“Melman thought it was important.”
“Yes, but he was into that stuff. I’d be surprised if he didn’t come up with such a correspondence, whether it was intended or not. He admitted that his master had never told him that that was the case. It was his own idea. But you’re the one with the background in the area. Is there any special significance or any real Power that you know of to be gained by slaying someone of your blood at this particular time of year.”
“None that I ever heard of. But of course there are a lot of things I don’t know about. I’m very young compared to most of the adepts. But which way are you trying to go on this? You say you don’t think it’s a nut, but you don’t buy the Walpurgis notion either.”
“I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud. They both sound shaky to me, that’s all. For that matter, the French Foreign Legion gave everyone leave on April 30 to get drunk, and a couple of days after that to sober up. It’s the anniversary of the battle of Camerone, one of their big triumphs. But I doubt that figures in this either.”
“And why the sphinx?” he said suddenly. “Why a Trump that takes you someplace to trade dumb riddles or get your head bitten off?”
“I’d a feeling it was more the latter that was intended.”
“I sort of think so, too. But it’s certainly bizarre. You know what? I’ll bet they’re all that way — traps of some kind.”
“Could be.”
I put my hand in my pocket, reaching for them.
“Leave them,” he said. “Let’s not look for trouble. Maybe you should ditch them, at least for a while. I could put them in my safe, down at the office.”
I laughed.
“Safes aren’t all that safe. No thanks. I want them with me. There may be a way of checking them out without any risk.”
“You’re the expert. But tell me, could something sneak through from the scene on the card without you?”
“No. They don’t work that way. They require your attention to operate. More than a little of it.”
“That’s something, anyway. I — ”
He looked back again. Someone was coming. I flexed my fingers, involuntarily.
Then I heard him let go a big breath.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I know him. It’s George Hansen. He’s the son of the guy who owns the farm we’re behind. Hi, George!”
The approaching figure waved. He was of medium height and stocky build. Had sandy hair. He wore Levi’s and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, a pack of cigarettes twisted into its left sleeve. He looked to be in his twenties.
“Hi,” he answered, drawing near. “Swell day, huh?”
“Sure is,” Bill answered. “That’s why we’re out walking in it, instead of sitting at home.”
George’s gaze shifted to me.
“Me, too,” he said, raking his teeth over his lower lip. “Real good day.”
“This is Merle Corey. He’s visiting me.”
“Merle Corey,” George repeated, and he stuck out his hand. “Hi, Merle.”
I took it and shook it. It was a little clammy.
“Recognize the name?”
“Uh, Merle Corey,” he said again.
“You knew his dad.”
“Yeah? Oh, sure!”
“Sam Corey,” Bill finished, and he shot me a glance over George’s shoulder.
“Sam Corey,” George repeated. “Son of a gun! Good to know you. You going to be here long?”
“A few days, I guess,” I replied. “I didn’t realize you’d known my father.”
“Fine man,” he said. “Where you from?”
“California, but it’s time for a change.”
“Where you headed?”
“Out of the country, actually.”
“Europe?”
“Farther.”
“Sounds great. I’d like to travel sometime.”
“Maybe you will.”
“Maybe. Well, I’ll be moving on. Let you guys enjoy your walk. Nice meeting you, Merle.”
“My pleasure.”
He backed away, waved, turned, and walked off.
I glanced at Bill then and noticed that he was shaking.
“What’s the matter?” I whispered.
“I’ve known that boy all his life,” he said. “Do you think he’s on drugs?”
“Not the kind you have to make holes in your arms for. I didn’t see any tracks. And he didn’t seem particularly spacey.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know him the way I do. He seemed very different. It was just on impulse that I used the name Sam for your dad, because something didn’t seem right. His speech patterns have changed, his posture, his gait. Intangibles. I was waiting for him to correct me, and that I could have made a joke about premature senility. But he didn’t. He picked up on it instead. Merle, this is scary! I knew your father real well — as Carl Corey. Your dad liked to keep his place nice, but he was never much for weeding and mowing or raking leaves. George did his yard work for him for years while he was in school. He knew his name wasn’t Sam.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” he said, “and I don’t like it.”
“So he’s acting weird — and you think he was following us?”
“Now I do. This is too much of a coincidence, timed with your arrival.”
I turned.
“I’m going after him,” I said. “I’ll find out.”
“No. Don’t.”
“I won’t hurt him. There are other ways.”
“It might be better to let him think he’s got us fooled. It might encourage him to do something or say something later that could prove useful. On the other hand, anything you do — even something subtle or magical — might let him, or something, know that we’re on to him. Let it ride, be grateful you’re warned and be wary.”
“You’ve got a point there,” I agreed. “Okay.”
