Callahan's Lady

by Spider Robinson

  Again she cut herself off.

  For the first time I remembered the scene she and I had acted out upstairs together. That, I realized now, was one scenario this imaginative woman had not invented. That one she had been reliving. From the other end of the leash, so to speak.

  “Well, I’ve got control now,” she said softly after a moment. “I played their games for long enough, and managed to sneak what I needed out of them, and found what I was looking for in spite of them and every disgusting thing they could do to me. I used some of the very gifts he thought he bought me with, the bastard. And my beta test has been just a wonderful success, everything I hoped it would be…” She glanced down at Sergei’s body. “And maybe even a little more. So now I intend to go out and change the face of contemporary American science. And contemporary American malehood. And any damn thing else that annoys me.”

  My arms ached dully. Damn, I’d picked heavy guns. Should have used Phillip’s idea of a fire. What was Phillip doing upstairs? Listening and wishing he’d been able to give Sergei a gun, no doubt. What else could he do? I envied him his place out of the line of fire. I hadn’t wanted to start this, hadn’t wanted to come downstairs in the first place…

  God, I suddenly realized, I really hadn’t wanted to. It had been Phillip’s idea. I had been terribly reluctant to even misconstrue Diana’s wishes, had been adamantly opposed to Phillip’s proposal even before I realized it involved dropping an extra story and freezing my butt off. Since that time I had not succeeded in misconstruing any requests for even a moment.

  How had I been able to do so, upstairs?

  Phillip had asked me to. He had said please.

  My brain went into high gear. She was a scientist. The force she was using on us was not black magic or some kind of ESP power, but a device of some kind, a physical utensil. It worked on anyone within its range, made one amenable to anyone’s requests.

  Except Diana. She was immune somehow.

  Where was the thing? Internal, tucked away inside some body cavity? She had left her purse and all her clothes upstairs, was it there, broadcasting through carpeting and oak floors and ceiling? She’d had nothing in her hands when she’d left my room, had been wearing only my own robe and slippers. Had I wandered dreamily away from the very thing that could have saved us all?

  No, that couldn’t be: the Russian would have been affected upstairs as well.

  But wait! Maybe he had been affected. The only request he’d have had time to hear before descending was, “Would you please try very hard not to make any noise, honeybunch?” Which was his earnest intention anyway.

  Figure this out, Maureen, there’s a clue here somewhere! And time is running out…

  It was, as I might have known it would be, Lady Sally who saved us all.

  She and the others had been asked to “please stop what you’re doing for the moment and stand still and pay silent attention.” She had no choice but to obey. But it is possible to construe “stand still” so as to conclude that it is all right for you to use your arms and hands. She was waving for my attention, and when she decided she had it (there was no way she could have been sure), she made the classic gesture you use to tell someone that the two of you are about to play a game of charades.

  There was no need for any additional gestures; I took her meaning at once. Now I had it narrowed down: Diana’s control gizmo was in one of three places. But what in the hell could I do about it?

  “And for a start,” Diana said, “you annoy me, Sherry-hon—with your stupid ‘why’ questions, and your wicked attempt to control me with these, after all we meant to each other once—”

  She yanked both the weapons from my cramping hands, and I actually might have thanked her if it had been possible—it felt like my arms were falling off! She looked around thoughtfully for a moment, then dropped both guns on the wrecked sign, where anyone trying to pick them up would fail. Every one of us irrevocably rooted where we stood, and she secured the weapons. God, she was paranoid! If only she’d been as paranoid as Sergei, and killed herself the first time control was ever taken from her…

  “—and besides, you’re the only one in the room who’s overdressed,” she went on, malicious amusement creeping into her voice. “I think that’s rude, don’t you? Here, let me just…well, you’re not too overdressed now, are you?”

  “No.” It looked like it was my turn in the barrel again.

  “My, you must have been cold, hon,” she chatted on. I was getting awfully tired of the sound of her voice. “You can talk if you like, I rather like the way you protest…oh, hell.” My elbows were locked against my sides to brace the weight of the guns; the coat would not come off. “Okay, would you move just enough to help me?”

  I had considerably less than a second to make my decision, so I probably didn’t change my mind more than a million times. But in the end I went with the only real shot I had with cramped fingers. Praying I was correct, and taking the most elastic possible interpretation of “help me,” I lowered my arms just enough to snatch both her earrings off.

  And said, before she had time to react, “Would you please SHUT UP?”

  An astonishing spectrum of expressions passed like skirmishing armies across her face, but none of them succeeded in opening her lips so much as a fraction of an inch. That may have been her least favorite question in the world, even before she invented her gizmo, and she hated it now. I’d guessed right!

  “And back off,” I added, suddenly revolted beyond all bearing by her beautiful hands on my body.

  She took two paces backwards, clutching toward my throat futilely as she went.

  “Stand still.”

  She obeyed.

  “This isn’t going to make you unhappy, you know,” I said. “Not in the long run, anyway. I started realizing how many slips you kept making, even with that paranoia of yours. You wanted to be stopped. You’re no unhappier now than you were when you came in here tonight.”

