LIFEHOUSE
by SPIDER ROBINSON
Copyright©
1997 by Spider Robinson
ISBN:
0-671-87777-1
For
the
two Evelyns
. . . may
we meet again in The Mind ...
We come
spinning out of nothingness,
Scattering stars like dust.
Look at these worlds spinning out of nothingness:
This is within your power.
Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
There is a field.
I'll meet you there...
—Rumi,
a
thousand years ago in
If the Eternal Return is not allowed by
modern physics,
and if the Heat
Death can also be avoided,
then eternal
progress is possible.
—Prof. Frank Tipler,
PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY, 1993
Table of Contents
Chapter 1..........................
A Walk In the Park
Chapter 2......................
Silent light, Holy light
Chapter 3...................................
What'd I Say
Chapter 4.......................................
Strike One
Chapter 5.......................................
Cute Meat
Chapter 6..................................
Grok and Roll
Chapter 7..............
Woolgathering on the Lam
Chapter 8..............
The Fans Hit the Shit Back
Chapter 9................................
Peeking Ahead
Chapter 10................................... The
Biter Bit
Chapter 11....................... The Immortal
Storm
Chapter 12................................. The
Lifehouse
Chapter 13................................ The
Shithouse
Chapter 14 "... Danny Boy, this is a
showdown..."
Chapter 15..................................... Call
or fold
Chapter 16....................................... Dead Dog
The
Tar Baby's alarm caught them making love, or the whole emergency might never
have happened.
It
might seem odd that they let something as frivolous as sex
distract them even momentarily from their responsibilities. They were as
dedicated, motivated and committed to their work as any guardians in history,
as responsible as it was possible to be. And they had, after all, been married
to each other for over nine centuries at that point.
But
then, theirs was—even for their kind—one of the Great Marriages. They had
mutually agreed on their five hundredth anniversary
that in their opinion, things were just getting really good, and as their
millennial approached, both still felt the same. And perhaps even we mortals
can dimly understand that any hobby which endures over such a span of time must
have within it certain elements of obsession. They had long since taken into
their lovemaking, as into their marriage itself, the spirit of the Biblical
injunction, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with all thy might," and they were good at finding things to do.
The
precise timing of the alarm, moreover, was more than diabolical: it was Murphian. For
several hours they had been constructing a complex and beautiful choreography
of ecstasy together, a four-dimensional structure of pleasure and joy extending
through space and time. A DNA double-helix would actually be a fairly accurate
three-dimensional model of it. It was itself part of a larger, more complicated
structure that had been under creation for nearly a week, a sort of interwoven
pattern of patterns of pleasure and joy, of which this particular movement was
meant to be the capstone. The tocsin sounded in both their skulls just as,
in the words of Jake Thackray, "They were
getting to a very important bit . . ." and for two whole seconds, both
honestly mistook it for a hyperbole of their imaginations. By the time they
understood it was real, a necessity at once emotional, biological and artistic
urged them to ignore it—just for a moment.
This,
in their defense, they did not do. Their responsibility was too much a part of
who they were. Orgasm may be the source of all meaning—but it needs a universe
in which to mean. The instant they realized the alarm was not a shared
hallucination they stopped doing what they were doing (or more precisely,
stopped paying attention to the fact that they were doing it), queried the Tar
Baby, downloaded a detailed report of the situation, and studied it, fully
prepared to leap out of bed and hit the ground running if the emergency seemed
to warrant it.
It
did not. Indeed, it seemed to be practically over. Only one sophont
appeared to be involved—and not a sophisticated one. It carried only a single
(pathetic) weapon, and no data transmission gear of any kind. The Tar Baby
reported no difficulty at all in investing it, and was even now reprogramming it. There was another higher lifeform of some kind present, about fifty meters away from
the Egg, but it did not display sentience signatures and thus could not be a
significant threat. To top it all off, the whole nonevent was taking place less
than two thousand meters away, a distance they could cover in seconds.
Yes,
doctrine did mandate a suspenders-and-belt physical visit to the site to obtain
eyeball confirmation of all data. But doctrine did not (quite) say that it
absolutely had to be done this instant. .. not
unless there were complicating factors present. They both double-checked, and
there were not. They very nearly triple-checked. They
concluded, first separately and then in rapport, that a delay of as much as
fifteen minutes in the on-site follow-up inspection could not reasonably pose a
serious or even a significant risk. They ran their logic past the Tar Baby,
which concurred. It agreed to notify them at once if the situation were to
degenerate, and to preserve all data.
This
whole process had taken perhaps three seconds, a total of five seconds since
the alarm had gone off. The weeklong work of art was still salvageable. Sighing
happily, they returned to their erotic choreography, and in under
ten minutes brought it to a conclusion satisfactory in every sense of the word,
the brief hiatus actually improving it trivially, both as sensation and as art.
They spent an additional five minutes on breath recovery and afterglow, and
were just about to get up, less than fifteen minutes after the Tar
Baby's first call—when suddenly it called again.
And
this time it shrieked.
***
They
came that close to being vigilant enough. Less than fifteen minutes late on a
pointless backup. Less than one minute too late.
Unfortunately,
they were not playing horseshoes.
And
so the whole universe very nearly ceased to ever have existed. . . .
June
Bellamy was walking in the woods, listening to FM on dedicated headphones and
thinking deep thoughts about mortality and love—or perhaps about love and
mortality—the first time she came close to annihilating upwards of twenty
billion people.
It
was definitely the mook's fault, not June's—the whole
thing. That is quite clear. All she wanted to do, at the start, was to grieve,
and she had gone out of her way to do so privately. Nonetheless she was—thanks
to the mook, and the headphones—the one who ended up
personally endangering some twenty billion lives. Repeatedly.
Whereas he was out of the story almost at once, never had more than a moment's
worry over it, and would not even remember that for nearly a century.
It
is almost enough to make one suspect God of a sense of irony.
***
It
was a splendid Fall afternoon in
The
only death she knew to be on her personal horizon was the impending death of
her mother, in
***
She
had just that day returned from what she knew would be
her last visit with her mother. She had known since the first phone call from
her father, the previous week, that Laura Bellamy had at best a matter of days
left. The cancer had come out of nowhere and gutted her without warning or
mercy: by the time she was symptomatic she was, as June's father put it on the
phone, a dead woman walking.
And
by the time June had arrived at her hospital bedside she was clearly done
walking. She
had looked shrunken and—the pun made June tremble the
instant it occurred to her, because she could never ever share it with
anyone—and cured, like leather: she had looked like someone who ought
to have that many wires and tubes coming out of her. She was fifty-four,
and looked ninety. June knew exactly the phrase her lover/partner Paul would
have used to describe his almost-mother-in-law's condition if he'd been there:
"circling the drain." She'd looked like a crude, ill-thought-out
parody of Laura Bellamy, one that was not intended to be sustained for long.
But
she had also looked—this was the part June could not get out of her mind, as she
walked through the forest—fearless. June's mother had, to the best of her
recollection, always had the usual human allotment of fears, doubts, and
uncertainties. Now she had none. It was clear in her sunken, shining eyes. June
had wanted mightily to ask her about that, to discuss it with her. But it had
proven almost completely impossible.
That
had been the very worst part of the whole depressing experience. Everyone in
the room, including the Alzheimer's patient in the next bed, had known
perfectly well that Laura Bellamy was terminal. But June's father, Frank,
suffered from—clutched like a drowner—the illusion
that his wife did not suspect anything of the sort. The notion that even a
doctor who was trying to could have concealed such news from Laura Bellamy was
ridiculous, but Frank was in deep denial—and, as always, needed his wife's help
with it. He needed to believe he was protecting her from something, even
if it was only knowledge of her doom. He had met June in the hospital lobby and
explained solemnly that they must be very very
careful not
to let Laura suspect the Awful Truth. By the time
June had realized he was serious, it was too late to protest; they were on
their way in the door of her mother's room.
Where
she found, to her horror, that Laura Bellamy would rather have died than admit
in her husband's presence that she knew she was dying. Unlike most men of his
generation, Frank Bellamy had not often needed his wife to simulate ignorance
or stupidity; she was willing to indulge him, this once.
And
therefore June, who had abandoned her partner in the middle of an important
project and traveled thirteen hundred kilometers for the specific purpose of
having her Last Conversation with her mother, who had rehearsed it in her mind
for several tight-lipped dry-eyed days because she knew this was her one and
only window, had been unable to have it ... had been forced to smile and
chatter cheery inanities about how everything was back home in Canada these
days and even help, herself, to shore up the grotesque illusion that her mother
was soon going to recover and resume her interrupted life.
Horror.
They'd
held a wordless conversation with their eyes, of course, while the rest of
their faces spoke hollow lines for Franks benefit. But eye contact lacks bandwidth;
the communication had been ambiguous, fragmentary, profoundly
unsatisfactory for June.
Once—once—she
had succeeded in inventing an errand that would require her father to leave the
room for five minutes. And then she had gone and dithered
away three of them, finishing up the useless surface conversational thread
they'd been
chewing when he left, too nervous to begin. Finally
she'd said, "Mom—we have to talk."
"Yes,
dear," her mother had said at once. "But if we take it out of the box
now, there's no way we can have it all tucked back in again in two minutes . .
. and that's when he'll be back."
She'd
made the words come out calmly. "There probably isn't going to be another
chance. I've gotta get back to
"Yes,
there will."
"Phone? He can't stay here twenty-four
hours a day—"
Her
mother had smiled at that. They had never had the clichéd
mother-daughter phone relationship; Laura Bellamy felt that talking on the
telephone was unsatisfactory, and that talking longdistance
was like hemorrhaging: something to be done in brief bursts if absolutely
necessary. "They won't let you have a cell phone around all this medical
gear, and I'm afraid I'm just too lazy to hobble down the hall these days.
Don't worry, dear: we'll talk."
"When? How?" Her voice had risen in pitch, and
she was furious with herself for losing control. She was not here to add
her own emotional burdens to her mother's obviously overfull agenda.
But
her mother's serenity had only increased. "Do you know,
I don't have the faintest idea? And I don't know how I know. But I'm quite
certain—so don't worry, June. All the things we need to say to each other will
be said ... in time."
June's
eyes had narrowed suspiciously. "What, are you going religious on me, Ma? Now?"
Laura
had smiled. "I don't think so. I'm still just as fundamentally ignorant as
I ever was, about all the important things.
I have no Answers; I've had no revelations. But somehow . . ." Her face
had changed subtly, in a way June could not classify. "Somehow, I'm not .
. . not quite as clueless as I was. Just . . . just trust me. All right? We will get it all said, one day—and we'll
probably find out that we already knew most of it. And meanwhile, it's all
going to be alright."
And
with theatrical timing, her father had reentered the room just then.
The
next hour or so of their discourse had been transmitted by eye contact, with
its terrible signal-to-noise ratio (was that a punctuation mark? or just a
blink?), and hampered by the need to keep a plausible surface conversation
going with an inarticulate man. Shortly June had found herself unable to decide
whom she resented more: her father, who had the nerve to find his beloved
wife's brutal dying too much to bear, or her mother, who, faced with a choice
between her daughter's needs and her husband's, had the nerve to make the only
choice she possibly could. And of course, awareness of her own irrational
selfish resentment had made June despise herself, so she had resented them both
for that, too.
And
then, as visiting hours were drawing to a close, her mother had said, "You
know, I read a book once, I forget who wrote it, but he said the most beautiful
thing. He said—let me see if I can get this right—he said, There
is really only one sense. It is the sense of touch. All of the other senses are
merely other ways of touching."
And
she had held out her hand—her shrunken, IV-trailing hand—and of course June had
taken it, and—
***
—and
something had happened. Even now, walking through the woods of
It
had not been the "getting it all said" that her mother had
spoken of earlier. The questions June had walked into that hospital room with
were still unanswered; the words she had gone there to say were yet unspoken.
But some kind of profound communication had taken place, something just
as for beyond talking as talking was beyond eye contact. (And something, therefore, just as unsatisfying as eye contact had
been—if for different reasons.) June did not have a mystical bone in her
body . . . but she was quite certain that her mother had taken something from
her in that brief physical contact, and imparted something important to her in
return. Something almost tangible, in the form of an energy
almost palpable. Some kind of change had occurred in June. She just wished she
knew what, so she could explain it to Paul when she finally saw him again.
She
was still trying to analyze it, as she wandered heedless through the woods,
jazz saxophone playing softly in her FM headphones. How, she thought, am
I different?
I
am different in some way that I cannot define. Changed.
I sense that the change is, or probably will be, temporary. Nonetheless it is
important. And it reminds me of something . . .
The
memory surfaced. It had taken awhile because it was
a memory not of a real event but of an imagined one.
This
is what I used to imagine it was like to have a magic spell put on you!
When
she was a little girl, a voracious consumer of Tolkien
and his disciples, she had often acted out fantasy scenarios of her own
devising in her solitary play hours. This was what it had felt like just after
the wizard had placed his enchantment upon her, and just before it was fully
activated by the inevitable appearance of the handsome warrior. It had
something to do with the inevitability of that appearance, and the certainty
that they would recognize each other at once. It was, now that she thought of
it, probably one of her earliest gropings, in
imagination, toward the concept of empowerment.
Well,
she already had a handsome warrior in inventory, thank you very much. She had
recognized her Tall Paul on sight . . . and had basically won him in combat
and directed that he be scrubbed and brought to her tent. Even better, he had a
tent of his own now. She was as empowered in that area as she felt any need to
be.
But
she did, now that she thought of it, feel more than usually empowered today, in
a strange sort of way. Usually when she was in raw nature like this, she felt
like a stranger, who must be careful not to offend through thoughtlessness;
like a visitor to the zoo, whose gawking curiosity is a kind of impertinence;
like a tourist. Today she felt, for once, at home here in the woods. And the
woods seemed to agree.
She
saw more wildlife than usual, for instance. Several
squirrels. A raccoon. Something she took to be
a weasel, that browsed her with his eyes, like a penny-pinching shopper, and decided she was too
expensive. Birds—June never saw birds in the woods, even when she was
right underneath the chirping things and the branches were bare, but so far she
had seen at least half a dozen, without even thinking about it. All of these
wild things noticed her in return, and were wary of her—but none of them seemed
to feel any need to flee. Perhaps they were all under the influence of the
magic spell.
Between
her light head and her heavy heart, she felt no alarm at all when she became
aware of the man ahead of her on the trail, even though he was clearly a
sleazebag.
***
She
reached up to switch off her radio headphones, succeeded only in turning the
volume all the way off, and settled for that.
She
did not even momentarily wish she had her handsome warrior with her for backup.
She was armed and competent—and more than that: somehow she knew that on this
day of days, she could face down a mugger with impunity, calm a psycho with her
gaze, unman any rapist. Death—not the concept but the
grim reality, up close and personal, ravaging one of her loved ones—had in some
odd way given her power, and she could sense it. She mistook an electric
tingling in her earlobes for a symptom of it. She studied the sleazebag
carefully, but her pulse remained steady.
Caucasian male, about her age. He looked
like when he was five Santa had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up,
and he'd chirped, "A perpetrator." In the distant neighborhood where
her lover had grown up, in a country adjoining
He
was well over two meters tall, and seemed to mass well under
fifty kilos. He wore clothes meant for other people, who unless they were
color-blind were not missing them, and a jailhouse haircut. On his back was a
large designer backpack. Its designers had intended it to say behold me: I
am rich, stylish and fit but on him it had the look of a false mustache,
making him look, impossibly, even more suspicious.
June
had been moving quietly, one with the forest, even before she saw him; now she
became a Shao-Lin monk walking the rice paper,
leaving no trace. Her first instinct had been to change course and avoid him .
. . but that backpack intrigued her. An instinct only slightly younger on the
evolutionary scale told her it contained treasure. June Bellamy liked treasure.
And she was in the mood for a distraction from her thoughts.
She
left the path and shadowed him for a little less than a hundred meters,
paralleling the meandering trail. He was the kind of mook
who could have been tailed through the French Quarter during Mardi Gras; for someone with a magic spell on her in a forest this
damp he was candy. Twice, he spun craftily on his heel in the hope of
surprising someone following him; both times his gaze passed right over her
without stopping. Call me Chingachcook, she
thought smugly.
He
kept staring from side to side as he walked, looking for something.
Occasionally he would leave the path, pick a spot at apparent random, paw at
the earth briefly with his sneakered foot (it was
probably the name that had first attracted him to sneakers), and then move on.
Finally
his eye was caught by a large, freshly toppled tree about twenty meters from
the trail. The bank on which it stood had been undercut by centuries of
She
began to understand when he removed a collapsible entrenching tool and
assembled it. The earth the tree had lately protected was freshly turned, easy
to dig. There was indeed treasure in that bag, and Captain Kidd there proposed
to bury it. June smiled.
And
almost instantly felt a stab of sadness. A week ago, such a gift from God would
have been a blessing and a pure joy. Now it was a consolation prize. A prize booby.
Still,
she was forced to admit to some interest in just how much consolation;
she took a position of vantage and dropped into a squat as the mook began digging.
The
longer he dug, the better she felt. The deeper he wanted his plunder buried,
the more likely it was to console her. But when he began approaching a depth
and dimensions which would have served for the
grave of a child, nearly waist-deep in the hole he was making, she entertained
a brief Pythonesque fantasy in which, having buried
his treasure, he would protect its secret by shooting the guy who'd dug the
hole. That way she wouldn't have to wait for him to pass out of earshot to
uncover the swag, and there'd be that nice handy entrenching tool.
Come
to think of it, digging up a grave wasn't something she was really in the mood
for, just now—even one with treasure in it. She'd settle for marking the spot,
and coming back with Paul sometime. Let him do the grunt work; that was what
handsome warriors were for. Well, one of the things.
The
mook's shovel, which had been saying chuff—shrrrp . . . chuff—shrrrp
. . . chuff—shrrrp with decreasing
rhythm like an asthmatic slowly recovering from an attack, suddenly said chuff—shrrrp , . . clack!
Not
clank! as if it had hit a rock. Not chup! as if it had
hit a root. Clack! As if it had struck . . . she didn't know, plastic or
plexiglass or formica
or something. Something manmade.
He
made a muttered sound of irritation that, if it had become a word, would have
been "Naturally," set that shovelful of dirt aside carefully, without
any shrrp, then offset his point of
attack slightly and tried again.
Clack!
"Aw,
fuck!" he groaned.
No,
no, she wanted to say. "Fuck!" is the sound of an axe
sinking into a tree. That was "Clack!"
As
if insisting on his point of view, he said "Fuck!" again, louder. But
this time, the way he said it was so different, and so incongruous, so full of an almost religious awe, that it caused her to
focus her attention on him. Because of that—remarkably—she actually recognized
what happened to him next. It was a thing she had never expected to see in
quite that context, but if you were looking right at it and paying close
attention, it was unmistakable.
Standing
up, hip-deep in an unfinished grave, fully dressed, shovel still held in both
hands, the mook threw back his head, keened like a
forlorn kitten, and had an orgasm.
It
might even have been the orgasm of his life. As she stared, marveling but never
doubting, June was impressed. Thanks to her mother, she had been confident in
her own sexuality since the age of fourteen, but she had to admit that in a
varied life she had never received applause quite as enthusiastic and sincere
as the mook was now awarding to ... no one at all. It
was more than vocal: his body language was so emphatic and so explicit that she
decided he might well have found work as a male erotic dancer, even with that
body.
I've
heard the expression "Fuck the world" countless times, of course, she
thought, but I'd never actually seen it done before.
He
was not even rubbing his groin against the wall of the pit in which he stood, though
he could have. Instead he simply thrust, violently, at the air itself, and
seemed to find it a more than adequate lover.
For
all its intensity, the event seemed to take somewhat less time than usual, at
least in her experience, and when it was over, he simply let go of the shovel
and sat down in the hole, his head disappearing almost completely from view. As
the top of it bobbed up and down with his slowing respiration, its coconut-husk hair made it resemble a hedgehog
trying to frighten off an intruder with a display of puffing bristles.
Something
in that hole, June
thought, causes men to have instant orgasms, of higher than usual quality. I
might just find a use for such a thing. God help me: I am
starting to feel consoled. . . .
***
She
waited, and watched, her vision so narrowed and focused that she seemed to see
him in the crosshairs of a periscope, her hearing so acute she became aware of
a mosquito hovering near her left wrist (the silenced headphones passed ambient
sound so well, she had forgotten she was wearing them), her attention so
concentrated she ignored the mosquito.
"Angel
Gerhardt," he said aloud, his voice hoarse but happy.
Of course. After you have sex with the
universe, it is polite to offer your name. He must be a nonsmoker.
"Heinz,"
he said, "but everybody calls me Angel."
I
see, she thought. And your address?
"
There
were short pauses between each sentence. By now she understood that something
silent in that hole was interrogating him, somehow, and she memorized every
syllable. Whatever it was, was a potential enemy,
and she did not want it better informed than her.
"I
was looking to bury a couple o's of flake till it
cooled off a little," he said, still lazily ecstatic. "Yeah.
No. Yeah, they do. No, they don't. Yeah, I'm sure. I don't trust them. Well,
Linda, a little." Even those last two sentences sounded happy.
The
next pause was long enough to give her time to work that out. Yes, his lover
and housemates knew he was out burying cocaine. No, they didn't know, or even
suspect, just where. This suited June. She was much less interested in even two
ounces of coke than in whatever the hell was in that hole . . . but
either way it would be nice never to have to meet anyone who would have Angel
Gerhardt for a friend.
Then
she caught herself, remembering the e-mail handle he had revealed: Frosty.
Admittedly, it was more energy-efficient than walking around wearing a sandwich
sign that read, "I deal cocaine in felony weight"—but not much
smarter. Angel could not be considered a reliable judge of what his
lover and housemates did or didn't know. Worse, all the neighborhoods that
bordered on
Angel
seemed to agree. He said only one more word—"Okay"—then stood up in
the hole, set down the shovel and began taking off his pants. A strange dread
clutched at her, though she could not have explained why undressing was weirder
than having a spontaneous orgasm dressed—but all he did was remove his
threadbare boxer shorts, wipe himself off with
them, drop them into the hole and put his pants back on. He was so skinny that
he seemed to have no difficulty getting the pants off and on without removing
his sneakers. Then he hoisted himself out of the hole and began hastily filling
it back in. He did it more intelligently than she would have expected. When he
was done, he collected underbrush and sprinkled it over the fresh-turned
earth—again, more artistically than she'd have predicted. Then he put his
backpack back on, picked up his shovel and walked away.
His
course, apparently randomly chosen, brought him rather near to June before he
reached the path again, but somehow she knew he was going to walk right by
without seeing her, and he did. He wore a vague, fatuous smile, and his eyes
were unfocused.
She
glanced briefly toward the huge drunken tree. Whatever was down there under its
uprooted base would probably stay there awhile. In any case she was not ready
to confront it. She followed the backpack.
She
was tempted at first to just stroll along beside Angel, since he seemed
oblivious, but she resisted, and took up stealthy station fifty meters behind
him again. She was glad when, a few hundred meters later, he stopped and shook
himself like a man coming out of a deep reverie. She had plenty of time to
become invisible before he turned and scanned his surroundings. His expression
was inhabited now, but still serene. For an instant he reminded her absurdly of
her mother in her hospital bed. He checked his watch then, muttered something
she couldn't hear, and resumed walking.
Shortly
he found another exposed bank, took out his shovel and began digging again.
As
she watched, she noticed something subtle. He was not digging like a man who
had already dug one hole this size this afternoon. Something seemed to have
returned to him the energy he had expended earlier.
This
time his task was accomplished without incident. She was not much surprised
when he buried the entire backpack: now anyone who had noticed him enter the
woods and saw him leave would know he had left something behind. The trick in
finding it would then be to go to the only dry trail in the forest, and proceed
as far as the second easy place to dig. The world had lost a great
rocket scientist when Angel Gerhardt decided to go into the crystal trade. Sure
enough, when he was done he left the shovel about five meters away (concealed
by a mound of leaves that would stay there for at least an hour, unless a
breeze came up), both to mark the spot and to make it easy for anyone who found
the stash to dig it up.
Then
he went away. He no longer looked serene; now he looked pooped. He dragged his
feet. But he moved.
After
she was certain he was out of earshot, June took her cell phone from her hip holster
and dialed Paul's number, irritably removing her forgotten FM headphones when
she hit them with the phone. Self-contained, with no wires to a Walkman or CD
player on her person, they fell to the forest floor. She expected to get his
machine and did; she suffered through the outgoing message with even more than
her usual impatience, wishing for the thousandth time that he'd get a modern machine, which allowed your friends to
cut off the message by pushing the proper key. The moment she heard the beep she
began talking quickly and quietly.
"Honey,
I'm into something heavy here. I'm walking in the Endowment Lands, and I ran
across a mook looking to bury something nice just off
the Lowrie Trail, Dorothy twice, but that's not the
good part. He was digging away at the base of a huge old toppled elm tree, and
he hit something with his shovel that made a sound like clack, something
like plywood or plastic. And then—" She knew how all this was going to
sound, but didn't want to edit it. "—I know this is nuts, but then he had
an orgasm, all by himself, standing up. And then he started to talk out loud,
as if somebody was grilling him—only I was only fifty meters away and I swear
there was no one else there. He said his name was Angel Gerhardt and he lived
over in the East End on William Street and his e-mail handle, God help us all,
was 'Frosty,' and he named his girlfriend Linda Wu and his two housemates and
said none of them knew where he planned to bury the . . . the thing . . . and
the weird part was, he didn't say any of this like a mope giving information to
the heat, he said it like a guy opening his soul to his new lover, happy as a
clam. Then he filled the hole back in and buried the
package in another spot. He's gone now. I'm going to put the package somewhere
else—but I'm not going near that goddam fallen elm without you, and maybe Rosco. I don't know what we've got ahold
of here, but whatever it is is very very big. Call me as soon as you get in, okay? I hope
everything went okay."
She
put the phone away and squatted there in the woods, thinking hard, for a minute—almost but not quite long enough.
Then she got to her feet, went to the shovel and picked it up.
If
she had thought just a little longer, it might have occurred to her that in
fantasy stories, it is generally unwise to tamper with the belongings of one on
whom a geas has been placed. The moment her fingers
touched the shovel, she came.
Wally
and Moira had, in a sense, spent most of their adult lives training for the
advent of the naked bald man. That didn't help them much.
Happy
round people in their mid-forties, they were hard at work at 11 p.m. on
Halloween night, side by side at their respective computers in the study of
their Vancouver home—popularly known as The Only Dump In Point Grey—when a
short sharp silent blast of very bright light burst in the big window behind
them and momentarily washed out their screens. As it faded, they saw that they
were both hung, their mice impotent; each rebooted at once, then used the brief
interval of startup to adjust their blood-sugar levels, Wally with a bird's
nest cookie and Moira with coffee.
"More Halloween nonsense?"
Wally suggested as he chewed.
Moira
frowned. "Thought we paid off the last of the little
thugs hours ago."
"Maybe
we should have given that Ace Ventura chocolate instead of rice cakes."
"It
was instinctive. I see Ace Ventura: I think bowel movements: I reach for the
fiber." She gulped coffee and glared at her monitor. "No, a smart-aleck kid going to that much trouble would pick
something with bang, not flash. Why waste that much magnesium to not annoy
somebody very much?"
"Right. Got to be a fan
or fen, then. Dr. Techno, or one of the Latex
Goddesses."
She
shook her head. "Any other time of the year, I'd say sure. But this close
to VanCon, all the fans bright enough are too busy.
Like us. At least, they'd better be."
Wally
finished his cookie hurriedly; his system was back up. "Maybe we should
duck and cover," he suggested, typing furiously.
"Eh?"
"Maybe
somebody just nuked Coquitlam. Or
points east."
"Huh."
She gave it half her attention; her own desktop had finally come up and typing
with a coffee cup in one hand took some care. "Nah," she decided,
reopening her application, "if the sound wave hasn't gotten here by now,
we're okay. I gotta get this thing uploaded."
"Damn,"
he said. "It didn't save." He poked futilely at his own keyboard.
"I lost the whole flippin' file."
Moira
smirked and kept working. "You should get a Mac."
"I
hate obsequious machines," he said automatically, and let it go. Mixed
marriages can work, with enough good will. "You're right: if it was a
nuke, it was way out in the Okanagan somewhere. Come
Spring we'll have peaches the size of pumpkins."
"And
use them for lawn lanterns," she agreed. "Seriously, what the hell do
you suppose that was?'
Wally
typed twelve lines before her question caught up with
him, then shrugged. (She saw it; they knew each others rhythms.) "Bright.
Short. Sharp; no perceptible waxing or waning. No
sound at all that I heard. Magnesium . . . big laser . . . searchlight, maybe. None likely in our alley, even on Halloween." He typed
some more, then cycled back again. "No, I don't come up with anything that
makes sense. Except fannish humor, and you're right:
there's no punchline to this one."
Moira
finished a flurry of her own, played back his answer, and frowned. "So . . . what? Elvis has just entered the
building?"
"No,
he was here four hours ago—and he got a Mars Bar. Seriously, hon, my honest best guess is that Captain Kirk just beamed
down to ask for directions." He resumed typing at top speed.
Moira
frowned fiercely now, and actually stopped typing for several seconds, even
though she was paying connect time again by now. This was a perfect example of
one of the Great Differences on which her twenty-year marriage to Wally was
founded. He found the irrational, the inexplicable, amusing.
She found it barely tolerable. "We ought to take a look out the window, at
least," she muttered, and resumed netsurfing.
"Sure
thing," he said, and kept typing. "Just as soon as I upload my column
for the LMSFSazine, finish that web-page upgrade for
the SCA, answer all the e-mail rumors on the new
Beatles stuff, and—oh, yes—download about twenty megs of current VanCon traffic and route it to the proper serfs, I'll join
you there at the window. Save me a seat."
She
didn't bother to recite her own litany of tasks; she had already dismissed the
matter and was deeply engaged in a rather tricky attempt to hack her way into
NASA and sniff out information regarding the first
live guitar jam—the first musical interaction—ever to be performed in space
(scheduled, according to rumor, to occur aboard Mir, during the next visit by
the shuttle Atlantis; a Canadian and a Russian trading off on acoustic
and electric). It was her intention to obtain the best possible recording of
the event, and play it at VanCon, the annual
He
was editing his column, and she had just settled on a promising line of attack,
when they heard the wail.
It
came clearly through the window behind them: the unformed sound of a baby in
distress. Odd that they both thought "baby" the instant they heard
it—for both the volume and pitch of the sound were unmistakably adult (though
the gender was indeterminate). But that cry was not even an attempt at a word.
"There
is a baby the size of a football player in our alley," Wally said calmly,
fingers poised over his keyboard, "on Halloween night."
Moira
caught herself trying to use her own keyboard as a breed of Ouija
board. "One of us should really look out the window."
He
began to tap his keys without quite typing them, a nervous mannerism she was
sure she would learn to accept in no more than another decade at most.
"That's the requisite number," he agreed, and poked a key
tentatively.
Her
face clouded up ... then smoothed over. "And babies are my department. I
see." She disconnected from the net, treating her mouse with elaborate
gentleness, and rose from her seat.
Although
their workstation was large by most home standards, so were Wally and Moira;
she
could not move her chair out of her way unless he got
up too, so the only way she could get a look out the window was to kneel up on
the chair and lean forward until her cheek pressed against the chilly pane. She
did so.
Several
seconds passed. Wally typed, but his heart clearly wasn't in it.
"What
do you see?" he asked finally.
"Bad
news," she replied slowly. "I think I'm getting a zit."
"Oh,
for—" He got hold of himself, and saved his changes. "Right.
Sorry. You're quite right: we do have to take up the tacks before we can
take up the carpet." He darkened both monitor screens, extinguished both
gooseneck lamps, levered himself up out of his own chair and went to dial the
overhead light down. He waited there by the rheostat, in near darkness,
watching his wife look out the window and down into the alley. "It's
Captain Kirk, right?" he said.
More
seconds passed.
He
was beginning to become irritated by the time she stirred slightly and spoke
his name; but then his irritation vanished at once, for there was something
wrong with her voice. "Yes, Moira?"
"We've
spoken of my ongoing ambiguity with regard to certain of the so-called assigned
gender roles, right?"
"Yes, dear. And I am sworn not to break
your stones about it."
"Thank
you. With all due respect to sisterhood, I think this is one of those times
when a Y chromosome is called for. He's naked, and he looks dead, and he's
bald—so for all I know he is Captain Kirk, but this is definitely not my
department, okay?"
"Our side of the fence, or Gorskys?"
"Our side."
His pidgin, then. He sighed. "Wait here
in the cave. Now, where did I leave that stone ax . . . ?"
She
turned away from the window. "Wally, seriously—"
He
halted in the doorway. "Woman, you have invoked the Y chromosome—now run
for cover and get the bandages ready. No, better yet, go to the phone, dial
nine one, and wait for my scream." He grinned and left the room, feeling
like a Heinlein hero. A Secret Master of Fandom and Permanent Secretary of the
Lower Mainland Science Fiction Society had, after all, certain standards to
maintain. And how tough could a nude bald corpse be?
She
turned her Mac into a voicephone and did just as he
had suggested, then went back to the window—moving both chairs out of the way
this time—telling herself that at the first sign of funny business she would
punch that last digit into the phone and then put a chair through that window
and . . . and . . . and rain coffee cups and lava lamps on the naked bald man
until he surrendered, that's what.
***
Wally
did take the time to change to better footgear, put on a light jacket, and
slide a short length of rebar up one sleeve before leaving the house by the
back door. It was a typical
There
was unquestionably and no shit a naked bald Caucasian male lying there on his
back, just below the den window.
Dead,
however, he was not. He was in the slow process of trying to lever himself up from
complete spread-eagled sprawl to a sort of sitting fetal position. Wally had
plenty of time to see clearly that the naked man was not merely bald but
completely hairless . . . and uncircumsized. Wally
guessed him to be about twenty-five, and in excellent shape, well muscled and
trim. He noted absently that the nude intruder was surrounded by a roughly
circular patch of scorched grass, and that the circle of scorching was wide
enough to mark both Wally's own house and the fence as well. He further noted,
and filed, the depth of the impression the stranger had left in the soggy
earth; as if he were made of lead ... or had somehow fallen onto his
back from . . . ah, doubtless from the top of the fence: that explained it.
Considering that the fence was made of chain link topped by savage little
twists of jagged steel, and that the stranger was nude right down to his soles,
he must have wanted to leave the Gorsky property
quite badly. For the first time Wally warmed to him slightly. (Like nearly
everyone else in the district except Wally and Moira, the Gorsky
clan lived in a million-dollar stucco-and-plaster steroid monstrosity that
looked like the box a real home had come in—and did not trouble to hide their
disgust at the property-value-lowering presence of Wally
and Moira's shabby human dwelling in their midst. In retaliation, Wally had
befriended his crabgrass.)
The
naked man saw Wally for the first time. His eyes widened comically, and he gasped, a sound so loud and sibilant it was nearly a shriek.
He drew up his knees, buried his head between them, and wrapped his arms around
them to keep them secure, like a turtle withdrawing into his shell.
Wally
moved, cautiously, to try and get a glimpse of Moira in the study window,
thought he saw her wave a hand. He let the chunk of rebar slip out of his
sleeve and into his palm, and tapped the stranger with it.
As
a lifetime science fiction fan, Wally feared little so much as the prospect of
appearing stupid in retrospect. He chose his words with care, and was rather
proud of them. "Excuse me," he said gently, "but do I correctly
understand that you are Blanched Du Boy, and you have
always depended on the blahndness of stranguhs?"
The
stranger poked his head back out, and stared
fixedly—not at Wally, but at the house ... or more properly, at the portion of
its foundation nearest him, about a meter away. His eyes seemed to be bulging
out of his head—or was that just the lack of eyelashes? No ... no, he was
genuinely terrified . . . not of the large homeowner poking him with a piece of
rebar, but of a cement wall. He scuttled involuntarily away from it, until he
fetched up against the fence.
"John!"
he muttered. "Unsnuffingbelievable!
One more hackin' meter west, and—" He shivered
violently.
Wally
thought it was about time; it wasn't terribly chilly out here, this was after
all
The
stranger whirled on him—not easy to do from a sitting position. "What
year is it?" he snapped.
Wally
bunked. "The same one it was when you decided to get drunk," he said.
The
man was on his feet so suddenly he seemed to have levitated; he sprang at Wally
and took him by the lapels of his coat. "What year?" he
thundered.
Unused
to naked men taking him by the lapels in his own yard while he held a piece of
rebar, Wally answered automatically, ana very
quickly, "1995, its 1995, I swear to God!"
The
stranger released him as quickly as he'd seized him, and the strangest thing
happened. For just a moment Wally saw him begin to panic utterly, just totally
lose it ... then, confoundingly, he felt his own
naked arms with his hands, felt his cheeks, and pulled himself back from the
edge. Terror gave way at once to towering rage: he smote himself mightily on
the thighs. "Grot!" he snarled. "Total snowcrash! Blood for this, my chop
. . . grotty wannabes!" The date clearly
displeased him greatly.
On
Wally, the light had just begun, dimly, to dawn. This was the moment he had
been waiting for since the age of six—here—now! He opened his mouth . . . then
glanced up at the window and closed it again.
"Look,
cousin," he said after some thought, "it's
cool out here. Come on inside like I said, okay? Get some hot coffee in you—you
drink coffee? We got real good coffee—"
The
naked man looked up at him and instantly, visibly, became devious. "Sure, yes, hot caffy,
very kind of you, caffy would be optimal. I can . . .
uh . . . I can explain all this—"
"Yes,
I'm sure you can," said Wally. "I'm looking forward to it." He
gestured. "If you'll just walk this . . . uh, in this
direction." And then he waved and gestured for Moira's benefit,
before leading the way.
***
Wally
watched the stranger carefully on the way into the house. He was one of those
people who looks good with his head shaved—in fact, now that Wally noticed, he
looked a little like a younger version of Captain Picard
from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He seemed alert, but some of the
things that interested him were interesting. He paid close attention, for
instance, to the process by which Wally opened, and then closed, the back
door—but did not attempt to hide his interest, as would a burglar casing the
joint. He shielded his eyes with his hand from the meager 40-watt bulb in Wally
and Moira's back hall. He noticed the stack of newspapers and the recycle
blue-box full of waste glass and metal waiting for Garbage Night, and for some
reason they seemed to amuse him. The stove in the kitchen made him snort. Then
they hung the right into the study, and the stranger froze in his tracks,
gaping.
Wally
was aware that not everyone admired large women as much as he; nonetheless this
behavior seemed rude for a guest. Then he realized that the stranger had not
yet noticed Moira. He was staring horrorstruck at ...
...
a painting on the study wall. The
Jack Gaughan Analog cover, for a story called
"By Any Other Name"—a simple crouched figure seen from behind, brandishing a futuristic weapon at a
number of translucent fireballs. Wally owned many scarier paintings.
But
the stranger had clearly never seen anything so utterly
terrifying in his life—not even the cement wall of Wally's foundation.
"Oh crash," he moaned. "Its
worse than I thought! You're science fiction fans, aren't you?"
Wally
took a deep breath, and drew himself up. "Sir, I'm afraid it is worse than
that. My wife and I are SMOFs."
The stranger fainted dead away.
Wally
gave Moira a meaningful look. "The first thing he wanted to know was what
year it was."
She
stared down at the inert stranger, then back up at her husband. "Oh, Wally, really?"
He
nodded, unable to suppress the grin any longer.
Her
own eyes became large and round, and for just a moment it looked as though she
might pass out herself. Then she got control, and smiled. "And the con's
only a few weeks away!" she cried.
The
two Secret Masters Of Fandom raced to each other,
joined hands, and began to dance.
***
When
the hairless man opened his eyes, it was in a white room which had no
windows and only one door. The door had no knob or handle
or keypad or other obvious means of causing it to open, nor did it appear to
slide on tracks. There was a bare lightbulb in the
ceiling, but its switch appeared to be elsewhere.
