Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  Art told what he could, leaving out the name of the girl for whom he had carried the container. “And the man with her said, That was Steve before he took off running into the woods. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  The priest-doctor nodded, hands clamped on his knees, squinting as if in physical pain. “Yes. Those two men were both my friends. Neither of them mentioned in the official accounts. Maybe the police never knew they were there.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Art said impulsively. “At the time there didn’t seem to be anything I could do.”

  “Of course not, Art. It’s not your fault. Listen, I’d better get you on your way home before I’m charged with kidnapping. But you must be hungry, let us feed you something first.”

  “Maybe just a protein bar. I never got around to thanking you for this patch-up job, did I?” Art brushed a hand gingerly over his scalp bandage. It wasn’t nearly as big as he had expected, and very little of his hair had been removed.

  In a few minutes one of the stalwart Young Virgins brought him a couple of bars on a plate, and a glass of milk. As he munched, the priest-doctor asked him: “Would you object very strongly to a blindfold when you leave? I’d accept your word if you gave it, but some of the other people here might not.”

  “Blindfold? Oh, I don’t care.” Art was abstracted again. Foodbar in hand, he got up suddenly and went to push the white screen aside.

  Like an idol in a temple, he thought suddenly. Surrounded by its screens and paraphernalia like an idol, or a statue on an altar. Suddenly the minuscule statue frowned at him, averted its blind face, then stretched an arm.

  Not an idol, then. Far more than that. Inscrutable as a flower or a nebula, it could only be contemplated, not understood. Tick-tick-tick. And again the firing neurons in its developing brain smeared green traces across the three oscilloscopes.

  SHAKING hands with the doctor on his way out, Art said: “Thanks again for the treatment. You know if I could find a way I’d still stop Rita from going through with this. Because of the kind of world we have to live in. But I wish it wasn’t so, I wish the world would let your way be possible. Anyway, you tell her that I want her back, whatever happens. I want that most.”

  “I’ll tell her, Art. I’ll be very glad to pass that word along.”

  XI

  AT ONE o’clock in the afternoon Art, once more shrouded in an opaque cover (this one smelling more medicinal than musty), was led out of the laboratory and out of doors, across an area of long weedy grass and uneven paving stones. Then he was put into the back seat of a car, where without being told he hunkered down so as to be invisible from the outside. The car when started jolted slowly over rough terrain for about a minute, before getting onto any kind of a regular road. Shortly Art began to hear the noises of other traffic around him.

  “You can come up,” said one of his Young Virgin escorts, in apologetic tones, only about five minutes after the start of the trip and somewhat before Art had expected any such permission. He pulled the blanket gingerly from his sore head and eased himself up to a normal position in the seat. The car was traveling through some middle-class, jobholders’ residential neighborhood that Art could not recognize. One of the two youths escorting him sat beside him in the back.

  “Sorry, we’re not going to be able to take you all the way to the Parrs’ house,” the driver said, apologetically. “It’s possible their place is being watched—you know how it is.”

  “I don’t know whether I do or not. Not any more.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s all right. I can walk.”

  “Oh, oh,” said his other escort, swiveling his head to peer back through the rear window. As it turned out, Art didn’t have far to walk at all. The police car with its blue lights flashing came alongside and nudged their vehicle neatly to the curb with its foamy plastic bumpers.

  FROM the questions the police asked before the van arrived to cart the three of them off to the station, Art gathered that his escorts’ car had been somehow identified as one used by participants in the morning’s infamous Family Planning riot. All its present occupants were under grave suspicion, the sullen one with the lump on his head being no exception. When they unloaded at the lockup he was taken underground to a large cell with padded walls. He recognized it as what they called a DD, or drunk-drug, tank of the tv crime dramas. In real life he found it crowded not with thrashing drunks or druggards, but with loudly vocal Young Virgin types, several of whom complained steadily to the walls (where perhaps there were microphones to listen) of their real or supposed injuries.

  Nobody else was listening. “Shuddup in there,” advised a loudspeaker in the ceiling, from time to time. In reply to this the Young Virgins would usually break out into a verse of all but unintelligible song. Approaching Art through this milieu, smiling as if at an old friend, came a suddenly familiar face: that of the sign-peddler of the morning.

  “It’s just a mistake I was picked up,” Art could hear the sign-peddler saying, as the latest outburst of song was ended. “My signs were useful, weren’t they, to let the world know what was going on? A man tries to be an influence for peace and communication in the world, to mediate the intelligent expression of differences in the community, and this is the thanks he gets. Hey, bud, which side were you on?”

  “Shut up,” said Art Rodney.

  Now another fifteen or twenty prisoners were being brought in a group, adding to the crowding and confusion. These looked like Young Virgins too. Presumably any Homo League members arrested were being held somewhere else, in the interest of relative peace. The corridors under this station seemed to be lined with these tank-like cells, and through the corridors drifted the steady animal murmuring of innumerable inmates. There was also a noticeable amount of dust in the air, and the muffled roar of heavy machinery at work nearby. Maybe more cell space was being excavated.

