The Long Twilight (36 page)

"I know. Let's just pretend I am anyway. Where's the Senator?"

"You can forget the Senator now," he said, talking so fast his tongue couldn't keep up. "That's all over now."

"Been for a ride in a green Buick lately?" I said, and ground the gun in harder.

"I never meant to kill you; you'd have been phased back to Eta Level, I swear it!"

"That's a big load off my mind," I said. "Keep going."

"You have to believe me! When the operation's over, I can show you the tape—" He paused to gulp. "Look here; I can prove everything I'm saying. Just let me key the retriever, and—" He jammed the key in and turned it. I made a grab for him but all of a sudden the air was as thick as syrup and the same color, full of little whirly lights.

"You fool—you'll lose him!" somebody yelled. It was the Senator's voice but it was coming to me via satellite relay, backed by a massed chorus and a drum as big as the world, beating sixty beats a minute. I sucked in some of the dead air and grabbed for Red with a vague idea of holding on and going where he went; but he turned to smoke that spread out and washed up around me like surf, and I took a breath to yell and the water rose and covered me, and I sank down in a graceful spiral while the light faded from green through turquoise to indigo to black like the dark side of Pluto.

She was sitting across from me, dressed in a sissified white blouse and a powder blue jacket. Her hair was a soft brown, and so were her eyes. She was looking at me with an anxious expression, like a mother hen watching her first egg hatch.

"Wrong." My voice sounded blurry in my own ears. "A swan, maybe. But not a hen. And definitely not a mother." I reached across the table and caught her wrist. I was good at grabbing people's wrists. Holding on was another matter. She didn't struggle.

"I . . . thought perhaps you needed help," she said in a breathless whisper.

"The thought does you credit," I looked around the room. It was the same room it had been the last time I ran through the scene. The barman was still polishing the same glass; there was the same odor of fried onions and spilled wine, the same blackened beams, the same tarnished copper pots beside the fireplace. Or were they the same? Maybe not. The flames looked cheery and comforting, but if they gave any warmth I couldn't feel it from where I sat.

"The other man—your friend—went off and left you," the girl said. "You looked—"

"Sure—a little strange," I said. "Let's skip over the rest of the routine, honey. There's a deeper conversation that's been wanting us to have it."

"I don't know what you mean," she said in a small voice that still sounded like Gypsy guitars in the night.

"What's your name?" I said.

"Miss Regis. Curia Regis."

"And you already know mine, right?"

"Of course. I think perhaps you've made a mistake—"

"I had a wide choice of mistakes to make, and I made them all." I let go of her and rubbed my wrists, but it didn't help. I wanted to rub my ankles, but restrained the impulse. My chest hurt every time I breathed, but I breathed anyway.

"You can start by clearing up a point," I said. "Have we ever sat here before—at this table—in this room?"

"Of course not."

"Why are you here?"

"Because of your message—of course." Her eyes searched mine for something she didn't seem to find.

"Tell me about my message."

"In the newspaper. The Personals column."

"What did it say?"

"Just—
I need you
. And your name."

"And you came—just like that."

"If you don't need me, I'll go away."

"Sit tight. Order a sandwich. Count to a million by hundreds. If I'm not back by then, start without me." I got a grip on the edge of the table and wrestled my feet under me. They were steady enough, but the room had a tendency to rock.

"Here I go again," I said. "Third time's the charm."

When I looked back from the door, the table was empty.

"Florin," I told myself, "there's something you're doing wrong; or something you're not doing right."

I looked up and down the street. A light snow was falling. There were no people in sight, no footprints on the sidewalk, no tire tracks in the street. I had the world to myself.

"I got doped," I said. "I'm having French fits coming out of it. But how many tries do I have to make before the big one? How do I know when it's for real?"

"It's a learning process," I said. "You're unconscious, thinking about it. Each time you take a wrong turning in your logic you get sent back to square one. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something."

"How about now?" I asked, cagey. "Am I really standing here having a friendly conversation with myself like any normal guy, or—"

I got that far with the question when the whole world disappeared.

