Sunlight. He had gotten outside.
The quibble.
He hobbled to it.
Inside he sat at the controls, bewildered by legions of knobs, levers, wheels, pedals, dials. “Why doesn’t it go?” he said aloud. “Get going!” he told it, rocking back and forth in the driver’s seat. “Won’t she let me go?” he asked the quibble.
The keys. Of course he couldn’t fly it no keys.
Her coat in the back seat; he had witnessed it. And also her large mailpouch purse. There, the keys in her purse. There.
The two record albums. Taverner and the Blue, Blue Blues. And the best of them alclass="underline" There’ll be a Good Time. He groped, managed somehow to lift both record albums up, conveyed them to the empty seat beside him. I have the proof here, he realized. It’s here in these records and it’s here in the house. With her. I’ve got to find it here if I’m going to. Find it. Nowhere else. Even General Mr. Felix What-Is-He-Named? he won’t find it. He doesn’t know. As much as me.
Carrying the enormous record albums he ran back to the house—around him the landscape flowed, with whip, tall, tree-like organisms gulping in air out of the sweet blue sky, organisms which absorbed water and light, ate the hue into the sky … he reached the gate, pushed against it. The gate did not budge. Button.
He found no.
Step by step. Feel each inch with fingers. Like in the dark. Yes, he thought. I’m in darkness. He set down the much-too-big record albums, stood against the wall beside the gate, slowly massaged the rubber-like surface of the wall. Nothing. Nothing.
The button.
He pressed it, grabbed up the record albums, stood in front of the gate as it incredibly slowly creaked its noisy protesting way open.
A brown-uniformed man carrying a gun appeared. Jason said, “I had to go back to the quibble for something.”
“Perfectly all right, sir,” the man in the brown uniform said. “I saw you leave and I knew you’d be back.”
“Is she insane?” Jason asked him.
“I’m not in a position to know, sir,” the man in the brown uniform said, and he backed away, touching his visored cap.
The front door of the house hung open as he had left it. He scrambled through, descended brick steps, found himself once more in the radically irregular living room with its million-mile-high ceiling. “Alys!” he said. Was she in the room? He carefully looked in all directions; as he had done when searching for the button he phased his way through every visible inch of the room. The bar at the far end with the handsome walnut drug cabinet … couch, chairs. Pictures on the walls. A face in one of the pictures jeered at him but he did not care; it could not leave the wall. The quad phonograph.
His records. Play them.
He lifted at the lid of the phonograph but it wouldn’t open. Why? he asked. Locked? No, it slid out. He slid it out, with a terrible noise, as if he had destroyed it. Tone arm. Spindle. He got one of his records out of its sleeve and placed in on the spindle. I can work these things, he said, and turned on the amplifiers, setting the mode to phono. Switch that activated the changer. He twisted it. The tone arm lifted; the turntable began to spin, agonizingly slowly. What was the matter with it? Wrong speed? No; he checked. Thirty-three and a third. The mechanism of the spindle heaved and the record dropped.
Loud noise of the needle hitting the lead-in groove. Crackles of dust, clicks. Typical of old quad records. Easily misused and damaged; all you had to do was breathe on them.
Background hiss. More crackles.
No music.
Lifting the tone arm, he set it farther in. Great roaring crash as the stylus struck the surface; he winced, sought the volume control to turn it down. Still no music. No sound of himself singing.
The strength the mescaline had over him began now to waver; he felt coldly, keenly sober. The other record. Swiftly he got it from its jacket and sleeve, placed it on the spindle, rejected the first record.
Sound of the needle touching plastic surface. Background hiss and the inevitable crackles and clicks. Still no music.
The records were blank.
Part Three
Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled;
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.
21
“Alys!” Jason Taverner called loudly. No answer. Is it the mescaline? he asked himself. He made his way clumsily from the phonograph toward the door through which Alys had gone. A long hallway, deep-pile wool carpet. At the far end stairs with a black iron railing, leading up to the second floor.
He strode as quickly as possible up the hall, to the stairs, and then, step by step, up the stairs.
The second floor. A foyer, with an antique Hepplewhite table off to one side, piled high with Box magazines. That, weirdly, caught his attention; who, Felix or Alys, or both, read a low-class mass-circulation pornographic magazine like Box? He passed on then, still—because of the mescaline, certainly—seeing small details. The bathroom; that was where he would find her.
“Alys,” he said grimly; perspiration trickled from his forehead down his nose and cheeks; his armpits had become steamy and damp with the emotions cascading through his body. “God damn it,” he said, speaking to her although he could not see her. “There’s no music on those records, no me. They’re fakes. Aren’t they?” Or is it the mescaline? he asked himself. “I’ve got to know!” he said. “Make them play if they’re okay. Is the phonograph broken, is that it? Needle point or stylus or whatever you call them broken off?” It happens, he thought. Maybe it’s riding on the tops of the grooves.
A half-open door; he pushed it wide. A bedroom, with the bed unmade. And on the floor a mattress with a sleeping bag thrown onto it. A little pile of men’s supplies: shaving cream, deodorant, razor, aftershave, comb … a guest, he thought, here before but now gone.
“Is anybody here?” he yelled.
Silence.
Ahead he saw the bathroom; past the partially opened door he caught sight of an amazingly old tub on painted lion’s legs. An antique, he thought, even down to their bathtub. He loped haltingly down the hail, past other doors, to the bathroom; reaching it, he pushed the door aside.
And saw, on the floor, a skeleton.
It wore black shiny pants, leather shirt, chain belt with wrought-iron buckle. The foot bones had cast aside the high-heeled shoes. A few tufts of hair clung to the skull, but outside of that, there remained nothing: the eyes had gone, all the flesh had gone. And the skeleton itself had become yellow.
“God,” Jason said, swaying; he felt his vision fail and his sense of gravity shift: his middle ear fluctuated in its pressures so that the room caromed around him, silently in perpetual ball motion. Like a pourout of Ferris wheel at a child’s circus.
He shut his eyes, hung on to the wall, then, finally, looked again.
She has died, he thought. But when? A hundred thousand years ago? A few minutes ago?
Why has she died? he asked himself.
Is it the mescaline? That I took? Is this real?
It’s real.
Bending, he touched the leather fringed shirt. The leather felt soft and smooth; it hadn’t decayed. Time hadn’t touched her clothing; that meant something but he did not comprehend what. Just her, he thought. Everything else in this house is the same as it was. So it can’t be the mescaline affecting me. But I can’t be sure, he thought.
Downstairs. Get out of here.
He loped erratically back down the hail, still in the process of scrambling to his feet, so that he ran bent over like an ape of some unusual kind. He seized the black iron railing, descended two, three steps at once, stumbled and fell, caught himself and hauled himself back up to a standing position. In his chest his heart labored, and his lungs, overtaxed, inflated and emptied like a bellows.