The
room contained no furniture or decorations of any kind.
The
balance of its contents were all sentient beings.
Specifically, the hairless man himself, Wally, Moira and the Buddha . . . represented in this specific instance
by a football-sized and -shaped bronze statue of him which was, ironically, the
only purely material object present. Everyone but the hairless man looked
generally the same: short, round and smiling beatifically.
He
sat up slowly, took in his surroundings, and the fact that he was no longer
naked. He now wore an old grey sweatshirt shrunken almost to normal-range size,
a pair of sweatpants cinched tight at the waist but with adequate room to store
a pup tent and an inflatable raft in the legs, and odd foot coverings that
Wally was accustomed to refer to as "sockasins."
He seemed to find the coverings tolerable.
"This
is my meditation room," Moira said.
He
nodded.
"If
the beginning of this conversation goes well," Wally said, "we can
continue it in more congenial surroundings. Over 'caffy.' But you did drop in without an
appointment."
The
stranger said nothing.
"We
caught a burglar once," Wally said. "We left him in here for a week.
Took the Buddha out, left him an empty wastebasket. He was very very contrite when we let him go. We had to help him to the
sidewalk. Nothing much but solids in the basket by that point ..."
"I
understand," the hairless man said. "Come, let us reason
together."
"When
are you from?" Wally asked. "Originally, I mean."
The
hairless man did a creditable imitation of puzzlement. "What do you mean, 'when'
am I from, Daddy-o? I'm from Frisco; I'm part of a team of long-hairs
hacking on a matter transporter at the
"Its possible to pipe sound in here," Moira said.
"Are you by any chance familiar with the work of the Gyuto
Monks?"
Beside
her, Wally visibly shuddered. The Gyuto Monks,
chanting, sound very much like a sustained short in the circuit that powers the
world. Like the
The
hairless man sighed, and his shoulders drooped. He might not have known the Gyuto Monks, but he knew a threat when he heard it.
"In your reckoning it would be the year 2287."
Wally
and Moira each outsmiled the Buddha.
"I'm
Wallace Kemp, and this is my wife Moira Rogers," Wally said.
"I
am Jude," the time traveler said.
Wally
and Moira exchanged a glance. "Hey," Wally said softly, making his
Paul McCartney face, and she glared at him. To Wally's
surprise, Jude seemed to catch the reference too, and looked suddenly wary.
"What
was your purpose in time-traveling, Jude?" Wally went on, louder.
"The
information would be of no value to you."
"Let
us decide that. Unless you're in a hurry to get started meditating? We could
get you a wastebasket—"
"I
came back in order to drive a taxicab, one time," Jude said. "There.
That is the complete truth. Satisfied?"
Wally
digested that. "You know how to drive a car?" Moira asked.
Jude
sneered. "Primitive mobile—myocontrol—how hard
can it be?"
"Does
it have to be a cab?" Wally asked.
Jude's
face fell. "The discussion is pointless," he said. "My mission
is a failure."
"Why?"
they asked together.
He
rubbed his forehead, where his eyebrows ought to have been. "Because there
was a major snowcrash—" He glanced suddenly at
Moira. "—pardon me, madam, a fuckup, and I undershot. This is the wrong
ficton."
Wally
nodded, pleased to have confirmed that Robert Heinlein's term for a
place-and-time, "ficton," would one day
pass into the language. "Yes, I got that. So it was necessary that your
cab ride take place in a ficton earlier in history
than this?"
"Yes,
by several years."
"What
year?"
Jude
looked stubborn.
"Look,"
Wally said reasonably. "You must see our problem. I told you we are Secret
Masters of Fandom. You are obviously a time traveler. There can only be four
kinds of time traveler: idiots, fanatics, criminals and very careful
historians—which last does not seem to describe you.
Anyone else would know it's too risky. Before we can let you go, we need to
know which kind you are."
Jude
frowned. "In your terms, I suppose I am a fanatic. I would call myself a
religious martyr."
Wally
nodded. "And you plan to alter history, for theological reasons. By driving a taxicab. Even though that
will annihilate reality."
"My
reality," Jude pointed out. "Not yours. If I had
succeeded, my ficton would have vanished
utterly, yes—but yours would merely have turned out somewhat differently."
"True,"
Wally agreed. "Still, you're going to have to tell us about it, if you
want to leave this room."
Jude
looked distinctly uncomfortable. "May I first ask you a question? Matters
of religion can be volatile. I know it is a little early in history for this
question to be truly meaningful, but . . . may I ask both of you your views
regarding . . . Elvis?"
Looking
back on all this in years to come, one of the small things Wally and Moira
would be proud of was the fact that neither of them cracked a smile at this
juncture. They did exchange a momentary glance which was a promissory note for
a shared belly-laugh later, but Wally answered seriously, after only a seconds hesitation, "He has left the building.
If he were alive, he'd have stopped his daughter's wedding."
"And
while he was here," Moira said, "he was a relatively talentless nutbar who happened to
get struck by lightning, and didn't do anything important with the energy.
Why?"
"Praise John!" Jude said
fervently. "Are you, then, by any chance . . . Fab?"
Wally
and Moira exchanged another glance. It was getting harder and harder not to
grin. The idea that there would be a Church of Elvis in the not-too-distant
future had become something of a cliché in recent science fiction—but
until now only Wally, in on-line forums and in his column in LMSFSazine, had ever suggested that it might and should be
countered by an equally fervent cult that worshipped the Beatles.
"I
think you could say that," Wally agreed slowly. "Washed in the Juice
of the Apple, you mean? I wouldn't call us devout, strictly speaking—we're fen;
we must remain skeptical on all matters of religion, by policy—but I own the
Black Album, and all the Christmas Fan Club Messages." He saw that
register. "And I was at Shea Stadium in '65, if
that helps."
"Twenty-three August, yeah yeah yeah!" Jude cried excitedly.
"Oh, thank The Four, some gear luck at last! You must help me—it
may yet be accomplished!"
"What
may?" Wally asked, but his eyes were already starting to gleam.
"The Reunification!" Jude said. "The Healing . . . the Reforging of
the Bond . . . the utter destruction of the forces of Elvis!"
Suddenly
Wally knew what he was talking about. It all ... well, came together,
over him. "Oh my God," he breathed, thunderstruck. For the
third time he met his wife's eyes, and was startled to see that she hadn't
caught up yet. "Don't you get it, love? In the future, there's a major
showdown between the
Moira
was lost, but game. "'. . . most awful Beatles anecdote
. . .' John's death? Or something to do with Stu Sutcliffe?"
"No,
no—you've heard this one, I'm sure; I've told it a hundred times. John and Paul
have buried the hatchet; they're sitting around in the Dakota one night in '79,
getting stoned and watching telly while the wives
chat in the kitchen. Lorne Michaels comes on the tube: it's the Saturday after
Bernstein offered the Beatles a million to reunite, and Michaels makes a
counteroffer on the air, live: if the Beatles will come down and play on Saturday
Night Live, now, he's prepared to pay them . . . union scale, a thousand
bucks or so apiece. Rim shot. And across town at the Dakota, John looks at Paul and Paul looks at John and they both
start to grin—"
"Oh
my God, I remember now," Moira said, "And they called a cab—but it
never showed up . . ." She turned pale.
"One
of the great Lost Moments of history," Wally said, his voice trembling.
Jude
broke the silence which followed. "It's plaintext, right? If the cab had
arrived, John and Paul would have appeared on Saturday Night Live that
night. The planet would have convulsed in its orbit, a generation gone mad with
joy. George and Ringo both would have been on the
phone before the credits rolled—and sooner or later, The Four would have
gotten together again! John would have gone back home to
Wally
couldn't help interrupting. "Wait a minute—are you saying that Elvis
Presley was behind Brian Epstein's—"
"Indisputable
proof will be uncovered in another eight years," Jude said, "but
isn't it obvious? Faggot Jew Commie . . . creator of the Anti-Elvis . . . pills
as the instrument of death . . . did you think it coincidence that Eppy died just as The Four were communing publicly
with an Eastern, non-Christian religious figure in India?"
"Elvis
did approach J. Edgar Hoover, and volunteer to spy on the Beatles for
the DEA, that's documented," Wally said softly.
He was talking to himself. "And his daughter's flaky husband is the guy
who stole the Beatles' publishing rights out
from under his mentor, Paul McCartney—"
"Elvis
Presley made his evil plans in full, the day he read John's Jesus Quote . . .
and from beyond the grave, he triumphed," Jude said in a vaguely chanting
tone, clearly quoting from scripture.
Moira
noticed that her hand hurt, from crushing Wally's hand, but forgot it almost at
once, distracted by horror. "You mean . . . you mean He Whose Name We Must
Never Mention really shot John as an agent of—of—"
Jude
nodded solemnly. "It will be the chance discovery of his secret memoirs by
a prison guard in 2003 that blows the story. I meant to undo all of that—and
with your help, I still can."
As
unconsciously as they had mangled them, Wally and Moira let go of each other's
hands, and sat up straighter, hearts hammering.
"You've
got the time machine on you," Wally suggested. "Or
in you. Implanted, or something."
Jude
shook his ironically bald head. "All the assets I have, you see."
"So
you're going to automatically slingshot back to the future, or something, and
try again."
Another headshake. "Return to my ficton is fundamentally impossible, time travel only works
backwards. Even if I had another machine, I could not travel to the future—it
isn't there yet."
"You're
stuck in this ficton, then? But then it's too late,
right? John's been dead for fifteen years!"
Jude
looked sly. "But there is another time machine—in this ficton—and
in this city."
"No
shit," Wally and Moira chorused. "I mean," Wally went on,
"'speak on, sir, omitting no detail however slight.' Where? And why?"
"Let
me table the question of its location for a moment," Jude temporized, "and address
your last input first. Authorized time travelers—as opposed to myself—are naturally hyperconscious of the danger of
corrupting history. Therefore a clandestine machine is maintained throughout
all periods of historical interest—so that if a researchers cover story should
collapse, at worst they can make their way there and escape to an earlier ficton, aborting the hang."
"Smart,"
Wally said. "So all you really need is a ride across town somewhere?"
Jude
sighed. "Well, no. I am not an authorized time traveler."
Slowly,
Wally nodded. "So then, what you need is ... ?"
Jude
hesitated . . . then took the plunge. "A substantial
bribe."
"In what form?" Wally
asked.
"Cash. Small bills would be best. . .
."
Wally
boggled, shamelessly. He had been very good for a long time, but this just
didn't seem logical. "Cash? You mean, 1995 dollars? What the hell would time travelers want
with cash?"
"Think
it through," Jude suggested.
Wally
frowned fiercely. That one stung: a science fiction fan should never need to be
told to think it through. "Apparently I lack data," he said stiffly.
"Okay.
You're the guardian of the time machine, stuck in this primitive ficton forever, and if The Fabs
are good you will have very little actual work to do: the need for your
services had better be rare. Sooner or later you go native. Now: what can I
bribe you with? Money in 2287 dollars, that you can
bury for your descendants? Unnameable futuristic
comforts and delights that you may never even risk letting any local observe
you enjoying?
Or the means to render this Stone
Age existence as tolerable as possible?"
"But
why can't I generate as much cash as I want?" Wally said, falling into the
Socratic spirit of the thing. "If I'm from the future, surely I was smart
enough to pack some market tips, memorize some important dates—"
"—which
you could only capitalize on at the cost of altering history," Jude
pointed out. "Calling that kind of attention to yourself is precisely what
you must not do. You must be a kind of invisible man—yet you must earn a
living, in a ficton with all the privacy of a large
bedroom, for altruism's sake. This is a recipe for bribery."
"Ah,"
Wally said. "I get it. And you're willing to take the risk they aren't, to
get money to bribe them with. If you show up with a barrel of cash, they'll
think it over and decide what's done is done, and the smartest thing to do with
that money is quietly slip it back into the system—by spending it themselves. I
guess if I were tending a time machine in the Court of Herod, I might take a
hundred goats to bend a rule. You might pull it off."
"If
you will help me," Jude agreed. "I need valid financial entities of
this ficton to act as my agents. If you will let me
give you market advice, I will make us ... let me see, '95, '95 ... say, two
hundred thousand Canadian dollars, and give you half. And—Julia
willing!—the joy of having undone the anagrammatic Evils of Elvis and saved
Saint Jock. Will you help?"
Wally's
heart was beating very fast. "Hold the phone. Check me out on this: you go
back in time sixteen-odd years. You show up at the Dakota in a Yellow cab.
Johnny and Paulie make the curtain, and history changes. And this ficton—here,
now, sixteen years later—ceases to exist, right? Moira and I and everybody we
know all disappear like Boojums?"
Jude
did not hesitate. "These avatars of you, yes. But
there will still be a Wally and a Moira. Have your lives been so good since
John's Murder that you would not have them different? In a
world with four strong Beatles to inspire it? Stack all the music
recorded since 1972 against Rubber Soul . . "
Husband
and wife both started to answer, and fell silent. They had met, fallen
in love and married well before the date in question. It wasn't as though the
proposed alteration in history would cost them their marriage. Merely some
dispiriting shared history . . . which would be replaced with—
"You
live here; I don't. Is this ficton, in your opinions,
gear? Or grotty? When do you
believe the Sixties died, and why? Would you not see that undone, the Yellow
Submarine relaunched?"
Wally
found that tears were trickling, silently and unobtrusively, down his cheeks.
"Please
help me," Jude said softly. "It is my destiny. I was born and named
to do as Paul commanded: to make the sad song better."
"We'll
do it," Wally and Moira both said at once, and took each other's hands
again. They shared a grin that began as a promissory note for a kiss, and began
inflating in value almost at once. Perhaps they had not been so happy since the
day Moira proposed.
Jude,
for his part, appeared to go into something like religious ecstasy. He shivered
all over, smiled hugely, and began rocking gently from side to side, seeming to glow. "Then you shall live out the
year," he said happily.
Through
his own warm glow, those words reached Wally. He stopped grinning long enough
to say, "Beg pardon?"
Jude
waved his hands in the air, as one who would say, no, no, it's nothing. "
"The Big One?" Moira
squealed. "Juan de Fuca Fault?
This year?"
"Yes,
yes—but you will have a hundred thousand dollars with which to flee. And I will
tell you when. Save as many friends as you like—as long as they are absolutely
discreet."
An
extraordinary cascade of thoughts went though Wally's brain in a short time.
Jesus,
they do say it's overdue—the whole
—Our
home here in Point Grey sits on the only rock around: the only part of the
greater
—After
we agree to help Jude, he gets around to mentioning cataclysmic earthquakes
in the near future?—
Oh
no, I see: he wanted us to be able to know and honestly say that our choice was
pure, wasn't based on selfish motives—
—except
for a piddling hundred grand—
—ohmyGod, to have the Beatles back! How
many albums would they have put out between 1979 and now? Oh Jesus . . . imagine hearing Tug of War without "Here
Today"—but with John himself! Hell, those new tracks we're
supposed to hear next month could have been out fifteen years ago—
—get
a grip, boy. Now which, if any, of my friends can I trust to keep their mouth
shut about this? Oh, shit—
—can
I condemn the rest to death for being gabby? Justice, perhaps, but rather harsh—
—is
there some way to get them a warning at the last possible moment? Or can I come
up with some alternate explanation for how I know for sure a quake is coming? A
prediction I got from the Internet, maybe? Or—
—I'll
miss this soggy town—
—where
the hell will we go? Will
—no
wonder Jude freaked when he learned what year it is—
—that's
funny . . . why did he calm down, though, almost at once? He didn't even ask me
the exact date: he just thought for a second, and relaxed—
—oh
my dear God, he's not from
"Jude,"
he said, enunciating carefully, feeling his lips and tongue starting to go
numb, "what is the date of the earthquake?"
Jude
was still ecstatic. "Oh, we'll have more than enough time, I should think,
assuming you have any reasonable amount of capital. Point two megabucks
shouldn't take more than a few weeks. You do know . . . um ... a
flexible broker?"
Moira
started to answer, would doubtless have expressed amusement at the notion that
there could be any difficulty locating a shady broker in the city which held
the Vancouver Stock Exchange, but Wally overrode her: "Tell me the
date, Jude."
"Really,
don't worry," Jude assured him. "It's not until Fall."
Wally
groaned.
"Wally,
what is it?" Moira said.
He
turned to her. "I told him it was 1995, and he freaked," he said.
"And then he felt the air with his skin, and relaxed . . . because it
couldn't possibly be later in the year than late Summer.
Don't you get it, love? Either he isn't from
Moira's
eyes grew round. "Oh my stars and garters.
Jude!"
"Yes, Moira?"
"This
is Halloween Night."
He
nodded. "I have read of it. Anti-Christian ritual holiday, yes? Dress up,
like Sergeant Pepper, take Magical Mystery Tour. We have a similar ritual in
late October. And your point is—"
"Halloween
Night falls on 31 October."
Jude
grasped the floor on either side of him to keep from falling through it.
"WHAT?" Gravity reversed itself; suddenly he rose like a launched
missile, clutching at the floor with his soles to keep from flying away.
"This is October?" Even internal gravity failed him: his trunk
repelled his hands, and they flew out to either side. "The
end of October?" He forced them to his will, brought them
back in and beat them on his thighs. "The LAST FUCKING
DAY of October?'
"It
almost never gets cold here," Wally said apologetically.
Physics
restored itself in Jude's vicinity: he went inert, fell back into his
seat, with a thud, and kept collapsing, like a dropped dummy.
They
gave him a moment with his despair. They wanted to ask, but the question was
too obvious. To ask it would have insulted all three of them. Finally, Wally
cleared his throat as discreetly as he could.
"Less
than forty-eight hours," Jude said hollowly.
They
both sat perfectly still. How appropriate a place in which to receive the news,
Wally thought. Except the clothes on their backs, a statue of Siddhartha and a
forty-watt lightbulb, there was not a single material
possession in the room.
All
right, then: it was a good place to think. Wally thought, as hard and fast as
he ever had in his life. This time, even a summary of the resulting cascade of
cogitation would be impossible, but he was through within a matter of perhaps
ten seconds.
"All
is not lost," he said then.
Jude
nodded dispiritedly. "There is time to save ourselves, yes. With your
help, perhaps I can establish a cover identity that will hold. I suppose it is
possible that later, when things settle down and you rebuild your credit
standing, we might try to ... but then the problem becomes vastly more complex,
you see. This time machine will be destroyed by the quake—and since its
replacement in Halifax will just be entering operation, enforcement of
regulations will be at its strictest: it'll be years before I'll even
dare try to ... oh crot, if only I'd
arrived even a week earlier—" He was near tears in his frustration.
Wally
turned and caught Moira's eyes. "Tomorrow morning we can put eighty-seven
thousand dollars in cash into your hands," he said. Moira's eyes
widened—and then slowly, she nodded. They turned back to Jude.
Burned
once, he was reluctant to let hope back. That . . . thank you, but I don't
think that would quite be enough to—"
"You
were always lousy at math, love," Moira said to Wally. "The correct
figure is ninety-six thousand, seven hundred and fourteen dollars and fifty-two
cents."
Wally
nodded, mortified. In his haste, he had neglected to include their
own personal net liquidity in the equation. The figure he had named
represented only every penny presently in the Lower Mainland Science Fiction
Society's VanCon account, entrusted to him and Moira
by a couple of thousand Pacific Northwest science fiction fans. In his heart,
Wally did not feel there was anything really dishonorable about offering that
money. There was not going to be a VanCon in
two weeks . . . and only a handful of chronic pains in the ass were ever even
going to ask for a refund. Nonetheless, he knew the moment Moira spoke
that, having pledged both his life and his sacred honor,
he really should have thought to include his fortune as well. He excused
himself on the grounds that the sum was so negligible it might have escaped
anyone's attention. "Actually, darling," he said, anxious to redeem
himself, "we could hit a few cash machines, and get another two grand
before we max out. So the correct figure is ninety-eight-seven and
change."
"Well,"
she said, "I thought we might—"
"We
can charge our plane tickets out of town," he pointed out. "We can
even put movers on plastic, to ship the books and music to a safe place.
There's enough walking-around money in the house." He turned back to Jude.
"Can you pull it off with ninety-eight-seven?"
Jude
frowned in concentration—then all at once, shockingly, he giggled. "I'll
tell them I have to charge them G.S.T.," he said
puckishly.
Wally
and Moira dissolved a lot of tension in that burst of laughter. (Canadians in 1995 regarded the Goods and Services Tax with all the
affection Bostonians in 1776 had held for a similar levy on tea.) Each
felt rather as though they had gnawed a leg off to escape a trap—but there was
a sort of dizzy calm in that . . . and a quiet joy that the sacrifice would be
sufficient after all. For think of the prize! New Beatles songs—not a lousy
pair of them, but albums and albums—conceivably even some kind of tours again,
with a living John Lennon, and stage technology the Beatles had never dreamed
of in their touring days. A world healed of disco. A reconsolidation of
the hopes and aspirations of the Sixties, tempered by experience—
—and
it would be Wallace Kemp and Moira Rogers, Secret Masters Of Fandom, Secretary
and Treasurer of LMSFS, who had helped to accomplish
it! (Even if they never got to remember that . . . talk about your selfless
sacrifices . . . )
In
less than an hour, Jude had been fed, taken on a tour of the house and the hard
drives, shown to a guest bedroom, taught to use a primitive contemporary
cable-TV remote and a flush toilet, and left alone to sleep. Wally and Moira
talked for another half an hour in bed, making plans, but they knew they needed
rest and it had been a long night; they put out the light at around midnight,
and were both asleep in a matter of minutes. Wally's last fleeting thought,
before he slipped over the edge and into Strawberry Fields, was the bemused
recollection from a Catholic childhood that, in
that myth-structure, Jude was the patron saint of the impossible.
***
Realizing
their total liquidity in small bills the next day required some ingenuity as
well as effort; fortunately Wally, a professional hacker, had "social
engineering" skills which proved useful. He and Moira left Jude alone with
the TV and Moira's Mac (to Wally's disgust, he was told that the basic Mac
interface would triumph in the future—as indeed it had already begun to do in
his own ficton), and Wally spent the day stalking
money while Moira worked the phone. By nightfall, just as movers were arriving
to ship their most precious possessions to
"How
does it feel," he asked as he passed it across, "to be one of the
beautiful people?'
Jude
grinned. "Baby, you're a rich man, too."
Wally
handed over a bulky envelope. "Just in case you fail—in case they won't
take the bribe—here's a plane ticket to
Jude's
eyes were misting. "What a thing to do. Thank you, brother."
"Driving
a cab is a little harder than it sounds. Try and arrive a week or so early,
give yourself time to practice. Watch it done a few times, first. I typed out
some tips; you'll find them on a sheet headed 'Baby, You Can Drive Their Car.'
There's a tube of pepper spray in the envelope with it: don't use it until he's
stopped, on a dark street, then reach past him fast and turn the key
counter-clockwise. Our temporary new number in
"I
know it seems paradoxical," Jude said, taking his hand, "but I feel
in my heart that if I succeed in my mission, somehow, in some way, you will
remember your part in it for all the days of your life."
Wally
did not agree, but it was a pretty thought; he let it pass unchallenged.
Moira
looked up from her sorting and packing. "Get a move on, Jude. John and
Paul are waiting. Give our love to Yoko and Linda."
Jude
nodded and left without another word, threading his way through the movers.
"Have
you noticed?" Moira said. "He has a passing resemblance to Jean-Luc Picard. . . ."
***
His
last words came back to them both with great vividness and force ... on the
very next evening, as they sat up late into the night, in the guest bedroom of
a friend and fellow SMOF in Toronto, listening in
growing horror to a television and a radio and an Internet Reuters feed that
all doggedly refused to report anything whatsoever about an earthquake
in the Pacific Northwest. They tried desperately for hours to persuade each
other that Jude had merely made some small error in the date, or that the
authorities were censoring the news to prevent panic, or ...
But
they were not stupid people, only silly ones. By dawn, shortly after Wally realized and pointed out that only in the
unlikely event it finally provoked Canadians to open Boston-Tea-Party-style
insurrection could the G.S.T. reasonably have been
remembered in history long enough for someone from the year 2287 to have heard
of it, they had both finally conceded that love is not all you need. Wally gave
Moira the chore of booking transport back home, while he went down to
Jude
ceased to exist about a hundred meters from Wally and Moira's house. Operation
of his physical plant was taken over then by Paul Throtmanian,
who made a point of existing whenever it was not inconvenient. It was he who
conveyed the bag of swag a kilometer or two, from one end of Point Grey to the
other (passing within a block of the edge of Pacific Spirit Park), softly and
triumphantly singing John Lennon songs every step of the way. When he got
within two blocks of his current home—just as he got to the words, "I
don't believe ... in Beatles"—Paul too ceased to exist, and became Ralph Metkiewicz, programmer, solid citizen, and tenant-of-record
for that address.
Ralph
was the only safe person to be in this particular neighborhood—was a
considerably safer identity altogether than either of the other two. (Though
there were no warrants outstanding for him under any of those names.)
Nonetheless he kept the lowest possible profile, walking in shadow whenever
possible, and using every trick he knew to make himself unobtrusive when he
could not. He knew it would not be safe to openly enter his home tonight, even in darkness. Moira's sweatshirt and
Wally's parachute pants and sockasins were just too
weird for his persona, too memorable should certain questions ever be asked.
Not that they would be, but he was an artist . . . and a professional
pessimist, besides.
Happily,
Ralph's home had been chosen specifically because one could leave it without
being seen, even if it were surrounded by many policemen . . . and the process
worked just as well in reverse. He entered the underground parking garage of an
apartment building on West Fourteenth, used a key to open a knobless
maintenance door on its far wall, let himself thereby into a long concrete
corridor that led past the buildings boiler room, and then turned left. Halfway
along this corridor, which ran the width of the building, he bent and picked up
a small unobtrusive piece of articulated wire from the filthy floor, about the
length and strength of a paper clip and bent at six places. At the corridor's
end he came to a blank wall, seemingly made of particle board sealed somehow to
the raw concrete. There was a heavy-duty electrical outlet set in it at about
chest height, inset perhaps a quarter of an inch as if sloppily installed. He
inserted the bit of wire into the right-hand slot of the socket in a certain
way, rotated it clockwise, twice, and heard a small clack! sound. Then he repeated the procedure, counterclockwise,
with the left slot. He removed the lockpick and
tossed it behind him toward the spot on the floor where he'd found it. He set
down his bag, put his fingertips into the shallow space formed by the wall
socket's inset, braced himself, and heaved sideways. The wall slid away
smoothly and noiselessly to the left. He reclaimed his satchel of swag, stepped through the resulting opening into a
tunnel, turned and slid the false wall back into place, and continued on
without troubling to turn on the lights. At the end of the tunnel he found the
keypad in the dark, tapped the combination, and was admitted into his own
basement.
The
moment the door locked behind him, Ralph was tempted to become Paul again. But
he waited until he had queried the security system and confirmed that his was
the only entry, authorized or otherwise, since his departure. Then he
morphed back to himself, losing Ralph's slouch and outthrust jaw, and emitted a
sustained whoop of triumph and glee that made the basement ring.
It
was more than the ninety-eight large. His place in the annals of the great was
assured. As of this moment, Paul Throtmanian was
legend. He had detected, perfected, and just now effected
the first new con in at least a hundred years.
With
any luck, the bulk of the fame—the on-the-record portion—would be posthumous.
Ideally his achievement would not reach the ears of anyone who wasn't bent
until Paul was comfortably in the ground, or at least past the statutes of
limitations. But the players would all know, well before then. In the
bucket-shops of Vancouver and Melbourne and Markham, at all the major stock
exchanges, in the great seine of Times Square, in the cabs of Florida pickup
trucks painted with the names of hurricane-repair contractors, backstage at alien-abductee conferences, after hours in Alternative AIDS
clinics and Stop Smoking clinics and Facilitated Communication clinics and Cure
Cancer clinics, on cruise ships and in revival tents and in Vegas and Key West
and along Bourbon Street, in between dropping wallets or recovering memories of fetal rape or pretending to treat frozen
shoulder or dispensing market or other psychic advice, the grifter
elite of the English-speaking world would sooner or later speak of Paul Throtmanian with respect, and even admiration. The beauty
of the sting, the sheer joy of it, the thing that would sell it, was that the
higher the mark's IQ, the more likely he was to bite. Pleasure
without guilt, like Pepperidge Farm cookies. You could almost use MENSA's mailing list for a hit sheet. It was possible that
his fame would become planetary, for the gag would work in any culture which
had been exposed to science fiction. It was even conceivable that the gambit
might come to be known as a Throtmanian . . . the
way Murphy's and Vesco's and
For
once, he would outshine his partner.
***
That
thought came close to derailing his joy, for he loved her and respected her
professionally and did not want to envy her, and besides there was
darkness in her life just now. But he also knew that she would not begrudge him
his triumph—she would probably take some of the credit for it, and probably
deserved it—and perhaps his glow would brighten her present darkness just a
bit. If not, perhaps ninety-eight large in cash would. And he had to share the
news or burst.
She
must be back from
He
left the cash in a place even the building's architect could not have found
without deep radar, and set demons to guard it. He stripped off Wally's and
Moira's clothing and fed it to the furnace, along with the air ticket to
Halifax, the Toronto phone number, the cab-driving tips and the envelope that
had contained them. The pepper spray and the cab fare he took with him as he
padded naked up the stairs. He went straight to the phone machine, which
greeted him with four blinks. The first call was a hangup—no
manners left in the world. The second was an infant or small child, happily
pushing buttons at random—no parents left in the world. The third caller warned
him that the opportunity to buy into lucrative lottery ticket syndicates in
other, tax-free nations was about to slip through his fingers—Paul recognized
the voice, and grinned. The fourth, at last, was his lady love, who said:
"Honey,
I'm into something heavy here. I'm walking in the Endowment Lands, and I ran
across a mook looking to bury something nice just off
the Lowrie Trail, Dorothy twice, but that's not the
good part. He was digging away at the base of a huge old toppled elm tree, and
he hit something with his shovel that made a sound like clack,
something like plywood or plastic. And then ... I know this is nuts, but
then he had an orgasm, all by himself, standing up. And then he started to talk
out loud, as if somebody was grilling him—only I was only fifty meters
away and I swear there was no one else there. He said his name was Angel
Gerhardt and he lived over in the East End on William Street and his e-mail
handle, God help us all, was 'Frosty,' and he
named his girlfriend Linda Wu and his two housemates and said none of them knew
where he planned to bury the . . . the thing . . . and the weird part was, he
didn't say any of this like a mope giving information to the heat, he said it
like a guy opening his soul to his new lover, happy as a clam. Then he filled
the hole back in and buried the package in another
spot. He's gone now. I'm going to put the package somewhere else—but I'm not going near that goddam fallen elm without
you, and maybe Rosco. I don't know what we've got ahold of here, but whatever it is is
very very big. Call me as soon as you get in, okay? I
hope everything went okay." Paul frowned. It was a good thing for her,
he reflected, that he loved her. . . .
***
His
phone had no redial button (it was barely a touch-tone), and he had a mental
block against remembering her cell phone number. So it was necessary to go consult
the tackboard in the kitchen, again. Along the way he
stopped in his bedroom and threw casual clothes on, chiefly to give him time to
deal with his irritation.
Even
for God, this seemed low comedy.
He
didn't have the slightest idea what the hell June had stumbled onto—any more
than she seemed to. But it never entered his mind to doubt for an instant that whatever
it was, was of greater and more lasting significance than ninety-eight
large in small bills. Or even maybe the first new con of the century. That much
was obvious. This was his punishment for being a male chauvinist pig—penance,
for the sin of Pride.
Most
infuriating of all, the mystery fascinated him.
It
seemed clear that her mook had triggered some kind of
security system light-years beyond anything Paul had ever heard of—and security
was a field he had given diligent study. Whoever had designed the system
possessed technology the RCMP or American NSA would
unquestionably kill, maim and/or torture for. Paul's most plausible
first-hypothesis was aliens, and he emphatically did not believe in flying
saucers.
What
that system was meant to protect, he could not even begin to guess. He did not
waste time trying. It would be more efficient to just go find out. He was
already scheming ways to beat the system as he returned to the kitchen.
There
he made and drank Ghimbi coffee while he replayed the
relevant tape, twice. At the third mention of Rosco's
name, he went to the bedroom and got him. Then he sat in the kitchen again and
thought hard for several minutes, occupying his hands and eyes by cleaning and
oiling Rosco and practicing with the speed-loader.
Maybe
he was looking at this the wrong way. Just backwards, even. Maybe he was going
to become twice as immortal as he had thought. How many players had ever
hit two world-class jackpots on the same day?
He
read June's number off the wall and dialed it.
She
answered at once. "Hi, hon."
She
sounded depressed—more accurately, chipper: the way she sounded when she didn't
want you to know she was depressed. June said depression was like farting: that
all humans are subject to it, but it is not done in polite company. He knew it
ran deeper than that, for they had long since reached that point of intimacy at
which they could fart unself-consciously in each
other's
presence. But he respected her need to suffer in
silence, and tried not to be insulted by it. "After considerable
reflection, I've decided to let you live," he said.
"That's
nice."
"I
will, of course, do my best to ensure that your every moment is infinite
agony—but it just seems to me Hell doesn't deserve you."
"It
never will. What'd I do?"
"What
did you do? Only you could have done this to me, bitch. I pull off the
triumph of my career, dead bang perfect the first time—and you top me before I
can even tell you the news. It's fucking typical, I tell you. You're a
menace."
"Paul,
what the hell are you talking about?"
At
once he inferred that she was not alone. Something had gone horribly wrong
since she'd left her message. It was now imperative to know whether the third
party could hear Paul's end of the conversation too, or only June's. "I
see. Good as a nod, is it?" he said, hoping to hear an "Uh huh,"
that would mean they could communicate safely as long as he could phrase his
questions to require yes/no or similarly cryptic answers.
Instead
she said, "What?"
Confused,
he tried, "You're alone?"
"Yeah,
I'm out for a walk, over in the Endowment Lands. Why?"
He
had to nail it down. "Where did we first meet?"
This
should do it. If someone were listening, she would answer with the Official
Version: the one they gave to strangers, straight acquaintances, and casual
friends.
But
she answered accurately. "Fogerty's.
I'm
really me, okay? So what's going on? Did something go
sour with your thing, or what?"
Now
he was baffled. "No. No, it went just great . . . right up until I got
home heavy and found your message."
"What
message?"
"—,"
Paul said, and then repeated it for emphasis.
"I
just got out of Customs three—no, four ... that's funny—four hours ago. It
didn't go real great down in
The
one thing he was certain of was that the phone message was from June. Not an
impressionist, not a computer-assembled matchup of
voice recordings: June. In speech pattern, emotional nuance, it was
unmistakably his lover. He knew he might be wrong, but he was positive.
She
was an amnesiac or a zombie. There was no third choice.
"Look,"
he said slowly, "I think it would be best if we discussed this in person.
I really really do."
Brief pause. "Okay. My
place or yours?"
Paul
thought quickly. They had long since agreed and arranged that, for reasons of
professional risk hygiene, neither should be able to enter the others home in
its owner's absence—the stated theory being that what you do not know, you
cannot babble if drugged or otherwise coerced. Paul had never quite been
certain that security was the only reason for this arrangement, but had never
pushed to find out. June was the senior partner of the team; it was enough that
she always let him in when he knocked, and usually came when he called. But now
he was seeing things through new eyes. If someone else were operating her now, the tactical advantage for him lay on his own
turf.
"Come
in the front way, okay?"
Longer
pause than before. "Paul?"
"Yeah,
love."
"What
time did we meet at Fogerty's?"
He
blinked. Okay, fair enough. "Twenty minutes after closing."
Her
relief was audible. "I'll be there in about fifteen minutes."
He
hung up the phone and glowered at Rosco, so
frightened and angry that holding him did not make Paul feel as ridiculous as
it usually did. Dammit, he had not expected to have to be this paranoid again
for months, yet! A man deserved a break after a big job.
Mess
with my woman's head, will you? I'm coming for you, pal. I don't
care who you are: I'm bringing it to you. You just bought the
whole package. Batteries are included.
***
The
living room projected out four feet from the rest of the house, with a big bay
window facing north that wrapped at east and west ends. Someone sitting in the
rocker by the window could see a pedestrian or motorist approaching the house,
from either direction, from at least a block away. So could someone crouching
beneath the window with a toy periscope in one hand and Rosco
in the other.
She
came from the right direction. It was for sure her. She was alone. She did not
appear to be under any kind of duress or constraint, did not look drugged or at
gunpoint. She looked totally serene, in fact, until she was within a few feet
of the door, at which time she allowed an expression of mingled curiosity and weariness to cross her face. It was still there as she
let herself in the unlocked door and locked it behind her. Then it was gone,
for you cannot look curious and weary and hoot with helpless laughter at the
same time.
"I'm
sorry," she said when she could. "I know you told me, but I guess I
didn't—I hadn't—" She lost it again, and sat in a nearby chair.
Under
other circumstances he might have been irritated—but he was too relieved. So
far as he understood, zombies did not giggle. Or break their lover's balls. Issss," he said in a hokey baritone, and rubbed his free
hand across his bald scalp, "a pozzlement!"
The hand she could not see put the safety back on and put Rosco
away in his small-of-the-back holster.
She
got the King and I reference, and giggled even harder.
"Thanks," she said when she was done. "I needed that. You look
like that guy from Star Trek, the one without the wrinkles. 'Make it so!'—that one."
"It'll
grow back," he said in his own voice. "And it was worth it, believe
me." He got up from his crouch, went to the door and rearmed the security
system.
"The
scam worked? Oh, that's great, honey—you're a genius! A bald
genius. How big?"
"Ninety-eight
kay," he said smugly, buffing his nails on his
chest. "Perfect blowoff.
They won't even know they've been stung for hours yet." He admired his
manicure. "I'm so smart I make myself sick."
Suddenly
she was serious. "You're not wrong. I take my hat off. Do you have any
idea how many people spent their whole lives trying to think up a new
bit?"
He
had not meant to be sidetracked by this, but he couldn't help himself. "Aw hell," he said, "it's
really just a refinement of the Horse Wire."
By
this he referred to the classic con outlined in the film The Sting, in
which the mark is led to believe the player has secret advance access to
telegraphed racing results. It is indeed the historical grandfather of most
"insider-information" cons, and a case could be made that Paul's
creation was merely another, admittedly highly refined, variant.
But
June answered as if he had primed her. "The hell it is. It looks a little
like a Horse Wire, but it's fundamentally different. It's about the only con I
ever heard of that doesn't require the mark to be corrupt. Your sting
works on altruists. You've broken new ground!"
For
some reason her praise made him flinch. Okay, he thought, you've had your
minimum daily requirement of stroking. Back to business!
"So
have you, love," he said.
She
frowned, shifting gears at once. "Oh yeah. What's
this about a message?"
"You
better listen to it yourself."
"I
guess so." She got up.
He
pushed away from the door, and just in time remembered
to say, and just in time had the wit not to preface it with By the way, "How's
Laura?"
She
winced, and came to him, and they hugged. "Later, okay?" she murmured
into his neck.
Sure.
Maybe in their golden years. "Yeah."
They
held each other for a long moment, each relishing the physical comfort, each
wishing it could be prolonged. Then they went to the kitchen, and he started a
pot of coffee while the tape played back.
She
played the whole message twice, and after she shut the machine off, for several
minutes the only sound in the room was the merry
bubbling of water. Just as he was about to set out cups and spoons, she shook
her head as if coming out of a trance.
"You
said there's a priest's hole in this dump," she stated, fiddling with the
machine.
"Yeah. Down
cellar." His blood began to pound: she was using command voice.
"Now. Bring Rosco!"
"I'll
get a jacket—"
"Fuck
the jacket. Let's go." She was already heading for the door to the
basement.
