by KW Jeter
“And a poor scheme it was,” I said. “Even if I had not already deduced that you were still alive, I would have immediately known there was something amiss in the portrayal; your manner of speech was a sad imitation of how he spoke.”
“Doing the best I could.” Scape had picked up another pebble and weighed it in his palm. “Figured if I talked the way I normally did – the way I’m talking now – you’d have flashed on it right away, and you’d have known right off who I was. Except, of course, you already did.”
“It is a distinctive patois, certainly.” The reason for it – or at least that which Scape had told me, when I had first unfortunately made his acquaintance – was that it was not his original mode of speech, but one that he had acquired through his perusal of one of my father’s creations, a device of flashing lights at a precisely regulated speed and rhythm, which had the effect of casting his mind into the distant Future, to a time when everyone spoke in such a clipped and slangy fashion, and with so many words of odd derivation and meaning. Miss McThane had spoken in the same way, but I had come to fondly regard it as part of her eccentric charm; from Scape’s mouth, however, such speech had struck me as a dreadful portent of a harsher, faster world to come. “But it seems,” I continued, “that you adopted not so much of his way of speaking, but rather that of a proper Englishman; I mean one of this time, of course.”
“Pretty much had to.” Scape held up the pebble between his thumb and forefinger, as though studying its composition. “I was in a bad way when I got out of that charity hospital – well, I didn’t get out so much as I escaped. No resources, no friends, nobody I could turn to – or at least no one I wanted to. Plus, the way I’d made my living before, kinda depended on getting into people’s confidences, and then ripping them off for as much as I could. But when you look like this–” He didn’t bother to gesture toward his ruined face; his meaning was clear. “Kinda hard to get people to trust you, when they can’t even bear to look at you. So I had to survive best I could – lotta burglaries, some muggings; anything I was capable of. Like that old saying: Hard times will make a rat eat a raw onion. But I managed.”
“So it seems,” I observed. “But whatever might have changed for you, one thing seems to have remained a constant.”
“And what’s that?”
“Your mendacity. Even when making these confessions, you are unable to keep from lying. At virtually the same moment in which you piously state how you kept yourself from burdening Miss McThane with the knowledge that you were still alive, you are displaying to me the proof of your continued correspondence with the woman.” I had tucked the fully signed letter back into my jacket; I now withdrew it and brandished the item before Scape, as though he were a prisoner in the dock, confronted with damning evidence. “She could not have initiated this contact, believing you were dead; thus you were the one who sought out her attention. So much for your fine resolutions to keep your tragic circumstances to yourself!”
“Give me a break, Dower. I would’ve, believe me – but something came up.” He pointed to the letter in my hand. “And you’re the one responsible for that.”
“I am? And how do you come to that conclusion?”
“What we were talking about, before you jumped for my throat and tried to throttle me–”
“You have my apologies for that.” Folding the letter, I deposited it in my jacket once more. “I was overcome with a fit of passion.”
“Guess so – but you didn’t give me a chance to tell you what you’re demanding to know.”
“Then proceed,” I said with feigned courtesy. “You have my keenest interest.”
“OK – here’s the deal.” He turned the mass of scars that was his face toward me. “Like I was telling you, both me and the More Loving Embrace know where a certain… something is; the difference between me and them is that they’re ready to kill you, in order to keep you from finding it as well. That’s how important it is to them.”
“But I am not looking for anything–”
“Doesn’t matter. There’s a connection between it and you, whether you like it or not. You’re responsible for its existence, as much as your father was for all his creations.”
“I fail to understand. How could this be?”
“Simple,” said Scape. “We’re not really talking about an it; we’re talking about a he. A person, a real one, not any kind of machine.”
“That distinction does not come as a complete surprise to me; you wrote about as much in your correspondence with Miss McThane, informing her in so many words that your quest had been completed – that you had, as I quote, Found him.”
“Just as she had wanted me to.”
“And who is this mysterious person, and what does he have to do with me?”
“That’s simple as well, Dower. He’s your son. And hers.”
“Indeed.” I turned my gaze full upon the figure beside me. “What appears simple is that the unfortunate events that resulted in your physical condition produced a similar impairment of your mind. Yes, Miss McThane and I lived as man and wife, and yes, we had that relationship between us which might have resulted in a child – but she was the only woman whom I knew in that way. I am confident that if our union had resulted in progeny of any number, I would have been aware of that fact; it’s not really the sort of thing that even the craftiest of women can conceal for very long.”
“The child wasn’t born while the two of you were living together, down there in Cornwall.” He slowly shook his head. “Good thing that she can’t hear you now – doubt if she’d find it very flattering that you’ve forgotten the first time that you got it on with her.”
“Oh.” I was stunned a bit by his words. “I have not forgotten… certainly not. It was a… memorable event.”
“Yeah, I bet it was. You seemed pretty flipped about it at the time.”
