by Jim Stark
Lilly was terrified ... but also curious. Lars had used the pistol report to cover the clicking of his ballpoint pen. Something strange was afoot!
"Do you know where Michael is?” he asked brutally.
"No sir."
"Beep."
BANG! This bullet missed her by a smaller margin than the last one.
"Is Victor Helliwell aware that we made him sick?"
Christ, Victor was right, she thought. “Sir, yes, sir!” she barked. “At least he assumes that the WDA—"
"Is Michael Whiteside aware that we killed Victor?” he demanded as he quietly put down the gun on the floor.
"No sir,” said Lilly, putting a “what's happening?” look on her face. “At least I didn't tell him, and I doubt if Victor did. He seems—"
"I'm not interested in your amateur female speculations, bitch!” shouted Lars as he rolled up his left sleeve and began writing on his forearm. “Are you Human Three?"
"No."
"Beep."
Lilly was stunned. “Not yet,” she tried.
"Beep."
"I guess I really don't know."
"Beep."
"Is Michael?” shouted Lars.
"I doubt it,” she said. “No, not to my knowledge. I haven't—"
"Shut up!” screamed Lars as he put his pen back in his pocket and held up his bare arm. “Just answer the fucking questions yes or no."
Lilly leaned forward. “Attack me when I wink, then kill my Sniffer,” he had written.
"One more act of insubordination,” he shouted at her as he got to his feet and slowly approached her, “and I'll do a summary execution.” With his free hand, he was signaling to her to stand up. She complied—and then he winked. “And don't think I won't do it if I hear one more—"
Lilly lashed out with her right foot. The gun was just above hip-level and pointed off to the side, but she wasn't about to take any chances. The steel toe of her boot snapped his right wrist just as the gun went off, and her right forearm crashed into his chest a split second later, driving the breath out of him and knocking him to the floor. She leapt onto him, pulled his Sniffer out of his inside jacket pocket, and threw it against the wall, where it fell face up—meaning Lars’ WDA handler could still see, even if what was visible was mostly ceiling. She grabbed for the fallen gun, stood up, and fired a bullet in the wall just above Lars, for effect. Then she wheeled around, stepped to where she virtually straddled the Sniffer, contorted her face into a contemptuous snarl, and fired again. “The Sniffer's dead,” she said as she put the gun in her jacket pocket and bent over to help Lars.
"Jesus H. Christ!” squeaked Lars, with insufficient air. “You didn't have to ... break my ... fuckin’ arm."
"Jeeze, I'm really sorry, Lars,” said Lilly. “What do we do now? You better fill me in on—"
"We got maybe two minutes before the choppers get here,” he said as he cradled his throbbing wrist. “They'll expect to find one of us dead ... and when they don't, and they figure out that we're on the same side, they'll expect us to run ... so we stay. Lift up the three floorboards immediately to the left of the stove. It's a trap door. Use my knife—it's in my jacket here, left pocket."
Lilly took his knife, went over to the side of the old stove, and looked—nothing. She had to get right onto her knees and stare before she saw the faint outline of the cleverly disguised trap door. She inserted the knife at the edge, lifted the floorboards—the thing creaked. There was sort of a shallow dungeon below. She could see two car batteries in there, and a plastic-covered box, presumably containing food, water and other supplies—and a smaller white box with a bold red cross on it. Good thinking, she said to herself as she heard “Colonel Johannsen” moaning lightly behind her.
"That ... was supposed to be your coffin ... after I killed you,” said Lars as he stood up. Then he reached up to an old shelf with his left hand, beside the stump of dangling stovepipe, and withdrew a tiny delicate glass bottle, circa 1900, or so it seemed. “Break this just before you crawl in,” he said, handing it to Lilly. He wormed his way into the hole, protecting the injured wrist as best he could. “Just heave it as hard as you can before you close the trap door,” he said. “And make sure the fucking thing breaks."
After Lars had managed to wiggle into place, Lilly got her lower body into the hole and did as she'd been told, easing the floorboards down only after the vial had shattered against the far wall.
The trap door was a masterpiece of makeshift carpentry. It was almost pitch dark in the dungeon even though it was daylight half an inch above. Lars turned on a flashlight to help Lilly find her way onto one of the two inflated mattresses. “You're not going to like the next part,” he said, wincing in pain.
