by Robert Adams
on his newly installed intercom. "Yes, yes. Who is it, please?"
That so-well-remembered voice came through the wires to warm him and his chilly office. "Mister Fitzgilbert? I . . . it's Dannon Dardrey. I know it's late, but . . . Mister Fitzgilbert, I just drove down from the city, I must speak with you. Please."
"Okay." Fitz pressed the button that now unlocked the gate. "Drive your car inside, don't leave it parked out there. Some of my neighbors . . . well, some of the lads hereabouts don't like me very well and are light-fingered, to boot."
The Dannon he let into his front door looked not one whit so calm and self-assured as had the attorney with whom he had spoken only a few hours earlier. She looked worried, harried, more than a little confused.
"That's a long drive," he said. "You could've phoned me, you know, you didn't have to come clear out here at almost midnight. Am I in more trouble than you thought?"
"You may well be," she answered enigmatically, adding, "and me, too."
"Well, then," he waved at one of the leather chairs, "sit down and fill your pipe while I get some clothes on. Would you like a drink?"
"No, damn it!" she almost shouted. "I don't want a drink, I want youl I don't even know why I want you, but . . . but it's like you're a ... a part of me that has been missing forever and . . . and now I want it back, I've got to have it back. Do ... do I make any sense to you? I don't to myself. I'm a perfectly respectable, fifty-five-year-old widow and I rank high in my chosen profession, if I say so myself. I just don't do mad, impulsive, immoral things like this, Mister Fitzgilbert. But there's ... I don't know,
there's . . . something about you, hell, maybe it's me, maybe I'm having a nervous breakdown or something. Do you understand any of this, Mist ... oh, hell, if I'm going to have sex with you, and I am, I might as well call you Fitz. Please tell me there's a sound, logical reason for the way I feel about you, a man I never saw before today. Please tell me that, Fitz."
Gravely, Fitz said, "From the first moment that I touched your hand this afternoon, I've felt strongly and very strangely drawn to you. The immediate feeling that I had then was what I thought was a feeling of kinship, but a much stronger feeling of kinship than I ever have felt for any real relatives in the past. I felt as if you were the other half of me, long ago sundered, and that I had to have you back, no matter what it took to get you. When the time came for Gus and me to leave, it was all that I could do to make myself tell you goodbye and then turn and walk out of that office. Leaving the proximity of you was like tearing off a piece of my body, Dannon."
Her eyes became misty, and she nodded slowly, "Yes, I know, Fitz, I could hardly bear to part from you, either, this afternoon. I suppose that I knew, even then, that I'd drive out here tonight. That's why I fought it so hard and for so long. And my name is Danna, it was once Mary Diana Flaherty. My late husband's name was Dardrey. I passed the state bar as M. Danna Dardrey,, but some clerical error made the middle name into Dannon and I've kept it ever since."
"All right," said Fitz, "now, do you want a drink?"
She shook her head. "No, I want directions to your loo. I'm going to take a shower, if you don't mind. Maybe that will give me back enough sanity to leave here before I commit mortal sin with you."
Much, much later, as they lay very close on his rumpled bed, her red-brown hair lying in disorder over his arm as it pillowed her head, she gasped out a long, shuddering sigh and said, "I pray God that it was as good for you as it was for me. I loved my young husband, Kevin, Fitz, I loved him with all my heart and soul, and I took inordinate pleasure from pleasing him as he pleased me. But now I know that that long-ago lovemaking was but a pale, almost-invisible shadow of the real article. It hurts me terribly to have to so speak of that poor, brave young man, but it's all truth and it must be spoken, regardless."
"You never had other lovers, Danna?" he asked.
"No, Fitz, since Kevin, there has never been another . . . until you, my own. We had been married for almost two years when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I tried my damnedest, along with his folks and mine, to persuade Kevin to hold off his passion to enter the military for only six months, until he had his degree and could go in as an officer, but he had to disregard us all and enlist, leaving me with our year-old son, Kevin, Junior. I saw him three whole times after that, before he was killed in North Africa, at the Kasserine Pass, never having been allowed to get even as close as ten thousand miles to the Japanese he had joined the army to fight. Four months after he had died, I gave birth to our younger son, Richard.
