Dominion, Fred Saberhagen [uplifting book club books TXT] 📗

sitting on it. A grossly heavy, swarthy man, just sitting there, turned so Marge couldn’t see his face, half dressed. Another half-dressed figure, facing the other way, a body so thin that Marge wasn’t sure for a moment that it was female, staring into space. Almost immediately Marge turned away. Ugh. There had been a wrongness in that room. She felt as if she had just spied on people laboriously inventing some new perversion. They looked as if they might have just finished such a task.

   Now, if and when the secret passageway became general knowledge during the weekend, that couple, all the guests, would wonder who might have watched them doing what. Ugh. Complications.

   Marge moved on, for the sake of silence scraping the walls as little as possible. She traversed what was left of the upper passage and then went down the long, steep stairs, using her light. When at last she reached the peephole giving a view of the great hall, nothing had changed. The great logs still crackled in the enormous fireplace, the aroma made Marge hungry. In her shoulder bag were a couple of candy bars that she meant to eat later. Anyway she certainly wasn’t just going to camp in this spot waiting for Simon to appear. He’d need an hour, at the very least, to get back across the river and then drive round, by way of the bridge at Blackhawk, to approach the castle by road in the manner of an ordinary guest.

   Using her flashlight sparingly, keeping its beam aimed low, Marge went on down, following the tunnel underground. A minute more, and she had passed the branching way—without giving it much thought—and was back in the cave, peering out into the now-gloomy daylight of the deserted grotto and its paved forecourt with the statues and the curious stone table. The fact that a cloud had come over the sun made the whole place now look somehow ominous. But, reassuringly, it was as quiet and uninhabited as ever. The jail-door was closed and bound with the chain and lock—Simon on going out must have been careful to leave it exactly as before, which was only what you would expect from someone as meticulously professional about details as he was. Now Marge ought to be able to do the same thing with the gate, and just slip out for a minute into these deserted woods…

   It took a little more than a minute, maybe two or three. Then she was back inside the cave again, physically relieved and ready to concentrate properly on the job at hand. She carefully bound up the chain and lock just as before, and retreated into the underground portion of the passage. The next step, she had decided, would be to get a little rest. She would find a relatively dustfree place and stretch out, maybe catch a little nap. Marge knew her own habits; the danger that she was going to oversleep was just about zero.

   Within a few minutes Marge was dozing on the tunnel floor, shoulder bag serving as a pillow. When she awoke it was with a start, and the feeling of having been asleep for some time. At first she had no faintest idea of where she was or how she’d got here.

   Memory returned, bringing with it reassurance of a sort. The gloom in the tunnel was much thicker than it had been when Marge dozed off; darkness had obviously fallen outside. She had a bad moment, wondering if after all she could have overslept. But no, her watch showed it to be only a little before seven. Some shadow must have come over the inlets for air and light. Perfect timing, she thought, or close to perfect. They had decided dinner probably wouldn’t start till eight, and the show would go on after dinner.

   Marge rose without haste and stretched. Then she picked up her bag and hurried along to the agreed-upon primary rendezvous, the peephole giving into the great hall. She braced herself in a standing position at the lookout, watching and waiting for Simon to appear.

   Her wait was short, so short that she again sent up a silent cheer for perfect timing. Here came Simon from another room, alone, wearing his swim trunks now and carrying still-dry towel. The expression on his face told Margie of controlled worry, concern deeper than the usual pre-performance tenseness. Maybe, she thought guiltily, Si had been here at the rendezvous before, trying to signal her about some problem.

   He gave the primary signal now, brushing at his hair, and Marge felt another twinge of guilt to see his relief when she answered at once with the flashlight, signaling that she was in place and everything was fine. And then Marge could feel relieved, for Si signaled to her nothing about difficulty or cancellation; he only paused for a moment, looking up at something above Marge’s head and out of her range of vision, and then he walked on out of the great hall, doubtless to have his swim. She thought it must be something other than the performance itself that was worrying him. Maybe he’d been told that the fee wasn’t going to be a full thousand after all.

   Anyway she could now relax again for a little while. Things were rolling, the act could go smoothly, just the way they wanted it. They might even pull off a really spectacular effect. Marge could imagine how it would be for the audience, a roomful of people absolutely certain that they were facing solid stone walls, when a voice spoke to them out of nowhere, and then in response to a magician’s gesture the figure of a young woman took shape out of thin air…

   It wasn’t too early now for her to get her costume on. She slipped it out of the handbag and inspected it as well as she could in the poor light. Diaphanous was the word. She had