Salvation Army thrift.
Romy hates it here. It's depressing. The people frighten her; they're not like the people she's known. Their eyes are wrong, too close together, their look too much like those of whipped horses. And it smellsof rancid grease, mothballs, antiseptic, sweat. She's never been to a place like it before, never even knew they existed. All she wants to do is get out and into the open air.
Willy poses in front of a wavy mirror, admiring himself in a pair of worn overalls, wool Pendleton, and an absurd tweed newsboy cap. "N...not bad," he says.
She watches as Karl offers Willy a knit cap. But he's having none of it. Mulishly, he won't be talked out of the hat by either of them. Excitement surges, a current through her veins as she rolls the idea over in her mind. Imagineher going there, a thousand kilometers from the plat, from L.A..
Karl gives up, comes at her with it.
"Oh, no you don't," she says, but he's too fast and yanks it down over her hair. "Don't do that," she says, throwing it off, but she doesn't mind. Part of her wonders that she doesn't. A man touching her, telling her what to wear, and her putting up with ithow much stranger can things get?
Leading her to a chair, he laces up her boots, ugly a pair as she's seen, has her stand, feeling for her toe. "They'll do."
Seeing him eye a rack of sleeping bags, she watches, incredulous, as he picks three from the pile.
"I'm not sleeping in one of those filthy things."
He sighs, irritated, "They've been washed, we may need them." Standing back to look her over, he smiles.
She's not so sure she likes the way he does it. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing."
"Come on, what?"
Squirming under his gaze, she lets him reach to turn up the collar of the pea coat he's found her, rough wool prickling against the skin of her neck."Even in these you're conspicuous."
Heat rises to her face and, uncomfortable, she turns to a tarnished mirror. Men telling her she's beautiful has always made her yawn. Him saying even this frightens her. "If you don't look too close, maybe."
Eyes still on her he says, "I am."
"Then don't."
Turning, she considers herself in jeans three sizes too big, bulky sweater, over it all the horrible coat and cap. In it she might be anyone, any sex. The lowest plat laborer wouldn't wear it. She hates the way it makes her look, the musty smell of the wool. She flings off the coat, "I won't wear that thing, it's repulsive, it stinks!"
"Oh, come on," Karl says, retrieving it, smiling, always smiling, "it's not all that bad."
He takes a step for her and she backs away, snatching up her dress and heels. "Oh, yes, it is."
Moving fast, he corners her by a rack of jackets, slips the coat on her, buttons it up, tucks her hair down inside the collar roughly. Like a father might do, she thinks, then wonders why.
"You read, right?"
She nods.
"Think of yourself as the spunky heroine of a ton romance. Here you are costumed as a sailor to escape an evil uncle plotting to marry you off to a syphilitic degenerate named Mustafa with a taste for buggery. You do and I guarantee you it'll become more appealing."
She pulls off the cap, sniffs it, grimaces, tosses it back on the pile. "Don't read that purple drivel, never have."
No longer smiling, he retrieves her hat an instant before a woman pawing through the table can snatch it. "Well, maybe you should start." He jerks it back onto her head, "And leave it on! That hair is skywriting. We need warm clothes, inconspicuous clothes. It doesn't matter if they smell, they just might keep us alive. You may have noticed we don't have a lot of choices left about where to shop.Look around."
She looks. Drifters, hair molded straw. Young mothers, fretful babies riding their hips. Old women, teeth gone, looking as if they sleep in their clothes. Punks, wasted faces parchment stretched taut over bone.
Karl's face is hard. "This is real life, for most of the world the only life. We'll be lucky if they take our clothes in tradevery lucky."
Not believing, she lets her jaw fall. She couldn't have heard aright. "What? This dress cost ninety thousand dollars! This stuff," she holds open the pea coat, "isn't worth the shine off my shoes."
Looking mean, he jerks her to him by the lapels of the coat, sending a thrill up her spine that has her questioning her sanity. What is she, a woman who needs a belt across the mouth now and again to let her know a man really cares? It's insane, her feeling this way.
Face close, he whispers. "Right now it's worth a lot to us, and this dress of yours, whatever it cost, will get you made again sure as Shinola. If you can keep that mouth of yours clamped, and that hair under your cap, I just might be able to get us out of L.A.."
Jaw clenched, she trembles in his grasp, unsure whether she hates him more for his attitude or for being right.
Looking her over, he seems to approve. "All right, let's see what they say."
Hearing a stifled laugh, she catches Willy watching her. "And you," she says, vexed, "what do you want with that stupid cap."
He squats and Bink bolts up on his thigh. "The c..."
"The cap what?" she says.
"M...makes the man."
So much talk now, and such nonsense. She moves to follow Karl to the front, bringing Willy along, "Well, then, Willy, I guess you're made."
At the counter, he calls for the manager, a woman with a face like a powdered prune and two eyes that see through people as easily as a finger goes through an overripe pear. She holds up Romy's dress, gives it a quick once over, folds it, sweeps it aside, slapping Romy's heels on top like they're nothing. It's all Romy can do not to snatch them back. Her favorite Italian heels... Has the woman never seen good shoes? Can she work with clothing all day every day and not know good shoes when she sees them?
Gingerly, the woman prods the pile containing Karl's slacks, shirt, Willy's coveralls. Looking up, she takes their measure and comes away unimpressed, mouth set tighter than before. Pushing the stack back at them over the glass, she says, "We don't take trades, only donations."
As she turns away, Karl touches her elbow, takes off a worn felt hat, tags dangling from wrist and brim. "All we've got's these clothes. Where we're going it gets wet, it gets cold. They won't get us there, not alive."
Romy watches him, amazed. She's never seen him humble. Can he be sincere? Fascinated, she watches the woman's face for a reaction. So far no dice.
"We were hoping you'd swap us for them." He moves close to her ear, lowering his voice. "I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but that dress is a good one. It cost nearly a hundred thousand, you must know that, too."
She hesitates, eyes like razors considering. Romy gets the feeling she's weighing more than the barter of clothing. She gives Romy a close glance, reaches over for the tag at her neck, "How much you got on there?"
Romy gathers tags, passing them to the woman, who totals them. "Fourteen hundred, plus the bags, that's two thousand." She glances nervously at the front door, "You know you can go over to the mission and they'll give you clothes for free, feed you, let you stay."
Karl shakes his head, no. "I have a home, if I can get there. These two are with me."
Her eyes move to Willy, "I thought they were killers."
Romy stiffens. If she knows what Willy is, she knows what she is, too.
Karl nods, "He can kill, so can you, so can I. With a good enough reason, so can anybody."
Romy keeps her mouth from showing the irony she feels. If she only knew who she was talking to, what he is, this humble man begging for rags. If she only knew how easy killing is, dying is. The last few days have taught Romy that, taught her she can kill. She sees now they're not all that different after all.
Karl unzips Willy's jacket. Bink snorts and snuffles fresh air. "That dog's a pretty good judge of character."
Sharp eyes move to Romy. What can this woman think of someone like her? How would she feel in her place? Would she hate this recom come to barter an original for scraps?
"What about this one? Is she what they say they are?"
Romy watches the side of his face, wondering if she can stand to hear his answer, afraid to listen, afraid not to.
Setting the hat back on his head, he leans into the counter, elbows on plate glass, "I came expecting what anybody might, I guess. What the vids, what the net says they are." He shakes his head, "Uh, uh, just people."
Her wrinkled lips the woman purses into a satisfied pucker, "A bill will buy a lot of dresses."
Romy can see the avarice working her eyes the way a steel works a blade. "That's the reward they're offering, one billion dollars. You hear about that?"
"You don't look the Judas type," Karl says.
A slow smile works its way onto her painted mouth, revealing eye teeth smeared with lipstick the tint of blood. "How do you know? I might have made the com soon as I saw you come in. They might be on their way right now while I keep you talking."
He nods, "They might. You better pray they're not."
Her assurance slips, leaving her smile looking false. "Why's that?"
"Well," Karl says, adjusting the old hat on his head as if he'd worn it for years, "because there's bound to be an argument, and if there is, being between us and the door won't be very healthy."
Her eyes flick toward the break in the counter. Karl nods to Willy, who squats to examine some wire potato mashers, plugging her way with his bulk.
Less sure of herself, she frowns, "She's kidnapped, they say, that makes you the kidnapper. Why should I believe anything you say?"
"Because I'm telling the truth. Does she look like she's been kidnapped?"
She looks Romy in the eye. Romy looks back, unable to keep from smiling. Good point it seems to her.
Desperation brims in the woman's eyes. "She's not human and neither is he. I've heard about the way they live, the things they do."
Fighting an urge to run, Romy watches the street outside through the glass storefront. If she did turn them in, how much time can they have, a minute, two? How can he stand here talking about it?
Again Karl takes off his hat, this time dropping it onto the counter, sighing as if he's more than tired, "They are what they are. Perfect, hell no. They're no more that than we are. Because they are what they were made, does that mean God doesn't see them? Is that what you think? A God that counts sparrows can't see them, can't see you right now?"
The woman's eyes, no longer sharp, drop to regard swollen knuckles. Incredibly, it seems to Romy he's reached her. She glances over her shoulder at the street, taps a tar-stained nail on glass. "What'll they do to them if they catch them?"
Karl smiles. "Now just what do you think?"
Horror dawns in her eyes, "No."
"Yeah, that's right."
Her eyes meet Romy's, flooded with guilt, with fear. "That way, through the back room, out the side bay, down the alley, there isn't much time."
Vibrating, needing to be gone, Romy waits for Karl as he stays where he is across the counter. Outside, sirens sing-song closer, louder. He picks up his hat, carefully seats it on his head.
"What are you waiting for?" She is desperate to have them gone. "Can't you hear them?"
"I can hear them," he says. "I just want to know if we're even on the clothes."
"Yes, we're even, of course we are, yes!"
"Okay, then, I just wanted to be sure, that's all."
At last he moves. On his heels she runs, Willy close behind. Through a room piled high with clothing, through a laundry, bleach strong enough to burn her eyes, finally out and away. Three blocks she follows, sirens dropping pitch as they pass, thinking only of the dress and heels she'd last seen bundled under the woman's arm as they headed out the back. That outfit will never see the racks, Romy's sure of that.
When at last they stop, she sits, groaning as she thinks of her things on a woman who had almost killed them all. From his place on the curb, stuggling for his breath, Karl says, "You okay?"
Mad enough to spit, she laughs. "A ninety thousand dollar original for some smelly ragsyou're quite the wheeler-dealer."
Face maddeningly impassive, he ignores her, chest working.
"We could have sold it for twenty at least! We could have had a proper meal!"
He looks at her as if he never wants to hear her voice again, stands, heads across the tracks to the Interstate.
She follows, wanting to hurt, wanting more than anything to get a reaction, any reaction, to see that what she says can touch him. "Do you hear me, I said we could be eating right now, or doesn't the stone man get hungry either?"
Abruptly, he stops, coming in close so fast he frightens her, "Keep your voice down!" This he hisses, then he whispers. "You say we could have sold itwhere? You know this town, know who buys that kind of dress? Do you?"
Confused by the sudden challenge, she stutters. He knows she doesn't. "I..."
"Want to go in? Here, then." He slaps a satcom in her hand. "Put it on, I'll give you the code, they'll be here in three minutes to pick you up. You want to come with me, zip your lip and keep the damned hat on."
He stalks off.
The arrogant bastard! She's terminated time with a client for less. Fear uncoiling in her belly, she watches him go. Making sure Willy's behind her, she looks, really looks at the ugliness around her. How could she have wanted to live here?
Face clear of fear, of worry, of anything, Willy waits patiently. In that ridiculous cap, waiting, patience for her a font never drying. As if he hasn't heard, hasn't understood. For what must be the millionth time since that day in the stands, she wonders just how much he understands.
More than she'll ever know is her guess. She's never been able to find out for sure. Willyattack dog loyal to the last contraction of his heart. She takes his hand, presses it to her breast, "Oh, Willy, what are we doing? Should we go with him? Wouldn't it be better for him if we didn't?"
Watching her with fluid eyes, he says nothing. Of course he says nothing, that's what he usually says. She looks down at herself with disgust. With her clothing went the last of her life. What is she now? Shapeless in clothing smelling of mothballs and God knows what else, here she stands with nothing. Sisters, life, home, bonsaieverything gone. Hunted. Alone but for Willy...
Karl recedes down the block, melting into the distance.
And him...
A thrill of fear traces its way up her back even under the sweater and coat as she sees how far away he's gotten. There he goesthe one man in the world she can trust. Not good looking. Not rich. Not brilliant. Oh, God, her dress... No, definitely not brilliant. Not any of the things she'd always dreamed the one meant for her might be. Unlike the others, she had never questioned that for her there would be someone someday. But why this one? Why a man repulsed by what she is? Why must life be so perverse?
Still she can't deny that's who he is. Her first touch, her first scent of him told her that. Knowing kept her from using what she knew to break free the night of the bomb, kept her struggle ineffectual as he pressed her to him like no man had ever done.
Now he risks everything for her. Why? Out of some warped sense of duty, of responsibility. To whom? Certainly not to her.
She should go in, she knows, but having so slightly outdistanced death makes her surprisingly unwilling to come near it again. She is weak, God help her. She wants to live. He does want her to stayso he says. This assuages the worst of her guilt, but not all. At the moment, on this blasted street corner, it's all too much to consider. With a deep breath, she pushes it away. Later she will figure it all outlater. Right now all she wants is out of L.A., away from the ugliness, the death. All she wants is.... She sighs, giving up. She hasn't any idea what she wants. Looking up the street in the direction of the freeway, she picks him out from the haze, blocks away, now.