"Kevin had had both GI and civilian insurance and his mom and pop were relatively well-off for those days. With Kevin dead, I just kept on living with them and invested most of the money, saving out only enough to go to college and learn enough to become a legal secretary. That was the work I did
until the boys were both old enough to fend for themselves, then I quit work and went back to college, taking my law degree in 1957, just prior to my own thirty-seventh birthday."
Fitz raised his head so he could better see her face. "You were born in 1920? Damn, so was I. You sure as hell don't look like any fifty-five, Danna. Or do you dye your hair and go in for face lifts?"
"I've never had a need for hair dye or even rinses, Fitz, and my face is just the way God made it, thank you. But you don't look to be your actual age either, Fitz. Until I got into your records, I had taken you to be no older than your early forties, if that," she said bluntly.
"How did you pick up the name Danna, Danna?" he inquired. "It's an odd one. I don't think I've ever heard or even seen it before."
She laughed throatily. "My mother's name was Mary, too, so I was called Diana, the middle name on my baptismal record. My eldest brother—I was the firstborn child in the Flaherty household—when he was very young couldn't say Diana, so he called me Danna and the name just stuck from then on. I've already told you where and how I came by the Dannon name; I keep it because it confuses the hell out of your average, staid, stodgy, chauvinistic businessman or attorney who telephones or comes to the office to see M. Dannon Dardrey. I freely admit that I derive a sadistic thrill from hearing or watching them squirm."
"What do your sons think of having a top-flight tax lawyer and an admitted sadist for a mother?" he chuckled, then wished he'd said anything else but those words when he saw the infinite sadness that came upon her face.
In a low, grief-laden voice, she said, "They were
very proud of me when they were still alive, Fitz, and I of them. Kevin, Junior, went to West Point, he graduated in 1962, and his brother and three of his grandparents and I were all there to see it. So was the sweet, dear girl who became his bride within weeks of his graduation. By 1970, he was a captain of infantry 7 in Vietnam, with medals for his inherited bravery, others for his competence in his profession and still more for his combat wounds. Then, one night while he was sleeping, some soldier—a disgruntled troublemaker Kevin had had disciplined, I've been told—threw a hand grenade into the place and killed my boy and severely wounded another officer. The murderer was almost immediately shot and killed by yet a third officer . . . but that couldn't bring back my Kevin.
"Dicky always had to be different from his older brother, it was like an obsession with him, so when Kevin was accepted for West Point, he set about trying to get an appointment to Annapolis. Failing at that, he went to a college that had a naval cadet program and did so well in it that he was awarded a regular Navy commission upon his graduation. Not quite a year after his older brother was murdered, Dicky was stung by a scorpion fish while skin diving for pleasure and died before he could be gotten to medical attention.
"Kevin and Barbara, for some reason, never were able to have any children, so I was denied even the small solace of grandchildren. I'm very much alone . rather, I was alone until today, until you.
"But you, you're a widower, aren't you? Care to talk about your life?"
He told her. He told her all of it, from beginning to tragic
end. And she cried for him, for his long years of suffering, and what could he do but comfort
her. Comforting caresses and kisses led to deeper kisses and more intimate caresses, each of them re-exploring the so familiar yet almost strange bodies. They they made soft, quiet, tender love again . . . and yet again.
They awoke to sun streaming through the tilted slats of the blinds. And then they made love again, saluting the new day with worship of life and of each other and of their new-found oneness, completeness, wholesome wholeness.
That weekend was the most beautiful, most fulfilling period of time that Fitz had ever spent anywhere with anyone in all his life. When he saw Danna into her eight-year-old Jaguar XKE 2 + 2 on Sunday night, let her out the gate and returned to the house, he did not feel lonely, as he had expected and feared. Danna was still there. She remained in everything she had touched or seen and commented upon. The invisible, welcome presence of her sat in the chairs she had used, lay still upon the bed whereon they two had experienced such joy and wonder in each other. Best and most thrilling of all, she still was with him, in him, truly a part of him, and he knew that now nothing—not time, not distance, no, not even grim death, itself—could ever again part them, one from the other, as they had lived for so many years before these last magical days and nights of reuniting two parts into one whole. He knew that he and the unbridled joy he felt had never, could never have been, more complete.
