"Because of whatever it is you're looking for?" Flowers said.
"Yes ... I suppose so. But I've thought about it a lot ... Even if there were nothing special I were seeking, even then... I'd just get restless."
He puffed on the cigar.
"Then I'd get back on the Road and my problem would still be there, waiting for me," he finished.
"That turnoff is coming up now."
"Yeah, thanks, I see it"
He cut down and across onto this tributary of the Road. He passed a variety of vehicles and was passed himself as he sped along.
"That closes one option," Mondamay said.
"What?" .,,.,,. "You can't just quit and hide, because you can't stay
hidden. The time interval spent off the Road—even if it is a long one—would mean nothing once you return
to it."
"So your retirement from the Road should only be for purposes of planning or arming."
"Again, true."
"Or you can return to the Road, go about your business, stay alert, and hope to win out in all the ensuing
assaults—"
"I might just do that."
"—bearing in mind that every one of them is going to be managed by a professional in this line of work, and that your enemy can afford to hire uniquely talented individuals from virtually anywhere."
"The thought had passed through my mind. Nevertheless ..."
"Or you could choose your own battleground. Select some comfortable, well-fortified spot, let it be known that you are there, and let them come after you."
"There's the motel now," Red announced as a large stone structure several stories in height, topped with cupolas, glittering in the dayglow, came into view on the left. The sign in front said SPIRO'S.
He passed the establishment. A little farther ahead, there was a cloverleaf. He spun about it, emerged on the proper side of the road, headed back. The sky faded, brightened, faded, faded, as he slowed and turned off toward the building. It was a cool, dark night when he entered the lot and parked. Somewhere a cricket was singing.
He removed Flowers from her compartment and got out of the car. He fetched his backpack from the rear. Mondamay climbed out and joined him.
"Red?" Mondamay said as they headed toward the front doors.
"Yes?" "Get two rooms, will you?" "Okay. How come?" "One for Flowers and myself. We just want to be
alone—together." "Oh. Sure. I'll take care of it."
They entered the flagstoned lobby, where he left
Flowers with Mondamay and headed for the registra tion office. He was in it for several minutes. "Sorry we couldn't be on the same floor," he said as
they moved toward the stairs. "You are below the
third balcony, though. I'm above it. Come on up to my
room for a while. I want to continue our discussion. "This was our intention also." | They went round and round, the stairs creaking be
neath Mondomay's tread.
Two
Dreaming roadmaps and gold, the great dragons of Bel'kwinith drift and twist on the breezes of morning, when they were not dreaming in their caves. Timeless collaborators with destiny, they move their wills across the landscape of dream and desire...
"Patris," said the younger one, "you have said that if a certain event occurs, I may enter his cave to remove the hoard that awaits him there and add it to my own."
The older one opened one eye. Minutes passed.
Then, "I have said that," Patris acknowledged.
More minutes passed.
Finally, "You say nothing more, Chantris," the older one stated. "Has it occurred?"
"No, not yet..."
"Then why do you trouble me?"
"Because I feel that it may soon come to pass."
"Feel?"
"It seems likely."
"Likelies and their uns have seldom concerned us here. I know your desire, and I say that you may not yet have his hoard."
"Yes," said Chantris, showing many of her teeth. "Yes," Patris repeated in their sibilant tongue, and he opened his other eye. "And you have just spoken one
"
word too many. You know my will and you seek to toy with it." He raised his head. The other drew back. "Do you challenge me?"
"No," said Chantris.
"... And by that you say 'not yet.'"
"I would not be so foolish as to choose this time and this spot."
"Good sense. Though I doubt it will save you in the end. Face the north wind and depart."
"I was about to anyway, Lord Patris. And I bid you remember we need no Road. Farewell!"
"Hold, Chantris! If you go to damage these chains you have seen, if you go to harm this one in his other form, then you may have chosen your time and your place!"
But the other had already departed, to seek and stop one who would return to the wind but knew it not wholly, yet.
Patris revolved his eyes. Times and places moved behind them. He found the channel of his desire and adjusted the fine tuning.
One
Red sat on his bed, Mondamay on the floor. Flowers on the table between them. Cigar smoke twisted about the room. Red raised an ornate goblet from the table and sipped a dark wine.
"All right Where were we?" he asked, unlacing his boots and dropping them beside the bed.
"You had said that you did not want to come home with me and make pots," Mondamay stated.
"That's true."
"... And you agreed that it would be difficult for you to leave the Road and stay in hiding indefinitely."
"Yes."
"You also conceded that remaining on the Road and going about your business could be hazardous."
"Right."
"Then the only course of action I can see is for you
to go on the offensive. Get Chadwick before he gets you."
"Hmm." Red closed his eyes. "That would be an interesting variation," he said. "But he's pretty far from here, and it would certainly not be easy .. ." Where is he now?"
"The last I knew, he'd put down pretty firm roots
in C Twenty-seven. He is a very wealthy and powerful man."
