Psychoshop

ONE · THE PSYCHBROKER

I was looking around desperately when my boss, Jerry Egan, poked his head into my office and in his soft Virginia voice asked, "May I come in, Alf?"

"Sure. Sure." I went on searching.

He hoisted himself on a corner of my big table (I hate desks) and watched. Then, "What have you lost?"

"I can't find my goddamn passport."

"Tried pockets, raincoat, travel bag?"

"Three goddamn times."

He started sorting through the mess on my table, stopped abruptly, and loafed to the low bookshelves under the window. He picked up my British motoring cap and there it was.

"How in the name of heaven could you go right to it?"

"My father was a dowser."

"Bless your father! Bless you!"

"I'd like to spring another foreign assignment on you, Alf. In Rome, but it's tricky. Ask around about the Black Place of the Soul-Changer."

"Sounds wild. What is it?"

"No one really knows. Girl of mine was there but she wouldn't talk about it. Sort of ashamed."

"Any suggestions?"

"You know how to dig. If it's just saloon-hype to pull the jet set trade, forget it. If it's a place that's doing the impossible, like inventing new sins, give it the full."

"Any leads from that ginzo girl of yours?"

"She did drop one name, Adam Maser. That's all."

"Isn't a maser some kind of microwave gadget?"

"You tell me, Alf. You're the Yankee genius. I'm only the Dixie chaser."

The world is divided into 99% civilians and 1% elite. The civilians are all running scared, afraid of nonconforming. The elites are on easy terms with themselves and the world, don't give a damn for, and can't be spooked by, anything. So when word got around that I was in Rome doing features for the chic Rigadoon magazine, I was accepted by the jet set and aimed in the right direction.

So there I was on a stool alongside this Adam Maser in La Corruttela having drinks and bar-chatting. I'd been told that he was the mysterious Soul-Changer and naturally antic­ipated meeting a Frankenstein or Count Dracula or even the Phantom of the Opera wearing a mask. I couldn't have been more wrong.

He was tawny red, almost the color of a leopard, the hair darker red than his skin, which simply looked sun-and-windburned. His slitty eyes were jet black. His fingernails were pointed and ivory-colored, but his teeth were brilliant white. Altogether an overpowering figure.

When we first sat down with each other, he had taken his time sizing me up, then introduced himself, and I did likewise. He said he'd heard about me. I said I'd heard about him.

His manner was all charm and grace; pure cafe society. He laughed a lot and his chuckle was almost a purr. He had an easy voice but was slightly hesitant in speech as though continually searching for the right word. Wonderfully pleas­ant and wide open like all the other one-percenters who don't give a damn. I figured him for a delightful interview provided his Black Place made it worthwhile.

"Adam Maser's an odd name," I said.

He nodded. "It's a compromise name."

"Between what and what?"

"We're late twentieth century, right?"

"And that's an odd question."

"I've got to be careful, speechwise. You know all about passing through time zones when you travel; jet lag and all that?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I also travel through people and culture zones, so

I've got to be sure I'm talking the right language. Can't speak Aztec to a Druid. Tell you about it some time if you're interested."

"Tell me about the compromise."

"Well the name should really be Magfaser."

"You're putting me on."

"No, Magfaser's an acronym."

"Of what?"

"Maser Generated Fetal Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation."

"Jeez."

"Yeah. Only close friends call me that.

"And Adam because I'm the first turkey— Do we say turkey in the late twentieth?"

"Not anymore."

"The first to be amplified during the embryo caper. Caper's right, isn't it? I'm having a little trouble getting with late twentieth. Just come from a session with Leeuwenhoek and a long seventeenth-century Dutch discussion about microscopes."

"You need warming up." I called the bartender. "Double shot for me, please, and anything my good buddy Maser Generated Fetal Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation wants to order."

That broke him up. "You're a right rigadoon, Alf."

"You're fairly OK yourself, Adam. What were these friends unknown amplifying you to do?"

