Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  He got in obediently. “Where are we going?”

  “I want to take you home with me, Artie. I told you, Daddy’s been anxious to meet you.”

  Once in on the driver’s side, Rose scanned the readiness indicators on the dash, as a cautious driver should, and then punched keys quickly. Then she sat back and turned to Art, giving him a long, unfathomable look while the programmed car started its engine and radared its way out into traffic.

  “Artie?”

  “What is it—Rosie? Do you like being called Rosie, by the way?”

  “Yes, I do like it.” She tilted her head, making the lenses shimmer beautifully. Probably in days of calm she practiced with them before a mirror. “Artie, my father’s a very nice man, a kind man. He’s not one to fly into rages or anything like that.”

  “Well. That’s fine.” He supposed she wanted him to ask some favor of her father for her. “Just who is your father, by the way?”

  “He’s the bishop, silly. Church of Eros archbishop of Chicago. Everybody in Chicago knows him. Artie, we really are good friends, aren’t we?” Taking Art’s hand, Rose swung his arm back and forth over the seat between them. It was a childlike action, and when a basically sexy girl like Rose did it, a man could be tempted toward serious repression. Especially a weary man drained of his energy to fight. The vision of her crouching on the riverbank, veiled by his dirty shirt, rose in his mind’s eye but he managed to thrust it down.

  “Of course we’re good friends, Rose. Any time I can do you a favor I hope you’ll let me know.”

  “Today I just want you to meet Daddy.” She giggled.

  “I’m looking forward to that. Especially . . . Rose, I won’t lie to you. Especially now that I know he’s someone with influence.” An hour ago Art had been ready to resign the game, but now things might be just a little different. “Because you see I have a problem, one that I really need help with. I hope your father may be able to at least give me some advice on it.”

  The cat’s-eyes seemed to offer sympathy. “It isn’t a really big and nasty problem, is it? Oh, I hope not.”

  He laughed feebly. “Big and nasty enough. Oh, I haven’t murdered anyone, so far.”

  Rose snatched her hand away. “Don’t say things like that! Don’t even make jokes about them!”

  “I’m sorry.” He hadn’t realized how sensitive she was to even the suggestion of violence. He looked around them. “Do you live nearby?” “Not far.” The neighborhood through which they were now passing looked much like that around the Parrs’ home, except here the blockhouses were set even further from the street, occupied larger plots of land, and their walls looked even higher. Just ahead was one whose granite walls were extra high.

  “We’re almost home, my big handsome protector.”

  The car measured the traffic and the traffic-spaces around it, chose an opening and shifted precisely to the street’s curb lane, then signalled for a turn and drove onto a ramp that swept it down beneath the granite walls. A man in a guard’s booth gave Rose a casual wave which she returned while switching the slowing vehicle back to manual control. The steering gear folded out of a panel into her hands and she drove on.

  Here as in the Parrs’ block the underground garage was divided into visitors’ parking areas and private stalls. Rose turned into what appeared to be the largest stall, with two cars parked in it already, and room for several more.

  She switched off the turbines and turned to Art again. “Artie, if your problem is—nothing like the horrible thing you joked about—then you can tell me what it is. In fact I think you’d better tell me, before you go in and meet Daddy.”

  “Rose, it has nothing to do with violence. It’s somewhat similar to—your problem. To the problem you were faced with when you and I first met.”

  She had pretty teeth and moist, full lips. “However did you figure out what that was?”

  “Oh, just putting two and two together. I know now what you must have had in that picnic cooler.”

  Now her lips were pouting. Was she going to cry? It seemed to Art that without eyes her weeping would be tearless and therefore repulsive. “Not that I care what you were doing, Rose, not that I’m in any position to talk. It’s just that my wife is now having difficulties along a somewhat similar line. I don’t know that your father would be able to help me with that kind of problem, or that he’d want to get involved in it.”

  Rose dabbed with a tissue at her nose, and yes, at her lidless lenses too. “I’m glad you understand, Art. What happened to my fetus is another thing my father mustn’t know the truth about.” (Another thing?) “Of course he thinks that I simply had it aborted. But I can’t even think about such violence, let alone permit it inside my own body. Ugh.” A final dab and a deep breath, and she smiled and was back to what passed for normal. “Now you’d better listen to me for a minute, Artie. Because I haven’t told you everything yet.”

