World Enough (And Time)

by Edmund Jorgensen

  “We just had a little chat.”

  “Katherine—”

  “Jeremiah, don’t start,” she said, in a tone that would have gone well with a giant blinking red light and a sign proclaiming “DANGER” in seven or eight languages.

  Despite which warning Jeremiah was about to start, had he not been interrupted by The Specimen coming out of the security office again.

  “Here,” he said, handing a printed sheet of paper to Katherine. “You have five minutes and then you give it back so I can destroy it.”

  Katherine pulled Jeremiah aside into the stairwell across the hall.

  “Take a look,” she said, handing him the paper. “This is the log from Boyle’s door the day he died. Does anything seem strange?”

  “Hold on,” Jeremiah said. “At 6:02 that morning the door opens from the inside—that has to be him opening up for his standing order from the kitchen. 9:17 a.m., again from the inside—he’s leaving to start his day. 1:00 p.m., door is opened from the outside, 1:08 p.m., opened from the inside, 1:23 p.m. the door is opened from the outside again. Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “At 1:00 p.m. he was in the office asking me to encode him a new keycard because his didn’t work.”

  “You’re sure about the time?”

  “100 percent sure—he was waiting for me when I got back from lunch. Wait, look at this, too: 10:13 p.m., door opens from the outside. He’s in for the night. Then 45 minutes later, door opens from the outside again.”

  “Hard to see how he returned to his room without having left it in the first place,” said Katherine.

  “Very hard.”

  “So the second one—at 10:58—was the murderer arriving to kill him,” she said.

  “Or the first one, if he was lying in wait.”

  “So we have proof it wasn’t suicide,” said Katherine. “Do we wait until we have a suspect or do we take it to Grubel right now?”

  “It’s not proof—not yet. Who’s to say he didn’t open the door to kill himself at 10:13, think better of it, turn around without entering, and then come back a little before 11 when he was finally ready to do the deed? But maybe we’ve narrowed our suspects down to people who had access to a keycard encoder. Who would that be?”

  “Alfred,” said Katherine. “John. You.”

  “That’s a pretty narrow field.”

  “Or anyone who could have stolen an encoder—you keep it unlocked in the desk drawer, right?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I grew up with Alfred Reynolds, Jeremiah.”

  “So much for narrowing the field, then,” Jeremiah said. “But at least we know this isn’t a wild goose chase.”

  “I’d better get moving,” said Katherine. “I need to change for dinner prep, and if I don’t get this log back to John in the next two minutes and 23 seconds, he’s going to have an aneurysm.”

  “A damn shame that would be.”

  “Be nice. He blew this case wide open.”

  “No,” said Jeremiah, “you blew this case wide open. Thank you.”

  And then, before she could leave or try to stop him, Jeremiah took her left hand in his, bent her knuckles, and raised them to his lips.

  “I have to go,” she said, but there was a flush of red along the tops of her ears, and two glowing spots on her cheeks.

  17

  A Lot of Credit in Money

  Still Tuesday (5 days until arrival)

  Back in the Guest Services office Jeremiah was still thinking about that flush of red, ranking it favorably against autumn skylines and ocean sunsets and other welcome sights when another sight arrived, considerably less welcome, complete with silver-orange beard and turquoise leg warmers.

  “Hello, Jack,” Jeremiah said. “How can I help you?”

  Jack did not answer right away, being occupied in sweeping a small metallic box and its attached antennae through the room, paying special attention to the area of the desk. Once he was convinced that reasonable standards of operational security were being observed, Jack put the device away and sat down.

  “I understand the position you’re in, Jeremiah,” he said. “Have I ever told you that I was once part of the System? My title was ‘diplomat,’ but I was just an apparatchik, a cog. For years I went through life asleep. But then one day, on a diplomatic visit to rural China, I was served a dish consisting primarily of fermented pig intestine. It was repulsive, but I had no idea how fermented pig intestine was supposed to taste, and so—not wanting to insult my hosts, who were family of a high-ranking official—I ate the whole thing, not realizing it had turned. For six days and nights, unable to rise from the bed of rough straw where they put me, I purged the poison of that spoiled pig intestine—and with it, the accumulated poison of a life lived in service of the System. Then, on the seventh day, I had a vision.”

