The John Varley Reader

by John Varley

  Krzywcz accelerated through a yellow light and up onto an icy freeway. Meers saw a green sign indicating DOWNTOWN. Straight ahead, just above the horizon, was a full moon. Traffic was light, not surprising since the roadway was frozen hard. It didn’t bother the cabbie, and the old Checker was steady as a rock.

  “So you decided to stay out here?” Meers asked.

  “Decided didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. You figure I went on a bender, drove here in a blackout, something like that?” Krzywcz looked over his shoulder at Meers. In a sweep of street-lamp light Meers saw the left side of the driver’s face was black and swollen. His left eye was shut. There was a long, scabbed-over wound on his cheek, a slash that had not been stitched. “Well, suit yourself. Fact is, none of these roads go to New York. And believe me, buddy, I’ve tried ’em all.”

  Meers didn’t know what to make of that statement.

  “What happened to your face?” he asked.

  “This? Had a little run-in with the night cops. A headlight out, would you believe it? I got lucky. One whack upside the head and they let me go. Hell, I’ve had a lot worse. A lot worse.”

  Hadn’t the pilot said something about night cops? They had sent his copilot to the hospital. Something was very wrong here.

  “What do you mean, these roads don’t go to New York? It’s an Interstate highway. They all connect.”

  “You’re trying to make sense,” Krzywcz said. “You’d better learn to stop that.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Meers asked, feeling his frustration rise. “What’s going on?”

  “You mean, are we in the fuckin’ Twilight Zone, or something?” Krzywcz looked at Meers again, then back to the road, shaking his head. “You got me, pal. I think we’re in Denver, all right. Only it’s like Denver is all twisted up, or something.”

  “We’re in hell,” a voice said over the radio.

  “Aw, shut the fuck up, Moskowitz, you stupid kike.”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” the voice of Moskowitz said.

  “It don’t make no damn sense to me,” Krzywcz shouted into his mike. “Look around you. You see any guys with pitchforks? Horns? You seen any burnin’ pits full a . . . full a—”

  “Brimstone?” Meers suggested.

  “There you go. Brimstone.” He gestured with the mike. “Moskowitz, my dispatcher,” he explained to Meers. “You seen any lost souls screamin’?”

  “I’ve heard plenty of screamin’ souls over the radio,” Moskowitz said. “I scream sometimes, myself. And I sure as shit am lost.”

  “Listen to him,” Krzywcz said, with a chuckle. “I gotta listen to this shit every night.”

  “Why do ya think it’s gotta be guys with horns?” Moskowitz went on. “That guy, that Dante, you think everything he said was right?”

  “Moskowitz reads books,” the cabby said over his shoulder.

  “Why do you figure hell has to stay the same? You think they don’t remodel? Look how many people there are today. Where they gonna put ’em? In the new suburbs, that’s where. Hell useta have boats and horse wagons. Now it’s got jet airplanes and cabs.”

  “And night cops, and hospitals, don’t forget that.”

  “Shut your mouth, you dumb hunky!” Moskowitz shouted. “You know I don’t want nobody to talk about that over my radio.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” Krzywcz smirked over his shoulder and shrugged. Hey, what can you do? Meers smiled back weakly.

  “It don’t make sense any other way,” Moskowitz went on. “My life is hell. Your life is hell. Everybody you get in that freakin’ cab is livin’ in hell. We died and gone to hell.”

  Krzywcz was furious again.

  “Died, is it? You remember dyin’? Huh, Moskowitz? You sit in that stinking office livin’ on pizza and 7-Up, nothin’ happens for months in that shithole. You’d think you’d notice a thing like dyin.’ ”

  “Heart attack,” Moskowitz shouted back. “I musta had a heart attack. And I floated outta my body, and they put me here. Right where I was before, only now it’s forever, and now I can’t leave! Either it’s hell, or limbo.”

  “Aw, limbo up a rope. What’s a Jew know about limbo? Or hell?” He switched off the radio, glanced again at Meers. “I think he means purgatory. You wanna know from hell, you ask a Catholic Pollack. We know hell.”