"Damned if I know. I don't think the lab mavens know either. They're still trying to find out, which is why they've got me under observation, like in a terrarium. ..."

I shook my head. He was sounding flakier by the minute.

"They thought they were doing a linear magnification, sort of putting me through a magnifying glass."

"Size wise?"

"Brainwise, but what they did was multiply me by myself into a quadratic."

"Inside your mother?"

"Hell no! I was a test tube clone floating in a maser

womb."

"So where is this terrarium where the good doctors have you under observation?"

He purred a chuckle. "My place. If you want to come, I'll show you."

"Love to. The Luogo Nero? The Black Place?"

"That's what the locals call it. It's really Buoco Nero, the Black Hole."

"Like the Black Hole of Calcutta?"

"No. Black Hole as in astronomy. Corpse of a dead star, but also channel between this universe and its next-door neighbor."

"Here? In Rome?"

"Sure. They drift around in space until they run out of gas and come to a stop. This number happened to park here."

"How long ago?"

"No one knows," he said. "It was there six centur­ies before Christ, when the Etruscans took over a small town called Roma and began turning it into the capital of the world. If you were looking for the Luogo Nero, where the sinister Soul-Changer did business, you were told it was just opposite Queen Tanaquila's palace. Usually your informant would then spit three times to ward off evil."

I smiled. "When did you get put into it, the black hole?"

I asked.

"About a thousand years from now, your time. For me,

ten rotas back."

There has to be a limit. "Adam," I said, "one of us is crazy."

"And you think it's me." He laughed. "That's why I'm safe when I tell it like it is. No one ever believes me."

"I've been assigned to do a story on you."

"Sure. I guessed. I'll cooperate; give you the full; but Rigadoon will never print it. They'll never believe you. You'll be wasting your time, Alf, but you'll have some wild stories to tell. So come on, already."

Outside, the redhead flagged a cab and told the driver, "II Foro etrusco." As we got in he said, "That's what they call the ruin of Tanaquila's palace, the Etruscan forum. I'm just opposite. If I gave a driver my address he'd swear he never heard of it and tell us to get lost."

The Etruscan forum looked like any ordinary Roman ruin, a few acres of fenced rubble covered with the usual graffiti:

DeeDee and Joe's

Smithfield Eatery

U.S.A

Rip 'em Tear 'em

Skin 'em alive

Pennsylvania '35

Across the Via Regina from Tanaquila's, the Black Place looked like any ordinary Roman house except that it stood alone, flanked by empty, weedy lots. Evidently no one cared to live alongside. It was built of the flat Roman brick three stories high, with windows and balconies, some with wash hanging from them.

"Windows, balconies, wash, all fake to conform," Adam said. "Also the bricks. They aren't the clay types; they're baked bort, cheap diamond dust, to last forever. Come into my web."

We stepped into the entranceway.

The sign above the door wasn't the traditional hockshop logo, the three gold balls, allegedly the arms of the Medici family but actually invented by the Lombard pawnbrokers as an attention-getter. No, what the sign sported was a fan­tastic extrapolation: three gold horizontal 8s, symbols of infinity. A nice touch. Its motto was Res Ullus—Anything.

"Petrified ebony," Adam said, rapping the door with his knuckles. "Also to last forever." He swung the door aside.

"No locks?"

"Open day and night to all the world. My observers want me to react to everybody and everything. Might help them figure out what my quadratic is. And that's why they made the terrarium a hockshop. It's a universal crossroads."

"You must have been ripped plenty."

"Never. The goniffs think this is a Mafia H.Q. and are afraid to mess around. Too bad. Lately, your time, the terror clowns've been tossing bombs which can't do any­thing against diamond and ebony. God knows who they think I am."