  Jack’s eyes grew wide, and he gazed somewhere up above Jeremiah’s head.

  “I saw a huge robotic face—mechanical, expressionless, uncaring—a machine with massive, steel teeth. It was shoving handfuls of people into its mouth, one after the other, always at the same, unhurried pace. They screamed as it chewed and swallowed them with perfect regularity, and their screams echoed as they progressed down its digestive tract, which twisted and forked like a gigantic maze. Finally, when the machine had sorted and separated them, their soulless bodies were excreted into the void, where they floated away like so much chaff from wheat.”

  Jack shivered and closed his eyes against the image, but it must have burned brighter still behind his eyelids, and he opened them again.

  “I can’t say how long I observed this horror, until I finally noticed something: the mouth of the System was missing a tooth. And in a flash I realized that I had been that tooth—that my whole life I had been nothing more than a molar of the System, and that only the mystical experience of this vision had finally pulled me out.

  “The next morning I woke up healthier than I had ever been in my life. I couldn’t forget what I had seen, though. I vowed never to become a tooth of the System again, and I began to search for something else that could give me the experience of that fermented pig intestine—preferably without the taste, or six days and nights of vomiting. Do you know what I found, Jeremiah?”

  “Drugs?”

  “I gave up pork, and I started taking all the drugs I could find. The System hates drugs. It fears them. Politicians pass laws against them, celebrities exhort the youth to refuse them—fascists like our security officer confiscate and destroy them. Do you know why? Because they are the only thing that can lift our consciousness high enough to see the System as it is. Except fermented pig intestine gone bad, which I don’t recommend.”

  Jack’s face twisted slightly at the memory of the fateful dish, but then he folded his hands on his cardiganed stomach, all business.

  “Which is all to say, Jeremiah, I’ve been following you, and I heard you talking with Mrs. Abdurov. I know you’re finding drugs for her, too.”

  “We’ve been over this: I’m not finding drugs for anyone.”

  “My Russian’s not great, but I know that Marya Jana is the Russian version of ‘Mary Jane.’”

  Jeremiah sighed.

  “She’s an iguana,” he said.

  “Mrs. Abdurov is an iguana?” said Jack. He did not seem to be dismissing the possibility out of hand, but he did seem to be considering how many brownies Jeremiah might have ingested before reaching this conclusion.

  “No, Marya Jana is an iguana. Mrs. Abdurov’s iguana, whom she lost and demanded that I find. And that ‘green item’ Mr. Wendstrom was asking me about? That was his iguana, who has also gone AWOL.”

  “Listen to yourself, Jeremiah,” said Jack. “Just listen to the insane things the System is making you say. No—no more. If you try to give me any more of those laughable stories and denials, I’m going to put my fingers in my ears and sing la la la. I didn’t come here to hear lies—I came to give you this. You’re part of t
he System now, so I’ll speak to you in the only language the System understands. Here.”

  Jack pulled a brick of something from his pocket and put it on the desk.

  “This is money,” said Jeremiah.

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, not credit—actual old money. Like, antique money.”

  “I always buy drugs with antique money—it’s harder for the System to track you that way. And there’s a lot of credit in money. Anyway, I know you’ll do the right thing now. I believe in you.”

  “Jack,” said Jeremiah, “I don’t want your money, or your credit, and I can’t get you drugs. Listen to me, Jack—it’s all a misunderstanding. They’re iguanas! I can explain everything if you’ll just listen!”

  But as Jeremiah made his plea, Jack—true to his word—had put his fingers in his ears and was already leaving the office, singing “la la la I can’t hear you” the whole way, very roughly to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.”

  * * *

  “The whole way?” said Katherine. She was still in her serving clothes and tired from her dinner shift, but (to Jeremiah’s great delight) upon arriving at the suite she had not gone into her room but simply sat down on the sofa next to him and asked him how the rest of the day had gone.

