The Long Twilight (38 page)

"Does that really matter now—?"

"You're not paying attention. First there was a door, then there wasn't. Doesn't that seem odd to you? Or am I confused?"

"You make a joke of everything."

"Baby, after considerable thought I've reached the conclusion that the only conceivable legitimate answer to the Universe as constituted is a peal of hysterical laughter. But I digress."

"This isn't a joke, Florin. It's deadly seriously."

"I remember once waking up in the middle of the night with the phone ringing. I groped around in the dark and picked it up and got it in position and all of a sudden I was asking myself a question:
Is this right? Do you really talk to an inanimate object?
"

"Florin, please stop—"

"But I was telling you about the door that wasn't there. I settled down to wait. My old associate, the gray man, came out of an alley and I followed him. He led me to a room with nobody in it, not even him."

"I don't understand—"

"Me, too, kid. But let me get back to my story. I want to see how it turns out. Where was I? Oh, yes—all alone with some bent coat hangers. So I prowled around until I found somebody to talk to. He turned out to be the fellow with a head like a garter snake."

"Florin—"

I held up a hand. "No interruptions, please. I'm learning plenty, just listening to me talk. For example, I just said he looked like a garter snake. The first time I saw him it was a cobra I thought of. Maybe I'm licking my neurosis. If I can work him down to a harmless angleworm maybe I can live with that. The funny thing is, he was like you in some ways."

She tried to smile. She was humoring me now. "Oh? In what way?"

"He advised me to stop asking questions and drift with the current. I promptly blacked out. And guess what? I was back here—with you—again."

"Go on."

"Aha—I'm getting your attention at last. That was the second time we met—but you don't remember."

"No—I don't remember."

"Sure. You warned me I was in trouble and I went out and ran around the block looking for it, and found enough to end up back here. It made me feel kind of like one of those rubber balls they tie to ping pong rackets."

"That was . . . our third meeting, then."

"Now you're catching on, girl. Stay with me. From here on it gets complicated. I still had a yen to see my old boss, the Senator. This time there was a trick door. I went through it and suddenly it was a summer afternoon in a place with eighteen percent light gravity, too much sun, and trees like lace underwear. The Senator was there. We were just beginning to get somewhere when he pulled a swifty and knocked me colder than a plate of Army eggs."

She waited, watching my face.

"That was when I saw Snake Head the second time. Diss, he said his name was. Wanted me to smarten up and play by the rules. Said he was a big shot—but he blew his cool when I mentioned Grayfell. He turned out the lights and I heard voices and passed out. . . ."

"And now—you're here."

"When I wake up you're always there to greet me. It's enough to make a man look forward to a tire-iron on the head. Except that I don't exactly wake up. First I'm
there
—then I'm here."

"You spoke of
dejà vu
—the already seen," she said in a brisk, case-worker tone. "There's a theory that it results from a momentary distraction; when your attention returns to your surroundings you have a sense of having been there before. And of course you have—a split second earlier."

"Nice theory. Of course it doesn't explain how I know your name. But I'm forgetting: you're my wife."

"Yes."

"Where did we meet?"

"Why, we met . . ." Her face became as still as a pond at dawn. The tip of her tongue came out and reassured itself that her upper lip was still there.

"I don't know," she said in a voice you could have printed on the head of a pin.

"Welcome to the group. Do I begin to interest you in my problem, Miss Regis?"

"But—why?" She grabbed a finger and started twisting it. "What does it mean?"

"Who says it means anything? Maybe it's all a game, played for someone else's amusement."

"No—I can't believe that; I wont!" She said this in a shocked gasp.

"But we can refuse to play."

"That's what you've been doing, isn't it, Florin? Has it helped you?"

I grunted. "There's a certain satisfaction in messing up their plans—if they're there and they have plans."

"Please, Florin—don't drop back into that brittle, cynical pose! It isn't like you—not really."

"How would you know?"

"Some things one simply knows."

"And some things one finds out. I've picked up a few items I don't think they intended me to know."

