Reprisal ac-5

by F. Paul Wilson

  "I think you're right. But if I get another notice like this from North Carolina, I'm out of here. I'm southbound."

  Nick nodded slowly and sipped his beer, a faraway look in his eyes. Yeah, this rocket scientist knew more than he let on. Definitely.

  Nick Quinn's mind raced ahead of him as he left Leon's and hurried back to Morningside Heights. He didn't know if he should be worried or not. If that telephone incident in North Carolina was connected to Father Ryan, it could mean real trouble for the priest. If only he had some idea where Father Bill was. But he didn't even know if he was still in the country. He could be in Mexico or Staten Island, or anywhere in between.

  It made no difference, really. Nick knew how to get in touch with him. And he also knew that Father Bill was no killer, no matter what Detective Augustino or the NYPD or the FBI thought. The man had practically raised him. He couldn't be a killer.

  As soon as he got back to his office, he locked the door and sat at his desk. He turned on his Macintosh and dialed into the DataNet network. When he'd accessed the bulletin board, he left a brief message for the priest.

  TO IGNATIUS:

  YOUR AUGUST OPPONENT GOT WORD OF AN ABERRANT RING-

  A-DING IN DUKE COUNTRY. THAT YOU, IGGY? HE'S STAYING

  put for now, but you be extra careful. hope you're well. please stay so.

  el comedo

  Nick leaned back and sighed. Even after five years he still felt the loss of a dear friend.

  Please be careful, Father Bill—wherever you are.

  THE BOY at one year

  November 29, 1969

  He'd stopped sleeping.

  It had frightened Carol at first, but she was getting used to it now. Somewhere in his tenth month he'd begun to stay up all night reading. He'd been reading books and newspapers ever since he could manipulate the pages. He would give her lists of books to buy or take from the library in Dardanelle. An omnivore of information, the child read voraciously, almost continuously. And when he didn't have his nose in a book, he'd settle himself in front of the TV.

  Carol stood in the doorway now and watched Jimmy, clad in his Bullwinkle pajamas, as he sat before the TV. Legs folded beneath him, he rested on his heels, his feet pigeon-toed inward, crossing under his buttocks. His dark eyes were alive with interest, a small smile played along his lips. But he wasn't watching Romper Room or cartoons. He was watching a story about Viet Nam on the ten o'clock network news.

  "All that fear and destruction and death over there," he said with shocking clarity in his toddler's voice. "And all the rage and strife here at home. All over a worthless, tiny clump of dirt on the other side of the world." He turned his head and smiled at Carol. "Isn't it wonderful!"

  "No," Carol said, stepping forward. "It's awful. And I don't want you watching it."

  She turned the set off and lifted him under the arms.

  "How dare you!" he cried. "Put that TV on! Put me down!"

  She held his tiny body away from her, out of reach of his flailing arms and kicking legs.

  "Sorry, Jimmy! You may not be like any other baby in the world, but I'm still your mother. And I say it's past your bedtime."

  She placed him in his crib, closed the door to the nursery, and tried to block out his screams of rage as she walked back to her bedroom. He was still too small, his arms too weak to pull himself over the crib railing. Thank God for small favors.

  She sat on the bed and tried for the thousandth time to sort out her feelings for her son. Despite everything there was love—at least on her part. He was Jim's child, and carrying him within her for nine months had forged a bond that would not break, no matter how bizarre his mental abilities and his behavior. And yet there was fear too. Not fear for herself, but fear of the unknown. Who was Jimmy? Carol wanted desperately to be a parent to him, but that had proven impossible. He seemed like a fully developed adult in a toddler's body. He'd been born with an encyclopedic knowledge of the world and its history and he was ravenous for more.

  Suddenly the screams from the nursery stopped. Carol stepped out into the hallway in time to see the tall, lean figure of Jonah Stevens leading Jimmy toward the den.

  "Jonah!" she said. "I want him in bed. He needs his rest."

  Here was another skirmish in what had become a constant battle between mother and grandfather: Whatever Carol denied Jimmy, Jonah would give him. He almost worshiped the child.