  At last three policemen came to the door of Art’s cell, and set up a table there for processing. “One at a time now, people. Form a single line. Come up here and present your identification and we’ll take your fingerprints. Then you can make one phone call. Form a single line.”

  A Young Virgin girl, a beautiful girl with dark devilish eyes, pushed herself forward to the table and demanded: “How about separate facilities for men and women?”

  The policemen who had already spoken eyed her warily, his lined face on guard against any of these young punks attempting to get smart. “Separate what?”

  “Latrines!” The girl waved at the open urinals and water closet at the rear wall of the cell. “We want to have separate latrines for each sex, with walls closing them off.”

  The cop’s hardened face showed disgust. “Oh, and no doubt you’d like to open a brothel in here, too. You’ll take what the city gives you, and do your carryin’ on outside of jail.”

  As if that were the answer she had hoped for, the girl stepped back smiling. With a gesture and a yell she started up another loud song, all the Young Virgins within earshot quickly joining in. But their rebelliousness now seemed strictly verbal; they were not slow to line up before the table for processing. Jail probably grew quite boring in a couple of hours, and it was now time to call one’s parents to get one out. Art used his weight and his elbows in self-defense, refusing to be pushed to the rear.

  Someone shouted at him: “Do you know the song?” It was a comradely voice, coming from just behind Art in the newly formed queue.

  The speaker was a tall young man, wearing a sweatshirt with STUDENTS FOR A CHASTE SOCIETY handpainted on the front, something about him looked vaguely familiar to Art.

  “No, why should I know your song?” Art answered, as soon as the noise of it had trailed off into silence and he could talk without shouting. “I was just caught up in all this by mistake.”

  “That’s the way it was with me,” said the voice of the sign-peddler, from up near the head of the line.

  “Are you with us, though?” asked the devil-eyed girl ahead of Art
. As the line was just about formed she had squeezed her cloth-shrouded body in just ahead of him, her eyes daring him to protest.

  “I’m not with you or against you. I just happened to get caught up in this.”

  The girl’s eyes, those of a determined persecuter, attacked Art’s beard and the conservative translucency of his clothing. She was silent, perhaps making plans.

  The tall young man demanded: “Sir, if you’re really not with us, why not?” His tone was meant to be not threatening but inspiring. “Now I judge you’re a man who has supported the Establishment in the past, who has upheld all its outworn dogmas and twentieth-century creeds. And now it’s thrown you into jail anyway. What good has worshipping the sex gods and goddesses ever done you? Think about it.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Art, and shuffled forward with the line. If it came to posting bond, he didn’t have a great deal of money.

  He never knew what Rita was feeling— those had been her words to him. Why couldn’t he have started, sooner, to find out? Until he knew what she was feeling it made little sense to argue with her. Of course she should have shown him similar consideration, talked to him more, found out what he really felt. Maybe they weren’t so utterly, terribly far apart as it had seemed when she ran away. He didn’t want her having another baby, of course . . . but if she was going to, anyway, if she really had to do it, then he wanted to be with her while it was going on. Now it was too late even for that. He wouldn’t be able to reach her until the thing was done.

  “Everybody be careful!” cried the devil-eyed girl brightly. She had been whispering with a couple of girl friends, and now she was ready to have some more fun with Art. “Everybody on their proper behavior while Mr. Whiskers is here. Maybe we should all undress a little.”

  “Now, Eunice,” chided the tall young man. She wasn’t helping his recruiting drive at all.

  At least Art was soon going to have a chance at a phoneplate. Did he have the nerve to call George and Ann, tell them that he had been caught in a riot in front of the Family Planning building, and ask them for help? Not if he could help it. Better if he never saw them again until this whole thing was over—but of course, his children were there. He had no choice but to call the Parrs.

  “I do hope they let us out soon,” said Eunice. “I want to pack as much sin into my life as I possibly can!” She stepped defiantly up to face the sour policeman at the cell door. Art followed in his turn.

  AFTER being fingerprinted and filling out a short routine identity form, Art got his chance at the phoneplate. Behind him other prisoners were waiting. Reluctantly he punched the Parrs’ number, and felt more relief than anything else when he was answered only by George’s recorded voice telling him that he might leave a message if he wished. He left no message and after a moment’s thought his relief turned sour. Maybe the Parrs had been arrested too, and his children were now in some orphanage.

  He was allowed one completed call. Who else in the city did he know, where else might he turn for help? There was the dojo, but he couldn’t remember either its name or address. There was Dr. Hammad. Ugh. After thinking a moment longer he dug a piece of folded paper from his wallet and, without much hope, punched numbers on the phoneplate once again.

  “Jamison residence,” said a male voice, answering through a blanked plate on the other end.

  He cleared his throat. “I’d like to speak to Rosamond Jamison, please.”

  “Who shall I say is calling?” The voice had some thick and awkward tones in it, those of a man who would rather be doing something more manly than taking messages on the phone.

  “Tell her it’s Art Rodney. Tell her the man she met on the tube train from California. She’ll remember.”

  “The tube train. All right, wait just a moment.”

