The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II

by David G. Hartwell

  “No. What is ‘rose’ a code word for?”

  Death? mused Anna. Was the rose a cryptolalic synonym for the grave? She closed her eyes and shivered. Were those really her thought, impressed into the mind and wrist of Ruy Jacques from some grandstand seat at her own ballet three weeks hence? But after all, why was it so impossible? Coleridge claimed Kublai Khan had been dictated to him through automatic writing. And that English mystic, William Blake, freely acknowledged being the frequent amanuensis for an unseen personality. And there were numerous other cases. So, from some unseen time and place, the mind of Anna van Tuyl had been attuned to that of Ruy Jacques, and his mind had momentarily forgotten that both of them could no longer write, and had recorded a strange reverie.

  It was then that she noticed the – whispers.

  No – not whispers – not exactly. More like rippling vibrations, mingling, rising, falling. Her heart beats quickened when she realized that their eerie pattern was soundless. It was as though something in her mind was suddenly vibrating en rapport with a subetheric world. Messages were beating at her for which she had no tongue or ear; they were beyond sound – beyond knowledge, and they swarmed dizzily around her from all directions. From the ring she wore. From the bronze buttons of her jacket. From the vertical steam piping in the corner. From the metal reflector of the ceiling light.

  And the strongest and most meaningful of all showered steadily from the invisible weapon. The Cork grasped in his coat pocket. Just as surely as though she had seen it done, she knew that the weapon had killed in the past. And not just once. She found herself attempting to unravel those thought residues of death – once – twice – three times . . . beyond which they faded away into steady, indecipherable time-muted violence.

  And now that gun began to scream: “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  She passed her palm over her forehead. Her whole face was cold and wet. She swallowed noisily.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ruy Jacques sat before the metal illuminator near his easel, apparently absorbed in the profound contemplation of his goatish features, and oblivious to the mounting gaiety about him. In reality he was almost completely lost in a soundless, sardonic glee over the triangular death-struggle that was nearing its climax beyond the inner wall of his studio, and which was magnified in his remarkable mind to an incredible degree by the paraboloid mirror of the illuminator.

  Bell’s low urgent voice began hacking at him again. “Her blood will be on your head. All you need to do is to go in there. Your wife wouldn’t permit any shooting with you around.”

  The artist twitched his misshapen shoulders irritably. “Maybe. But why should I risk my skin for a silly little nightingale?”

  “Can it be that your growth beyond sapiens has served simply to sharpen your objectivity, to accentuate your inherent egregious want to identity with even the best of your fellow creatures? Is the indifference that has driven Martha nearly insane in a bare decade now too ingrained to respond to the first known female of your own unique breed?” Bell sighed heavily. “You don’t have to answer. The very senselessness of her impending murder amuses you. Your nightingale is about to be impaled on her thorn – for nothing – as always. Your sole regret at the moment is that you can’t twit her with the assurance that you will study her corpse diligently to find there the rose you seek.”

  “Such unfeeling heartlessness,” said Jacques in regretful agreement, “is only to be expected in one of Martha’s blunderings. I mean The Cork, of course. Doesn’t he realize that Anna hasn’t finished the score of her ballet? Evidently has no musical sense at all. I’ll bet he was even turned down for the policemen’s charity quarter. You’re right, as usual, doc. We must punish such philistinism.” He tugged at his chin, then rose from the folding stool.

  “What are you going to do?” demanded the other sharply.

  The artist weaved toward the phono cabinet. “Play a certain selection from Tchaikovsky’s Sixth. If Anna’s half the girl you think, she and Peter Ilyitch will soon have Mart eating out of their hands.”

  Bell watching him in anxious, yet half-trusting frustration as the other selected a spool from his library of electronic recordings and inserted it into the playback sprocket. In mounting mystification, he saw Jacques turn up the volume control as far as it would go.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Murder, a one-act play directed by Mrs. Jacques, thought Anna. With sound effects by Mr. Jacques. But the facts didn’t fit. It was unthinkable that Ruy would do anything to accommodate his wife. If anything, he would try to thwart Martha. But what was his purpose in starting off in the finale of the first movement of the Sixth? Was there some message there that he was trying to get across to her?

