Taltos

One

IT HAD SNOWED all day. As the darkness fell, very close and quickly, he stood at the window looking down on the tiny figures in Central Park. A perfect circle of light fell on the snow beneath each lamp. Skaters moved on the frozen lake, though he could not make them out in detail. And cars pushed sluggishly over the dark roads.

To his right and his left, the skyscrapers of midtown crowded near him. But nothing came between him and the park, except, that is, for a jungle of lower buildings, rooftops with gardens, and great black hulking pieces of equipment, and sometimes even pointed roofs.

He loved this view; it always surprised him when others found it so unusual, when a workman coming to fix an office machine would volunteer that he’d never seen New York like this before. Sad that there was no marble tower for everyone; that there was no series of towers, to which all the people could go, to look out at varying heights.

Make a note: Build a series of towers which have no function except to be parks in the sky for the people. Use all the beautiful marbles which you so love. Maybe he would do that this year. Very likely, he would do it. And the libraries. He wanted to establish more of these, and that would mean some travel. But he would do all this, yes, and soon. After all, the parks were almost completed now, and the little schools had been opened in seven cities. The carousels had been opened in twenty different places. Granted, the animals were synthetic, but each was a meticulous and indestructible reproduction of a famous European hand-carved masterpiece. People loved the carousels. But it was a time for a spate of new plans. The winter had caught him dreaming….

In the last century, he had put into material form a hundred such ideas. And this year’s little triumphs had their comforting charm. He had made an antique carousel within this building, all of the original old horses, lions, and such that had provided molds for his replicas. The museum of classic automobiles now filled one level of the basement. The public flocked to see the Model Ts, the Stutz Bearcats, the MG-TDs with their wire wheels.

And of course there were the doll museums-in large, well-lighted rooms on two floors above the lobby-the company showcase, filled with the dolls he’d collected from all parts of the world. And the private museum, open only now and then, including the dolls which he himself had personally cherished.

Now and then he slipped downstairs to watch the people, to walk through the crowds, never unnoticed, but at least unknown.

A creature seven feet in height can’t avoid the eyes of people. That had been true forever. But a rather amusing thing had happened in the last two hundred years. Human beings had gotten taller! And now, miracle of miracles, even at his height, he did not stand out so very much. People gave him a second glance, of course, but they weren’t frightened of him anymore.

Indeed, occasionally a human male came into the building who was in fact taller than he was. Of course the staff would alert him. They thought it one of his little quirks that he wanted such people reported to him. They found it amusing. He didn’t mind. He liked to see people smile and laugh.

“Mr. Ash, there’s a tall one down here. Camera five.”

He’d turn to the bank of small glowing screens, and quickly catch sight of the individual. Only human. He usually knew for certain right away. Once in a great while, he wasn’t sure of it. And he went down in the silent, speeding elevator, and walked near the person long enough to ascertain from a score of details that this was only a man.

Other dreams: small play buildings for children, made exquisitely out of space-age plastics with rich and intricate detail. He saw small cathedrals, castles, palaces-perfect replicas of the larger architectural treasures-produced with lightning speed, and “cost effective,” as the board would put it. There would be numerous sizes, from dwellings for dolls to houses which children could enter themselves. And carousel horses for sale, made of wood resin, which almost anyone could afford. Hundreds could be given to schools, hospitals, other such institutions. Then there was the ongoing obsession-truly beautiful dolls for poor children, dolls that would not break, and could be cleaned with ease-but that he had been working on, more or less, since the new century dawned.

For the last five years he had produced cheaper and cheaper dolls, dolls superior to those before them, dolls of new chemical materials, dolls that were durable and lovable; yet still they cost too much for poor children. This year he would try something entirely different…. He had plans on the drawing board, a couple of promising prototypes. Perhaps …

He felt a consoling warmth steal through him as he thought of these many projects, for they would take him hundreds of years. Long ago, in ancient times as they called them, he had dreamed of monuments. Great circles of stone for all to see, a dance of giants in the high grass of the plain. Even modest towers had obsessed him for decades, and once the lettering of beautiful books had taken all his joy for centuries.

But in these playthings of the modern world, these dolls, these tiny images of people, not children really, for dolls never really did look like children, he had found a strange and challenging obsession.

Monuments were for those who traveled to see them. The dolls and toys he refined and manufactured reached every country on the globe. Indeed, machines had made all sorts of new and beautiful objects available for people of all nations-the rich, the impoverished, those in need of comfort, or sustenance and shelter, those kept in sanitariums and asylums which they could never leave.

His company had been his redemption; even his wildest and most daring ideas had been put into successful production. Indeed, he did not understand why other toy companies made so few innovations, why cookie-cutter dolls with vapid faces lined the shelves of emporiums, why the ease of manufacture had not produced a wilderness of originality and invention. Unlike his joyless colleagues, with each of his triumphs he had taken greater risks.

It didn’t make him happy to drive others out of the market. No, competition was still something he could only grasp intellectually. His secret belief was that the number of potential buyers in today’s world was unlimited. There was room for anyone marketing anything of worth. And within these walls, within this soaring and dangerous tower of steel and glass, he enjoyed his triumphs in a state of pure bliss which he could share with no one else.