  Jonah smiled condescendingly. "No, Carol. He needs to learn all he can about the world. After all, it's going to be his someday."

  Jimmy barely glanced up as he toddled past her to the den. Carol leaned against the wall and fought the tears as she heard the news begin to blare anew from the TV screen.

  OCTOBER

  FIVE

  North Carolina

  "What a wonderful piece of filmmaking!" Rafe said as they left the auditorium.

  Lisl smiled at him. "I can't believe you've never seen Metropolis before."

  "Never. Those sets! How much have I missed by ignoring silent films? I've always avoided them—all those histrionics. But that's going to change. Next stop: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligaril"

  Lisl laughed. She'd been seeing a lot of Rafe since Cal Rogers's party. She felt comfortable with him. More than that, she felt confident with him. Never a dull moment, never a lag in the conversation. Always something to talk about—some new idea, some new theory about anything that struck his fancy. His mind was a voracious, restlessly foraging omnivore, always on the prowl for new game, new fields in which to graze. She'd come to see their pretzel conversation that night at Cal's as a paradigm of so many of their conversations over the past few weeks. Rafe found significance in every little action of an individual. "The increments of personality," he called them. He said he planned to devote his career as a psychologist to tallying, quantifying, grouping, and analyzing those increments. His doctoral thesis would be his first step along that path.

  As the weeks passed, they'd progressed from lunches to dinners to long walks in the parks to tonight's special screening. Rafe hadn't put a move on her yet and she wasn't exactly pleased about that. Not that she wanted a physical relationship with him, and she was sure the thought had never crossed his mind. She was too old and frumpy to appeal to someone like him. But it would do wonders for her ego to politely turn him down.

  But would she turn him down? Could she?

  Lisl caught herself. Sexual feelings for Rafe? Preposterous. Dreaming of a sexual relationship with him? Impossible.

  First off, he was too young. Ten years was simply too much of a gap in time and experience and maturity…

  But he was mature. Rafael Losmara was not the typical graduate student, not someone who had passed through the college experience yet was still in a state of becoming. Rafe seemed to be complete. God, there were times when he seemed so much older than she, when she felt like a child learning at his feet. He seemed to see everything so clearly. He had this ability to cut through all the layers of pretense and get to the core of whatever matter was at hand.

  But even if she could forget the years between them and acknowledge that he was mature enough for a serious relationship, Lisl still had to ask herself a very basic question: Why?

  Why should someone as wealthy, bright, talented, and good-looking as Rafe Losmara, who could cut a sexual swath through the female graduate students and the hordes of nubile undergraduates as well, want to get involved with an older woman? A dumpy divorcee, no less.

  Good question. One not easily answered, because Rafe wasn't chasing other students, graduate or undergraduate. As far as Lisl knew, she was the only woman in his life at the moment. The thought had crossed her mind that he might be gay. But he didn't seem interested in men, either.

  Recently she had noticed little touches, sidelong glances that seemed to hint at something bubbling beneath his cool exterior. Or was she reading too much into them, looking for something she hoped might be there?

  He was a lot like Will. Maybe they were both asexua
l. Why not? And what did it matter? They had a nice platonic relationship, one that brightened many a day for her. Very much like the one she shared with Will. She decided to be satisfied with that, because it was unrealistic to the point of delusion to think it could be anything more.

  Rafe took her hand and squeezed it. A tingle ran up her arm.

  "Thank you, Lisl. Thanks for suggesting this."

  "Don't thank me. Thank Will."

  "Will?" Rafe's brow furrowed. "Oh, yes. That intellectual groundskeeper you told me about. Thank him for me."

  "If he's here, you can thank him yourself."

  "I'd love to meet him. He sounds interesting."

  Lisl searched the small crowd of attendees and immediately spotted Everett Sanders's reed-thin figure passing nearby. She waved him over and introduced him to Rafe.

  "An impressive film, don't you think?" Rafe said.

  "Extraordinary."

  Lisl said, "We're going over to the Hidey-hole for a drink. Want to come along?"

