The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Cagey spread her hands. “No, I’m sorry. I apologize. Sergeant Tomlinson, you’re detailed to call me up short if I get onto delicate ground again. But if I could just ask one or two general questions, Madre? Nothing specific—nothing about Czarny in particular ... just a few questions about general principles?”

  “Well ...”

  “For instance. I was a sorority woman myself. University Greek life pretty often involves ‘raids’—thievery, some vandalism, hazing stunts. Wouldn’t all that come under the heading ‘sin’?”

  “It depends. When all the parties involved…encourage it, expect it, even demand it ... When things are ‘stolen’ with full intention to return them, a little minor damage done with full intention to repair it ... No, that wouldn’t necessarily count as sin,” the madre confirmed Mendoza’s theory. “Certainly not as major wrongdoing,” she went on. “Even some kinds of personal hazing can be excused, though the lines are much more fragile there. How far do you want me to go into it? We can’t get very far without bumping against the Church’s official line on the ‘Consenting Adult’ laws.”

  Cagey looked curious, even eager. I don’t think she ever threw off quite as much of the 2020s as I did. Maybe it was simply her natural temperament. But she resolutely shook her head. “Not necessary, Madre. I think you’ve pretty well answered my question already. The other point I wanted to check ... Sometimes us outsiders get the impression that Catholics can pretty much do anything they like, as often as they like, just so long as they confess it afterwards.”

  “You’ve been totally misled,” said Mother Pedersen. “The reconciliant must always have the true desire not to do it again. If it’s evident they don’t have that desire, the priest can refuse Reconciliation. It isn’t like a hunting license. You can’t go in and pay five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys for…the license to go out and shoot ... no, say, embezzle fifty tridollars. I’m sorry, I seem to be losing touch. The painblankers, probably. Giving out Our Fathers as penances is completely ... old Reeltime, anyway. If you stop in at the Student Ecumenical Center, they can give you a lot of nice, concise little folders full of questions and answers about the Faith.”

  “Thanks,” said Cagey, “I think I tune in the picture. The confessees—’reconciliants’—have to want to stay clean, or you don’t wash them. Suppose one of them fools you about not wanting to do it again?”

  “In that case ... it wouldn’t ‘take.’ To use the vernacular. Nowadays, we go in more for community-service penances, personal meditations, other exercises aimed at helping the reconciliants keep clean.”

  “What happens if they don’t manage to keep clean?”

  “None of us is perfect,” said Mother Pedersen. “As long as the desire is there every time, the desire never to fall again ... If you climb a mountain, you want to get to the top, you don’t want to fall ... But not all of us are born mountain goats ... ski lifts ...” She blinked her eyes open with a visible effort. “Well, Officers, I think I’m going to send you for more wide-awake instruction. Before I start…feeding you my dreams.”

  We thanked her, apologized for any inconvenience, and left. In the hospital florist shop, Cagey was about to buy her an arrangement with two dozen peaches-and-cream rosebuds, until I wondered aloud what kind of statement it might look like for us to upstage Czarny that much in the expense of flowers. Cagey blinked back at me—she rarely remembered to think in terms of expense as it touched her own immense finances—and took my suggestion of a porcelain planter filled with mixed ornamentals, mainly coleus, to send up to Mother Elizabeth Pedersen.

  Once back in the car, my lieutenant remarked, “So Czarny wired her a more expensive bowl of flowers than he could afford. ... If we get the time, I might like to ask those kids—Dukas and Aldebaran—how much blood they actually noticed in the madre’s bathroom.”

  “Cagey! You can’t think a priest would lie to cover it up if she’d been attacked?”

  “Why not, if he put her under the seal of confession first? I’m pretty sure they don’t actually have to be in church. Suppose he came around to the rectory claiming he needed an emergency confession—reconciliation—waited till they were in the middle of it and then attacked—”

  “I can’t think the actual attack would count as part of the reconciliation. Besides, she couldn’t very well claim to have been in the bathroom if Dukas and Aldebaran found her somewhere else, could she? I can’t see her using her private bathroom for a confessional.”

