Taltos (3 page)

But her molds could be used now for something utterly different—half a million beautiful renditions of one doll, and another and another, out of a vinyl so skillfully worked that it would look as lovely as porcelain, with eyes painted as brilliantly as if they were real glass.

“But what about the names, Miss Paget? Why won’t you choose the dolls’ names?”

“The dolls have never had names for me, Mr. Ash,” she said. “And the names you chose are fine.”

“You know you’ll be rich soon, Miss Paget.”

“So they tell me,” she said. She seemed suddenly vulnerable, indeed fragile.

“But you have to keep your appointments with us, you have to approve each step. It won’t take so much time, really….”

“I’m going to love it. Mr. Ash, I want to make—”

“I want to see anything that you make, immediately. You’ll call us.”

“Yes.”

“But don’t be sure you will enjoy the process here. As you have observed, manufacture is not the same thing as crafting or creating. Well, it is. But seldom do people see
it that way. Artists don’t always see mass production as an ally.”

He did not have to explain his old reasoning, that he did not care for the one-of-a-kinds and the limited editions, that he cared only for dolls that could belong to everyone. And he would take these molds of hers, and he would produce dolls from them year after year, varying them only when there seemed a reason to do it.

Everyone knew this about him now—that he had no interest in elitist values or ideas.

“Any questions about our contracts, Miss Paget? Don’t hesitate to put these questions directly to me.”

“Mr. Ash, I’ve signed your contracts!” She gave another little riff of laughter, distinctly careless and young.

“I’m so glad, Miss Paget,” he said. “Prepare to be famous.” He brought up his hands and folded them on the desk. Naturally, she was looking at them; she was wondering at their immense size.

“Mr. Ash, I know you’re busy. Our appointment’s for fifteen minutes.”

He nodded as if to say, This is not important, go on.

“Let me ask you. Why do you like my dolls? I mean, really, Mr. Ash. I mean—”

He thought for a moment. “Of course there’s a stock answer,” he said, “which is wholly true. That your dolls are original, as you’ve said. But what I like, Miss Paget, is that your dolls are all smiling broadly. Their eyes are crinkled; their faces are in motion. They have shining teeth. You can almost hear them laugh.”

“That was the risk, Mr. Ash.” Suddenly she herself laughed, and looked for one second as happy as her creations.

“I know, Miss Paget. Are you perhaps going to make me some very sad children now?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Make what you want. I’m behind you. Don’t make sad children. Too many other artists do that well.”

He started to rise, slowly, the signal of dismissal, and he wasn’t surprised when she rushed to her feet.

“Thank you, Mr. Ash,” she said again, reaching for his
hand—his huge, long-fingered hand. “I can’t tell you how much …”

“You don’t have to.”

He let her take his hand. Sometimes people didn’t want to touch him a second time. Sometimes they knew he wasn’t a human. Never repelled by his face, it seemed, they were often repelled by his big feet and hands. Or, deep in their subconscious, they realized his neck was just a little too long, his ears too narrow. Humans are skilled at recognizing their own kind, tribe, clan, family. A great part of the human brain is organized around merely recognizing and remembering types of faces.

But she was not repelled, merely young and overwhelmed, and anxious over simple transitions.

“And by the way, Mr. Ash, if you don’t mind my saying it, the white streaks in your hair are very becoming. I hope you don’t ever color them out. White hair is always becoming on a young man.”

“Now, what made you say that, Miss Paget?”

She flushed once more, but then gave in to laughter. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s just that the hair is so white, and you’re so young. I didn’t expect you to be so young. That’s what is so surprising—” She broke off, unsure; he had best release her before she tumbled too quickly into her own imagined failures.

“Thank you, Miss Paget,” he said. “You’ve been very kind. I’ve enjoyed talking with you.” Reassurance, blunt and memorable. “I hope to see you again very soon. I hope you’ll be happy.”

Remmick had come to spirit the young woman away. She said something else hastily, thanks, avowals of inspiration and determination to please the whole world. Words to that sweet effect. He gave her one final sober smile as she went out and the bronze doors were shut behind her.

