The Long Twilight (35 page)

"What about it, Lloyd?"

"All right, all right. For God's sake, settle it! I have my hands full!"

There was more talk, but another sound was drowning it.

The rising wind was hot as a blowtorch across my skin. A buzz saw started up and sliced its way across the sky; it split and darkness poured in like Niagara, swept away the voices, the ants, the desert, and me . . .

I opened my eyes and the girl was sitting across from me, not wearing her fox skin now, looking at me with an anxious expression.

"Are you all right?" she said in a voice like doves cooing. Or like a spring breeze among the daffodils. Or like the gurgle of happy waters. Or maybe it was just a voice. Maybe I was slaphappy, coming out of it.

"Far from it," I said, using somebody else's voice by remote control. "I've got the damnedest urge to climb the chandelier and yodel the opening bars of
William Tell
. It's only my years of training that prevent me; that and my rheumatism. How long was I out?"

She frowned. "You mean . . .?"

"That's right, kid. Out. Cold. Doped. You know: unconscious."

"You were just sitting here. You looked a little strange, so I . . ."

"They got him, huh?"

"Him? You mean your brother. He . . . just left."

"Which way? Did he go, that is. My drinking buddy, I mean. What makes you think he's my brother?"

"I . . . just assumed—"

"I don't suppose there's any point in asking where they took him, or why?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"This is where I'm supposed to work you over with my blackjack and get all your secrets. But frankly, honey, I'm not up to it."

I stood. That didn't feel at all good. I sat down again.

"You shouldn't exert yourself."

"What's it to you, doll?"

"Nothing—really. It's just . . ." She let it go.

"Another time, maybe." I stood again. This time it worked a little better; but my head still felt like bagged gravel.

"Please wait!" she said, and put a hand on my arm.

"Another time I'll linger," I said, "but duty calls. Or something calls."

"You're hurt and sick—"

"Sorry, kid, I'm on my way. Sorry about no tip, but I seem to have left my change in my other suit. By the way, did you ever hear of the Lastrian Concord?"

She didn't answer, just shook her head. When I looked back from the door she was still watching me with those big lovely eyes. I let the door close between us and was back out in the street. A light snow was falling. In the thin layer of slush on the pavement I could see footprints leading back the way the Senator and I had come. I followed them, weaving a little, but still on the job.

The trail retraced the route the Senator and I had taken when we made our daring escape from the assassins, or whatever it was we had escaped from, if we had escaped. It ended at the spot where we had unloaded from the cargo flat. The tailor shop was still closed, but the second dummy from the left seemed to have an eye on me.

"Be my guest, buddy," I said. "We're two of a kind." He didn't answer, which suited me OK.

I felt as weak as a newborn squirrel and just about as smart. My wrists and ankles hurt. I wanted to lie down on something soft and wait for something nice to happen to me, but instead I moved along to a dark doorway and got comfortable in it and waited. I didn't know what I was waiting for. I thought about the girl back in the bar. She was nice to think about. I wondered if she'd been part of the dope-dream. I had an urge to go back and check, but just then a man stepped out of the alley-mouth across the street. He was in a dark overcoat and hat, but I knew the face. It was the scruffy redhead who had called at my hotel with the gray man.

He looked both ways along the street, then turned and set off at a brisk walk. I let him get to the corner, then followed. When I reached it, he was nowhere in sight. I kept going, passed a dark entry just in time to see the revolving door glide to a stop. I pushed through, was in a small lobby floored with black and white tiles, the small, rectangular unglazed kind, set in a pattern that zigged and zagged—just like my thoughts. The stairs led up to a landing; I could hear feet up above. They seemed to be in a hurry. I went up after them.

Two flights higher, the climb ended in a dark corridor. A faint greenish light was coming under a panel door at the far end. My feet made no sound at all on the Nile green carpet. No sounds came from behind the door. I didn't knock, just turned the knob and walked in.

There was a nice rug, a filing cabinet, a chair, a desk. And behind the desk, dressed in a snappy gray pinstripe, a cobra smiled at me.