  SOMETHING about those words was ominous. Art leaned back in the car’s luxurious seat, closing his eyes for just a moment’s rest. He checked his watch. A little past three. Then he turned and looked into Rose’s lenses. “What is it you haven’t told me?”

  Once more she took his amu She became clinging. “Oh, Artie, I was just desperate. You see, there’s a man I . . . like. I like him very much indeed. In fact I’ve come to—to revere him.”

  “Revere!”

  “Art, I put my fate into your hands. I know you won’t betray me. Just recently my father has found out that I’m having an affair, or at least he’s become very suspicious. But he doesn’t know who the man is, and I didn’t dare confess the truth, because . . . anyway, I didn’t dare. So today I told him that it was you.”

  “Oh.” Art closed his eyes again. He supposed he could push Rose out of the car, seize the controls, and go roaring up out of the garage, perhaps crashing through the barrier at the door. Transporting illegally frozen fetuses. Rioting. Midwifery. Auto theft, gate-crashing.

  Was there a crime called gate-crashing? There would be. No previous convictions, or even arrests, that Rodney must have been a clever one. But sooner or later the most cunning criminals trip themselves up. They say he seduced a bishop’s daughter, that’s what really wrote finis to his career. They say just the other day he was in the Family Planning office, bold as you please, talking about an appointment with the director himself. They say . . .

  “Artie, dear?” Rose’s voice dripped honeyed anxiety. Probably she didn’t even like to be called Rosie. “Artie? I was just desperate, or I would never have done it. I had no one else to turn to, and I just had to keep Daddy from finding out who my true cavalier really is . . . Art? Oh, I promise it won’t be so bad. Daddy really did want to get you out of jail, even after I told him you were the one.”

  Art nodded slowly, meanwhile keeping his eyelids firmly closed. If he could somehow get out of the bishop’s dungeon here and reach the Parrs’ castle, maybe Ann could hide him under a bed and no one would ever find him. Drape him in an opaque sheet. But that might constitute another crime. Oh, chastity, what a mess. Maybe he was dreaming.

  “I was just in despair, Art, when suddenly you called. Then it seemed so logical for you to be the man that I told Daddy you were. Don’t you-see? Art, are you all right? Poor Art!”

  Poor Art opened his eyes. Now then, what did he have to do to attain success and happiness? Meet the bishop and prove himself innocent of Rose’s seduction. Then, with or without ecclesiastical help, find Rita and get her safely aborted, while keeping George and Ann, and Rita and himself of course, clear of the law. That about covered it.

  He opened the car door and slid out. The situation was clearly beyond worrying about, and from that fact he derived a kind of second wind. Bring on the bishop.

  “Shall we go in, Artie?”

  “Oh, why not?”

  Rose led him directly from the parking stall through a double door that might have served to guard a bank vault, and up a private escalator. The door at the top was opened
by a huge man, rough-looking though well dressed, who eyed Art with suspicion. Art in turn suffered a momentary fear that this was the bishop himself.

  Rose said: “Jove, this is a friend of mine, Mr. Rodney. Daddy wanted me to bring him home so they could get acquainted.”

  Jove grunted. “Have ‘im wait here and I’ll see. Or would you rather go in, Miss Jamison?”

  “No, you go, I’ll wait with Art.” She took Art’s arm and they stood there in the elegantly carpeted hall like a couple waiting to be married.

  “The bishop’s chief bodyguard?” Art asked, when the giant was gone.

  “Yes. Don’t mind Jove’s rough manners, he’s really quite sweet.” She squeezed his arm meaningfully. “So’s Daddy. Now I put all my trust in you, darling.”

  Jove was already coming back through the plush hallway. “The boss says you should bring him on in. Hey, Miss Jamison, you’re looking real hot. I’m off duty in a little while, could we maybe get together for some sex?”

  “All right, Jove, I’ll see you in the chapel. Art, dear, let me introduce you to Daddy first.”

