III

The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to

seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and

the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There

was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the

fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.

She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.

Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room

extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,

its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were

galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.

Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred

and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by

strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with

pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half

full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment

Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the

liquid. Then she screamed.

The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from

the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions

upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,

leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison

put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the

stairway door.

Into a pair of arms.

"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.

Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have

her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder

Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he

said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were

we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against

her two _sumo_-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by

some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the

floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted

all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of

course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of

calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within

minutes."

"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of

the earmuffed _sumo_-wrestlers protested.

"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you

must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."

"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.

"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of

damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the

bank."

"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you

acromegalic apes!"

"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.

"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"

* * * * *

Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as

though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their

faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering

himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without

questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms

around Orison.

"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against

his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn

your brain back on. All right, now?"

"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to

the spiders."

"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the

kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."

"I...."

Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's

jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.

"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to

recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."

Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink

through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.

_Samma!_"

Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with

the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.

"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do

it?"

"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close

to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see

what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was

forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for

you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you

that the escudo green is pale."

"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what

is this thing you have about spiders?"

"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little

girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a

spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came

home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite

for supper."

"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked

one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,

Orison," he said.

She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped

in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related

to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal

eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He

extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,

flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around

the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.

"Here. You hold him."

"I'd rather not," she protested.

"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.

* * * * *

Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the

Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like

a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and

unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.

"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.

"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial

process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and

secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."

"What do they do?" Orison asked.

"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you

that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."

"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,

perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching

against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.

"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,

comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as

children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.

We'd better get you down where you belong."

Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest

tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.

It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,

using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I

thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something

like the sighing of wind in winter trees."

"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing

together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He

took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these

little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."

Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to

the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,

storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace

and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash

of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the

quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.

"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been

singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a

wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.

"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.

"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.

Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the

mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the

liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.

"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she

thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling

life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.

* * * * *

Dink took her to the elevator and pressed the "Down" button. "Don't

come up here again unless I bring you," he said. "The Microfabridae

aren't dangerous, despite what my brother told you, but some of our

processes might involve some risk to bystanders. So don't take any

more tours above the fifth floor without me as your guide. All right,

Orison?"

"Yes, Dink."

The elevator stopped. "Take the lady to her office," Dink told the

bowing, earmuffed operator. "And Orison," he said, just before the

door closed, "I'm really not a Bluebeard. See you this evening."

Dink Gerding, wearing an ordinary enough suit, well-cut, expensive, but

nothing extraordinary for a banker, called for Orison at seven. He'd

look well, she thought, slipping into the coat he held for her, in a

white uniform brocaded with pounds of spun gold, broad epaulettes, a

stiff bank of extravagantly-colored ribbons across his chest; perhaps

resting his right hand on the pommel of a dress saber. "Dink," she

asked him, "were you ever in the Army?"

"You might say I'm still in an army," he said, turning and smiling down

at her from that arrogant posture of his. "I'm a corporal in the army

of the gainfully employed; an army where there's little glamor but

better pay than in the parades-and-battles sort. What makes you ask,

Orison?"

"Because of the way you stand and walk, Dink," she said. "Like an

Infantry captain from Texas."

"I'm flattered," Dink Gerding said, holding open the lobby door for

her. "The car's just around the corner."

"I met your brother, Kraft, earlier today, just before he and the

Earmuffs caught me up on eighth floor," Orison said. "He's no Texan,

that one. A Junker, maybe. I'm afraid I don't much care for your

brother, Dink."

"To be my elder brother is Kraft's special misfortune," Dink said. "I

understand he was quite loveable as a boy. Here's our transportation."

The car was a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, splendidly conspicuous beside

the curb of the Windsor Arms, reducing that nobly-named establishment

by contrast to more democratic proportions. The ubiquitous Mr. Wanji,

liveried in a uniform nearly as ornate as the one Orison had visualized

for Dink, only his earmuffs clashing with the magnificence of his

costume, sprang from the driver's seat, raced around the limousine and

stood at attention holding the door for Orison and her escort. The

front door of the Rolls was marked, she observed, with a gold device

of three coronets. At the center of the triangle they formed was the

single letter "D."

The Rolls negotiated the city streets with the dignity of the _Queen

Elizabeth_ entering a minor harbor. "I thought you bankers aspired to

the common touch," Orison remarked. "I expected you to come for me in a

taxi, or perhaps a year-old Ford you drove yourself."

