by Ted White
During the next hour I met too many new faces, shook too many new hands, for memory to bother with. Most of them were in some aspect of a business which had direct dealings with the Angels. They represented what were often referred to as the Off world Industries; their products went directly or indirectly into Angel hands.
All of them were wealthy. The Angels paid a good price for the goods they bought, and this price was theoretically supposed to filter down into the general economy. I had the feeling that a good portion of it was getting sidetracked.
Nevertheless, there was considerable feeling of resentment among these men for the Angels. They resented the fact that while the Angels had made each of them enormously wealthy, the Angels retained the power that such wealth would normally buy. These men were plant managers much more than industrial leaders. And that rankled them.
I began to see what Hitler had up his sleeve. He was quite clever at this; I recalled that he’d used similar tactics to line up Germany’s industrial giants behind him in the thirties—and that much he had accomplished in this world as well.
These men might regard Hitler for now with good-humored, patronizing contempt, but he was using them, and quite effectively. He was uniting them by bringing them together at his parties, and he was building them into a second force that would be far more effective in a showdown than his carefully trained band of uniformed goons, the Nazi Party. I began appreciating Hitler’s tactics a little more thoroughly. And I still wondered— what did he expect to do with me?
Not all the conversation was centered on business and the Angels. Here too I caught the threads of the current fads in culture, of the latest books and plays, the new showings in the art museums, and this interested me a good deal more.
With Betty on my arm, I moved from group to group, listening, absorbing. This was my first opportunity to move among the moneyed citizenry, my first chance to listen openly and unsurreptitiously.
“I was so delighted with Mr. de Camp’s new historical, darling,” one heavy matron gushed to Betty. “He really brings it all so alive—those good old days among the Romans and the Greeks. Don’t you wish you could’ve lived then, when mankind was so gloriously free?"
“My dear,” a bookish little man interrupted her, “if I recall the book at all well—and I should, since I only just finished it—de Camp was describing a world in which you would most likely have been bom a slave. . . . And think of it: no medicine to speak of, and. . .”
“Personally,” a young woman with a thin face and a large nose was saying in another group, “I abhor Bradbury. His plays are so wretchedly fey. All that murky nostalgia mixed up with children who are actually—and you just know it to look at them—actually the most loathsome little monsters.”
“I don’t know,” disagreed another woman. “Tynan says that Bradbury is one of the most lyrical playwrights of this generation.”
“Tynan says, Tynan says!” snorted the other. “You believe anything Kenneth Tynan says, don’t you?”
“Did you catch the Hannes Bok Retrospective, at the Modern last week?” a bespectacled young man asked me. I shook my head. The name, like all the others I’d heard, was meaningless to me. “Beautiful stuff,” the fellow told me. “That man works with glazes like nobody else in years. And his colors—”
“What about Parrish?” Betty asked.
“Maxfield Parrish? That calendar artist?”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Parrish? I’ve heard of him. He illustrated a lot of fairy tale books and things I read when I was a kid.”
“Yes, yes,” Betty said, brushing my one contribution to the conversation aside, “Don’t you realize,” she said to the other fellow, “that Bok learned most of his color sense and technique from Parrish? He—”
I stopped listening. This was, if anything, duller and more esoteric than the business talk.
I turned to scan the room, and then my eyes locked with those of a man standing quietly by himself across the room, near the doorway.
He was tall, dark, and somber. His skin was that curious shade that could be African, Indian, or Mediterranean. His eyes were sunken under heavy brows that formed an almost solid bar over a strong, hawklike nose.
He was not wearing a suit. Instead he wore a long, loose, flowing robe, not unlike a monk’s habit. It fell freely from his shoulders, the sleeves all but lost amid the folds.
As I stared at him, I felt a powerful impulse to meet him. He was out of place here. Who was he? I started cutting through the throng, towards him.
CHAPTER TEN
While I was still some distance from the man, Hitler materialized from the crowd at his side and began leading him towards me.
