Benighted
Page 41
Hugo asks if Seligmann threatened me. I say no.
I don’t believe this tape will be kept.
I tell him my theory, and he hears me out. He doesn’t question me. He just sits quiet, and lets my voice dig itself into the narrow recording tape.
After it’s over, I go home. I go and sit on a bus and look at my fellow passengers, and I watch every stop go by until I get to the one that’s only a street away from my own building.
My key is still in my bag, and they didn’t take that away. I take it out, I fit it in the lock and turn, and I’m back in the hallway, then in the elevator, then in front of my own door. I stand before it a moment, with the sense that something should happen, there should be something else that I’ve missed. Nothing comes to mind, so I open the door and go in.
There’s a layer of dust over everything, and I see with dismay that I left a light on, that I’ve been wasting money and power ever since I left. Everything looks the same. There’s just a slight sense of subsidence, like the cabin of a ship that’s rolled sideways on a heavy wave.
FORTY-THREE
“Are you feeling better?” Hugo asks me.
I sit once again in his chair. “Yes, sir.” I don’t mean to say much. I could go to jail for this.
He looks over the transcript: someone has typed up everything I told him. I wait for him to list my crimes: theft and possession of a firearm, breaking and entering, firing a bullet into an unarmed man.
“You will be pleased to hear,” he says quietly, “that the suspect, Darryl Seligmann, has confessed to the murder of Nate Jensen.”
“He confessed?” What did we do to him? Nate beat him till blood ran from his mouth, and Seligmann did nothing but curse. He sank his teeth into his own wrist to get away from us. What have we done to him?
“Yes.” There’s no expression in Hugo’s voice. “He confessed shortly before he was admitted to the hospital.”
He leaves a pause after saying it, and I know what we did. A silver bullet wound, high up in the thigh. Left untreated, the best he could hope for was to lose the leg. At worst, death by gangrene. In between, a creeping necrosis that would spread down to his feet, up through his stomach and groin, ruining everything in its path. If he didn’t get treatment.
“Is the confession valid?” My voice is as cool and quiet as Hugo’s, and he knows I’ve understood.
“It is. He provided sufficient evidence and detail, all of which checks against the facts. There’s no question of his guilt.”
“I see.” Hugo leaves me sitting in silence for a while, and I stay still, I don’t fidget or look away.
Finally he speaks again. “I’ve been reading your theory again. Your theory that it was Dr. William Parkinson who was responsible for the death of John Marcos.”
He waits for me to speak up. I don’t.
“I have to say, your reasoning outstrips your evidence by a considerable margin, Ms. Galley.” Ms. Galley. He called me by my surname. Something’s going to happen to me.
I don’t answer.
“You may be interested to learn that Dr. Parkinson was—invited to come in for questioning, following your report.”
Invited? Not arrested, invited? “Did he come?”
“Indeed he did.”
“What did he say?” The thought of Parkinson makes me pull my jacket around myself, press my knees together.
Hugo looks at me for a long moment. Then he looks away. “This may be better coming from someone else,” he says.
I’m taken upstairs, into a new office, a larger one with windows on two sides. The carpet is worn, its fabric pressed flat by years of walking, and the boards on the walls are pitted with use; it’s a good office, by our standards, but everything in it still looks flimsy.
William Jones sits at the desk. I’ve met him once before, when I was warned about Seligmann’s escape, when they told me I wasn’t going to be strawed. He still wears the same look he had then, autopilot courtesy, like a man who’s depended on his habits so long he can’t get away from them. His scarred face studies me with a kind of tired compassion, and although I can’t guess what he’s going to say to me, I know, suddenly, that it’s going to be bad.
Hugo glances at him, sits me in front of the desk and seats himself off to one side. There’s a picture of a woman on the desk in a fine wooden frame; it makes the rest of the room look cheaper still.
“How are you, Ms. Galley?” Jones says.
I swallow, lost for words. “All right, thank you.” Ms. Galley, not Miss. People here started using the Ms. when I lost Ann. I guess Jones knows about that.
Jones looks at me. That’s what I notice, that he looks. He doesn’t glance down, or take a deep breath, or rearrange his hands, he doesn’t do any of the things people do to take a pause before delivering upsetting news. He just looks at me, and his face is slightly, distantly sad. “I read your report on William Parkinson,” he says. “You’re to be congratulated on your deductions. If not on your actions.”
“Did you speak to him?” I say. Somehow I feel that nothing I say in this meeting will affect what’s done to me. Whatever they do, my little comments aren’t going to sway it.
“I did, yes. Successfully. All things considered, it’s unfortunate that you acted as you did, without prior consultation. It’s going to take a little management to work things out.”
“What’s going on?” I’ve been guessing for too long, I’m tired of groping in the dark. Jones talks like he knows what’s happened, and more than anything now, I want to know.
“You must understand,” he says, “that the procedures Parkinson has been using—they’re not unheard of.”
“I didn’t suppose he invented them,” I say, not sure what he means.