"Go on." Her eyes held on mine. They were a pellucid green with flecks of gold swimming in their depths.

"Maybe I wasn't supposed to see the purple money with 'Lastrian Concord' printed across it," I said. "Or maybe it was another plant. But then Red stuck his head up. I can't figure that. He ran when he saw me. After that I listened in on a conversation I'm pretty sure I wasn't intended to hear. Big voices, talking in the sky, arguing about things going wrong. Maybe they meant me. Or maybe I dreamed it. The Senator was there, and Big Nose. They talked about situation one. Not much help here."

"Go on, Florin."

"Then you stepped into the picture. I don't know why, but I have a feeling you're not part of Big Nose's plans."

"I'm not, Florin! Please believe me! I'm not part of anything— that I know of," she finished in a whisper.

"Then there's Grayfell," I said. "Magic gates into other worlds don't fit any world-picture of mine. Bardell was surprised to see me there. And when I squeezed him he told me things I don't think Big Nose wanted me to know. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm being led every foot of the way. Maybe there are coils within coils, traps within traps—"

"Florin! Stop! You have to believe in something! You have to have a starting point! You mustn't begin to doubt yourself!"

"Yeah.
Cogito ergo sum
. I've always got that to fall back on. I wonder what a polyplex computer's first thought is when they shoot the juice to it?"

"Is that what they expect you to say, Florin? Is that the role they want you to act out?"

I shook my head. "How much of myself can I peel away and have anything left? If the itch I've got to get my hands on the Senator isn't my own, I'm no judge of compulsions."

"Florin—can't you just—forget the Senator? Forget all of it, come home with me?"

"Not now, baby," I said, and felt myself start to smile. "Probably not before, and definitely not now. Because they goofed."

She waited; she knew there was more. I opened the hand that I had been holding in a tight fist for the past quarter hour and looked at the gadget I was holding. It was small, intricate, with bulges and perforations and points of brilliance that scintillated in the dim light; a manufactured article, and manufactured by an industry that was a long way from human.

"I took it away from Snake Head," I said. "That means Snake Head is real—at least as real as you and me."

"What is it?"

"Evidence. I don't know what of. I want to show it to people and see what happens. I can hardly wait. I've got a feeling they won't like it, and that alone will be worth the price of admission."

"Where will you go?"

"Back where they don't want me to."

"Don't do it, Florin! Please!"

"Sorry. No turning back for the Man of Iron. Straight ahead into the brick wall, that's my style."

"Then I'm going with you."

"You always let me go before. What's different now?"

"I don't know anything about all that. Shall we go?"

"It's a switch," I said. "Maybe it's a good omen."

Outside, the chilly wind was blowing in the empty street. She hugged herself, a chore I'd have been glad to do for her.

"Florin—it's so bleak—so lonely. . . ."

"Not with you along, doll." I took her arm; I could feel her shivering as we started off.

The tailor shop was still there, and the candy store; but now there was a vacant lot between them, full of dry weed-stalks and rusty cans and broken bottles.

"Tsk," I said. "No attention to details." I led the way to the corner and along to where the revolving door had been. It was gone. In its place was a tattoo parlor with a display like a retired Buchenwald guard might have on his den wall. But no door. Not even a place where a door could have been. This started my head hurting again. On the third throb, a voice the size of a cricket rubbed its wing cases together inside my ear and said,
"All right, Florin. Wait there for the next development."

"What is it?" the girl said.

"Nothing: just a twinge from my sciatica," I said, and felt back of my ear. No little pink chip seemed to be there. I checked the other side. OK. So now I was hearing voices without the aid of hardware. It wasn't an unheard-of-trick: lots of psychotics could do it.

We went along to an archway that opened on a musty arcade full of cobwebs and damp air. I tried the first door I came to and stepped into a room I'd seen before.

