“I need some information. Some special, certain information. How confidential is your service, Mr. Demeter?”
The friendly uncle, the wise old owl, the reassuring businessman understood all the edited spaces behind the question. He nodded several times. Then he smiled and said, “That is a clever door I have, isn’t it? You’re absolutely right, Mr. Talbot.”
“A certain understated eloquence.”
“One hopes it answers more questions for our clients than it poses.”
Talbot sat back in the chair for the first time since he had entered Demeter’s office. “I think I can accept that.”
“Fine. Then why don’t we get to specifics. Mr. Talbot, you’re having some difficulty dying. Am I stating the situation succinctly?”
“Gently, Mr. Demeter.”
“Always.”
“Yes. You’re on the target.”
“But you have some problems, some rather unusual problems.”
“Inner ring.”
Demeter stood up and walked around the room, touching an astrolabe on a bookshelf, a cut-glass decanter on a sideboard, a sheaf of the London Times held together by a wooden pole. “We are only information specialists, Mr. Talbot. We can put you on to what you need, but the effectation is your problem.”
“If I have the modus operandi, I’ll have no trouble taking care of getting it done.”
“You’ve put a little aside.”
“A little.”
“Conservative portfolio? A few glamours, mostly steady climbers?”
“Bull’s-eye, Mr. Demeter.”
Demeter came back and sat down again. “All right, then. If you’ll take the time to write out very carefully precisely what you want—I know generally, from your letter, but I want this precise, for the contract—I think I can undertake to supply the data necessary to solving your problem.”
“At what cost?”
“Let’s decide what it is you want, first, shall we?”
Talbot nodded. Demeter reached over and pressed a call button on the smoking stand beside the wingback. The door opened. “Susan, would you show Mr. Talbot to the sanctum and provide him with writing materials.” She smiled and stood aside, waiting for Talbot to follow her. “And bring Mr. Talbot something to drink if he’d like it…some coffee? A soft drink, perhaps?” Talbot did not respond to the offer.
“I might need some time to get the phraseology down just right. I might have to work as diligently as your copywriters. It might take me a while. I’ll go home and bring it in tomorrow.”
Demeter looked troubled. “That might be inconvenient. That’s why we provide a quiet place where you can think.”
“You’d prefer I stay and do it now.”
“Inner ring, Mr. Talbot.”
“You might be a toilet if I came back tomorrow.”
“Bull’s-eye.”
“Let’s go, Susan. Bring me a glass of orange juice, if you have it.” He preceded her out the door.
He followed her down the corridor at the far side of the reception room. He had not seen it before. She stopped at a door and opened it for him. There was an escritoire and a comfortable chair inside the small room. He could hear Muzak. “I’ll bring you your orange juice,” she said.
He went in and sat down. After a long time he wrote seven words on a sheet of paper.
• • •
Two months later, long after the series of visitations from silent messengers who brought rough drafts of the contract to be examined, who came again to take them away revised, who came again with counterproposals, who came again to take away further revised versions, who came again—finally—with Demeter-signed finals, and who waited while he examined and initialed and signed the finals—two months later, the map came via the last, mute messenger. He arranged for the final installment of the payment to Information Associates that same day: he had ceased wondering where fifteen boxcars of maize—grown specifically as the Zuñi nation had grown it—was of value.
Two days later, a small item on an inside page of the New York Times noted that fifteen boxcars of farm produce had somehow vanished off a railroad spur near Albuquerque. An official investigation had been initiated.
The map was very specific, very detailed; it looked accurate.
He spent several days with Gray’s Anatomy and, when he was satisfied that Demeter and his organization had been worth the staggering fee, he made a phone call. The long-distance operator turned him over to Inboard and he waited, after giving her the information, for the static-laden connection to be made. He insisted Budapest on the other end let it ring twenty times, twice the number the male operator was permitted per caller. On the twenty-first ring it was picked up. Miraculously, the background noise-level dropped and he heard Victor’s voice as though it was across the room.