“No. They’ve been usable for a while now. Though not widely known.” He doesn’t lean on words, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Widely known in the medical community?” He’s telling me the truth.
“No. Ethical objections. They wouldn’t be accepted. It’s known that experiments have been tried at various times, generally at points in history where people were more than usually disposable. Criminals, prisoners of war.” I knew this. He looks tired. There are expressive lines around his forehead and eyes, but they don’t deepen or flex, he doesn’t use them. “That they were successful—well, you know the problems that would create, you said as much on the tape.”
I don’t answer.
“The thing is, Ms. Galley, you were right about William Parkinson. He has been using the technique he offered you. He hasn’t been acting alone, though.”
I look at him. His face is still.
“You have to understand this, Ms. Galley. He wasn’t the only doctor using the method. And he wasn’t doing it unsupervised. People knew about it. Not the medical board, but others. A few highly placed police officials, a few government officials, and a few of us.”
The word us doesn’t register, it’s too tiny a syllable, meaningless.
“It wasn’t our idea to start with, I think, but we haven’t opposed it. We’ve been declining for too many years. Science advances, and medicine improves, and the number of birth defects falls. Cities rise, the population rises. You know yourself how understaffed we are.”
“Understaffed?” It’s a word for a post office, a school.
“We have better weapons, but we aren’t allowed to use them. You know that. Casualty rates are too high among us. We don’t publicize the statistics because morale is bad enough, but I don’t suppose they’ll surprise you. Our retirement age is sixty, like everyone else, but about twenty-five percent of us are already out by then. Injuries, heart attacks, burnout. Death in the line of duty. Higher rates of cancer, stroke, all sorts of stress-related deaths. That’s why we agreed to this program.”
“Program.”
“An increased rate of anmorphic births. Not so dramatic as to be conspicuous, but enough to bolster us. You know yourself how much work one more pair of hands can do. The doctors
are in it for less social reasons, for the most part. Scientific achievement, and the government subsidizes each birth they affect.”
“Parkinson killed Johnny,” I say. It’s the one true thing left to hold on to.
“Yes, he did.” Jones doesn’t look away. “It seems Marcos threatened him with exposure. And you were right about Seligmann. We have a full confession from him; he’s loquacious in his way. Once he gets angry enough. Parkinson did give him the gun to dispose of in exchange for hiding him. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t a man to pass up an opportunity. It seems Seligmann had his own ideas about justice that Parkinson hadn’t foreseen. Unfortunately. He hasn’t been careful, Seligmann. Too many gestures. The program may cease because of this, Ms. Galley. A murder compromises the security too badly. Parkinson himself will not be permitted to continue, that’s for certain. But you should understand, he isn’t going to be arrested either.”
“You knew he was turning babies.” My voice isn’t my own.
“This is going to be handled quietly, Ms. Galley. It will be handled, but it will be handled quietly, and your involvement is at an end.”
“You knew? You did?”
“I knew. The thing is, you’re fairly compromised yourself. Taking a gun from our stores might be a departmental matter, but breaking into a private house and shooting the occupant represents a lot of jail time. We can handle that quietly as well. We don’t even need to publicize that it was you who arrested him, not outside DORLA. But you should realize what will happen to you if you try to cause trouble about this.”
“You knew he was doing this. You let it happen.” A demon kneads its claws in my throat.
Jones doesn’t look down. “If DORLA is to continue, we need help. I haven’t heard any proposals to eliminate anmorphism. This seemed to be the only option.”
My hand rakes the air around my body. “You let him turn children into—this.”
Hugo glances at Jones, and Jones sits back, waits for me to accept it. Hugo half reaches toward me, and I flinch, and he draws his hand back.
“You let him turn children into us.” With the eyes of two men on me, two senior men, the sense that I should hold myself together shakes me, I should find cutting words to say, I should make speeches and scald them, I should call down fires. But I can’t, there’s nothing to hold the pieces together, and everything comes apart. I press my hands to my mouth, trying to hold it steady, but it writhes against my palms and I hear a hoarse, ugly sob tear through me, a second, a third.
They sit and wait, they don’t say anything. I draw in a breath, try to speak, and my voice collapses. With my hands at my face, I stay, hiding myself, for long minutes.
When I speak again, my voice isn’t steady, it’s high and tight like a child’s, but the shame of silence has overcome me. “What would you have done if I hadn’t shot him?”
Jones raises his eyebrows, more in thought than surprise. “If you had arrested Seligmann through the proper channels? Much the same as we’re doing now, except we would have had to find some other means of persuading you to cooperate. Parkinson has to be protected. Or at least, what he represents does.” He looks at me. “You mustn’t shoot anyone else, Ms. Galley. Not in daylight. We can’t have it. I wouldn’t advise it, anyway. You put yourself at a bad disadvantage. You’ve been handling the Seligmann case from the beginning; I would have thought you’d had a chance to see the pitfalls of making such gestures.”
I should have learned from Seligmann not to make gestures. That’s what he says. I made a gesture the way Seligmann did.
