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“My father said I was raving and should apologize. I called him a senile old fool. We had a fight, and I split open his head.
He had to go all the way to Port Deposit for treatment. My parents disowned me, and sued to remove my patronymic. I had to take on a new name.
“Who was the Black Beast? I was obsessed. I had lost my family; now I gave up my friends. Better to live alone than with a traitor at my back. Still, the Black Beast taunted me. I would wake up to find my chest covered with black feathers. Or I would receive a letter from Gregorian telling me things no one could know. I had dreams. Strangers passing through told painful stories from my childhood, secrets from my affairs.
“It was maddening.
“There came a day when my isolation was complete, my life shattered, my ambition gone. I lived alone in a hut by the salt marshes. Still the Black Beast left his sign. I would return from gathering herbs to find the word ‘crow’ scrawled above my bed. I would hear the cries of crows in the middle of the night. Mocking laughter followed me down the street. Finally I was driven to contemplate killing myself, just to get it over with. I held the knife to my heart and carefully judged the angle of thrust.
“Then the door opened — it should have been locked, but it opened anyway — and Gregorian stood before me. He gri
“So I bowed down to him. He took me to a star-shaped room in the Puzzle Palace with a vaulted ceiling where five great wooden beams came together, and between them was blue plaster with gilt stars. There, he copied from me what herb lore I held — it was all he valued of what I knew — and cut away the bulk of my emotions, leaving me little more than the gray capacity for regret. And when I was no conceivable rival to him anymore, I asked the question, the one that had ruined my life: Who was the Black Beast?
“He leaned forward and whispered in my ear.
“You are, he said.”
With sudden energy Orphelin stood and snapped shut his bag. “My diagnosis is that you were given three drops of tincture of angelroot. It is an intensive hallucinogen that leaves the user open to spiritual influences at the height of its action, but has no serious aftereffects. You’re experiencing a touch of vitamin depletion. Have Mother Le Marie cook up a plate of yams and you’ll be fine.”
“Wait! Are you saying that Gregorian tapped your agent in the Puzzle Palace?” It was rare, but it happened, the bureaucrat knew. “Was that the forfeit when you lost to him in suicide?”
“You would believe that, of course,” Orphelin said. “I know your type. Your eyes were closed long ago.” He opened the door, unmuffling screams from the room across the hall.
Mother Le Marie stood just outside, back to them, staring through the door at a badly bruised woman lying unconscious on the floor. On the screen a door opened, and a figure entered. Mother Le Marie gaped. “Now there’s a character I never thought they would actually show.”
“What, you mean the mermaid?”
“No, no, the offworlder. Look — Miriam’s had a miscarriage, and he’s arrived too late. But he’s put the child in biostasis, and now he’s taking it to the Upper World to be healed and brought to term. It’s going to live forever now. You can bet the offworlder’s going to give his bastard that ray treatment.”
“That’s nonsense. Immortality? The technology simply doesn’t exist.”
“Not down here it doesn’t.”
The bureaucrat felt a thrill of horror. She believes this, he thought. They all do. They actually believe that the knowledge exists to keep them alive forever and that it’s being withheld from them.
Orphelin took a pamphlet from a coat pocket. “I advise that you read this and think seriously about its implications.”
The bureaucrat accepted it, looked at the title. The Anti-Man. Curious, he opened it at random and read: “All affections and bonds of the will are reduced to two, namely aversion and desire, or hatred and love. Yet hatred itself is reduced to love, whence it follows that the will’s only bond is Eros.” Odd. He flipped to the credit page:
A. Gregorian
Angrily, he crushed the pamphlet in his hand. “Gregorian sent you to me! Why? What does he want of me?”
“Would you believe it?” Orphelin said. “I have not seen Gregorian from that day onward. Yet I constantly find myself doing his work. A magician does not send messages, you know — he orchestrates reality. I do not enjoy being forced into his games, and I ca
“Why should I believe you?”
“Suicide is a stupid game, isn’t it?” Orphelin said. “I thought I was good at it, but Gregorian was better.”
He left.
Mother Le Marie watched him go. Behind her, the bureaucrat could see the autopsy machine, silent now that it had done analyzing Undine’s arm. The sun had shifted and left it in shadow.
“Tell me,” Mother Le Marie said. “Did my…did the doctor give you good service?”
He caught the hesitation, and thought of Orphelin’s estrangement from his parents, of his change of name, of the fact that he was the son of hoteliers. And he knew he should tell her yes, that her son had been of enormous help to him. But he could not.
After a while the old woman left.
One of the nationals put a white chit in his hand. “The autopsy results,” she said. “One woman, a bit past her prime, in good health, tattooed. Drowned almost exactly one day ago. Is this acceptable to you?”
The bureaucrat nodded heavily.
“Good.” She slipped on a signet ring, and they shook hands. He returned the chit, and she turned away. The other national began wheeling the machine away, and the bureaucrat realized that he would never see Undine again.
When he closed his eyes, he could smell her mouth and feel the light electric shock when her lips first touched his. That instant would never leave him. Gregorian had set his hooks, and now the magician stood far away and played him on hair-thin lines. Tugging him first one way, then another. Orphelin had spoken of the star chamber. It must have been at Gregorian’s behest he had done so.
The bureaucrat knew the star chamber well. He was one of three people who had keys to it.
He looked down at the pamphlet, still clutched in his hands, and in a fit of revulsion tore it in two and flung the pieces on the floor.
Mother Le Marie opened the front door and gasped. Fresh air and sunlight gushed in. Wrapping the blanket more tightly about himself, the bureaucrat peered dizzily over the old woman’s shoulder.
An insectlike metal creature walked daintily down the street on three spindly legs.
It was his briefcase.
Tilted up on one corner, the briefcase looked like nothing so much as an enormous spider. Away from the machine-saturated environs of deep space, it seemed a monstrosity, an alien visitor from some demon universe. People skittered back from it. Unmolested, it walked to the hotel. It climbed the steps, and then, retracting its legs, laid itself down at the bureaucrat’s feet.
“Well, boss,” it said, “I had one hell of a time getting back to you.”
The bureaucrat leaned to pick it up. There was a scurry of motion to one side, and he turned to face three men shouldering broadcast machines.
“Sir!” one said. “A word with you.”
There was a bustling noise outside, shouts of fear and astonishment. Old Man Le Marie materialized on the stairs. “What’s that?” he said querulously. “Ain’t he gone yet?” One or two boarders peered from their rooms without coming out. Nobody emerged from the television room. Curious, the bureaucrat glanced in and saw Mintouchian asleep on the couch. Save for him, the room was empty, a blaring void at the center of the house.