When she got home, of course, she would drag out her magazines. She would do addition on her fingers, maybe even with a calculator. She would realize he couldn’t be young, not by anyone’s count. She’d conclude he was past forty, and carefully fighting fifty. That was safe enough.

But how must he deal with this in the long run, for the
long run was always his problem? Here was a life he loved, but he would have to make adjustments. Oh, he couldn’t think of something so awful just now. What if the white hair really began to flourish? That would help, wouldn’t it? But what did it really mean, the white hair? What did it reveal? He was too content to think of it. Too content to court cold fear.

Once again he turned to the windows, and to the falling snow. He could see Central Park as clearly from this office as from the others. He put his hand on the glass. Very cold.

The skating lake was deserted now. The snow had covered the park, and the roof just below him; and he noticed another curious sight which always made him give a little laugh.

It was the swimming pool on top of the Parker Meridien Hotel. Snow fell steadily on the transparent glass roof while, beneath it, a man was swimming back and forth in the brightly illuminated green water, and this was some fifty floors perhaps above the street.

“Now that is wealth and that is power,” he mused quietly to himself. “To swim in the sky in a storm.” Build swimming pools in the sky, another worthy project.

“Mr. Ash,” said Remmick.

“Yes, my dear boy,” he said absently, watching the long strokes of the swimmer, seeing clearly now that it was an elderly and very thin man. Such a figure would have been the victim of starvation in times past. But this was a physically fit individual—he could see it—a businessman, perhaps, snared by economic circumstances in the bitter winter of New York, swimming back and forth in deliciously heated and safely sanitized water.

“Phone call for you, sir.”

“I don’t think so, Remmick. I’m tired. It’s the snow. It makes me want to curl up in bed and go to sleep. I want to go to bed now, Remmick. I want some hot chocolate and then to sleep and sleep.”

“Mr. Ash, the man said you would want to speak to him, that I was to tell you …”

“They all say that, Remmick,” he answered.

“Samuel, sir. He said to tell you that name.”

“Samuel!”

He turned from the window, and looked at the manservant, at his placid face. There was no judgment or opinion in his expression. Only devotion and quiet acceptance.

“He said to come to you directly, Mr. Ash, that it was the custom when he called. I took the chance that he—”

“You did right. You can leave me alone for a little while now.”

He took his chair at the desk.

As the doors closed, he picked up the receiver, and pressed the tiny red button. “Samuel!” he whispered.

“Ashlar,” came the answer, clear as if his friend were truly at his ear. “You’ve kept me waiting fifteen minutes. How important you’ve become.”

“Samuel, where are you? Are you in New York?”

“Certainly not,” came the reply. “I’m in Donnelaith, Ash. I’m at the Inn.”

“Phones in the glen.” It was a low murmur. The voice was coming all the way from Scotland … from the glen.

“Yes, old friend, phones in the glen, and other things as well. A Taltos came here, Ash. I saw him. A full Taltos.”

“Wait a minute. It sounded as if you said—”

“I did say this. Don’t get too excited about it, Ash. He’s dead. He was an infant, blundering. It’s a long story. There’s a gypsy involved in it, a very clever gypsy named Yuri, from the Talamasca. The gypsy would be dead right now if it weren’t for me.”

“Are you sure the Taltos is dead?”

“The gypsy told me. Ash, the Talamasca is in a dark time. Something tragic has happened with the Order. They’ll kill this gypsy soon, perhaps, but he’s determined to go back to the Motherhouse. You must come as soon as you can.”

“Samuel, I’ll meet you in Edinburgh tomorrow.”

“No, London. Go directly to London. I promised the gypsy. But come quickly, Ash. If his brothers in London catch sight of him, he’ll be dead.”

“Samuel, this can’t be a correct story. The Talamasca
wouldn’t do such things to anyone, let alone its own people. Are you sure this gypsy is saying true things?”

“Ash, it has to do with this Taltos. Can you leave now?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t fail me?”

“No.”

“Then there’s one more thing I must tell you right now. You’ll see it in the papers-in London as soon as you land. They’ve been digging here in Donnelaith, in the ruins of the cathedral.”

“I know this, Samuel. You and I have talked about this before.”

