Coils

by Roger Zelazny

  Was that a mocking light in Marie's eyes as she raised her glass and drained it?

  The Boss made a motion to his Muscle. They crossed the room. One of them opened a door—not the one I had come in by.

  He held it open. The other passed outside. Marie picked up her purse from the floor and got to her feet. She and Barbeau began moving toward the doorway. I followed them.

  We exited, to come upon a small, private parking lot. The bodyguard who had preceded us was already climbing into a limousine. There was something more than a little suspicious to me about the ease with which The Boss had agreed to give me a ride over to the shop for an inspection of secret records.

  The limousine came to life. It moved.

  "This is very cooperative of you," I said, "but I'm not really prepared to inspect them immediately. I want my lawyer on hand when I do."

  I didn't really have a lawyer in the area, but if I called Ralph Button I'd a feeling he could put me in touch with someone competent.

  "A lawyer?" he said, turning toward me as the car swung around. "Come on, Don! This is just between us. I don't want some legal eagle sniffing around while you're pulling out sensitive stuff."

  "I'll come by in the morning, to the front door," I said, "with counsel. I want to have lots of explanations then—like what I was supposed to have done that got me sent out to pasture with my brains washed. I'll want to talk about that, too."

  The car pulled up before us, halted.

  The big man at his side moved forward and opened doors. I took a step backward and let my hands hang loose. I adjusted my balance. I'd a feeling that the bodyguard was going to try forcing me into the car. If so—

  "Well, if that's the way you feel about it," Barbeau said, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry that we can't just work this out between us, like in the old days." He turned one palm upward. "But, if that's the way it has to be, okay. Bring your man around in the morning and we'll do it your way."

  He and Marie climbed into the back seat

  "Good-bye, Donald."

  The bodyguard shut them in, got into the front passenger seat and closed the door. I watched them drive off.

  Hell of an anticlimax. It was absolutely too easy. Unless—

  Could it be possible that I had really misread the situation? I had had amnesia. Supposing everything I'd seen on the way up had been bona fide BelPatri hallucinations? Could I really rely on my own judgment? What if Cora had simply gotten tired of putting up with me and left? Maybe—

  I turned away. That way lies… I chuckled. More madness? Come on, feet, take me away. I looked around the area. The only pedestrian exit from the parking lot was a nearby platform—a station on the automated monorail system used to move people around the airport. I crossed over and climbed its steps.

  I saw the button on the post, and there was an instruction plate beneath it. This was a special station. Cars would not stop here unless someone coming out of the VIP lot signalled for one. The idea apparently was that curious or wandering members of the general public would not be able to get off at this place. I pushed the button.

  A few seconds later, a single car came along. There was one man in it. He was sitting with his back to me. I entered.

  For a moment, I stared. There was something familiar about that seated figure. I moved around, nearer to him, and I looked him in the face.

  A gray man, in some indeterminate region of middle age. He had grown bushy sideburns and acquired a network of broken veins across his wide nose since last I had seen him. He was a bit fleshier now, with the pouches under his bright blue eyes more pronounced.

  "Willy Boy," I said.

  No, the face on the houseboat in Florida had not been his. It was as if my memory and imagination had somehow combined to warn me about something even then.

  "Well, bless me! If it isn't Mr. Don Bell-Patri!" he said, in that magical voice, clear and almost musical.

  That voice had once been nationally famous. The words were always clearly enunciated; the accent varied, seeming at different times to come from all parts of the South. He'd shouted the Gospel at tent audiences and then auditorium audiences and finally at millions watching him on television. There were healings and hollerings, and then there had been the story of the teen-age girl in Mississippi—her abortion, her attempted suicide… Willy Boy's stock had plummeted. In the end, there had been no legal charges, but for the past several years the faithful had been denied his version of the Lord. Willy Boy's profile had flattened on the graph of public awareness. But there was still something special about him. It involved the healings. They had been real.