Now, it's always a shock to the nervous system when the power fails, even when it's only a bridge lamp that goes off. But this time the sky went out, too. It was total, impenetrable black in every direction. I put out a hand and felt the wall beside me; with my nose an inch from it, I could sense it, but not see it.

"New rules, Florin," I said aloud, just to be hearing something. "But the same game."

I felt over the wall behind me, found the door I had just come out of. It was locked, frozen harder than a Nazi's Swiss account.

"No going back," I counseled myself. "That leaves forward, if you can call it forward. Back to the spot where the action is. You can do it by dead reckoning."

It wasn't much of an idea, but I didn't have a better one.

It took me half an hour, shuffling along with one hand on the wall and the other out in front, feeling the air. I stepped down curbs and up again on the other side, avoided falling over fireplugs, didn't get run over, all without a seeing-eye dog. I was proud of myself. Good work, Florin. If your enemies could see you now . . .

That gave me a creepy sensation along the back of my neck. My being blind didn't mean anybody else was. Maybe they were watching me, tracking me every foot of the way, closing in for the kill.

I didn't know who I meant by "they." That made it worse. I had started off working for the Inner Council but had neglected to get the names. Then the Senator took over, and for a while we had worked out pretty well together, but then that went sour, too. There was a chance that he had given me the Mickey himself, but in the absence of proof he was still my client. If Van Wouk or someone else of the same nature had grabbed him out from under my slumbering nose it was up to me to get him back, which meant I had to keep right on picking my way, counting the paces and the blocks, back to where I had last seen him and the scruffy man.

I was at the corner. I turned left and felt my way along to the glass door with the big 13. There wasn't any door. Maybe I'd counted wrong. Maybe somebody had come along and sealed it up just to confuse me. Maybe it hadn't been there in the first place.

I went on another few feet and stumbled into a revolving door; it revolved and palmed me into the blinding glare of a forty-watt bulb hanging on a kinked wire in a lobby that was either being built or torn down.

There was nothing pretty in sight, but it was nice to have my eyes back, even if all I was looking at was bare lath walls, a rough concrete floor, temporary wooden steps leading up.

"This time," I told myself, "you play it a little smoother. No blundering around with a gun in your fist; no pushing open strange doors and sticking your head in to see what they hit it with. Foxy all the way, that's the motto."

I went up. There was a landing covered with shavings and brick dust. A black fire door had the number 13 in heavy brass above it. With an ear pressed to it, I could make out the sound of voices. They seemed to be disagreeing about something. That suited me; I was in a mood to be disagreeable. I tried the knob; it turned, and I stepped through into a passage with a plastered wall on one side and obscure-glass cubicles on the other. The voices were coming from the third cubicle in line. I soft-footed along to it.

". . . what do you mean, lost him?" Big Nose was saying.

"I tell you, there's a factor of unpredictability involved! I'm getting interference!" This in a thin, high-pitched tone.

"Get him back—before irreparable damage is done!"

"I don't understand it. The recovery was made in time. . . ."

"You see?" a voice that was not quite that of the Senator said. "I'm telling you I can't take many more shocks like the last one."

"Never mind what you can take! You knew what you were signing up for!"

"Did I? Not even the Professor knows what's going on!"

"Don't call me 'Professor,' Bardell!"

"Gentlemen—let's not lose sight of the objective! Everything else is secondary."

There was a rather long silence. I breathed through my mouth and tried to read minds through the door. Either I couldn't read minds or there was nobody there. I eased the door open. The room was empty, looked as though it had been empty for a long time. In the closet were three bent coat hangers and some brown paper on the shelf. That and a few dead flies. A connecting door into the next office had been boarded up. I checked the boards; something clicked and the wall glided back and ocher light blazed through. I palmed my toy gun and stepped through into a wide avenue of colored tiles.

I squinted up at the sky. The strange yellow light was the sun. It was midafternoon of a pleasant summer day. Not a snowstorm. A drop of water ran down my chin. I put the back of my hand against my face; the skin was as cold as frozen fish.

