The Final Circle Of Paradise Part 20

"When did it start?"

"Not very long ago... a few months."

"Then why in h.e.l.l do you keep it quiet?"

"Keep it quiet? I don't understand. This is my sixth call tonight, young man. The second case of nervous exhaustion and four cases of brain fever. Are you a relative?"

"No."

"Well, all right, I'll send some men." He stood awhile, looking at Peck. "Join some choruses," he said. "Enter the League of Reformed s.l.u.ts..."

He was mumbling something else as he left, an old, bent, uncaring man. I covered Peck with a sheet, pulled the drape, and went out into the living room. The drunks were snoring obscenely, filling the air with alcoholic fumes, and I took them both by the heels and dragged them out in the yard, leaving them in the puddle by the fountain.

Dawn was breaking once more and the stars were dimming in the paling sky. I got into the taxi and dialed the old Subway on the console.

It was full of people. It was impossible to get through to the railing, although it seemed to me that only two or three men were filling out the forms, while the rest were just looking, stretching their necks eagerly. Neither the round-headed man nor Eli were to be seen behind the barrier, and no one knew where they could be found. Below, in the cross-pa.s.sages and tunnels, drunken, shouting, half-crazed men and hysterical women were milling about. There were shots, distant and m.u.f.fled and some loud and close, the concrete underfoot shook with the detonations, and a mixture of smells -- gunpowder, sweat, smoke, gasoline, perfume, and whiskey -- coated in the air.

Squealing and arm-waving teenagers surrounded a big fellow who dripped blood and whose pale face shone with a look of triumph. Somewhere wild beasts roared menacingly. In the halls, the audience was going wild in front of huge screens showing somebody blindfolded, firing a spray of bullets from a machine gun held against his belly, and someone else sat up to his chest in some black and heavy liquid, blue from the cold and smoking a crackling cigar, and another one with a tension-twisted face, suspended as though cast in stone in some sort of web of taut cords...

Then I found out where Eli was. I saw round-head by a dirty room full of old sandbags. He stood in the doorway, his face covered with soot, smelling of burnt gunpowder, the pupils of his eyes fully distended. Every few seconds he bent down and brushed his knees, not hearing me at all, so that I had to shake him to make him take notice of me.

"There is no Eli," he barked. "Gone, do you understand?

Nothing but smoke -- get it? Twenty kilovolts, one hundred amperes, see? He didn't leap far enough!"

He pushed me away vigorously and took off into the dirty room, jumping over the sandbags. Elbowing the curious out of the way, he got to a low metal door.

"Let me through," he howled. "Let me at it once more. G.o.d favors a third time!"

The door shut heavily and the mob surged away, stumbling and falling over the bags. I didn't wait for him to come out.

Or not to come out. He was no longer of any use to me. There was only Rimeyer left. There was also Vousi, but I couldn't count on her. So there was really only Rimeyer. I was not going to wake him. I'd wait outside his room.

The sun was already up and the filthied streets were empty.

The auto-streetcleaners were coming out of their underground garages to do their job. All they knew was work; they had no potentialities to be developed, but they also had no primitive reflexes. Near the Olympic, I had to stop for a long chain of red and green men followed by a string of people enclosed in some sort of scales, who dragged their shuffling feet from one street into the next, leaving behind a stench of sweat and paint. I stood and waited for them to pa.s.s, while the sun had already lit up the huge ma.s.s of the hotel and shone gaily in the metallic face of Yurkovsky, who, as he had while alive, looked out over the heads of all men. After they pa.s.sed, I went into the hotel. The clerk was dozing behind his counter.

Awaking, he smiled professionally and asked in a cheery voice, "Would you like a room?"

"No," I replied, "I am visiting Rimeyer."

' Rimeyer? Excuse me -- room 902?"

I stopped.

"I believe so. What's the matter?"

"I beg your pardon, but he is not in."

"What do you mean, not in?"

"He checked out."

"Can't be, he has been ill. You are not mistaken? Room 902?".

"Exactly right, 902, Rimeyer. Our perpetual client. It's an hour and a half since he left. More accurately, flew away.

His friends helped him down and aboard a copter."

"What friends?" I asked hopelessly.

"Friends, as I said, but, excuse me, they were acquaintances. There were three of them, two of whom I really don't know. Just young athletic-looking men. But I do know Mr.

Pebblebridge, he was our permanent guest. But he signed out -- today."

"Pebblebridge?"

"Exactly. Lately he has been meeting Rimeyer quite often, so I concluded that they were quite well acquainted. He stayed in room 817. A fairly imposing gentleman, middle-aged, red-headed..."

"Oscar!"

"Exactly, Oscar Pebblebridge.

'That makes sense," I said, trying to keep a hold on myself. "You say they helped him?"

"That's right. He has been very sick and they even sent a doctor up: to him yesterday. He was still very weak and the young men held him up by his elbows, and almost carried him."

