Library of the Dead

by Glenn Cooper

  He nodded. It must be done.

  Ubertus stood beside the bed, looking down on this catastrophe. His hugely muscled arms hung weakly at his side. "I beseech you, Lord!" he cried out, but no one was sure whether he was praying for his wife or his son.

  The midwife began her traction. It was apparent by the strain on her face that she was exerting great effort. Santesa muttered something unintelligible but she was beyond pain.

  The midwife loosened her grip and withdrew her hands to wipe them dry on her smock and catch her breath. She regripped the legs and began again.

  This time there was movement. It emerged slowly. Knees, thighs, a penis, buttocks. Then suddenly it was free. The birth canal yielded to the large head, and the boy was wholly in the hands of the midwife.

  It was a large baby, well-proportioned, but clay-blue and lifeless. As every man, woman, and child in the room watched in awe, the placenta squirted out and thudded onto the ground. With that, the baby's chest spasmed and it inhaled. Then another breath. And within moments the blue boy was pink and squealing like a piglet.

  At the moment life came to the boy, death came to his mother. She took her last breath and her body went still.

  Ubertus roared in grief and grabbed the infant from the midwife.

  "This is not my son!" he screamed. "It is the Devil's!"

  He moved fast, dragging the placenta along the dirt floor, using his shoulders to force his way through the crowd and out the door. Josephus was too stunned to react. He sputtered but no words came out of his mouth.

  Ubertus stood in the road holding his son in his stonehard hands and he wailed like an animal. Then, as torch-bearing villagers looked on, he grabbed the umbilical cord and swung the baby high over his head as if he were wielding a sling.

  He brought the small body crashing down hard onto the earth.

  "One!" he shouted.

  He swung it over his head and smashed it down again.

  "Two!"

  And over and over: "Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven!"

  Then he dropped the bloody broken carcass onto the lane and numbly shuffled back into the cottage.

  "It is done. I have killed it."

  He couldn't fathom why no one was paying him any mind.

  Instead, all eyes were on the midwife, who was hunched over the lifeless Santesa, frantically groping between her legs.

  There was a shock of ginger hair showing.

  Then a forehead.

  And a nose.

  Josephus watched in amazement, scarcely believing his eyes. Another child was springing from a lifeless womb.

  "Mirabile dictu!" he muttered.

  The midwife grimaced and pulled the chin free, then a shoulder and a long thin body. It was another boy, and without any prodding it instantly began breathing, strong, clear breaths.

  "A miracle!" a man said, and this was repeated by everyone.

  Ubertus stumbled forward and glassily took in the spectacle.

  "This is my eighth son!" he cried. "Oh, Santesa, you made twins!" He warily touched its cheek as one might touch a boiling pot.

  The infant squirmed in the hands of the midwife but did not cry.

  Nine months earlier, when Ubertus had finished planting his seed, his spray had shot through Santesa's womb. That month, she had produced not one but two eggs.

  The second egg fertilized became the baby who now lay shattered on a cart path.

  The first egg fertilized, the seventh son, became the ginger-haired boy who now held every soul in the room spellbound.

  MARCH 19, 2009

  LAS VEGAS

  A s an only child growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts, Mark Shackleton was rarely frustrated. His doting middle-class parents satisfied every whim and he grew up with only a passing relationship with the word no. Nor was his inner life disturbed by feelings of frustration, since his quick, analytical mind sliced through problems with an efficiency that made learning nearly effortless.

  Dennis Shackleton, an aerospace engineer at Raytheon, was proud that he'd passed on math genes to his son. At Mark's fifth birthday party, a family affair in their tidy split-level, Dennis produced a clean sheet of tracing paper and announced, "Pythagorean Theorem!" The skinny boy grabbed a fat crayon and felt the eyes of his grandparents, aunts, and uncles follow him as he approached the dining room table, drew a big triangle and underneath it wrote: a ^ 2 + b ^ 2 = c ^ 2. "Good!" his father exclaimed, pushing his heavy black glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Now what's this?" he asked, jabbing a finger at the long leg of the triangle. The grandfathers chuckled as the boy screwed up his face for a moment then exploded with: "The hippopotamus!"

