“Now – I don’t know – ” said Hearst, but Marion had the bit in her teeth.
“Oh, come on, it can’t hurt anybody. Are you all done eating? What do you say, kids?”
“Aren’t you supposed to have a round table?” asked Jack doubtfully.
“Not necessarily,” Mrs. Bryce told him. “This very table will do, if we clear away dinner and turn out the lights.”
There was a scramble to do as she suggested. Hearst turned to look at me sheepishly, and then I guess the humor of it got to him: an immortal being sitting in on a séance. He pressed his lips together to keep from grinning. I shrugged, looking wise and ironic.
Marion came running back from the kitchen and took her place at table. “Okay,” she yelled to the butler, and he flicked an unseen switch. The dining hall was plunged into darkness.
“Whadda we do now?” Connie asked breathlessly.
“Consider the utter darkness and the awful chill for a moment,” replied Mrs. Bryce in somber tones. “Think of the grave, if you are tempted to mock our proceedings. And now, if you are all willing to show a proper respect for the spirits – link hands, please.”
There was a creaking and rustling as we obeyed her. I felt Hearst’s big right hand enclose my left one. Lewis took my other hand. Good Lord, it’s dark in here, he transmitted.
So watch, by infrared, I told him. I switched it on myself; the place looked really lurid then, but I had a suspicion about what was going to happen and I wanted to be prepared.
“Spirits of the unseen world,” intoned Mrs. Bryce. “Ascended ones! Pause in your eternal meditations and heed our petition. We seek enlightenment! Ah, yes, I begin to feel the vibrations – there is one who approaches us. Can it be? But yes, it is our dear friend Tcho-Tcho! Freed from her disguise of earthly flesh, she once again parts the veil between the worlds. Tcho-Tcho, I sense your urgency. What have you to tell us, dear friend? Speak!”
I think most of the people in the room anticipated some prankster barking at that point, but oddly enough nobody did, and in the strained moment of silence that followed Mrs. Bryce let her head sag forward. Then, slowly, she raised it again, and tilted it way back. She gasped a couple of times and then began to moan in a tiny falsetto voice, incoherent sounds as though she were trying to form words.
“Woooooo,” she wailed softly. “Woooo Woo Woo Woo! Woo Woooo!”
There were vibrations then, all right, from fourteen people trying to hold in their giggles. Mrs. Bryce tossed her head from side to side.
“Wooooo,” she went on, and Conqueror Worm sat up in her lap and pointed his snout at the ceiling and began to talk along with her in that way that dogs will, sort of Wou-wou, wou-wou wou, and beside me Hearst was shaking with silent laughter. Mrs. Bryce must have sensed she was losing her audience, because the woo-woos abruptly began to form into distinct words:
“I have come back,” she said. “I have returned from the vale of felicity because I have unfinished business here. Creatures of the lower plane, there are spirits waiting with me who would communicate with you. Cast aside all ignorant fear. Listen for them!”
After another moment of silence Marion said, in a strangling kind of voice: “Um – we were just wondering – can you tell us who any of us were in our past lives?”
“Yes . . .” Mrs. Bryce appeared to be listening hard. “There is one . . . she was born on the Nineteenth day of April.”
Connie sat up straight and peered through the darkness in Mrs. Bryce’s direction. “Why, dat’s my boithday!” she said in a stage whisper.
“Yes . . . I see her in Babylon, Babylon that is fallen . . . yea, truly she lived in Babylon, queen of cities all, and carried roses to lay before Ishtar’s altar.”
“Jeez, can ya beat it?” Connie exclaimed. “I musta been a priestess or something.”
“Pass on now . . . I see a man, hard and brutal . . . he labors with his hands. He stands before towers that point at heaven . . . black gold pours forth. He has been too harsh. He repents . . . he begs forgiveness . . . ”
I could see Gable gritting his teeth so hard the muscles in his jaws stood out. His eyes were furious. I wondered if she’d seen a photograph of his father in his luggage. Or had Mrs. Bryce scooped this particular bit of biographical detail out of a movie magazine?
Anyway he stubbornly refused to take the bait, and after a prolonged silence the quavery voice continued:
“Pass on, pass on . . . There is one here who has sailed the mighty oceans. I see him in a white cap. . . .”