"What next—” she began ... and then it hit her. “What the—"
"Eau de skunk,” said Lars, trying to maintain his sense of humor. “Put this on,” he said, giving her a gas mask and struggling to get his on with his one good hand. “It's so the dogs won't know we're here. Let's get my arm set. There's morphine in—"
"Shhh!” said Lilly, as the sound of helicopter blades emerged faintly out of the gray sky above. She put on her mask, laid the flashlight down on the mattress, and helped Lars on with his mask. Then she got a morphine pill from the first aid box and shoved it up under Lars’ gas mask and onto his waiting tongue. “We'll have to set the arm later,” she whispered.
Chapter 72
CONFESSION
Wednesday, May 11, 2033—11:50 a.m.
Victor awoke in his bedroom to find himself staring at the carpeted floor, about three feet below. He wondered briefly if he was having an out-of-body experience, but ... no such luck. I wish, he thought as his brain kicked in.
It was the strap around his forehead that caused him to remember. He hadn't been able to lie flat on his back for weeks. The only relatively comfortable position he could manage was to lie on one side or the other, and he needed help to switch over from left to right. In recent days, he'd reached a point where he couldn't lie on his sides for very long either. The pain in his neck was often just too much, even with the pills. They'd told him the time had come for morphine, but he had demanded a few more days of lucidity, or what passed for same—the pain medication he was willing to take was no slouch. “Think of something, for Christ's sake!” he had demanded of his doctors. So they had put him in a bed called a modified Stryker frame. Whenever it was necessary, which was about half the time now, they would have him lie briefly on his back, and then lower a suspended mattress onto his front—a mattress with a hole in it for his face—then strap him into this temporary mattress “sandwich” and rotate him until he was on his stomach, with his face sticking partly out through the hole, looking down. When the deed was done, they'd lift off the regular mattress for a while—for how long, Victor was never sure, but this queer “rotisserie contraption,” as he had come to call it, did help.
"Where's my apple?” he whispered at the carpet. He knew he was never alone any more, and he rather hoped it was Julia that was keeping the deathwatch today. Probably not, he thought. Certainly not. She'd be lying on the floor already, so I'd see her when I surfaced.
"Did you ... say something?” came a whispered response.
Victor snickered ... which hurt his head. He couldn't tell who it was because there were no vocal cords involved. He snickered because his mind went back to that one little loophole in his invention. The LieDeck didn't work for psychopaths—everybody knew that—but it also didn't work if a person whispered. He remembered a time just before the Revolution when former prime minister Louis St. Aubin and his caucus and cabinet were reduced to whispering to the media, lest they be caught in a lie. Those were strange days, he thought.
"Victor?” came another inquiry, this time in full voice.
"Hi Mr. Wu,” he said. Not my first choice, he felt, recognizing the telltale Oriental nasality in the male voice. He considered explaining his little “apple-in-the-mouth” joke, but decided against. Mr. W
u hadn't laughed the first time anyway. “Get Julia,” he said hoarsely. It was hard for him to clear his throat in this sling thing, and phlegm tended to build up while he slept. If you can call being KO-ed by drugs “sleep,” he said to himself.
"Pardon?” said the voice, beside the bed now. Mr. Wu had hunkered down, but was not about to prostrate himself under the man. Last time I did that, Victor asked me to get a cup so he could spit in it. Yuck!
"Get ... Julia,” said Victor again, as strongly as he could. “And clean ... your ears ... furfucksakes,” he added as Mr. Wu's feet scampered out of the room.
Victor didn't know what time it was. They don't put clocks on floors, he mused. He made a mental note to ask Julia to do exactly that, then changed his mind. What would it matter? he thought. My time is measured in doses, not minutes or hours.
He heard the bedroom door close. Good, he thought; he didn't want his MIU, out in the living room, to pick up their conversation.
"Hi Victor,” said Julia as she maneuvered carefully under the bed—she wasn't used to having a football in her tummy. “How are you feeling?” she asked as she reached up and ran her hands over the exposed areas of his face and scratched the underside of his chin through the long white beard. She knew he always woke up itchy. “Do you need a cup to spit in?"