“Seligmann will be tried in our courts, and he’ll be convicted for both murders. Both men died by the same gun, forensics are in our favor, and we have only his word that Parkinson ever handled it. He won’t testify himself, of course. Parkinson will be handled, but not in any way you’ll be told about, Ms. Galley. Which only leaves us with you.” My hands are still pressed to my face. It’s graceless, stupid, but I’ll not lower my hands for him.
“I know you’re disenchanted, Ms. Galley. I’m sorry.” His voice is more weary than anything else. His hair is gray, but his brows are still dark and straight, and they don’t move. “You do understand that you will face charges if you try to overturn our processes. And since it was a lyco citizen you shot, you’ll face them in a mainstream court. I’m sure you appreciate your chances. We won’t intervene.” I look at Hugo, who sits, staring into his lap, as if there were a weight at the back of his head. “We don’t want to be unnecessarily harsh. John Marcos was a friend of yours, I know.” I don’t answer. “I’m sure you’re concerned about his family. We’ve managed to secure a widow’s pension for his wife.” I look up. It’s paltry compensation for a murdered man, but still an uncommon award, around here. But still paltry. “And we do appreciate your work. You put a lot of effort into this case. We’re prepared to requite it. Seligmann will be tried quickly, and nothing can be done until he’s safely finished with, but after that, we’re granting you a pay raise.” He names a sum, a higher one than I would have guessed. I can’t even react. “This is nonnegotiable. We were considering a simple bonus, but this is less conspicuous. We’ll give you a couple of easy cases, which you no doubt will handle as well as you usually did before all this trouble started, and the raise will be attributed to them.”
“You’re bribing me?” I say it with sheer disbelief. At this moment, it feels like the maddest thing I ever heard.
“If you like,” Jones says without a flicker. “We’re giving you some reasons to keep what you know to yourself.”
“What will happen to Parkinson?”
“He’ll be dealt with.”
“How, how is he going to be dealt with?”
“That,” Jones says with slow, gentle emphasis, “is not something you will be told. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry.”
“This is as far as it goes, Ms. Galley. Marcos’s widow will be taken care of, Jensen’s murderer will be punished, and the process Parkinson was involved in will be, at the least, called into question. If you accept that, we’ll look after you. If you don’t, you will go to prison.” I look at his worn face, his extinguished eyes. “It’s the most that can be done. This isn’t our world,” he says. “Let it go.”
FORTY-FOUR
Nobody stops me when I leave the building. I walk, I don’t look up at street signs or study the faces of people I pass. I walk with a dull, swift stride that carries me along, the streets flowing past me at such a steady speed that it seems they’d keep flowing if I stopped walking. I walk all the way to the church and go in, but I don’t know which saint to talk to.
There’s a graveyard surrounding the church, a little one, where the headstones tell the dates of birth but not the conditions, and we all lie buried together.
A beam of winter sunlight stands before me, slanting in golden from outside. My hands glow under it, radiant.
The dead lie around me. The maggots are stealing away the last of their flesh.
The stickiness of birth. The jelly and whey where the soft-boned baby nestles. It must have got all over his hands.
If I tried to turn my baby within me, I’d have broken her limbs. She would have twisted and shrunk into a stone inside me, she would never have got out. We would have sunk together. How many women were pulled under the surface, all those centuries, by their dying, fractured babies?
It must have taken a lot of murders to get it right.
There will be injections now. Clean needles, scrubbed fingers. Tainting the water inside women like cooks seasoning a broth. Choking the baby in its unresisting mother for a few, measured seconds. Just long enough for a little part of its soft white brain to die.
I wonder how many adults there are in wheelchairs, in nursing homes, from days when the doctors got the timing a little wrong. What if there were only a few, only five, only ten? If they could meet, what would they say to each other?
Sunlight lies warm in my lap. It won’t be long till spring.
I think about murder, about falling victim to it and about committing it. For a while I wonder whether Parkinson deserves to live. I remember the bruise on my hand when the gun kicked back and slammed a bullet into Darryl Seligmann, and the way he curled around his wounded leg like a child.
Mostly, I think about getting away with things.
Back in my apartment, the tiny rooms gape around me, full of empty space. I stare ahead of me, watching the daylight fade on the walls. Despite the sounds from the other units, above, below, around me, silence fills the place from floor to ceiling.
I sit alone on the sofa, as if I was the only person in the world. Stupidly, I wish for Paul. I’m tired and I’d like someone to lean against, but that’s gone. Probably I’ll never see him again. Perhaps this is it, I think, perhaps this is the rest of my life. Knowledge I can do nothing with, my tongue stilled with a little money and my freedom, which I can use to sit alone in quiet rooms.
The people who know about Parkinson would probably all fit into my living room. I could serve them drinks. Or he could, because he knows them all, he’s safe. There’s nobody outside his charmed circle except me who knows what he’s done. The fortunate ones can be trusted because they’re part of him, they’ll stay together, and I can be relied on, or can be disposed of.