The Pedestal

by Daniel Wimberley

  “I’m not taking any pills, so don’t bother getting up.”

  “But you look really sick, Wallace.”

  “I’m fine. Your cooking blows, that’s all. It makes everything sound orange.” Well, I don’t begrudge him that point. My eggs are a little runny, though I think they sound more yellow than orange.

  I finish my breakfast with a smile working like crazy at the corners of my lips. Grogan notices—I can tell because he looks at me as if I have a death wish—but doesn’t say anything. Wallace has fallen asleep at the table, slumping haphazardly against the back of his chair.

  When we’re done eating, Grogan pulls me into the kitchen and yanks me away from the door, against the wall; he’s sweating and breathing in short bursts. “You figured it out, didn’t you?” he whispers.

  “Yeah, I did. I know I can be a little dimwitted—but I’m not a complete misfire.”

  “Okay then. Keep cool, though. Don’t give him any reason to freak out.”

  I agree, but I have to ask: “I’m not complaining or anything, Grogan. But surely you know that if Wallace looks like this when we get to the USS, Gunn’s gonna take it out on your family. How do you know you haven’t just signed Fiona’s death warrant?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Wil. Actually, if you think about it, this only makes me look better; I singlehandedly brought you in when Gunn’s own guys weren’t up for the challenge.”

  “But why even risk it?”

  “Because no matter what happens, that freak can’t be allowed to continue terrorizing people. I had the chance, and I took it. No regrets.”

  I can only stare at him, this man who I’ve clearly underestimated.

  Grogan swallows and blinks, eyes utterly haunted. “He’s done things you can’t imagine, Wil.”

  I open my mouth to rebut, but then clamp it shut again as another thought occurs to me. “Grogan, about Skelly—was that you, too?”

  “Nah, that was just nature finding a way. It gave me the idea for Wallace, though.”

  I nod and breathe a deep sigh. “Well,” I add, nodding toward the doorway. “I guess this guy had it coming. You hear the way he was bagging on your cooking?” Through the door, we hear a loud thump as Wallace collapses to the floor.

  Wallace sleeps most of the morning away, stirring now and again only to slip back into an uneasy slumber. By lunchtime, it’s all over. I find him in a bathroom stall, propped up on a toilet with a network of leafy vines exiting both ends. Too late to turn back now, huh?

  Grogan and I drag him to the airlock and release him into space. With horror—and a little fascination—I watch as he disjoins the ship in a lazy tumble. At near light speed, the corpse will reduce to vapor upon collision with even a single speck of dust. I turn away, knowing I’ll never free my mind of that image if I witness it firsthand.

  I can’t believe I’ve played a part in the death of another human being. I suppose the circumstances might justify our actions—to some extent, anyway—yet I’m overwhelmed by sadness over what I’ve done. Not remorse, exactly. Just shapeless guilt for breaking the code of life.

  I’d like to think I’ll find within myself a previously unknown font of self-preservation, but the truth is that from here on out, everything is out of my control. My fate has been in motion for a long while now. In the background of my waking moments, I’ve heard the telltale clinking of its gears; too bad it’s taken me this long to distinguish it from the noise of circumstances. Even still, I think I’ve known all along how it would end, even if I hoped for something better. I imagine Grogan is thinking something like this, too. If I thought it would help, I’m pretty sure I could take him in an all-out fight, if by no other margin than the depth of my desperation. But at best, that would only delay the inevitable; even if by some miracle I could figure out how to fly his ship, I’d have to land it eventually. And when I did, I have no doubt Gunn would be waiting. Besides, as much as I’m viscerally driven to save my pathetic life, I can’t sacrifice Fiona’s any more than Grogan can.

  In a way, I think this situation is even harder on Grogan than me. After all, as much as I feel caught in the middle of a tug of war, Grogan has much more to lose than I do. Because when I leave this life, no one will miss me and my pain will have ended. Grogan, in contrast, has loved ones relying on him—the combined weight of their lives is upon his shoulders, and that’s got to be more of a burden than any man should ever have to bear.

