Executing a brief dance step, he kissed his fingertips and waved as the last of them took flight, the ill-cast dreams of would-be scribblers from half a dozen centuries.
"Bon jour, ail revoir, adieu," he stated, and then he turned away and smiled.
Returning to the desk, he took up his pen and wrote, I have done my successor a favor and destroyed all of your stupid manuscripts. None of you have any talent whatsoever, and he signed it. He folded it then to take with him, to tack to the door of the conference room as he passed it on the way out.
Then he took up a second sheet of paper.
It may seem, he wrote, as if I am repaying your hos pitality, your generosity, in a particularly odious fashion, with my resolution to assist your worst enemy by de stroying you—destroying you, I might add, in an es pecially macabre style. Some might feel that my sense of justice has been outraged and that I do this in the service of a higher end. They would be wrong.
After signing it, he added the postscript: By the time you read this, you will already be dead.
He chuckled, placed the skull paperweight atop the document, rose to his feet and departed his quarters leaving the door slightly ajar.
He took the tube down, posted his rejection slip and walked the short corridor to the side door, encountering no one. Outside, he shuddered against the balmy breeze, squinted at the sunlight, grimaced at the birdsongs—taped or live, he could not be sure which— from the nearest park. He chuckled, though, as he mounted a beltway and moved northward toward the transfer point. It was going to be a glorious day nevertheless.
By the time he passed onto the westbound belt, he was humming a little tune. There were a few other people out, but none of them nearby. His destination was already plainly visible, but he moved to the faster belt and actually walked along it for a few moments before returning to the slower and finally stepping off at the proper underpass. He could as readily have reached this point on the underground belts, he thought, if he had been sure of his distances and directions. As it was, he had needed this landmark.
He entered the enormous building, proceeding in what he recalled to be the proper direction. He passed only two white-smocked technicians and he nodded to . both of them. They nodded back.
He found his way into the big hall. At a workstand toward the center, Sundoc leaned over a piece of equipment. He was alone.
The marquis had crossed most of the distance between them before Sundoc looked up.
"Oh. Hello, marquis," he said, wiping his hand on his jacket and straightening.
"You may call me Alphonse."
"All right. Back for another look, eh?"
"Yes. I stole a few moments from that miserable schedule Chadwick has set up for me. Oh, my!"
"What?". "Some of the magnetic fluid is leaking from that
piece of equipment behind you!"
"What? There's no—"
Sundoc turned to his left and bent to inspect the indicated unit. Then he collapsed across it.
The marquis held a stocking in his right hand, with a bar of soap knotted into its toe. This he thrust back into his jacket pocket, then he caught Sundoc in his slide floorwards and assisted him into a supine position. He covered him with a tarpaulin which had protected a machine near the wall.
Whistling softly, he moved to the small console which controlled the pit lift. After a moment, he heard the low, sighing noise of the machinery. He moved to the edge and looked down, the helmet clasped before him.
"How like that wondrous Beast of Revelations," he mused, as the startled creature bellowed, dropped the carcass of a cow and began, with great thudding noises, to spring about within its enclosure. "I long to be joined with you, my lovely. But a moment more—"
"Hey! What's going on in here?"
The two technicians he had passed on the way in had just come into the hall.
"Reverse it! Reverse it!" one of them screamed, and began running toward the unit near the workbench.
The marquis raised the helmet and placed it on his head. There followed a moment of delightful disorientation. He closed his eyes.
... The wall was sinking all about him. He beheld his own diminutive, helmeted form. He saw the first white-coated figure arrive at the console, the second close behind it. "Don't do that!" he tried to say. But a button was pushed. All at once, the walls ceased their movement. He sprang. God! the power! The guard rail collapsed. He swayed on the edge of the pit, then moved forward. The console and the technicians vanished beneath him. He bellowed... Lower your head, he/they willed, that I might mount. Clumsily, he straddled the neck of the great beast. Now we are going to take a walk. You are my guest artist for today.
The doorway was too small, for a few moments. As he moved up the mall paralleling the belts, screaming sounds began, here and there. A slow-moving vehicle halted and discharged its colorfully garbed passengers, all of whom fled. The breezes, the sunlight, the birdcalls, were no longer disturbing. In fact, they were barely discernible. He overturned the vehicle and bellowed a song. Chadwick's main building lay ahead.
He would be in the a rebours room at this time of day...
With each lurching step forward, his feelings rose. Parceling out terror, he left the mall and headed into the park. He passed through its elegant periphery of trees, shrubs, flowerbeds, like wind through a sieve. The holograms closed upon themselves behind him, to rustle in their imaginary breezes. Hidden below the level of fictitious tulips, a pair of lovers were crushed at the moment of orgasm. A genuine bench splintered, a trash container crumpled as he passed. His bellowed song drowned all other sounds.
As he emerged at the side of the park nearest his destination, he tried to smash a small black car which had slowed and seemed to be aimed to park beside the
blue truck which he had not noted earlier. It swerved about him, however, and vanished rapidly up the road.
He continued on, passing to the right of the entrance, rounding a comer, unaware of the play of shadow now behind him, so like that which had lain upon the truck.
He ceased his bellowing as he counted windows, seeking the proper section of wall. Stalking, panting, chuckling, he did not hear the sounds of more vehicles approaching the front of the building. If he had, it
really would not have mattered.
His joy rising to a new height, he struck. The facade shattered, and on his third blow he burst through the large-grained crushed morocco leatherbound wall. The ceiling tore apart and fell down around him as he advanced upon Chadwick and the other man who stood at the fireplace before the sphinx, regarding a lengthy tongue of tape. His forelegs clawed at the air. His
tongue darted forth.
"The death of Chadwick!" he shouted. "By Tyrannosaurus rex! Under the direction of the marquis de
Sade!" "Really," Chadwick replied, flicking an ash from his
cigar, "there are simpler ways of submitting your
resignation."
The beast halted. The shadow fled from beneath its tail, centimeters ahead of a copious quantity of urine.
The forelegs twitched.
"The marquis has already introduced himself," Chadwick stated, throwing his arm about the other man's shoulders, thrusting him forward and stepping behind him. "Marquis, I would now like you to meet my former partner. Red Dorakeen."
The marquis's smile vanished. The beast shifted uneasily.