restrain you and it turns out you were right and I was wrong
—
and that I've kept you from something very important to you
—
then I'll feel terrible. I'll feel that I've failed in my duty as your aide. So I feel obligated to come along and assist you in whatever you are up to, even though I can only accept it provisionally."

"That's more than I asked of you, you know."

"I know. Damned decent of me. I also hasten to point out that I feel equally obligated to slam on the brakes if I think you are doing something really stupid."

"Fair enough, I guess."

"It will have to do."

Red breathed smoke.

"I suppose so."

The miles ticked inside him like years.

Suddenly, the marquis de Sade threw down his pen and rose from his writing table, a strange gleam in his eye. He gathered together all the manuscripts from the writing workshop into a mighty bundle and waddled across the room with them and out onto the balcony. There, three stories above the parks and glistening compounds of the city, he removed the clips and staples and, one by one, cast them forth, clumps of enormous, dirty snowflakes, into the afternoon's slanting light.

Executing a brief dance step, he kissed his fingertips and waved as the last of them took flight, the ill-cast dreams of would-be scribblers from half a dozen centuries.

"
Bon jour, au revoir, adieu
," he stated, and then he turned away and smiled.

Returning to the desk, he took up his pen and wrote,
I have done my successor a favor and destroyed all of your stupid manuscripts. None of you have any talent whatsoever
, and he signed it. He folded it then to take with him, to tack to the door of the conference room as he passed it on the way out.

Then he took up a second sheet of paper.

It may seem
, he wrote,
as if I am repaying your hospitality, your generosity, in a particularly odious fashion, with my resolution to assist your worst enemy by destroying you
—
destroying you, I might add, in an especially macabre style. Some might feel that my sense of justice has been outraged and that I do this in the service of a higher end. They would be wrong
.

After signing it, he added the postscript:
By the time you read this, you will already be dead
.

He chuckled, placed the skull paperweight atop the document, rose to his feet and departed his quarters leaving the door slightly ajar.

He took the tube down, posted his rejection slip and walked the short corridor to the side door, encountering no one. Outside, he shuddered against the balmy breeze, squinted at the sunlight, grimaced at the birdsongs
—
taped or live, he could not be sure which
—
from the nearest park. He chuckled, though, as he mounted a beltway and moved northward toward the transfer point. It was going to be a glorious day nevertheless.

By the time he passed onto the westbound belt, he was humming a little tune. There were a few other people out, but none of them nearby. His destination was already plainly visible, but he moved to the faster belt and actually walked along it for a few moments before returning to the slower and finally stepping off at the proper underpass. He could as readily have reached this point on the underground belts, he thought, if he had been sure of his distances and directions. As it was, he had needed this landmark.

He entered the enormous building, proceeding in what he recalled to be the proper direction. He passed only two white-smocked technicians and he nodded to both of them. They nodded back.

He found his way into the big hall. At a workstand toward the center, Sundoc leaned over a piece of equipment. He was alone.

The marquis had crossed most of the distance between them before Sundoc looked up.

"Oh. Hello, marquis," he said, wiping his hand on his jacket and straightening.

"You may call me Alphonse."

"All right. Back for another look, eh?"

"Yes. I stole a few moments from that miserable schedule Chadwick has set up for me. Oh, my!"

"What?"

"Some of the magnetic fluid is leaking from that piece of equipment behind you!"

"What? There's no
—
”

Sundoc turned to his left and bent to inspect the indicated unit. Then he collapsed across it.

The marquis held a stocking in his right hand, with a bar of soap knotted into its toe. This he thrust back into his jacket pocket, then he caught Sundoc in his slide floorwards and assisted him into a supine position. He covered him with a tarpaulin which had protected a machine near the wall.

Whistling softly, he moved to the small console which controlled the pit lift. After a moment, he heard the low, sighing noise of the machinery. He moved to the edge and looked down, the helmet clasped before him.

"How like that wondrous Beast of Revelations," he mused, as the startled creature bellowed, dropped the carcass of a cow and began, with great thudding noises, to spring about within its enclosure. "I long to be joined with you, my lovely. But a moment more
—
”

"Hey! What's going on in here?"

The two technicians he had passed on the way in had just come into the hall.

"Reverse it! Reverse it!" one of them screamed, and began running toward the unit near the workbench.

The marquis raised the helmet and placed it on his head. There followed a moment of delightful disorientation. He closed his eyes.

. . . The wall was sinking all about him. He beheld his own diminutive, helmeted form. He saw the first white-coated figure arrive at the console, the second close behind it. "Don't do that!" he tried to say. But a button was pushed. All at once, the walls ceased their movement. He sprang. God! the power! The guard rail collapsed. He swayed on the edge of the pit, then moved forward. The console and the technicians vanished beneath him. He bellowed . . .

Lower your head
, he/they willed,
that I might mount
.

Clumsily, he straddled the neck of the great beast.

Now we are going to take a walk. You are my guest artist for today
.

The doorway was too small, for a few moments. As he moved up the mall paralleling the belts, screaming sounds began, here and there. A slow-moving vehicle halted and discharged its colorfully garbed passengers, all of whom fled. The breezes, the sunlight, the birdcalls, were no longer disturbing. In fact, they were barely discernible. He overturned the vehicle and bellowed a song. Chadwick's main building lay ahead. He would be in the
à rebours
room at this time of day . . .

With each lurching step forward, his feelings rose. Parceling out terror, he left the mall and headed into the park. He passed through its elegant periphery of trees, shrubs, flowerbeds, like wind through a sieve. The holograms closed upon themselves behind him, to rustle in their imaginary breezes. Hidden below the level of fictitious tulips, a pair of lovers were crushed at the moment of orgasm. A genuine bench splintered, a trash container crumpled as he passed. His bellowed song drowned all other sounds.