There was a pleasant foyer with a wide rack for hats, coats, and such, and an enormous brass scuttle containing a colorful assortment of walking sticks, umbrellas, parasols, all probably forgotten by visitors. He led me into a giant reception/living room which would have made collectors, curators, and dealers green with envy. Exquisite rare furni­ture, lamps, books, prints, and paintings; cut crystal and objets d'art; an inlaid harpsichord; an Aubusson rug, 20 x 30; linenfold paneling; a magnificent ironwork stairway leading to the upper floors; inexplicable items which had not yet been designed and built in my time. And . . . AND, standing in the center was a woman. . . .

Gleaming black hair, sharp features, and tiny ears were what I noticed first. Her eyes were golden, oval, and never blinked, so wide apart she could almost see behind her. The tip of her tongue constantly darted just inside her narrow lips. Her skin was quadroon but seemed to glow with iridescent mica flakes when she moved forward to greet us.

"This is Alf, my new buddy," Maser told her. "Alf, this is my nanny."

"Nanny!?"

He nodded. "I'm just a kid."

"But— I— This is too much for me. Does your nanny have a name?"

"I call her Medusa."

"Medusa?"

"Uh-huh."

"You have to be kidding!"

"Of course." The redhead chuckle-purred. "It's our joke because she's descended from our snake genus. I don't have to explain why she calls me Macavity, the Mystery Cat."

"No need. Good evening, Ms. Medusa." I gave the enchantress my best bow. "Do you have a real name I might call you?"

"Ssss."

I looked at Maser.

"That's her real name," he said.

"Good evening, Ms. Ssss."

He broke up and she flashed a smile at me.

"What have I done now?"

"You called her Glory Hallelujah."

"No."

"Yes. Ssss. Ssss. Can't you hear the difference?"

"Not really. It's one hell of a language."

"We come from one hell of a universe. You should hear the pisces crowd bubble. Talk twentieth Yank to him, Nan." She flashed another smile but that was all. "No, no, Nan. Alf can't hear UHF. Try lower."

Her voice came, smooth and tingly like the low notes of an oboe. "Good evening. So nice to meet you. . . ." She took my hand. Hers was cool and firm. "I'd like very much if you called me Glory, Alf."

"Hallelujah," I muttered.

"Careful, you're turning into stone," Macavity laughed. He crossed to one of the panels, which proved to be a door. As he started to open it he said, "It's quite dark, Alf. You won't be able to take notes."

"Never do. I've got temporary total recall. Lasts about an hour. When I leave you I'll go back to the hotel and get it on tape before it fades."

"I see. Tell you what, I'll swap your temporary for per­manent. No charge. On the house."

"You can do that?"

"Sure, if you want to. No sweat. I've got a beauty from an idiot savant. You know the type: I.Q. nowhere but a memory down to the finest minutiae. He traded in his recall."

"For intelligence?"

"No. You won't believe this. Instruments for a one-man band, come in for the Grand Tour. Hold the fort, Nan."

Most of us have seen a hockshop at one time or other, from the outside and even inside. I did a full feature on pawn­shops for Rigadoon once. Their slogan is: If it isn't alive and you can get it through the door, you can hock it. The only word for them is clutter. They display everything from A-alembics to Z-zithers, but this Black Hole pawn-cum-psychshop . . . !

It was an endless black cavern piled with physical As to Zs and covered in a blizzard of New Year's Eve confetti and streamers. They weren't bits of colored paper, they were psychic moieties that had been pawned or sold.

They were particles of living souls charged with ener­gies that try to make themselves known to us through our clumsy conscious senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, kinetics. This timeless Libido Exchange was a kaleidoscope of Man's rejections and desires, discontents and remedies.

Sexual images predominated: penis, vulva, buttocks, breasts—large, small, pointed, blunt—and scores of eroge­nous zones. Sexual acts: hetero, homo, bestial, nymphomania, satyriasis, and all the erotic postures of desire, passion, lust, love, and pleasure.