"Oh, come on, then," she says, drawing Willy after her, "he's getting away."
"So where are we going?" Romy asks when she catches him at the ramp.
Not wanting to talk, he points up at the sign: Santa Ana Freeway North.
Her eyes widen as if the idea scares her, "You're going home? But Auri said–"
"I don't care what Auri says." Thumb out, he yells over the roar of ten lanes stretching out below them. "I'm going home."
"I..." Eyes flickering, mouth carefully composed, she nods, backing away, "I understand."
No, she doesn't, and it peeves him as he reaches out for her wrist. She should by now. "You're coming."
Her eyes search his face, uncertain. "But they'll be waiting."
There's nothing to say to that. There's nowhere else for them to go. He's sure as hell not staying here. "People have been waiting for me my whole life."
She waits, watching him thumb.
Nine hundred sixty-two cars laterWilly counts them aloudnot one has slowed.
Karl can't take any more. "Count on your fingers, will you?"
Three more tides pass, and Romy irritates him by sighing with impatience.
"Sighing doesn't help." He knows exactly why it's taking so long. Nobody picks up three menand that's what they look like. "Sometimes it takes a while."
"I can't stand any more of this," she says, stepping up to the berm. "Let me."
"What do you mean, let me? A thumb's a thumb."
She smiles, "Didn't you ever see It Happened One Night? Colbert, Gable, Wall of Jericho?"
He gives her a blank look and she gives up. "Just stand back." She slips off the cap, letting her hair tumble out and down, flashing her smile at traffic.
He watches her, amazed at the way she can turn it on and off. Even dressed like this she gleams. "This isn't a movie."
Not a minute later a super-hauler taps his brakes, coasting to a stop half a kilometer past them. An old one, only three trailers, it leaves the air behind tainted with burnt clutch. Older yet is the driver.
With a brown-toothed grin, tobacco juice dried in the corners of his mouth, he greets them, "Take you far as Frisco."
Karl hesitates. Inside, there's plenty of room. An old German shepherd bitch rides behind the driver. Right now Karl would take a ride to Goshen if it would get them out of L.A.. "We'll take it."
Romy climbs in first, then Karl. German shepherd in the sleeper growls deep in its throat, hackles rising as he gets in. Without hesitation Willy climbs in back and at once the dog calms, bald tail wagging. Blood-crusted fur on its back patchy from mange, Karl offers her a smell of his hand. When black lips recede over yellow fangs he reconsiders. Every time he opens his mouth for 500 klicks, the dog growls. So much for his way with animals.
In the sleeper Willy curls up between the dogs for a nap. Though he knows it's not contagious, Karl doesn't like Bink anywhere near mange. Right now there's not much he can do.
The tranny chuckles and chatters. Worried it may throw a tooth, Karl watches the old man baby it, humor it, kid it along. Running down the Grapevine to the valley floor the sensation is like sitting on the lid of a pressure cooker as the three trailers do their best to shove the truck out of gear and over the high side.
They blow past Goshen in fifth, day wearing on, heat shimmering on the long dead straight ribbon up the belly of Mexicali. Even at this pace it's good to be making time, every second farther from the deadly dance of the cityfrom Raj. It's an illusion, but one he enjoys. Of course distance won't help at all. Raj is an electron's breadth away.
It makes it all so hopeless. If he could go back to finish him he would. But how do you kill something that's not alive, has no body, is everywhere and not really anywhere at all? What a mess it all is. If there's any way to make it right he can't see it. It's too far gone for anything, now. Too late to do anything but run.
North.
Home.
He gets there before EPA, he can make their life tough for a while. Whatever happens he'll be home. He looks down to see Romy asleep, head on his shoulder. Dangerous company. Much in demand. By the agency. By Genie. By Raj. By anybody in want of a billion dollars. A very hot property.
Lulled by heat, by the feel of her against him, the song of chattering gears, the smell of an overheated engine, the rocking cab, he sags, head against window. One hand on the butt of the Smith, he drifts off.
On the bum.
On the grift.
Karl doesn't like it.
Istanbul, 2009, Karl, seventeen, on a summer rail trip, gives away his travelers checks to a young Slavic blonde whore, chingune, they call them. Baby suckling her breast, she caught his eye, andso he was stupidhis heart.
A touch of her, all darting animal fear and suspicion, tells him nothing. He gives her everything, all he has, enough to feed them both for half a year. Later that day he sees her back on her spot selling herself for the price of a loaf of peda. This teaches him something about the impossibility of change, of the futility of making even the slightest nail imprint in the lump of clay that is the world.
He begs of American and Australian students to get through the week on mutton tripe soup and day old flat bread. Best pickings he finds outside the dome of Sultan Ahmet, between there and the tower. Beyazit: the old, cheap section of the city where tourists in jeans go to score hash and gash.
That long week he watches her. She never misses a night. He checks on her down near the Bosporous. Jostled by the crowd, smoke of barbecued lamb gyro tearing his eyes, watering his mouth, he stands with other men peering at her. Eating noodles with her fingers, witless breeding sow, legs folded under her, she sits on a bed in the nude with another girl, goods on display.
The baby hers? Who can know? Borrowed, so they tell him. His money in the pocket of her pimp. Out there in the street the thought of it reddens his face with shame. How could he have been so stupid?
The satcom to California takes the fruit of the day's panhandling. That night he curls up at the gate to the cistern with nothing in his belly but the smell of smidts the boys carry past still warm from the oven on their tall sticks.
The reply from his father is a thousand U.S. dollars, enough to let him scrape back to London, if he were very careful. Along with it came a note saying he expects him to plant a thousand spruce that springone for every dollar. That was Dad. That was him in spades. He'd resented it then, never him giving, but with a price, with a cost. Karl understands it now.
There's always a costalways.
So, now, here he is. Twenty million in his account and he can't get to it. Half a Q worth of timber on his land waiting to be thinned and here they are in San Francisco begging tokens. Outside the Cannery they hesitate, counting street people lining the walk. With chagrin, Karl realizes he's not the first to think to come here.
"Uh, uh," Romy says, sizing them up. "This is no good. I want a restaurant, the best one." Scanning the directory, she runs a finger down the list, "There, that'll do, third floor. Lets go."
Sensing he's in the company of a pro, Karl tails her up the stairs. "Why a restaurant?"
Without turning she answers, taking stairs two at a time, long legs scissoring effortlessly, "Guilt. They've just eaten, it's a good time. We did a lot of reading in psychology." Looking back at Karl as he struggles to keep up, she smiles as if she had just bitten into a persimmon, "Useful for whores, psychology."
At the door to the eatery, she pauses, turns, "Yeah, this is good." Sternly, she frowns, "I'll do better without you. Work the kebab and creperie outside." She pushes him away, leaving him dazed by the familiarity coming through her hand. When he opens his mouth to protest, she covers it with a cool hand, shakes her head, cap off. "I'll be all right here, we're a long way from L.A.. If I weren't dressed like a tramp I might do better yet, now go and let me work." She shoves Willy at him, and they head down.
He doesn't like it she takes to it so well. Then he remembers she's been in the grift more or less since birth. Bred to it. Born to it. Nearly died in it. What she didn't do is choose it.
Downstairs, bedrolls stacked at his back, Willy sets Bink at his tricks as Karl watches, disgusted. Bink, who couldn't so much as fetch a bone. Willy has him jumping, eager as hell, into his cap, right up into his arms. Karl stands back, playing shill, clapping, tossing tokens into his hat modeling the way for the squares. It works, they toss some in, too. If he's a good gypsy, Willy's better.
Ball rolling, he wanders off to score a pita from an old woman with painted eyebrows and a bracelet of lapiz lazuli that must have made it hard to lift her frail, blue-veined wrist. He thanks her and, feeling too guilty to eat it, spends an hour with it in his inside pocket, the smell of roasted lamb, garlic, and lemon driving him nuts every time he moves.
He hits on another old woman and she looks at him like he's something stuck to the sole of her heel. Okay, so maybe he isn't such a good beggar. Discouraged, he sits. He'd rather starve than face that look again.
A young couple stroll by, heads tilted up reading the overhead menu. He hoists himself up to hit on them. They fill his hand with tokens, and add a chicken and black bean pita onto their order for him. Feeling better, he passes the time while they wait.
"What's up with you, man?" asks the guy. He wears a short trimmed beard, corduroy jacket. The girl hangs on his arm in a loose India print skirt. Small thing, yet vital, Karl imagines her making love like a chinchilla.
She frowns at him. "Why you bumming?"
Karl looks into their young faces, so sure of themselves, in college, no doubt. Not good, not bad, just full of themselves, of their own importance, their own place in the whole mess. "You really want to know?"
They do.
Well, why not? Nothing less believable than the truth.
"Okay, I'll tell you, I'm X-DOJ, freelance now, on the run from the agency, police, a multinational's contractors and an old friend who happens to be dead. I've got twenty million in my account I can't use, a code I can't access, and no chip at all. My traveling companions are a couple recoms with bounties on their heads. One would shame Helen of Troy and the other one's made to kill with his bare hands, but he'd really rather love up a little mutt that lives in his jacket."
Seeing by their faces they aren't buying a word, Karl warms to it, "Now, in Vegas I could read minds to win poker games for food money, but here I've just got to beg. See, we're on our way up to my ranch in Anglo-Cali. Of course the EPA could beat me there. It'll be close. Either way you'll hear about it. My guess is I can get twenty before they gas me."
The kid's smile goes stale, but stays right where it is. Both shrink back, almost imperceptibly, a snail's stalked eye receding. "Yeah?" the guy says, "That must be tough. We did something like that in UR last week didn't we Tish?" He elbows her out of her stupor, "Didn't we?"
She nods uncertainly, "Yeah, uh, yeah, we did."
When the food's shoved over the counter they wave, edging away through the crowd. Watching them go, Karl smiles, pita warm in his hands. The truth is powerful stuff, disturbing stuff, not suitable for all occasions. He's sorry he told them. Just kids, they meant no harm, just trying to be nice. Now they're scared of him, sure he's crazy, and again he's alone. He doesn't like it much.
From the corner of his eye he sees a big man in a tattered field jacket lead two smaller men up the stairs. Just before he disappears, he turns, smiles a broken-toothed smile from behind a full, red beardRaj's smile gone vicious.
Dropping the pocket bread, Karl bolts for the stairs, moving fast as he can, heart leaping in a prison of membrane, muscle and bone, every pulse drumming the same question.
How did he find them?
Traffic's bad.
Embarcadero's backed up far as Drew can see, which isn't saying much. His grip on the wheel tightens as he inches along in the fog. Eyes glazed, he has to concentrate to focus on the bumper of the car ahead.
No sleep since the bombing. He keeps seeing her face, hearing her voice. Romy, the Sister he'd taken for an hour walk on the quay. Deadmust be.
All day, all night he prays, and still God is silent. Now he's wondering if maybe he wasn't deceived, if maybe it wasn't all a mistake, the bombing, the Army of God, all of it. He's confused, afraid. For his soul, for the consequences of what he's done.
He tried to get her to come away but, face sober, she had laughed with those coral reef green liquid eyes of hers. Wanting nothing so much as just to hear her speak, to listen to her voice, he'd blathered on about God, about the Spiritthings of which he knows nothing. Talked and talked until she'd stopped listening.
Six killed, the news saidthree human, three sisters. No names, but she had to be one. Maybe if he'd been more sure of himself she might have listened. But then, that had always been the problem; he had never been sure, not of anything. Even with ten pounds of C4 in his grip, he came off as a kid expecting to be slapped.
They said Sisters had no souls, and he had believed. Then, on the plat she'd looked at him and he knew it was a lie. He'd felt a soul behind those eyes, a soul throbbing with lifeand killed her anyway. Why? For the most witless reason of anyinertia.
The car in front of him brakes and he barely sees it in time, slamming into the harness as he howls to a stop inches from the bumper. Dear God, if he could only forget her face. To do that he would do anything. Anything.
As a man he's a washout, he knows that. Ahead looms the Golden Gate. It's the only way to forget her face, to forget what he's done, to sleep.
And he so needs sleep.
Eyes level with the next hallway, Karl spots them as they head up the next landing. Moving fast, they head for Romy. Somehow they know where she is. No way he can stop them. Lungs straining he calls. "Raj!"
At the next landing red beard turns on him with mad eyes. Spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth, he doubles back, shakes out a tanto butterfly, dried blood on the blade. Karl wonders as he comes whose it is. Charging down the stairs, dog circling to bite, he lifts his arm for a downward slash. The big Smith warm from its nest under his arm, Karl raises it, sighting on his face as he comes, in his eyes no reaction to looking down the barrel of a .44.
The thought of this obscene thing, this witless marionette straddling him as he bleeds out scares Karl more than dying. Front sight on the man's open mouth, over the path through the cerebellum, brain stem, nowhere to go, Karl waits. What was he before Raj got hold of him? Not much different from what he is now, Karl guesses.
At the last instant, the gun bucks, his hand taking the recoil in the web of his thumb. Ducking under the slash, Karl goes down hard on his knee, fending off the swipe with upraised left arm, taking the brunt on his jacket, not much force in it, but enough. He feels the blade bite through and into his arm, cold as ice. Pivoting over Karl, dead on his feet, he tumbles to the bottom of the stairs.
Skin crawling from the near miss, Karl gets up massaging an aching knee. Trembling, he looks down at the thing sprawled on the landingpuppet with cut strings, back of his head gaping, blood pooling. A woman screams so long he wonders if she'll ever stop.
How did he find them? Whatever it was, Karl missed it. Up the stairs he limps, calling, knowing they won't come. It's her they want. Him, Raj can kill anytime. Romy's the one he has to have, and he wants her alive, which is good. It means he has time; not much, but a little. At the landing he stops, trying desperately to think.
