“JKF Airport,” he told the taxi driver. The cab zoomed away. From the front seat came the voice of the radio with today’s closing Dow Jones Industrials: 948.72, down 6.11. He reached the airport by half past five, and at seven he boarded a Pan Am flight for London. The next morning at nine, London time, he cabled his wife to say that he was well and planned to head south for the winter. Then he reported to the Air France counter for the nonstop flight to Morocco. Over the next week he cabled home from Rabat, Marrakech, and Timbuktu in Mali. The third cable said:
GUESS WHAT STOP I’M REALLY IN TIMBUKTU STOP HAVE RENTED JEEP STOP I SET OUT INTO SAHARA TOMORROW STOP AM VERY HAPPY STOP YES STOP VERY HAPPY STOP VERY VERY HAPPY STOP STOP STOP.
It was the last message he sent. The night it arrived in New York there was a spectacular celestial display, an aurora that brought thousands of people out into Central Park. There was rain in the southeastern Sahara four days later, the first recorded precipitation there in eight years and seven months. An earthquake was reported in southern Sicily, but it did little damage. Things were much quieter after that for everybody.
Capricorn Games
Jesus was a Capricorn, so was Richard M. Nixon, and so am I. I am not much of a believer in the astrological sciences—in fact, I put no credence in them at all—but I do maintain a notion of the sort of people that Capricorns, in astrological parlance, are supposed to be. (Stubborn, dedicated, talented, self-centered, always working things out in advance. I think of Capricorns as the sort of people who would be superb chess players, although I confess that I’m a lousy one myself.) I look upon Capricorns as somewhat manipulative, which is not necessarily a negative attribute: “manipulative” can apply to jugglers, novelists, surgeons, musicians, and others who are quick with their hands in a literal or metaphorical sense. But some of the Capricorn energy does flow into the work of organizing other human beings into patterns that serve the needs of the Capricorn who’s doing the organizing, I feel. Certainly that’s the sort of Capricorn that Nikki is in this story, which dates from October, 1972.
This is another of the many stories that I wrote at the behest of the prodigious anthologist Roger Elwood (it appeared in his book The Far Side of Time in 1974), and has always been a particular favorite of mine, not just because its January-born author often sees himself as sitting at the keyboard playing games with his characters and playing games with his readers’ minds. Nikki’s birthdate happens—by sheer one-out-of-365 coincidence—to be the same as that of a young woman who was living in Houston, Texas in 1981 when I—also by sheer coincidence—was in town to speak at a local university. She came upon the story somehow, was startled and amused to find that she shared a birthdate with its protagonist and that the author of the story was making a public appearance locally that day, and went to meet him. It turned out that we had a lot to say to each other. Her name was Karen Haber and—to make a long story short—we play our Capricorn games under the same roof these days.
~
Nikki stepped into the conical field of the ultrasonic cleanser, wriggling so that the unheard droning out of the machine’s stubby snout could more effectively shear her skin of dead epidermal tissue, globules of dried sweat, dabs of yesterday’s scents, and other debris; after three minutes she emerged clean, bouncy, ready for the party. She programmed her party outfit: green buskins, lemon-yellow tunic of gauzy film, pale orange cape soft as a clam’s mantle, and nothing underneath but Nikki—smooth, glistening, satiny Nikki. Her body was tuned and fit. The party was in her honor, though she was the only one who knew that. Today was her birthday, the seventh of January, 1999: twenty-four years old, no sign yet of bodily decay. Old Steiner had gathered an extraordinary assortment of guests: he promised to display a reader of minds, a billionaire, an authentic Byzantine duke, an Arab rabbi, a man who had married his own daughter, and other marvels. All of these, of course, subordinate to the true guest of honor, the evening’s prize, the real birthday boy, the lion of the season—the celebrated Nicholson, who had lived a thousand years and who said he could help others to do the same. Nikki…Nicholson. Happy assonance, portending close harmony. You will show me, dear Nicholson, how I can live forever and never grow old. A cozy soothing idea.
