Мартин Гринберг - Lord of the Fantastic - Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny

Then again, who’s saying that it didn’t?

He was late, rushing to work on that gray November morning in 1962, when a car coasted to the curb beside him. A man slid out of it, lifting an imperative hand to stop him. The driver got out and darted around the car. A woman, she held his eye. Slenderly perfect in figure and style, she was made up like a matinee queen, every blond curl precisely in place. The man caught her arm and spoke to him in a language that sounded like Russian or perhaps Greek.

“Are you lost?” he asked. “Can I help?”

The woman spoke, her inflections just as puzzling. He stepped back, staring. The man was too film-star handsome. They both looked far too hep and chic for the traffic noise and diesel reek of this busy Cleveland street. He dodged back when the woman pounced at him, reaching with both hands to clap him on the sides of his head.

“Hey—”

In a moment she had glided away. Catching a startled breath, he found that she had left a cloud of some rich perfume and two hard little objects clinging to his temples. They vibrated briefly and felt slightly warm. She spoke to him again, her voice now musically clear.

“You are Security Agent 850-28-3294?”

He retreated again, blinking in startled bewilderment at them and their car, a 1958 Ford sedan. It looked too new, the sky-blue paint too bright, the whole shape not quite right, though it had a 1962 license plate.

They stood intently waiting.

“I do have a job with Social Security,” he told them. “And that is my Social Security number. But I’m no agent—”

“A clever attempt at cover.” The woman glanced down the street and made a face of shocked disgust. “And a very strange place to hide. You almost escaped us.”

He backed farther away. Though he saw no weapons, they both looked alert and superbly fit, poised and ready for anything. Her green eyes narrowed, she watched him like a crouching cat. Hostile or not, they made no sense here in downtown Cleveland.

“What’s this all about?” He blinked at them and the sky-blue Ford. “Who are you?”

She made a sound he didn’t understand.

“Security,” the man said. “We are here from Security Command.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’ve forgotten—” Impatiently, she sniffed something, perhaps a name or a title, that he didn’t get. “We’re here to get you back to your duty.”

“You’ve got me wondering.” He turned to the man, who seemed less demanding. “Do you have some identification?’’

The woman tilted her ivory wrist to display a little object that flickered for a moment with rainbow color.

“Do you want our individual designations?”

Blankly, he nodded.

“They don’t translate.” The man shrugged as if in apology. “Not into any local dialect. You may call me Paul.” He smiled ambivalently at the woman. “Lilith, perhaps, from the local folklore? Call her Lil.”

“What, exactly, are you after?”

“If you have forgotten who you are,” the woman was severely ironic and no longer charming, “your record here has been abysmal since the day you were placed. You’ve failed to file reports and ignored your recall. We are here from the command to pick you up.”

“You must have made some mistake—”

“We don’t make mistakes.” Her voice had the cold snap of breaking ice. “We’re here to stop your own.”

“If you want to see my record—” He appealed to the man. “Just come down to the office with me. I’m still the new man there, but you won’t find anything—”

“You’ll come with us.” Sharply, she cut him off. “At once.”

“Wait a minute.” He edged back, prepared to run. “Let’s call a cop to straighten this out.”

“Get him in the car,” she told the man. “I’m sick of this hideous hellhole.”

“I’ve got to get on to the office.” He backed farther. “Let me call a lawyer—”

“Your native ways are no concern of ours, and you won’t be returning to any office here.” The woman grew stern. “Not after your miserable fiasco.”

“However,” the man was more patient, “we are required to record any statement you may wish to make.”

Looking up and down the street, he found no police car, no taxi, no visible escape.

“Let’s get on with it,” the man urged him. “We have your earlier duty record, apparently satisfactory and complete up until your assignment here. What we need is an account of what you have been doing since.”

“In particular—” The woman paused, holding out her wrist as if that flickering dial might conceal a microphone. “Have you compromised the service? Have you revealed yourself?”

“What could I reveal?” He dug for his wallet. “I’m an American citizen. Here’s my driver’s license. Roger J. Zelazny, born right here in Cleveland, May 13, 1937.”

“Born?” Her perfect eyebrows lifted. “What does that mean?”

“Remember we’re out on a frontier rim world,” the man told her. “Among primitive exotics. Natural procreation is evidently still allowed.”

She made a face and shrank away.

“Thank you.” With a noncommittal nod, the man glanced at the license and gave it back. “Will you continue?”

“Just what do you want to know?”

“Your own account of what you have been doing.”

“Briefly,” the woman said. “I’ve got to get out.”

“Mostly, I’ve just been in school.” He spoke slowly, watching the street for a chance to break away. “At Noble School and high school out in Euclid. Then Western Reserve for the B.A. in English. I finished my M.A. at Columbia earlier this year. I write a little poetry—”

“A bard?” The man turned to the woman. “A native bard!”

The woman shrugged with impatient disdain.

“A native informant!” The man’s voice quickened. “Or native enough, if he’s been here since we set up the station.”

She said something he didn’t catch and gestured at the Ford.

“Please forgive us, Mr. Zelazny.” The man was suddenly affable. “Lil is my superior. The service is her career. My own main interest is cultural anthropology. The service affords me a splendid opportunity for field work while I’m fulfilling a civil duty. Whatever your excuses, your extended experience here can make you a very useful informant.” His voice turned harder. “You will find yourself far more comfortable if you don’t resist.”

The woman reached for him with red-nailed talons.

“Help!” Yelling, he gestured wildly at a passing taxi. “Help me! They’re—”

Her steely fingers gripped his arm. He felt a sharp vibration in the objects she had stuck to his temple. His yell was cut off. Suddenly limp, he let them drag him into the Ford. The man got in the backseat beside him. The doors closed with oddly solid thumps. He heard a puzzling hiss of air. The woman drove them, silently and fast.

Feeling numbed and groggy, he tried to see where they were going. The familiar buildings gave way to suburbs, farms, finally woods. Then the woods were gone. He craned to the window and saw the earth falling away below.

“Where—”

His voice only a croak, but the man answered helpfully:

“The first stop is your proper post at the signal station out on the satellite. The second is Galactic Security High Command.”