As he emerged at the side of the park nearest his destination, he tried to smash a small black car which had slowed and seemed to be aimed to park beside the blue truck which he had not noted earlier. It swerved about him, however, and vanished rapidly up the road.

He continued on, passing to the right of the entrance, rounding a corner, unaware of the play of shadow now behind him, so like that which had lain upon the truck.

He ceased his bellowing as he counted windows, seeking the proper section of wall. Stalking, panting, chuckling, he did not hear the sounds of more vehicles approaching the front of the building. If he had, it really would not have mattered.

His joy rising to a new height, he struck. The facade shattered, and on his third blow he burst through the large-grained crushed morocco leatherbound wall. The ceiling tore apart and fell down around him as he advanced upon Chadwick and the other man who stood at the fireplace before the sphinx, regarding a lengthy tongue of tape. His forelegs clawed at the air. His tongue darted forth.

"The death of Chadwick!" he shouted. "By
Tyrannosaurus rex
! Under the direction of the marquis de Sade!"

"Really," Chadwick replied, flicking an ash from his cigar, "there are simpler ways of submitting your resignation."

The beast halted. The shadow fled from beneath its tail, centimeters ahead of a copious quantity of urine.

The forelegs twitched.

"The marquis has already introduced himself," Chadwick stated, throwing his arm about the other man's shoulders, thrusting him forward and stepping behind him. "Marquis, I would now like you to meet my former partner. Red Dorakeen."

The marquis's smile vanished. The beast shifted uneasily.

"Take off your hat," the marquis ordered.

Red doffed his baseball cap and smiled around his cigar.

"You do look like your photo in the hit file," the marquis acknowledged as Chadwick slipped over and tore the printout from the teeth of SPHINX. "So what are you doing here? That man has designs on your life "

"Well, yes
—
”

Across the room, at the point to which the shadow had lifted, there was an implosion. Writing desks, chairs, oriental rugs, drink carousels were sucked into a dark tornado, along with debris from the walls and ceiling, the remains of a large lunch, a stuffed leopard, an owl and the remains of a cat which had expired some time before in a curtained alcove. The curtains also swirled and were drawn into the vortex. The three men watched with interest, the tyrannosaurus less intelligently, as the door to a concealed refrigerator was torn off and its contents sucked in, along with the door.

The dark column grew, absorbing the mass of almost every loose item in the room. At some point in its progress, it began to emit a humming noise. This rose in pitch as it increased in volume.

"I take it this is not a local meteorological effect?" Red inquired.

"Hardly," said Chadwick.

An enormous outline took shape within the mass. The humming noise ceased. A huge figure began to coalesce before them, giant wings outspread. It remained motionless until it had solidified to a point where there could be no doubt as to its nature.

It was almost the size of the tyrannosaurus, and, while roughly reptilian in appearance, this was of a highly stylized nature. Its coinlike scales ranged from gold on its breast to jet upon its back, running from copper through red down the length of its tail and back across the breadth of its great vanes. Its eyes were large and golden and lovely and disturbing to look upon. A small wisp of smoke curled upward from either nostril. It advanced two meters in a sudden movement and its neck snaked forward. Its voice was delicate, strangely nasal, and accompanied by soft gray plumes, and it was neither Red nor Chadwick that it addressed.

"What have you done to this poor beast?" it asked.

The marquis shifted uneasily.

"Sir, or madam," he stated, "I am in phase with his nervous system and I can assure you that he feels no discomfort whatsoever. As a matter of fact, there is an implant in his pleasure center which, if you insist, I will stimulate so as to give him as much joy as the poor beast is capable of
—
”

"Enough!"

"Frazier? Dodd?" said Red.

"Yes," it replied. "But I am not addressing you now. It was Chadwick that I sought, and you have brought me to him. But first
—
” Flames rolled about its mouth, subsided. "It is an abomination to have wired this handsome creature so!"

"I agree with you fully," said the marquis, "and I am pleased it was not I that did so."

"You have compounded the crime against his magnificent person! You manipulate him!"

"I assure you it is only a brief borrowing. My intentions
—
”

Chadwick seized Red's sleeve and tugged him along as he backed slowly toward the door.

"Your intentions be damned, sir! Release him and apologize to him!"

"I would do that at peril to my life!"

"Your life
—
and more
—
is already at peril! Release him!"

Chadwick edged the door open with his foot just as the tyrannosaurus bellowed and lunged toward the dragon, which sinuously avoided its charge. He sidled through, drew Red after him, pulled the door shut and locked it.

"You're parked out that way, aren't you?" Chadwick asked, gesturing.

''Yes."

"Come on! They could break out of there any minute."

As they hurried up the corridor, heavy crashing noises were heard and the floor shook.

"We'd best get this trip under way immediately," Chadwick remarked. "I had not anticipated an employee grievance at this time
—
or on this scale. We can stop for necessaries sometime else."

From behind them came a sound like an explosion a moment's silence, then a resumption of noisy activity. Glancing back, they saw a falling wall in the vicinity of the room from which they had fled. Smoke emerged and the air purifiers sucked it away.

Chadwick hit the door running, with Red close behind him. He immediately collided with a short man wearing a garish shirt, a lightweight kilt and blue sunglasses who had been advancing upon the door. Falling back, the man recovered his footing with amazing agility and reached for the camera case he wore slung over his left shoulder. "For the love of God! No!" cried Chadwick. As the camera came about, Red was beside the man. His left hand caught the strap and jerked, pulling him off balance again.

"Don't kill him!" Chadwick shouted. "The decade's off! I've sent the cancel order!"