‘Please take me a long way from here,’ Nicole said to him.
‘Okay, okay,’ Kongrosian agreed irritably. ‘Where do you want to be? In another city entirely? On Mars? Who knows how far I can move you — I don’t. As Mr Pembroke said, I haven’t really learned the political uses of my ability, even after all these years. But anyhow now I’m in politics.’ He chuckled with delight. ‘What about Berlin? I can move you from here to Berlin; I’m confident of that.’
‘Anything,’ Nicole said.
‘I know where I’ll send you.’ Kongrosian exclaimed suddenly. ‘I know where you’ll be safe, Nicky. Understand, I want you to be safe; I believe in you, I know you exist. No matter what those damn news machines say. I mean, they’re lying. I can tell. They’re trying to shake my confidence in you; they’ve all ganged up, saying exactly the same thing.’
He added by way of explanation, ‘I’m sending you to my home in Jenner, California. You can stay with my wife and my son. Pembroke can’t get you there because he’ll be stone dead by then; I’ve turned off another organ inside him, now, and this one — never mind which it is — this one is even more vital than the other. He won’t live another six minutes.’
Nicole said, ‘Richard, let him — ‘ She ceased, then, because they were gone. Kongrosian, Pembroke, her office in the White House, everything had whipped out of existence and she stood in a gloomy rain forest. Mist drizzled from the shiny leaves; the ground underfoot was soft, impregnated with dampness. She heard no one. The moisture-saturated forest was utterly silent.
She was alone.
Presently she began to walk. She felt stiff and old and it was an effort to move. She felt as if she had stood there in the silence and rain for a million years. It was as if she had been there forever.
Ahead, through the vines and tangle of wet shrubbery she saw the outlines of a dilapidated, unpainted redwood building. A house. She walked towards it, her arms folded, shivering from the cold.
When she pushed the last branch aside she saw, parked ahead of her, an archaic-looking auto-cab in the centre of what appeared to be the house’s driveway.
Opening the door of the auto-cab she said, ‘Take me to the nearest town.’
The mechanism of the cab did not respond. It remained inert, as if it were moribund.
‘Can’t you hear me?’ she said loudly to it.
A woman’s voice came to her, from a distance. ‘I’m sorry, miss. That cab belongs to the record people, it can’t respond because it’s still under hire to them.’
‘Oh,’ Nicole said, and straightened up, closing the door of the cab. ‘Are you Richard Kongrosian’s wife?’
‘Yes, I am,’ the woman said, descending the board steps of the house. ‘Who are — ‘ She blinked. ‘You’re Nicole Thibodeaux.’
‘I was,’ Nicole said. ‘Can I come indoors and get something hot to drink? I don’t feel too well.’
‘Of course,’ Mrs Kongrosian said. ‘Please. Did you come here to find Richard? He’s not here; the last I heard from him he was at a neuro-psychiatric hospital in San Francisco, Franklin Aimes. Do you know it?’
‘I know it,’ Nicole said. ‘But he’s not there now. No, I’m not looking for him.’ She followed Mrs Kongrosian up the steps to the front porch of the house.
‘The record people have been here three days,’ Mrs Kongrosian said. ‘Recording and recording. I’m beginning to think they’re never going to leave. They’re nice people and I enjoy their company; they’ve been staying here at night. They showed up originally to record my husband playing, under an old contract with Art-Cor, but as I said, he’s gone.’ She held the front door open.
Nicole said, ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’ The house, she discovered, was warm and dry; it was a relief from the dreary landscape outside. A fire burned in the fireplace and she went over to it.
‘I heard the strangest garbling thing over the TV just now,’ Mrs Kongrosian said. ‘Something about you; I couldn’t make any sense out of it. Something having to do with you — well, not existing, I think. Do you know what I’m talking about? What they were talking about?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ Nicole said, warming herself.
Mrs Kongrosian said, ‘I’ll go and fix the coffee. They Mr Flieger and the others from EME — should be back fairly soon, now. For dinner. Are you alone? Nobody’s with you?’ She seemed bewildered.
