This airlock was perhaps four paces across—large only in comparison with the preceding passage—slightly oval in shape, and dominated by a heavy, highbacked wooden armchair, bristling with metal appurtenances, that lurked on a single-step stone dais near the center of the floor. To Corwin, it less resembled an antique means of electrocution than one of those even more antique devices for the application of leisurely pain according to late medieval and early modern fashions.
The only other pieces of furniture were a tiny table and cupboard against one wall.
“I thought,” said M. Liberty, “that you had a visiting room in this area.”
“Airlock number three,” a guard told her. “Just on the other side of that door there.”
“I’d like to see it,” said the reporter.
One guard said, “Well ...” To which the other added sagely, “I’m not sure ...”
“Look,” said Click, “I promised M. Liberty the grandest tour she could get without actually stepping all the way inside. One of you can show her the rest of the airlocks while I help the other one take care of his lordship.”
“Well, okay,” said the first guard. “What can it hurt? If you’ll step this way, M. Liberty.”
“And if your lordship will step this way,” Click echoed, with a grand gesture of his arm toward the chair.
Corwin reflected that neither M. Liberty nor himself would have needed the guiding directions. His only vocal comment, however, was: “The brochures failed to make any mention of this.”
“Quite an oversight, there,” said Click. “I understand this little safetyseat’s the only one of its kind anywhere.”
“Unh-unh.” The remaining guard shook his head. “Daventry Straits has one. So does Hojo’s Pacific Sunset, and the Astoria people are thinking about ordering one for their Appalachia Hermitage.”
“No glitch? Hilmar must have started pushing the design.”
“Surprised they aren’t pushing it harder.” The guard lifted out a plank that formed the entire backrest of the chair between seat and headclamp. “Warden Warren’s patent, but Hilmar gets a percentage on any sold outside the corporation. Me, I’d be advertising ’em around the state lockup systems right along with the private luxuries. Watch your step, your lordship,” he added as Corwin hesitated, studying the edge of the dais.
The single step appeared curiously contoured, extending out beneath each of the chair’s front legs, but scalloping inward between them, leaving little space for footing. Corwin’s life had begun taking on a dreamlike quality, so that he wondered if he could trust his perception or if, by stepping only on the surfaces he beheld, he was about to make a buffoon of himself. Interpreting the guard’s caution as a clue pointing to the former state of things, he set his right foot on the narrow space that bordered the chair leg and contrived, steadied by Click and the guard, to hoist himself up, turn, and fall not too abruptly into the chair. He felt, though he had not seen, a seat cushion. As if in defiance of this amenity, the deep indentation in the dais left surface only for his heels, and he had to thrust his legs far inward to find even that.
The guard tugged his hands some little distance rearward and refitted the plank between them and Corwin’s back. “Are the arms of this chair,” the new prisoner inquired, “purely vestigial?”
“Huh? Oh. No, the idea is that if we ever have to use ’em, they’re there.” He jiggled the manacle cuff on the chair’s left arm, proving that, whatever it was, it was certainly there.
“I see. M. Click, are you actually tightening a metal band around my head, or is it simply my perception again?”
“Hey,” said the guard, “don’t tell me you’re another real fancier?”
“Off and on,” Click replied for Corwin. “Long story. I’ll tell you all about it later. Well, your lordship, in standard reality it’s a hard rubbermold clamp padded on the inside with two centimeters of quilted cotton.”
“Fancier, huh?” The guard brought up a wide, heavy surcingle to secure across Corwin’s body from left hip to right shoulder. “Eyesores, M., I admire your guts, but I sure don’t envy you! Be hard enough doing an undercover job like this when you know what you’re perceiving.”
“Thank you. But who better able to fathom the workings of the fancy-class psychomystique than another fancier? Ow,” Corwin added, as Click tightened another band around his legs just below the knees. “That pinches a bit.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the policeman told him comfortably. “It’s padded almost as thick as the headband. Just your perception going trolly again.”
“We change the padding for each new customer,” said the guard. “Health and hygiene guidelines.”
