Résumé With Monsters (33 page)

It was also suggested that a potential patron not be offended by explicit photographs of sexual acts.

Philip pushed the door open and entered, plunging immediately into a brightly lit, heavily perfumed space whose walls were plastered with magazines and video boxes depicting men and women copulating garishly.

A fat man with a goatee perched on a stool. His arms were laced with tattoos of dragons and serpents. These intertwining reptiles were, Philip felt certain, etched over older tattoos, faded images that were still evident by reason of their ghastly subject matter. The blazing head of
Cthulhu
was unmistakably present behind the scaled visage of a fire-breathing lizard.

The fat man nodded slowly and Philip nodded back, passed through a small gate, and entered the room. Two men, both of whom appeared to be human, studied the walls with identical expressions of boredom.

Philip adopted this expression and drifted slowly around the room. It was a long, narrow room and the racks of video boxes and magazines displayed the variety—and sameness—of the human sexual impulse. Some of the videos were imaginatively titled: STIFF COMPETITION, PORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY, DRIVING MISS DAISY CRAZY, YUPPIES IN HEAT, SATURDAY NIGHT BEAVER. Other videos were rather matter-of-factly packaged: INTERRACIAL ORAL SEX #9, CLIT-O- RAMA, SUZIE'S SUCKFEST, TRACI'S HOTTEST THREE-WAYS.

Philip blinked at a video located in a section entitled, simply, "Breasts." A woman with breasts considerably larger than her head leaned forward grimly under a red-lettered title that troubled Philip. The title, BUTT-NAKED BREASTS, bothered Philip, who was something of a prude when it came to logical sentence construction. Breasts did not have buttocks and could not, therefore, bare them. As usual when encountering such constructions, he felt an almost irresistible urge to point this out to someone in authority, but he realized he had a mission to accomplish. He moved on.

He came to a dark-curtained room and entered.

He moved quickly past rows of bondage magazines and videos for yet more specialized tastes. This room was a little darker, the lighting in keeping with the impulses pandered to. Indeed, as the corridor narrowed, the darkness seemed to increase.

He hurried past rows of foreign pornography, the titles no longer in English.

He paused, stricken, in front of what, of course, he had been seeking.

The video box displayed a
spiderlike
thing, wrapped in the naked embrace of something resembling a giant sea anemone. On other boxes, lurid organs caressed unspeakable appendages.

Alien porn
. Here the Old Ones came to satisfy their fibrillating libidos, to clatter their
chitinous
mandibles, to drool acid and undulate in the promise of secret, forbidden pleasures.

And, of course, the corporate
bigshots
would have discreet access to this room. They wouldn't—like that poor scuttling bug he had passed on the street—have to march through the front door. There was, Philip was certain, a passage leading directly to
Pelidyne
.

It took him ten minutes to find it, harrowing minutes when the certainty of the proprietor's hand on his shoulder made him tremble.

The lever was concealed—purloined-letter- like—as the third silver dildo in a gleaming display of eight. Pulled forward, the lever activated a section of magazines which rolled back to reveal a dark, musty-smelling concrete stairway leading upward. Philip entered and found a switch that set the door clattering back to its prior position.

I'm in it now
, he thought, and he ascended the stairs.

11.

He came out in a janitor's closet filled with cleaning supplies, mops, an ancient floor
waxer
, and 50-gallon drums of disinfectant.

The hall was empty.

He remembered that Amelia's offices were on the fifth floor. That seemed the logical place to begin, although he didn't expect to find her there. If he found her desk, her computer, he might (
bloodhoundlike
) sniff through her papers and pick up her trail.

He stood in front of the elevator and pushed the "UP" button. As he waited, he glanced at the ubiquitous bulletin board. Amelia's photo jumped out at him again, the same photo he had recently seen in
Personality Bytes
. Again,
EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
was the caption.

Philip scanned the copy, "Let's all congratulate Amelia Price on a job well done. Amelia will be receiving a commemorative plaque recognizing her achievement and she will be officially entered into the Employee Merit Hall of Fame at a short ceremony that will take place..."

Tomorrow
.

Philip felt the first real surge of hope. If Amelia was accepting an award tomorrow, then she was still alive and still on earth.

The elevator arrived and its doors opened with a hiss. Philip jumped inside and punched the lighted "5."

The fifth floor was as silent as the third.

Usually, a corporation like
Pelidyne
had at least a dozen workers on any floor no matter how late the hour. This stillness was ominous, as though a sudden eruption of terrible industry were brewing.

Philip ran down the hall. He stopped abruptly in front of the door marked GRAPHICS SUPPORT. He pushed it open and peered inside.

All the lights were on in the room. Amelia sat stiffly in front of her computer, her back to Philip.

"Amelia," Philip said.

He ran to her. She did not turn until he touched her shoulder and then she swiveled in her chair.

Her eyes were blank, emotionless.

Some sort of hypnotic trance
, Philip thought.

