One
Red sat on his bed, Mondamay on the floor. Flowers on the table between them. Cigar smoke twisted about the room. Red raised an ornate goblet from the table and sipped a dark wine.
"All right Where were we?" he asked, unlacing his boots and dropping them beside the bed.
"You had said that you did not want to come home with me and make pots," Mondamay stated.
"That's true."
"... And you agreed that it would be difficult for you to leave the Road and stay in hiding indefinitely."
"Yes."
"You also conceded that remaining on the Road and going about your business could be hazardous."
"Right."
"Then the only course of action I can see is for you
to go on the offensive. Get Chadwick before he gets you."
"Hmm." Red closed his eyes. "That would be an interesting variation," he said. "But he's pretty far from here, and it would certainly not be easy .. ." Where is he now?"
"The last I knew, he'd put down pretty firm roots
in C Twenty-seven. He is a very wealthy and powerful man."
"But you could find him?"
"Yes."
"How well do you know his time and place?" Mondamay asked.
"I lived there for over a year."
"Then your best course of action seems obvious: go after him."
"I suppose you are right."
Red suddenly put down his goblet, rose to his feet and began pacing rapidly.
"You suppose! What else is there left to do?"
"Yes, yes!" Red replied, unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it onto the bed. "Listen, we'll have to finish talking about it tomorrow."
He unbuckled his belt, stepped out of his trousers, threw them next to the shirt. He resumed pacing.
"Red!" Flowers said sharply. "Are you having one of your spells?"
"I don't know. I feel a little peculiar, that's all. Possibly. I think you'd better go now. We'll talk more in the morning."
"I think we'd better stay," Flowers answered. "I'd like to know what happens, and perhaps—"
"No! I mean it! I'll talk to you later! Leave me!" .
"All right. As you say. Let's go, Mondy."
Mondamay rose and removed Flowers from the table.
"Is there anything at all that I can do, that I can get you?" he asked.
"No."
"Good night, then."
"Good night."
He departed. As he moved down the stairs, Mondamay asked Flowers, "What is it? I've known him for some time, but I never knew of any illness—any spells... What's he got?"
"I have no idea. He does not get them often, but
when he does, he always manages to be alone. I believe he has recurrent bouts of insanity—some sort of manic thing.
"How so?
"You will know what I mean if you get a look at his room in the morning. He is going to have a big bill here. He'll tear that place apart."
"Hasn't he ever seen a physician about it?"
"Not that I know of."
"There must be some very good ones in the high Cs."
"Indeed. But he won't see one. He'll be all right in the morning, though—a little tired, perhaps, and there may even be a personality change. But he'll be all
right."
"What sort of personality change?" "Hard to say. You'll see."
"Here's our room. You sure you want to try this?" "I'll tell you inside."
Two
In the room with walls bound like books in large. grained, crushed morocco, Chadwick and Count Donatien Alphonse Francois, marquis de Sade, sat in high-backed chairs playing chess at a C Fifteen moneychanger's table. Standing, Chadwick was six feet in height. Standing or sitting, he weighed about twentyfive stone. His hair was a helmet of pale curls above a low brow over gray eyes with dark smudges beneath them, blue eyeshadow above; broken veins crossed his
wide nose and underlay his cheeks like bright webs. His neck was thick, his shoulders broad; his sausage-like fingers were steady and deft as he removed the other's. pawn from the board and dropped his bishop onto its square.
He turned to his right, where a pale-blue lazy Susan containing a circular rack of aperitif glasses drifted. Turning it, he sipped in quick succession of an orange a green, a yellow and a smoky gold, almost in time to the music of horns and strings. The glasses were instantly refilled as he replaced them.
He stretched and regarded his companion, who was reaching for his own beverage carousel.
"Your game is improving," he said, "or mine is degenerating. I'm not certain which."
His guest sipped from the clear, the bright red, the amber and again the clear liqueurs.
"In light of your activities on my behalf, he replied, "I could never acknowledge the latter."
Chadwick smiled and flipped his left hand palmupward for a moment.
"I try to bring interesting people to teach at my writing workshops," he said. "It is extremely rewarding when one of them also proves such fine company."
The marquis returned his smile.
"I do find it a considerable improvement over the circumstances from which you removed me last month, and I must confess I would like to extend my absence from my own milieu for as long as possible—preferably indefinitely."
Chadwick nodded.
"I find your views so interesting that it would be hard to part with you."
"... And I am enthralled by the development of letters since my own time. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Verlaine—and that wonderful man Artaud! I saw it all coming, of course."
"I am certain."
"Particularly Artaud, as a matter of fact."
"I would have guessed as much."
"His call for a theater of cruelty—what a fine and noble thing!"
"Yes. There is much merit to it."
"The cries, the sudden terror! I—"
The marquis produced a silk handkerchief from his sleeve and blotted his brow. He smiled weakly.
"I have my sudden enthusiasms," he stated.
Chadwick chuckled.
... Such as the game in which you are engaged— this, this black decade. It makes me think of the wonderful Jan Luyken plates you showed me the other evening. From your descriptions, I almost feel party to it...."
"It is about time for a progress report," Chadwick remarked. "Let us see how things are going."
He rose and crossed the pelt-strewn floor, approaching a black marble sphinx to the left of the smoldering fireplace. Halting before it, he muttered a few words and it extruded a long paper tongue. He tore this off and returned with it to his seat, where he held it before him like a scroll, his brows furrowed, and slowly unrolled it.
He reached for a glass containing an ounce of straight Kentucky bourbon, drained it and replaced it in the rack.
"Old Red made it past the first one," he said. "Killed the man we'd sent. This was not unexpected. It was a rather crude effort. Just to serve him notice, so to speak."
"A question ..."
"Yes?"
"You definitely wanted the quarry to be aware that this game had commenced?"
"Sure. Makes him sweat a lot more that way."
"I see. Then what happened?"
"Things began in earnest. A tracking device was placed on his vehicle and traps were set for him in a number of places to which he might flee. But the record becomes confused at this point. He did proceed into one of the ambush areas where one of the better assassins—a man for whom I had great hopes—had what sounded like an excellent arrangement for concluding things. It is not clear what occurred there. But the assassin disappeared. Our follow-up men learned that there had been some sort of altercation—but the innkeeper on whose grounds it took place did not even know its exact nature—and Red departed, after removing the tracking device and leaving it behind."
The marquis smiled.
"And so the second stroke fails. It makes the game more interesting, does it not?"