Stairway to Forever (12 page)

There were a plethora of insects—flying, crawling and hopping—hairy, huge, burrowing spiders, scorpions of varying sizes, and some of the largest, longest centipedes Fitz had ever seen. There was a profusion of birds of every size, shape, color and habits he could imagine. There were also some very singular flyers about and he could not decide whether they were bird or beast or reptile, as they bore at least some resemblance to all three.

Another peculiar case was that of the flocks of what he called, for want of a better name, "rat-tailed ostriches." They looked about as big as an ostrich, most of them, they walked or ran at speed on two legs like an ostrich, true enough, but they had no feathers or plumes like an ostrich, rather a growth of fluffy, fuzzy, very fine hair. They also grew tails—thick, up near the body, but tapering along a scaly length of six or seven feel to a point.

With such an assortment of prey animals about, he was certain that there had to be a number of predator species, as well, but thus far the only ones he had n had been a few weasel-sized and -shaped creatures, some snakes and b hefty beast that had looked, through tin* binoculars, a lot like a badger. There were raptorial birds, of course, but none of these avian predators spotted to date looked of a size or a lifting capoctt) to pose a threat to anything larger than a good-sized rat or an underweight prairie dog

or one ot the smaller of the fixing rabbits.

Several times, he had seen impressed in the damp

banks of the spring-led pool and on the shores of the

fresh-water lake spoor that looked to his inexpert-em I I lot like much-OVersized house cat pads, but he had never seen any actual cats of any size or description on the sandy plain, so he assumed that either thev did not den on the plain or that they were, like most felines, noeturnal hunters.

He could hear the telephone ringing from the moment he closed the stone slab and began to dress tor the cold, damp, inclement weather outside the wall-tent, and it just continued to ring, on and on, incessantly, as he finished dressing and made his way across his backyard, onto the back porch through the

back door and into the kitchen of the house, where he finally was able to make the annoying sound cease by picking up the receiver of the wall phone. There was no reply to his repeated hellos, so he hung up. But he had only had time to get back to his bedroom before it rang again.

"Mister Fitzgilbert? Mister Alfred O'Brien Fitzgilbert?" asked a woman's voice.

"Yes," said Fitz. "This is Alfred Fitzgilbert speaking. Who's calling me?"

But she failed to identify herself, only saying, "Please hold for Mister Blutegel."

Fitz still could not recall the name when a man's voice came on the line, a raspy voice that sounded angry and exasperated. "Mister Fitzgilbert, where have you been these past weeks? You had an appointment with me, here at my office. Why didn't you keep it or telephone me to reset it? Don't you know better than to try trifling with the Internal Revenue Service?"

Then Fitz remembered the name and the card in the government envelope that the Customs man, Harland, had given him on the day before he had left for the sand world.

"Mister Blutegel," he said politely, "I did not make any appointment with you, at your office or anywhere else. You or someone scribbled on one of your cards that I had an appointment with you, but when I got that card, I already had other plans and ..."

"Then why didn't you telephone me, immediately, tell me where you were going and when you would return, Fitzgilbert?" It was not so much a question as an unequivocal demand, and it, plus the grating voice and the supercilious manner began to irk Fitz. "Because, Mister Blutegel, I'm a private citizen, have

been for many years, and where I go and what I do is my own business, not yours or anybody else's. What did you want to talk to me about, anyway? My taxes are prepared by . . ."

"Now, don't you get snotty with me, Fitzgilbert," the raspy voice broke in to say, "unless you think you'd like living in a federal penitentiary. "I know who prepares your tax returns, if such pieces of arrant, nonsensical fiction can be rightly justified with the name of tax returns. Like most of your class of criminal, you obviously think we of this service all are morons."

Fitz took a deep breath while the arrogant man was speaking, then another. "Just who do you think you're calling a criminal, Blutegel? I think that such a charge delivered over an open telephone line is considered slanderous. Maybe I need an attorney."

