Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  The cab stopped in front of one such entrance, and Art put money into the slot in the partition, got back his change, and disembarked. He walked right into the bright rocky tunnel of the entry, through block walls that looked as thick as those of some ancient castle —or cave, perhaps, where the first men had sheltered from the terrors of the night they could not understand.

  He came quickly to a place where the bright-lit narrow passage was blocked by a gate of steel grillwork, heavily functional despite its ornamentation of nymphs and cupids. In a booth built into the wall beside the gate sat a gray-uniformed man who looked out at Art through a small window of bulletproof glass. Through the window Art could see that this guard had before him rows of buttons, and closed-circuit TV monitors, and a pistol within easy reach. The guard was eyeing Art with alert suspicion, no doubt sharpened by the lateness of the hour.

  “I want to visit George Parr,” Art said. “Tell him Art Rodney is out here.” He checked the time on his watch and began to wait.

  Less than three minutes passed before George came into view beyond the iron gate, which slid open at his arrival. He was smiling and holding out his big-knuckled hand. Aside from the callus pads over the base knuckles of forefinger and middle finger, there was nothing peculiar in the feel of George’s hand, lethal weapon though it was supposed to be. And George was rather short. Sturdy, but not bulging or rippling with muscle inside his transparent shirt. His pale hair, almost the color of Rita’s, was crew-cut to the same length as his neat goatee.

  “How’s it going, Art?” George didn’t look upset about anything, but then Art could not recall that he ever had.

  “Well, I’m upset, naturally. I want to talk to Rita right away.”

  “She’s been here, but now she’s gone again.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. Come in.” With gentle pressure on an arm George steered him through the gate. Speaking to the microphone below the guard’s window, George added: “My brother-in-law. He’s going to be staying with us for a day or so.”

  Art let himself be steered inside, though he wasn’t at all sure about the duration of his stay. “Where is she now?” he asked impatiently. “Couldn’t you have talked to her?”

  George simply continued to smile in his likable way. “Come on in and have a look at our new home. We can talk the whole situation over. It’s not something that can be settled in a couple of words. Ann’s fixing up a bed for you.”

  “ALL RIGHT.” Art sighed, abandoning whatever hope he had left of somehow catching up with Rita tonight. Let Ann fix the bed. He was willing to bet she would never offer to share it with him, which was fine with Art. He would make polite gestures of lust at her, whether or not she had the good manners to reciprocate, but in truth she aroused him not at all.

  Another few meters of tunnel and they had reached the interior of the block. It looked just about as Art had expected, but still he was impressed. Most of the interior was a single open space, wide and pleasant, green now with summer grass and trees and shrubs. This central park was mostly in darkness now, but was surrounded by the lighted windows and patios of the block’s thirty or so townhouses, which were all backed against the block’s encircling outer wall and were probably integral with it.

  Shaded lights on knee-high poles gently illuminated curved paths of flagstone paving that branched off into the balmy night in several directions. Crickets sang of summer and tranquility. In spite of his worries Art found himself pausing, soothed by the peaceful scene. He said: “It looks like you have things nice in here.”

  George pounced gratefully on this retreat to banality. “I tell you, it makes me feel a lot easier about the kids. There’s even talk about getting our own elementary school started right here in the block.” He gestured the direction for Art to take and they walked on. Somewhere nearby, people playing string instruments were rehearsing a melody, starting arid stopping and trying again. Somewhere else a wild party was in progress, but its uproar came heavily muted from some deep interior place, and to the musicians inside their own house it must be entirely inaudible.

  “Yes, very nice,” said Art, following where George led.

  “We have our own emergency power generator, too,” said George. “In case vandals knock out the city power or there’s a breakdown. That’s happened a couple of times in the last year.”

