Flicker of Doom

by Paul Kenyon

  Don Alejandro's hand was steady again. He smiled sardonicallly.

  "And the Baroness," he said.

  12

  "She's very beautiful," the Baroness said.

  The Velazquez portrait dominated the wall. The Duchess, full-length and life-size, gazed with remote serenity out of a twelve-foot frame. She was a striking beauty, with raven hair and cool aristocratic features. She was wearing a black gown that exposed creamy shoulders and a generous amount of bosom.

  "As you are," Don Alejandro said with a little bow. "It was astute of Marietta to notice the resemblance."

  "Well, we're both wearing a black dress, anyhow," Penelope laughed. "Only mine is a little shorter."

  She had on the filmy black dress with the glass buttons that Sumo had made up for her. The design was Halston, but the workmanship was his. Over in the corner, where he was holding a glass of sherry uncomfortably in his hand, Dr. Funke stared greedily at the plunging neckline.

  "The Duchess was a woman of rare parts," Don Alejandro said. "Fortunately, she managed to bear three children before the Inquisition divided her in two."

  "Or you wouldn't be here?" Penelope prompted.

  "That is right. The Quimera line of descent is through her. The Duke entered Holy Orders after her death. He so enjoyed what had been done to her that he eventually worked his way up to the post of Grand Inquisitor."

  She turned to the somber El Greco portrait hanging beside the Velazquez. "You seem to have had more than one Inquisitor among your ancestors."

  "Ah, yes. Don Luis de Otero. My line of descent through him is, as you say, bar sinister."

  "On the wrong side of the sheet, you mean?" she said innocently.

  Don Alejandro scowled.

  From his corner, Dr. Funke spoke up. "Don Alejandro possesses a fine collection of authentic torture instruments from the Inquisition. Some were used by his ancestors. Perhaps he'll show them to you."

  "Yes," the Spaniard said. "An interesting bit of history."

  She gave a light laugh. "As long as there's no demonstration." She turned to the Velazquez again. "Velazquez is an astonishing painter," she said sweetly. "Are you familiar with his portrait of the Court Dwarf at the Prado?"

  Dr Funke glowered.

  "Of course," Don Alejandro said maliciously. "Sad little man. My ancestors liked to keep dwarfs around. And parrots and baboons."

  Dr. Funke took a quick swig of sherry. It went down the wrong way, and he coughed.

  Penelope nodded at the paintings and at the sweep of the great hall with its hangings and shields and display armor. "Are you trying to recreate the past, Don Alejandro?"

  He shrugged. "The past is glory. The present is… without distinction."

  "And yet we must adjust to the world as it is."

  There was a flash of fire in his eyes. "Or, by heaven, the world must adjust to us!"

  "The world doesn't have much use for aristocrats these days."

  "Then we must make the world sit up and take notice." He frowned at her. "You should understand what I mean. The Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini. The possessor of one of the most distinguished names in Europe."

  "I was born an American."

  "So you put your name on and off as it suits you, like one of your gowns."

  "I try to make myself useful in the world as it is." She smiled at him. "And so do you, Don Alejandro. I seem to recall that you have a profession. You took the trouble to become a neurologist. A very distinguished neurologist, if I recall."

  He waved a negligent hand. "It was a means to an end."

  "Earning a living?" she said boldly.

  He shot a black look at the empty spaces on the wall of paintings. "There was enough left of the Otero y Quimera inheritance to support me in comfort, if not in style. But I dream of more — the recovery of my rightful heritage!"

  "An impossible dream. There are no more kingdoms, no more independent dukedoms or baronial domains."

  He seemed not to hear. "Once the Otero and Quimera dynasties ruled vast areas of Andalusia. We held it as an independent kingdom during all those centuries of Saracen conquest." He struck his palm with his fist. "By heaven, we should have ruled Spain when the Moors were expelled, instead of that sniveling Ferdinand! That was when it all began! They nibbled away at our domain, little by little, until there was nothing left except a few thousand acres in southern Spain and Morocco. Then that dog, Franco, came to power and confiscated our Spanish estates!"