Well, maybe not a cobra. A lizard. Pale violet, shading to powder blue, white at the throat. Smooth-scaled, glistening, round-snouted, with lidless eyes and a lipless mouth. Something not human. Something that leaned back in the chair and gave a careless wave of what was almost a hand and said, "Well, Mr. Florin—you've surprised us all." His voice was as light and dry as old rose petals.

I groped the Browning out into view and waved it at him. He lit up a cigarette and blew smoke through two small, noseless nostrils.

"Are you part of the first nightmare?" I said. "Or is this a double feature?"

He chuckled; a nice, friendly, relaxed chuckle such as you seldom hear from a reptile. Maybe he was all right at that.

"You're a most amusing fellow, Florin," he said. "But what are you attempting to accomplish? What do you seek in these ghostly rooms, these haunted corridors, eh?"

"You left out the phantom-ridden streets," I said. "I give up; what am I looking for?"

"Let me give you a word of friendly advice, Florin. Let it go. Stop seeking, stop probing. Let life flow past you. Accept what comes. You're Florin, a man of deeds, not philosophies. Accept what is."

"One at a time or all at once?" I raised the gun and aimed it at the middle of the smile.

"Tell me things," I said. "Anything at all. If I don't like it, I'll shoot."

The reptilian smile floated in a soft haze of cigarette smoke. A buzzing sound was coming out of the woodwork. I tried to say something, but there was no air in my lungs, only thick pink fog. I tried to squeeze the trigger, but it was welded in place, and I strained harder, and the buzzing got louder and the mist thickened and whirled around the little red eyes that gleamed now like two fading sparks far away across the sea and then winked out.

The girl was sitting across from me, wearing a close-fitting dark blue dress that shimmered like polished fish scales. She was looking at me with an anxious expression, like a bird-watcher watching a problem bird.

"No good," I said. "No bird watcher ever had eyes like those." The sound of my own voice startled me.

"Are you . . . all right now?" she said. Her voice was smooth as honey, as soft as a morning cloud, as sweet as music. Anyway, it was a nice voice. "Your friend left," she said, and looked worried.

I looked around. I was at the table in the beer joint, the same place I'd been the last time I swam up out of a Mickey. The Senator was nowhere in sight. Neither was the gray man or the Nile green car.

"Don't get the wrong idea," I said. "I'm not one of those habitual drunks. What makes you think he's my friend?"

"I . . . I just assumed—"

"How long was I out?"

"I'm not sure; I mean—you were just sitting here; you looked a little strange, so . . ." Her voice trailed off.

I rubbed my temples; there was a light throbbing behind them that could become a heavy throbbing with very little encouragement.

"Did you ever get the feeling you'd been through a scene before?" I said. "I can almost guess your next line. You're going to suggest that I sit tight until I get to feeling better."

"I . . . think you should. You don't look well."

"I appreciate your interest, Miss—but why would you care?"

"Why wouldn't I? I'm a human being."

"That's more than I can say for some of the folks I've been advised by lately. Say, you didn't see a fellow with a head like a garter snake? Only larger. His head, I mean."

"Please don't talk nonsense." She looked at me with an unreadable expression that I tried to read anyway.

"I knew you'd say that too.
Dejà vu
, they call it. Or something. Have I come out of the smoke once, or twice? A question for the philosophers."

"I don't know what you're talking about," the girl said. "I thought you needed help. If I was wrong . . ." She started to get up and I caught her hand and pulled her back.

"Don't rush off. You're my sole link with whatever you're my sole link with, if that makes any sense—or even if it doesn't."

She pulled against my grip, but not very hard. I let go and she didn't move.

"Maybe the Senator slipped me something," I said. "Or maybe he didn't. Maybe the gray man shot me with a dope dart . . ."

"You've been shot?"

"At. They got the Senator, but it was just a graze. You wouldn't know who?"

She shook her head.

"Did you see the gray man? Or the green car?"

"No."

"But you saw the Senator. He was sitting with me when you came in. He pretended not to notice you. Why?"

"I have no idea."

"I'm his bodyguard," I said. "Or that's what they said. It turned out I was the finger. Dirty pool, don't you agree, Miss . . .?"