"I'm ... fine,” said Victor, answering both questions at once. “But I think I may fall asleep again pretty soon, and I have to tell you something, okay?"
"Sure,” said Julia. “What?"
"I did a crime,” he said. “I'll tell you about it, but it's okay ... the next time you're LieDeck-verified I'll be dead anyway, so you can tell them the truth and you won't get in trouble, okay?"
"You did a crime!” asked Julia. She was just nine during the Revolution ... Dad used to call me “Gobbleguts,” she remembered ... so she had never known anyone who did a crime! “How did you not get caught, Victor?” she asked incredulously. There hadn't been any crime ... oh, a little, maybe ... since the Revolution.
"Well,” said Victor with as much of a smile as the contraption allowed, “for a long time I didn't talk, eh? And the WDA left me alone, and then by the time they decided to LieDeck-verify me like they do everybody else, I ... well, I was somebody else."
Julia couldn't make any sense of that, and she was pretty sure it wasn't because of her mental disability, either. Maybe the drugs are making him imagine things, she wondered, or get mixed up.
"You know how some people have diseases of the mind?” he asked.
"Like me?” asked Julia.
"There's nothing wrong with your pretty mind,” said Victor. “You just got a low IQ, that's all, same as I got a high forehead."
Julia laughed. He had explained what he meant by “high forehead” once before, and she'd thought it was perfectly silly, and funny, that some men were embarrassed because they didn't have any hair on their heads, or at least none on the top, like Victor.
"All my not-talking and brooding and hiding from the world all those years,” Victor continued, “gave me one of those diseases of the mind. But I did it on purpose, Julia. I got what's called a split personality, which means that sometimes I get to be this whole other person ... you can look that up on the Net if you want ... it's quite interesting.” His breathing was becoming labored now, and there was a gurgle in his voice. He decided not to try to explain how he had only come to realize this lately, probably as a result of all the medication he was taking. “Split ... personality,” he repeated. He cleared his throat ... or tried to.
"I'll get a cup,” said Julia, as she wiggled awkwardly out from under the bed.
First things first, thought Victor. He was enduringly grateful that it had turned out—as he'd anticipated and predicted—that one's CQ and IQ were largely unrelated. While a few people came by high CQs naturally, a high CQ was mostly a matter of will, practice and support, not biology—and the cup was the first priority, lest he choke to death before he had the occasion to say what he wanted to say. He did his best to hork out the mucus plug that seemed to grow in his throat every time he slept, and Julia arrived with the cup just in time.
"Feel better?” she asked as she slid the cup away and wormed her way back under the bed, to where her face was directly below his.
"Yeah ... thanks,” he said, somewhat winded from the effort.
She watched as he calmed down, and then, just when he was getting back to normal, she noticed that he was holding his breath, and sort of grimacing. She was going to ask if he was all right, but then she realized it wasn't because of the pain. She knew what it was. He'd told her two days ago about how they had arranged for him to pee or poo while he was in his “rotisserie.” They put a condom on his thingie all the time with a hole in it and a tube in the hole that goes over to a bag so he can pee whenever he wants to without moving, she remembered. And they ... she forgot how they handled poo, so she waited ... patiently ... although not for long.
"So ... it was this other guy that you got to be that actually did the crime?” she asked when his “business” was done.
"I didn't say it was a guy,” said Victor teasingly.
"You got to be a girl?” Julia asked excitedly.
"No ... it was another man that I became ... and yes, it was him that did the crime."
"What did he do?” she asked.
"Well,” said Victor, “I ... me ... Victor ... I actually forgot that I still had my original prototype LieDeck, the first one that I ever made, the one I showed your daddy back in twenty fourteen. Everybody thought it got destroyed in that explosion that happened here ... remember when the lodge got blown up and your dad built it all up again in just a few days using hundreds of workers ... just before the Revolution?"
"Oh yeah,” said Julia pensively. “Daddy said he would build it right back the way it was before, and he did it. That was when Annette got shot right near her eye and almost died, eh?"
"Yes,” said Victor. He was getting concerned that this current bout of consciousness wasn't going to last long enough for him to get through what he had to say, but he was in the middle of it now, and he fought against the magnetic pull of stupor.
"This other guy called himself Eyeball,” he said.
