The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Let us take these objections as they come.” Of The Light spread his hands—large, pale-palmed, strong, and singularly graceful—in the illumination of the table’s candle. “All earthly flesh is vile, Brother Earl. But earthly flesh is all that we have to work with, here on this present plane. And it is not the flesh itself which we offer, but the pain of the flesh, a less tangible, more spiritual thing, the sign and token of the soul’s willingness to be set free of the flesh, a consummation that cannot be accomplished without pain. This is the pleasing odor our bloody sacrifices carry up to the nostrils of God. And this is why it is worse than futile to offer any creature’s flesh save our own, whether in simple expiation or in the more advanced holocausts of purification and holy fervor. For it is not we who would sacrifice you, but we who as purgators would serve as your humble instruments in the sacrifice of yourself. Do you understand?”

  Incredible! thought Corwin. With a modicum of effort, I actually might. Aloud, he said, “I believe so, more or less, except for your use of the word ‘holocaust.’ I had always understood that term to connote a certain…er ... irreversible permanence.”

  “Don’t worry, Moan,” said Double Oh Nine, studying the musk-scented smoke of his mock cigarette. “Brother Of The Light likes to speak figuratively. What’s your second objection?”

  “It is that I have no guilt to purge. I did not murder my ... my late countess. It was that reality perceiver who sold me the actual narcotic when we trusted her to sell harmless flour! I did not ... Forgive me, gentlemen.” Carried away by his own performance, or perhaps the apprehension of his actual situation had much to do with his emotion—the counterfeit Earl of Moan buried his face in his handkerchief and hoped he hadn’t chosen a cover story that struck his present companions as holier-than-thou.

  Withycombe laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  He remembered Sergeant Click’s confidential revelation that Senior Sergeant Lestrade had never been satisfied as to this man’s guilt. Corwin had come in with some hope of rooting out evidence that Adrian Withycombe was innocent, a hope which Withycombe’s own statements about valving off the sense of guilt had all but killed, but which his gesture of sympathy began to revive.

  “That’s all right,” John Stock said dryly. “We don’t discriminate against the innocent.”

  Of The Light explained further, in kindly tones: “We hold the offer open to you still, Brother Earl. Guiltless you may be of her bodily death, but who among us all can long remain guiltless of the seventy times seven thousand sins of daily life?”

  Corwin thought of Angela’s opposition to his coming inside.

  “It’s also very useful,” Withycombe added gently, “as a therapy for survivor’s guilt.”

  “In other words,” Stock remarked, “they’re willing to hurt you just as much whether you’re guilty or not.”

  Corwin put away his handkerchief, damp with actual tears; cleared his throat; swallowed more cognac; and said, “No offense intended, M. Stock, but your tone begins to strike me as somewhat, shall we say, world-weary?”

  “No offense taken, Moan. In fact, thanks for the compliment. How else should any intelligent mind look at this screwy world?” Stock punctuated his sentiment with a sound that could not quite be called a wry chuckle. “Blood guilt! Survivor’s guilt! Tags people use to avoid admitting that they just haven’t got the guts to play the game as it ought to be played.”

  “Yet I think I heard you imply,” Corwin went on, “that you yourself have taken part in these purificatory self-immolations with assistance.” And when Stock didn’t contradict him, he added, “Why?”

  “Because,” Withycombe answered for the secret agent, “his prototype Bond was repeatedly being tortured.”

  John Stock snorted. “James Bond—Oh Oh Seven—was a semi-competent fool. In his first recorded mission, he landed himself in hot water through his own failure to suspect a double agent who was so blatantly obvious an idiot would have spotted it. He survived only thanks to the coincidental intervention of an enemy agent, and succeeded in carrying out his instructions at all only thanks to the kind generosity of counterpart operatives from a friendly foreign government. The last of his missions to be recorded by Fleming would have been over within fifty pages had Oh Oh Seven done his job like a competent agent instead of having to bait his target into attacking and all but eliminating him, simply so that he could make his kill ‘in self-defense.’”