Will it be enough?
They've got her already. Got her and are taking her down right now. He misses them and she's dead. No, not dead. Worse than deadshe's his. Turning back down, to the stairwell at the opposite end of the floor, knee complaining, gun under his jacket, he waits where he can see three out of four wells. That leaves the elevator and one stairwell open. Three out of fivelittle better than even odds. Better than Vegas, but not good.
Eyes roving from one to the other, he waits. Icy sweat runs down his ribs. His shirt he presses to the slash on his arm. Can't be too bad if he can still use it. This is taking too long. Can they be implanting her right now?
He won't think about it, he can't. They do, the game's over. She'll be his. Raj wins.
His heart starts the same old thing and he presses the flat of his palm hard against his breastbone, commanding it behave. Oddly enough, it does. Never good at waiting, he's going nuts.
What should he do? What if he misses her? He won't lose Romy the way he lost Kat. The thought smarts like a backhand.
Should he be down in the plaza? Should he check the other well? Stop the lift? What, damn him, what?
Physically impossible for him to stand still, he pacescome on, come on, come on!
SFPD officer shows up at the foot of the far well, and Karl freezes. Tall, gangly, fresh out of the academy, maybe a fast 23, he kneels. Careful to find a spot free of blood, he takes the corpse's pulse.
Karl can only shake his head. Was he ever that green?
Subvocalizing, he spots Karl, pretends to look away, turns, brings a carbine around from behind his back. One of the new sub-lethals Karl thinks, not that it matters. They take him he's just as dead. Karl's sure Raj would have no trouble getting to him in lock up. Too many in too close, all wired.
Karl doesn't want to kill a cop. He takes the .44 out from under his jacket, lets him see it. Around the corner behind him come two couples, young, thirties, late twenties maybe. The cop raises something in Karl's direction. Karl ducks around the stairwell. Nothing happens.
The four in front of him go mute mid-gerund to coast, toys with dying batteries. They keep their legs under them, but sag, feet dragging, shuffling, sailboats caught in an eddy. Faces slack, they spiral, eyes glass. So that's ithe has something tuned to jam implants, and he thought he was going to put Karl down the same way. Sorry, no dice. Lifting the revolver, Karl sights over it, trigger finger along the frame. The kid's carbine's a slug thrower and Karl's dead.
When he scurries out of sight, Karl knows it's a goo-shooter. He's seen them used. Foam ties a man up, worse the more he fights it. God bless liberals. The crap won't reach this far. Karl can keep him away and out of the equation.
By now the couples recover, stagger away, dazed, confused, wiping drool from their chins. Do they know what hit them?. Do they know their little dream was just a beneficent government minding the flock?
As far as Karl can tell, they find nothing unusual about it. The way they huddle together reminds him of his flock of lambs released from the indignities of the worming ritual.
Dismissing the cop from his mind, Karl scans the three wells he can see, wishing for Superman's eyes to see the forth.
Were Lois' dainties pink? black? Did she favor girdle? garter belt? Did Clark use his X-ray eyes to find out? Was he saintly or just super? Why is Karl even remotely curious?
The lift stops to take on a couple sweet things and Karl sees it's empty. All righthe's batting 800. But there's always that last stairwell.
He itches to go. Run. Do something, anything. Not long and they'll have some guys in to swat him. Guys who'll laugh at his antiques. Just then, he catches movement from the corner of his eye and steps back out of sight.
It's the two, Romy between them, a struggling, cursing hellion. Anything but passive this time, she screams, claws, kicks. Karl smiles. Good girl. Barely able to hold her between them, they drag her by pinioned arms. The cop picks now to peek around the corner and they see him, backtracking up the stairs.
God damn him. Karl considers shooting the dumb bastard. Instead he wills his mind quiet. He's got to think. Okay, he's got maybe three minutes. They know these two wells are covered, so that leaves only the lift and the two far wells. Those he can watch at once. Moving fast, he keeps his eyes on the stuccoed ceiling. She's there, barely a meter over his head on the other side of warp and weave of steel joists, sprayed foam, wire, tubing, optics. So close. Not close enough.
Gun under his jacket for the benefit of strolling tourists still oblivious to the excitement, he makes the lift, presses the down button. He's sure they'll use it, he can feel it. Woman with a little girl comes to wait beside him. He tells her to use the stairs, that it's out of order. Looking back resentfully, she leads the girl away.
He presses his head to the stainless doors to hear by bone conduction. Hears hydraulics vent as the ram descends. Gun out, he waits. Kat he lost by hesitating. He won't lose Romy that way. Stairways still clear. SWAT'll be along any second. They won't be asking questions. Against their armor the .44's a pea shooter. Gun hand shaking, he waits, back to the wall.
Killed by the good guysthat would be his style.
The elevator slows. He wishes he were in the woods, home. He can smell the shavings in the hen house, feel the smooth warmth of brown eggs gathered from under a broody hen. He'll only have a second to double tap them, her in the middle. He's done El Presidente on the range in just under three secondsbut never with Romy standing between the targets.
Sweat greasing the grip in his hand, he dries his gun hand on jeans, gets set. Five years since he's practiced with a handgun. He doesn't pray for things, but he prays now. Not asking for anything, just opening a line.
Letting his hands hang slack, Karl blanks his mind as if he's on the range, waiting for the buzzer to go. He can feel the car come down, feel her there on the other side of the door. He brings up the gun in an isometric grip, left pulling, right pushing. Raising the hammer with trigger pressure, breath suspended, up on the balls of his feet, he focuses over the sight like a hood ornament, through the door an inch from the muzzle to a point three feet back in the car.
He will not lose her, will not leave here without her.
The shushing cuts off as the valve closes, a thunk as the inside door latch engages.
He will not.
A nearly imperceptible tremor in the floor under his feet, and time runs midnight molasses as stainless doors crease.
In a story his great-grandmother often retold, Drew remembers the suicide of Uncle Will. Studying to be a doctor, when the sight fails in his right eye, he moderates his dream to pharmacist. When his left eye fades he secures a pint of sulfuric.
His great-grandmother, then a child, waits in her bed to wish him good night. Waits, listening as he showers, changes into new underclothes, comes to sit on the edge of her bed and kisses her, bristled cheeks sanding her face as he clamps her furious hard, then, at the kitchen table, bolts the oily liquid.
Is it the same urge that drives him to buy a fresh suit of clothes before walking halfway across the Golden Gate?
Romy rushes into Karl's arms, nearly knocking him down. When he can see past her, he sees them both flat on the floor.
"Dead," she says. "Let's go."
Fighting for breath, he stands rooted.
"Come on, I said!" She drags him by his jacket "Let's get out of here, there'll be policía everywhere in a minute, I saw one back there."
Stunned inert, he lets her haul him away, eyes on the two on the floor of the car. "You did that?"
Eyes on the gun, she takes him down the stairs. "Put that away."
He slips it back under his arm. "How?"
She won't look at him, "I'm a freak. You know that already, don't you?"
Down the hallway, past evacuated shops, past a sign marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
"The thing you did when you touched me?"
Saying nothing, she leads him fast through the deserted hallway.
"Something electric.... You can do that?"
She looks at him, ashamed, "I can do it."
"Why now, why not before?"
She straight-arms their way through a swinging door, hustling him along with her, "I don't know why, okay, I don't know. Now shut up and move."
Where the hall T's, she hesitates.
"Know where you're going?"
She takes them left, down, "Out, I'm going out."
A door marked EXIT, she leans out, whistles shrill, hurting his ear. Bags in his arms, Willy comes springing through, and again they're moving.
Down a dim hallway, around and down stairs, past a scared looking Mexican kid in kitchen whites, grease blackened on his thighs where he wipes his hands, and out they go into the haze.
Does the feeling of being joined with her come through her hands or is it his alone? Either way it's there, real as wind off the bay, real as the scent of grilling lamb drifting up from the plaza.
God help him, he aches for it.
The Cannery is crowded today.
Sure coming here is a mistake, Drew heads up the stairs and three jerks elbow him out of their way as they hurry past. Dirty, smelling of sweat and poppers, urine, Thunderbird, glue. Scary, the one with the red beard. They don't apologize, just keep going, mounting stairs at a run. Picking himself up, he wonders what they're doing here. Nothing good, he's sure.
Now another guy, he doesn't see his face, jostles past him, gun out and he's had enough, goes back down. Let them have the stairs. Four shops down he hesitates. What was that, a firecracker? He strains for another, hears a scream or thinks he does.
Ten minutes later, having found nothing he wants, disgusted, he goes to sit in his van. He wants to go out in style, in something really nice, preferably wash and wear, but he can't do it. Even now, can't throw away money on overpriced made-in-China-by-slave-labor junk. He laughs at himself, at the utter ridiculousness of iteconomy when in an hour he'll be dead. That's if he hits the lights right.
Depressed by his own bullheaded frugality, he noses the little van into the afternoon crush. Motor arcing, he thinks again it's time for a rebuild, and smiles at the thought. That doesn't matter now. Let the next owner worry about it. As the light cycles for the third time red, leaving him at the crosswalk, he glances left and forgets to breathe.
Out a fire exit not twenty meters from him they come. It's her, it's Romy and the other one, the one in the leather jacket. The two from the lobby, the ones he killed, there, right there in the street in front of him. Can't be, but it is.
He skins his head on the way out of the cramped van like he does every time he's in a rush and, ignoring the traffic speeding by before and after him, ignoring the shouts, the raised fists and gestures, walks to them, eyes on their faces, afraid to blink, afraid to turn away, even to look down at the ground, afraid the faces will change.
Now the smaller guy, the one in dark leather notices him coming and opens his coat, lifts a gun, a very large gun, to point at his navel, at his raw, naked heart, and he lifts his arms in front of him, finding out in a half second just how much he's been kidding himself about wanting to die.
Very much he wants to live.
Why he doesn't drop him Karl doesn't know.
But as he comes across traffic, finger poised at half the pressure that'll rock the sear, he waits, scanning the street up and down looking for someone else. If he sees anyone else coming he'll have to kill him. But it's just this one, just this skinny guy in baggy khakis, a man he's sure he's seen somewhere before.
Romy's hand tightens on his, "It's Drew, the man I was with before the bomb."
Now he remembers. He checks again, finds his hands empty.
"Dear God, you're alive! I'm not dreaming this, am I?"
"Not unless I am, too," Romy says. "Can you give us a ride?"
The other stares blankly back as singsong horns close in.
Karl's hand shoots out, clamps his upper arm, "Can you?"
Slowly, it sinks in. "A ride?" He nods, smiles, looks at Romy, back at Karl, "Sure! Sure I can, my van's right here, come on, get in."
They squeeze into the van, Willy sprawled in back on stacks of Bibles, Karl ducking down in the second seat, Romy up front, head on Drew's lap. "Everybody ready? Here we go." Karl watches from the back seat, shotgun muzzle cold by his forehead. No way will he be taken now.
"Those guys after you?"
"Don't stop," Romy says, "don't look down at me. Watch where you're going!"
From the pitching floor, Karl hears cruisers scream by. A snared hare is what he feels like, nowhere to go if a face looms in the window. No choice but to kill a cop. That or Raj gets to him in lock up. It won't happen that way.
The car lurches, motor whining five thousand RPM as he thrusts them out into traffic. The van weaves, rocks, turns.
Willy slides on his bed of Bibles, rocking the van as he hits the wall, "Ow."
Bink stands on Karl to peer over the back of the rear seat. Karl reaches up to stroke him and he dodges, the little jerk, intent on cars around them. No time for him, now. Too busy. Showbiz gone to his head. Dog stolen by a recom with biceps bigger than his frontal lobe.
Into the open the van accelerates, electric motor changing keys as it gears up. Drew smiles back at him, down at Romy, "You can relax, now."
Romy sits up, wiping hair out of her face, "We owe you."
"You owe me nothing."
Karl sits up. That's true. Breathing dropping back to where it should be, he looks out.
"Where to?" Drew says, glancing back at Karl.
It's him, all right, and Karl doesn't much care for being in the same car with him. Might be crazy. "Drop us anywhere."
Drew looks back over a shoulder, "I don't know where you're going and you don't have to tell me, but I'll take you all the way, wherever it is, if you'll let me."
This is nuts. He plants a bomb then gives them a lift? He wants away from this guy. "You must hate recoms to do what you did."
"I never hated you," he says to Romy. "Never. What I hate is Genie. That's why I did what I did. I haven't slept since."
Watching his eyes in the rear view mirror, Karl believes him.
"So, hey, mi carro es tú carro, where to?"
Karl watches the road, notices drivers gawking as they pass. He reaches up, tucks her hair down the back of her coat. "North."
Drew looks puzzled. "Anglo-Cali, huh? Good choice. Big place. Where you headed up there?"
Jesus freak. Maybe he regrets the bomb, maybe just that they got out alive. Karl doesn't like him, doesn't trust him. But right now the last place they want to be is out there on a ramp. That's exactly where the policía and Rajwill be looking. "Don't worry about where."
"Yeah, sure, man, relax. North it is."
Karl thinks of something. "You implanted?"
"Sorry, don't believe in it. You need to call I've got a set back there somewhere."
"That's all right," Karl says, nerves keying down a notch. "Just take us north."
They make it as far as the Russian River.
On a long steep grade on 101 the overtaxed van gives up the fight, smell of melting insulation and red hot copper coming through the floorboards. They coast to a stop. Drew ratchets on the brake, "That's it, she's done."
"You're sure?" Romy says.
He laughs, "I'm sure."
