The Sphinx (20 page)

He was so relaxed when he returned to bed that he drifted
off into sleep almost at once and didn’t hear the shuffling and bumping that
disturbed the house an hour or so later. It sounded like something being
dragged upstairs, step by step, like a sack, or mattress, or a dying boy.

T
hat week was memorable in Washington for two reasons. The first
was a man arrested for trying to run across the White House lawns with what
appeared to be a gun, but was later discovered to be a piece of Kentucky fried
chicken. He had told the police, “I just wanted to share my lunch with the
President. He said he wanted to be a people’s President didn’t he?”

The second was
the annual visit from the Romero Traveling Circus, which came a week early
because of a cancelation at Silver Spring, Maryland.

It was still
strangely warm for the time of year, and when Gene drove down the freeway on
his way to work he kept the driving window of his car open. The big top was
pitched out by the cloverleaf not far from the Merriain turnoff, and Gene could
see the flags and the sideshows and the animal cages, and catch a waft of that
distinctive smell of sawdust and cotton-candy and lions’ urine.

At the office,
Maggie knew that something had subtly altered in Gene’s relationship to Lorie,
and she tried to be more sympathetic and supportive. She had gone back home and
cried .the night that Gene had married Lorie, but now she saw herself as a
friend and advisor to help him through the hard times of rehabilitating Lorie
to live a completely human existence. She was always there when he was anxious
or disturbed, and she could sense his moods and worries as soon as he walked
into the office door.

Today, he
seemed in pretty good humor.

“Are you going
to see the circus?” she asked, collecting his completed reports from his
Out-tray.

“Who needs to
see a circus when they work for Henry Ness?” asked Gene.

“It’s a
terrific show. You ought to go. Take Lorie.”

Gene lit his
first cigarette of the morning. “I can’t Bay that I’ve ever liked circuses. I
didn’t even like them when I was a kid. All those elephants holding on to each
other’s tails. It’s like a Democratic convention.”

Maggie laughed.
“Do you want some coffee?”

“I’d prefer
some help.”

“Help? What
help do you want? You look like you’ve got everything pretty well sewn up these
days.”

Gene leaned
back his chair. “Well, things are a lot happier with Lorie. I mean, we’re
really beginning to relate to each other now. We’re starting to build up our
trust. With any luck, once she’s undergone that plastic surgery, we’ll be over
the worst of it.”

“But what?”

“I didn’t say
‘but’ anything.”

“Yes, but the
‘but’ was implied. You’re happier with Lorie, you’re looking forward to the
plastic surgery, you’re settling down in Dracula Castle, but.”

Gene grinned.
“If I’d have married you, I wouldn’t have gotten away with anything. All right,
I’ll tell you what it is. It’s this whole Ubasti thing, right? It’s obviously
very important to Lorie, and even more important to her mother, but they won’t
talk about it. It’s like a secret between them, and I’m not included. I get
some vague hints about the lion-people now and again, but that’s not enough.
Yet I think if I knew something about the Ubasti, what they really are, I might
be able to relate to Lorie a lot closer.”

Maggie
shrugged. “I think you’d be doing yourself a favor if you let well enough alone
for now.

If Lorie
doesn’t want to tell you, then maybe she finds it too traumatic. You’re going
to have to build up your relationship absolutely firm before you can start
poking around with the real sensitive stuff.”

Gene stood up
and stretched. “I don’t know. I just get the feeling that everybody hi the
household knows something that I don’t. It’s like the chauffeur, Mathieu. He
cornered me upstairs a couple of days ago and started trying to tell me about
the sons of Bast, whoever the hell they are. But as soon as Madame arrived, he
was off.”

Maggie supped
coffee. “I think you’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

“You don’t live
there.”

“Oh, come on,
Gene, the whole thing with Lorie Is genetic. It’s nothing to do with monsters
or beast-people or reptiles from twenty thousand fathoms. It’s just some
genetic accident that a little bit of common sense can easily overcome You’ve
tried psychiatry, and you’re about to try surgery. What more can you possibly
do?”

Gene looked
thoughtful. “I don’t know. There’s a tension around the place, like something’s
going to happen, and I can’t work out what it is.”