  Withycombe smiled. “Our Double Oh Nine is a cooler hand than that.”

  “Infinitely,” Stock agreed, stubbing out his mock cigarette and lighting another. “Neither of the Russian agents I eliminated ever knew that anything was about to hit them.”

  Corwin felt that the telltale heart must surely be beating within his own breast, jarring him from head to toe and thus making itself apparent to his companions visibly if not audibly. But as they showed no sign of noticing, he remarked, trying to sound casual, “To the best of my knowledge, the S.S.S.R. has been among our nation’s allies for several generations.”

  Stock eyed him sadly. “So you’ve bought that old lie too, Moan.”

  Fervently praying that 009 would not see in him whatever Obersturmbannfuehrerin von Cruewell had seen to cast him in the part-time role of a Russian master spy during his and Angela’s honeymoon—might 009 possibly have cast Adrian Withycombe for such a part in his personal perceptional world?—Corwin attempted to swing the conversation back one or two steps. “All this may be reasonably enlightening, M. Stock, but I should prefer the answer to my original inquiry.”

  Stock glanced from Withycombe to Of The Light before returning his gaze to Corwin. “Withstanding various interrogation techniques is part of the continued training for my next assignment. Oh, they’re just hiding me here awhile, Moan. They’ll be letting me out when they need me again. I’m too valuable to waste. Not that I’m ever likely to need to withstand interrogation techniques when I’m actually out in the field. A competent operative carries out missions without having adventures. But meanwhile, the training helps break up the boredom of waiting things out.”

  Withycombe dashed a wink to Corwin. “Double Oh Nine likes to hide a dummy document somewhere beforehand. The grounds and buildings must be thick with them—he’s never yet confessed where one is cached.”

  A faint, self-satisfied smile played briefly over Stock’s features.

  “We will give a similar exercise to anyone who asks it,” said Of The Light. “But you have the look, Brother Earl, of one who would be interested in the pure spiritual benefits rather than the tinsel fripperies of silly role-playing.”

  Should I feel complimented? thought Corwin. But M. Magadance had said it was strictly voluntary—hadn’t she? What had Withycombe, Of The Light, and Stock said so far that might give him a natural-sounding hook for checking that point? Anything? “Ah…by ‘offering me the opportunity,’ M. Of The Light, do you imply that it is mine to accept or to refuse at will?”

  “It is, Brother Earl. But I urge you most strongly to accept it. Indeed, to seize upon it and hold it fast. True, it is not an opportunity which we hold out once and never again. Like salvation itself, this will ever remain open to you for the asking. But some have found that the longer they wait, the harder it becomes to ask. And earthly life is always and everywhere uncertain, even in such a cloistered retreat as ours.”

  “Induction,” Withycombe said cheerfully, “can be yours for the asking at any time.”

  Stock added, “Besides, we’re always on the watch for more good people to help out as torturers.”

  Good Lord! thought Corwin. That wrinkle had somehow failed to crease his brain until this moment. Fortunately, another burst of laughter from the other table lent him a few seconds to cover his confusion.

  Less fortunately, that burst of laughter immediately preceded the other group’s rising to their feet en masse and heading toward the drawing roo
m, leaving Corwin alone in the cavernous dining hall with Stock, Of The Light, Withycombe, and the little wizened Onyenemezu at his drinks station. The place seemed so gloomy now that Corwin wondered if he were entering a slow shift to fantasy perception.

  “Which comes first?” he said as detachedly as he could, after another swallow of cognac. “That is, which role would I play at my induction?”

  Of The Light answered sternly: “We do not pander to sadism. No member of our Purgatory Club can ever be judged fit to serve as purgator who has not already benefited as purgatant.”

  Stock remarked, “In other words, they have to be sure of enough victims.”

  “Brother John,” Of The Light told him, “we tolerate your participation solely in the ever blessed hope that the letter may someday lead you to the spirit.”

  Double Oh Nine puffed his lips—in his own perception, he would be blowing out cigarette smoke, perhaps in rings—and then smiled smugly, as though to imply, “And because I’m so bloody good at it.”