Karl looks down the highway, cars already with lights on, thinning out, now. Too late to start; hitching at night's chancier. He looks around him at hills of upthrust serpentine. Not a bad spot to spend a night. No way Raj can track them here. Nobody to see them.
Willy's already down on the sand bar by a river running high, the color of tea. The sun droops over oak-studded hills lush from winter rain.
"Good place to stop," Romy says, unloading food Drew bought on the way.
They agree on a sandbar out of view of the road. Karl builds a fire, takes an armload of driftwood from Drew and though he's been dreading it, opens his mind.
At once Karl trusts him absolutely. Wanting to make amends, hagridden with guilt, driven insane with it, he's no threat. Noticing Romy at riverside, he leaves the fire to Drew, follows.
Downstream, she sits cross legged on a slab of eddy-pocked bedrock only a few inches above the water. In deepening shade she watches the river flow, face serene. He reaches in to find the water jarringly cold. Over crags behind them a chill, high fog blows in from the sea. It will be cold tonight. He sits. "Penny for your thoughts."
She answers, her gaze on the river, "What to do next."
A cold hand probes his viscera. There it is again. "Why decide now? Why not see a bit of the world first? Like it here?"
She raises her head, hair skimming sand, to the cliffs above them. "It's magnificent, big as the entire plat, this one hill. I always dreamed of coming to a place like this. None of the others ever saw a river, not in person." She reaches out to slip her bare feet, coated with sand, into fast running current. Lips pressed tight with determination, she holds them immersed.
He observes, amused. "Not cold?"
Arms taut, she keeps her feet where they are. "A river," she says, voice lit with wonder. "My feet in a river."
He admires her toughness, more her capacity to look like she looks and not be possessed by vanity. "You know, the river will be here tomorrow. The sun will come up and it'll be warm. You don't have to soak it all up right now. It'll keep, really it will."
She gasps, gives up, pulls them out, cradling them in her hands, moaning as she rocks.
"Let me see," he says, taking a foot in his hands. Her skin burns, it's so cold. She watches him, wary, as he rubs her instep with his thumbs, working some warmth back into it.
Gaze wandering upriver, Karl sees Willy toss a willow branch to splash in shallow water and, disgusted, sees Bink race madly off and return it to him. Wheedling sod, never once has he ever brought anything back for him, never once. Too stupid, he always thought.
Clouds pass, driven by chill wind. It'll drop down into the low forties tonight. They've got only three bagssomebody's going to get cold, and it sure as hell won't be him. Drew can sleep in his van, wrap himself like a beef Wellington in C4 for all it matters, he's not freezing his ass off for somebody who did his best to blow him up.
The one foot warm, he lets it go, takes up the other. He can't believe she's letting him touch her like this. He looks up to find her watching him speculatively.
"I know what you think I am."
"And what's that?"
"What you seethis." She yanks a handful of her hair. "This is what they made me. It's not me." She presses a fist to her chest. "I'm in here, I'm nothing like what men see when they look at me."
He's intrigued. "What do they see?"
"They see their fantasy, what they want to see."
"But you... I mean, Sisters..." He wishes he'd never opened his mouth.
Her eyes glare as she waits for him to finish. "What?"
There's nothing to do but to go on. "You were...intimate."
She sneers at his stupidity, "You are a prude. Yes, we were intimate. Those that refused disappeared. I did what I had to to stay alive. You think I should be ashamed? I'm not. We had each other; that's all we had." She pulls her foot away, "I don't expect you to understand."
An ache throbs in his gut. Jealousy, moral outrage, he's not sure which.
"So that confirms what you always thought about us, I guess."
Karl reaches out, snatches her bare foot, hauls it back.
"Let go!"
"I'm not done," he says, gripping it hard until the tension goes out of her leg. The feel of her skin in his hands calms him as he works.
She watches him, "And are you a virgin?"
He meets her eye, "I'm forty years old."
"So, you've been intimate with just your wife, that right?"
He sees what's coming. "No."
Her mouth drops in shammed surprise, "There were others?"
"A few."
"Many?"
"I lost my score card."
She looks at him as if he'd just told her he had cut the heads off week old kittens, "You're telling me you fornicate like a mongrel."
"All right, I get the point. I'm no saint. I've never known any. The ones that pretend to be are just more careful about hiding their sins than the rest of us. I've made mistakes, plenty. I mean, what am I? A killer, that's all, a loser, pig farmer, punching bag. Who the hell am I to judge you or anybody else?"
She shakes her head, covers his hand on her foot, holds it there, "You could have turned me over. You didn't."
Not wanting to hear any more, he lets her go. She grabs his arm. "I see the way you miss your dog, yet you let Willy keep him. You let us slow you down when you might have been home. None of this you had to do. And, you know, when you touch me, l feel something...something I've never felt before a connection."
She has his attention. "What do you mean?"
She shakes herself as if throwing something off, "I don't know, it's like I.... You'll think I'm insane."
He's got to hear it, got to know. "Tell me."
She hesitates, face cynical, "It's like I know what you're thinking, what you're feeling." Eyes brimming, she looks away, "I told you, don't you think I know how it sounds?"
Numb, Karl says nothing. It's not true. It can't be true. In forty years, no one, not one person, has ever said anything like this to him.
"It's not that." Unable to look at her, he watches the river. "I was a cop once. They called me a mind reader, joking, you know, just to needle me. They had no idea, but they nailed me."
Her eyes, narrowing with disbelief, pierce him. When she speaks, her voice is barely audible over the rills in the river. "You can do that?"
He watches water loll its way around a swerve of rock, cutting even as it's diverted, adding to the sculpting of thousands of years of hydraulics. He answers, crossing the line he's crossed only once before in the last twenty years. And that with Magnus who'd already guessed.
Laying it out, he opens all he has, the only thing that's really hishis secretto a woman he's known for hours. He looks up at her, then back down at the water. He can't do it, can't look at her and say it. "I can."
He glances up to see none of the fear he dreads.
Slowly, she nods. "It's not easy being different."
"I told someone once, she broke three fingernails getting away from me. My wife I never told. StillI knew. It didn't make it fair. Things most women can keep secret she couldn't. Knowing the things I knew and not able to say... It didn't last long."
"And since?"
"Nobody but Tate. Mary's always known."
"Your wife?"
"Sister, Mary's my sister."
What about your wife?"
"Don't have one, haven't for ten years."
Looking punch drunk, she exhales a gust of breath, "Your sister?" She considers, "You care for her very much?"
He has trouble believing they're having this conversation. "Very much."
"Your parents?"
"Uh, uh."
"Ah, I see, is she married?"
"Was."
"Children?"
"Mel."
"The boy you spoke of."
"Sixteen, okay kid most the time."
She gives him a look.
"What?"
"You're an uncle."
He tosses a shard of stone to the far bank. "Not much of one."
Sunlight gone, the river rushes by in twilight. He thinks of her sister, the one in his cubicle. "Were you and Sasha close?"
She opens her mouth, not a smile, eyes flashing, looks past him upriver, "As long as I can remember. Who killed her?"
"It was Raj, they all were."
"How could it have been?"
"Five years ago, I killed a man who slit a little girl's throat. Two days ago I went to see Swindlehurst and it was him. They both said the same thing, Raj said it yesterday. He wanted me to know. The men on the quay. Swindlehurst. The three at the Cannery. The waitress, the boy with the batall Raj."
She hugs her knees to her chest as she rocks, eyes on far hills and the deepening turquoise sky beyond. "I won't let him take me."
"He won't take either of us."
She shivers, looks back at the fire, sparks riding a plume of heated air up into the dark. "I can't stand thinking he's out there waiting, listening, planning. How can he exist like that, no body, only a will? How can we let him do the things he does?"
"He exists because we made him. We made it possible for a good man to survive his own death, to become disembodied intellect. We gave him the power he has. Our cult of technology made him, now we get to enjoy his company."
Drew calls, and grateful for the interruption, Karl follows her up to the fire. They eat, something out of cans heated in the coals, hash he thinks. Not tasting, he bolts it, drains a bottle of water.
Afterward, he backtracks to the van for bedrolls. One he tosses down to Willy near the bank, the second to Romy by the fire. The third he lays out under a live oak far from the fire for himself. Here he can keep his night vision and avoid being back-lit by the fire in case they're surprised. Leaving the bag, he returns to the fire pit.
Full dark, now, blood red coals are the only source of light. The warmth is good. The sight of the coals holds him entranced. Cross legged on the sand, he surrenders to it, wondering as he always has that fire should affect him the same as it has men for millennia. Fire dimming, wood gone, he thinks of getting into his bag but finds the idea unpalatable.
Hunkered silently by the fire in short sleeves, Drew looks cold. As Karl watches, he nods off, catches his lolling head, jerks upright only to sag again. Karl sends him off to his bag under the oak, assuring him he has another for himself. He's slept out with only a jacket for a blanket before, and on harder ground than this.
He turns to the dim to see Bink disappear down into Willy's bag and Drew safely bundled in his. Romy, back to him, sleeps. Later, breath visible in smoky air, he can tell by the sound of their breathing they're out. He's relieved to be alone, yet not. He wouldn't mind company tonight.
Eyes on the coals, he listens to the night. Pygmy owl chattering high in the oak. The river. The odd semi coasting down the grade. With a growing sense of unease, he realizes he's not alone. Sure it makes no sense at all, he feels it all the same. He reaches for a stick to turn a half-burned log and is startled to see her lying, eyes open, watching him from her bag only a few feet away, head pillowed on rolled jeans.
"Aren't you cold?"
He answers without turning, unwilling to tear his eyes from the fire. "I'm fine."
A world of their own, heat shimmering, violet flame dancing among escaping volatiles, the embers tap into a vein of primitive awe. Light, heat, safety, the fire calms, reassures, sweeps away the last three centuries like so much duff.
"You won't sleep like that."
Can't she just shut up? "I'll do all right."
"If I leave you alone, huh?"
Now she's got it.
"I've never..." she says, voice catching.
He takes a long breath. He doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to offend her either. "You've never what?"
She breathes slowly, once in, out. "Never slept alone in my life before last night."
Surprised, he turns. Her eyes catch a glow from the fire. "That's true?"
She nods. "I couldn't sleep. By myself it's no good. All the snoring, moving around, strange smells, I can't stand sleeping where there are strange smells."
He breathes deeply, clean, cold air, wood smoke, the river. "No strange smells tonight."
"There are. The river, this bag, the smoke from the fire. And noises. I'll never be able to sleep."
"So get in with Willy."
"I thought of that, I'd never fit."
What is she getting at?
She can't be trying to lure him into her bag. A breeze sweeps up the river, and he shivers, raising his collar in a futile gesture. It's going to be a long, miserable night. He wishes she would just shut up and go to sleep, just leave him alone with his self-pity so he can get through it. When she doesn't say anything for a minute, he begins to hope maybe she won't.
She works at the zipper, opening the bag, folding it back, and incredibly, climbs out to sit on a log a quarter of the way around the pit. Demurely she sits in a turtleneck sweater just long enough to make a dress, elbows on bare knees.
He watches as goose bumps rise on her arms, thighs. "What the hell are you doing?"
She stares into the coals. "Sitting by the fire."
"Why?"
"If I can't sleep, I may as well let you have the bag."
"I don't want it, get back in."
"No."
Sure as a dog to its bed, Karl's eyes find their way from ankle, to calf, to thigh. He resents her intrusion into his solitary misery. "Hasn't anyone ever told you not to run around like that?"
Offended, she looks down, "Like what? You picked this shirt out."
Can she be that dense?
"I picked out jeans, too."
"We didn't worry about it in the tower."
"You're not in the tower, now, go on, get in."
"Uh uh."
Neither speaks. What's left of a log smolders as fingers of flame claw their way up to take it in their grasp.
"Have you killed many men?"
He's known it was coming, dreaded it nevertheless. The big questionhe's been asked before. He knows how she feels about killing, or thinks he does. He won't lie. "I've done it when it needed doing." He considers. "Many? What's many?"
He feels her recoil. "Who, then?"
He stares down at the carcass of log, split at the rings, shimmering with heat. "I don't remember names. Some I never knew."
"No, I mean what were they?"
Dew forming around them, over them, as the temperature dips below dew point, he thinks. The river sends white noise up to them from below. Something drops into his mind. Something he hasn't thought about in fifteen years. "Two days out of the academy I walked in on a robbery. San Francisco, one of the little Korean hole-in-the-wall groceries down in the Tenderloin. Four a.m. I go in and the old man and his wife just sit there, don't say anything, which isn't right. I reach over to grab a pack of gum and brush against her arm and I know. Two kids hiding one aisle over, AK-94's on my back."
"And?"
"They were my first."
Frustration radiates through her skin like light, "What happened?"
He knows perfectly well what she means, what she wants. "I killed them, that's what happened."
She squirms around to partially face him, "No, no, what happened? Don't talk in generalities, they don't say anything."
He meets her gaze, "I didn't think you'd want to know."
"Well, I do."
"The gory details, huh?"
She swallows, clamps her lip between sharp teeth, nods.
Then that's what she'll get.
"Okay. One was in the cold box getting some beer when I came in, the other was behind me in the chips. I mouthed to mama and papa to get down and took off down in front of the dairy case. He opens up on me and glass, milk and tofu fly. When he's on empty I get off the floor, duck around the end of his aisle, sight below his vest and drop him."
"You didn't tell him to surrender?"
"Surrender?" He nearly laughs. "Uh, uh."
"Why not?"
She's serious.
"Because I didn't want him to, that's why. He just did his best to shred me with his first magazine and he's busy digging in his jacket for another. Ever seen what a 94 does to tissue?"
"Not lately."