No one else. Only the dolls could share it. The dolls who stood on the glass shelves against the walls of colored marble, the dolls who stood on pedestals in the corners, the dolls who clustered together on his broad wooden desk. His Bru, his princess, his French beauty, a century old; she was his most enduring witness. Not a day passed that he didn’t go down to the second floor of the building and visit the Bru-a bisque darling of impeccable standards, three feet tall, her mohair curls intact, her painted face a masterpiece, her torso and wooden legs as perfect now as they were when the French company had manufactured her for the Paris market over one hundred years ago.

That had been her allure, that she was a thing for hundreds of children to enjoy; a pinnacle had been reached in her, of craft and mass production. Even her factory clothes of silk represented that special achievement. Not for one, but for many.

There had been years when, wandering the world, he had carried her with him, taking her out of the suitcase at times just to look into her glass eyes, just to tell her his thoughts, his feelings, his dreams. In the night, in squalid lonely rooms, he had seen the light glint in her ever-watchful eyes. And now she was housed in glass, and thousands saw her yearly, and all the other antique Bru dolls now clustered around her. Sometimes he wanted to sneak her upstairs, put her on a bedroom shelf. Who would care? Who would dare say anything? Wealth surrounds one with a blessed silence, he thought. People think before they speak. They feel they have to. He could talk to the doll again if he wanted to. In the museum, he was silent when they met, the glass of the case separating them. Patiently she waited to be reclaimed, the humble inspiration for his empire.

Of course this company of his, this enterprise of his, as it was so often called by papers and magazines, was predicated on the development of an industrial and mechanical matrix which had existed now for only three hundred years. What if war were to destroy it? But dolls and toys gave him such sweet happiness that he imagined he would never hereafter be without them. Even if war reduced the world to rubble, he would make little figures of wood or clay and paint them himself.

Sometimes he saw himself this way, alone in the ruins. He saw New York as it might have appeared in a science-fiction movie, dead and silent and filled with overturned columns and broken pediments and shattered glass. He saw himself sitting on a broken stone stairway, making a doll from sticks and tying it together with bits of cloth which he took quietly and respectfully from a dead woman’s silk dress.

But who would have imagined that such things would have caught his fancy? That wandering a century ago through a wintry street in Paris, he would turn and gaze into a shop window, into the glass eyes of his Bru, and fall passionately in love?

Of course, his breed had always been known for its capacity to play, to cherish, to enjoy. Perhaps it was not at all surprising. Though studying a breed, when you were one of the only surviving specimens of it, was a tricky situation, especially for one who could not love medical philosophy or terminology, whose memory was good but far from preternatural, whose sense of the past was often deliberately relinquished to a “childlike” immersion in the present, and a general fear of thinking in terms of millennia or eons or whatever people wanted to call the great spans of time which he himself had witnessed, lived through, struggled to endure, and finally cheerfully forgotten in this great enterprise suited to his few and special talents.

Nevertheless, he did study his own breed, making and recording meticulous notes on himself. And he was not good at predicting the future, or so he felt.

A low hum came to his ears. He knew it was the coils beneath the marble floor, gently heating the room around him. He fancied he could feel the heat, coming up through his shoes. It was never chilly or smotheringly hot in his tower. The coils took care of him. If only such comfort could belong to the entire world outside. If only all could know abundant food, warmth. His company sent millions in aid to those who lived in deserts and jungles across the seas, but he was never really sure who received what, who benefited.

In the first days of motion pictures, and later television, he had thought war would end. Hunger would end. People could not bear to see it on the screen before them. How foolish a thought. There seemed to be more war and more hunger now than ever. On every continent, tribe fought tribe. Millions starved. So much to be done. Why make such careful choices? Why not do everything?

The snow had begun again, with flakes so tiny he could barely see them. They appeared to melt when they hit the dark streets below. But those streets were some sixty floors down. He couldn’t be certain. Half-melted snow was piled in the gutters and on the nearby roofs. In a little while, things would be freshly white again, perhaps, and in this sealed and warm room, one could imagine the entire city dead and ruined, as if by pestilence which did not crumble buildings but killed the warm-blooded beings which lived within them, like termites in wooden walls.

The sky was black. That was the one thing he did not like about snow. You lost the sky when you had it. And he did so love the skies over New York City, the full panoramic skies which the people in the streets never really saw.

“Towers, build them towers,” he said. “Make a big museum high up in the sky with terraces around it. Bring them up in glass elevators, heavenward to see …”

Towers for pleasure among all these towers that men had built for commerce and gain.

A thought took him suddenly, an old thought, really, that often came to him and prodded him to meditate and perhaps even to surmise. The first writings in all the world had been commercial lists of goods bought and sold. This was what was in the cuneiform tablets found at Jericho, inventories…. The same had been true at Mycenea.

No one had thought it important then to write down his or her ideas or thoughts. Buildings had been wholly different. The grandest were houses of worship-temples or great mud-brick ziggurats, faced in limestone, which men had climbed to sacrifice to the gods. The circle of sarsens on the Salisbury Plain.

Now, seven thousand years later, the greatest buildings were commercial buildings. They were inscribed with the names of banks or great corporations, or immense private companies such as his own. From his window he could see these names burning in bright, coarse block letters, through the snowy sky, through the dark that wasn’t really dark.

As for temples and places of worship, they were relics or almost nought. Somewhere down there he could pick out the steeples of St. Patrick’s if he tried. But it was a shrine now to the past more than a vibrant center of communal religious spirit, and it looked quaint, reaching to the skies amid the tall, indifferent glass buildings around it. It was majestic only from the streets.

