A Borrowed Man (5 page)

“I don't have a lot of money.” Colette's voice sounded steady, but I could feel her trembling. “You can have it all if you'll only go.”

“You've got the book.” That was the second man. He looked younger than the stocky guy, wore a hat, and was a good head taller. “You've got it and we want it. Hand it over.”

“I have several books,” Colette told him. “I'm a teacher. Perhaps you know.”

The stocky one farted with his mouth.

“You know the book we mean,” the tall one said. “Give it to me. As soon as you do we'll go, and you'll never see us again.”

I said, “Will someone please tell me what you're talking about?”

“Ms. Coldbrook had a brother,” the tall one said; his voice reminded me of a library 'bot about to use its prod. “He stole a book that belongs to us. We want it. Now!” As he spoke, he dropped Colette's controller into a pocket of his jacket.

I stood up. “This doesn't concern me, and it seems to me that it doesn't concern Colette either.”

“We know it does,” the stocky one said. He said it like he was telling me the time, but his face said he'd tear the arms off babies.

The tall one asked, “Just who the fuck are you, anyhow?”

“Simply an admirer of Ms. Coldbrook's. This would appear to be a private matter, one in which I have no wish to intrude.”

Colette's hand found mine. “Don't go, Ern! Please don't!”

“If you don't want me to, I won't.” I tried to make my voice reassuring. “If I can be of any help to you here, just let me know.”

The stocky one said, “I'll give you your last chance now. Do you have the book?”

Naturally I said, “What book is that?”

“The book Conrad Coldbrook gave his sister here.”

I shook my head.

“But you know about it.”

“I believe she mentioned a book.
The Lantern in the Library
? I think that was the one. An excellent book! I've read it.”

That was when Colette tried to run to the door. She nearly made it, but the tall one grabbed her from behind before she could get it open. Somebody jumped on his back and got an arm around his neck—and that is all that I remember.

I said “somebody” because I cannot remember deciding to do it. I cannot remember doing it, either, but I know somebody did. Somebody, not me. I was standing nice and quiet in front of the couch.

By and by my arms were behind me. I could not move them forward no matter how much I wanted to rub the side of my head. Colette was off to my left, her hands tied with white stuff and held behind the back of her ebonite dining-room chair. She was naked. When I finally looked away, scared that she could see my reflection and I was embarrassing her, it soaked through to me that I was naked, too.

I am not sure what I said then, but this is close. “It was nice of them not to gag us. I don't suppose it will do much good to shout for help.”

Colette did not say a word. As far as I could tell, she was staring straight ahead, and tears were trickling down her cheeks.

“Soundproofed, no doubt. Otherwise they would have killed us.”

“Yes. It's very good.” She spoke so softly that I could scarcely hear her.

“Have they gone?” I was taking care not to look at her anymore, afraid that she would be looking right at what might happen if I did.

“Yes. They ransacked the whole place. Where did you put it?”

“I didn't put it anywhere. I thought you intended to destroy it.”

She worked her chair around until she could stare at me for a moment, then managed a brave smile. “I suppose you're right.”

“I don't believe I can free myself,” I told her, “but if you'll permit it, I may be able to free you. I'm afraid I'll have to break this chair to do it, though.”

She stared.

“Have I your permission?”

“Can you? Go right ahead, if you can.”

My legs had been tied to the legs of the chair, and the chair legs were not braced with rungs. I could not describe all the contortions I went through trying to put as much stress as I could on the spindly front legs of my own chair, but eventually one snapped. Five minutes later I got the other one. That was the only time in either life that I have wanted to be fatter than I am.

With them broken, I was able to shake free of the rest of the chair and walk into the kitchen. They had searched it, and their search had included throwing a set of ceramic-bladed steak knives onto the floor. I found one whose blade had not broken, and by kneeling and bending down I was able to grab the figured naturewood handle between my teeth. I had not expected it to be easy to cut through the strips of stout cloth that held Colette's hands; but that steak knife was sharp, and it was not as difficult as I had been afraid it might be.

She rubbed her hands and slapped them together, muttering cuss words (including a couple that were new to me) and rubbed and slapped them again.

“You cut me a little.” She stopped to lick one of her cuts.

I said, “I couldn't help it.”

“I suppose not. You couldn't see what you were doing, could you?”

“No. Not at all.”

“They're listening to us. Maybe watching us, too. How long will it be before they come through that door again?”

I shrugged. “I don't think they will.”

“Really? Did they find it?”

I shrugged again.

“You went into my kitchen.”

I admitted I had, and explained that I had forgotten her rule.

“We'll forget about that this time, but not next time.” Colette paused. Then, “I think I can get you loose now.”

And she did. We found our clothes and dressed, and after that she wanted me to help her move the furniture to barricade the door. I told her to wait.

Half to herself she muttered, “I suppose you want to screen the police.”

I shook my head. “They'd want the book, and arrest you when you couldn't produce it.”

For a few seconds, she digested that. Then she said, “I don't see how they got around that lock. Those locks are terribly sophisticated.”

“So are our friends.” I sat down on the divan and rubbed my head.

“I suppose.”

“Five hundred years ago, you would have had an iron bar you could drop into brackets. Anybody who wanted to get in would have to demolish your door with an ax. Today we're very clever, but someone more clever still can get in easily.”

“Are you sick?”

I shook my head. “Just tired. I want to take whatever you've got for headaches.”

Leaning very close, she whispered, “Where did you put it, Ern?”

I shook my head again.

“I know I gave you a bedroom and a bed, but can I get you to sleep out here? And make noise if they come in to wake me up? You'll have to sleep on the divan.”

“They won't come back, but I'll be delighted to sleep here if it is your wish. I need to ask you about laundry facilities, however. In the basement?”