"Fires a two round burst, bullet under-stabilized, leaves an exit hole you can't plug with a king size bed sheet. And I bet you forgot his buddy in the cold box, didn't you? Well, I can tell you, I didn't. Not for a second."
"I see."
"I'm just getting off a twelve-hour shift, I'm beat, I'm alone. Not a soul knows I'm here and I don't have time to com. I'm not out to rehabilitate these sweethearts. I want one thing: to go home and stand in the shower hot as I can stand it, and hit the sack, see? That's all I want. I want to live. And mamasan and papasan curled up on the floor behind the counter wouldn't mind if they lived, either."
"Okay, I see, what then?"
This part he doesn't want to tell. Not because he's ashamed. Because it will make her hate him. "Forget it."
"Tell me, what then?"
She turns to him and the sight of her legs sets his stomach to smouldering. Why couldn't she have stayed in her bag? He watches firelight reflected off her hair, decides it doesn't matter, that the truth is what matters. "I run up on him where he lies, still doing his damnedest to slip in another magazine, I put a round through his neck, that's what I do then."
She swallows, "You killed him."
"I killed him."
"And then?" She says it as if she dreads hearing what he'll say.
Let her. "The other one takes a shot at me from the back. He's smarter than the last one, sends me one burst at a time, shooting low, knee height right through the snack food aisles. I crawl, face to dirty linoleum all the way across the store to him. When I can see his ankles I lay the pistol down and sweep his legs out from under him. I see him fall. I see his face close as you and I are right now as he turns to look at me under the aisle."
"What then?"
"He tries to get his gun up. I'm faster."
"You shot him."
He swallows, nods, knowing what she must think of him, all her worst suspicions confirmed. It doesn't matter now, he won't lie about it. "I shot him."
"You killed them both. And were you sorry?"
He feels again what he felt when it was over. Glad to be alive, to be able to pick a cold beer out of broken glass, pour it down his throat, let it run down his chin and over his jacket, making a mess. Glad to hear the sobs of the mamasan as she answers the young interpreter's questions. Sorry? Like hell he was. "I wasn't sorry. I was damned glad to be the one standing."
She nods.
Now it's his turn to be curious. After what seems a long time, he says, "So..."
"So, you did what you had to to stay alive. I think if you hadn't, you wouldn't be here nowI wouldn't, Willy wouldn't."
He doesn't get it. "That's what you think."
"That's what I think."
"I thought..."
"A few days ago I might have thought so. A few days ago I wasn't who I am now. Things change."
He notices her shiver, looks back at the bag, at her. "You won't get in the bag."
She won't.
Another gust of wind comes up the canyon, off the river, sends smoke into his eyes. "You're out of you mind, get in and zip up."
She ignores him, eyes on the dying fire.
God, he's tired. He looks at her, at the bedroll, decides. He's not going to sit out here and freeze with a heavy bag lying open collecting dew an arm's reach away. She can sit out if she wants. For all he knows she has some capacity to heat herself the way she can shock him, some strange animal capacity. "You do get cold..."
She gives him a look that makes him feel stupid for asking. "All right, so you do, well I do too. If you're not getting in, I am."
She doesn't move.
To hell with her, then.
He pulls off his boots and jeans, sets the Remington under cover from the dew and slips into the warmth she left behind. It's good to be warm. No small thing, sitting out in the dark all a misty, spring night with the sea sending its tendrils over the hills. This is more like it. He shuts his eyes, breathes deep, lets it out slowly, the tension in knotted muscles with it. He reaches around him out into the dark, listening, hears only chirring night sounds. At last he can sleep.
The thought of her out there in the cold nags at him, and though he shoves it away, like a starving kitten, comes back. He opens his eyes to find her watching him.
Quickly she turns back to the fire.
Let her sit out there. He closes his eyes again, but it's no good. It's an effort, now, to keep them shut.
Damn her.
He throws open the bag, "Get in."
She's up and moving in an instant, sliding in front of him, skin cadaver-cold, erect velvet of her legs tickling. He shrinks back as far as he can go in the cramped bag, but she backs up against him, sapping heat from him, hair in his face, smelling both exotic and somehow familiar as coffee. A homey, comfortable scent. A scent relentless. A scent that, surely as the pocket at the bottom end of a pinball game swallows the ball bearing, swallows him.
"Warm me up." she says.
"Kid trick sitting out there like that."
"I had to, now warm me up, I said." She grabs his hand, pulls his arm around her, twines her legs in his, the cold skin taking his breath. She's the most pure mind he's ever entered. No envy, no hate, no poison, no darkening whorls of complexity. What he's felt before only in the minds of children.
For him, trust, affection, caring, more than he ever felt in his wifethat and something more. It's been a long time since he felt any part of what he feels now.
"You did that just to get me into the bag, didn't you?"
"Worked, didn't it?"
He feels her smile.
"Know something? I've never had a man friend before, except for Willy, and that's different. Never one I could trust like I trust you."
Her words come to him twice. The first time an instant before she says them and then in her voice. He doesn't mind hearing them twice. Not these. He can feel her thoughts move, like currents along a spit.
She moves against him, snuggling, finding a good fit, and he draws her in close, body responding. Around them a rhythmic chirring. A little flower of panic blooms in her very deep and he waits to hear what it will be.
"I can trust you?" she says, not coy, not put on, just asking.
He smiles into her hair, locking his arms around her, "Little late to ask, isn't it?" Her hair in his face, the smell of her in his lungs, the feel of her body against him, her mind around him, through him.
A glow of comfort warm as the glow of the embers in the sand pit comes to him through the skin of her back.
"I know I can."
Downward she drifts toward sleep, drawing him with her. He follows down into warmth, into darkness, one question in the back of his mind, niggling as beggar's lice against bare skin.
She can trust him, true enough.
But can he?
Bristly whiskers and an icy nose sniff Karl's cheek.
He turns his face and it comes after him, snuffling. A ghost of thought comes through. Bink, curious about this other nested with him in the bag. He sniffs her, and she stirs, moaning, in his arms. Finding his hand cups her breast, he pulls it away. She draws it back, pressing close. "I slept warm," she says, voice barely more than a moan.
The sand, odiously hard the night before, is now soft as down. On every strand of her hair, beads of dew. The bag, the sand, everything exposed is sopping. Traffic's picked up. Fire's out, cold. Nobody up but Bink.
Lips at the nape of her neck in the hollow formed by her jaw, he smiles, earlobe brushing his lips. He inhales, subtle perfume teasing. "What's that perfume you're wearing?" He scents her again. Good stuff, whatever it is. No wooden mallet to the temple, almost as if you've got to know it's there to smell it.
He feels her pull back into herself as if he's hurt her. What can be wrong?
"It's not perfume."
He's lost. "What is it, then?"
"It's me. Asiatic lily. It's in me, part of me, in my sequence. It's part of what makes me near-human."
He draws her back against him, not sure what to say. He could tell her he could get used to it, could learn to need it, to require this haunting scent to stay alive. But he won't.
They lie together not talking, listening to the river, to stellar jays bickering over the remains of their dinner on the sand.
"So, mind reader," she says, half turning, "what am I thinking?"
Oddly enough, he doesn't resent it. "You're sure you want to know."
"I'm sure."
"I don't want to get up either, but we have to."
Slowly, body electric, half with fear, half with awe, she strains to look back at him. "It's true, thenyou can."
"Anybody could tell you what I just did."
"But you really can."
He nods, sorry she asked.
"You can't be ashamed."
"Why not?"
"Don't ever be ashamed of what you are. It's a great gift." Then he can feel her balancing, weaving on the edge between fear and something else he much prefers. "You can read...everything?"
He closes his eyes, nods into the delicious warmth of her neck, breathing deeply of her, not wanting to see, wishing he could shut off the loathing she'll feel when she knows. He would give anything to be able to say no. He won't lie. Not to her. "Yeah. Everything."
He doesn't get what he expects at all. No loathing. No hatred. No fear. No disgust. Instead compassion sweet as rainwater. Can it be? Of course, he sees it, nownothing to hide gives her nothing to fear.
Lying quietly in his arms, she muses. "That can't have been easy."
Nuzzling her, hiding his head from the gray light outside the world of warmth they have shared for the night, he laughs low. She sees, she knows. No one, not his mother, not his sister, not lovers, not friendsno one has ever seen it from his side. Not one. Like that, she does. "Not always."
"It must...." She hesitates. "It must scare some people."
He nods into her hair, touch all he needs to reach her now.
"That's why, isn't it, why you are the way you areso hard, so calloused."
"Am I?"
She shrugs, barely a move of her head, still not retreating from him, still not moving away, more a shrug inside her than out. "You were."
Body taut with hope, a man tied to a frame over sharp culms of shooting bamboo, he dares hope they will not grow through him, dares believe this one night the unstoppable groaning canes will hesitate in their man-tall stretch to the sun, dares worship his own existence enough to want it to go on a while longer, to want to taste, eat, drink, excreteall the forms of ecstasya while longer. "And now?"
She looks back, eyes rising to a sky heavy with cloud. "You're differentnot the same at all. I wouldn't be here if you weren't."
She believes every word of it, he knows, and he is suddenly afraid. If she's wrong.... "And you, are you the same?"
Now she smiles, breath rank as his own.
"Things don't change."
"You're not a thing."
"I have it on good authority I am."
The words are poisoned thorns deeply embedded in flesh, her mention of them the prodding of a needle. "I was wrong."
She rises, peels her flesh from his, segments of an orange, cloven apart, exposing skin never meant to meet air, a rending. She rises and as the others lay sleeping, stands over him, unrolling, slipping sand caked jeans up goose pimpled legs, eyes on his, reproving. "A gentlemen would turn away."
He doesn't move. "I would if I could."
Her face is hard in a way it hasn't been since the plat. "Don't talk like that, it reminds me of them."
At once he regrets the inane remark. "Them?"
"All of them, the men that paid to be with me. Talking nonsense. I can't stand lies."
"I wasn't lying."
Again she turns those sharp eyes on him, lips opening, closing in indecision, jaw set. "Then that's worse."
In bare feet she pads to the river.
To Romy the river feels colder this morning. She cups hands, splashes water over her face. She's gone barefoot on the plat, but on resilient decking. Here, sand grates against the soles of her feet, rocks jab, burrs prod. Out here things are hard, messy, dangerous. The complex pool was clean, warm, the air sultry.
She's seen rivers in UR, swam them, too; they were nothing like this. Is it possible people really swim in water this cold, this fast, this strong? Dipping her feet, they go numb at once. With no one to see, she jerks them out, kneading them until the aching subsides. Last night, not wanting to let him see her courage fail, she'd kept them in until they had gone dead, until she had feared they would never feel again. Karl took them, tingling and prickling, in his hands, rubbing the feeling back. She let him handle her, touch her skin-to-skin as no man but those in the suite on the plat ever had.
She bends to sip of the river, shockingly cold. Tasting of what, rock? stream bed? A new taste, this living water, one she likes. Current so strong, it could suck her away, breaking her against tumbled rock. At the thought of it she shivers. In frustration she clutches a knife-edge of rock inches from a lapping river. There is so much she doesn't know about the world, so much she has to learn. All the texts she has read can't help her now, not out here where river etches rock.
Bending again, she rinses, spits, follows the bubbles as they trail away on the current, embarrassed to think he had smelled the vile breath she woke with. Sleeping next to him had been better than she had hoped, better than with Sasha. Guilt at the thought makes her cringe, but it's true. Somehow he fit her perfectly, hard arms lying so right, so reassuringly, between her breasts near her heart. Never has she felt so safe as she did last night.
All her life she's spent afraid. All her life she's dreaded the next momentthe next opening of a door, the next rise of an elevator, the next summons to Dr. Vici. Few times has she cast it off. The first was for Willy. The second for Auri. The first made her a friend, the second sent her Karland kept her alive. Is it possible that fear, instead of preserving her life, has leached it away?
She realizes that for the first time since her memories began she's not afraid of anything. It's as if the world can no longer touch her, hurt her, as if nothing can get close enough with him there. The only fear she has left is of him. She looks back to see him dressing by the fire, Drew up stoking it, Willy by the river.
Men are such fools.
Karla man. Like the others, like all the others. Full of pretty words, pleading words, meaningless sophistriesall plied to one purpose. For fifteen years she parried, cajoled, placated. It sickens her to remember. How much easier, how much more honest it would have been to work the quay with a chip scanner around her neck and a well stocked UR library implant.
Of course she will have to leave himand soon. Before he reveals himself for what he is. Their matrons taught them well. Men were odious, revolting, corrupt. Each had their reasons, their own stories of betrayal, treachery, ill use. What amazes Romy now is that never once had she or any of them wondered at the unvarying view.
The sky is blue.
Men are reprobate.
Both truths had seemed equally obvious.
When at fifteen she went to work as an escort she had no difficulty confirming it. None at all. Now, water streaming by an inch from her nose, for the first time she sees why. What kind of man would pay so much for the small chance at seducing a fifteen-year-old virgin? A man very different from Karl. But men, or so she was taught, are menone and all the same. Face close to eddy, water smooth enough to pick out her reflection in bits moment by moment, she makes out stones on the bottom, sunk deep in greenish murk. Is he like the rest? She wants to say no, but can she? What scares her is how much she wants to say itenough to accept a lie if it's one she wants to hear. No. She won't lienot to herself. Letting her face hang slack, eyes unfocused, she ponders. He is...what? She has to say a decent man, from what she knows of him so far. The morning of the bomb, he kept her alive. The next day he did it again, not for her, for himself, because of the deal with Auri. But what he did with Lia, with Kara, he didn't have to. Okay that was one thing.