“Ah, Mr. Archer,” he said as I approached. “I’m pleased you came this way. I should like to introduce you to Eric Mingus, a Brother of the Society of Believers.”
Hitler’s tone was sardonic as he made the introduction. Mingus did not extend his hand, but only nodded, so I nodded back. He seemed to be watching me with wary eyes.
“Brother Mingus,” Hitler added, “is a member of that curious sect which believes that the Angels are come to us from God—literally, from God. Led, no doubt, by Gabriel himself, eh, Mingus?” He seemed to be in surprising high humor. “They, umm, worship the Angels, you might say. . . .”
Mingus said nothing, and in his disdain for this baiting, he retained considerable dignity. But Hitler didn’t seem to mind.
“Mr. Archer,” he told Mingus, “is, you might say, one of your opposite numbers.” I started. What was Hitler saying? Could he know about Sharna? But then I relaxed, as he continued, “Mr. Archer is, ahem, an agent of the Devil, here on Earth to destroy the Angels. Isn’t that right, Mr. Archer?”
I mumbled something, and waited for Mingus’s reaction. It must’ve disappointed Hitler. Tfie man only smiled, displaying even white teeth. “If indeed you are correct,” he said, “I fear only for your Mr. Archer. Traditionally, the Devil has won few battles with the Kingdom of God.” His voice was full and rich, and betrayed no annoyance with the contempt with which Hitler was treating him.
Others were starting to gather around now, and I felt Betty slip her arm through mine again. For some reason, it annoyed me.
“Behold a Man of God, please,” chortled Hitler to the crowd. “Or, rather let us say, a Man of the Angels, eh?”
There were murmurs of disgust in the crowd behind me, and beside me Betty murmured, “That man has strange ways of finding his amusement.” Yeah, I thought. Like pulling the wings off flies . . .
Mingus only smiled benignly, however. I wondered if he’d been at one of Hitler’s little gatherings before. He seemed used to being patronized, and sloughed it all off his back with only a mild contempt.
I had no interest in adding further to the sport, so I turned my back on them and began cutting through the crowd to the bar. When I got there, I found Betty still on my heels.
“A stiff one for me too, if you will,” she said. “Whatever you’re having, if it’s Scotch.”
I glanced over at her as I relayed the message to the bartender.-It isn’t every day you find a woman who appreciates good Scotch.
“You know,” I said, handing her the drink, “if you’d dress yourself a little more decently, you’d make a fine escort.”
She glanced down at her bared breast, and a faint flush crept up her neck. “It’s the fashion, Arkie,” she said.
“Women should pick their fashions,” I returned, “rath-er’n letting their fashions pick them.”
Suddenly she laughed. “Okay, so I’m a little scrawnier than I should be. At least I’m honest about it.” With that she slipped her arm through mine again. “Let’s stroll out on the terrace,” she said.
Whatever Colonel Belz had said to her, it had been effective. She was sticking to business.
It was a wide terrace, screened along the edge with thick shrubbery which came up to chest height—on me. Betty could barely peer over the edge, but, as she pointed ou
t, “There’s nothing but the backs of buildings below, anyway. But-look up there, in the sky!”
The moon, fatter and richer than I’d ever known it, had climbed higher, and peered down at us now like a somber jack-o-lantern. No stars were visible.
‘The force-field,” I said casually. “How long has it been up now?”
“Weather control? Oh, years and years, I guess. I really don’t remember,” she said doubtfully. “Oh, you’re thinking about the moon. Yes, you know I was out on Long Island last summer, for a special Party gathering, and— well, forget that. Anyway, it was the first time I’d seen the moon, you know, the way it really is. All pale. It looked unnatural—like a corpse.”
“You probably saw the stars out there too, didn’t you?” “The stars?” I felt a shudder pass briefly over her. “Yes, I saw the stars. . . . But it’s better not to think about them. That’s one good thing about weather control. You don’t have to think about the stars.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Why not think about the stars?” “Please,” she said. “Let’s just change the subject. Next thing we’ll be talking about how the Angels are descended from Heaven and all that.”
