Masters of the Maze (12 page)

“Well, Jack, hey — ”

“Oh, hello, Jack, have you — ”

He, Nate, couldn’t hear the end of the question because the third man was speaking to him, Nate.

“Mr. Gordon, Mr. Jamieson Swift has engaged us to look out for you in this matter, and we have engaged Mr. John Morton, who is a member of the local bar. By ‘we,’ Mr. Gordon, I mean the firm of which I am a member — Mathesson, Peabody, Farrel, and Smith — my name is Thomas Farrel Smith.” He gave Nate a firm but not unpleasantly firm handshake. Thomas Farrel Smith was a small, slight man with pale, smooth skin and dark, smooth hair. His smile and the glance it contained seemed to say that he was pleasantly impressed with Nate.

Nate was mildly surprised, at least he thought he was, and a bit more than mildly pleased. The man with the red nose was discussing a bear hunt with Nobeldorf and Congers. The gray-haired man did not, at second look, seem a bit familiar. Nate said, “Such dispatch doesn’t seem typical of Jamie. Not that I’m — ”

Smith said, with a rueful smile, “Not that I’m, either, but — Well, it’s been on the radio and the television and in at least some of the newspapers. To tell you the truth, we actually represent Mr. Swift in connection with other business matters. And it was we who called this to his attention. He was naturally upset and immediately asked us to do what we could.” His voice dropped in tone and he said, with a glance to the side, “Here you can watch what is called, for some curious reason, ‘the democratic process in action.’ I assure you, it is a much more interesting show than either radio or television …”

Morton, having wound up the bear hunt, turned to Nate and he said, “Well, young fellow, are these two yokels giving you a hard time?”

“Now, Jack — ”

“Ah, come on, Jack — ”

But Morton waved them aside. “You’re poor old Joe’s nephew by marriage, aren’t you?” he asked. He walked over, shook his hand, patted him on the back. “Too bad that this had to turn out like this, first time he had a chance to see you in years. Well, naturally … Both in the army, your brother and you, dead men, seeing dead men, no novelty. But … you know … funny thing — nothing to laugh at, not what I mean — odd — seems
different
, somehow, quiet, decent, civilized place like this. Old man asks you to come up and stay with him — nearest kin he has — dying. We all knew it. You didn’t. Quite a shock. Stayed with him, though, faithfully, all night, all morning, didn’t move from his side, covered him up decently, Kezzie told us, yes, yes.”

He sighed, nodded. “All flesh is as grass,” his sigh said. “The vanity of human wishes,” his sigh said, “He who believeth in me shall not die,” he nodded. “You went for a walk to be alone for awhile when you saw the whole goddamn cavalcade coming down the drive like Coxey’s Army — Mat, when in the
hell
is the State going to get you a new car, the one out there is a dis
grace
, for Christ’s sake, there’s only one thing to do: you got, how many troopers?
you
know how many troopers. Plus your wife. Plus me. Plus
my
wife. My son. My daughter. My son-in-law. Okay. The only thing to do is we catch Oscar Hamilton and pin his ass to the mat. I mean, he’s not in the General Assembly in response to some law of nature, for Christ’s sake. He only won the nomination by exactly thirty-seven votes, you know? All
right.
Tomorrow night’s his night at the firehouse, and if he votes down ’t the Statehouse the way he plays poker down ’t the firehouse, then: Oyez, oyez, and may God save this honorable Commonwealth, is all I got to say.

“Elmer Nobeldorf isn’t in any too better of a shape either, now I come to think of it,” said John Morton (Esquire), rubbing his red, red nose and gesturing with fluttering eyebrows at a cut-glass decanter on the sideboard. “Ah, thanks, El; old Joe knew how to buy booze, poor Joe. Have one, El. It’s therapeutic, you owe it to the citizens, protect your health. Drop dead from the cold and frost, bottoms up, here’s hair on your balls, you won’t have to worry about Clyde Benchley, he, what’d he do? lost out by two-twenty-two first time he run in the primary; only ninety-one, this last time, Tsk,” Jack Morton shook his cocked head. “Clyde
Benchley
as sheriff! Well, lots of people seem to like him, he was sucking up to
me
, believe it or not, only last week. Well, well, young fellow, you behaved altogether admirably on this occasion; Mat Congers and El Nobeldorf obliged only in their official capacities; sure you’ll all be great friends: well.

“What’s he charged with?” he asked.