  At the end of the hall Rose tapped on an old-fashioned wood-paneled door, then pushed it open without waiting for an answer. The room revealed was a large study, the walls lined with bookshelves and tape-racks. A massive, brown-skinned old man rose from an armchair and favored Art with a mild smile of greeting. The bishop wore the exaggerated white codpiece of his office, under a vaguely transparent robe.

  “Daddy, this is Art. I’ve been telling him how nice you are, and that he really had nothing to be afraid of, meeting you. Now I want you to be nice to him.”

  “Why, I’m generally sociable, dear.” The old man accepted his daughter’s kiss on his worn sagging cheek. “Dear, why don’t you buzz away now for a little bit? Mr. Rodney and I are going to have a chat.”

  “Sure, Daddy. I expect I’ll be in the chapel with Jove if you should want me.” Turning toward Art with an expression that was doubtless meant to be encouraging, Rose stepped past him and out of the study. Art, who had reached out his arm mechanically, caught himself at the last moment and let her go without a good-bye pinch. They were supposed to be having an affair, and possibly, just possibly, he would want to maintain that fiction.

  Bishop Jamison was still smiling. “Mr. Rodney, that sofa there is very comfortable. And how about a drink? I have vodka and bourbon and beer and even a little sherry on hand.”

  “Uh, thank you, sir. Your Potency. Bourbon on the rocks would be fine.” Art sank resignedly into the sofa while his host turned away. Poison in the whiskey, maybe? He would drink it anyway.

  THE room might have been the study of any successful and conservative man, though, not surprisingly, there was a somewhat heavy emphasis on religious art. Rodin’s The Kiss in nearly lifesize reproduction. Leda and the Swan, there on the wall, by one of the newer photographic masters. Painting had been dead for a century now, along with poetry and story-telling, or so most of the critics said. And there of course above the mantel, Love Conquers All, Caravaggio’s Cupid trampling triumphantly the symbols of the occupations by which man sometimes allowed himself to be lured temporarily away from his true master, Lust.

  The old man was back, holding out a glass, and Art half rose to take it from him. “Thank you, sir.”

  With a wheeze, the bishop settled his bulk in his own leather chair; his own drink he held in a tankard around the outer surface of which some kind of Oriental orgy marched in bas relief. “Mr. Rodney, Rose tells me that you and she have become quite good friends.”

  “Uh, yes sir, we have.” Art’s intended sip of bourbon somehow transformed itself into a gulp.

  Jamison emerged from his tankard with a trace of beer foam on his dark lips. “She’s a lovely girl in her way . . . her mother was a lovely piece, and I oughta know, though I was an old dog even then . . . how was it you two happened to meet? On the tube train coming in from Iowa, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right, sir.” Art drew in a deep breath. “Bishop, I don’t mean you or Rose any harm. Far from it. So I’m just going to tell you the truth. I don’t know what Rose may have told you, but the fact of the matter is I hardly know her. If she has any, ah, involvement with any man, it’s certainly not with me.” So far the news was being received with apparent calm. “I’m sorry about her problems, Your Potency, and yours, but I have problems of my own that are just as bad. I’m sorry.”

  Jamison leaned forward a little. “Would you like a refill on that drink?”

  “I’ll get it myself, sir, thanks. Another beer? I’m telling you the truth, bishop, I never was any good at lying.”

  The bishop indicated with a headshake that his tankard had no need of refilling as yet. He swiveled his chair to keep facing Art, who was now at the bar. “Some people never realize they’re not, and it gets ‘em into endless trouble. Most of the time honesty simplifies things, if it doesn’t always pay. You really did help Rose, out there in Iowa, didn’t you? Her own story is a little muddled. She was coming back from visiting some girl friend in Dubuque, I guess, when that riot broke out.”

  “Oh, yes sir, I had the chance to be of help to her in a small way.” Back at the sofa, Art sank down with relief and took a sip, this time truly no more than a tiny sip, of the excellent bourbon. “But believe me, there’s been nothing wrong between us. We made it all the way, right there in the park, while we were waiting to get on the train to Chicago.”