  Mark's earliest frustrations came as a teenager when he became aware that his body had not developed as robustly as his mind. He felt superior-no, he was superior-to the jocks and the goofballs who populated his high school, but the girls couldn't see beyond skinny legs and a pigeon chest to the inner Mark, a soaring intellect, scintillating conversationalist, and budding writer who constructed elaborate science fiction stories about alien races conquering their adversaries with superior intelligence rather than brute strength. If only the cute girls with pillowy chests would talk to him instead of giggling when he gangled through the halls or eagerly pumped his hand into the air from the front row of class.

  The first time a girl said no to him, he vowed it would be the last. In his sophomore year, when he finally mustered the courage to ask Nancy Kislik to a movie, she looked at him strangely and coldly said, "No," so he shut down that part of himself for years. He threw himself into the parallel universe of Math Club and Computer Club, where he was coolest of the uncool, first among equals. Numbers never said no to him. Or lines of software code. Not until well after grad school at MIT, when he was a young employee at a database security company, flush with stock options and a convertible, and dated a plain Jane systems analyst, did he mercifully score for the first time.

  Now, Mark paced nervously in his kitchen, kinetically transforming himself into his alter ego and nom de plume, Peter Benedict, man about town, gambler extraordinaire, Hollywood screenwriter. An entirely different sort of man than Mark Shackleton, government employee, computer geek. He took a few deep breaths and knocked back the last of his lukewarm coffee. Today's the day, today's the day, today's the day. He psyched himself up, praying almost, until his reverie was halted by the hated reflection in the glass of the deck sliders. Mark, Peter, it didn't make a difference. He was slight, balding, and bony-nosed. He tried to shake it but an unpleasant word crept in: pathetic.

  He had begun work on his screenplay, Counters, shortly after his meeting at ATI. The thought of Bernie Schwartz and his African masks made him queasy but the man had virtually commissioned a script about card counters, hadn't he? The ATI experience had been gut-wrenching. He loved his rejected script with the kind of affection lavished on a firstborn but had a new plan now: he'd sell the second script then use it as leverage to resurrect the old one. He swore he would never let it die on the vine.

  So he threw himself into the project. Every evening when he got home from work and every weekend he pecked out the action sequences and the lines of dialogue, and in three months it was done-and he thought it was more than good, that it was maybe even great.

  As he conceived it, the film would be first and foremost a vehicle for major stars who, he imagined, would approach him on the set-the Constellation?-and tell him how much they loved the lines he had put on their lips. The story had it all: intrigue, drama, sex appeal, all set in the high-stakes world of casino gambling and cheating. ATI would sell it for millions and he would trade his life in an underground lab in the middle of the desert, with his life savings of about 130 grand, for the glittering world of a screenwriter, living in a grand house high in the Hollywood Hills, taking calls from directors, attending premiers, klieg lights sweeping the horizon. He wasn't fifty yet. He still had a future.

  But first Bernie Schwartz had to say yes. Even the simple act of calling the man
was complicated. Mark left for work too early and returned too late to connect with Bernie's office from home. Outside calls from work were impossible. When you worked deep underground in a bunker, there was no concept of popping outside to make a call on a cell phone, even if mobiles were permitted, which they weren't. That meant he literally had to take sick days to remain in Las Vegas to phone L.A. Too many more absences and his superiors were bound to ask questions and force him to get evaluated by the medical department.

  He dialed the phone and waited till he heard the chant, "ATI, how may I direct your call?"

  "Bernard Schwartz, please."

  "One moment, please."

  For the past couple of weeks the music on hold had been a Bach harpsichord work, soothing in a mathematical sort of way. Mark saw the musical patterns in his head and it helped relieve the stress of calling this loathsome but essential little man.

  The music stopped. "This is Roz."

  "Hi, Roz, this is Peter Benedict. Is Mr. Schwartz there?"

  A pregnant pause, then, frostily, "Hello, Peter, no, he's away from his desk."

  Frustration. "I've called seven times, Roz!"

  "I'm aware of that, Peter. I've talked to you seven times."

  "Do you know if he's read my script yet?"

  "I'm not sure if he's gotten to it."