  Meers had finally had enough.

  “I think you’re both crazy,” he said, defiantly.

  “Yeah,” Krzywcz agreed. “We oughta be, we been here long enough.” He studied Meers in his mirror. “But you don’t know, buddy. I could tell soon as you got in my cab. You’re one a those airplane pukes. Round and round ya go, schleppin’ your Gucci suitcases, cost what I make in a month. In and out of airports, off planes, onto planes. Round and round, and you think things are still makin’ sense. You still think tomorrow comes after today and all roads go everywhere. You think that ’cause the sun went down, it’s gonna come up again. You think two plus two is always gonna equal three.”

  “Four,” Meers said.

  “Huh?”

  “Two plus two equals four.”

  “Well, pal, two plus two, sometimes it equals you can’t get there from here. Sometimes two plus two equals a kick in the balls and a nightstick upside the head and a tunnel that don’t go to Manhattan no more. Don’t ask me why ’cause I don’t know. If this is hell, then I guess we was bad, right? But I’m not that bad a guy. I went to mass, I didn’t commit no crimes. But here I am. I got no home but this cab. I eat outta drive-thru’s and I piss in beer bottles. I slipped offa something some-wheres, I fell outta the world where you could go home after your shift. I turned inta one of the night people, like you.”

  Meers was not going to protest that he wasn’t one of the “night people,” whatever they were. He was a little afraid of the mad cabbie. But he couldn’t follow the logic of it, and that made him stubborn.

  “So we’re in a different world, that’s what you’re saying?”

  “Naw, we’re still inna world. We’re right here, we’ve always been here, night people, only nobody don’t notice us, that we’re in a box. The hooker on the stroll, they think she goes home when the sun comes up, with her pimp in the purple Caddy. Only they don’t never go home. The street they’re on, it don’t lead home. That lonely DJ you hear on the radio. The subway motorman, it’s night there alla time. The guy drivin’ the long-haul truck. Janitors. Night watchmen.”

  “All of them?”

  “How do I know all of ’em? I’m gonna drive my cab inna office building, ask the cleaning crew? ‘Hey, you stuck in purgatory, like me?’”

  “Not me.”

  “Yeah, you airplane pukes. Most of us, we know. Oh, some of ’em, they gone bugfuck. Nothin’ left of ’em but eyeballs like gopher holes. But you been here long enough, you stop thinkin’ you’re gonna find that tunnel back home, you know? Except you ‘passengers.’ Like they sez in the program. In . . .”

  “Denial.”

  “In denial. You said it. Look ahead there.”

  Meers looked out the windshield and there it was, just below the yellow moon. The sprawling canopy of the Denver Airport, like some exotic, poison rain-forest caterpillar. He stared at it as the cab eased down an off-ramp.

  “Always a full moon in Denver,” Krzywcz cackled. “Makes it nice for the were-wolves. And all roads lead to the airport, which is bad news for airplane pukes.”

  Meers threw open the cab door and spilled out onto the frozen roadway. He scrambled to his feet, hearing the shouts of the driver. He clambered up an embankment and onto the freeway, where he dodged six lanes of traffic and tumbled down the other side. There were a lot of closed businesses there, warehouses, car lots, and one that was open, a Circle-K market. He ran toward it, certain it would vanish like a mirage, but when he hit the door it was wonderfully prosaic and solid. Inside it was warm. Two clerks, a tall black youth and a teenage white girl, stood behind the counter.

  He paced up and dow
n the abbreviated aisles, hoping he looked like someone who belonged there. When he heard the door security buzzer, he picked up a box of cereal and pretended to study it.

  He saw two police officers walk past the counter. They’ve come for me, he thought.

  But the cops walked toward the back of the store. One opened the beer cooler, while the other took a box and loaded it with donuts.

  Both officers passed within ten feet of him. One had two six-packs of Coors hooked in a black-gloved hand and he cradled a huge black weapon that had a shotgun bore but a fat round magazine like a tommy gun. The other wore two automatic pistols on her belt. She glanced at Meers, and gave him a smile both insolent and sexual. She wore bright red lipstick.