  Jamison was nodding slowly. “Arthur, I find myself believing you. I know my own daughter, and she just gave me your name too suddenly and too willingly. I don’t suppose you know the name of the man she is involved with, as you put it?” Then before Art could try to answer, the bishop scowled and waved a white-palmed, wrinkled hand. “No, I withdraw the question. Don’t want to put an honest man like yourself on the spot.”

  “I really haven’t the faintest idea, anyway, who it could be.” Numbly relaxing, Art sipped at his icy whisky. His head ached, but not as bad as before. It seemed that he had managed to avert any new and disastrous trouble; and what more could a man hope for than that?

  The bishop set his tankard down carefully on a small table. “Not that I care an awful lot what kind of fun she has with men.” His steady black eyes peered at Art from their time-ravaged face. “Probably that shocks you, coming from a church-man like me. But if she wants to sit with some young fella and gaze at the stars and forget all about sex for ten minutes, I can’t see how society is harmed.”

  “Yes sir, I am surprised to hear you talk like that.” It would really have shocked Art, too, if he hadn’t been somewhat numb with alcohol, and emotionally exhausted by still more shocking things. “If what your statement implies is true, that society isn’t harmed by repression, that it doesn’t matter what people do with sex, why do we have the Church of Eros then?”

  The bishop heaved himself erect, his erotically-decorated tankard in hand, and walked over to the dark fireplace. It looked a lot like George’s, except this one was bigger. When the bishop switched it on, a realistic imitation of burning logs, probably a hologram, appeared in the dark cave. The logs crackled audibly and flared and seemed to send smoke up the flue.

  “This thing is a fake,” Jamison mused, patting the mantle with one hand. “Lots of fire and noise, but no smell. And no real heat.” He set his tankard on the mantlepiece and turned to Art, “You know why it is good for man to Worship sex? Why it really is good? Simply because the poor fool has nothing better before which to prostrate himself. Eros as a god is far from perfect, he’s just the best of a bunch of failures.”

  Having a little time to think over what the bishop said, and looking at the old man closely, Art was not so very surprised after all. There were such cynical bishops in modern fiction sometimes. And Jamison wasn’t just old, he must be decades over a hundred. He must have spent his youth in the period of moral vacuum before his Church became established. Art had sometimes heard other very old people express similar startlingly modern
and radical views.

  Standing massive besides the fireplace, Jamison told him: “The war-god and the wealth-god and the heaven-and-love god all have failed. Heaven-and-love came the closest. Best example is the man they nailed up on the cross. He spoke to a lot of people, that one did. He was about the best, except for sex. And then Allah and Jehovah and Mithra and all the rest.

  “And then there’s the man-god. You know what I mean by that? I mean god made by man in man’s own image, humanity in apotheosis, we will all be god someday and maybe our great leader is god right now—he’s the worst, the most dangerous, and we’re not through with him yet. Damnation, are we ever through with anything?” Jamison’s voice, which had taken on the tones it might employ on Saturday nights in the pulpit above the orgy, fell back to conversational pitch. One other man in Art’s recent memory had used such ancient expletives. “Mr. Rodney, man was made to worship something, and no god he finds is worthy of him. That’s what the ancients would have called a tragedy. Sex does the least harm, I would judge; and sex is fun. Oh man, yes man, it sure is fun.”

  THE bishop smiled at Art wryly, and made his way to the bar to get a refill on his beer. Then back to his leather chair to let down his weight, he and the chair wheezing together. “The only thing is, if she does like some young man in what to her is such an extra-special way, then I’d like to know his name and what he’s like. Rose has had enough pain in her young life already. She tell you about that ape-assault where she lost her eyes?”

  “No sir. I didn’t know that was what had happened. It must have been terrible.”

  “That it was,” said Jamison shortly. “My much-publicized crusade against the street-apes and the dope-peddlers, which you will hear a lot about if you stay long in Chicago, stems in large part from that assault on my daughter.”

  “I believe I heard something about it from the police. They were in favor.”

  “I myself am not a non-violent man,” the bishop said. “Not always. Eros does not counsel turning the other cheek except for a caress.”