There was an indrawn breath from one of Hearst’s executives. Somebody who enjoyed yachting?
“Yet he has sailed the seven seas in another life . . . I see him kneeling before a great queen, presenting her with all the splendor of the Spanish fleet . . . this entity bore the name of Francis Drake.”
Rapacious little pirate turned cutthroat executive? Hey, it could happen.
“Pass on now . . .” I could see Mrs. Bryce turn her head slightly and peer in Lewis’ direction through half-closed eyes. “Oh, there is an urgent message . . . there is one here who pleads to speak . . . this spirit with his dark and smoldering gaze . . . he begs to be acknowledged without shame, for no true passion is shameful . . . he seeks his other self.”
Yikes! transmitted Lewis, horrified.
Okay. She wanted to convince us Rudolph Valentino was trying to say something? He was going to say something, all right. I didn’t care whether Lewis or Rudy were straight or gay or swung both ways, but this was just too mean-spirited.
I pulled my right hand free from Lewis’ and wriggled the left one loose from Hearst’s. He turned his head in my direction and I felt a certain speculative amusement from him, but he said nothing to stop me.
So here’s what Hearst’s surveillance cameras and Dictaphones recorded next: a blur moving through the darkness and a loud crash, as of cymbals. Tcho-Tcho’s voice broke off with a little scream.
Next there was a man’s voice speaking out of the darkness, but from way high up in the air where no mortal could possibly be – like on the tiny ledge above the wall of choir stalls. If you’d ever heard Valentino speak (like I had, for instance) you’d swear it was him yelling in a rage:
“I am weary of lies! There is a thief here, and if what has been stolen is not returned tonight, the djinni of the desert will avenge. The punishing spirits of the afterlife will pursue! Do you DARE to cross me?”
Then there was a hiss and a faint smell of sulfur, and gasps and little shrieks from the assembled company as an apparition appeared briefly in the air: Valentino’s features, and who could mistake them? His mouth was grim, his eyes hooded with stern determination, just the same expression as Sheik Ahmed had worn advancing on Vilma Banky. Worse still, they were eerily pallid against a scarlet shadow. Somebody screamed, really screamed in terror.
The image vanished, there was another crash, and then a confused moment in which the servants ran in shouting and the lights were turned on.
Everybody was sitting where they had been when the lights had gone out, including me. Down at the end of the table, though, where nobody was sitting, one of Mr. Hearst’s collection of eighteenth-century silver platters was spinning around like a phonograph record.
Everyone stared at it, terrified, and the only noise in that cavernous place was the slight rattling as the thing spun slowly to a stop.
“Wow,” said the Hearst kid in awe. His father turned slowly to look at me. I met his eyes and pulled out a handkerchief. I was sweating again, but you would be too, you know? And I used the gesture to drop the burnt-out match I had palmed.
“What the hell’s going on?” said Gable, getting to his feet. He stalked down the table to the platter and halted, staring at it.
“What is it?” said Jack.
Gable reached out cautiously and lifted the platter in his hands. He tilted it up so everybody could see. There was a likeness of Valentino smeared on the silver, in some red substance.
“Je
ez!” screamed Connie.
“What is that stuff?” said Laurence. “Is it blood?”
“Is it ectoplasm?” demanded one of the executives.
Gable peered at it closely.
“It’s ketchup,” he announced. “Aw, for Christ’s sake.”
Everyone’s gaze was promptly riveted on the ketchup bottle just to Mr. Hearst’s right. Hard as they stared at it, I don’t think anybody noticed that it was five inches further to his right than it had been when the lights went out.
Or maybe Mr. Hearst noticed. He pressed his napkin to his mouth and began to shiver like a volcano about to explode, squeezing his eyes shut as tears ran down.
“P-P-Pops!” Marion practically climbed over the table to him, thinking he was having a heart attack.
“I’m okay – ” He put out a hand to her, gulping for breath, and she realized he was laughing. That broke the tension. There were nervous guffaws and titters from everyone in the room except Cartimandua Bryce, who was pale and silent at her place. Conqueror Worm was still crouched down in her lap, trembling, trying to be The Little Dog Who Wasn’t There.
