"Doorsways in the Sand 06" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

Doorways in the Sand
Chapter 6

It was the sound of the steam, whistling through, rattling the ancient pipes, that drew me across the fine line to the place where identity surprises itself. I balked immediately and tried to go back, but the heating system wouldn't let me. In close-eyed preconsciousness I clung to the transitory pleasure of being without memory. Then I realized that I was thirsty. And then that something hard and uncomfortable was indenting my right side. I did not want to wake up.
But the circle of sensations widened, things fell together, the center held. I opened my eyes.
Yes . . .
I was lying on a mattress on the floor in the corner of a cluttered, gaudy room. Some of the clutter was magazines, bottles, cigarette butts and random articles of clothing; some of the gaud was paintings and posters that clung to the walls like stamps on a foreign parcel, bright and crooked. Strings of glass beads hung in a doorway to my right, catching what seemed like morning light from a large window directly across from me. A golden blizzard of dust fell through its rays, stirred perhaps by the donkey who was nibbling at the potted pot that occupied the window seat. From the sill, an orange cat blinked at me in yellow-eyed appraisal, then closed her eyes.
A few small traffic sounds came from a point beyond and below the window. Through the sun patterns on the streaked glass, I could make out the upper corner of a brick building sufficiently distant to indicate that a street did indeed lie between us. I made my first dry swallowing movement of the morning and realized again how thirsty I felt. The air was dry and rank with stale odors, some familiar, some exotic.
I shifted slightly, testing myself for aches. Not bad. A small throbbing from the frontal sinuses, not sufficient to herald a headache. I stretched then, feeling a fraction fitter.
I discovered the sharp object prodding my side to be a bottle, empty. I winced as I recalled how it had gotten that way. The party, oh yes . . . There had been a party . . .
I sat up. I saw my shoes. I put them on. I stood.
Water . . . There was a bathroom around the corner through the beads in the back. Yes.
Before I could move in that direction, the donkey turned, stared at me, advanced.
By a splinter of a second, I'd say, I saw what was coming coming, before it came.
"You are still fogged up," the donkey said, or seemed to say, the words ringing strangely in my head, "so go quench your thirst and wash your face. But do not use the window back there for an exit. It could result in difficulties. Please return to this room when you have finished. I have some things to tell you."
From a place beyond surprise, I said, "All right," and I went on back and ran the water.
There was nothing especially suspicious beyond the bathroom window. No one in sight to be the wiser, no one to do anything about it if I decided to cross over to the next building, then up, up and away. I had no intention of doing it just then, but it made me wonder whether the donkey might be something of an alarmist.
The window . . . My mind went back to that bar of black, to the snap of the gun, to the glass. I had torn my jacket on the frame and scraped my shoulder where I hit. I'd kept rolling, rolled to my feet and taken off running, crouched....
An hour later I was in a bar in the Village carrying out the second part of my instructions. Not too quickly, though, as-the fugitive feeling was still with me and I wanted to hang onto my faculties long enough to regroup myself emotionally. Consequently, I ordered a beer and sipped it slowly.
Small gusts of wind had been tumbling bits of paper along the streets. Random flakes of snow had angled by, turning to damp splotches wherever they touched. Later, the middle state was omitted and cold raindrops alternately sprayed, dripped, ceased altogether, drifted in patches of mist.
The wind whistled as it slipped about the door, and even with my jacket on I felt chilly. So ten or fifteen minutes later when I'd finished the beer, I went looking for a warmer bar. That was what I told myself, though from some more primitive level the flight impulse still operated, assisting in the decision.
I hit three more bars in the next hour, drinking one beer per and moving on. Along the way, I stopped in a package store and picked up a bottle, as it was late and I was loath to go too blotto in public. I began thinking about where I would spend the night. I'd get a taxi by and by, I decided, let the driver find me a hotel and complete the intoxication business there. No sense in speculating what the results would be and no need to hurry things along. At the moment I wanted people about me, their voices, walls that echoed a tinny music. While my last memories of Australia were messy and blurred, I had been brighteyed and strung tight as a tennis racket on departing the hall. I could still hear the snap and the brittle notes of the glass. It is not good to think about having been shot at.
The fifth bar that I hit was a happy find. Three or four steps below street level, warm, pleasantly dim, it contained sufficient patrons to satisfy my need for social noises but not so many that anyone begrudged my taking up a table against the far wall. I took off my jacket and lit a cigarette. I would stay awhile.
So it was there that he found me, half an hour or so later. I had succeeded in relaxing considerably, forgetting a bit and achieving a state of warmth and comfort, let the wind go whistle, when a passing figure halted, turned and settled onto the seat across from me.
I did not even look up. My peripheral vision told me it was not a cop and I did not feel like acknowledging an unsolicited presence, especially the likely weirdo.
We sat that way-unmoving-for almost half a barbed minute. Then something flashed on the tabletop and I looked down, automatically.
Three totally explicit photos lay before me: two brunettes and a blonde.
"How'd you like to warm up with something like that on a cold night like this?" came a voice that snapped my mind through years to alertness and my eyes forty-five degrees upward.
"Doctor Merimee!" I said.
"Ssh!" he hissed. "Pretend you're looking at the pictures!"
The same old trench coat, silk scarf and beret . . . The same long cigarette holder . . . Eyes of unbelievable magnitude behind glasses that still gave me the impression of peering into an aquarium. How many years had it been?
"What the devil are you doing here?" I said.
"Gathering material for a book, of course. Dammit! Look at the pictures, Fred! Pretend to study them. Really. Trouble afoot. Yours, I think."
So I looked back at the glossy ladies.
"What kind of trouble?" I said.
"There's a fellow seems to be following you."
"Where is he now?"
"Across the street. In a doorway last I saw him."
"What's he look like?"
"Couldn't really tell. He's dressed for the weather. Bulky coat. Hat pulled down. Head bent forward. Average height or a bit less. Possibly kind of husky."
I chuckled.
"Sounds like anybody. How do you know he's following me?"
"I caught sight of you over an hour ago, several bars back. That one was fairly crowded, though. Just as I'd started toward you, you got up to leave. I called out, but you didn't hear me over the noise. By the time I'd paid up and gotten out myself you were part way up the street. I started after you and saw this fellow come out of a doorway and do the same. I thought nothing of it at first, but you did wander awhile and he was making all the same turns. Then when you found another bar, he just stopped and stared at it. Then he went into a doorway, lit a cigar, coughed several times and waited there, watching the place. So I walked on by as far as the corner. There was a phone booth, and I got inside and watched him while I pretended to make a call. You didn't stay in that place very long, and when you came out and moved on, he did the same. I held off approaching you for two more bars, just to be positive. But I am convinced now. You are being followed."
"Okay," I said. "I buy that."
"Your casual acceptance of the situation causes me to believe that it was not wholly unexpected."
"Exactly."
"Does it involve anything I might be able to help you with?"
"Not in terms of the headache's causes. But possibly the immediate symptoms . . ."
"Like getting you away from here without his noting it?"
"That is what I had in mind."