The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Making a fist, she levered her arm free and stepped out of the booth. “Blank my former remarks about your drinking,” she told him. “I see now that your best course will be to drink yourself under the table right here. Maybe it’ll keep you out of trouble till morning.”

  She turned and started for the doorway. Within three steps, she felt a hand clamp down on her shoulder.

  “Not so fast, Dragon Lady,” said the private detective. “Let’s talk.”

  “In the morning, M. Hammersmith,” she said without trying to turn around. “When you’re sober. If you ever get sober.”

  “Damn it, I’m plenty sober! Sober enough to drive over here from the needletrain—”

  “Hey!” The bartender was coming out from behind the bar. “This rollo bothering you, lady?”

  “Mind your own beeswax, buddy,” said Hammersmith.

  “Keeping this place peaceful is my business.”

  “Peddlin’ booze is your business—rollo yourself—and you ain’t all that good at—”

  “Blank it, fella, and let the lady go.”

  So chivalry wasn’t quite dead. Why not take advantage of it? Still without turning, Lestrade told the bartender, “I think you’d make his day if you smacked him one.”

  The bartender swung. There were a couple of ugly sounds, including a grunt, and Hammersmith’s hand came off her shoulder. She looked around to see him rubbing his jaw.

  “Bloody damn!” he said, raising his fist and aiming at the bartender. Who replied with a karate block and followed through with a punch to the stomach. Hammersmith crumpled.

  “Hey, save some for me!” shouted one of the other patrons, who had gotten up and was halfway to the point of action.

  “No!” said Lestrade. “That’s enough.” She thought about reinforcing it with her ID card, but how would it look, a polly having incited to riot in the first place? The barkeep was a big man and, from what she’d seen of his style, a pretty competent martial artist. “This floater,” she told him, “said he’s registered here under the name of Hammersmith or something like that. Maybe you could trans him up to his room and slip him a Sleepitoff pill or something.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, M.,” said the bartender. “And most ladies,” he added, “would’ve wanted to see me throw him out on the street.”

  “I’m a conservationist. I believe in preserving rattlers and stinkbugs, too.” She handed the bartender two tridols as a tip. “Thanks, M.”

  “All part of the service, M.,” he replied, pocketing the bills. “Don’t worry about another thing.”

  Hammersmith was groaning and slapping the floor. Lestrade made her exit before he got up. She should have left sooner, she told herself sourly. She ought to have guessed that her suggestion about getting Hammersmith to his room would make the other males in the lounge think she was syrupy about the lunker.

  To be on the safe side, she got her room changed from 85 to 47 and instructed the desk to disconnect her room phone. Then she spent an hour in Room 47 reminding herself why she was in Reno at all before even attempting to sleep.

  Her own objective was tracking down the possible connection between Nostalgia City’s Pepper Pot and Nandra Barlow Savecash. Tomorrow she would tackle the neighborhood where Savecash had her Reno headquarters and where Linda Handsome had apparently spent four years before moving on to Nostalgia City. A few nosy neighbors with long memories could sometimes be more use than all the computer databanks on the continent.

  Of course, other investigators had already sifted Savecash’s neighbors’ memories, tactfully but often over the years. But not, so far as Lestrade knew, in relation to Handsome.

  The officially recommended procedure would be to get in touch with the local P.D. before doing anything else. But ... Nevada pollies? When she herself was supposed to be on her own rest and recreation time? Maybe she could locate an Inindrucon agent.

  Hammersmith might have been useful. Interviewing neighbors was one of his specialties. Another one was breaking into places. Lestrade tried to turn her thoughts around in time to keep them from getting into the idea of an unauthorized search through Savecash’s house in the owner’s absence.

  Inconveniently, Savecash’s house turned out to be on the other side of the city from the Westerman-Apex mini-ranchero. And Hammersmith wasn’t interested in tracing Lord Moan’s drug supplier and clearing Gentian Truemeasure. Magnum Hammersmith, P.I., was interested only in the old Withycombe case.

