by Jim Stark
"Well,” said Annette, “I was pretty depressed and distraught at the time, and I was worried like hell about you. I could imagine you racing through the bush by yourself, scared out of your mind, hurting from the broken wrist that Lilly gave you, so I brought her into the bathroom to talk over the possibility of going with you on the run. And she said how truly sorry she was about hurting you, and how she was confident you'd get away, and how she knew you were special to me and all that.
"Well I just stared at her, eh? I thought, ‘You fucking BITCH!’ I mean you said ... you said you wouldn't blab, and I know you didn't. But it was real clear to me that Lilly knew you and me were lovers—otherwise she'd have no reason to think that we were so close, eh? She eavesdropped on us, Lars! Maybe it's no big deal to you—I mean being a Sex-Een and all—but to me it was ... well, it was fucking outrageous! So I continued to stare, hard, to let Lilly figure out the message and maybe even do the right thing ... the Human Three thing.
"Lilly glared back at me, like she was confused by all this hostility on my part, then after a few seconds she says: ‘Oh my God, I'm so sorry, Annette. Please forgive me.’ It was like a light bulb going on, eh? Like she just then realized what she had revealed. And I guess she got suddenly ashamed of the person she'd been. I told her that if we got out of this alive, I'd take a front tooth out of that long face of hers, with pliers. Then she started lecturing me about threatening her with violence, eh? So ... I smacked her good! I mean flat-handed, eh? But like really hard. To her credit, she took it. She didn't even try to hit me back, but..."
And with that, Annette stopped relating the tale. There was silence from under the tarp. She wondered if Lars had fallen asleep or something.
"Well,” he finally said, “I guess she deserved it.” What he didn't say was that perhaps he deserved what he had got too—the broken wrist, the likely death sentence—one way or another.
"Are you saying that as a WDA agent or a Human Three?” asked Annette, who was saving that discussion for later, the one about how he owed his whole Victor-Een family, and her especially, a huge apology.
"Neither,” said Lars, as he used his good hand to pull the tarp off his face and look at Annette in the bright May sunshine. They smiled at each other in the awkward manner that lovers sometimes fall into when much has already been forgiven, and yet the end of the affair is unavoidable. But this wasn't a time for a sentimental retrospective on their ... on our relationship, Lars supposed it was. “You ... got doubts about the plan, right?” he guessed.
Annette sighed quietly, wiped perspiration off her forehead, and adjusted her internal orientation. He was right. There was business to be done. “I say fuck the canoe and fuck waiting for dark,” she said. “What say we run for it now, using this motorboat?"
"I agree,” said Lars. “Just one thing ... I really meant it when I said that I just won't allow myself to be arrested. If they—"
"I know!” said Annette. She wasn't “in love” with Lars, but she'd loved him hard and often with her body—in Sleepery #31, her “boss spot,” in her summer digs at Sleepery #31, in his so-called hunting cabin and in many other places. And she'd loved him not a little with her heart and mind, too. She knew he felt the same, even if he wasn't exactly the immature apprentice plumber with the awful grammar that she thought she had come to know and care about. Yes, he had deceived her, and all of Victor-E ... but his reasons were compelling ... and his former role as a mole had nothing to do with his relationship with her. But while his resolve to blow his brains out rather than be taken alive was quite understandable, Annette worried that it was perhaps based on wonky thinking, messed-up emotions. Yes, Victor's imminent death would mean that Lars was officially a murderer, but he was innocent of the intent, and surely he knew he could forgive himself ... in time. And he was heavily drugged, and in pain; just not in a position to take a rational decision to die ... if anyone ever is!
Annette thought about the winding route that Dora's Creek took. She knew the layout of the estate well from her years as a Patriot agent, and she tried to calculate how many miles of creek there were from Michael's cabin to this and that point along the way, and to the hunting shack. The creek meandered vaguely northwest for several miles before turning west across the first road. “It's about—uh—three miles upstream to the Bristol Line,” she said—that was the road that ran south to Ray's Restaurant on Highway 148. “So ... if there's a perimeter, that's where it'll be. Let's go that far ... or get close to the road ... and we'll rethink things up there."