He
caught up with her at the foot of the stairs: she did not know which way to go
from there. But she was right on his heels as he led them to the emergency
exit, one hand in her purse, looking back over her shoulder. He had caught her
urgency now, and didn't bother to conceal the code he punched into what looked
like a broken calculator. A slab of paneling became a door, which opened to
reveal the unlit tunnel. As he reached to turn the tunnel light on, they both
heard the horrid sound of an alarm echoing through the house, and probably the
neighborhood.
"Son
of a bitch," he said. "Somebody just came through the front
door." A different tocsin. "The fire alarm
too! Damn—I liked this place." Suddenly his eyes widened. "Oh,
shit—cover me! The ninety-eight large—" He began to turn back . . .
and found that June was pointing her own gun at him.
"Did
the brain fairy leave you a quarter last night?" she snarled. "Fuck
the money."
She
was right. He knew she was right. "But—"
She
took the safety off. "Move move move move move—"
He
moved.
***
The
best car in the underground garage was a '94 Honda Accord. June was better with
cars, they'd settled that long ago, so Paul guarded her back while she got in
and got it running, a matter of seconds. She had it on the street and
accelerating before he could get his seat belt buckled. "Where are we
going?" he asked.
"How
the hell do I know? Downtown, for now: try and maximize witnesses, disappear in
the crowd. After that, who knows?"
He
nodded and watched out the window for cops. A few blocks later, he said,
"You don't remember it at all?"
She
took her eyes off the rearview mirror long enough to throw him an agonized
look. "No! Not any part of it. If it wasn't my voice, I wouldn't believe
it. Except for one other thing."
He
nodded. "Our visitors."
"No,
they only confirmed it. I believed it before we ran—that's why we
ran."
"Okay:
what's the one thing that convinced you?'
"The part about Angel Gerhardt having an orgasm."
"I
don't get you. That part almost convinced me you were hallucinating."
"When
I left Dad's house this morning, I was wearing panties. I'm not, now."
Paul
turned pale, and then ruddy. "Jesus."
Suddenly
she started to laugh. "You want to hear something stupid?"
"Sure."
"I
actually feel better now than I did when you called. And I'm scared
shitless."
As
they came through the door they knew they were too late.
They
did what they could—hurled orgasms after both their targets, hard—but were
unsurprised to miss. Too much distance, too much building and wiring in the way
. . . and almost at once, the targets were enclosed in something that insulated
them from the tasp.
Knowledge
of the certainty of failure slowed them no more than the door had—that is, not
at all: they burned the living room floor away beneath their pounding feet and
hit the basement running. Walls received no more respect. But the door they
finally came to was made of sterner stuff, fighting a heroic fifteen-second
rear guard action before it too succumbed. So did the one at the far end of the
tunnel. By the time they emerged into the underground parking garage its robot
door had fully closed again.
They
let it live. To go quickly through so public a door would court attention; to
trick it into opening normally would take too long. Without hesitation they
backed out of the garage and retraced their steps
toward the single-family home they had just renovated.
Once
they were back in the tunnel, and its door to the world was fused shut again
behind them, she put away a weapon widget and took out a scanning widget.
"Lead lining," she announced. "Not just this tunnel: half the
basement. Positively Murphian."
"This
whole set-up has to be a Cold War relic," he said. "Basement bomb shelter
with a secret way in and out."
"Thanks,"
she said. "I didn't quite have enough irony to choke on. Somewhere, Joe
Stalin is chuckling. I don't like this."
"We'll
reacquire," he said as they reentered the house proper and sealed the tunnel
behind them.
"Of
course we will. But meanwhile we have two active leaks—and the second
target we know nothing about."
"We
know everything June knows about him," he said soothingly.
"Yes,
and she thinks he's an endearingly helpless boob. Do you think a boob outfitted
this house?"
The
house's security measures had been impressive, for this ficton. Impressive enough to keep their preliminary site
surveillance shallow, for fear of being spotted. For that reason, the priest's
hole had come as a rude surprise. And the speed—no, the quickness—with which it
had been used was certainly unsettling. "No," he admitted.
"This
is ungood," she said. "Two competent
paranoids, in a fairly sophisticated ficton, on the
loose with a Time bomb in their heads."
"So
let's learn all we can about target number two," he said. He waved his
hand like Peter Pan scattering fairy dust, and multicolored sparkles dispersed
in all directions.
Upstairs
in the den, Paul's hard drive powered up. Elsewhere in the building, photos of
him were identified and scanned; samples of his DNA were collected and
analyzed; his belongings were inventoried. In the basement, in the room where
they stood, a barely visible trail of red sparkles began to form in midair,
denoting where a heat-source of human temperature had recently passed. The brighter the sparkles, the more recent the passage. The redder
the sparkles, the longer the human had tarried there. She traced it down a
hallway to a place faint but carmine, and used her scanning widget.
"There's something good here," she said, deactivating an excellent
booby-trap.
"Be
careful," he said, approaching.
"Don't
b—" she said, and the second booby-trap blew her through a wall. He was
barely able to cancel most of the sound. A lot of upstairs came downstairs onto
both of them. He fought through smoking rubble to reach her side.
She
lay on her back, blinking up at him. "I am finding it very hard not to
dislike Paul Throtmanian," she said, her voice
gentle in the sudden silence.
"Are
you all right?"
She
scanned herself—and winced. "I came through fine—but love . . . I'm afraid
that was the Last Straw."
He
turned to stone, and it did not help enough. "You're sure."
"My
whole defensive system overloaded. For good. I'm an
ordinary mortal."
He
flinched, but said nothing. He owned no words equal to the occasion. He dropped
to his knees beside her and took her in his arms.
This
was a body blow, for her and for him and for their marriage and for their mission. They had both known this day
might come, for either or both of them—had spent centuries preparing themselves
for it, knowing that preparation would be no help. Sure enough, it was not.
Suddenly it was a very sad day . . . and nowhere near over, with utter disaster
on the horizon.
They
shared their heartbreak in silence for several seconds.
"I
dislike Paul Throtmanian," she said then, her
voice even gentler than before. "Let's go see what he was
protecting."
He
helped her up. Her clothing was already starting to repair itself—as if to underline
the point that she no longer could. Her temper was not improved when she found
that Paul's hiding place had concealed money. "Oh for God's sake,"
she snapped. "I thought it was something important."
He
was almost as annoyed that the cash had been destroyed—it certainly could have
come in handy for them, particularly just now—but he could not say so
without implying criticism of her judgment. Worse, accurate
criticism. Fortunately the stream of incoming data still being
assimilated and analyzed throughout the house picked then to yield up a useful
distraction. "Ah," he said gratefully, "there's a lead."
She
held the flagged datum before her mind's eye, studied it, and nodded just as
gratefully. "Good. It's a place to start, at least."
"Do
we want to involve the law?" he asked.
She
started to answer . . . caught herself. "You decide. My judgment is a
little off tonight."
It
was one of the bravest things he had ever heard her say. He saluted it by
ignoring it. "I'm on the fence," he said at once. "My inclination is obviously to go for a full-court press; I'd call out an
air strike on them if I could think of a cover story. But the way they bugged
out of here, on a second's notice, without even stopping for the cash . . .
maybe our only chance is for them to think they've gotten clear, and relax just
a hair. I think the cops might simply keep those two alert."
"Tough
call," she agreed. "Make it."
He
juggled the universe, backstopped but all alone. As he thought, he heard a
clock ticking, louder than one had ever ticked for him before. Sweat sprang out
on his forehead for the first time in decades.
"More
data," he said. "We know one of them; we know about the
other—the one with the testosterone. We need to integrate everything we just
got here with everything June knows about him."
Ignoring
the ticking, they closed their eyes, joined hands, joined minds, and did as he
had proposed.
MEMORY SHARD:
JUNE
BELLAMY,
June
tried to walk as if the right shoe still had a high heel, and scanned both
sides of the deserted street, searching the shadowed places for danger and the
arc-lit places for a door out of the world.
At
age twenty-eight, she had just made what she intended to be her last
professional mistake, overestimating not the character but the intelligence of
her partner. The Slider was so innately lazy, she had assumed he realized what
a valuable asset she was to him. She had trusted him completely to handle the
blow-off; it was well within his talents. Instead he had simply skipped, left
her standing there to take the gaff when the mark tipped. Caught flatfooted,
she had been lucky to get clear with nothing worse than a couple of slaps, one
good punch, and a broken high heel. In the Slider's stupid estimation, the
extra half of the take was compensation enough for the inconvenience of having
to find and train another skirt at his next address; never mind that the new
girl
would have half June's brains, skills or
talent at best. As a result June herself was on the street at 4 AM in Toronto
with no money, no safe address or identity, no local friends, and a dull
nauseating ache on the left side of her face where the fist had caught her.
She
understood her error, and looked forward to explaining his to the Slider one
day. Some equations, she would tell him, contain certain terms so valuable that
they cannot safely be subtracted or replaced. Or perhaps she could match
his own laziness and say it even more succinctly: a
good place to carve an "equals" sign occurred to her . . .
But
first she had to make sure she was clear, get off the street. The mark
might have yelled copper—or he might be in his Porsche now, casting through the
night streets for a redhead with a hitch in her walk. Her hair and makeup would
probably pass under streetlights—if she kept the unmarked side of her face to
the street—but even the option of playing hooker and flagging down one of the
rare motorists was closed to her: she looked like after the rape rather than
before. It was so late, other pedestrians were rare, and none she saw looked
like a serviceable champion. The cabs had all melted or corralled up or
whatever it was they did when you really needed one.
That
left a rabbit hole. Scarce, at 4 AM in downtown
Up ahead on this side of the street.
A bar with a faint light on inside . . .
Horse
Shoes & Hand Grenades, it was called. The owner had
hubris—June was absolutely certain every male who had ever spoken of it had
referred to it as "Horseshit and Handjobs."
She squinted
through the partially frosted window,
saw a shadowy figure behind the bar. Thank God—someone as lazy as the Slider, still cleaning up at this hour.
Her
knock startled him; he spun and stared from side to side of the vast window
that fronted the street, trying to locate her. He looked young and dumb and
just cute enough to believe himself irresistible.
Perfect.
She
knocked again, more weakly than before, and allowed herself to slump.
This
time he located her, and at once began shaking his head and waving his hands in
a reasonably impressive catalog of all the myriad ways there are to pantomime Go
away; we are closed, a statement so self-evident
as to be insulting. Marceau himself could not have
returned the serve more powerfully: she managed—long distance, in bad light—to
convey need, desperation, apology, tremulous hope and earnest
entreaty, without so much as raising her hands or ever drawing undue
attention from her sexual desirability.
It
might not have worked in
He
was still doing harassed, but now that he could see her left cheek and general state of disrepair, felt obliged to add concerned
and just a touch of generically gallant. Nonetheless he began by
wasting his breath. "I'm sorry, miss, but we're closed."
"I
know," she said, wasting some of her own. "But I just ... I ... look, I just had a really bad experience, okay? I'm a little
shaken up; I thought he was going to ... look, can I
just duck inside for a second and clean up? Maybe after that I can figure out
what to ..." She let her voice trail off.
"Look,
lady, I'd really like to help, okay? but the boss is gonna be back any minute,
and honest to God, if he finds out I let anybody in here after closing he's
gonna—"
He
certainly had a lot of breath to waste. "I'll only be a minute, I
swear." She paused a moment to let him begin his response, then overrode
him with, "Look, I got female troubles, give me a break, okay?" and
took a deep breath of her own to set the hook.
He
emptied his lungs in a sigh (breath smelled okay, a good omen) and, in the
Slider's memorable phrase, folded like a full wallet: slowly but thoroughly.
"Jesus Christ, you're breaking my stones, lady. All right, look, come on
in, the ladies' can is, uh, over there, just make it quick, all
right?"
"You're
very kind," she lied, and brushed past him, leaving him to close the door.
Once
in the toilet, she relaxed and took her time. The cheek wasn't as bad as she
had feared (thank God the son of a bitch wore the diamond on his other hand).
She decided it would pass with a little work, and did it carefully. Then she
addressed the shoes; by wedging the remaining heel under the sink tap, she was
able to snap it off—lowering her apparent height
by an inch or two. The tear at the collar she managed to repair with a safety
pin, although it required taking off the blouse. Since it was off, she took off
her bra too and treated herself to a full field bath, swabbing the sweat and
fear-stink from her armpits with paper towels and rolling on fresh deodorant.
The bra went into her purse, and several buttons were not rebuttoned
when she put the blouse back on. She brushed out her hair and restyled it to
present an altered silhouette. She removed and reversed her skirt, changing its
color, and rolled its waistband under to shorten it by a couple of inches. She
redid her lipstick with care. As an afterthought she slid a finger down her
panties, moistened it, and rubbed it off on each earlobe. She assessed the
results in the mirror, and felt some of her self-confidence flowing back.
Time
to boat this sucker, she thought. She made sure her purse
held condoms, and left the toilet.
He
was exactly as she had imagined him: pacing behind the bar, muttering to his
feet, drumming his fingers on every flat surface he passed, miming
impatience to an empty house. He spun at the sound of her approach and
stumbled slightly. When his eyes locked on her, there was an audible click. He
had clearly been preparing to resume their Dueling Mimes with a strong
combination of put upon and endangered by your thoughtlessness and
in no mood, but the impression collapsed as his targeting computer
claimed all available processing power.
She
waited, let him speak first, and as soon as he did she overrode him with a
husky "Thank you, kind sir. I really . . . owe you a lot."
"You're
welcome," he had to say. "But look—"
"I
really hope you mean that," she said. "Because right now I'd do just
about anything for a stiff bourbon."
He
wanted to say no firmly and at once, but was distracted by the half-grasped
changes in her appearance; by the time he refocused, too much time had passed
and it came out ineffective. "Jesus, lady, my boss—"
"I'm
sure he wouldn't begrudge a lady a single drink," she said. "Not if
he knew what I've been through tonight."
"Look,
a cop glances in and sees you here this time of night and we got license
trouble—really, they already gave us a couple of warnings: this time they're
gonna—"
"I'll
sit over here out of sight, then," she said, and at once took a seat at a
table which was both well outside the cone of light from the single lamp above
the register, and shielded from the window by a cigarette machine.
He
glared down at his shoes and relaxed to the inevitable. "One short one,"
he said, and turned to hunt for a bourbon bottle.
She
studied him as he built her drink. He was younger than her; call it three calendar and about a century subjective. He was of pleasing
height, shape and aspect, in shape but not obsessive about it. He was clean
shaven, wearing a black turtleneck and dark slacks. He moved with easy grace,
light on his feet, but appeared very tired, fumbling for things he needed and
pouring with only a sketch of professional elegance. As he went by the
register, she noticed the key sticking out of its lock, giving it the absurd
air of a windup toy. Something indefinable about his upper lip gave her a mild
but distinct urge to bite it. When he brought her
the drink, she noticed the bulge in his pants, without being caught at it.
She
thought about all these things, and then she made him sit down and told him a
long and gaudy and quite fictitious tale about how she had come to need succor
at this hour, sipping her bourbon slowly as she created. The story might well
have produced an erection on a statue of John Diefenbaker, and when she was
sure he had one, she slid a hand into her purse. "I've taken up enough of
your time," she said. "Let me just pay for my drink and I'll let you
finish up and go home." She stirred the trash in her purse. "Do you
have change for a twenty?"
He
bunked at her, turned to look at the locked register, turned back to her.
"You don't have anything smaller?"
"Afraid
not," she said, smiling sweetly.
"Forget
it, it's on the house."
"No,
really, it's the least I can do. You want your accounts to balance."
"I
already closed out the register. Thanks for offering, but it isn't
necessary."
"Well,
let me give you something for your trouble, then. Really, you've been a
life-saver: just give me back a ten and a five." She began to take out the
imaginary twenty. This was fun.
"I
wouldn't dream of it," he said quickly. "Look, have you got some
place you can go for the night? That creep could still be back at your
apartment—"
"I
... I'll think of something," she said.
"Why
don't I go back there with you, right now, make sure the coast is clear?"
"But
didn't you say you have to wait for your boss?" she said sadistically.
He
blinked twice. "Uh, well, if he's not here by—" He glanced at his
watch. "—now, it usually means he's not coming. Really, I'd be glad to
lock up here and—"
"I
don't think I want to go back to my place, just yet. I don't think I'm ready.
You wouldn't know of anyplace else . . ."
He
went for it like a starving trout. "Uh . . . look, what's your name?"
"Angela,"
she said.
"Angela,
I know how this might sound, but . . . there's a fold-out couch at my
place." He met her eyes squarely. "And I swear you can trust
me."
She
looked him over carefully. "I almost believe you," she said softly.
"You
can," he said. "I've got my share of faults, but I won't ever lie to
you."
"I
hope you mean that," she said.
"I
do," he assured her, quiet sincerity in his voice.
She
took her time deciding, for the pleasure of watching him mime steadfast, and
finally said, "I don't even know your name—no, don't tell me yet—but I'll go
home with you, if you'll give me a truthful answer to one question."
"I'm
not," he said. "Never even been engaged."
"Good,
but that wasn't the question."
"What,
then?'
"How
much did you clear?"
He
shook his head slightly a few times. "Beg pardon?"
"How
much did you take off the guy tied up and gagged on the floor behind the
bar?"
His
eyes went to her right hand, still deep in her purse. They were the only part
of him that moved. His own hand must have yearned to go to the bulge in his pants she had seen earlier—the one a few inches from
his erection—but it didn't even twitch. She was impressed. "You
heat?"
"No,"
she said. "And I'll never lie to you, either. Not anymore.
Sound like a plan?"
It
was his turn to take his time making up his mind. "Yeah," he said
finally. "I guess it does. When did you tip?"
"You
were too graceful to be such a lousy bartender. And you left the key in the
register."
He
was impressed. "You're good."
"Yes,"
she said.
"I
figure I'll probably net somewhere around two large."
"Chump,"
she said fondly. "It's time you went professional. Let's book."
"I'm
sick of the place," he agreed. He rose, got a briefcase from behind the
bar, said, "Sorry 'bout that, cap," toward the floor, and came back
to take her arm.
As
they walked out the door they nearly collided with a cop. He glanced at them
with idle curiosity, looked away politely, then registered the briefcase and
began a double take. Before he could complete it his jaw collided with a male
fist, distracting him so much that he failed to notice June's foot rising like
a Shuttle launch toward his groin. Its impact folded him like an empty wallet,
presenting the nape of his neck to her companion's elbow, and he ceased to be a
significant part of their lives.
"Now
you can tell me your name," she said,
when she had made sure the cop was out.
"I'm
Paul Throtmanian." He was breathing audibly but
under control.
"I'm
Susan Hughes."
"Want
a gun or a badge?" Paul said cheerily.
"What
would I need with a gun?"
"Good
point." He flexed the fingers of his right hand, winced, and started to
walk away.
"Chump,"
Susan said—but softly, to herself—and got the cop's wallet and pocket change.
***
She
told him her right name after the third orgasm. His third; she had long since
lost count.
ABSTRACT ACQUIRED DATA:
PAUL
THROTMANIAN,
BIRTH
NAME:
Paul
Donald Throtmanian
BIRTHPLACE:
Riker's
BIRTHDATE:
MOTHER:
Lada Loven
(apparently legal name; birth name: Ilse Throtmanian; deceased)
FATHER:
not known
CURRENT
LEGAL NAME (THIS ADDRESS):
Ralph
Metkiewicz
KNOWN
ALIASES:
Peter
David Talbot; Philip Dwight Tanaeer; Sebastian Tombs;
Richard Stark; Dick Starkey; John Archibald Dortmunder; Samuel
Holt; Ernest Gibbons, Sr; James Tiptree, Jr.; Dr. Lafe Hubert,
M.D.; Neil O'Heret Brain; B.D.
Wyatt; Edward Hunter Waldo;
Preston Danforth
Tomlinson; Parker Meyer Spenser; Travis T. Magee; Tak Hallus; Penforth Naim; Susan Donim; Dr. Winston O. Bourgee;
Paul Nurk; John Nurk;
Edison Ripsborn; Marcus Van Heller; Paul Teale
CURRENTLY
ACTIVE ID:
Metkiewicz; Gibbons; Hallus;
Naim; Donim; Smith; Teale (various)
REGISTERED
VEHICLES:
• 1994 Toyota Camry to Metkiewicz
(this address; disabled)
• 1995 Porsche to Naim
(location of record:
KNOWN
RESIDENCES, LOCAL:
• this address;
expired
•
KNOWN
RESIDENCES, NONLOCAL:
•
CITIZENSHIP:
Canadian
(2); American (3); Cuban; Japanese; all valid and current
EDUCATIONAL
HISTORY:
entered Chaminade
HS,
CREDIT
HISTORY:
labyrinthine; no credit history as Paul Donald Throtmanian after 1982
MILITARY
HISTORY:
none recorded; inventory suggests
advanced weapons training
WORK
HISTORY:
various; all apparently virtual except for a summer job as shipping clerk, K&K
Chemicals, Syosset, NY, as Paul D. Throtmanian, 1985
TAX
HISTORY:
none, any jurisdiction
ARRESTS:
•
COMPLAINTS
FILED:
none, any jurisdiction
CONVICTIONS:
none, any jurisdiction
WARRANTS
OUTSTANDING:
none, any jurisdiction
"There
is no point in mobilizing the authorities," he said. Upstairs, the Throtmanian/Metkiewicz computer reformatted its hard drive
three times and then boiled its own ROM; flames began whispering in two nearby
floppy disk caddies, two filing cabinets, a lockbox under the bed in the master
bedroom, and at three points in the basement.
"There
isn't even any point in chasing that pair ourselves," she said. "We
need to phone home."
His
shoulders tensed, then slumped as he realized he
agreed. Centuries of success, ended. Only the third full-scale Red Alert in their
entire tenure, and the first time they had ever needed to yell for help.
The
day had begun so well. . . .
***
Their
own vehicle, a generic grey Honda Accord, was parked immediately across from
Chez Metkiewicz, and their clothes had finished regrowing themselves by now. Nonetheless they left the
building by the discreet route, and circled a total of seven blocks to approach
the car. They would have abandoned it, but it was registered to his current identity. Several local residents and pedestrians
passed them as they reached it, and they were alert and ready with the tasp . . . but it proved unnecessary, as everyone's
attention was focused on the smoke and flames emerging from the shattered door
of the house across the street.
They
left that block with care, scanning the sidewalks to make sure no disaster fans
would need notice them to cross the street safely. Even after turning the
corner he drove just enough above the speed limit to avoid being conspicuous,
and maneuvered conservatively, until he found a spot on West 10th where an
Accord could remain parked indefinitely without attracting interest. The
distant sounds of the fire engines leaving the substation were audible as they
got out of the car; for once that fine brigade would be too late. They rounded
the corner and walked south at a speed appropriate to their personas, and for
another twenty meters into the dark mews between West 10th and West 11th. They
stopped abruptly there, and stood in perfect silence and stillness for five
seconds, making quite sure they were unobserved.
Then
they became invisible and rose into the air and flew southwest at barely
subsonic speed.
Like
circling seven blocks to get the car, stashing it felt like a waste of
time and energy. But the roundabout method got them home nearly two full
minutes sooner, without compromising security.
There
they found no good news.
Paul
said, "I think it's time to stop underestimating these people."
June,
involved with a "footlong" sub (nineteen
centimeters, counting projecting silage), did not respond. They were in the
safest place they could think of to dine at
"I
think it's time to change tactics, too," he went on. "I've been on
the defensive for over an hour, now, and that raises my lifetime cumulative
exposure to damn near a whole waking day. I think it's time we scared the shit
out of them."
"Paf 'ime," she said, then
swallowed and repeated, "Past time."
"So
we need a plan," he said, and took a bite of his own sub. He hoped that
she would take up the conversational ball while he chewed, but she took another
big bite of her own food. When he had cleared his mouth again, he tried,
"So what are our assets?" and took another mouthful.
"I
come up with bugger-all," she said.
"Zheevuf, Zhu'," he said, and then, "Jesus,
June!"
"Am
I missing something? As an asset, a hot car has the shelf life of a donut. We
have to consider both of our addresses blown. All three cars
gone or useless. Every ID we have is hot, including passports. Chump
change. No weapons. No good way to get out of town without new ID. Three real
friends in the world, each of whom would regard us as radioactive typhoid
HIV-positive lepers with Ebola fever if they knew what's after us. And I
wouldn't blame them."
"Hell,
I don't know what's after us. Maybe we're all of those things. All I
know is, I'm a dog who just got chased out of his own damn house, and if I
don't do something about it I gotta lie down and die."
"I
agree," she said. "I simply said we have no assets. Except fear, terror, and a fanatical devotion to the Pope.
So how would you like to start?"
He
looked down at his sandwich, and gave thought to pitching it into the sea . . .
following it, perhaps, with the portion already consumed. Then he sighed, and
took a deep breath, and bit off another hunk.
"Okay,
no asshetsh," he said, chewing vigorously.
"Exshep Key Wesh,
maybe, if we cang 'et there
. . ."
"I
think we have to consider that blown, too," she said.
"Not
for awhile, maybe," he said. "There's no paper on it back there at
home."
"Its in the computer."
"Jesus,
June, the fucking NSA couldn't hack into my private partition in less
than a week: even you might have some—" His voice trailed off.
"Oh."
She
nodded. "We've already seen them do things the NSA couldn't
do."
"I
said I was going to stop underestimating them. Right."
He resumed eating, frowning.
She
corrected him. "What you said was, 'It's time to stop underestimating
these people. . . .' Maybe that's doing it again."
"Huh?"
"I've
stopped assuming they're people."
He
spat out a mouthful of sandwich and stared. After a moment, he wiped his mouth
and said, "What, then? Martians? Sauron of Mordor? Cthulhu? Christ, Scientist?"
She
shook her head impatiently. "I don't have any labels for what's
after us. And I'm not looking for any. If I think of them as humans, I'll be
subconsciously expecting them to have human limitations. If I let myself think
of them as Martians, I'm liable to hunt them with a water pistol. If they're Sauron, I'll start looking for the Ring—you see? I can't
afford preconceptions: this is more than our lives on the line."
"There
is nothing more than our lives."
"Yes,
there is!"
"Not
so loud—"
She
lowered her volume to a passionate whisper. "I'd rather the bastards rape
me and torture me to death and crap on my corpse than monkey with my mind.
They're welcome to anything else they're smart enough and strong enough to take
from me, including my life—but they can't have my memories. Those
are all I've got out of all this."
He
kept silent, from surprise at her passion and confusion at her words and a
general instinct to lower their average sound production. He had known that
what had happened to June was very bad; awful, sure. He had not realized until
now it was skin-crawling. . . .
Well,
which was more important to him? Staying alive? Or preserving the
integrity of his mind? You can live, Mr. Throtmanian,
but you'll never be able to trust your own memories again as long as you live .
. . never know for sure what has been or will be taken from you—or, if
you prefer, we can put you out of your misery right now. . . .
What
finally brought him out of his thoughts was the classic Sub Eater's Dilemma.
(You've finished the sandwich; your hands are greasy; the paper napkin you were
using is a sodden, useless mess; you have another napkin, but can't get it
without soiling your shirt by reaching into your pocket for it with greasy
hands.) He solved it as he did most problems, impatiently, running his fingers
through his hair until it lay flatter and his hands were clean. June regarded
him with fond distaste. "Can't take you anywhere," she said softly.
"Do
we even know it's a 'they'? Do we know for a fact that there's more than one .
. . Jesus, we have to call it something—more
than one monkey demon?" He knew she would get the reference, having lent
her the book. In Richard Farina's novel BEEN DOWN SO LONG, IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO
ME, the monkey demon was the symbol of all ancient evil; it had no
limitations.
"Good
point. Let's think it through using one, and see if we stumble. Okay: I trip
over the demon in the woods, and I—" She hesitated. "—I have an
orgasm, and it takes over my mind. It interrogates me until it's happy,
disposes of my damp underwear, and lets me go. It doesn't need to follow me any
more, any more than it needed to follow Angel Gerhardt. But now it knows I
phoned you. It knows everything I said. It wants me to erase the message, but I
have no way to do that because your machine is so primitive. So it goes to your
place, but you're not there, you're out cleaning the sci-fi people. So the
monkey demon stakes you out."
He
held up a hand. "Interesting point. Why? Why not
just enter the house, find out everything it can about me, and wait inside for
me to come home? Or just erase the phone machine and tiptoe away?"
"I
don't know," she said, "and it's the first thing like a limitation
we've spotted on it. Maybe it could smell your alarms, and decided to let you
turn them off. Mark for later analysis; onward. Then you come home—but it
doesn't know you have, right away, because it doesn't know about your back way
in, because I didn't—you'd hinted you had a bolt-hole, but you never
showed it to me. For all we can prove, there was a second demon behind the
house, with no idea you were strolling by under his feet."
"There
was a back door alarm too," Paul said, "and I never heard it go
off."
"To
notice you were home only after a while suggests the demon or demons were
monitoring the house with something like thermal gear, from outside: it took
time for you to set it off. They thought I was in there alone, waiting for
you."
"Okay,
I buy that. I still see only one set of tracks."
"You're
right," she said. "There's no reason to assume there's more than one
monkey demon. On the other hand, there's no reason to assume there aren't
fifty. And my mother is dying." At the non sequitur, she flung the heel of
her sandwich from her, so heedlessly that it fell short of the water, providing
not even the satisfaction of a splash. "So what I say is, screw the bastard
or bastards. You want vengeance; I can relate. Let's deal with it in our next
lifetime. Let's abandon our luggage, figuratively and literally. Forget
Paul
scratched his neck and peeked. "Still a ways off."
"Alone.
Fat. Moving slow. I think
he's just strolling his beat."
"Back
to business, then: can we do that, you think? Just walk away?"
"There's
only one weakness I've noticed about the monkey demon. I don't understand it,
but I'm sure of it: somehow, despite all his power, he's as afraid of The Man
as we are. He could have taken either of us out at any time, with anything from
an axe to a nuke—but he doesn't want to attract attention to himself for some
reason. I won't be terribly surprised if he sends a fucking curse after us ...
but he can't put out an APB. I don't think that cop is looking for us. About
forty meters away now."
Converting
that laboriously in his head to a hundred and thirty one and a quarter feet, a
hair under forty-three and a quarter yards, Paul decided the metric system
could stand to be damned one more time. "And maybe if the monkey demon
notices we've disappeared, and after awhile nothing he doesn't like has happened, he'll decide we're not a threat and let us live.
It plays. So let's see if it's safe." He stood and walked like a numbskull
directly toward the cop.
June
sat still, and discreetly put a hand into her purse.
"Excuse
me, Constable," Paul said, pitching his voice just a little too loud for
the time and place, the way a real numbskull would do. "My name is Ralph Metkiewicz, and that's my fiancée June Cleaver, and
we've been talking about our relationship for hours, you know how it is, and we
were just starting to wonder, sitting here trying to remember, whether we
turned the gas off before we left my house, or ... what I'm getting at, I'm
sorry to bother you, I know this must sound stupid, but have you heard anything
about a house fire or some kind of commotion up on West Thirteenth
tonight?"
June
held her breath. That's my warrior, she thought. A hair trigger—everywhere
except in the rack, thank God! Hope it doesn't get us killed . . . or even
pinched. This is a lousy time to be trapped in a known location and have our
faces on the news.
The
cop sized him up. After an endless few seconds, the registers of his eyes
displayed: Numbskull. "Friend, if it doesn't concern this
particular stretch of shoreline, I tend to get most of my local news from the
TV, just like you. I was in your shoes, though, I think I'd conclude it was
something worth going home to check on."
"You
know, you're probably right," Paul told him. "Joan—Miss Cleveland
there—excuse me, honey, Ms. Clevelyn—was just
saying something like that. Risk versus game, or something like that. Weren't
you, honey?"
"The
term 'honey' is a demeaning sexist put-down, you know that, Ralph,"
she said. "It is not flattering to be compared to something wild bears paw
and slaver over. And I think the constable is quite right—aren't
you, Constable?"
For
her the cop took no time at all: Numbskull. "Well, ma'am, all's I'm
saying is, it wouldn't hurt to go check. I hope everything turns out alright
for you both. Goodnight, Ms. Clevemumble—good night,
Mr., uh, Metka . . ."
"Meskavitz," Paul said. "Thank you, Constable.
Have a nice night."
"Anybody
ever tell you you look like that starship guy on
TV?"
"What
guy?"
"Never mind. Good night."
Paul
and June left their bench and headed west, listening carefully to the tired
footsteps behind them. When Paul calculated that the fat cop was once again a shade under forty-three and a quarter yards
distant, he murmured, "See? Good news: we were right about
something."
"I
said I didn't think he had us on his hot list," June said, a
wonderful sentence to hiss through one's teeth.
"And
that was good enough for me . . . 'honey.' What would have been better: wait a
few hours for the morning paper to come out? Now we know we're not law-type
hot, and we can plan our getaway."
"Fine. Go ahead."
"Jesus,
do I have to do everything around here? You start. We want to go far far away. Tell me where."
"Not
there."
"Huh?"
"Far
far away is where the monkey demon will expect us to
go. We want to get clear, sure—but some place so close to the known Danger Zone
that only a numbskull would run that far and then stop. The monkey demon thinks
he knows we're not numbskulls: that's our secret weapon."
He
snorted. "By that logic, the smartest thing for us to do is pick up some
marshmallows and wieners and go back to my place to toast 'em.
We can join the crowd and ask in a loud voice if anybody's seen a monkey who
can suck your brain and make you forget you saw him."
"Maybe
that would be the smartest thing we can do," she said dryly. "I have
a feeling the least threatening place we could be right now, in his estimation,
is in a nice snug VGH mental ward with heads full of thorazine. It's something we know
that makes us dangerous to him, and mental patients don't have any
information anyone else cares about."
She stopped, confused; instead of being squelched, he looked almost cheerful.
"You
think he considers us 'dangerous'?" he said.
She
suppressed an urge to smack him. "Amend that to 'annoying,' all right,
Tarzan? 'Worth hunting and mindraping.'
You want to pick up those marshmallows and franks? We'll have to pull a short
con on a Seven-Eleven guy. . . ."
He
sobered. "As Oberlin Bill used to say, it never pays to be too smart.
Maybe a shade less audacity wouldn't hurt anything. Okay, nearby, but not too
near—someplace we can get to without leaving a record or passing a security
camera, with no ID and chump change. Well, I know one last good border crossing
I think I can afford to use up—but I'm afraid we're going to arrive in the Land
of the Fee smelling just like everything else that comes out of that pipe.
Let's try and clout something with two changes of clothes in it—"
"The
border's too far and too intelligent," she said. "Everybody tries to
disappear to a crowded place where you can blend in easy. Let's go to someplace
we'll stand out—to the locals, who we don't care about—and where we can
hang out a lot of tripwires, where we'll hear early about any other odd
strangers in town. We're both city lads, so we'll hide in the boonies."
"The
"That'd
work," she said. "But I've got something better in mind. Cast your
mind back about a million years, to when we were free human beings, loose on
the earth. What was I working on, when I had to go visit my mother?"
Paul
stopped short, and stared in admiration. "Jesus. Of
course. Whatsisname!
June's
recent trip south to visit her mother had forced a working con onto the back burner: the mark had been ripe but
June was too busy to pluck him, so she had been forced to reschedule. He was a yuppy software baron named O'Leary, presently away with his
beloved on a long-planned trip around the world which would take him three
months even in the absurd event that everything went as planned. Postponed
opportunity had proven to be a blessing in disguise: O'Leary's luxury A-frame
home stood unoccupied until his return.
"
"Where
is that one?'
"It's
one of the
"Better
and better," he said. "A little one. This
likes me well. Have you noticed that things always start to look better after
you eat a sub?"
"First
we have to get there," she said. She was cheering up too, but was not yet
ready to admit it. "Let's go find a doss. Tomorrow we scrounge a little,
and then catch a ferry."
"Scrounge
what?"
She
thought. "We need a backpack, maybe an overnight bag, some binoculars,
sunglasses ... an ice chest wouldn't hurt. And cash, of course, at least enough
for two pedestrian ferry tickets. And as much L.L.
Bean as we can lay our hands on." She looked him over critically, and
suddenly started to laugh. "And you'll need to shave." The laugh
built as he stared in incomprehension. He had forgotten. "Nothing looks
less respectable than five o'clock shadow all over your fucking head," she
managed, and then lost it.
So
did he, of course, and the shared laugh grew until they had to stop walking and
hold each other up, and in no time at all they were kissing, still laughing but
really kissing.
"Are
we having fun yet?" he asked when they broke for air.
"Who
stopped?' she said. But there was something indefinable in the placement of her
eyebrows, or possibly her lower lip, that cued him it was time to stop kissing
and get back to business.
Besides,
the rain was starting to really come down, now.
***
The
Lower Mainland of the
In
1995 one could drive thirty minutes south from Vancouver, almost to the U.S.
border, and take a large ferry from the immense ways at Tsawwassen
(providing one resisted the urge to attempt to pronounce it) southwest to any
of the medium-size, generally well-populated Gulf Islands; these gathered like
hungry pilotfish around the anus of the leviathan
Vancouver Island, whose immense torso enclosed the Strait of Georgia between it
and the mainland. Alternatively, one could drive twenty minutes north and then
west to the feverishly picturesque Horseshoe Bay, and take a small or
medium-size ferry from more modest docks than Tsawwassen's
to an assortment of smaller and less populous (thus more interesting) islands
in Howe Sound. These varied widely in state of development—from rustic
The
Paul
could not believe the security.
"There
isn't any!" he exclaimed almost angrily. "Look at this place!
No ID check, no cameras—I swear to God I don't smell a single cop, uniform or
plain. There must be some, but they're all cooping." They were strolling
along the edge of an immense parking lot which had filled in the last half hour
and would empty in fifteen minutes, on the opposite side from the long row of
washrooms, "restaurant" and other dollar-traps that were currently
milking most of the cars' passengers while they waited for the ferry.
"They're
probably helping a trucker with his engine," she said. "Usually they
try to stay visible. In case someone needs to ask them a question."
Paul
stared at her. "I will never in my life get used to this country. It isn't
fucking natural."
"Thank
God!"
"Christ,
we could clout a car right here in broad daylight, if we had any use for one.
I've seen three with keys in them."
"Where
the hell are they going to go? Every one is boxed in."
They
reached the front of the lineup, found a spot from which they could admire
"June?"
"Mm?"
"About
your mother . . ."
She
kept staring out across the gunmetal water. "She's still here. I can feel
it. Still hanging on."
He
nodded uselessly. He began to speak three times, producing nothing at first,
and then, "We could," and "If."
She
nodded, and put the binoculars on a bird. "Pop has enough on his plate
just now," she said, tracking it. "He can't believe they moved to a
country without socialized medicine."
"Yeah. I just . . ."
"I
know." She put down the glasses. "And what I'm supposed to do is come
into your arms and let you comfort me. You deserve that. You really do. I'm
sorry."
He
said nothing.
"I
don't know if this is going to make sense," June said. "I want to try
and say it just right." There was a long pause, and then the words came
out quickly. "You and me. When we're together I
want you inside of me, and me inside of you. You know
that. When we're together and it's good I want to be naked for you, naked to
you. I want
you to come inside of my skull and know me, know
me better than anybody else, know me better than I've ever been able to make
myself known to anybody else, know all my secrets and all my sorrows." She
stopped speaking, bent her head. The ferry was 25 percent nearer when she
continued. "Well, it happened to me, the real deal, and it sucks. I feel
like I've been raped by a column of ants, like a burglar left turds on the carpet of my brain on the way out. I don't
know, it—" She broke off again. When she resumed, her voice was thicker,
her words clumsier. "So what I mean, us, it's for a while it'll be a
little hard, okay? I'm trying to say hard the way it was, like before, feeling
that way again for a little while, with anybody. I just—I've only got
the two speeds, flat out and neutral, and I'm
scared to touch the pedal. ... I hope you can deal with that."