The scribes of Jericho would have understood this shift, he thought. On the other hand, perhaps they would not. He barely understood it himself, yet the implications seemed mammoth and more wonderful than human beings knew. This commerce, this endless multiplicity of beautiful and useful things, could save the world, ultimately, if only … Planned obsolesence, mass destruction of last year’s goods, the rush to antiquate or render irrelevent others’ designs, it was the result of a tragic lack of vision. Only the most limited implications of the marketplace theory were to blame for it. The real revolution came not in the cycle of make and destroy, but in a great inventive and endless expansion. Old dichotomies had to fall. In his darling Bru, and her factory-assembled parts, in the pocket calculators carried by millions on the streets, in the light beautiful stroke of rolling-ball pens, in five-dollar Bibles, and in toys, beautiful toys sold on drugstore shelves for pennies-there lay salvation.

It seemed he could get his mind around it, he could penetrate it, make tight, easily explainable theories, if only-

“Mr. Ash.” It was a soft voice that interrupted him. Nothing more was required. He’d trained them all. Don’t make a sound with the door. Speak quietly. I’ll hear you.

And this voice came from Remmick, who was gentle by nature, an Englishman (with a little Celtic blood, though Remmick didn’t know it), a manservant who had been indispensable in this last decade, though the time would soon come when, for security’s sake, Remmick must be sent away.

“Mr. Ash, the young woman’s here.”

“Thank you, Remmick,” he said in a voice that was even softer than that of his servant. In the dark window glass, if he let himself, he could see Remmick’s reflection-a comely man, with small, very brilliant blue eyes. They were too close together, these eyes. But the face was not unattractive, and it wore always a look of such quiet and nondramatic devotion that he had grown to love it, to love Remmick himself.

There were lots of dolls in the world with eyes too close together-in particular, the French dolls made years ago by Jumeau, and Schmitt and Sons, and Huret, and Petit and Demontier-with moon faces, and glittering glass eyes crowding their little porcelain noses, with mouths so tiny they seemed at first glance to be tiny buds, or bee stings. Everybody loved these dolls. The bee-sting queens.

When you loved dolls and studied them, you started to love all kinds of people too, because you saw the virtue in their expressions, how carefully they had been sculpted, the parts contrived to create the triumph of this or that remarkable face. Sometimes he walked through Manhattan, deliberately seeing every face as made, no nose, no ear, no wrinkle accidental.

“She’s having some tea, sir. She was terribly cold when she arrived.”

“We didn’t send a car for her, Remmick?”

“Yes, sir, but she’s cold nevertheless. It’s very cold outside, sir.”

“But it’s warm in the museum, surely. You took her there, didn’t you?”

“Sir, she came up directly. She is so excited, you understand.”

He turned, throwing one bright gleam of a smile (or so he hoped it was) on Remmick and then waving him away with the smallest gesture that the man could see. He walked to the doors of the adjoining office, across the floor of Carrara marble, and looked beyond that room, to yet another, also paved, as were all his rooms, in shining marble, where the young woman sat alone at the desk. He could see her profile. He could see that she was anxious. He could see that she wanted the tea, but then she didn’t. She didn’t know what to do with her hands.

“Sir, your hair. Will you allow me?” Remmick touched his arm.

“Must we?”

“Yes, sir, we really ought to.” Remmick had his soft little brush out, the kind that men used because they could not be seen using the same kind of brush as women, and reaching up, Remmick brought it quickly and firmly through his hair, hair that ought to be trimmed and cut, Remmick had said, hair that fell sloppily and defiantly over his collar.

Remmick stood back, rocking on the balls of his feet.

“Now you look splendid, Mr. Ash,” he said with raised eyebrows. “Even if it is a bit long.”

He made a soft chuckle.

“You’re afraid I’ll frighten her, aren’t you?” he asked, teasingly, affectionately. “Surely you don’t really care what she thinks.”

“Sir, I care that you look your best always, for your own benefit.”

“Of course you do,” he said quietly. “I love you for it.”

He walked towards the young woman, and as he drew closer, he made a polite and decent amount of noise. Slowly she turned her head; she looked up; she saw him, and there came the inevitable shock.

He extended his arms as he approached.

She rose, beaming, and she clasped his hands. Warm, firm grip. She looked at his hands, at the fingers, and at the palms.

“I surprise you, Miss Paget?” he asked, offering her his most gracious smile. “My hair has been groomed for your approval. Do I look so very bad?”

“Mr. Ash, you look fabulous,” she said quickly. She had a crisp California-style voice. “I didn’t expect that … I didn’t expect that you would be so tall. Of course, everyone said you were….”

“And do I look like a kindly man, Miss Paget? They say this of me too.” He spoke slowly. Often Americans could not understand his “British accent.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Ash,” she said. “Very kindly. And your hair is so nice and long. I love your hair, Mr. Ash.”

This was really very gratifying, very amusing. He hoped that Remmick was listening. But wealth makes people withhold judgment on what you have done, it makes them search for the good in your choices, your style. It brings out not the obsequious but the more thoughtful side of humans. At least sometimes …

She was plainly telling the truth. Her eyes feasted on him and he loved it. He gave her hands a tender squeeze and then he let them go.

As he moved around the desk, she took her seat again, eyes still locked upon him. Her own face was narrow and deeply lined for one so young. Her eyes were bluish violet. She was beautiful in her own way-ashen-haired, disheveled yet graceful, in exquisitely crushed old clothes.