His mood was one of unbelievable exultation as he trundled down load on load of supplies to the sand world, knowing that he now must provide there for his other half, Danna. He could hardly wait to tell her of, then introduce her to the emptiness and freedom of this world of sand and surf and strange stars that he now considered his own.
He and Danna had spent much time in bed over the weekend, but not all that much of that time in sleeping, so he quickly drifted off to sleep on Sunday night, after she had phoned to let him know that she had arrived safely at her apartment. Then, sometime during the night, he found himself experiencing yet another of those vivid, incredibly real and utterly impossible dreams. As he lay there, he knew not whether he was truly awake or still asleep, but in either case, he knew without even opening his eyes that he was not alone in the big bed.
"Danna . . .?" he breathed, reaching out toward the other half of the bed. But his hand found not smooth, warm, delicate skin or silky hair. Instead, the fingers touched, sank into dense, plushy fur, their touch evoking a deep bass purring noise.
"Yes, my old and dear friend," he suddenly heard in a voice that he recalled from another fantastic dream, "enjoyment of one's mate is very pleasant, but there are other, even more important things that await your needed hand and powers, while you dawdle here or journey much of the length and all of the breadth of Pony Land, innocently unaware of the terrible dangers that dwell there, the horrible and most deadly creatures that stalk its flatnesses in search of meat. Here, make use of your paw and its so-useful extensions, and scratch my belly."
Fitz then thought that he opened his eyes to see his old pet cat, Tom, whose body he knew lay buried in the backyard, nearly a year dead, lying sprawled on the bed. Even as he watched, the big, blue-grey cat rolled onto his back and lay with his hind legs widely splayed and his forelegs folded down upon themselves on either side of his chest.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Scratch," said the
dead-alive cat. "Be helpful to me, at least, before you go down the gullet of Teeth and Legs, as you soon or late will, if you spend overmuch time on that fearsome plain."
"Tom," asked Fitz in bewilderment, "are . . . are you really talking to me?"
"No, not really," came the cat's caustic reply. "Actually, one of the chipmunks burrowed under this house is a ventriloquist. Of course I'm talking to you. I'm saying, 'Scratch my belly with your short, flat, blunt claws/ "
"I've seen nothing of a nature or size to threaten me on that plain," argued Fitz, while dutifully scratching the warm, living, furry belly of the cat he knew to be dead and moldering in a grass-grown grave marked by the statue of a sleeping cat carven from grey limestone. "Only the tracks of some beast that was, to judge by those tracks, the size of a leopard or a jaguar or, maybe, a puma."
"Those pad prints at the ponds at the verges of the lake were not those of any leopard or jaguar or puma, friend, they were mine. I have been watching you as you move about on that noisy, smelly, three-wheeled thing that you brought from this world. Someone has to try to keep you out of trouble until you come to the full knowledge of just who and what you are and to full realization of your inherent powers. But that will never happen if old Teeth and Legs eats you first, so cross that plain as fast as you can and come to the hills and forests, where you are needed, where your destiny awaits you."
Fitz left off scratching the cat now purring continuously, even as he somehow spoke words. The man took a forepaw between thumb and forefinger and eyed it, critically. "Yes, you're big enough, Tom. You weighed over twenty pounds. But whatever cat
left those prints by the water there, in the sand world, would dwarf a mere twenty-pound tomcat. Why, those prints were about as broad as my palm and so deep as to make me think that the owner of those feet weighed as much as ten times twenty pounds."
"You stopped scratching," the cat admonished. "Please start again. But yes, those tracks were mine. Your eyes see the Tom you remember, see me in the body that was mine in this world. But in that world, I am not so small and puny, though my color and my mind are unchanged."
"Your mind was as it now is in all the time before you . . . you died?" demanded Fitz. "Then why did you never talk to me like you now are doing?"