"It is Mister Blutegel to you, Fitzgilbert," grated the voice. "Yes, you do need an attorney. You'd better get the best one you can find, too. You are already in a great deal of trouble, in case you don't know it, Fitzgilbert, both with my service and with the state taxation department, with whose Mister Schabe I was just conferring yesterday, concerning you and some other notable tax cheats. If you know what's good for you, you'll be in my office at three today."

"Impossible!" snapped Fitz.

"Why?" demanded the voice.

"Because I say so," Fitz replied. "I am not some subordinate under your jurisdiction and I need give you no other answer. And not tomorrow, either. I'll see you . . ." he glanced down at the calendar on his bureau, "on next Tuesday morning at eleven."

"You have been and are being uncooperative,

Fitzgilbert, most uncooperative indeed. I might be inclined to be more lenient with you if you come in to see me today or tomorrow. Otherwise . . . well, do you think you will look good in grey denim, Fitzgilbert?" rasped the voice ominously.

"I don't know who or what you presume yourself to be, Blutegel. No, don't bother to correct me again. It's this way—you don't grant me the dignity of a title before my last name, you don't get granted one by me," Fitz stated coldly. "I am getting a lawyer, and that, damned fast. I also intend to contact certain people up in D.C. and make a determination of what right, if any, you have to call me such things as 'criminal' and 'tax cheat' or to threaten me with federal prison. This entire conversation is on tape, you see; all of my conversations from my home phones are.

"Goodbye, Blutegel. Don't ring me up again. I'll see you Tuesday."

After he had heard the tape, Gus Tolliver shook his head slowly. "Yeah, Fitz, boy, they after your ass, the pack of the bloodsuckers. At least this here pair is got them the names for it."

"What do you mean?" asked Fitz.

"Oh, that's right, you don't talk no German, do you?" Gus nodded. "Well, Blutegel is the German word for a leech, and Schabe means a cockaroach. They's both of them good names for bastards is in that line of work, too. I tell you, you come on into town today and I'll take you over for to see my lawyer, Pedro Goldfarb. Bring along that tape and I'll get this feller up the street from the shop to copy 'er, two, three copies, enyhow. I think you right, see, I don't think that fucker's got no kinda right to

threaten you and call you names like he done. With that there tape, you just may have him by the balls, so you oughta have you more than just the one, see. "You really know some guys in D.C.?" "No," replied Fitz, "but Blutegel doesn't know I don't."

"Well, I do," said Gus. "And while you driving in, I'm gonna call two, three fellers I knows up there. It's fuckers like that Blutegel, use to make good Gestapo men for the Nazis. In Russia, they have em working for the KGB. Over here, they gets their rocks off finding them some poor fucker screwed up trying to do his own taxes and they drags him though a fucking wringer by his cock. Maybe I can get his Kraut ass dragged acrost the coals a few times, ain't no sense in not at least trying."

But at his office, they were told that Pedro Goldfarb was in court and was not expected back before closing time of the law firm.

Well, then, how 'bout Miz Dardrey, is she in?"

While the receptionist busied herself with the intercom, Gus said to Fitz, "I got a feeling we better do some legal-type talking today, see. And Pedro, he tells me this pertic'ler partner of his is just as smart as a fu . . ."he screeched to a halt in mid-word and glanced at the receptionist with a brief, guilty look before continuing, "smart as a whip. He says she's helped pull him out the sh . . ." another fast pause and another guilt-ridden glance, "out the soup, more than once. She's a real looker, too. She's 'bout forty, I'd say with a body and legs that won't quit. Looking at her makes me wish / was forty again, I tell you!"

"If you were forty, Mister Tolliver," a warm, smooth, female voice spoke from behind them with overtones of amusement, "you'd be too young for me . . . but I do thank you for the compliments."

The two men turned to see a slender, very fair-skinned woman, her heart-shaped face framed by cascades of red-brown hair, regarding them with blue-green eyes which reflected the fleeting smile on her foil, red lips. Despite her tailored suit, there could clearly never be any hiding her lush, thoroughly female figure.

Striding forward, she held out her hand, saying, "I'm Dannon Dardrey, Mister Tolliver. How can I help you?"

