" 'We'? Who is this 'we,' Red?"
"The dragons of Bel'kwinith would be the best way I could say it in these words we use. I just remembered that part earlier, and—"
"In your dreams you are a dragon?"
"That is the best way I know of describing the feeling and the appearance, though that is not exactly it."
"Interesting if not comprehensive. Red. But what has all this got to do with your present problems and your decision to ditch me?"
"They are not just dreams. They are real. I only recently realized that more and more of them seem to return to me when my life is threatened. I seem to undergo some sort of transformation."
"Real? You are not a man dreaming you are a dragon, but the other way around?"
"Something like that. Or both. Or neither. I don't know. It is real, though, the more of it I recall. As real as this."
"These—dragons of Bel'kwinith—you think that they you—whoever—built the Road?" "They didn't exactly build it. They sort of composed it, or compiled it, like an index for a book." "And we are driving down an abstraction? Or a
dream? "I don't know what you'd call it."
"I have to stay with you now, Red. Till you get your
wits back." "This is why I would have preferred not telling you
as much as I have. I foresaw this reaction. I can't convince someone else of the existence of a version of reality that is temporarily my subjective vision. But I know I am stable."
"You say 'as much as I have,' meaning that there is more to tell, and I still do not know why you want to get rid of me. Let's have it all."
"This is just what I was trying to avoid .. ."
The truck creaked loudly. To his right, the seat buckled and folded toward him. The steering wheel began to elongate and twist in his direction like a strange, dark flower. The roof pressed down upon his head. A clawed arm emerged from the glove compartment, reaching for him. Outside, a shadow on the truck's bed twisted like seaweed in a current.
"I can deliver you to the nearest human service station for a complete physical and psychiatric workup, unless you show me why I should not."
"I would like to avoid that too," Red said. "You have made your point. Okay. Ease up and I'll satisfy your circuits."
The clawed arm retreated into the glove compartment and emerged again moments later holding a lighted cigar, which it extended to him while the steering wheel resumed its normal form, the roof rose and the seat settled.
"Thank you." He accepted it, puffed upon it.
Suddenly, Flowers recited:
"Toute 1'ame resumee Quand lente nous 1'expirons Dans plusieurs ronds de fumee Abolis en autres ronds
Atteste quelque cigare Brulant savament pour peu
Que la cendre se separe De son clair baiser de feu
Ainsi Ie choeur des romances A la levre vole-t-il Exclus-en si tu commences Le reel parce que vil
Le sens trop precis rature Ta vague litterature"
He chuckled.
"Apt, I suppose," he said. "But I thought you were programmed for Baudelaire, not Mallarme."
"I am programmed Decadent. I am beginning to see why. No matter what you do, you are slumming."
"I never looked at it that way—consciously. Maybe you have a point."
"The point is in the poem. Puff your cigar and dis pense with reality."
"... And your depths amaze me." "Cut the flattery. Why do I have to go?"
"To put it simply, you are a sentient being whom I like. I am trying to protect you."
"I am built better than you are when it comes to taking punches."
"It is not just a matter of danger. It is a matter of almost certain destruction for you—" "I repeat-"
"You're never going to get the information you want if you keep interrupting me." "I wasn't getting it the other way, either."
"I don't know. Whether this is the dream, whether
the other is the dream—I don't know. It doesn't matter.
I do know that I am that other of whom I dream. A
woman with whom I was once old had a notion I only today realized to be correct. Before those of my blood can reach maturity, we must be set upon the Road to
grow young—for we are born crabbed and twisted and old and must discover our youth, which is our maturity, in this form. This may in fact be the reason for the Road, and I begin to suspect that all who can travel it must be somewhat of our blood. But this I do not
know for fact."
"Save the speculations for later, okay?"
"All right. Leila became progressively more selfdestructive and dangerous to be about, though our paths have a strange way of continuing to cross. It began with her sooner than it did with me—and I only spotted it in myself later and tried to keep it under control. She always was more sensitive than me—"
"Stop. Leila is the woman back at C Sixteen—who started the fire—the one to whom you referred as someone with whom you were once old?"
"Yes. There's corroboration there, if you ever meet her again. First we sought—together, then apart—for the way back to the place from which we had come. No luck. Then I decided one day that it was because things had changed from my earliest memories of dispositions along the Road itself. So I set out to alter the picture, to bring it back into accord with my recollections—hoping to find the lost route once everything was back in place. But the world is too messy and hard to work with. I realize now that I can't just fiddle with it here and there and get it to behave the way it used to, back when I was old. I guess I had actually begun to realize this some time ago. But I couldn't figure any other way to go about it, so I persisted. Then Chadwick declared black decade against me and things slowly began to fall into place."
"Should I begin to see how?" "No."
