The Final Circle of Paradise

He ran down the stairs. Apparently he really was in a hurry. I went down in the elevator and sent off a telegram to Matia: "Brother very ill, feeling very lonesome, but keeping up spirits, Ivan." I truly did feel very much alone. Rimeyer was out of the game again, at least for a day. The only hint he had given me was the advice about the Fishers. I had nothing more definite. There were the Fishers, who were located somewhere in the old subway; there was Devon, which in same peripheral way could have something to do with my business, but also could just as well have no connection with it at all; there was Oscar, clearly connected with Devon and Rimeyer, a player sufficiently ominous and repulsive, but undoubtedly only one of many such unpleasant types on the local cloudless horizons; then again there was a certain "Buba," who supplied pore-nose with Devon… After all, I have been here just twenty-four hours, I thought. There is time. Also, I could still count on Rimeyer in the final analysis, and there was the possibility of finding Peck. Suddenly I remembered the events of the night before and sent a wire to Sigmund: "Amateur concert on the twenty-eighth, details unknown, Ivan." Then I beckoned to a porter and inquired as to the shortest way to the old subway.

Chapter NINE

"You would do better to come at night. It's too early now."

"I prefer now."

"Can't wait, eh? Perhaps you've got the wrong address?"

"Oh no, I haven't got it wrong."

"You must have it now, you are sure?"

"Yes, now and not later."

He clicked his tongue and pulled on his lower lip. He was short, well knit, with a round shaved head. He spoke hardly moving his tongue and rolling his eyes languidly under the lids. I thought he had not had enough sleep. His companion, sitting behind the railing in an easy chair, apparently also had missed some. But he did not utter a word and didn't even look in my direction. It was a gloomy place, with stale air and warped panels which had sprung away from the walls. A bulb, dimmed with dust, hung shadeless from the ceiling on a dirty cable.

"Why not come later?" said the round-head. "When everybody comes."

"I just got the urge," I said diffidently.

"Got the urge…" He searched in his table drawer. "I don't even have a form left. Eli, do you have some?"

The latter, without breaking his silence, bent over and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from somewhere near the railing.

The round-head said, yawning, "Guys that come at break of day… nobody here… no girls… they're still in bed." He proffered the form. "Fill it out and sign. Eli and I will sign as witnesses. Turn in your money. Don't worry, we keep it honest. Do you have any documents?"

"None."

"That's good, too."

I scanned the form. "In open deposition and of my own free will, I, the undersigned, in the presence of witnesses, earnestly request to be subjected to the initiation trials toward the mutual quest of membership in the Society of VAL." There were blank spaces for signature of applicant and signatures of witnesses.

"What is VAL?" I asked.

"That's the way we are registered," answered round-head.

He was counting my money.

"But how do you decipher it?"

"Who knows? That was before my time. It's VAL, that's all there is to it. Maybe you know, Eli?" Eli shook his bead lazily. "Well, really, what do you care?"

"You are absolutely right." I inserted my name and signed.

Round-head looked it over, signed it, and passed the form to Eli.

"You look like a foreigner," he said.

"Right."

"In that case, add your home address. Do you have relatives?"

"No."

"Well then, you don't have to. All set, Eli? Put it in the folder. Shall we go?"

He lifted up the gate in the railway and walked me over to a massive square door, probably left over from the days when the subway had been fitted out as an atomic shelter.

"There is no choice," he said as though in self-defense.

He pulled the slides and turned a rusty handle with considerable effort. "Go straight down the corridor and then you'll see for yourself."

I thought that I heard Eli snickering behind him. I turned around. A small screen was fitted in the railing in front of Eli. Something was moving on the screen, but I could not see what it was. Round-bead put all his weight on the handle and swung back the door. A dusty passage became visible. For a few seconds he listened and then said, "Straight down this corridor."

"What will I find there?" I said.

"You'll get what you were looking for. Or have you changed your mind?"

All of which was clearly not what I was looking for, but as is well known, nobody knows anything until he has tried it himself I stepped over the high sill and the door shut behind me with a clang. I could hear the latches screeching home.