It was growing dark outside, the sky turning a peacock blue above the varicoloured glitter off the city beyond his balcony, and it came to him that by this time – had his dreams of homecoming materialized properly – he should have been bedding down with a woman. He had an intense yearning for the comfort and companionship of love. Hobart turned restlessly on the bed’s pliant surface for a minute, then lay still, his eyes widening, as the idea which had lain dormant in his mind heaved upward and began to dominate all thought.
There was one person who had cause to remember the night of the party as clearly as he did, despite the passage of time, and as far as he knew there was nothing to prevent him from contacting Dorcie Langer without further delay.
Hobart was surprised to find that the big house was in comparative darkness. Subconsciously, having previously been there only when a party was in full swing or when the colonel was organizing a foray, he had it fixed in his mind as a place where such things were the norm, and the terse instruction from Mrs Langer’s personal secretary had in an obscure way reinforced his preconceptions. As he parked his rented car in the driveway he admitted to himself that more than a year in the confines of the ship had disposed him towards a therapeutic blowout, garnished with excesses of every kind, and the insight was a disturbing one. His current troubles all stemmed from one shameful debauch, yet part of him had been ready to flirt with similar temptations and perhaps still was. The id, he suddenly realized, could be a dangerous encumbrance.
He slammed the car door and examined the house, wishing he were a smoker so that he could indulge in the ritual of lighting a cigarette. The two-storey building, with its stone mullions and complex roof, looked imposingly ancient. In the gardens at the rear he could see the outlines of the freezer house where Nolan Langer had kept his menagerie of frost animals, and he was further surprised to note a bluish glow from the windows, which indicated that the refrigeration system was still functioning. The enigmatic creatures, inhabitants of Sirius VII, were troublesome to support and he would have expected the colonel’s widow – whose interests were more earthly – to have rid herself of the responsibility at the earliest possible moment.
Hobart walked to the house’s main entrance and ascended the curving steps. A control system, responding to the identity code emitted by his citizenship tag, swung the door open for him and he went through into a dimly lit, spacious hall which seemed not to have altered since his last visit. The same pictures of extraterrestrial scenes – souvenirs of the colonel’s travels – hung on the walls, and the same photon-sculptures glowed in the corners and recesses. He was still getting his bearings when a door on the right opened and a woman he took to be Dorcie Langer’s secretary appeared in a rectangle of pink light and beckoned to him. Hobart had almost reached her before he realized his mistake.
His talk with Armitage had alerted him to the effects of timeslip and he had steeled himself to find the young Dorcie Langer transformed into a woman in her forties, but other forces had been at work – and the person before him had an apparent age closer to sixty. She was dressed in salmon-coloured silks revealing a round-shouldered figure in which the torso had plumped out while the legs had grown thin, giving her an odd sparrow-like aspect. Her face, in the flattering light, was much as he remembered it, except for a waxy, unnatural sheen. Hobart, in spite of his naivety in such matters, sensed that a cosmetician had all but erased the real face and used it as a canvas upon which to paint the woman who had used to be. His stride faltered.
“Hello, Denny,” she said in a burry voice. “Don’t stand there gawking. Come in!”
“Of course.” Hobart entered the room behind her and closed the door. “Hello, Mrs Langer.”
“Mrs Langer he says! You don’t need to be formal with me, Denny.” She threw him a brilliant smile as she went towards a liquor cabinet. “What are you drinking?”
“Ah… anything.”
“Good for you. Still game for anything, eh?” She splashed two glasses of clear liquid from a decanter, came back and handed one to him. She looked closely into his face as their fingers touched, and her smile vanished. “Just as a matter of interest – what age are you?”
“Twenty-three,” Hobart replied, too nonplussed to avoid a direct answer which carried a whiff of danger.
“My God,” Dorcie said, walking around him as though inspecting a statue. “My God! It isn’t fair – you’re still just a kid. How can you still be just a kid?”
Hobart strove to be diplomatic. “Age isn’t important.”
“Not important!” Dorcie drained her glass, wetting the side of her chin in the process. “Not important, he says. Of course it isn’t important for somebody who doesn’t change in eighteen years.”
“For me it’s only been one year,” Hobart said soothingly. “The time dilation effect – ”
“Don’t give me any of that scientific crap,” she shouted, chilling Hobart with the abrupt contortion of her face into a mask of fury. “Time is time, for God’s sake! It’s the same everywhere. Nobody will ever convince me…” She stopped speaking, glanced around like someone who had just heard a stealthy footfall, and her smile returned in full force. “Let’s have another drink.”
Hobart held up his still brimming glass. “I suppose you can guess why I came to see you.”
“I can guess, all right – you young spacers are all the same,” Dorcie said coquettishly, appalling Hobart even further. She refilled her glass and sat down on a low-backed couch. “Don’t stand around, Denny – we’re old friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes, indeed.” Hobart sat down near her and sipped his drink, which proved to be a cloying almond-flavoured liqueur. “Look, Dorcie, you don’t believe I killed Wolf Craven, do you?”
“You? That’s hardly your style.”
“Have you any idea why Colonel Langer told the police I did it?”
“I know exactly why.” Dorcie gave a sharp laugh. “Don’t you know? It’s because he was a bastard. Through and through. He tried to keep me shut up as if I was a goddamn Sister of Mercy or something – but it didn’t work.”
“That’s not what I’m getting at.”
“Funny thing is, he was able to do it better after he was dead. I’m not allowed to give up the house, you know. I’m tied to this mausoleum and that damned ice box out in back, otherwise I lose three fourths of my lousy income.”
Hobart shook his head impatiently. “Do you remember the party the night before I left?”
“Do I?” Dorcie rolled her eyes, put a hand on his knee, and leaned closer. “Are you trying to get me going?”
“In his deposition to the police,” Hobart said steadily, repressing the urge to shrink away, ‘the colonel said he rejoined the party soon after midnight, but you must remember that he didn’t. Nobody saw him for the rest of the –’
“I don’t want to talk about that old goat,” Dorcie cut in, setting her glass aside. “All right, Denny – let’s go upstairs.”
Hobart’s mouth went dry. “Upstairs?”
“Don’t act so innocent.” She slid her hand along his thigh. “You’ve been stripping me with your eyes ever since you came in here.”
Hobart disengaged by jumping to his feet. “You’re the only one who can help me. Think back, please. Can you remember exactly what the colonel did that night?”
Dorcie made as if to come after him, then a slow smile appeared on her face and she settled back on the couch, spreading her legs a little. “I probably could remember – given the right sort of encouragement.”
“He was missing for the rest of the night, wasn’t he?”
“Down on your knees,” she commanded, eyes bleak and threatening. “Down on your knees, boy.”