ONE
Red rolled out of bed, grabbed for his vest.
"Hey! Hell of a smoke-detector you are!"
"That part of me mutht have been damaged altho."
He withdrew a small, flat flashlight from the garment's pocket as he slipped it on. He sent its beam about the room, but there was no smoke. Rising, he moved to the door. He halted there and sniffed.
"Maybe you'd better not . . . "
Opening the door, he stepped out into the hall, sniffed again and moved to his left.
There! The next room!
He ran to the door, pounded on it, tried the knob. It was locked.
"Wake up!"
Stepping back, he kicked hard, next to the lock. The door flew open. Smoke rolled by him. He rushed in to behold a burning bed, a smiling woman still apparently asleep within it.
Stooping, he raised her from the flames and bore her across the room. He dumped her onto the floor, her clothing still smoldering, and returned to beat at the bed with a rug.
"Hey!" the woman called out.
"Shut up" he said. "I'm busy."
The woman rose to her feet, her clothing still afire. She ignored this for the better part of a minute and watched him assail the flames. Then, as the front of her garment flared, she glanced down at it. With a casual movement, she unfastened a tie behind her neck and let it fall to the floor. Stepping out of its circle of fire, she advanced.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Trying to put out your blasted fire! What were you doing, smoking in bed?"
"Yes," she replied. "Drinking too."
She knelt and reached beneath the bed. She retrieved a bottle.
"Let it burn," she said. "Have a drink. We'll watch it."
"Leila, stay out of my way!"
"Sure, Reyd. Anything you say."
She withdrew, seated herself in a large chair, looked about, rose again, crossed to the dresser, applied a candle that burned there to the wick of an oil lamp and picked up a goblet. She returned to the chair.
There were rapid footsteps in the hall. They slowed, stopped.
"How bad is it?" came Johnson's voice, followed by a cough.
"Just the bed," Red replied. "I've got it under control now."
"You can throw the mattress out the window when you're able to handle it. There's just gravel down there."
"Okay. I will."
"Room seventeen is empty. Miss Leila. You can have that one."
"Thanks, but I like it here."
Red moved to the window, unfastened the shutters, swung them back. Returning to the bed, he rolled the mattress, gathered it in his arms and bore it to the star-filled square, where he pushed it through.
"I'll have a new bed and mattress sent up," Johnson said.
"And another bottle."
Johnson, who had stepped inside, backed out into the hall, still coughing.
"Very well. I don't see how you people can breathe in there."
Red stared out the window. Leila opened her bottle. Johnson's footsteps retreated down the hall.
"Care for a drink, Reyd?"
"Okay."
He turned and walked to her. She handed him the goblet.
"Your health," he said, and sipped it.
She snorted and took a drink from the bottle.
"Here, that isn't ladylike," he said. "I'll trade you."
She chuckled.
"Never mind. I've the better part of the deal
—
Your health. How is it, anyway?"
"The booze or my health?"
"Either one."
"I've had better and I've had worse. Either one. What are you doing here, Leila?"
She shrugged.
"Drinking. Turning a few tricks. What are you doing? Still racing up and down the Road, looking for an unmarked turnoff
—
or trying to open one?"
"More or less. For a long while I thought perhaps you had found the way and taken it. To find you here is
—
how shall I say it?
—
disillusioning."
"I've a way of producing that effect," she said, "haven't I?"
He withdrew a cigar from his vest, crossed to the candle, lit it.
"Got another of those on you?"
"Yeah."
He passed her the cigar, lit a second for himself.
"Why are you doing it?" he asked.
The smoke spiraled above her head.
"Doing what?"
"Doing nothing," he said. "Wasting your time here when you could be looking."
"Since you ask," she said, taking another drink, "I will tell you. I have been up and down that damned Road from the Neolithic to C Thirty. I have followed every sideroad, footpath and rabbit run along the way. I am known in a thousand lands by different names. Yet in none of them have I found what I sought, what we seek."
"You have never been close? You have never felt the presence?"
She shuddered.
"I have felt presences
—
some of them very similar, some of them quite unforgettable
—
none of them right. No. I can only conclude that the place I once sought no longer exists."
"Everything exists somewhere."
"Then you can't get there from here."
"I can't believe that."
"Then tell me this: is it worth it? Is it worth wasting your life looking when you can have your choice of times and places, go anywhere, do anything you want?"
"Like turning tricks and drinking yourself unconscious? Like setting fire to the bed?"
She blew a smoke ring.
"I have been doing nothing
—
as you said
—
for almost a year. It gets easier every day. And the results are the same. I have used up my energies. I am by nature quite indolent. It is pleasant to stop, to resign a fruitless enterprise. Why don't
you
join me? You have nothing to show for all your efforts. We could at least console one another."
"It is not my nature," he said, just as servants arrived with new bed, bedding and bottle.
They smoked in silence and watched the men work. When they had gone, she said, "Having a lot of money and sleeping much of the time are the best things in life."
"I am also interested in the things in between," he said.
"And what has it gotten you?" she asked, standing. "Marked for death, that's all."
She moved to the window and looked out.