The sky beyond the sleek curve of her window was black, snow-dappled; she imagined she could hear the rusty howl of the wind and feel the sway of the frost-gripped building, ninety stories high. This was the worst winter she had ever known. Snow fell almost every day, a planetary snow, a global shiver, not even sparing the tropics. Ice hard as iron bands bound the streets of New York. Walls were slippery, the air had a cutting edge. Tonight Jupiter gleamed fiercely in the blackness like a diamond in a raven’s forehead. Thank God she didn’t have to go outside. She could wait out the winter within this tower. The mail came by pneumatic tube. The penthouse restaurant fed her. She had friends on a dozen floors. The building was a world, warm, snug. Let it snow. Let the sour gales come. Nikki checked herself in the all-around mirror: very nice, very very nice. Sweet filmy yellow folds. Hint of thigh, hint of breasts. More than a hint when there’s a light-source behind her. She glowed. Fluffed her short glossy black hair. Dab of scent. Everyone loved her. Beauty is a magnet: repels some, attracts many, leaves no one unmoved. It was nine o’clock.
“Upstairs,” she said to the elevator. “Steiner’s place.”
“Eighty-eighth floor,” the elevator said.
“I know that. You’re so sweet.”
Music in the hallway: Mozart, crystalline and sinuous. The door to Steiner’s apartment was a half-barrel of chromed steel, like the entrance to a bank vault. Nikki smiled into the scanner. The barrel revolved. Steiner held his hands like cups, centimeters from her chest, by way of greeting. “Beautiful,” he murmured.
“So glad you asked me to come.”
“Practically everybody’s here already. It’s a wonderful party, love.”
She kissed his shaggy cheek. In October they had met in the elevator. He was past sixty and looked less than forty. When she touched his body she perceived it as an object encased in milky ice, like a mammoth fresh out of the Siberian permafrost. They had been lovers for two weeks. Autumn had given way to winter and Nikki had passed out of his life, but he had kept his word about the parties: here she was, invited.
“Alexius Ducas,” said a short, wide man with a dense black beard, parted in the middle. He bowed. A good flourish. Steiner evaporated and she was in the keeping of the Byzantine duke. He maneuvered her at once across the thick white carpet to a place where clusters of spotlights, sprouting like angry fungi from the wall, revealed the contours of her body. Others turned to look. Duke Alexius favored her with a heavy stare. But she felt no excitement. Byzantium had been over for a long time. He brought her a goblet of chilled green wine and said, “Are you ever in the Aegean Sea? My family has its ancestral castle on an island eighteen kilometers east of—”
“Excuse me, but which is the man named Nicholson?”
“Nicholson is merely the name he currently uses. He claims to have had a shop in Constantinople during the reign of my ancestor the Basileus Manuel Comnenus.” A patronizing click, tongue on teeth. “Only a shopkeeper.” The Byzantine eyes sparkled ferociously. “How beautiful you are!”
“Which one is he?”
“There. By the couch.”
Nikki saw only a wall of backs. She tilted to the left and peered. No use. She would get to him later. Alexius Ducas continued to offer her his body with his eyes. She whispered languidly, “Tell me all about Byzantium.”
He got as far as Constantine the Great before he bored her. She finished her wine, and, coyly extending the glass, persuaded a smooth young man passing by to refill it for her. The Byzantine looked sad. “The empire then was divided,” he said, “among—”
“This is my birthday,” she announced.
“Yours also? My congratulations. Are you as old as—”
“Not nearly. Not by half. I won’t even be five hundred for some time,?
?? she said, and turned to take her glass. The smooth young man did not wait to be captured. The party engulfed him like an avalanche. Sixty, eighty guests, all in motion. The draperies were pulled back, revealing the full fury of the snowstorm. No one was watching it. Steiner’s apartment was like a movie set: great porcelain garden stools, Ming or even Sung; walls painted with flat sheets of bronze and scarlet; pre-Columbian artefacts in spotlit niches; sculptures like aluminum spiderwebs; Dürer etchings—the loot of the ages. Squat shaven-headed servants, Mayans or Khmers or perhaps Olmecs, circulated impassively offering trays of delicacies: caviar, sea urchins, bits of roasted meat, tiny sausages, burritos in startling chili sauce. Hands darted unceasingly from trays to lips. This was a gathering of life-eaters, world-swallowers. Duke Alexius was stroking her arm. “I will leave at midnight,” he said gently. “It would be a delight if you left with me.”
“I have other plans,” she told him.
“Even so.” He bowed courteously, outwardly undisappointed. “Possibly another time. My card?” It appeared as if by magic in his hand: a sliver of tawny cardboard, elaborately engraved. She put it in her purse and the room swallowed him. Instantly a big, wild-eyed man took his place before her. “You’ve never heard of me,” he began.