  The ship is utterly silent as we dock at the USS. I lie in my bed, trembling. The bandage on my arm is gone; my fingers trace circles around what was a crispy crater, yet I’m too distraught to be amazed. I can’t see much through the window portal from here, but I can just discern the glow of Earth’s atmosphere creeping into the corner of the pane like a peeping Tom. The floor shudders faintly as the ship mates with the Unified Space Station dock, then I feel more than hear a series of clicks as locks engage to solidly couple the two masses together.

  Ten minutes pass, and I’m ashamed to admit that I spend them weeping. Grogan knocks gently on the door, which is already ajar, and peeks his head in. I wipe my eyes with my shirtsleeve and take a deep breath.

  “It’s time,” he says.

  I nod. Shuddering, I get to my feet. My knees wobble like jelly. Grogan approaches and—with unexpected and blessed kindness—takes my arm, gently guiding me from the dorms. Wordlessly, the engineer leads me through the ship to the airlock, which has already pressurized with the USS. I follow him through the hatch, inching toward my death.

  Despite my frightful state, I can tell Grogan’s only marginally better off—he stumbles often; his breathing is taxed, rasping with worry and sorrow.

  And then, just like that—with no shoe-clopping preamble of gathering dread—there’s Palmer Gunn. I suppose I was more than half-expecting another throng of his meatheads, not the main man. But here he is—and he’s utterly ecstatic at the sight of me.

  “Well, well, well. Long time no see, Mr. Abby,” he remarks. He sounds ridiculous, like a bad caricature of some film mobster. “So happy you accepted my invitation,” he adds. Good grief, this guy needs to work on his presence; scary or not, I can’t imagine how he’s managed to get this far, talking like that. If he had a gun in hand, I’d more than half expect him to add, “Say hello to my little friend,” in a thick, Cuban accent. For once, my internal filter catches these remarks before they can slip through to hasten my death.

  Grogan squeezes my arm—the closest I’ll get to a goodbye from my friend—and then takes a deep step back. It dawns on Gunn now, for whatever reason, that things aren’t necessarily copacetic, even if his evasive quarry is finally within his grasp.

  “Where’s my boys?” he grunts at Grogan.

  Grogan shows the palms of his hands, shaking his head pleadingly. “They didn’t make it, Mr. Gunn.”

  Palmer Gunn steps toward Grogan and his face darkens like the night itself. “What do you mean, they didn’t make it?”

  Grogan swallows visibly, but holds his ground. “I’m sorry, sir. They didn’t acclimate well to Mars. Despite my best efforts, neither took our safety protocols seriously.”

  Gunn takes a second step toward Grogan, who looks like he might vomit. I’m right there with you, buddy. Gunn grabs a fistful of shirt and draws Grogan in until only centimeters span the gap between them. “You kill my boys, kid?”

  For a brief moment, it occurs to me that even if he’s armed, Grogan and I might stand a chance against this guy—he’s alone here, after all. But against all logic, he instills something that surpasses fear, something that seems to psychologically eliminate any possibility of ever prevailing against him.

  One moment, I’m thinking, He doesn’t look that big. The next? If I had a loaded gun in my hand, I’m fairly certain I’d hand it over without a fight.

  “No! Of course not,” Grogan yelps.

  Gunn drills him with his eyes and then lowers his voice to a guttural whisper. “If I find out different, things are gonna get reall
y messy for you, got me?”

  Grogan nods, eyes bugged like his head is in a vice. Abruptly, Gunn releases my friend, who stumbles back and to the floor, and diverts his attention to me. “He tellin’ the truth?” he demands.

  I suppose he has good reason to think I’d betray Grogan—after all, the man has betrayed me—but Gunn has miscalculated. “Yeah, he is. They both died from exposure to one of our research specimens,” I say. Grogan swallows and looks at the floor, nostrils flaring. “Truth is,” I add, “I was ready to make a run for it. But this crank dragged me in, even after those other guys died.”

  Gunn looks at me with eyes like needles, probing deeply into me as if to unearth a hint of deception. But he finds none because, though I’m a terrible liar, I’m telling the truth—if stretching it a bit. Gunn seems satisfied. With lightning efficiency, he fastens an iron grip on my upper arm.

  “Time to go home, Wilson.”

