Free Maelstrom by Paul Preuss Page A

proprietor decided enough was enough.
“Get along,” he said. “Go, go.”
     
The bum looked ostentatiously around. “This your sidewalk, mon cher? ”
     
“Want to sit on it? Come on, move. Quick, quick.”
     
“Trou de balle, toi.” He resumed his calm inspection of the papyrus.
    The proprietor’s beefy face reddened; his fists clenched. He had no doubt he could have knocked the fellow off his ridiculous high heels with a swift backhanded slap, but the mockery on the bum’s face gave him pause. Why risk a lawsuit? In five minutes the flics would hustle this type off to work-shelter without wasting breath on him.
He turned abruptly and walked into his shop, closing the door behind him. He put his hand to the commlink in his ear.
    The bum watched and grinned; then his darkeyed glance darted sidelong to the woman who had been watching the show from the corner of the rue Bonaparte. She’d been watching his show for two days now, she and her friend. He was a long-haired guy in a black plastic jacket who looked like he’d be at home in a prize ring.
    The evening promenade filled the narrow rue Jacob from sidewalk to sidewalk, a tide of stylish humanity. Aside from the occasional bleat of a superped’s horn no vehicular noise interrupted the soft babble, so it was easy to hear the burp of the police van’s oscillator while it was still around the corner a block away, clearing a path for itself. Inside the Librairie de l’Egypte the proprietor took his hand from his ear and sneered at the bum.
A hand touched his sleeve; he jerked it away and stumbled back, his face twisting in a snarl. “Don’t touch.”
    “Don’t be frightened. All is well.” It was the woman. Up close, her height was impressive. Her face was tan and round, with high Slavic cheekbones and gray almond-shaped eyes under invisibly fine brows. Whiteblond hair, straight and unfettered, fell to the waist of her white cotton dress. She was muscular, leggy, with a predatory beauty emphasized by lips that seemed swollen from sucking at her slightly protruding incisors.
“We can help you.” “I don’t need your . . .”
    “They’re almost here.” She pointed her round chin at the blue light bouncing off the street’s stucco walls and shuttered windows; the police oscillator burped again, closer, impatient with the crowds. “We can help you better than they can.”
“So? How?”
     
“All is ours to give,” she said. Her voice was pitched low; she spoke urgently and intimately, only to him. “Food, a place to live, friends if you want them–other things. Don’t be afraid.”
     
She touched his sleeve, grasped the soiled fabric with her colorless fingertips. She tugged gently, and he took an awkward step forward.
     
“Don’t let them take you,” she said. “You were meant to be free.”
     
“Where are we going?”
     
Her companion had watched expressionlessly until now. He said, “With me. Stay close.”
     
They turned and pushed into the crowded street. The man opened the way and the woman followed, holding the bum’s arm in a tighter grip, her fingers surprisingly strong around his elbow as she steered him.
    As the police van halted in front of the Librairie de l’Egypte it was immediately surrounded by curious onlookers. Meanwhile, half a block away, the fugitive and his rescuers ducked into a courtyard off the rue Bonaparte and hurried across the cobbles to a black-enameled door. A brass plaque identified the offices of Editions Lequeu. The man pushed it open and they went quickly in.
    The narrow hall was paved with gray marble. To the right were tall double doors, firmly closed; on one, an engraved card in a small brass frame bore the words “Societé des Athanasians.” To the left, a warped staircase wound around the shaft of a caged elevator, which stood open.
They got in, pulled the grille closed, and waited silently as the two-hundred-year-old car ascended; it sang softly as it passed each floor, its squeaking