  There was. She had it. She was going to live. If –

  “In a moment,” she told The Cork in a tight voice, “you are going to snap off the safety catch of your pistol, revise slightly your estimated line of fire, and squeeze the trigger. Ordinarily you could accomplish all three acts in almost instantaneous sequence. At the present moment, if I tried to turn the table over on you, you could put a bullet in my head before I could get well started. But in another sixty seconds you will no longer have that advantage, because your motor nervous system will be laboring under the superimposed pattern of the extraordinary Second Movement of the symphony that we now hear from the studio.”

  The Cork started to smile, then he frowned faintly. “What do you mean?”

  “All motor acts are carried out in simple rhythmic patterns. We walk in the two-four time of the march. We waltz, use a pickaxe, and manually grasp or replace objects in three-four rhythm.”

  “This nonsense is purely a play for time,” interjected Martha Jacques. “Kill her.”

  “It is a fact,” continued Anna hurriedly. (Would that Second Movement never begin?) “A decade ago, when there were still a few factories using hand-assembly methods, the workmen speeded their work by breaking down the task into these same elemental rhythms, aided by appropriate music.” (There! It was beginning! The immortal genius of that suicidal Russian was reaching across a century to save her!) “It so happens that the music you are hearing now is the Second Movement that I mentioned, and it’s neither two-four nor three-four but five-four, an oriental rhythm that gives difficulty even to skilled occidental musicians and dancers. Subconsciously you are going to try to break it down into the only rhythms to which your motor nervous system is attuned. But you can’t. Nor can any occidental, even a professional dancer, unless he has had special training” – her voice wobbled slightly – “in Delcrozian eurhythmics.”

  She crashed into the table.

  Even though she had known that this must happen, her success was so complete, so overwhelming, that it momentarily appalled her.

  Martha Jacques and The Cork had moved with anxious, rapid jerks, like puppets in a nightmare. But their rhythm was all wrong. With their ingrained four-time motor responses strangely modulated by a five-time pattern, the result was inevitably the arithmetical composite of the two: a neural beat, which could activate muscle tissue only when the two rhythms were in phase.

  The Cork had hardly begun his frantic, spasmodic squeeze of the trigger when the careening table knocked him backward to the floor, stunned, beside Martha Jacques. It required but an instant for Anna to scurry around and extract the pistol from his numbed fist.

  Then she pointed the trembling gun in the general direction of the carnage she had wrought and fought an urge to collapse against the wall.

  She waited for the room to stop spinning, for the white, glass-eyed face of Martha Jacques to come into focus against the fuzzy background of the cheap paint-daubed rug. And then the eyes of the woman scientists flickered and closed.

  With a wary glance at the weapon muzzle, The Cork gingerly pulled a leg from beneath the table edge: “You have the gun,” he said softly. “You can’t object if I assist Mrs. Jacques?”

  “I do object,” said Anna faintly. “She’s merely unconscious .
. . feels nothing. I want her to stay that way for a few minutes. If you approach her or make any unnecessary noise, I will probably kill you. So – both of you must stay here until Grade investigates. I know you have a pair of handcuffs. I’ll give you ten seconds to lock yourself to that steam pipe in the corner – hands behind you, please.”

  She retrieved the roll of adhesive patching tape from the floor and fixed several strips across the agent’s lips, following with a few swift loops around the ankles to prevent him stamping his feet.

  A moment later, her face a damp mask, she closed the door leisurely behind her and stood there, breathing deeply and searching the room for Grade.

  He was standing by the studio entrance, staring at her fixedly. When she favored him with a glassy smile, he simply shrugged his shoulders and began walking slowly toward her.

  In growing panic her eyes darted about the room. Bell and Ruy Jacques were leaning over the phono, apparently deeply absorbed in the racing clangor of the music. She saw Bell nod a covert signal in her direction, but without looking directly at her. She tried not to seem hurried as she strolled over to join them. She knew that Grade was now walking toward them and was but a few steps away when Bell lifted his head and smiled.