"And the nurse? He had an attendant nurse with him?"

"Yes, there was one. But she left right after them -- they let her go."

"And what is your name?"

"Val, at your service."

"Listen, Val," I said. "You are sure it didn't look like they were taking him away forcibly?"

I looked hard at him. He blinked in confusion.

"No," he said. "Although, now that you have mentioned it..."

"All right," I said. "Give me the key to his room and come with me."

Clerks are, as a rule, quite savvy types. Their sense of smell, at least for certain things, is quite impressive. It was perfectly obvious that he had guessed who I was. And maybe even where I came from. He called a porter, whispered something to him, and we went up to the ninth floor.

"What currency did he pay in?" I asked.

"Who? Pebblebridge?"

"Yes."

"I think... ah yes, marks, German marks."

"And when did he arrive here?"

"One minute... it will come to me... sixteen marks ...

precisely four days ago."

"Did he know that Rimeyer stayed with you?"

"Excuse me, but I can't say. But the day before yesterday, they had dinner together. And yesterday, they had a long talk in the foyer. Early in the morning while everybody was still up."

It was unusually clean and tidy in Rimeyer's room. I walked about looking over the place. Suitcases stood in the closet. The bed was rumpled, but I could see no signs of struggle. The bathroom also was clean and tidy. Boxes of Devon were stacked on the shelf.

"What do you think -- should I call the police?" asked the clerk.

"I don't know," I replied. "Check with your administration."

"You understand that I am in doubt again. True, he didn't say goodbye. But it all looked completely innocent. He could have given me a sign, and I would have understood him -- we have known each other a long time. He was pleading Mr.

Pebblebridge: 'The radio, please don't forget the radio.'"

The radio lay under the mirror, hidden by a negligently thrown towel.

"Yes?" I said. "And what did Mr. Pebblebridge say to that?"

Mr. Pebblebridge was soothing him, saying, "Of course, of course, don't worry..."

I took the radio, and leaving the bathroom, sat down at the desk. The clerk looked back and forth from the radio to me.

So, I thought, now he knows why I came here. I turned it an. It moaned and howled. They all know about slug. No need for Eli, nor Rimeyer; you can take anyone at random. This clerk, for instance. Right now, for instance. I turned it off and said, "Please be good enough to turn on the combo."

He ran over to it with mincing steps, turned it on, and eyed me questioningly.

"Leave it on that station. A little softer. Thank you."

"So you don't advise me to call the police?"

"As you wish."

"It seemed you had something quite definite in mind when you questioned me."

"It only seemed so," I said coldly. "It's just that I dislike Mr. Pebblebridge. But that does not concern you."

The clerk bowed.

"I'll stay here for a while, Val," I said. "I have a notion that this Mr. Pebblebridge will be back. It won't be necessary to announce that I am here. In the meantime, you are free to go."

"Yes, sir," he said.

When he left, I rang up the service bureau and dictated a telegram; "Have found the meaning of life but am lonely brother departed unexpectedly come at once Ivan." Then I turned on the radio again, and again it howled and screeched. I took off the back and pulled out the local oscillator-mixer. It was no mixer. It was a slug. A beautiful precision suba.s.sembly, of obviously ma.s.s-produced derivation, and the more I looked at it, the more it seemed that somewhere, sometime, long before my arrival here, and more than once, I had already seen these components in some very familiar device. I attempted to recollect where I had seen them, but instead, I remembered the room clerk and his face with a weak smile and his understanding, commiserating eyes. They are all infected. No, they hadn't tried slug -- heaven forbid! They hadn't even seen one! It is so indecent! It is the worst of the worst! Not so loud, my dear, how can you say that in front of the boy... but I've been told it's something out of this world.... Me?... How can you think that, you must have a low opinion of me after all.... I don't know, they say over at the Oasis, Buba has it, but as for myself -- I don't know.... And why not? I am a moderate man -- if I feel something is not right, I'll stop....

Let me have five packets of Devon, we have made up a fis.h.i.+ng party (hee, hee!). Fifty thousand people. And their friends in other towns. And a hundred thousand tourists every year. The problem is not with the gang. That's the least of our worries, for what does it take to scatter them? The problem is that they are all ready, all eager, and there is not the slightest prospect of the possibility to prove to them that it is terribly frightening, that it is the end, that it is the last debas.e.m.e.nt.

I clasped the slug in my fist, propped up my head on it, and stared at Rimeyer's dress jacket with the ribbon bar on it, hanging on the back of the chair. Just like me, he must have sat in this chair a few months ago, and also held the slug and radio for the second time, and the same warm flick of desire wandered through the depths of his consciousness: there is nothing to worry about, because now there is light in any darkness, sweetness in any grief, joy in any pain....

