Castle Perilous (2 page)

“I doubt they'd bother with us,” Jacoby said.

“Well, frankly, I agree. I'm not exactly worried about it. But not being able to come back to the castle would be damned inconvenient. I'd hate to go back to working for a living again.” Dalton sighed. “Still, if it has to be, it has to be. There are a number of very pleasant worlds on the other side of the portals.”

Jacoby shook his head. “I like it here.”

“Yes, this place does have its delights — as well as its dangers. But this castle belongs to someone else. You would be forever a Guest, never an owner.”

“I feel . . . alive here,” Jacoby said with sudden animation. “This magnificent construct . . .” He turned and lifted his head to look up the high wall of the keep. “This colossal monument to power — it excites me. You say never an owner? I can't bear the thought of it. Anything is possible here. Anything.”

Dalton did not look up. He was eyeing Jacoby circumspectly.

“I want to — ” Jacoby felt Dalton's gaze, turned back toward the rail and gave a slightly self-conscious smile. “You'll forgive me, but my experiences here so far have given me an overwhelming sense of freedom, of promise. I can't quite . . . well, it's exhilarating; to say the least. And the newfound powers, these abilities I've acquired — ”

“Don't let it go to your head. We've all acquired them, to varying degrees.”

Jacoby's smile faded into something akin to indignation. “I'd be willing to wager that mine are more than usually developed, for such a recent arrival.”

“I have no reason to doubt you.”

Jacoby's smile crept back. “Do forgive me.”

“It's nothing.”

“Since we're on the subject, do you mind giving me a small demonstration of your own abilities? I hear they're quite advanced.”

“Well . . .”

“Please. I'd be very interested — if you don't mind.” Jacoby's smile was warm.

Dalton nodded, stubbed out his cigarette on the rail, and slipped the holder into a leather pouch attached to a wide belt around his waist. He picked up the wine glass, drank the last of its contents, and replaced it on the rail. He then extended a stiffened right hand perpendicular to the ground, aiming it in the direction of the glass. His hand began to vibrate slightly. At the same time he commenced an unintelligible, monotonous chanting.

Presently the glass rose tentatively from the stone to a height of perhaps a few inches. It stopped and hung there, rotating slowly about its longer axis and processing lazily. This went on for a few moments; then, abruptly, the glass fell to the rail, toppled over without breaking, and rolled. Dalton quickly reached out and saved it from falling over the far edge.

“Damn. Lost it there. I can usually hold it for about a minute before my concentration breaks.” He set the glass upright and turned to Jacoby.

“Still, very impressive,” Jacoby said. “You use a mnemonic phrase?”

“Yes. It seems to help focus the forces . . . whatever.”

“I see. Very good. Very good indeed. And now me.”

Dalton's body suddenly went rigid, his expression turning first to one of puzzlement, then to alarm. “What . . .? What is it?”

“Me,” Jacoby said.

“I — ” His next words were choked off. With jerky, marionettelike movements, he started edging toward the rail. His face drained and his eyes grew round with fear. His right leg spasmed, rose, lowered, then rose again until his foot was even with the rail of the balustrade. He slid forward until he straddled the rail, knocking his empty wineglass over the side in the process.

Jacoby, meanwhile, was standing ramrod straight, the pupils of his eyes shining like tiny polished black stones. His jaw muscles clenched and relaxed spasmodically, making his jowls shake. The loose, bloated sac of his chin quivered.

Resisting fiercely every inch of the way, Dalton lowered himself over the rail. The process was agonizingly slow.

“You see,” Jacoby said when Dalton was hanging by both hands. “My powers, are to be reckoned with even at this early stage.”

“Yes . . . you — ”

“There is total freedom here. One only needs the will to do what one desires, without fear of retribution.”

“Let me up.”

“I could let you drop.”

Dalton started to raise himself.

“I could, you know. I doubt if any of the other Guests would bat an eye.”

Dalton's body shook and grew rigid again. “Pl-please!” he managed to say in a strangled gasp. His left hand withdrew from the rail.

