Fred Saberhagen Vlad Tepes 03 Vlad Tapes

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after another. Annie was getting close.
In the distance, on every side now, more mountains reared. Somehow the highway
had shrunk, it seemed too narrow here to be called an Interstate. Pat hadn t
been watching the signs. The man, after his first attempt to talk, was
unexpectedly going to be silent. Who knew what went on inside people s heads?
No one did. No one. It was all right, silence was okay with Pat.
After they had driven for the better part of an hour through virtual
nothingness they topped a final long hill. Now, miles ahead, some kind of a
town or city came into view, looking as if it had been dropped at the foot of
the tallest-
looking mountains around. Their peaks still showed white that Pat supposed was
snow.
The man cleared his throat again. Whereabouts can I let you off?
Pat brought his gaze back into the car, shifted his position in the seat.
Annie was near. Somewhere around the
center of town is fine. If you re going that way.
The Plaza?
Pat didn t know what The Plaza meant. That s fine. Anywhere around there is
fine.
The man stopped the Pinto twenty minutes later to let Pat out in the midst of
a minor traffic jam in narrow streets.
Slanting afternoon sunlight warmed low buildings covered with what Pat would
have called beige stucco; they put him vaguely in mind of pictures that he had
seen of Indian cliff dwellings. And here were some Indians, real-by-God
Indians, with their blankets spread on a roofed sidewalk to display pots and
jewelry for sale. Above their heads the rough ends of unfinished logs stuck
out of the edge of the building s roof.
Thanks for the ride. Pat flashed a merry smile as he got out. He always
liked to do that, no matter what. Maybe he hoped that the people would
remember him.
The man huffily not-answered as he drove away.
Annie was somewhere around here. That way. Within walking distance now, or
almost, Pat started walking.
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On the rear patio of his huge house near the northern edge of Santa Fe,
Ellison Seabright was trying to get his wife posed properly to paint before
the light changed any more. They were out on the rear patio, overlooking a
spectacular scene of what was almost wilderness. Only a few other houses were
visible, around the edges. Ellison had given Stephanie a supposedly genuine
seventeenth-century Spanish shawl to put around her while she perched on the
low stone balustrade that rimmed the patio. Just behind his subject, a slope
of sandy earth and sparse wild grass, punctuated with dwarfish juniper, fell
unfenced and almost untrodden for a hundred yards to end in the bottom of a
sinuous ravine. Somewhere down there was an unmarked line where Seabright land
ended and national forest land began.
Beginning right with the steep opposing slope of the wild ravine, the Sangre
de Cristos mounted to the north and east, claiming the sky in one great
rounded step above another. The highest and most distant shoulder of the
mountain, blue-clad in distant fir and pine, hid behind it the bald snowcapped
peaks projecting upward beyond timberline. Almost all the land in view was
government land, unsettled and unpeopled. The mountains went up a mile or more
in altitude above the seven thousand feet or so of the patio; a thousand
years, Ellison thought, or maybe more than a thousand, back in time.
Ellison vaguely enjoyed thinking about the mountains, and liked knowing that
they were there as a subject for his own painting, whenever he got around to
it. He seemed to be chronically pressed for time, and rarely felt he could
take time out from business to pick up a brush himself. But today, at last, he
had Stephanie at home with him. And a few hours without people or business to
interfere.
Stephanie, sitting on the balustrade, had at last got the shawl arranged to
Ellison s satisfaction. She smiled into the lowering sun, as if she enjoyed
its warmth.
You re in a cheerful mood today, Ellison commented, getting some paints out
of the box.
Why shouldn t I be? Her voice was lighter and easier than he had heard it in
some time.
No reason. You re basically a lucky lady. Except for Helen, of course, a few
months back but if Stephanie could start to forget that now, Ellison wasn t
going to remind her. But last week in Phoenix you were worried about the sun,
how it aged the skin and brought on wrinkles. You said you weren t going to
pose for me any more, out in the sun.
The sun here isn t as hot.
And you ve stopped imagining you have wrinkles, I hope.
I don t intend to get them. I know you divorce your wives when that happens,
and look for someone younger.
You ve done it twice before.
Ellison looked at her. She gave him back a smile, enigmatic, Mona Lisa. Shall
I cross my legs?
No, he said, pretending patience, wondering what was going on. We have the
pose all settled. Let s just concentrate on keeping it. A change in his wife
lately, sure enough; he had thought it was only Helen s death, but it was
more. Ellison squinted about the huge patio, all winey sunlight and bluish
shadow, with more furniture than a small house. He was looking for his tube of
titanium dioxide white. Do you realize, he asked, that s it s now been
almost four years since you have posed for me?
Really? That long?
Since shortly after we were married.
Surely it hasn t been that long.
Oh, yes. I remember that Helen was hardly more than a little girl. She kept
sneaking around to see what we were up to. In those days I generally had you
posing in the nude.
The mention of Helen seemed to have had no effect. Something else was
certainly on her mind.
I wish you would have posed nude again today. Out here, against the
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mountains. I gave all the help the day off,
you know.
I know. But it s too cold today. Maybe next time.
There. That s just the smile I want. Hold it for me, if you can. Just like
that.
Ellison found that he was a little nervous about the painting. God, it was a
long time, it must be a couple of years now, since he had really tried to
paint anything at all. Would he really be able to do it now?
He suddenly spotted the tube of paint he had been looking for. It was on a
small stone ledge not an arm s length from where he had set up his easel; now
he recalled setting it down there. He picked up the tube and fidgeted with it
and dropped it back into the paintbox. Then holding a stick of charcoal he
looked at his model, and then beyond her to the mountains, where the changing
sunlight made blue folds slowly appear and disappear. The light changing like
that, and it was so long now since he had really tried. It was going to be
hopeless.
Are we going to talk about Del, sometime? Stephanie asked him suddenly.
What s there to talk about?
We both know that he s still alive. You don t have to be so cagey with me.
Yes, said Ellison. He was not going to try to get the background in at all
today. Only Stephanie. Yes, well, don t you think it s wiser not to talk too
much about the fact?
No one can overhear us. I just wondered how much you knew about the details.
I know you re handling business deals for him. Do you think anyone else knows
he isn t dead?
I say it s wiser not to talk, even out here. There could be someone up there,
behind any of those rocks, listening.
Directional microphones have amazing capabilities these days.
Stephanie glanced behind her, at the hillside, then resumed her pose without
appearing to be convinced.
Someone? Who?
My dear, you must have some idea of how much that painting is worth. Whenever
such amounts of money are concerned, a lot of people take an interest.
Ellison, our phone might be tapped, but no one s hiding up on that mountain
twenty-four hours a day watching our house. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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