  Corwin made himself say, “And how often do you…ah ... meet?”

  “The minimum is once a quarter,” said Withycombe. “With special ... meetings called on request whenever anyone feels the immediate need for purgation. Which has happened as often as often as twice within a week, but that’s extremely rare. Usually it averages out to once a month or thereabouts.”

  Then it is highly unlikely, Corwin thought in a surge of relief, that I would be called upon to act as purgator during my limited time here.

  But to participate in any capacity whatsoever?

  Angela would at once cry, “NO!”

  He had been churning the whole question through his meditative faculties ever since M. Magadance broached the subject earlier that day. But the actual moment to decide found him perhaps even more torn than had it taken him totally unaware. With the Angel of Duty and the Imp of the Perverse both tugging him toward the precipice, Angela’s opinions and his own misgivings—not to say terrors—tugging him back, and the counseling voices of his psychomystical and spiritual advisors at war somewhere in the empyrean above, Dr. Younghart suggesting mildly that such experiences might act as therapy upon his patient’s peculiar perceptional disorder, could a trustworthy and respectable group be found (but a company of murderers?); Mother Jilly flying in the face of a two-millennia tradition of martyrologies and pious flagellants to state pointblank that God was not amused. Quite a dialogue the madre might have with Brother Paul Of The Light!

  Meanwhile, Double Oh Nine gave a dry, deliberate cough. They were awaiting Lord Moan’s decision.

  “As you gentlemen may appreciate,” Corwin said carefully, “I have not slept well of late. By my own estimate, I have spent less than two hours of the last thirty-six in any state approaching slumber, and then it was hardly the most refreshing species of slumber. As a result, my mind may be a little prone, just at present, to drift off now and again.”

  “That’s all right,” Withycombe remarked, cheerful as ever. “It can be one of the optimum states in which to go to purgation.”

  Corwin gave this statement a brief mental prodding and replied, “But not, I conceive, in which to make any important life decision.”

  “Brother Earl,” said Of The Light, “we don’t ask you, here tonight, to decide once for all for the rest of your life. All participation in our ceremonies is a time by time decision. True, each time is a renewal of every member’s ardor. Some of us find that each decision makes the next that much easier, and some—”

  “Find the reverse,” Stock put in.

  Of The Light frowned at him and went on, “Some bless us for wasting no time, for although it is never too late, so long as life may last, to take the first step toward salvation, even so is it never too early.”

  Putting more weight on Of The Light’s guarantee than Stock’s insinuations, Corwin thought, all this means that they could never, by their own rules, coerce me into participating as a purgator in any case. Rather self-satisfied to have made sure of this angle before committing himself to anything at all, he swirled his cognac once or twice, gazing at it like a philosopher in contemplation of some natural phenomenon, and then remarked, “In that case, gentlemen, I’m willing enough to have a go at it.”

  “You shall not regret this, Brother Earl.” Of The Light closed his large hand on Corwin’s upper arm, gently compressing the biceps. “When you awaken tomorrow, purged and purified—”

  “Tomorrow?” Corwin tried instinctively to pull away. Withycombe laid hold of his other arm.

  Wearing something much like a smirk, Double Oh Nine stubbed out his second mock cigarette and explained, “Everything is strictly voluntary, Moan. But once you volunteer, you’re committed. If they allowed backsliding, there’d never be an end to it.”

  “But ... But is there not some preliminary interval of fasting required?” said Corwin, hoping that these three had mentioned it, and trying to remember when.

  “Yes,” said Withycombe, “but your lordship has already built up a nice fast-from-sleep, and the minimum needed from food and drink, for some purgations, is four to six hours. I make it nine oh two p.m.,” he added, checking his wristwatch. “Since I’m usually a few minutes fast, you should have just about enough time to finish your brandy, and we can plan on starting at three a.m.”

  Corwin drained his cognac in one gulp.