  He was breathing hard now. His face was splotched with red. The ancient history was as real to him as the room they stood in now.

  "Leaving you with your Moroccan holdings?" Penelope prompted.

  He snorted. "A pittance! At the mercy of the political maneuverings of France and Spain! Even so, I held on! Until those dogs in Paris and Madrid conspired to rob me of everything that was left!"

  "When Moroccan independence was granted, you mean? In 1956?"

  "Yes. The Sultan catered to the nationalists. I was relieved of everything — everything except this one miserable villa and a few orange groves!"

  Penelope didn't think the villa was miserable. From what she'd seen when she arrived, it embraced hundreds of acres of seashore property, surrounded by a high wall, with a magnificent old castle that was a blend of Spanish and Moorish architecture.

  "Surely," she said, "you don't think they conspired against you personally? There were national interests involved."

  His eyes were mad. "They plotted together! Leclerc in France. Delegado in Spain. El-Hamid in Morocco. Oh, there were scores of them, I can tell you!"

  "You must have quite an enemies list," Penelope said.

  "And now your President!" he went on. "Encouraging a French and British presence in the Mediterranean! Conspiring with the Arabs! He'll promise them anything to get their oil!"

  "Your orange groves?" Penelope said. "It seems to me that the Moroccan government could take them away from you any time it wants. Without encouragement."

  He wasn't listening to her. "But I'll get it all back!" he shouted. "All of it! The holdings in Spain! The Moroccan estates! The royal prerogatives! By God, I'll make them all sit up and take notice!"

  She would have dismissed it as the ravings of a lunatic, except for the fact that the politicians he'd mentioned had all died. And the nuclear near-disaster at Bandar Abbas.

  "Don Alejandro…" Dr Funke was tugging at the tall Spaniard's sleeve. His shriveled little face showed concern.

  "Eh?" Don Alejandro passed a hand over his eyes.

  "The lights, Don Alejandro, the lights!"

  "What? You're right! I'll have that lazy ox's hide!"

  He pulled the bell rope. A hulking servant dressed in a green vest and velvet knee britches came in.

  "Si, Don Alejandro? Que desea?"

  Don Alejandro spoke with controlled fury. "Hijo," he said, "you forgot to change the light."

  The huge lout looked frightened. "Lo siento! Perdόneme, Don Alejandro!"

  He hurried off. A moment later a change came over the room. Penelope couldn't put her finger on it, but it felt more peaceful.

  She hadn't realized it until this moment, but she'd been feeling edgy, combative. It had been all she could do to keep from punching Don Alejandro. And that remark about the dwarfs had been quite uncalled for.

  She looked over at the Velazquez portrait of the Duchess of Quimera. The colors seemed subtly different. The flesh tones were less flushed. Cooler.

  "That's better," Don Alejandro said. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  "What was that all about?" Penelope said.

  His good humor restored, Don Alejandro said, "It's well known that color affects our moods. Green is restful and relaxing, red is exciting, gray is depressing and so on. You'd find it hard to fall asleep in an orange bedroom, for example. That's why industrial psychologists are consulted about the colors they paint offices and factory areas — certain colors increase productivity. I like to regulate my own moods, bu
t I don't want to go to the trouble of painting a room a different color several times a day." He smiled.

  She looked around at the vast hall. "I can understand why."

  "But, of course, color is nothing more than light of different wave lengths. You can achieve the same effect with light alone. That's why your appetite is better in some restaurants than others. It depends on the lighting. You've heard of the psychological experiments where light was used to turn perfectly appetizing food odd colors — green meat, purple peas? The subjects were unable to eat."

  She nodded. "But I didn't notice any change of light in this room just now."

  "That's where I make use of my special knowledge as a neurologist. The brain perceives impressions of light that are of extremely short duration, even if you don't actually see anything." He gestured up toward the shadows of the tall ceiling. "There are hidden spotlights up there. They're flashing at this very moment. But the flashes are too brief for you to see them."

