by Damon Knight
“But I do know how to use it,” said Dick, reaching. “Damn!” The chain brought him up short; he couldn’t extend his arm fully.
The gargoyle doubtfully put the stick in his hand. “You sure now, Misser Jones? With the chains, an’ all?”
Dick balanced the weight of the thing across the fingers; there was about an ounce of lead in each of the padded knobs, he judged. The ones he had used at home were heavier; otherwise there was no difference, except, of course, the handicap of the chains. Evening after evening, ever since he was twelve, he had got his knuckles bruised and his nose bleeding—to his intense disgust, since nobody ever fought with sticks—down in the gymnasium with his father. Engage, thrust, cover, parry, chop, backhand, retire …it was in his bones, and he had never suspected what it was for until now.
“I can handle it,” he said, and thrust the stick into a spring clip at the side of his belt, where it seemed to belong.
The slob behind the counter had produced a thick looseleaf book and was turning the pages. “Jones,” he said, “let’s see …”
“Nev’ mind!” cried the gargoyle. “You don’ have to tell me, I know where Misser Jones belongs. Come right this way, misser—we fix you up in one, two, three time!”
The archway under which they passed was a single huge sheet of some white metal, intricately hand-chased in a design of running deer and oak-leaves. Silver light spilled down it from a trough-shaped reflector at the ceiling. Beyond that, the hall was brown translucent glass, lit from behind; the floor itself was heavy glass, under which water ran in a shallow channel.
They climbed three ivory steps and threaded their way through a gossiping crowd that half-filled a large hall. A peacock strutted across their path, tail-feathers spread like a many-eyed gossamer fan. Music murmured from somewhere, broken by the harsh shrieks of cockatoos, caged in a brilliant line down the farther wall.
Dick looked around disapprovingly as he walked. There were too many people—all, to his way of thinking, ridiculously overdressed—; the place was too big and too gaudy, and in spite of the sickly sweet overtone of perfume, it smelled bad. Here they went down another shallow flight of steps and under another scrolled archway: the place seemed to be built on half a dozen levels, without plan or purpose.
Now they were in a narrow corridor whose golden walls and floor were as irregularly curved as a natural tunnel dug out of the earth. Down one side of it, swift and deep, flowed what must be the same stream he had seen before. Here it had no floor over it, and no guard-rail either. A dark shape flickered past, a young trout perhaps, but it was gone too quickly to see. Dick looked back over his shoulder; at the end of the corridor, the stream dived out of sight.
Just ahead, a young man was kneeling with one hand in the water, while a little knot of people—two girls, another young man, a handful of slobs in wine silk—looked on. As they approached, another dark shape hurtled down the stream; the kneeling young man moved convulsively, exclaimed, “Ha!” and held up his hand in triumph. In a soaked cloth bag of Kelly green—his hat, evidently, since it matched his costume—a fish squirmed and flopped. Laughing, he shook it out onto the floor. The spilled water splattered Dick to the knees.
Still kneeling, the young man looked up with a glint of humor. The fish, a speckled trout, arched itself once, twice, and toppled into the stream; it splashed and was gone.
“Good shot?” asked the young man, still smiling easily. He was blond and handsome; the fanciful lace-trimmed collar of his tunic was open over a strong brown throat. Behind him, the others watched silently.
“Misser,” said the gargoyle, taking Dick’s arm, “this corridor is too trafficky today—better we go round by the South Promenade.”
“Leave him alone, Frankie,” said the young man without turning his head. “I asked him a question.”
The cold water was soaking through Dick’s trouserlegs to the skin. “It was a good shot,” he said.
The gargoyle, Frankie, was whispering in his ear, “That’s Jerry Keel, misser, be careful—” Ignoring him, Dick leaned swiftly, scooped up a palmful of water and flung it at the other’s face.
The blond man, Keel, was up instantly, nose and chin dripping, knobbed swagger stick in his hand. His smile was tight over his teeth. “Now, then, let’s see,” he said.
“Jer, he’s a green calf,” one of the girls murmured.
“He’s wearing a stick, isn’t he? Come on, you, don’t keep me waiting.”