Another is the pressure Auri's putting on him right now to give her up. He hasn'tnot yet. Why? She can't say. Then there was last night. Another man might have misunderstood, used her. She'd hardly have been in a position to resist. He did what? nothing. No, that isn't right. He did more than anyone she's ever slept with. Tearing herself away hadn't been easy.
He's decent.... "Decent." She listens to the word as she whispers it, caramel voice low, face close to the water. "Decent." What does it mean? Just a word, and words change nothing. She pushes the thought of last night away, thinks of the river, this living river sweeping along under her nose. A tingling thrill surges to the nape of her neck as she realizes again where she is. She lowers her face into the river, and rises, breath stopped by the cold, hair dripping. Drew calls them for breakfast, and she turns away, mind made up.
She'll let them know where she is, turn herself in to Auri. She has to. Sooner or later she has to. She won't see him lose his land. More she won't wait to see him show himself to be like the others.
That she couldn't stand.
She'd rather let Auri do what she will than see that.
Karl's forgotten the day.
Can it be Sunday? He counts back, finds it is. Ten days tomorrow he's been away from the land. A pang in his gut reminds him he may never see it again. A man can belong to a piece of ground, to the trees on it, to the deer trails, the creeks, the pasturesand he does.
Pulling on clammy jeans, he scans the sky. High clouds, gone metallic, as a sky before snow. He shivers as he slips into his coat. It's cold enough. April's late for it, but it's happened before. Rolling the bag into a taut bundle, he watches Romy down at the river, mind full of the feel of her against him. That he won't let happen a second time. Feeling when you should be thinking has gotten him into trouble before. It won't again.
They eat, climb the path to the van. Drew insists on hitching with them, leaving his Bibles behind. They catch a ride immediately and an hour later are dropped in Ukiah. There they wait three hours. Nothing. Three men and a woman are too manythree too many. By herself, Romy could catch a ride in a hot minute.
Finally an old man in a Jimmy offers them a ride to Colousa. Karl hesitates. It's out of the way to go east, but they've got to break the jinx. He takes it and by two, they make junction 299.
New construction on the interchange, widening the road to twelve lanes, equipment parked, a kid's toy box fantasy. Belly scrapers, jawed buckets for lifting asphalt, rollers, loaders, track layers, sheep foot, cranes, all waiting for Monday.
They try their luck on the on ramp where they can catch both the traffic coming off 5 and anybody coming back on from the truck stop. An hour later it's three o'clock and still no ride. Willy down the hill tossing Bink a stick. Doesn't he ever get tired, Karl wonders. He sure gets tired of watching. Straddling a concrete lane divider, Drew reads his Bible. Romy thumbs. Traffic is surprisingly sparse; of the many that have stopped to offer her a ride, not one has been willing to take them all. One man perhaps, but three, one Willy's bulkno way.
They're hungry, thirsty, cold. Karl paces, looks at the sky, stomps his boots to keep warm. Cold, weird for April. Drew's tapped out, they have nothing but water. Light fading from a stainless sky, he heads down to the transport stop to make a call with his last token. Romy he takes with him, not trusting her anywhere near the on ramp without him. She might run, but that's not the only reason.
First to stop was a trucker that agreed to take them, all but Romy riding in the van. Following a hunch, Karl shook his hand and his stomach lurched at the squirming pit yawning before him. Drawing back, he raises the .44, pivots the muzzle between the driver and the drawn curtain to the sleeper where the other waits. They wouldn't have been the first for them. Bodies found stripped of belongings, scattered puppets along a stretch of nowhere. He wants to kill them, maybe he should, but instead, he throws the door shut, backs, watching as the deadly transport pulls away.
No, he won't leave her alone.
The number he has memorized. Karl punches it in, averting his face from the eye. Rick answers sounding put out as always. "Yes?"
Rick always could load the word with disgust. Karl wonders at this facility for hauteur. "Get me Magnus."
"I don't recognize your code, please identify yourself."
He leans against the side of the stall, discouraged more than usual. "The reason you don't recognize my code is because I didn't punch it in. Cut it out, Rick, you know damned well who this is."
"I'm sorry, I don't."
Curious, Karl turns , unable to resist seeing this new, timorous Rick. What he sees puts him on guard. Rick sits facing the eye stiff as a dummynot at all the Ricky he knows and loves. Something's wrong, wrong as hell. Karl's first thought is he's got a gun to his head. He's never seen Rick act this stiff, this afraid. Faggot or not, he's seen him stand up to some bad actors without flinching. Something's got him scared out of his wits and Karl's finding it catching.
"Ricky," he says, compassion edging out irritation, "what's the deal?"
"I'm sorry, sir," he says, voice quavering, "you have reached the sanitation division of the United States Justice Department. Your sat com visual seems to be disabled. I'm not getting a visual on you. If you know your extension, please enter it now."
Disgusted, Karl punches it in.
"I'm sorry, you have entered an inoperative code."
Like hell he did. "Rick, what the hell's going on?"
Rick's speaking some agency gibberish, but Karl isn't listening, instead he's watching as he draws a long finger across his neck, shaking his head no with the shortest of movements.
Karl's scared now, scared something's happened to the old man. In spite of knowing how absurd it is, he moves to the side in hopes of seeing beyond into the office, "Magnus?"
Rick looks up off screen, whines like a pup that's come to know the belt. A blast at close range comes over the satcom a tinny crash, and Rick's down, what's left of his skull on the desk.
Magnus comes into view of the conference pickup holding a pistol. "Nice of you to check in, Karl."
With a drop of his heart, Karl understands. "What now, Raj? Why Rick?"
"How now brown cow? Cleaning up some loose ends is all. It seems there's been a tragic accident. The epidemic of handgun violence has claimed yet another innocent victim. A minor government official has just killed his secretary, and an x-lover. Love triangle it seems. A tragic conclusion to a bit of office hanky panky."
Karl's blank. "A lover?"
Tate looks smug, "Didn't you know? Auri. Oh, yes, we were like this," he says, holding up two fingers side by side. "She's in there on the couch. Not very photogenic, just now. Want to see?" He flips a switch and a view of Tate's private quarters come on. Auri on the couch, a long path of arterial blood trailing down one lovely arm to pool on berber. Very dead.
Romy tries to force her way past him and into the booth, but arms braced, he holds her off. He doesn't want Raj to see her.
The view switches back to Tate's office. "No, expect not." Raj drops the 10mm on the desk, dusts off his hands in a gesture he's seen Raj do forever. "Disgusting what these things can do in the wrong hands. I like people so much better empty-handed, don't you? Why do you insist on hauling around that dangerous contraband? Why can't you just allow the police to protect you like everyone else?"
Karl slams a hand against the plexi of the screen, "Let him go, Raj, dammit, let him go!"
Raj seems to consider it, forms a purse-lipped smile, "Not quite yet, but soon, soon."
Karl forces himself calm, "Okay, Raj, okay, but why Magnus? What can he do for you?"
Raj smiles, bared teeth giving him a carnivorous look. "I want her, Karl. She's the last and I want her. Give her to me now and I'll let you live. I'll even give you back your money. It's there waiting for you. Must be hard not to be able to eat properly with that much wealth just out of reach."
He reaches for a glass of wine, brings it to his lips, "Is it?" He drinks, raises a finger, wags it in the air, "Oh, mmm, oh, this is good, good, good. Your favorite, isn't it? Considerate of Magnus...of me, I mean." He giggles, offers the glass, "Like some? No?"
Raj stops, eyes focused on a far point. "I remember what it was like to hunger, to thirst. I miss it, I really do." His eyes come back to Karl, face held in a curious half smile, not like Magnus at all. "Come on, what do you say? See reason, give her to me. If not I'll track down everyone you've ever known, ever satcomed with. I've got access to all of it, you know. I'll work my way through. I know about Petrolia. Eventually I'll find a way in. Don't make me do that."
Karl knows what's coming, can think of nothing to say that will change it.
Raj takes another sip, swallows, "You really should try some of this. I'm looking forward to a little trip to the country, but, you know, Karl, it's the damnedest thing. Is anybody wired up there? What are you, a bunch of yahoos or what?"
"Let him go."
Magnus stands, walks to the window.
Dread plucks at Karl. "What are you doing, Raj?"
"You know, he says, opening a long window, tearing away long tendrils of akibia with the swipe of an arm, "I've always wanted to know what it felt like to be a bird. Haven't quite worked that one out yet." He cups an ear dramatically, "Oh, I hear the boys in blue are on their way."
Magnus is in trouble, but he's still alive. Maybe if he can say the right words, something to reach himit maybe he can keep him that way. "Raj, you say you don't have a soul, but maybe you do. You can think, you can feel. You can change, too."
"Oh, yes," Raj says, peering down, "fifty stories ought to give me a pretty good taste and still give me time to avoid the grand finale on the water. Of course Tate will be there, won't he?" He steps up on the frame, looks down, clowns losing his balance, fans his arms, catches himself, "Hoo, boy, this is scary."
"Raj, this isn't funny, come back in and let's talk!"
He leans out, catches himself by the frame with a whoop. "Ha! Fooled you, didn't I? Well, what do you say?" He does it again, barely catching himself with one hand, "Ooops, almost didn't make it that time."
Romy grips his arm. levering herself around in view of the eye, "Stop it, I'll come, just tell me how!"
Magnus turns, all trace of foolery gone, "Your word?"
She opens her mouth to answer, and Karl covers it with a hand, "Give us time, Raj, just twenty-four hours, time to think. Let him live that long. What can it hurt?"
Magnus smiles from the window, one of the few friends Karl has known in his life. "Promise you'll wait there ten minutes and I'll let him live."
Ten minutes. That means he's already closevery close. Romy pulls at his hand over her mouth, but he holds her pinned against him. She wrenches free and he lunges at the mute button, holds it down.
"I promise!" she says.
"He didn't hear that."
Frantic, she bores her head into his chest. He fends her off.
"Let me tell him!"
"No."
She looks at him, what on her face? Fear? Confusion? Disgust? "Tate's your friend, let me tell him! I won't let anyone else die for me. I'm not worth it."
Karl blocks the eye with his back, "You think we wait here ten minutes for Raj, he'll show up, whisk you away, then walk out of Tate's office? That what you think?"
Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Now she's confused. Good, she ought to be. "That's not what'll happen. Tate's dead already. As dead as Rick or Auri. His heart's just still beating, that's all. He won't leave him behind to talk, or any of us either. He doesn't play that way. Look around," he says, waving an arm at the freeway, he's only a couple minutes away. How does he know that?"
He sees understanding in her eyes, "He knows where we are."
Karl nods, following a car that slows to look at them. He reaches under his coat and it drives on. Somebody looking for a satcom, maybe. "We've got maybe five minutes to get out of here, now will you shut up and let me talk?"
Her eyes say she will.
He opens the line, "We're back. Sorry, Raj, trouble this end."
"Will you wait, or won't you?" Karl hesitates and Raj nods, "Didn't think so." He waves a finger, seeming to think of something, "Oh, I know, I'll bet you'd like to say goodbye, wouldn't you? Far be it from me to stand in the way of true friendship."
Karl opens his mouth to say no, but before he can, Tate's face changesit's Magnus.
"Karl," he says, voice a croak, eyes harrowed, "It's you?"
Karl's throat constricts painfully. What can he say? Are there words for this? He doesn't know them. "It's me."
The look in Magnus' eyes tells Karl he's been listening, knows precisely what awaits him. Incredibly, he smiles, eyes hopeless. "Auri's dead, then."
Karl nods.
"And Rick."
Karl doesn't deny it.
For a long moment neither speaks, then Tate says, "So, there are demons."
"It looks that way."
"You're the best, you know that."
Karl keeps his jaw clenched tight, but his eyes betray him. "Magnus, I"
He waves him off, "You remember the favor I asked you to do for me? Do it. And Karl..."
Karl nods.
"Remember your Blake." His face changes. "Ah, ah, ah." Raj wags a finger, "No secrets. Now just what did he mean by that, I wonder?"
Karl thinks he knows.
Raj shrugs, pretends to dab at his eye, "Goodbyes are always so very moving, aren't they?" He turns to face the sea forty stories below. "Be seeing you real soon."
"Raj!" Karl screams at the screen. "In the name of God!"
He turns from the window, smiles, "You forget, I don't believe in God."
He steps out.
Blindly, Karl walks.
Gravel crunches and rolls under his boots, as he passes equipment lined along a mile-long open-wound in the earth. He's got to get home. Home. There's nothing left but that.
He doesn't know how much time he has before Raj finds a way out there. One strand, that's all he needs, one crack into everything he loves, to his sister, his nephew, his land. All he knows is he's got to get there first.
Romy paces him easily, "You should have let me wait."
He keeps on, "No."
"It's my fault this is happening."
"It's mine."
"We're five hundred kilometers away, what could you have done?"
"I could have killed him, at least I could have tried."
She catches him, hand on his neck, flooding him with compassion he can't ignore, can't walk away from. His foot slips in loose rock and he wrenches his knee, pain bright as crushed mint. He drops to sit on a bank of freshly cut clay.
"What's wrong?"
"Knee," he says through a grimace.
Magnus is gone. Who will be next? Sara? Mary? He knows now he can't run away from this. It's following him like the stench of something foul on the sole of his boot. He's sure, if he can't stop it, it'll get to him, to everything he cares about. He's got to get to Raj somehow, but how?
By his side she sits, elbows on worn jeans too short for her legs, ankles spare as a deer's. "You've never had therapy for them or your heart eitherwhy?"
"I don't want anybody fiddling in here. God made me the way I am. Who the hell am I to change it?"
"That's right, you believe in God."
"No, I don't."