Her mouth opened suddenly, the action accompanied by a whirring sound, and she spoke. "
Whag
... on...
wah
... bah," she said, her voice low, as though recorded speech were played on a sluggish, dying tape recorder. Then, with a whoop, the pitch rose and quite distinctly,

Amelia said, "I can't tell you how delighted I am to accept this honor. Working at
Pelidyne
has been a wonderful experience and..."

Philip knew then. Knew he was too late.

"You are too late, my friend."

"I know," Philip said.

He turned, not at all surprised to see Hal Ketch, welcoming the man's familiar, uncomplicated evil. Ketch was wearing his uniform, his cap pushed forward over his eyes.

Amelia droned on: "When I first came here, I had no idea I would come to love it so much, that I would..."

Ketch was slouched against the door frame and now he shrugged himself upright and sauntered toward Philip.

There isn't going to be a better time
, Philip thought, and he lunged toward his enemy.

Ketch saw him coming and drew his revolver. He didn't have time to fire it before Philip was on him and they both tumbled to the ground, banging against a light table that crashed to the floor instantly, like a prizefighter taking a dive.

They fought amid broken glass. They rolled across the carpet, collided with Amelia's chair which fell on its side, sending her sprawling. She continued to speak, "Being part of a team, having a real sense of belonging, is something I've always..."

Philip was no match for the security guard.

Ketch pushed the gun barrel against Philip's cheek.

"So long,
mutherfucker
," Ketch said.

"It's a great honor," Amelia was saying. "I couldn't have done it without..."

"Shit," Ketch said, his weight lifting from Philip's chest.

Philip, surprised to be alive, blinked at the running form of Hal Ketch.

Amelia was marching stolidly toward the wide plate glass window.

"Stop!" Ketch shouted, leaping toward her.

"I accept this award for my colleagues as much as for myself. I understand—" Arms outstretched, Amelia crashed through the window and into the night.

Ketch grabbed for her legs and hauled her back inside. Amelia was floundering oddly, arms
pinwheeling
. She fell back into the room and opened her mouth and coughed a glittering mass of capacitors, resistors, ICs.

The light in her eyes flickered and died. "Without the help of my.... without the help of my... without the help of my..."

"Shit," Hal Ketch was grumbling, rising on his knees, the revolver inches from his hand. He found it as he began to turn.

Philip rushed forward, hitting the man hard and low, hoping to bring him down.

He failed in this too. Ketch hit him in the face with the gun and Philip screamed.

Amelia was on her feet, arms still flaying the air, locked in an epileptic seizure of circuits. A large rent in the side of her neck revealed metal tubes and bright, colored wires.

"So long, sucker," Ketch said, crouching for the kill.

Amelia's arm caught him on the chin and lifted him.

Ketch made a noise, not a grunt or scream but something closer to an articulated word, as though he had spoken a comic-book balloon: "
Gaagh
."

Ketch rose up and out, the night sky and the gleaming stars behind him. He rose effortlessly, as though levitated, his chin balanced precisely on robot-Amelia's arm, and then the delicate balance was broken, that moment of suspense suddenly only a memory, and he fell, crying out, arms clawing indifferent air.

He was gone, embarked on five stories of falling, his scream modulated by wind and distance and velocity, his death ruled by mathematics.

Robot-Amelia spun and toppled to its side and could not right itself again but flipped on the floor, whirring and clicking.

Philip crawled away from the facsimile of his ex-lover. He spied the
Necronomicon
where it lay on the floor, the printer's apron spread out under it like a drop-cloth. The fiendishly conceived volume seemed to glow, gaining strength, no doubt, by close proximity to its ancient progenitors.

He rewrapped the book, lifted it, and lurched back into the hall.

He took the elevator to the basement. He seemed, now, prescient in his awareness, and there was no question of his destination.

Although he had been dragged there while unconscious he could have found that dreadful room had it been hidden amid a hundred million worlds in a million galaxies.

It is the obvious that we find unbelievable
, he thought, as he crawled over ruined computers, rusting file cabinets, coils of copper wire, broken ergonomic chairs.

How many times had he watched an awards ceremony, muttered, "God, what a lot of robots," and so missed the truth by speaking it?

He came to
Yuggoth's
waiting room.

He found Amelia almost instantly, before the crablike robots were alerted, and he did not hesitate (indecisiveness was behind him) but smashed the glass container with the fire extinguisher he'd grabbed from the wall.

The emerald liquid poured out, oozing over the polished floor, enveloping Philip in its rotted fish reek. He held his breath, knelt down, lifted Amelia's nude body in his arms. She coughed violently, her lungs contracting to disgorge the stagnant seas of
Yuggoth
.

She'll be all right
, Philip thought, knowing he was right in this too.

Alarms were ringing now. But lights did not flare overhead, and the implacable alien voice did not boom from the rafters.

Pelidyne's
resources were elsewhere engaged.

Luck?

Why not? Philip thought. I'm due.

A single, crablike robot clattered across the floor. Philip turned, lay Amelia on the floor beside the
Necronomicon
, and stood up. He was not frightened. He felt oddly invulnerable.

Perhaps it was just such a feeling that would get him killed.