“There you dangle, eighty stories up,” Jacoby said. “Subject to my will.”

Dalton emitted a muffled scream.

“I could let you drop.” Jacoby's body relaxed, his jowls going loose once again. “But not today.”

Dalton's left arm shot up to hook over the rail. With some effort he hauled himself upward until he was able to throw one leg over. Struggling, he inched upward until he was straddling the rail again, then slid off and fell to the flagstone floor of the balcony. After a long moment he got up on all fours, then lurched to his feet. His face was bloodless, tinted with ghastly shades of green.

Jacoby looked at his glass. “I need a drink,” he said, and walked inside.

It was some time before Dalton followed.

 

 

 

Elsewhere

 

“Mr. Ferraro?”

“Here.”

A tall, curly-headed, dark-haired man, about thirty, rose from among the Waiting Dead. Apex Employment Agency was busy that day. At least three dozen people occupied chairs in the reception area. Most had been sitting, slumped and hopeless, for hours. Gene Ferraro was lucky, having had only a forty-minute wait.

“Hi. Jerry Lesko.”

Gene took the kid's hand — Lesko was no more than twenty-five, probably a good deal younger. “A pleasure.”

“Come on back.”

“Sure.”

Gene picked up his attaché case and followed Lesko through a maze of desks and partitioned offices until they came to a cluttered cubicle, which they entered. Lesko took a seat behind a gray steel desk and motioned for Gene to sit in the small hard-backed chair next to it.

“First we gotta get you to sign this,” Lesko said, placing in front of Gene a large yellow filing card densely inked with small lettering. “Read it and sign if you want to.”

Glancing over it, Gene recognized it as the usual agreement to fork over a certain percentage — in this case a healthy fifteen percent — of the signee's yearly salary, payable immediately and in full should the signee accept any job offer resulting from the agency's referral. Fine. You pay to work. Dandy.

Gene signed it, slid it across the desk to Lesko.

“Good. Now fill this out.”

“What is it?”

“Credit check.”

“Why?”

“Company policy. You may have to borrow to pay the fee. Fifteen percent of your salary, you know. Just put down your bank account, and list any major credit cards.”

“I don't have a bank account, at least not a checking account. No credit cards either.”

“Oh. Did you ever have a student loan? Says here you have a degree . . . couple degrees, in fact.”

“Never did. Scholarships, fellowships, teaching assistantships, that sort of thing. My parents covered whatever shortfalls there were.”

“You're lucky. Must be pretty smart. Well . . . have a savings account?”

“Yes.”

“Put that down.”

“I'm afraid I don't have the passbook with me, and I don't remember the account number.”

“Well, just put down the name of the bank.”

“Sure.” Gene did so and handed the form back to Lesko.

“You live with your parents? Hard to get along without — ”

“Yeah, temporarily, until I find work.”

“Good idea. Can't hurt.”

“Yeah.”

Lesko passed his eyes over Gene's resumé. Gene got the impression it was the first time he'd seen it.

“You have a master's degree. What in?”

“Says right there. Philosophy.”

Lesko found it. “Oh, yeah. Really? I have a cousin who majored in psychology. She had a hard time finding — ”

“Philosophy.”

“Huh?”

“Philosophy, not psychology.”

“Oh. It's different?”

“Very.”

“Uh-huh. Gee, you've had a lot of schooling.”

“Unfortunately, when you put it all together, it comes up short of a marketable skill.”

“That's too bad. Economy's in real bad shape too. It's going to be hard to place you.”

“I know. In fact, I more or less just said that . . . unless I'm badly mistaken.”

Lesko frowned and averted his eyes. “What . . . uh, what were you studying for? To be a . . . philosopher?”

Sighing, Gene answered, “I wanted to teach. Teach in a university — do you understand? I was after an assistant professorship, tenure-track, and I was just at the point of writing my dissertation when it dawned on me that the job market had completely dried up. Even with the Ph.D., getting a job was unlikely. I quit and went to law school.”

“Yeah, I see. You quit that too.”