...There, there, said Rimeyer. Now you have got it. You just have to be honest with yourself. It is a little shameful at first, and then you begin to understand how much time you have lost for nothing.... ...Rimeyer, I said, I wasted time not for myself. This cannot be done, it simply cannot, it is destruction for everyone, you can't replace life with dreams.... ...Zhilin, said Rimeyer, when man does something, it is always for himself. There may be absolute egotists in this world, but perfect altruists are just impossible. If you are thinking of death in a bathtub, then, in the first place, we are all mortal, and in the second place, if science gave us slug, it will see to it that it will be rendered harmless. And in the meantime, all that is required is moderation. And don't talk to me of the subst.i.tution of reality with dreams. You are no novice, you know perfectly well that these dreams are also part of reality. They const.i.tute an entire world. Why do you then call this acquisition ruin?... ...Rimeyer, I said, because this world is still illusory, it's all within you, not outside of you, and everything you do in it remains in yourself. It is the opposite of the real world, it is antagonistic to it.

People who escape into this illusory world cease to exist in the real world. They become as dead. And when everyone enters the illusory world -- and you know it could end thus -- the history of man will terminate.... ...Zhilin, said Rimeyer, history is the history of people. Every man wants to live a life which has not been in vain, and slug gives you such a life.... Yes, I know that you consider your life as not having been in vain without slug, but, admit it, you have never lived so luminously, so fully as you have today in the tub. You are a bit ashamed to recollect it, and you wouldn't risk recounting it to others. Don't. They have their life, you have yours....

...Rimeyer, I said, all that is true. But the past! s.p.a.ce, schools, the struggle with fascists, gangsters -- is all that for naught? Forty years for nothing? And the others -- they did it all for nothing, too?... ...Zhilin, said Rimeyer, nothing is for nothing in history. Some fought and did not live long enough to have slug. You fought and lived long enough....

...Rimeyer, I said, I fear for mankind. This is really the end.

It's the end of man interacting with nature, the end of the interplay of man with society, the end of liaisons among individuals, the end of progress, Rimeyer. AU these billions of people submerged in. hot water and in themselves... only in themselves.... ... Zhilin, said Rimeyer, it's frightening because it's unfamiliar. And as for progress -- it will come to an end only for the real society, only for the real progress.

But each separate man will lose nothing, he will only gain, since his world will become infinitely brighter, his ties with nature, illusory though they may be, will become more multifaceted; and ties with society, also illusory but not so known to him, will become more powerful and fruitful. And you don't have to mourn the end of progress. You do know that everything comes to an end. So now comes the end of progress in the objective world. Heretofore, we didn't know how if, would end, But we know now. We hadn't had time to realize all the potential intensity of objective existence, it could be that we would have reached such knowledge in a few hundred years, but now it has been put in our grasp. Slug brings a gift of understanding of our remotest ancestors which you cannot ever have in real life. You are simply the prisoner of an obsolete ideal, but be logical, the ideal which slug offers you is just as beautiful. Hadn't you always dreamed of man with the greatest scope of fantasy and gigantic imagination....

...Rimeyer, I replied, if you only knew how tired I am of arguing. All my life I have argued with myself and with others.

I have always loved to argue, because otherwise life is not worth living. But I am tired right now and don't wish to argue over slug, of all things.... ...Then go on, Ivan, said Rimeyer....

I inserted the slug into the radio. As he had then, I got up. As he did then, I was past thought, past belonging in this world, but I still heard him say: don't forget to lock the door tight so that you won't be disturbed.

And then I sat down. ...So that's the way of it, Rimeyer!

said I. So that's how it went. You surrendered. You closed the door tight. And then you sent lying reports to your friends that there wasn't any slug. And then again, after hesitating but a moment, you sent me to my death so that I wouldn't disturb you. Your ideal, Rimeyer, is offal. If man has to perform what is base in the name of an ideal, then the worth of such ideal is -- less than dross....

I glanced at the watch and shoved the radio in my pocket.

I was past waiting for Oscar. I was hungry. And beyond that I had the feeling that for once I had done something useful in this town. I left my phone number with the room clerk -- in case Oscar or Rimeyer should return -- and went out onto the plaza. I did not believe that Rimeyer would come back or even that I would ever see him again, but Oscar could hold to his promise, though more likely, I would have to seek him out. And probably not alone. And probably not here.

Chapter TWELVE.

There was but one visitor in the automated cafe.

Barricaded behind bottles and hors d'oeuvres at a corner table sat a dark man of oriental cast, magnificently but outlandishly dressed. I took some yogurt and blintzes with sour cream and set to, glancing at him now and then. He ate and drank much and avidly, his face s.h.i.+ny with sweat, hot inside his ridiculous formal clothes. He sighed, leaning back in his chair and loosening his belt. The motion exposed a long yellow holster glistening in the sunlight under the clothing.

I was on my way into the last of the blintzes when he hailed me: "h.e.l.lo," he said. "Are you a native here?"

"No," I said. "A tourist."