“Let’s head on back and drive into town for lunch. I want to stop by the office and pick up some papers and make some phone calls. Then I have to see a client at two o’clock. You can take the car and knock around while I’m doing that.”
“Fine.” As we strolled back I did some wondering. There were a number of things I had not told Bill. For instance, there had been no reason to tell him that I wore an invisible strangling cord possessed of some rather unusual virtues, woven about my left wrist. One of these virtues is that it generally warns me of nasty intentions aimed in my direction, as it had done in Luke’s presence for almost two years until we became friends. Whatever the reason for George Hansen’s unusual behavior, Frakir had not given me any indication that he meant me harm.
Funny, though… there was something about the way he talked, the way he said his words…
I went for a drive after lunch while Bill took care of his business. I headed out to the place where my father had lived years ago. I’d been by it a number of times in the past, but I’d never been inside. No real reason to, I guess, anyway. I parked up the road on a rise, off on the shoulder, and regarded it. A young couple lived there now, Bill had told me, with some kids — a thing I could see for myself from some scattered toys off to the side of the yard. I wondered what it would have been like, growing up in a place like that. I supposed that I could have. The house looked well kept, sprightly even. I imagined that the people were happy there.
I wondered where he was — if he were even among the living, no one could reach him via his Trump, though that didn’t necessarily prove anything. There are a variety of ways in which a Trump sending can be blocked. In fact one of these situations was even said to apply in his case, though I didn’t like to think about it.
One rumor had it that Dad had been driven mad in the Courts of Chaos by a curse placed upon him by my mother, and that he now wandered aimlessly through Shadow. She refused even to comment on this story. Another was that he had entered the universe of his own creation and never returned, which it seemed possible could remove him from the reach of the Trumps. Anot
her was simply that he had perished at some point after his departure from the Courts and a number of my relatives there assured me that they had seen him leave after his sojourn. So, if the rumor of his death were correct, it did not occur in the Courts of Chaos. And there were others who claimed to have seen him at widely separated sites afterward, encounters invariably involving bizarre behavior on his part. I had been told by one that he was traveling in the company of a mute dancer — a tiny, lovely lady with whom he communicated by means of sign language — and that he wasn’t talking much himself either. Another reported him as roaring drunk in a raucous cantina, from which he eventually expelled all the other patrons in order to enjoy the music of the band without distraction. I could not vouch for the authenticity of any of these accounts. It had taken me a lot of searching just to come up with this handful of rumors. I could not locate him with a Logrus summoning either, though I had tried many times. But of course if he were far enough afield my powers of concentration may simply have been inadequate.
In other words, I didn’t know where the hell my father, Corwin of Amber, was, and nobody else seemed to know either. I regretted this sorely, because my only long encounter with him had been on the occasion of hearing his lengthy story outside the Courts of Chaos on the day of the Patternfall battle. This had changed my life. It had given me the resolve to depart the Court, with the determination to seek experience and education in the shadow world where he had dwelled for so long. I’d felt a need to understand it if I were to understand him better. I believed that I had now achieved something of this, and more. But he was no longer available to continue our conversation.
I believed that I was about ready to attempt a new means of locating him — now that the Ghostwheel project was almost off the ground — when the most recent fecal missile met the rotating blades. Following my cross-country trip, scheduled to wind up at Bill’s place a month or two from now, I was going to head off to my personal anomaly of a place and begin the work.
Now… other things had crowded in. The matters at hand would have to be dealt with before I could get on with the search.
I drove past the house slowly: I could hear the sounds of stereo music through open windows. Better not to know exactly what it was like inside. Sometimes a little mystery is best.
That evening after dinner I sat on the porch with Bill, trying to think of anything else I should run through his mind. As I kept drawing blanks, he was the first to renew our serial conversation:
“Something else,” he began.
“Yes?”
“Dan Martinez struck up his conversation with you by alluding to Luke’s attempts to locate investors for some sort of computer company. You later felt that the whole thing could simply have been a ploy, to get you off guard and then hit you with that question about Amber and Chaos.”
“Right.”
“But then Luke really did raise the matter of doing something along those lines. He insisted, though, that he had not been in touch with potential investors and that he had never heard of Dan Martinez. When he saw the man dead later he still maintained that he’d never met him.”
I nodded.
“Then either Luke was lying, or Martinez had somehow learned his plans.”
“I don’t think Luke was lying,” I said. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about that whole business some more. Just knowing him as I do, I don’t believe Luke would have gone around looking for investors until he was sure there was something to put the money into. I think he was telling the truth on that, too. It seems more likely to me that this might have been the only real coincidence in everything that’s happened so far. I have the feeling that Martinez knew a lot about Luke and just wanted that one final piece of information — about his knowledge of Amber and the Courts. I think he was very shrewd, and on the basis of what he knew already he was able to concoct something that seemed plausible to me, knowing I’d worked for the same company as Luke.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” he said. “But then when Luke really did — ”
“I’m beginning to believe,” I interrupted, “that Luke story was phoney, too.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I think he put it together the same way Martinez did, and for — similar reasons — to sound plausible to me so that he could get some information he wanted.”