The thick rug was gone, the heavy drapes were missing, the plaster walls were cracked and blotched with age. Newspapers that looked as if someone had slept in them were scattered across the floor. The only furniture was the collapsing steel frame of what might have been a leather lounge. But the door to the safe, somewhat corroded but still intact, hung half open, just as it had the last time I'd been here.

"Do you know this place?" Miss Regis whispered.

"It's my old pal the ex-Senator's private hideaway. The only trouble is, it's sixty miles from here, in a big house with lots of lawn and fence and a full set of security men. Either that, or I had a ride on a cargo flat that drove in circles for three hours."

I looked in the safe; there was nothing there but some dust and a torn envelope with a purple postage stamp, addressed to
Occupant, Suite 13
. I checked the fake window, the one the Senator had opened like a door for our midnight escape; but if there was a latch there I couldn't find it.

"It seems the Senator moved out and took all his clues with him," I said. "A dirty trick, but maybe I know a dirtier one." I went to the closet and felt over the back wall.

"He told me the official escape route was here," I told the girl. "Maybe he was lying, but—" The chunk of wall I was pushing on pivoted sideways and cool air blew in from the darkness beyond.

"Aha," I said. "Predictability is the test of any theory; now all we need is a theory." I had the gun the Senator had called a 2-mm. needler in my hand. I poked it out ahead of me and stepped through into a narrow passage with another door at the end. It was locked, but a well-placed kick splintered wood and it bounced open. Outside was a standard-model dark alley with empty apple crates and battered galvanized garbage cans and clumps of weed between weathered bricks. A high board fence barred the way to the left.

"Well, well," I said. "It seems to me I've been here before, too. Last time there was some shooting, but I don't see any spent slugs lying around. And they've added a fence."

"This is all wrong," the girl said. "I have a good sense of direction; there can't be anything like this here. We should be in the middle of the building now, not outside!"

"I couldn't agree with you more, pet." I went toward the street where the car had rolled past the last time, spraying lead. This time everything was quiet; much too quiet. The street looked all right, except that instead of the buildings across the way, there was just a featureless gray. Not a fog, exactly; solider than that, but less tangible.

"Florin, I'm afraid," the girl said, sounding brave.

"Smart girl," I said. "Let's look around."

I picked a direction and started off. We turned a couple of corners. There was a sort of syrupy haze hanging over everything, blurring details. The sidewalk seemed to be running uphill now. We were in an alley, cluttered with the usual assortment of slopped-over garbage cans, defunct orange crates, dead cats, and drifted paper— for the first five yards. After that the bricks were clean, the way unimpeded. There was enough filtered light from the street to show me a high board fence that closed the space between buildings.

"It looks like the same fence," Miss Regis said.

"But the other side," I felt of the boards; they were just boards.

"It stinks," I said. "Topologically speaking."

"What does that mean?"

"There are relationships of surfaces that aren't modified by distortion of the surface. But we've seen two faces of the same plane— and we haven't turned enough corners. Somebody's getting careless; we're pressing them harder than they like. That makes me want to press harder."

"Why? Why not just go back—"

"Aren't
you
a little curious, Miss Regis? Aren't you a little tired of the man at the other end of the string, pulling whenever he feels like it? Wouldn't you like to squeeze back?"

"What are we going to do?"

"Funny," I said. "It could have been a brick wall or concrete—or armor plate. But it's just pine planks. It's almost an invitation to tear it down." I put my gun away and stooped to examine the bottom edges of the boards. There was room to get a hand under them. I heaved and the wood resisted and then splintered and broke away. I threw the pieces aside and stepped through into the conference room, looking just as I'd seen it last, fancy spiral chandelier and all.

"We're getting closer to home," I said. I went around the long table to the door I had entered the room by last time and pulled it open.

I was back in my hotel room, complete with blotched wallpaper, chipped enamel washbowl, broken roller shade, and sprung mattress. The door I had come through was the one that had had the bathroom behind it in an earlier incarnation.

"No wonder the boys came in so nice," I said. "I've been feeling kind of bad about not hearing the door. But it never opened."

"What is this place?" Miss Regis said, and came close to me.