Yes, don’t throw them away, save them from the thrift-shop rack, reinvent them with nothing more than a few stitches and an iron; the destiny of manufactured things lies in durability and changing contexts, crushed silk beneath fluorescent light, elegant tatters with buttons of plastic in colors never achieved within geological strata, with stockings of such strong nylon they could have been made into braided rope of incalculable strength if only people didn’t rip them off and toss them into wastebaskets. So many things to do, ways to see … If he had the contents of every wastebasket in Manhattan, he could make another billion just from what he would find there.

“I admire your work, Miss Paget,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.” He gestured to the top of the desk. It was littered with large color photographs of her dolls.

Was it possible she hadn’t noticed these? She seemed overcome with pleasure, her cheeks reddening. Perhaps she was even a little infatuated with his style and manner, he wasn’t sure. He did tend to infatuate people, sometimes without trying to do it.

“Mr. Ash,” she said. “This is one of the most important days of my life.” She said it as if trying to realize it, and then she became silently flustered, perhaps because she thought she had said too much in saying what really mattered.

He let his smile brighten, and dipped his head slightly, as he often did-a trait people remarked on-so that he appeared to be looking up at her for a moment, though he was much taller than she.

“I want your dolls, Miss Paget,” he said. “All of them. I’m very pleased with what you’ve done. You’ve worked so well in all the new materials. Your dolls aren’t like anyone else’s. That’s what I want.”

She was smiling in spite of herself. It was always a thrilling moment, this, for them and for him. He loved making her happy!

“Have my lawyers presented everything? Are you quite sure of the terms?”

“Yes, Mr. Ash. I understand everything. I accept your offer, completely. This is my dream.”

She said the last word with gentle emphasis. And this time she did not falter or blush.

“Miss Paget, you need someone to bargain for you!” he scolded. “But if I’ve ever cheated anyone, I don’t remember it, and I would honestly like to be reminded so that I could correct what I’ve done.”

“I’m yours, Mr. Ash,” she said. Her eyes had brightened, but they were not filling with tears. “The terms are generous. The materials are dazzling. The methods …” She gave a little shake of her head. “Well, I don’t really understand the mass-production methods, but I know your dolls. I’ve been hanging around in the stores, just looking at everything marketed by Ashlar. I know this is simply going to be great.”

Like so many, she had made her dolls in her kitchen, then in a garage workroom, firing the clay in a kiln she could barely afford. She had haunted flea markets for her fabrics. She had taken her inspiration from figures in motion pictures and in novels. Her works had been “one of a kind” and “limited edition,” the sort of thing they liked in the exclusive doll shops and galleries. She had won awards, both large and small.

But her molds could be used now for something utterly different-half a million beautiful renditions of one doll, and another and another, out of a vinyl so skillfully worked that it would look as lovely as porcelain, with eyes painted as brilliantly as if they were real glass.

“But what about the names, Miss Paget? Why won’t you choose the dolls’ names?”

“The dolls have never had names for me, Mr. Ash,” she said. “And the names you chose are fine.”

“You know you’ll be rich soon, Miss Paget.”

“So they tell me,” she said. She seemed suddenly vulnerable, indeed fragile.

“But you have to keep your appointments with us, you have to approve each step. It won’t take so much time, really….”

“I’m going to love it. Mr. Ash, I want to make-”

“I want to see anything that you make, immediately. You’ll call us.”

“Yes.”

“But don’t be sure you will enjoy the process here. As you have observed, manufacture is not the same thing as crafting or creating. Well, it is. But seldom do people see it that way. Artists don’t always see mass production as an ally.”

He did not have to explain his old reasoning, that he did not care for the one-of-a-kinds and the limited editions, that he cared only for dolls that could belong to everyone. And he would take these molds of hers, and he would produce dolls from them year after year, varying them only when there seemed a reason to do it.

Everyone knew this about him now-that he had no interest in elitist values or ideas.

“Any questions about our contracts, Miss Paget? Don’t hesitate to put these questions directly to me.”

“Mr. Ash, I’ve signed your contracts!” She gave another little riff of laughter, distinctly careless and young.

“I’m so glad, Miss Paget,” he said. “Prepare to be famous.” He brought up his hands and folded them on the desk. Naturally, she was looking at them; she was wondering at their immense size.

“Mr. Ash, I know you’re busy. Our appointment’s for fifteen minutes.”

He nodded as if to say, This is not important, go on.

“Let me ask you. Why do you like my dolls? I mean, really, Mr. Ash. I mean-”

He thought for a moment. “Of course there’s a stock answer,” he said, “which is wholly true. That your dolls are original, as you’ve said. But what I like, Miss Paget, is that your dolls are all smiling broadly. Their eyes are crinkled; their faces are in motion. They have shining teeth. You can almost hear them laugh.”

“That was the risk, Mr. Ash.” Suddenly she herself laughed, and looked for one second as happy as her creations.

“I know, Miss Paget. Are you perhaps going to make me some very sad children now?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Make what you want. I’m behind you. Don’t make sad children. Too many other artists do that well.”

He started to rise, slowly, the signal of dismissal, and he wasn’t surprised when she rushed to her feet.

“Thank you, Mr. Ash,” she said again, reaching for his hand-his huge, long-fingered hand. “I can’t tell you how much …”

“You don’t have to.”

