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 you to your death. Is it because you tried to kill him earlier? Did you get his Martian secret?”
Sollenar shook his head.
“You didn’t get it.” Ermine sighed. “That’s unfortunate. I’ll have to take steps.”
“Under the By-Laws,” Sollenar said, “I cry laissez faire.”
Ermine looked up, his eyes twinkling. “Laissez faire? Mr. Sollenar, do you have any idea how many of our members are involved in your fortunes? They will cry laissez faire, Mr. Sollenar, but clearly you persist in dragging them down with you. No, sir, Mr. Sollenar, my office now forwards an immediate recommendation to the Technical Advisory Committee of the I.A.B. that Mr. Burr probably has a system superior to yours, and that stock in Sollenar, Incorporated, had best be disposed of.”
“There’s a bench,” Sollenar said. “Let’s sit down.”
“As you wish.” Ermine moved beside Sollenar to the bench, but remained standing.
“What is it, Mr. Sollenar?”
“I want your help. You advised me on what Burr had. It’s still in his office building, somewhere. You have resources. We can get it.”
“Laissez faire, Mr. Sollenar. I visited you in an advisory capacity. I can do no more.”
“For a partnership in my affairs could you do more?”
“Money?” Ermine tittered. “For me? Do you know the conditions of my employment?”
If he had thought, Sollenar would have remembered. He reached out tentatively. Ermine anticipated him.
Ermine bared his left arm and sank his teeth into it. He displayed the arm. There was no quiver of pain in voice or stance. “It’s not a legend, Mr. Sollenar. It’s quite true. We of our office must spend a year, after the nerve surgery, learning to walk without the feel of our feet, to handle objects without crushing them or letting them slip, or damaging ourselves. Our mundane pleasures are auditory, olfactory, and visual. Easily gratified at little expense. Our dreams are totally interior, Mr. Sollenar. The operation is irreversible. What would you buy for me with your money?”
“What would I buy for myself?” Sollenar’s head sank down between his shoulders.
Ermine bent over him. “Your despair is your own, Mr. Sollenar. I have official business with you.”
He lifted Sollenar’s chin with a forefinger. “I judge physical interference to be unwarranted at this time. But matters must remain so that the I.A.B. members involved with you can recover the value of their investments in E.V. Is that perfectly clear, Mr. Sollenar? You are hereby enjoined under the By-Laws, as enforced by the Special Public Relations Office.” He glanced at his watch. “Notice was served at 1:27 a.m., City time.”
“1:27,” Sollenar said. “City time.” He sprang to his feet and raced down a companionway to the taxi level.
Mr. Ermine watched him quizzically.
He opened his costume, took out his omnipresent medical kit, and sprayed coagulant over the wound in his forearm. Replacing the kit, he adjusted his clothing and strolled down the same companionway Sollenar had run. He raised an arm, and a taxi flittered down beside him. He showed the driver a card, and the cab lifted off with him, its lights glaring in a Priority pattern, far faster than Sollenar’s ordinary legal limit allowed.