Dead Lines

by Greg Bear

  “What do you want, sweetie?” Peter asked.

  “Look,” she demanded, and made another step. This time, as she moved, he could see the discontinuity—a jerk, as if a video were being rapidly advanced. Behind her face he discerned the outlines of veins and arteries, teeth behind the lips, skull beneath the skin. No wonder we think the dead come back shrunken and decayed. But she’s made of crystal. She’s beautiful, not ugly and broken.

  Daniella was now within his reach. With a moan, Peter leaned forward. He felt resistance, like pulling together the equal poles of two bar magnets. His skin tingled. She lay against his chest, sighed—the echo of a sigh—closed her eyes, and wrapped translucent arms around him.

  From every point she touched flowed a welcome weariness, deeper than repose, the seeping desuetude of death: sadness and distance and loss, loss of motive, utility, connection. His muscles grew limp. Too late, he realized this was not good. This would not work.

  Peter gasped for air.

  “Daddy,” she said, and spread up and around him.

  CHAPTER 28

  IN MEXICO THE dead are not mocked but laid and sweetened by candy skulls.

  Ancient tribes, enlisting shamans trained in sympathies and magic, placated their dead. They surrounded and confused them with ritual, gently separated them from life and the living, and tried to make sure they did not return, or that if they did return, they had no power. Their darkness was deeper than ours, their nights longer; they truly lived in the shadow of the Earth, and on some nights, haunted nights, the sun itself was reluctant to show his face again.

  For the living, it is love. For the dead not yet departed, it is a clinging, sapping necessity. The old ways speak of dangerous needs that cannot be met or assuaged. Wise mothers protected their babies against mal occhio, the unreasoning affection and desire of both the desperate living and the envious dead.

  He should have prepared and protected his baby.

  Mal occhio

  Evil eyes

  Time has slipped; he has slipped and fallen.

  He saw her so clearly. She was there.

  He almost makes sense out of it. The dead can never return to their old homes in the same way. They need release, forgetting. Freedom.

  (The sunset within the ghost . . .)

  The weeping will never stop.

  Peter just wants his daughter back.

  CHAPTER 29

  HE LAY ON the sloping driveway outside the house, staring at a crusted patch of old oil flecked with clay litter. His pulse rattled in his ears, blood pumping like gasoline through a stalled engine. He did not remember coming out here and falling, but his knuckles and knees were skinned. There was no pain; pain would have been welcome.

  His face was wet with emotion, but he could not remember why at first and wondered if it had finally come, if the angina or whatever had finally split his tissues.

  He rolled over and stared at the graying sky. Dusk or dawn? The sky was getting brighter. It must be dawn. Had he been out on the driveway all night?

  The phone rang in the house. Not the Trans; the old wall phone. Communication. Talk from distant lands. He counted seven rings before it stopped. Got stiffly to his knees on the drive, faced the house like a penitent about to inch toward a shrine. Slowly, memories returned. He was saying his daughter’s name over and over. He looked down. His shirt and pants were covered with a thin layer of dust, not driveway dirt. Grayish white. On his fingers: house dust, as if he had crawled under a bed. He stood and sniffed his fingers. Unmistakably, the scent he had associated with Daniella from infancy clung to him, sweet and primal. “God help me.” He leaned against the wall of the garage. His pulse steadied, his breath eased, vitality returned. He felt a dangerous kind of good, that sense of relief and well-being after a skipped heartbeat. He wanted more. He wanted to return to the house and see if Daniella was still there. This time, he knew that if they touched he would not wake up. And that would be okay. That would be just fine with him.

  The phone rang again.

  Still dizzy, Peter walked toward the house. A little stumble on the low curb beside the driveway. He crossed the patio, stubbed his toe, lurched, and brushed the Soleri bell. The key broke loose from its tape and fell onto the bricks with a blunt ting. He stared down at it, letting the phone ring.

  The key was covered with dust.

  Peter bent, picked it up, sniffed it, and put it in his pants pocket.

  CHAPTER 30

  HE LIFTED THE receiver on the tenth ring.

