Cameras swung in, ridden to earth by men in baseball caps. Microphones dangled over Marcello’s head like a cluster of surrealistic bananas. The Roy Bell Dancers received a standby signal. Red lights blinked like the malignant eyes of Cyclops, and Martin’s voice could be heard barking orders in a jargon so technical that only Chet was able to understand it and transmit it to the proper recipients.
Polletti watched this spectacle within a spectacle with something not far from incredulity, though not from belief, either. He turned to Caroline and asked lightly, “Shall I say a few words into the microphone?”
Caroline regarded him with eyes like milky obsidian. “There’s only one thing you have to do: die!” She had a revolver trained on him now. It was Polletti’s own weapon, taken from his jacket pocket inside the hut.
The orchestra (the Zagreb Philharmonic had been hired especially for this occasion) now burst into a lilting, ominous paso doble. The Roy Bell Dancers stopped discussing hair sprays and exploded into a mellifluous, perilous danse du ventre. The cameras rolled in and out on their long skeletal booms like crazed giant praying mantises.
More signals were flashed. From his waiting position beneath a crumbling arch, a uniformed attendant wheeled out a little table containing a teapot and a cup of tea, all real except for the prepackaged vapor which rose from the cup. On his way out, the attendant almost collided with a slim, dark, elegant young woman, exquisitely though somewhat theatrically dressed, with the large, black, shiny eyes of a jacklighted wolf.
“A typical homicidal schizophrenic paranoid, and with kittenish overtones yet,” the attendant muttered to himself, completely unaware that the woman was Olga, and that his diagnosis of her contained more truth than poetry, and more verity than wit.
“Tea!” remarked Polletti, when the attendant reached him. “Must I drink it?”
“She drinks it,” the attendant whispered. “You just stand there and die good and don’t be a wise guy.” He turned on his heel and left; he had the real professional spirit, and he hated levity.
“Uncle Ming’s Terrific Tea!” cried an announcer from a different part of the Colosseum. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Uncle Ming’s Terrific Tea is the only tea which adores you for yourself alone, the only tea which would gladly marry you and raise little tea bags if only Uncle Ming would allow it.”
Polletti laughed with delight. He had never heard this particular advertisement, which last year had won the triple goldburst decoration from the Advertising Council, Inc., for propriety, taste, humor, originality, and many other virtues.
“What’s so funny, Marcello?” Caroline asked, hissing the words like a deadly spotted adder from central Borneo.
“It’s all funny,” Polletti said. “I tell you that I love you, that I want to marry you; and you turn me down by killing me. Isn’t there something humorous about that?”
“No,” Caroline said. “Not if you really mean it.”
“Of course I mean it,” Polletti said. “But don’t let that stand in your way.”
“—and so, out of the depths of its tortured, hopeless infatuation, Uncle Ming’s Terrific Tea cries out to you: ‘Drink me, Mr. Consumer, drink me, drink me, drink me!” the announcer concluded. His message was followed by a moment of stunned canned audience disbelief, and then by a few tentative canned handclaps, and at last by a stunning canned audience ovation.
“Double handful to splashout!” Martin called.
“Ten seconds to go,” Chet translated. “Nine, eight, seven—”
Caroline stood like a statue except for the tremors of tension that ran down her right arm and imparted to the muzzle of the tightly gripped revolver a barely perceptible vibration.
“—six, five, four—”
Polletti stood his ground easily, the smile on his face conveying his sense of amusement at the alien yet thoroughly human drama in which, unaccountably, he found himself a prominent actor. (The smile also conveyed a sense of uncharacteristic patience, an innate feeling for propriety, and a pathetic little string of veal between his third and fourth canines.)
“—three, two, one, fire!”
Caroline shuddered throughout her entire being at the tremendous irreversibility of the instant. She raised her revolver slowly, falteringly, like a maniacal sleepwalker awakened into a nightmare. She pointed the gun at Polletti’s head, centering an inch above his eyebrows. Instinctively she took up the slack in the trigger pull.
“Splashout! Splashout!” Martin screamed.
“Fire! Fire!” Chet screamed in translation.
