by Allen Steele
There’s a faint beeping sound behind us. John gently pulls me aside to let a small vehicle pass. Containers are stacked on its open bed and it floats several inches off the floor, but it doesn’t have anyone aboard. I stare at it until it disappears from sight; it seems to vanish into the ceiling far away from us, and that’s when I realize the corridor bends upward slightly.
John talks to me as we walk.
“How are you feeling today, Alec?”
“Good. I’m feeling very good, John.”
“That’s good. Have you been happy here?”
“Yes, I…I’m very happy here.”
“Very good, Alec. We’ve been very pleased to have you as our guest. Do you know what that means, Alec? Guest?”
“No…no, I don’t.” I blink three times, but for some reason I don’t hear the voice of my associate.
“Your associate has gone away for just a little bit, Alec,” John says. “He’s leaving us alone for awhile. Do you mind?” I don’t completely understand his question, and not having my associate makes me a little nervous; I shake my head. “Well, a guest is someone who has been invited to come and stay at someone’s house. This is our house, Alec, and you’re our guest, and you’ve been a very good guest. Do you understand now?”
No, because I don’t remember anyone inviting me here. But I don’t want to make John mad at me, so I say: “Yes.”
“Very good, Alec. I also want to tell you that you can stay here as our guest for as long as you want. We like you very much, and we would like to have you remain with us. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say, more truthfully now.
“That’s good. Now, here’s a big question, one that I want you to think about a little before you answer. Do you understand me?”
I think about it a little. “Yes, John. I understand you.”
I look directly at him when I say this, and now I notice something odd: John’s eyes have changed color. They’ve always been brown before, but now they’re pink.
John laughs. “I’m glad you do, Alec, but that isn’t the question. The question is…do you remember what you were doing before you came here?”
I think harder this time, but can’t recall anything past the moment when I first woke up in the White Room. On the other hand, thinking is a very difficult thing for me to do; it always seems as if there’s something in the head that won’t let me. It’s like the disappearing door in the White Room: I know it’s there, but whenever I’ve walked over to look for it, all I’ve found is a blank wall. “No,” I say after a few moments, “I don’t remember.”
“Nothing at all?”
I look at John. His face is as placid as always, but now there’s a strange depth in his pearl-colored eyes, and even as I look, something appears in my memory
(a face)
that I can’t identify, yet the more I concentrate, the more
(a young man’s face)
it seems familiar, as if I’ve seen it recently, even though I can’t
(a young man with that face, smoking a cigarette)
put a name to it, or say where I’ve seen it before.
“Do you remember something?” John asks.
“I remember…I remember a face.”
“Is it your own?” I don’t know, but I don’t believe so. I shake my head. “Have you seen it recently?”
“No…no, I don’t think so.”
“I see. Do you remember anything else before you arrived here?”
“No.” And that’s the truth. So far as I’m concerned, my life had begun forty-eight bowls of chicken soup ago.
“Well, then,” John says, “let me tell you a little bit of what you don’t remember. You were very sick when you were brought here, but someone asked us to take care of you and so we did. Now you’re even better than you were before you got sick, and now you’re our guest, and as I said before, you’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you wish. Do you understand?”
“I…I…”
“Yes, Alec?”
“I think so.”
“You think you understand?” I nod again. “But you have a question, don’t you?”
“All the other people in the room…were they…?”
John stops before a closed door. He passes his hand in front of a tiny panel on the wall next to it, but the door doesn’t open at once. “Sick? Yes, they were. They were all sick when they got here, and we were able to cure most of them. Some of them didn’t get as well as you, though, and so we had to take them someplace else, but you’re doing fine. You’ve made wonderful progress, and we’re very proud of you.”
The door parts in the middle and slides open; two people step out, brushing past us with scarcely a glance. Startled by their sudden appearance, I shrink back against John, but he lays a comforting arm around my shoulders. “It’s all right, Alec. Everyone here is your friend. You can go inside now.”
The room is very small, vacant, and almost as featureless as the White Room; the door closes as soon as John and I enter. “Great Hall,” John says, and there’s a motion from beneath the floor that makes me grab the slender metal rail that encircles the room. “This is an elevator,” he explains. “It takes you places…just as I’m taking you someplace now.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere special. A place you’ve never seen before.”
The door opens onto a short hallway: hard marble floor, pale blue walls hung with framed oil paintings of rolling countryside, mountain landscapes, and river valleys. The paintings are very old, yet they somehow look familiar. I stare at them as I shuffle behind John while he walks to a carved oak door at its end. He waits patiently until I catch up with him, then he opens the door and leads me through.
Before us is an enormous rotunda, one so huge that our footsteps echo off the domed ceiling far above our heads. Medieval tapestries drape white stone walls between tall, round columns; beneath the columns are archways leading to corridors branching off from four sides of the rotunda. A vast mural is painted across the inside of the dome: angels and cherubim float around an ancient bearded man in a robe who is reaching out to touch the extended hand of a reclining nude man. A broad staircase spirals up to a gallery encircling the rotunda; archways on the second floor lead to even more corridors. Sunlight gleams through windows above the gallery and through an open arch on the far side of the hall.