  Ev shook his head. "No. I have some work to do. And speaking of work, I understand you intend to submit a paper for the Palo Alto conference."

  "I thought I'd give it a shot," she said, suddenly uncomfortable. Even though she had every right in the world to submit a paper, she felt as if she were crashing his party.

  "I'm sure it will be brilliant," he said. "Good luck."

  "Sure you won't have that drink with us?" Rafe said.

  "Positive. I must be off. Good night."

  "A bit stiff, don't you think?" Rafe said as they watched Ev stride away.

  "Maybe that's why I like him," Lisl said. "When he's around I feel like a swinger."

  She resumed her search for Will but he wasn't anywhere to be seen.

  Strange. He'd seemed so enthusiastic about the university film society's acquisition of a fully restored print of the Fritz Lang classic, telling her all about the recently discovered dream-sequence footage. Yet this afternoon he'd said he was going to try to make it. There had been a hint of melancholy in his voice, as if he knew there was no chance of his being there. Too bad. He'd have loved it. Lisl had once seen a shorter version on TV and hadn't been too impressed. But tonight, in a theater, in the dark with a full-size screen, the scope of the images had been mesmerizing.

  To Rafe it had been some sort of epiphany.

  "You know," he said, raising his voice as they walked out into the night, "I wonder if adding sound to films really improved them."

  "It forced the acting to improve, that's for sure."

  "True. All that mugging and those exaggerated gestures were no longer necessary. But not having sound forces the filmmaker to use the visual medium to the max. It's all he has. He can't tell you things, so he's got to show you. My new theory of film criticism:

  If you can close your eyes and still follow the story line, maybe they should have saved the celluloid for some other feature and performed the script on the radio. If you can plug your ears and follow the story with your eyes only, there's a damn good chance you've got a good movie on your hands."

  The couple walking ahead of them obviously had been listening, for the man turned around and challenged Rafe's theory with the titles of a number of Academy Award winners. Lisl recognized him from the sociology department. A few more of the filmgoers chimed in and within minutes Lisl found herself in the heart of a friendly but vigorous debate moving across the east campus. The whole group gravitated to the Hidey-hole where they commandeered one of the big tables and went through round after round of drinks discussing Rafe's theory and Metropolis itself.

  "Visually stunning, yes," said Victor Pelham from the sociology department. "But the class-war politics are positively archaic."

  "And a rip-off of H. G. Wells," said a doctoral candidate from English. "The idle rich frolicking above and the oppressed workers toiling below—it's the Eloi and the Morlocks from The Time Machine."

  Pelham said, "I don't care who he ripped off—a socialist like Wells or Marx himself—that class-war bullshit has been passe for ages. A shame, too. It hobbles the film."

  "Maybe it's not as passe as you think," Rafe said.

  "Right!" Pelham laughed. "Will the real Overman please stand up."

  "I'm not talking about anything so crass as Overmen and Undermen," Rafe said softly. "I'm talking about Primes and non-primes—or, for the sake of simplicity and clarity, Creators and Consumers."

  The table fell silent.

  "That's where the real division lies," Rafe continued. "There are those who innovate, invent, modify, and elaborate. And there are others who contribute nothing, yet enjoy all the benefits of those innovations/inventions, modifications, and elaborations."

  "Sounds like another variation on the Eloi and Morlocks," someone said. "Creators on top, consumers below."

  "Not so," said Rafe. "That implies that the Consumer masses are slaves to the Creator overlords, but it doesn't work that way. The Creators are in fact the slaves of the masses, providing them with all the benefits of art and modern science. The Wellsian cliche of the Eloi elite owing their comfortable life-style to the labor of the Morlock masses is backward. The Consumer masses owe their health, their full bellies, and the comforts of civilization to the efforts of the small percentage of Creators among them."

  "I'm confused," someone said.

  Rafe smiled. "It's not a simple concept. Nor is it a clear-cut division. The dividing line is nothing so obvious as economic status. Creators have often reaped fame and profits from their work, but throughout history there have been countless Creators who've lived out their entire lives in obscurity and abject poverty. Look at Poe, at Van Gogh; think of the mathematicians and physicists whose work Einstein studied in laying the groundwork mat led to his theory of relativity. What are their names?"