  "Matthews," I acknowledged, and I dropped into a seat facing him, fascinated by his presence, new memories surfacing from moment to moment.

  I was fascinated, too, by the change that I saw in him—a change for the worse. He seemed to exhale evil now, along with a faint aroma of bourbon. And in a way, I was glad of this, because it meant that I had not been wrong, that I was not crazy, and that what was happening was not yet over.

  The monorail car was not moving. Its door still stood wide open. But for the moment I thought nothing of this.

  "How's the energy business these days?" I asked him—because he was part of the group, I felt sure of that much, though what the group was was still hazy to me. I wondered what Matthews did-

  And then I remembered what he did, even as he began to do it to me. I felt a sudden shortness of breath, and then a pain in my chest and one that radiated down my left arm.

  There had been a night, long ago, when I had gone with Willy Boy to his apartment and spent an evening lowering the level in a jug of very smooth white lightning. Incongruously, for what he did in those days, there was still an opened Bible in plain sight, on a small table by the window. Curious, when he was out of the room, I had gone over. It was opened to Psalm 109, which was almost entirely underlined. Later, when we were both several sheets to the wind, I had asked him about his preaching days:

  "How much of it was hype? Did you really believe any of the things you said?"

  He lowered his glass and raised his eyes. He fixed me with that acetylene blueness which had come over so well on the tube.

  "I believed," he said simply. "So help me, when I started I was full of the fire of the Lord. I wanted their souls for Him. I believed. I hollered and gave 'em Scripture and waved the Good Book. I was as good as Billy Graham, Rex Humbard—any of 'em! Better, even! When I prayed for healing and saw 'em throw down their crutches and walk, or see again, or stop hurting, I knew that the grace of the Lord was on me, and I believed and there was no hype." His eyes drifted away from me. "Then one day I got mad at a newsman," he went on, slowly. "I kept telling him to move back, he was getting in my way. He wouldn't do it 'Damn you, then!' I thought. 'Drop dead, you miserable bastard!'" He paused again. "And he did," he finally said, "just keeled over and lay there. The doctor said it was a heart attack. But he was young and healthy-looking, and I knew what I'd said in my heart. And then I thought about it. Thought about it a lot. Now the Lord wouldn't go in for His servant pulling that sort of thing, would He? The healing, yeah—if it was helping to get a bunch of 'em saved. But killing 'em? I started thinking, maybe the power didn't come from the Lord, maybe it was just something I could do by myself, either way. Maybe He didn't care one way or the other whether I was preaching or not preaching. It wasn't the Holy Spirit moving through me, healing. It was just something about me that could cure 'em or kill 'em. I started drinking around then, and fornicating and all the rest. That's when it got to be hype and makeup and TV cameras and people planted in the audience with fake testimonies… I didn't believe anymore. There's just us and animals and plants and rocks. There ain't no more. The best thing a man can do is get hold of all the good things in a hurry, 'cause time's passing fast. There's no God. Or if there is, He don't like me anymore."

  He took a big swallow then, refilled his glass and changed the subject. It was a part of the longest conversation I'd ever had with Will
y Boy on anything other than business.

  … And his business was killing people. Heart attack, cerebral hemorrhage—it always looked like natural causes. He had the power. He was a reverse faith healer with no faith. I think he hated himself and he took it out on other people, for money, for Angra. And now he was squeezing my heart, and I would be dead in a matter of seconds.

  I started to get up. I fell back. He was not finishing me as quickly as he might have. This was something new—overt sadism. He wanted to watch me struggle and die slowly.

  I rolled out of my seat to the floor. A sense of the train's computerized guidance system was in my brain like an alarm. Without knowing how I was doing it, I was trying to get the car to move, to take me to where I could get help. I reached the door, which had closed a few moments before, and I couldn't get it open again. I pushed and pulled at it with my right hand, my left arm now feeling as if it were afire. Through the glass, I now became aware of a vague shape outside—a large man—a third bodyguard, perhaps. He just stood there watching while I struggled.

