Sign of the unicorn (16 page)

But who? I was not so far gone that I failed to realize I might be contacting the one responsible for my condition. Would it be better to gamble that way, or to take my chances here? Still, Random or Gerard-I thought that I heard a car. Faint, distant . . . The wind and my pulsebeat were competing wth perception, though. I turned my head. I concentrated.

There . . . Again. Yes. It was an engine. I got ready to wave the cloth.

Even then, my mind kept straying. And one thought that flitted through was that I might already be unable to muster sufficient concentration to manipulate the Trumps.

The sound grew louder. I raised the cloth. Moments later, the farthest visible point along the road to my right was touched with light. Shortly after, I saw the car at the top of the rise. I lost sight of it once more as it descended the hill. Then it climbed again and came on, snowflakes flashing through its headbeams.

I began waving as it approached the dip. The lights caught me as it came up out of it, and the driver could not have missed seeing me. He went by, though, a man in a late model sedan, a woman in the passenger seat. The woman turned and looked at me, but the driver did not even slow down.

A couple of minutes later another car came by, a bit older, a woman driving, no visible passengers. It did slow down, but only for a moment. She must not have liked my looks. She stepped on the gas and was gone in an instant.

I sagged back and rested. A prince of Amber can hardly invoke the brotherhood of man for purposes of moral condemnation. At least not with a straight face, and it hurt too much to laugh just then.

Without strength, concentration, and some ability to move, my power over Shadow was useless. I would use it first, I decided, to get to some warm place. . . . I wondered whether I could make it back up the hill, to the compost heap. I had not thought of trying to use the jewel to alter the weather. Probably I was too weak for that too, though. Probably the effort would kill me. Still...

I shook my head. I was drifting off, more than half a dream. I had to stay awake. Was that another car? Maybe. I tried to raise the cloth and dropped it. When I leaned forward to retrieve it, I just had to rest my head on my knees for a moment. Deirdre . . . I would call my dear sister. If anyone would help me, Deirdre would. I would get out her Trump and call her. In a minute. If only she weren’t my sister . . . I had to rest. I am a knave, not a fool. Perhaps, sometimes, when I rest, I am even sorry for things. Some things. If only it were warmer . . . But it wasn’t too bad, bent over this way . . . Was that a car? I wanted to raise my head but found that I could not. It would not make that much difference in being seen, though, I decided.

I felt light on my eyelids and I heard the engine. Now it was neither advancing nor retreating. Just a steady cycling of growls. Then I heard a shout. Then the click-pause-chunk of a car door opening and closing. I felt that I could open my eyes but I did not want to. I was afraid that I would look only on the dark and empty road, that the sounds would resolve into pulsebeats and wind once more. It was better to keep what I had than to gamble.

“Hey! What’s the matter? You hurt?”

Footsteps. . . This was real.

I opened my eyes. I forced myself up once again.

“Corey! My God! It’s you!”

I forced a grin, cut my nod short of a topple.

“It’s me. Bill. How’ve you been?”

“What happened?”

“I’m hurt,” I said. “Maybe bad. Need a doctor.”

“Can you walk if I help? Or should I carry you?”

“Let’s try walking,” I said.

He got me to my feet and I leaned on him. We started for his car. I only remember the first few steps.

When that low-swinging sweet chariot turned sour and swung high once more, I tried to raise my arm, realized that it was restrained, settled for a consideration of the tube affixed thereto, and decided that I was going to live. I had sniffed hospital smells and consulted my internal clock. Having made it this far, I felt that I owed it to myself to continue. And I was warm, and as comfortable as recent history allowed. That settled, I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and went back to sleep.

Later, when I came around again, felt more fit and was spotted by a nurse, she told me that it was seven hours since I had been brought in and that a doctor would be by to talk with me shortly. She also got me a glass of water and told me that it had stopped snowing. She was curious as to what had happened to me.

I decided that it was time to start plotting my story. The simpler the better. All right. I was coming home after an extended stay abroad. I had hitchhiked out, gone on in, and been attacked by some vandal or drifter I had surprised inside. I crawled back out and sought help. Finis.

When I told it to the doctor I could not tell at first whether he believed me. He was a heavy man whose face had sagged and set long ago. His name was Bailey, Morris Bailey, and he nodded as I spoke and then asked me, “Did you get a look at the fellow?”

I shook my head.

“It was dark,” I said.

“Did he rob you too?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you carrying a wallet?”

I decided I had better say yes to that one.

“Well, you didn’t have it when you came in here, so he must have taken it.”

“Must have,” I agreed.

“Do you remember me at all?”

“Can’t say that I do. Should I?”

“You seemed vaguely familiar to me when they brought you in. That was all, at first. . .”

“And.. . ?” I asked.

“What sort of garments were you wearing? They seemed something like a uniform.”

“Latest thing. Over There, these days. You were saying that I looked familiar?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Where is Over There, anyway? Where did you come from? Where have you been?”

“I travel a lot,” I said. “You were going to tell me something a moment ago.”

“Yes,” he said. “We are a small clinic, and some time ago a fast-talking salesman persuaded the directors to invest in a computerized medical-records system. If the area had developed more and we had expanded a lot, it might have been worthwhile. Neither of these things happened, though, and it is an expensive item. It even encouraged a certain laziness among the clerical help. Old files just don’t get purged the way they used to, even for the emergency room. Space there for a lot of useless backlog. So, when Mr. Roth gave me your name and I ran a routine check on you, I found something and I realized why you looked familiar. I had been working the emergency room that night too, around seven years ago, when you had your auto accident. I remembered working on you then-and how I thought you weren’t going to make it. You surprised me, though, and you still do. I can’t even find the scars that should be there. You did a nice job of healing up.”