  No one answered. Lisl glanced around the table. All eyes were fixed on Rafe, everyone mesmerized by his voice.

  "And far too many of the wealthiest among us are nothing more than overfed Consumers. Those who have merely inherited their wealth are the most obvious examples. But there are others who've supposedly 'earned' it who are just as useless. Take the Wall Street types—the stockbrokers and arbitrageurs: They spend their lives buying and selling interests in currencies or in concerns that actually produce things, they pocket their commissions, they cash in on the spread, but they produce nothing themselves. Nothing at all."

  "Nothing but money!" Pelham said, evoking a few muted laughs.

  "Exactly!" Rafe said. "Nothing but money. A whole life of six, seven, eight decades, and what besides a big bank account have they left behind? After their assets are gobbled up by their greedy little Consumer heirs, what mark have they left in their wake? What evidence is there to indicate that they ever passed this way?"

  "Not much, I fear," said a middle-aged woman with red hair. Lisl recognized her as being from the philosophy department but couldn't remember her name. "If I may quote Camus: 'I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: He fornicated and read the papers.'"

  "And if I may paraphrase Priscilla Mullin," said Rafe. "Speak for yourself, Albert."

  Amid the laughter, Pelham said, "Are you serious, or are you just trying to rattle the cage as you did with your sound-as-a-detriment-to-filmmaking theory?"

  "I'm quite serious about both."

  Pelham stared at him, as if waiting for Rafe to smile and laugh it all off as a joke. Lisl had a feeling he might have a long wait.

  "Okay," Pelham said finally. "If all this is true, why haven't these Creators taken over the world?"

  "Because they don't know who they are. And because too many of them have learned over the years not to reveal themselves."

  "Why on earth not?" Lisl said.

  Rafe's eyes poured into hers.

  "Because they've already been crippled or damaged by the masses of Consumers who try to destroy any trace of greatness in others, who do anything they can to douse the faintest s
park of originality, no matter where they find it. Even in their own children."

  Lisl felt as if a bell were chiming in a remote corner of her past, toning in resonance to Rafe's words. It made her uncomfortable.

  "I've consumed too many drinks to create a cogent rebuttal," said someone at the far end of the table. He turned to his date. "Want to dance?"

  They headed for the postage-stamp dance floor and began to sway to a slow tune on the jukebox. A few others followed; those who didn't said good night and departed.

  And left Lisl and Rafe alone at the table.

  Lisl glanced around the dimly lit tavern, at its college memorabilia -strewn walls, at the dancers on the floor. When she turned back to Rafe she found him staring at her over the rim of his glass. His eyes glistened in the neon light. The scrutiny made her uncomfortable.

  "Care to dance?"

  Lisl hesitated an instant. She never had been much of a dancer—always had thought of herself as clumsy—and had never had many opportunities to learn. But the two and a half glasses of wine in her system had lulled her inhibitions and she was too surprised to say no.

  "I, uh… sure."

  He led her from the table, took her in his arms, pressed himself against her, and led her expertly around the tiny floor. They moved as one. Light presses and pulls from his left hand on her right or from his right hand against the small of her back told her precisely which way to move. For the first time in her life she felt graceful.

  "Where did you learn to dance like this?" she asked. "I thought it was a lost art."

  He shrugged. "My folks made me take ballroom dancing when I was a kid. I found it came easily. I was the best in the class."

  "How did you do in your modesty lessons?"

  He laughed. "Flunked every time."

  As she became used to the sensation of gliding around the floor, she became aware of another: Rafe's body against hers.

  Deep within her, old emotions stirred. At first she wasn't sure what she was feeling. So long since she'd felt much of anything. After the number Brian had done on her in the final days of their marriage, and the nastiness of the divorce, she had simply turned off. She'd wanted nothing to do with another man, and women didn't interest her that way in the least, so she'd gone into a sort of sexual coma.