“For Christ’s sake, what good could I do? One vote against a majority of millions!”
Dave was grinning at me cunningly. “Come with me,” he said. He led me down the corridor a way, then opened a door. There were four beds in the bare room. Six eyes watched me as we entered. “See this man?” Dave pointed. “Now take a good look at that.”
I wondered at the foursome’s docility, and concluded they must be sedated. The man Dave indicated lay naked; a rubber tube led from his penis to a bottle under the bed. He had no arms, no legs, and his torso was a mass of scar tissue. One eye peered at me malignantly and I thought: This man will soon reach the limit of his usefulness.
Choking back vomit, I ran from the room.
Dave followed me back into his den. “Terrible thing.” He was still grinning that horrible fixed grin like a rictus as he spoke. “God, look what humanity has done to that poor wreck of a man.”
“For Christ’s sake, shut up about it, Dave.”
“But listen to this.” He held a card up. “This is that man’s record. This is what that man did to humanity. John Umpleby. Committed to this penitentiary seven years ago, having been found guilty on eight counts of murder. The victims were all young children, boys and girls under the age of ten, and all had been sexually assaulted before their death.” He held the card before me. “Read it. There’s more.”
I thrust it away. “What the hell are you getting at, Dave?” I think I said.
He stared at me. He wasn’t grinning any longer. “I’m telling you that if you’re looking for the difference between right and wrong you’re wasting your time here, Mr. Sagar. Here, everything’s wrong. I’ve been trying to tell you that for years, but you couldn’t see it. Do you see it now? Do you see it, you smug bastard?”
I’d committed no crime. Why did he always try to make me and everybody else feel like a criminal? Did he want me to wallow with him in his comfortable mudbath of despair?
“I’ve come here because I think Marigold’s here, Dave,” I said stonily. “If she is, I want to get her out. She’s no criminal. She has nothing to do with these … people.”
I had got through to him at last. “Marigold,” he murmured. “You mean that foreign girl, with the—” Whatever inappropriate means of identification he was about to employ, he broke off in time. “Marigold was a lovely girl,” he said quietly. “I’d hate to think she was in this place.”
“This is the third floor,” I said. “What’s below?”
“I’m not sure. More corridors, I guess. More rooms.”
“Can you show me?”
His bravado was gone; he looked nervous. “If I’m caught, I don’t get to be a trusty anymore. That might mean another donation before I’m released. What are you going to do, anyway?”
I showed him the minivid. “I want to get pictures, and I want to have them broadcast on Newspocket, nationwide.”
“You don’t have to go downstairs for that. There are plenty of donors up here.”
“I told you I want to find Marigold. I want to find out why she’s here. I want to find out what the hell goes on in this place.”
He shrugged. “I’ll go partway with you,” he said.
I didn’t find what I was looking for on the second floor, where Dave left me, or the ground floor, where I found my way through to the women’s wing. All I found were more corridors, more doors, most of them with their little cards describing the organs therein, so that suitable donors could be quickly selected in times of emergency. I used the minivid several times. Suddenly I found myself at the main entrance lobby, and quickly ducked back out of sight. Guards paced the mosaic floor; sharks lay nearby. I waited, trying to think.
I’d glanced into many of the rooms I’d passed without finding what I was looking for. The cards outside the doors gave the names of the occupants and I’d seen no Marigold Carassa—not that I’d expected to. Either she’d be under another name or, more likely, she wouldn’t be in these rooms at all. In that case, where would she be?
Soon I found the little door. It was set into an alcove and it had a disused, dirty look.
It was locked. Taking the laser, I burned away the hinges and pushed it aside, hoping the guards wouldn’t smell the smoke. If they inspected the door, a cursory glance at the intact lock might convince them that all was well. I stepped into a dingy area and lifted the door shut behind me. Laser in hand, I descended a flight of stairs. As I expected, the gloomy basement contained the heating equipment, silent and dead at this time of year. Beginning to think that this was merely the junk area typical of any bureaucratic establishment—there were boxes of old files and papers stacked against the wall—I tried a small door beside a stack of broken chairs, without much hope.