She frowns, "But you said"
"I knowthere's a difference. Not to knowthat's the stunt. To see no order, no logic, no meaning, to call love an accident of electrical impulse and chemistrythat demands faith, that needs the true believer."
She smiles, sadly he thinks. "You despise science."
Frustrated, he shakes his head, "No. Not as long as that's what it is, as long as it isn't just another graven image, another tin God. To do something just because we can, that's not science, that's fanaticism sure as flagellation. Science is reason, or it should be."
She looks away, "How you must hate me."
He draws breath to protest when one of the earth movers comes to life with a deep rumbling of a diesel, making speech impossible. When he says nothing, she rises, heading back to where Drew and Willy wait.
He watches her go. Let her think what she likes. Not long ago she would have been right. But not now. Raj is what he hates. Raj and the world that made him, that lets him liveif that's the word. That's what he hates. Wistfully, he smiles at the irony of itthe more advanced we become, the more demons plague us.
Rising painfully, Karl heads down to them, the machine growling behind him. Curious, he sees a tracked hinged-jaw blade moving out of line, remote aerial strobing red in the dim of the cloudy afternoon as it dips and weaves on uneven earth. Across the yard an office trailer sits deserted. Inside it's dark, only one company truck parked outside. Odd. Sunday would be time and a half.
He supposes if they're working, he ought to get out of the way. Eyes on the sky, he heads on down the new grade. What can he do? Raj is a wraith, untouchable, a deadly mirage appearing, disappearing, leaving dead and broken behind. He says there are more like him. How many more?
A cold wind nudges Karl from behind, and he shivers, zipping his jacket. Diesel belching, the track layer follows him down the road bed, narrowing the distance between them. Irritated, he moves to the side, hugging the steep bank. With five klicks of road to lay, why does it have to follow him? Why can't they take the day off like everybody else? It is Sunday for chrissake. Ahead, Drew and Romy wave frantically. The noise at his back grows.
What are they trying to tell him?
To his surprise, Drew comes sprinting. At his back the sound is wrong. Karl turns his head to catch it from the corner of his eye as it passes. It's not where he expected to see it.
Dead behind him, blade gaping low enough to break both his ankles, top one raised to neck level, it bounds for him, throttle wide open. Mouth dry, he gets it, why Raj seemed to think they would see him so soon.
Close enough to feel the heat of the exhaust, he leaps over the embankment, knee giving with a spark of pain, sending him rolling down forty feet of soft clay to the bottom of the incline. All he can think as he shoulder rolls over and over, as the earth rushes up to meet him again and again is that he'll be dizzy for a week.
If he lives.
At the bottom the change in grade hits him hard. When he stops, the pain in his ribs is so bad he doesn't dare move. World looping, he stays where he is. Drew catches him by an arm, drags him standing, ribs grating.
They look up to see the loader stop, pivot, teeter, and tracks clanking, transmission whining soprano, rush down the grade of loose earth in a power slide.
Karl takes an involuntary step back, nearly falls. It's a monster. Ten seconds it'll be on top of them.
Drew yanks his arm, "Can you walk?"
Around Karl the world dips, yaws. Last time he felt this way he was a kid just off the spinning teacup ride at the county fair. "I can walk."
"Then, walk!" Drew leads him away at right angle from the machine's line of descent. "It can't turn or it'll tip. I've driven them, I know."
Stomach roiling, Karl concentrates on the ground at his feet, on the next step, forcing his eyes to focus.
"One of us has to get up in the cab," Drew says as if it's important. "There's a cut-off button under the seat. Press it, it goes to manual and shuts down."
Karl's head throbs as he watches twenty tons of metal slide down the incline, tracks throwing a wake of clods and dust. "How is he doing it? Is there someone in the trailer?"
"He wouldn't need anyone. You know what you're doing, you can do it all by sat."
Entranced, Karl watches it come.
Drew shakes him, earnestness coming through his hands sobering him, making him listen. "Did you hear what I said, about the cut off?"
"Yeah, yeah," Karl says, fighting nausea, wishing he would leave him alone.
"I'm going to take it that way. If it follows me, you get up on the back. There's a ladder there. Remember, button under the seat," and he's away.
Karl watches as it hits level ground. Looking as if it might be considering, it pivots in a slow 180. In front of it Drew runs across a wasteland of bare clay. The behemoth hesitates, then, engine spewing black from rockered exhaust, follows.
Karl watches it go, wanting to turn away, to follow the downgrade to the ramp where Romy waits. Against all reason, he sets off after the reeling machine, limping, gauging distance and speed. What he sees makes him drive himself, doing his best to forget the fire in his knee. It's too fast, he sees that. He can never catch it if it keeps this up.
Drew stops, turns to face it as Karl watches in disbelief. The Komatsu lunges, gearing up, blade working. Drew dodges left and it reels, tracks churning clay. Karl's close. Drew, seeing him, meets his eye. His look Karl thinks he understands.
Drew sprints right and as it pivots to follow, it presents Karl with the ladder. Without thinking, he jumps for it. At precisely the wrong instant it surges forward, sending him face down on hard packed earth. Spitting dirt, he looks up, sees it close on Drew. Up and running again, he goes after it. It pivots on its right tread, sending up a spray of clods stinging like bird shot. Anticipating, Karl swerves to have it veer back. He hits the ladder hard and, broken ribs screaming, hangs on.
It wheels after Drew, slamming Karl against the engine housing as it drags him, light-headed with pain, behind it. Hand over hand, Karl climbs, hands slipping on rungs sticky with dust, with diesel. On top, he can see Drew as he runs, barely keeping ahead of toothed-jaws. Spinning, Drew looks back, spotting Karl clinging to the top of the ladder, compartment with cut off three meters away over a careening deck.
Drew stops, dodges, and as the machine slows, Karl breaks for the cabin. Acceleration throws him back into a ripper blade, and Karl clings with both hands to steel thick as his arm, polished slick as ivory from contact with the earth.
As it jogs, lunges, swerves, Karl, winded, works his way back to the ladder. Another fall like that one and he'll be done.
Drew stops, waves to Karl. "Now!" He screams over the roar of the engine. "Do it now!"
Karl hurls himself forward to the cab, this time making it. Levering open the door, he's inside. Cool, dark, quiet. He drops into the seat and it hisses under him as air shocks adjust. Groping underneath with both hands, he comes up with nothing. Outside, Drew dodges, feints, at the last possible moment springs, but not far enough, not fast enough. The corner of the blade clips him. He falls.
Under the seat, Karl recognizes a knob just as the blade, searching for Drew along the ground, finds him. Engine gearing down, the blades scissor closed.
Desperately, Karl twists the knob and the timbre of the engine falls to a stuttering rumble. He realizes the machine is waiting for him to tell it what to do. Panic vibrating through him, he finds the jaw levers, opens them, tilts them up, and slapping the kill switch, scrambles down.
The engine dies as Karl's feet hit the ground. "Drew," he says, as he comes around front, knowing there won't be an answer, "Drew!"
What he sees is not Drew, not a man at all. For a moment he stands, not seeing. With Willy, Romy comes. Bink sniffs, backs away on eggshells, nervy from the stink of death.
"Jesus, God," Romy says, dry eyes bleak, "We should..."
Karl turns on her, "We should what?"
"We should bury him, at least we should do that."
Karl heads for the highway, "No time."
She tags after,"No time? What about respect, do we have enough of that?"
Anger boiling over, legs trembling from adrenaline letdown, he stops to face her, "Respect?" He glares, too disgusted to laugh, too hopeless to care what she thinks of him. They've got little chance of losing Raj out here. His guess is one in a hundred they survive the next ten minutes, and she wants to hold a service. "Respect's got nothing to do with it. Raj knows where we are. We've got to go. Now." Want to stay alive?" He takes her hand, jerks her after him. "Then move."
Shouldering the duffel, Karl drives himself on, ribs screaming.
Ranked earth movers hold their places, silent. Dusk thickens as snow sifts down. A little more than a kilometer down 299 they catch a ride as far as Helena, about halfway to the coast. Two hours later they step down on a silent highway.
"Where are we?" Romy says.
"Helena."
She looks up the road, "Where?"
Irked, he repeats the name.
She raises her arms, spins, "No, where?"
He gets her, now. "You're there, couple houses, service station, general store, that's about it."
She shrugs. "Oh."
Silently, in gathering gloom, snow falls, cloaking trees, highway, fir, red clay bank in crystalline white. Lonely highway, no plow, tracks already closing in. Quiet, so quiet, only sound their boots scrunching, squeaking in dry powder. The road snakes on forever ahead of them. Light can't last long. It's two hours to the coastif they can get a ride. Looking behind them, he decides they won't. Not on Sunday night, not with the road this bad.
Romy walks, arms wide, step springy, face upturned to falling flakes. She catches them in her mouth, squealing when one falls in her eye. She dances, singing a little ditty under her voice. Good voice, it seems to him, not that he's any judge. He wonders she sings at all.
"God, isn't it beautiful?" she says.
Karl sees again what was left of Drew clamped between the jaws of the Komatsu. There are worse ways to go, he decides. "Seen snow before?"
"No."
He hasn't thought of that. Living on the plat she would never have seen it, never in thirty years. He understands her joy, while he feels none of it.
She falls in beside him, matching his pace, "Don't you like it?"
"No."
"You're thinking about Drew."
For a kilometer they walk in silence. She's wrong. It's not beautiful. What it is is death in small doses. It stays below freezing they'll be okay. But it won't. Too late in the year. When it goes to slop it'll suck warmth out of them.
Romy scoops up a hand of flakes, "So many of the people I've known are dead. I won't let it kill me, too." She raises her face. "Honestly, you can resist this?"
His boots are soaked. Less than a half hour and already he can't feel his toes. "Honest injin."
"But, it's"
"Cold, and it'll get colder." He's tired, and as snow melts through the shoulder seams of his jacket, growing wet and cold. Light is failing and nobody's on the road. Raj will have guessed where they went and will be sending someone along for them.
Ahead a steep drive winds up through fir. Mailbox, but no tracks. Maybe a house, maybe notone way to tell. He stops, waiting for them to catch up.
"What?" she says.
"I'm going up to check." Halfway up he finds they're behind him. He considers sending them back down, but thinks better of it. They'll be where he can see them and off the highway.
A cabin, small, overgrown with anemic grapevine, clings to a steep hillside. Mounded needles on the roof make it look a thatched cottage. Shrugging off a chill, he pushes himself forward.
The porch, four foot off a falling grade doubles as a workshop, judging from benches and tools stacked there. Gas, chain saws, come alongs, chaps, hardhatsa logger lives here. Inside, children laugh. This he's happy to hear. Where children are there is love, warmth, decencyif only it were true. Unzipping his jacket, he raps at the glass in the door and stands back.
A woman, little mousy thing with a pinched nose, clips pinning dishwater blond hair flat to either temple, looks up at him, in a small voice says,"Yes?"
He steps back, sensing her fear, not wanting to frighten her, knowing he has. "Pardon me, ma'am, the three of us are on our way to Petrolia. We've got no money for a room, no ride." He crooks a thumb over his shoulder. "The two of us could split some of that stack of wood for you, if you thought maybe we could sleep on the floor by the fire."
A two-year-old boy, face smeared, appears clutching her leg. Inside, a baby cries. Yet another boy, this one more like four, comes to peek around her. Romy leans a bare hand on the edge of the porch, boards soaked with melted snow, "I'll help with housework if you'll let me."
Wonder kindling in her eyes, the woman cocks her head, "Take your cap off."
Romy looks at Karl, hesitates. What can he say, this may be the only house for kilometers. She turns them in they'll have to lose themselves in the woods.
"Come on," she says to Romy, cajoling, "Let me see your hair."
Romy slips it off and her mane sparks as it reflects the light from inside.
Slowly, the woman raises a hand to her mouth. "Sweet Mary, you're the one they're talking about."
Romy nods.
"You're the last."
Again she sends Karl a glance.
From the doorway, the woman looks Karl over, eyes wide with suspicion, fear. "They said you were kidnapped."
"They're my friends."
"Everybody's looking for youfeds, police, all of them."
Karl stands back, watching something happen between them, what he's not sure. It's like watching two strange she-wolves circle, scent, take each other's measure. Something's going on, a communion of some kind that he's deaf to, shut out of. Between Romy and this woman with red hands he can feel the air alive with tension.
He knows how women feel about Sisters, how they despise them. How hard can it be to predict what this one will do? He never should have come up the drive. Now they're worse off than before. Karl's been tracked by dogsthe bay of a hound hasn't sounded the same since. Still those hounds haunt the twilight landscape of his nightmares.
Karl backs off, turning away. Why wait for it?
"I'm Clio."
Stunned, Karl turns back to see them clasp hands.
"Romy."
Another moment and Clio cups the cheek of the two year old at her thigh, guiding him in, "You're soaked, you all better come on in by the stove."
Through the window Karl watches Willy split cedar rounds as Bink yaps, dancing crazed around him in powder deep as he is tall. Wearing one of Clio's muslin shirt waists, Romy burps the baby over a shoulder. Fascinated, Karl watches. He's never thought of her as being good with babies. He's never thought of her being with them at all. Yet obviously she knows what she's doing.
"Where'd you learn to do that?"
She moves her body in rhythm to her palm on the small back, swooping slightly from the knees, humming something he can barely make out. "The nursery, I helped there a lot."
The baby seems content, belches, coos. He's never held a baby, has always thought of them as ugly little things. But in Romy's arms, this one doesn't seem too bad. "You're good at it."
She shrugs, "Practice is all."
Karl moves to stand close to the stove, soaked jacket and jeans steaming. Unable to relax, he paces, clothes turning clammy. Husband due any minute. Clio keeps checking out the window for him. Something about the way she does it makes him think he may not be too thrilled with what he finds waiting in his living room.