  “Everything all right?” said the psychogeneticist loudly.

  She replied clearly: “Fine. Mrs. Jacques and a Security man just wanted to ask some questions.” She drew in closer. Her lips framed a question to Bell: “Can Grade hear?”

  Bell’s lips formed a soft, nervous guttural: “No. He’s moving off toward the dressing room door. If what I suspect happened behind that door is true, you have about ten seconds to get out of here. And then you’ve got to hide.” He turned abruptly to the artist. “Ruy, you’ve got to take her down into the Via. Right now – immediately. Watch your opportunity and lose her when no one is looking. It shouldn’t be too hard in that mob.”

  Jacques shook his head doubtfully. “Martha isn’t going to like this. You know how strict she is on etiquette. I think there’s a very firm statement in Emily Post that the host should never, never, never walk out on his guests before locking up the liquor and silverware. Oh, well, if you insist.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Tell ya what the professor’s gonna do, ladies and gentlemen. He’s gonna defend not just one paradox. Not just two. But seventeen! In the space of one short hour, and without repeating himself, and including one he just thought up five minutes ago: ‘Security is dangerous.’”

  Ruy frowned, then whispered to Anna: “That was for us. He means Security men are circulating. Let’s move on. Next door. They won’t look for a woman there.”

  Already he was pulling her away toward the chess parlor. They both ducked under the For Men Only sign (which she could no longer read), pushed through the bat-wing doors, and walked unobtrusively down between the wall and a row of players. One man looked up briefly out of the corner of his eyes as they passed.

  The woman paused uneasily. She had sensed the nervousness of the barker even before Ruy, and now still fainter impressions were beginning to ripple over the straining surface of her mind. They were coming from that chess player: from the coins in his pocket; from the lead weights of his chess pieces; and especially from the weapon concealed somewhere on him. The resonant histories of the chess pieces and coins she ignored. They held the encephalographic residua of too many minds. The invisible gun was clearer. There was something abrupt and violent, alternating with a more subtle, restrained rhythm. She put her hand to her throat as she considered one interpretation: Kill – but wait. Obviously, he’d dare not fire with Ruy so close.

  “Rather warm here, too,” murmured the artist. “Out we go.”

  As they stepped out into the street again, she looked behind her and saw that the man’s chair was empty.

  She held the artist’s hand and pushed and jabbed after him, deeper into the revelling sea of humanity.

  She ought to be thinking of ways to hide, of ways to use her new sensory gift. But another, more imperative train of thought continually clamored at her, until finally she yielded to a gloomy brooding.

  Well, it was true. She wanted to be loved, and she wanted Ruy to love her. And he knew it. Every bit of metal on her shrieked her need for his love.

  But – was she ready to love him? No! How could she love a man who lived only to paint that mysterious unpaintable scene of the nightingale’s death, and who loved only himself? He was fascinating, but what sensible woman would wreck her career for such unilateral fascination? Perhaps Martha Jacques was right, after all.

  “So you got him, after all!”

  Anna whirled toward the crazy crackle, nearly jerking her hand from Ruy’s grasp.

  The vendress of love-philters stood leaning against the front centre pole of her tent, grinning toothily at Anna.

  While the young woman stared dazedly at her, Jacques spoke up crisply: “Any strange men been around, Violet?”

  “Why, Ruy,” she replied archly, “I think you’re jealous. What kind of men?”

  “Not the kind that haul you off to the alcoholic ward on Saturday nights. Not city dicks. Security men – quiet – seem slow, but really fast – see everybody – everything.”

  “Oh, them. Three went down the street two minutes ahead of you.”

  He rubbed his chin. “That’s not so good. They’ll start at that end of the Via and work up toward us until they meet the patrol behind us.”

  “Like grains of wheat between the millstones,” cackled the crone. “I knew you’d turn to crime, sooner or later, Ruy. You were the only tenant I had who paid the rent regular.”