He
had trouble enough dealing with the simple urge to reach out to her with his
hands, then and there: the lunatic certainty that if he only touched her he
could draw out some of her pain even if she said otherwise. And he did have the
fleeting, guilty thought that running for your life is
much more fun if you can get laid during the lulls. But he was a strong man,
and loved her enough to give her anything she asked that would not kill him
outright or spoil his opinion of himself. He took several deep breaths without
being caught at it, and when he had himself under control, he said, as if
agreeing on a restaurant, "Space. Sure."
The
ferry was near, now. She checked his backpack, then
picked up her overnight bag. "Thanks."
"Yowsah."
Then
neither of them said anything until he said,
"Say when," and she said, "You'll know." By then the ferry
was beginning its approach, snorting foam, and he picked up the cooler and they
joined the rest of the foot passengers lining up at the gate.
They
were much more plausible as rich people, walking a couple of feet apart.
***
Snug
Cove, the ferry terminus at Bowen Island, was a lovely, sleepy little place,
quaint but not yet aware of it, its "downtown" small enough that
there was nowhere you could stand in it and not see forest, but just large
enough to offer a choice of "restaurants." They dined in silence (as
was expected of people dressed like that) at the least worst. The deck view of
a rustic duck pond guarded by a magnificent old grandfather tree was splendid,
but Paul was still moved to swipe tips on the way out. As they stepped back out
onto a sidewalk which, between ferries, was empty as a politician's word, he
spoke to his lady for the first time since they had left the mainland. "So
how far is this place?"
"About
a fifteen-minute drive, I think. I've never actually been there."
He
groaned. "Naturally. We can't go around clouting
cars, either; we have to live here. Is there any point in my even asking
whether they have cabs on this overgrown speed bump?"
"Nope." She headed off uphill
through the drizzle, toward the beckoning wilderness. He followed with as much
good cheer as he could muster. Within what he thought of as a city block, the
terrain leveled off—but the buildings and sidewalks went away. He was too much
of a city kid to be comfortable walking anywhere that didn't have sidewalks, but his guru had once drummed into him that
he must never complain (because she was sick and tired of listening to it), and
so he soldiered on, scheming ways to humiliate an irresistible force. Any
place that has fifteen-minute drives should have cabs, he thought
from time to time, as the blisters began to form.
Suddenly
June stopped, for no reason he could see. Distantly he heard the sound of a
motorist, and envied him or her fiercely. "What's up?"
As
though it were an answer, she moved a few steps to the edge of the roadbed,
held out her hand, and stuck up her thumb.
He
blinked, puzzled. "What are you doing?"
She
sighed. "Just wait. And pray."
The vehicle, a truck that had emphysema too bad to be singing that
loud, was almost upon them now. All at once it dropped its
pitch, like Tom Waits nodding off in the middle of a song, and slowed to a
complete stop beside them.
The
driver, a senior citizen, stared at them. At a loss, Paul stared back. Both the
old man's hands were visible on the steering wheel.
"Where
you folks headed?" he asked.
Paul
was too flustered to remember his cover; June supplied the name of the man
whose house they were supposed to be sitting, and described its location. At once,
as if some sort of agreement had been negotiated, the old man leaned to his
right and opened the passenger door of his pickup, clearly offering them a
ride. Up front, with him.
When
June began walking around the front of the truck, Paul decided people must just
do things like this in the country, in
Sure
enough, without so much as displaying a weapon, the old man put the truck very neatly in gear and took them
where they wanted to go. He did talk nearly as much as a New York cabbie, in a
voice clearly audible above the roar of the truck's renewed Waits imitation,
but was willing to listen to June bullshit back—he even gave her something like
fifty percent of the airtime. In the course of his own rambling he disclosed at
least three pieces of information of use to anyone who wanted to come clean him
out some night. He even waited to offer his name until June gave their current
names.
"And
it's all right to laugh when I tell you," he prefaced it.
"I
wouldn't laugh," June assured him.
"Aw,
go ahead, I wouldn't want to see you folks hurt yourself. My daddy's name was
spelled L-Y-C-O-T-T, and he always pronounced it 'like it'—'like it is,' he'd
say, 'and you can Lycott or lump it!' And then my ma
decided she just had to name me after her dead little brother Maurice. . .
." He waited until their faces showed they'd got it, thumped the dashboard
and cackled. "That's right: I'm Moe Lycott!"
After
a polite pause, they used the dispensation they'd been given and began to
giggle. "You don't seem mad about it," June said.
"Hell,
no," he said. "All my life, whenever I walk by, people point and say,
'Now, that's—'"
June
obligingly supplied the punchline, and giggled some
more.
Paul
did not really think the bald husband of a chirpy yuppie woman who kept silent
himself would be out of character, but eventually he felt he should produce at
least a token attempt at polite discourse, to make clear that he was not the world's only wealthy skinhead. He cast through his mind
for movies he'd seen involving country life, and at the next gap in the
conversation, he said, "So Moe, do you have any cows?"
The
truck was allowed to take a solo for the next forty-three and a quarter yards
or so.
"I
been a widower twenty year," Moe finally said, and immediately asked June
something about her imaginary job back in the city.
Although
June's directions had been general, Moe spotted the right mailbox with his cataracted eyes and let them off exactly where they wanted
to be. He drove off before Paul could even begin to embarrass himself by
offering to pay for the ride, leaving them the single word,
"Goodnight," as though he no longer had a right to talk their ear off
now that they were no longer locked into being with him. June turned at once
and started down the weeded driveway, but Paul stood where he was for a moment,
frowning.
"What?"
she said, turning back.
"Nothing,"
he said. "I just feel like a tiger trying to hide in a slaughterhouse.
This island is candy. Hell, Hopeless Harry could get healthy,
here." He blinked. "I can't believe I just said that sentence."
Hopeless Harry was the worst grifter either of them
knew, a man with a face so quintessentially dishonest that he had once been
stopped and frisked while dressed as a priest in a wheelchair; you had to
admire his doggedness, but then you were done admiring him.
"Down, boy."
"I
know, I know," he said. "I feel like the Invisible Man in the girls'
dormitory, though."
As
he had prayed, that got a faint grin. "Up, boy.
Come on, let's check out our lovely new home."
The
keys, as expected, were where people hide keys.
***
Much
money had been both thoughtfully and tastefully spent on that home. The
location itself was a postcard. The A-frame was a sketch drawn on the back of
the postcard by a master. It had two decks out back, both cantilevered
out over a dizzying slope that dropped what Paul thought of as about fifteen
stories in about one block to Howe Sound; lush forest on either side framed the
view perfectly, making it endurable. Next stop,
"I
can't believe this clown didn't actually get someone to watch a house
this nice for him while he was away."
"Why?
To make sure nobody moves in and trashes the place, or something? What do you
think this is, civilization?"
There
was a hot tub built into the lower deck, big enough for seven people or four
programmers. The barbie on
the upper deck enabled a reasonably bright child to cook half a beeve at a time to perfection, and the deck itself had a
built-in cable-and-power hookup in its railing so you could take the portable
TV/CD/tapedeck/tuner/VCR out there without stringing
unsightly wires from the bedroom. There was an Aptiva in the den, with Pentium
133 chip and 32 megs of RAM, a ten-gig hard drive, a
25-inch monitor and an 800-dpi printer. There was a similarly equipped Power
Mac in a corner of the living room; apparently O'Leary had taken all of his Powerbooks with him on his world tour. The brand-new
state-of-the-art high-end entertainment console beside the Mac produced sound
you could taste and video you could smell in any
room of the house including both bathrooms, and could be remotely programmed
from most of them. The fridge and freezer could have supported a midsize
restaurant; the microwave could have accommodated the other half of the
barbecued cow, with the gas stove for the potatoes and vegetables; there was no
room in the house without at least one ceiling-high shelf of books (most either
old friends or intriguing); the construction and carpentry were ostentatiously
breathtaking throughout; the interior decor said you deserve this quietly
but very persuasively, and it came as something of a relief to Paul when he
managed to find (in the garage) a single, inexplicably uncomfortable chair.
"I
don't want to con this guy," he said to June, when he found her sorting
through excellent drugs in the drawers of the guest bedroom. "I want to be
this guy." He smelled a bag of marijuana, and sighed. "I love
this part of the world."
"You
haven't seen what he's sleeping with," she said.
"True.
What is Mrs. O'Leary like? You never told me."
"What's
that got to do with what he's sleeping with?"
"Ah,"
he said. "You were working a Diabolique."
"A
modified Diabolique," she agreed. "What
he's sleeping with has a Y chromosome. Likes girls just as much as Henry does,
thank goodness, or I'd have had to be big sister fag hag."
Paul
nodded. "I wondered how old Henry was dealing with the problem of bringing
his mistress along on a world cruise."
"By
the time they all get back from being locked in a hotel together for three
months, all
the way 'round the planet, the boyfriend will be
happier than ever to have me help him set up a burglary-gone-wrong on the happy
couple, and run away with me. I just hope he stays greedy and half-smart,
doesn't decide to ad-lib and lever them both over the rail somewhere along the
way. I won't blame him if he does, but I want this place for the whole three
months if I can get it."
The
turn of this conversation was giving Paul a powerful warm furry urge to tear
off all that L.L. Bean, peel his lady like a grape
and throw her on the guest bed, so he put down the bag of marijuana and said,
"I've got the water and heat back on, and the hot tub is warming. Is it
time to go next door—wherever the hell that is—and start establishing
our cover, so nobody has the cops swing by?"
She
shook her head, and dropped a large chunk of hashish on top of the cocaine in
the drawer. Coke was just money one shouldn't flash, to both of them.
"That's covered."
"What,
you mean Mo' Like It? We don't even know how far away he lives; he could be a
hermit at the other end of the island."
"Doesn't matter. On an
island this size, the jungle telegraph is like the Internet: all users are
equidistant. Twenty bucks says at this moment, one of the neighbors is asking
what the world is coming to, when even decent people are shaving their
heads."
"Twenty Canadian? Or American?"
June
shut the drawer. "Whatever. And I have a much better idea than borrowing a
cup of credibility."
"Go."
"Why
don't you tear this goddam L.L. Bean off me, peel me like a grape, and carry me upstairs to the
master bedroom?"
Don't
ever let anybody tell you enough money can't heal, sometimes, Paul
thought. "That bed there's a lot closer," he pointed out.
"Yeah,
but I want to be carried further than that."
He
shrugged. "Works for me."
Even
for a strong man in love and his prime, yuppie clothing is oddly hard to tear;
Paul had to settle for merely rumpling everything but the panties. June didn't
seem to mind.
***
He
was very careful, very alert, until she signaled clearly that he did not need
to be; then he burst open and died and was annihilated and, timeless time
later, painstakingly reassembled from a kind description. Perhaps it should
have been disappointing to both of them that she didn't come, too. But she did
not always, when they made love, and often didn't care, and could be relied on
to cue him if she did. He offered anyway, licking her throat in a way that was
one of their signals, but she declined with a warm hug and an uncounterfeitable kiss, and reached for the remote.
"That's
why you wanted to come up here," he said sleepily.
"Better TV."
"You
know me so well," she said, and gave him a friendly tweak.
He
fell asleep watching a genuinely astonishing commercial, in which an immensely
fat hairy jolly man (immensely all those things) wearing only a jockstrap and a
skipper's cap did—for a Pacific Rim audience—a sumo shtick that must
have been to a Japanese what Step'n'Fetchit is to a
brother.
It turned out he sold junk. What a country! was Paul's last coherent thought.
Then
he slept, and dreamed that he was Gnossos Pappadapolous, and the monkey demon was chasing him and his
buddy Heffalump through
June
switched to headphones when she saw he was asleep, found the satellite channels
and watched a Japanese porn movie dubbed into Chinese for an hour, marveling at
the endless variety of ways different cultures have evolved to make idiots out
of themselves while doing something necessary, all in the name of a little
quiet in the pants. Hasn't there ever been a sexually sane culture? she wondered for the thousandth time in her life. Will
there ever be one?
Just
before she drifted off, she thought, I almost came. Next time I will. I
won't let the bastard take that away from me, too.
Her
sleep was dreamless when it came, and she woke hungry.
Pacing
in his bedroom, the evening after the con, Wally said, "Let's total up
everything we know for sure about the son of a bitch."
He's
uncircumsized was Moira's
first thought, but she probably would not have said that even if her husband
had not been armed. "He's very smart; he probably has five o'clock shadow
all over his body right now; he has our lives, AKA ninety-eight thousand
dollars, in a big brown bag; and with his head shaved he looks a little like
Captain Picard. And he was raised in
Wally
stopped pacing. "You think he's American?"
"I
didn't say that. Maybe he's a Canadian citizen, maybe he's a Landed Immigrant,
maybe he's just a visitor come north to shear the fat stupid sheep of Niceland for a few weeks. But he was raised in the Untied
Snakes." The pillows were giving her trouble.
"What
makes you say that?"
She
burrowed her shoulder blades into the pillow mass, and finally achieved
comfort. "He used the word 'table' to mean
'temporarily remove from consideration,' rather than the correct, rational, AngloCanadian meaning, 'put forward for immediate
consideration.' He was raised in
Wally
smiled. "By God, I think you're right. He did say that, I remember.
It didn't take at the time. Very good, love." He frowned. "Wait, now.
What about that G.S.T. line?"
"Misdirection,"
she suggested. "He's subtle."
"Which
one?" he argued. "Table' or 'G.S.T.'?'
She
echoed his frown.
"Let's
mark that one 'tentative,' for now," he said. "I'm considerably more
confident that he's a fan, possibly even a Truphan.
Inactive, maybe—about as gafiated as you can get,
now, thanks to us—but at some time in his life he smelled corflu,
I'd bet my collection on it."
"Not
necessarily," she insisted. "Ten or fifteen years ago, I'd have said
anybody who could sting us like that would have to be a fan. Who else
would try? But fandom's had a lot of media exposure, the last decade or so. A
lot of mundanes have noticed us going through hotel
lobbies in costume and asked the desk clerk what was going on. Anybody on the
Internet could have stumbled over all that PR we tried so hard to make
eye-catching, and found out about VanCon. From the
membership data he could infer the size of the nut in the bank, and even the
bank . . . and the names of the only two chumps with signing authority."
"Sure,
maybe," he said. "But constructing the scam itself . . ."
"—doesn't
even require that the bastard ever read a book in his life," she said.
"The movies are full of time travel these days."
"He
used the word 'ficton,' I'm sure of that," Wally
said.
"True,"
she said. "Okay, so he's read Heinlein. That just makes him literate and
lucky. It doesn't mean he reads sf for pleasure, let
alone make him a fan. Much less a Truphan. No fan could be capable of this. Not even Splatt."
Wally
resumed pacing. "Dammit, you may be right. But even so, I think we have to
put out the Word."
"To fandom? Come
clean? Why? Didn't we just get through begging Steve and Sybil in
"Moira,
our fannish reputations are dead, forever, the moment
the first major VanCon bill comes due. We have no
other explanation for where the money went. We can't even say we stole
it, unless we can explain why we haven't got it any more. There's only one way
we can prevent our names becoming the fannish
byword for Stupidity for the next century, now. The only hope we have in the
world of ever being allowed in a Con Suite again, the rest of our lives, is to
catch that hairless ape, ourselves, personally, and get back every cent we
handed him—in time for the con to go on. That gives us two weeks, absolute max.
And I think fandom is our only lead."
"Beatles,"
she said. "Internet Beatles forums—chat
groups—"
He
shook his head. "You don't have to leave traces anywhere to know all
about the Beatles. The information's in the water supply. I mean, there are probably starving hermits in
Moira's
choices were, get up and get the Pepto Bismol, or come up with an idea. "I got it!"
Wally
misunderstood. "Okay, I was just trying to—"
"No,
no, I mean I got an idea. Another lead, besides fandom!"
Wally
stopped in his tracks. If he had been the protagonist of Jack London's "To
Build A Fire," suddenly confronted with a Zippo,
he could not have become more alert, more hopeful, more frightened. "... tell me," he whispered.
Moira
began to—and from nowhere came the thought that it would be kinder to let him
guess it himself, and that her husband could use some kindness now. " 'Fool, fool—back to the beginning is the rule,'"
she quoted softly from their favorite bedtime story.
For
a moment she could hear his neurons firing . . . and then his eyes began
to glow, as if in illustration of the memory behind them. "Yes!" he
cried. "Magnesium . . ."
"How
many places could there be in the greater
The
question hung in the air for a moment. And then they chorused together: "I
don't know, but I know somebody who'll know somebody who will!" and raced
for their computers.
***
Wally,
having been both standing and nearest the door at the starting gun, won the
race handily; Moira arrived (looking not unlike the
"I'm
tryin'a think, but nothin' happens,"
it reported truthfully, in the voice of Curly (the real one), and began
rebuilding her virtual desktop.
As
always, it took too much time. By the time the desktop appeared on-screen, she
had begun to leak helium. "This may not work out as well as we hope,"
she said slowly.
Wally's
system had loaded faster; it just took much longer to do anything.
"Why do you say that?" He moused like Monk
taking a solo, off-rhythm but strong.
"Think
about Jude. Or whatever his name is. That's my point: can you see a con-man
that good buying a kilo of magnesium in this town? Under
his own name? And leaving a valid address?"
Monk
let the bass player have it. "Oh shit." Wally pushed his chair back
from the desk, and rubbed his eyes. "Any two, possibly,
but not all three." He looked like he was going to cry.
"We
should still try, though," she said hastily, and opened her Net browser.
She wished she had gotten the Pepto Bismol on the way there.
"Yeah,
we will," Wally agreed, his voice tired and defeated. "And we'll
check the Beatles forums, and we'll search the Net for 'con-man' and 'grifter' and strings like that, and maybe we can even get
Vicki's brother Jack to hack us into the cops' network and look for Jude's
footprint, and none of it is—"
"Genius,"
she said. "I married an intuitive genius."
Wally
blinked. "Certainly. What I say?"
"What
does Vicki's brother do for the cops?"
Wally
was hesitant to let hope return, but this was good. For the second time, he
chorused along with her: "He draws pictures of people you didn't think you
remembered!"
Jack
was a police sketch artist—one of the first to realize that the WYSIWYG
revolution had transformed his profession as much as any other, for no
other image-medium can be as quickly and easily changed, fine-tuned, as a
computer paint document. He was by training as good a psychologist as he was an
artist: he had once, as a parlor trick, drawn Wally and Moira a sketch on his Powerbook of a waiter who had served them the night before,
using only the memories he drew out of them with his questions and his
trackball. An hour later, a friend who'd had the same waiter a week earlier had
ID'd him from the sketch.
"That's
really good, love," Wally went on, excited again. "He can even add
hair and stuff, or show ways the guy could disguise himself, beard and glasses
and like that. We could show them to the clerks at all the chemical supply
houses, and—" He broke off.
"And?" She didn't want to ask, but
it was the only question she had.
He
took his time answering. "And let's face it: unless and until some clerk
says, 'Sure, I know that guy; I got his address and his Visa number, and come
to think of it, his fingerprints are on the slip,' we still have shit."
For
the first time in decades, Moira searched for words.
Wally
switched his computer off cold, swiveled his chair to face her, and when he
spoke his voice was awful to hear. "Let's admit it. We're screwed. The
Yankee son of a bitch is just too smart for us."
CHIRRRKRRUP, said the
phone.
Oh
Finagle, NOW? Moira thought. Five seconds earlier and
whoever it is would have gotten a busy signal on that line. When the hick goes bad, boy—But almost instantaneously she
flip-flopped. Nuisances have their place. When your husband has just made the
most terrible, humiliating admission he has ever made or could make, perhaps a
good distraction is not unwelcome. Even a poor one.
"I'll get it," she said, and started to rise.
"I've
got it," he said bitterly, and picked up the phone. "Yeah, who is
it?"
The
caller ignored the perfectly reasonable question, but identified himself
nonetheless. "Enough I had," came a voice
with what Moira had always called a pronounced Martian accent. "No more,
you are hearing? Any more shenanigans like the last night, police I call, yes?
My wife is upset, I am upset, you should be disgrace.
You are hearing me, flying saucer boy?"
"Gorsky!"
Wally groaned.
Well,
I asked for a nuisance, Moira thought. I hit the Lotto.
"Dem
right Gorsky. Too much, too long I put up. This is
decent neighborhood, Kemp, till you come with science fiction condom people. No
more! I tell you: you tell wife who has different last name: police come next
time. You tell naked Metkiewicz too: police come his house too—and one more thing: my dog puke
one more time, I come punch you face. You got no right poison lawn where dogs
live around, you—"
Moira
had turned to stone. It was Wally who found his voice first: an eerily calm, peaceful
voice. "Naked who?"
"Naked
Metkiewicz—how many naked men play big joke with you
last night? You tell him I know where he lives: they got special prison for
naked men, what is call? fleshers. He will—"
"You
know where Medgawhatsis lives."
"Metkiewicz, Jesus, M-E-T—" Gorsky spelled it, contempt plain in his voice for anyone
who needed to be told how to spell Metkiewicz.
"You bet I know where he lives. Ha ha. He is not
so smart he thinks, yes?"
"How
do you know where he lives?" Moira heard herself
say, and cursed herself because it was the wrong question.
He
answered it anyway. "Ha ha.
Big surprise, yes? He buys chemical for big boom from
my warehouse in
Wally
asked the right question. "What address did Mr. Metkiewicz
give you, Mr. Gorsky?"
"What?"
His
voice had been too dreamy; Moira repeated the question.
"How
do I know what address? Is in warehouse. Why you don't
know where your friend lives?"
For
a fraction of a second Moira debated telling Gorsky
that "Metkiewicz" was a thief, who had
stolen their money. The scent of a burglar in the neighborhood would elevate
even her and Wally to the status of provisional human beings in Gorsky's eyes. But he would insist on handing over his
evidence to the police at once. "He's not a friend, Mr. Gorsky. He's an acquaintance. Someone we know from science
fiction. He's having trouble with his mind, you understand?"
"I
understand good, you bet it. Big
trouble, sure."
"He
was acting so crazy last night, after he left we thought maybe we should make sure he got home all right, but we don't
know where he lives."
"He
go home naked, I know where he lives now. In hose goo."
He
couldn't say "hoosegow" when I had time to laugh, Moira
thought. "No, he wasn't that crazy. But I really think we ought to check
on him. Is there someone at your warehouse at night?"
"Is watchman. But he can not get paper. Is lock."
Moira
briefly explored her decision tree. Branch A: try to persuade Gorsky to give them the key to his Restricted Substances
records and phone the watchman to expect them; rotsa ruck. Branch B: try to draw the address out of Gorsky's murky memory; forget it. Branch C: give up and
hand the whole thing over to the police, like a civilian; make herself and
Wally—and by extension, God help them, VanCon and the
entire Lower Mainland Science Fiction Association—international laughingstocks
within and without fandom.
Without fandom . . .
"But
crazy naked man is bad thing. Hokay. You come over, I give you key,
phone watchman to wake up."
Absurdly,
Moira found herself thinking of the silly joke Wally had once made after they'd
seen a video of Stallone as a mountain-climber, endlessly going up and down
ropes to display his biceps. Wally had held up the video box, moved it up and
down a few times, pointed to Sly's picture, and said,
"Yo. Yo. Yo. Yo—" Up, down; up,
down—"That's very kind of you, Mr. Gorsky.
Thank you very much. We'll be right over."
"No
crazy nakeds in this neighborhood I want."
Wally ended the
conversation the way he religiously ended conversations with that man. "Good
luck, Mr. Gorsky." He disconnected.
They
swiveled to face each other, and simultaneously reached to take each other's
hands, and as their fingers touched they allowed themselves to smile.
"Hose
goo," she said. "Oh, that is precious."
"The
man next door has just walked on the Moon," Wally said, smiling bigger.
"Every
once in a while, maybe a good deed goes unpunished," Moira said.
"We
are going to explain to Jude that it's a fool who plays it cool, by making his
world a little colder."
"Lets go get under his skin," she agreed. They put their
silicon servants to sleep, and left the office. Like any Vancouverite about to
leave home unexpectedly at night, Moira zapped the TV on to access the cable
weather channel to find out whether rain-gear was required. It came on with a
shriek of sound, tuned to the local news channel; the last time the set had
been used, they'd been listening for earthquake warnings while running around
the house packing. The screen filled with a long shot of a smoking ruin, and an
earsplitting voice bellowed, "OINT GREY
COMPUTER PROGRAMMER RALPH METKAVITCH'S HOME WAS
DESTROYED BY FIRE FOLLOWING AN UNEXPLAINED EXPLOSION LAST NIGHT, AND THE
PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION REPORT SAYS THAT ARSON QUOTE CANNOT BE RULED OUT
UNQUOTE. SO FAR POLICE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO CONTACT MESKOWITZ,
WHOM NEIGHBORS SAID HAD RECENTLY SHAVED HIS HEAD—"
Moira
tried for either the volume down or mute buttons, and missed both; the set went off. She thought about turning it
back on, and could not think of a point. She turned to her husband, and at the
sight of his face she blanched. "Oh, Wally."
"It's
not the despair," he said, his voice placid, conversational. "I can
deal with the despair."
She
nodded. "It's the hope."
"Yeah. It's killing me."
Sigh.
"Me too, Wally."
CHIRRRKRRUP, said the
phone.
"Do
we answer it?" she asked.
Wally
sighed. "Why not? We haven't got anything better
to do. Maybe it's a Psychic Friend, calling to tell us where to find Jude.
Maybe it's Dr. Kevorkian letting us know he's going to
be in the neighborhood, that'd be useful—"
"I'll
go."
"No,
I'll get it."
She
compromised, waiting until he caught up and then putting on the speakerphone.
"Is this someone with good news or money?"
"Both,"
said the phone.
"Steve?"
"I
got a lead on your guy."
Silence.
"Hello?"
It
was Moira who reinvented breathing first. "Say again, Steve."
"I
got your guy. Got an address and an accomplice, anyway—from the Net."
Moira
would not have believed, if informed beforehand, that a heart could so
simultaneously rise and fall. This might just possibly be good news—but it was
probably worthless, and its cost could be dear. Had Steve started a fannish clock ticking on their amateur manhunt? Had he told anyone why he needed the data? "Steve, just how
did you get this—"
Wally
overrode her, slapping the record button on the phone machine.
"What's the address you have?"
The
vibrations of his voice had to be translated by the phone into a pattern of
electrical signals; these had to cross half a continent, starting at the speed of
light but arriving much slower due to switching delays; converting them back
into sound waves took more time, then Steve needed at least three times as long
to hear, grasp, and respond to them—whereupon the whole weary process began in
reverse. All this time, Moira waited, absolutely certain that if she were just
patient enough Steve would give them the late address of the former Ralph Metkiewicz, and they could hang up and get back to
contemplating suicide. She and hope were quits for the night; maybe for good.
"Pencils
ready? One, zero, six, fi-yuv, niner,
Point Grey that's ee why Road, Vancouver; postal code
Varley eight Unicorn, four Rotsler
six. Owner of record is a Carlo with a sea Bernardo. He got mail there through
an account registered to 'Penforth Naim,' that's en-nuh, eh, eye, em-muh, but obviously that's not gonna do you much good.
Still, it's a start. You want me to repeat any of
that?"
Moira's
operating system was hung, her cursor and her cursor both frozen; Wally had to
take it. "No, that's okay, Steve-o, it's on tape. I'm genuinely impressed.
Tell me, though, how exactly did you dig all that up?"
"Relax:
I know what you're thinking. It's cool—really.
I understand this is ... uh ... a sensitive matter. What I did, I logged onto
the Net and tapped the fannish grapevine—"
Moira
moaned.
"No,
really, wait a minute and listen. I didn't say anything about . . . about what
happened to you guys, okay? Not a word."
When
it was clear that Steve would wait until someone reassured him or hell froze
over, whichever came first, Wally said. "You have our complete confidence,
Steve. What did you say then?"
"I
said I was putting together a Next Generation parody for VanCon,
called 'Data Takes A Dump,' and I wanted to know if anybody had seen anyone
around a con lately that looked like Picard and
either was bald or wouldn't mind shaving his head."
The
metaphorical lightbulb that appeared in the air over
Moira's and Wally's heads baked their shadows onto the wall.
"Bless
my soul!" Wally exclaimed. Moira backed up involuntarily until she hit the
fridge, and gave thought to sliding down it to a sitting position. But she
couldn't face getting back up again. "Steven," she said weakly,
"would you and Sybil like a couple of sex-slaves for a year or so?"
"You'll
have to take a number—damn city building-code won't
let me expand the dungeon without a permit. Now, naturally I got about two
dozen hits—hell, I got people who were willing to have plastic
surgery to play Picard at a Worldcon,
and have you noticed? there's no shortage of bald guys
in fandom. But I'm pretty sure if any of 'em is your
guy, it's the one I gave you. Yin the Stomach-Settling talked to him at the
Registration Table at Vikingcon, down in
"As
far as I know," Wally said, "that may be the second sign of sloppy
workmanship he's shown."
"Well,
actually it wasn't all that sloppy. He must have thought it was safe: the
address he gave her went through anon.data.ru."
This was a Moscow-based free Internet service, created and run by a volunteer
and funded entirely by donations, which relayed e-mail after stripping off its
identifying header—conferring effective anonymity on its users. "Yin
said on the strength of that she included some of her private porn in the stuff
she sent him, but she never heard back."
"Then
how did you get a meat address?" Moira heard herself ask.
Steve
made the vocal equivalent of a suicide's hesitation marks.
"Steve?"
Wally said.
"Look,
this is completely DNQ, all right? I mean, really.
I keep your secret, you keep mine, okay? The guy that runs anon.data.ru is a friend of mine."
The
metaphorical flashbulb attempted to flare again, but it was shot.
"You
told him the truth," Wally said.
"I
had to. He wouldn't have breached security to help me find an
amateur actor. He's only EVER opened his files twice, and nobody knows about either
one or he'd be out of business. Both times were to stop criminals in progress—and
I mean, he's got a comfortingly narrow definition of 'criminal.' But 'thief' fits. He says this guy is too
clever to be walking around."
"Roger
that," Moira muttered.
"Did
he let you browse 'Mr. Pen Naim's' traffic?"
Wally asked.
"Negatory. He says catching crooks is one thing, reading
their mail's another. I have to agree."
"Yes,
I suppose so," Wally agreed, rubbing his forehead. "I'll settle for
reading his entrails."
"Well,
I'll tell you what my friend in
"Please
do."
"He
said 'bolshoyeh luck.'"
"Thank
him for us. Discreetly but profusely. No one will ever
know where we got the information, I promise him that. As for yourself, I would
begin to outline a summary of just the highlights of all the many ways we thank
you, but this is your dime. We owe you big-time."
"I'll
relay your offer to Sybil. She happens to have an opening . . . and, a position
available, too. Good hunting, you guys. Remember, if you lose him, you're no
worse off than you are now—you can't be—but
if you get him, you'll live forever. Later."
The
speaker clicked off. There was silence. Wally reached up and shut off the phone
machine, hit rewind.
Moira
said quick "OhWallyifthefuckingtapedidn't—"
Wally
cut her off. "One, zero, six, fi-yuv, niner, Point Grey that's ee why
Road, Vancouver; postal code Varley eight Unicorn,
four Rotsler six. Carla with a sea Bernardo: cute. Penforth Naim: too cute. Let's go
see Ms. Bernardo."
Moira
saw his hand twitch toward his pants pocket, toward
the little .22 he had bought from a helplessly giggling Rastafarian on
He
hesitated, and his hand twitched again. And then he relaxed. "Never make
decisions in haste that don't call for haste. If she's there now, she'll be
there in an hour. You take municipal and provincial, I'll take federal."
"The
other way round," she said, already on her way, physically and mentally.
***
An
hour later, they parked their
"What's
'cute' about the name Carla Bernardo?" Moira asked.
"You
don't want to know. Dammit, I don't see any lights on in there."
"Well,
it's late."
"Not
to a thief. Maybe they're out working; we can wait here and ram them in their
own driveway."
"We
could look through the garage window and see if there's a car in there."
"Screw
it; let's just go knock on the door and see what happens." He started to
get out of the car, but Moira could be a very effective anchor.
"What?"
She
looked him in the eye. She kept her voice very low and calm. "Wally? Do you want to out-think this guy, for
once?"
"More
than I want to win a Hugo."
"Give
me the gun."
He
opened his mouth . . . and in spite of himself, he began to smile. "Oh,
that is good. That is smart. I smell like fear and testosterone: if he's there
he'll watch my hands and you can put one through his knee."
She
was mildly surprised to realize that she was actually prepared to do that.
"You remember how good I was with a paint-gun that time in
"You
hit what you aim at," he agreed. "Here." With some difficulty,
he extricated the gun from his pants, checked the safety, and passed it across.
As he did so, his smile turned wry. "It's technically a lady's gun anyway,
the Rasta said."
She
moved her hand from his shoulder to his cheek. "Wally ... I promise you I
won't shoot him until you hit him at least once, okay? Unless
he runs."
He
turned his face and kissed her hand. "Thank you. The safety's on the
right."
"I
saw how it works." She placed it carefully in her purse, and hung the
purse from her right shoulder, unzipped.
They
left and locked the car and, since it was late at night, crossed
She
stopped on the minuscule sidewalk and looked at him. "In
a dumpster?"
"Well,
it didn't come out the other side. But I think I heard it hit the back."
"Did
it shoot straight?"
"I
don't know. Uh ... I was aiming at the dumpster."
She
nodded. "Good enough. Five rounds, got it. Let's
check the garage before we knock."
They
walked through a florid floral quotation from
generic on the right, maybe only a lowly
Thunderbird or something."
"Looks
like a Camry to me." She took her hand from the gun and rummaged in the
purse until she found her Swiss Army knife; went over to the edge of the door
and examined its track. She found a place to wedge the knife, and opened some
of its extensions to tighten it in place, trapping the Porsche in its bay.
"There. Now if they get past us and make it to the garage, we only have to
catch another Camry. Now we ring the bell."
Wally
examined her in admiration for a moment—she felt it—before he followed.
She
let him ring the bell. Its melody was like a commercial for a laxative—lovely
on first hearing, cloying at the fifth repetition . . . binding by the tenth.
She
was afraid he might get angry then—his face was dark as he turned away from the
door—but his voice was calm. "Okay, we gather information. Let's try
neighbors. Wake 'em up if we have to."
"What
do we tell them?"
"Whatever they want to hear."
To
their surprise, they hit pay dirt on the first try. The neighbor immediately to
the west of Casa Bernardo was a find from the point of view of just about any
collector.
Her
face alone was worth driving a long way to see: it had started out pretty once,
many years ago, and then she had dieted until the bones showed clearly, and
then she had had it repeatedly lifted until, on first viewing, one felt the
cruel impulse to bounce a quarter off her cheek. Even in the doorway light, the
line where the nasal region of her skull gave way to cartilage was clear; in
better light, Moira was confident she could have traced the way that cartilage
had been rebuilt. The woman looked overall like a concentration-camp survivor
onto whom absurd balloon breasts had been grafted by Dr. Mengele,
dressed in the Bitch of Buchenwald's housecoat and
given Szell's cigarette holder. For their purposes
she was the ideal menagerie: mean as a snake, nosy as a cat, territorial as a
pit bull, shameless as a ferret, loud as a gull, smart as an ox, and drunk as a
skunk. They had won the Blotto.
She
opened the door talking; it was a full minute before they were able to fold and
insert their names. The moment she grasped that they were interested in any
gossip she might have about That Pardon My French But Cunt Next Door and/or Her Stud Gigolo, it ceased being necessary for Wally or Moira to do anything but murmur and
nod from time to time, with an occasional cluck or tsk
as seemed indicated. She even reeled away into the house—waving them sternly to
wait where they were—and returned with several photographs of an astonishing
zoo-parade of zombies at a recent Do in her backyard: three shots had Carla
Bernardo in frame in the background, and one of those included a clear shot of
Jude/Metkiewicz/Naim with a full head of hair. They
were in their own yard, at a raised poolside, visibly sneering at the party.
Mrs. Never Mind What My Name Is, I Live Here was unwilling to give Wally and
Moira any of the photographs—but was willing to sell them the shot with
both targets in it for the approximate cost of an exclusive McKinnon, since it
also depicted guests she particularly despised (for reasons they were obliged
to hear). She even took one of Wally's cards—Moira's she ignored—and swore to
call him the instant That What I Said or Her Love Slave came home. She
assured them she would know, day or night; they did not doubt this. Then she
gave Wally a quick but nonetheless sloppy bourbon kiss he was too shocked to
dodge, and closed the door in their faces, but Moira did not shoot her through
it.
"You
know," she said as they walked back to their car, "I hate to say it,
but I'm almost starting to enjoy this. Stephen Cannell
couldn't have written her dialogue better."
"Monologue,"
Wally corrected, wiping his mouth and spitting.
"We
were getting stale, Wally: we gotta start
hanging out with mundanes again. You know, if a pygmy
shrunk her, she wouldn't get any smaller."
Wally
began to giggle. "If you unscrewed the top of her head, her whole skeleton
would come squirting out from the pressure—" He chortled. "—and
there'd be this little glove left, shaped like Linda Hunt—" He whooped.
"Unzip the back of her head, and her face would be in your
face—"
"Keep
it down. A sincere laugh in this neighborhood is unusual enough somebody might
call the cops—and I'm holding a firearm."
He
reduced his mirth by increments to a silly grin, and they got in the car.
"Okay, now we're getting somewhere. We know there's
two of them, we have their pictures, we know a lot about their habits, and we
have their house staked out for us by a force of nature. All we have to do now
is—
"Honey,
I, uh, I have a bad feeling about that part."
His
grin flickered.
"Maybe
you'll think this is hard to buy, with that Porsche sitting there in that
garage and all that money blooming all over the place . . . but I think maybe
why I buy it is that Porsche, just sitting there. . . . Wally, honey, I
don't think they're coming back here. I think something happened, something
spooked them, some other con blew up in their faces,
probably. Jude's house got torched last night, and according to Robo-neighbor they left here on foot a few hours later. I
think they're on the run."
"We
have competition," Wally said, in his testosterone voice.
"But
maybe we're a jump ahead of them," she said quickly. "That . . .
life-form back there would have mentioned anybody else asking about Carla, so
we have information nobody else does."
"Sure—about
why Motormouth doesn't like her other neighbor Mrs.
Wong."
"Think,
Wally. She said they left in the middle of the night dressed for a day of
hiking. ... I remember distinctly the way she made five syllables out of 'L.L. Be-ean-uh' . . . and
she said they were carrying an ice chest and a backpack and an overnight bag.
Carla's a Canadian, from
"Terrific,"
he said. "That narrows it down to three hundred and sixty possible
degrees. Maybe they dug themselves a bunker over in the Endowment Lands—excuse
me,
"It
means wherever they run to, it won't be far. And not where
anybody else would expect a con-man to run to, not downtown or the 'burbs or another city altogether."
He
nodded. "Yeah. That's good."
"Everybody
else will be watching the airport and the bus station and the highways and the Tsawwassen Terminal . . . and meanwhile they'll take the
bus or Skytrain or the Seabus
or ... I don't know, the Horseshoe Bay Ferry."
"But
we still don't know which, or how far."
"No, but look on the bright side.
Country grapevine works even better than city grapevine—if you're listening to
it."
His
fickle grin returned. "Wherever there's a Nowheresville
. . . there's a fan with a modem. Those two will stick out more there—to
us. Oh, I like it, darling. Let's go get their pictures scanned in and cropped,
and put them—no, get Steve to put them out on the Net. You're right. Maybe our
luck is finally starring to turn."
He
should really have known better than to make a U-turn on
Fortunately,
Canadian cops do not search stopped vehicles—or their passengers'
purses—without a good reason. The pair got back home with nothing worse than a
ticket that would put points on Wally's license . . . and one set of slightly
damp underwear. His, if you must know.