“Speaking of which, why did Hitler bring that Eric Mingus here tonight?”
“That man!” she said with disgust, and for a moment I wondered which she meant—Hitler or Mingus.
“He’s a dirty little perverted man,” she added. “You couldn’t know! Do you know, they say he was on the brink of pushing Germany into war—a war to wipe out all the Jews in the world? A holy crusade. What I think, I think that Mingus man is a Jew, and this is Hitler’s way of having twice as much fun.”
“Strange ‘fun.’ ”
“It’s his way. He’s very sneaky. He never goes directly after something—have you noticed that? He sniffs all around it first.
“Well, he hates the Angels for what they did to him, and he wants to get back at them. But he can’t, so he does the next best thing. He picks on those silly Believers.
And you saw what he does—he can’t even be straightforward about that.”
“You don’t sound awfully enchanted with the Nazi Party, Betty,” I said.
“Well,” she gave a shaky laugh. “I shouldn’t really talk like that, you know? They’ve been pretty good to me, and when it comes right down to it, I guess I don’t feel any differently than they do. I mean, about the Angels.”
We’d been strolling quietly as we were talking, and had covered two sides of the terrace. Now we turned the corner, and hit a more commanding view.
Almost directly below us was the Hudson, broad and dark, with only a few glimmerings from ships passing silently along it. Across the river, the New Jersey Palisades, lights sparkling here and there along the top, marked the routes of cars.
Immediately below, visible only when I craned my head over the boxwood, were the lights of Riverside Drive, and, just beyond it, the Hudson Drive.
It was a beautiful sight.
I wondered how far the Angels’ “weather control” extended. Across the Hudson? Not likely—it would form a barrier to shipping.
“Mr. Archer?”
It was a soft, but firm voice. I turned towards the shadows between two large potted shrubs. I could barely make out his robes.
Betty’s grasp on my arm tightened.
I nodded. “Mr. Mingus,” I said.
“I should like to talk with you,” he said, gliding forward into the thin moonlight.
Betty pulled against me. “Please,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of him.”
I was starting to become impatient with this woman. She’d attached herself to me on orders, and she was obviously just doing her job. But her efforts at pretense were wearing my nerves thin.
“Why, sure,” I said to Mingus.
“The young woman,” he said, gesturing. “If she prefers, she need not stay.”
That was pretty pointed. I felt Betty release me, and I could almost hear her turning the situation over in her mind, trying to find the key to salvaging it. “Give me your glass,” she said. “I’ll get us fresh drinks. I’ll be back in a moment.” She was careful to accent that last.
Mingus’s eyes bored into me.
“I bring you a message from the Angel Shama,” he said quietly.
I said nothing. I stood in stock silence and waited.
“I have the right Mr. Archer?” he inquired.
I let out my breath. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m the right Archer. What’s your message?”
“She is returning to the Home Worlds,” came his soft voice in the enwrapping darkness. “I am to take you to her. She wishes to see you.”
I felt a surge of emotion—feelings I’d been desperately holding under control, holding back against that ultimate disappointment—lifting through me. I reached out, grabbed his arm. “You mean that? You’re not putting me on?”
He pulled back. “Please do not touch me. I do not lie, Mr. Archer. I do not understand your relationship with this Angel, but I envy you your experience. To speak with them—to be privy to their thoughts—!
“I am a courier. I am here to assist you in escaping this malodorous place. I act as I am commanded. I venture no opinions of my own.”
“Shama—!” I felt dazed. Suddenly the Scotch I’d been soaking up over the last couple of hours was hitting me. My brain was befuddled. “Okay,” I said. “What do we do?”
“You do nothing,” came Betty’s soft voice. She stepped out of the shadows. I saw my empty glass still in her left hand. In her right hand was a small gun.