  “Maybe he got out the back way when he heard Dukas and Aldebaran at the front door, and she—in a daze—dragged herself into the bathroom. Come to that, why couldn’t he have gotten her into the bathroom? Good place for him to clean up afterwards. Maybe dragged her in as part of the attack. Or even talked her in there first. Isn’t a dracula supposed to be potent as any hallucinogen in the mindboggling department?”

  “Then he could have hypnotized Dukas and Aldebaran, too, couldn’t he? So why would he have had to run when they came?”

  “To keep from glutting himself? Seems to me I’ve seen some nature film about the mosquito not being able to stop drinking until she pulls her hypodermic out again. And then, some people are more hypnotizable than others. Czarny would have had Mother Pedersen’s measure, but a couple of new voices, maybe strange voices, at the door could have been unknown factors, and he didn’t want to take time to check them out. Or, for that matter, maybe he did hypnotize them. Into forgetting they’d seen him.”

  I reminded her again, “We promised April not to judge him before we’d met him.”

  “I’m not judging him,” Cagey protested. “All appearances to the contrary, I’m not even sure yet he’s our culprit. I’m just trying to see all the angles. And keep us both on our guard, Tommi. We know he drinks real blood, at least on occasion. We know that two other boys who were romantically involved with April B. Greenhill are dead. And we can guess that you’re half under his spell already.”

  “Susceptible as I am anyway,” I said dryly. “Even to men I’ve never even met. And it’s going to be dark pretty soon, too. Ooo-oooo-ooooo! Maybe we should have asked Mother Pedersen for a quick lesson in crossing ourselves.”

  “A trick that didn’t help her much.” Cagey grinned. “All right, Sergeant, point taken. But all I’m really saying here is, it might be just as well if we can manage to meet Clement Batory Czarny somewhere with a lot of lights and other people around.”

  XVI

  (The Pi Rho Hunting Shack)

  Quite a “hunting shack” the Purple Rose kept for itself out here in what passed for deep woods. Not that the mighty hunters could have let off a high-powered rifle charge in any direction without the risk of putting it through somebody’s kitchen window. But the illusion was there. You’d never have guessed without knowing it beforehand that people had year-round homes only a couple of klicks away almost every way you could turn. Even knowing it, Keiko might have had trouble finding a trail to one of those homes. Not that that would stop her from trying, as soon as she could figure a way out of this fancy shack.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Theda told her from the computer center. “We aren’t in any serious trouble. You certainly aren’t, you Independent, you! All you have to do is announce that you’ve decided not to pledge after all, and what can they possibly do to you?”

  “They’ve already locked me up in here.”

  “Oh, poor prisoner! And left you nothing but microwave dinners, beer, full shower and comfort facilities, a reasonably extensive home entertainment selection, and your choice of bedding in case we’re here overnight.”

  “And a brother outside in case we get lonesome,” Keiko observed sourly.

  “Struwwie is not a brother to worry about. Big he may be, but gentle as a Saint Bernard. Is he still out there?”

  Keiko gave another look through the window, her first in almost four minutes. They were on the upper floor, and the wind
ow she looked through was almost directly over the front door. In order to see their guard, she had to stand with her forehead to the wall and strain her field of vision to its sharpest angle. “Yeah, he’s still there. Sitting up against the door ... watching something on his handscreen, looks like. Old Roger Rabbit cartoons, probably.”

  “Or a documentary for some class. Don’t downgrade poor old Struwwie. He puts in a lot of studyhours. Third-semester senior, determined to make January graduation.”

  “If he’s such a great big, fluffy Saint Bernard, how come we let him herd us out here and lock us in, all by himself?”

  “I suppose that you went along with it,” Theda replied in a quietly teasing voice, “for the same reason crooks go along with pollies: guilty conscience. I went along for the chance of finding out what this ‘Lest We Forget’ program is all about. I knew the PC they have out here has adapters for most formats of software.”