The floor is a mosaic: hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces of multicolored ceramic and quartz form a black surface sprinkled with tiny white jewels, with long threads of hammered gold tracing concentric circles and odd right-angled patterns. The floor looks rough, but it’s mirror-smooth beneath my sandals; the patterns are familiar, but I can’t place them, let alone give them a name. All I know was that they’re achingly beautiful.
“This is the Great Hall of our master’s house,” John said. “There’s forty-two rooms in the castle, and they must be—”
“The master?”
“Pasquale Chicago…but you must call him Mister Chicago, never Pasquale. Can you say that, Alec? Mister Chicago.”
“Mister Chicago,” I slowly repeat. Again, something tickles my memory: the last word seems familiar.
“Very good. This is where he lives when he isn’t absent.”
“Absent?”
A small smile. “Away on business…just as he is now. One day you may get to meet him.”
“When?”
“Someday. However, his household continues to operate just as if he was home, so it scarcely matters if you ever meet him or not. Mister Chicago is a very busy man, because he is also a great man, greater than anyone else who lives here. You’re his guest, Alec, and you must always respect this. Do you understand?”
I nod. “Who is Mister Chicago?”
“A great man,” John repeats, a little more firmly now, “and that is all that matters to you.” Then he takes my hand. “Come now. There’s much more I have to show you.”
He guides me across the Great Hall toward t
he sunlit arch, our sandals softly padding against the mosaic floor. I hear a faint scrubbing noise; I look around, spot a man in a hooded robe like John’s and mine. He’s kneeling on his hands and knees between two columns. There’s a pail of soapy water next to him; he’s diligently scrubbing the floor with a brush. He briefly raises his eyes as we walk past, then quickly looks down again.
“Who is he?”
“Someone you’ll meet later,” John says.
Past the archway is a broad balcony surrounded by a wrought-iron balustrade. Turning around to look, I see an enormous octagonal dome surrounded by four gable-roofed wings, each containing dozens of casement windows. At the apex of the dome is a glass hemisphere, like a little greenhouse. A castle of gray stone: mysterious and wonderful, yet somehow frightening.
And beyond the parapet…
Glades and ponds and meadows, a landscape stretching out for miles, its horizon a hazy line in the far distance where a pale yellow sky melds with the ground. There is no sun, only a warm mellow glow from a vaulted ceiling rising above patchwork vineyards and thickets of small trees. Narrow dirt paths lead away from the castle, weaving between apple groves and carefully cultivated gardens, disappearing into the distance.
I smell roses and ripening grapes, maple and fresh-cut grass, daisies and sod. Strange birds sing weird songs as they flit from branch to branch. A bumblebee settles on my wrist for a moment, then buzzes off before I can react. From somewhere far off, goats protest some momentary distraction; on a terrace below the balcony, a calico cat nearly the size of a half-grown dog stands up, gracefully arches its back, then saunters off in search of whatever passes for a mouse in these parts.
I stare and I stare and I stare, my eyes moving from one wonder to the next, as hungry as my stomach had been when I had first awakened. No chicken soup served in a sterile white room, this, but a smorgasbord of sight and sound and aroma.
“Welcome to your new home, Alec.” John stands beside me, his hands clasped together within the sleeves of his robe. “I hope you’ll be happy here.”
“My home?” I can’t believe what he’s just said. All that I see—the gardens, the manicured lawns, the clear brook meandering alongside a pathway until it disappears into a distant orchard, the fantastic manse behind me—this is where I now live?
“For as long as you wish to remain here.” John’s voice is very soft. “For the rest of your life, if you wish.”
A stone stairway leads down to the terrace where the cat prowls. Without a second thought, I start moving toward the stairs, intending to take it down to the terrace…and then beyond, out into this new, beautiful world.
I haven’t gotten as far as the third step, though, when John clears his throat.
“Oh, dear,” he says. “Will you look at this?”
I look back at him. He’s still standing at the railing, but now he’s gazing down at the balcony’s white tiles. My eyes travel to where he’s looking, but I don’t see anything unusual.
John glances up at me; there’s consternation in his face. “Here,” he says, pointing down at a spot just in front of his toes. “Look here…this is terrible!”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, nor am I very interested. John is my friend, though, and something has upset him, so I reluctantly walk back up the steps and to his side. “Come closer,” he says, bending down on one knee. He gently runs a forefinger across the tiles and holds it up to my face. “Do you see?”
There’s a faint gray smudge on his fingertip.
“Yes,” I say. “I see.”
“Filthy. Just filthy.” John tsks as he wipes off his finger in a fold of his robe. “It gets dirty here quickly, but I bet this terrace hasn’t been properly mopped in a week, at very least.”