When Fitz took her cool hand in his own, he felt an immediate and a very strong sense of. . . of what he suddenly realized was kinship with the attorney. The feeling was stronger than any he had ever before sensed with any other relative—parents, brothers, sisters, even his own children. It was uncanny.

Apparently, this weird sense was shared, for the handsome woman suddenly wrinkled her brows and tilted her head to one side as she looked up at his face quizzically. "I am very pleased to meet you, Mister Fitzgilbert, but . . . haven't we two met before . . . somewhere, sometime? It seems that I know you."

In her comfortable office, she heard them both out and listened to the tape, then leaned back in her big chair and began to fill a small meerschaum pipe from a canister of dark, spicy-smelling tobacco while she spoke her thoughts on the matter.

"I don't know, Mister Fitzgilbert, but what that Pedro or one of our other associates might better represent you in this matter, unless we can get your case switched over to another person, down at the local offices of the I.R.S. I have had to deal with Mister Blutegel before, on behalf of other clients, and there is a definite lack of rapport where we two

are concerned, principally due to the fact that he feels women should not be in the professions or in business—you know, the old 'Kinder, Kirche, Ruche' mind-set. You were most unlucky to have had your file land on his desk, for he is a very unpleasant man; thank God he is atypical of your usual I.R.S. person.

"I'll still be here tonight, when Pedro gets back. Til cover this matter with him, all right? Should there be any questions, Mister Fitzgilbert, give me a number at which I can reach you tonight. Unless you should hear differently from either Pedro or me, be at this office at nine o'clock on Tuesday morning and one of us, maybe both, will go with you to the Federal Building.

"Please let me keep these files and copies of your tax returns. Oh, and this tape recording, too. I can't be sure yet, of course, but Herr Blutegel just may have overstepped even his overblown concepts of his God-given authority, this time around.

"Schabe's much easier to deal with. There is a lot of politics at work in his department, state politics. Members of this firm did a good bit of work for and contributed some fair sums of money to the successful campaign of the current governor . . . and Schabe intimidates quite easily, so we may be able to handle the state's business with you entirely by phone and mail. But here again, I'll have to confer with Pedro on this."

Again, that powerful sense of kinship as he shook her hand, returned her firm grip, felt the hidden strength, thick velvet over tempered steel. Their eyes locked for a fleeting moment and he saw hers filled with wonderment and . . . with something else, something that he could not just then define. His own feelings were jumbled, chaotic. He knew that he and Gus must leave no*", their meeting with the

woman concluded, but. . . but he did not want to leave her, did not want even to release her hand.

But, of course, he did.

He and Gus conducted their accounting session in the shop, then had dinner in the fine restaurant of the businessmen's club of which Gus was a member. It was an early dinner and Fitz was back at home by nine. It was by then too late to drive in to pick up his mail from the local post office branch, so he showered and went to bed, to there experience the strangest, most vivid dream he ever had had ... in this world.

Their throats had been cut with such force as to almost sever the heads from the bodies, and the bellies of both had been slashed open from crotch to breastbone. Their breasts had been sliced from off their chests and hideous savageries had been done upon their faces and heads with sharp knives. They looked white as swans, lying there in the last hours of the grey day, their bodies all drained of blood and washed as for burial by the cold, drizzling rain.

The old, long-bearded man muttered something too low to be clearly heard as he and the cart passed the terrible tableau, then tried to urge still more speed out of the ponies.

Fitz knew that he was in the cart, nor was he alone. Of course he was not alone. She was with him, naturally: his sister, who would one day be his bride and the queen who would rule with him.

She was crying now, crouching low against the side of the cart, hiding her head and face in her cloak. She was terrified that the Dark Ones would catch them and do to her what they had done to so many others, like that fair child they had seen earlier on this terrible journey through mist and rain and cold, the child whose small body had been impaled on a lance shaft.

Fitz was terrified, too, but he meant to be a warrior-king and so he steeled himself not to cry or show fear. Nonetheless he was very fearful. His kind were being mutilated and butchered from one end to the other of this land that had been all theirs only a very short time ago. The Dark Ones were inciting and abetting and even joining in the orgy of rapine and murder in the names of gods and goddesses alien to this ancient land.