“Execute soonerest!” Martin roared.
“Do it now!” Chet roared in translation.
But nothing moved in the murderous tableau. The tension of that moment was almost beyond description. Indeed, susceptible young Cole keeled over in a faint; Chet was stricken with a temporary (but nonetheless painful) paralysis of the right biceps, triceps, and lateral extensors; and even Martin, hardened professional though he was, felt a twinge deep in his throat which he knew to be the unmistakable onset of heartburn.
Directors and cameramen waited; the Roy Bell Dancers and the Zagreb Philharmonic waited; the vast worldwide audience waited, except for an irreducible few who had gone into the kitchen for a beer. Polletti waited; and Caroline, torn by indecision and wracked by ambiguity, found herself waiting for herself to act.
How long this might have continued is hard to estimate; but suddenly, an imponderable element entered the unpredictable equation. Olga ran out from beneath the arch, burst through the anxious little crew of technicians, vaulted to the floor of the hut and snatched the revolver out of Caroline’s hand.
“So, Marcello,” Olga said, “I find you again with another woman!”
There was no response to this lunatic statement, which carried with it, as the statements of the insane all too frequently do, the definite impress of a subterranean truth.
“Olga!” Polletti cried, vainly hoping to explain the inexplicable.
“After twelve years of waiting,” Olga cried, “you do this to me!” And she leveled the revolver at a spot approximately one inch above Polletti’s eyebrows.
“Please, Olga don’t shoot!” Polletti pleaded. “It will be worse for you if you do. We can talk about this rationally—”
“I have already had a rational talk today—with Lidia!” Olga declared. “Your former wife admitted that the annulment had come through—not today, not yesterday, but three days ago!”
“I know, I know,” Polletti said. “But I can explain everything. …”
“Then explain this!” Olga screamed, and pulled the trigger.
The gun barked with deadly authority. Olga gasped in amazement, put a faltering hand to the region of her heart, looked with disbelief at the blood on her fingers, and then slumped over, dead as a pterodactyl in a glass case.
“This will be difficult to explain,” Polletti conceded.
Caroline sat down on the bed and clutched her head. Cole came out of his faint and thought to himself with pride, “Gee, I actually fainted.” Chet went to black and switched over to a standby film: The Big Telecast of 1999.
Starring Le Mar deVille, Roger Roger, and Lassie.
Martin walked over to the hut, took in everything at a glance, and asked, “What’s going on around here?”
A policeman came up, failed to take in everything at a glance, and asked, “Who is the Hunter, please?”
“I am,” Caroline said, holding out her identification card but not looking up.
“And who is the Victim?”
“I am,” Polletti said, also holding out his card.
“Then this dead woman was not in the Hunt?”
“No,” Polletti said.
“In that case, why did you kill her?”
“Me? I haven’t killed anybody,” Polletti said. He bent down and picked up the revolver. “Look,” he said to the policeman, and showed him the small opening just below the hammer.
“I see nothing relevant,” the policem
an said.
“That hole is the revolver’s real muzzle,” Polletti said. “The gun fires backward, do you understand? It’s my own invention; I built this myself.”
Caroline stood up quickly and glared at Polletti. “Why, you animal!” she cried. “You planned for me to steal that gun out of your jacket! You gave it to me so that I would kill myself!”
“Only if you happened to try to kill me,” Polletti pointed out.
“Words, words!” Caroline screamed at him. “How can I believe anything you say to me?”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Polletti assured her. “My love, there is a simple explanation for all of this—”
“Which,” the policeman interrupted rudely, “you will first have to try on me before insulting the young lady with your spurious harlequinade.” He smiled gallantly at Caroline, who frowned at him.
“First I shall inform headquarters,” the policeman said, unclipping his portable radio from his pistol belt, “and then I shall expect to hear some answers.”
Neither of these expectations came to pass, however; for the policeman found himself abruptly and desperately engaged in trying to maintain some faint semblance of order.