  “Good idea.” Art’s sandals scraped on the slight unevenness of the flagstones as they walked a pleasant curve between the houses’ vine and bush-screened patios and the openness of the central park. Each house was surprisingly private behind its trellises or open-work wall or vines. Art wondered if Rita might be sheltering at this moment in one of these discreet dwellings, hidden by friendly conspiratorial neighbors until Ann could throw the persecuting husband off the track with some halfway plausible story. “Yes, this is a beautiful place.”

  “Costs an arm and a leg and a testicle too,” said George, his voice now turning grim. “I don’t think there’s a man in the block who doesn’t have a job—I mean a good job—or his own business. In fact I’m repressin’ sure there isn’t.” Talking man-to-man, George would sometimes use strong language. In front of ladies, Art had noticed, he never did.

  “How are things at the dojo?” Art asked. Then he turned his head at the unexpected sound of a splash, followed by a trill of feminine laughter. Way out in the middle of the common park the lights of a swimming pool glowed in the soft, safe darkness, and he saw the wet tan gleam of a bikinied body. What were possibly the lights of another pool were almost completely blocked off by intervening shrubbery.

  “Oh, good enough, I guess,” said George. “Here’s our happy home.” He walked behind a vine-covered trellis to a patio. Ann, as if she might have heard them coming, was peering out with a hospitable smile from her doorway of white stone and Spanish-looking ironwork. Stalking across the Parrs’ hedged-in patio on thin metal legs, a kneehigh electric bugkiller lured flying creatures to itself with a nervously flickering eye of yellow light and a whisper of attractive noises. It broke its whispering with zapping hiccoughs as some of itslarger victims were ingested.

  As Art had expected, Ann’s dress was radical. Her skirt fell almost to her knees, and her blouse almost completely covered her breasts and left only a narrow strip of midriff bare. Both garments were loose-fitting and practically opaque. Also as he had expected, Ann’s chin was lifted high in challenge despite her smile; she would be glad to have him stay in her house for a day or so and argue; maybe she would be able to convert him. Her face was reasonably pretty, and her hair a curly brown. She was small and strong, like George, and her strength was even more subtle than his.

  “Rita thought you might come after her, Art,” she greeted him. “You didn’t bring a bag? That’s all right, there’s a clothing vendor right here in the block. Of course you’re staying with us, we have a spare room. My brother was here for a couple of days, but he moved out when Rita showed up.” Ann shrugged away her sibling’s behavior.

  “Fred’s here in Chicago too?”

  “Yes. The day he finished high school he just had to apply for Basic Income, like a fool. Couldn’t see going to college, or even trying to go. He wants George to give him a job, or so he says. Come and see your children, they’re asleep.”

  INSIDE the townhouse the furnishings were rather sparse and disorderly, indicating that the Parrs were not yet done with the job. Evidently they had barely time to unpack in their new house before a series of their crazy relatives began to arrive from California. Following Ann to some ascending stairs, Art noted an electric fireplace in the living room, where the floor looked like real hardwood. He could well believe that only the prosperous lived in this block.

  After gesturing for silence in a second-floor hallway, Ann slid open a door. Art went in to find Timmy and Paula curled up in their usual positions in the strange bed, child bodies clothed in opaque pajamas like unopened flower buds all sheathed in leaves. Across the room in another bed were two sma
ll mounds that would be George Jr. and his younger brother Enoch. On the wall Art noticed a version of what he recognized as a traditional Christian statuette, depicting the putative founder of the sect fastened to a wooden cross. The figure was quite large for the little room, and crudely but strongly carved in some pale wood. He wondered if Fred might have done it.

  “Don’t wake them,” Ann whispered, as Art bent over his own two children. “They’re worn out from traveling.”

  Art, who had not intended to touch them and risk an awakening, now gave each a kiss. They were not as deeply asleep as he had thought, for Paula reached up to tangle baby fingers in his beard. Then, as if reassured, she slept again. Tim, almost three years older, murmured: “Daddy.”

  “Go to sleep,” Daddy whispered. And Tim did so, for once.

