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the two girls.
I hadn't expected that, which was why I'd tried to do ev-erything and
experience all the previous day. Instead, I had something of a hangover, a
couple of what looked and felt like mosquito bites from the naked romp in the
gardens out-side, and a few scratches and such as well.
I did not repeat the excesses and pleasures and debauch-eries of the day
before, at least not like that. Hell, then it had been just an experience,
just a brand-new kind of cost-free sin, since, in spite of everything my brain
and senses told me, this simply could not be real. Now, still here after a
full day and a night's sleep and suffering the effects, I was beginning to
wonder if I should be so certain about that.
Damn it, this couldn't be some sort of virtual reality. It just couldn't
. Not to this degree. Not to this detail. It is beyond words to convey that
sense of being there, of experiencing it firsthand. There are things you do
not even realize that you experience that are only noticed when missing. Those
little aches and pains I spoke of; insect bites if you are crazy enough to
wander around a tropical island naked; smells, tastes, the unique feel of
running your tongue over the roof of your mouth, the enzyme and hormonal and
blood flows when you kiss and when you do far more than kiss these were all
real. There wasn't a single detail, not in the tiniest degree, to betray that
this was anything but reality.
I prowled the vast mansion, looking for other clues as to this place and this
bizarre existence. There was a minor but very complete wardrobe for me, in
which I could if I wished dress for any occasion or any mood or period I
could think of, but finding the other wardrobe was even more astonishing. A
huge, cavernous room in which almost any woman of al-most any size or shape
could find any and all manner of dress from fig leaves to Elizabethan to
Frederick's of Hollywood. That's what it was, too a Hollywood-type female
wardrobe fit for a major studio.
All for my benefit and to cater to my whims?
It didn't make any sense.
Perfumes of all vintages from cheap and tawdry to what had to be thousands an
ounce; wines of every kind and vintage. And all these women,
all young, female, overbuilt, sexy, totally focused on my needs, and very,
very specialized. Not just cooks and companions, but ones who could fix the
elec-tricity, maintain the gardens, clean, polish, do the plumbing, all the
skills that were essential to maintaining an operation like this, yet still
and all as one-dimensional as their uniform beauty.
It was as if you had a classical dumb blond bimbo pattern and then impressed
on different ones one specialty that they knew and could do in an instinctive
manner. They couldn't explain it I found that out. And they couldn't do each
oth-er's jobs, either, although beyond their specialty they were all the same
and all, well, available.
It was boring.
Ultimately, I found the library. It was one of those huge Renaissance types,
with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases crammed with titles and rising up
several stories, the topmost shelves being accessed by a combination of moving
ladders and small ledges. There was, of course, one of the girls to do that
for me.
"Do you know every title in this room?" I asked her.
"I can find any title my lord requires," she responded a bit evasively.
I had a thought. "Have you ever read any of these books?"
The question took her completely by surprise. "Read?" she repeated, as if
trying to grasp the concept. "Why, no, my lord, why would I ever wish to do
that?"
"You can read, though, can't you?"
"I I know the titles, my lord, the look of each."
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An illiterate librarian. That was amusing to a degree, but not in this
circumstance. "How do you know them? Did someone teach them to you?"
"N no, my lord. I just know that's all."
Like a search-and-retrieval program. Uh-huh. "Is there any book that tells the
history of this place and how it came to be?" I asked her.
She thought a moment. "No, my lord. All histories and ge-ographies and
grammars of this place were prohibited."
"Prohibited? By who?"
"I I do not know, my lord. I am sorry."
I had already established, by speaking and quizzing others, that there was no
knowledge of how this came to be, no memories of it not being just the way it
was, and no ques-tioning of it, either. They simply accepted it, took it for
granted, and could not even imagine anything else.
"Am I always living here?" I asked the wordless librarian.
"I do not know, my lord.
Someone is always here."
Was that it? Was this simply a scene, drawn out and fixed in some kind of
computer memory only Matthew Brand comprehended, that existed as it was
forever, going round and round? Was that always why there was meat in the
freezer, always fresh supplies of just about anything some-where at hand?
"Do you have
Through the Looking-Glass
?" I asked her.
"Yes, my lord. Shall I fetch it?"
"Please."
She was off in a flash, climbing the network of ladders and ledges like a
professional acrobat, and then she had a book in her hand and was coming back
down to me. She handed it to me, a look of extreme delight on her face. She'd
been asked to do her job and she'd done it.
I'd asked for
Through the Looking-Glass partly to stump her; the book was rarely in a
separate volume from
Alice in Wonderland
 in fact, I'd never seen it separate.
Until now.
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
, by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel.
It was a first edition, British, in the kind of shape one would expect if you
were alive when it appeared, walked into a bookshop, and bought it. There was
not a trace of yellow-ing, and the binding was still taut and needed to be
forced to remain open.
I opened it at random.
"Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
"Just then flew down a monstrous crow, As black as a tar barrel, Which
frightened both the heroes so, They quite forgot their quarrel."
"I know what you 're thinking about," said Tweedledum:
"But it isn't so, nohow."
"Contrariwise, " continued Tweedledum, "if it was so, it might be; and if it
were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
I shut the book. It was too close to home.
"Has anyone actually written anything and left it here?" I asked her, trying
not to think about that passage any-more.
"No, my lord. You do not usually come to the library."
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Well, if I was stuck here much longer that would change, I knew. I
wondered about that quotation, though, without let-ting its strangeness get to
me. Where had it come from? Was it really in the book? Certainly those twin [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]