A Sharpness on the Neck d-9

by Fred Saberhagen

  Of course he had tried asking. "Where does he go? Graves?"

  "That's no secret." Connie tossed her head. In keeping with her seeming determination to keep people off balance by her behavior, she had just come in through the window, unlocking the barred grating from outside and then swinging it tightly closed behind her on its heavy hinges.

  "Why don't you tell us, then?"

  "He's looking for a way to save your little… neck." The gamine smile again. "I almost said, save your ass. But in this case, 'neck' is really the right word."

  Today Mr. Graves's chief assistant was carrying with her a plastic garment bag, too thin to contain more than a dress or other single change of clothing. It crunched and crackled faintly when she tossed it down on one end of the sofa. When she saw her captives looking at it, she smiled and told them it contained some of the earth of her homeland.

  The couple exchanged looks.

  "Why do you carry that?" June asked.

  "It lets me sleep. I really can't sleep without it."

  "Where is Graves today?" Phil tried again. "Come on."

  This time the question was a little more successful. Maybe Constantia's thoughts, as usual, were tending to drift away from the matter on hand. "He goes out looking for his brother. He thinks Radu will be not too far from where you are!" And she giggled, touching the tip of Radcliffe's nose with a playful forefinger.

  "Does he drive? I never see or hear any traffic, any engines starting up." In fact the silence here, after dark particularly, struck Radcliffe as eerie.

  "Sometimes he does. Sometimes he flies."

  "You mean a plane lands and picks him up? But we never hear that either."

  No answer, except a smile.

  "Have you ever met his brother?"

  "Yes. I have." Connie gazed off into the distance. For the first time that Philip could remember, she looked sad.

  Somehow Radcliffe hadn't been expecting an affirmative. "Well, is there any truth in what Graves says about him? I mean, what's this Radu really like?"

  For once Connie seemed at a loss for words. "Please, stay here," she urged after a time. "Do what Mr. Graves tells you."

  Shortly after dawn, Constantia's eyelids were evidently growing heavier and heavier. Looking more than ever the part of the gypsy girl, she slumped down with her crackling plastic garment bag beneath her slender body.

  Looking as if she were about to yawn, but not quite doing so, she closed her eyes, folded her hands across her denim-clad tummy, and announced that she was tired and deserved a rest.

  Phil pointed toward the bag. "You say this is earth of your homeland? Where's that?"

  "Far, far away."

  "And your carrying this bag around is supposed to prove to us that you are a vampire?"

  Constantia's eyelids opened halfway. Her voice was drowsy. "Oh, I could show you, sweetie. Trust me, I could show you very convincingly. But I'd better not."

  "Show us?" June demanded. "How?"

  But Connie only smiled and closed her eyes again, relaxing with a kind of snuggling motion.

  As Radcliffe sat watching her, the idea suddenly came to him: This woman's on drugs. He whispered his insight to his wife, who nodded in agreement.

  She must be, he thought to himself again. Drugs, or simply booze. Though, now that Phil came to think of it, neither he nor June had ever seen Connie or any of the other guardians drinking or smoking anything. Probably they were trying to keep alert while on guard duty, but now Connie had slipped up.

  June, with her lips brushing her husband's ear, whispered her own discovery: "I don't think she's breathing."

  Looking carefully, he couldn't tell. What, he wondered, were the infallible signs of death?

  Moving carefully; he shifted his weight until he had brought himself into position to whisper an answer at the same level of volume: "We're not going to hang around and find out."

  Philip felt confident of being able to overpower Connie if necessary—or at least he told himself that he did—but he didn't want to hurt this demented young woman.

  It was June whose attention was first drawn to the window, by a new noise. It was only a little noise, hard to identify and locate at first, but every few seconds it was repeated: gusts of fitfully rising wind making the loose grate tap against its frame. By now, with nerves continually on edge, he was familiar with every creak and rattle of this dwelling. Radcliffe realized with an inner thrill that there was nothing to stop them from getting out the window—the steel grill through which Connie had entered had been left carelessly unlocked, so it could be swung out on its hinges. Knowing Connie as well as he now did, he could believe it. A way of escape had been accidentally left open. And at the moment none of their guardians, masked or otherwise, were anywhere in sight.

  Phil cast one more cautious glance toward Constantia before he stepped out through the window, and saw that she had not moved a muscle. Actually it was more like she was in a trance, or dead. Neither her eyelids nor her lips were entirely closed. He couldn't tell if she was breathing or not, and decided that he had better not wait to find out.

  Before they made their move, June reminded Philip to bring water. He grabbed a plastic bottle from the kitchen; it was too big to fit into any of his pockets, but he could carry it in one hand. And Phil grabbed up from the floor beside the sofa the broad-brimmed hat Connie always wore during the day. It was a tight fit and lacked a chin strap so it tended to blow away, but it was still better than nothing as protection against the sun. June had her own hat.

  Silently Phil swung back the grill-gate on its smooth new hinges and led the way out through the window. It was only a short drop to the dusty ground outside, which was only about a foot lower than the interior floor. June, having slipped on the hiking shoes so thoughtfully provided by their captors, followed close on his heels. What could be easier?