  “Out of the office and all the way down the hall,” said Jeremiah. “He might still be singing it for all I know. But how was the rest of your day? Good dinner shift?”

  “The usual,” she said. “But what I meant about the rest of the day was, did you find out anything new about Boyle? Any ideas about where to take the investigation next?”

  “Ah,” said Jeremiah.

  “What is it with you and ‘ah’? What does ‘ah’ mean this time?”

  “Just that I thought when you asked about the rest of the day you were interested in the rest of my day.”

  “Don’t be so sensitive,” said Katherine. “Any luck on the case?”

  “I’m still stuck. Anything occur to you?”

  Katherine shook her head.

  “Then I guess I had better prepare myself for Mrs. Mayflower’s visit.”

  Jeremiah stood and brought the bandora, which was still clamped, back to the sofa.

  “She’s picking it up tomorrow?” Katherine asked.

  “So she threatened when she came by today. Here goes nothing.”

  Gingerly Jeremiah loosened the clamp, first on one side and then the other, until the bandora slid out into his lap.

  “That doesn’t look too bad,” said Katherine.

  “No, it doesn’t. I mean, eventually she’s going to see the seam in the wood and blow a gasket. But until she does it will look much better than expected. And it will sound—”

  Jeremiah gave the strings a gentle strum.

  “Damn,” Katherine said.

  For no sooner had his fingers brushed the strings than the bandora—like a puppy in Jeremiah’s lap relaxing completely at his touch—had simply come apart.

  “So much for Barnaby’s wood glue,” said Jeremiah. “Was that the one with the guarantee?”

  “I think it was the glue for wood that came with the guarantee.”

  “Then let’s try that one.”

  Jeremiah fetched the file and the glue for wood from where he had stowed them under the sofa. Squinting, he began to clean the dry wood glue from the bandora’s body and neck, rasping away the hardest beads and digging deposits out of recesses with the file’s sharp end.

  “Can I ask you a question while you work?” said Katherine.

  “I don’t know,” said Jeremiah as he slathered the glue for wood on the neck of the bandora, “what have you done for me lately?”

  “I mean, am I going to distract you?”

  “Always.”

  “Come on, Jeremiah, I’m serious.”

  “Right, serious: yes, you can ask me a question while I work.”

  “I know so little about life on Earth now,” she said. “I mean, I’ve read the history books, and I know the basics—the Drought Wars, the Canadian Mistake. But I don’t know things like—can you still have a quiet life on Earth? Is that something that’s still even possible?”

  “My experience is about 20 years out of date, but what do you mean by a quiet life?”

  “You know,” she said, “a small house in a small town, maybe on a lake somewhere.”

  “How many people are living in this lake house? One? Two?”

  “Jeremiah, remember how I keep saying that certain business is none of yours?”

  “You’re asking about lake real estate—which is hard to find and very expensive—so I’m just trying to figure out how much house you’ll need.”

  “Fine,” said Katherine. “Maybe two people, eventually.”

  “Is one of these people John Battle? Don’t scowl, it makes a difference for the height of the ceilings. I want to make sure he’s comfortable.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked you. I’m going to bed,” said Katherine.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said, “I just don’t understand why we have to pretend we’re not talking about The Specimen if we really are.”

  “Fine. I don’t want you to have to pretend anything.”

  She stood up and went to her room. Almost immediately Jeremiah heard muffled music through the door.

  * * *

  As he sat there trying to occupy his hands and mind with the bandora, Jeremiah could not help but mentally replay this latest encounter with Katherine, until he reached the conclusion that he’d been something of a jerk. More mystifying was why he had acted so boorishly. She had only asked him a question, after all—and one that he could have answered to her benefit if not her pleasure (yes, there still was such a thing as a quiet life on Earth, and no, unless the situation on Earth had changed drastically in the last 20 years, Katherine would never be able to afford to live one, especially anywhere near a lake or other body of water, with or without The Specimen’s income thrown into the mix). So why had Jeremiah needled her instead?

