by Diane Duane
“Analog,” she said, “not digital. And not computer-managed, like the phone system in our time.” Rhiow knew from her old hhau’hif associate Ehef, who worked with other wizards on the CATNYP system at the New York Public Library, that a digital system was structurally much more liable to sentience than an analog one: the advent of the transistor and the densely-packed circuitry that made digital signaling possible had left the vast matter substrate of the phone system itself able to become half-alive even very early on. What state it had now reached in her home time, with quadrillions of synapses stretching across continents and under the seas and now even into space, Rhiow couldn’t say. But Ehef always talks about the Net and the Web as if they’re alive in more than the normal “inanimate-object” way…
“Well,” she said after a moment, “that’s more than we had to go on with. You’re pretty sure it meant Anya Harte…”
“I don’t think there’s any other possible reading.”
“One thing though, Rhiow,” Hwaith said. “She didn’t make just one call. She made two.”
Rhiow blinked at that. “Who was the other one to?”
“Another woman. Beyond that, the phone wasn’t sure. All it said was that the phone at the other end was tired, said it never had any rest, just kept getting a lot of calls at all hours of the day and night…”
Rhiow’s tail was lashing as she wondered what to make of that. But her thoughts were interrupted by a tall silhouette paused between the open French doors. Helen stood there, gazing out into the darkness.
Urruah let out a small but unmistakeable “meow” from under the table. Helen’s head turned that way: a second later she casually made her way over, put her drink down onto the table, and gazed out across the pool toward the darkness of the hillside.
“Well,” Urruah said, “you had a nice crowd of suitors back there…”
“Please,” Helen said softly, “that’s an image I’ve been trying to avoid.” She sat down for a moment on one of the deck chairs by the table, pausing to rub one foot, then the other. She sighed. “Heels,” she said. “I don’t mind them every now and then, but I’m really more of a flats person…”
“So what was the outcome of that little meeting?” Urruah said.
“Well, among other things, I hired an agent,” Helen said.
Rhiow stared. “You mean – “
“There were at least five of them downstairs in the main room,” Helen said, dry. “They were already fighting over me by the time I got downstairs.” She chuckled. “I have a feeling our Mr. Dagenham gets some kind of commission on his ‘finds’.”
“So which one did you pick?” Rhiow said.
Helen smiled. “The one who was least interested in my secondary sexual characteristics,” she said. “Sometimes my fellow ehhif can be unusually easy to read, and the only figure this one saw when he was looking at me had a lot of zeroes attached.” Her smile acquired that feral quality again, and Rhiow, seeing it, wondered at how unusually feline the expression was for an ehhif. Contagion, she thought, amused. “Once I had representation sorted out, I went to talk to the studio people. I think it went fairly well.” The smile got broader, and if possible, more smug.
Urruah, surprisingly, looked a little concerned. “You don’t think this business might interfere with your work?” he said.
Helen sat down and pushed her hair back with a thoughtful look. “I’m not sure now that it’s not part of it,” she said. “Normally I’d certainly have seen them off. But you know how it is when the events of the moment suddenly put tools in your hand that you weren’t expecting, but that’ll be useful. The Manual says that when the universe itself is imperiled, it may try to find ways to help you that won’t get it, or you, in trouble.” She looked thoughtful. “I find myself wondering whether some of those offices, especially the ones at the studios, are going to be places it’ll be useful for us to have entrée, and an alibi for being there.” She looked over at Rhiow. “And there’s at least one of those studios that’s of interest to us: the one that had the fire. It’s one of several that’re making me a job offer. I imagine I could tell my agent I’ve got a preference for that one.”
Urruah sat switching his tail, thinking. Rhiow watched this process with interest for a moment, then said to Helen, “But, cousin, when we’re through with all this – “
Helen shrugged. “I can ‘vanish,’” she said. “Starlets did that sometimes. A moment of fame, then suddenly something takes them away: marriage, a change of heart…”
Urruah looked up suddenly. “Murder,” he said.
Helen looked shocked. “I’d never stage such a thing,” she said.