“Thanks. A tribute to the physician. I’d say.”

“May I have your age, for the record?”

“Thirty-six,” I said. That’s always safe.

He jotted it somewhere in the folder he held across his knees.

“You know, I would have sworn-once I got to checking you over and remembering-that that’s about what you looked the last time I saw you.”

“Clean living.”

“Do you know about your blood type?”

“It’s an exotic. But you can treat it as an AB positive for all practical purposes. I can take anything, but don’t give mine to anybody else.”

He nodded.

“The nature of your mishap is going to require a police report, you know.”

“I had guessed that.”

“Just thought you might want to be thinking about it.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“So you were on duty that night, and you patched me up? Interesting. What else do you recall about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“The circumstances under which I was brought in that time. My own memory is a blank from right before the accident until some time after I had been transferred up to the other place-Greenwood. Do you recall how I arrived?”

He frowned, just when I had decided he had one face for all occasions.

“We sent an ambulance,” he said.

“In response to what? Who reported the accident? How?”

“I see what you mean,” he said. “It was the State Patrol that called for the ambulance. As I recollect, someone had seen the accident and phoned their headquarters. They then radioed a car in the vicinity. It went to the lake, verified the report, gave you first aid, and called for the ambulance. And that was it.”

“Any record of who called in the report in the first place?”

He shrugged.

“That’s not the sort of thing we keep track of,” he said.
 
“Didn’t your insurance company investigate? Wasn’t there a claim? They could probably-“

“I had to leave the country right after I recovered,” I said. “I never pursued the matter. I suppose there would have been a police report, though.”

“Surely. But I have no idea how long they keep them around.” He chuckled. “Unless, of course, that same salesman got to them, too. . . . It is rather late to be talking about that though, isn’t it? It seems to me there is a statute of limitations on things of that sort. Your friend Roth will tell you for sure-“

“It isn’t a claim that I have in mind,” I said. “Just a desire to know what really happened. I have wondered about it on and off for a number of years now. You see, I have this touch of retrograde amnesia going.”

“Have you ever talked it over with a psychiatrist?” he said, and there was something about the way he said it that I did not like. Came one of those little flashes of insight then: Could Flora have managed to get me certified insane before my transfer to Greenwood? Was that on my record here? And was I still on escape status from that place? A lot of time had passed and I knew nothing of the legalities involved. If this was indeed the case, however, I imagined they would have no way of knowing whether I had been certified sane again in some other jurisdiction. Prudence, I guess it was, cautioned me to lean forward and glance at the doctor’s wrist. I seemed possessed of a subliminal memory that he had consulted a calendar watch when taking my pulse. Yes, he had, I squinted. All right. Day and month: November 28. I did a quick calculation with my two-and-a-half-to-one conversion and had the year. It was seven, as he had indicated.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. “I just assumed it was organic rather than functional and wrote the time off as a loss.”

“I see,” he said. “You use such phrases rather glibly. People who’ve been in therapy sometimes do that.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve read a lot about it.”

He sighed. He stood.

“Look,” he said. “I am going to call Mr. Roth and let him know you are awake. It is probably best.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that with your friend being an attorney, there might be things you want to discuss with him before you talk to the police.”

He opened the folder wherein he had somewhere jotted my age, raised his pen, furrowed his brow, and said, “What’s the date, anyway?”

I wanted my Trumps. I imagined my belongings would be in the drawer of the bedside table, but getting at it involved too much twisting and I did not want to put the strain on my sutures. It was not all that urgent, though. Eight hours’ sleep in Amber would come to around twenty hours here, so everyone should still have been respectably retired back home. I wanted to get hold of Random, though, to come up with some sort of cover story for my not being there in the morning. Later.

I did not want to look suspicious at a time like this. Also, I wanted to know immediately whatever Brand had to say. I wanted to be in a position to act on it. I did a quick bit of mental juggling. If I could do the worst of my recovering here in Shadow, it would mean less wasted time for me back in Amber. I would have to budget my time carefully and avoid complications on this end. I hoped that Bill would arrive soon. I was anxious to know what the picture was in this place.

Bill was a native of the area, had gone to school in Buffalo, come back, married, joined the family firm, and that was that. He had known me as a retired Army officer who sometimes traveled on vague business. We both belonged to the country club, which was where I had met him. I had known him for over a year without our exchanging more than a few words. Then one evening I happened to be next to him in the bar and it had somehow come out that he was hot on military history, particularly the Napoleonic Wars. The next thing we knew, they were closing up the place around us. We were close friends from then on, right up until the time of my difficulties. I had occasionally wondered about him since. In fact, the only thing that had prevented me from seeing him the last time I had passed through was that he would doubtless have had all sorts of questions as to what had become of me, and I had had too many things on my mind to deal with them all that gracefully and still enjoy myself. I had even thought once or twice of coming back and seeing him if I could, when everything was finally settled in Amber. Next to the fact that this was not the case, I regretted not being able to meet him in the club lounge.

He arrived within the hour, short, heavy, ruddy, a bit grayer on the sides, grinning, nodding. I had propped myself up by then, already tried a few deep breaths and decided they were premature. He clasped my hand and took the bedside chair. He had his briefcase with him.