Rain
was just beginning to fall as they arrived. Ignoring it, and being ignored in
return, they landed in front of their home in
She
found that she was both exhilarated and exhausted. (These terms relative to her
normal emotional state: any human observer would have thought her serene.) The
simple intellectual knowledge that one has become mortal, can die, changes a
thing like flying. The sensation was oddly invigorating, as if in pathetic
compensation for its cost.
He
did not notice, nor did she hold it against him. He was too worried for her to
empathize with her fully right now; she would have to do something about that
when she had time. And they were both too busy.
"I'll
make coffee," she said. Human domestic customs, adopted for cover and
practiced for drill, had worked their insidious comfort over the centuries. The
ritual would help her ground herself, and him as well,
even if the caffeine itself was superfluous.
He
nodded, understanding. "I'll build a fire." He used his hands.
Both
had long practice in achieving and sustaining calm; it was a large part of what
they did. By the time the hearth was crackling and the coffee was steaming,
they were ready to see the humor in the situation, and nearly ready to
appreciate it.
"E.T.," she said. She blew across the surface of her
cup, grateful for the professionalism which had caused her to develop that
habit, now that her lips could be burned, "Only its Extra Temporal, rather
than Terrestrial."
He
smiled, understanding the reference. "Yes. Time for us
to Phone Home. Talk about call forwarding!"
She
sighed. "Never expected to do it."
"I
know. I haven't tried to peek ahead to the end of a book since . . . well, a
long time ago."
"And
we made it necessary."
Another
would have accepted her tone as flat, neutral—but he did not need ears to hear
his mate's pain. He spoke sharply, for him. "We cannot afford to be
ashamed of our failure just now. The stakes are too high. The least important
thing about this disaster is whose watch it happened on. The most important
thing is to report it fully and try to get it dealt with. I love you."
She
steadied. "Agreed. I love you."
He
gestured, and a small piece of polished quartz left the rock collection on
display in a corner of the room and came to them. It hovered directly between
them, picking up flickering highlights from the fire, so that to each it
appeared a sparkling third eye of the other.
They
began to fill it with thought together.
***
Even
as the first datum was entered, the message began containing information. Its
very formatting structure said that it was composed of purely human thoughts,
thus largely in words, these words being late 20th Century Canadian English.
This declared the identity of its senders, strongly hinted at the nature of the
problem itself, and implied the mode of thought that would have to be adopted
in order to consider it effectively.
Having
created a self-explaining "blank sheet of paper," they began to
"write" on it.
First,
in the largest type, the addressee:
Everyone.
Next,
the desired delivery time; i.e., the specific (sidereally
expressed) date on which the quartz beacon was to begin announcing itself, and
continue until acknowledged:
The
instant we left.
Then,
priority:
Ultimate.
Next, summary of text. This was
the first part they hesitated over long enough for a contemporary timepiece to
measure the interval. Finally:
A
Class One Paradox threatens. We urgently request Anachrognosis
to resolve it; delivery soonest.
They
had to pause, there. One simply cannot make a truthful statement on the
order of it will now be necessary to rape God and then go on to explain
why and just how, without stopping for a moment and waiting for the
unprecedented thrill of awe and horror to fade. They had just asked that one of
the most fundamental principles of their society of origin be massively
violated, in order to preserve it. Since the whole point of their present
existence was to make such a request
unnecessary, they felt the antinomy perhaps more strongly than would anyone who
heard it.
Thunder
sounded outside, somewhere to the north.
Statement
of problem:
Here
they dumped everything either had experienced since the Tar Baby had shrieked. Literally everything. The context from
each of their points of view. Every single vagrant thought or sensation
the mook had ever had, up to the instant when his
shovel had said clack and he had said "Aw, fuck." (He'd had no
thoughts after that which were relevant.) Every single
random thought or sensation June Bellamy had ever had, up to the instant when
she touched the shovel. Everything they had done in response to this catastrophe,
and every thought they'd formed while doing it. All the data they had gleaned
from Paul Throtmanian's house and ancillary sources.
Summary
of conclusions:
The
targets Throtmanian and Bellamy are much too
intelligent and educated to be permitted to know what they know. Given time,
they will draw obvious conclusions. They are top professionals at escaping
capture by any reasonable contemporary means, and have proved themselves
resourceful in evading the most sophisticated methods available to us. One of
us has already been rendered mortal while tracking them.
Prognosis
broke down into two sections. First:
(Without
Anachrognosis—) Exposure. Paradox. Catastrophe.
(With
Anachrognosis—) A very good chance of salvage and safety.
And
at last, they came to the part they metaphorically sweated most over: their
specific request. The heavens outside wept
inconsolably onto their roof as they thought it over. There were several ways
to approach it. After agonizing for nearly a full minute together, they
selected the one which seemed to them to require the absolute minimum of anachrognostic disturbance, and the smallest possible
outrage of human free will.
We
request that Paul Throtmanian and June Bellamy advise
us on how to catch them.
It
was done, now. All that was left was a final trivial detail: specification of
the delivery date for the requested information. They had already asked for
"soonest"—but now they must tell the addressee specifically when
"soonest" would be.
He
glanced over at the TV by learned reflex, snorted, glanced upward through the
ceiling to a satellite with considerably better raw data, and made his own
analysis.
She
saw his face change, checked his figures—and reached the same conclusion.
It
had long been established—indeed, since the very first attempt—that it was a
Very Bad Idea to hurl a parcel back through time to a ficton
where it was raining ... or snowing, though that was rarely a problem in the
For
as long as there was rain, or even mist, in the air, they could hope for no
package from home. They could not even submit their request for one until they
could confidently specify dry target ficton
coordinates.
"Why
am I not surprised?" she asked. And then for the
first time in more than a hundred and fifty years, she began to cry.
He
swept the coruscating bit of quartz out of the way and took her in his arms.
"It will be okay," he said, the way you say something when you hope
saying it will make it true.
"After
all this," she sobbed against his neck, "are we going to be ruined by
the damned weather?"
"We've
always had that hazard here," he said. "We can shorten it a little.
Three days. Maybe two; let me work up a first approximation."
She
struggled against his embrace. "If those two get one whole day to
sit and think about what they already know, it's all over."
"Not
instantly," he insisted, the muscles of his upper arms and shoulders
bulging like kinked hoses. "Even if they figure it out, we could have days
to get to them before they do anything about it."
She
gave up the physical expression of her struggle. "Sure. And right now they
could be gaping up at the clouds and drowning, like turkeys."
He
did not slacken the physical expression of his caring. "Things are bad. We
will do our best. And then we will wait to see what happens. Shall I refine
that approximation now, or would you like to do it?"
She
squeezed her eyes shut until the mandalas came.
"I'll do it. I was always better with weather."
In
paradise, Paul was in a funk.
He
didn't do it often, for a man. June's inclination was to let him indulge
himself. But he seemed to want to be busted for it.
He
had thrown himself savagely into his period of enforced play, as if determined
to have run or die in the attempt. He had hot-tubbed
until he pruned; eaten till he creaked; drunk till he puked, and screwed till
he couldn't any more for awhile. Then he had filled the house with Wagner at
terrifying volume while filling the huge satellite TV screen with German
porn—some of the really astonishing stuff; the kind that would in a few months
embarrass the Munich police into harassing CompuServe for letting foreigners
export disgusting hard-core erotica to their God-fearing nation. Then, of
course, he had screwed some more. (She'd been forced to admit, howling along
with the Valkyries, that the Master Race had its
points. As she'd hoped, the ability to climax had returned to her—Hoyoto! But it hadn't been especially friendly sex.)
Afterwards he'd switched the music to the Beatles, and dived into O'Leary's
books for several taciturn hours. When he emerged it was only to boot up the big Mac in the living room and sample his host's games.
He found an alpha version of a WWII submarine simulator with superb graphics called
War Patrol, designed by Gordon Walton, and became impervious to human contact
for half a day, happily stalking defenseless convoys and torpedoing hospital
ships.
June
joined him for half an hour, out of loneliness, and the game was diabolically
interesting. But it was a prerelease version, even more prone to crashes than
Wagner, and she could not see the point of a game that would kill her sooner or
later no matter how smart she was. She drifted off and watched the rain fall on
the lower sundeck. The next time she wandered by he had stopped playing and was
typing some sort of text document, but she knew from the set of his face that
it would not be a good idea to read it over his shoulder. A little while later,
reading in the bedroom, she heard the keyboard-tapping downstairs cease
abruptly, and the door to the lower deck slide open and closed again. When he
did not return within five minutes, she left the TV and went to make sure he
hadn't fallen over the side.
She
saw him at an angle through the glass of her own sliding door, wearing a
mackinaw, standing down on the lower deck by O'Leary's big Zeiss
telescope, a hand resting on it. It was aimed not at the drizzling sky, but at
the bay laid out below. His other hand held a pair of binoculars, through which
he seemed to be examining the horizon. As she watched, he took a look through
the scope, visibly sighed, and went back to the binoculars.
For
the first time it began to dawn on her that he was in some kind of trouble.
Paul was a city lad to his bones; he enjoyed
looking at nature as much as she enjoyed looking at blood.
But
what the hell could his problem be? They had been on the run before. They had
even been on the run from superior forces before, and taken shelter in much
meaner quarters than these. Okay: so Something Bad was out there, and for all
they knew might be vectoring closer even now—was that any reason not to enjoy
life in the meantime? Why was he acting like a citizen?
She
slid her door open and stepped out onto her own smaller deck, and was shocked.
He was smoking marijuana! The light rain and the roof overhang that shielded
her from it combined to enclose the smell. It was not the first time he'd ever
gotten high—but it was definitely the first time she could recall him doing so
while danger was known to threaten. They were both firm believers in alertness
during working hours: God knew nothing else had saved their bacon only two days
earlier. "Jesus, Paul," she said, leaning over the rail and waving at
the thick fruity scent.
Red
eyes blinked up at her. "Hey, baby. Wanna
toke?"
He
looked so miserable her heart softened. "One of us better stay on
duty," she said gently. "You have fun."
He
snorted and looked away. "Yah. Fun."
She
let that line sit there for a little bit. When he raised the binoculars again,
she asked, "Whatcha looking at?"
"The
only straight line God ever made," he said, resting his elbow on the Zeiss to steady himself.
She
found herself thinking about that. Were there any straight lines in nature
besides the
horizon? Come to think, even raindrops didn't fall
straight, did they? "Curved," she said thickly. God, was the stuff that
good, that two breaths of his exhaust were zonking
her? Or was it just empathic contact high with her lover?
"Technically,
yeah, but you can't see that from here. Looks straight as a citizen, doesn't
it? Has to be where humans got the idea for straight lines . . . and without
them, what would people like you and me color outside of?"
"Go
easy on that stuff, okay? It smells powerful."
"The
year I was born," he said, "
"No."
"They
assigned five levels of stonedness for each drug, and
learned how to reliably bring experienced volunteers to each level—from barely
buzzed to shitfaced. Then they had 'em all drive an obstacle course, sober and at each of the
five levels of intoxication for both drugs, and compared results. At levels one
and two, grass made you a better driver. Faster reflexes, wider
peripheral vision, expanded depth of field, more caution. After careful thought
and due determination, the state decided the study was too good to publish or
release. They prefer the ones where you count how many fatality-accident
victims had smoked pot in the previous forty-eight hours: the more people get
high, the more 'proof' they have that it 'causes' all those accidents. My mom
happened to type most of the raw data while she was in the joint, and she told
me about it."
"I
wouldn't dream of arguing with your mother," she said, "but remember:
that's B.C. boo you're smoking. They didn't have that shit in the '70s."
He
put down the binoculars and looked up at her. "True. Maybe I better check
the old reflexes, huh?" He slipped off his mackinaw, faced her and
crouched.
"Paul—"
Nothing
wrong with her own reflexes; she managed to get out of his way, and still had a
whole half second to appreciate the beauty of his tumbling flight and the
catlike grace of his landing. Dizzily, she reconstructed what she must have
seen: he had sprung high, used the floor of the deck on which she stood to
continue his ascent, and grabbed the rainslick upper
railing just long and hard enough to let his legs come up and over and fling
his body forward, finishing up in a half crouch before her. "So," he
said, not even breathing hard, "you sure you don't want a hit?"
"Christ,"
she said, annoyed at her momentary fear and at him for causing it. "I hope
you don't develop a taste for coke, next."
"Right. I'm just trying to relax and have a
little fun, alright?"
"I
noticed," she said. "You getting
anywhere?"
His
cockiness drained from him. "As the fella said after a ménage à trois with a
porcupine and a skunk, 'I reckon I've enjoyed about as much of this as I can
stand.' I feel like a guy who's had his leg cut off—I itch, but I can't find
the place to scratch."
Good.
Keep him talking now. Anything at all. "So what's
all this about straight lines?"
Paul
made that sound which can be either an aborted chuckle or suppressed nausea; context
offered no clue which. "Well, it just seemed like there had to be one,
right?"
"In
nature, you mean? I guess so. Why?"
"Hey,
think about it. The greatest joker Who ever
lived—" He waved upward at the weeping sky. "—I mean, the truly funniest
sonofabitch of all time . . . the guy Who filled the universe with punchlines—"
He mimed boxing. "—pow,
pow, pow, punchlines . . . shit, there'd just have to be a
straight-line around somewhere, now wouldn't there?" He pointed at
the horizon, where grey day was becoming rainy night. "There it is. The set-up for the cosmic joke. The sweet salty place we
came from, that tries to kill us every time we try to go back." He began
to laugh, the helpless belly laugh of a driver who wakes after the crash to see
his toddler wearing the dashboard for a hat.
She
took him in her arms and tried her best to stop the ghastly laughter with
compression of the thorax. "Good straight-line—" he choked out
between spasms. "—stare at it—long as you want—still won't see that
old punchline comin'—oh
God, baby—"
She
held on, searched her memory for soothing things her mother had said to her
when she was a heartbroken child. "Better soon . . . better soon, honey .
. . I'm here . . . we're okay so far ... it'll be all right . . . we'll figure
out what's the matter, we're too smart not to ... and once we do, we'll know
how to fix it, you wait and—" She broke off. He had stopped sobbing, was
looking at her with astonished eyes from a distance of three inches.
"You
don't get it yet," he said. "You really don't get it." He worked
a hand between them and wiped at his nose. "Jesus, I'm really
surprised."
"Get
what?" She wasn't going to like this. She let go of him.
"You
haven't worked out the punchline yet." He grimaced, covered it by rubbing at his eyes. "Hey, why
should you? I'm the one it was aimed at. 'You just happened to be comin' along at the right time, sucker.' You want me to
spoil it for you? Or you just want a hint?"
She
took a deep breath. "Spit it out."
"How
did I get Wally Kemp and Moira Rogers to give me ninety-eight large?"
There
having been no part for her in the Jude sting, Wally and Moira had never become real to her. She fell back on first principles:
"By selling them something they wanted that much."
"No,
I mean, who was I? Who did they think I was?"
"A time traveler. It really
was brilliant, you know."
He
waited for her to get it, so she tried. Finally she lifted her eyebrows: I'm
stumped, get on with it.
"Who,"
he said, "are we running from?"
***
At
first she thought he was crazy. The more she thought about it, the more
terrified she became that he was not.
"Tell
me something else it could be," he said, "that fits the facts we have
so far."
She
flailed. "Mad scientists," she tried. "I don't know, aliens,
maybe." She was horrified to hear herself suggesting something even more
X-Files than his notion, but could find no better.
"If
you find star travelers who have some reason to be afraid of us monkeys more
plausible than time travelers, hey, go for it," he said. "I figure
like this: you tell people you came across an alien artifact, either you end up
in a shirt with real long sleeves and buckles, or you end up in the same room with Maury Povich: either
way there's no reason for anybody to burn your house down. But you tell people
you stumbled across a human artifact that can't be made yet, an
anachronism of some kind . . . and maybe you end up making a paradox, and the
universe goes away."
June
had endured just enough sci fi
in her life to understand the argument. Time travel had to be stealthy if it
was to be done at all. Change history, and all hell broke loose. Whoever wanted
them dead was trying to move like a virus: with discreet deadliness. Oh
God, it made sense . . . more than anything else she could think of.
The
word "denial" was in her vocabulary—but only as a legal strategy. She
had spent her life training herself to face facts. She couldn't stop, just
because the facts had turned weird . . . could she?
"My
brilliant idea," Paul said sourly. "I'll tell you something I wasn't
ever gonna tell anybody: it wasn't even original. I got it from a
fifty-year-old story by a writer named Cyril Kornbluth—the
guy that wrote 'The Marching Morons.' I figured it was okay to lift the gimmick
in this other story because what he did with it just wasn't practical. His grifter pretends to be a time traveler, and pulls off a
sting—a lot crummier sting than the beauty I put together, by the way: it never
woulda worked in real life—and then the punchline is, the real time travelers hear he's blowing
their cover, and they come boil his brain. Naturally I didn't waste any time
worrying about that little hazard—hell, no! I'm a rational man. Only in
a science fiction story would time travel turn out to be real—and unlike Wally
and Moira, I don't wish my life were a science fiction story. Guess what,
honey: it is anyway. Whether we like it or not."
The
true horror of their situation washed over her, and she began to laugh herself.
Unlike
Paul, however, she had no trouble at all stopping. She sat down on the deck
with her arms wrapped around her knees and thought, hard. He sat beside
her and let her think, silently watching the dull grey glow go out of the world
to the west.
"I
don't get it," June said finally, breaking the silence. "I believe
you, I guess, but I still don't understand it. How the hell does this time
traveler think we threaten him? By knowing he exists? How does that make us any
different from Kemp and Rogers? What are we supposed to do with the information?
Sell it to Geraldo?"
"We
know where he has something buried. We don't know what, but it must constitute
proof he's a time traveler."
"So what? Everybody who sees it
forgets."
"You
didn't—for long enough to phone me."
"So
why doesn't he just move whatever it is fifty meters east? We'd never find it
again."
Paul
shook his head. "I don't know. He must like it right where it is, for some
reason. Maybe it's his time gate, and once you set it up you can't move
it." He frowned at the rain. "I wish I could call up Wally and Moira
and ask them. They've had experience thinking seriously about this shit."
She
shook her own head, impatiently. "Horseshit. They don't know any more
about time travel than we do. And they probably don't even realize that."
"Maybe
not, but they can think about this kind of stuff logically without
boggling," he said. "They actually know some real science. I haven't
got a good enough sense of what's really ridiculous, and what's only
weird."
"So
we do that: stick to what we know, and apply logic.
How about this one—this is the one that keeps sticking in my craw: how come we
know as much as we do? How come we know anything at all?"
"Huh?"
June
went into lecture mode. "You're a time traveler. You have powers beyond
those of mortal men. You bury something you want to stay buried. So you
booby-trap it: if a guy hits it with a shovel, he gets hit with a mind-ray or whatever, he forgets what he was doing and wanders off. Now:
won't you give the damn mind-ray a large enough radius to also get his
buddy who wandered off a few meters to take a pee?"
He
nodded. "That bothers me some, too. You shouldn't have had time to make
that long a phone call before you got bagged."
"Maybe
it was just a robot security system that mook
triggered—"
"Even so. It obviously read his mind;
it should have noticed a better mind nearby. It would have if I designed
it, and I'm probably not as smart as a time traveler."
June
winced at the last clause, and spoke quickly to distract him, lest he hear what
he had just said. "So we want to figure out why it didn't notice me at
first. Let's just riff and see what happens. How am I different from Angel
Gerhardt? I'm smarter . . . right, and the mind-ray only notices stupid people.
It'd be getting a great reading off of me, now. Uh . . . let's see: I'm female,
I weigh less, less upper-arm strength, I probably have
nicer tits—"
"Try
it this way," Paul said. "How were you different from him that
afternoon?"
"Okay,
let's think about that. I probably had less cocaine in my system ... I wasn't planning to commit a crime, not that
day, anyway ... I was depressed from thinking about my mother . . . I didn't
have a backpack or a shovel—"
"The
depressed thing might be something," he said. "I admit I can't
imagine what—but it's something mental, and this is a mind-reader we're talking
about. I think so, anyway. Maybe depression is something he blocks out as long
as possible."
"Great.
In that case, I could walk straight up to him, right now, and he'd never even
notice me." Thoughts of her mother were trying to steal her attention, but
June pushed them back under the covers. She knew—somehow—that Laura Bellamy was
still alive, down there in
"Not
a bad idea," he agreed, remaining where he was. "It's what you were
doing when this whole clem
started. And this is a good place for it, as long as you stick to the path.
Take an umbrella and a flashlight." June's "thinking thing" was
a ritual he was familiar with, and respected, even if it didn't work for him.
Faced with an intractable problem, she liked to surround herself with the
physical, visual, olfactory and aural stimuli she found most conducive to
thought—by walking in woods (for preference; a park or picnic area would do in
a pinch) or along the shore while listening to good music on headphones.
"I think I saw a Walkman in the bedroom," he added.
"Yeah,"
she snorted. She took hold of the railing and did some stretches to work the
kinks out. "I noticed it, too. What the hell is the point of owning a
Walkman if you're going to leave it behind when you go on trips? I swear, the ones with the money are always the least—WOW!"
He
rolled away from her, came to his feet in a half crouch and spun twice like a
ballet dancer, snapping his head around for each turn. "Where?"
"No,
no, relax—I just had a rush of brains to the head. I was wishing I had my own
FM headphones with me, so I wouldn't have to go put on something with a pocket
to put that heavy Walkman in, and deal with the cord, and so on . . . and that
made me miss my headphones, sitting back home in Vancouver . . . and that
reminded me that as I was leaving the house for the last time, right after you
called, I looked for those 'phones and couldn't find them. They weren't where I
always hang them by the door."
Paul
straightened, shivered slightly, and shook adrenaline-energy from his
fingertips, but kept his temper. "Okay. And from this you infer . . .
?"
"I
know I had those 'phones on my head when I walked into
Paul's
eyes glowed. "You didn't have the radio on anymore. Oh, I like this.
You're absolutely right: this is a 'WOW.'" He began to pace the deck.
"Check me out on this. This Gerhardt mook starts
to bury his stash. In doing so he triggers ... I know it's a feeble pun, but
let's call it a mental detector. It reads his mind, erases the parts it doesn't
like, and sends him on his way, clueless. It ought to pick you up, too,
what did you say, fifty meters away, call it fifty yards, right? Only you
have an FM radio right next to your skull, and that
screws up the mental detector for some reason. So you get to watch the
whole show. The mook buries his stash somewhere else,
and goes home, and you put a message on my machine. Alright: for the Hawaiian
vacation and ten thousand dollars cash, what does June Bellamy do next?"
"I
dig up his stash," she said at once, and then, more slowly, "and
maybe I take my radiophones off to wipe away the sweat—"
"Or
maybe a second mental detector has been put on the stash, now, to keep
tabs on the mook if he should ever shake off the
whammy and come back—and the FM radio gag only works at fifty meters."
"I
like the first one," she said. "It explains why they take the risk of
not giving me my headphones back after they're done."
"Okay,"
he agreed. "I like it, too. You realize what this means? For the first
time, we have a clue how we can possibly defend ourselves, if the
bastard catches up with us."
"We're
doing it again," she said.
"Doing
what?"
"Thinking of him as 'him.' I said I
wasn't going to do that."
"Hard not to."
She
nodded. "Well, now that we're agreed he's not a monkey demon or a
spaceman, 'it' doesn't work anymore . . . and who knows better than I how few
women warriors there are in
"Point taken. Tell you the truth, I kind
of hope there are two of them."
"Really? Why?"
"Well,
we seem to have found a counter for the mental detector slash obedience ray
slash brain-washer."
"Maybe."
"Without
that, the best these guys can possibly be is supernaturally good ... so if there's two of them, that makes it a fair fight." Even
in the growing dark she could see his grin. "I like a fair
fight"
"God,
testosterone is an amazing thing. I'll settle for there's only one of him and
we kick his ass without working up a sweat."
He
shook his head, still grinning happily. "One way or another, I'm working
up a sweat. I disapprove of people who do B&Es on
my sweetie's skull."
It
came to her that testosterone had its uses. "Not to mention people who
spoil your greatest triumph and burn your house down."
He
shrugged. "Those things too. For them I'd hurt
him. For you, I'm going to kill him."
A
primitive thrill made her tingle, and a few more uses for testosterone occurred
to her. "You say the sweetest things," she murmured, and moved
nearer.
But
he was not quite ready to segue from blood lust to the other kind. "I'm
glad it pleases you," he said, "but I have
to be honest: I think my motives are more selfish than anything else. Nobody
is going to know you better than I do."
She
pressed her attack, ignoring his body language. "Darling, our relationship
is based on enlightened mutual selfishness, you know that." Her tongue
made a demand of his neck. "Our interests coincide." She could smell
him shifting gears. "You kill him, and I'll make you a lovely loincloth
from the hide." Her fingers asked a question of his penis. "Now drag
me into the cave and exploit me, you brute."
As
she was being carried in from the deck, she remembered that he always lasted
forever when he was stoned, and she shivered with anticipation. Her lover's
funk was definitely over. They had a plan . . . and just possibly the
beginnings of an edge.
***
"The
first thing we do tomorrow morning," he said sleepily, "we find out
where's the nearest place to score a couple of sets of FM headsets. Shit, one
of us may have to go back to
"Mom
is down."
He
stared.
"I
just know, okay? She's gone."
"Aw
jeeze—"
"Shit,
I can't even call Pop and console him."
And
her funk began.
***
By
the middle of the next day, it had so thoroughly thickened the atmosphere in
that lavish little A-frame that Paul volunteered to walk to "town" in
a low-probability search for headphones with FM radios built in, despite the
ever present rain. Better to soak than choke.
Although
he kept his ears open for the sound of Tom Waits along the way, he was not
fortunate enough to encounter Moe Lycott, and he
could not quite suppress the instincts of a lifetime enough to stick his thumb
out for the occasional stranger who did drive past. Consequently it was midafternoon, and he was footsore and sweaty under his
mackinaw, by the time he reached the cluster of shops by the ferry terminus. He
looked with longing upon the first tavern he came to ... then remembered his
marijuana binge of the night before, reminded himself sharply that he was on
combat-alert, and began to walk on by. But the first step hurt so much, after
the momentary respite, that he converted the second into a pivot and trod
heavily into the welcoming shade where ice-cold beer lived.
He
emerged with a much lighter step half an hour later, scoped the street without
seeming to, and made his way to the general store the bartender had suggested,
humming softly.
Two
beers was not enough, however, to make him follow the bartender's suggestion
that he ask for "Space Case," despite assurances that this was the
name of the clerk most likely to be able to help him. Instead he simply looked
over the two clerks available in the little shop, figured out which a yokel
would be most likely to call Space Case, and approached that one. "Uh,
excuse me—I wonder if you could help me out."
"I
can try. Define the problem."
Ah,
a technical mind. "My wife and I have decided we prefer radio to tape.
It's more unpredictable, eh? And we do a lot of walking, and gosh, to get the
same amount of choice from a Walkman that a radio offers, you need an extra
pack just for cassettes. Plus I always get the cord caught. You wouldn't by any
chance happen to have a couple of sets of dedicated FM headphones around the
shop, would you?"
Space
Case grinned, brushed stringy hair from his face, and pointed to the wall
behind him. "Ask me a hard one. Panasonic okay?"
Paul
squinted. "Are they powerful?"
The
grin widened. "Well, that's your basic good news/bad news situation. The
good news is yes and yes, and the bad news is yes."
Paul
reminded himself that he was supposed to be a Canadian, too polite to mind
having his chain yanked. "Beg pardon?"
"You
ask me if it's powerful, you're asking three things. First, does it play loud?
Answer: yes, it'll play just as loud as anything else in the world with
earphones—as loud as the law allows, and no louder. Second, does it pull in all
the signals, even the weak ones? Answer: maybe better than the tuner you have
back home; your whole skull kind of acts as an antenna, fillings and all. Those
are the good news. Part three: does it put out a strong field? Answer: well,
yeah, kind of, relatively speaking."
Paul's
ears grew points. "I don't think I follow you. A radio receiver puts out a
signal of its own?"
"Well,
a weak one. So does a Walkman, or a CD player, or a computer. It's why they
don't want you to use one in a plane during takeoff and landing. Which by the
way is a total crock: the field strength falls
off so fast with distance, you're as likely to
interfere with the pilot's electronics as you are with his menstrual cycle.
Airlines are just lawsuit-happy."
"So
why is this bad news?"
Space
Case took two sets of FM headphones from the wall and set them on the counter, then recaptured his hair and tucked it behind his
ear again. "Well, a lot of experts say it isn't, actually. But I notice
that your personal skull gets a lot closer to one of these than the cockpit
does. Even a Walkman at the end of one of those little cords gives you more
distance. And there's this cube-square thing happening."
"So
if the experts are wrong, and there is any danger in low-level
electromagnetic fields . . ."
"This
is about as good a test as you can get," Space Case agreed. "Short of building a cabin under a power line."
Paul
frowned. He wanted the things more than ever, now . . . but staying in
character required him to appear dubious. "Are you saying they're
dangerous, then?"
Space
Case shrugged. "I'm saying, anybody who claims to know that for sure either
way at this point in history is lying or kidding himself. Put it like this:
Panasonic is willing to undertake the risk of selling them to you . . . and I'm
willing to accept the karma of taking your money. I'm just into full
disclosure. Like I say, a lot of experts say they're perfectly harmless. But
the way I see it, an expert is an ordinary person, a long way from home."
Paul
considered, wrestling with a tiny, absurd dilemma. In
Space
Case grinned even wider. "A fan!"
Paul
blinked. "Beg pardon?"
"That
was a Lazarus Long quote. You're a fan, right?"
Very
faintly—in fact, almost below the conscious level entirely—an alarm went off in
the back of Paul's mind. Those who lie for a living must pay close attention to
any mental notes they leave themselves . . . and one part of the prophylactic
debriefing procedure he'd automatically put himself through as he had walked
out Wally and Moira's door with ninety-eight thousand of their dollars in his
hand had been to instruct himself: For the next little while, if anyone asks
you if you know anything about science fiction, say no. "Sorry,"
he lied fluently. "I don't know this
"Ah.
Well, never mind; it's a long story. Pun intended. Several books long,
actually. Will that be cash or charge?"
"Cash,
please."
"How
are you fixed for goo?"
Paul
stopped sorting bills by color, and stared. "Could you run that by me
again?"
"You
said you and the wife walk a lot. I got some great blister goo."
Paul
had made up his mind over an hour ago: he was going
to walk back to Casa O'Leary with his new radio headphones, and then he was
never ever going to walk anywhere again as long as he lived. Painkiller he
already had. So the only operative consideration was,
what would a real walker say to an offer like this? "No,
thanks," he said. "We've got some prescription stuff her sports
medicine doctor gives her."
"Oh yeah? What's it called?"
He
took refuge in incompetence. "I know it as 'foot gunk.' It's white, if
that helps any."
Space
Case kept his face straight. "Yeah, that narrows it down some."
Out
of professional admiration, Paul kept his own face straight, and kept playing
dumb. "Really?"
"Yeah,
all them white ones are only manufactured on days that
end in y."
He
did his double-take so beautifully he drew a shout of laughter from Space Case.
"I suppose they are just about all white, eh?" he said with a
great show of rue. "I wonder why that is."
"I'd
imagine," Space Case said, still chuckling, "for the same reason
every brand of creme rinse you can buy for your hair
looks exactly like ejaculate. You want powerful magic, invoke semen."
Paul
obliged by looking mildly scandalized but too ashamed to admit it, and left,
well pleased. Even the nosiest clerk tended to forget the dull ones quickly.
All
the way back to O'Leary's A-frame he strained his ears for Moe Lycott's truck, without success. Halfway there the rain
suddenly went from drizzle to downpour. He went through a kind of epiphany, and
by an act of the will forced himself to stick his thumb out, the way he'd seen
people do in old movies. This turned out to be sound strategy: the savage satisfaction he achieved when fourteen successive
cars blew by him without slowing was more comfort than a ride would have been.
Even here, there were traces of civilization. . . .
He
arrived home lamed but in a fine sour spirit that tasted like unsweetened
chocolate, and hung up his mackinaw prepared to resume the burden of not being
permitted to comfort his lover—
—only to find something out of a nightmare.
Sitting, safe and sound, in the chaise lounge on the lower deck,
under the overhang of the deck above. Serene and
tranquil, internal thunderclouds past, funk miraculously over, days ahead of
schedule. Heartbreakingly lovely in the grey light of rainy afternoon: his
lover, his partner, his best friend June. Who at his approach looked him square
in the eye, and said, quietly and without a trace of humor, words which
frightened and shocked him more than being stalked by a brain-raping
house-burning time traveler had:
"Paul,
I'm getting out of the business."
***
Paralysis. There were so many possible
responses—so many sheafs of different kinds of
possible responses—that his quick wit and quick body alike were mazed, and he made no response at all. He stood there
expressionless and motionless and almost thoughtless, for the first time in
years simply waiting to find out what would happen next.
"However
this thing with the time traveler works out, I'm through," she said.
"I'd like to keep half title to the
His
eyelids closed of their own accord. He could think of no reason to raise them, but then he heard a voice rather like
his own, miles away, croak, "You're leaving me?" and opened his eyes
to see who had said that and what she would answer.
It
must have been one of those two tiny copies of him swimming in her eyes who'd
spoken. "Not unless you ask me to," she said carefully. "We can
keep separate finances, and you won't talk about work at home. I'll go where
you go, and lie for you, and cover you when you have to run, and catch up when
I can. I'll bind your wounds and tolerate your bullshit and I'll bury you if it
comes to that. But I won't so much as rope for you: I won't even consult. I'm
through."
Idly
he wondered what new—legit!—profession she would dream up for herself, flexible
and portable enough to be compatible with a mate in The Life: he knew it was
certain to be interesting. But that was a consideration for the distant
future—whole minutes from now. At the moment the important thing was to get his
heart restarted.
Unh. There . . .
"You
want to hear something amazing?" his voice said. Yeah, it was coming from
one of those little reflections in her eyes: the distance and volume sounded
about right. "My feet don't hurt a bit. Not at all.
You feel like going for a hike in the rain, I'll be glad to come along."
"Paul—"
"It's
like the old joke," the reflection interrupted; he lip-synched along.
"You're supposed to lead up to a thing like that. First you say, 'I've
found
She
returned his gaze steadily, and said something so absurd he and the reflections
all had to smile: "I'm sorry."
For
the first time Paul understood why the commander of the Light Brigade had
followed those blundering orders and mounted an impossible charge. Because
there is no despair so vast or cold or stony that some drifting idiot seed of
hope cannot take root, wither, and decay there, all in an instant.
"June," he said, in the freedom of futility, "your mom—"
"She
didn't like what I do, Paul. She never said so. Not once, or we could have
argued it, and maybe I could have persuaded her. But we both knew."
"Of
course she didn't like it: she's your mother, she was scared for
you—"
"She
was ashamed of me. I think she was wrong, most of the time, but she was ashamed
of me. Not because she had to lie whenever her friends asked what I was up to;
she didn't mind lying at all. Because the truth hurt her.
She wanted to be proud of me. And she was—but not all the way."
"If
she'd understood—"
"I'll
tell you the worst. I've been sitting here reviewing the last year or so, and
I'm ashamed of me, too."
He
had been stunned for some time, now he was shocked: different things. He raised
his arms as if to summon divine witness. "Why?"
His
reflections, thrashing around in their tubs like that, made them spill over and
run down her cheeks. "Our standards have been slipping."
"Bullshit."
She
shook her head hard enough to displace the tears, but they were replaced almost
at once.
"What did we say, back at the beginning? Only
jerks, right? Only people that deserved it."
"That's
right," he agreed. "You're the one who taught me that. I was feeding
on anything with blood when you found me. And feeling shitty
about it."
"Think
about my last two games. How about Frazier?"
"He
hired us to kill his wife!"
"And
you said yourself it was a shame not to go through with it."
"But—but
then it wouldn't have been a sting. It would have been . . . work."
"The
point remains. Being driven beyond his endurance doesn't make a guy a jerk.
Remember, he even asked us to make it quick and painless."
"Sure—till
I told him that'd be extra."
"Being
on a budget doesn't make you a jerk either. She had no money,
there was no real insurance on her to speak of: all he wanted was his sanity
back. We didn't even leave him enough to try again."
Change
tack. "Well, what was wrong with Wo
Fat? He had it coming."
"Sure,
he deserved to get stung. I ruined him. Not because he ripped off
immigrants. Because he offended me. Because he treated
me exactly the way his culture had raised and trained him to treat women. The way I encouraged him to treat me, to set up the gaff.
What I was trying to do was sting his whole sexist society."
"So?"
"So
I forgot it's half women."
Paul
was lost. "Okay, so maybe you've slipped into a couple of grey areas,
lately—"
Water
had continued to leak, silently and slowly, from her clear eyes. Now she began to cry: different thing. "I've
even got you doing it lately."
"Huh?"
"It
really was brilliant, honey. I never wrote a better scam in my life. But tell
me: just what did your Wally and Moira do to deserve to lose ninety-eight large
that wasn't even theirs?"
For
the second time he waved his arms. "Are you nuts? They're true believers. Sci fi fans, for God's
sake."
"Those
are lapses of taste, not lapses of morality. And you didn't just take their
money. You also took their friends' money, entrusted to them. Right now their
universe is forever fucked because they wanted John Lennon alive and the
Beatles back. Accept that criterion and we can sting anybody over thirty, and
anybody younger than that with taste."
He
got a grip, and patiently began to explain to her why she was wrong. Assembling
his arguments, he discovered she was right.
The
only trouble with owning an unusually acute and flexible mind (aside from the
loneliness) is that you can't make it blind or stupid when you need to. Paul Throtmanian shifted gears instantly for a living. Against
his will, his universe now processed about two degrees, and clicked into a new
alignment, for the second time in as many minutes. He tried desperately to put
it back the way it had been, but it wouldn't go. He had been stunned and
shocked, now he was horrified: different thing.
"My
God," he breathed. "We have been slipping. You're right. We've
been acting like . . . like executives, or muggers or something. Robbing anybody who comes along." He shook his head, in
awe as much as horror. "Haven't we?"
Her
crying escalated to sobbing. "I never got to work it out with her. She
died ashamed of me. It has to stop."
He
had never seen her sob, not even when that mark in
He
didn't mean it yet. But he already knew he would, eventually.
After
they had been silent and still for awhile, he suddenly began to giggle. She pulled
away and searched his face, more than glad for something to laugh about.
"What?"
"J-just
one thing b-bothers me—"
All
of a sudden she got it, and began to giggle herself. "The time
traveler—"
He
nodded. "If he gets us—"
"—we'll
forget we ever made this decision!"
They
howled.
Later,
as he helped her to her feet, she gripped his shoulder. "So we won't let
him get us. Right?"
"Well,
now that we've finally got a good reason ..." He stopped smiling, then,
and put his hand over hers. "We won't let him get us."
"I
love you," she said.
He
squeezed her hand tightly. "And so well."
As
they cleared the doorway, his feet began to hurt again.
"Excuse
me, ma'am," Wally said. "I'm sorry to bother you a second time, but I
intend to break and enter Ms. Bernardo's home shortly, and I was wondering if
you could help me."
He
held his breath, poised like a cat to spring to safety, while she blinked
blearily at him.
In
He
had to wonder why she had failed to slur the last two sibilants. For that
matter, why hadn't she shooshed last night, when
she'd been just as drunk? "Thank you, Mrs. Live Here. That's very kind of
you."
He
still did not relax. He was not poised to escape an adverse reaction, but to
dodge any more attempted bourbon kisses. Moira had agreed with him that this
audacious approach, long shot though it might be, was the only possible way to
burgle a home on Point Grey Road, but she had been extremely emphatic on
precisely how far he was and was not authorized to go in securing assistance.