"But you could find him?"
"Yes."
"How well do you know his time and place?" Mondamay asked.
"I lived there for over a year."
"Then your best course of action seems obvious: go after him."
"I suppose you are right."
Red suddenly put down his goblet, rose to his feet and began pacing rapidly.
"You suppose! What else is there left to do?"
"Yes, yes!" Red replied, unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it onto the bed. "Listen, we'll have to finish talking about it tomorrow."
He unbuckled his belt, stepped out of his trousers, threw them next to the shirt. He resumed pacing.
"Red!" Flowers said sharply. "Are you having one of your spells?"
"I don't know. I feel a little peculiar, that's all. Possibly. I think you'd better go now. We'll talk more in the morning."
"I think we'd better stay," Flowers answered. "I'd like to know what happens, and perhaps—"
"No! I mean it! I'll talk to you later! Leave me!" .
"All right. As you say. Let's go, Mondy."
Mondamay rose and removed Flowers from the table.
"Is there anything at all that I can do, that I can get you?" he asked.
"No."
"Good night, then."
"Good night."
He departed. As he moved down the stairs, Mondamay asked Flowers, "What is it? I've known him for some time, but I never knew of any illness—any spells... What's he got?"
"I have no idea. He does not get them often, but
when he does, he always manages to be alone. I believe he has recurrent bouts of insanity—some sort of manic thing.
"How so?
"You will know what I mean if you get a look at his room in the morning. He is going to have a big bill here. He'll tear that place apart."
"Not that I know of."
"There must be some very good ones in the high Cs."
"Indeed. But he won't see one. He'll be all right in the morning, though—a little tired, perhaps, and there may even be a personality change. But he'll be all
right."
"What sort of personality change?" "Hard to say. You'll see."
"Here's our room. You sure you want to try this?" "I'll tell you inside."
Two
In the room with walls bound like books in large. grained, crushed morocco, Chadwick and Count Donatien Alphonse Francois, marquis de Sade, sat in high-backed chairs playing chess at a C Fifteen moneychanger's table. Standing, Chadwick was six feet in height. Standing or sitting, he weighed about twentyfive stone. His hair was a helmet of pale curls above a low brow over gray eyes with dark smudges beneath them, blue eyeshadow above; broken veins crossed his
wide nose and underlay his cheeks like bright webs. His neck was thick, his shoulders broad; his sausage-like fingers were steady and deft as he removed the other's. pawn from the board and dropped his bishop onto its square.
He turned to his right, where a pale-blue lazy Susan containing a circular rack of aperitif glasses drifted. Turning it, he sipped in quick succession of an orange a green, a yellow and a smoky gold, almost in time to the music of horns and strings. The glasses were instantly refilled as he replaced them.
He stretched and regarded his companion, who was reaching for his own beverage carousel.
"Your game is improving," he said, "or mine is degenerating. I'm not certain which."
His guest sipped from the clear, the bright red, the amber and again the clear liqueurs.
"In light of your activities on my behalf, he replied, "I could never acknowledge the latter."
Chadwick smiled and flipped his left hand palmupward for a moment.
"I try to bring interesting people to teach at my writing workshops," he said. "It is extremely rewarding when one of them also proves such fine company."
The marquis returned his smile.
"I do find it a considerable improvement over the circumstances from which you removed me last month, and I must confess I would like to extend my absence from my own milieu for as long as possible—preferably indefinitely."
Chadwick nodded.
"I find your views so interesting that it would be hard to part with you."
"... And I am enthralled by the development of letters since my own time. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Verlaine—and that wonderful man Artaud! I saw it all coming, of course."
"I am certain."
"Particularly Artaud, as a matter of fact."
"I would have guessed as much."
"His call for a theater of cruelty—what a fine and noble thing!"
"Yes. There is much merit to it."
"The cries, the sudden terror! I—"
The marquis produced a silk handkerchief from his sleeve and blotted his brow. He smiled weakly.
"I have my sudden enthusiasms," he stated.
Chadwick chuckled.
... Such as the game in which you are engaged— this, this black decade. It makes me think of the wonderful Jan Luyken plates you showed me the other evening. From your descriptions, I almost feel party to it...."
"It is about time for a progress report," Chadwick remarked. "Let us see how things are going."
He rose and crossed the pelt-strewn floor, approaching a black marble sphinx to the left of the smoldering fireplace. Halting before it, he muttered a few words and it extruded a long paper tongue. He tore this off and returned with it to his seat, where he held it before him like a scroll, his brows furrowed, and slowly unrolled it.
He reached for a glass containing an ounce of straight Kentucky bourbon, drained it and replaced it in the rack.
"Old Red made it past the first one," he said. "Killed the man we'd sent. This was not unexpected. It was a rather crude effort. Just to serve him notice, so to speak."
"A question ..."
"Yes?"
