Chapter Seventeen
To Libby Allison it seemed as if the world of nightmare had suddenly become reality. There were people here, a million people in the rooms and corridors, all talking at once, milling around, laughing too loudly, shaking hands too eagerly, with smiles on their faces and fear deep in their eyes. It had all been over after the speech, everybody knew that, yet they had waited for the formality of congressional approval, waited until the resolution had been formally read, and debated, and carried without a dissenting vote. And then the reporters were there by the thousands, flash-bulbs popping, a hundred questions in the air, and every eye was on Julian Bahr.
He was the center of attention, talking, laughing, proclaiming, as all the little men with pads jotted down his words. He was flushed and voluble, almost as though he were drunk. When die vote results came down four men moved in to his side, heavily-built men dressed in psychophantic imitation of Bahr, keeping the crowding groups of people from coming too close.
She watched him in growing horror, and in growing fascination. There had been times when she had seen this clearly, the thing that had been coming from the very first. Now, suddenly, all the restraints were broken, all the barriers down. He had stamped and pounded and bulldozed through the field, and suddenly it was empty before him; he was in command. He stood there, talking, his ego swelling, power and confidence in every word, every movement of his head, every gesture of his hands. And still he was chiving forward, fighting . . . .
He will change the whole country, everything in Federation America into a dynasty, she thought. He will set civilization back six hundred years. There will be no stopping him if he succeeds in this. He is thirty-four years old, and in a week he will be ruling a continent, but that will not be enough. He could be the master of the world, and that would not be enough. By the time he is fifty, the idolatry of ten billion people might still make him feel unloved.
It seemed to her that this was unreality, a dream she was floating through, and she could only see it with a sense of detachment, as though it were not really happening to her. Even when Bahr was at her side, taking her arm through the crowds, smiling and talking about reform and the part she would play in it, there was no sense of reality. She saw him, and realized with a shock of horror that she was proud of him, excited for him, eager for him. He had fought so hard, he had even fought her, and now he had won, in spite of everything. And now he was making her a part of the victory.
His white goddess. His empress. His wife, his lover, his concubine, his first love, his partner, his daughter, his sister, his mother . . . .
Reality broke in on the dream with sudden brutality, and the vast panoramic nightmare-lens clamped down to a tight, narrow channel and came into focus on Adams’ face.
Adams, pushing his way through the room, his coat lapels flapping, lank blond hair awry, face white and distorted and ugly as he made his way across toward them. He thrust at the crowds of people that were intervening, and they stepped back as his anger swept the room like a wave. He approached Julian Bahr, and two of Bahr’s men appeared at Adams’ side, suddenly, each taking an arm, holding him as he writhed to break away from them. But his hate-filled eyes were not turned toward Bahr at all; they were turned toward Libby.
“You bitch!” he screamed at her, lunging forward to glare into her face. “You bitch! You did it, it’s yours. Aren’t you proud! Vanner should be proud of his bastard daughter. Oh, yes, he should be proud, and your whore mother, too! You’ve done their work well for them, haven’t you? You’ve betrayed everything they ever believed in, and now see what you’ve won for yourself , . .”
She had a drink in her hand, and she hit him in the face with it so hard that the glass shattered. Something snapped in her mind, and she threw herself on Adams, gashing his face again and again with the broken glass, pouring out all the hatred she had ever felt. And then she heard somebody screaming, and it was Adams screaming, and his face looked like the skin had been hacked off. She stepped back, gasping, and at her side Bahr was laughing, and the DIA men were grinning at her and holding Adams so he couldn’t move, and Adams kept screaming, “Traitor! Traitor!”
Then Bahr nodded, a curt order, and the men dragged Adams out through the door, and Libby was sick, more violently sick than she had ever been in her life. Somebody was helping her across the room, into a lavatory. In the mirror she saw herself, and there was blood all over her hands and arms and dress, and some of it was her blood, but most of it was Adams’.
All the way home, through the dark wet streets, something in her mind was screaming at her that the nightmare was real, the nightmare was real, the nightmare was real . . . .
He didn’t notice that she was not there for quite a long time, and then only vaguely, as he caught himself looking around the room, trying to see where Libby had gone. He chuckled to himself. She had turned on Adams, all right. God how she had turned on him! He hadn’t thought that she had it in her, and he felt his pride swell as he thought of it. He’d been right about Libby. She would help him. She knew the DEPCO organization, she would know whom to keep, whom to get rid of. With Libby at his side . . . .
But she was not in the room, and he spoke to one of his men, who vanished from his side for live minutes or so, then returned, frowning.
“She’s gone, Chief. She left the lavatory, and somebody saw her hail a cab outside.”
Alarm leaped in his mind, and he blinked, trying to think it through. Not a word to him, nothing, and there were people she would have to see, work to do, plans to be made. “Get a car,” he said, “and get these parasites out of here.”
How long had it been since she left? He tried to wade through the drunken exhilaration of the past hours, and he couldn’t remember. But something cold was eating away at his chest, and he snarled at the driver and slammed his fist into his palm, wondering why it was that he was actually feeling pain in his chest, physical pain, as though something were crushing the life and breath out of him.
Outside the apartment building he leaped from the car, jammed the elevator button with his thumb, then cursed and started up the stairs three at a time, with his men panting behind him. He ran down the corridor, digging for keys in his pocket, but he didn’t need the key. He stopped at the apartment door, and saw that it was hanging wide open into the darkened room.
Inside, with the lights on, there was nothing. She was gone. The closet doors hung open, clothes gone as though grabbed up in a desperate sweep of the hand. A suitcase was gone from the shelf. Dresser drawers yawned at him, empty. And in the back room the crib was also empty.
He stared at the room, unable to believe what he saw, shaking his head helplessly as he tried to fight down the rising wave of fear in his mind, surging in to fill the void left by the shock.
He looked up at his men, and told them to wait in the hall. He was trembling; he couldn’t control the shaking of his hands. He saw his face in the mirror, and slammed off the light switch with a snarl of rage. He stood in the darkness, and then walked over to the window, stared out at the lights of the city, trying to make his hands hold still by gripping the sill with all his strength.
She was gone as if she had never been there. But now, in the silent room, things were blurred in his mind, confused. Was it Libby who was gone, or was it someone else? Suddenly, it seemed that it had all happened before, so long ago that he could hardly remember, and the bafflement and rage and pain he was feeling now was the same bafflement and rage and pain he had felt then, when someone, someone . . . .