Strength and beauty: muscle, stature, form, grace, skin, hair, eyes, lips, color. Power: over men, over women, over events, over selves. Success: in love, life, career, leisure. Brilliance: intellectual, political, artistic, social. Status. Celebrity. Popularity. Perpetuity.

And a chaos of fears, fixations, hatreds, beliefs, supersti­tions, salvations, manias, plus fragments from the far future and dim past which had no meaning for me. All this I saw, felt, tasted, and touched. I was flayed by this shrapnel from the battle between Man's realities and yearnings. I was shat­tered.

Adam's voice came. "Spooky, isn't it?"

I could make him out through the dark turmoil; his crimson was curiously luminescent. All I could do was croak.

"You all right, Alf?"

I didn't respond. I couldn't. Something farther down the way had caught my attention, held it. Without thought or will I continued to move in that direction.

"This isn't real space, as you know it," said Adam. "We're protected by several layers of tricks. But even so, you are headed in the direction of the singularity. Go too far and it becomes dangerous. Go farther, and there's no turn­ing back."

"Uh-huh," I said, and I kept going.

"You're still well within the safety margin, of course, or I'd have stopped you. In fact, you're only nearing the strip­ping field where I remove those traits or talents customers wish to dispose of. The adding field is off to the left—there's a kind of symmetry involved in the way I engineered it. That's where I install those things they're trading up to—or down to. We've got to bear a little to the left now to pass safely between them. Just follow the illuminated claw marks. Wouldn't want to be stripped indiscriminately. Not by a field, anyway."

I plodded on.

"The fields also grow stronger the farther you go," he continued. "I don't really work with them much beyond this point—"

I halted. I froze. I made some sort of noise in my throat.

They hung there, as I had detected them subliminally from much farther back: human forms, bodies suspended as if from meat hooks, swaying, turning, limp and lifeless, as in some steady breeze. There were seven of them.

"What," I croaked, "are they?"

"Seven guys," he said, "who traded everything they had."

"How? Why?"

"In each case, the man gained access here while I was out of the room. He wandered into the stripping field—you saw how easy it was to do—and it took away everything he'd added to himself since birth. What you see are the remains, breathing—albeit slowly—and with very faint heart­beats. The field's time-effects preserve them. As Shelley said, 'Nothing beside remains.'"

"When did it happen?"

"The first one, Lars, lived back when the Etruscans were in charge around here. Marcus came a few centuries later. Erik was a Germanic mercenary. And we've a Vandal and a Goth and a thirteenth-century Norman Crusader," he said, gesturing. "The last guy, Pietro, was sixteenth century. Claimed to be a painter."

"Why do you think they did it?"

He shrugged.

"Maybe simple curiosity. I can understand curiosity. More likely, they wanted more than they thought they could afford and figured they might find a way to rip me off. You want that memory job now?"

The nearest body was turning in that eerie breeze. Its profile began to come into view.

I screamed. I turned. I began to run.

"Alf! What's the matter?"

His hand fell upon my shoulder, steering me safely between the fields. His question rang in my head. But already I was blotting out—the horror.

"What is it, man?"

"It— It startled me. It was like— I don't know."

"Uh-huh. It's quite an experience the first time around. You'll get used to it."

"I'm not sure. I'm so damned empathic."

"That's the price the artist has to pay."

"And this is the real Black Hole?"

"Oh, you've been in it since the front door. The foyer and reception are decorated to put people at ease. This is the undisguised real thing."

"It's more of a Hellhole."

There was a dazzle of light as the door to reception opened and closed. Glory's voice came. "Client, Dammy."

"Great, Nan. Alf can watch us in action. Where from and when?"

"A college boy from the U.S. Early nineteenth century."

"What's his problem?"

"Something about asthma."

"I'm no M.D., but let's see what we can do."

The client was seated but stood up politely when we entered the reception room: a skinny college boy in his late teens, dark, pale skin, big head, melancholy eyes, dressed in the post-Federal style.

