The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (9 page)

The address system clicked off amid clapping and a buzz of excited voices, punctuated by occasional shouts.

She must escape! She must get away!

Anna pressed back into the crowd. There was no longer any question about finding a man in a polka dot suit.
That
creature in white certainly wasn’t he. Though how could he have
recognized her?

She hesitated. Perhaps he had a message from the other one, if there really was one with polka dots.

No, she’d better go. This was turning out to be more of a nightmare than a lark.

Still –

She peeked back from behind the safety of a woman’s sleeve, and after a moment located the man in white.

His pasty-white face with its searching eyes was much closer. But what had happened to his
white
cap and gown?
Now
, they weren’t white at all! What optical fantasy was this?
She rubbed her eyes and looked again.

The cap and gown seemed to be made up of green and purple polka dots on a white background! So he was her man!

She could see him now as the couples spread out before him, exchanging words she couldn’t hear, but which seemed to carry an irresistible laugh response.

Very well, she’d wait.

Now that everything was cleared up and she was safe again behind her armor of objectivity, she studied him with growing curiosity. Since that first time she had never again got a good look at
him. Someone always seemed to get in the way. It was almost, she thought, as though he was working his way out toward her, taking every advantage of human cover, like a hunter closing in on wary
quarry, until it was too late . . .

He stood before her.

There were harsh clanging sounds as his eyes locked with hers. Under that feral scrutiny the woman maintained her mental balance by the narrowest margin.

The Student.

The Nightingale, for love of The Student, makes a Red Rose. An odious liquid was burning in her throat, but she couldn’t swallow.

Gradually she forced herself into awareness of a twisted, sardonic mouth framed between aquiline nose and jutting chin. The face, plastered as it was by white powder, had revealed no
distinguishing features beyond its unusual size. Much of the brow was obscured by the many tassels dangling over the front of his travestied mortarboard cap. Perhaps the most striking thing about
the man was not his face, but his body. It was evident that he had some physical deformity, to outward appearances not unlike her own. She knew intuitively that he was not a true hunchback. His
chest and shoulders were excessively broad, and he seemed, like her, to carry a mass of superfluous tissue on his upper thoracic vertebrae. She surmised that the scapulae would be completely
obscured.

His mouth twisted in subtle mockery. “Bell said you’d come.” He bowed and held out his right hand.

“It is very difficult for me to dance,” she pleaded in a low hurried voice. “I’d humiliate us both.”

“I’m no better at this than you, and probably worse. But I’d never give up dancing merely because someone might think I look awkward. Come, we’ll use the simplest
steps.”

There was something harsh and resonant in his voice that reminded her of Matt Bell. Only . . . Bell’s voice had never set her stomach churning.

He held out his other hand.

Behind him the dancers had retreated to the edge of the square, leaving the centre empty, and the first beats of her music from the orchestra pavilion floated to her with ecstatic clarity.

Just the two of them, out there . . . before a thousand eyes . . .

Subconsciously she followed the music. There was her cue – the signal for The Nightingale to fly to her fatal assignation with the white rose.

She must reach out both perspiring hands to this stranger, must blend her deformed body into his equally misshapen one. She must, because he was The Student, and she was The Nightingale.

She moved toward him silently and took his hands.

As she danced, the harsh-lit street and faces seemed gradually to vanish. Even The Student faded into the barely perceptible distance, and she gave herself up to The Unfinished Dream.

She dreamed that she danced alone in the moonlight, that she fluttered in solitary circles in the moonlight, fastened and appalled by the thing she must do to create a Red
Rose. She dreamed that she sang a strange and magic song, a wondrous series of chords, the song she had so long sought. Pain buoyed her on excruciating wings, then flung her heavily to earth. The
Red Rose was made, and she was dead.

She groaned and struggled to sit up.

Eyes glinted at her out of pasty whiteness. “That was quite a
pas –
only more
de seul
than
de deux
,” said The Student.

She looked about in uneasy wonder.

