Doorways in the Sand. Chapter 8, 9
Chapter 8
They were waiting for me to say something, to do something. But there was nothing to say, nothing to do. We were going to die, and that was that. I glanced out the window and along the beach to the place where the sea stacked slate on the shore and pulled it down again. I was reminded of my last day and night in Australia. Only then Ragma had come along and provided a way out. In fair puzzles there should always be a way out. But I saw no doorways in the sand, and try as I might I could not make the puzzle fall fair.
“Well, Fred? Do you have something for us? Or should we go ahead? It is up to you now.”
I looked at Mary, tied there in the chair. I tried not to look at her frightened face, look into her eyes, but I did. At my side, I heard Hal’s heavy breathing stop short, as though he were tensing to spring. But Jamie Buckler noted this also, and the gun twitched slightly in his hand. Hal did not spring.
“Mister Zeemeister,” I said, “if I had that stone, I would tie a bright ribbon around it and hand it to you. If I knew where it was, I would go get it for you or tell you where to find it. I do not want to see Mary dead, Hal dead, me dead. Ask me anything else and it’s yours.”
“Nothing else will do,” he said, and he picked up the pliers.
We would be tortured and killed, if we just waited our turns. If we had had the answer and we gave it to them we would still be killed, though. Either way …
But we would not stand there and watch. We all knew that. We would try to rush them, and Mary and Hal and I would be the losers.
Wherever you are, whatever you are, I said in my shrillest thoughts, if you can do something, do it now!
Zeemeister had taken hold of Mary’s wrist and forced her hand upward. As he reached for a finger with the pliers, the Ghost of Christmas Past or one of those guys drifted into the room behind him.
Stamping out of Jefferson Hall, cursing under my breath, I decided that a State Department official named Theodore Nadler was the next man I was going to punch in the eye. Making my way around the phountain and heading off toward the Student Union, however, I recalled that I had been remiss concerning my promise to call Hal in a day or so. I decided to phone him before I tried the Nadler number Wexroth had given me.
I picked up a coffee and doughnut before I made my way to the phone, realizing after thirteen years that all it took to make the Union’s brew palatable was a reversal of every molecule in it, or in the drinker. I saw Ginny at a table off in the corner and my good intentions evaporated. I halted, started to turn in that direction. But then somebody moved and I saw that she was with a guy I didn’t know. I decided to catch her another time, went on into the alcove. All the phones were in use, though, so I sipped my coffee and waited. Pace, pace. Sip, sip.
From behind my back I heard, “Hey, Cassidy! Come on, it’s the guy I was telling you about!”
Turning, I saw Rick Liddy, an English major with an answer for everything except what to do with his degree come June. With him was a taller version of himself in a Yale sweatshirt.
“Fred, this is my brother Paul. He’s come slumming,” he said.
“Hi, Paul.”
I put my coffee on the ledge and started to extend the wrong hand. I caught myself, shook hands, felt foolish.
“He’s the one,” Rick said, “like the Wandering Jew or the Wild Huntsman. The man who will never graduate. Subject of countless ballads and limericks: Fred Cassidy-the Eternal Student.”
“You left out the Flying Dutchman,” I said, “and it’s Doctor Cassidy, damn it!”