“Right. The lawyer's path is rocky with ethical dilemmas every foot of the way. Most lawyers simply step over them. I stumbled on the first few, and decided it wasn't for me.”

“Yeah?” Lesko said emptily.

“Also, competition in that field is stiff too. Every field. Post-war baby boom, the demographic bulge.” Gene shrugged. “You know?”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. Well . . . what did you do after that?”

“Worked in a car wash, then bartending, then . . . for years, a series of odd jobs. In my spare time, I wrote.”

“What did you write?”

“Poetry, fiction. None of it publishable, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, you're a writer? Well, we may have something in that line.” He went through the card file again. “Ever do any technical writing?”

“No.”

“Oh. We always get listings for technical writers.”

“I had two semesters of mechanical engineering.”

Lesko's eyes lit up. “Hey, right. We may have something for you.”

“I changed to liberal arts when — ” Gene blinked. “You do?”

“Yeah. Says here, ‘In-House Technical Writer.' Now, what a technical writer does is — well, he sort of . . . um . . .”

“Right.”

“Takes technical stuff and . . . you know.”

“I have a fair idea of what the job entails.”

“Oh, good. Tell you what, why don't you go back to reception and have a seat. Let me contact the employer and see if I can sell them on you.”

“Fine with me.”

“Can't promise anything. I mean, your employment history . . .”

“I drifted a lot.”

“Yeah. It's kind of hard. Look, go out and have a cigarette or something and we'll see what we can do. Can't hurt. Right?”

“Fine.”

Gene was surprised to see Lesko again in only ten minutes.

“Mr. Ferrari? Look, I — ”

“Ferraro.”

“Right. I talked to the personnel manager over at USX — that's the employer — and he says they have over two hundred applicants for that job already. But he has a cancellation today, and I talked him into seeing you. Can't hurt. Right?”

“Can't hurt,” Gene said.

“Just give him this card. Okay?”

“Can't hurt.”

“Huh?”

 

When he emerged from the lobby of the office building into the wilting August sun. Gene saw that his blue VW bug was in process of being ticketed and towed away. He sprinted across the street, talked the cop out of following through with the tow, and settled for the twenty-five-dollar ticket. Then he got in, fired up the Bug and drove away. Thinking that he might as well spring for the two bucks or whatever it was for the underground facility at the USX building — couldn't afford the risk of another whopping fine — he turned up Forbes Avenue, then hung a right on Grant Street, there to bump along the cobblestones, threading his way through the almost-rush-hour traffic. The USX building hove into view as he approached the intersection of Bigelow Boulevard. It was an immense, peculiar-looking edifice of reticulated surfaces and myriad small windows. It was the exact color of rust, this so because of the special steel of its exposed frame (expressive of its organic structure, don't you know), a remarkable alloy designed specifically to accrete a protective layer of oxidation on its surface, but no deeper.

Gene saw USX parking and turned in, traversed a narrow roadway that skirted the edge of an expansive plaza, and plunged into the mouth of a tunnel that spiraled down into the bowels of the underground lot.

The first level was full, as was the second and the third. So was the forth. There, he chanced across an attendant removing barriers blocking a ramp descending to still lower depths. He leaned out of the window.

“Hey! How far down does it go?”

“Got me, I just started today. Go ahead down. Plenty of room.”

“Can't hurt.”

“What?”

Reaching the fifth level, he felt a wild hair at his fundamental aperture and decided, what the hell, let's see how far down it does go.

Two more sub-sub-basements down. Gene was amazed. The place was vast, tomblike in its silence. Gene picked an arbitrary slot marked by parallel yellow lines and pulled in. With the motor off, the stillness fell like the lid of a sarcophagus.

Now I know. Gene thought, where to run when the balloon goes up, as the boys at the Pentagon are wont to say.

He locked the car and struck out into the dimness of the reinforced concrete cavern, looking for a way up, his footsteps echoing hollowly. He couldn't find a sign. Coming to the mouth of the ramp, he looked up, saw it was a long way to walk — dangerous too — and decided there must be a stairwell, or better yet, an elevator around somewhere.