“Gene, of
course there’s tension. There’s bound to be. But don’t you see that once your
problems with .Lorie are all worked out, all that tension is going to fade
away? You can’t expect to get over this thing in five minutes.”

“Well, no,”
said Gene. “I guess not.”

He sat down
again and frowned at his smoldering cigarette as if the ribboning smoke could
give him a clue to his future happiness.

“Look,” said
Maggie, “if it makes you feel any better, why don’t you award me a couple hours
off, and I’ll go down to the specialist anthropological library and see what I
can find you?”

“You don’t have
to.”

“I know I don’t
have to. But I’d like to. Anything to make you realize that Lorie is a
beautiful girl with a slight genetic problem, that the Semple family are not
the Munsters, and that it’s time you stopped worrying. Henry Ness has noticed
you’re worried, you know. He keeps wondering if you’ve done something awful you
don’t want to tell him, like sell the Panama Canal to-Fidel Castro.”

Gene checked
his watch. “Okay, Maggie. Two, maybe three hours. See if you can get back here
by three.”

“Fine,” said
Maggie, finishing her coffee. “And Gene?”

“Yes?”

“Remember I
loved you once, and I probably still do, and the thing I want for you more than
anything else is happiness.”

Gene gave her
.a reassuring grin. “Thanks, Maggie, You’re the next best thing .to a guardian
angel.”

At five that
evening, Maggie still hadn’t returned from the library, and Henry Ness was
calling an urgent policy meeting on the twelfth floor. Gene left a note on
Maggie’s typewriter to phone him at home, and then collected his files and
papers together and went upstairs. Walter Farlowe was outside the conference
room, sucking on a dead pipe and looking irritated.

“What’s up?”
asked Gene.

Farlowe
sniffed. “A real dilly. The press hasn’t got to it yet, but some maniac’s
kidnapped the son of the French Ambassador.”

“You’re
kidding! You mean today?”

“Last night I
guess. The cops are keeping the whole thing shut down tight It looks like
they’re expecting some kind of political ransom note or something. Henry’s
going out of his mind.”

“Jesus, I’m not
surprised. Do they know who did it yet?”.

“Not as far as
I know. It seems like they haven’t heard anything yet. But Henry thinks it’s
got something to do with his Middle East initiative. He thinks they’re going to
put the squeeze on him to lay off the Arabs, on pain of the kid’s death.”

-At that
moment, the doors of the conference room were opened, and they were invited in.

Henry Ness was
already there, along with a dark-suited FBI man, and representatives from the
French Embassy and the CIA.

“Now,
gentlemen,” said Henry Ness, “let’s consider what this kidnap’s going to mean.”

They talked for
three hours, going around and around Henry’s defensive neuroses about his
Middle East discussions, but as the room grew bluer and smokier, and the State
Department executives grew wearier and less inspirational, and as the police
reported that there was still no news from the kidnappers, the discussions
gradually ground to a halt As Henry was expounding his personal theories about
the crime for the fifteenth time, the telephone by Gene’s elbow began to ring.
“Excuse me sir,” he said, and picked it up.

“Keiller.”

“Darling, this
is Lorie.”

“Oh, hi.
Listen, honey, I’m right in the middle of it.

We have the
Secretary here and we’re struck for a couple of hours at least.”

“Well, that’s
okay, the circus doesn’t start until nine-thirty.”

“Circus? What
do you mean?”

“It’s a
surprise. I managed to book us two tickets for tonight’s performance.”

He reached for
his cigarettes across the table. “Lorie, I hate to tell you this, but I don’t
flunk I really want to go.”

“But this one
sounds so good, darling. Everybody says they have wonderful trapeze artists.”

Gene lit his
cigarette and rubbed the back of his neck in suppressed exasperation. “Lorie,
after spending five . hours hi conference, I must tell you that the last thing
I want to do is go to a circus. Now, will you do me a favor and take the
tickets back?”

“Oh, Gene.”

“I’m sorry,
honey, but I’m too bushed.”

“Oh, Gene, I
was so looking forward to it,”

“Well, maybe
some other night.”

“All the other
nights are booked. Anyway, tonight’s special.”

“What’s special
about it?”

