“It sounds cruel,” I said.
“More silly than cruel,” Mendoza replied. “And physically, it’s the mildest part of the pledge’s evening. Anyway, the Purple Rose isn’t the first fraternity to do it, and probably won’t be the last. In theory, it’s supposed to test whether the pledge has more obedience to the full brothers or loyalty to his fellow pledges, and the ‘correct’ response is supposed to be refusal to burn another pledge’s work—loyalty to the fellow pledges. In fact, since no pledge has ever been turned away for the ‘wrong’ response, it amounts to the last piece of serious hazing before full and final initiation. That’s just as well, since almost every year many more pledges lay the paddle on the fire than refuse to do it. I’d singed my hand doing it several years earlier.”
“Which did Czarny do?” Cagey asked, sounding very interested.
“In a sense, neither. He flatly refused to burn anyone else’s handiwork, but he offered, if given the permission of his big brother—myself—to burn the one he himself had made. I won’t say he was the first who ever came up with this particular solution, but it doesn’t happen much oftener than once or twice every three or four years. The evening is designed to have the pledges in a state of considerable mental turmoil by the time they’re forced to make the decision.”
“Well?” Cagey said eagerly. “Did you bring out the paddle he’d made for you and let him burn it?”
Mendoza returned her a whimsically disdainful glance. “At that point? Of course not.”
* * * *
When we were alone later, I observed, “It sounds to me as if the whole Pi Rho house is obsessed with fire and burning things.”
“What? Oh, you mean the paddle and sun god ceremonies. Well,” said my lieutenant, “I guess they might look a little sinister in light of those two deaths, but if it weren’t for that, they’d seem pretty innocent. In fact, I’m beginning to think I missed out on most of the real fun of Greek life, getting myself into a staid, stick-in-the-mud house like the Sapphos. In the wild 2020s, too! So far, we haven’t heard anything all that shocking about the Purple Rose. I mean about the things we can be sure are actual, time-honored fraternity activities. Except for the pledging ceremonies. Don’t remember ever hearing about any other house that went in for anything like that quite so early in the pledge period. And yet I’m not so sure even about them, aside from the way they seem to be using M. Greenhill’s name sometimes.”
“What about the pledge raids and so on?”
“Oh, a lot of Greek houses encourage their pledges to pull stunts like that. To show their spirit with a little healthy rebellion against the brothers and sisters for hazing them. Sneak into the house at night, or maybe try to break in bodily if the house is on the alert, and steal towels or silverware, boobytrap furniture, shut off the water, gimmick the screens or infect the computerware, that kind of thing. Actually, back in the Sapphos, all we ever did was plant caricatures, spray cheap perfume, and sprinkle talc. Just to let ’em know that Kilroy had been and gone. In my student generation, anyway. But then, you can’t actually call it ‘hazing,’ what we went through as Sappho pledges. We were a genteel bunch, us Sapphos. Maybe because it was the Twenties and being genteel was our misguided way of rebelling against the wild, wicked world around us. Even back then, a lot of our neighboring houses played it much rougher.”
“Why?” I wondered.
She looked at me and winked. “Why not?”
To this day, I remain genuinely puzzled. To me, university had been a time for proving how grown up I had become, not how juvenile I still was.
XI
(The Pi Rho house)
The odd thing ... poignant, that was the word, the poignant thing about Clement’s room, Keiko thought, was the way it was still so obviously Clement’s room. Half of it, anyway. The other half was obviously somebody else’s. Solly’s, of course; but she couldn’t remember ever having been in Solly’s room back at the dorm that first part of the frosh semester. Besides, Solly’s half must have been blanked days before Clement’s half. Ready for the new man moving in tomorrow. Clement’s half ...
Well, it was and it wasn’t. For one thing, it was stark neat. Stripped-bare neat. Neater than anybody’s room had any right to be, let alone a fraternity man’s. But Clement had always kept his room almost abnormally neat even back in Thelwell Hall. And now his half wasn’t quite as stripped-blank neat as Solly’s half. She could tell which half must have been Clement’s by the extra pillow on his bed, the blotter on his desk, and the print of Sydney Constantine’s “Transfiguration in Orange” gumtacked over the dresser mirror.
The pillow was in a black case, which he said was best for daytime sleeping. That he hadn’t taken it along could mean that wherever he’d gone he wouldn’t have any problem keeping daylight out with curtains or window panels or whatever, and no roomies to want light coming in when he wanted it kept out. The desk blotter was still pretty new, with this year’s calendar, but it had the identical Floyd Hubbard wildlife scene as the desk blotter he’d had back in Thelwell that wonderful year when she could spend joint study sessions with him in his room. The “Transfiguration” print was new. Back at Thelwell, it had been the same artist’s “Crucifixion in Orange” that he’d gumtacked over his mirror, Jesus in an orange loincloth—Sydney Constantine always put Jesus in orange clothing, that was where the series got its name—with a braided orange satin headband in place of the crown of thorns, standing smiling and unwounded superimposed over the orange outline of a cross on a background holograph of deep space. Keiko guessed that Clement had substituted the Transfiguration, which had Moses and Elias, out of consideration for his roommate, even though as far as she knew Solly had been completely ecumenical, had even had a copy of the Talmud and one of the Quran bound together and called it a symbol of his parents’ marriage.
