Ballroom of the Skies

Nine

Dake took his luggage to a nearby hotel, registered, had a late supper and went up to his room. He was unpacking his toilet articles when the bellhop arrived with the typewriter.

“It doesn’t look like much, sir, but the assistant manager says it’s in good shape.” He carried it over to the desk by the window and set it down.

“I didn’t order a typewriter sent up.”

The bellhop was a chinless and earnest young man. He gave Dake an uneasy smile. “I suppose that’s some kind of a joke, Mr. Lorin. I guess I don’t get it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was in here ten minutes ago when you sent for a boy, and you told me you wanted a typewriter. I mean, if it’s a gag, I don’t get it.”

Before the episode with Patrice, Dake knew he would have objected strenuously. He would have phoned the manager and asked if this was a new method of gouging the guests. He would have demanded that the typewriter be taken away.

But the world was altering in some obscure way. A brassy little wench had talked imaginatively of the delusion of reality. Half a death’s head in a mirror. A woman mad from fright. A fingernail. Fundamentally he was a man of curiosity. A reporter. He could not ignore the objective questions triggered by subjective experience.

He tipped the boy. “Not a very good joke, I guess.”

The boy sighed. “Thanks, sir. You had me worried there for a minute. I wondered if I was going nuts. Good night, sir.”

The boy closed the door after him. Dake stood in the middle of the room, rubbing his chin. This, like every other damnable thing that had happened, had two aspects. The other side of the coin was that he had requested a typewriter. Insanity. Delusion. But Molly and Patrice had seen something. Could that be objective proof? Only, he thought, if he could prove to himself that he had gone to her house and what he imagined had happened had actually happened. He went quickly to the phone. It took twenty minutes to get the hospital. Phone service had changed over the years from a convenience to an annoying irritant.

The girl at the hospital switchboard answered at last. “Do you have a patient there, recently admitted? A Miss Patrice Togelson?”

“Just a moment, sir. I’ll check.”

He waited. She came back on the line and said, “Yes sir. She was admitted about three hours ago. She is resting comfortably, sir.”

“Thank you.”

He hung up, sat on the edge of the bed, lit a cigarette. All right. Take it another step. How do I prove I made that call, and prove I talked to the girl at the hospital switchboard? The call will appear on my bill. Yet, when I see it noted on the bill, how do I know I am actually seeing it?

There was a stabbing pain centered behind his eyes, a pain so sudden and intense that it blinded him. He closed his eyes and opened them again, aware of an abrupt transition, aware that time had passed. Instead of being seated on the bed, he was seated in front of the desk. A dingy sheet of hotel stationery was rolled into the typewriter. Several lines had been typed.

Dake read them mechanically. “To whom it may concern: When Darwin Branson died I saw that I could use his death to my own advantage. I saw a way I could put myself back in the public eye. I had worked for Darwin Branson for a full year, but his assigned task had been to make a detailed survey of State Department policy decisions. He was not engaged in any way in secret negotiations.

“The article I wrote for the Times-News was a ruse. No such agreements were made. I had the plan of writing the article in order to help promote world unity. I realize now that it was a delusion of grandeur. I realize now that the article will have the reverse effect from what I had planned. I feel that at the time I wrote the article I was not responsible for my actions.

“The only way I can make amends is to write this full confession and then proceed to...”

It stopped there. The sudden time transition seemed to leave him numbed, unable to comprehend. The words seemed meaningless. He moved his lips as he read it again, much like a child trying to comprehend an obscure lesson in a textbook.

“No!” he said thickly.

The pain again focused behind his eyes, but not as intensely as before. It was almost as though it were coming to him through some shielding substance. It made his vision swim, but it did not black him out entirely. There was a pulsating quality to it, a strength that increased and diminished, as though in conflict.

He tried to keep his hands at his sides, but they lifted irresistibly to the keys of the typewriter. A new word. “... take...”

He held his hands rigid. Sweat ran down the side of his throat. Two hard clacks as his fingers hit the keys. “... my...”

The feeling of combat in his mind, of entities battling for control, was sharp and clear. He did not feel that he was fighting with any strength. He was something limp, helpless, being pushed and pulled at the same time.

“... own...”

His hands flexed, the knuckles crackling.

“... life.”

And again, without temporal hiatus, his pen was in his hand, his signature already scrawled at the foot of the sheet, the sheet out of the typewriter. Blackout, and he was at the window, one long leg over the sill, the window flung high, sharp October night breathing against his face, an enclosed court far below, a few lighted windows across from him, like watchful eyes.