  It shames me a little to recall how long I just stood there, drinking the sight of her struggling face like a fine wine. I don’t know whether anyone else would have moved if they’d been able to. Maybe to get a better view.

  Eventually I turned my mind to practical matters.

  Let’s see. The tools at hand included a shotgun and a Russky hand-cannon. But for sentimental reasons, I favored the fire ax Sergei had wanted to use on her. I’ve never minded getting my hands a little dirty in a good cause. I felt his shade would be grateful. I knew just where I wanted to put my first shot.

  And then I would free my friends, one at a time to keep it orderly, and allow them each a shot. And then we would…

  And then we would…

  What were we, a totally heterogeneous group of eccentric denizens of the world’s best whorehouse, going to do with a couple of fresh corpses and absolute power?

  “Lady Sally?” I called. “Would you please get fixed and come over here and help me figure out what the hell to do?”

  And burst into tears.

  She came at once, already barking orders. “Kate, would you see to Judith at once? And then Priscilla, please, and anyone else who needs you? Would the rest of you—excepting Diana—please be calm and untroubled, and get yourselves cleaned up and dressed properly again when you’re able? And please talk softly if at all, dears, we need to think.”

  There was a general sigh of relief, of several kinds of tension. People dressed rapidly. Very few had anything to say.

  And then she had reached me.

  I swam in Sally’s hug. I needed that hug more than I’ve ever needed anything. “You did splendidly, darling,” she murmured in my ear as she stroked me. “You were magnificent. You’ve upheld my highest traditions. A client was in need and you moved enough to help her. It’s over now.” She did not say, “Please don’t cry,” and I sobbed and sobbed in her arms until I had cried it all out, all the horror and panic and disgust and fear and awful hope and disappointment, and even, toward the end there, a good
deal of the rage that had shaken me to my core. Perhaps the very worst of what I had experienced was that I now understood, deep in my heart, the profound sense of violation and outrage that must have driven Diana to invent what she had. I had just walked a mile in her shoes, and could no longer even simply hate her.

  “Sherry,” Lady Sally said when I had finally cried it out, “would you please consider yourself now and henceforth, and no matter what anyone else ever asks of you, free to do any damned thing you want that doesn’t hurt someone unnecessarily?”

  It was the most sweeping freedom anyone had ever offered me. Citizenship in the freest nation on Earth doesn’t confer that much freedom, even to its richest citizens. Perhaps especially not to them.

  But of course she had already offered me—recommended to me!—that same freedom, in almost those exact words, years before. On the night she accepted me into her employment.

  “Thank you, Your Ladyship. I believe I will,” I said, and stretched until every muscle cracked.

  “Then I am well pleased.” She scrubbed at the lipstick on her and began to dress herself, ignoring the helplessly glowering Diana.

  “And the first thing I’m free to do is thank you about a million times for tugging on your ear like that,” I said. “That saved us.”

  “Well, it had to be either the ring or the earrings; she simply wasn’t wearing anything else of her own. And she had to be using something to shield herself from the effects of the damned thing, and it made sense that one would keep the shield nearest the brain. Here, let’s try them.”

  She took the earrings from me, and put one on each of us. “Let’s try a test,” she said, and characteristically picked the first thing that came into her head. “Please hug me.”

  Grinning, I hugged her.

  We giggled together as we hugged. In a joke voice she said, “No, no, no—”

  “We’re going about this wrong,” I said. “Please stop hugging me.”

  She disobeyed me. “Please stop hugging me,” she said.

  And with exquisite pleasure, as much as that stretch had given me, I ignored her too.

  But we cut it short; we were busy. “So they work even one at a time,” Lady Sally said, taking mine in her fingers and examining it. “Two earrings for symmetry, surely, but there didn’t have to be a shield-generator in each one. Braces and belt. God, how paranoid she must be. Afraid of her own magic. How bad could it have been if the shield had failed? She’d still have been the only one who knew what was going on, still in control.”

  “Lady, what are we going to do?”

  She frowned. “Some distasteful things. I’ve dawdled long enough.” She checked on Judith and Priscilla, then approached the silently writhing Diana, who clutched vainly at her as she approached. “Stop that at once,” she said, sounding for all the world like a stern aunt taking a rectal temperature, and Diana slumped resignedly. “Please don’t struggle, now,” Lady Sally admonished her. She took Diana’s right hand in hers, and with some effort managed to remove the milk opal ring. “Answer by moving your head: you want this?” She held it up so Diana could see it.

  Diana nodded vigorously.

  “Answer me by moving your head: you think you need this?”

  Again.

  “Think about how much you want this. Think about why you think you need it.”

  Diana’s face was suffused with a hopeless naked yearning.

  Lady Sally said, looking her square in the eye, “Forget it. Really.”

  Diana’s face smoothed over.

  “Please forget all about it,” the Lady amplified, “what it is, and what it does, and why you felt it was necessary, and at least the last three crucial insights that allowed you to create it, and above all forget everything—except my orders!—that has transpired from this moment back to the time you walked in my House.”