  “I feel awful,” Helen said without waiting for him to speak. “It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for being angry.”

  Then, when he still didn’t answer, she said, “Peter, damn it, are you there?”

  “I’m not angry,” Peter said.

  “Why don’t you answer your phone? I know you’re angry.”

  “I’m not feeling well,” Peter said. He could see himself in the glass of the kitchen cabinet—and frankly, he thought he looked a little luminous.

  “We want to make it up to you,” Helen said.

  “I’d love to see you both,” Peter said. He had questions, so many questions to ask so many people.

  “I really think we should go on a picnic.”

  Softly, as if reaching for a life preserver, he asked, “Can Lindsey stay here overnight?”

  “Of course,” Helen said a little sharply, her aggression not yet abated. She felt guilty but justified. Doing this would make her feel better. Well, he’d take what he could get, whatever would lure him away from that blank and dangerous place that had held him for so many hours.

  “Why are you calling this early?” Peter asked her.

  “What? Silly, it’s ten o’clock.”

  He looked outside. The sun was bright. “The clock wound down.”

  “Your electric clock?”

  “Power out, I mean.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “I think so.”

  Over the phone, he heard a dryer buzzing. “Sorry. Just a sec.” Helen’s voice dropped away and she called out, “Lindsey, come say hello to your father.”

  A brief pause and a clunk. Lindsey took the phone. The first thing she said was, “Hi, Dad, we need to talk.”

  “Sure,” Peter said.

  “Mom’s getting the laundry in the other room,” Lindsey said, dropping her voice. “We need to talk and I can’t tell you why.”

  “I know,” Peter said. “I miss you, Lindsey.”

  “Something’s changing, Dad,” she whispered. Then, louder, “Here’s Mom.”

  CHAPTER 31

  RAVENOUS, PETER MADE himself a late breakfast of oatmeal. As he ate, he could feel the nutrients push along his bloodstream, warm and sensuous as dollops of hot gravy wrapped in mashed potatoes. After touching the dead, even oatmeal could be sinful.

  In the back of the cabinet he found an ancient jar of Tang and made himself three glasses, breaking up the fossilized orange clumps in tap water, stirring and stirring with the clinking spoon, then lining them up and drinking down all three. The sugar was like electricity. He could feel everything with a sharpness that was both exhilarating and worrisome.

  Lindsey needed to talk with him.

  Peter put down his spoon, suddenly ill. A few minutes passed before he knew that what he had eaten was not going to come back up—ghost of breakfast. He could not eat any more. He looked at the phone, at the answering machine on the tile counter below, with its light steady, no messages. And no wonder. He had switched the answer mode to off. He did not remember doing that.

  He reached out and turned it on again.

  Peter wondered if Daniella would leave him messages like a ghost on an episode of The Twilight Zone, dialing out of the graveyard over a storm-dropped telephone line. Of course, Daniella was not in a graveyard. Helen had had her remains cremated. There was an urn in a columbarium. No. Don’t go there.

  I’ve never been there. I did not do for her what I did for Phil: return her
to the sea. Helen forbade me from taking my daughter back to nature.

  Scragg. Detective Scragg. After all this time, still checking out the case. Looking at the calendar, two years. Just a coincidence. How devoted, how dedicated. People we have not thought about. Suspects all.

  He leaned over the breakfast-nook table, hands grabbing the metal rim, and just stared at the shiny marble-print linoleum top, at nothing, nothing whatsoever.

  Bit his lip, then his cheek.

  She had been missing and dead for three weeks when a jogger found her buried in high, dry grass, under a pile of leaves.

  Former nudie movie director Peter Russell’s ten-year-old daughter has been found in a shallow grave in Griffith Park.

  Whoever had kidnapped and killed her had just scraped at a patch of grass and earth and dumped her there. She had been stabbed many times, a frenzy. Their only solace, thin solace—Peter’s, Helen’s—was that Daniella had not been raped.

  Ghosts did not reflect the violence done to them in life, the sickness, the murder.

  Time seemed to have slowed, so rapidly were all these thoughts spilling out of his deeps.