"Oh ... kay,” drawled Lars—it seemed the pain shot was dulling his speech as well as his senses. He pulled the tarp back over his head, and was mostly glad he could avoid standing up, or moving. His body felt as dense as the lead walls of the tiny box at his feet. Every heartbeat was like a miniature explosion in his right wrist, even with the injection that Dr. Valcourt had given him. He felt his jeans with his good left hand to make sure he still had the plastic bottle of morphine tablets ... and the pistol.
Annette pulled the cord and started up the ten-horsepower fishing motor. She pushed the boat away from the dock and headed for the mouth of Dora's Creek, a stone's throw or two north of Michael's cabin. There had been bigger and faster boats at the lodge, but none was more suited than this one to navigate the narrow creek. There were hovercraft at the lodge too, but they were much louder than the small engine that pushed them along now. In fact, Annette realized that in her choice of this vessel at the lodge, she must have been already contemplating ... subconsciously, I guess ... this possible change of plan.
As the twosome purred their way up the first few hundred yards of the slow-flowing stream, Annette reactivated the skills she'd learned all those years ago as a Patriot agent. Her eyes searched the terrain ahead like radar, looking side to side through the maze of tree-trunks and flowering bushes for the first sign of trouble. Her heart was racing, and she felt certain it was only a matter of time before they were confronted by one or more WDA commandos, or, worse yet, hit by an invisible hail of bullets. Still, her left hand gripped the steering arm tightly as she kept the craft in mid-stream at about one-quarter power—trolling speed. And every now and then, she couldn't help touching her jacket pockets with her free hand to confirm that the three analog videotapes were still there.
She had checked her wristwatch at the mouth of Dora's Creek, and she had estimated their progress at walking speed, strolling speed ... maybe three miles an hour. I'll stop in forty-five minutes, she decided, at 4:35 p.m. Then I'll leave Lars with the boat and scout ahead on foot to the Bristol Line.
Chapter 83
A SON-OF-A-BITCH TO THE END
Saturday, May 14, 2033—3:39 p.m.
Michael's Grandpa Whiteside, Randy's great-grandfather, had built the fallout shelter underneath the Wilson Lake lodge in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It had not only been kept fully operational, it had been upgraded regularly and tested monthly by Patriot Security, ever since. It had six tiny bedrooms, one large bedroom, a kitchen, a walk-in freezer, a storage room, a bathroom and a mini-hospital, where Victor Helliwell now languished. The shelter was stocked with a three-month supply of everything that might be needed—guns, tools, food, water, two big power generators, fuel, medicine, and three MIUs. Now, of course, those MIUs were unplugged as a precaution—so the WDA couldn't find out any more than they already knew.
The last problem Michael had faced before lockdown was explaining to the thirty-two Patriot guards outside the shelter why he and the others still needed to be sheltered now that the deadly lead box had been removed by Lars. How the WDA would react depended on how much they knew, and how frightened or furious they were. There was no way of knowing these things, but the mysterious power outage was a pretty damned good clue, as far as Michael was concerned. Whatever dangers the Patriot agents might face outside the lodge, inviting them in was obviously not possible. Just before locking the heavy steel door, Michael had done the only thing he could do—he told them t
o go to their homes, immediately, and to stand by there.
Randy and Lucky went into a bedroom to talk about their situation—Gil Henderson had agreed to fill them in on what he had learned during the interviews he'd conducted at the cabin and here at the lodge. Others had gravitated to various bedrooms, or stayed in the dining area to whisper and brood. The six smiling monks sat down on the floor in the kitchen, in a neat row, seemingly disinterested in their fates, or by the other difficulties faced by this thrown-together group. A decision had been made to drop the intensity for a while, partly for the benefit of Venice, Julia and the Roy children, partly because there aren't a whole lot of possibilities for action when you're locked in a 1960s-vintage fallout shelter, partly because it seemed that a bit of reflection couldn't hurt, but mostly because the word had come out that “the patient” had very little time left.