"How do, sir," Maser said pleasantly. "Nice of you to wish here. We're all on a first name basis. This is Nan, my assistant; Alf, my associate. I'm Adam. You?"

"They call me Gaffy in college," the boy said. His speech was unusual and quite charming; Southern spoken with a slight English accent.

"And you want to pawn or buy what?"

"I want to exchange my asthmatic wheeze for some­thing endurable."

"Ah, you have rales, eh? What makes them unen­durable, Gaffy? Are they too loud, too prolonged, painful, what?"

"They speak to me in a language I can't understand."

Adam's jet eyes widened. "Now that's a new one on me. Are you sure it's a language?"

"No, but it does sound like words in sentences."

"Most interesting, Gaffy. Permit me to listen." Without waiting for approval, Adam bent and put an ear to the boy's chest. "Deep breath, please, and let it out slowly."

Gaffy obliged. Maser listened intently, then straight­ened, smiling. "You're quite right, my dear boy. It is a lan­guage, early-eleventh-century Persian." He turned to me. "There's no end to fantastic phenomena, Alf. Our client is wheezing passages from the Shah Namah, the epic fantasy by the great poet, Firdausi. It was the source for Schehera­zade and the Arabian Nights."

I stared. Gaffy stared.

"Now I'm not a physician, so I can't remove the wheeze," Adam continued briskly, "and I refuse to ex­change it. It's a treasure you'll appreciate and thank me for some day. What I will do is sell you a knowledge of Persian so you can understand what you're hearing. Self-entertainment, as it were. Inside, please."

We were seeing Macavity at his most Napoleonic. Arguments and objections were out of the question. It was something he'd referred to as his persona power. As the college boy followed Adam into the Hellhole, I looked at Glory.

"If Maser's just a kid, what'll he be like when he grows up?"

"God, maybe?" she answered. "He doesn't overwhelm me but to tell the truth, Alf, he's been whelming me lately."

"D'you think that this persona power is his quadratic?"

Before she could reply, Maser and the college kid came out.

"What?" I exclaimed. "So quickly?"

"Moments, real time," Adam smiled. "No counting, psychwise. There's no time or dimensions in the libido and intellect."

"Xirad za'n Pahlavi." Gaffy beamed.

"No, no!" The redhead was overpowering again. "It was our agreement that no one is to know you understand ancient Persian. Questions will be asked and how can you answer them? You damn well better keep your word."

The boy nodded submissively.

"Right. Got any money on you?"

"All paper, sir. A dollar Federal and two-fifty Bank of Richmond."

"I'll take the paper half dollar for my fee. I'm not under­charging you. It'll be worth a hell of a lot more in the future."

"Thank you, sir."

"Now pay attention. When you go through the front door think hard of the place you wished yourself here from, and you'll wish back into it. Same time. Same place. Got it?"

"Yes, sir." The half-dollar bill was handed over. As the boy turned to leave, Glory said, "Do you want a receipt, Mr. Gaffy?"

"No thanks." He hesitated, then, "Gaffy's what they call me in college. I hate it. My real name's Edgar. Edgar Poe," and he was gone.

Three jaws dropped. Then we burst out laughing.

"So that's what inspired him," I said.

"And you think Rigadoon's going to print this?" Adam chuckled.

"I have my doubts. I also have doubts about Poe's work. Wasn't it a cheat, really?"

"No way, Alf. You ought to know. Inspiration's one thing; what you do with it is something else. Firdausi's been translated into a dozen other languages. Same source for all. Has anyone else ever equaled Poe?"

"God knows they've tried. Me too. But never."

"I had another thought about him," Glory said. "Per­haps this is why he took to drink and drugs. It must have been hell, living with that stockpile and trying to re-create what he could remember."

"Ah yes, memory," Adam said. "Come back into limbo, Alf, and I'll replace your temp recall with that permanent from the one-man band. Like I said, on the house. No charge."