“Even allowing them to be more comfortable than an airfoam bed,” Corwin remarked, “these restraints begin to seem a trifle baroque.”
“Told you Warden Warren’s a regular security packer.” The guard crossed a second surcingle, this one right to left, over Corwin’s torso. “We used to just leave ’em tucked in with an airline seatbelt and a cuff hook in back. Story is that one of our paying guests—Paul Jeff. Jefferson—that’d make it, let’s see, about nine years ago—managed to break his left instep by stamping his other foot down on it, get his cuffs off the hook and crack an elbow bone on the back of the chair, and darn near give himself whiplash shaking his head around, all in the five minutes between when the guards left and when the warden came in from the other side.”
Corwin said, “My God!”
“They say he was trying to snap his own neck.”
“And this man is still alive?” Corwin felt sure that he remembered the name from Click’s lists. “That is, with a determination that strong, surely he would have found any number of opportunities for self-destruction once inside.”
The guard shrugged. “Warden Warren or somebody else must have reconciled him to life in luxury lockup while he was recuperating in the hotel infirmary. Anyway, it’s our responsibility to make sure the manager gets ’em safe and sound. That’s why Warren designed this little module for us.”
“And of course,” came M. Liberty’s voice, tinged with sarcasm, “you have to treat them all alike, low risk as well as high risk.”
Whenever she had returned from her tour of the visiting lounge, she remained out of Corwin’s range of sight, limited as it had become due to his present inability to move his head in any direction. He began to feel the sharp pressure of emotion gathering in his throat and upper face.
“It isn’t our job description to classify the low risks from the high risks, M.,” said the second guard. “For obvious reasons, Warren thinks he’s getting the real Moan. If he came in and found him lolling around free and easy, our boy would be cooked right at the start.”
“At the very least,” said the first guard, “Warren ’ud tab in a report on us for slacking up on the job.”
“Hilton-Maracott would know why,” said the reporter.
“Hilmar would want to know why we’d left our boy at risk.” The second guard stepped up and tried to push one finger between the captive’s right leg and the restraining band, as though to test his colleagues’ more than competent work.
Immobilized, Corwin felt a keener appreciation of how alone he was about to be. How alone, in some sense, he already was. It was on the tip of his tongue to call the whole escapade off and beg for an instant return to the world of the living. He could be with Angela again in time for afternoon coffee ... He attempted to blink back tears and instead shook one free to go rolling down his left cheek.
“Say, that’s good!” said the guard, looking up from his inspection of the place near Corwin’s left shoulder where the surcingle attached somehow to the back of the chair. “Almost every one of ’em turns on the waterworks about now, if they haven’t done it sooner. Even some of the staffers who’ll be out in ten or twenty years. Yeah, Jerry, I think maybe he’ll pull it off, after all.
How’re you faking it, M.? I should say, your lordship.”
Swallowing, Corwin replied, “Pure histrionic genius.”
“I think,” said M. Liberty, still without stepping back into his line of sight, “that we should leave now and let them get on with Act Two.”
“I should have said Act One,” Corwin remarked. “Calling all this up until now the Prologue.” As when, in the dentist’s chair, he both longed for the next process to be over and dreaded its commencement, so now he observed himself striving to postpone the imminent five minutes of total isolation. “M. Liberty, if you will—before you go—I think it might be prudent for me to have some idea of the actual appearance of these airlock chambers.”
Chapter
Lestrade surfaced about 12:45, intending to eat a Little Mac on her way to check the Pepper Pot again. She could have gotten a sandwich from the Nostalgia City Pollystation’s slotpay miniteria, but at least Little Macs were hot. The miniteria had a microwave, but the slotpay offerings that were meant to be heated had even less flavor than the ones meant to be eaten cold. Everything was scientifically nutribalanced, down to the synthetic whole tomatoes with their edible branpaste stems and real tomato seeds strained out of the ketchup-makers’ vats. But at the same time, Lestrade subscribed to the popular theory that Police Central had given Midwest Minitmeals Corporation secret instructions to encourage pollies to eat outside the station, rubbing elbows with normal humanity.