  Art walked downstairs again with Ann. “So,” he commented, “Rita’s gone into hiding somewhere. How long does she expect the children to stay here?”

  “Art, you know we don’t mind having them in the least. Husband George, where are you?”

  “That wasn’t what I asked.”

  “Black Russian?” asked George from below, appearing in the doorway of what was evidently the recreation room, holding a couple of plastic bottles in his hands.

  “Thanks, I will,” Art answered. Inside the rec room was a bar, and a second fireplace, with a tap marked INSTRUCTIONS still hanging from one andiron. Art sank down with a sigh upon a leather-like couch, and received from George a glass with ice cubes floating in a dark and powerful fluid.

  Ann had vanished, apparently to the kitchen, for there drifted in sounds suggesting the preparation of food. From out there somewhere she called: “How do you like our medieval fortress? I’m very happy with it. The kids have a safe place now.”

  “It’s very nice,” Art called back, downing his first swallow of Black Russian. “I think I saw two swimming pools, didn’t I?”

  In a chair opposite the sofa George sat, or squatted, pulling up his sandalled feet and folding his legs in an effortless contortion. “The pool in the bushes is more Ann’s than anybody else’s. She’s always wanted a nude pool available, and when the blockhouse corporation was being formed she kept standing up in meetings and demanding.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t I?” Ann, smiling, was in the doorway, already pushing a serving cart laden with sandwiches and cups of soup. Had she been expecting Art? “You know me, Art.”

  He thought he did. While moving clutter from a small table to make room for some food, Art got a good look at the covers of some of Ana’s radical magazines. The cover photos featured startlingly shrouded bodies, and bold print promised that the articles inside were of shocking frankness, detailing what every adult ought to know about the history of celibacy and the ancient, once-honorable techniques of self-control. Art took these to be the kind of magazines that promised more in the way of obscenity than they usually delivered. He would have expected a more sophisticated obscenity than this on Ann’s coffee table. He thought that she was watching for his reaction to the magazines, and he tried to show none at all. Maybe they were just left there as argument pieces.

  Art didn’t much like the idea of his children staying here, but where else was he going to put them while he searched for Rita? And they were too young, he supposed, to be much affected by Ann’s morals—or lack thereof. He liked to think of himself as fairly liberal, but this woman just had a dirty mind. It was as simple as that. He could imagine being marooned in a long orbit with her, and her wearing long opaque coveralls continuously, and refusing sex through all the months and years.

  He had thought he was conjuring up that image as a private expression of his scorn, but somewhere in its ugly heart a kernel of attraction lay, which made Art angry when he realized it. Repulsive woman! He could feel sorry for George, who was a gentleman, except that George must have known what kind of woman he was marrying and George still seemed very well satisfied. George in his own quiet way was evidently pretty far out himself.

  “You know, old girl,” said George, the squatting guru, “your ways are actually more old-fashioned than your opponents are. You go back to the twentieth century. Or was it the nineteenth when everybody pretended to be chaste?”

  Ann took a seat on the sofa next to Art and gave him a look intended to show comic exasperation with her husband. “I’m hungry, let’s eat,” she said. “Oh, George, you know it’s not what’s new or what’s old-fashioned. I know things go in cycles. It’s not whether people wear suits when they swim or don’t wear them, it’s why they wear them or go without.”

  “Ann.” Art set down his glass, which had somehow become empty. “Ann, where is Rita? Where did you send her?”

  “Art, listen to me. I’m not going to tell you where she is, because I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know? Come on. When is she coming back to get the children? As soon as I leave?”

  Ann, with maddening assurance, ignored the question. “Art, I suppose you realize that she’s expecting the people at Family Planning to make trouble for her.”

  “Of course I know she’s in Family Planning trouble. Why do you imagine I’m here?” If he hadn’t had the drink he would be shouting at Ann by now. “She left me a note, I know she’s pregnant. I even had a call from the FP before I left California.” He repeated as well as he could the few words of Ms. Lazenby’s message.