If the “Transfiguration” print reminded Clement too much of Solly, that could be why he had left it behind. The pillow and desk blotter could be just plain generosity. Fairly expensive generosity when it came to the pillow. She remembered how tickled he’d been to call it a gift from his professors the semester his bill for textcubes and lab supplies came out eight tridollars less than he had budgeted. But these dangerously generous moods could hit Clement at times, especially when he was feeling depressed.
Nothing else of him was really visible in the room, unless it was the way the furniture was arranged: bed angled to cut off one corner, the way he’d have liked to do at Thelwell if they’d had the space for it there. Here, beneath the eaves like that, it made a nice little cavernlike effect. Desk not quite square beneath the window, dresser not quite plumb against the wall, because he had taken the idea a little too much to heart about the ancient Hellenes always making their architectural measurements slightly untrue on the theory that it created a more pleasing effect.
The rest of his gear, whatever he hadn’t taken with him, was in his trunk and guitar case, on the floor between the dresser and closet. That was probably a good sign. If the Purple Rose was out to cover anything up, wouldn’t they have either ditched all his stuff, or else left it all in the room as if he hadn’t planned on going away at all? Unless they had some very shrewd thinker in on the scheme.
“Well?” Valentino cut into her thoughts, sounding eagerly nervous. “You’ve seen one of our bedrooms.”
“Yes, and it’s pretty spartan,” Theda teased him. “I was expecting something that looked more like a tornado had just been through, not this.”
“Yeah, but it’s the best one if you guys don’t want to get caught. Nobody’s likely to come in and catch us here except ...” His voice trailed off.
Keiko turned around to face him. “Except?”
He grinned apologetically. “Well, I was going to say, except ghosts.”
Keiko snapped, “Czarny isn’t a ghost.”
“He’s a vampire, isn’t he?”
“Jus
t a vampire, M. Saladin. Not a ghost. There’s a big difference. And I don’t care if he does come back and catch us here.” She’d welcome it. She started for the trunk.
“Okay,” said Val. “At that, we’re probably luckier than we deserve. Only four bedrooms up here in the attic, but I’ll bet somebody would have been napping or studying or something in at least one of them if a lot of brothers hadn’t cut out early for the Fourteenth, coming up Tuesday. Anyway—Hey! how am I supposed to raid a room nobody’s living in?”
Right. The room that interested Keiko most—although their guide didn’t know it—was the worst one for the fratty prank Theda had talked him into coming up here to pull. Seized with inspiration, Keiko aboutfaced to the bed, picked up Clement’s extra pillow in its black cotton case, and tossed it to Valentino. “Okay, here. ‘Steal’ this.” That way, it’d have a better chance of eventually getting returned to Clement than if the next guy to move in here found it waiting.
The pledge thought a few seconds, shook his head, and tossed it back. “No, I don’t think that’d be playing fair. I’d better go raid somebody else’s room. Uh ...” He looked at Theda. “What should I do, exactly?”
Theda grinned. “Use your imagination. Make it your handiwork. They’ll like you all the better for it.”
“Break crackers in their beds and put shoe polish on their toothbrushes,” said Keiko. “Make them really like you. Just come back when you’re done and smuggle us down into the basement.”
Theda repeated, “Use your own imagination, Val.”
Keiko heard him say, “Uh, okay. Right,” and leave the room. She was already kneeling at Clement’s trunk.
Footsteps echoing a little, Theda joined her. “Those were fairly mean suggestions,” the sorority woman said admiringly. “Are you really sure you wouldn’t like to go Greek yourself?”
“Completely, thoroughly, totally, one hundred and ten percent sure.” The crackers bit was one Clement had refused to do, the toothbrush thing was what he had done instead, but only with old toothbrushes the owners should have replaced weeks ago anyway.
“Now,” Theda pondered aloud, “should we shut the door to make it harder for anyone to hear us, or leave it open so that we’ll be able to hear anyone coming up?”
“Leave it open,” said Keiko. “With nobody up here but us pullets, we want to be sure to hear it if anybody else comes up.”
“I was seriously torn, you know,” Theda went on. “I may never have another chance to see what their bedrooms look like while being lived in. Would you rather be alone here?”
“Please yourself. If you’re staying, give me a hand sliding this trunk out a little so the lid won’t hit the dresser when I open it.”
“Are you really going to open it? How? Do you know how to trick locks?”
“What locks?” Keiko put one hand on each of the sidecatch buttons and pushed. The catches sprang open. She did the same with the center catch.
“Wow,” breathed Theda.
“No trick. This trunk was a present from the rich side of his family. He says it’s worth more money than anything he puts in it, so why tempt thieves by making them think there’s anything inside worth locking up, and have them spoil the trunk itself.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, I see. It makes a good cover story.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, he wouldn’t want to risk anyone ever locking him in, would he?”