Red took a puff on his cigar and stared out of the window. A small black vehicle passed. As he watched it diminish before him, he continued, "Once my life was threatened, my spells became more frequent and my dreams increased in intensity. I saw more and more iclearly which dreams were true—and I suddenly realized that it was this threat that was causing it. I considered my past. I had experienced similar reactions to danger throughout my life. Back at the camp before the attack, when I was drowsing, it occurred to me that Chadwick was accidentally doing me a favor with this vendetta. Then, as we fled, I thought, supposing it is not an accident? Supposing—unconsciously, perhaps— he is trying to help me? It seems possible that we are of
the same breed and that he somehow knows what it takes..."
He let his voice trail off.
"I really think that last spell messed up your thinking
a bit. Red. You're not making sense. Unless there is something you are leaving out."
"Well, I have a number of friends, and the word is out as to what is going on. It is possible that someone may try to remove Chadwick so as to do me a favor. I
would like to prevent that, which has now become the reason for this trip."
"Hm. A red herring. If I buy your crazy logic, I can understand your sudden desire to save the life of the man who has been trying to kill you. But that is not what I meant. You said it just then to distract me.
There is something that you are not saying and I'm getting close to it. Come on!"
"Flowers, you've been with me too long. There was another unit such as yourself that I actually had to
abandon because she was beginning to think too much like me."
"I guess I'll have to bear that in mind and be sure I leave you first. In the meantime..."
"Actually, I thought she was beginning to flip out. Now I wonder whether she might not have been more perceptive than—"
"You can't distract someone with a memory core like mine! What are you hiding?"
"Nothing, really. I am looking for the way back, to the existence I begin to remember more clearly. You know that. This search has been a constant thing for me. I've a feeling—if that's what you're after—that I may be finding it before much l
onger,"
"Aha! Finally. Okay, I suspected as much. Now give me the rest of the news. How is this to happen?"
"Well, I believe that this existence has to be, ah, terminated, before the other resumes."
"You know, all along I sort of felt that you were getting at something like that It is the most bizarrely justified death-wish I've ever heard described—and my Decadent programming is very thorough. Anything
you'd care to add? Have you decided yet how you'll go about it?"
"No, no. It's nothing like what you're implying. I've never thought of myself as suicidal, or even accidentprone. This is something more in the nature of a premonition—I guess that's the best way to put it. It's just that I feel now that this is what must happen. I also feel that it can't be just any old place or time or means. there is a proper manner in which the translation must occur, and it has to happen at just the right spot."
"Do you know the time and the place and the means?"
"No."
Well, that's something, anyway. Maybe you'll have a revised premonition before long." "I don't think so."
"Whatever, I am glad you told me. Now, to answer your question finallyNo, I am not leaving you."
"But you might be damaged, destroyed when it occurs." "
"Life is uncertain. I will take my chances. Mondamay would never forgive me if I left you, either." "You have an understanding or something?" "Yes." "Interesting..."
"You are the curiosity under discussion at the moment. My decisions are governed mainly by facts and logic, you know."
"I know. But—"
" 'But,' hell! Shut up a minute while I rationalize. I have no facts to run through the chopper. Everything you've told me is subjective and smacks of the paranormal. Now, I am willing to acknowledge the paranormal under certain circumstances. But I have no way to test it. All I really have to go on is my knowledge of you, gathered during our strange relationship as transporters and occasional time-meddlers. I find myself wanting to believe that you know what you are doing at the same time that I fear you are making a mistake."
"So?"
"All I can conclude is that if I restrain you and it turns out you were right and I was wrong—and that
I've kept you from something very important to you— then I'll feel terrible. I'll feel that I've failed in my :
duty as your aide. So I feel obligated to come along and assist you in whatever you are up to, even though I can only accept it provisionally."
"That's more than I asked of you, you know."
"I know. Damned decent of me. I also hasten to point out that I feel equally obligated to slam on the brakes if I think you are doing something really stupid.
"Fair enough, I guess."
"It will have to do."
Red breathed smoke.
"I suppose so."
The miles ticked inside him like years.
Two
Suddenly, the marquis de Sade threw down his pen and rose from his writing table, a strange gleam in his eye. He gathered together all the manuscripts from the writing workshop into a mighty bundle and waddled across the room with them and out onto the balcony. There, three stories above the parks and glistening compounds of the city, he removed the clips and staples and, one by one, cast them forth, clumps of enormous, dirty snowflakes, into the afternoon's slanting light.
Executing a brief dance step, he kissed his fingertips and waved as the last of them took flight, the ill-cast dreams of would-be scribblers from half a dozen centuries.
"Bon jour, ail revoir, adieu," he stated, and then he turned away and smiled.
Returning to the desk, he took up his pen and wrote, I have done my successor a favor and destroyed all of your stupid manuscripts. None of you have any talent whatsoever, and he signed it. He folded it then to take with him, to tack to the door of the conference room as he passed it on the way out.
Then he took up a second sheet of paper.
It may seem, he wrote, as if I am repaying your hos pitality, your generosity, in a particularly odious fashion, with my resolution to assist your worst enemy by de stroying you—destroying you, I might add, in an es pecially macabre style. Some might feel that my sense of justice has been outraged and that I do this in the service of a higher end. They would be wrong.
After signing it, he added the postscript: By the time you read this, you will already be dead.