He stands up and strides past me to the stairway, where he kneels again and runs his finger across the top step. “Oh, and it’s even worse here,” he complains, peering at his fingertip again. “Just awful…”
“Yes, it is…”
“You agree?” He looks up at me sharply. “That this place is filthy?”
“Umm…yes, I think so…”
“Good! I’m so happy!” Brisking his hands together, he stands up again and walks away from the stairs. “Well, we’ll just have to do something about this, won’t we? Come along…”
I glance back at the magnificent world that had just been introduced to me. All I really want to do is to walk down those filthy stairs and across the grimy terrace below them, out to the nearest germ-filled path and away into this warm and inviting world, to become lost in its vast and intriguing beauty. I want this more than anything else…
“Come on!” John snaps, clapping his hands together. “Hurry up! We’ve got to take care of this before Mister Chicago finds it!”
“But you said he was…”
“Absent, yes…but I also said that his household operates as if he never left. Now hurry!”
I hasten to catch up with John, who is already standing within the archway, and follow him as he strides quickly back through the Great Hall, passing the robed man silently scrubbing at the floor on his hands and knees, until we walk through an arch and find a small alcove hidden between two columns.
He stops before a plain wooden door within the alcove and stands aside. “Say your name to this door and tell it to open. Quickly now! Not a moment to lose!”
I look at the door. “Umm…Alec.”
“Say ‘I’m Alec…open.’ Hurry!”
“I’m Alec, open.”
The door slides open; within is a large walk-in closet whose shelves are filled with buckets, brushes, feather dusters, sponges, sprayers, toilet paper, folded towels, cans of this and bottles of that. Arranged on hooks on the far wall is a large selection of brooms and mops.
John shoves past me into the closet. “Take this, and this, and one of these,” he says as he snatches up a bucket, a mop, and a can of some evil-smelling off-white powder and thrusts everything into my hands. He points to a spigot mounted on the wall next to the door. “Fill the bucket halfway with water. Hurry!”
Bewildered, I stare at the bucket for a moment, then at the mop, then the spigot. “I don’t know…”
“Ask your associate!” John snaps.
He told me that my associate wasn’t with us, but when I blink three times, the little stick man appears before me. He shows me how to place the bucket beneath the spigot and twist its knob. I repeat his motions; cold water gushes into the bucket. When the bucket is half-full, John impatiently reaches around me to turn off the water.
“Now put a little soap in the water,” he says, his voice nowhere near as friendly as it had been before. When I give him a blank look, he grabs the canister out of my hands. “Like this,” he says, then shakes a fistful of the powder into the bucket. “See?”
“Uh…yes, I…”
“Outstanding!” He flicks a hand over his shoulder as he backs out of the closet. “Quick now! Bring everything and follow me! Hurry! We’re wasting time!”
Encumbered by the mop, the detergent bottle, and the heavy bucket of water, I scurry to catch up with John as he stalks out of the alcove, through the Great Hall, and back onto the balcony. Once we’re back where we started, he halts in the same place where he had shown me my wonderful new home and points at the very same spot where he wiped his fingers.
“Mop.”
I try to hand the mop to him.
“No,” he says coldly. “You mop.”
I stare at him in utter confusion. “I…don’t know how.”
“Blink three times,” he says.
The stick man dips the head of his mop into the bucket, lifts it out again, places it on the floor and begins to move it back and forth. It’s now plain what’s expected of me, but I still don’t know why. Once more, I look away at the incredible world that lies beyond the parapet…
“I don’t want to, John. I want to go out there.” I drop the mop and start walking toward the stairs.
A dagger of
electric ice stabs into my brain.
I howl and grab my head. My legs become liquid, give way beneath me. The cold hard tiles slam against my face; a coppery taste rushes in my mouth, and there’s a hot fluid sensation between my thighs as the knife slices somewhere just behind my eyes and
(the PAIN it hurts like)
it hurts like
(rolling down a hill over and over)
and I hear
(a woman screaming something crashing)
and then it’s suddenly gone and now I’m lying on the balcony, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I clutch at my head, my pulse pounding at my temples. There’s a dull acidic sensation beneath my legs as the robe soaks up my urine. My tongue involuntarily licks the blood that my teeth have drawn from my inside lower lip.
“I’m sorry, Alec.” John is kneeling beside me, his hand stroking the bristles of my hair. His voice is as kindly as when we first met. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, but maybe it’s better that you learn this now and not later.”
I manage to raise my head to look at him. “You’re our guest,” he says, “and you can stay here for as long as you like, but there are some things that are expected of you in return, nor are you free to do as you wish.”
“Free? I don’t…I don’t know that…”
“No,” John says softly. “You don’t understand. Not now, at least…perhaps later, but not now.” His hand falls to my shoulder. “Listen to me carefully, because I will tell you this only once. If anyone around here ever tells you to do something for them…to do anything for them…just do it, because if you don’t, they’ll make your head hurt again. Do you understand at least this?”