  They strolled past the clerks, who were very busy with other things, things that put their backs to the police officers. They went out the door. There was a moment of silence, then a huge explosion.

  Meers saw a plate glass window shatter. Beyond it, the male cop was firing his shotgun into the store as fast as he could pump it. His partner had a gun in each hand.

  He hit the floor in a snowstorm of corn flakes and shredded toilet paper. Both cops were emptying their weapons, and they had a lot of ammunition. But finally it was over. In the silence, he heard the police laughing, then opening their car doors. He got to his knees and peeked over the ruined display counter.

  The patrol car was backing out. He caught a glimpse of the woman drinking from a beer can as the cruiser pulled out on the road. In a second, a yellow Checker cab pulled into the lot, the battered face of Krzywcz behind the wheel. He saw Meers and motioned frantically.

  Shattered glass and raisin bran crunched under his feet as Meers walked down the aisle. Behind the counter the black man was crouched down near the safe. The girl was lying on her back in a pool of blood, holding her gut and moaning. Meers hesitated, then Krzywcz leaned on the horn. He turned his back on the girl and pushed out through the aluminum door frame, empty now of glass.

  Krzywcz took it slow and careful out of the lot. Parked off to the left was the police car, headlights turned off, facing them. Meers couldn’t breathe, but Krzywcz turned the other way and the police car did not move.

  “They’ll be piggin’ out on beer and sinkers for a while,” the cabbie said.

  “That girl . . . she—”

  “She’ll be all right.” Krzywcz pointed ahead at flashing red lights. In a moment an ambulance rushed by in the other direction. He hunched down in his seat until it had gone by. “Eventually.”

  “What is it with the hospital?” Meers asked. “Moskowitz didn’t even—”

  “Hospitals is where you get hurt,” Krzywcz said. “There’s diseases in hospitals. Your wounds, they get infected. They give you the wrong pills, make you puke your guts up. All kinds of things can go wrong. Then you hear about the ‘experiments. ’ ” He shook his head. “Better to stay out. Them night doctors and night nurses, they ain’t human.”

  Meers asked, but Krzywcz would say no more about “experiments.”

  The cab pulled up to the terminal building and Meers got out. He ran.

  They fired at him, but he kept running. They chased him, but he was pretty sure now they had lost him. He was out on the runways. A fog had moved in; the terminal was no longer visible.

  This was no place for a human being, even on a summer night. He kept moving, avoiding the lumbering, shrieking silver whales that taxied through the darkness. He stopped by a low, poisonous blue strobe light that drove cold icepicks into his eyeballs every time it flashed. He had no idea where he was, no idea where to go.

  “. . . help me . . .”

  It was more whimper than word. It came from just beyond the range of the light.

  “. . . for the love of God . . .”

  Something was crawling toward him. It moved slowly into the light, a human figure pulling itself along with bloody hands. Meers fell back a step.

  “. . . please help me . . .”

  It was Eduardo, from the O’Hare snack bar. His white shirt was a few blood-soaked scraps, black in the alien light. His pants were gone. One of his legs was gone, too. Torn off. Shattered white thighbone protruded.

  Meers became aware of others. Like beasts hovering beyond the range of the campfire, figures were suggested by a blue-steel glint, a patch of pale cheek. They were darkened patches against the black of night. They wore fighter-pilot black visors, black helmets, Terminator sunglasses. Shiny black boots, belts, and jackets creaked like motorcycle cops. Somewhere out there were ranks of black Harleys, he was sure of it. He smelled gun oil and old leather.

  There were other shapes, other beasts. These were black, too, with fangs snarling blue in the night. They strained at their leashes, silently.

  Meers began to back away. If he didn’t make a sudden movement they might not come after him. Perhaps they hadn’t even seen him.

  Soon the shapes were swallowed back into the fog. Not once had he seen a distinct human figure.