  Chapter

  Just two cups, Lestrade figured, and then she’d go back up to her room and treat herself to a Drowzoff caplet. Meanwhile, she sat in the clockround cocktail lounge of the Alpha Arms and shone her penlight over the printout map of Reno and its suburbs.

  There was enough mock gaslight over the bar itself to allow the bartender to mix his drinks. The only other lounge lighting came from the rainboglo menus mounted above each booth and sticking up from the center of each table. There were also the glowing cigarettes of the only other two customers in the lounge, both of them deep in the smokers’ section. The light dial in Room 85 seemed to be stuck at a thirty-watt level, too. Reno must conserve its night illumination, except what was needed in the gambling and show areas, for the outsides of its buildings.

  Seemed strange that the lounge should be so nearly empty at a little after 23:00. She guessed it must be because the Alpha Arms was one of the very few Reno hotels without its own gambling den. Made an advertising slogan of it: “Your haven away from the bright lights and one-armed bandidos.” Earlier in the evening, before the guests went out, and much later, when they crawled back with aching eyes, ringing ears, and empty billclips, this lounge might be considerably fuller.

  She was halfway through her second cup when Hammersmith finally arrived. She tabbed off her penlight and watched him inspect the smokers’ side of the lounge, approaching the other two customers close enough to exchange a few words with each of them in turn, as if to make sure that neither was the party he was looking for. At last, starting for the bar, he looked her way, paused in his tracks, and waved to her, using his right arm from elbow to wrist. She gave him one answering flash from her penlight. He finished his detour to the bar, had a brief verbal bout with the bartender, and eventually made it over to her booth, carrying a tumbler half full of something straight up.

  “Lousy creep wouldn’t let me have the bottle,” he said. “Called it against house rules.”

  “Why didn’t you have him refill your pocket flask for you?”

  Hammersmith didn’t seem to hear the sarcasm in her question. “Still has a couple swigs of rye in it, and this—” He held up the glass. “—is brandy. Floater likes a change every once in a while. What’s that you’re swiggin’?” he went on, sniffing audibly as he slid into the seat opposite her. “Not absinthum?”

  “Anise roast.”

  “Yugh. Straight? Here, let’s sweeten it up a little. Classy brandy mixes with anything.” He reached across as if to pour directly from his glass into her cu
p.

  She moved it out of his reach.

  He retreated, took a swig of his brandy, and said, “Hey, that ersatz coffeesim doesn’t even have any caffeine, does it? If you don’t want anything to keep you warm tonight, Dragon Lady, at least you want a little caffeine to keep you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

  She thought seriously about getting up and leaving then and there. Instead, reminding herself that he had handed her some evidence, however illegally obtained, on the Withycombe case, she replied, “I intend to be bright-eyed in the morning. When you’ll be hung over.”

  “Hunh-unh. Not me. Got a sure preventative. Stay up all night.”

  She started folding the map of Reno. “M. Hammersmith, I admit you hold it well. No staggering, very little slurring of the tongue. But I agreed to this nightcap in order to share a few more thoughts about the Withycombe case. Since you’re obviously not sober enough to talk sense, there’s no point in my staying.”

  She stood. Reaching across the table again, he closed his left hand around her right wrist and squeezed almost hard enough to hurt.

  “You need a little real braingrease, Lady Les,” he said. “Then we’ll both be able to talk sense. What’s the point of being in Reno overnight if we don’t take advantage of it for a stakeout?”

  “A stakeout.”

  “Yeah. Came to me while I was convincing one of those blamed rentacar screens to turn its wheels loose. Why come all the way out here to Reno and then pass up the chance to stake out our boy Apex’s mini-rancheroni?”

  One, because they had no reason to believe that Apex was in town. Two, because a ranchero, even a mini-ranchero, would cover too much ground for a single car to stake out. Three, because according to the map, the Westerman-Apex “spread” was out in the open, where a stakeout car would be rather more obvious than on a city street. But if she tried to feed Hammersmith any of this data, he’d interpret it as willingness to be argued into spending a night in a car with him.