Conflict crescendoed in his mind and was suddenly gone. Emptiness. He straddled the sill, motionless. No more pushing and pulling. Easy now to let go. Easier than trying to find answers to problems. Easier than fighting insanity. Let go and spin slowly down through the whispering night, down by the lighted windows, down to that final answer. He heard himself make a sniggling sound, a drunken giggle. He sensed the impending rupture of his brain. A bursting of tissues. His hand tightened on the sill. Come now, God of darkness. Take your tired child. Find the dark land father, hanging in the stone cell of eternity, turning slowly with blackened face. Find the wife who one instant was warmth, and now lives forever in the heart of the whiteness hotter than the sun.

But... WHY?

Drop with question unanswered? Fall to the smash of bone on stone and never know why?

His mind wheeled for one insane instant and focused on WHY. Big letters, the color of flame, written on the black night. Never knowing was more horrid than continuing the conflict, the distortion of reality.

He released his hold and fell into the room, fell with a slack-muscled helplessness, his head thudding on the rug. He lay on his back and grasped his hard thighs with long-fingered hands, sensing the fibrous nerves, meaty tissues, churn of blood. He tasted his aliveness with his hands, content not to think for a little while. The drapery moved with the night wind. The wind cooled the sweat on his face. He heard the faraway city sound. Not like the roaring burly sounds of the old days. The cities had thinner sounds now. A lost and lonely scream was a part of each night.

Dake sat up slowly, feeling as though hallucination had drained his strength. He hitched closer to the window wanting to close it. The sash was out of his reach, yet he did not quite dare stand to reach it. He hitched over, stood up, leaning against the wall. He reached one hand over, blindly, slid the sash down with a shattering bang. He turned his heavy shoulders against the wall.

In front of him was an evanescence, the faintest silvery shimmer. It was much like that first warning flicker of migraine, dread shining blindness.

And Karen Voss stood there, brown hair tousled, thumb tucked pertly in the wide belt, luminous gray eyes full of pale concern and sassy arrogance. He drew his lips back flat against his teeth and made a small sick sound in his throat and tried to reassure himself by passing his hard arm through the vision. His wrist struck the warm roundness of her shoulder, staggering her.

“Don’t try to explain things to yourself,” she said quickly. Her voice was tense. “Got to get you out of here.” She stepped quickly to the desk, snatched up the typed confession, ripped it quickly. She looked over her shoulder at him. “I hate to think of how many credits I’m losing. Start drooling and babbling and prove I’m wrong.”

Dake straightened his shoulders. “Go straight to hell,” he said thickly.

She studied him for a moment, head tilted to one side. She took his wrist, warm fingers tightening, pulling him toward the door. “I remember how you must feel. I’ll break some more rules, now that I’ve started. You’re expected to go mad, my friend. Just keep remembering that. And don’t.”

At the door she paused. “Now do exactly as I say. Without question. I kept you from going out that window.”

“What do you want?”

“We’re going to try to get out of here. The competition is temporarily... kaput. If we get separated, go to Miguel. You understand? As quickly as you can.”

He felt her tenseness as they went down all the flights of stairs to the lobby, went out into the night. “Now walk fast,” she said.

Down the block, around the corner, over to Market. She pulled him into a dark shallow doorway.

“What are we...”

“Be still.” She stood very quietly. In the faint light of a distant street lamp he could see that her eyes were half shut.

Suddenly she sighed. “The competition is no longer kaput, Dake. They’ve got an idea of direction.”

An ancient car meandered down the potholed street, springs banging, engine making panting sounds. It swerved suddenly and came over to the curb and stopped. A gaunt, raw-looking man stepped out, moving like a puppet with an amateur handling the strings. He went off down the sidewalk, lifting his feet high with each step.

“Get in and drive it,” Karen said, pushing impatiently at him. He cramped his long legs under the wheel. She got in beside him. He drove down the street, hearing behind them the frantic yawp of the dispossessed driver.

She called the turns. They entered an area of power failure, as dark as one of the abandoned cities.

“Stop here and we’ll leave the car,” she said.

They walked down the dark street. She stepped into an almost invisible alley mouth. “Wait,” she said.

Once again she was still. He heard her long sigh. “Nothing in range, Dake. Come on. North Seventh is a couple of blocks over. Bright lights. Crowds. That’s the best place.”

“It’s a bad place to go. For a couple.”

“We’re safe, Dake.”

“What did you do to that man in the car?”

She didn’t answer. Her high heels clacked busily in double time to his long stride. They came to streetlights again. Brown hair bounced against the nape of her neck as she walked.

“What did you people do to Branson?”

Again she refused to answer.

“If you are people,” he said with surly emphasis. “I don’t care about your... motivations. I won’t forgive what was done to Patrice.”