“Is that a boast or an apology?”
“I’m quite ordinary. I work for Steiner. He thought it would be amusing to invite me to one of his parties.”
“What do you do?”
“Invoices and debarkations. Isn’t this an amazing place?”
“What’s your sign?” Nikki asked him.
“Libra.”
“I’m Capricorn. Tonight’s my birthday as well as his. If you’re really Libra, you’re wasting your time with me. Do you have a name?”
“Martin Bliss.”
“Nikki.”
“There isn’t any Mrs. Bliss, hah-hah.”
Nikki licked her lips. “I’m hungry. Would you get me some canapés?”
She was gone as soon as he moved toward the food. Circumnavigating the long room—past the string quintet, past the bartender’s throne, past the window—until she had a good view of the man called Nicholson. He didn’t disappoint her. He was slender, supple, not tall, strong in the shoulders. A man of presence and authority. She wanted to put her lips to him and suck immortality out. His head was a flat triangle, brutal cheekbones, thin lips, dark mat of curly hair, no beard, no moustache. His eyes were keen, electric, intolerably wise. He must have seen everything twice, at the very least. Nikki had read his book. Everyone had. He had been a king, a lama, a slave trader, a slave. Always taking pains to conceal his implausible longevity, now offering his terrible secret freely to the members of the Book- of-the-Month Club. Why had he chosen to surface and reveal himself? Because this is the necessary moment of revelation, he had said. When he must stand forth as what he is, so that he might impart his gift to others, lest he lose it. Lest he lose it. At the stroke of the new century he must share his prize of life. A dozen people surrounded him, catching his glow. He glanced through a palisade of shoulders and locked his eyes on hers; Nikki felt impaled, exalted, chosen. Warmth spread through her loins like a river of molten tungsten, like a stream of hot honey. She started to go to him. A corpse got in her way. Death’s-head parchment skin, nightmare eyes. A scaly hand brushed her bare biceps. A frightful eroded voice croaked, “How old do you think I am?”
“Oh, God!”
“How old?”
“Two thousand?”
“I’m fifty-eight. I won’t live to see fifty-nine. Here, smoke one of these.”
With trembling hands he offered her a tiny ivory tube. There was a Gothic monogram near one end—FXB—and a translucent green capsule at the other. She pressed the capsule, and a flickering blue flame sprouted. She inhaled. “What is it?” she asked.
“My own mixture. Soma Number Five. You like it?”
“I’m smeared,” she said. “Absolutely smeared. Oh, God!” The walls were flowing. The snow had turned to tinfoil. An instant hit. The corpse had a golden halo. Dollar signs rose into view like stigmata on his furrowed forehead. She heard the crash of the surf, the roar of the waves. The deck was heaving. The masts were cracking. Woman overboard! she cried, and heard her inaudible voice disappearing down a tunnel of echoes, boingg boingg boingg. She clutched at his frail wrists. “You bastard, what did you do to me?”
“I’m Francis Xavier Byrne.”
Oh. The billionaire. Byrne Industries, the great conglomerate. Steiner had promised her a billionaire tonight.
“Are you going to die soon?” she asked.
“No later than Easter. Money can’t help me now. I’m a walking metastasis.” He opened his ruffled shirt. Something bright and metallic, like chain mail, covered his chest. “Life-support system,” he confided. “It operates me. Take it off for half an hour and I’d be finished. Are you a Capricorn?”
“How did you know?”
“I may be dying, but I’m not stupid. You have the Capricorn gleam in your eyes. What am I?”
She hesitated. His eyes were gleaming too. Self-made man, fantastic business sense, energy, arrogance. Capricorn, of course. No, too easy. “Leo,” she said.
“No. Try again.” He pressed another monogrammed tube into her hand and strode away. She hadn’t yet come down from the last one, although the most flamboyant effects had ebbed. Party guests swirled and flowed around her. She no longer could see Nicholson. The snow seemed to be turning to hail, little hard particles spattering the vast windows and leaving white abraded tracks: or were her perceptions merely sharper? The roar of conversation seemed to rise and fall as if someone were adjusting a volume control. The lights fluctuated in a counterpointed rhythm. She felt dizzy. A tray of golden cocktails went past her and she hissed, “Where’s the bathroom?”