  “Okay, what have you found out?”

  “That all the fuss may simply be a state of riot over a burned hamburger. With a few minor changes, the first two levels look suitable for printout as funeral home brochures.”

  “Darn!” said Keiko. “It’s almost sunset.” Liturgy would be over by now. No way she could connect with Clement at Our Lady tonight.

  Theda glanced around through the backview window at what was visible of the reddening clouds above the pines and bare hardwoods. “Well,” she remarked, “I should think that means they intend to leave us here through the dinner hour. Good. That may mean this little incarceration will be the extent of it, for me as well as you. Be a dear and choose us each a dinner while I move on to another level.”

  “I don’t know what kind of food you like.”

  “Hmmm? Oh, anything. No, make it something handheld for me. Fish and chips, if they have any. There has to be some fire beneath all the smoke about ‘Lest We Forget.’”

  Keiko seemed to remember that Greek life was supposed to put a high value on sociable mealtimes, but she let the thought pass without comment. She hated to admit it, but she had gotten curious about that doggone “Lest We Forget” program, too. Especially since it was Clement’s copy.

  She gave the upper story another quick scouting over: the living room or recreation room or whatever it was where Theda sat at the computer center; a bedroom, slightly bigger but more crowded because of the bunks and cots; and a medium-sized comfort station with two cinerary toilets, three wash-up sinks, and a home urinal covered with a rollover lid sporting a stylized set of geometric shapes that stopped just short of vulvarity. Keiko had a little trouble with the logic there, seeing that the only reason she could think of for the Purple Rose to have a urinal cover here at all would be politeness to the occasional female guests.

  Like selected portions of the Pi Rho house in town, their “hunting cabin” was open to the complementary gender on invitation. Keiko herself had seen it once before, at a Hunting Season poker party not quite a year ago. She hadn’t noticed then what a good little jailhouse it could be.

  She was tempted to report it for violation of the fire safety guiderules, once she got back to town. There should be some way of opening every egress-size window quickly, some kind of ladder or descending device readily available to every upper-floor room. And people should be able to find all these escape routes without a big search.

  Unless the Pi Rhos put on their fire-escape handles or directions or whatever only when they themselves were in the cabin, and kept it shut up at all other times, inside as well as outside, for whenever, just on the spur of the moment, they might need a jailhouse.

  She paused a few seconds at one of the bedroom windows for another view of the sunset. Might as well enjoy what she could. Dark, heavy clouds, letting only a few patches of violet sky show through holes glowing crimson around the scalloped cumulus edges ...

  She sighed, glanced down toward the ground, and stiffened.

  All right, what had that been? That little flick of dark motion that vanished back in between the pine trees before it had quite finished registering in her brain. Owl? Some kind of animal? Part of a cape?

  Or just her own imagination?

  Before going on downstairs, she looked in on Theda again. “You sure Valentino’s okay?”

  “Oh, relax. He isn’t here with us, and we didn’t mention anything about him to Struwwie. Therefore, he probably got away without being noticed. And if they did catch him, they really will be pleased with his spunk and daring. Believe me. I wasn’t lying about that. Of course, they’ll make him do a lot of push-ups or paint the porch or something, but they’ll still award him a lot of points.”

  “No chance that he ... uh ... ratted on us?”

  Theda turned around, looked at her, and blinked. “No. No, I don’t think so. Well, it’s an outside chance, I suppose, depending on which he takes more seriously, the sanctity of the house’s male preserves or the loyal camaraderie with brothers and sisters as individuals. But, no, I truly don’t think he gave us away. It would have spoiled his raid. Is dinner ready yet?”

  “Just going down now.”

  “Good. You might just run it back up here to me when it’s hot. Level Four looks a little more interesting. Rather heavily into the philosophy of good versus evil, with some fairly convoluted historical metaphors, and the connection with Levels One through Three seems very sketchy, but it is starting to get more interesting.”