  Although what he could hope to learn by staking out the Apex spread for the rest of tonight ... Had he gotten some information that Apex was in Reno this weekend? Lestrade should have asked before walking away. Shouldn’t have let distaste get the better of her quite so fast.

  Hammersmith was right about one thing. Withycombe’s letter certainly looked like some kind of veiled blackmail threat. As if he and his brother had made a deal before Withycombe went in. Before Withycombe took the blame for Uncle Westerman’s death? Even before the actual murder? And now he was reminding the brother on the outside to live up to his part of their bargain. Or else what? If Withycombe had some hold on Apex, then so must Apex have one on Withycombe. By feeding out data to get Apex convicted, Withycombe would cut off the funding that kept him in Hummingbird Hill luxury. Both brothers would land in cheap, uncomfortable state prisons. Assuming whatever Withycombe was blackmailing Apex about was that serious. It might be something more embarrassing than criminal.

  In which case, would it be worth all the risk? Again making the assumption that Apex was trying to mastermind Withycombe’s murder.

  What Apex had taken his solemn oath to do within the year was apparently to divest himself of the family’s New York penthouse. And, she guessed, of certain other properties as well.

  The Directory still listed Westerman Manor as Hector Heikkinen Apex’s principal residence. (Security Hotels were forbidden to keep the Directory in their internal computer databanks, to safeguard against honest survivors being pestered by unwanted letters from criminals whom the law had decreed out of circulation. But people carried small, personal directories, especially of their own former residences, around in their brains.) So why would Withycombe have addressed his letter to the Nostalgia City condominium instead? One possible answer: he had addressed a similar letter to every property his brother had promised to get rid of. Withycombe was smart enough to understand that Apex would destroy every such letter he received. But all undeliverable letters went back to the point of origin. If there wasn’t any other return address, they went back to the collection point indicated by the postcode, which meant, in this case, the Hummingbird Hill apartment complex for guards and daystaffers. Withycombe could have arranged with whoever smuggled the letters out for him to smuggle in again any that the Postal Service bounced back as undeliverable. Any that came back, he could be fairly sure his brother was no longer available there—had probably divested himself of that property. Any that didn’t come back, he could be equally sure Apex had received and destroyed. It wasn’t a foolproof system. The Postal Service automatically forwarded mail from old addresses for six months, longer if the patrons paid for longer. Apex might well pay. And once in a great while, even a modern radiprinted postmark got smeared and illegible. But on the other hand, Withycombe might be peppering Apex with these letters continually. As suggested by the fact that one had been waiting in the Nostalgia City condo for Hammersmith to find. Destroying them might easily be a task Apex didn’t want to delegate to anybody, and making the rounds to do it himself would keep him hopping. That alone could give him a motive for murder, especially the murder of somebody who was “dead to the world” anyway.

  In which case, also, not finding one waiting in Nostalgia City might have tipped Apex off that somebody else was peeking into the matter. Good thing they’d made photocopies and left the original resealed in its envelope, even knowing that Apex would almost certainly destroy
it.

  All right, but what was Withycombe blackmailing Apex about, and how long would he go on threatening before acting? Starting to visualize the two brothers cutting cards, or maybe playing a game of chess, to decide which of them would hold the pillow down on Uncle Westerman, Lestrade decided it was time for her Drowzoff and bed.

  Chapter

  It was a great temptation for Corwin to pass the entire four to six hours weltering in fears and self-criminations. But that would be counterproductive. Besides, one could ask oneself only so often how one had missed the cues that the invitation had been for this same night. And the mental—occasionally subvocal—repetition that, after all, these people obviously took care never to kill nor maim one another, comforting at first, eventually turned inside out to become a reminder of the more grisly possibilities.