  Penelope looked up at the ceiling. It looked dark and gloomy.

  "How brief?" she said.

  "A few millionths of a second. They're laser spurts."

  "And how often?"

  "About fifty times a second. If you get much below that, you begin to match brain rhythms. There are… other effects."

  Penelope ignored that. She'd seen some of those other effects at Bandar Abbas.

  "And your flashes are different colors for different moods?" she said.

  He looked pleased. "That's right. In effect, I'm painting the whole room with light, without interfering with the perceived color of these paintings. Just now, I was using a red light to increase our sensitivity. But it went on too long and made us irritable. That fool Sancho forgot to change it. A little more, and we might actually have begun to behave irrationally."

  She didn't comment. She'd thought that Don Alejandro had been acting balmy. Perhaps he had a lower threshold than she did.

  "I'll install the automatic circuits tomorrow," Dr. Funke said. "You'll be able to program the lights in advance."

  Don Alejandro nodded. He offered his arm to Penelope. "Shall we go in to dinner now?" he said.

  She was quite hungry. Famished, in fact. It must have been the lights.

  * * *

  There were bars on the windows of her room. They seemed quite unnecessary, forty feet above ground.

  Penelope thought it might be a good idea to try the door. She rattled the knob. She'd guessed right. It was locked.

  She looked around her bedroom. It had everything she needed to make her comfortable. There was a big, soft, sixteenth-century bed with a canopy, a well-stocked bar with a little refrigerator concealed in a carved walnut sideboard, a good selection of reading matter if you had a taste for leather-bound editions in Spanish of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, a little bathroom with a terrazzo floor.

  And lights. She found them concealed above the projecting molding near the ceiling, a whole battery of tiny spots, no doubt blinking away like crazy, too rapidly for her to see.

  That's why she'd felt so sleepy and unambitious after she entered the room. The lights were tranquilizing her. Fortunately, she'd had the presence of mind to take a couple of the pep pills she had in her bag.

  Don Alejandro was keeping her on ice. He didn't want her wandering around his castle tonight. She wondered why.

  He'd suggested that she stay overnight after they'd finished dinner. It was after midnight. She'd have had to call a taxi to take her back to downtown Tangier. She'd get a good night's rest, and a swim in the morning, he said.

  She'd accepted with unfeigned alacrity. It was a perfect opportunity to do some snooping.

  Except that she was locked in.

  There was only one thing to do. Get undressed.

  She unbuttoned her lacy black frock and took it off. If there were some sort of spying device, Don Alejandro was getting an enticing view of her in her black panties and bra. But she hadn't been able to find an optical device. The master of light had contented himself with a small microphone and FM link disguised as brass studs in a chest.

  She tore the dress carefully along the seams. When she finished, she had a long, irregular black rag, fifty feet from end to end. In the morning she could paste it back together again, along the Velcro strips cleverly concealed under the seams. If she moved carefully, she could get by without it splitting.

  She turned out the lights and tiptoed over to the window. The bars were an ornamental iron grid, too small to fit your head through.

  She lowered the black lace streamer down the side of the building, playing it out like a rope. There were a couple of the glass buttons at the end she was holding. She put one of them to her eye and squinted.

  She was looking into another bedroom. It was the one directly below hers. The light was being piped through the optical fibers the dress was made of, from the lens, disguised as a glass button, at the other end. The image was reconstituted, point by point, no matter what folds and bends the light had to travel through.

  It was a periscope — a periscope that you could tie in knots and still see through.

  There was a maid in the room, a big buxom creature with a feather duster. She was wearing a black uniform with a little white starched apron and cap. She was dusting the dark furniture energetically.

  The door opened. A wide, hulking creature in knee britches came in. It was the servant named Sancho.