“He isn’t exactly
charged —
”

“We’re waiting for the re
port —
”

Morton’s expression was that of an archbishop who has seen his choirboys tumble out before the altar mother-naked. “Not.
Charged
?” he cried, astonished, almost speechless. Almost. “You mean, he has
not
been taken before a magistrate? He is being
detained
here? You-know-better-than-that Not even arrested! Well, boys, one thing you’ve done. Not only we don’t need to bother with that writ of habeas corpus Judge Fleming is waiting in his office to sign if it becomes necessary, but you’ve — I
hope
— I could be
wrong
— I
believe
you’ve saved yourselves from a suit for false arrest, which otherwise this young man, he may for all we know be the new and rightful owner of the very floor we stand on —

“Button your coat up, Mr. Gordon. Let’s go. After
you.
” He shook his head, jowls flapping reproachfully, at the two peace officers.

“Now, Jack, don’t be — ”

“Listen Jack, I only — ”

But their hearts didn’t seem to be in it.

Attorney Smith, his fine, dark brows arched quizzically, bowed slightly and gestured slightly, toward the door. Nate said, “I’ll be right with you … ‘Even kings must live by nature,’ ” he added. He went through the other door, rapidly, entered the small, cold, quiet water-closet, flushed the close-stool. While it roared and gurgled, he, even more rapidly, went to the end of the corridor and opened the window. He strode quickly to the other end and opened the door there. Then he returned to the room where Joseph Bellamy no longer lay on the floor. He paused a moment and pressed his wood against the door frame. A wave of cold and near-nausea swept over him. He swallowed, hard.

There wasn’t any doubt in his mind, finally, why the sallow man with the clipped gray hair had looked familiar. Man never identified, man never introduced. Ralph Wiedemyer’s warning.
Timor Danaos et dona ferentes.
Beware the Greeks when they come bearing gifts. This man might have been father, uncle, cousin — but kin, kin, close of kin — to the dark young man whose appearance, challenge, threat, had occurred so soon after Bellamy’s last alarm and death.

Nate Gordon entered the inner room, closed the door, pulled up the wall, stepped through, pulled it down behind him.

He took five or six uncertain steps and then, watched — blinking, blind, light, darkness, spinning, whirling, roaring, blackness, whiteness, sickness, shadow, sharpness, dimness, glory, horror, silence, stillness, rest.

• • •

Afterward, though how long or how far afterward he knew not and no search could make him know for not even the event would teach him in its hour, he walked down a long cube tube of the richest golden crystal — measured pace with infinite grace and dignity, upon the tips of his toes and the balls of his feet, to the accompaniment of music of sakers, serpents, spinets, tambours and triangles. His walk was a dance, a sacred, hallowed, hallowing, holy dance. He came out into the Temple of En-lil, the Hei-gal of the Lu-gal, and his dance was a walk, a sanctifying, fructifying, pollinating walk.

He took the waiting priestess by her narrow, painted waist and possessed her and begat a godling upon her, and he arose and departed and affirmed to the few who dared to lift adoring, glazed, and glowing eyes, eyes like almonds, arrows, and like kohl; affirmed to them with gestures and the very gait of his walk, dance, dance, walk, dance, that neither U-perath nor Hid-dek-el would allow a drop too few nor suffer one too much, but both would water the valleys and trees and fields so that the steps of the ziqquratu would flow with myrrh, with honey, with butter, and with cream.

Afterward he departed, in search of Et-dir-Mor. This had not been his land after all. But it had been perhaps worth his while to have made the error.

He fled down a funnel through which blew ice and snow and rime and powdered hail and came out in a gust upon a plain where naked men whose shoulders and feet alone were wrapped in crackling hides thrust their fingers into huge and faintly steaming dung-masses and besought him with words, with gestures, and with mimings to tell them which way through the storm the great red mammoths had fled not long before, not long before at all. But he would not as he could not and strode back upon the blast the way he had come, back up and back down the funnel.

He sat and mused a long while at a point where seven cities glowed at the arm-ends of seven branch roads, each different as day from white, and watched them turn and revolve like the points of a great, slow Catherine wheel as he walked down the hub to the under sea grot where the mermen come to woo each other when their women have gone ashore to kindle and to bear. Their kink green beards adrifting and afloat in the gentle-currents, they gestured at him with their six soft arms and rolled their glaucous eyes. “Where is the Gate which leads to the land of Et-dir-Mor?” he asked them. Bubbles like streams of pearls rose from under their feet.