“I wasn’t saying you would,” said Urruah, sounding uneasy. “But it’s occasionally been an occupational hazard. Ehhifs’ reactions to the she-ehhif held up before them in movies as desirable can be… complex. And sometimes deadly.”
Helen breathed out, stretched. “I know,” she said. “Well, I’m not going to be the usual starlet: there can’t be that many who’re also wizards. And killing a wizard isn’t all that easy. So let’s not worry about that right now.” She stood up again. “I should go in and deal with Freddie, he needs contact information for me…”
“Freddie?” Rhiow said.
“My agent,” said Helen. “Freddie Fields. He’s a new young agent with a company called MCA.” Urruah’s eyes went wide: Rhiow made a note to ask him why later on. Helen, though, was now wearing a somewhat considering look. “Shouldn’t take more than a moment to do a wizard-spoof on my own cellphone so that it thinks it’s got a ‘40’s local phone number.” She looked down at Hwaith. “You think the local phone system will talk to mine?”
“If properly introduced,” Hwaith said, “shouldn’t be a problem. Make an excuse to use the queens’-room for a few minutes and we can take care of it.”
“Good,” Helen said. “And we can go touch base with Mr. Runyon and let him know what’s happened.”
“He was interested?” Hwaith said as they headed back toward the French doors.
Helen laughed softly. “Are you kidding? If we’re not careful, this little escapade’s likely to wind up in one of his stories. I want to make sure he conceals the facts sufficiently to avoid any time paradoxes. But to say that he found what was going on funny – I think it’d be an understatement.”
They headed back into the main room. The music had thankfully gone quiet now, the band having taken advantage of the general disinterest in what they were doing to take a break and get themselves some booze and food. Over by the table that Runyon and Winchell were sharing, the studio people were arguing in lowered but intense voices, and Runyon was jotting on his pad – not the normal bold block letters he used for casual communication, but something quick and flowing. Shorthand, Urruah said silently to Rhiow. Look at him go! He put his whiskers right forward. They may be sorry some day that they didn’t go have this conversation somewhere else. Do they think just because he can’t talk that he can’t hear?
It does make you wonder, Rhiow said.
As Helen strolled smiling back over to the group, their conversation got a little more hushed, then changed course and picked up again. “Miss Walker,” said one of the men, “Goldwyn would be most interested in testing you for a new romantic drama – “
“Miss Walker, wouldn’t you be more interested in trying something less predictable, possibly even a musical! You could – “
“Paramount is going to be the forefront this year of a whole new idiom in film, we’re calling it film noir – “
They were all talking at once now, and it was impossible for Rhiow to make much sense of anything that was going on. Helen merely stood there exchanging an amused look with slim young Mr. Fields, who stood with his arms crossed and was taking everything in. Rhiow, for her own part, sat down and watched the Silent Man scribbling away, a faint smile on his face. Cousin, she said to him silently, how are you holding up?
Just fine, he said: just fine. He didn’t stop w
riting for a moment. How about you?
Well enough for the moment, Rhiow said, flicking an ear at the sound of the front door opening again for someone to leave or some new guest to arrive. I can hardly believe they’re still turning up here. How long do these things usually go on?
Pretty late sometimes, the Silent Man said. You’d be surprised, sometimes they —
He stopped. She could feel a shock of surprise go through him. On the pad, the Silent Man’s hand froze in place; his eyes went to the doorway to the front hall, to the sound of a woman’s voice speaking, footsteps —
Rhiow go up, turned toward the doorway. There was a woman standing there: dark blonde hair, a high broad forehead, dark down-slanting eyes – handsome enough for a queen-ehhif, Rhiow thought, but by no means up to the standard of the beauties who otherwise were everywhere at this gathering. The woman wasn’t dressed for a party, but in a relatively dark and conservative waist-level jacket and below-the-knee skirt and a dark hat with a veil, like someone who’s just gotten off a train in an old movie. The Silent Man was looking at her like someone who sees coming toward him something he’s dreaded for a long time.
Next to him, Walter Winchell looked from the Silent Man to the blonde woman, and back to the Silent Man again. “Damon – “ he said.