"Wanji is a better driver than I. So I have him drive me," Dink

explained. "We each do the work we're trained for. I assist Wanji in

balancing his checkbook, for example. As for this car, it belongs not

to me, but to my family. My family owns most of the toys I play with."

He paused. "I've been thinking, Orison, of acquiring a most valuable

property for myself alone."

"A nice little seventy-meter yacht?" Orison inquired. "Or the island of

Majorca, perhaps?"

"Something even grander," Dink said. "You, Miss McCall."

"But, Dink!"

The Rolls glided to the curb. Wanji jumped out and snapped open the

door. "Sire!" he said, and saluted as Dink disbarked. Orison took

Dink's hand and stepped to the curb, acknowledging Wanji's bow to her

with a princess smile. She'd come a long way from the secretarial pool.

* * * * *

The doorman of the restaurant, instructed as to the importance of

these clients by their tableau at the curb, ushered Dink Gerding and

Orison McCall into the presence of the maitre d'. When the doorman

had been rewarded with a crackling handshake, the headwaiter led them

through the crowd of groundlings as though they were accompanied by

fife and drums. The table to which he bowed them, while not the most

conspicuous, was without doubt the finest the management had to offer.

The _Reserved_ sign was swept aside with a gesture that indicated that

there were no reservations where Mr. Dink Gerding was concerned.

Mr. Gerding justified the maitre's confidence in him with another

green-palmed handshake.

"Dink," Orison whispered across the table. "That was a fifty-dollar

bill you gave him."

"Yes, it was," Dink admitted. "I felt that fifty was enough."

"Quite enough," Orison assured him.

The wine-steward, wearing a chain that could have held a tub to

mooring, absorbed Dink's instructions with the air of a chela attending

the dying words of his guru. The two waiters poised themselves

reverently at his shoulders, waiting the revelation of his order.

"We'll begin ..." Dink began.

"Dink, I'd like a lobster," Orison said.

"I'd not advise lobster," Dink said thoughtfully. "I'm afraid that

lobster won't agree with you this evening."

"Dink, lobster is what I want," Orison insisted. "Haven't you heard of

the Nineteenth Amendment?"

"Very well, feminist," Dink said. He turned to the waiter at his right.

"The lady will have a lobster." He turned to the left. "As for me, a

saddle of venison, and such accessory furniture as you may choose to

accompany it." The waiters bowed and retreated.

"Why do you insist on being boss, even after banking-hours?" Orison

asked.

"Being boss is not my nature, but is my training," Dink said. "It seems

to me, Orison, that you American women resent the dignity of being

served by an adoring man."

"I prefer dignities to be more democratic," she said. "Why, in any

case, should you be exercised by my choosing lobster for dinner? My

digestion is my own affair, isn't it?"

* * * * *

"Your question," Dink said, resting his elbows on the table, "requires

a two-part answer. _Imprimus_: everything you do interests me, Orison,

inasmuch as you are my future bride. Please make no comment at this

point. Allow me to enjoy for the moment the male privilege of unimpeded

speech. _Secundus_: I once wished to be a doctor, had not my career

been chosen by my father. I still pursue the study of medicine as a

hobby. I didn't wish you to order lobster because I'm certain that

you'll be unable to enjoy lobster."

"I've eaten it before," Orison said. "Except for the engineering

difficulties in getting through the shell with all those little picks

and nutcrackers and nail-clippers, I had no trouble to speak of. Dink,

are you a foreigner?"

"What makes you think I may be?" he asked.

"The crest of your car, the earmuffs on most your staff at the Bank and

the fact that you seem to think a woman's opinion nothing more than a

trifle. There's a beginning," Orison said.

"What's wrong with earmuffs?" Dink demanded. "Everybody wears earmuffs."

"Not everybody," Orison said. "Not in April. Not bank officials. Not

indoors, in any case."

"Must report this to the Board," Dink said, taking a notebook from his

pocket and scribbling. "Must find alternative. No earmuffs indoors."

Perfect, Orison thought, near tears. He's perfect. He'd sit astride

that milk-white charger like a round-table knight, sturdy and lean and

honest-eyed. Dink is perfect, she thought, except only that he's insane.

Dink tucked his notebook back into his vest-pocket. "If I were a

foreigner," he asked, "would it make any difference to you?"

"Your nationality should concern me as little as my diet concerns you,"

Orison said.

"You said _should_," Dink pointed out. "That means that you are

concerned with me. Therefore, I will formally invite you to marry me."

He held up his hand as Orison began to speak. "I warn you, Orison,

there are only two answers possible to my proposal. Only _Yes_ or _Some

day_."