"I pays my own way." I was all class. "I got fifty liras burning a hole in my pocket."

"A whole nickel U.S.? Like wow! You're the last of the big spenders."

"Naw. I'm on expense account."

But just as we reached the door to the Hellhole, Glory called, "Another client, Dammy."

"Oh? Where and when?"

"From the Beta-Prometheus Cluster. Twenty-fifth."

"Jeez," I said. "Does it have two heads?"

"Shut up, Alf. What business, Nan?"

"His name's Tigab. He wants to get rid of an obsession. Says he imagines he's haunted by a hitching post that's in love with his wife."

Glory was ushering the client in as we returned to the par­lor. I whispered to Adam, "If I went through the door now would I be in that Cluster in the twenty-fifth?"

"You'd be where and when you really wanted to be," he murmured. "Not just dreaming. We'll fill in details later." Aloud, to the client, "Good evening, sir. So nice of you to wish here from so far off. You've met Nan, my assistant. This is Alf, my associate. I'm Adam, the psychbroker."

Not two heads, just one, and a marked resemblance to the classic portraits and busts of Shakespeare. Two arms, two legs, wearing a timeless jump suit.

Adam continued, "Now what's this delightful obsession about a loving hitching post, Mr. Tigab?"

"Well, it's like this. Me and the wife made our pile and thought we'd live it up a little. We bought a mansion from the estate of an antique dealer, furnished and elegant like this room."

"Thank you, Mr. Tigab."

"Elegant outside too. You know, gardens, lawns, trees, driveways, and 'longside the front steps is an antique hitch­ing post."

"Forgive me, Mr. Tigab, but why do you talk like that?"

"Talk like what?"

"Three words level and one word down."

"Oh. We're born that way out in the Cluster. You know, like kids are born righties or lefties? We're also born inflect­ing."

"I see. All with the same inflection?"

"Oh no. All different."

"Anyway," Mr. Tigab continued, "about this hitching post hangup I want wiped. We got settled in and everything was great until one afternoon we're sitting in the parlor when my wife jumps up and yells, 'There's a man looking through the window.'

"I jump up. 'Where? Where?"

"She pointed. There."

"I look. Nothing. 'You imagined it', I told the wife. She swore she saw him and he was some kind of ghost because she could see trees through him.

"Well, she's got imagination—she always wanted to be a poet—so I paid no mind, but she kept on seeing it all the time and damn if she didn't start me thinking I was seeing it too."

"Yes? How did you see it?"

"We were sitting by the fire in my study, talking, when I saw this dumpy little spook come in and sit down alongside my wife. It was the image of the figure on the hitching post."

"And?"

"I kept imagining I saw it coming in and sitting with my wife, looking at me like it wanted to be me. She's got me believing this damn delusion and you've got to kick it for me."

"You're sure it's the guy from the hitching post?"

"The image."

"What's it look like?"

"Real antique. Hundreds of years. Hell, I'll draw if for you. Got some white paper?"

Glory produced a large pad and pencil.

"No," Tigab said, "we don't use pen or pencil in the Cluster, we project. Just hold the pad up where you can see it."

He pointed a finger and the hitching post took form on the pad: an eighteenth-century figure, dumpy, right arm raised, left behind its back, top hat on the back of the head, high collar and loose ascot, long overcoat, unmistakable scowling face.

Adam and I looked at each other and began to sputter.

"What's so funny?" Tigab demanded.

"The hitching post ghost," Adam said. "It isn't a delusion, Mr. Tigab, it's a genuine spirit, and it isn't in love with your wife, it's fascinated by how you speak to her."

"I don't believe it. A ghost likes what I say to my wife?"

"No, it likes how you say it. Your inflection. If you'll come with me I'll solve your problem by selling you a new inflection. No more spook sitting with your wife listening to you."

More or less dazed, Tigab followed Macavity into the Hellhole while Glory and I grinned to each other, shaking our heads.