Victor Helliwell lay on the Stryker frame bed, attended by his physician, Dr. Valcourt, and by Becky. The only sound to float out of the mini-hospital was the dim beeping of a heart monitor. Michael was in the large bedroom just across from the open door of the medical center, with Lilly, and they could just feel the heaviness. They sat on the hide-a-bed sofa, saying nothing. Michael could see the end of the Stryker frame bed, and a lump of white sheet that covered Victor's feet, toes up—he was lying on his back now, in spite of the pain. Michael tried in vain to not glance so often at the gaping threshold he would soon have to cross.
"Doctor Valcourt has been in there an awfully long time,” he said as he let his head fall onto the back of the sofa. Valcourt was a great doctor—he knew that—but ... well, doctors still seemed to have a ... a way about them. It was as if their job was simply to minister to the sick or dying, without reference to the feelings and needs of the family ... or what passed for family, in this case.
Michael was so glad Lilly was here. Thank God, he thought—felt. They were parked side by side on the sofa, like patients waiting their turn at a dentist's office. His mind was on the problems they faced, but his feelings were on Lilly and Becky, the two women he loved, and Victor, a man for whom feelings were the enemy, or at least a dangerous ally. He stared up at the concrete ceiling, and then he closed his eyes, wishing his heart could block things out as easily as that.
Lilly was just numb. She hated it when other people saw her differently than she saw herself, and it seemed that almost everyone did—the WDA, all the good people at Victor-E, certainly Annette ... maybe even Michael? She felt she was a failure as a Human Two, and she found herself hoping that out of all this confusion would emerge a better Human Three ... if I live! For now, she was with the man she loved ... and he loved her, and he loved his wife Becky, and Becky loved him, among others, and it was all ... too damned much. Things were so much simpler when men and women swore eternal fealty to each other and then tried their best to keep the cheating to a minimum, and a secret. There was a case to be made that reality was too complicated for the human mind ... and yet it was impossible to escape the new realities of the LieDeck Age. As she thought further about these convolutions, she recalled that the crisis had begun with her decision to walk into the bush and fuck Lars blind ... and that was to pay Michael back for not calling her, and for continuing to love, if not screw, his own wife ... a woman I admire and like!
She gave up trying to figure it all out, and did whatever her feelings said ... and never mind Human Two, Three, this, that, or whatever. She remembered her first meeting with Victor, and made a decision. She shifted down on the sofa, put her head on Michael's lap, and draped her legs over the far armrest. She flipped her long dark hair off to the side, where it fell to the tiled floor. If Michael hadn't dropped his head back, her eyes would have gazed up into his, and caressed his pain. “Maybe he's sleeping ... comfortably,” she tried—meaning Victor.
Michael's mind went back to the moment he'd heard Lilly descending the wooden stairs leading down from the main floor of the lodge, just after his son Randy had entered the shelter. Her footfalls seemed so light, so pressed for time and yet hesitant, scared but confident, all this mixed together in one complex person who had become everything to him, everything his wife wasn't ... couldn't be, he shifted the thought sideways. He loved Becky ... in a deep and abiding way, but...
He gave up on figuring out reality too. He put a hand under Lilly's chin, on her neck, and he moved his thumb up and down to let her know that he'd heard, that he appreciated her intentions. “Yeah,” he said softly towards the ceiling. “Maybe. I hope so."
Lilly reached up and touched his prominent jawbone with the back of her hand. She knew as well as anyone the thunderous impact the strange inventor had had on the planet, and she found herself wishing, again, that Helliwell had used the Net more while he was alive. While he was still able, she rephrased her thought, realizing that ... he's still with us. “I ... don't know ... what to say to him,” she admitted, “other than ... what the monks asked."
"Me neither,” said Michael, lifting his head again, shrugging with his brows as their eyes met. “Victor is probably going to be the last important historical figure whose life profile won't be archived in the World Identity Bank, and can't be mined. It's ... a real shame. People will be arguing about him for centuries, millennia. He wasn't..."
With her facial inflection, Lilly asked him to continue ... almost begged him. He had an annoying habit of starting a sentence and then just quitting on it. “He wasn't...?” she repeated.