  No, that’s not it at all. She died of leukemia. She was sick for months, not murdered. Don’t be an ass.

  She died in a car wreck,

  a bus accident.

  She died falling off a rock on a school outing,

  broke her neck; she was beautiful, lying there in the coffin with all the flowers.

  Who in this awful, awful world would want to slaughter such a lovely little girl, and then leave her outside to rot?

  SOMETIMES, RARELY, THE missing kids return alive, and the TV cameras return as well. When the kids return, dead, who will believe? Peter Russell’s daughter comes back from the other side. Nation rejoices. After the break, a happy father.

  Those terrible three weeks of not knowing, Helen shrieking in the bathroom, scratching her arms bloody. Lindsey hiding in her room or under the stairs down to the basement, at eleven too young to really understand death; and who at any age could ever understand or accept the death of a loved one?

  Next, on Oprah—mourning or forgetting? Pain or insanity?

  Weeks into months.

  When the police could do nothing, find nothing, Peter had gone out himself. Bought books on solving crimes. Returned to the scene over and over again, standing in October sun or December rain, coming home with muddy shoes, running on in an optimistic fury about what he would do the next day, what he would investigate.

  Lying next to Helen at night, reading from the textbooks, until she grabbed up the blanket and went to sleep in the living room.

  Finally, that short last step into madness, going to the psychic. And all along, drinking like a fish just to hope to feel normal for five or ten minutes out of the unendurable day.

  Working on autopilot. Flying blind.

  Who did this to you, sweetie? And why?

  Weeping quietly, his shoulders shaking, rubbing his sternum with a stiff finger, he sucked in a breath. “Humpty Dumpty time, Peter Russell,” he said.

  CHAPTER 32

  PETER WALKED UP the hill from the small grocery store, carrying two paper bags full of milk and salad makings and lunch meat and bread and a six-pack of ginger ale. He saw a red Mercedes 500SL parked on the sloping drive before his house and paused, then hefted the paper bags and continued.

  The Mercedes’ California license plate read TRANS4U2.

  Stanley Weinstein was pacing in short arcs on the porch, stopping to thwong the Soleri bell with a finger. He jumped as Peter said hello. “Didn’t hear you coming. What a great house. Classic rambler. Hope I’m not interrupting something interesting.”

  Weinstein was a bundle of nerves, but not nervous energy. The bags under his eyes had darkened since their meeting in Marin.

  “No problem,” Peter said, unlocking the front door. “Come on in. I’ll put these away. Want a ginger ale?”

  “Don’t you have white wine? Whiskey?”

  Peter shook his head. “Won’t keep it in the house,” he said. “Besides, you’re driving, right?”

  “Responsible fellow,” Weinstein said, following him inside. He flipped the cardboard lid on the box in the hallway. “You still have a few units, I see.”

  “A few,” Peter admitted. “I don’t get out in public much. Gave them to several friends, however.”

  “All’s well, then,” Weinstein said, a not completely appropriate response, Peter thought. As if the young man was only half listening. “I’m meeting with more moneyed interests in Santa Monica tonight. Lots of cash on the sidelines. Raising money is kind of like show business, don’t you think? See and be seen.”

  “Show business is all about raising money,” Peter agreed, taking the bags into the kitchen.

  “Truth is,” Weinstein continued, “I also wanted to see how your work is going. There have been Questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” Peter asked, washing the lettuce in a battered colander in the sink.

  “Wiser heads say I’ve taken a bit of a risk. Some of our newer investors wonder if you’re the best choice. I’m here to bring back ammunition—conceptual samples. Have you looked at the work done by our design firm?”

  Peter came out of the kitchen into the living room, wiping his hands on a towel. “It’s awful,” he said.

  Weinstein snorted. “We paid a fair amount for their assessment. They’re among the folks who wonder about you, to tell the truth.”

  “Well, let’s always tell the truth,” Peter said, feeling his cheeks pink. Watch your mouth. Delicate time. No more self-sabotage.

  “No offense,” Weinstein said. “But we need to move forward.”