They were sitting together on a marble bench before a fountain. Behind them was a curved walk bounded by a high wall covered with climbing green, dotted here and there with white.

She put her hand to her forehead. “Where are we?”

“This is White Rose Park.”

“How did I get here?”

“You danced in on your own two feet through the archway yonder.”

“I don’t remember . . .”

“I thought perhaps you were trying to lend a bit of realism to the part. But you’re early.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are only white roses growing in here, and even
they
won’t be in full bloom for another month. In late June they’ll be a real spectacle. You mean you didn’t
know about this little park?”

“No. I’ve never ever been in the Via before. And yet . . .”

“And yet what?”

She hadn’t been able to tell anyone – not even Matt Bell – what she was now going to tell this man, an utter stranger, her companion of an hour. He had to be told because,
somehow, he too was caught up in the dream ballet.

She began haltingly. “Perhaps I
do
know about this place. Perhaps someone told me about it, and the information got buried in my subconscious mind until I wanted a white rose.
There’s really something behind my ballet that Dr. Bell didn’t tell you. He couldn’t, because I’m the only one who knows.
The Rose
comes from my dreams. Only, a
better word is nightmares. Every night the score starts from the beginning. In The Dream, I dance. Every night, for months and months, there was a little more music, a little more dancing. I tried
to get it out of my head, but I couldn’t. I started writing it down, the music and the choreography.”

The man’s unsmiling eyes were fixed on her face in deep absorption.

Thus encouraged, she continued. “For the past several nights I have dreamed almost the complete ballet, right up to the death of The Nightingale. I suppose I identify myself so completely
with The Nightingale that I subconsciously censor her song as she presses her breast against the thorn on the white rose. That’s where I always awakened, or at least, always did before
tonight. But I think I heard the music tonight. It’s a series of chords . . . thirty-eight chords, I believe. The first nineteen were frightful, but the second nineteen were marvellous.
Everything was too real to wake up. The Student, The Nightingale, the white roses.

But now the man threw back his head and laughed raucously. “You ought to see a psychiatrist!”

Anna bowed her head humbly.

“Oh, don’t take it too hard,” he said. “My wife’s even after
me
to see a psychiatrist.”

“Really?” Anna was suddenly alert. “What seems to be wrong with you? I mean, what does she object to?”

“In general, my laziness. In particular, it seems I’ve forgotten how to read and write.” He gave her widening eyes a sidelong look. “I’m a perfect parasite, too.
Haven’t done any real work in months. What would
you
call it if you couldn’t work until you had the final measures of the
Rose
, and you kept waiting, and nothing
happened?”

“Hell.”

He was glumly silent.

Anna asked, hesitantly, yet with a growing certainty. “This thing you’re waiting for . . . might it have anything to do with the ballet? Or to phrase it from your point of view, do
you think the completion of my ballet may help answer your problem?”

“Might. Couldn’t say.”

She continued quietly. “You’re going to have to face it eventually, you know. Your psychiatrist is going to ask you. How will you answer?”

“I won’t. I’ll tell him to go to the devil.”

“How can you be so sure he’s a
he
?”

“Oh? Well, if he’s a
she
, she might be willing to pose
alfresco
an hour or so. The model shortage is quite grave you know, with all of the little dears trying to be
painters.”

“But if she doesn’t have a good figure?”

“Well, maybe her face has some interesting possibilities. It’s a rare woman who’s a total physical loss.”

Anna’s voice was very low. “But what if
all
of her were very ugly? What if your proposed psychiatrist were me, Mr.
Ruy Jacques
?”

His great dark eyes blinked, then his lips pursed and exploded into insane laughter. He stood up suddenly. “Come, my dear, whatever your name is, and let the blind lead the
blind.”

“Anna van Tuyl,” she told him, smiling.

She took his arm. Together they strolled around the arc of the walk toward the entrance arch.

She was filled with a strange contentment.

Over the green-crested wall at her left, day was about to break, and from the Via came the sound of groups of die-hard revellers, breaking up and drifting away, like spectres at cock-crow. The
cheerful clatter of milk bottles got mixed up in it somehow.