Dick drew the staff free of its clip and closed his fist around one of the knobbed ends. Cautiously, he and Keel advanced toward each other, toeing toward the edges of the puddle of water. Dick found the elbow chain a little disconcerting; he would have to try to remember he couldn’t make a full lunge …
They engaged. Keel had a curious, negligent stance; he held the stick palm up, rapped it against Dick’s with offensive gentleness. Angered, Dick feinted right, left, and swung for the other’s knuckles. Wood met wood, jarringly; Keel’s stick whirred with motion, grazed Dick’s wrist, then hit his staff so shrewdly on the backswing that he nearly dropped it.
Both drew back for a moment, staring at each other. Then Keel stepped forward and Dick met him, each treading dangerously on the slick wet metal. Keel engaged with a flurry of beats, ending with a straight thrust which Dick answered by a back-parry and lunge. Keel made an assault on the elbow and hand; Dick double-parried, shifted his grip and cut over, narrowly missing Keel’s face. They stepped back again, breathing a little heavily.
Dick’s wrist was numb, and the inside of his elbow chafed from trying to lunge farther than the chain would permit. Keel grinned at him, swung his stick twice with a whit, whit, and stepped forward again.
They engaged a third time; Keel feinted twice, parried Dick’s counter-thrust, and lunged. Dick saved himself by leaping back, but immediately closed again with a strong beat, chop and thrust. Keel parried; when his guard was high, Dick stepped across the puddle and closed in. Keel staggered, off balance; Dick hit him solidly with a body check. They lurched, grappling together; Dick fended off Keel’s clutching hand and shoved again. With a wild yell and a splash, Keel went into the stream.
The crowd ohh-ed. Dick heard a thump; he turned in time to see Keel’s head and one arm appear, haloed in spray, where the water arched down under the wall.
There was a scurrying of footsteps. “Fair play! Fair play!” boomed a sudden voice. Keel’s friend and two or three slobs, hurrying toward him, stopped and drew back. Standing inside the corridor entrance was a stocky man in green and russet silks. His hair was iron-gray under a foolish, lemon-colored hat, but his eyes were black and brilliant. “You know the rules,” he said, and turned to Dick with an ironic salute of his stick.
In the water a yard away, Keel’s body was spread-eagled against the narrowing sides of the channel. The passage, Dick saw with horror, had no bars or grille across it: the only thing that kept Keel from being swept down with the current was the pressure of his hands and feel against the smooth metal. The elbow chains prevented him from taking a secure hold; the force of the falling stream was tremendous. He could not move, or he would lose his grip. Water and spray covered him above the chin: he was slowly drowning where he stood.
Dick’s involuntary motion was checked. “Jones?” said the stocky man quietly, with the stick he held resting lightly on Dick’s arm. His voice was deep but breathy, with the suspicion of a lisp. His face was an unhealthy paper-gray, his nose beaked, his mouth firm and thin.
“What?” said Dick. “Yes, but—”
“My name is Ruell. Ruell. Take my advice—let him go. He would have done it to you.”
The man’s dark, wet head had dropped a little farther forward. The muscles of his back quivered and seemed about to relax. Dick had a sudden incongruous vision of another body falling, leaning head downward into the bright grass.
His mouth was dry. “Get out of my way!” he said hoarsely. He flung his stick away, careless of where it went, and kneeled on th
e brink with one foot precariously braced against the side of the entrance. He got his hands around Keel’s wet, cold wrist, and pulled.
A giant’s hand was tugging Keel the other way. Dick went down on one side, still hanging on. He was sliding toward the edge, helplessly; the lights in the ceiling were a bewildering glare.
Arms went around his waist. There was a clatter of sticks on the metal, voices babbling; another giant’s hand began to pull him backward. Dick’s arms threatened to come out of their sockets; he hung on grimly. Keel’s arm and lolling head came reluctantly over the brink, then the other hand, feebly groping; then the rest of him.
It was not Keel’s friend, as Dick had imagined, who had held him by the waist, but the gargoyle, Frankie. The friend, a man with a dark forelock and a sullen lip, was looking on from the background. Rolling to his feet, Frankie bent over Keel, then straddled him and began to push rhythmically at his ribs. A little water dribbled out of Keel’s mouth; he stirred. “He be arright,” said Frankie cheerfully. “If you wait for me jus’ a little minute now, Misser Jones, I take you to you’ rooms.”
The stocky man (Ruell? Why was that name familiar?) had bent to retrieve his swagger stick and was delicately dusting his hands. He must have been the third man, then, on the human chain that had dragged Keel to safety. “I’ll take him,” he said, with a stiff little bow to Dick. “If the mister doesn’t object. What suite?”