A vaguely familiar-looking man in mirror shades, sweat pants, and a red and white polo shirt walked in. I watched him in the mirror. He was about my height and build, his reddish hair was close-cropped, and he had on some sort of moccasins or dancer's shoes. He wore studded leather straps about his wrists.

He approached Glory. "Is the proprietor in?" he asked.

"Yes, but he's occupied," she replied. "May I help you?"

"No, thanks," he said. "I'll catch him another time."

He turned and left, soundlessly.

When they came out of the Hellhole, moments later,

Tigab was so stunned that he could barely mumble. All the same, his new inflection was equally unmistakable. My grin broadened.

"Got to pay up and go home. The wife's got to get used to my new singsong. Me too."

He pulled a pouch from a pocket, opened it, and dumped green pebbles on a table. "Cluster coin-of-the-realm," he grunted. "Take as many as you like. You earned it and I'm obliged."

They were raw, uncut emeralds. Adam picked up the smallest stone and returned the rest. "This is too much, Mr. Tigab, but since you say you've made your pile I won't feel too guilty. Nan?"

I followed Glory as she escorted Tigab out. He was hum­ming. When we returned, we three looked at the hitching post portrait.

"I've seen blackamoor posts," I said, "and jockeys, but what demented designer used Beethoven for a model?"

"Like I said, Alf, there's no end to fascinating phenom­ena in this world. D'you think Rigadoon's going to print this?"

I shrugged it off. "And I spotted what you replaced those first four notes from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with."

"Did you?"

"Yes I did now; the main theme from 'Rhapsody in Blue.' Is Tigab going to be haunted by the ghost of George Gershwin now?"

"All depends on the hitching posts," Adam laughed.

"If I understand it correctly, there's got to be an exchange. Why can't you just remove some unwanted aspect of the psyche?"

"The danger," he explained, "is squatters moving in on your psychique, Seele, nao-tzu. Farstayst? Had a woman once with a wild idea; she wanted to leave a vacanza, a vacancy, in her heart for her lovers. I went along with it to see how it would work out.

"But a damn black widow spider nipped in ahead of her studs and that was that. Oh, sure, every living thing, animal or vegetable, has a soul. Never again. Borgia, her name was. Lucy Borgia."

The front door was suddenly enveloped by a pillar of cold, corposant fire. It advanced into the reception room and out of it stepped the towering figure of Mephistopheles.

We had to give him a big hand.

He bowed graciously. "Merci! Merri! Merti! I am the tenth Count Alesandro di Cagliostro."

"Ah yes," Adam smiled. "Descended from the original Cagliostro, adventurer, magician, liar, cheat. Died in the fortress prison of San Leo in 1795."

"I have that honor, M'sieur Maser."

"The tenth Count Alesandro? Then you must be from the late twenty-first or thereabouts, eh?"

"Paris. Early twenty-second, M'sieur."

"Welcome. We're honored. This is—"

"Your assistant of the serpents, Ssss." Apparently he pronounced it properly. "But this gentleman from les Etats-Unis I do not know."

"Alf, from Rigadoon magazine. He's associating with me while he prepares a feature on the Black Hole Hockshop."

"Delighted, M'sieur Alfred. I felicitate myself. You know, of course, that your admirable writings will never be received as fact. Who could believe the magique wrought by M'sieur Maser, eh? Yet he is as genuine as my great-great -etcetera grandpapa was— Pardon, Maitre. How does one translate simulateur?"

"Faker."

"As the grandpapa was a faker."

"Thank you, Count Alesandro. I hope this is a social call, we'll amuse each other. Dr. Franz Gall, who developed phrenology, paid a social call. Said he wanted to explore the bumps on the head of a charlatan. I was amused but he wasn't."

"Why not?" I asked.

"He was dumbfounded. Said I had no bumps at all, which threatened to undermine his entire theory. I started to reassure him with a— How does one translate craque, Count Alesandro?"