He let her take his hand. Sometimes people didn’t want to touch him a second time. Sometimes they knew he wasn’t a human. Never repelled by his face, it seemed, they were often repelled by his big feet and hands. Or, deep in their subconscious, they realized his neck was just a little too long, his ears too narrow. Humans are skilled at recognizing their own kind, tribe, clan, family. A great part of the human brain is organized around merely recognizing and remembering types of faces.

But she was not repelled, merely young and overwhelmed, and anxious over simple transitions.

“And by the way, Mr. Ash, if you don’t mind my saying it, the white streaks in your hair are very becoming. I hope you don’t ever color them out. White hair is always becoming on a young man.”

“Now, what made you say that, Miss Paget?”

She flushed once more, but then gave in to laughter. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s just that the hair is so white, and you’re so young. I didn’t expect you to be so young. That’s what is so surprising-” She broke off, unsure; he had best release her before she tumbled too quickly into her own imagined failures.

“Thank you, Miss Paget,” he said. “You’ve been very kind. I’ve enjoyed talking with you.” Reassurance, blunt and memorable. “I hope to see you again very soon. I hope you’ll be happy.”

Remmick had come to spirit the young woman away. She said something else hastily, thanks, avowals of inspiration and determination to please the whole world. Words to that sweet effect. He gave her one final sober smile as she went out and the bronze doors were shut behind her.

When she got home, of course, she would drag out her magazines. She would do addition on her fingers, maybe even with a calculator. She would realize he couldn’t be young, not by anyone’s count. She’d conclude he was past forty, and carefully fighting fifty. That was safe enough.

But how must he deal with this in the long run, for the long run was always his problem? Here was a life he loved, but he would have to make adjustments. Oh, he couldn’t think of something so awful just now. What if the white hair really began to flourish? That would help, wouldn’t it? But what did it really mean, the white hair? What did it reveal? He was too content to think of it. Too content to court cold fear.

Once again he turned to the windows, and to the falling snow. He could see Central Park as clearly from this office as from the others. He put his hand on the glass. Very cold.

The skating lake was deserted now. The snow had covered the park, and the roof just below him; and he noticed another curious sight which always made him give a little laugh.

It was the swimming pool on top of the Parker Meridien Hotel. Snow fell steadily on the transparent glass roof while, beneath it, a man was swimming back and forth in the brightly illuminated green water, and this was some fifty floors perhaps above the street.

“Now that is wealth and that is power,” he mused quietly to himself. “To swim in the sky in a storm.” Build swimming pools in the sky, another worthy project.

“Mr. Ash,” said Remmick.

“Yes, my dear boy,” he said absently, watching the long strokes of the swimmer, seeing clearly now that it was an elderly and very thin man. Such a figure would have been the victim of starvation in times past. But this was a physically fit individual-he could see it-a businessman, perhaps, snared by economic circumstances in the bitter winter of New York, swimming back and forth in deliciously heated and safely sanitized water.

“Phone call for you, sir.”

“I don’t think so, Remmick. I’m tired. It’s the snow. It makes me want to curl up in bed and go to sleep. I want to go to bed now, Remmick. I want some hot chocolate and then to sleep and sleep.”

“Mr. Ash, the man said you would want to speak to him, that I was to tell you …”

“They all say that, Remmick,” he answered.

“Samuel, sir. He said to tell you that name.”

“Samuel!”

He turned from the window, and looked at the manservant, at his placid face. There was no judgment or opinion in his expression. Only devotion and quiet acceptance.

“He said to come to you directly, Mr. Ash, that it was the custom when he called. I took the chance that he-”

“You did right. You can leave me alone for a little while now.”

He took his chair at the desk.

As the doors closed, he picked up the receiver, and pressed the tiny red button. “Samuel!” he whispered.

“Ashlar,” came the answer, clear as if his friend were truly at his ear. “You’ve kept me waiting fifteen minutes. How important you’ve become.”

“Samuel, where are you? Are you in New York?”

“Certainly not,” came the reply. “I’m in Donnelaith, Ash. I’m at the Inn.”

“Phones in the glen.” It was a low murmur. The voice was coming all the way from Scotland … from the glen.

“Yes, old friend, phones in the glen, and other things as well. A Taltos came here, Ash. I saw him. A full Taltos.”

“Wait a minute. It sounded as if you said-”

“I did say this. Don’t get too excited about it, Ash. He’s dead. He was an infant, blundering. It’s a long story. There’s a gypsy involved in it, a very clever gypsy named Yuri, from the Talamasca. The gypsy would be dead right now if it weren’t for me.”

“Are you sure the Taltos is dead?”

“The gypsy told me. Ash, the Talamasca is in a dark time. Something tragic has happened with the Order. They’ll kill this gypsy soon, perhaps, but he’s determined to go back to the Motherhouse. You must come as soon as you can.”

“Samuel, I’ll meet you in Edinburgh tomorrow.”

“No, London. Go directly to London. I promised the gypsy. But come quickly, Ash. If his brothers in London catch sight of him, he’ll be dead.”

“Samuel, this can’t be a correct story. The Talamasca wouldn’t do such things to anyone, let alone its own people. Are you sure this gypsy is saying true things?”

“Ash, it has to do with this Taltos. Can you leave now?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t fail me?”

“No.”

“Then there’s one more thing I must tell you right now. You’ll see it in the papers-in London as soon as you land. They’ve been digging here in Donnelaith, in the ruins of the cathedral.”