  True, he had met as many “guests” as both the police records and those of Hilton-Maracott said there ought to be, numerically speaking. But Withycombe’s own words had suggested that there was indeed truth underlying M. Magadance’s allegation; and, although Withycombe had seemed to make very light of his apparent close brushes with death ... Might it be possible for this closed little community to draft a member of the clockround staff into the role of a deceased paying guest, and so conceal a casualty while continuing to draw upon the victim’s funds? The conspiracy including even the warden-manager and daystaffers? And what of such others as chaplains, medics, and special instructors? The hour was conducive to bizarre grotesqueries, especially to someone in his present situation.

  Such a substitute guest seemed unlikely to wish to go on participating in the activity that had proved fatal to his or her predecessor, which made M.’s Bluehair and Walker the likeliest candidates for the role. And it seemed particularly suggestive, in this light, that the accounts which Stock, Withycombe, and Of The Light had given him of these two did not entirely match the testimony of M. Magadance. Nevertheless, seemingly greater discrepancies in various historical and literary matters had been reconciled successfully. And if M.’s Bluehair and Walker had indeed both tried one purgation, it would most probably have been before M. Magadance’s arrival, and need not contradict their present behavior as she had observed it.

  Moreover, the Bluehair whom Corwin had met seemed entirely consonant with the Mrs. Abercrombie, &c., who had profitably blackwidowed her way through so many spouses before her apprehension; whilst Jorum Walker, assuming that today was a typical one for him, must spend his time in an alcoholic haze. Surely a staff member posing as a guest would have to play a double role, carrying out enough regular duties to remain on the staff list as well. Could a drunk maintain such a schedule?

  It had been easy enough, once Corwin had an hour to himself before dinner, to work out that Walker must be Cameron Oyaas Richart, the “mercy cannibal” who upon being sentenced had given his own detailed story to the news services in the stated hope that public opinion would vindicate him where the official jury had not. Following the wreck of their private airplane in mountain wilderness, Richart had “put his two companions out of their misery” and subsequently survived until his rescue, on their corpses and the canned South American beer they’d been smuggling in for the thrill of it. His claim was that they had been too badly injured to survive. From what remained of their bodies, the autopsists had disagreed; the cannibalism aspect might have sealed Richart’s doom in any event. The case had spawned more than one novel, none of which Corwin had ever gotten around to reading. Sensational as it had been when new—at about the same time he was just learning his letters—it had since been swept more or less under the carpet. In ages of less advanced medical technique, Jorum Oyaas Walker might well be dead by now of one or more alcohol-related ailments.

  M. Parkinson, “Warden Warren,” was the third who rarely if ever attended Purgatory Club ceremonies, and then only in the role of observer. But Corwin doubted very much that any imposter would be able to take the manager’s place without Hilton-Maracott noticing the difference, even despite the prison’s strictly cloistered nature.

  Assuming, then, that all the inmates were who they ought to be, whole and sound; that Withycombe was the only one for two decades to have been in danger and that even with him the alleged would-be murderer had twice failed, thanks to the vigilance of the club’s other participating members ... Corwin’s immediate prospects remained obsessively nervewracking.

  And yet, he repeated to himself, how much worse can it be than my every visit to doctor and dentist between the ages of about twelve and twenty-four, and roughly half my visits since, whenever they have coincided with my fantasy modes? But then there is always the base awareness, with modern medical practitioners, that ninety-nine percent of it is all the sufferer’s personal perception. Even to us spontaneous pain producers, there is a certain difference between actual as opposed to purely perceptional agony. And to judge from M. Magadance’s descriptions, what they deal in here is very actual.

  Yes, but was this not exactly the sort of material which M. Liberty, with her reporter’s nose, looked for him to bring out to her in return for her vital assistance in the whole project?

  His pocket watch had been with his other belongings in the suitcase delivered, as per Sergeant Click’s guarantee, that afternoon to his prison suite. But he had not put it back in his pocket, reasoning that Lord Moan would relish evening freedom from the tyranny of the iron minute-hand. And had he had it on him, his escorts would probably have confiscated it before leaving him here. Hence he had no way to know how much time was passing, but assumed it to be far less than it seemed.