“Your story is a fantasy,” the Stated Sages told him, fingering their lip furrows. “Your speech is a fantasy, and your clothes are fantasies as well, as well, as well.” They nodded, but their manner was friendly. “Striving only for reality inevitably results only in fantasy, and to prove it, to prove it, to prove it, here is a fellow sickling. He also suffers from fantasy, as you may see from the fact that he wears the same clothes and speaks the same speech. He may or may not, depending on his immediate condition, incline to tell you his story, his story, his story; but we assure you it is exactly the same.”

The dark young man in the red hunting shirt cleared his throat. “Look, that was a mistake on my part, getting mad and behaving like that that time the other night,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Nate said, “What happened to Mr. Bellamy?”

The man scowled, shrugged. “He got in my way and I shoved him. I mean, I just
shoved
him. It wasn’t my fault. Listen,” he said, essaying a crooked grin, “we better stick together. Okay? I can show you a way out — besides the one you came in by, I mean.”

Nate considered. “Okay,” he said, after a moment. They walked off together through the great black stone.

The Stated Sages nodded at one another. “Now they have fantasied that they have no substance,” they said. They rubbed their lip furrows and they sighed. Then they turned themselves inside out and went down the ramp for a sand bath.

“You first, now,” said the red shirt.

“The Hell you say. That was a firearm you pointed at me.”

“I said I was
sorry,
didn’t I?”

“Don’t follow strangers,” Wiedemyer said. But did it make sense to let strangers follow
you
? when they had only very recently tried to kill you? Answer: No.

“Tell you what,” Nate said; “we’ll go side by side. Okay? Okay.”

“Let’s shake on it,” said the other, and then tried to throw Nate over his back. There was quite a tussle, but Nate — by dint of beating his opponent to several dirty tactics — won. That is, he floored his man, and when the latter lunged at his leg, he side-stepped and kicked him smartly a few times in the side of the head. The man stayed down. He had a revolver in his pocket. Nate thumped him on the skull with it for good measure. Then he took off the fellow’s shoes and tied his hands behind his back with his own socks.

“ ‘
Fare thee well, my own true love
,’ ” Nate sang; “
tum-tee-tum-tee-tah. Tum-tee-tum-tee-tum — tee-tum — little b’ar’ feet on the floor …
’ ”

By now he was no longer quite sure of where he was, but it certainly made no sense to remain there. He proceeded onward. Once or twice he had a nasty fright, as for instance the time he saw the body lying half-in and half-out of an opacity which indicated the presence of a gate. It was unclothed and chitinous and part of a spurred foot fell off as he nudged it with his shoe. He thought that he would not investigate what lay on the other side of the opacity. He did wonder, though, on the nature of the world the creature had come from.

It was almost immediately afterward that he heard the whistling sounds, like guinea pigs at first, then, as they grew nearer, too loud to be that. He saw only three of them at first, then the smaller one a moment later, all gamboling and tittuping and butting each other now and then. The first sight was the shocking one — three of them to his one: and they quite strange of form; or, if not quite that strange, then familiar-seeming chiefly by resemblance far from reassuring. And, in that place or in any place of that nature, almost hideously proper and peculiar to it. But there was something too innocent in their manner for fright to be maintained. So he stayed where he was and watched as they approached. After all, where was he to flee? Into that last portal where the exoskeletonic thing lay? — death-world that it probably was.

So he stayed put, but kept his hand on the revolver in his pocket.

And then they saw him. For a moment they ceased their romping and whistling. But for a moment only; then they came on. Their blocky bodies were rather man-like, though two of them were clearly female, and they were tridigital. But it was none of this, nor the symmetric wartiness of their skins, which immediately arrested attention. It was their heads, like great, rounded wedges, which caught both the eyes and the imagination. The flaps of integument, like ears. The bossy protuberances, like great, elongated warts. Or … like horns.

Minotaurs!

Up they came, frisking and gamboling once more, in a manner suggesting a game of follow-the-leader. Then, almost at his side, they turned away and began what may not have been, but which seemed to be hardly anything other than, a game of tag with the cub or calf. So benign was their manner, indeed, that it was almost absent-mindedly that he reached out and patted the proferred head of the “bull” as he watched the curious antics of the child. For some time they sported around about him; then, with more whistles and wavings and prancings, they were off. He turned and watched them until they vanished from sight.