When she stepped out into the sunshine, the first thing she saw after blinking was Magnum Hammersmith sprawled at ease on the nearest public bench.
A sandwich in his right hand and a bottle of beer on the concrete parquet near his foot, he hoisted a brown plastic bag at her and said, “I would’ve waited, Madam L. But it began to look like you’d never get out.”
“Must be very lonely for you in a hick town like Nostalgia City, M. Hammersmith. Barely thirty thousand permanent population.”
“And artificial,” he agreed. “That’s the worst of this burg. Slick. Picturesque atmosphere churned out by mass-production lines and sold at so much per square meter. Phony as a synthetic apple. The 1890’s puts out a decent bag lunch, though. Genuine ham on rye with real, honest-to-goodness caraway seeds.”
“How much?”
“Hey, this one’s on me! For the pleasure of your company.”
She started walking right on past.
“Okay, okay! Three tridols. Ten and a half bucks if you want the cola, too.”
Three times as much as a Little Mac meal, but worth it if it was real ham. She turned back, got out three tridollar bills, a single, and a copper half, set them down on the bench with the coin on top like a paperweight, put the rest of her money back in her pocket, took the bag and sat down. As far from him as convenient.
It was real ham, thin slices and not many of them, but still enough to give the real rye a meaty flavor. The cola was 450 milliliters of Old Boston red.
“I see you got your bottled beer,” she remarked.
“The 1890’s specializes in wet stuff. That Japanese joint you picked out last night only specializes in sooshi.” He lifted the square brown bottle and took a swig. “Among other things, that sheet of thermal plastic they squeeze in around the glass keeps your beer cold like no cheap can ever could. Save these, by the way. Good for half a buck deposit apiece, the cola bottle too. Not that I care that much myself, but the barmaid asked me very nicely. Seems the establishment gets a good discount on the next case for every full case of empties returned. Helps pay the rent. I’d have gotten you a couple of beers, too, but you’re on duty.”
Not technically, but she didn’t see fit to tell him she was doing all this unpaid, on her own time and behind her superiors’ backs. “I’d rather drink a good cola anyway. Since you’re still hanging around this town, I assume you’ve found something here to keep your morning busy? Besides the barmaid at the 1980’s.” (Careful, old woman, careful! she told herself. He could interpret that as sounding jealous.)
“Hey, barmaids can be a regular gold mine of information. Did you know that Old Man Westerman used to keep a little condominium, just seven rooms and two baths, right here in Nostalgia City?”
“And a cabin in the Ozarks, a town house overlooking New Frisco Bay, a mini-ranchero on the outskirts of Reno, and a penthouse apartment in New York. Not to mention the five resorts—in Minnesota, Wyoming, Florida Bay, Cahu, and the Klondike—that always had VIP accommodations ready for him, as owner, on twelve hours’ notice.”
“Hey! Not bad.”
“The regular pollies are computer literate, M. Hammersmith.”
“I meant your memory. You rattled ’em off like the ABC. Too bad the old boy never got to use any of them very much his last couple years. I think the nephews did, though.”
“The family has two private planes, a helicopter, a private luxury car for the needletrain network and another that can be hitched to surface-rail trains. And a garageful of autos. The air vehicles have to file flight plans in advance and the train cars have to rent their place behind the regular lines’ engines, but corporate and air-control computers have a habit of blanking that kind of data automatically after six to twelve months. And the autos don’t have to file any travel plans with anybody before taking to the highways.”
“I’ll go you one better, Lady L. Data controllers can be bribed to blank files early, and train people can be paid off to add private cars to regular runs without mentioning it to their computers at all. These people can also be confidentially persuaded to remember doing it, sometimes for as little as the price of a meal someplace like Aster’s. I’m talking about work for private cops, of course.”
“Of course. Us regulars would need fairly compelling evidence before starting that kind of fine-comb inquiry. How many such furtive trips have you uncovered so far?”
