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in the other room cut off abruptly.
Still the mad light continued to pulsate through the tunnel.
Abruptly the girl thrust out one slender arm in a graceful shove. The young
man, who had no dancer s balance, went staggering back. He reeled helplessly
into a towering marble statue, which rocked on its base and settled back.
Mumbling something, the man tried to recover, clawed at a wall, then sat down
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on the white carpet with a soft thud.
Again the multicolored light wavered with approaching shadows. Another naked
man was coming from the far room. The legs that bore him round the white curve
of tunnel were moving trunks of bone and muscle, well designed for his great
weight. The torso above the legs had once been heroic, but now sagged grossly
with advancing age. Still the clean-shaven face, its chin held high, was
alert, controlled, imperious. Only a fringe of hair, all white, remained
around the massive head; and gray hair grew matted thickly on the chest and
belly and on the heavy, still-powerful arms.
This man advanced a little way into the room and halted, looking with
displeasure at the scene.  There are some very valuable things in here, he
announced in a bass voice,  and both of you are evidently crazy, or completely
freaked out, or whatever the word for it is this year. Therefore I am not
going to let you make this your playground.
Got that?
The last words trailed off just a little. The aging man had at last taken some
notice of the extreme rigidity of the girl s gaze and the strangeness of her
frozen posture. The arm she had used to shove the youth away was still
extended. Her head was still turned, eyes looking back over her left shoulder.
The only sound in the room, besides the violent music, was the labored
breathing of the young man. He still sat on the floor, and now he was
glowering angrily at the girl.
The old man said, in his bass voice:  If that on the wall really strikes your
fancy, little girl, then you have good taste. Better than some people who have
entered this room fully clothed and supposedly in their right minds. Well, I
have good taste too, and you doubtless don t know what you re staring at
anyway, and I appreciate your round little ass. In fact, out of all the
orifices available tonight, I may just choose to end my evening there. But I
want to do it back in the other room. So get up.
Now through the tunnel behind the old man three more naked figures were
approaching, pushing before them an extensive interplay of shadows. Slightly
in the lead there walked a leanly muscular man of about thirty-five. His
suntanned body was marked with the pale outline of absent swimming briefs.
Just after the man came a boy who appeared to be in his mid-teens, small and
slightly built, pale-haired, blinking lost eyes at the world. The boy
supported himself every few steps by leaning a frail arm against the white
curve of the tunnel wall. When he emerged from the tunnel into the room and
the wall flattened, he stopped, leaning his back against it for support. A
step behind the boy, another dark-haired girl strolled in casually. In size,
and build, and coloring, she fairly closely resembled the girl who had been
dancing. The brown eyes of this newly-arrived girl were keen with interest but
they were focused on the empty air an arm s length before her face. She paid
no attention to anyone else. Her full lips mumbled soundlessly, then smiled.
The red-haired man who sat on the floor ignored them all, all except the girl
who had danced. Now in his throat a low murmuring of rage and humiliation had
begun, and grew in loudness. On the second try he struggled back to his feet.
His right hand went out to a small white cube, and from its flat surface he
grabbed up a small but heavy artifact of silvery metal. Raising this, he
lunged straight for the crouching dancer as his right arm swung the lethally
compact weight straight for her skull.
The old man s was the only voice to cry a warning, and his yell did no one any
good. It sounded simultaneously with a sharp, dying scream.
The thin young boy still leaned back tiredly against the flat white wall. His
blinking eyes, completely lost, were looking somewhere on the far side of the
dim room. The dark-haired girl who had come with him through the tunnel stood
quietly beside him now. She was thoughtfully probing with one finger inside
her own mouth, as if intent on making sure her teeth were all still there. She
took no account of what had happened to the white carpet just a few feet away.
The athletic man, who was alert and could move very fast, was already a step
in front of the huge old one. But there he halted his swift advance, warily
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astonished; his move had obviously come too late, and he had no wish to step
into the fresh blood.
The huge, gray old man was astonished too. Then, because he was no stranger to
sudden violence and it did not particularly upset him, and because he
possessed a quickly penetrating mind, he was immediately struck by
circumstances even more amazing than the mere fact of abrupt murder.
Inspiration of a magnitude extremely rare grew swiftly behind his clear blue
eyes. Slowly he put out a massive hand, to take his wiry companion by the
shoulder.
 Gliddon, the old man said. He used the careful tone of one who wishes to
wake a sleeper gently, not to startle.
 What? The attention of the wiry man was still warily absorbed in the scene
before him. Hell of a mess to be cleaned up, at best, he was thinking. The
killer was now standing, swaying, as if dazed. The silver artifact lay on the
floor, near something else.
 Gliddon. These two kids behind me. I want you to get them out of here.
They re both stoned blind, and I don t think this has made any impression on
them at all. I doubt that they ll remember seeing a thing but anyway we ll
cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now get  em out of here and put
 em down to sleep somewhere. I want to deal with this. He nodded at the red
spectacle before them.
 But.
 Oh, you can take charge of the cleanup later. But right now just get those
two put away. The old man, an expression in his eyes befitting the discoverer
of a new continent, was moving forward slowly, his gaze shifting from the
dazed, spattered killer to the demolished victim, and back again.  I want to
handle this, alone. I have my reasons.
ONE
In my opinion I owe the breathing legions of humanity no explanations of any
of my affairs, no apologies for any chapter of my life. And I consider this
judgement to apply with particular force to my role in the events surrounding
the recent and much-publicized disappearance of one of the world s noblest
works of art. Let those breathing folk who in financial anguish claim rights
to the painting recover it if they are able, or get along without it if they
are not.
Nor do I consider that it is up to me to interpret for them those strange and
violent events, mystifying to so many, which like red parentheses enclose the
painting s vanishment. By the standard of objective justice it is rather I who
deserve an accounting from the breathing world, I who am entitled to some
reparations . . .
Bah. At my age I should know better. And in fact I do. I press no formal
claim.
Only this much do I insist upon: you will understand that almost my sole
purpose in setting down this history is to please myself.
Almost, be it noted. Mina, my true great love, my delight now for almost a
century, accept these pages from me as my humble effort to explain some things
you must have wondered at; and be assured, my dear, that none of the breathing
women mentioned here could ever begin to mean as much to me as one look from
your eyes, one touch from your sweet hand. In addition, I would like to think [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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