“Number H 103—in the rosewood court aroun’ by the Old Fountain.”
“I know where it is. Come along then, Mister Jones; you’ve done quite all you can do here.”
As they passed, the sullen young man made a sudden face and gesture: “Jerry won’t forget you!”
“Nor will he,” murmured Ruell, strolling on at Dick’s elbow. “You made a mistake; Keel is not a grateful man, he’s too vain. I now warn you again, and then I’ll drop the subject: you had better kill that man if you can, the first chance you get.”
They were crossing a huge, paved courtyard, glassed in fifty feet above, with beds of geometrically planted geraniums and phlox, dogwood, asters, delphiniums, tulips. Dick felt bewildered and weak from reaction; he said, “Why did you help me pull him out, then?”
“It was your choice,” said Ruell, indifferently. “On your left,” he went on, “the Winton Number One.” He was pointing to a hideous object on a flagstone dais, a four-wheeled golden carriage with lucite wheels and an embroidered canopy over the open seat. Every inch of surface was chased, engraved, jeweled, elaborately ornamented. “One of the first automobiles sold in the United States,” Ruell said. “A reconstruction, however—historically valueless, but the only one of its kind.” He pointed again. “On your right, an early Packard—the first with a wheel instead of a tiller. Beyond that, of course, is the Stanley Steamer.”
“Is that what the Boss collects?” Dick asked. “Autos?”
“Ha!” said Ruell, explosively. His nose twitched and his eyebrows went up. “Ha, ha! Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha! Ah, my dear boy—” He hugged himself with one arm, with the other clapped Dick on the shoulder.
Dick moved away. “What’s so funny?”
“Now here,” said Ruell, recovering instantly, “we have the famous Old Fountain.” It was a waist-high flagstone pool, twenty feet across, with a thin jet of water in the middle. “The eel-like fish,” said Ruell, “are lampreys. Quite unpleasant—they cling to their prey with that toothed sucker, then rasp a hole in it with their tongues, which also have teeth. A Roman of the time of Augustus kept lampreys in his fishpond, and threw slaves to them for trivial offenses. Vedius Pollio was his name; that was twenty-one centuries ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
Dick stopped and turned to face him. “My rooms can’t be far from here,” he said. “I imagine I can find them myself. Good-by.”
Ruell stopped him, looking contrite. “My dear boy, I didn’t mean any offense. I laughed, impolitely, at your ignorance. You asked if the Boss collects cars—well, I can’t just at the moment think of anything the Boss does not collect. He collects collections. He collects interminably and insatiably. This whole mountain, in fact,” he said persuasively, taking Dick’s arm again, “is little more than a thin shell, over a bottomless pit of the Boss’s collections. Now. Your suite is just here.”
Dick allowed himself to be led again, thinking it the quickest way to get rid of the man. There was something he profoundly disliked and distrusted about him; perhaps it had something to do with the nagging familiarity of the name Ruell— He stopped suddenly, feeling for the thin envelope he had stuffed into his breast pocket. It was still there.
“Yes?” said Ruell, alertly. “Have you something for me?”
“If you’re the man my father—I mean, if your name is—”
“Leon Ruell; of course; I thought you knew. But don’t let’s talk here—one moment.” He leaned, opened a carved rose-wood door, urged Dick inside.
The ceilings were immensely high, ending in peaked, prismed skylights from which a multicolored radiance spilled down the walls. The walls to a level above Dick’s head were of carved rosewood; the rest was blue plaster. From beyond a doorway came the sound of hammering: the rooms had a musty, untenanted air.
“You’ll be comfortable enough here,” said Ruell, sniffing disparagingly, “for a day or so, until we can find you more suitable quarters. Now, then, if you please.” He held out his hand; Dick put the envelope in it.
Ruell, with an apologetic nod, turned half away, slit the envelope with his thumbnail, opened a sheet of flimsy paper and read it slowly. When he was done, he creased the paper thoughtfully once, twice, and began to eat it. He smiled at Dick’s astonishment. “Rice paper,” he said, swallowing. “Haven’t you ever used that trick? Well, you will, you will.”
The hammering had stopped. From the other room came the gargoyle, Frankie, dressed in a blue overall like a show dog and carrying a box of carpenter’s tools. He nodded cheerfully to Dick. “We fix you up, one, two, three, Misser Jones.” He went out; there was a brief colloquy at the door, and he came in again, dressed in a yellow coverall and carrying a painter’s kit.