First there were the tourists, several thousand of whom had broken through the restraining cordon outside of the Colosseum, and all of whom were determined to find out what was going on and to snap a picture of it. Next, clawing through the tourists, came the lawyers, several dozen of whom had arrived miraculously on the scene, and who were variously threatening suit against Polletti, Caroline, the UUU Teleplex Ampwork, Martin, Chet, the Roy Bell Dancers, Cole, the police of Rome, and other—unspecified—parties. Finally there were six officials of the Hunt International. They demanded that Caroline and Polletti be taken into immediate custody, pending charges of unjustifiable nonmanslaughter.
“All right, all right,” said the overtaxed policeman, “first things first. I shall arrest the alleged Hunter and her alleged Victim. Where are they?”
“They were standing here just a moment ago,” Cole said. “Do you know, I actually fainted earlier?”
“But where are they now?” the policeman asked. “Why wasn’t anyone watching them? Quick, guard all the exits! They can’t have gotten far!”
“Why couldn’t they have gotten far?” Cole asked.
“Don’t provoke me!” the policeman roared. “We shall soon find out if they have gotten far!”
And soon—but not soon enough—he found out.
18
Guided by Caroline’s skilled hands, the small helicopter, previously overlooked in a corner of the great stadium near Trajan’s arch, soared high above the city of Rome. The yellow-gray oval of the Colosseum dwindled out of sight. The dense and circuitous streets of the Eternal City gave way to suburbs, and then to villages, and then to open countryside.
“You’re marvelous!” Polletti declared. “You planned it this way all along, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” Caroline said. “It seemed a reasonable precaution to take, just in case you were telling the truth.”
“My darling, I can’t tell you how much I admire you,” Polletti said. “You have snatched us from death and lawsuits, into the magnificent open air, into the wilderness, far from electric razors and refrigerators. …”
Polletti glanced over the side and noticed that they were over a bleak, whitened desert, toward the lunar face of which the helicopter was beginning to descend.
“Tell me, my treasure,” Polletti said, “do you have anything else planned for us?”
Caroline nodded gaily and brought the helicopter to an adroit landing. “Mainly this,” she said, seizing Polletti and kissing him with the enthusiasm and élan which she brought to most things.
“Mmmmm,” Polletti said, then raised his head abruptly. “That’s strange,” he said.
“What’s strange?” Caroline asked.
“I must be having an hallucination. I thought I heard a church bell.”
Caroline looked away with that droll hint of coquetry which characterized even her simplest movements.
“I did hear it!” Polletti said. “There it goes again!”
“Let’s take a look,” Caroline said.
Hand in hand they left the helicopter, walked around a small rocky ledge, and found themselves standing less than 20 yards from a little church neatly built into the overhanging granite of the hillside. In the doorway of the church was the black omnipresent figure of a priest. He smiled and beckoned to them.
“Isn’t it nice?” Caroline said, tugging at Polletti’s hand and leading him forward.
“Charming, fascinating, unusual,” Polletti said, his voice marked by a slight but decided loss of its previous gusto. “Yes, decidedly engaging,” he said in a somewhat stronger tone, “but not entirely credible.”
“I know, I know,” Caroline said. She led Polletti into the church and up to the altar. She knelt before the priest; after a moment, Polletti also knelt. Organ music issued forth from nowhere. The priest beamed, and began the ceremony.
“Will you, Caroline, take this man, Marcello, as your wedded husband?”
“I will!” Caroline said, with fervor.
“And will you, Marcello, take this woman, Caroline, as your wedded wife?”
“I will not,” Polletti said, with conviction.
The priest lowered his Bible. Polletti saw that the man had marked his place with a .45 caliber Colt automatic.
“Will you, Marcello, take this woman, Caroline, as your wedded wife?” the priest repeated.
“Oh, I suppose so,” Polletti said. “I had merely wished to wait a few days so my parents could attend.”
“We’ll get married all over again for your parents,” Caroline assured him.
“Ego conjugo vos in matrimonio …,” the priest began.
Caroline quickly gave Polletti a ring, thus enabling them to exchange rings in the classic old ceremony which Polletti had always found so moving. Outside, the desert wind moaned and complained; inside, Polletti smiled and said nothing.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1965 by Robert Sheckley
ISBN 978-1-4804-9685-9
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The 10th Victim Page 10