"Tall story."

"With a tall story about my brain being where the bowels usually are,, and vice versa. Said I was a freak and offered to let him feel the bumps on my belly. He left in a huff."

We laughed. Then Cagliostro said, "So sorry to disap­point you, Maitre, but I am come on an affair of business. I wish to purchase these," and he handed Adam a cassette.

Adam pulled the end of the tape out and began running it between thumb and forefinger. The tape seemed to be composed of flickering fireflies. Cagliostro caught my curi­ous stare and said, "Phonotact of the twenty-second. There are in all six hundred and sixty-six items."

Adam whistled softly. "The Number of the Beast in Rev­elations, six hundred, threescore and six. Are you going to brew a beast, Count Alesandro? A warlock's familiar, per­haps?"

"You forget what follows: Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man."

"Quite right. Then you're making a man."

"An inconnu, unheard-of man."

"Curiouser and curiouser."

"I intend to synthesize an android unique. Not the clumsy simulacrum that laboratories cook, but a brilliance which can communicate with and control the deepest well-spring of human behavior, the primal layer of motivation. No, not an android, my friend."

"An Iddroid!" Adam said, eyes seeming to flash. "But this is fabulous! Your grandpapa, nine times removed, may have been a faker, but you are a genius absolute!"

"A thousand thanks, Maitre. Then you will help me?"

"I insist on helping. I'm grateful for this splendid chal­lenge. Have you any idea of your chances for success?"

"Chacun la moitie. Fifty-fifty."

"Good enough odds for me. Now, about what you require for your Iddroid synthesis; I have many of the items in stock, but I shall have to go out and locate others. Just to mention a few: a sixth sense, scrying by aggression, a freak superstition, an inconnu absolu, and—this number's a killer—origins of Humanity's Collective Unconscious."

"All essential, Maitre, and I'm prepared to pay hand­somely."

"No way, Count Alesandro! I'm collaborating for the glorious defi. Now, est-ce que cela presse? Are you in a rush?"

"No hurry at all."

"Can you give me a week?"

"I shall give you two or even longer. Au revoir," and Cagliostro exited in a pillar of purple smoke.

Before I could express my astonishment the red Macavity's persona power took over. "Ready, Nan?"

She nodded. He was certainly whelming her.

"Right. We'll be in and out, Alf, jumping to and from times and places. You mind the store."

"Hey! Wait a minute! I can't monkey around with psy­ches. I don't know how."

"Of course not." To Glory, "Don't forget the tape." To me again, "Just stall the clientele till we get back."

"Stall them? How? I'm no linguist. What if a dejected Druid comes in?"

"Fake it, Alf," he laughed. "Fake it with chutzpah. Go the whole nine yards."

And they were gone.

And before I could decide whether to keep the kettle boiling or get the hell out of there, the hitching post ne Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) came tramping in storm­ing German.

Jeez.

"Me no speakie kein Deutsch," I faked. "You, du, efsher, dig der Ingleitch?"

He felled me with a scowl, strode to the harpsichord and banged three octaves, probably to help him shift gears, and then growled, "Dot verdammt Shakespeare. His schatten, ghost haunted mich und give mir schone, beautiful inzpiration. Dies ist dein fifth. G-G-G-E flat. Dis ist your funste. F-F-F-D. All in key of C Minor. Wunderschon!"

"Would that be fifth as in symphony?"

"Ja! Ja! Funste symphonic. I listen to ghost waiting for more, wanting to komponieren, compose, und suddenly cursed schatten change inzpiration."

"How?"

"Kein more Fifth Symphonic in C Minor. Now verdammt Shakespeare ghost zing me halbton, flat tones, flat­ted dritte und fu'nste und siebente, thirds, fifths, sevenths. Blue intervall. Mit synkopieren! Unheard of! Auslandisch! Verruckt! Ein Symphonic in Blau!"

Oy gevald.