“Gee, that was some neat trick somebody pulled off!” said young Hearst.
Mrs. Bryce drew a deep breath and rose to her feet, clutching Conqueror Worm.
“Or – was it?” she said composedly. She swept the room with a glance. “If anyone here has angered the spirit of Rudolph Valentino, I leave it to his or her discretion to make amends as swiftly as possible. Mr. Hearst? This experience has taken much of the life force from me. I must rest. I trust you’ll excuse me?”
“Sure,” wheezed Hearst, waving her away.
She made a proudly dignified exit. I glanced over at Lewis, who stared back at me with wide eyes.
Nice work, he transmitted. I grinned at him.
I wouldn’t go off to your room too early, I advised. Give her time to put the script back.
Okay.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,” Hearst said at last, sighing, “but I’m ready for some ice cream, after that.”
So we had ice cream and then went in to watch the movie, which was Dinner at Eight. Everybody stayed through to the end. I thought it was a swell story.
Lewis and I walked back to La Casa Del Sol afterward, scanning carefully, but nobody was lurking along the paths. No horrible little dog leaped out at me when I turned on the light in my room, either.
“It’s here,” I heard Lewis crowing.
“The script? Safe and sound?”
“Every page!” Lewis appeared in my doorway, clutching it to his chest. “Thank God. I think I’ll sleep with it under my pillow tonight.”
“And dream of Rudy?” I said, leering.
“Oh, shut up.” He pursed his lips and went off to his room.
I relaxed on my bed while I listened to him changing into his pajamas, brushing his teeth, gargling and all the stuff even immortals have to do before bedtime. He climbed into bed and turned out the light, and maybe he dreamed about Rudy, or even Garbo. I monitored his brainwaves until I was sure he slept deeply enough. Time for the stuff he didn’t need to know about.
I changed into dark clothes and laced up the tennis shoes Hearst had loaned me. Opening my black case, I slid out its false bottom and withdrew the sealed prepackaged medical kit I’d been issued from the Company HQ in Hollywood before coming up here. With it was a matchbox-sized hush field unit.
I stuck the hush unit in my pocket and slid the medical kit into my shirt. Then I slipped outside, and raced through the gardens of La Cuesta Encantada faster than Robin Goodfellow, or even Evar Swanson, could have done it.
The only time I had to pause was at the doorway on the east terrace, when it took me a few seconds to disable the alarm and pick the lock; then I was racing round and round up the staircase, and so into Hearst’s private rooms.
I had the hush field unit activated before I came anywhere near him, and it was a good thing. There was still a light on in his bedroom. I tiptoed in warily all the same, hoping Marion wasn’t there.
She wasn’t. She slept sound in her own room on the other end of the suite. I still froze when I entered Hearst’s room, though, because Marion gazed serenely down at me from her life-sized nude portrait on the wall. I looked around. She kept pretty strange company: portraits of Hearst’s mother and father hung there too, as well as several priceless paintings of the Madonna and Child. I wondered briefly what the pictures might have to say to each other, if they could talk.
Hearst was slumped unconscious in the big armchair next to his telephone. Thank God he hadn’t been using it when the hush field had gone on, or there’d be a phone off the hook and a hysterical night operator sending out an alarm now. He’d only been working late, composing an editorial by the look of it, in a strong confident scrawl on a lined pad. His dachshund was curled up at his feet, snoring. I set it aside gently and, like an ant picking up a dead beetle, lifted Hearst onto his canopied bed. Then I turned on both lamps, stripped off Hearst’s shirt and took out the medical kit.
The seal hissed as I broke it, and I peeled back the film to reveal . . .
The wrong medical kit.
I stared into it, horrified. What was all this stuff? This wasn’t what I needed to do routine heart repair on a mortal! This was one of our own kits, the kind the Base HQ repair facilities stocked. I staggered backward and collapsed into Hearst’s comfy chair. Boy, oh boy, did I want some Pep-O-Mints right then.
I sat there a minute, hearing my own heart pounding in that big quiet house.
All right, I told myself, talented improvisation is your forte, isn’t it? You’ve done emergency surgery with less, haven’t you? Sure you have. Hell, you’ve used flint knives and bronze mirrors and leeches and there’s bound to be something in that kit you can use.