The Silent Man shook his head as the woman began walking toward to them. Then he stood up to greet her, as Winchell did. Helen, for the moment, stood her ground, and it obscurely reassured Rhiow to see her new agent do the same. But the other studio people standing around each edged backward a little, as if both anxious to dissociate themselves from something that was about to happen, and unwilling to miss seeing it.
“Well,” the woman said, and looked at them all: and looked Helen up and down.
Helen merely nodded to the woman courteously, but said nothing.
“Patrice,” said Winchell.
The woman looked at him. “Walter,” she said, and turned her eyes away to Runyon again.
“I called the house to try to reach you, Damon,” Patrice said. “And stopped by afterwards. You were out. But I managed to catch up with you eventually.” She glanced around. “Surprising to see you out and about – especially since all I’ve heard from you and the doctors lately is how sick you’ve been.”
The Silent Man made no move to reach for his pad. He simply stood there and looked her in the eye.
She came closer to him, looked up at him. Patrice was about a head shorter than he; when she looked up to meet his eyes, her face twitched a little, almost as if her neck hurt her from having done this a thousand times before. “I just had to see for myself,” Patrice said, “how you were.”
Runyon opened his mouth. “Been better,” he said, in a nearly inaudible whisper. To Rhiow’s ears, the pain in the two words was incredible, and it had nothing to do with the merely mechanical agony the Silent Man was suffering from the ruin now present where his vocal cords had been.
Patrice looked from him to Helen Walks Softly: a still look, chilly and assessing, and one which Helen did not try to avoid. “Yes,” Patrice said, “I’d say you have.”
Out in the rest of the room, a circle of relative quiet was gradually spreading away from them as if the two words that Runyon had managed to utter were working some kind of dire sympathetic wizardry of their own on the place. Heads were turning toward the frozen little tableau: Patrice, the Silent Man, Helen, and the agent and the studio people standing like embarrassed statues behind them. For a couple of breaths there was no movement, no words were spoken.
Then Patrice said, “I just wanted you to know that I’ve been down here from Reno the last few days to fetch the last of my things that were in storage. I’ve also sent for my boxes from the New York apartment and the Florida house. Everything’s on its way to Reno now. So don’t worry about getting in touch with me again when you get back to New York. There’ll be no need.”
The Silent Man’s mouth moved. Patrice, his lips said: but this time there wasn’t even a breath of sound. Somewhere across the room, ice tinkled in a glass: out in the front hallway, heels clacked across the tile, went quiet.
“Damon,” Patrice said, “I’ve been putting it off, but it’s time. I can’t just keep putting off living my own life any more. It looks like you’re finally letting go of me, which is good. I won’t ever forget you. How could I? But it’s all over. I just thought I had to say it to you at last before I left.”
He simply looked down at her, his face frozen, the brittle bright light of the room’s crystal chandeliers glinting off his glasses.
“The car’s waiting,” she said. “I should go. Goodbye.”
She turned away. Quietly and without stopping to speak to anyone else, Patrice made her way out through the bright room, past the people who stood and watched, out through the front hall, out the front door. Behind her lay a wake of glances that looked first in her direction, then in the Silent Man’s. Out in the front hall, just quickly there and gone again, though nowhere near Patrice, Rhiow caught a flash of a sky-blue dress, heard a faint tap of heels.
Slowly the Silent Man sat back down in his chair, then reached out to the coffeepot on the table, picked it up, tried to pour himself another cup. But the pot was empty. The hand that held the pot was shaking, and Rhiow thought this did not entirely have to do with caffeine. A dark ehhif came hurriedly across the room, picked up the pot and took it away.
Winchell was still looking after her. The Silent Man picked up his pencil again, pulled the pad over to him, and stared at the shorthand-covered page on top as if having trouble remembering how it had gotten that way. After a moment he tore that page off, laid it aside, and wrote on the pad, pushed it over to Winchell as the coffeepot was brought back full.
“Wonder how she knew I was here…” Winchell read under his breath.