"What if I said no?" Orison asked.

"I'd interpret it as Some day," he said, and smiled.

"You know nothing about me," Orison protested.

"But I do," Dink said. "I know you're good. I know that you've fallen

half in love with me, and I entirely in love with you, in this half-day

in April that we've known each other."

"No," Orison said, gripping tightly the edge of the table.

"That means, Some day," he said.

The lobster arrived in post-mortem splendor, borne on a silver tray,

brick-red, garnished with sprigs of parsley and geranium, served with

the silver instruments designed for his dissection and the bowl of

baptismal butter. "Oh ..." Orison said, turning her eyes away from the

supper she'd selected. "It's horrible!"

"You've no appetite for lobster?" Dink asked.

"I'd as soon eat boiled baby," Orison said, pressing her napkin against

her lips.

"Take it away," Dink instructed the waiter. "The lady will have the

same order as I." The crustacean, red but undismembered, was again

borne aloft by the waiter to be returned to the scene of his martyrdom.

"Try a little of the wine, Orison," Dink suggested, tipping a splash of

the Riesling into her glass. "It will clear your head."

* * * * *

She sipped. "It helps," she admitted. "What do you suppose happened

to me, Dink? It's as though all of a sudden I'd become allergic to

lobster."

"In a sense you are, darling," Dink said.

"Such a strange thing," she said.

"Don't let these strange things worry you, Orison," Dink said. "Think

this: for everything in the universe, there's an explanation. If you

understand it or not, the explanation's still there, curled up in the

middle of the mystery like Pinocchio in the belly of his whale. Just

have faith in the essential honesty of the universe, Orison, and you'll

be all right."

"A comforting philosophy," Orison said. "I can't imagine an explanation

for my sudden distaste for lobster, though."

"Such things happen," Dink assured her. "I have a friend, for instance,

who holds life in such reverence that he eats only vegetables. Isn't

that strange? And he worries, this very good friend of mine, that

perhaps vegetables have souls, too; and that perhaps it is no more

moral to destroy them for his food than it is to roast and ingest his

fellow animals."

"So what does this friend of yours eat?" Orison asked.

"Vegetables," Dink said. "But he worries about it. He's now proposing

to confine his diet to cakes made from algae. His argument is that if

vegetables have souls, algae have very small souls indeed; and that

they suffer less in being eaten than would, say, a cabbage or an

apple. His guilt may be numerically greater, eating algae. But it will

be qualitatively less."

"Has this micro-vegetarian friend of yours thought of psychotherapy?"

Orison asked.

"Often," Dink said. "But he maintains that he's much too old to pour

out his mind to a stranger; too set in his patterns to change. He fears

most of all, he says, that he might be made uncomfortable in new ways."

"We all do," mused Orison.

"Do I make you uncomfortable in a new way?" Dink asked.

"You're strange," Orison said. "Your Bank is fantastic. All in all,

this is the most peculiar day I've ever lived."

"I promise you, Orison, that someday you'll understand why the sight

of lobster made you ill this evening, why so many of the people at the

Bank wear earmuffs, why I seem foreign. You'll understand the work of

the singing Microfabridae and you'll meet Elder Compassion; you'll

know why Wanji was excited about the escudo green; and someday soon,

this most of all I promise you, you'll love me, and be my wife. Hah!

Here are the comestibles. Let's talk of topics less vital than love

and earmuffs. Let's talk of the weather, and Mr. Kennedy, and the

orchestra."

V

_Abstract of Transcript, Monitor J-12, to U.S. Treasury Department

Intelligence:_

"Miss Orison McCall's report from Potawattomi, Indiana, was delayed

by one hour. Contact was established at 00:10 hours. Details follow

herewith:

"J-12: CQ, CQ, CQ, CQ.

"Miss McCall: If you'd been a minute later, I'd have been sound asleep,

dreaming bad dreams.

"J-12: Is the job wearing you down?

"Miss McCall: It's exciting and mysterious. Nothing like Washington.

The boss of Taft Bank appears to be a man named Dink Gerding. He's six

feet tall and slim, his hair is clipped short as a dachshund's, and he

walks like an Olympic skier. The other men at the bank bow when they

meet him, and some of them get all the way down onto the floor when

he's angry. Do you suppose this means something?

"J-12: Everything means something.

"Miss McCall: He said that. Dink did. For everything in the universe,

he said, there's an explanation.