  "You said you were going to check when I called last week."

  "As of last week he hadn't."

  "Do you think he'll read it this week?" he pleaded.

  There was silence on the line. He thought he could hear the rapid-fire clicking of a ballpoint pen. Finally, "Look, Peter, you're a nice guy. I'm not supposed to say this, but we got the coverage of Counters from our readers and it wasn't good. It's a waste of your time to keep calling here. Mr. Schwartz is a very busy man and he's not going to represent this project."

  Mark gulped and squeezed the phone so hard it hurt his hand.

  "Peter?"

  His throat was tight and it burned. "Thank you, Roz. I'm sorry I bothered you."

  He hung up and let his knees buckle him onto the nearest chair.

  It started as a tear from his left eye, then his right. As he wiped away the moisture, the pressure rose from below his diaphragm reached his chest and escaped his larynx as a single low rumbling sob. Then another and another until his shoulders were heaving and he was crying uncontrollably. Like a child, like a baby. No. No.

  The desert sky turned coronation purple as Mark numbly walked into the Constellation, his right hand curled around a wad of cash in his pants. He plowed through the crowded lobby with a tunnel vision that blurred the periphery and set a clear path toward the Grand Astro Casino. As he crossed the threshold he hardly noticed the din of voices, the clanging and goofy musical tones of the slots and video poker machines. Instead, he heard blood throbbing in his ears, like a pulsing, heavy surf. Uncharacteristically, he paid no attention to the points of light on the planetary dome, with Taurus, Perseus, and Auriga directly overhead. He bore left through the valley of the slots and passed beneath Orion and Gemini on his way to Ursus Major, the Great Bear, where the high-stakes blackjack room beckoned.

  There were a half-dozen $5,000 tables to choose from, and he picked the one where Marty, one of his favorite dealers, was working. Marty was a New Jersey transplant, his wavy brown hair pulled back into a neat little ponytail. Marty's eyes lit up when he saw him approaching. "Hey, Mr. Benedict! I got a nice chair for you!" Mark sat down and mumbled hello to the four other players, all men, all deadly serious. He pulled out his wad and traded it for $8,500 in chips. The stake was the largest Marty had ever seen from him. "Okay!" he said loudly, catching the ear of the pit boss nearby. "I hope you do real well tonight, Mr. B."

  Mark stacked his chips and stared at them stupidly, his mind gummy. He bet the $500 minimum and played automatically for a few minutes, breaking even until Marty reshuffled and started a fresh deal. Then his head cleared as if he'd taken a whiff of smelling salts and he began to hear numbers pinging in his head like an audible beacon in the fog.

  Plus three, minus two, plus one, plus four.

  The count was calling out to him, and hypnotically he allowed himself for once to link the count to his bets. For the next hour he ebbed and flowed, retreating to the minimum bet on low counts and jacking the wager on high counts. His stack grew to $13,000, then $31,000, and he played on, hardly noticing that Marty was gone, replaced by some sourface named Sandra with nicotine-stained fingertips. A half hour later he hardly noticed that Sandra was shuffling more frequently. He hardly noticed that his stack had grown to over $60,000. He hardly noticed that his beer hadn't been refreshed. And he hardly noticed when the pit boss sidled up behind him with two security guards.

  "Mr. Benedict," the pit boss said. "I wonder if you could come with us?"

  Gil Flores moved back and forth with quick little steps like one of the Siberian tigers in Siegfried and Roy's old act. The meek humiliated man sitting before him could almost feel plumes of hot breath on his bald pate.

  "What the fuck were you thinking of," Flores demanded. "Did you think we wouldn't spot this, Peter?"

  Mark didn't answer.

  "You're not talking to me? This isn't a fucking court of law. It's not like you're innocent till proven guilty. You are guilty, my friend. You basically fucked me up the ass and I do not like my sex that way."

  A blank, mute stare.

  "I think you should answer me. I really think you'd fucking better answer me."

  Mark swallowed hard, a dry, difficult swallow that produced a comical gulp. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I did it."

  Gil ran his hand through his thick black hair, mussing himself in exasperation. "How can an intelligent man say 'I don't know why I did something'? To me, that doesn't make any sense. Of course you know why you did it. Why did you do this?"