"You definitely wanted the quarry to be aware that this game had commenced?"
"Sure. Makes him sweat a lot more that way."
"I see. Then what happened?"
"Things began in earnest. A tracking device was placed on his vehicle and traps were set for him in a number of places to which he might flee. But the record becomes confused at this point. He did proceed into one of the ambush areas where one of the better assassins—a man for whom I had great hopes—had what sounded like an excellent arrangement for concluding things. It is not clear what occurred there. But the assassin disappeared. Our follow-up men learned that there had been some sort of altercation—but the innkeeper on whose grounds it took place did not even know its exact nature—and Red departed, after removing the tracking device and leaving it behind."
The marquis smiled.
"And so the second stroke fails. It makes the game more interesting, does it not?"
"Perhaps. Though I wouldn't have minded seeing it end there. I am disturbed by the third one, however. It must count against me as an attempt, as I'd registered the assassin with the Games Board-but it doesn't seem as though the attempt was actually made."
"Which one was that?"
"The woman with the deadly hands and the custom you found so delightful. She simply vanished. Went off with a new boyfriend and never came back. My man waited several days for her. Nothing. I am going to call him away from that phase of the operation and write
her off." , , ,
"Pity. Sad to lose a creature of such character. But tell me, when you say 'several days,' how do you measure them if you are not certain where—or should I say when?—she has gone?"
Chadwick shook his head.
"They are 'drift' days," he explained. "My man is at a fixed point on the Road. A day there corresponds to the passage of a day at most of the exits. If he were to remain there for ten years and then wish to return to the exit point of ten years previous, he would have to head down the Road and take a different exit."
"Then there is a drift to the exits themselves?"
"Yes', that's one way of regarding it. But there appear to be an infinite number of them advancing. We change the signs periodically, but most of the travelers who go in for long runs rather than local hops carry small computers—those thinking machines I told you about—to keep track of these matters."
"So you could restore me to my own age at an earlier time, a later time, or the same time as you recovered me?"
"Yes, any of those could be arranged. Have you a
preference?"
"Actually, I would like to learn to operate one of your vehicles—and one of those computers. Could I
travel it alone then? Could I find my way back here again from another age?"
"Once you have traveled the Road, there does seem to be some sort of physical alteration permitting you to find it and do it again," Chadwick acknowledged "But I'll have to think about it. I am not ready to sacrifice your company to your sightseeing whims or to your desire to murder your grandfather."
The marquis chuckled.
"Nor am I an ungracious guest, I assure you. But once I learn to deal with the drift, I could see all the sights I want and return to just about now—could I not?"
"I'd rather discuss this later. Shall we leave it at that?"
The marquis smiled and sipped absinthe.
"For now," he said. Then, "So your quarry is temporarily invisible?"
"He was, until he foolishly betrayed his position around C Twelve by placing a bet on himself. Perhaps he does not realize that betting records in these matters have recently been centralized. And, of course, it could also be some sort of a trap."
"What are you going to do?"
"Respond, naturally. If it means sacrificing another assassin, so be it I can afford it at this point, and I have to discover whether he is being careless or has something special in mind."
"I feel it should be a strong one. Perhaps Max, that C Twenty-four brain in the armored vehicle. Or even Timyin Tin—though I would like to hold him in reserve, should everyone else fail. It would be best to hit hard now. Perhaps Archie. Yes..."
"I wish ..."
"What?"
"I wish it were possible for us to go back and witness
the event. Have you no desire to be present when your old enemy is brought low?" "I will, of course, receive a full report, with photos."
"Still.'.."
"Yes I see your point. Naturally, it has occurred to me. But I have no way of knowing which one will be the hit. My intention is simply to wait until the event has occurred and then go back and witness it. I'll locate some sideroad. I will get there to see it, eventually. I just want to be certain that it has taken place first In fact I intend to witness it many, many times."
"It sounds rather complicated. I would be happy to go back and serve as your personal witness the first time
around."
"Perhaps something might be arranged—later."
"But later may be too late."
"It is never too late. Right now we have a chess game to complete, and then there are some manuscripts I want you to take a look at."
The marquis sighed.
"You really know how to hurt a man."
Chadwick grinned and lit an orange tube. A tortoise, its shell inlaid with gold and precious gems, wandered by. He reached down and patted its head.
"A' time for everything, and everything in its time," he said.
One
Red had sent for trays of food—great racks of beef, whole chickens and hogs—and he sat gorging himself and swaying, rising occasionally to pace, to pause, panting, beside the barred window. The night was cool. An unrisen moon paled the east. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and strange noises rose in his throat
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes for half a minute. Then he stared at his hands for a long while. The light seemed to be growing brighter, but he knew this was not the case. He tore off the rest of his clothing and returned to eating, pausing only to wipe the perspiration from his eyes.
The lights began to dance. Reality seemed to phase in and out in colored flashes. The heat was oppressive ...
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