“My lady, I’ve barely begun scratching the surface. But I know that the Westerman, now the Heikkinen-Apex, condo here in Nostalgia City has seen occupancy at least twice within the last six months. Even nowadays, you can still pin down the occasional nosy neighbor who needs minimal persuasion. In fact, Apex’s third-floor neighbor gave me coffee, rolls, and a slightly distracting view of a slightly too snug tunic along with the information. Julie Kurandasra. Quite a person.”
“She remember the dates, too?”
“Unfortunately, no. The closest she could come was sometime between Christmas and Valentine’s—the latter seems to be one of the high-water marks of her year—and before that, sometime around the Fourteenth of October, because of the fireworks. About a weekend each time. According to Julie, but she’s a working realizer who thinks in terms of workweeks and weekends, so it could have been four, five days, or it could have been just one overnight each time.”
“A working realizer has a condominium in the same building as Apex?”
“A very high-paid working realizer. Manager of the local Field’s. Besides, you should see The Elmgrove. Caters to very high-paid working realizers. If anyone’s the odd one out, it’s Apex. Probably not so you’d notice at a casual glance, though.” After another swallow of beer, Hammersmith added, “And when he isn’t around, Apex keeps his place locked up tighter than President Preston’s private box.”
“Careful, M. Hammersmith. I voted for Reggie Preston—”
“Good for you, Dragon Lady! Most folks who did won’t admit it. Most mysterious doggone landslide election in history.”
“And I still think he was framed.”
Hammersmith shrugged and said, around a mouthful of sandwich, “Too bad they didn’t call you in on the case. Well, Senior Sergeant, care to get an open sesame from your friendly local station here and give the Apex condo a little going over with me, as long as we’re both in the neighborhood?”
“So far, you haven’t told me anything to justify a search warrant. Let alone use of the police master keys.” But she was
giving the list of Westerman, now Apex, personal-use properties another mental runthrough.
“Hey, Dragon Lady!” said the private investigator. “How’d you have gone about clearing Prexy Preston without breaking a couple dozen eggs?”
Chapter
Five minutes could be very long.
Long enough, Corwin thought, that he might, conceivably, have been able to discover the trick of sliding out the chair’s back panel, holding its edges steady between the crooks of his elbows and angling it down at one side, up at the other ... Holding it firm ought to require little additional muscle pressure—the plank was already wide enough to cause some discomfort. It also felt quite thick. Possibly its edges were padded with cotton. The difficulty would be finding enough slack to turn it.
Yet it might, perhaps, be feasible. Assuming that it was, what next? Wriggling his body through the circle of his arms so as to get his bound wrists in front? Although his legs were bound together below the knee, he thought they were not tethered to the chair’s legs. If he could, with careful determination, hoist his legs up and through…then, with his hands in front, even though cuffed together, it might be possible to attack the head brace and chest surcingles ...
Ah, but those restraints across his chest would have had to be loosened first, before he could hope to pull his body through the circle of his arms. Perhaps the bands were not, in fact, so tight after all, if he could have overlooked them for a moment. Did they attach, he wondered, to the chair’s frame or to the removable back panel?
Well, he doubted the possibility, without practice and experience, both to conceive any such maneuver and then carry it through. Five minutes were not that long. They merely seemed so.
M. Liberty had described both this airlock and the one beyond as clean to the point of hygienic sterility, but depressing in their lack of adornment. The walls, she had said, were molded space-alloy seamless, slightly warped but otherwise free from irregularity, probably white but tinged green in a wraparound lighting effect that was so antiseptic as to seem vaguely unwholesome. The chair in which he sat was heavy steel, painted white, its legs anchored straight through the dais to the bare concrete floor. The single small table was likewise rooted in the concrete; almost its only purpose was to convenience the obligatory if sometimes desultory searches a guard of the appropriate gender made of emerging daystaffers, chaplains, and other visitors. (Searches made of them before going in were done in the gate guardhouses; these were less desultory and included as much use of rayscreens as standard health guiderules permitted.)
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 166