"Fake money, fake Senator, fake weather," I said. "Or maybe this is the fake. Maybe I'm in a big room with a sky-blue ceiling and an imitation sun."

"
Could be
," I agreed. "
The question remains—why
?"

"The Senator will know," I pointed out.

"
Sure—but will he talk
?"

"When I finish bouncing his phony head off this phony pavement he'll sing like three canaries," I stated with less confidence than I felt.

"
You've got to catch him first
."

"Nothing to it. He can't escape the eagle eye of Florin, the Master Sleuth—unless I happen to step on my shoelace and rupture my spleen."

"
Do I detect a note of disillusionment? Not getting tired of your tricks, are you, Florin
?"

"That's the trouble with tricks. They pall. God, how they pall."

"
Try the park
."

I was looking across the wide avenue at a stretch of downy-looking green grass set with tall, feathery trees. Beyond them tall, misty buildings loomed, gleaming white. A vehicle swung a corner and rolled toward me on high wheels. It was light, fragile-looking, like a buggy without a horse, painted a soft purple and decorated with curly corners and a complicated pattern in gold lines. A man and a woman sat in it, looking at each other while the buggy drove itself. They were both dressed in filmy white stuff with flecks of color here and there. The rubber tires made a soft whooshing sound against the tiles as it glided past.

"I knew Henry was planning a big surprise for '30, but I wasn't expecting this," I said, and realized I was not only talking aloud, I was waiting for an answer. Whatever it was the Senator had used to spike my beer had more side-effects than six months of hormone injections—perhaps including hallucinations involving purple carriages rolling down tile streets under a sun two sizes too big and three shades too yellow. It was time for me to curl up somewhere and sweat it out of my system. I headed for the biggest clump of flowering shrub in sight, rounded it, and almost collided with the Senator.

His head jerked. "You!" he said, not sounding pleased. "What are you doing
here!
"

"Sorry, I dozed off while you were talking," I said. "Rude of me. How's your busted rib feeling?"

"Florin—go back! Quickly! You have no business here! This is all wrong!"

"What is this place, Senator?"

He backed away. "I can't tell you. I can't even speak of it!"

"Sorry to be insistent," I said, and grabbed for him as he jumped back. He ducked aside and sprinted for it. I gave chase, using a pair of borrowed legs and towing a head the size of a blimp at the end of a hundred-foot cable.

It was a strange chase along the curving graveled path. We ran past fountains that threw tinkling jets of ink into green-crystal pools, past banked flowers like daubs of fluorescent paint, under the blue shadows of trees with bark like polished lacquer and foliage like antique lace. He ran hard, head down and legs pumping; I floated along behind, watching him get farther and farther away. Then he jumped a hedge, tripped, and was still rolling when I landed on him. He was a big boy and plenty strong, but he didn't know how to use it. A couple of solid hooks to the jaw took the shine off his eyes. I laid him out comfortably under what looked like a juniper except for the little crimson blossoms and worked on getting my wind back. After a while he blinked and sat up. He saw me and looked glum.

"You and I need to have a little talk," I said. "I'm two paradoxes and a miracle behind."

"You're a fool," he snarled. "You don't know what you're involving yourself in."

"But I'd like to," I said. "By the way, tell me again what the Lastrian Concord is."

He snorted. "I never heard of it."

"Too bad," I said. "I guess I imagined it. I saw this in the same place." I slid the flat gun I had taken from his safe into sight. "Maybe I'm imagining it, too."

"What does this mean, Florin?" the Senator said in a tight voice. "Are you selling me out, then?"

It was my turn to grin the lazy grin. "Nuts," I said. "Who do you think you're kidding, Senator—or whoever you are."

He looked astounded. "Why should I want to deceive you?"

"It was laid on with a trowel," I said. "The callers in the night, the fancy reception room, the hints of dark deeds in the offing. And the details were nice: fake official forms, fake money—maybe even a fake gun." I bounced it on my palm.

"It's a two-mm. needler," he said, sounding angry or maybe scared. "Be careful with it!"