It opened onto a different world.
Another corridor lay before me, similar to those on the upper floors, clean and white in contrast to the dust and debris of the furnace room. I began to move slowly along it, noticing that the doors possessed no adjacent statistics boards. I eased the nearest door open. …
I shut it again quickly, gulping.
It was fortunate that there was nobody around, because it took me a moment to recover. I walked along the corridor again, trying doors, closing them again after taking a brief videotape of the occupants. Then a door opened onto a room brighter than most. A powerful smell of anesthetic greeted me. Taking out my laser pistol again I stepped quietly inside and found myself in a fully equipped operating theater. The big central lights blazed down, and although the table was empty, a figure lay under white sheets on a bed near the wall. I stepped across, stared into the sleeping face.
It was Marigold.
I shook her gently but she didn’t awaken, and her body possessed the slack feel of the drugged. I rolled her onto her back, kissing her briefly and feeling like crying, when it occurred to me that she rolled too easily.
I drew back the sheets.
She opened her eyes and looked at me without intelligence, without recognition, as I pulled the sheet up again and tucked it around her throat. I felt weak and sick, so I drew up a chair and sat beside her, slipping the minivid and laser on the shelf beside her because suddenly it didn’t seem right to videotape Marigold the way she looked now. I think she may have understood because her eyes moved from me to the little machine and I imagined there was a flicker of recognition there, a flicker of hope.
She was in postoperative shock and although I spoke to her she didn’t really know me, and soon her eyes closed again. I sat there, wondering what the hell to do. I suppose I’d visualized myself burning doors open and leading her out by the hand, slipping through darkness past the guards, dealing with peril as it arose like some goddamned knight rescuing his princess, then a final sprint for safety.
But Marigold wouldn’t be doing any sprinting.
I felt an enormous pity as I sat looking at her, and if they tell you pity is akin to love, then they lie, because I didn’t love Marigold. Yet in that black moment I knew I had loved her, just a little, when she was perfect. This is something a woman can never understand: that any man will feel love, albeit a minor love, when he sees a perfect, beautiful girl. This love is not necessarily connected with lust; it is a simple, delighted pleasure, a warm happiness that anything so pretty should exist. Once, I had felt like that about Marigold.
But not anymore. Now Marigold was spoiled, and I didn’t love her anymore, because she was imperfect. It wasn’t my fault, because I am only a man and that is the way men are made. So I just sat there, feeling as sorry as all hell.
“Now just stand up and turn around slowly, Sagar.”
I complied, and found myself looking into guns held by Gallaugher and a guard.
16
“This way,” said Gallaugher briefly.
They took me along the corridor to a small room at the end, pausing only to allow me to be violently sick against the wall. My knees were trembling so badly that I could hardly stand upright, let alone walk. I knew they were goin
g to kill me. They had to kill me now; I’d seen too much. And I couldn’t do a thing about it; my gun was back in the operating theater with Marigold.
Inside the room they pushed me against the far wall and searched me briefly.
“What the hell were you trying to do, Sagar?” asked Gallaugher.
I didn’t tell him about the minivid on the shelf in the operating theater. It was good to know something they didn’t know; almost like an ace in my hand—except that I would have no chance to play it. “I knew you had Marigold Carassa here,” I said. “I wanted to try to get her out.”
“Is that all?” He looked exaggeratedly surprised. “You disappoint me, Sagar. I’d have thought a dedicated Foe of Bondage like yourself would have been snooping around, gathering evidence against whatever it is you people object to.”
“I object to you making money out of the Pool, Gallaugher,” I said, finding courage from somewhere.
“Do you now?” he murmured, smiling faintly. “Do you now? Well, isn’t that just too bad, Sagar. We can’t allow him to say things like that, can we, Johnny?” The guard shook his head. “So I’m afraid we’re going to have to kill you. I mean to say”—his smile grew broader—”we could use you—there’s quite a shortage of organs these days, but in your case death would be the simplest thing. Alive, you might prove difficult.”