“Little pitchers have big ears,” I said inanely. Control was slipping totally out of my hands.
“The Colonel will be interested to hear that you Believers act as couriers for the Angels,” she said, waving her gun between us. “He has suspected for some time that you are not as simple as you’ve pretended.”
I waited until the gun was beginning its arc away from me. Then I kicked her legs out from under her. It’s a very effective method for disarming a woman. When she feels herself falling, she’s all, but incapable of aiming and firing a gun—in fact, she’s lucky if she thinks to hold onto the gun.
Betty was pretty well trained. She kept the gun— 119
momentarily. Then Mingus was oh her. She gave a sudden high-pitched peep, and then fell awkwardly to the tiled terrace. Her neck was at an unnatural angle.
“Help me with her,” Mingus grunted, as he started picking her up. “We’ve got to get her over the side before anyone notices her.”
“Pretty bloodthirsty, aren’t you?” I asked, as I stooped to help. A limp adult is not the easiest thing in the world to lift, but once I had a firm grip on her, it wasn’t difficult to grapple her up, over the shrubbery, and the edge of the wall. Mingus gave her a shove, and she was gone. I waited, and listened,, but I didn’t hear her land.
“Was that the cleverest idea in the world?” I asked.
He spat. “A blasphemer—a Nazi. Would that I could bring down the vengeance of the Lord on them all as easily.”
I was beginning to think that perhaps Eric Mingus wasn’t much improvement over my present host. But he was a pipeline to Shama, I reminded myself.
“Is there anyone on this damned planet who isn’t out for someone else’s blood?”
He ignored me. “Mingle with the other guests for a short spell. I shall signal you when it’s safe to make our exit.” Then he slipped away into the darkness, and I was standing alone on the terrace.
The next hour was a refined and subtle torture. I felt keyed up, nervous, totally unlike my usual slow-witted self. I was wondering what would happen when I saw Shama again, wondering if I really would, after all this buildup. And I was watching for Mingus’s signal, wondering how he planned to get us out. I had few illusions about my actual status as a captive. I’d been somebody’s prize captive since this whole thing began. Bitterness flooded my mouth.
And I kept expecting at any moment to see a uniformed guard rush into the ro
om and seek out Belz to tell him of the splattered remains of Bettina he’d just found below. I developed a nervous tic on one eye, and I found myself ignoring the conversational group I was with at the moment, my gaze sweeping back and forth across the room, from the entrance way to the terrace doors, and over to the bar.
Mingus was not in sight. I’d made that out soon after I’d stepped back into the big room. Mingus stood out easily in the crowd; I wouldn’t miss him. He was up to something.
A thoroughly boring matron was gushing on about the disgusting new styles, which, for all I could tell, differed little from last year’s styles, save that they were if anything more garish—“My dears, I am simply old-fashioned, and I do not believe in women going bare above the waist, no matter what le Courve may say about Grecian simplicity, and as far as I am concerned, it is quite enough to bare one breast—I flatter myself, my left breast is still quite shapely, but. . .”—when Colonel Belz touched my arm. I’d seen him coming.
“Herr Archer,” he said. “You are alone?”
I nodded. “That girl of yours—she went off to get me another drink, must’ve been forty minutes ago. I haven’t seen her since.” I screwed my face up into a scowl, and poked Belz with a stiff finger. I leaned close enough for him to smell the alcohol on my breath. “That one was a bit scrawny for my tastes, y’know? Try to rustle up a better one next time—more zoftig, you know what I mean?” I leered at him.
It produced the desired effect. He backed off from me, his nose wrinkling. I was just a big dumb jerk, and too loaded to be any trouble.
It was a good pose. I kept it up as a new conversational group closed in on me. “I don’t really drink much,” I told a hatchet-faced young matron with a straight face. “I spill most of it.”
When was Mingus going to act? Was I really going to get clear? Sharna . . . Questions gnawed at me, keeping my head clear while I evaded the conversation about me and watched for Mingus, and his signal.