He looked off to one side, where a sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman in a dark evening dress and an extravagant hat had been watching the whole passage most keenly. Now that woman looked away, picked up the cocktail she had briefly put down and started an animated conversation with a short bald man in a tuxedo. “My money says somebody called our little Hedda over there,” Winchell said, “and Hedda called Patrice.” His face creased into a fierce frown. “You know as well as I do that she and Louella Parsons have been digging into your story for months, dropping little hints in their columns. And Hopper wasn’t here earlier, Damon: she turned up after the excitement with the cops. Could’ve been that after she got the call from whoever told her you were here, she called Patrice herself, then came to see the excitement. Dollars to doughnuts it’ll be on the radio when she does her show in a couple of days…”
Rhiow glanced around at Hwaith and Urruah. I’d start getting unsidled if I were you, she said. Somehow I doubt we’re going to be here much longer. She jumped up on the empty chair on the near side of the Silent Man, looking at him closely.
The Silent Man was writing on his pad again, shaking his head. After a moment he shoved the pad at Winchell.
THE STORY’S BEEN OTHER PEOPLE ALL MY LIFE. NEVER GET USED TO BEING ONE MYSELF. TIME TO GO.
Winchell glanced at the words, frowned, poured Runyon another cup of coffee. “One for the road?” he said.
The Silent Man nodded. Helen came to stand by the table on the far side. “I’ll be heading out shortly as well,” she said, apparently to him, but also to Rhiow, and then to Urruah as he slipped out from under one of the buffet tables and Hwaith as he came in through the French doors. “Mr. Fields and I have some matters to discuss, and some appointments to set up for tomorrow. Mr. Runyon – thanks again for your kindness.” And I’ll be in touch with you all first thing in the morning, she added silently to him and the others, so we can discuss what we can do with what’s started happening to me. Rhiow, anything from Arhu?
Not as yet, she said. Go ahead, Helen. Call if there’s need. We’ll see you in the morning.
Dai stihó, my cousins, Helen said, and moved off, heading for the pool terrac
e in company with Mr. Fields.
Winchell was looking out across the room, staring down the many eyes still stealing glimpses at the other man at the table, who was now looking at the torn-off pages from his pad. “Damon,” he said, “you want me to drive home behind you?”
The two men’s eyes met, and though the look was very still and composed, Rhiow was surprised at the warmth hidden in it. This is his only real friend, she thought, and he’s going to need his friends, this next while… But the Silent Man shook his head, reached for the pad. MAY HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU IN A FEW DAYS, he wrote. FOR THE COLUMN, AND YOUR OWN SHOW. BIGGER STORY THAN MINE WILL EVER BE.
Winchell looked at him for several moments, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “Drop me a note about it tomorrow, if you can. And keep me posted.”
The Silent Man nodded, put his pad away, got up. Behind him, on a chair nearer the wall, Sheba had been sleeping for some time, fed and petted into doziness quite early in the proceedings. Now Runyon picked her up: she purred as he settled her into her accustomed place on his shoulder and almost immediately dropped off into a doze again. The Silent Man looked around the room, sketched an ironic salute to the gorgeous crowd who were still watching him and trying not to look as if they were. Then he headed for the door. Rhiow leapt down from the chair and went after him, Urruah and Hwaith following after.
In the front hallway, Elwin Dagenham was standing by the front door, talking in a low voice to a fair-haired young man – working for whom? Rhiow wondered. Possibly some PR person, a flack for one of the local columnists or fan magazines — ? Whose secrets, whose pain are being sold off at the moment?… But the Silent Man paused by the front door, looked at Dagenham, nodded to him, mouthed the words: Thank you for a lovely evening.
Dagenham looked at him with an odd stricken expression, and nodded. “Thank you for coming,” he said.
The door was opened for Runyon, and he walked out and headed down the stairs toward where the cars were parked. Out past the house, away down the hill, the lights of Los Angeles glittered. As Rhiow and the others followed him down the stairs, she found herself suddenly feeling as if she was being stared at by many cold, distant, heartless little eyes. But whether the ones before her or behind her were more heartless, she couldn’t tell.