"Oh, but I did, and often," replied the purring cat. "It was just that then, before my old body died, you had had none of the experiences that resulted in the first dim beginnings of the reawakening of your mind and the vast powers it holds, so you could not hear my words, only the beast-noises that the powerless and savage strangers hear.
"You were overlong in awakening, my good old friend, for long and long, even in The Isle, where everything is conducive to the uses of powers, much time elapsed before you had gained—rather, regained—the abilities of seeing me, hearing me, even only as I was, as simple Strangers saw me in this world.
"But now, finally, your powers are beginning to manifest themselves. They are still slowed, however, slowed and stunted because you spend so much time in this world which is inimical to powers. You must be more in The Isle to become that which you can be, that which you must be, are you to fulfill your destiny. Stay as little as three moons in The Isle and
you will have it all back—your powers and, with them, the memories of all that was before, all that is now and all that is to be, with the help of you, the one you call Danna and others.
"But do not linger on the plain, old friend, else it is but a matter of time before a pair of Teeth and Legs finds you and deprives you of life and all those who depend upon you and your powers of a future. Come you, rather, directly to the hills and forests, where the Teeth and Legs never trespass."
Thinking of the toothiest beast he had seen in the sand world, Fitz asked. "This or these you call Teeth and Legs, are they like the huge crocodile that came after me on the beach?"
The cat's voice indicated a gentle amusement. "Old Kassandra? Of course not, she only eats sea creatures, like all her kind. It was just that she does not see too clearly, especially not on land. She took you at first for some robber after her eggs, but when I explained to her who and what you were, you notice, she stopped chasing you.
"No, the Teeth and Legs are much like you, in general shape, but much, much larger, covered in coarse hair and with long, wide, strong jaws filled with many big, long, sharp teeth. There are not and have never been many of them, else there would be no life at all upon the plain, and since they will feed upon anything that walks, swims, flies, hops or crawls, even others of their own kind, they seldom are seen in numbers, mostly alone. You will smell them, hopefully,
before you see them. But beware, even ponies and the long-legs you think of as rat-tailed ostriches are hard-pressed to outrun one and I think that one might even outpace your noisy thing with three wheels. So cross the plain and come to the hills, where you will be safe from them. Much and many
depend upon you, so you must take care to preserve yourself for us."
When he arrived at the law offices in the city on Tuesday morning, just before the specified time of nine o'clock, a secretary came out and led him into the back of the suite, but not to Danna's office, rather to a much larger one, wherein stood a man about his own age, height and build, though he had silver-stippled black hair, vandyke and guardsman moustache.
The office itself looked much like a set from the movie El Cid —dark, heavy, intricately carved Spanish furnishings, Moorish rugs over highly polished hardwood flooring, drapes that resembled tapestries, arrangements of real-looking, medieval weapons and shields bedecking the walls, even a full suit of armor in one corner, its articulated gauntlets resting atop the pommel of a bastard-sword. Had Charlton Hes-ton suddenly burst into the room through one of the side doors, his dusty armor clanking, grasping a blood-streaked mate to that long, wide battle-brand, thought Fitz, he would not have looked in the least out of place or anachronistic.
The greying man, who rounded an oversized, dark-oaken desk and strode to meet him with outstretched hand, however, wore no period clothing and not one single piece of armor. He was dressed in an expensively tailored, very conservative three-piece suit, pin stripes of grey on a ground color of a blue so dark as to be almost black. His shirt was of a blue a few shades lighter than the suit, but still dark, and the tie alternated stripes of blue and burgundy. His gleaming black ankle boots were beautifully tooled and obviously of foreign cut and manufacture.
His grip was firm, though well-controlled as his
baritone voice. "Mister Fitzgilbert, I'm Pedro Goldfarb. You are most welcome, sir. Please come in and be seated, won't you. Danna Dardrey will be in shortly. It's a bit early in the day for me to take spirits, but if you would care to indulge, there's plenty here." He chuckled. "You name it, and I've most likely got it somewhere in this suite. Or would you rather join me in a cup of coffee?"