If her sensitive nose detected a single molecule of bourbon—or worse, soap—anywhere above his collar or below
his belt when he got home tonight . . . well, he wouldn't be able to go home,
no matter what he found out at the Bernardo house.
"Why
do you call me that?"
He
slapped his forehead. Clumsy start. "I'm sorry. I
have this . . . well, odd sense of humor. When I asked your name last night,
you said, 'Never mind, I live here,' so I'm afraid ever since, I've been
thinking of you as 'Mrs. Live Here' in my head."
She
pursed her lips and blinked some more. "All thingsh considered, that'll do. But it's Ms. Live
Here. Call me Liv for short."
"Ah."
Oh God, don't let that mean she's single. "Well, Liv,
is there any particular method of entry you would recommend? I'd prefer to keep
this as discreet as possible. Actually, I'd like it if no one ever finds out I
was in there; frankly, we're sort of hoping to come up on Ms. Bernardo's blind
side. If you should know anything about the nature of her alarm system, for
instance—"
"I
only know one thing about it," she said, blinking, "but it's a pip. There ishn't one."
Wally
blinked back at her. "Bless my soul. Really?"
"She
told me once it was ludicroush to spend a penny on shecurity on
"You
know," Wally said slowly, "that makes a kind of sense. You see an
open door, unlocked windows, you assume someone's inside."
She
nodded so savagely she nearly unbalanced. "Damn right it make shense!
Spesh'ly
here. There hashn't been an attempted break-in
on thish shtreet in ...
well, shince I've been here. Early
this century. And do you think my fucking inshurance
comp'ny'll let me do the same goddam thing?
Bugger, they will! That'sh why I'm gon' help you: I wanna see her
'shurance comp'ny get what
they desherve for being so shenshible
and decent."
His
brain kept trying to find the pattern in her intermittent slur; it was giving
him a headache. She seemed most successful with sibilants spelled with a c. Could her tongue spell? "Of
course. So you think it would be safe for me to just . . . pop next
door, go round back, and try the door?"
"Long
ash you don't look furtive," she said. "That'll get you shot anywheres around here."
"Oh,
I won't," he assured her.
"You're
poor," she said suddenly, as if challenging him to disagree.
"That's
right," he said.
She
snorted, fruitily, like a small horse. "You poor
guys alwaysh got more intreshsting
minds than the kind o' jerksh I gotta
hang out with. Why'sh that, you think?"
"We
need to," Wally explained.
She
nodded as thoughtfully as if provisionally accepting his solution to Fermat's
Last Theorem. "That soundsh
right. Anybody on thish block wanted a break
an' enner done, they'd hire it done. Too damn rich to
be intereshsting."
He
wanted, badly, to ask her how she had conceived the notion of both slurring and
not slurring the sibilant in "interesting," and whether it required
practice or had come easily to her—but he knew it would constitute a
digression, and in any case, artists are seldom able to explain their methods satisfactorily to the layman. "It hardly seems
like break and enter if I don't have to break
anything, does it?"
She
smiled her feral smile, tightening her face so much that for a moment he feared
her eyeballs would pop out. "Far'sh I'm consherned, you can exshplore
that ashpect of your artishtic
vision once you're inshide. I promish not to hear a thing. And the old Chink on
the other shide's deaf as a boot. Wing
Wang Wong, or whatever her name ish."
Now
she was slurring c's—and even an x! "I really
appreciate your help," he said. He was already backing away as he began
the second syllable, out of the sheltered doorway and into the rain. This
proved to be nice timing: her aborted lunge was unmistakable. "Goodbye, Liv, and thank you."
"Good
luck, Handsome."
Wally
had last been called handsome by a woman not Moira while auditioning for a part
in a fannish play that was to have been performed at
a small regional relaxacon, some eighteen years
before—and he had not gotten the part. "Cuddly" he could aspire to;
"handsome" exceeded even his fantasies. Nevertheless he was within
ten steps of Carla Bernardo's back door before he next remembered to be
terrified again. There was something to be said for drunken myopia—and
nymphomania, too, if it came to that.
His
pulse quickened when he saw that the door was not, as advertised, actually ajar.
Liv Here might—in fact, almost certainly did—suffer from that condition Moira called rectofossal ambiguity. ("Fossa" being Latin for "a hole in the
ground.") If he tried that door . . . was he going to trigger the
alarm system Liv had assured him didn't exist, and end up with his own rectum in a torsa
("sling")?
Did
he have any choice?
The
door opened at his touch like a nymphomaniac's legs, easily, thoroughly, and
silently.
Wally
stood there before the open door, absolutely motionless, in drizzling rain, for
a full five minutes. He told himself he was listening, but the rain and his
pulse would have drowned out anything short of a pistol being cocked next to
his head. It took him nearly the whole first minute to realize that there was a
radio playing in the house, a talkjock whose topic
tonight seemed to be the old Canadian standby, "America: Threat or
Menace?" If Wally had merely been a junkie with his whole body screaming
for a fix, he'd have left. Only one thing finally had the power to drive him inside:
the vision of Moira's face when he reported back. He found that he wanted, very
badly, to hear her say, "My hero!" so that he could say, "Aw,
shucks."
Once
in the house, however, he simply doffed his rain gear and got to work. He lost
some time and some shin skin to his reluctance to turn on any
lights—successfully establishing by way of consolation, however, that anyone
else in the building was dead or deaf, and that a human heart can't actually
explode. He also managed to silence the talkjock, at
least locally. But once he penetrated to rooms with no exterior windows, where
he felt safe turning lights on, things picked up quickly. Not only did he
locate the computer in the second room he tried, and not only was it a make and
model and operating system he was reasonably comfortable with, its security
encryption program yielded to him even more skittishly than the door had.
As
he had guessed, "Carla Bernardo" had characteristically been a hair
too cute for her own good: the password that cracked her shields was
"Tammy Lynn." It was an obvious choice, if you had some experience at
what hackers and crackers called "social engineering"—and if you
realized "Carla" had made up her name by reverse-combining those of
the notorious, recently sentenced Canadian monsters Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. The first of the young girls they had raped and
murdered together—a few weeks before their wedding—was Karla's fifteen-year-old
sister Tammy.
Wally
didn't even bother to read a thing: just fired up the modem and uploaded
everything he could decrypt to one of his own hard drives back home. It came to
something over fifty megabytes. Then he scanned the stuff which had not been
encrypted, and uploaded some of those files to a separate folder at home. He
could see Moira smiling, in his mind's eye, and grinned back at the screen.
When
he was satisfied he had every byte he could locate and wanted, he reformatted
Carla's whole hard drive three times—wiping it irrecoverably—and entertained
himself as it churned by thumbing through the Japanese pornographic comic book
collection he found in a drawer. She had some better ones than he and Moira
did.
Finally
the computer chirped for the third time and drew him back from a particularly
absorbing manga. He nearly left, then,
but things had gone so well thus far, he was in the mood for a little
adventure. So he searched Carla's office, finding nothing of lasting interest,
and then her bathroom, learning only that she was not a natural blonde, and
then her bedroom, where he found behind the false back of a bottom dresser
drawer a
lockbox whose combination was the same as her
computer password. Its contents caused Wally to leap to his feet and dance the
Monkey, for the first time in twenty years. A little work before a full-length
mirror distributed these things about his person so well that even a sharper
observer than Liv might not have noticed Wally was a
bit more cuddly than usual.
On
his way out, he stopped by Carla's office again, stole three of the manga, and added them to the swag, tucking
them inside his belt in the back, under his shirt.
He
recovered his rain poncho and left by the back door again—leaving it ajar—and
returned to the street around the opposite side of the building from the one by
which he'd entered. By the time Liv saw him and began
cawing, he was within twenty steps of his car. Even walking
carefully so as not to spill his pornography, he was able to make a clean
getaway.
Halfway
home, stopped at a traffic light on Broadway, he found himself unable to
suppress an impulse to beat his fists on the steering wheel and howl with
animal glee. He glanced to his left and saw a pedestrian staring at him from
the sidewalk. "
The
pedestrian smiled, nodded, and waved.
The
light changed and the mighty hunter went home to his mate.
***
Who
literally greeted him with open arms. And open
nostrils.
"My
hero!" she cried.
"Aw,
shucks, ma'am." Wally knew he was grinning the
uncontrolled grin, the one that made him look goofy, but he couldn't help it. He had successfully carried out his
first burglary, and he had passed his sniff test, and he had just heard and
spoken two of his very favorite clichés—and the best was yet to come.
Moira
hugged him tightly, putting english
on it. "Really, Wally, you did great. I've been going through some of what
you sent, making a start, anyway, and there's—what?"
He
had disengaged from the hug just far enough to silence her with an upraised
finger. "Go to the meditation room," he said, "and wait for me
there."
She
frowned, studied him carefully, and one eyebrow lifted slightly in alarm.
"Wally, that's the goofy grin. Am I gonna like this?'
"Want
to see another grin just like it? Bring a hand mirror to the meditation room
and wait for me there."
"Hey,
where's your coat?"
"Read
on," he suggested.
She
sighed. "Should I put on music?"
He
shook his head. "There'll be plenty. Trust me."
She
looked exasperated. "That's the trouble. I do."
He
went back to the car, recovered his coat, and carried it inside in his arms. He
locked the door behind him and made sure the phone machine was armed before
joining Moira in the meditation room. He found her there, sitting on her zafu, measuring her breath. She had not
fetched a mirror. Again he made sure the door was sealed behind him, then dropped into tailor's seat opposite her, setting his
bundle down between them. Declining to feed him any more straight-lines, she
waited serenely.
He
adopted his Panel Moderator voice. "Having stolen all the really important
items—that is, the data—of which you were just about to deliver a
preliminary summary that I am, I promise you, most eager to hear—I turned my
attention briefly, before I took my leave, to mere material things."
She
kept waiting, but her lips seemed to tighten ever so slightly.
He
nodded as if she had said something. "I hear you. You're thinking: no
matter how lavish or fine they may be, I don't want any of the possessions of
those people in my house. I felt much the same way when I began my search.
Doubtless you're wondering why I'm going around Robin Hood's barn like this,
why I've got what I found bundled up in my coat. If I'd left it all where I had
it stashed when I left the place, you'd have felt most of it as soon as you
hugged me a minute ago, and then there might have been trouble. I thought it
would be better all around if we did this here. Are you ready?"
She
took one more deep breath and nodded.
He
unwrapped his booty.
He
let her have five seconds to absorb the basic gist of the contents, and then
placed his fingers in his ears, and in a loud clear voice, provided inventory
details. "The Canadian is forty-seven thousand five hundred in used nonserial fifties. The American is thirty-five thousand in
new nonserial twenties. The handgun is a Glock nine millimeter, fully loaded; there was no extra
ammo. The comics are great. The passports are all—" That was as far as he
got.
One
of several reasons Moira had been in more or less constant demand for fan
theatricals over the past few decades was her scream. It might have made a Hammer Films alumnus weep with nostalgia, or
won a nod from Coltrane—evoking all the stark despairing terror of a virgin
accosted by the Ripper on her wedding night, yet delivered by a vocal
instrument with the raw pneumatic power of a Sophie Tucker or a Mama Cass. At
the previous year's Worldcon Hugo ceremonies, where
she had performed for two thousand pros and fans in an immense hall, the tech
crew had not found it necessary or even advisable to mike her. The effect in a
small soundproof room was impressive. Even with his fingers deep in his ears
and his palms cupped over them, Wally paid for his fun. He had expected to, and
paid up like a man. But then he made a very bad mistake: he took his fingers
out of his ears—just as she did it again.
Shortly
he managed to pry his eyelids open again, but he kept on seeing paisley swirls
and neon mandalas. Gradually, as in one of those
tests for color-blindness, some of them resolved into Moira's face. The lips
were moving. He waved and gestured to indicate the transmission was
unsuccessful, but they kept moving. He closed his eyes to conserve processing
power and concentrated. White noise slowly arrived from the far end of the
universe, rose to the level of static—then, as with the visual data, some of it
coalesced into a parody of Moira's voice.
"—alize what this means? This is wonderful.
This is horrible. It couldn't be better, and it couldn't be worse. Who's writing
this mess, Wally? What did we ever do to deserve this? Stop grinning, dammit!"
He
hadn't realized he still was. He made it go away with a massive effort, and his
hearing
improved slightly. "You understand why I did
this here?" he asked. His voice sounded to him flanged, distorted,
like John Lennon in "I Am the Walrus," a comparison that irritated
him.
She
nodded impatiently. "Of course. Everyone on the
block would be dialing 911 right now if we weren't in a soundproof room. But
Jesus, Wally, the way you set it up I thought it was gonna be something good."
What
in Finagle's name did he have to do to please this
woman? "This isn't good? One: sitting right there on the floor is on the
close order of ninety-five percent of what we got taken for; I did the math. As
far as I can tell it's all real and it all spends. Two: it's enough—as of now, VanCon can happen after all, and we even got some of our
own money back! Three: that means hereinafter, I can be assured that my motives
in continuing to stalk these bastards are at least eighty percent pure personal
vengeance; I don't know about you, but that gives me a lot of spiritual
satisfaction." His hearing was improving; by now he sounded like Lennon in
"Strawberry Fields." (The first half.)
"And four: now we each have a gun, and neither can be traced to us.
Tell me the downside, because I don't—oh wait, I get you. Here we are in the
middle of a manhunt, and we have a convention to run again. Okay, so we give up
sleeping on alternate days, instead of every third—"
She
cut him off. "What would have happened if we'd gone on the Net this
morning and announced exactly what had happened to us? That we got taken, and VanCon was vaporware?"
He
frowned. If this was a sequitur, the connection escaped him. "Well . . .
put it this way: the only upside would have been
that we'd never have heard another live filksong in
our lives."
She
nodded. "Total humiliation, and lifelong
expulsion from the councils of fandom. Possibly even total excommunication from
fandom itself. We'd have had to have plastic surgery and change all our ID to ever see another huckster room."
"And
your point is ... ?"
"Obviously
that's unthinkable. But what would happen if we went on the Net right now, and truthfully reported events as of this
minute? VanCon's still on, but here's why it almost
didn't happen?"
He
flinched slightly, and then made himself think about it dispassionately. If she
wanted to be Socrates, he could bat around a theoretical proposition as well as
Phaedrus. "Uh . . . let's see . . . still total
humiliation, for sure . . . but probably no banishment. It'd be just too much
fun to have us around to laugh at. Best guess, I'd say we'd be making
significant progress toward living it down in—I don't know, ten years? Twelve? A couple of fannish generations, call it, before we'd ever be given anything but
scutwork to do again. Long after we died, they'd
still be telling neos about us. And the neos would be laughing. Except for the
occasional sweet one who would pity us."
She
reached out and took his hand. "Wally?" she said. His hearing was now
nominal; nonetheless her voice sounded strained. "Those two jerks are
still out there someplace, with new names and maybe new faces. We're looking
for them, granted, but we don't even really know for certain they're still in
Wally
screamed. Not in the same league with one of hers . . . but it was closer to
his ears.
That
postponed the first real quarrel they'd had in months for another several
minutes.
***
It
escalated, when it finally came, to yet another iteration of The Quarrel. Their
version, that is, of the one all couples lucky enough to have the privilege will
write together and perfect over the years granted them: the basic chord
structure over which they would improvise The Dozens together, every time fate
lashed them into song. It was no more interesting than any other couple's
quarrel, full of You're Always and You Never and If You'd Just Once; its chief
function was to allow them each to say things of which they would later be
intellectually and/or emotionally ashamed—an instinctive human response to
crisis so primitive it makes fight-or-flight look like an intelligent advance.
By now they knew where each other's vulnerable places were, and were reasonably
confident they could take each others best shot. (Pity the singles and loners,
who must make do with bar fights or politics.)
As
in postmodern music—indeed, postmodern art of most kinds—communication was
subordinated to personal expression; the results were thus unlistenable
for anyone but the artists, and will not be recorded here. When this set had
had time to seep into long-term memory storage, each would forget most of what
they had said, and remember most of what the other
had said, but they would process it differently. Wally would be deeply scarred
by the very worst of her barbs—but would almost never consciously think of them
again until the next jam session, and thus would take decades to deal with
them. Moira, on the other hand, would replay his cruelest words over and over
in her head daily for several weeks, until she had worn them smooth, then
string them with the others on a secret necklace she could finger whenever it
suited her to be depressed.
Fortunately
for them, they both suffered from a chronic condition that might be called
stupidity fatigue. Even driven by fear, frustration and shame, half an hour
away from rationality was about the maximum either Wally or Moira were built to
tolerate. This session followed their basic pattern: two extended solos, a
spirited duet, a reprise of the theme, and then a smooth segue into their
trademark ending. Wally always won the putative argument, whatever it happened
to be, and then discovered his prize was a barren, blasted desert, and
scrambled to apologize and surrender. This allowed her to apologize and accept
his surrender, and at last they were free to return, tired but oddly refreshed,
to whatever their actual problem was.
Which usually had neither changed in the slightest, nor suffered
visibly from being used as an emotional dodgeball.
"Alright,"
he conceded finally, and swallowed a mouthful of the coffee cake she had
fetched to seal the truce. "We have to warn fandom. It is our fannish duty. But do we have to do it immediately?"
"Let's
use worst-case analysis," she suggested. "Say Jude and Carla walked
from
He
stopped a forkful short of his mouth. "Well," he said, "it must
have taken him awhile to select us as targets, and research us both—"
"Worst-case
scenario, I said. Assume he selected and researched multiple targets, and now
he's going across the checker board: jump . . . jump . . . jump. Or maybe she
does the research in advance for him. Like a celebrity
surgeon: he holds out his palm, she slaps the next scalpel onto it.
Whatever: once he knew he was coming after us, once he knew which window
we'd be sitting beside, how much time did he need to take us?"
He
took the bite, and chewed and swallowed it, before he was ready to say,
"Half an hour to shave all over. Maybe an hour or two to
buy and set up the magnesium. Then he could go as soon as it got dark
enough. Oh, damn."
"We
have no way to be sure we're the first fans he's hit, Wally."
"Butter
me!" He spilled tea on his lap. "Ow. Oh,
Moira, that's a horrid thought."
"And
even if we are, he could have destroyed two more clubs already, by now. Every
convention in
He
prodded futilely at his soggy slacks with a handful of kleenex she'd given him, and gazed morosely at the
results. "Heaven help me, I think I'd actually rather be a monumental
sucker, than just another monumental sucker." He shook his head.
"Isn't that appalling?"
"Well,"
she said grimly, "if we are, we can at least be the first ones who didn't fail the test of honor." She
turned and looked pointedly toward the office, where the computers waited.
"We can sound the alarm. Even if we have to pull our
pants down to the world to do it."
For
the first time he could recall, Wally didn't feel like finishing his coffee
cake. He sighed, assessed the results, and sighed again. "I guess it's
time to put my Asshole Principle to the test."
Some
years before, he had suddenly stopped their car on a country road, gotten out
and walked around it several times, shaking his head and mumbling, then slowly
climbed back in and propounded to his wife the stunning new insight he had been
vouchsafed: that every living human, and every one who had ever lived, was an
asshole. He had challenged her to name a single exception. Jesus? Trashed a harmless currency exchange, which merely let foreigners
give sacrifice to God in legal tender. Handpicked a
round dozen custodians for the most important words ever spoken: every man jack
of them both illiterate and too stupid to find a ghostwriter—staged the most
important event in history and forgot to invite the media. What an
asshole. Albert Einstein? Instigates Manhattan Project; says Oops: major
asshole. John Lennon? Saw his future with utter clarity—began the last Beatles
album with the whispered words, "Shoot me," wrote and recorded a
prescient solo song called "I'm Scared"—then a few years later,
forgot and stuck his head up again: poor asshole. Robert Heinlein had given
Wally's theory the most trouble—but even the First Grandmaster of Science
Fiction had disparaged marijuana, and once permitted one of his more
authoritative characters to refer to homosexuals as "the poor in-betweeners." To be sure,
Heinlein had more class than any other three assholes put together, but . . .
Once
Moira had accepted her husbands basic premise, that everyone is an
asshole—and she could not dispute it; she had a fair amount of
self-honesty—she'd seen the obvious corollary. The trademark of the true,
dyed-in-the-wool, hopeless and irredeemable capital-A Asshole (Wally had
explained) is the fixed belief that there exist some people, somewhere, who are
Not Assholes. This immediately gives rise to the passionate desire to be
mistaken for one of them. Wally himself—he now saw—had been wasting enormous
amounts of energy, time and invention on trying to keep anyone from
suspecting that he was one of the Assholes. "Dignity doesn't have to
be a suit of armor," he had told her. "It can be as weightless and
transparent as a force field." And from that day forth, both had tried to
refocus their efforts—to settle for being perceived (by anyone whose opinion
mattered to them) as a pair of competent and pleasant and capable assholes. Assholes with class.
And,
damn it, with senses of personal honor.
Building
on his anal metaphor, and punning on a joke they both knew, so ancient it was
almost due to come around again, she gestured with her head toward their office
and said, "Time to answer the question, 'How far is the old log-in?'"
He
took one last look at his coffee cake and heaved up from his chair. "About
thirteen steps away, I'd say." He helped her out of her own chair, and
they each put an arm around the other as they walked those steps to the
gallows.
"Let's
compose it on your Mac," he said as they waited for their machines to
boot. "Then we'll save it as text-only, and both upload it. Gee, there are still a few clubs that aren't online yet, too—we better fax
them. Don't you have a database for them somewhere?"
"First
let's just sniff the Web and make sure we aren't too late," she said.
"Maybe we'll get lucky: somebody else will sing first, and we can go down
as a subtitle instead of a headline." Her browser stabilized on-screen and
she began a staccato composition for keyboard and mouse.
He
knew she could netsurf better and faster; he left her to it, and began to
triage their e-mail. First he identified the VanCon
traffic, which had to be sorted into business (hotel and other subcontractors),
pro (the Guests of Honor and honored guests), and fan (everybody else with a
right to yank on their chain). All three folders bulged with unread posts which
he was just beginning to realize he was going to have to deal with after all,
now that the con was tentatively back on. But he left
them all unread and pressed on. Next he culled out and filed several
professional messages—related, that is, to the cottage industry by which he and
Moira earned their bread: writing and distributing stable software patches for
existing computer operating systems, which made them more useful for the
handicapped. He was briefly tempted to stop and read one of these messages, a
beta-tester's critique of a new program intended to assist one-handed typing
and eliminate mousework altogether in Mac System, but
restrained himself. Finally he was down to personal mail, and began to read
it—for once leaving his Joke of the Day subscription for last. If there were
going to be a report of a major fiscal fiasco anywhere in fandom, this was
(after the Web) where it was most likely to be.
Two
sentences into the third message, he turned to stone in his chair.
Even
a statue can read good news, though, given enough time, and happily the text of
this message was short enough to fit on Wally's oversized screen without
scrolling.
When
his screen began to shimmer at the edges, he remembered to bunk. He stopped
when he realized he was making it strobe. "Darling?" he said faintly.
"Anything?"
"Bugger
all so far."
He
reached out, groped, found her wrist and clamped down hard. "Have you
committed us to anything yet?"
She
stopped work, looked down at his hand on her wrist, then up at him. "Of
course not—we said we're going to write it together, didn't we? Aren't
we?"
"Maybe not."
Her
eyes widened, and she gripped his hand with her other one. "Tell me."
"Take
a look at this e-mail from Steve."
Sender:
stevethesleeve@eworld.com Received: from vanbc.eworld.com (vanbc.eworld.com
[204.191.160.2]) by dub-img-2.eworld.com (8.6.10/5.950515)
id JAA08556;
(Smail-3.1.29.1
#32) id mOuJKeR-0690WpC;
Subject:
Forwarded message from Space
Case
To:
moira@eworld.com (Wallace Kemp)
Date:
(PDT)
X-Mailer:
ELM [version 2.4 PL24 MESb]
MIME-Version:
1.0
Content-Type:
text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding:
7bit
Content-Length:
1291
Found
this in my mailbox this morning. Will be happy to forward any reply you want to
send.
—Forwarded message from Space Case (John Edw. MacDougal, III)—
From spacecase@teleport.com Mon May 13
Message-Id:
<999605140533.WAA05535@desiree.teleport.com>
From: spacecase@teleport.com (John Edw. MacDougal, III)
To: stevethesleeve@eworld.com (Steve Tomas)
Subject: smooth fen
Date:
X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82
Dear Sleever:
On
>If you happen to run across any new fans, or even just
>fellow travelers, who look like they'd cast well as
>Captain Picard, let me know ASAP.
(Please route thru
>me as Wally and Moira are busy with VanCon
coming up.)
>As you might imagine, close facial resemblance is not
>as important here as willingness to go bald for awhile
>—and if he's articulate, so much the better. Please
>pass the word.<
Don't know if helps, but am out here on
address, and gent just
walked into my store
today with 3-4
days' beard - all over head.
Backs of hands, too.
Not stilyagi: if had to
guess, would say
he bet Reform in last
election. Late 20s,
tall, in great shape,
narrow face. IMHO,
with right makeup could
make wizard Picard -- and if wife he
mentioned let him
shave head once, might
again if asked
quickly enough.
Funny thing: specifically stated was NOT fan
—but quoted Lazarus Long . . . accurately.
Perhaps one of those legendary poor
bastards who got
self de-fan-estrated for life,
for some ripoff or cosmic concern blunder. Or
perhaps, as he
claimed, favorite English
teacher once passed
off Heinlein quote as
own. Pleasant
cobber, seemed a little dull to
be fan. But
note for whatever may be worth
he also claimed
to be hiker, and was full of
shit about that.
Still, get that lie all time out
here . . .
Want me to ask grapevine for his 20?
Probably take <5 minutes and .5 droplet of
sweat. Please advise.
CU at VanCon; will have latest NSS updates
for our panel
as promised.
- Space Case
Regional Rep, National Space Society
—End of forwarded message from Space Case (John Edw. MacDougal,
III—
stevethesleeve@eworld.com
stevethesleeve@eslvcr.whimsey.com (Steve Tomas)
http://www.whimsey.com/~steve/
Key fingerprint = B9 4F BO 4U 2B +/ 2B 4Y
18 69 4U 82 1C U8 12 6C
"He's
on
"And
two warm guns," Wally murmured dreamily, temporarily immune to physical
pain. "Double happiness." He began to sing. "Bang bang, shoot shoot . . ."
She
had to lean past him and use his keyboard to reply to Space Case.
Johnson
would have found the successive days of almost relentless rain frustrating—even
though waiting was his life, and his life was long—had it not freed him up to devote
most of his time and attention to cheering up his dying wife Myrna. This had
the side effect of cheering him considerably as well.
Their
emotional state during this period is difficult to convey to a normal human;
different postulates controlled. Most adults who mate know, and sometimes
reflect, that they will one day see their loved one die, if they are the
lucky one of the pair; it has been thus since before we invented language.
Johnson, however, had lived several long centuries without ever truly believing
in his heart that this fate could come to him some day. (And in that
respect, at least, was like all other men—save that in his case it had not been
denial, but only optimism.) The fact was emotionally wrenching—could have been
devastating, if he had not regarded death as a correctable nuisance.
Myrna
did, too . . . but understandably, she needed more cheering up than he did. She
was the one who was probably going to have to do the dying.
And
even that (maddeningly) was not certain. Her body was newly mortal, but not
particularly fragile—especially for its age—and the Great Change was not
impossibly far away. With luck and good management, she might very well
survive, enfeebled, until the day when the long Masquerade could end, and she
could have not just immortality and invulnerability and youth again, but
literally anything she could conceive.
Unfortunately,
luck and good management did not appear to be in inventory just at present,
which was where/when they were needed. "Might not die" is admittedly
better than "will certainly die"—but not a hell of a lot better, for
one who has long been immortal.
So
Myrna's husband did his best to cheer her.
Music
was one of his favorite methods of sharing, a nonprescription mood-elevator
almost as potent as sex and laughter themselves. The artistic challenge he
faced was that he had been writing her love songs for some seven hundred years,
during which he had been perpetually on duty but almost never busy. The subject
had been picked pretty clean: believe it or not, there are a finite number of
ways to say "I love you."
Happily,
the dilemma itself suggested a line of attack, and by the evening of the third
rainy night, he was able to take up his current guitar, borrow a sprightly tune
no one was using at the moment, and sing to her:
I want to tell you how I feel, love
But it ain't exactly news
Got no secrets to reveal love
But I'm gonna say it anyway,
'cause I'm alone and you're away
I haven't got a blessed thing to lose . . .
(so here goes:)
Water ain't dry,
the sky goes up high,
And a booger makes pretty poor glue
You can't herd cats, bacteria don't wear hats
—and I love you
Sugar ain't sour,
it's damp in the shower
And murder's a mean thing to do
Trees got wood, and fucking is pretty good
—and I love you
I'm belaboring the obvious:
You will have noticed all the good times
This is as practical an exercise
As taping twenty cents to my transmission
so
that any time I want to
I can shift my pair o' dimes . . .
(but God knows:)
Goats don't vote, and iron don't float
And a hippie don't turn down boo
Dog bites man, the teacher don't understand
—and I love you
Sickness sucks, it's nice to have bucks
And the player on first base is named Who
Kids grow up, and fellows pee standing up
—and I love you
Guess I didn't need to say it
Just a message that my heart sent
And I kinda like the way it's
More redundant than is absolutely
necessary
according to the Department
of
Redundancy Department . . .
(I must close:)
Fun is nice, you can't fry ice,
And the money will always be due
Bullshit stinks, and no one outsits the
Sphinx
—and I love you
Living ain't bad, and dying is sad
And little we know is true
But that's just karma—baby,
you
can bet the farm on this:
I
do love you.
"I
call it 'Belaboring The Obvious'—or is that
redundant?" he said, after the last notes echoed away.
He
had already gotten the smile he had hoped for. Once he had set down the guitar,
he got the kiss, too.
Smile
and kiss were both like oil of cloves on a toothache, like the warm bath of
pharmaceutical morphine, melting pain for each spouse. Their telempathic connection caused this analgesic energy to
oscillate back and forth between them like
alternating current, reinforcing itself, and generating a third, resultant
field that acted to stabilize both. Their vibrant love had been the sole
constant in a millennium of slow tedious change; they knew well that it was
stronger than death, and that they differed from all the other lovers alive
only in that they could explain why. Johnson, a scholar of his wife's body
language, decoded runes in their hug which indicated that while this was not
yet the right time to proffer an erection, a fellow who was patient and played
his cards right might not die of waiting. Every songwriter loves applause,
however promissory.
As
they disengaged, he caught himself reaching for a cigarette. He was not
addicted to nicotine, of course—he and Myrna could self-generate any desired
drug effect they wished—but his cover persona appeared to be, drawing smoke deep
into his lungs in public without ever actually metabolizing a molecule of it.
And he was meticulous enough about tradecraft that he had formed the policy of
smoking even when in private, sometimes, so his home would smell right to the
rare visitor. It was that (true) habit which had caused his hand to start
toward his breast pocket.
What
stopped it was the realization that his mate no longer had the power to decide
which of the molecules she inhaled might have her leave to remain, and which
must depart.
Well,
irrational anti-tobacco hysteria was currently epidemic in this ficton anyway, part of the general paranoia inevitable in a
large complex society of innumerates and scientific
illiterates. It would actually be good for his cover to quit smoking, at this
juncture in history, make his persona even less interesting. And their home
less musty—not
that either ever smelled anything they didn't choose
to. He mentally accessed the housekeeping nanobots'
controller, and added cigarettes and related materials to the list of objects
defined as "trash," to be disassembled for parts the next time it was
convenient.
—and
was surprised to feel a pang, almost as sharp as an addict might have felt. The
small change in habit was his first overt acceptance of the great change that
had come into their lives, his first tacit admission that he was helpless to
cure, and must endure, this thing.
Myrna
caught all this, of course, and instantly took over as morale officer.
"Honey," she said, referencing a book they had both enjoyed,
"let's go and look at the kids."
He
hesitated a fraction of a second. Was it appropriate
to comfort a dying woman by taking her to visit one of the world's great mausolea? But he knew her intuition was superior to his
own. "Sure."
The
Lifehouse lay less than half a kilometer from their
home. They walked the distance, as humans would (under an umbrella Myrna would
actually have needed if she'd been alone), not just for the sake of their
cover, but simply because they wanted to walk in the forest in the rain
together. It was always best, they had found, to approach the Lifehouse slowly, and with humility.
The
rain had dwindled for a time to a barely visible mist, that
did not so much fall as roil. This should have been frustrating—for if it would
only clear up that last little bit, even for a few minutes, they could inscribe
their quartz beacon with a requested delivery date of now, stomp it into
the mud, and receive an instant response from the future. But one of the first principles of Waiting is that there is
no such thing as almost done. The rain would stop when it stopped; very
sensitive detectors would alert them the instant that occurred; meanwhile
downpour or mist were the same.
The
damp forest was full of trapped ozone; they allowed it to mildly exhilarate
them. Everything had that strange muted vividness that comes of poor light
passed through a billion tiny prisms. The rain-sound that had been blanketing
the high frequencies like a treble filter was suspended now; viridescent trees still dripped their accumulated moisture,
but those sounds arrived with crystal clarity. So did a rich stew of smells.
The rain forest ecology could be felt going about its business all
around them, industriously making hay while the sun didn't shine.
And
so, hand in hand beneath their umbrella, mud sucking shamelessly at their
boots, the scent of sweet rot in their nostrils, they came to the place where
the mook Angel Gerhardt had recently tried to bury
two ounces of something laced with cocaine.
***
They
perceived that the repairs they had made to the site were holding up. The great
elm was vertical once more, the bank on which it stood rebuilt to a convincing
naturalness. They stepped up detector range and sensitivity to the maximum,
satisfied themselves that the most intelligent life-form besides themselves
within a kilometer was a bull raccoon—and, this time, that there were no
electronic devices save their own functioning anywhere within the same range.
Then Johnson gestured, and a yonic tunnel gaped in
the side of the bank with a lewd wet sound, opening like a man-sized mud sphincter to reveal the stainless surface
of—
—the Lifehouse.
Their Lifehouse.
Their child, in a sense. Many children and children's children, in another. In yet
another—just as valid—merely a highly evolved descendant of a hard disk, packed
with a great many zeros and ones.
It
was a crystalline sphere two meters in diameter, externally identical to the
Eggs used to travel back through time, but it had never carried a living passenger—in
that direction. Now, after a millennium of creeping forward through time
again in the only way possible—like everything else, at the rate of one second
per second—it held millions of passengers . . . albeit only potentially living,
at present.
This
particular Egg, like all the other Lifehouses on
earth, was packed absolutely full of the most dense and stable information
storage medium permitted by the laws of physics. Its capacity was most
meaningfully expressed not in giga-, tera-, peta-, exa-,
or even zettabytes, but in yottabytes,
or sextillions of bytes. It could hold a lot of yottabytes—so
securely that the society which designed it had actually abandoned, presumably
forever, the concept of data backup.
Paradoxically,
this sphere of ultrastable memory visually resembled
nothing so much as a translucent model of Jupiter: a slow, majestically
churning globe of chaotic milky fluids, that appeared dimly lit from within, as
if for the convenience of the student.
Suspended in those roiling fluids, as incorruptible patterns of
data, were virtually all the human beings who had
died in the
There
in the Lifehouse, if all went well, they would wait
safely, in something very like the Christian concept of Limbo . . . until the
day came when their descendants were ready to grow them new bodies and
resurrect them to life eternal.
And if, through Myrna's and Johnson's failures as guardians, that
day should never come . . .
Well,
the dead would never know they had died a second time, at least.
Was
there any consolation in that? Or not?
***
Myrna
had always loved to visit the Lifehouse, always
wished they dared do so more often. It did not
put out any trace of any field that any instrument could detect . . . but
it always seemed to. Whenever she felt overwhelmed by that profound melancholy
which sooner or later must come to any immortal, who watches everything around
her dying in pain and needless terror, she would come to the Lifehouse and put her hand on its cool surface and feel
better. This was part of the antidote to Death. A monument to
monkey defiance of entropy, to the stubborn, eternal refusal of the human
spirit to surrender to fate.
She
had wondered if it would feel any different, any less comforting to be here,
now that she knew in her guts she might well end up in that glowing milky swirl
herself one day. She found that it did not. Mentally she compared the Lifehouse to every popular human conception of afterlife,
including utter nothingness, and found it a reasonably congenial place to be
dead for a few decades. No hymns to memorize, no harp lessons. No hellfire. No petulant paranoid demanding hosannas. No houris forcing figs and camel milk on you. No grinning
She
found herself picturing the way it would probably be.
One
silly thing or another would kill her. Whatever the proximate cause, her heart
would cease to beat, and decline to restart. Blood pressure would fall to zero,
along with cranial oxygen supply. Brain temperature would begin to drop. At
some point, an indetectably tiny but quite
sophisticated nanocomputer in her medial forebrain
bundle—precisely like the one to be found in the brain of every living human
being older than minus eight months—would conclude that she was a goner.
And,
as with everyone else who had ever died, her whole life would pass before her
eyes . . . as a high-speed data dump.
Forewarned,
and used to thinking at computer rates when necessary, she would probably be
one of a bare handful who had ever been in a position to fully appreciate that
particular show—and hers would last considerably longer than was customary.
Even at the ferocious speeds that would be employed, and even though she had
been in the habit of making regular deposits in the Lifehouse's
memory bank every century or so, it would take nearly five whole seconds of realtime to squirt a perfect copy of her self from
her played-out body—wherever it happened to die—to the indetectable
satellite that was always in the sky, and another ten seconds for the satellite
to perform integrity tests and relay-bounce her
back down to ... here, to this very Lifehouse.
Where she would remain in stasis, in the form of Read-Only Memory,
along with all the other dead. Until the time—subjectively,
only an instant after her death—when she would come to awareness again, to find
herself floating down a long tunnel diode, toward a bright light . . . being
greeted by departed relatives and loved ones . . . being welcomed (in her case,
back) into The Mind, the telepathic family of nearly all the humans who had
ever lived . . .
It
didn't sound that bad, actually.
Oh,
the dying part itself would doubtless be unpleasant. But she had known
unpleasantness before, in her near-millennium of stewardship. And it would
probably be the last unpleasantness she would ever know. In effect, she
would be trading some moments or days or weeks of pain for the privilege of
fast-forwarding through some history that was becoming increasingly oppressive:
the final darkness before the dawn of the Great Change. It might almost be
worth dying, to miss the rest of the Nineties—let alone the decades that would
follow.
But
poor Johnson would be so lonely in the meantime!
***
"I
keep wishing we could just talk to them," she said aloud.
"To
Paul and June, you mean?'
"Yes.
If we could just explain to them . . . bring them here, show them this, explain the stakes . . . perhaps they'd submit voluntarily
to editing. You never know."
In
her mind she constructed the argument.
Elsewhere
in this country, right now, a man is learning to decipher the information
storage code of the human brain. Before long he will know how to erase memories
. . . and shortly after that, how to read and write them. In time he will have
technologically assisted telepathy. By great good fortune he will be an ethical
man: he will exercise the resulting power to conquer the world undetected—but
only long enough to successfully give away his secret to everyone, everywhere,
at once. Soon thereafter, inevitably, nearly all men will be telepathic, and nontelepathic man will join Neanderthal. The Mind will
form: several billion brains, all equal, all forever free, all able to
transcend solitude and death and pain and the need to sleep, working together
without friction or language barrier. Soon, inevitably, they will understand
the universe well enough to travel backward through time. Soon, inevitably,
they will realize that almost as many brains' worth of memories as the Mind
began with were trashed unnecessarily before it formed—and they will
decide to conquer death retroactively. They will come back and make
pickup on all their fallen comrades who will consent to live again in a
different way. They will tailor a nanovirus that
makes backup copies of human beings, and stores them in Lifehouses
until there is a Mind to restart them, and they will release it ten thousand
years ago. And the very hardest and most necessary part of the whole project
will be concealing that knowledge from terrified ancestors, who needlessly
believe themselves doomed to extinction.