  Mark looked at him finally and started to cry.

  "Don't be crying at me," Flores warned. "I'm not your fucking mother." That said, he tossed a box of tissues into Mark's lap.

  He dabbed his eyes. "I had a disappointment today. I was angry. I felt angry and this is how I reacted. It was stupid and I apologize. You can keep the money."

  Flores had almost been mollified until the last concept, which threw him into a tizzy. "I can keep the money? You mean the money you stole from me? This is your solution? To let me keep that which already fucking belongs to me!"

  Mark winced at the shouting and needed another tissue.

  The desk phone rang.

  Flores picked it up and listened for a while. "You sure about this?" After a pause, he continued, "Of course. Absolutely."

  He put the phone down and moved in front of Mark, making him crane his neck. "Okay, Peter, this is how we're going to handle this."

  "Please don't report this to the police," Mark begged. "I'll lose my job."

  "Would you please shut your mouth and listen to me. This is not a conversation. I'm going to talk and you're going to listen. That's the asymmetry that your actions have brought upon you."

  A whisper. "Okay."

  "Number one: you're permanently banned from the Constellation. If you walk into this casino again you will be arrested and we will seek your prosecution for criminal trespass. Number two: you are leaving with the $8,500 you walked in with. Not a penny more, not a penny less. Number three: you violated a trust and a friendship so I want you to get the fuck out of my office and out of my casino right now."

  Mark blinked at him.

  "Why are you still here?"

  "You're not going to call the police?"

  "Were you not listening to me?"

  "And you're not going to have me banned at other casinos?"

  Flores shook his head in amazement. "Are you giving me ideas? Believe me, I could think of a lot of things I'd like to do to you including sending you to an orthopedic surgeon. Get lost, Peter Benedict." He spit out the last words: "You are persona non grata."

  From the penthouse, Victor Kemp watched the st
oop-shouldered man push himself out of a chair and shuffle out the door, and on other video feeds he followed him, accompanied by security as he made his way back into the casino, where he scanned the planetarium dome a final time in a last-ditch effort to spot Coma Berineces, through the lobby, and out into the parking lot and the authentic night sky.

  Kemp freshened his drink and spoke out loud in a rich tenor to the colossal empty living room: "Victor, you will never make a buck trusting people."

  Mark slowly drove his Corvette down the Strip in stop-and-go traffic. It was three hours till midnight and the town was getting busy as people were settling on the evening's entertainment. He was heading south, the Constellation in his rearview mirror, but he had no particular destination. He tried not to think about what had just happened. He was cast out. Banished. The Constellation was his home away from home and he could never return. What had he done?

  He didn't want to be alone in his house, he wanted to be in a casino bar, with giddy action and loopy slot-machine jingles to distract him. Thank God Flores hadn't put the word out and blasted his photo to every casino in the state. He had caught a break. So, the question he mulled as he jerked down the Strip was: where should he go? He could drink anywhere. He could play blackjack anywhere. What he needed was a place with the right atmosphere to suit his peculiar temperament-a place like the Constellation, which had an intellectual component, albeit a token one.

  He passed Caesars then the Venetian, but they were too fakey and Disneylike. Harrahs and the Flamingo left him cold. The Bellagio was too flash. New York New York, another theme park. He was running out of Strip. The MGM Grand was a possibility. He didn't love it but he didn't hate it either. At the corner of Tropicana he almost made a left to swing into the MGM parking lot. But then he saw it and knew it was going to be his new place.

  Of course, he had seen it before, thousands of times, since after all it was a Las Vegas landmark. Thirty stories of black glass, the Luxor pyramid rose 350 feet into the desert sky. An obelisk and the Great Sphinx of Giza marked the entrance, but the true marker was at the apex, a spotlight pointing straight upward, piercing the darkness, the brightest beacon on the planet, putting out an insane forty-one gigacandela of luminosity, more than enough to blind an unsuspecting pilot making an approach into McCarran. He drove toward the glass edifice and drank in the mathematical perfection of the triangular faces. His mind filled with the geometrical equations of pyramids and triangles, and then a name tenderly slipped from his lips.