"What do you mean?" he finally asked.
"Nothing."
"It sounded like something to me. Come on, what did you see?"
"I didn't say I saw anything." She turned toward him. "We've got a new bed. Let's try it."
"Don't try to distract me. I know you've got more of the Sight than I have. Let's have it."
She leaned back against the sill and took a long drink.
"And get away from that window. You might fall out."
"Always the big brother," she said, but she moved away and went to sit on the bed.
She placed the bottle on the floor and began drawing on her cigar, producing great clouds of smoke into which her gaze wandered.
"Seeing . . . " she said, then lapsed into silence.
"Seeing," Red repeated.
"You move in a fog. It thickens as you head toward death. And you desire it! I saw ten dark birds pursue you," she said, her voice dropping to a lower register, "and now there are nine . . . "
"Black decade!" he whispered. Then, "Who called it?"
"Big," she said. "A big, heavy man . . . And a poet . . . Yes, he is a poet. Why, of course!"
"Chadwick."
"Fat Chadwick," she agreed.
She blew the smoke away and reached for the bottle.
"Why, when and how?" Red asked.
"What do you want for one lousy vision? That's it."
"Chadwick," he repeated, then drained his goblet. "It does make a sort of sense. Many men have had the motive, but few others have the means." Then, "Tony must have known something," he decided. "So he's gotten to them, too . . . That means I can't count on anything from the cops. But . . . Who can? It's official, then."
He rose, retrieved the bottle and poured some more wine into the goblet.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
He took a sip.
"Keep going," he said.
She nodded.
"All right. I'll go with you. You'll need my help."
"Nope. Not now. Thanks."
She picked up the bottle and threw it out the window. Her green eyes flashed.
"Don't be noble. I'm still one of the toughest things you ever met. You know I can help you."
"Any other time, and you know how happy I'd be. Not when a black decade's been declared, though. Hell, one of us has to live, if only to avenge the other."
She sprawled suddenly on the bed.
"You'd love that, wouldn't you? And you'd love it to be me . . . Everything has just caught up with me," she said. "I must sleep. I can't force you, but neither do I accept your answer. Do as you would, Reyd, for I will certainly do the same. Good night."
"I want you to be reasonable about this!"
She began to snore.
He finished his drink, put out the lights and left the goblet on the dresser. He closed the door behind him and returned to his own room, where he began to dress.
"Are we burning?"
"No, Flowers. We're leaving."
"What'th wrong?"
"Got to get out of here quick."
"Have you given your report to the polithe, about latht night?"
"Hell, the next report may be about me if we don't move now. That guy I shot last night was no crazy. I'm under black decade."
"What'th that?"
He drew on his boots and began lacing them.
"Vendetta is what I call it. My enemy gets ten shots at me without interference. If they all miss, he's supposed to quit. It's kind of a game. Last night's was the first."
"Can't you hit back?"
"Sure. If I knew where to look. In the meantime, I'd better run. The Road is long. The game can take a lifetime. Always does, in fact, one way or the other."
"The cops won't do anything?"
"Nope. Not when it's official. The Games Board has jurisdiction then. And even if they wanted to, there aren't that many police
—
and most of them are from around C Twenty-three to Twenty-five, anyway. Too civilized, and not much good this far back."
"Tho go up the Road to where they're thtronger, and look for thome criminal violation in the game."
"No, my enemy lives up that way, and he probably has them in his pocket. I think that's what Tony was trying to tell me. Besides, their function is mainly traffic control. No, we're running back."
"You know who'th behind it?"
"Yeah, an old buddy of mine. We used to be partners. C'mon."
"But aren't you
—
”
"Sh! We're sneaking out."
"Without paying?"
"Just like the old days."
"I wathn't with you then."
"It's all right. I haven't changed much."
He closed the door quietly behind him and headed for the back stairs.
"Red?"
"Shh!"
"Thh, hell! How did they know you were going to thtop here? It wath a thpur-of-the-moment dethithion."
"I've been wondering about that myself," he whispered.
“—Unleth thomeone knowth where you latht fueled and hath calculated a great number of pothible thtops where you'd be likely to take on more."
"And covered all of them? Come on!"
"Jutht the probable oneth. Could thith Thadwick guy afford it?"
"Well, yes . . . "
"He'd have to thpend ath much or more hunting you down if you got wind of it and ethcaped the firtht guy, wouldn't he?"
"Yes, you're right. But now I think of it, he knows me awfully well. If he'd arranged for that confiscation of my load just where it occurred, he might have guessed I'd pulled in at the next stop to think things over."
"Maybe. You willing to take the thanthe?"
"What chance? That there's someone at the next stop, and the next, and the next?"
"Could be, couldn't it?"
"Yeah, you're right. I was too busy just now thinking of something more immediate. Like, that fellow who was supposed to take me out not being wherever he was to be picked up after the job was done. It must have been earlier this evening. When they learned I'd killed him and was still here, what do you figure they did?"
"Hard to thay."
"Could they be out there right now, waiting?"
"It doeth theem pothible, doethn't it? Could they be covering thith back door?"