  Matthews' whiskered face loomed over me as he leaned forward in his seat, showing his long yellowed teeth, engulfing me in an atmosphere of alcohol fumes. I tried to reach out with all of my strength. Something—

  The car suddenly lurched under me, back and forth, back and forth, a rapid, violent shaking. Willy Boy was jostled out of his seat.

  The pressure in my chest eased. Abruptly, the door opened.

  I half-crawled, half-rolled out of the car onto the platform and began to scramble away. The only safety from Matthews' attacks, I remembered, lay in distance. If I could get more than a stone's throw away from Willy Boy, he couldn't kill me, not with his mind alone.

  I practically threw myself to my feet. I swayed, recovered and took a step, halted again, as a wave of dizziness came and went. The man who had been waiting on the platform still had a look of surprise on his face. Old Willy Boy wasn't supposed to let them get away. Behind me, I could still hear the car lurching back and forth, as the man recovered and came at me.

  He aimed a kick, and my body responded before my memory did. I had some skill here that I had not recalled.

  My arm, fist clenched, moved in a scooping block that caught his leg and broke his balance, sending him toppling backward, rolling to the side and right off the edge of the platform. He fell onto the track, where a single large rail stood up from a narrow roadbed.

  Turning, I saw Matthews being shaken from his feet within the lurching car. Booze and age had slowed his reflexes. As he struggled to rise once more he was toppled again, but this time nearer to the doors. Now he tried crawling. He was almost to them. He was partway through…

  With a vicious crash the doors slammed shut on him. Their edges were padded, but they had closed hard and they remained closed, clamping him in place.

  Immediately then, the car ceased its shaking. It accelerated rapidly and I heard a scream from below, where the other man had fallen. I did not look down. It had been a very final thing—the unmistakable crunching sound of the car's impact upon a body, the abrupt termination of the scream, a certain smell…

  And back, back off to my left now as I turned, I could still see Matthews' head protruding from between the doors of the receding car, his face dark and contorted, his mouth working but no words coming out.

  A moment of nausea came and went. I looked all around me. The monorail's roadbed seemed the handiest route for flight. I jumped down upon it, far past the thing that lay unmoving beside the track, my eyes averted. Then I turned and began running in the direction opposite that which the car had taken.

  Something had helped me, I knew that. What or how, though, I had no time to speculate. I wanted to put as much distance as I could between myself and that platform in the shortest time possible. I ran, my breath coming hard into my lungs, my heart pounding.

  This went on for what could have been several minutes. I don't know. Then I felt the ground vibrating beneath my feet. My first thought was that a big plane was taking off or landing somewhere nearby, masked by the surrounding structures. But it grew stronger and acquired an above-ground accompaniment that I couldn't mistake. Another monorail car was coming toward me.

  A moment later it came into view, rounding a corner up ahead. Inside, I could see the passengers, pulling emergency switches or cords to which the vehicle was not apparently responding. None of them were yet looking in my direction.

  I was about to leap from the track to get out of the way when the car suddenly began braking. There was no platform in sight, but it came to a halt and the door opened. I ran forward and climbed in.

  The doors snapped shut behind me and the car jerked into motion again, this time heading back in the direction from which it had come.

  I grabbed hold of one of the hanging loops and stood panting. Everyone in the car turned to stare at me. I felt a crazy, lightheaded desire to laugh.

  "Just a test run," I muttered. "Getting ready for the Pope's visit."

  They continued to stare, but shortly a platform came into sight, thronged with people. The car halted there in good order and the doors opened.

  I stepped out and passed among the others, running a hand through my hair, adjusting my apparel, brushing away dust, before I gave way to tremblings. I had a strong desire then to fling myself onto a nearby bench. But a death-trap had just been sprung, wheel turning upon wheel, rods dancing, delicate balances shifting, all to crush me; and someone or something had reached out and realigned a gear-setting, jogged a balance, reset the final closure in my favor, burying all discomfort beneath the triumph of survival. It would be discourteous to ruin all that by collapsing now. I kept going.