“I know this, Samuel. You and I have talked about this before.”

“Ash, they dug up the grave of St. Ashlar. They found the name engraved in the stone. You’ll see it in the papers, Ashlar. Scholars are here from Edinburgh. Ash, there are witches involved in this tale. But the gypsy will tell you. People are watching me. I have to go.”

“Samuel, people are always watching you, wait-”

“Your hair, Ash. I saw you in a magazine. Are those white streaks in your hair? Never mind.”

“Yes, my hair is turning white. But it’s happening slowly. I haven’t aged otherwise. There are no real shocks for you, except the hair.”

“You’ll live till the end of the world, Ash, and be the one to make it crumble.”

“No!”

“Claridge’s in London. We are leaving now ourselves. That’s a hotel where a man can make a big oak fire in the grate, and sleep in a big old cozy bedroom full of chintz and hunter-green velvet. I’ll be waiting for you there. And Ash. Pay the hotel, will you? I’ve been out here in the glen for two years.”

Samuel rang off.

“Maddening,” he whispered. He laid down the phone.

For long moments he looked at the bronze doors.

He didn’t blink or focus when the doors opened. He scarcely saw the blurred figure who came into the room. He was not thinking, he was merely repeating the words Taltos and Talamasca inside his head.

When he did look up, he saw only Remmick pouring chocolate from a small, heavy silver pitcher into a pretty china cup. The steam rose in Remmick’s patient and slightly weary face. Gray hair, now that was gray hair, an entire head of it. I do not have so much gray hair.

Indeed, he had only the two streaks flowing back from his temples, and a bit of white in his sideburns, as they were called. And yes, just a tiny touch of white in the dark hair of his chest. Fearfully he looked down at his wrist. There were white hairs there, mingled with the dark hair that had covered his arms now for so many years.

Taltos! Talamasca. The world will crumble ….

“Was it the right thing, sir, the phone call?” asked Remmick, in that wonderful, near-inaudible British murmur that his employer loved. Lots of people would have called it a mumble. And we are going now to England, we are going back among all the agreeable, gentle people…. England, the land of the bitter cold, seen from the coast of the lost land, a mystery of winter forests and snow-capped mountains.

“Yes, indeed, it was the right thing, Remmick. Always come to me directly when it’s Samuel. I have to go to London, right now.”

“Then I have to hurry, sir. La Guardia’s been closed all day. It’s going to be very difficult-”

“Hurry, then, please, don’t say anything further.”

He sipped the chocolate. Nothing tasted richer to him, sweeter, or better, except perhaps unadulterated fresh milk.

“Another Taltos,” he whispered aloud. He set down the cup. “Dark time in the Talamasca.” This he wasn’t sure he believed.

Remmick was gone. The doors had closed, the beautiful bronze gleaming as if it were hot. There was a trail of light across the marble floor from the light embedded in the ceiling, rather like the moon on the sea.

“Another Taltos, and it was male.”

There were so many thoughts racing through his head, such a clatter of emotion! For a moment he thought he’d give way to tears. But no. It was anger that he felt, anger that once again he had been teased by this bit of news, that his heart was beating, that he was flying over the sea to learn more about another Taltos, who was already dead-a male.

And the Talamasca-so they had come into a dark time, had they? Well, wasn’t it inevitable? And what must he do about it? Must he be drawn into all this once more? Centuries ago, he had knocked on their doors. But who among them knew this now?

Their scholars he knew by face and name, only because he feared them enough to keep track of them. Over the years, they had never stopped coming to the glen…. Someone knew something, but nothing ever really changed.

Why did he feel he owed them some protective intervention now? Because they had once opened their doors, they had listened, they had begged him to remain, they hadn’t laughed at his tales, they’d promised to keep his secret. And like him, the Talamasca was old. Old as the trees in the great forests.

How long ago had it been? Before the London house, long before, when the old palazzo in Rome had been lighted still with candles. No records, they had promised. No records, in exchange for all he had told … which was to remain impersonal, anonymous, a source of legend and fact, of bits and pieces of knowledge from ages past. Exhausted, he had slept beneath that roof; they had comforted him. But in the final analysis they were ordinary men, possessed of an extraordinary interest perhaps, but ordinary, short-lived, awestruck by him, scholars, alchemists, collectors.

Whatever the case, it was no good to have them in a dark time, to use Samuel’s words, not with all they knew and kept within their archives. Not good. And for some strange reason his heart went out to this gypsy in the glen. And his curiosity burned as fierce as ever regarding the Taltos, the witches.

Dear God, the very thought of witches.

When Remmick came back, he had the fur-lined coat over his arm.

“Cold enough for this, sir,” he said, as he put it over the boss’s shoulders. “And you looked chilled, sir, already.”

“It’s nothing,” he replied. “Don’t come down with me. There’s something you must do. Send money to Claridge’s in London. It’s for a man named Samuel. The management will have no trouble identifying Samuel. He is a dwarf and he is a hunchback and he has very red hair, and a very wrinkled face. You must arrange everything so that this little man has exactly what he wants. Oh, and there is someone with him. A gypsy. I have no idea what this means.”

“Yes, sir. The surname, sir?”

“I don’t know what it is, Remmick,” he answered, rising to go, and pulling the fur-lined cape closer under his neck. “I’ve known Samuel for so long.”