“Oh, for the love of Elvis! He never locks anything unless his lute’s in it. Here, you take that end.” Actually, if the trunk had been locked, then Keiko might have gotten really worried.
Theda helped her slide it out at an angle to where the lid could swing open freely, and Keiko swung it, bringing it to a gentle rest against the closet doorframe.
The tray, which had movable dividers, was about three-quarters filled, and the packing looked like his style. Neat. Not sorted and catalogued, more like a crazy quilt fitted together, but that’d be because he’d have packed quickly. His little rosary collection, most of which he’d strung himself as a kid when he found out about all the other kinds of rosaries there’d been over the centuries besides the standard old five decades of ten Hail Marys; a lot of spare guitar picks, extra set of tuning forks, spare strings, capos and other oddments connected with musical instruments; a few bottles of holy water; a few bottles of men’s colognes and aftershave and talc—she didn’t pay much attention to the brands because if he’d left them, chances were they weren’t his favorites but just spares he’d gotten as presents; his swimming and music competition medals; the leftover supplies from that introductory sketching course they’d taken together their frosh year; his collection of holy pictures and pamphlets; a darning egg; a mending kit in clear plastic box, every spare cubic millimeter crammed with scapulars in half a dozen colors; a couple of novelty paperweights, one of them covered with little black bats on a dayglo orange background; a row of paperback books, half of them old devotionals printed last century, with a couple decks of playing cards, a bunch of picture postcards, and another bundle of holy pictures added to make the row fit from end to end of the tray compartment; and a personal library of disks, cassettes, and bookchips in so many formats that he had to go looking for the right hardware to use many of the old, secondhand ones.
She lifted the tray out and set it on the floor. The rest of the trunk was about four-fifths filled, mainly with spare clothes and sheet music. Of course, he’d have taken at least one suitcase as well as his lute in moving out. And he always wore dracula uniform except for sleeping and athletics, which simplified his wardrobe. All the same, it was awesome how little junk he had managed to accumulate in two full years of university life.
“This is it?” said Theda.
“Scary, huh? Maybe he keeps a lot of his things in storage in relatives’ houses.”
“No, I meant ... It looks so ordinary. I had half expected, I don’t know, churchyard mold or something.”
“Oh, sure, and here I was, ready with a whole pocketful of consecrated Host to crumble into it and make it unfit for him to sleep in anymore. You’re as bad as Valentino!”
“Well, isn’t it the sort of thing he leads people to expect?” Theda replied, a little on the defensive.
“Almost half the student body dresses up to match their personal worlds,” Keiko reminded her. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“Yes, and a lot of them would have perceived these things as churchyard earth, too,” the sorority woman pointed out. “I should think that would please him. What else does he want?”
Keiko sighed. Her companion was speaking too mildly to be paid with snappish comebacks. “All he wants, Theda, is for people to accept him for what he is. Believe it or not, that’s why he wears that costume, and all the rest of the act—so nobody will think he’s trying to cover up and pretend to be something else. Look, this trunk is going to have to be padded to keep the stuff from shaking around when they move it. I’m going to use that pillow. It’s his own pillow. I was with him when he bought it.”
Tickled with her inspiration, Keiko got the pillow from the bed and plumped it neatly down on top of his clothes and music. If necessary, she could let on that his fratty brothers had put it in for him. Next she turned to the “Transfiguration” print on the mirror. Inexpensive though it was, it was in excellent condition, and she hated to think that the room’s next occupant might just rip it down and throw it away instead of appreciating it. These holoprints tended to be almost a centimeter thick and fairly stiff; she thought it would be safe packed up against the top of the trunk.
As she was carefully peeling it away from the gumtacking, she heard Theda say excitedly,
“Say, look at this! ‘Lest We Forget’!”
“What?” Keiko glanced around to see her companion holding a boxed computer chip up like a diamond between thumb and forefinger.
“‘Lest We Forget,’” T
heda repeated. “It’s a semi-secret program. You can’t buy it or beg it. You can get it only from someone who already has it and decides you’re worthy. The title is hand-penciled, you see. I could hardly read it at first.”
“Huh! I never heard of it before.”
“Nobody who has it must ever have judged you worthy,” Theda said with a wink.
“I’m flattered they didn’t. Sounds like some kind of gunzhy secret society.”
“Don’t worry, nobody has ever judged me worthy, either. But I’ve often wished they had. I’ve been curious about this program for years. I wonder who decided our vampire was worthy?”
Keiko wondered the same thing. “Take it along,” she said. “It can’t be one of his real treasures, or he’d have taken it with him right away.” Yeah, there was that, anyway. Though it began to sound as if she might wish he had thrown it out instead of keeping it at all.
“You mean ...” Theda began, but just about then they became aware of footsteps on the stairway. Heavy footsteps. No mistaking that tread for Valentino Saladin’s.
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 134