"Regis. You're not making sense."

"I kind of don't like that, Miss Regis. I think maybe the Senator's lost confidence after what happened. Can't say I blame him. So maybe he ditched me; or maybe they got him. Either way, I don't care for it."

"Who is the Senator?"

"
The
Senator. A very big man. But no names. Not for the present. That's what the gray man said. I wish I knew which side he was on. I wish I knew which side
I
was on—or if there are any sides. How many sides to a ring-around-the-rosy, Miss Regis?"

She shook her head, just watching me.

"You'll have to overlook any little eccentricities I seem to demonstrate," I said. "I've been having a few mild hallucinations. Hard to tell which are which. You, for example. Why are you sitting here listening to me? You ought to be in full flight by now, yelling for the boys with the strap-down cots."

"I don't believe you're dangerous," she said calmly.

"Do you know me?"

"I never saw you before."

"What brought you out in the chill night air, to a place like this— alone?"

"I really can't say. It was . . . an impulse."

I nodded. "Swell. That clears that up. Any other points you'd like to cover before I go?"

"Please don't go—wherever it is you mean to go."

"Why not—except for those big blue eyes?" I got to my feet; my legs felt twelve feet long and the diameter of soda straws. I leaned on the table as if intentionally.

"I've got stuff to do, baby," I said. "I've got questions that want answers and answers looking for the right questions. And time's a-wasting." I tottered away, and she didn't call after me. I was a little sorry about that, but I kept going.

Outside I looked for tracks in the snow, but there wasn't any snow. In a way that was reassuring; the snow was part of the dream. The street was still there; that was something. I turned right and headed the way I had gone the last time, or dreamed I had, or dreamed I'd dreamed I had, the time I met the fellow with the purple head. Meeting him had been a break. It helped me remember he was-n't really there. Whatever they'd fed me, it was potent stuff. I still felt woozy as a conventioneer discovering it's Tuesday morning in a strange town.

The streets were empty, even for the wee hours. No lights were on in the windows. No cars moved. Just the fitful wind and a feeling of mice scuttling behind the wainscoting. I made it back to the street where I'd made my debut in town a few hundred years—or maybe two hours—before. I turned the last corner and saw a man in a dark hat and overcoat standing in front of the tailor shop, looking into the window. I recognized him; it was Red, the rangy man who had paid the call at my hotel in company with the gray man. As prophecy, my dope-dream hadn't been too bad so far.

Then the Senator walked out of the alley across the way. I eased back out of sight and ran through the data. That confused me, so I ran through it again, in the other direction. That confused me still more.

"To hell with the data," I growled. "Let's get back to essentials." I patted my gun and came around the corner ready for action. They were gone.

I strolled on up to the place where Red had been standing, but I'm not enough of a tracker to pick out the spoor of a leather sole on concrete. I looked up and down the street, saw nobody, heard nothing.

"All right, come on out," I called. "I know you're there."

Nobody answered, which was just as well. I went along to the corner. Nobody there. The city looked as deserted as Pompeii—and as full of ancient sin.

In the dream I had followed Red through a door halfway down the block. Maybe that was a clue. In the absence of any other, it would have to do. I went along to the spot and found a big glass door with a large number 13 painted on it in swooping gold characters. It opened to a push, and I stepped into a foyer with Nile green walls and a spiral staircase and an odor like an abandoned library. Listening revealed a lot of stately silence. I went up the carpeted steps, came out on a landing with a gray door. I eased it open and saw the scruffy man six feet away with his back to me. He wasn't hiding; he was in the act of unlocking the door; I had my gun in his left kidney before he had time to turn around.

"Don't ever think I won't squeeze a few rounds into your spine if it works out that way," I said in what I was using for a voice. It had a big, hollow ring to it, like a speech in an empty auditorium.

His eyes looked like mice caught outside their holes. His mouth sagged sideways like an overloaded pocket.

"Tell me things," I said. "Don't worry about getting it all in order. Just start. I'll tell you when to stop."

"You—can't be here," he said in a choked version of the high-pitched squeak.