"That's weird,” said Julia.
"You gotta tell Mr. Wu to call a guy named Gil Henderson on the Net, and tell him that I was Eyeball, and Eyeball said ‘thank you, friend, and goodbye,'” he said. “Can you remember all that?"
"Duh,” said Julia—she thought it meant “no” when you said that made-up word. She retrieved a pen from her “manly canvas bag” and began writing the essentials on her left forearm. “Gil..."
"Henderson,” said Victor, and then he spelled both names for her, Gil and Henderson, at her pace. This is all taking too long. “Mr. Wu knows who he is."
"Victor ... is ... Eyeball ... and ... Eyeball ... says ... thanks,” she said slowly as she printed the upper case letters on her arm.
"Friend,” said Victor.
"Yes ... I'm glad you had a friend, Victor.” She wrote that word down, although she wasn't sure she had the spelling right ... not that that matters, but...
"And goodbye,” he said.
"And ... good ... bye,” she repeated as she wrote it down.
"My first LieDeck?” said Victor, in the form of a question ... to get Julia back to that. “It's hidden inside the ... left arm of that old chair that's ... always in front of my MIU,” he said.
"You had a LieDeck all that time!?” squealed Julia with delight.
"Well, Eyeball did,” said Victor. “I never even knew I was turning into this Eyeball guy, but he remembered the old LieDeck, and sewed it into the arm of that chair, and unsewed the arm to replace the batteries every eight or ten months, and sewed it back up ... I don't know how many times ... dozens ... and he did all that in the dark, and—"
"Why in the dark?” asked Julia.
"I'm falling asleep, Julia,” said Victor, “and there's one more thing I ... I got to tell you ...
before ... I...” He was silent for a few seconds. “Mr.... Wu ... arranged..."
Julia waited a few seconds, unsure of whether Victor was still among the conscious, or the living. “What?” she asked.
"I'm the ... father of your ... baby,” he said ... or thought he said ... he couldn't be completely sure which.
"What?” said Julia, but it was too late. “Sweet dreams,” she said as she got up on one elbow, kissed his cheek, and lay back down, staring at her inked forearm and crying hot, silent tears.
Chapter 73
THE HOLE
Wednesday, May 11, 2033—8:30 p.m.
Lilly lay motionless in the cramped underground hole, sweating profusely, breathing in the putrid air—the gas mask worked, but only to a point.
Oddly, she found herself wishing for all the world that she could brush the mud out of her hair. Stray thought, she said to herself as she pushed that silliness out of her mind. She knew that stray thoughts were dangerous. Anything could happen in the pitch dark—knock something over, even poke yourself in the eye. She was a trained WDA agent, and knew that she needed all of her faculties aimed solely at the problem at hand. Review all you know ... over and over, she'd been taught. Make as many plans as you can dream up, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each, then choose the best one and act. What do you know about your enemy? Can you anticipate his moves? You must win. The question, the only question, is “how?"
She had done all that many times over. She'd started her reviews even as the WDA helicopters had hovered near the old shack in the early afternoon, lowering their human robots on ropes (she remembered doing that during her training). Neither fighting nor fleeing were options, even with Lars’ weapon in her possession. She had worked on her plans as the incoming WDA agents had screamed at each other, at her and at Lars from the surrounding bush, and fired four shots into the cabin's walls, judging by the sound. And she had kept concentrating on her business while they tried unsuccessfully to send dogs into the shack, undoubtedly with Sniffer-arrays strapped to their heads, Netcasting to agents in the bush. She had swallowed her fear and focused her mind on the longer-term even as she heard the banging of boots and coughing only inches above her face. She didn't find it funny that the capture force swore up a storm at the skunk that had squirted its foul defenses—presumably at Lars and herself as they left. “Or after they left,” one agent had speculated between coughs and curses—curses because they had no gas masks as much as because their quarry had escaped. Lilly had continued her planning as the swarm of WDA agents went outside for air and to settle down their yelping dogs, whose olfactory genius had been thwarted by a dumb-assed forest critter. She'd kept her mind centered on planning and analysis while she listened to the WDA helicopters depart ... hopefully with all the agents and dogs on board. If they left someone behind to set up a perimeter, we're dead, she'd realized.