  Art waited, gazing around him. The prisoners in line to use the phone looked in their frozen impatience as if they expected him to forget about his call and get out of their way at once. And now the nearby police were all watching Art, silently, with peculiarly blank, controlled faces. He hadn’t noticed them doing this when other prisoners were phoning. If it was just a game they were playing to make him nervous they were succeeding.

  “Hello?” It was Rosamond’s voice. Then on the phoneplate appeared the image of her pretty face, the cat’s-eye lenses gleaming. “It is you, my handsome protector! I’m so glad! I’ve been hoping you would call, and Daddy has too, he’s wanted to thank you.”

  With the corner of his eye Art noted, without understanding, that the nearby policemen had suddenly all lost interest, were turning away and getting back to their jobs. “I’m glad I could reach you,” he said. “I’m afraid I need help, and I don’t know where else to turn. The police have made a mistake, and they have me in jail here—”

  “Wha-at?”

  “I innocently accepted a ride with some strangers,” which was quite true, “and it turned out the police were looking for their car. So now I’m being detained for questioning, as they put it. I’m held for investigation on a charge of conspiracy to riot, something like that. I’m not sure I have it straight. I was hoping you might be willing to call a lawyer for me. Or something. I’m afraid I don’t have much money with me, and—”

  “Oh my, oh my. Poor Art. How do you spell your last name? And what station are they holding you at?”

  He spelled his name for her. “And the sign here says Tenth District Detention.”

  “Just wait there, wait!” Rose counseled him excitedly. Then she blanked off.

  Art took a step away from the phone and a policeman was there to touch him on the arm and beckon him away. This officer, for a change, had a friendly-seeming smile. He led Art down a corridor to where a bulky, middle-aged man in civilian clothes was sitting behind a desk. On the desk were computer printouts whereon appeared small photographs of Art, both fall face and profile. The bandage on his head with the small bald spot around it showed on the photos, and he wondered when and how they had been made.

  The bulky man looked up. “You’re Mr. Arthur Rodney? I see here that you’re from out of state. Did you know when you accepted a ride in that car that the police were looking for it?”

  “No, I—no.”

  “Well, we find that there’s no evidence to the contrary. We’re very sorry about the inconvenience, but you can understand that we can’t take any chances.”

  “I suppose not.”

  The man behind the desk nodded in a friendly way, and the interview seemed to be over. Another smiling policeman, this one in uniform and with an unusually large number of stripes on his sleeve, was holding open a door at one side of the desk as if he expected Art to pass through it. Beyond the door was an ascending escalator.

  After he had started up, and realized that what appeared to be a public lobby was at the top, Art asked: “This means that I’m free to go?”

  “That’s right, sir.” The smiling sergeant had come with him onto the rising stair. “By the way,” he added, his voice lowering, “if you’re talking to—anybody, you can let ‘em know that the men on the force are a hundred per cent behind the campaign to get tough with the apes and get ‘em off the streets.”

  “Huh?”

  They had reached the marbled public lobby on the station’s ground floor. With a gesture the smiling sergeant directed Art’s attention to where the air-curtained main doorway stood open to the world.

  “I’d better wait here for a while,” said Art. “I think someone’s coming to see about getting me out.”

  “That so?” The sergeant winked. “Tell ‘em they needn’t have bothered. Still, you’re welcome to wait for ‘em here if you like. Have a seat. Excuse me, I’d better get back to work.”

  “Certainly.” As soon as the man had gone, Art went to a public phone booth in the lobby and tried the Parrs’ again. To his surprise, Ann answered the phone almost at once.

  “Art, what’s up?”

  He stood with his head held high; maybe the bandage wouldn’t be noticeable at
that angle to the plate’s pickups, with his hair sort of piled in front of it. “How are the kids?”

  “Why, they’re fine, fine. How are things with you?”

  “I tried to get you a few minutes ago, but no one answered.”

  “I was just out in the park with the children. George is working. Where are you calling from, Art?”

  “I’ll—be talking to you again, soon, Ann.” With that he blanked off.

  HE WENT to sit in the marbled lobby, and watched the public flow in and out at a brisk rate. All these people were involved with legal trouble in some way, even if they were only reporting it, so he supposed it was natural that they should look frightened or dazed, or indignant or stony-faced. What bothered Art was that now when he looked out the window at the throng passing the station on the slidewalk, the faces out there looked much the same . . . He had been sitting there less than ten minutes when Rose came in. She spotted him at once, smiled, and came marching clack-clack across the lobby on new hard-heeled sandals. It struck him now that her walk was somewhat too childlike and bouncy for a normally mature young woman. She was wearing a red bikini, daringly opaque all over and almost padless. Art stood up and greeted her with an embrace.

  “My good friend Art! How have they treated you?”

  “Fine, ever since they heard me talking to you on the phone. Before that they practically had me sentenced, and now they tell me I’m free to go.”

  Rose laughed prettily, and linked her arm in his. “Then let’s be going. We have lots to talk about on our way.”

  He walked out of the station with her, asking: “Did you call a lawyer?”

  “I thought you couldn’t be in any serious trouble,” she said obliquely. “Here, get in.” She was unlocking the door of a very expensive car parked right in the NO STANDING zone in front of the police station. The Illinois license plate was number four. Four. Great sex, had his luck changed at last?