  I haven’t grasped the depth of my longing for Earth until I’ve returned to the protection of its atmosphere. I’ve forgotten how rare and beautiful this planet really is, bejeweled in mesmerizing shades of aquamarine and jade, liquid with symbiotic life. For a brief moment, my fate seems inconsequential. Drawing near my homeland, I’m helplessly transfixed by the sheer beauty of it, the fantastic variety of color and textures, the sedimentation of living layers held firmly in its bosom.

  Suddenly, hot breath is on my neck and Gunn’s gravelly voice blasts past the turbulence of reentry, through my blissful reverie. “Soak it in, kid. May be the last thing you ever see.”

  We land at a small airfield near Houston and I’m dragged across an empty tarmac toward a transit bay. A shuttle awaits us. As I step inside—with the brusque assistance of Gunn—I find that I’m not the first passenger. For a split second, I’m relieved that she’s here, that she’s survived Grogan’s gamble. But as Fiona affixes her eyes on mine, I see something in them that I never expected, something that breaks my tired heart.

  “Sit down,” Gunn snaps. I obey, and the shuttle begins to move. My eyes are glued to Fiona, and for once, there’s no lust there.

  “What is this, Fiona?” I ask. Her mouth forms a sad frown and she shrugs. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve misinterpreted the situation. I’ve been known to do that now and then, after all.

  “I’m sorry, Wilson. Things weren’t supposed to play out like this.”

  “Oh, spare me,” Gunn interrupts with a groan. “Don’t go getting sentimental on me now. We got things to do.”

  “You aren’t going to kill him, are—”

  “Now? Relax, lady. If I wanted the kid dead, he’d be dead already. I’m not done with him yet.”

  Fiona seems guardedly pacified. “Mr. Gunn, we need to contact my brother. He did his part and got Wilson here; he needs to believe you’ve done your part.”

  Gunn rolls his eyes. “Ah, screw your brother, lady.”

  “Mr. Gunn, I won’t let you turn my brother into a liability. If he thinks I’m still in danger, he’s going to reach out for help. We don’t need that kind of attention. Need I remind you of what’s at stake here? If any of this gets out, none of us are safe.”

  Gunn takes a step toward Fiona, glaring down at her diminutive form. “So maybe I’ll just take him out then, huh? Lure him to the surface and trigger a little stroke or something.”

  Suddenly Fiona is a very different creature than the woman I thought I knew. “Listen up, you psychotic bully,” she seethes. “I’m to report to the president of Unified America in less than an hour. If I even suspect my brother is in any danger, you’re going to feel her wrath.” She pauses briefly, then flashes a terrible smile. “Big sister can be ruthless.”

  Palmer Gunn scowls and seems to loom over her like a great gargoyle. He wants to hurt her, I can tell. But instead, he matches her terrible smile with his own and chuckles. “Fine. But don’t think you can throw your weight around to save this one.” He gestures at me with a dimpled chin. “Once we scrape his NanoPrint, he’s dead. I got orders, just like you.”

  My eyes glaze over with shock. What could the president possibly hold against me?

  Fiona looks away, out the window at the airfield on the horizon. “I know,” she mutters. She turns to me, but she avoids my eyes. “I’m really sorry, Wilson.”

  My brain is overloading from the sheer contrast of stimulus I’ve experienced in the last twenty-four hours; I feel like I’m so close to understanding it all, yet—as always—my mind is incapable of drawing the pieces together. My thinking muscles are just too tired, cutting off in midthought, merging ideas that don’t belong together. I think of Wallace and the bizarre fragmentation of his mental processes under the influence of a BP7 seed, and I can’t help but draw some similarities between that and what I’m experiencing.

  It’s then that something occurs to me, something that perhaps should have long ago.

  “PRMC,” I say. “It’s a Miritech company, isn’t it?”

  Fiona swallows visibly, steeling herself for something. Her face begins to smooth into an expressionless mask. “Always a few steps behind the pack, Wilson.”

  Ignoring the jab, I put a hasty conclusion into words before it can fall apart. “So, I’ve been working for the vice president all this time?” I consider this for a moment and realize that I’ve overlooked the significance of her earlier remark. “Wait—Carlisle. She’s not just the vice president anymore, is she?”

  Fiona looks at me appraisingly with eyes turned to stone, and then shakes her head as if annoyed. The longer I look at her, the less I can reconcile her with the woman I once knew. “How do you even manage to dress yourself in the morning?” she mutters. Her demeanor has now completely transformed. My ears burn, my heart turns to lead in my chest.