"I was just thinking that he wasn't ... you know ... that nice a person,” said Michael, mostly out of regret, certainly without malice. “I mean ... he was so..."
Lilly looked away this time. She knew from painful personal experience how difficult Victor could be. There had been times when she'd wanted to pull back an elastic band and flick the hell out of his most sensitive body parts, times when she'd wanted to have nothing more to do with him, ever, in much the same way that he had excommunicated the whole world. “That's the trouble with the man on the mountain,” she sighed.
"What?” asked Michael.
"My dad used to say that to me all the time,” she said. “He had this booming voice ... God I used to love that voice when I was a kid ... and he'd get this really stern look on his mug, and then he would say: ‘That's the trouble with a man sitting on the mountain; everybody looks small to him, and he looks small to everybody.’”
Michael chewed on that for a bit. He wondered if Victor Helliwell ever “saw himself as others saw him.” Not that it matters any more, he thought. The poor bastard never got to know what Human Three Consciousness actually feels like. He ... said he didn't give a damn about that, but ... “I don't think that applies to Victor,” he said.
"Want me to get the LieDeck?” asked Lilly.
"No,” said Michael. Opinions didn't matter much, and even if they passed muster on a LieDeck, you were left with only a Pyrrhic satisfaction of knowing that the opinion, however wild or eccentric, was sincerely held. He wasn't interested in whether he really believed what he'd said about Victor. What mattered now was that the man was dying. This was his moment, his very last moment ... well, the last one he participates in, he said to himself. His legacy will reverberate for...
Michael had been a significant player in only one other death, and that debilitating and defining moment washed over his mind, again. He was only seventeen, and it was the day of his marriage. The guests were milling about the estate in sunny weather, trying to ignore the hubbub at the front gate, when his father had been brutally gunned down by Christian fundamentalists, based on their mad claim that he was somehow to blame for the death of God—this, because he produced and sold the LieDeck. “Assassin of Jesus,” Michael remembered them shouting from the road near the front of the manor. He could still hear the bizarre chant that covered the sound of the shots: “Enemy of God, you will fail, Randall Whiteside belongs in jail.” He remembered peering out from behind a thick shrub, ten yards away, at the backs of a solid blue line of police who were holding the crazed crowd o
f true believers at bay. And he remembered his father standing very close to the commotion, frowning, and no doubt wishing he could give his accusers the finger ... the “digitus impudicus,” he used to call it ... without the TV cameras catching him in the act. He remembered a Patriot agent walking down the line, holding a LieDeck over each policeman's shoulder, pointing it at one protester at a time. That LieDeck had been hot-wired to a battery-powered blow horn, turned up full blast. And that was a sight to behold, and to hear...
"Enemy of God"
"BEEP"
"You will fail"
"BEEP"
"Randall Whiteside belongs in jail"
"BEEP"
Those fuckers didn't even believe their own bullshit, he had been forced to realize ... and the amplified beeping just made them bellow all the more. Michael remembered the astonishment he'd felt as these zealous “Christian soldiers” ranted on, ignoring the loud, incontrovertible proof of their own duplicity. He remembered how he'd laughed at them until tears came—and he remembered seeing his father double over, slump to the ground.
Christ, he thought, Human Twos are so disconnected from reality! He had to remind himself that they did it, those God-addled screamers with their towering fear ... and their dumb anger ... and their guns. But when Mom went into shock, it was me that had to say “okay” to the morphine for Dad, came the aching memory. That was a decision he had regretted ever since. That was the moment his father had lost consciousness ... forever, as it turned out. And now it seems that maybe all those rabid Christians ... or some of them ... were actually WDA!
"I'm glad that Victor...” He swallowed hard, trying to erase the mental image of his mortally wounded father breathing from his mouth, and twitching periodically, unable to clear the gurgle in his lungs, unable to talk, unable to banish the terror in his eyes. “I'm ... glad Victor rejected the morphine,” he finally said.
"Yeah,” said Lilly, knowing now the dark waters where Michael's mind had been swimming—he'd told her the story of his father's death down in Freeport. “I admire that about him, I suppose. I hope he's ... you know ... able to hear us ... and speak ... when we go in there."