Down the hall. Five strangers clustered outside it, talking in scaly whispers. She floated through them, grabbed the sink’s cold edge, thrust her face to the oval concave mirror. A death’s-head. Parchment skin, nightmare eyes. No! No! She blinked and her own features reappeared. Shivering, she made an effort to pull herself together. The medicine cabinet held a tempting collection of drugs, Steiner’s all-purpose remedies. Without looking at labels Nikki seized a handful of vials and gobbled pills at random. A flat red one, a tapering green one, a succulent yellow gelatin capsule. Maybe headache remedies, maybe hallucinogens. Who knows, who cares? We Capricorns are not always as cautious as you think.
Someone knocked at the bathroom door. She answered and found the bland, hopeful face of Martin Bliss hovering near the ceiling. Eyes protruding faintly, cheeks florid. “They said you were sick. Can I do anything for you?” So kind, so sweet. She touched his arm, grazed his cheek with her lips. Beyond him in the hall stood a broad-bodied man with close-cropped blond hair, glacial blue eyes, a plump perfect face. His smile was intense and brilliant. “That’s easy,” he said. “Capricorn.”
“You can guess my—” She stopped, stunned. “Sign?” she finished, voice very small. “How did you do that? Oh.”
“Yes. I’m that one.”
She felt more than naked, stripped down to the ganglia, to the synapses. “What’s the trick?”
“No trick. I listen. I hear.”
“You hear people thinking?”
“More or less. Do you think it’s a party game?” He was beautiful but terrifying, like a Samurai sword in motion. She wanted him but she didn’t dare. He’s got my number, she thought. I would never have any secrets from him. He said sadly, “I don’t mind that. I know I frighten a lot of people. Some don’t care.”
“What’s your name?”
“Tom,” he said. “Hello, Nikki.”
“I feel very sorry for you.”
“Not really. You can kid yourself if you need to. But you can’t kid me. Anyway, you don’t sleep with men you feel sorry for.”
“I don’t sleep with you.”
“You will,” he said.
“I thought you were jus
t a mind-reader. They didn’t tell me you did prophecies too.”
He leaned close and smiled. The smile demolished her. She had to fight to keep from falling. “I”ve got your number, all right,” he said in a low, harsh voice. “I’ll call you next Tuesday.” As he walked away he said, “You’re wrong. I’m a Virgo. Believe it or not.”
Nikki returned, numb, to the living room. “…the figure of the mandala,” Nicholson was saying. His voice was dark, focused, a pure basso cantante. “The essential thing that every mandala has is a center—the place where everything is born, the eye of God’s mind, the heart of darkness and of light, the core of the storm. All right. You must move toward the center, find the vortex at the boundary of Yang and Yin, place yourself right at the mandala’s midpoint. Center yourself. Do you follow the metaphor? Center yourself at now, the eternal now. To move off center is to move forward toward death, backward toward birth, always the fatal polar swings. But if you’re capable of positioning yourself constantly at the focus of the mandala, right on center, you have access to the fountain of renewal, you become an organism capable of constant self-healing, constant self-replenish ment, constant expansion into regions beyond self. Do you follow? The power of…”
Steiner, at her elbow, said tenderly, “How beautiful you are in the first moments of erotic fixation.”
“It’s a marvelous party.”
“Are you meeting interesting people?”
“Is there any other kind?” she asked.
Nicholson abruptly detached himself from the circle of his audience and strode across the room, alone, in a quick decisive knight’s move toward the bar. Nikki, hurrying to intercept him, collided with a shaven-headed tray-bearing servant. The tray slid smoothly from the man’s thick fingertips and launched itself into the air like a spinning shield; a rainfall of skewered meat in an oily green curry sauce spattered the white carpet. The servant was utterly motionless. He stood frozen like some sort of Mexican stone idol, thick-necked, flat-nosed, for a long painful moment; then he turned his head slowly to the left and regretfully contemplated his rigid outspread hand, shorn of its tray; finally he swung his head toward Nikki, and his normally expressionless granite face took on for a quick flickering instant a look of total hatred, a coruscating emanation of contempt and disgust that faded immediately. He laughed: hu-hu-hu, a neighing snicker. His superiority was overwhelming. Nikki floundered in quicksands of humiliation. Hastily she escaped, a zig and a zag, around the tumbled goodies and across to the bar. Nicholson, still by himself. Her face went crimson. She felt short of breath. Hunting for words, tongue all thumbs. Finally, in a catapulting blurt: “Happy birthday!”