Johnson
knew her thought. He did not even bother to disagree. They both knew it was
wishful thinking. Though they had never physically met either Paul or June, they knew both of them very well: they knew June
at least as well as she knew herself, and knew Paul a little better than she
knew him. Each human had the kind of fiercely independent, paranoid temperament
that would find The Mind—the author and point of all this—a thing of horror.
Both believed deep down that identity was a thing made of borders and limits;
both would flatly refuse to believe that an ego could blend with any other
without losing its integrity. To them, a self-cherishing telepathic
species-wide family would seem an ant-like hive mentality: inhuman rather than
superhuman. If they were apprised of all the facts, and given a simple
choice—forget this ever happened, and wake one day to life eternal in the
company of everyone you ever loved, liked or respected ... or sound the alarm,
and vanish forever along with the whole universe—well, humans could never be
perfectly predicted, but the strong probability was they would proudly choose
the latter.
When
and if they were tracked down, they would have to be mind-raped: both were
incapable of surrender. The irony was biting.
As
Myrna and Johnson stood there in silence, contemplating the Lifehouse
together, souls of the recently deceased rained down invisibly from the sky at
random intervals, striking the receiver at the peak of the elm and racing down
the heart of its trunk to the Egg beneath. Each time this occurred, a short
report was generated and squirted to a database in the attic of their
caretaker's cottage, a process designed to come to their conscious attention
only in the astronomically rare event that the report read "file could not
be written and was skipped." Idly, now, perhaps feeling that it would
bring her into a slightly more intimate contact with
the whole ongoing process to which she'd dedicated her life, Myrna tuned a
fragment of her mind to that "channel," and monitored the names and
vital statistics of the incoming new dead.
Just
as one byte in particular tried to claim her attention, an alarm went off.
Think of the alarm clock you've hated worst in your life, surgically implanted
in your skull. Even as she and Johnson flinched, their hearts leapt with joy
and relief.
The
humidity had finally fallen below the critical value.
Johnson
whirled and gestured toward home. The chunk of coruscating quartz crystal
arrived in less than a second, decelerating smoothly to a dead stop in midair
at a point precisely equidistant from them both. Their eyes met around it.
Together they mentally inscribed it with the tick that described this
particular instant of sidereal time. Johnson gestured again, and the crystal
slammed down into the earth and buried itself deep.
At
once, both began to back away from the spot.
The
air became electric. A prickly scent, like toasting basil and cinnamon, came
from everywhere. A faint, high, vaguely metallic sound converged slowly from
all directions at once. Local temperature rose. Tendrils of steam rose from the
damp grass. The sound swelled and contracted, like an explosion played
backwards—
At
the last moment, Myrna remembered to avert her eyes.
CRACK!
"Oh,
shit," Johnson said.
She
opened her eyes again. An Egg sat on the earth, directly above the spot where
the quartz beacon had buried itself.
"Oh,
shit," she agreed.
They
had not, in their wildest dreams, expected to see two actual, corporate
passengers in that Egg. A person could exist only once in any given ficton. But they had hoped—hoped hard—to see a chunk
of quartz very like the one they had used to summon the Egg here/now: a
memory-crystal containing the best advice of the future June Bellamy and Paul Throtmanian on how to track and capture their past selves.
What
had arrived instead both looked and was considerably less impressive.
"Well,"
Johnson said philosophically, "like they told us back in training, the
operative syllable in 'Anachrognosis' is the
next-to-last one. Can't fight a big paradox with a little
one. We should have known The Mind would turn us down."
Myrna
said nothing.
"Look
on the bright side," he said. "The situation just improved: from
'hopeless' to 'outcome uncertain.'
"Yes,"
she said softly. "That is good news."
"We're
going to get to repair our own mistake after all."
She
noticed, just at that moment, that her neck hurt, and automatically tried to
fix it herself so she wouldn't have to ask Johnson for a rub. And failed. For the first time in her long
life . . . and not the last. "It's purely a coincidence those
things usually home on shit," she said, suppressing a wince.
"Well,"
he said, apparently deciding that sardonic humor was better than none at all,
"at least nobody can say we don't give a fucking fly."
The
humor was metaphorical, of course. The thing that hovered in the center of the
new Egg—its sole contents, save for air—was not in fact a housefly. It just
looked and acted precisely like one.
Externally, at least. But not superficially. If, somehow, it had fallen into the
hands of a drosophilist, he might have needed several
days of study to notice there was something distinctly odd about that
particular specimen. He would probably never have identified the weaponry,
would certainly never have located either the detection gear or the onboard
computer, and could not have comprehended the power source if it had been
explained to him. His best guess at its top speed would have been short by at
least an order of magnitude or two.
For
a climate so kind that even in November a single passing fly would elicit only
mildest surprise, it was the perfect tracking device. The ultimate snitch: in
cop slang, a shoo-fly. Or perhaps "gumshoe-fly" was more accurate.
If
time travelers had the luxury of being allowed to alter the historical date of
anyone's death, it might also have made a perfect Terminator. It was quite
capable of saying "No problemo" in a German
accent if the need should arise . . . and could not be stopped or destroyed by
anything currently living or manmade. But while it would fight like a wolverine
to avoid capture, it could not kill any life-form as advanced as another fly,
even to save itself.
Given
enough time, however, it could locate any life-form whose DNA parameters
it knew, anywhere on earth or in its atmosphere, clear out to Low Earth Orbit.
It
already had DNA and gross physical descriptions of June and Paul in memory. It
could identify
their skeletal profiles under any conceivable
disguise, their retinal patterns through even opaque contacts, their
fingerprints on a car door handle from treetop height. It knew every pheromone
or sebaceous volatile their bodies were capable of emitting, far more
intimately than the lovers themselves did, and could positively identify them
in concentrations of less than one part per octillion. Like a Bussard ramjet, its high speed made it an excellent
molecule collector. If either grifter were presently
in
The
question was: did Myrna and Johnson have as much as a whole day left, before
some form of all Hell broke loose?
"'Said
the flea, "let us fly!" Said the fly, "let us flee!" . .
.'" Myrna recited.
"...
'So they flew through a flaw in the flue.'" Johnson said, giving the
tagline of the ancient limerick. It so happened that
he had written it. "This fly won't leave a flaw in the flue, Flo. Slim Gaillard would have
called it a 'flatfoot floozie with the floy-floy.'"
She
wasn't really in the mood for word games—her neck was quite stiff, now—but he
was trying his best. "Reet," she agreed.
"Lets turn it loose-a-rootie."
He
heard the subtext in her voice, dropped the banter, gestured
sharply at the Egg. It promptly ceased to exist, utterly and forever. The Superfly, without so much as
pausing to dip its wings in salute, took off like a silent bullet, reappeared
briefly above the nearby spot where Angel Gerhardt's coke-laced baby laxative
lay buried for all time, and departed in a northerly direction at just under
Mach One.
They
stood there in silence together for a minute or two, looking deep into each
other's eyes. She found the strength for one last effort. "Well," she
said, "the fly is cast."
He
winced obligingly. "Very dry."
And
of course, just then it began to rain again, wringing genuine giggles from both
of them.
"Come
on," he said, taking up the umbrella and putting an arm around her.
"Let's go home. You look like you could use a neck rub."
She
put her head on his shoulder, her own arm around him, and squeezed hard.
In
the distance a faint false thunder was heard, as the trackfly
exceeded the speed of sound. . . .
It
was such a brief and such a kindly note, to have generated so much adrenaline:
Dear
Mr and Mrs Dortmunder
somebodys askin around the island tryin to
find you two without you knowin. I didnt say nothin but they will
find you sure by tomorrow or the next day. You seem like a nice young couple. I
thought youd want to know.
Regards,
Maurice
Lycott
June
always took a secret special pleasure in blowing her lover's mind. So few people could manage it. Even she, who could blow just
about anybody's mind, usually had to work at it with Paul. The look on his face
now, the color in his forehead, the little squeak in his voice as he said,
"You want to what?" were enough to calm her down, and almost
enough to cheer her up.
"Call
Wally and Moira," she repeated.
He
made three successive sounds, two moist and one dry, none of which graduated to
the status of a proper syllable.
"You
said it yourself: they've got the kind of minds that can think about time
travel without boggling. For sure they've been thinking about it longer than we
have—and reading the thoughts of better minds than their own, too. The more I
think about this, the more my head hurts. You need a getaway: you call in a
wheelman. You need something moved: you hire muscle. Right now, we need a time
travel specialist in the string, fast. Two would be even better."
He
closed his eyes, sighed, and opened them again. He began quietly, but built to
a crescendo by the end of his question. "And you don't suppose the fact
that both those airheads are presently consumed by a passionate desire
to examine my giblets with rusty fucking tongs might present a few trivial
fucking obstacles?"
She
ignored his anger: it was not really directed at her. "You tell me—you
know them better. Which would a true-blue science fiction fan rather do, in his
or her heart of hearts? Avenge a sting—or meet a no-shit time traveler?"
"No
way they're going to believe me a second time—"
"Way,"
she said, knowing he hated that particular neologism. "They're not stupid,
you said. You steam-cleaned them, Paul, down to the
last peso. They're wigless, gigless and cigless now. You know it, and they know you know it. The
only possible motive you could have for coming back on them again with the same
tale is if it's the truth this time."
"That's
not—"
"That
Kornbluth guy—was he a big name in sci fi?"
"One of the very very best. So what?"
"How
much do you want to bet Wally or Moira once read the same story you did?'
He
frowned and squinted ferociously, as at a sudden blinding light.
"Think
about it, Paul. Everything I know about time travel, and half of what you know,
we got from the movies and TV. They're lousy sources of information about real
science, for God's sake. You want to blow this, through some equivalent of
expecting to hear sounds in vacuum, or thinking cars blow up in real
life?"
He
gestured, like a beggar seeking alms. Shylock, crying,
"My daughter! My ducats!" could not have sounded more
conflicted. "But June—ask a mark for
help? It's . . . it's not decent."
She
shared his pain, but pressed on. "You don't like that argument? Here's one
you're gonna love: it goes right to the root of your favorite root. So far we think
we've worked up a few field tactics useful for defending ourselves against
this guy's mind-ray—maybe—for as long as a pair of AA
batteries hold out—maybe long enough to slip in under his radar. All to the good. But wouldn't you like to have a way to threaten
the bastard?"
His
frown eased slightly. "With what?"
"Look,
we know he's afraid of exposure. Maybe even more than we are: we could go to jail, he could go to
Paul's
frown released altogether; so did all his facial muscles. "Oh, my," he said softly. "Oh
la." He pulled his jaw back up, and shaped it into a grin. "Oh
angel, I like it. That might be just about the only thing we could
possibly do that would scare the living shit out of the son of a bitch. Will
you marry me?"
"No."
His
grin faltered. "Huh? Why not?"
"Paul,
don't ask me that now, okay?"
Back to a frown. "I think it constitutes
what I'd call a valid point of order," he said. "I may have been
smiling, but it wasn't a joke question."
"I
know."
Hurt
twisted his features. "So?"
"I
gave up on marriage a long time before I met you: it just isn't in the cards
for me, alright? Please, baby, can't we just go on living in sin and get this
fucking zombie off our backs and then see what happens?"
He
turned on his heel and walked away.
"Paul?"
He
reached the telephone's base unit and thumbed the intercom; a loud repetitive
whoop in the next room announced the location of the wandering handset.
"Aw,
come on—Paul?"
He
retrieved the phone, punched keys. "Yes, in
"Paul—"
He
held up a hand. As the digits were read to him, he punched them into the phone.
When he had them all, he hung up, poked redial and returned the thing to his
ear. "Ringing," he said.
"Paul,
damn it to hell—"
He
held his hand higher and turned his face away slightly.
They
waited, alone, together.
After
what seemed like an eternity, he disconnected. "Answering
machine. They stayed in
"Paul—"
"They
gave me their fucking number there—and of course I burned it the minute
I got home. Oh—" He began his swearing litany. It was different every
time, and she had once heard him continue it for three solid sulphurous minutes before he slipped, and repeated an
obscenity. Another time, the victim—a grown man—had fainted dead away, midway
into the second minute. It was going to be impossible to interrupt him now
until he had finished wringing the English language dry of its power to express
his frustration.
She
gave up and left the room, to attack the same task from a feminine perspective.
Somewhere she couldn't be interrupted either, with a door that locked, and lots
and lots of kleenex.
But
of course she was wrong. One simple knock at the front door, and she and Paul
were both as interrupted as they could be.
***
"Look,"
Paul said wearily, when they had all seated themselves, "the sooner you
put those silly things away, the less chance you'll end up using them as
suppositories."
"You're
probably right," Wally agreed. "But I'm feeling reckless." His
gun-hand looked dismayingly steady.
"It's
not necessary, you know," June said. "We were just trying to call you
when you showed up, only we lost your
Wally
looked at her for a long moment. "That is such a preposterous assertion, I think I almost believe it." He glanced to
Moira.
She
shrugged. "My experience is that the really ridiculous is usually true.
But I'm not losing the gun."
Her
husband nodded, and turned back to June. "Why were you going to call us?
You don't look like gloaters. You know you tapped us out. Oh, wait, I
get it—you must have found out somehow that we hit your other place on
June
groaned. Another perfectly good address and identity, blown
for good. Not to mention another large cash-stash gone. "You
know," she said to her own partner, "I've had better weeks. Lots of 'em."
"Tell
me about it."
"Our
own has been excessively eventful," Moira pointed out.
"Let
me take this," June said.
"Of
course," Paul agreed.
There
was no more than that to the exchange: half a dozen banal words, absolutely no
ironic vocal undertones or pained expressions. But June clearly saw Moira grasp
that she and Paul were presently in the middle of a quarrel. From this she
inferred that Moira was no fool, and reconsidered her opening.
"Wallace,
Moira, my name is June Bellamy, and this is Paul Throtmanian.
I can't think of any reason why you should believe those are our real names,
because I'm as good a professional liar as he is. But you have to call us
something. It's a place to start."
"Call
me Wally, June," Wally said.
She
felt relief. She did not want to address herself principally to Moira,
to seem to be trying the lame let's us girls work this out while the boys
hold weapons on each other ploy. "Thank you, Wally. As I said, Paul
and I were discussing phoning you and Moira. Not because you have brains—we
have brains—but because you both have a particular kind of brains. And I
think you've proven that, by tracking us. Frankly, I don't know how you pulled
it off—and please don't think I'm asking how you found us: I haven't earned the
right. But we have a problem we need your kind of brains to solve, and I'd like
to explain it to you."
"Pardon
me," Wally said, "but I want to get this straight. We're holding guns
on you, and you're trying to hire us?"
"Basically,"
she agreed.
He
nodded. "I'm beginning to like you, June. Proceed."
She
carefully did not smile. "Thank you, Wally. Since you say you got as far as
the Bernardo house, I assume you must know what happened to Paul's Metkiewicz place." She glanced to Moira for
confirmation, got back nothing, glanced away. "From that and our hasty
departure for here, you must have deduced that someone else is after us.
Someone we are very respectful of."
"And
you want to hire us as consultant hackers," Wally said. "Oh, this is
lovely."
"Would
you like to hear our minimum fee?" Moira inquired.
June
turned back to her. "Please, let me define the job correctly first. It may
not involve any hacking as such, for instance. What we really need is your
expertise as science fiction fans." She saw Moira begin to frown. "Please," she said quickly, holding up a
hand, "I know that sounds like exactly the same sort of grifter technique my partner used on you: tell the mark
what she wants to hear. Unfortunately, it happens to be the truth. Paul and I
need a fan, badly. All I have to overcome your reasonable suspicion is logic.
If you're really who we need, you'll see that logic. Will you listen?"
She
was quietly elated when Moira shared a glance with her husband before saying,
"Yes."
"Again,
thank you. I'm going to make another assumption. I'm guessing you've both
figured out where Paul got the idea for the game he ran on you. A story by ...
what's his name, honey?"
"Cyril
Kornbluth," Paul supplied.
"Told
you," Wally blurted, and flinched at the glance it got him
from Moira.
"Thanks,"
June pressed on. "Kornbluth."
She began slowing the pace of her speech. ("June," her mother had
once told her, "it is almost impossible to speak
foolishness slowly") "I haven't read it, but Paul's told me about it.
You've read it. A grifter pretends to be a time
traveler. He works a long con." Beat. "What happens to him?"
Moira's
eyes began to glitter a whole second before Wally's did. She covered superbly,
kept her face serene and body relaxed. Wally managed to keep silent, but
allowed his eyes to widen and his knuckles to whiten on his Glock,
which happened to be pointed at his own ankle. Neither said anything for
several seconds. Then simultaneously they turned to each other, exchanged a
silent highspeed transmission, and turned back to
June together. Wally's gun was no longer pointing at his ankle.
"You
allege that the Time Police are after you," Moira stated. Her own gun was
smaller, but nearer; June felt she could almost see the .22 bullet in there in
the chamber. Dammit, this did sound exactly like another con, improvised
to fit their known weakness. They were right to be angry. It was time to go for
broke.
"I
have a ... call it a skill," she said. "I call it the eye of power,
or just the eye. I have not tried to use it on you so far—" She did so
now, on Moira, gave her both barrels. "—but you
can see that it is very powerful. I can sell a turd to a perfumier
with the eye of power." Moira nodded involuntarily. "I am now going
to look away from you both and talk to the bay out there for a few minutes. You
can shoot me any time you become convinced I'm lying to you. If you can think
of any other explanation for what's happened to us, I promise to believe
it." She switched off the eye, continued to meet Moira's eyes long enough
for her to grasp that, then slowly swiveled her chair
until she could just see Moira's gun in her peripheral vision.
And
then she told them, as concisely and accurately and dryly as she could,
everything that had happened to her since she had first seen the mook in
She
was quite surprised not to be interrupted even once. Her opinion of science
fiction fans rose somewhat, in consequence. She did not try to hide her own
complicity in Paul's sting. When she came to the only part she had intended to
gloss over, how she and Paul came to be in tenancy of this particular dwelling,
she changed her mind and told that straight too, giving O'Leary's name and a
rough sketch of the game she had been planning for him, blowing it thereby.
For
her finale, she got up, went to the phones base unit, and activated the
speakerphone feature. "I just thought of one small piece of evidence that
can corroborate at least one tiny thing we've told you," she said, over
the sound of dial tone. "I wish I had more." Signifying for them like
a mime, she pushed the redial button. After four rings, they all heard a click,
and then Moira's recorded voice saying, "This is what it sounds like. Do
the obvious at the standard cue." June disconnected before it could beep
at them.
Wally
and Moira exchanged a glance.
"You
both must know the Sherlock Holmes quote about eliminating the
impossible," June concluded. "Paul and I are down to the X-Files,
ancient hairy gods, a mad scientist, or a time traveler. I don't know about you
two, but time traveler is the only one of those I can live with. I would reject
that as impossible ... if I had anything at all to replace it with. Do
either of you see any possibility I missed?"
There
was a long silence.
"And
you see why we need you?"
Outside,
the rain stopped.
She
was mildly surprised when it was Wally who broke the silence. "You've
defined the job. I will stipulate the problem is interesting to us. Will you
hear our consulting fee now?"
She
swiveled back to face them, and took Paul's hand. "Please."
"Ninety-nine thousand Canadian dollars."
Paul's
hand tightened on hers. She squeezed back. "You've already—" she
tried.
"—recovered
a large fraction of what you took us for, yes. That's a separate transaction.
That's why we're probably not going to shoot you. This is different. Ninety-nine thousand dollars is the fee your partner set
for giving us an education, in his area of expertise. We won't work for
less."
June
looked at Moira's eyes. They meant it.
Paul
groaned, and made one last try at preserving a shred of self-respect. "The
correct figure—"
"Excuse
me," Wally said mildly, but it was the gesture with the Glock that cut Paul off. "I am not going to shoot you
unless you absolutely insist. And I may work for you if we can agree on terms.
But if you want to dick me around over change, I may be moved to pistol-whip
you a little. Can we keep this friendly?"
"Sorry,"
Paul said. He turned to look at June. She felt his pain, like a blow to an
already weary heart. His hand was limp in hers, now. "That's about
everything we've got left," he said.
Technically
he was lying; there were a few stashes here and there, though none easily
accessible. But in another sense he was correct. There could be no more
humiliating fate for a grifter than to have to pay
the mark double. If they agreed to this—even if they swore Wally and Moira to
secrecy—it would be the irrevocable end of both their careers. No one but the
people in this room would ever know what a genius Paul Throtmanian
was. She groped for words. As she did so, her eyes met his squarely for the
first time since Wally and Moira had arrived . . . and she fell in.
"Yes,
I will," she heard herself say.
He
understood her perfectly and at once. His smile was a beautiful thing to see.
"Then everything's okay, then."
"Yes,
Paul," she said. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
"I
was broke when I met you."
"So
was I," she agreed. "Ow."
He
eased his grip on her hand, snapped their gaze-lock with a visible effort, and
turned his smile-beam on their guests. "It's a deal. You'll want it up
front." Both nodded firmly. "It'll probably involve a little pick and
shovel work: the bastard burned my house down around it. But it should still be
there, perfectly safe, untoasted and undiscovered,
not far from a basement entrance I know survived. Best done in darkness;
if we catch the next ferry the timing should work out." June had tuned out, distracted by the stunning awareness that she had
somehow, despite a lifetime of wariness, become a fiancée. But her
attention was caught again when Paul went on, "I guess the only thing left
to be settled is whether you need to pistol-whip me before we can put the heat
away and get this show on the road."
Moira
visibly deferred to her husband. He considered the matter, frowning
speculatively. "You're a prick," he said finally, "but I've
worked for pricks without violence all my life. And for about twenty-four
hours, there, I thought I'd saved John Lennon's life. Maybe that is worth what
it cost me." He engaged the safety catch on his gun and put it in his lap.
(Moira, startled, started to take her own safety off . . . then left it
the way it was, and put the gun in her purse.)
June
was so relieved she shamelessly allowed it to show.
Paul
nodded. "In that case, I believe the moment has come when honor will
permit me to apologize, to you and your wife, for what I did to you. I don't
have any excuse, and I don't expect you to accept the apology, but I give it
gladly."
No
response.
"So
do I," June said, largely to see if her numb lips
could produce speech. "We're quitting the business."
"One
last thing and then we can head for the ferry," Paul went on. "You're
the first to know: we just got engaged."
Wally
and Moira both raised their eyebrows and exchanged a glance. And
began to smile.
"June,"
Moira said, "all your sins will be satisfactorily
atoned for."
"You
lucky duck," Wally added.
She
found her cheeks were being squeezed up so tight by the corners of her mouth
that water was threatening to leak from her eyes. "I hope we're as lucky
as you two."
"Not
a chance," Wally said. "But it's something to shoot for."
"Then
I take it we're adjourned?" Paul asked.
"Just
one thing," Wally said. "That PC I saw in the den—is that the one
with the Pentium 133 chip?"
Moira
smacked him on the shoulder. In spite of herself, June giggled. After a moment
and a few blinks, so did Wally.
This
might, June decided, just work out.
***
The
ride to the ferry terminus in Wally and Moira's
But
by the time they shut off the engine at the tail end of the lineup waiting for the next sailing (at this end of the
trip, perhaps thirty whole vehicles—for which no accommodation whatsoever had
been provided, stacked up in most of the downhill lane of "downtown"
Snug Cove's "main street"), the women could stand it no longer.
"How long have you and Wally—" June began, at the same instant Moira
asked, "How long have you and Paul—" and everyone laughed, and that
broke the ice. Then they swapped How We Met stories. June went first, and gave
both the version they told people, and the truth. So Moira felt compelled to do
the same when it was her turn. Sharing embarrassment forged another small bond.
Yet another formed between Paul and Wally as each attempted and failed to edit
his mate's account: that peculiar, wry late-twentieth-century brotherhood of
shared public submission.
Whatever
their business differences, it is difficult for really intelligent people not
to enjoy each other's company. Each couple had good and recent reason to
respect the other's intelligence. None of the four ever quite completely forgot
that there were loaded firearms in the vehicle, or just where they were
located; nonetheless they were all about as relaxed with each other as crime
partners, for instance, ever get by the time the Queen of Something-or-Other snugged itself into its tire-studded berth, stuck out its
steel tongue and began vomiting Jaguars, Ladas and 4X4s onto the land.
As
Wally parked in the vehicle bay, they agreed they were all hungry, but not
enough to eat ferry food. The two grifters went first
up the steep narrow stairwell, out of an intuitive sense that they were still
not fully trusted yet. The first time you climbed those stairs, you wondered why the handrails had studs along
most of their length; halfway up you came to appreciate the pitons. June became
slightly aware of Wally's nose only a few inches from her buttocks, and tried
to climb as unprovocatively as possible. Apparently
she succeeded; when they all sat together on a life-jacket locker outside on
the upper passenger deck, Moira did not interpose herself between them.
It
was quite pleasant on deck, no cooler or windier than they were dressed for.
The rain had been over for so long it was not necessary to dry the surface of
the locker before sitting on it. The sun was just settling toward the treetops,
behind the ferry, crowning
Shortly,
the captain made a general announcement over the loudspeakers, and the four got
up and joined ninety percent of the vessel's passengers on the north side to
gawk in awe and inexplicable pleasure at a whale. A bitter argument broke out
among several of their fellow passengers as to just which sort of whale it was.
An elderly man loudly demanded to know why, for this kind of money, the captain
couldn't for chrissake drive the damn boat closer so
he (the jerk) could get some better shots of the fish. The air was cooler out
of the cove, and the wind was from the south, so it was somewhat less nippy
there on the port side; they remained by tacit mutual consent even after the
whale had gone about its business, and most of the other passengers had gone
back indoors to enjoy "food" or videogames or virtuously display
their nonsmoking status.
It
would not have made the slightest difference if they had remained where they'd started.
The trackfly passed the ferry on the south side, no
more than half a kilometer away at closest approach, but as stated, the wind
was from that direction. The fly was not quite bright enough to change course
to pass the ferry to leeward; in order to bring the search down to something
manageable, it had been programmed to regard bodies of water as null areas, to
be traversed as quickly as possible. Ignoring the can of pheromones downwind,
it continued on a straight line toward
If
it had so much as glanced their way, even its rather poor vision might have
picked out Paul's fuzzy skull, decided that it fit the parameters of a male
head which had been bald three days ago, and vectored in for a quick sniff. If
any of the
four had been scanning the right quarter of the sky
with good binoculars at precisely the right instant, and known what to look
for, they might just have glimpsed the fly. They did, in fact, like all the
other passengers out on deck, hear a muffled sound that might be termed a sonic
poof, and like everyone else dismissed it as some sort of ferry noise, or
perhaps a far-distant Canadian Forces jet.
It
was—as it had been at the very start—just that tantalizingly close.
But they were sailing to
***
They
ate in a wonderful place Wally and Moira knew just outside
"Wally?"
he said. "Are you familiar with a condition called shellout
falter?"
Watty's eyebrows rose sympathetically.
"You suffer from a reach impediment?"
"Well,
it's been a hard week."
Wally
waved a hand, and grinned. "Take it from your mind. I cannot tell you how
much you will have improved this whole anecdote if you will allow me to buy you
dinner."
Paul
and June considered that . . . and burst out laughing.
Moira
joined in too, but when the laughter had subsided she said to June, "So
you two took off so fast you didn't have time to grab any cash?"
June
nodded. "There are still a couple of small accounts around town we could
tap in theory—but none I'd dare access until we settle this."
"So
what were you going to do when O'Leary's fridge emptied out?"
"Pocket
cash has never—" Paul began automatically, and then trailed off.
"What?"
Moira said.
"Pardon
me," he said slowly. "A phantom ache in an
amputated limb. I said goodbye to my life out there on
June
took his hand. "What Paul means," she said quietly, "is that he
started to say cash has never been a problem for us, we'd just have worked some
short con or other on some mark for operating capital. And then he remembered
that we've retired, and there's no answer to your question anymore."
After
an awkward silence, Moira spoke up. "You meant that about quitting your
line of work?"
June
nodded.
"Why?"
In spite of herself she giggled. "I mean, you're good at
it," she tried to explain. "That eye of power thing is awesome. And
you had no way of knowing Wally and I were going to catch up with you. Why were
you thinking about retiring?"
"To
change your pattern, make it harder for the time traveler to track you?"
Wally suggested.
Still
looking at her fiancé's expressionless profile, June shook her head.
"Basically," she said, "we woke up one day and found ourselves
stinging nice people. People who we could have liked.
We always swore we weren't going to. Maybe every grifter
swears that, starting out—the good ones, anyway. Maybe not.
But over the years, your standards
slip, a centimeter at a time, while you aren't paying attention. Your
partner's standards slip, too. Soon you're like two drunks trying to hold each
other up, each certain you're sober. The next thing you know, you find you've
written a truly brilliant new con . . . that only works on smart, kind
people." She reached out and stroked Paul's cheek. "So you look back
to see just where you lost control, and you can't pin
it down. So maybe you've had it all wrong from the start, and nobody deserves
to get stung."
"I'm
not certain I agree with that part," Moira said. "There are
bastards on this planet. Maybe you've just lost faith in your own wisdom to
judge."
It
was not said unkindly; June considered it, and shook her head. "My right to."
"It
isn't right to be Simon Templar, and smite the Ungodly," Wally suggested,
"unless you're in a book, where you don't make mistakes, and you can
guarantee there won't be any innocent bystanders."
"Exactly,"
Paul said, and turned back to face the table. "There's a song James
Taylor's brother Liv wrote, that goes, 'Life is
good—when you're proud of what you do . . .'" he said to Wally.
"Well, for a long time now, I've been trying to skate by on being proud of
how I do it, instead. It just stopped being good enough."
"I
see," Wally said.
"I
mean, look at my masterpiece. My most brilliant artistic
creation. Like June says, it only works on bright sensitive misfits with
unusually flexible minds. I mean, it's pretty obvious who I'm really trying to
sting, isn't it?'
"Your
mother," June said.
He
spun on her, thunderstruck, and started to cloud up—then his face went blank.
"Good one," he said after a few seconds of thought. "I was going
to say me, but that was infuriating enough to have some truth in it."
"Maybe
some of both," she suggested.
"You
two are going to be good at this marriage business," Moira said.
"And
the rest will fall into place," Wally agreed. "It always does, if
you've got the basic stuff covered."
June
found herself smiling. "Well, if we don't get caught and killed, or
shipped off to the Stone Age or something, I think we've got a shot. That's why
I accepted his proposal."
"Oh,
don't worry about that," Wally assured her. "I think we can deal with
that."
Paul
and June stared at him.
"Oh
yeah," he said, somewhat abashed. "I worked it out on the way to the
ferry. A plan, I mean. It needs a little polish, but it ought to work."
Moira's
eyes were gleaming. "My heroin," she said in a swooning, theatrical
voice.
Her
husband smiled at her. "Aw, shocks."
The
good fellowship that had grown up between the four of them made it sort of
necessary for Wally to outline his idea then, even though he and Moira had not
yet been paid their consulting fee. His scheme was not, at first, received with
great enthusiasm, since it required large amounts of trust and faith and
hope—ingredients Paul and June were mostly accustomed to selling to other
people. But eventually they were forced to concede that their only other option
was to cut their own throats, right now. June then spotted a potential hole in the scenario, but Moira was able to patch
it brilliantly. They all left the restaurant feeling confident, and with that
special warmth that comes from having made good new friends. Wally and Paul
talked together in the front of the Camry, and Moira and June talked in the
back, all the way back to
The
camaraderie thus engendered helped considerably to smooth over the awkward
moment that arose when they reached the site of Paul's secret stash, and found
only shrapnel.
After
several minutes of silence, during which Paul considered using his swearing litany—after
all, the house had already burned down—but couldn't work up the heart to begin,
he felt Wally's pudgy hand on his bowed shoulder. In all the countless
permutations of the English language, there was only one right thing Wally
could possibly have said just then, and Paul was immensely gratified to hear
him say it.
"You
can owe us."
Too
moved to speak, he nodded.
"Let's
get our women and go to war," Wally said.
Paul
nodded again, and they left.
Myrna
and Johnson were alertly waiting—desperately hoping—for word of June Bellamy
and Paul Throtmanian; indeed, they had done very
little else in the thirty-six hours since they'd loosed the trackfly.
It didn't help them much.
The
one thing they'd thought they knew for sure about June and Paul's location was
that it was distant. The fly had long since swept the entire Greater
Vancouver area in a Drunkard's Walk pattern, conclusively reported null
results, and expanded its search area to encompass all the inhabited islands
nearby. It had scanned most of the small ones, was already halfway through the
immense
The
truth came as a rude shock. A similar emotion might be experienced by a
submarine skipper who—having lobbed a deckgun round through the night at a distant gunboat, and while waiting
out the endless long seconds before he will know for sure whether or not he has
scored a hit and is committed to battle, or has wasted a round but is still
safe—feels the cold muzzle of a pistol against the back of his own personal
neck, and hears the click of the hammer being cocked. By the time Myrna and
Johnson's own personal alarms—which had seemed perfectly adequate for nearly a
thousand years, and which had been tuned most carefully—sounded in their
skulls, June was standing about half a kilometer from their home.
And
about a hundred meters from the Lifehouse . . .
***
She
got that far without being identified as more than just another passing hiker,
biker or stroller because Myrna and Johnson's own sentries were nowhere near as
sophisticated as the trackfly. A change of hair and
eye color, cheek inserts and lifts sufficed to fool them on the physical level,
as they would probably have fooled another human. They neither knew nor cared
what she smelled like.
And
she had obviously remembered her lost FM radio headphones, and somehow deduced
what they could accomplish on the mental level.
The
set she wore now had been altered to generate a much more powerful signal than
usual. It did not merely mask, but completely shielded her thoughts. Indeed,
what had finally triggered the alarm was the sentries' belated perception that
a human-sized animal with a sentience level around that of a bluejay was probably a significant anomaly.
But
Myrna and Johnson absorbed all this information after they perceived the
message June meant them to get, so efficiently did she deliver it.
First,
they saw the white flag she was waving in her right hand.
Next,
they took in the modified cellular phone that hung from the belt of her jeans,
to which she was speaking continuously.
And
finally they noted the extra-extra-large black tee-shirt she was wearing, big
enough to be a Rubenesque sf
fan's convention souvenir. It was gathered and tucked in in
back, so the white lettering just below her left breast could be clearly seen.
It spelled out the simple words:
The Place
because
it's time
She
and Paul wanted to parley.
Knowing
her as they did, they were at once dismally certain that she and her partner
had rigged some sort of ingenious stalemate to protect themselves. The Lifehouse Keepers sent their awareness hurtling
pessimistically out to trace it as far as they could.
Somewhat
to their surprise, the cell phone's signal went less than a hundred meters, at
first—to a phone Paul wore as a headset with a throat mike, very sophisticated
gear indeed for a grifter. So was the high-powered
rifle on a tripod, through whose sniperscope he was
taking dead aim at the back of June's skull. (All the gear seemed brand-new;
there was still a price tag on the tripod.)
But
from there the phone signal went off on Hell's own journey. They followed it
awhile, but gave up when it crossed its own trail for the third time in
Worse:
the existence of a third, combined with the fact that neither grifter had ever once been so much as indicted for any
felony in any jurisdiction, strongly implied at least a fourth party as well.
Both Paul and June were suspenders-and-belt types. Myrna herself was going to
die because Paul's money stash had been doubly booby-trapped; he was clearly a
man happiest with an ace up both sleeves at a minimum. He might, for all
Myrna or Johnson knew, have enlisted an entire army of grifters,
grafters, hucksters and dips, who could communicate in ways even a thousand-year-old
layman could not hope to grasp.
This
was very bad.
A
Quaker watching her family tortured could not have felt more profoundly or
primitively conflicted. Myrna had seen so much sorry death in her millennium of
service that it had been centuries since she had even recreationally fantasized
dealing it out to anyone as punishment for their silly human sins. Nonetheless
she was a true descendant of a redhanded ape and his
bloodthirsty mate, mortal as them now into the bargain, and to hell with
the fate of all the sleeping dead and all reality: these clowns were messing
with her personal lifeboat! If killing had been of the slightest use
to her, she'd have used her teeth and fingernails.
Johnson,
similarly, was descended from two million years of primates who had unanimously
felt that anyone who killed their mate should be treated with great rudeness.
Since his and Myrna's comment through the
past thousand years, and not merely the last thirty-odd, he had been crafted
with a normal amount of male dominance: he was not merely the titular but the
effective leader of their team, and knew the ancient commander's desire to
avenge his wounded as strongly as he knew the even more ancient protector's
desire to avenge his mate.
Dealing
with such emotional disturbances would never be impossible for either of them.
At times it could be extremely difficult. Myrna, in particular, had lately had
to do much more of that sort of thing than usual, as small bodily damages she
was no longer able to heal sent chemical messages of unease to her alarm
system. Emotional control was somewhat like a muscle that can be worn out to
the point of spasm. She managed to master herself, now, but it cost her great
effort.
And
the shared knowledge made it that much harder for Johnson to do the same.
So
it was that several seconds passed before they acted.
Then
Johnson enveloped her in his field and flew them together like bullets, and at
a similar velocity, through the forest toward June Bellamy.
***
There
was no deceleration. Their velocity was simply canceled, at a point just out of
sight and just out of earshot of June. As smoothly as children stepping off an
escalator, they were walking hand in hand toward her at a slow pace, making no
effort to muffle their footsteps in the (finally) drying underbrush. Their
acute hearing picked up her muttered telephone monologue about the time she
became aware they were approaching. They heard her alert Paul, and tell him to
stand by.
"If
I come, I die," she yelled then.
They
had to admire the absolute absence of self-consciousness in her voice. She was
stating a fact, and could not care less if some distant hiker thought she was
kinky.
Johnson,
who knew there was no other human within earshot, called back,
"Understood," and he and Myrna kept walking.
They
expected June to start visibly when she finally saw them. It was clear that she
and Paul had not deduced their antagonists' cover identities, or they
would have come directly to the park caretaker's cottage. Therefore, however
she had been visualizing their pursuers, it could
scarcely have been as a pair of snowcapped senior citizens.
But
she betrayed no surprise. Professionally immune to surface appearances, she would
not have lost her poker face if they had manifested hand in hand as Janis
Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, on fire. Her only reaction
was to give target coordinates to Paul, who shifted aim from the back of her
head to Johnson's forehead the moment it entered his field of view.
Paul
was largely visually concealed from them by undergrowth, though not of course
from their sentries. He was a memorable sight. His headset phone sat atop a
bright skull-hugging helmet of some sort of crinkly golden metal foil, almost a
metal-maché, with small holes for eyes and
mouth and absurd sculpted ears that came to Vulcan points (the phone's earbead cord disappeared into the one on his right), and to
whose preposterous appearance he was plainly as indifferent as any holdup man in
a Nixon mask. It shielded his thoughts even better than June's radio headphones
did hers: the sentries rated him a rather bright shrub on the sentience scale. He seemed to sense that he was under
remote surveillance of some kind—and didn't give a damn.
Johnson
kept his own face blank, maintained his leisurely pace, and shifted their
course slightly so that Paul could continue to track him without needing to
move the tripod.
Myrna's
grip was tight in his. They both knew a bad shot or a bad ricochet could kill
her. They also knew if one did, it would be his immediate task—before he
could so much as say goodbye—to try to reason with her killers.
They
stepped out of the woods and onto the path together, stopped six meters from
June, and perhaps ten meters from the great tree under which the Lifehouse lay hidden.
"I'll
bet you can force your way through this," June said, pointing at her
headset. "But I bet you can't take me over instantly." She
pointed to the cell phone at her hip. "If anything makes Paul suspect a
struggle for control of my mind is taking place, he will try to kill one of
you, and failing that will take me out with the second slug."
Johnson
nodded.