  It’s not merely that I’ve been chastened that saddens me just now. I know it’s in my nature to cringe against such treatment when perhaps I ought to keep my chin up. But I think it’s her blatant and immediate disentanglement from me as a person—as a man who has both consciously and unconsciously yearned for her affection, if not her respect. I know I’ve probably read or dreamed things into our relationship over the previous months—I’m a man who doesn’t take hints well, after all—but until right now, I haven’t realized just how prolific her deception has been. And how ugly she really is to deliberately turn on me rather than put up an ounce of fight for me.

  “Does that make it easier for you, kicking me while I’m down?” A shimmer of guilt ripples across her face, but it’s fleeting. She masks it with a bland smile and turns away, dismissing me.

  “Go ahead—convince yourself that you hate me, if it’ll make this easier.”

  Gunn sighs nearby and rubs at his temples. “Would you two love birds knock it off? You’re giving me a headache.”

  For a while, we comply. But with the passage of each second, my anger swells until it can no longer be contained. Spite takes my reins, and it has a smart mouth.

  “Too bad about Mars, huh?” I remark, eyes boring into her with a glare that smolders with radioactive intensity. “All those years of hard work down the drain.”

  She considers me with a flicker of uncertainty, trying to resist the bait. But she can’t. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she sighs with feigned disinterest.

  “It means your seeds—the hallucinogenic fruits of your labor—they’re not sterile.” Her expression turns to steel, and for a split second I fear I’ve only demonstrated my modest intelligence again. But then, her eyes narrow and her mouth curls into a terrible sneer.

  “You’re lying,” she says, but the waver in her voice and the fresh desperation in her eyes betray that she knows better. I’m not capable of it, after all. Particularly to her.

  Suddenly, behind the exhilaration of this small victory—and just above the merry gliding of the shuttle above the city—I feel a long-forgotten tingling on my wrist.

  And everything changes.

  My NanoPrint is suddenly humming full blast, laboring to downl
oad thousands of unheeded notices. At once, my senses are overloaded with auditory and retinal signage. Wincing, I struggle to dig through it all, sweeping aside the nonsense to reach my file directory. It’s no good; my implant is all but locked up. Still, I’m not completely out of options. If I hurry, maybe I can—

  >>Oh, Wilson. I’ve missed you sooooo much!

  Marilyn slides from my periphery into the center overlay of my vision at half opacity.

  >>Say, handsome—why don’t I configure all these new add-ons for you? I know how you like it when I—

  Dang it—not now, Marilyn! I give my digital personal assistant—who is even more beautiful than I remember, I can’t help noticing—a mental shove aside; she responds with a sexy pout before blinking out in a blast of trademarked, skirt-lifting wind. Before I can regroup, her head reappears.

  >>Maybe later? she whispers with a long-lashed wink, and then she’s gone.

  Breathing heavily, I manually add a single request to my process queue. Sequences process there so quickly I almost lose track of my request immediately. Once I find it, I realize a minor adjustment is needed. I open the request to edit and increase its priority rank to urgent, which sends it closer to the top of the queue. I still can’t predict when my request will engage—native implant updates are inherently profiled with the highest priority, so they supersede all other processes. For the moment, all I can do is wait.

  Our shuttle glides onto pavement with a slight jolt, though I hardly notice.

  Fiona sees the strain on my face and visibly tenses.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Nothing,” I mutter. A mist of sweat at my hairline channels into a single, telling droplet down my cheek.

  Fiona rises to her feet, but there’s nothing she can do.

  “Stop him,” she barks to Gunn.

  With startling speed and agility, Gunn is instantly on me, gripping my arms and screaming obscenities in my face. He gets one of my fingers into his meaty fist and yanks it back—seriously, what’s with this guy and fingers? “Stop!” he growls. My brain explodes with agony, and I shriek—but I cry out as much in victory as in pain. My implant has finished updating, and even as it bombards me with a year’s worth of notices and unsolicited spam—I almost laugh at the number of Nike ads in my system—and while Gunn has his barbaric way with my poor, defenseless fingers, I sense my implant bulleting through its queue and finally preparing to process my humble request, and then—