  The maid shook the feather duster at him coquettishly. He gave her a stupid grin. She shook a hammocklike bosom at him. He scratched his head. She made an explicit gesture, explaining it carefully. He nodded and dropped his britches. The Baroness caught a glimpse of something the approximate size and shape of a salami, and then the maid was stretched face down across the bed, her skirts pulled up and her pants down around her ankles. A pair of enormous white cheeks presented themselves, and then Sancho was standing between them, his hands on the maid's hips. He rammed himself home and began pumping energetically.

  It wasn't awfully interesting. The Baroness lowered the black streamer another ten feet. It was twisting, and she had a blurred view of the horizon, alternating with stone wall. She steadied it.

  This was better. She was looking into the great hall.

  Don Alejandro was standing with his back to her. His head was bent thoughtfully. He nodded once or twice. The black streamer stirred in the breeze, and the view shifted enough for her to see Dr. Funke, his hands gesturing while he explained something.

  It was too bad she couldn't hear what they were saying. She'd have to ask Sumo to add some kind of listening device to the dress next time.

  There was a third figure in the room, sitting in one of the high-backed chairs. It was Ahmed.

  She wasn't surprised. It had been too much of a coincidence, his picking her up in the Medina like that. He had to tie in somehow with PAFF and Don Alejandro. The bug she'd found in her lamp was proof enough of that.

  Ahmed opened his mouth and began speaking. She tried to read his lips. He was speaking a rapid Arabic, and she was only able to catch a few words. He was saying something about guerrillas — the Arab acronym for PAFF — and then, very plainly, his lips formed the word "Baroness."

  Don Alejandro nodded and gestured toward the ceiling. He was telling Ahmed that he had her locked up.

  She'd been watching for four or five minutes now, and suddenly the scene blurred. She could see the stones of the outside wall flashing by, and all of a sudden she was looking into a big brown eye.

  She tugged on the dress, but something was holding it at the other end. She pulled sharply, and they let it go. She hauled it back through the window and turned to face the door.

  The lock rattled a minute later, and the heavy door swung open. A thin servant with a face like a fox stood there. Sancho was behind him, adjusting his britches.

  They moved into the room and shut the door behind them.

  "So," the thin fellow said, "it's good thing I checked the room downstairs to see what Sanc
ho was doing. And that I noticed that strip of black cloth hanging outside the window. I thought at first that you had made a rope to climb down, until I looked through the button."

  "Esteban," Sancho said nervously, "shouldn't we get Don Alejandro?"

  "In a minute, niño," the thin one said. His eyes were fastened hungrily on Penelope's figure in the skimpy black bra and panties. He held out his hand. "Give me that," he said.

  "Gladly," the Baroness said.

  She lashed out with the black streamer and caught him around the neck. She pulled him to her and spun him around backwards. With a swift motion like a striking snake, she got the heel of her hand under his chin and broke his neck.

  "Esteban!" Sancho said stupidly. He looked at the dead figure on the floor, a disjointed marionette in green livery.

  Then he looked at the Baroness. His low brow furrowed in concentration. "You killed Esteban," he said wonderingly. An expression of resolve came to his face. He moved toward her at a crouch, his arms spread out, his sausage fingers clawed.

  She couldn't let him get those hands on her. She backed away until she bumped into the bed. His lips writhed in anticipation and he lunged. She struck out with her foot and caught him in the belly. He grunted in pain, but his hands grabbed, and she just barely got her foot away in time. He lunged again, and she did a backward somersault over the bed and landed on the other side.

  He dived over the bed after her, but by then she was underneath it, pulling at his ankles. He howled in surprise and fell over backward. She heaved with all her strength and pulled him under the bed. He must have weighed three hundred pounds. She pulled him halfway out while his hands groped, trying to catch hold of something, and then she had him bent around the mattress, his head and torso underneath the bed and his hips and legs on top. His broad buttocks, upholstered in green velvet, faced her. She reached between them and squeezed his cojones. He screamed in agony and went limp.

  The big ox had fainted. For good measure she dragged him all the way out from under the bed and hit him on the head with a lamp. She didn't wait to see if she'd killed him. That scream was going to bring people.