  “Other difficulties?” Peter asked.

  “Other than keeping everyone on the same page, none,” Weinstein said, but would not meet Peter’s eyes. “Geniuses are not my first choice for business partners. They keep going off on tangents. They get lost in theory. Let’s consider this, let’s consider that. You know the drill. The dental drill.”

  “I haven’t got much to show, yet. Arpad sent me a note with the design team sketches, and he doesn’t like them, either.”

  Weinstein now faced him with what was apparently meant to be an accusing glare. “Well, yes, Arpad. Truly our Tesla, is he not? And with about as much business sense. If I’m going to fight for you, I need some genuine Peter Russell material. Inspirational.”

  “If?” Peter asked.

  Weinstein pulled his head to one side to take a kink out of his neck. For a moment, his eyes looked wild. “We’ve got a week to prove ourselves, and not one hour more. If I can keep Arpad from getting morose, if I can keep our investors from turning into a pack of hyenas . . . Please. Anything.”

  Peter decided that Weinstein was little worse than most of the producers he had worked for. The lower the budget, the more they complained. But he had usually delivered, and he would try now. “Handing out word balloons,” he offered, draping the towel over his arm like a waiter.

  Weinstein cocked an eyebrow. “Beg pardon?”

  Peter made as if he were uncorking a bottle of champagne, pantomimed pouring it into his fist. “People on the street, blowing up word balloons and giving them to each other. They take them home and the word balloons pop . . . out come messages. ‘We’re only human. Talk is what we do.’ ”

  “Sounds self-defeating,” Weinstein said. “Not in the least sexy or edgy.”

  “I’m working on that,” Peter said. “Fan dancing. Men and women, naked, holding word balloons in front of their privates, waltzing around a street.”

  Weinstein snickered. “Well,” he said, noncommittal. “Well.” He walked along the big front window, hand to chin.

  “Amateur actors,” Peter said. “Old and young, not all hip pretty kids. Slightly baggy nudes, but they’re all having fun. Maybe their skin suits are a little too obvious. Shoot super eight. Or you can buy me a used Arriflex Super 16, more control, we can pull it down in the lab. About
thirty grand. Cheaper than renting if we’re going to do several commercials or promos back-to-back.”

  Peter would not ask Karl Pfeil for a loan, not now.

  “What about digital video?” Weinstein asked, wincing a little.

  “Not the look you said you wanted. But maybe things have changed.”

  “No, no,” Weinstein said, backing down. He pursed his lips. “We can rent.”

  Peter sensed acquiescence. “Give me a budget and I’ll put together a team. I can do wonders for fifty grand. If we rent. And that’s exclusive of my own fee. Twenty grand per promo, fifty grand for a commercial. If we work fast, I can get you some short stuff in two weeks.” Peter secretly took a deep breath.

  Weinstein resumed pacing. “You cannot believe the pressure. Six of our key people resigned yesterday. It’s got us seeing double.”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t be working in a prison,” Peter suggested.

  Weinstein shot him a look that Peter could not read, then turned away. “Your agent,” he said.

  “I work with a lawyer,” Peter said. They hadn’t spoken in over seven years.

  “Fine,” Weinstein said. “Get me the papers. You don’t like the other ideas, huh?”

  “They were going to use the gas chamber,” Peter said.

  “I suggested that,” Weinstein said. “Psychotronic, right?”

  “Suicidal,” Peter said, feeling an odd strength roll back into him. “You’re selling talk, not video games. But if you want to sell Trans to jaded teenage boys . . .”

  Weinstein considered this, his face blank. “All right,” he said, and held out his hand, waggling his fingers like a beggar. “A sample, anything. I’m desperate.”

  Peter took up a sketchpad and a Magic Marker and drew a large cartoon of four of Phil’s nebbishy guys, clutching their word balloons down low. “Don’t walk the walk without the talk,” he said, sharing the words across the balloons. Then, over it all, he scrawled, “When talk is cheap, life is good. And that’s the naked truth.” He handed the page to Weinstein, who glanced at it and grimaced.