Short Fiction - Algis Budrys (chrysanthemum read aloud .TXT) 📗

But it might be a time will come when I couldn’t bear to live in this city. What about that?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

And Cortwright Burr put his hand up over the edge of the parapet, between them.

Sollenar stared down at the straining knuckles, holding the entire weight of the man dangling against the sheer face of the building. There was a sliding, rustling noise, and the other hand came up, searched blindly for a hold and found it, hooked over the stone. The fingers tensed and rose, their tips flattening at the pressure as Burr tried to pull his head and shoulders up to the level of the parapet.

Bess breathed: “Oh, look at them! He must have torn them terribly climbing up!” Then she pulled away from Sollenar and stood staring at him, her hand to her mouth. “But he couldn’t have climbed! We’re so high!”

Sollenar beat at the hands with the heels of his palms, using the direct, trained blows he had learned at his athletic club.

Bone splintered against the stone. When the knuckles were broken the hands instantaneously disappeared, leaving only streaks behind them. Sollenar looked over the parapet. A bundle shrank from sight, silhouetted against the lights of the pedestrian level and the Avenue. It contracted to a pinpoint. Then, when it reached the brook and water flew in all directions, it disappeared in a final sunburst, endowed with glory by the many lights which found momentary reflection down there.

“Bess, leave me! Leave me, please!” Rufus Sollenar cried out.

III

Rufus Sollenar paced his office, his hands held safely still in front of him, their fingers spread and rigid.

The telephone sounded, and his secretary said to him: “Mr. Sollenar, you are ten minutes from being late at the TTV Executives’ Ball. This is a First Class obligation.”

Sollenar laughed. “I thought it was, when I originally classified it.”

“Are you now planning to renege, Mr. Sollenar?” the secretary inquired politely.

Certainly, Sollenar thought. He could as easily renege on the Ball as a king could on his coronation.

“Burr, you scum, what have you done to me?” he asked the air, and the telephone said: “Beg pardon?”

“Tell my valet,” Sollenar said. “I’m going.” He dismissed the phone. His hands cupped in front of his chest. A firm grip on emptiness might be stronger than any prize in a broken hand.

Carrying in his chest something he refused to admit was terror, Sollenar made ready for the Ball.

But only a few moments after the first dance set had ended, Malcolm Levier of the local TTV station executive staff looked over Sollenar’s shoulder and remarked:

“Oh, there’s Cort Burr, dressed like a gallows bird.”

Sollenar, glittering in the costume of the Medici, did not turn his head. “Is he? What would he want here?”

Levier’s eyebrows arched. “He holds a little stock. He has entrée. But he’s late.” Levier’s lips quirked. “It must have taken him some time to get that makeup on.”

“Not in good taste, is it?”

“Look for yourself.”

“Oh, I’ll do better than that,” Sollenar said. “I’ll go and talk to him a while. Excuse me, Levier.” And only then did he turn around, already started on his first pace toward the man.

But Cortwright Burr was only a pasteboard imitation of himself as Sollenar had come to know him. He stood to one side of the doorway, dressed in black and crimson robes, with black leather gauntlets on his hands, carrying a staff of weathered, natural wood. His face was shadowed by a sackcloth hood, the eyes well hidden. His face was powdered gray, and some blend of livid colors hollowed his cheeks. He stood motionless as Sollenar came up to him.

As he had crossed the floor, each step regular, the eyes of bystanders had followed Sollenar, until, anticipating his course, they found Burr waiting. The noise level of the Ball shrank perceptibly, for the lesser revelers who chanced to be present were sustaining it all alone. The people who really mattered here were silent and watchful.

The thought was that Burr, defeated in business, had come here in some insane reproach to his adversary, in this lugubrious, distasteful clothing. Why, he looked like a corpse. Or worse.

The question was, what would Sollenar say to him? The wish was that Burr would take himself away, back to his estates or to some other city. New York was no longer for Cortwright Burr. But what would Sollenar say to him now, to drive him back to where he hadn’t the grace to go willingly?

“Cortwright,” Sollenar said in a voice confined to the two of them. “So your Martian immortality works.”

Burr said nothing.

“You got that in addition, didn’t you? You knew how I’d react. You knew you’d need protection. Paid the Martians to make you physically invulnerable? It’s a good system. Very impressive. Who would have thought the Martians knew so much? But who here is going to pay attention to you now? Get out of town, Cortwright. You’re past your chance. You’re dead as far as these people are concerned⁠—all you have left is your skin.”

Burr reached up and surreptitiously lifted a corner of his fleshed mask. And there he was, under it. The hood retreated an inch, and the light reached his eyes; and Sollenar had been wrong, Burr had less left than he thought.

“Oh, no, no, Cortwright,” Sollenar said softly. “No, you’re right⁠—I can’t stand up to that.”

He turned and bowed to the assembled company. “Good night!” he cried, and walked out of the ballroom.

Someone followed him down the corridor to the elevators. Sollenar did not look behind him.

“I have another appointment with you now,” Ermine said at his elbow.

They reached the pedestrian level. Sollenar said: “There’s a café. We can talk there.”

“Too public, Mr. Sollenar. Let’s simply stroll and converse.” Ermine lightly took his arm and guided him along the walkway. Sollenar noticed then that Ermine was costumed so cunningly that no one could have guessed the appearance of the man.

“Very well,” Sollenar said.

“Of course.”

They walked together, casually. Ermine said: “Burr’s driving