  “Mart’s lawyer did that.”

  “Just the same, it looked mighty suspicious. You want to try the alley behind the tent?”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “Cuts back into the Via, at White Rose Park.”

  Anna started. “White rose?”

  “We were there that first night,” said Jacques. “You remember it – big rose-walled cul-de-sac. Fountain. Pretty, but not for us, not now. Has only one entrance. We’ll have to try something else.”

  The psychiatrist said hesitantly: “No, wait.”

  For some moments she had been struck by the sinister contrast in this second descent into the Via and the irresponsible gaiety of that first night. The street, the booths, the laughter seemed the same, but really weren’t. It was like a familiar musical score, subtly altered by some demoniac hand, raised into some harsh and fatalistic minor key. It was like the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet: all the bright promises of the first movement were here, but repetition had transfigured them into frightful premonitions.

  She shivered. That second movement, that echo of destiny, was sweeping through her in ever faster tempo, as though impatient to consummate its assignation with her. Come safety, come death, she must yield to the pattern of repetition.

  Her voice had a dream-like quality: “Take me again to the White Rose Park.”

  “What! Talk sense! Out here in the open you may have a chance.”

  “But I must go there. Please, Ruy. I think it’s something about a white rose. Don’t look at me as though I were crazy. Of course I’m crazy. If you don’t want to take me, I’ll go alone. But I’m going.”

  His hard eyes studied her in speculative silence, then he looked away. As the stillness grew, his face mirrored his deepening introspection. “At that, the possibilities are intriguing. Martha’s stooges are sure to look in on you. But will they be able to see you? Is the hand that wields the pistol equally skilled with the brush and palette? Unlikely. Art and Science again. Pointillist school versus police school. A good one on Martha – if it works. Anna’s dress is green. Complement of green is purple. Violet’s dress should do it.”

  “My dress?” cried the old woman. “What are you up to, Ruy?”

  “Nothing. Luscious. I just want you to take off one of your dresses. The outer one will do.”

  “Sir!” Violet be
gan to splutter in barely audible gasps.

  Anna had watched all this in vague detachment, accepting it as one of the man’s daily insanities. She had no idea what he wanted with a dirty old purple dress, but she thought she knew how she could get it for him, while simultaneously introducing another repetitive theme into this second movement of her hypothetical symphony.

  She said: “He’s willing to make you a fair trade, Violet.”

  The spluttering stopped. The old woman eyed them both suspiciously. “Meaning what?”

  “He’ll drink one of your love potions.”

  The leathery lips parted in amazement. “I’m agreeable, if he is, but I know he isn’t. Why, that scamp doesn’t love any creature in the whole world, except maybe himself.”

  “And yet he’s ready to make a pledge to his beloved,” said Anna.

  The artist squirmed. “I like you, Anna, but I won’t be trapped. Anyway, it’s all nonsense. What’s a glass of acidified water between friends?”

  “The pledge isn’t to me, Ruy. It’s to a Red Rose.” He peered at her curiously. “Oh? Well, if it will please you . . . All right, Violet, but off with that dress before you pour up.”

  Why, wondered Anna, do I keep thinking his declaration of love to a red rose is my death sentence? It’s moving too fast. Who, what – is The Red Rose? The Nightingale dies in making the white rose red. So she – or I – can’t be The Red Rose. Anyway, The Nightingale is ugly, and The Rose is beautiful. And why must The Student have a Red Rose? How will it admit him to his mysterious dance?

  “Ah, Madame De Medici is back.” Jacques took the glass and purple bundle the old woman put on the table. “What are the proper words?” he asked Anna.

  “Whatever you want to say.”

  His eyes, suddenly grave, looked into hers. He said quietly: “If ever The Red Rose presents herself to me, I shall love her forever.”

  Anna trembled as he upended the glass.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A little later they slipped into the Park of the White Roses. The buds were just beginning to open, and thousands of white floreate eyes blinked at them in the harsh artificial light. As before, the enclosure was empty, and silent, save for the chattering splashing of its single fountain.