the floor. Only in her peripheral vision could I detect her lady's maid packing up her clothes and the fatal legal paper lying, walked upon occasionally, in the center of the rug.
But fate was not through playing with me that day. Stamping on me would be a better term. Fate was getting ready, as the hours passed, to do a ghoulish dance step.
The Countess Krak's baggage had been shifted to the 79th Street Boat Basin by cabs. The white expensive length of the resplendent yacht was standing by in the river, and two flag-streaming speedboats were curving ashore from her, throwing fans of spray, ready to pick up the Countess, her baggage and her maid and carry them away.
It suddenly occurred to me that she could shortly be out of range of the activator-receiver. She would be on a yacht and might take it into her mind to go anywhere, and I had no way to keep tabs on her. Well, never mind. Maybe the yacht would blow up and sink. I had to look on the brighter side of things.
Just as the grizzled old captain in all his gold braid was gallantly assisting the listless Countess to step into the speedboat, I heard the front door of the apartment open.
I covered up the viewers. I did not go out.
A certain amount of fear had been with me since my return to the apartment. Miss Pinch and Candy were not talking to me but their whispers to each other, I was certain, boded no good.
And I was right.
Miss Pinch and Candy had not taken off their coats. They came in. Miss Pinch was taking off her gloves.
They both sat down.
"Listen, you," said Miss Pinch, severely, "we have to talk."
"What about?" I said in fright.
"The children when they are born," she said.
"No, wait," I said. "Rockecenter sends anyone who gets pregnant to his abortion clinic. There's no reason both of you can't go. You'll get fired if you don't."
"That's just it," said Miss Pinch. "Psychiatric Birth Control is for the (bleeps). So all they say of childbirth must be as well. We are determined to experience the joys of motherhood. There is only one way we can't be fired."
The hair began to rise on the back of my neck. It always did when she fixed her eyes on me like that.
"Candy and I are agreed," said Miss Pinch. "There is no other way."
"Than?" I pleaded, expecting the worst.
I got the worst.
"You have to marry us," said Miss Pinch.
When Miss Pinch brought me to by throwing a glass of water in my face, I sat there transfixed, eyes staring sightlessly.
I tried to speak. I tried to tell myself my name was not Heller. I tried to tell Miss Pinch that her name was not the Countess Krak.
Apparently, I wasn't making any sounds at all.
Candy said to Miss Pinch, "He seems to be stricken dumb, Pinchy. Let's have a bite of supper and let him recover a bit and then you can tell him the rest of it."
They went off.
I sat there.
After about half an hour, Miss Pinch came in. They had apparently finished supper but she still had a fork in her hand. She used it to prod me into the living room. Defensively, I sat down on the sofa. My legs wouldn't hold me up very long. I knew more was coming.
Candy said, "Let's put him in the mood." She went to the clamshell stereo and put a platter on the turntable. "I'm sure you remember this song," she said. "You played it the first time you raped us."
The song started up, very emotional crooning:
Sweet little woman,
Please marry me,
Man and wife together,
How happy we will be.
And then we'll have some kiddies,
Maybe two or three,
So here's the ring and there's the church! Oh, come, my honey be!
I found my voice. "Turn it off!" I begged. I felt I knew what this was, now. A sadistic and evil revenge for all the favors I had done for them.
She turned off the record but in doing so turned on an FM radio station. It was pumping electronic pop music. You couldn't understand the words, so that was better.
"You must think," said Pinch, "that we're trying to
do you in, Inkswitch. This is not the case. It is a simple arrangement. You marry us and then we won't get fired if we have these babies. We can show that we are actually married. Be reasonable, Inkswitch."
I sat there, still stricken.
"I'll tell you what we will do," said Miss Pinch. "You have signed quite a few blank invoices. So the original money of yours is almost intact in that safe." She pointed to where it stood, covered now so as to look like a rock wreathed in sea foam. "You're always bleating around about money."
I flinched at this reference to goats.
Miss Pinch smiled thinly. "If you give us your word to go through with this without giving us any trouble at all, no matter what, I'll give you the combination to that safe, and also you can draw whatever you want from petty cash thereafter. I will simply bring it right home to you and drop it in your lap. That's around sixty-five thousand from the safe and unlimited drawing thereafter. How can you lose, Inkswitch?"
Inkswitch! It was not my real Earth name. I clutched at a straw and also at the funds necessary to make it possible for me to flee at the earliest opportunity. Still, marriage? I shuddered to the depths of my soul. I un-clutched.
She saw my hesitation. She said, "We don't want to use the alternative of suing you," she said.
The horror of Izzy's description of the legal system reclutched at my throat.
Words stuck in my voice pipe. I forced them out anyway. "All right."
"What?" said Miss Pinch.
I realized I had spoken in Voltarian and with a Fleet
accent, too! I choked and finally made it in English. "All right."
She smiled grimly. Candy clapped her hands.
The only trouble was, Candy did the hand clapping in rhythm to the song that had just come on. It was one of those rare modern songs where one could understand the lyrics. It said:
I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying!
I'm rolling all over the ground. I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying!
A poor devil that you've downed. I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying!
You've got me up a tree!
I'm dying,
I'm dying,
I'm dying!
And never more will be!
Ill and spinning, I got out of the front room and back to the rear. I closed the door to shut out the awful electronic music. But the drumbeats kept coming through like thuds of doom.
It was more by chance than design that I saw what happened at the condo. Heller's voice, "Dear?" The blanket had slipped off the viewer and I, sitting there, staring with dilated pupils, noticed that Heller was looking into Krak's room.
Boxes were thrown about but the place was otherwise cleaned out.
The butler was in the door, looking very unhappy.
"Where did she say she was going?" demanded
Heller.
"She didn't say, sir. Her maid packed for her and went with her. But she did not take the car. She called a fleet of cabs and they loaded her baggage and left."
"Didn't she leave any note?" said Heller.
"No, sir. She wasn't talking to anyone, sir. The maid even called the cabs."
"What cab company?"
"I don't know, sir. I'm terribly sorry, sir. She did make a phone call and at the time I thought it must be to you. Otherwise I would have phoned you myself. She seemed very crushed, sir. I thought perhaps there had been a death in the family."
"She made a call," said Heller. Then he snapped his fingers. "Mamie Boomp!"
He grabbed the phone. He punched the automatic button.
"President Mamie Boomp here," said the voice.
"This is Wister. I must contact Joy. She's gone."
Mamie's voice was sniffish. "I shouldn't be surprised."