“It just is.”

Gene could see
Henry Ness glaring at him in very thinly disguised disapproval. This was
supposed to be the new get-up-and-go administration, and calls from home in the
middle of crisis policy meetings were not exactly encouraged. In Henry’s view,
an executive was married to his desk, and any man who went home to his wife
more than a couple of tunes a week was almost a bigamist, or at the very least
an adulterer.

“I have to go,”
said Gene, “I’m in the middle of a meeting.”

“Oh, please say
yes.”

“Listen, I’ll
catch you later. We can discuss it then.”

“I love you,
Gene. Please say yes.”

Henry Ness let
out a rumbling cough. Gene smirked in embarrassment. “All right, Lorie,” he
said. “Okay. We’ll go. Come around to the office at nine. Now listen, I have to
hang up.”

“Oh, Gene,
you’re beautiful. I adore you so much.”

“Yes, well, me
too. Goodbye now.”

Gene laid the
receiver down, and turned back to the meeting with an earnest face, as if he’d
just taken a call from Castro’s foreign minister, or the British Prime
Minister.

“Not domestic
trouble, I hope, Gene?” Henry Ness asked.

“Oh no, sir.
Far from it.”

“Good. You
people make enough of a mess of things abroad, without doing the same at home.”

Everybody
laughed loud hyena laughs, and then they got back to the kidnapping.

The circus
didn’t finish until nearly a quarter of midnight, and Gene was tired and
irritable as they walked across the field to the parking lot, through discarded
popcorn boxes and half-chewed pizzas. The lights in the tents and sideshows
were going out, and the clowns and bareback riders were going back to their
trailers to shower, drink a bottle of beer, and watch late-night television.

Gene’s raincoat
collar was turned up against the chill of the November evening, but his
tiredness made him feel cold and shivery. They had been late for the circus
because of a snarl-up on the freeway, and then they had found that their
reserved seats had been commandeered by an immovable redneck in a plaid lumber
jacket and his five, fat children. In the end, they had spent two
uncomfortable, hours on a wooden form, way back among the coughing and sneezing
kids and the senile senior citizens, and everything that had happened in the
ring had been, invariably inaudible and usually invisible.

Lorie, though,
hi her long fur coat, seemed particularly glowing and happy; he supposed that
if going to the circus did this much to please her, it was a small price to
pay. He reached in his pocket and discovered he was out of cigarettes.

“Gene,” said
Lorie, “I’m so excited.”

“Excited?
What’s to be excited about?”

“Oh,
everything. Everything’s just so exciting.”

“You could have
fooled me. All I saw was some fat ladies on horses and a guy getting himself
shot a couple of feet in the air out of a cannon.

Lorie tugged
his arm so that he stopped walking, and she looked up at him with sparkling
eyes.

“Gene, let’s go
look at the lions.”

“The lions? Is
that a very good idea?”

“Gene, they
were beautiful. Did you see how beautiful they were?”

“Well, sure.
They were okay.”

“Okay! They
were beautiful That big male with that fantastic mane. Did you see his face?
He’s so virile, and wise-looking, but he looks strong and fierce too.”

“Lorie, I’m
sorry, but Tm just not a connoisseur of lions.”

“You married
me.”

“Sure, but,
look, I don’t think this is a very good idea, that’s all. I think the best
thing we can do is-get back to the car and .go home.”

Lorie leaned
forward and kissed him. Her lips felt warm in the chill breeze, and he could
smell that distinctive aroma that always clung around her.

“Please, Gene.
They’re just around the corner.” He looked at her, and she was so lovely that
all he-could do was smile and say, “All right. A quick couple of minutes. And
maybe you can point out some of their finer features to an amateur lion-lover
who doesn’t know a mane from a floor mop.”

She kissed him
again. “You’re perfect,” she whispered. “You just don’t know how perfect you
are.”

They walked
around the clowns’ trailers, past the elephant enclosure until they reached the
row of cages where the lions and tigers were kept. It was dark here now,
because the generators had been switched off for the night, and the grass
rustled in the wind. From the gloom of the cages, Gene heard the scratch of
claws of wooden floors, and the deep growling purr of great carnivorous beasts
as they slept.