  Of course Jeremiah was half in love with Katherine—he had fallen half in love with her the first night he sat at her table, despite the one piece of good advice his Uncle Leo had given him, which was never to fall in love with anyone who worked for tips. But that in and of itself was not sufficient to explain his recent bad behavior. Back on Earth Jeremiah had half, quarter, or eighth fallen in love with a handful of women on a daily basis, for an average of roughly 7.6 fancies taken per week, and markedly more in springtime. Many of these women had been waitresses, cashiers, or recruiters to political causes he met on the streets of Detroit, but some had been friends or acquaintances. In other words, Jeremiah was flush with practice at dealing normally and civilly with women he was infatuated with.

  Neither could the fact that Katherine did not seem to share Jeremiah’s feelings fully explain the meanness of his mood. With rare exceptions, all the aforementioned fractional loves were completely unrequited, or at best exhibited an affection deficit that was not in Jeremiah’s favor. Even at the height of his relationship with Lana Peterson, when he had been a full 34/35ths in love with her, he estimated that her feelings for him had never exceeded the 7/8ths mark, and peaked that high only on birthdays and the odd Thanksgiving. He had managed reasonably well for years with that imbalance, thank you very much. So why the anger and sarcasm now?

  Jeremiah could no longer pretend occupation with the bandora—he absolutely had to speak to Katherine immediately, though he was not quite sure what he was going to say. He put the bandora aside, walked up to her bedroom door, and knocked loudly.

  “What,” said Katherine through the door. She did not phrase it as a question.

  “Can you open up?”

  “Why.”

  “Because I need to talk to you,” Jeremiah said.

  “You can talk through the door.”

  “I want to apologize.”

  “You can apologize through the door.”

  “Please,” said Jeremiah, “would you jus
t open the door for a minute?”

  For about 30 seconds he wasn’t sure whether she was silently considering or had already silently refused, but then the door opened outwards a crack, from which Katherine’s left eye peered angrily.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said. He leaned against the doorjamb in what he hoped was a casual and forthright manner.

  “You already alluded to that,” said Katherine. “Anything else?”

  “Would you just come out and talk to me for a minute?”

  Now Jeremiah had the opportunity to witness, at least in part, the same kind of silent deliberation that he had been blind to a moment ago. He hung on each slight widening of Katherine’s one visible eye, and despaired at each narrowing, until finally her eye found its natural size again and she sighed.

  “I’m in the middle of something. I’ll come out when I’m done.”

  So saying, Katherine slammed the door shut—or at least she tried to, giving Jeremiah both cause and opportunity to wonder whether his casual lean hadn’t been undertaken a bit too casually, in that his fingers were still on the doorjamb, very much in the spot that the slammed door was accustomed to occupying when it closed.

  “What is wrong with you?” shouted Katherine over Jeremiah’s yelps and swearing. “Why can’t you just stay out of the way of my door? Are you all right? Let me see.”

  “I’m fine,” Jeremiah said when he was able. “It’s nothing.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, give me your hand.”

  As Katherine took Jeremiah’s hand in his to examine it, he found himself examining the scene behind her. Upon meeting his fingers so unexpectedly, the door had bounced wide open, and for the first time Jeremiah could see into the room where Katherine slept.

  The space was not much larger than Jeremiah’s living room turned hostel, but Katherine had put every inch to use. The walls were filled with more antique wave posters. Though Jeremiah recognized a few classics—Casablanca and Pulp Fiction—most of them were new to him.

  Beneath the wave posters stood shelves of antique books—no doubt children’s titles that the eight-year-old Katherine had brought aboard. One book was lying on the single bed, its yellow pages held open by a skein of turquoise wool. One strand of the wool wove its way off the book and along the faded red blanket until it ended, like a river running into a lake, at what appeared to be a half-finished shawl impaled by two knitting needles. Piled in the corner at the back of the room were more skeins of turquoise wool, still snug in their shrinkwrap packages.