  Diana now had the preoccupied expression of someone who is playing a game of chess with herself that is going to take hours.

  “Are you mad at anyone anymore?” the Lady asked her softly.

  She shook her head no, slowly, wonderingly, and went back to her chess game.

  Lady Sally turned back to me. “I must confess that a part of me is tempted to just put this thing back on her finger, ask her to make sure that it never leaves her finger, and turn her loose. She’d never figure out exactly what was wrong, but for the rest of her life, she’d be exactly the sort of agreeable, pliable blonde that some men dream of. She certainly deserves it, for what she has done to my friends this night. But there’s too much risk that someone else would figure things out, and take it from her dead hand. And besides, I’d hate to be responsible if someone asked her to drop dead.”

  I giggled. “Me, I’d kind of want to be around the first time someone asked her to go—”

  “Please, dear. Vengeance is counterproductive. Not to mention the fact that it gets your soul all sticky.”

  Vengeance made me think of something. “Lady, what’s going to happen when Sergei’s people find out he’s dead?”

  “Oh, God. Well, there’s no publicity problem at least. When a KGB man dies in a—”

  “Sergei was KGB?”

  “No, dear, he was a private citizen who carted around a poison tooth and a small cannon as eccentricities. As I was saying, when a KGB bites down in a bordello across the river from the United Nations, there is very little difficulty in making it didn’t happen. But we must be very careful never to let them suspect for an instant why he didn’t do it. You and I must give that some thought. But first things first. Wait here patiently, everyone!”

  Together we dragged Sergei’s body out into Reception, where Ruth still snored. We left him curled up as naturally as we could on a couch, covered him with his coat. I changed to my own overcoat, and my own boots. We fetched out the guns and ax and smashed sign; the weapons went into the gun-locker and the shards of wood and paper went out into the dumpster. Then we hurried back into the Parlor. Kate had taken Judith and Priscilla up to the Infirmary.

  Lady Sally went to Diana. “Diana, listen to me carefully, please. In just a minute I am going to send you home in a taxi. But I want you to remember this, always. The next time someone tries to control you, Diana, and every time thereafter, please remember that their reaction to you is as natural as your height and beauty and brains. Forgive them their flaw, as you would have them forgive you yours…and you’ll find it makes it easier for you to outwit them. Once an opponent angers you, you’re his, you know. Will you do that for me?”

  Diana nodded her head slowly.

  “That’s a good girl. Will you do two things for me when you get home tonight? Yes? All right: first, regain the power of speech, and second, forget you’ve ever been to my House or even heard of it.”

  Diana nodded again.

  “Now please wait there on the couch until I can get you a cab, dear.”

  Diana did as she was asked.

  Lady Sally addressed the room. “Darlings? Lords and Ladies? Attend me please. I am extremely reluctant to do this. I find that a mind is a very poor place to try and bury something ugly for any length of time. Pressure builds and finally blows out a gasket somewhere else. I suspect some of you may, in the fullness of time, end up having some sort of seemingly inexplicable mental turmoil, and most of you will end up in the hands of expensive therapists who won’t have a clue as to what’s really wrong with you. But that can’t be helped, I’m afraid. I shall try to be there for you if I can—but to allow this knowledge to remain in your minds would leave a hole in the world too big to mend. Would you all please forget that anything unpleasant or unusual has occurred here tonight?”

  “Yes, Lady,” came the soft chorus, after which everyone looked vague and slightly disoriented. They found themselves facing her, so they waited, patiently and amiably, to hear what she had to say.

  “Would you all,” she said clearly, “please consider yourselves now and henceforth, and no matter what anyone else ever asks of you, free to do any da
mned thing you want that doesn’t hurt someone unnecessarily?”

  This chorus was more like a rousing cheer. “Yes, Lady!”

  “Then let the party resume, my darlings.”

  As the assembly broke up into laughter and conversation and slightly puzzled good cheer, Lady Sally motioned me to follow her and strolled casually to the fireplace. We stood before the crackling hearth, side by side, silent with our shared knowledge, for several minutes. I had a lot to think about.

  Our introspective trance was broken finally by Phillip, who came down the stairs with a puzzled smile on his face. He had taken advantage of Lady Sally’s blanket benediction of freedom to dress. “That must have been some incredible client I was just with. Cut me up like a side of beef, and I can’t recall a single thing about her—if it was a her—and as far as I remember, it didn’t hurt a bit. Who was that naked person?”

  “Don’t worry about it, lad,” Lady Sally told him.

  “Okay.”

  “And see Kate when she’s free, get yourself looked after.”

  “I will,” he promised, and wandered off to the bar.

  She returned her gaze to the flames.

  “I’ve always liked a fireplace,” she said. “My husband, too. Something restful about a bit of domesticated fire caged in stone.” She twirled the ring meditatively in her hand. “Handy for throwing things into.”

  Maybe a professional pitcher could have thrown that ring harder and maybe not. It shattered into dust on the back wall of the fireplace, and the dust showered down over the flames.

  I took off my milk opal earring and watched, mesmerized, what firelight did to it. “You should have waited until I took this off and asked me to forget, too,” I said.