“Yes! Hello!” Impatient, surly as always.
“Victor…Larry Talbot.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“The States. How are you?”
“Busy. What do you want?”
“I have a project. I want to hire you and your lab.”
“Forget it. I’m coming down to final moments on a project and I can’t be bothered now.”
The imminence of hangup was in his voice. Talbot cut in quickly. “How long do you anticipate?”
“Till what?”
“Till you’re clear.”
“Another six months inside, eight to ten if it gets muddy. I said: forget it, Larry. I’m not available.”
“At least let’s talk.”
“No.”
“Am I wrong, Victor, or do you owe me a little?”
“After all this time you’re calling in debts?”
“They only ripen with age.”
There was a long silence in which Talbot heard dead space being pirated off their line. At one point he thought the other man had racked the receiver. Then, finally, “Okay, Larry. We’ll talk. But you’ll have to come to me; I’m too involved to be hopping any jets.”
“That’s fine. I have free time.” A slow beat, then he added, “Nothing but free time.”
“After the full moon, Larry.” It was said with great specificity.
“Of course. I’ll meet you at the last place we met, at the same time, on the thirtieth of this month. Do you remember?”
“I remember. That’ll be fine.”
“Thank you, Victor. I appreciate this.”
There was no response.
Talbot’s voice softened: “How is your father?”
“Goodbye, Larry,” he answered, and hung up.
They met on the thirtieth of that month, at moonless midnight, on the corpse barge that plied between Buda and Pesht. It was the correct sort of night: chill fog moved in a pulsing curtain up the Danube from Belgrade.
They shook hands in the lee of a stack of cheap wooden coffins and, after hesitating awkwardly for a moment, they embraced like brothers. Talbot’s smile was tight and barely discernible by the withered illumination of the lantern and the barge’s running lights as he said, “All right, get it said so I don’t have to wait for the other shoe to drop.”
Victor grinned and murmured ominously:
“Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night,
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the Autumn moon shines bright.”
Talbot made a face. “And other songs from the same album.”
“Still saying your prayers at night?”
“I stopped that when I realized the damned thing didn’t scan.”
“Hey. We aren’t here getting pneumonia just to discuss forced rhyme.”
The lines of weariness in Talbot’s face settled into a joyless pattern. “Victor, I need your help.”
“I’ll listen, Larry. Further than that, it’s doubtful.”
Talbot weighed the warning and said, “Three months ago I answered an advertisement in Forbes, the business magazine. Information Associates. I
t was a cleverly phrased, very reserved, small box, inconspicuously placed. Except to those who knew how to read it. I won’t waste your time on details, but the sequence went like this: I answered the ad, hinting at my problem as circuitously as possible without being completely impenetrable. Vague words about important money. I had hopes. Well, I hit with this one. They sent back a letter calling a meet. Perhaps another false trail, was what I thought…God knows there’ve been enough of those.”
Victor lit a Sobranie Black & Gold and let the pungent scent of the smoke drift away on the fog. “But you went.”
“I went. Peculiar outfit, sophisticated security system, I had a strong feeling they came from, well, I’m not sure where…or when.”
Victor’s glance was abruptly kilowatts heavier with interest. “When, you say? Temporal travelers?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve been waiting for something like that, you know. It’s inevitable. And they’d certainly make themselves known eventually.”
He lapsed into silence, thinking. Talbot brought him back sharply. “I don’t know, Victor. I really don’t. But that’s not my concern at the moment.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry, Larry. Go on. You met with them…”
“Man named Demeter. I thought there might be some clue there. The name. I didn’t think of it at the time. The name Demeter; there was a florist in Cleveland, many years ago. But later, when I looked it up, Demeter, the Earth goddess, Greek mythology…no connection. At least, I don’t think so.