‘I’m entirely alone,’ Nicole said. She wondered if Wilder Pembroke was dead by now. She hoped so, for her own sake.
‘Your husband,’ she said, ‘is a very fine person. I owe him a great deal.’ My life, as a matter of fact, she realized.
‘He certainly thinks a lot of you, too,’ Mrs Kongrosian said.
‘Can I stay here?’ Nicole said suddenly.
‘Of course. For as long as you wish.’
‘Thanks,’ Nicole said. She felt a little better. Maybe I’ll never go back, she thought. After all, what’s there to go back to? Janet is dead, Bertold Goltz is dead, even Reichsmarschall Goering is dead, and of course Wilder Pembroke; he’s dead by now, too. And the entire ruling council, all the half-concealed figures who had stood behind her. Assuming of course that the NP men had carried out their orders, which no doubt they had.
And, she thought, I can’t rule any longer; the news machines have seen to that in their blind, efficient, mechanical way. They and the Karps. So now, she decided, it’s the Karps’ turn; they can hold power for a while. Until they in turn are preempted, as I was.
She thought, I can’t even go to Mars. At least not by jalopy! I saw to that myself. But there are other ways. Big legal commercial ships and government ships as well. Very fast ships which belong to the military; perhaps I could commandeer one of those. I could work through Rudi, even though he is — or it is — on its deathbed. Legally, the army has sworn an oath to him; they’re supposed to do what he, or it, tells them.
‘Coffee? Are you all right? Are you ready for it?’ Mrs Kongrosian peered at her intently.
‘Yes,’ Nicole answered, ‘I am.’ She followed Mrs Kongrosian into the kitchen of the big old house.
Outside the house the rain fell heavily, now. Nicole shivered and tried not to look directly at it. The rain frightened her; it was like an omen. A reminder of some evil fate to come.
‘What are you afraid of?’ Mrs Kongrosian said suddenly, acutely.
‘I don’t know,’ Nicole confessed.
‘I’ve seen Richard like this. It must be the climate, here. It’s so dismal and monotonous. But I thought from his description of you that you’d never be this way. He always made you sound so brave. So forceful.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’
Mrs Kongrosian patted her on the arm. ‘You don’t disappoint me. I like you very much. I’m sure it is the climate that’s getting you down.’
‘Maybe so,’ Nicole said. But she knew better. It was more than the rain. Much more.
15
The hard-eyed, middle-aged and utterly professional NP man said to Maury Frauenzimmer and Chic Strikerock, ‘You’re both under arrest. Come along with me.’
‘You see?’ Maury said with scalding accusation to Chic.
‘I told you so! The bastards have it in for us. We’re the fall-guys in this. The lowest dupes on the ladder — the ultimate simps.’
With Maury, Chic left the small, familiar, cluttered office of Frauenzimmer Associates, the NP man immediately behind them. He and Maury trudged gloomily, in silence, to the parked police car.
‘A couple of hours ago,’ Maury burst out suddenly, ‘we had everything. Now, on account of your brother, look what we’ve got. Nothing.’
Chic did not respond. There was no answer he could make.
‘I’m going to get you, Chic,’ Maury said as the police car started up and moved towards the autobahn. ‘So help me god.’
‘We’ll get out of this,’ Chic said. ‘We’ve had troubles before. They’ve always passed. Somehow.’
‘If only you had emigrated,’ Maury said.
And I wish I had, too, Chic thought to himself. Right now Richard Kongrosian and I would be — where? In deep space, on our way to our frontier farm, beginning a chaste, new life. And instead … this. He wondered where Kongrosian was, right now. Doing just as badly? Hardly likely.
‘Next time when you start to leave the firm — ‘ Maury began.
‘Okay!’ Chic said savagely. ‘Let’s forget it. What can be done now?’ The one I’d like to get, he thought, is my brother Vince. And, after him, Anton and old Felix Karp.
The NP man seated next to him all at once said to the NP man driving, ‘Hey look, Sid. A roadblock.’