He chuckled, placed the skull paperweight atop the document, rose to his feet and departed his quarters leaving the door slightly ajar.
He took the tube down, posted his rejection slip and walked the short corridor to the side door, encountering no one. Outside, he shuddered against the balmy breeze, squinted at the sunlight, grimaced at the birdsongs—taped or live, he could not be sure which— from the nearest park. He chuckled, though, as he mounted a beltway and moved northward toward the transfer point. It was going to be a glorious day nevertheless.
By the time he passed onto the westbound belt, he was humming a little tune. There were a few other people out, but none of them nearby. His destination was already plainly visible, but he moved to the faster belt and actually walked along it for a few moments before returning to the slower and finally stepping off at the proper underpass. He could as readily have reached this point on the underground belts, he thought, if he had been sure of his distances and directions. As it was, he had needed this landmark.
He entered the enormous building, proceeding in what he recalled to be the proper direction. He passed only two white-smocked technicians and he nodded to . both of them. They nodded back.
He found his way into the big hall. At a workstand toward the center, Sundoc leaned over a piece of equipment. He was alone.
The marquis had crossed most of the distance between them before Sundoc looked up.
"Oh. Hello, marquis," he said, wiping his hand on his jacket and straightening.
"You may call me Alphonse."
"All right. Back for another look, eh?"
"Yes. I stole a few moments from that miserable schedule Chadwick has set up for me. Oh, my!"
"What?". "Some of the magnetic fluid is leaking from that
piece of equipment behind you!"
"What? There's no—"
Sundoc turned to his left and bent to inspect the indicated unit. Then he collapsed across it.
The marquis held a stocking in his right hand, with a bar of soap knotted into its toe. This he thrust back into his jacket pocket, then he caught Sundoc in his slide floorwards and assisted him into a supine position. He covered him with a tarpaulin which had protected a machine near the wall.
Whistling softly, he moved to the small console which controlled the pit lift. After a moment, he heard the low, sighing noise of the machinery. He moved to the edge and looked down, the helmet clasped before him.
"How like that wondrous Beast of Revelations," he mused, as the startled creature bellowed, dropped the carcass of a cow and began, with great thudding noises, to spring about within its enclosure. "I long to be joined with you, my lovely. But a moment more—"
"Hey! What's going on in here?"
The two technicians he had passed on the way in had just come into the hall.
"Reverse it! Reverse it!" one of them screamed, and began running toward the unit near the workbench.
The marquis raised the helmet and placed it on his head. There followed a moment of delightful disorientation. He closed his eyes.
... The wall was sinking all about him. He beheld his own diminutive, helmeted form. He saw the first white-coated figure arrive at the console, the second close behind it. "Don't do that!" he tried to say. But a button was pushed. All at once, the walls ceased their movement. He sprang. God! the power! The guard rail collapsed. He swayed on the edge of the pit, then moved forward. The console and the technicians vanished beneath him. He bellowed... Lower your head, he/they willed, that I might mount. Clumsily, he straddled the neck of the great beast. Now we are going to take a walk. You are my guest a
rtist for today.
The doorway was too small, for a few moments. As he moved up the mall paralleling the belts, screaming sounds began, here and there. A slow-moving vehicle halted and discharged its colorfully garbed passengers, all of whom fled. The breezes, the sunlight, the birdcalls, were no longer disturbing. In fact, they were barely discernible. He overturned the vehicle and bellowed a song. Chadwick's main building lay ahead.
He would be in the a rebours room at this time of day...
With each lurching step forward, his feelings rose. Parceling out terror, he left the mall and headed into the park. He passed through its elegant periphery of trees, shrubs, flowerbeds, like wind through a sieve. The holograms closed upon themselves behind him, to rustle in their imaginary breezes. Hidden below the level of fictitious tulips, a pair of lovers were crushed at the moment of orgasm. A genuine bench splintered, a trash container crumpled as he passed. His bellowed song drowned all other sounds.
As he emerged at the side of the park nearest his destination, he tried to smash a small black car which had slowed and seemed to be aimed to park beside the
blue truck which he had not noted earlier. It swerved about him, however, and vanished rapidly up the road.
He continued on, passing to the right of the entrance, rounding a comer, unaware of the play of shadow now behind him, so like that which had lain upon the truck.
He ceased his bellowing as he counted windows, seeking the proper section of wall. Stalking, panting, chuckling, he did not hear the sounds of more vehicles approaching the front of the building. If he had, it
really would not have mattered.
His joy rising to a new height, he struck. The facade shattered, and on his third blow he burst through the large-grained crushed morocco leatherbound wall. The ceiling tore apart and fell down around him as he advanced upon Chadwick and the other man who stood at the fireplace before the sphinx, regarding a lengthy tongue of tape. His forelegs clawed at the air. His
tongue darted forth.
"The death of Chadwick!" he shouted. "By Tyrannosaurus rex! Under the direction of the marquis de
Sade!" "Really," Chadwick replied, flicking an ash from his
cigar, "there are simpler ways of submitting your
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