  June was almost entirely out, when the unfamiliar shoe on her right foot seemed to catch on something. She tugged it free just as she began to fall, but came down awkwardly.

  When June started to fall, Philip made a grab for his wife's elbow in an effort to save her, but he was off balance and her modest weight was too much for his extended arm.

  Immediately she tried to regain her feet, but was felled at once by a lance of pain. Sharply she drew in a breath, and let it out with a whispered curse.

  No alarms had been set off when Radcliffe and June went out through the window; no one seemed to have heard the light scrambling sound and sudden fall, the muttered curses. The day of broiling sunlight surrounded them with its quiet.

  Their one chance, and they had screwed it up… but the small noise the two of them made in collapsing to the ground seemed to have gone unnoticed. The bright sun glared down like a merciless spotlight. Surely at any moment now someone would come out into the yard and see them, raise a general alarm…

  But no one did.

  "Come on!" Radcliffe whispered fiercely. With their lives at stake, he was going to be as tough as he had to be, on her and on himself.

  June, gritting her teeth and clinging to her husband for support, tried bravely once again. But one second of frantic experimentation, groaning and swearing, was enough to make it plain that she couldn't walk on the injury.

  Sure, he could carry her. But not for very far, or at any effective rate of speed.

  In a desperate whisper June urged Phil to go on alone. "You're sure as hell not doing me any good by staying here. Will you get going?"

  He glared at her as if he hated her. "Just sit there, against the building, and don't move. Maybe I can steal a car."

  She started to argue and then thought better of it. She slumped back against the building, rocking, fighting to keep the pain inaudible, nursing her injury.

  Still no one saw or heard them. By some heaven-sent chance, Graves's breathing helpers were all occupied with other jobs. Or one or two who had been up all night were sleeping their own exhausted sleep.

  June held her breath as she watc
hed Philip's figure recede from her in a swift walk. Hunched over to make himself shorter, less conspicuous, he was moving toward the nearest vehicle. From somewhere in the other mobile home a woman's voice was raised, as if for emphasis in some debate. Maybe June could have understood the words, but right now she couldn't seem to think coherently.

  Their luck was still holding, at the minimum necessary for survival. But for how long?

  There were two parked vehicles currently in sight, and Phil discovered, to his frustration, that neither of them had been left unlocked.

  So far, unbelievably, the disturbance he and June had made in getting out had failed to draw the attention of any of their guardians.

  He was going to have to get away on foot, or not at all. He waved and shrugged at June, and she waved at him, and made fierce shooing motions with both arms.

  The silent message was plain enough: Go on, get out of here! You're not doing me any good by staying.

  Before finally heading out, he ran back to where June was sitting, to get the plastic bottle of water they had brought with them from the kitchen. Had there been any time, he would have stuffed some food in his pockets—but there was no time for food. He knew enough about the desert to realize that water meant life and death.

  He clutched her hand once more, exchanged with her a silent pledge of fierce intensity, and then was gone.

  Watching, sitting huddled against the building, still clutching her ankle, June held her breath, her whole being tensed against the impact of an alarm that had not yet sounded.

  * * *

  Philip was on his way, running in a crouch at first, bending low until he'd put a rise of ground between himself and the mobile homes. Still there was no alarm.

  He could get his overall bearings by the sun, but as he wasn't sure in which direction they had been driven to reach this place, knowing north from south was not immediately helpful.

  Keeping to low-lying land as much as possible, he clung fiercely to the few remembered clues he had to determine by what road or route, from which direction, the van had approached the house on the night he was brought here. But the effort seemed hopeless.

  Every few minutes he had to fight down a wave of frantic emotion, in which he wanted desperately to turn back, at all costs not to leave his wife alone. But each time he reminded himself savagely, with all the conviction he could muster, that the course he was following was the only sensible one. The only chance he had of doing June any good at all.

  He trudged on across country. There was only one visible road, no more than a pair of ruts dead-ending at the front yard of the mobile homes, and he kept it intermittently in sight. But for the time being he avoided getting too close to the road. Any travelers on it might very well be some of Graves's people.

  Before Phil Radcliffe had walked or trotted more than a mile, his heart gave a jump at the sight of a pickup truck approaching. Still almost a mile away, he could see the vehicle only by faint plume of dust raised by its passage in the hot dry air. The driver might, of course, be Graves himself. Well, he'd have to take that chance.

  Long minutes passed before Phil thought he might be close enough to signal. Though he tried frantically waving his arms, the truck failed to stop for him, or even slow down. He thought he might not have been close enough for the occupants to see him. Anyway, who was going to stop in the middle of nowhere for a lunatic thrashing his arms about? Next time he'd make one simple, appealing gesture.

  Philip trudged on, expecting at any moment to see signs of pursuit from the collection of mad people he had left behind.

  The sun was already merciless, his hat was already saving his life, and his single bottle of water was not going to last him for many hours. Maybe it was just as well there weren't two people sharing it.