I got on my feet and poked through it. Okay, here were some sterile Scrubbie Towelettes. I cleansed the area where I’d be making my incision. And here were some sterile gloves, great, I pulled those on. A scalpel. So far, so good. And a hemostim, and a skin plasterer, yeah, I could do this! And here was a bone laser. This was going to work out after all.
I gave Hearst a shot of metabolic depressant, opened him up and set to work, telling myself that somebody was going to be in big trouble when I made my report to Dr. Zeus . . .
Hearst’s ribs looked funny.
There was a thickening of bone where I was having to use the laser, in just the places I needed to make my cuts. Old trauma? Damned old. Funny-looking.
His heart looked funny too. Of course, I expected that. Hearst had a heart defect, after all. Still, I didn’t expect the microscopic wired chip attached to one chamber’s wall.
I could actually taste those Pep-O-Mints now. My body was simulating the sensation to comfort me, a defense against the really amazing stress I was experiencing.
I glanced over casually at the medical kit and observed that there was an almost exact duplicate of the chip, but bigger, waiting for me in a shaped compartment. So were a bunch of other little implants.
Repairs and upgrade. This was the right kit after all.
I set down my scalpel, peeled off my gloves, took out my chronophase and opened its back. I removed a small component. Turning to Hearst’s phone, I clamped the component to its wire and picked up the receiver. I heard weird noises and then a smooth voice informing me I had reached Hollywood HQ.
“This is Facilitator Joseph and WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?” I demanded.
“Downloading file,” the voice replied sweetly.
I went rigid as the encoded signal came tootling through the line to me. Behind my eyes flashed the bright images: I was getting a mission report, filed in 1862, by a Facilitator Jabesh . . . assigned to monitor a young lady who was a passenger on a steamer bound from New York to the Isthmus of Panama, and from there to San Francisco. She was a recent bride, traveling with her much older husband. She was two months pregnant. I saw the pretty girl in pink, I saw the rolling seas
, I saw the ladies in their bustles and the tophatted guys with muttonchop whiskers.
The girl was very ill. Ordinary morning sickness made worse by mal de mer? Jabesh – there, man in black, tipping his stovepipe hat to her – posing as a kindly doctor, attended her daily. One morning she fainted in her cabin and her husband pulled Jabesh in off the deck to examine her. Jabesh sent him for a walk around the ship and prepared to perform a standard obstetric examination on the unconscious girl.
Jabesh’s horrified face: almost into his hands she miscarried a severely damaged embryo. It was not viable. His frantic communication, next, on the credenza concealed in his doctor’s bag. The response: PRIORITY GOLD, with an authorization backed up by Executive Facilitator General Aegeus. The child was to live, at all costs. He was to make it viable. Why? Was the Company making certain that history happened as written again? But how could he save this child? With what? Where did he even start?
He downloaded family records. Here was an account of the husband having had a brother “rendered helpless” by an unspecified disease and dying young. Some lethal recessive? Nobody could make this poor little lump of flesh live! But the Company had issued a Priority Gold.
I saw the primitive stateroom, the basin of bloody water, Jabesh’s shirtsleeves rolled up, his desperation. The Priority Gold blinking away at him from his credenza screen.
We’re not bound by the laws of mortals, but we do have our own laws. Rules that are never broken under any circumstances, regulations that carry terrible penalties if they’re not adhered to. We can be punished with memory effacement, or worse.
Unless we’re obeying a Priority Gold. Or so rumor has it.
Jabesh repaired the thing, got its heart-bud beating again. It wasn’t enough. Panicked, he pulled out a few special items from his bag (I had just seen one of them) and did something flagrantly illegal: he did a limited augmentation on the embryo. Still not enough.
So that was when he rolled the dice, took the chance. He did something even more flagrantly illegal.
He mended what was broken on that twisted helix of genetic material. He did it with an old standard issue chromosome patcher, the kind found in any operative’s field repair kit. They were never intended to be used on mortals, let alone two-month-old embryos, but Jabesh didn’t know what else to do. He set it on automatic and by the time he realized what it was doing, he was too late to stop the process.
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17 Page 89