“You’ve lost me. What information?”
“My Ghostwheel. He wanted to know what it was.”
“And he was disappointed to learn that it was just an exercise in exotic design, for other reasons than building a company?”
Bill caught my smile as I nodded.
“There’s more?” he said. Then: “Wait. Don’t tell me. You were lying, too. It’s something real.”
“Yes.”
“I probably shouldn’t even ask — unless you think it’s material and want to tell me. If it’s something big and very important it could be gotten out of me, you know. I have a low tolerance for pain. Think about it.”
I did. I sat there for some time, musing.
“I suppose it could be,” I said finally, “in a sort of peripheral way I’m sure you’re not referring to. But I don’t see how it could be — as you say — material. Not to Luke or to anyone else — because nobody even knows what it is but me. No. I can’t see how it enters the equation beyond Luke’s curiosity about it. So I think I’ll follow your suggestion and just keep it off the record.”
“Fine with me,” he said. “Then there is the matter of Luke’s disappearance — ”
Within the house, a telephone rang. “Excuse me,” Bill said.
He rose and went into the kitchen.
After a few moments, I heard him call, “Merle, it’s for you!”
I got up and went inside. I gave him a questioning look as soon as I entered and he shrugged and shook his head. I thought fast and recalled the location of two other phones in the house. I pointed at him, pointed in the direction of his study and pantomimed the motion of picking up a receiver and holding it to one’s ear. He smiled slightly and nodded. I took the receiver and waited a while, till I heard the click, only beginning to speak then, hoping the caller would think I’d picked up an extension to answer.
“Hello,” I said.
“Merle Corey?”
“That’s me.”
“I need same information I think you might have.”
It was a masculine voice, sort of familiar but not quite. “Who am I talking to?” I asked.
“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that.”
“Then that will probably be my answer to your question, too.”
“Will you at least let me ask?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Okay. You and Luke Raynard are friends.” He paused.
“You could say that,” I said, to fill the space.
“You have heard him speak of places called Amber and the Courts of Chaos.”
Again, a statement rather than a question.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Do you know anything of these places yourself?”
Finally, a question.
“Maybe,” I said again.
“Please. This is serious. I need something more than a maybe.”
“Sorry. ‘Maybe’ is all you’re going to get, unless you tell me who you are and why you want to know.”
“I can be of great service to you if you will be honest with me.”
I bit back a reply just in time and felt my pulse begin to race. That last statement had been spoken in Thari. I maintained my silence.
Then: “Well, that didn’t work, and I still don’t really know.”
“What? What don’t you know?” I said.
“Whether he’s from one of those places or whether you.”
“To be as blunt as possible, what’s it to you?” I asked him.
“Because one of you may be in great danger.”
“The one who is from such a place or the one who is not?” I asked.
“I
can’t tell you that. I can’t afford another mistake.”
“What do you mean? What was your last one about?”
“You won’t tell me — either for purposes of self preservation, or to help a friend?”
“I might,” I said, “if I knew that that were really the case. But for all I know, it might be you that’s the danger.”
“I assure you I am only trying to help the right person.”
“Words, words, words,” I said. “Supposing we were both from such places?”
“Oh, my!” he said. “No. That couldn’t be.”
“Why not?”
“Never mind. What do I have to do to persuade you?”
“Mm. Wait a minute. Let me think,” I answered. “All right. How about this? I’ll meet you someplace. You name the place. I get a good look at you and we trade information, one piece at a time, till all the cards are on the table.”
There was a pause.
Then: “That’s the only way you’ll do it?”
“Yes.”
“Let me think about it. I’ll be back in touch soon.”
“One thing — ”
“What?”
“If it is me, am I in danger right now?”
“I think so. Yes, you probably are. Good-bye.” He hung up.
I managed to sigh and swear at the same time as I recradled the phone. People who knew about us seemed to be coming out of the woodwork.
Bill came into the kitchen, a very puzzled expression on his face.
“How’d whoever-the-hell-he-is even know you’re here?” were his first words.
“That was my question,” I said. “Think up another.”
“I will. If he wants to set something up, are you really going?”
“You bet. I suggested it because I want to meet this guy.”
“As you pointed out, he may be the danger.”
“That’s okay by me. He’s going to be in a lot of danger, too.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I’m not so happy with it myself. But it’s the best offer I’ve had so far.”
“Well, it’s your decision. It’s too bad there isn’t some way of locating him beforehand.”
“That passed through my mind, too.”
“Listen, why not push him a little?”
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