  Chapter 7

  I got into the first of a line of cabs waiting outside the terminal, and I told the driver to take me into town. I half-expected to hear sirens at any moment, and I sat tensely much of the way in, staring out of the window, at other cars, at trees, at buildings, at signs along the road. The sun was working its way into the west, but there was still plenty of daylight remaining. I had to get out of town, had to put a lot of distance between me and this part of the country in a hurry, had to find a place to hole up, think this thing through, formulate a plan. Couldn't think now, though; something could happen at any minute. Had to keep my wits handy. I was certain that this cab ride would eventually be traced, which was why I was heading into town. I hoped to confuse the trail.

  I had her drop me on a busy, random, downtown corner. I walked until I came to a bus stop. I stood there watching people and pigeons. I got into the first bus that came along and rode it for a long while in a roughly northwesterly direction. When it took a turn to the south I got off at the next stop and began walking again, to the north and the west.

  I rode two more buses and walked a lot before I reached a suburban area. Then I tried sticking out my thumb to passing motorists. I had a feeling of having done it before, years earlier, back when I was in school. Yes, I'd wanted to go home for the semester break my first year, and I didn't want to spend the money. I remembered that it had gotten pretty cold and windy between rides. Smile a little. That sometimes seems to help…

  … A number of required general courses and my Computer Science major requirement. I'd done pretty well. It had been a bit lonely at first, but I'd a few friends now—like Sammy, who used to call me "Mumbles"—and I was anxious to get home and talk about everything. Mumbles? I hadn't thought of that nickname in years. Sammy was in my Comp. Sci. section, a little dark-eyed guy with a warped sense of humor. I'd had a habit of muttering when I was working with computers. Actually, I used to talk to them—give them names and all. He never knew that. He just heard me at it and started calling me Mumbles. We became pretty good friends as time went on. I wondered where he was now? Be nice to call him someday and see whether he remembers me…

  Actually, I hadn't started talking to the machines in college. It went back to my parents' business when I was much younger. I used to play games with the c
omputers. I started talking to them then, I guess. Outside of that one experience when I was about seven, though, I hadn't gotten much in the way of personal responses from them. But I'd always had a feeling that if I tried hard enough—

  A car slowed down. An older man in a lightweight business suit pulled over.

  "How far you going?" he asked.

  "Pittsburgh, actually," I said.

  "Well, I'm just going home to Norristown," he said, "but I can drop you at the Turnpike, if you like."

  "Great."

  I got in.

  He didn't seem to be looking for conversation, so I leaned back and tried to continue my reverie. It had been broken, though, and nothing new seemed willing to surface. All right. I no longer felt as harried as I had in the cab. Maybe I could think a little more clearly now about my present situation. Then I might be able to initiate some action of my own instead of merely running, reacting.

  Barbeau was definitely out to kill me now. No doubt about that. And Matthews was still working for him, as was the rest of the group…

  The group… It was somehow the key. It had once included me, as much as I hated to think of it now. It also included Willy Boy, and Marie Melstrand. Cora? No, she'd never been involved. I really had met her for the first time on her Florida vacation. And Ann Strong? Very much so. There had been the four of us. Yes. Four of us with something in common…

  We all had odd mental powers. I talked with machines, I possessed a form of human-to-computer telepathy. I could read their programs at a distance. Marie? Marie's power was a force she could exert upon things. PK, they used to call it. While she could wreck a computer, she was incapable of reading it the way I could. Ann? Ann was a human-to-human telepath. She couldn't read computers either, but she could both receive and transmit information, from and to other people—up to and including real-seeming visual impressions. And Willy Boy…? A kind of PK, I suppose, but not quite. His was a subtle form of physiological manipulation, working with matter and energy inside living systems exclusively.