"Do you know the time and the place and the means?"
"No."
Well, that's something, anyway. Maybe you'll have a revised premonition before long." "I don't think so."
"Whatever, I am glad you told me. Now, to answer your question finallyNo, I am not leaving you."
"But you might be damaged, destroyed when it occurs." "
"Life is uncertain. I will take my chances. Mondamay would never forgive me if I left you, either." "You have an understanding or something?" "Yes." "Interesting..."
"You are the curiosity under discussion at the moment. My decisions are governed mainly by facts and logic, you know."
"I know. But—"
" 'But,' hell! Shut up a minute while I rationalize. I have no facts to run through the chopper. Everything you've told me is subjective and smacks of the paranormal. Now, I am willing to acknowledge the paranormal under certain circumstances. But I have no way to test it. All I really have to go on is my knowledge of you, gathered during our strange relationship as transporters and occasional time-meddlers. I find myself wanting to believe that you know what you are doing at the same time that I fear you are making a mistake."
"So?"
"All I can conclude is that if I restrain you and it turns out you were right and I was wrong—and that
I've kept you from something very important to you— then I'll feel terrible. I'll feel that I've failed in my :
duty as your aide. So I feel obligated to come along and assist you in whatever you are up to, even though I can only accept it provisionally."
"That's more than I asked of you, you know."
"I know. Damned decent of me. I also hasten to point out that I feel equally obligated to slam on the brakes if I think you are doing something really stupid.
"Fair enough, I guess."
"It will have to do."
Red breathed smoke.
"I suppose so."
The miles ticked inside him like years.
Two
Suddenly, the marquis de Sade threw down his pen and rose from his writing table, a strange gleam in his eye. He gathered together all the manuscripts from the writing workshop into a mighty bundle and waddled across the room with them and out onto the balcony. There, three stories above the parks and glistening compounds of the city, he removed the clips and staples and, one by one, cast them forth, clumps of enormous, dirty snowflakes, into the afternoon's slanting light.
Executing a brief dance step, he kissed his fingertips and waved as the last of them took flight, the ill-cast dreams of would-be scribblers from half a dozen centuries.
"Bon jour, ail revoir, adieu," he stated, and then he turned away and smiled.
Returning to the desk, he took up his pen and wrote, I have done my successor a favor and destroyed all of your stupid manuscripts. None of you have any talent whatsoever, and he signed it. He folded it then to take with him, to tack to the door of the conference room as he passed it on the way out.
Then he took up a second sheet of paper.
It may seem, he wrote, as if I am repaying your hos pitality, your generosity, in a particularly odious fashion, with my resolution to assist your worst enemy by de stroying you—destroying you, I might add, in an es pecially macabre style. Some might feel that my sense of justice has been outraged and that I do this in the service of a higher end. They would be wrong.
After signing it, he added the postscript: By the time you read this, you will already be dead.
He chuckled, placed the skull paperweight atop the document, rose to his feet and departed his quarters leaving the door slightly ajar.
He took the tube down, posted his rejection slip and walked the short corridor to the side door, encountering no one. Outside, he shuddered against the balmy breeze, squinted at the sunlight, grimaced at the birdsongs—taped or live, he could not be sure which— from the nearest park. He chuckled, though, as he mounted a beltway and moved northward toward the transfer point. It was going to be a glorious day nevertheless.
By the time he passed onto the westbound belt, he was humming a little tune. There were a few other people out, but none of them nearby. His destination was already plainly visible, but he moved to the faster belt and actually walked along it for a few moments before returning to the slower and finally stepping off at the proper underpass. He could as readily have reached this point on the underground belts, he thought, if he had been sure of his distances and directions. As it was, he had needed this landmark.
He entered the enormous building, proceeding in what he recalled to be the proper direction. He passed only two white-smocked technicians and he nodded to . both of them. They nodded back.
He found his way into the big hall. At a workstand toward the center, Sundoc leaned over a piece of equipment. He was alone.
The marquis had crossed most of the distance between them before Sundoc looked up.
"Oh. Hello, marquis," he said, wiping his hand on his jacket and straightening.
"You may call me Alphonse."
"All right. Back for another look, eh?"
"Yes. I stole a few moments from that miserable schedule Chadwick has set up for me. Oh, my!"
"What?". "Some of the magnetic fluid is leaking from that
piece of equipment behind you!"
"What? There's no—"
Sundoc turned to his left and bent to inspect the indicated unit. Then he collapsed across it.
The marquis held a stocking in his right hand, with a bar of soap knotted into its toe. This he thrust back into his jacket pocket, then he caught Sundoc in his slide floorwards and assisted him into a supine position. He covered him with a tarpaulin which had protected a machine near the wall.
Whistling softly, he moved to the small console which controlled the pit lift. After a moment, he heard the low, sighing noise of the machinery. He moved to the edge and looked down, the helmet clasped before him.
"How like that wondrous Beast of Revelations," he mused, as the startled creature bellowed, dropped the carcass of a cow and began, with great thudding noises, to spring about within its enclosure. "I long to be joined with you, my lovely. But a moment more—"
"Hey! What's going on in here?"
The two technicians he had passed on the way in had just come into the hall.
"Reverse it! Reverse it!" one of them screamed, and began running toward the unit near the workbench.
The marquis raised the helmet and placed it on his head. There followed a moment of delightful disorientation. He closed his eyes.
... The wall was sinking all about him. He beheld his own diminutive, helmeted form. He saw the first white-coated figure arrive at the console, the second close behind it. "Don't do that!" he tried to say. But a button was pushed. All at once, the walls ceased their movement. He sprang. God! the power! The guard rail collapsed. He swayed on the edge of the pit, then moved forward. The console and the technicians vanished beneath him. He bellowed... Lower your head, he/they willed, that I might mount. Clumsily, he straddled the neck of the great beast. Now we are going to take a walk. You are my guest artist for today.
The doorway was too small, for a few moments. As he moved up the mall paralleling the belts, screaming sounds began, here and there. A slow-moving vehicle halted and discharged its colorfully garbed passengers, all of whom fled. The breezes, the sunlight, the birdcalls, were no longer disturbing. In fact, they were barely discernible. He overturned the vehicle and bellowed a song. Chadwick's main building lay ahead.
He would be in the a rebours room at this time of day...
With each lurching step forward, his feelings rose. Parceling out terror, he left the mall and headed into the park. He passed through its elegant periphery of trees, shrubs, flowerbeds, like wind through a sieve. The holograms closed upon themselves behind him, to rustle in their imaginary breezes. Hidden below the level of fictitious tulips, a pair of lovers were crushed at the moment of orgasm. A genuine bench splintered, a trash container crumpled as he passed. His bellowed song drowned all other sounds.