"Tell me about the compromise."
"Well the name should really be Magfaser."
"You're putting me on."
"No, Magfaser's an acronym."
"Of what?"
"Maser Generated Fetal Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation."
"Jeez."
"Yeah. Only close friends call me that.
"And Adam because I'm the first turkey— Do we say turkey in the late twentieth?"
"Not anymore."
"The first to be amplified during the embryo caper. Caper's right, isn't it? I'm having a little trouble getting with late twentieth. Just come from a session with Leeuwenhoek and a long seventeenth-century Dutch discussion about microscopes."
"You need warming up." I called the bartender. "Double shot for me, please, and anything my good buddy Maser Generated Fetal Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation wants to order."
That broke him up. "You're a right rigadoon, Alf."
"You're fairly OK yourself, Adam. What were these friends unknown amplifying you to do?"
"Damned if I know. I don't think the lab mavens know either. They're still trying to find out, which is why they've got me under observation, like in a terrarium. ..."
I shook my head. He was sounding flakier by the minute.
"They thought they were doing a linear magnification, sort of putting me through a magnifying glass."
"Size wise?"
"Brainwise, but what they did was multiply me by myself into a quadratic."
"Inside your mother?"
"Hell no! I was a test tube clone floating in a maser
womb."
"So where is this terrarium where the good doctors have you under observation?"
He purred a chuckle. "My place. If you want to come, I'll show you."
"Love to. The Luogo Nero? The Black Place?"
"That's what the locals call it. It's really Buoco Nero, the Black Hole."
"Like the Black Hole of Calcutta?"
"No. Black Hole as in astronomy. Corpse of a dead star, but also channel between this universe and its next-door neighbor."
"Here? In Rome?"
"Sure. They drift around in space until they run out of gas and come to a stop. This number happened to park here."
"How long ago?"
"No one knows," he said. "It was there six centuries before Christ, when the Etruscans took over a small town called Roma and began turning it into the capital of the world. If you were looking for the Luogo Nero, where the sinister Soul-Changer did business, you were told it was just opposite Queen Tanaquila's palace. Usually your informant would then spit three times to ward off evil."
I smiled. "When did you get put into it, the black hole?"
I asked.
"About a thousand years from now, your time. For me,
ten rotas back."
There has to be a limit. "Adam," I said, "one of us is crazy."
"And you think it's me." He laughed. "That's why I'm safe when I tell it like it is. No one ever believes me."
"I've been assigned to do a story on you."
"Sure. I guessed. I'll cooperate; give you the full; but Rigadoon will never print it. They'll never believe you. You'll be wasting your time, Alf, but you'll have some wild stories to tell. So come on, already."
Outside, the redhead flagged a cab and told the driver, "II Foro etrusco." As we got in he said, "That's what they call the ruin of Tanaquila's palace, the Etruscan forum. I'm just opposite. If I gave a driver my address he'd swear he never heard of it and tell us to get lost."
The Etruscan forum looked like any ordinary Roman ruin, a few acres of fenced rubble covered with the usual graffiti:
DeeDee and Joe's
Smithfield Eatery
U.S.A
Rip 'em Tear 'em
Skin 'em alive
Pennsylvania '35
Across the Via Regina from Tanaquila's, the Black Place looked like any ordinary Roman house except that it stood alone, flanked by empty, weedy lots. Evidently no one cared to live alongside. It was built of the flat Roman brick three stories high, with windows and balconies, some with wash hanging from them.
"Windows, balconies, wash, all fake to conform," Adam said. "Also the bricks. They aren't the clay types; they're baked bort, cheap diamond dust, to last forever. Come into my web."
We stepped into the entranceway.
The sign above the door wasn't the traditional hockshop logo, the three gold balls, allegedly the arms of the Medici family but actually invented by the Lombard pawnbrokers as an attention-getter. No, what the sign sported was a fantastic extrapolation: three gold horizontal 8s, symbols of infinity. A nice touch. Its motto was Res Ullus—Anything.
"Petrified ebony," Adam said, rapping the door with his knuckles. "Also to last forever." He swung the door aside.
"No locks?"
"Open day and night to all the world. My observers want me to react to everybody and everything. Might help them figure out what my quadratic is. And that's why they made the terrarium a hockshop. It's a universal crossroads."
"You must have been ripped plenty."
"Never. The goniffs think this is a Mafia H.Q. and are afraid to mess around. Too bad. Lately, your time, the terror clowns've been tossing bombs which can't do anything against diamond and ebony. God knows who they think I am."
There was a pleasant foyer with a wide rack for hats, coats, and such, and an enormous brass scuttle containing a colorful assortment of walking sticks, umbrellas, parasols, all probably forgotten by visitors. He led me into a giant reception/living room which would have made collectors, curators, and dealers green with envy. Exquisite rare furniture, lamps, books, prints, and paintings; cut crystal and objets d'art; an inlaid harpsichord; an Aubusson rug, 20 x 30; linenfold paneling; a magnificent ironwork stairway leading to the upper floors; inexplicable items which had not yet been designed and built in my time. And . . . AND, standing in the center was a woman. . . .
Gleaming black hair, sharp features, and tiny ears were what I noticed first. Her eyes were golden, oval, and never blinked, so wide apart she could almost see behind her. The tip of her tongue constantly darted just inside her narrow lips. Her skin was quadroon but seemed to glow with iridescent mica flakes when she moved forward to greet us.
"This is Alf, my new buddy," Maser told her. "Alf, this is my nanny."
"Nanny!?"
He nodded. "I'm just a kid."
"But— I— This is too much for me. Does your nanny have a name?"
"I call her Medusa."
"Medusa?"
"Uh-huh."
"You have to be kidding!"
"Of course." The redhead chuckle-purred. "It's our joke because she's descended from our snake genus. I don't have to explain why she calls me Macavity, the Mystery Cat."
"No need. Good evening, Ms. Medusa." I gave the enchantress my best bow. "Do you have a real name I might call you?"
"Ssss."
I looked at Maser.
"That's her real name," he said.
"Good evening, Ms. Ssss."
He broke up and she flashed a smile at me.
"What have I done now?"
"You called her Glory Hallelujah."
"No."
"Yes. Ssss. Ssss. Can't you hear the difference?"
"Not really. It's one hell of a language."
"We come from one hell of a universe. You should hear the pisces crowd bubble. Talk twentieth Yank to him, Nan." She flashed another smile but that was all. "No, no, Nan. Alf can't hear UHF. Try lower."
Her voice came, smooth and tingly like the low notes of an oboe. "Good evening. So nice to meet you. . . ." She took my hand. Hers was cool and firm. "I'd like very much if you called me Glory, Alf."
"Hallelujah," I muttered.
"Careful, you're turning into stone," Macavity laughed. He crossed to one of the panels, which proved to be a door. As he started to open it he said, "It's quite dark, Alf. You won't be able to take notes."