They paused at the archway while the man kicked at the seat of the pants of a spectre whom dawn had returned to slumber beneath the arch. The sleeper cursed and stumbled to his feet in bleary
indignation.

“Excuse us, Willie,” said Anna’s companion, motioning for her to step through.

She did, and the creature of the night at once dropped into his former sprawl.

Anna cleared her throat. “Where now?”

“At this point I must cease to be a gentleman,
I’m
returning to the studio for some sleep, and
you
can’t come. For, if your physical energy is inexhaustible, mine
is not.” He raised a hand as her startled mouth dropped open. “Please, dear Anna, don’t insist. Some other night, perhaps.”

“Why, you – ”

“Tut tut.” He turned a little and kicked again at the sleeping man. “I’m not an utter cad, you know. I would never abandon a weak, frail, unprotected woman in the
Via.”

She was too amazed now even to splutter.

Ruy Jacques reached down and pulled the drunk up against the wall of the arch, where he held him firmly. “Dr. Anna van Tuyl, may I present Willie the Cork.”

The Cork grinned at her in unfocused somnolence.

“Most people call him the Cork because that’s what seals in the bottle’s contents,” said Jacques. “
I
call him the Cork because he’s always bobbing up.
He looks like a bum, but that’s just because he’s a good actor. He’s really a Security man tailing me at my wife’s request, and he’d only be too delighted for a little
further conversation with you. A cheery good morning to you both!”

A milk truck wheeled around the corner. Jacques leaped for its running board, and he was gone before the psychiatrist could voice the protest boiling up in her.

A gurgling sigh at her feet drew her eyes down momentarily. The Cork was apparently bobbing once more on his own private alcoholic ocean.

Anna snorted in mingled disgust and amusement, then hailed a cab. As she slammed the door, she took one last look at Willie. Not until the cab rounded the corner and cut off his muffled snores
did she realize that people usually don’t snore with their eyes half-opened and looking at you, especially with eyes no longer blurred with sleep, but hard and glinting.

Twelve hours later, in another cab and in a different part of the city, Anna peered absently out at the stream of traffic. Her mind was on the coming conference with Martha
Jacques. Only twelve hours ago Mrs. Jacques had been just a bit of necessary case history. Twelve hours ago Anna hadn’t really cared whether Mrs. Jacques followed Bell’s recommendation
and gave her the case. Now it was all different. She wanted the case, and she was going to get it.

Ruy Jacques – how many hours awaited her with this amazing scoundrel, this virtuoso of liberal – nay, loose – arts, who held locked within his remarkable mind the missing
pieces of their joint jigsaw puzzle of The Rose?

That jeering, mocking face – what would it look like without makeup? Very ugly, she hoped. Beside his, her own face wasn’t too bad.

Only – he was married, and she was en route at this moment to discuss preliminary matters with his wife, who, even if she no longer loved him, at least had prior rights to him. There were
considerations of professional ethics even in thinking about him. Not that she could ever fall in love with him or any other patient. Particularly with one who had treated her so cavalierly. Willie
the Cork, indeed!

As she waited in the cold silence of the great antechamber adjoining the office of Martha Jacques, Anna sensed that she was being watched. She was quite certain that by now she’d been
photographed, x-rayed for hidden weapons, and her fingerprints taken from her professional card. In colossal central police files a thousand miles away, a bored clerk would be leafing through her
dossier for the benefit of Colonel Grade’s visigraph in the office beyond.

In a moment –

“Dr. van Tuyl to see Mrs. Jacques. Please enter door B-3,” said the tinny voice of the intercom.

She followed a guard to the door, which he opened for her.

This room was smaller. At the far end a woman, a very lovely woman, whom she took to be Martha Jacques, sat peering in deep abstraction at something on the desk before her. Beside the desk, and
slightly to the rear, a moustached man in plain clothes stood, reconnoitring Anna with hawklike eyes. The description fitted what Anna had heard of Colonel Grade, Chief of the National Security
Bureau.