“We talked. He understood my problem and said he’d undertake the commission. But he wanted it specific, what I required of him, wanted it specific for the contract—God knows how he would have enforced the contract, but I’m sure he could have—he had a window, Victor, it looked out on—”
Victor spun the cigarette off his thumb and middle finger, snapping it straight down into the blood-black Danube. “Larry, you’re maundering.”
Talbot’s words caught in his throat. It was true. “I’m counting on you, Victor. I’m afraid it’s putting my usual aplomb out of phase.”
“All right, take it easy. Let me hear the rest of this and we’ll see. Relax.”
Talbot nodded and felt grateful. “I wrote out the nature of the commission. It was only seven words.” He reached into his topcoat pocket and brought out a folded slip of paper. He handed it to the other man. In the dim lantern light, Victor unfolded the paper and read:
GEOGRAPHICAL COORDINATES
FOR LOCATION OF MY SOUL
Victor looked at the two lines of type long after he had absorbed their message. When he handed it back to Talbot, he wore a new, fresher expression. “You’ll never give up, will you, Larry?”
“Did your father?”
“No.” Great sadness flickered across the face of the man Talbot called Victor. “And,” he added, tightly, after a beat, “he’s been lying in a catatonia sling for sixteen years because he wouldn’t give up.” He lapsed into silence. Finally, softly, “It never hurts to know when to give up, Larry. Never hurts. Sometimes you’ve just got to leave it alone.”
Talbot snorted softly with bemusement. “Easy enough for you to say, old chum. You’re going to die.”
“That wasn’t fair, Larry.”
“Then help me, dammit! I’ve gone farther toward getting myself out of all this than I ever have. Now I need you. You’ve got the expertise.”
“Have you sounded out 3M or Rand or even General Dynamics? They’ve got good people there.”
“Damn you.”
“Okay. Sorry. Let me think a minute.”
The corpse barge cut through the invisible water, silent, fog-shrouded, without Charon, without Styx, merely a public service, a garbage scow of unfinished sentences, uncompleted errands, unrealized dreams. With the exception of these two, talking, the barge’s supercargo had left decisions and desertions behind.
Then, Victor said, softly, talking as much to himself as to Talbot, “We could do it with microtelemetry. Either through direct micro-miniaturizing techniques or by shrinking a servomechanism package containing sensing, remote control, and guidance/manipulative/propulsion hardware. Use a saline solution to inject it into the bloodstream. Knock you out with ‘Russian sleep’ and/or tap into the sensory nerves so you’d perceive or control the device as if you were there…conscious transfer of point of view.”
Talbot looked at him expectantly.
“No. Forget it,” said Victor. “It won’t do.”
He continued to think. Talbot reached into the other’s jacket pocket and brought out the Sobranies. He lit one and stood silently, waiting. It was always thus with Victor. He had to worm his way through the analytical labyrinth.
“Maybe the biotechnic equivalent: a tailored microorganism or slug…injected…telepathic link established. No. Too many flaws: possible ego/control conflict. Impaired perceptions. Maybe it could be a hive creature injected for multiple p.o.v.” A pause, then, “No. No good.”
Talbot drew on the cigarette, letting the mysterious Eastern smoke curl through his lungs.
“How about…say, just for the sake of discussion,” Victor said, “say the ego/id exists to some extent in each sperm. It’s been ventured. Raise the consciousness in one cell and send it on a mission to…forget it, that’s metaphysical bullshit. Oh, damn damn damn…this will take time and thought, Larry. Go away, let me think on it. I’ll get back to you.”
Talbot butted the Sobranie on the railing, and exhaled the final stream of smoke. “Okay, Victor. I take it you’re interested sufficiently to work at it.”
“I’m a scientist, Larry. That means I’m hooked. I’d have to be an idiot not to be…this speaks directly to what…to what my father…”
“I understand. I’ll let you alone. I’ll wait.”
They rode across in silence, the one thinking of solutions, the other considering problems. When they parted, it was with an embrace.
Talbot flew back the next morning, and waited through the nights of the full moon, knowing better than to pray. It only muddied the waters. And angered the gods.