"If
that happens," June went on quietly, "someone else far from
here—someone who doesn't even know where he is himself—will make a
single mouse-click, and spam the planet with everything we know about you time
travelers. Every science fiction or fantasy writer or fan, every scientist,
science writer, news medium and national security agency with an Internet
address will know everything we knew up to the moment of the mouse-click."
Determined
to keep his features expressionless, Johnson found that his eyes had closed of
their
own volition. It took immense effort to force them
open again. He did have the power to take over the minds of both June and Paul
by brute force, despite radio headphones or metallic masquerade masks, whenever
he wanted to badly enough to permanently lower their IQs by fifty or sixty
points—but no longer dared use it, whatever the need. This was Armageddon.
Here. Now.
"You
understand that would make a hole in history too big to mend," he said
softly. "Even if not one person believed you."
It
wasn't quite a question, but she nodded superfluous agreement, "That's how
little I'm prepared to tolerate another hole in my mind."
"Do
you have a proposal?" Myrna asked.
"Do
we have a truce?"
Again,
Johnson nearly showed surprise. "You will accept our word?"
June
nodded. "What choice do we have? If your word is no good, there's no point
in bargaining. Besides, if you are time travelers without honor, everything is
already fucked . . . and the problems of two little people don't amount to a
hill of beans."
He
exchanged a glance with Myrna. June was emphatically not a science fiction reader, and Paul only a recreational one, like a social
drinker: that last sentence was reasoning more sophisticated than expected for
either of them. At once the Lifehouse Keepers began
to suspect who the pair's new allies might be. A pity that when they'd last
read June's mind, she had not then known the specific names or addresses of the
sf fans Paul was about to sting—or that Paul had not
left any useful clues even in the encrypted partition of his hard drive. If
only the couple had trusted each other a little more, been
a little less paranoid by nature, the Keepers might now have a lead on their
new antagonists.
The
absurdity of that last thought caused them to spend a precious half-second
smiling ruefully at each other. (Inside only.)
"We
have a truce," Johnson said then.
June
insisted on spelling it out. "You won't try to monkey with our memories
any more?"
She
was too good a liar to lie to. Johnson shrugged and spread his hands. "We must
try, or die in the attempt. But we won't do it now. If this parley is
unsuccessful, we'll give you an hour for a head start."
"A
lot more than you needed the last time," Myrna pointed out. There was just
a hint of an edge to her voice.
June
nodded, and gave her just a touch of the eye of power in return. "If it
goes that way, we'll suspend our upload for the same period." Wanna play hardball, Granny? said her gaze.
"Agreed,"
Johnson said. With eyes locked, both women said it together, and Paul's echo
came in stereo, from June's hip and from a hundred meters away.
When
he emerged from his place of concealment, his hands were empty, and he no
longer wore the comedy space-monster mask. But his phone now rode directly on
his own bristly scalp, and its circuit was still open. Johnson counted two
hidden weapons (lethal to a human—such as his wife), and wondered how many he
was overlooking.
Being
impressed by an opponent was, for him, a novel and not utterly unpleasant
sensation.
As
Paul joined them there was a brief subtle dance that ended with the men
confronting each other directly, each with his mate slightly behind him and to his left. Neither male consciously noticed it
happen; neither female missed it.
"Had
you actually already stung them?" Johnson asked.
Paul
took his meaning at once, and if he found it an odd opening, he showed no
surprise. "Yes," he said. "Ninety-eight
thousand Canadian."
Johnson
allowed his own surprise to show, in the form of a lifted eyebrow, and tried
another gambit. "So that's, what, seventy-five in real money?"
Again
Paul was impervious. "Call it seventy-three five American."
"Mr.
Throtmanian, I am impressed. Even for you, conceiving
of enlisting your victims as allies was uncharacteristically brilliant. Pulling
it off was . . . As I say, I'm impressed."
"And
I'm impressed by how well you know me, okay? As the saying goes, you must be
reading my mail. Can we move on?"
"Certainly. My name is Johnson Stevens,
and this is my wife Myrna. I'm afraid we don't have 'real names'—but
we've been using those for nearly two centuries now."
June
spoke up. "You're old: we get it." Her eyes were still locked on
Myrna's. "We knew that anyway. We would not have gone to all this trouble
if we were not impressed with you, alright?" She switched
off her eye of power. "You're Myrna and Johnson; we're June and Paul. Like
he said, can we move on now?"
Myrna
bunked her own tired old eyes for the first time in a long while, and shivered
slightly as if throwing off a chill. "Please go ahead, Paul," she
said. The edge was gone from her voice now.
"In
Very old man with money in his hand
Lookin
for a place to hide
Along come a young man,
a
gun in his hand
They both sat down and cried
Cryin
all they had in this world
done
gone."
Johnson
nodded. "Neither side in this matter much likes the role fate has cast
them in. We don't want to edit your memories by force. You don't want to risk
paradox to prevent us. Neither side can see a choice. But you did not come here
to suggest we sit down and weep together, Paul."
"We
came to see if there is any give in your position," Paul said.
"Is
there any in yours?"
For
the first time, Paul betrayed surprise.
"Can
you conceive of circumstances under which you would consent to specifically
limited memory-edit?"
"Cover
me," Paul said softly, and closed his eyes to help him visualize. At the
cue, June increased her own alertness, expanded her peripheral vision to encompass
Johnson, and moved her right hand fractionally away from her own hidden
weapon . . . presumably toward one the sentries could not detect.
"I
can think of only one case," Paul said, reopening his eyes, "and it
doesn't seem to pertain here. Can you conceive of circumstances under which you
would consent to let us keep our present memories?"
"I'm
afraid my answer is the same," Johnson said, allowing as much of his own sadness as they would find credible to
come through in his voice.
"Then
we have two choices," Paul said. "Say goodbye now, and start fighting
to the death in an hour ... or try and persuade each other that the unique
solution we each find imaginable might somehow be made to exist. I would prefer
the latter. I assume you feel the same."
"Very
well," Johnson said. "I will go first."
He
held a hasty telepathic conference with Myrna. They had no contingency plan for
negotiation; had not until this minute considered it a possibility. But their
minimum requirements seemed clear—and highly unlikely to be acceptable. No
point in pulling punches.
"I
would let you and June and your allies walk the earth unedited under the
following circumstances: you permit me to enter each of your minds, satisfy me
that you will never voluntarily divulge any datum I label critical, to anyone
under any circumstances, and permit me to insure you against drug or hypno interrogation. Not lethally—but any such attempt
would leave you a very happy fellow with no memory of anything at all, for
life. I realize that could be a significant hazard for you and June, given the
nature of your profession, but after all you both have gone undetected
by the authorities up to this—"
"That
part's not a factor," Paul said. "My fiancée and I are
retired. For good."
Johnson's
face did not pale; it never did unless he told it to. But he was shocked. His
superb and trusty Bullshit Detector told him Paul was not lying . . . but if
this was a true statement, then he and Myrna did not know June or Paul nearly
as well as they'd thought they did, could not hope to reliably predict what they might do. This might actually work!
"Congratulations, twice," he said automatically, while his mind
raced. "Then I see no problem. Our minimum requirements are, one, absolute
assurance of your sincere will to be permanently discreet; two, assurance that
you cannot be compelled to spill what you know of us against your own will; and
three, your promise that when our business is concluded, you will never have
anything to do with this park again as long as you live, or cause others to do
so. We will trust you to keep the most important secret we know, our existence—if
you will prove you can be trusted by opening your minds. In all candor, we might not require this of ordinary civilians . .
. but I hope you'll take it as the compliment it's intended to be if I say
that, for you two and your allies, nothing less will serve: you are two of the
greatest liars we've ever encountered. Your turn."
Paul
inclined his head. "Thank you. Coming from thieves of your caliber it is
indeed flattering. I would permit you to enter my mind under the following
conditions. One, you must first restore every second of the memories you stole
from my fiancée."
Johnson
nodded. "Acceptable." June had never learned anything more damaging
than the simple fact that something was buried here.
"Two,
you must give me your word that neither of you will ever use anything you learn
from my mind in any way that, in my opinion, would harm me or anyone I
care about. I don't have to define that any closer, because you'll know. And the same for the others."
Johnson
nodded again.
"Three,
it must be two-way."
"In what sense?"
"7
get to walk around inside your head too."
Johnson
shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry. That's impossible."
Paul's
voice went flat. "Gosh, that's a real pity."
"Please!"
Johnson said quickly. "I do not mean that word as a euphemism for
'unacceptable'—it literally is not possible."
Paul
nodded. "I believe you. Like I said, a real pity.
But a dealbreaker."
Johnson
wondered why; was startled to hear himself ask,
"Why?"
"Two
reasons, either one sufficient. First, thanks to June here, and everything she
has taught me in our time together about subordinating my precious ego, I am
just barely willing to consider telepathy—with an equal. Wide-open two-way ... or strictly limited on both sides.
You want me to get naked in front of your brain, I'll consider it. But you
don't get to keep your shorts on."
Johnson
sighed. "I understand your position. And your second
reason?"
"You
want me to keep your dark secret for life. Only I don't know shit. All I
know is, there's something from the future buried over
there that's worth brain-rape to protect. Before I agree to keep my mouth shut
about it, I have to know what it is, and why it's so important. For all I know,
you came back here in your time machine to start the plague that'll solve your
real estate problem. I have to be as sure of your sincerity as you are of
mine."
Johnson
knew more about serenity than most Zen masters. Nonetheless he was conscious of
a powerful urge to bite himself on the small of the back. If any particle of
him had believed in an external deity who was supposed to punish vice and
reward virtue, he could have taken refuge in rage at that Being. Lacking this (expensive) luxury, he was instead so
overwhelmingly sad it seemed his ancient heart might stop of it. There were
very few bodily functions he could not control absolutely, but tears leaked
against his will from his eyes as he said, "Paul, you break my heart.
Everything you ask is perfectly reasonable, nothing more than you deserve, and
the least I'd probably settle for in your shoes. And I wasn't lying—it just
isn't possible. I'll be honest: I wouldn't do it if I could. But I can't."
"You
want to amplify that a little?" Paul asked. "Or are we done
here?"
As
far as Johnson could tell, they were. But he did not want to admit it, even to
himself, so he allowed himself a few more sentences, to buy time. "I can't
drop my shields and let you in, because I can't do it partway. It's like being a
little bit pregnant, or somewhat dead. You would get everything at once."
"Your point being?"
Johnson
pointed at his own head. "This is not a brain like yours. It has been
gathering memories more detailed and vivid than yours for a thousand years—and
it was never really human by your definition to begin with. Furthermore, I am
inextricably interwoven with Myrna: you'd get most of her thousand
years, too. If I opened my mind to you, it might take you several seconds to
actually hit the ground . . . but only because your knees would probably lock
when the first seizure hit. Beyond doubt, what would finally fall to earth
would be a vegetable with your face. A dying vegetable, too stupid to breathe."
Paul
seemed to be listening to his earbead. "There have
to be people trained to initiate new telepaths without burning out their brains," he said.
Damn.
It would be one of the kibitzing fans who had realized that. "Yes,"
he agreed. "But none in this time. Nor would I be
permitted to so initiate you, if I were able. Think it through. There would be
no way but mindwipe to make you unlearn it
again, afterward, and it would no longer be possible to mindwipe
you."
As
he had expected, the words "Think it through" shamed the unseen fans into
silence again. It was June who spoke next. "Is that what you meant by,
'you wouldn't if you could'?"
He
was tempted to agree just for the sake of simplicity, but something made him
answer more honestly. "No. Forget telepathy for a moment. I would not even
verbally tell you any more than you already know about our mission
here."
"Then
you better give me a better reason why not than, 'I might want to stop you if I
knew,'" Paul said inexorably.
Fair
enough. But how? "Paul, listen to
me. I'll try to explain as much as I possibly can. The knowledge you want is
knowledge that . . . that would change the coloration of every second of the
rest of your life. It is a secret so ... so precious, so wonderful, that
a hundred times a day for the rest of your days you would be tempted to share
it." He saw Paul's face twist into a grimace of insult, and went on
hastily. "I am not disparaging your self-control! Please believe me—"
Myrna
spoke. "Paul, we stipulate that you can hold out against needles under the
fingernails. That's not what this is about. Knowing what you want to know would
change you. In ways you would come to regret."
"Grandma
knows best," Paul said flatly. Distant thunder was heard from the west,
threatening rain.
"I
will make one more try," Johnson said, "and then we'll give up and
move on. Paul, by your standards I am not a human being. I was not born of
woman. My personality was assembled from parts, and poured into a body whose
DNA configuration had never existed before, designed for the occasion. The same
is true of Myrna. A normal human given longevity and required to do our job
would have gone insane about nine hundred years ago. Now that you are engaged,
it may mean something if I tell you that I have been happily faithful to my
wife for all that time. I was, if you will, built
to accomplish one specific purpose: to preserve the secret you want to
learn, for a thousand long, slow years." He met Paul's eyes squarely.
"But this human I am: keeping that secret has been the hardest
thing I've ever had to do. Even harder than the loneliness of
being penned up inside a single skull."
"I
promise you," Myrna said. "It would tear you apart. June too. The nicer a person you are, the worse it would
tear you up."
"Cover
me," Paul murmured again, and again went away inside to his thinking
place. His features smoothed over. June's hand went this time toward the hidden
weapon Johnson could identify, rather than away from it. Did that mean she was
closer to attacking? Again, thunder rumbled faintly, to the north this time.
"The
hell of it," Paul said finally, "is that I think I believe every word
you say. But I cannot bet my species on it ... and that's what you're asking me
to do."
Johnson
was in constant rapport with Myrna. Nonetheless he
turned his head toward her now, and used his mouth to say, "He's
right," in mournful tones. Meanwhile his awareness was reaching out—
The
trackfly had nearly succeeded in executing its new
programming, by now—as he had known when he'd heard its thunder a few moments
ago. It had returned from
If
forced to it, Johnson was barely able and barely willing to take over the minds
of Paul, June, Wally and Moira at once—rendering them permanently autistic in
the process. But even if he focused his full attention on Moira alone—allowed
Paul to shoot Myrna dead, took the chance that a ricochet from his own body
might kill one of them prematurely and ruin everything—he still could not seize
control quickly and smoothly enough to prevent Moira from dropping that second
phone, and thus hanging it up. If there were a fifth confederate
somewhere, with a high-speed modem programmed to dial Moira's number continuously—and
there was no way for even the trackfly
to know where such a person might be—the instant it reported success, the fifth
man could, and probably would, upload The End of Everything to the Worldwide
Web. There was no way to stop him.
Yet
Johnson knew if he did nothing, sometime in the next thirty seconds Paul Throtmanian was going to break the truce and try his best
to kill him, fully expecting to die in the attempt but determined. Paul lied
brilliantly in body language, but Johnson had been decoding that language for
twenty lifetimes longer than Paul had been lying in it. He was going to have to
risk everything whether he liked it or not, and there
was nothing to be gained by letting Paul force his hand. He told the trackfly to hover, await his command, and then do its best
to destroy Moira's second phone as she thrashed. He bade Myrna goodbye, and
started the process of turning part of his consciousness into a long-distance
sledgehammer—
"Wait,"
Myrna said, in his mind to him and aloud to all of them. "Don't
just do something: stand there. All of you.
I know one last thing I can try." She pulled her gaze from her husbands.
"June—will you trust me, for about thirty seconds?"
June
studied her for a long moment. "Give her thirty seconds," she said to
Paul, not taking her eyes from Myrna's.
"Johnson,
will you trust me?"
The
question was so simple it confused him briefly. "With the universe,"
he said simply.
"Thank
you, beloved." She turned back to the grifters,
spoke slowly and calmly. "June, Paul, I'm going to cause a utensil to come
to me. It will stop in midair, right in front of Johnson and me. After a few
seconds, it will drop and bury itself in the soil.
When that happens, we will all back away from the spot, and a time machine will
appear on it. There'll be some special effects—but nothing that will hurt you,
if you close your eyes when I tell you to. All right?"
"Go
ahead, Myrna," Paul said. "I really hope you've got something."
"That's
why I'm doing it," she said.
A
chunk of quartz arrived from the house, took up station in front of her and
Johnson. June and Paul regarded it with close interest, and Paul muttered a
terse description of it to Wally.
Concealing
her thought from Johnson for the first time in centuries, Myrna composed a
message, impressed it into the quartz beacon, and planted it in the earth. They
all backed away, Paul and June taking their cue from Myrna and Johnson as to
how far away was far enough. "Here we go,"
Myrna said.
The
air crackled. The scent of toasting basil and cinnamon stung their noses. A
faint, high whine converged slowly from all directions at once. The temperature
rose just perceptibly. The sound swelled and contracted, like an explosion
played backwards—
"Close
your eyes," Myrna called, and everyone but Johnson obeyed.
CRACK!
"Oh,
shit," Johnson said, quite unable to help himself.
This
time the Egg held a passenger.
It
appeared to be the fetally curled corpse of a woman
about twenty years older than June, with similar features and short thick
chestnut hair, dressed in a white garment that somehow was able to suggest a
hospital gown and still preserve dignity. At first
blink the body was floating in a translucent fluid—then that was gone, and it slumped
bonelessly to the bottom of the Egg. Inside his head,
Johnson heard a sound very like the squeal of a modem connecting. For the first
time ever, one of the buried Lifehouse's files was
downloaded from it. Nearly at once the corpse stirred, lifted her head . . .
glanced round and spotted her four observers. Her eyes locked on June.
June
made a small sound in her throat, somewhere between a sob and a snarl.
The
Egg sighed and vanished. The woman in white stood up. She turned slowly in a
full circle, took in her surroundings, turned her
attention to June again. Slowly she smiled, and started walking closer to June,
who visibly turned to stone.
The
wrinkles framing that smile were fake. That body had
never been used before. Nevertheless it was somehow inexplicably and
inescapably an old smile . . . and the brand-new body that bore it
walked and carried itself as if it belonged to a woman
in her fifties who had been ill recently and was still in recovery. She stopped
before June, and put her hands on her own hips.
"You
see, darling?" she said serenely. "I told you we were going to
get it all said, someday."
June
did not quite lose consciousness, merely misplaced it for a few moments. And
she didn't quite go down, for Paul caught and steadied her. But for the longest
interval in her life, perhaps ten whole seconds, she did not think anything
whatsoever. Johnson could not have more effectively stunned her consciousness
with his mental sledgehammer. Paul was somewhat less affected; his mind
produced not only gestalts but words . . . but just the two, over and over: Holy
shit holy shit holy shit—
By
the time June was sentient again, she was in her mother's embrace, squeezing
back fiercely. (She heard, but did not register, Paul behind her muttering,
"Her fucking dead mother just showed up, okay, Wally? Shut up and stand
by.")
This
is a lie, was her first verbal construct. And then:
This
is the most precious lie I have ever been told, and I must not waste a second
of it!
She
stepped back and looked.
It
had to be a lie. It was just too perfect. Laura Bellamy in a brand-new
replacement body, she might have been able to rationalize with Star Trek logic. The wasted, half-animate doll she had said goodbye
to only days ago, she might also have accepted. But this Laura looked precisely
the way she had in the childish wish-fulfillment fantasy June had been
having repeatedly ever since her death: neither rejuvenated nor ruined, but
partly recovered, as though her illness had miraculously remitted a week or two
ago and she was nearly ready to be released. This was, at best, a very good
model of Laura Bellamy, who was herself in fact dead.
Okay.
Just now June was prepared to settle for even a fair model of her
mother—gratefully. Any booby-prize is much better than total defeat. Too good
to be true is the best kind of false.
"Are
you all right?' she asked.
"Of course." A very good model. Even Disney's audioanimatronic
boys couldn't have gotten that twinkle at such close range—much less the scent,
the oldest and largest file in June's olfactory memory—or the skin
temperature. "But you aren't. What's wrong, Junebug?"
"Don't
call me th—" June automatically
responded, and then caught herself and began to giggle.
Paul
came up from behind her and put an arm around her, and that helped her stop and
get her breath back. Okay, I'm in the Twilight Zone. Time
to stop acting like a protagonist, and go with it, then. She came to
a decision.
"Mom,"
she said, "this is Paul. We're retired, and engaged."
Her
mother's smile nearly took her breath away again. "Oh, I'm so glad!
Hello, Paul," Laura said, and embraced him. After a frozen second, he
returned it. "Welcome to the family," she said. "Call me
Laura."
"I'm
. . . glad I got to meet you after all, Laura," he said gravely, and
released her.
"Oh,
so am I." She took both their hands in hers. "Now, what is
wrong?"
"Well
. . ." June gestured vaguely toward Myrna and Johnson, and Laura appeared to
become aware of them for the first time. "... these
are Myrna and Johnson Stevens. They're from the future. They say they must invade
our minds—and will—but it won't hurt a bit, and they'd rather we let them. We
say fine, let us into yours so we know we can trust you, and they say that's
not possible, we'd go insane. We say, then at least tell us, in words, what
you're doing here in our time, so we can be sure it's okay with us, and they
say we'd be sorry if they told us and they can't anyway. They're at least as
slick as I am, Mom, and I just can't tell if I can trust them."
Laura
had nodded after the statement, "They're from the future," and
continued to nod after each sentence to indicate that she was following the
tale. After June stopped speaking, she nodded one more time, and then turned to
face Myrna and Johnson.
"Mr.
and Mrs. Stevens," she said, raising her voice but speaking in a polite,
conversational tone, "from what I've read and been told by a dear friend
of mine, I understand I am late for an appointment with a bright light at the
end of a long tunnel, so I'll be brief. Are you conning my daughter?"
Myrna
did not hesitate. "Yes, Mrs. Bellamy. We must."
"Is
there no way you could tell them what they wish to know, and then, if they are
indeed sorry to know it, cause them to forget it again, with their
consent?"
"I'm
sorry, ma'am," Johnson said. "At that point, the only thing that
would serve would be to completely remove every memory they've formed in the
last week—no, excuse me, the last several weeks. They would become different
people than they are now. They've grown and changed a lot, in the last few
days. Several weeks ago, for example, they were not retired. They would notice
a memory gap that large, identify it as a wound, put their talented brains to
vengeance, and sooner or later we'd be right back where we are now—at best. The
only thing that will serve is for that Paul and June standing there
beside you now—and all their friends listening in—to all agree to walk away and
spend the rest of their lives knowing nothing more than they do right now. And
we must be certain they mean it."
"But
you state that if you could and did satisfy their curiosity, they would ask you
to perform surgery to remove the knowledge again?"
"Yes,"
Myrna and Johnson said together.
"Thank
you."
She
turned back to her daughter and prospective son-in-law. She chose her words,
and when she spoke her voice was firm and strong.
"Junebug, if you won't listen to your mother, listen to your
great-great-grandchildren. Do what these people tell you. Walk away. You and
Paul and whoever else is involved. They mean no harm, to you or anyone."
It
never occurred to June to ask her how she knew. Her mother's people-radar had
always been infallible. Instead she heard herself cry, "But how do I know
you're not a hallucination?"
Laura
Bellamy considered the question . . . and smiled. "How do I know you're
not?" She thought about it some more,
and her smile wavered. "This does seem an awful lot like the kind of dying
fantasy I'd concoct. You're retired. And engaged. And
only my wisdom from beyond the grave can save you." Her smile firmed
again. "Only we both know it isn't a hallucination, don't we? We both know
this is real, however it's happened. Just like we both somehow know I'm going to
have to go again, soon. Tonto, our work here is
done."
"No!"
June cried.
Oh
my God, she thought frantically, I finally got one last chance to have
that Last Conversation after all, without Daddy around . . . and just like last
time, it's going to be over before I've even had a chance to remember all the
things I needed to say, all the things I needed to ask—
"Wait!"
"As
long as I can, dear," her mother agreed, glancing at Myrna.
"Mom,
you were wrong a minute ago. I did listen to you. Always.
I know I gave you hell. I'm sorry. But I always listened. Hardest
when I pretended to be deaf, maybe. You won The Fight, you know.
Stubborn bitch that I am, I held out until the day after you died—but you won.
I always knew you would. I just didn't want you to have the satisfaction."
"But
I did know."
June
blinked. Something knotted began to ease, deep within her. "Well, I'm
sorry."
"I
absolve you. Now ask the question you want to ask."
There's
only one? she thought dizzily,
and opened her mouth to let it emerge of its own accord. "How could you
stay with Daddy, all those years?"
"It
was my privilege," she said.
"Mom,
forget the fact that on his best day, his brain was half as good as yours. The
man is an emotional basket case. He needed round-the-clock care just to keep
him functional, my whole life—hell, he managed to screw up your death scene!
How could you waste a mind like yours on propping him up all those years?"
Laura
took her time answering, seeking the right words. "June," she said
finally, "you greatly underestimate my own selfishness. I got more from
your father than I gave."
"But what?"
"The
thing I married him for. The thing I never had much of myself, until he taught
it to me. The thing I hope Frank and I together managed to pass on to you. His kindness. His clumsy warm
never-failing kindness."
June
stared "But there's kindness everywhere," she protested. "The
world is full of kindness."
"Oh,
it certainly is," Laura agreed. "And most marriages still end in
divorce. Most people can be kind, honey. Your father is kind. That's a
different thing—and it's worth more than rubies." Seeing that her daughter
still didn't get it, she went on. "Okay, yes: you have to hang a sign on a
joke for Frank to recognize it. But dear, once you do, he always laughs, even
if it's a poor joke. One time I'd gone with him to one of those awful sales
conventions, and we were sitting in the most expensive restaurant in the
convention complex, and by some accident they had a genuinely wonderful jazz
combo playing. I looked up and saw a young couple we knew, a new salesman and
his fiancée, standing in the entranceway, listening to the music and
nodding. I started to wave and invite them to join
us, quite automatically . . . and just as automatically, your father caught my
hand and stopped me. 'But that's Jim and Shirley,' I said, 'You like them.' And
Frank stopped and thought about it and said to me, 'Laura, look at the way
they're dressed. Look at the way we're dressed. Why are they standing there in
the doorway? If you wave to them, they're going to have to come in and sit down
and blow half their weekend's budget on two drinks they don't want, just to
hear the music for a few minutes. Kindest thing you can do just now is ignore
them.' Once he explained it, I saw he was right, of course—but June, he had to stop and think to explain it. It's
instinctive with him. If anyone in a room with him gets their feelings hurt,
it's because his best wasn't enough to prevent it.
"Take
the example you mentioned. Dear Frank tried to protect me from the terror of
death. Clumsily, transparently, yes—and to the very best of
his sweet ability. Even though it cost him his right
to share his own crushing grief and loss with me. I had no choice but to
let him think he was succeeding." She took June's hand again. "And in
consequence, I could not allow myself to indulge in that terror. Do you see?
For his sake, I kept whistling as I approached the graveyard—and so in the end
he succeeded, and I died with as little fear as I could. Honestly, it wasn't
nearly as hard as I'd thought it would be. All our married lives, he did things
like that for me. Without him, I might have been you without Paul." She
took his hand again as well, but kept speaking directly to June. "I
approve of him as a son-in-law—but not because the boy is clever. Because
I can tell he is kind."
"There
are people who would disagree with you," Paul said softly. "Some of
them are listening right now."
She
met Paul's eyes. "Ah. I see. You were trying to unlearn the kindness ...
to impress June. She has always had enough mischief in her to get her
boyfriends in trouble. Well, it didn't work this time . . . did it?" She
watched his eyes, and nodded. "Kindness does you less credit than it does
Frank, because you're smarter and more confident and less afraid: you can afford
to be kind. But it's still a rare and sweet thing to be by nature. Teach
her everything you know about it, teach her to respect her father and you . . .
and forgive her what she finds hard to learn."
"I
do," Paul said.
"I
will," June said.
Laura
smiled again—beamed, this time. "I now pronounce you man and wife,"
she said.
June
felt herself beaming back, and burst into tears. "I love you, Mom."
"I
love you, dear. And you too, son." She reached up, captured one of June's
tears on her fingertip, and licked it. "We're done, aren't we?"
"Yes,"
June said in wonder, "I think we are."
At
once her mother was gone. The pilot light went out behind her eyes, and as her
vacated second body began to fall, it dissolved. There was no sound or heat. It
was as though she simply turned to ash-laden smoke and blew away, like a
digital special effect. In seconds, the last wisp was gone.
June
kissed her fiancé firmly, and was kissed back. Then she pulled away and
faced Myrna and Johnson.
"I'll
never know for sure if that was real," she stated.
"That's
right," Myrna said.
"I
am in exactly the frame of mind a mark is just before I take 'em for everything they've got. Cold logic says I'm being
set up, but I want to believe."
"I
imagine so," Johnson agreed.
She
squared her shoulders. "I'm wide open. Come on in."
Paul
said nothing, very loudly.
"Sit
down," Myrna said. "Since you are volunteering, it will not be necessary
to invest you, the way we did Angel Gerhardt. There will be no orgasm involved.
Or any other physical sensation."
June
sat by the great ash tree, leaned back against it and relaxed utterly. "Go
ahead."
"First,
your stolen memories back," Johnson said.
There
was a soundless explosion, an inertialess impact, and
a vague inexpressible sense of relief, of healing from an unsuspected wound.
She probed, and found that she had her missing minutes back. Quite dull and
uninteresting minutes, really—but she cherished each one.
"That
felt . . ." she murmured, "that felt like . . . like scratching an
itch on a phantom limb I didn't know I had. Okay, I remember everything now.
Scan away."
"It
is done," Johnson said. "You are free to go."
She
shook her head in awe, and got slowly to her feet. "So little," she
said, "for all that trouble. Maybe I felt a tickle. Maybe I imagined it.
I'm sure you didn't hurt anything. Paul?"
His
voice was so well controlled that only his fiancée or a telepath could
have detected the suggestion of a quiver in it. Wally probably never noticed.
"I'm ready." He sat.
"It
is done," Johnson said again. "Thank you. Mr. Kemp? I can hear you
directly. . . ."
Suddenly,
so could June—with crystal clarity, as though he were present. "Well, it's
going to drive me nuts, that's for sure—but I'd like to put this whole thing
behind me as quickly as possible. Moira and I have a convention to run in two
weeks, and we've already lost about all the time we can afford. Go ahead: I'm
dropping my shields."
"It
is done. Thank you, Wally. Ms. Rogers?"
"The greatest puzzle of my life?
And I can never ever know the answer? And never ever share it with anyone I
haven't already? Johnson, you know more about what makes a SMOF
tick than even Paul, there. Besides, I go anywhere Wallace goes. Make it
so."
"Thank
you, Moira. Mr. MacDougal?"
"You
guys got a space program in the future?" Space Case asked.
Johnson
seemed to grin in spite of himself. "At the time we left, pretty much
anyone who wanted to had spent at least a decade or
two off Saturn, in the Ring, just gawking."
"That's
all I want to know. My lips are sealed, and I'm gonna die happy."
After
a second, Johnson said, "I believe you will. Done."
June
knew the meeting was over. She found herself reluctant to leave this place,
this tranquil spot, these people she had wished dead for so many hunted days.
Something wonderful was near here, and she would never know what it had been.
"Will we ever see you again?" she asked Myrna and Johnson.
Myrna
shook her snow-white head. "Not for a very long time," she said. "And not here."
"Is
there anything you two need, that we can get you?" Paul asked.
June
turned and looked at him with new and growing respect.
"One
thing, perhaps," Johnson said. "And I'm afraid it's a dreadful cliché."
"Name
it," Paul said.
"When
you remember this—" he said.
"—and
you will—" Myrna said.
"—think
of us with kindness."
"We
will," June said, and took Paul's hand, and they left
They
did, of course—but did not bring their bodies with them when they did, and
never experienced a subjective instant of all the long years they spent there
together in the Lifehouse. The answers they had
wanted so badly would be granted them only in the next life—the longer and
happier one. But their reward had already begun. For the remainder of their
short first life together, they would display such uncanny talent at remaining
married that their many close friends would often say it was as if they had
been granted some secret knowledge no one else had.
Every
other house on the south side of the block had a front balcony or deck
on its upper story, facing north toward the harbor and
To
get the same view from Wally and Moira's house, one climbed out an upstairs
bedroom window and stretched out on the sloping roof. The roof showed signs of
hard use, and was extremely comfortable. There was, for instance, a nook
sheltered from the rain, up against the house, in which stood a minifridge, thermal mugs, and a coffeemaker Wally had
connected to the house wiring and water systems: one need only bring a basket
of grounds, and remember to leave the carafe out for the rain to rinse
afterward. The nook also held a large bottle of John Jameson's Irish whiskey,
whose continued existence was in doubt, and the controls for a set of external
speakers. At the moment they were rendering Don Ross's percussive acoustic
guitar, an excellent choice for a sunset.
Early
November is right at the end of
"I
don't think they even got as far as me," Moira said, "and even if
they had, they'd never have found Space Case."
"Not
even if they'd taken over your mind," Paul agreed. "It was a sweet
bit, and I could never have thought of it in a hundred years."
"Aw
shucks," Wally said, and something in the tone of his voice made June
recall her mother's words about her fiancé's kindness. She tightened the
arm she had around Paul, and grinned fiercely at the sunset. "I think the
alien mask worked good, too," she said. "Did
you see them frown at that, Paul?"
"Well,
I just had it lying around in my masquerade trunk, and I happened to think of
it," Moira said, clearly as pleased as Wally. "So what will you and
Paul do now, June?"
"Haven't
the foggiest," she said happily, and took a swallow of Irish coffee. "Something good."
"Shouldn't
be a problem," Paul said confidently. "Our requirements are modest.
All we really need is identities, a house, a car, and a modest income, ideally
in the next twenty-four hours. Oh, and one other detail: I owe a guy
ninety-nine large."
"Aw
Jeeze, look—" Wally began.
"Even
worse," Paul went on, "the guy is a friend of mine, so I can't just
weasel."
Wally
subsided, but bit his lip.
"You
can't go back to the
June
shook her head. "We were going to have to leave there soon anyway. Any
time now, the bank and the realtor are due to figure out the money we bought it
with was imaginary. I don't even think it's safe to go back and get my dirty
comic books."
Wally
coughed, and bit his lip some more.
"But
like I say, I'm in the mood to scale back a little," Paul said. "A
Honda gets you the same place a Porsche does—cheaper—and you don't have to keep
it locked up as tight. I don't need a really good house, like this one—I'd
settle for one of those modern pieces of crap." He gestured casually to
his right. "As for work, the first thing that occurs to me is that this is
a big movie and TV town, and June and I both have relevant skills."
"WOW!"
Wally cried, loud enough to startle Paul and June.
Moira
merely turned to him and raised an eyebrow.
"I
almost got it," he said excitedly. "Help me, spice!"
Moira
nodded, and he turned to present the back of his head to her. She quickly
surveyed the tools available to her, finished her coffee in a long draught, and
used the soft thermal plastic mug to whack her husband solidly on the occiput.
He
caught his glasses as they flew off, and put them back on. "Got
it—thanks," he said, and turned to Paul, who
was regarding him with a strange expression. "You are both
excellent actors," he stated.
"Well,
actually, when I said 'relevant skills' I meant bullshitting—and I was thinking
of bullshitting on a more serious scale than mere acting," Paul began.
"I was thinking producer, or—"
"I
have two jobs for you," Wally said. "I would also take both of them
as personal favors. The first one requires acting—and bullshitting:
specifically, writing."
Paul
pursed his lips. "Well ... I believe Heinlein said the difference between
a writer and a con man was, the writer could work in bed and use his right name
if he happened to feel like it. What did you have in mind?"
"Remember
the story we gave the Net to track you down?" Wally said. "If Moira
and I don't want to have to waste a whole lot of the precious two weeks left
before the con doing a lot of fast talking, somebody is going to have to
write and produce a play called 'Data Takes A Dump,' that stars a guy who looks
like Jean-Luc Picard."
In
spite of himself, Paul smiled. "Well, it's a little out of our line."
June
was smiling too. "What the hell. Dad'll let us
use the barn; I can sew costumes—"
"Wait,"
Wally said. "You haven't heard the second job. It goes along with the
first. Both or no deal."
"Go
ahead," Paul said.
"That
house you just pointed to next door belongs to a life-form named Gorsky. He's the one you bought your magnesium from, and
he's the one who gave you up as Metkiewicz."
"Oh, really?" Paul said,
turning to look more closely at the Gorsky home. His smile had become faintly feral.
"He's
also sued Moira and me half a dozen times in eight years. Now I realize that
you are both retired. But if you're willing to skirt grey areas like movie
producers . . . would you be willing to lecture other citizens on the tricks of
your former trade? Could you, for instance, explain to me how an unscrupulous
enough individual could con, say, someone who lived on a block like this out of
their house and land?"
Paul
looked at June; she looked back. "You want him in jail?"
"No.
Just somewhere else. And I want that property."
Paul's
smile became positively vulpine.
"If
you and June will do those two jobs for me," Wally said, "I will pay
you ninety-nine thousand dollars Canadian, and
lifetime free rent in that house—on the condition that you plant
crabgrass."
"And
we'll throw in free room and board here, until both jobs are done," Moira
said. "Paul, you know what our guest room is like."
Paul
and June exchanged another glance, finished their coffees, put their cups down,
and stuck out their hands.
***
More
coffee was poured, considerably more whiskey was poured, and the sunset was
roundly toasted. As the sky darkened, conversation became general, veered
around for awhile, and inevitably wandered back to the events of the day just
finished.
"You
know," Paul said, "I almost wish there was some effective way they could
have edited my memories, without leaving gaps too big to shrug off as a bender. I mean, in a way I'm almost glad I'm never
going to know any more than I do right now . . . but at the same time, the
little I do know is going to stick in my mind like a burr under my
saddle for the rest of my life, and drive me crazy."
"Tell
me about it," June said. "I know my mother was dead. But that
was her, today. How do you make sense of something like that?"
Wally
sent Moira a glance she could read even in the dark, that meant, They haven't figured it out.
She
sent one back that meant, That's good.
He
sent, But knowing is going to drive us crazy!
She
sent back, So who said life was fair?
And
both grinned.
Just
then there came a faint crackling sound, and an odor of toasting basil and
cinnamon.
Paul
and June stirred in sudden alarm. Wally and Moira caught their alarm at once,
and guessed its cause. Each of the four freed their right arm and reached for a
weapon. "Double cross?" Paul wondered. A
sound at the upper range of perception converged slowly from all directions at
once. The temperature rose just perceptibly. Paul started to rise, and June
restrained him. The sound swelled and congealed, like a Bronx cheer played
backwards—
A
small Egg sat on the roof, directly in front of Wally and Moira.
It
was about the size of a volleyball, but otherwise
identical to the one Paul and June had seen appear that afternoon: a perfect
sphere of something more transparent than glass. Paul and Wally both had the
same wild thought: that the little sphere would contain a miniature Laura
Bellamy, something like Tinkerbell.
But
its contents seemed far more mundane.
The
Egg vanished like the soap bubble it resembled, and the item within dropped to
the roof and began to slide. Wally reached out and stopped it with a foot,
leaned forward and recovered it.
It
was a compact disk. The caddy that held it had no front or back cover or liner notes, was simply a plastic box. The CD itself was almost
equally featureless. No corporate or manufacturer's logo, no catalog data, no
copyright warning, none of the standard commercial icons, no printing at
all—not even the basic stuff found on a blank CD-ROM. Just a rectangular white
block printed on its upper surface, within which someone with careful,
Spenserian penmanship had written the words:
Free As A Bird
Real Love
(final versions and original demos)
"What
the hell do you suppose that means?" Wally asked.
Version 1.0—Taken from
multi-page tiff file supplied through MollyKate (I
believe wiz actually scanned it). OCR'd,
spellchecked, and formatted. I haven't done the second of the trilogy, mostly
because I didn't have my copy close to hand, but also because it's my least
favorite, and kind of superfluous. Don't worry about it, it's not a strongly
linked trilogy — there are no characters common between the books. The second
book adds little if any content needed for the third.
Version 2.0 –