Dick started at him with his jaw unhinged. “All done pretty quick, Misser Jones,” said Frankie, grinning happily; he disappeared into the other room.
With a muttered exclamation, Dick followed to the doorway. A section of the paneling in the inner room had been removed and replaced with raw, newly carved wood. Frankie was taping sheets of masking paper around it, with his cans of stain and shellac, his brushes and spray gun neatly laid out around him. His coverall was definitely yellow, an unequivocal, almost offensive yellow, and it was a different garment entirely from the blue one he had worn a moment ago.
Ruell was at his elbow, looking amused. Remembering the exchange at the door, Dick said, “There are two of them—is that it? Are they twins?”
Ruell went off into one of his choked explosions of laughter. “Are there two!” he repeated. “Twins!”
Frankie looked around—if it was Frankie—with his grin broadening. “Don’t you feel bad, Misser Jones,” he said. “We surprise mos’ people, don’t we, Misser Ruell?”
Ruell’s laughter was trailing off into a series of little sighs, Ahuh. Ahuh! Finished with these, he asked solemnly, “Exactly how many are there of you at the present moment, Frankie?”
Frankie’s expression grew equally serious. “This morning,” he said, “they was two hun’red forty-three of me exackly. You know las’ month they was only two hun’red twelve, the mos’, but this month we doing so much work to build up the Long Corridor where it fell down, they need us bad. We the bes’ servan’ in Eagles, Misser Ruell. Nex’ nearest is Hank the carrier, and I think they only a hun’red, a hun’red ten of him. Well, Misser Jones, you never see a fellow so many, eh?” He laughed with pleasure.
They turned away. “There used to be some fabulous number of him,” Ruell said, “I don’t recall, three hundred fifty or so, and Frankie’s one ambition is to beat his
own record. He counts himself every morning, and if he’s lost any, he goes around with a long face for the rest of the day. Is anything the matter?”
“It doesn’t seem sensible,” said Dick. He started to sit, then, remembering that he was technically at home, offered Ruell a chair first. “How do you tell which one you’ve sent on an errand? Or suppose you want one of them to remember something for you, how do you find him again?”
“Oh, Frankie tells himself everything,” said Ruell, sitting gracefully upright, legs crossed, hand on his stick. “That’s why he’s so useful—he knows everything, goes everywhere; besides which, if you have a useful servant, why experiment?”
It was the fifth or sixth time he had heard the word “servant” that day. “Don’t you call them slobs here?” he demanded irritably. “Or even slaves?”
Ruell shrugged. “My dear boy—” His ironic glance sharpened. “Let me see now. You ride well, your small-arms shooting is just fair, your swagger-stick work is quite good, as you have demonstrated; with coaching, you might become exceptional. You swim, no doubt, dance, I suppose; know nothing, want to know nothing …”
Dick stood up.
“Don’t lose your temper,” said Ruell evenly. “It’s your worst fault, except for ignorance: sit down, I have something to tell you. I say, sit down.”
For some reason, Dick sat. “You are of a prime age,” Ruell went on in the same tone, “strong, well set up and not bad looking. Above all, you are a new face. I think that will be our best line of attack.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Dick.
“Don’t you? Let me put it this way. At Eagles, everything is power; orbits and spheres of power, tides of power. As you have none yourself, you must have a protector: the question is, which? Now, nothing is ever given for nothing, at Eagles; what have you to offer? Let’s see; no particular talents nor skills, no connections at Eagles except myself—and nothing to expect from me but good advice, incidentally—no supporters, no special information, in short, nothing but your person. Now let me think.” He paused, two curved fingers at his chin. “If only you had let Keel drown, there would have been an opening. Keel is Randolph’s boy, and you could hardly ask for anything better than that; Randolph is the Boss’s secretary of entertainment. Very nice; it’s too bad. However—” he scanned Dick’s face more closely—“I don’t believe you’re the type; curious, I had rather expected …Well, that leaves us just one alternative.” He sat back. “We shall have to make a ladies’ man of you. It’s a shorter career as a rule, and a chancier one—the dear ladies are capricious—but we’ll see what we can do. I’ll introduce you to one or two of them; I assure you, some of them are not bad-looking at all; and if nothing happens, or if it doesn’t last, well, we’ll try again.”