“I won’t be difficult,” I heard myself croak. The wall rasped against my back as my knees began to give out. Abject fear is a most undignified thing.
The interviz rang just as it seemed to me that Gallaugher had run out of conversation and his finger was whitening on the trigger. “Yes?”
I saw the face of a guard on the small screen. “Mr. Gallaugher, we’ve found the remains of a sling-glider in the grounds.”
Gallaugher winked at me as he spoke to the guard. “Post a couple of our men on it and I’ll be up with you in a minute. I think we may have found the body of the man who crashed.” The screen went blank.
“You can’t shoot me,” I said hopefully from my sitting position on the floor. “The police will wonder what the burns are.”
“They will have been caused by you passing too low over the pen walls and being caught by the beam fence, Sagar. Uh, would you mind standing? I don’t like to shoot a sitting duck. Traditionally, as the villain with the upper hand, I ought now to explain the entire setup here—but our organization is quite large and very complex, and it would take too long. So, uh, good-bye, Joe,” he said almost apologetically.
There occurred a dizzy moment which I can never quite remember. All I know is that suddenly there was a woman standing in the open doorway. I can remember everything about her, although I don’t remember the door opening. She was aged about fifty-five, had gray hair, pale blue eyes, pink sunken cheeks, and an uncertain expression. Her clothes were expensive with a wealth of mink and slithe-skin trimmings, and her arms were pale and skinny. She wore a tiny gold watch and a large number of huge rings. Her legs were thin, gnarled and knotted with varicose veins like snails, and her shoes were green and jeweled.
She spoke. “Mr. Gallaugher, I hope I’m not interrupting anything, but I really am most unhappy about that imperfection you mentioned.” Her manner was diffident at first but was rapidly becoming aggressive as she gained confidence. “I mean, you will be the first to agree that the operation is not cheap. But I am a woman of some substance and am accustomed to getting the very best.”
Another woman appeared whom I took to be her hired companion. She said nothing, but her presence tended to lend weight to her employer’s words.
“And I will not be put off,” she continued as Gallaugher muttered something. “I paid good money for cosmetic surgery and now you tell me the items you have prepared for me are incomplete. Well, I shall not accept them.” She was working herself into a fury. “I want you to understand, Mr. Gallaugher, that when I pay in advance for leg treatment I expect a full set of toes!”
Here again my recollection is hazy. I saw the woman looming up; I saw her wrinkled face and pale eyes through a curtain of insanity. Gallaugher’s face receded in a spattering red flash and I caught a glimpse of the guard clutching his stomach. Thoughts, images, words pounded repeatedly through my brain like a piston, blotting out reason, blotting out the physical world around me. All consisted of the one thought, the one image, the one phrase: She bought Marigold’s legs, she bought Marigold’s legs, SHE BOUGHT MARIGOLD’S LEGS!
Somewhere in there was satisfaction, was revenge. I don’t know what I did to that woman and I don’t want to know—and certainly no repercussions came my way, nor even a rumor; yet she must have been a wealthy person. But in some way I can’t remember, I satisfied myself on the woman in about ten seconds—and it was not an easy score to settle, because she was responsible for changing my feelings toward Marigold from half-love to whole-pity, and that’s a terrible way for a man’s feelings to change.
I was running down the corridor. Paint peeled from the wall beside me in a scorching long blister. I swerved and kept running.
As I ran it seemed I saw a parade of women and girls, the ones who had affected my life, and it was not always certain whether I saw that woman with the pale blue eyes—or whether I saw Carioca Jones. Later, I was not sure exactly whom I had revenged myself on, in that murderous moment in the basement of the state pen.
There were guards and sharks in the entrance lobby. I ran up the stairs, through a doorway, up more stairs.