“Please shut up. Stop grumbling.”

Two men appeared suddenly out of the shadows a dozen paces ahead. Dake stopped at once, turned and glanced quickly behind them, saw the others there, heard the odd whinnying giggle of a mind steeped in prono, anticipating the sadist fury. Karen had kept on walking. He caught her in two strides, hand yanking on her shoulder.

She spun out of his grasp. He gasped and stared at the two men. They had turned into absurd dolls, leaping stiff-legged in grotesque dance, bellowing in fright and pain. One rebounded off the front of a building, caught crazy balance and rebounded again. The other pitched headlong into the gutter and rolled onto his back and began banging his heels against the pavement, arching his back. Dake could think of nothing but insects which had blundered into a cone of light which had blinded them, bewildered them, driven them frantic with heat and pain. Behind them the other men bounded and bucked and sprawled. Karen did not change her pace. He caught up with her. She gave him a sidelong gamin grin, a squint of ribald humor in the glow of streetlights.

“Dance of the pronies,” she said.

“And there is no point, I suppose, in asking you... what did that?”

“Why not? A headache. A rather severe one. It gave them something to think about. Like this.”

He staggered and clapped his palm hard over the lance of pure flame that ran from temple to temple, a rivulet of fire. It stopped his breath for a moment. And it was gone as quickly as it had come. There was no lingering pain. But the memory of pain was almost as hurtful as the pain itself.

She took his hand. “You’d be much more difficult, Dake. Prono makes mush of them. Soft, sticky little brains. Like wet glue. We’ll go over there to that place. A breathing spell. I’ve got to think how I can get us back to New York.”

The fleng joint was a slow cauldron of mass desperation. Prone and fice, and fleng strip routines, and the gut-roil of the kimba music, and the rubbery walls like white wet flesh. During the Great Plague in London, man, obsessed by dissolution, had made an earnest attempt to rejoin the slime from which he had once come. Now the plague was of the spirit, and the effect was the same. They pushed their way through to a lounging table, and waved away the house clowns, refused a cubicle ticket, managed to order native whiskey. She put her lips, with their heavy makeup, close to his ear.

“We’re going to separate here, Dake. That will be the best way. I could try to help you get to Miguel, but they can find me easier than they can you. I’ll be more harm than help.”

“And if I don’t want to get to Miguel?”

“Don’t be such a fool. It isn’t a case of wanting. If you don’t get there, you’ll die. Maybe you want to do that. If you want to die, then I’m wrong about you.”

He turned toward her and saw the sudden panic change her face. Though her lips did not move, and he was certain she had not spoken, her words were clear in his mind, coming with a rapidity that speech could not have duplicated.

“I didn’t do as well as I thought: A Stage Three picked us up. Coming in the door over there. The man with the long red hair. I’m going to distract him. Leave as quickly as you can and don’t pay any attention to anything. Understand? Anything! No matter how crazy it looks to you. Go to Miguel as quickly as you can and... be careful when you get there. You’ll be safe once you’re in the lobby. But the street out in front will be dangerous. Be very careful. Go now. Hurry!”

He slid from the table and plunged toward the door. A small man with a wooden look on his face hopped up onto one of the show platforms and dived at the sick-looking man with the long red hair. A woman screeched and raced at the red-haired man. Dake felt a surge of terror so strong that he knew, somehow, that it had been induced in his brain by Karen to give him more speed, more energy.

The red-haired man was twisting in a knot of people who oddly fell away from him, as though all interest in him were suddenly lost. Dake burst through the door and found himself running with others. Running with a pack of others. And he saw that they were all himself. He saw a dozen Dake Lorins bursting from the door, running in all directions, and he screamed as he ran, screamed and looked back over his shoulder as he screamed, saw the red-haired one stand on the sidewalk and then topple as someone dived against his legs. He ran silently then, lifting his long legs, running until white pain burned his side and scorched his lungs. He slowed and walked, struggling for breath, his knees fluttering, sweat cold on his body.

The cabdriver was reluctant. He said he didn’t make trips like that. He yielded to two arguments — Dake’s strangling arm across his throat and the thousand-rupee note in front of his eyes. Dake took the man’s gun and shoved it inside his belt. Dawn wasn’t far away as they turned into the only tunnel to Manhattan that had not become flooded and unusable through neglect. In the city the white police trucks were collecting the bodies of those who had died violently in the night. Dake felt caked and dull and old, worn dry with emotional hangover. They went through the dark streets in those predawn hours when life is at its lowest ebb — the hours of aimless regrets, of the sense of waste, of the knowledge of death. The October stars wheeled in a corrosive indifference to all the works of man. The city slept... restlessly.