When the phone rang, and Talbot lifted the receiver, he knew what it would be. He had known every time the phone had rung, for over two months. “Mr. Talbot? Western Union. We have a cablegram for you, from Moldava, Czechoslovakia.”
“Please read it.”
“It’s very short, sir. It says, ‘Come immediately. The trail has been marked.’ It’s signed, ‘Victor.’”
He departed less than an hour later. The Learjet had been on the ready line since he had returned from Budapest, fuel tanks regularly topped-off and flight-plan logged. His suitcase had been packed for seventy-two days, waiting beside the door, visas and passport current, and handily stored in an inner pocket. When he departed, the apartment continued to tremble for some time with the echoes of his leaving.
The flight seemed endless, interminable, he knew it was taking longer than necessary.
Customs, even with high government clearances (all masterpieces of forgery) and bribes, seemed to be drawn out sadistically by the mustachioed trio of petty officials; secure, and reveling in their momentary power.
The overland facilities could not merely be called slow. They were reminiscent of the Molasses Man who cannot run till he’s warmed-up and who, when he’s warmed-up, grows too soft to run.
Expectedly, like the most suspenseful chapter of a cheap gothic novel, a fierce electrical storm suddenly erupted out of the mountains when the ancient touring car was within a few miles of Talbot’s destination. It rose up through the steep mountain pass, hurtling out of the sky, black as a grave, and swept across the road obscuring everything.
The driver, a taciturn man whose accent had marked him as a Serbian, held the big saloon to the center of the road with the tenacity of a rodeo rider, hands at ten till and ten after midnight on the wheel.
“Mister Talbot.”
“Yes?”
“It grows worse. Will I turn back?”
; “How much farther?”
“Perhaps seven kilometer.”
Headlights caught the moment of uprootment as a small tree by the roadside toppled toward them. The driver spun the wheel and accelerated. They rushed past as naked branches scraped across the boot of the touring car with the sound of fingernails on a blackboard. Talbot found he had been holding his breath. Death was beyond him, but the menace of the moment denied the knowledge.
“I have to get there.”
“Then I go on. Be at ease.”
Talbot settled back. He could see the Serb smiling in the rearview mirror. Secure, he stared out the window. Branches of lightning shattered the darkness, causing the surrounding landscape to assume ominous, unsettling shapes.
Finally, he arrived.
The laboratory, an incongruous modernistic cube—bone white against the—again—ominous basalt of the looming prominences—sat high above the rutted road. They had been climbing steadily for hours and now, like carnivores waiting for the most opportune moment, the Carpathians loomed all around them.
The driver negotiated the final mile and a half up the access road to the laboratory with difficulty: tides of dark, topsoil-and-twig-laden water rushed past them.
Victor was waiting for him. Without extended greetings he had an associate take the suitcase, and he hurried Talbot to the sub-ground-floor theater where a half dozen technicians moved quickly at their tasks, plying between enormous banks of controls and a huge glass plate hanging suspended from guy-wires beneath the track-laden ceiling.
The mood was one of highly charged expectancy; Talbot could feel it in the sharp, short glances the technicians threw him, in the way Victor steered him by the arm, in the uncanny racehorse readiness of the peculiar-looking machines around which the men and women swarmed. And he sensed in Victor’s manner that something new and wonderful was about to be born in this laboratory. That perhaps…at last…after so terribly, lightlessly long…peace waited for him in this white-tiled room. Victor was fairly bursting to talk.
“Final adjustments,” he said, indicating two female technicians working at a pair of similar machines mounted opposite each other on the walls facing the glass plate. To Talbot, they looked like laser projectors of a highly complex design. The women were tracking them slowly left and right on their gimbals, accompanied by soft electrical humming. Victor let Talbot study them for a long moment, then said, “Not lasers. Grasers. Gamma Ray Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Pay attention to them, they’re at least half the heart of the answer to your problem.”