She brings him dry jeans and shirt, and he thanks her but lets them lie. He'll wait to hear what the man says. Karl in his clothes he doesn't need to see as soon as he comes through the door. Taking an offered mug of coffee, he warms numb hands over it. Chaffing with frustration, he sips, burns his tongue. It turns out they've accomplished nothing. It's the husband who must approve.
A truck hammers up the drive, muffler long gone, throwing gravel. Karl steps out. Ancient Jimmy, fifty years old at least, more Bondo than steel, knobbies big as the wells can take, it comes to rest at the top of the drive, dies. The door squeals open, steel on steel. Her husband steps down.
Big man, eyes flashing warily, mouth hidden by a beard the size of a kestrel's nest. Hair long, streaked with gray, in chaps, suspenders, hardhat, he sizes Karl up, staring hard, keeping the door open where Karl's sure he's got something behind the seat.
"And just who the hell are you?"
Not a good beginning. Hands in plain sight, he begins. "Name's Karl. We're on our way to my place in Petrolia. We're broke, afoot. Your wife said we might be able to spend the night out of the snow in exchange for some work."
Ignoring them, Willy splits wood as if it were a game, tossing cedar rounds his girth as if they were balsa. Slamming down the maul with one hand, they peel back along straight, aromatic grain. Between swings he tosses a stick for Bink.
The husband watches him work, tired, snow in his beard, dirt-caked furrows creasing his brow. "Your friend likes splittin' wood, does he?"
Karl smiles, not sure how to answer. "That he does."
He moves his gaze back to Karl and his eyes narrow. "Petrolia, you say?"
Karl's got a feeling the next few seconds will decide how he spends the nightor if he spends it. He hopes he's had a good day, because there's no way he'll gun this guy down on his drive in front of his wife and kids. "That's right."
"Then you know John Rock."
This is good, this is very good. "Went to school with him, tough SOB."
This brings a smile. "Still poaching deer from his pickup at dusk?"
This guy gets around. "He wouldn't want me to say so, but his teriyaki jerky is far and away the best on the cape."
He seems to relax. "Pretty little thing, Heather, isn't she?"
Karl smiles, understanding. "Ashley's her name and I'll never understand what she wanted to marry him for."
He offers a grease-blackened hand, smile real this time. "Don't mind me being sure. Eli."
Karl takes it, feeling the grip of a man who wrestles choker cables and a chain saw all day. At first he holds his own, then, losing it, concentrates on not wincing as his hand is slowly vised to mush.
Eli's eyes smile as he lets up, "Not bad, better'n most. Go on in out of the cold, I'll be in in a minute."
Inside, Karl feels a weight off his necktonight, they'll be dry, warm, fed. Tomorrow, with any luck at all, home. At the table he sits. Fishing a box of buckshot out of the duffel, he lays the Remington across his lap. Slipping sabot rounds out the trapdoor, he drops them into a pocket. Nothing as calming as fiddling with ammunition. Peeling back the top of the box of shells, he smiles. They've got it made.
Eli blows in, hangs his hat and coat, "God, Clio, you wouldn't believe the mud out there today." Turning, he sees Romy. "Sweet Jesus," he says, voice booming, "what's she doing here?"
He tears the baby from Romy's arms as if she were poison, leaving her sitting on her feet in the middle of the rug, arms out, a pleading Madonna. "Get that whore out of here!"
Wondering at the speed with which his hopes for a decent night topple, Karl stays where he is. Right now she's not in any danger he can see. He wants to keep it that way.
Slowly, eyes brimming, Romy gets to her feet. Karl's never seen her look less wanton. She looks straight at the man with eyes clear as blue sky and says, "All right, I'll go."
Clio rises to stand between them, taking the baby from his arms, "I won't let you do this."
Clio's a woman Karl can't imagine standing up to a man like Elia small, submissive woman, wiry as wild grapevine. But in her voice is fire.
"What do you mean, no?" he says, rising voice a threat.
She doesn't waver, doesn't shrink. "I mean, I won't let you. We will not refuse them shelter."
"Clio, listen to yourself, she's not even human, she's... Well, look at her, she's the one everybody's looking for, isn't she?"
The baby frets at the tone of his voice and Clio jostles it on her hip to keep it from crying. "That's right, she is."
"I won't have a thing like that in my house, in front of the boys, holding Zeke... holding him, for God's sake?"
She puts the baby back into Romy's arms, and at once he quiets. The Madonna, he thinks again, the Madonna repeated ever and always when woman loves child.
Clio turns to face him, "Is this what Jesus would do?"
"Clio, for the love of God!" He says it loud enough to rattle windowglass.
Clio does not flinch. "Yes!" The intensity of her voice is shocking. A whisper aspirated as if her whole body were the instrument. The word comes out under pressure, "Yes," she says again, glaring up at him. "For the love of God, Eli, we will not turn them out."
Karl's throat swells with respect. He was wrongshe's not weak. Not at all.
"Clio," Eli says, rumbling voice building as he raises an arm in Romy's direction, "she's all that's sick in the world, all that's evil. You want her here touching the boys, holding the baby?"
Other than the hissing kettle on the stove and the cracking of the maul coming from outside, the cabin is silent. The two boys sit frozen on the braided carpet near Romy, plastic cars unmoving, eyes saucer wide.
Wishing he had somewhere to hide, Karl keeps his eyes on the gun, the shells. He shoves one after another into the trapdoor until they click in place. He knows what it's like to feel this way, knows how easily fear changes to anger, to cruelty. Eli he doesn't blame. A man does what he has to to protect what's his.
Clio straightens shoulders habitually bowed, peers up at him, "Look at her."
Eli keeps his eye on Clio.
She reaches up, takes his beard in her hand, jerks his head around, "I said look at her!"
"I'm looking."
"Is it her fault she's been made the way she is? Is it? Must we despise the slave to despise slavery? Does Paul not write to Philemon: '...no longer a slave, but more than a slave, as a beloved brother...'
Frustration lining his face, he raises big hands, drops them onto his thighs, "You're quoting out of context, Clio, you always do that."
She takes his work shirt in two fists, yanking herself up into his face, "I don't care. It says it, Eli, it says it, and you're wrong, you're wrong. Oh, God, don't do this!"
At the emotion in his mother's voice, the baby whimpers. Silently, the two boys watch, tears coursing down their faces.
Karl looks at his jacket dripping melting snow onto the slate by the door, thinks about how it'll feel to put it back on. Jesus knows he's not looking forward to it. But he will. It's Eli's house. No way he'll go against him. He thinks maybe he can talk him into letting them sleep in the shed. He'll try, anyway.
The big man looks down at his woman, and Karl thinks of a bobcat holding a hound at bay as she protects her kittens.
"If you make them go," she says, voice barely above a whisper, "I go too. I'll take the boys with me, I will, so help me God, I will, I'll take them."
This hits Eli hard. His mouth falls open, arms at his sides, inert.
All on the table, all at risk, everything he hasshe's just pushed it all into the pot. Karl looks at the pattern of braid in the rug, wishing he were somewhere else, anywhere else, wishing he could spare the man an audience.
The kettle pops, sizzles, drying. A small avalanche of snow slides from the roof with a thump. The tarnished brass pendulum on the clock dips, hesitates, dips again.
"You'd do that?"
Intensely embarrassed, for Eli, for himself, for all of them, Karl moves head down to the door. It's all he can do for him right now. Being challenged in front of strangers in his own house has to hurt. At the door he puts on his hat, sodden and heavy, clipping the twelve back under his arm, feeling the cold reach in through the closed door to claw at him, prodding him for any trace of warmth. He slips into slick ostrich skin, leaden with melted snow. Romy rises, stepping carefully over the tangle of cars and legs to take the baby to its mother.
Clio won't take him, won't let go of Eli, won't give up. Hands red with work, veins dark through opalescent skin of her arms, she shakes him. "No man of mine would do this. Jesus wouldn't do this."
She points. "Do you see him, he's got a gun, and the one outside, did you see those arms, you don't think they could make us let them stay?" Voice ragged with emotion, with frustration, she tugs at him with every word. "But they won't. They'll go if you say, and I'll go with them." Turning loose of him, she calls to the children. "Abe, Josh, get your coats, we're going."
Karl opens the door, letting in a wall of frigid air, and turning back to thank her, sees something give in Eli's face. Shoulders sagging, his eyes close as if he's hurting bad somewhere down in his gut.
"Close the door, you're letting the heat out." Rising, he takes Clio, struggling, onto his lap. "I was wrong, honey, I was wrong," he says, soothing, stroking her head as she sobs into his grime-blackened undershirt, boys pressing close. "The jawbone of an ass is a dangerous thing."
Storm blown out, Karl shuts the door, "You sure?"
Through Clio's hair, he answers. "Hell, yes, I'm sure, take your pack off."
Hanging his jacket, Karl warms himself by the stove as Romy jostles the baby beside him. Casually she brushes her arm against his, eyes searching his face, and through the round, hazy feeling of content he gets from the baby, he gets her question as she intends him to. Would you have gone?
Wordlessly, they watch the family before them. Steam rising off damp jeans, he nods. "Oh, yeah."
She snatches the hat off his head, tosses it on a stack of alder by the stove. "Tough guy," she says in a whisper.
She presses nearer yet, and he can read all she feels. Though they say nothing, only stand side to side, to her he's closer than he's been with any woman.
They watch as Clio pulls free of his arms to stir the soup, and Eli sweeps his sons up to ride grimed chaps. The boys squeal their delight as he jogs them roughly on his knee, steadying them with big hands.
They both feel ita sense of what's right with the world, of what's meant to be, of a sum more than its partsof family. Here in this cabin perched on termite eaten posts is love.
Sudden as a blow, sadness swells in Romy as she pats the baby over her shoulder, sadness cold and sterile as the alloy grid of the quay. Confused, he turns and sees it in her face. Loss is there, scalding cold, loss of all she knew, all she loved. As if these were his own thoughts he feels what he sees there, and he wonders.
He wonders.
After supper, dry and warm in Eli's jeans and flannel shirt, Karl follows him out on the porch.
He smokes as Karl stands upwind. They watch snow melt, dripping from the low porch tin overhang in dribbling streams.
"So," Eli says at last, "what's she like?"
Karl knows why he asks, why any man would want to know.
Raised with more hoopla than the Dionne Quints, spending their lives in front of net cams, the subject of an endless series of docudramas, melodramas, UR fantasies. Sisters in Heat. Sisters in Love. Sisters on the Moon. My Sister Friday. Precocious, yet inaccessible, an endless seep of purple prose cemented them as the subject of a world's fetish for perfection.
Touchstones for female attractiveness, women hate them. Men, a whole generation of men, grew up with Sisters imprinted in their minds as quintessential womanan ideal no randomly encoded woman could ever reach. Fetish of a jaded world, Karl has spent half his life despising them. Now here he is trying to explain why he feels the way he does about the last of them. Oh, yeah, Karl knows why he asked. How to answer? "I don't know how to tell you what it is you want to know, I really don't."
"I was glad when I heard about them," Eli says. "I don't think they were meant to be."
Karl smiles to hear his thoughts echoed so clearly, a little ashamed, too. "I think you're right about that. They weren't meant to benot in this world. Uh, uh, not in this one. They're too good for us."
Eli looks up, surprised.
Karl goes on. "I saw them sleeping once, the last of them, fifty in one room. Floor solid with them. Heads on laps, spooned together, a sleeping pride. The scent of them... Not perfume, them: lily, buddleia, glorybower..." he sighs in frustration, "I can't describe it."
Eli drags his pipe, waiting, eyes sharp behind his beard.
"I saw them die. They weren't afraid, they waited for it. Romy had to learn to want to live. They waited for the gas to come to them, holding hands, no rush for the door, no screaming, no pushing, no reaction at all, just acceptance." Karl goes to squat on his haunches on the edge of the porch, eyes on snow, blue-white under moonlight filtered through trees, cold air burning his nose. "No, they didn't belong here."
"And this one?"
Karl looks up, "What about her?"
"Is she human?"
"At least."
"But," Eli worries the idea the way Bink worries a rag, unwilling to let it go, "does she have a soul, you think?"
Karl smiles at the absurdity of the question. Bink's got more soul than half the hominids he's met in forty years. Karl looks him in the eye, seeing himself. "If anyone has."
"Are you and her..."
"Friends."
Eli nods, "Clio and I are friends. It's good for a man and a woman to be friends."
Talked out, Karl nods.
Later, chilled bone deep, Karl gives up his vigil on the porch to slip into a dark, silent house.
Inside he finds two bags zipped together in front of an ebbing stove. Reflecting firelight, Romy's eyes glisten up at him from the floor. He steps out of his clothes and slips inside. She nests into his arms, head at his neck, as if she's always belonged there, as if she always will.
As he cradles her body, she cradles his mindin warmth, honesty, safety. With her he feels secure as he has never felt with a woman. No need to hide what he is, be something he isn't. Not with her.
She turns her head to whisper to him, hair an ocean of silk across his neck, breath on his cheek. "I didn't think you were ever coming."
"Too tired, kept drifting off. Raj is coming tonight he'll have to wake me when he gets here." Breath drawn through her hair, the scent of her filling his lungs, mouth against her neck, he needs to tell her something. What he's not sure. "Romy..."
"No," she stops his mouth with a hand warm from the bag, "don't say anything, just...." She whispers, fingers tickling his lips, body a brand against his skin. "Just be with me."
Humbled speechless, he squeezes his eyes shut, straining to stop the rhythmic noise of the clock over their heads as it marks the passing of what little time they have.
In the warm darkness the pendulum keeps up its rocking.