  Something brushed against his leg. He did not look down, but kept backing. Dark areas on the ground, seen peripherally, resembled body parts. But they were moving.

  He heard a distant siren, saw flashing red and blue lights. A boxy white ambulance pulled up, a big orange stripe on its side with the words EMERGENCY RESCUE. The rear doors flew open. The light inside was dim and reddish. The angle was wrong for Meers to see very far inside. A black cloud of flies exploded into the air. He could hear them buzzing. A thick, black fluid seeped over the floor and ran over the bumper to pool on the frozen ground, steaming. Meers understood that in white light the stuff would be dark and red.

  From the far side of the ambulance men and women appeared, clad in crisp whites or baggy surgical blues. They all wore gauze masks. The masks, their rubber-gloved hands, and their clothing were all spattered with gore. None of them had horns or carried pitchforks. Their attitude was efficient and workman-like.

  The doctors and nurses lifted Eduardo and tossed him into the open ambulance doors like a sack of laundry. One nurse loomed out of the fog with Eduardo’s leg. The leg was twitching. She tossed it after Eduardo.

  Meers was going backward at a walking pace now. A man in blue surgical scrubs looked in his direction. All the rest did, too. He turned and ran.

  The world began to spin again, and this time it did not stop. He felt himself flying apart, and when he came back together, not everything fit in just the same way it had before. He felt much better. He was smiling.

  He had found the terminal building again. He stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, getting his breathing under control. A big man with a battered face stood leaning against a taxi painted bright yellow with a checkerboard stripe down the side. The man held up a thumb. When Meers stared at him blankly, the cabbie switched to his middle finger and muttered something about “airplane pukes.” Meers brushed snow and ice from his overcoat and ran his hands through his unruly hair. He entered the terminal.

  Inside were Christmas lights, tinsel and holly. It was jammed with a sea of humanity, few of them showing any Christmas spirit.

  He glanced to his left, and there was his luggage, sitting neatly against the wall. Meers hefted his possessions. Someone had put a strip of silver duct tape over the gash in his carry-on.

  Meers was still smiling after three hours in line. The harried ticket agent smiled back at him, and told him there was no chance of reaching his home that night.

  “You won’t get home for Christmas morning,” she said, “but I can get you on a flight to Chicago that’s leaving in a few minutes.”

  “That’ll be fine,” Meers said, smiling. She wrote out the ticket.

  “Happy holidays,” she said.

  “And a Merry Christmas to you,” Meers said.

  They were already announcing his flight. “. . . to Chicago, with stops at Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Topeka, Omaha, Rapid City, Fargo, Duluth, and Des Moines.”

  Christmas, Meers thought. Everyone trying to go somewhere at once.
Pity the poor business traveler caught in the middle of it. Puddle-jumping through most of the medium-sized cities on the Great Plains. It sounded like air-travel hell. But he took heart. Soon he would be home with his family. Home with his sweet wife . . . and his lovely children . . . He was sure he’d think of their names in a moment.

  He shouldered his burdens like Marley’s Ghost shouldered the chains he had forged in life, and shuffled along with the slow crowd toward his boarding gate. He would be home in no time. No time at all.

  INTRODUCTION TO “Good Intentions”

  I’m proud of this story for two reasons. One is that the editor at Playboy told me she never thought she’d buy a Deal-with-the-Devil story. Every editor in the world has rejected a hundred Deal-with-the-Devil stories. Along with Adam-and-Eve stories (the last man and woman on Earth after a war/epidemic/whatever turn out to be named . . . Adam and Eve!), they are universally dreaded.

  Well, I never expected to write a Deal-with-the-Devil story, either, but when you get an idea that feels the least bit original, you have to go with it.

  The other thing I’m proud of is selling it to Playboy. For most freelance writers, a sale to Playboy is a sort of Holy Grail. This doesn’t have a lot to do with whether one loves or hates the magazine itself. The attraction is very simple: I was paid $5,000 for this story. I normally wouldn’t reveal that figure, but I do have a point here. There may be writers out there who would not publish in Playboy for political reasons, but I don’t know any.