  “Okay. Fish and chips, right?”

  “Right. Thanks.” Theda turned back to the screen.

  Keiko headed downstairs, thinking. Yes, philosophies of good versus evil usually caught Clement’s attention.

  The upstairs rooms had sound-absorbent paneling and wall-to-wall carpeting. The downstairs had been interior-decorated to look more like everybody’s idea of the archetypal log cabin in the woods: woodfinish floors, a fake bearskin rucked up in front of the fieldstone fireplace, mock antique lineoleum in the shower stall, blue windmill tiles around a kitchenette sink and microwave, cupboard stocked with real, authentically chipped Blue Willow china. The walls looked like bare logs laid horizontally, but from the quietness inside, the scarcity of northwoods noises seeping through, she suspected a layer of sound-soaking in the insulation between outer and inner walls.

  The falsest note was the high ceiling. High enough for three broad crossbeams almost four meters above the floor. A wheel-lamp hung from the middle one, fastened with a chain that ran through one of a set of holes cut well beneath the level of the surface supporting the floor above. Another hole, a little to the side of the kitchenette, supported a rope of garlic. All the beams had similar holes. Maybe they had all been cut for lamps and picturesque food supplies.

  On the other hand, there was that bench-seat chest full of ropes, chains, leather straps, a couple of rubber hoses, something that looked like a homemade knotted whip ... Nice stuff! Stuff Clement had never mentioned. Stuff she hoped he didn’t even know about. Some of it had brown residue on it, and some of it looked scorched. She felt almost sure Theda didn’t suspect it was there, buried beneath a couple of old, folded horse blankets.

  All Theda had cared about, once Spuds locked them in, was getting up to the PC and investigating that doggone piece of software. Theda seemed to be sublimely confident all this was just a lot of fun. Keiko wished she could feel half so cozy about things. Glad, anyway, that all the doors and windows had locks and bolts inside as well as outside, and that the inside ones worked separately from the outside ones, she went around and rechecked them all, at the same time keeping one more lookout for any potential escape route. She still couldn’t spot any, but none of the inside locks seemed to have been tampered with.

  One thing, the Rose kept their kitchenette pretty well ordered. In the cupboard that was given mainly to microwave tray dinners, she found a fish and chips for Theda and picked out one with sausage on a stick and mixed veggie fritters for herself. Rememberin
g that beer was the only beverage Theda had listed when scrolling off the cabin’s comforts, Keiko got her a can of Leinenkugel from the fridge, at the same time helping herself to an Old Boston lemon seltzer. By the time she had them and a couple of napkins on a tray, the dinners were waved. She added them, left the microwave door open in a fit of spite against the Pi Rhos for locking them up and maybe planning to charge them for whatever they ate, and did a balancing act back upstairs with the awkwardly loaded tray.

  Theda was sitting far back in the desk chair, staring at the screen. Her lips were slightly parted.

  “I’m into Level Five,” she half whispered, and Keiko couldn’t tell whether she was enthralled or horrified. “Kokyo, it’s a program for hunting Nazis!”

  “The he-eck you say!”

  “It is! Come and have a look!”

  Keiko set the tray on the floor and hurried across the room to lean on Theda’s chair and scan the screen over her shoulder.

  She read:

  * * * *

  “That these six millions might not have been tortured and murdered for nothing:

  A. Monumentalize forever each of the death camps as a Living Memorial.

  B. Contribute to the World Peace Fund in the names of the death camp victims.

  C. Bring their murderers to justice.”

  * * * *

  Theda said, “Now watch,” and moused the cursor to choice “C.”

  The screen flashed into an obvious “Congratulations” picture—the peace dove putting a crown of laurels on the head of the smiling, unisex figure that represented the program user. After just long enough to register on the retina, the image flashed off again to be replaced by a big “Affirmative!”

  “But that’s garbage!” Keiko exclaimed, starting to quiver. “How old is this stupid program, anyway?”