He was in the elevator before he realized that this last statement was absurd. He said too many things of late that were absurd. The other day Remmick had said how much he loved the marble in all these rooms, and he had answered, “Yes, I loved marble from the first time I ever saw it,” and that had sounded absurd.

The wind howled in the elevator shaft as the cab descended at astonishing speed. It was a sound heard only in winter, and a sound which frightened Remmick, though he himself rather liked it, or thought it amusing at the very least.

When he reached the underground garage the car was waiting, giving off a great flood of noise and white smoke. His suitcases were being loaded. There stood his night pilot, Jacob, and the nameless copilot, and the pale, straw-colored young driver who was always on duty at this hour, the one who rarely ever spoke.

“You’re sure you want to make this trip, tonight, sir?” asked Jacob.

“Is nobody flying?” he asked. He stopped, eyebrows raised, hand on the door. Warm air came from the inside of the car.

“No, sir, there are people flying.”

“Then we’re going to fly, Jacob. If you’re frightened, you don’t have to come.”

“Where you go, I go, sir.”

“Thank you, Jacob. You once assured me that we fly safely above the weather now, and with far greater security than a commercial jet.”

“Yes, I did do that, sir, didn’t I?”

He sat back on the black leather seat and stretched out his long legs, planting his feet on the seat opposite, which no man of normal height could have done in this long stretch limousine. The driver was comfortably shut away behind glass, and the others followed in the car behind him. His bodyguards were in the car ahead.

The big limousine rushed up the ramp, taking the curbs with perilous but exciting speed, and then out the gaping mouth of the garage into the enchanting white storm. Thank God the beggars had been rescued from the streets. But he had forgotten to ask about the beggars. Surely some of them had been brought into his lobby and given warm drink and cots upon which to sleep.

They crossed Fifth Avenue and sped towards the river. The storm was a soundless torrent of lovely tiny flakes. They melted as they struck the dark windows and the wet sidewalks. They came down through the dark faceless buildings as if into a deep mountain pass.

Taltos.

For a moment the joy went out of his world-the joy of his accomplishments, and his dreams. In his mind’s eye he saw the pretty young woman, the dollmaker from California, in her crushed violet silk dress. He saw her in his mind dead on a bed, with blood all around her, making her dress dark.

Of course it wouldn’t happen. He never let it happen anymore, hadn’t in so long he could scarce remember what it was like to wrap his arms around a soft female body, scarce remember the taste of the milk from a mother’s breast.

But he thought of the bed, and the blood, and the girl dead and cold, and her eyelids turning blue, as well as the flesh beneath her fingernails, and finally even her face. He pictured this because if he didn’t, he would picture too many other things. The sting of this kept him chastened, kept him within bounds.

“Oh, what does it matter? Male. And dead.”

Only now did he realize that he would see Samuel! He and Samuel would be together. Now that was something that flooded him with happiness, or would if he let it. And he had become a master of letting the floods of happiness come when they would.

He hadn’t seen Samuel in five years, or was it more? He had to think. Of course they had talked on the phone. As the wires and phones themselves improved, they had talked often. But he hadn’t actually seen Samuel.

In those days there had only been a little white in his hair. God, was it growing so fast? But of course Samuel had seen the few white hairs and remarked on it. And Ash had said, “It will go away.”

For one moment the veil lifted, the great protective shield which so often saved him from unendurable pain.

He saw the glen, the smoke rising; he heard the awful ring and clatter of swords, saw the figures rushing towards the forest. Smoke rising from the brochs and from the wheel houses … Impossible that it could have happened!

The weapons changed; the rules changed. But massacres were otherwise the same. He had lived on this continent now some seventy-five years, returning to it always within a month or two of leaving, for many reasons, and no small part of it was that he did not want to be near the flames, the smoke, the agony and terrible rain of war.

The memory of the glen wasn’t leaving him. Other memories were connected-of green fields, wildflowers, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny blue wildflowers. On the river he rode in a small wooden craft, and the soldiers stood on the high battlements; ah, what these creatures did, piling one rock upon another to make great mountains of their own! But what were his own monuments, the great sarsens which hundreds dragged across the plain to make the circle?

The cave, he saw that too again, as if a dozen vivid photographs were shuffled suddenly before him, and one moment he was running down the cliff, slipping, nearly falling, and at another Samuel stood there, saying,

“Let’s leave here, Ash. Why do you come here? What is there to see or to learn?”

He saw the Taltos with the white hair.

“The wise ones, the good ones, the knowing ones,” they had called them. They had not said “old.” It would never have been a word they would have used in those times, when the springs of the island were warm, and the fruit fell from the trees. Even when they’d come to the glen, they had never said the word “old,” but everyone knew they had lived the longest. Those with the white hair knew the longest stories….

“Go up now and listen to the story.”

On the island, you could pick which of the white-haired ones you wanted, because they themselves would not choose, and you sat there listening to the chosen one sing, or talk, or say the verses, telling the deepest things that he could remember There had been a white-haired woman who sang in a high, sweet voice, her eyes always fixed on the sea. And he had loved to listen to her.

And how long, he thought, how many decades would it be before his own hair was completely white?

Why, it might be very soon, for all he knew. Time itself had meant nothing then. And the white-haired females were so few, because the birthing made them wither young. No one talked about that either, but everybody knew it.

The white-haired males had been vigorous, amorous, prodigious eaters, and ready makers of predictions. But the white-haired woman had been frail. That is what birth had done to her.