"J-12: Not so. I mean that everything that people do in banks is

explainable. Not all the universe is logical--the tax-structure, for

instance, or the ways of women.

"Miss McCall: I'm not required to put up with male chauvinism from a

pillow, Mister, no banns having been published between us.

"J-12: Sorry, beautiful. Here are instructions from the Chief. He wants

to know why some members of the Taft Bank staff wear earmuffs, and he

wants details of what goes on upstairs. He wants you to get to know

this Dink Gerding better. Over.

"Miss McCall: Roger, Wilco, and Aye-Aye. Meanwhile, get philologists

working on this. The sentence, _Wanji e-Kal, Datto. Dink ger-Dink

d'summa_, means, more or less, 'This is Wanji. I'd like to speak to

Dink Gerding.' This message was received by me at Taft Bank this

morning, evidently by accident. Check also possible meaning of the

phrase, 'Escudo green is pale.'

"J-12: Will do.

"Miss McCall: Good night, then; wherever you are.

"J-12: Good night, beautiful. Out."

_Report of Treasury Intelligence on six words of presumed

foreign-language message_:

"_Datto_ may be Tagalog _chief_. _Summa_ is Latin _sum_. Total message

is nonsense in fifty languages. The clear message, _Escudo green is

pale_ probably a code. Escudo is Portuguese currency presently equal to

U.S. $0.348. End of Report."

_Confidential report_ (on scratchboard) _of Elder Compassion to H.R.H.

Dink ger-Dink, Prince Porphyrogenite of Empire, Heir-Apparent to the

Throne, Scion of the Triple Crown, Count of the Northern Marches,

Admiralissimo of the Conquest Forces of Empire, Captain-Commander of

the XLIIth Subversion-and-Conquest Task Force (Sol III)_:

"She whispered to her pillow, local time 2 A.M., 'I love him.'"

* * * * *

Orison hadn't gone to sleep easily. She'd suppressed information from

J-12, saying nothing to him about the Microfabridae, surely the most

striking objective discovery of her two days' spying within the Taft

Bank. More central in her thoughts than her disloyalty to the Treasury

Department, though, was Dink Gerding. He'd told her that she was

half in love with him. He was half wrong, she thought. "I love him

entirely," she whispered, not knowing that J-12--in carelessness, not

subterfuge--had left the receiver-switch open to the pillow she'd made

her confidante.

_The Wall Street Journal_ greeted her the next morning, curled up in

her "In" basket. She'd just switched on her microphone and said "Good

morning" to her invisible listener when Mr. Wanji stepped from the

elevator. His ears, she saw, were bare today. But they were pink--a

shocking, porcelain, opaque, Toby-mug shade of pink.

She looked away from this latest manifestation of peculiarity in

banker's ears. "Good morning, Mr. Wanji," she said.

"Hi, doll," Wanji said. "The brain-guy says you don't have to read out

loud any more. Just read quiet-like. Dig?"

"Yes, sir," she said. "Shall I take notes on anything in particular?"

"Naw," Wanji said. "The brain-guy, he remembers everything."

"The brain-guy?" Orison asked. "Is that Dink Gerding?"

"Naw. Dink's the boss. The brain-guy is the man who makes the wheels

go round," Wanji said. He pressed the "Up" button of the elevator. As

Wanji embarked, Orison observed that the elevator operator had the same

shocking-pink ears.

Had those earmuffs been designed to hide this pinkness, the symptom of

some rare and disfiguring disease? Orison returned to her newspaper,

reading silently as ordered, wondering what obscure Pinocchio of sense

was curled up in the belly of this whale of illogic. The elevator,

she noticed with the housekeeping bit of her mind, was running much

more than usual today, up and down like a spastic yo-yo. Whatever the

mysterious business of the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust

Company might be, there was a lot of it being done.

Her telephone buzzed. Orison switched off her microphone. "Miss McCall

here," she said, feeling very efficient and British.

"This is Mr. Kraft Gerding," she was told. "I need you at the National

Guard Armory right away, Miss McCall. Will you come right over?"

"Yes, sir," Orison said. She gathered up her purse and coat and pressed

the elevator button. The operator ushered her into his car as though

she were his queen, and the elevator the paramount plane of the royal

flight. Standing behind him as he piloted them downward five floors,

Orison studied the man's ears. They were that awful, artificial pink,

as though enameled. Pancake makeup? Orison wondered. The ears, now the

earmuffs were off, might be the clue to that fish-of-understanding she

sought. Orison dampened a fingertip and applied it to the edge of the

man's ear.