  During the direct passage they had made of it from the dining hall, his own personal world had returned in giddying force. His present surroundings—a closet attached to one of the club’s two facilities in the basement of the main hotel building—still looked as it had when they locked and bolted him into it: a small, lozenge-shaped chamber whose plate-metal walls glowed with crude imitations of Boschesque demons. It might have been three paces across, but for the pit that yawned—of course—over most of the central floor space. Due to the smallness of the chamber in its present state, the pendulum hung directly over the pit. This was not strictly accurate. The pendulum ought to have been pulled up completely before the walls started flattening to drive the victim over the precipice. But something was dangling there in standard reality, so Corwin’s perception made of it his venerable namesake’s famous pendulum.

  The figure of Death, be-robed in dark draperies, stood in the acute angle opposite the door. No painted image, this, but some sort of effigy, darkly tridimensional in contrast with the glow of the wall daubings. A large book lay near its hem. It was curious, how books nearly always translated, even at a distance, into books, their texts accurate to the comma.

  Corwin was grateful that neither Withycombe, Stock, nor Of The Light had inquired concerning his perceptions of this closet. He would have been hard pressed to translate them into Peakean imagery on the spur of the moment.

  Chances were that the floor was solid and pit-less, the walls cool. Nevertheless, unwilling to let his escort suspect his personal perception, he had stood haughtily rooted in place just inside the door until he heard it closed and secured. Then, wondering whether it had any viewing apparatus, he had strolled around to the nearest obtuse angle and sat crosslegged on the floor, striving to appear casual and as though he did not feel himself to be on a narrow strip between circular black abyss and walls heated to searing incandescence.

  As the immeasurable moments crept inexorably onward, his curiosity to perceive this chamber however it really was assumed the aspect of a solemn duty. (Anything, to draw his thoughts from what was scheduled at the end of this wait!) Unfortunately, his perceptional mode appeared less and less liable to shift of itself during the next several hours. Apprehension seemed to act, not only as a spur into his personal world, but as a fixative to hold him therein.

  Yet this was somewhat paradox
ical, apprehension being by definition, so to speak, a wavery state. Four or five times since his marriage he had succeeded, when occasion demanded, in arresting the shift-over and remaining in one mode or the other. To date, he had managed such feats of willpower only when the change began slowly and gradually enough to allow of his catching it in an early warning stage. If he could turn it around tonight, after ... surely he must have sat here at least an hour by now…that would constitute a major breakthrough.

  Under more normal circumstances, he should have preferred a breakthrough in the opposite direction, a transfer at will from standard reality into fantasy mode. But, as Angela sometimes quoted the Household Philosopher of syndicated fame, one worked within the situation at hand.

  He had little doubt that the closet was actually rectangular. Its lozenge shape fell among the simplest basic perceptional stage-setting truths. Even realizers experienced and had for centuries commented upon the tricks of optical illusion. For a fancier, it could be tactile illusion as well. Corwin would certainly have felt each corner as either acute or obtuse, regardless of its true ninety-degree status, if he could have borne to touch the walls.

  He had no desire to experience the result of such a touch—the throbbing, searing, blistering skin—purely delusional though it would undoubtedly be, as he was able to reason by the mere fact that he could sit within inches of the apparently red-hot surface and feel only a warm glow on his back. His perceptional world was explaining the overall temperature of the room by presenting him with a mass of cool air pushing up from the pit; in standard reality, however, the closet probably enjoyed a uniform interior climate of between eighteen and nineteen degrees Celsius.

  He put his right hand over the edge and into the pit. Beneath his palm he felt the sensation of nothingness, amounting almost to a suctional force that threatened to draw his whole arm down and, following it, the rest of his body. Yet because even the most perfect fantasy perception could not alter the objective laws of physics, his palm remained flat on a level with the floor area that he could see and feel. Simple vertigo might cause him to fall, but he would simply fall over flat on his face upon the floor, and anything else would be waking dream. What dreams, however, might come ...