  ANN listened in sympathy and indignation, as if the FP agents had broken down Art’s door. “Well, if and when our third one comes along—I take my pills and pray it never does, but if and when—I’m going to do just what Rita’s doing. No court or no doctor is going to murder one of mine, I don’t care what the laws say.”

  “You have that right,” affirmed George in a low voice.

  She flashed her eyes over at her husband, glad of support though not needing it, and plunged on. “And no one’s going to make me call it unwanted, either, not once I know that it’s alive!”

  Drink or not, Art’s nerves were worn and his voice got louder. “Most people would say that you yourself have rather a murderous attitude toward the wanted people of the world. The ones who are alive right now, including the babies. You’re talking about adding to the crowding. Remember Calcutta. Remember Rio. Where will this year’s cannibalism be?”

  George had begun on a cup of soup with apparent good appetite. Now he reached in between the disputants for some crackers. “Peace, brethren, peace, sistern,” he said, smiling genuinely. “Art, how was your trip?”

  “Oh, exciting.” Art sat back and took an interest in his own soup. Arguing general principles with Ann was certain to wear him out and get him nowhere. Let the atmosphere cool , off for a minute and then he would return to the subject of his wife. He began to tell the Parrs of his adventures.

  The attack on the Christian monastery was naturally a shock to Ann, and he let her see the real sympathy he felt for any victims of persecution. “I suppose we passengers should have stopped and demanded that the police do something for that man who was screaming in the woods—but they were only Transcon’s private police, and I suppose they had their orders, as they said.”

  Ann looked at him wanly, mystified. “But why was the monastery being attacked?”

  “One of the people there said something about the monks’ performing experiments on some aborted fetuses. Some absurd, muddled story about creating monsters. Of course a lot of scientists work with fetuses.” Ann for some reason seemed shocked, perhaps even frightened; she was sitting quite still and listening intently. Art went on: “It does strike me as rather inconsistent for these monks, who are presumably as opposed to abortion as you are, to use fetuses that are still biologically active in their experiments, whatever research they’re really doing. Of course that’s no excuse for violence, for mob action.”

  Ann and George exchanged a look. Then she brought her attention back to Art. “Who was this girl you said you helped?”

  “Oh, her name was Rose something or other, lived in Ch
icago. She was really frightened, for which I don’t blame her.”

  Ann was upset. “There doesn’t seem to be any safety for anyone any more. I’m glad we’ve got this place. Art, you and Rita should think about getting into a townhouse like this. I don’t think California is any safer to live in than Illinois.”

  “I’m sure we have a lot of problems out there, too. I’ll talk over our housing situation with Rita after I’ve found her again. Now tell me where she is.”

  His voice was not threatening but it was grim and determined enough to shake Ann back into her anger mode again. Her eyes brightened and her chin lifted. But before she could speak George put out a peremptory hand and got to his feet with a neat quick untangling of his legs. “Ann,” was all he said, but to Art’s surprise, she closed her mouth.

  George set down the empty soup cup that he had been turning round and round in his fingers for some time. “Art, I’m satisfied that Rita’s in good hands.”

  “Then you know where she is. If you know, you’re going to tell me.”

  “Let me finish. Let’s say that I know my sister. I believe she knows what she’s doing. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Not for me.” Art was inflexible. “You knew she was trying to do something wrong, and dangerous, and maybe you could have stopped her but you didn’t try.”

  There was a pause that seemed long. Ann, evidently still considering herself commanded to silence, was biting her tongue. Her husband still held the floor, dominating the room without effort, unconsciously rubbing his enlarged knuckles. “I know it’s dangerous,” George said unhappily. “She could go to jail for what she’s doing. But she wants to do it. She made a free decision.”

  “What about me?” Art demanded. “Don’t I have any say about how many children I have?”