Awful to remember these things, so suddenly, so clearly. Was there perhaps another magic secret to the white hair? That it made you remember from the beginning? No, it wasn’t that, it was only that in all the years of never knowing how long, he had imagined that he would greet death with both arms, and now he did not feel that way.

His car had crossed the river, and was speeding towards the airport. It was big and heavy and hugged the slippery asphalt. It held steady against the beating wind.

On the memories tumbled. He’d been old when the horsemen had ridden down upon the plain. He’d been old when he saw the Romans on the battlements of the Antonine Wall, when he’d looked down from Columba’s door on the high cliffs of Iona.

Wars. Why did they never go out of his memory, but wait there in all their full glory, right along with the sweet recollections of those he’d loved, of the dancing in the glen, of the music? The riders coming down upon the grassland, a dark mass spreading out as if it were ink upon a peaceful painting, and then the low roar just reaching their ears, and the sight of the smoke rising in endless clouds from their horses. He awoke with a start.

The little phone was ringing for him. He grasped it hard and pulled it from its black hook.

“Mr. Ash?”

“Yes, Remmick?’’

“I thought you’d like to know, sir. At Claridge’s, they are familiar with your friend Samuel. They have arranged his usual suite for him, second floor, corner, with the fireplace. They are waiting for you. And, Mr. Ash, they don’t know his surname either. Seems he doesn’t use it.”

“Thank you, Remmick. Say a little prayer. The weather’s very volatile and dangerous, I think.”

He hung up before Remmick could begin the conventional warnings. Should never have said such a thing, he thought.

But that was really amazing-their knowing Samuel at Claridge’s. Imagine their having gotten used to Samuel. The last time Ash had seen Samuel, Samuel’s red hair had been matted and shaggy, and his face so deeply wrinkled that his eyes were no longer fully visible, but flashed now and then in random light, like broken amber in the soft, mottled flesh. In those days Samuel had dressed in rags and carried his pistol in his belt, rather like a little pirate, and people had veered out of his path on the street.

“They’re all afraid of me, I can’t remain here. Look at them, they’re more afraid in these times than long ago.”

And now they were used to him in Claridge’s! Was he having his suits made for him on Savile Row? Did his dirty leather shoes not have holes? Had he forsaken his gun?

The car stopped, and he had to force the door open, his driver rushing to help him, as the snow swept against him in the wind.

Nevertheless, the snow was so pretty, and so clean before it struck the ground. He stood up, feeling a stiffness in his limbs for a moment, and then he put his hand up to keep the soft, moist flakes from striking his eyes.

“It’s not so bad, really, sir,” said Jacob. “We can get out of here in less than an hour. You should board immediately, sir, if you please.”

“Yes, thank you, Jacob,” he said. He stopped. The snow was falling all over his dark coat. He could feel it melting in his hair. Nevertheless, he reached into his pocket, felt for the small toy, the rocking horse, yes, it was there.

“This is for your son, Jacob,” he said. “I promised him.”

“Mr. Ash, for you to remember something like that on a night like this.”

“Nonsense, Jacob. I’ll bet your son remembers.”

It was embarrassingly insignificant, this little toy of wood; he wished now that it were something infinitely better. He would make a note-something better for Jacob’s son.

Taking big steps, he walked too fast for the driver to follow. He was too tall for the umbrella anyway. It was just a gesture, the man rushing beside him, umbrella in hand, for him to take it if he wanted it, which he never did.

He boarded the warm, close, and always frightening jet plane.

“I have your music, Mr. Ash.”

He knew this young woman, but he couldn’t remember her name. She was one of the best of the night secretaries. She’d been with him on the last trip to Brazil. He had meant to remember her. Shameful not to have her name on the very tip of his tongue.

“Evie, isn’t it?” he asked, smiling, begging forgiveness with a little bit of a frown.

“No, sir, Leslie,” she said, forgiving him instantly.

If she’d been a doll, she would have been bisque, no doubt of it, face underpainted with a soft rose blush to cheeks and lips, eyes deliberately small, but dark and deeply focused. Timidly she waited.

As he took his seat, the great leather chair made especially for him, longer than the others, she put the engraved program in his hand.

There were the usual selections-Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich. Ah, here was the composition he had requested-the Verdi Requiem. But he couldn’t listen to it now. If he slipped himself into those dark chords and dark voices, the memories would close in.

He put his head back, ignoring the winter spectacle outside the little window. “Sleep, you fool,” he said without moving his lips.

But he knew he wouldn’t. He would think about Samuel and the things Samuel had said, over and over, until they saw one another again. He would remember the smell of the Talamasca house, and how much the scholars had looked like clerics, and a human hand with a quill pen, writing in great curled letters. “Anonymous. Legends of the lost land. Of Stonehenge.”

“Just want to be quiet, sir?” asked the young Leslie.

“No, Shostakovich, the Fifth Symphony. It will make me cry, but you must ignore me. I’m hungry. I want cheese and milk.”

“Yes, sir, everything’s ready.” She began to speak the names of the cheeses, those fancy triple creams that they ordered for him from France and Italy and God only knows where else. He nodded, accepting, waiting for the rush of the music, the divinely piercing quality of this engulfing electronic system, which would make him forget the snow outside, and the fact that they would soon be over the great ocean, pushing steadily towards England, towards the plain, towards Donnelaith, and towards heartbreak.