  The good news was that no signs of pursuit had yet appeared. He trudged on, trying to turn up his speed a notch.

  The fugitive consumed a little of the water he had brought with him. He tried to remember whether it was supposed to be better to drink your water freely or ration it out.

  Soon he was close enough to the real road to see it quite plainly as a distant, whitish streak, marking the course of some kind of commerce between ranches or farms, he supposed.

  More little plumes of whitish dust came into being, showing the presence of vehicles. First one plume, then ten or fifteen minutes later another, creeping in the opposite direction. Hiking that road, he wasn't going to have to worry about getting run over in the traffic. He wondered whether he should turn right or left (north or south?) when he reached it. Even getting within shouting distance of potential traffic seemed to take hours. With every sloping of the land, the road disappeared and then rose again above the western-movie vegetation.

  At last he felt he was so close to the road that the occupants of the next passing vehicle could not fail to see him.

  But it turned out that seeing him and stopping for him were two different things. On the first try, and the second, waving and yelling did no good.

  His heart leaped when the second or third vehicle he tried to flag down, what looked like a converted school bus, repainted in military-looking camouflage, did stop for him, pulling an impulsive U-turn in the sand to do so.

  A long-haired young man, dressed in baggy pants and a reversed baseball cap, opened the door and politely asked if he could offer him a ride. Three or four other faces looked out through a variety of windows.

  "You can. You sure as hell can."

  At first glance the people in the bus looked a little rough, perhaps, but at least none of them were wearing masks. They seemed reassuringly normal after Graves and his companions.

  He got in with a great sensation of relief, slammed the door, looked at the expectant faces around him, and asked to be taken to the nearest phone because he had to call the police. "God, have I got a story to tell."

  "Sorry, we don't have a phone in the bus. But we'll take you to a place where you can call."

  Someone else said: "And we'd sure like to listen to your story." To emphasize his point, he was gesturing with a very real-looking automatic pistol.

  And only then did Radcliffe notice all the weapons.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Within a few hours Marie Grosholtz, a woman in her early thirties, well dressed within the bounds of Revolutionary fashion, and attractive in her own way but bearing little personal resemblance to Melanie, appeared at the door of Philip's cell with a guard for an escort. When the door had been unlocked the guard performed brusque introductions, as of one citizen to another, and in the name of the Revolution thanked Radcliffe for so far repenting his aristocratic crimes as to consent to having his face modeled. The guard, in the manner of one dealing with a frequent visitor, took only a perfunctory look into the container Marie was carrying. She had brought with her, in what looked like a hatbox, the equipment she needed in her work. Scarcely an hour before Marie's arrival, another guard had officially notified Philip that the model-maker was coming to take an impression in plaster of Paris of his living face. Radcliffe had taken care to look as if this coming of a visitor was news to him. No one was suspicious when he immediately expressed his readiness to cooperate. Most prisoners who were given the opportunity did so, because it gave them at least a few hours in which they were secure from a summons to immediate death.

  Secretly, of course, Radcliffe looked forward with desperate eagerness to the chance of holding private communication with Melanie's cousin.

  The guard soon left prisoner and technician alone. Marie had Philip recline face-up on his bunk, in a position which he could hold comfortably for an hour or so. She then set up a lamp on the small table, and began preparations to give him a close haircut and a shave. At the same time they began to converse in low voices about private matters.

  The first step in the process, Marie informed him, would be the removal of most of the hair on his head, not sparing any beard or mustache. Any hair remaining on a subject's face would be smoothed down w
ith pomade, to prevent it sticking to the plaster of Paris from which the mold-mask was made.

  Naturally Philip was eager to hear news of Melanie. Marie immediately assured him that her cousin was in good health and seemed to be in no immediate danger of arrest. That was about as much as could be said for almost anyone in Paris. Still, Melanie was lying low as much as possible, so as not to attract the attention of the authorities. As the daughter of an executed man, she would fall automatically under a certain amount of suspicion.

  As the conversation went on, Marie casually revealed that she was now engaged to be married.

  "Allow me to offer my felicitations."

  "Thank you, Citizen Radcliffe." Apparently that term of address had become habitual with many people, even when engaged in planning some action against the government. Marie, her hands busy, mused briefly in an abstracted voice about her own affairs. "There are certain difficulties, mainly financial, that must be overcome, as is often the case in these matters." On hearing this, Phil remembered being told by Melanie that Marie's Uncle Philippe, Dr. Curtius, was in poor health, and that he had declared his niece his only heir. "But if all goes well, next year I will be Madame Tussaud."

  "Again, Marie, I wish you and your future husband every happiness. What is his occupation?"

  "Francois is a civil engineer."

  And now the preparations had reached the point where it was necessary for Radcliffe to close his mouth and keep silent while the technician put quills up his nostrils to let him breathe, anointed his face with oil, and then smeared and patted the wet plaster of Paris over his newly lubricated skin.

  Marie continued talking to her subject as she worked. When a guard seemed to be loitering for a time close outside the cell's door, which had been left slightly ajar, she spoke of innocent matters, of the famous people whose likenesses she had already molded—some after their beheading.