“That's right, and you'll need a card. Would you like me to take you down?”

“That won't be necessary. Or at least, I hope it won't. Can you lend me a robe?”

“One of mine? I'll be happy to, but I'm going to come with you; I'd have to lend you my card—you'll need a card to get into the laundry room and operate the universals. Are you going to clean that suit?”

“Not unless you think it needs it.”

“It doesn't. That shirt doesn't have to be pressed, does it?”

I shook my head.

“Then the whole thing should take ten minutes or so. You'll want to strip in your room. Wait a minute and I'll find a robe for you.”

I waited, then retreated to Colette's spare bedroom carrying a woman's filmy robe with white roses and purple morning glories all over it. In there I took off my shirt, undershirt, socks, and briefs. I put my trousers and shoes back on, slipped into the robe, and told Colette I was all set to go.

As I had expected, each tenant had a locked bin for dirty clothing. “Now I have to borrow your card,” I told Colette. “I hope you don't mind.”

“Of course not.” Unnecessarily, she pointed out the bin with her apartment number. “Your things should be in there.”

“No, yours.” I unlocked the bin.

“Some of mine, yes; but I usually do laundry once a week. There's no need to do mine now.”

I was reaching into the bin. When I found
Murder on Mars
, I held it up.

Colette's eyes widened and her mouth shaped a little round O.

I touched my finger to my lips. Her mouth formed the words “the chute,” and I nodded. The woman's robe she had loaned me had a big pocket on each side, each of them plenty big enough to hold the book.

She shut her door that night, but she did not block it with furniture the way she had wanted to block the door of her apartment; doing it would have made a good deal of noise, and even though I listened for it I heard nothing. When I was dead certain she had gone to bed, I stripped again, took a shower, and moved the thin cushions from the couch onto the floor. That made it as much like my shelf in the library as anybody could want. Probably you know that after the library closes, we sleep on mats that we roll up and push to the back of the shelf during the day.

Right here it would be handy to say that I was dog tired and fell asleep at once—handy but a big lie. This new softer mat, with me stretching from corner to corner, was too new. Ditto the long lending. Colette had checked me out for ten days, which I had thought hard-rock unlikely. I had never been checked out for more than a couple of days. I had heard a few of us talk about a week or even two weeks, but I had never more than half believed any of it. Rose Romain the romance writer once told me she had kept tabs on three of her friends, and none of them had ever been out for more than five days. Now it seemed like Colette's estimate had been crazy short. I got up and got my jacket out of the closet to look at the card I had put in the pocket: July thirtieth. Right. Before six o'clock that day, I was supposed to say good-bye if I could get away and go back to the library.

But tomorrow both of us would leave Spice Grove and flitter southeast to New Delphi to look at the Coldbrook house and quiz the expert who'd opened her father's safe. Sooner or later we would come back here—or anyway, we had better.

What if we were grabbed again? Would we ever get loose? Both of us? Alive?

After worrying about all this and a couple of dozen other things for what seemed like an hour, I got up, got my book from the pocket of the robe Colette had loaned me, and read myself to sleep.

Only to dream about wrestling a monster with a man's head at one end and an ape's at the other end, and one hell of a lot of arms. This desperate struggle was in a grave thinly disguised as a wormhole through Mars. A wormhole that was already starting to flood. I guess they have a lot of water on Mars, when you are dreaming.

When I woke up it was nearly morning and I was soaked with sweat.

 

4

H
ER
F
ATHER'S
H
OUSE

Somehow I had assumed a city house. It may only have been that in my time—I mean in the time of the earlier me, in my first life—there was not much land where new building was allowed. Anyway this house where the Coldbrook family had lived was not even close to the actual city of New Delphi. When Colette pointed it out, I asked her to circle it a couple times so that I could get a better picture of the house and the countryside around it. The house was supermodern and shiny as a new ground car, but you could see it was not really all that new. Built forty-three years ago was what she said, and added to and altered ever since. I counted four floors in some places but only one or two in a couple of additions. Scattered around it were a hangar, a barn, a garage, and some other outbuildings that were anybody's guess. There was a walled garden, too. Seeing it from the air like that I did not realize how badly the garden had been neglected.

“You and your brother grew up here?” I asked.

“Not exactly.” She banked and dipped, bringing our racy little flitter closer to the house. “I was fourteen, I think, when we moved in. Conrad, Junior—we generally called him Cob or Cobby back then—would have been about sixteen, I suppose. Sixteen or seventeen.”

“Did you like it?”

“Not as much as Mother did. My father really bought it for her. She was … not social. Not a bad person or even an unfriendly one; but other people, even people she knew and liked, stressed her out.” Colette paused. “Do you understand what I mean?”

I had to admit that she had lost me.

“Well, after dinner the men would generally sit around the table, have another glass of wine, and talk. And the women would clear things away and feed the dishes to the washer. Sometimes Cob and I would help with that. Then they'd go into the music room or in nice weather out into the garden. Only Mother wouldn't be there. It would generally be half an hour or so before anybody noticed. Nobody'd know where she'd gone or when, but she wouldn't be with the others.”

“What about you?” I was trying to picture it. “Would you stay with the women?”

Slowly, Colette nodded. “Pretty often I did, or else go up to my room to watch some show or do my homework. My room was on the second floor. So was Cob's, and I've been trying to decide whether I could bear seeing it again. All right if I land now?”

She did. The little red flitter's cabin split, spreading its little red wing; and we drifted down on the wind like a maple leaf in the fall. I had never flown a flitter or even flown in one back then, and I had a hunch that I was going to have to fly that one before long; so I had been watching everything Colette was doing and trying to learn, following every motion. Once we had landed and recombined, and were taxiing over to the hangar, I asked, “Wouldn't the autopilot do all that for you?”