“Ash, they dug up the grave of St. Ashlar. They found the name engraved in the stone. You’ll see it in the papers, Ashlar. Scholars are here from Edinburgh. Ash, there are witches involved in this tale. But the gypsy will tell you. People are watching me. I have to go.”

“Samuel, people are always watching you, wait—”

“Your hair, Ash. I saw you in a magazine. Are those white streaks in your hair? Never mind.”

“Yes, my hair
is
turning white. But it’s happening slowly. I haven’t aged otherwise. There are no real shocks for you, except the hair.”

“You’ll live till the end of the world, Ash, and be the one to make it crumble.”

“No!”

“Claridge’s in London. We are leaving now ourselves. That’s a hotel where a man can make a big oak fire in the grate, and sleep in a big old cozy bedroom full of chintz and hunter-green velvet. I’ll be waiting for you there. And Ash. Pay the hotel, will you? I’ve been out here in the glen for two years.”

Samuel rang off.

“Maddening,” he whispered. He laid down the phone.

For long moments he looked at the bronze doors.

He didn’t blink or focus when the doors opened. He scarcely saw the blurred figure who came into the room. He was not thinking, he was merely repeating the words
Taltos
and
Talamasca
inside his head.

When he did look up, he saw only Remmick pouring
chocolate from a small, heavy silver pitcher into a pretty china cup. The steam rose in Remmick’s patient and slightly weary face. Gray hair, now that was gray hair, an entire head of it. I do not have so much gray hair.

Indeed, he had only the two streaks flowing back from his temples, and a bit of white in his sideburns, as they were called. And yes, just a tiny touch of white in the dark hair of his chest. Fearfully he looked down at his wrist. There were white hairs there, mingled with the dark hair that had covered his arms now for so many years.

Taltos! Talamasca. The world will crumble …
.

“Was it the right thing, sir, the phone call?” asked Remmick, in that wonderful, near-inaudible British murmur that his employer loved. Lots of people would have called it a mumble. And we are going now to England, we are going back among all the agreeable, gentle people…. England, the land of the bitter cold, seen from the coast of the lost land, a mystery of winter forests and snow-capped mountains.

“Yes, indeed, it was the right thing, Remmick. Always come to me directly when it’s Samuel. I have to go to London, right now.”

“Then I have to hurry, sir. La Guardia’s been closed all day. It’s going to be very difficult—”

“Hurry, then, please, don’t say anything further.”

He sipped the chocolate. Nothing tasted richer to him, sweeter, or better, except perhaps unadulterated fresh milk.

“Another Taltos,” he whispered aloud. He set down the cup. “Dark time in the Talamasca.” This he wasn’t sure he believed.

Remmick was gone. The doors had closed, the beautiful bronze gleaming as if it were hot. There was a trail of light across the marble floor from the light embedded in the ceiling, rather like the moon on the sea.

“Another Taltos, and it was male.”

There were so many thoughts racing through his head, such a clatter of emotion! For a moment he thought he’d give way to tears. But no. It was anger that he felt, anger that once again he had been teased by this bit of news, that his heart was beating, that he was flying over the sea to
learn more about another Taltos, who was already dead—a male.

And the Talamasca—so they had come into a dark time, had they? Well, wasn’t it inevitable? And what must he do about it? Must he be drawn into all this once more? Centuries ago, he had knocked on their doors. But who among them knew this now?

Their scholars he knew by face and name, only because he feared them enough to keep track of them. Over the years, they had never stopped coming to the glen…. Someone knew something, but nothing ever really changed.

Why did he feel he owed them some protective intervention now? Because they had once opened their doors, they had listened, they had begged him to remain, they hadn’t laughed at his tales, they’d promised to keep his secret. And like him, the Talamasca was old. Old as the trees in the great forests.

How long ago had it been? Before the London house, long before, when the old palazzo in Rome had been lighted still with candles. No records, they had promised. No records, in exchange for all he had told … which was to remain impersonal, anonymous, a source of legend and fact, of bits and pieces of knowledge from ages past. Exhausted, he had slept beneath that roof; they had comforted him. But in the final analysis they were ordinary men, possessed of an extraordinary interest perhaps, but ordinary, short-lived, awestruck by him, scholars, alchemists, collectors.