And it wouldn’t have deterred the woman with the pale eyes if she’d known what a pretty girl Marigold was, if she’d known what beauty she was spoiling—in fact she would have enjoyed the knowledge, because that sort of woman resents pretty girls. They resent every good thing in other women, most especially if that good takes the form of a gift, like Marigold’s desirability. Like Joanne’s musical accomplishments.
I reached the roof and heard no sound of pursuit.
They are the devils, they are the destroyers, they are the ones who gather evil like knowledge as they claw their way through life.
I clattered down the fire escape and heard the whistling, and paused beside the body of the shark on the last platform. Below I could dimly see the eager shapes licking at the blood as it dripped through the iron steps, about five of them circling and humping and sliding and sucking and feeding, black like widows around their husbands’ graves.
A hooter blew. I pulled myself together and the images vanished, although the sharks remained. Doors slammed and a loudspeaker boomed:
“You out there! Come in with your hands up or we release the rest of the sharks!”
I stood there, wondering vaguely how many more sharks they had, how long it would take them to realize I’d taken the top route out. I heard the speaker rasp its command twice more; then there was silence. Then a low whistling in the distance, a chirruping like a multitude of birds.
They came toward me as a dark undulating carpet, with their uncanny sense of smell making straight for the foot of the ladder on which I stood. There must have been twenty of them. The whistling became piercing as they snuffled around in the dirt, dissatisfied with the pickings. There was no way I could get past them; they were all around the base of the fire escape, avidly waiting for something to kill, to eat.
I was thinking more clearly now, and the trembling had stopped. That obscene black mass reminded me of something, of Hector Bartholomew and a fish-girl named Rosalie, and an afternoon of fear at Pacific Kennels. …
I knelt, got my hands under the body of the land shark on the platform, and heaved, blood sticky and slippery about my fingers, cold hide rough like sandpaper. The shark shifted saggily, flopped over and showed a pale belly, slid over the edge, and fell among the writhing forms below.
Instantly the whistling became deafening as the sharks attacked their dead comrade, tearing and snapping, munching and snuffling with unearthly horrifying greed. The body was tossed about on a wave of darting snouts and soon came apart, entrails glistening in the dim light
, blood spraying.
Above the din, I heard a shout of triumph.
Inevitably, one shark snapped at another as the frenzy increased in a whirling of sinuous forms, a tearing of delicate fins, a brutal lunging and ripping at the flesh of weaker members. More bodies were flung about, twisting and whistling as the carnage ebbed away from the foot of the ladder.
I jumped to the ground and ran for the wall beyond the playing field. With my breath sobbing in my throat I crouched against the brickwork, glanced up. A light mist was drifting in from the sea; the laser beam fence showed along the top of the wall as three lethal bright threads running from one watchtower to the next. Moths danced about the eerie light and vanished in little sparks of quick brilliance.
A searchlight beam sprang from the tower above me and played against the wall of the Organ Pool. A heaving black mass could be seen, and the flash of pallid bellies. I heard a voice.
“That’s no way for a man to die, no matter what he did.”
Somebody else said, “Well, what the hell did he do, anyway?”
“God knows. The last escape, it was that guy due for his first donation, remember? Just a kidney, they tell me—but the first is always the worst, so they say. He didn’t know how lucky he was. The sharks took all of him. Bastards. Vicious bastards.”
“Look at that, will you? I reckon they’re eating one another now.”
“Oh, Christ!”
I edged along the wall to the gate. Here, both guards were watching the illuminated frenzy from a distance of around a hundred yards, chuckling with ghoulish delight as it dawned on them, too, that the sharks had gone cannibal. It seemed that I had sympathizers all around the compound. The dreadful seething continued against the Pool wall and I had the sudden wild notion that the net result would be one single shark of gigantic dimensions, gorged and comatose.
Then a group of men burst from a door and ran toward the struggle, carrying nets, guns, and gas bombs which they tossed among the writhing forms. Above the whistling I heard dull explosions, and vapor drifted pale in the spotlights. The men closed in, nets in one hand, guns in the other. Their faces were alien with respirators.
The Girl With a Symphony in Her Fingers Page 16