I was thus prodded into more vivid recollection. A scene formed within my thoughts, of the richly adorned interior of the lunatical Lord Bendray’s manorial estate – which at the precise time that I remembered, was being shaken to bits by the unleashed operation of one of my father’s most fearsome creations. Of that machine, it had been convincingly demonstrated to me that it was equally capable of destroying the entire planet on which we stood, and would proceed to do so in short order, unless it was somehow stopped. The utter depravity of my father’s creations was finally borne out to me, when it was revealed – however unlikely it might have seemed to me before then – that the only way to silence the machine, and thus save the world, was for me to have sexual congress with Miss McThane. If that act had depended upon my experience in such matters – in fact, I had none – then I would not be penning these words now; and none would be reading them, for we would all be but dust floating in the cold emptiness that lies beyond our present skies. Fortunately for the bulk of Humanity, Miss McThane’s feminine skills and determination were more than enough to overcome any deficiency on my part, allowing me to perform this duty, though with a good measure of bewilderment mixed with the act’s associated pleasures.
What was not contained within my memory, for I had no way of knowing, was that there had been any result from that strangely ordained conjunction between us, other than shutting down the dreadful machine created by my father, even as rubble from the shuddering mansion rained upon the bed in which she and I were entwined.
“That’s right–” Scape had been able to discern the course of the thoughts that tumbled through my head. “You knocked her up.”
“Why was I not informed?” I was unfamiliar with the coarse phrase he employed, but its meaning was nevertheless clear to me. “Why am I only hearing of this now?”
“Come on, Dower – she and I were on the lam. We had to make ourselves scarce, and fast, after all that stuff went down. So we got ourselves as far away as possible–”
“I had heard some rumours in that regard; that the two of you were in the far north of Scotland, pursuing whatever dishonest opportuniti
es came to your hand.”
“Well, of course we were; people gotta eat, don’t they? We didn’t get a big payout for all those machines of your father’s, the way you did. So that’s just the way it goes, right? And that’s why you didn’t hear anything about your having gotten her pregnant; hell, we didn’t know until we were up around John o’ Groats, freezing our butts off. Hey, and don’t give me any crap about how maybe it wasn’t you that did it–”
“The question had come to mind,” I admitted. “As much as I loved and admired the woman, I am not such a naïf as to believe I am the only one who ever had carnal relations with her. The two of you were lovers, were you not?”
“At one time, yeah.” The confession was voiced in a grudging tone from him. “But that had kinda come to an end by the time we ran into you. By that point, she and I were just business partners. So when she told me that you were the only one who could be the father of the kid she was carrying, I knew she was telling the truth.”
Sadly, I sensed that the truth was being told now as well – ascribing the paternity of this unfortunate child to Scape had been my only hope of avoiding my own condemnation of my misdeeds. True, I had managed to save the world from destruction, by my sexual congress with Miss McThane terminating the sympathetic vibrations generated by my father’s creation – but at what cost? Had there been times when I might have wondered if there had been any other consequences of that brief moment between us, and had I pushed those thoughts away into the forgetful darkness, rather than investigating them? In truth, I had to confess there were such – and that our sins of omission, the obligations we fail to perform, are as black or blacker than the crimes we commit.
“The boy you describe as my son…” I emerged from my brooding thoughts, as one might surface from the depths of a lightless ocean, into a night as dark. “In the correspondence you had with Miss McThane, which I discovered only after her death – does your having written Found him refer to this child, and to no other person?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“But for him to have been found, he must first have been lost – to both you and his mother. How did that come about?”
“Face it, Dower – the life the two of us were living, it wasn’t exactly conducive to domestic bliss. There were times when we were having a hard time keeping ourselves fed, let alone having a kid on our hands. So we figured we were doing the responsible thing by unloading him onto someone else. We went down to Glasgow – that’s where she gave birth – and that’s where the orphanage was, where we left him. Wasn’t easy for her – hey, you know how she really was, under that tough-girl exterior – but that’s how it went down.”
“She never said anything of this to me. If she had… I might have done something.”
“Well, she didn’t – but she was going to.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow as I regarded him. “How are you aware of that?”
“Told me so. When she got hold of me – there were some, we could say… associates from before, who knew where I could be found – that’s what she said. She’d heard from them that I was still alive, and she wrote and told me that she wanted to find this kid – no surprise there, that it’d been preying on her mind all these years – and claim him as her own son. And… you know… have him with her, and give him a home and all; a real home. She said that she knew you wouldn’t have a problem with that. Not just because the kid’s your son, too – but because she had kind of a high opinion about you.”
“Did she?”
“Look, you might consider yourself pretty worthless – and there’d been a time when I wouldn’t have argued with you about that – but this woman you were living with apparently didn’t think you were a total jerk. Most guys should be so lucky.”
“Then if so, why did she not tell me as much? I take it that she asked you to find the boy–”
“Yes.” Scape nodded. “She begged me to. Because she had already managed to contact the orphanage in Glasgow, and they’d told her that not only didn’t they still have the kid, but they had no record of him ever having been there. So she knew something fishy was going on.”
“And you consented to her request? With no hesitation on your part?”
“Yeah… I mean, eventually. I had to think about it.”
“And what,” I inquired, “was it that you thought?”
“I don’t know, George.” His voice softened to a musing tone. “Except… maybe this was why I hadn’t killed myself. Back in the hospital, when I’d thought about it. Maybe I knew that there was something I’d have to do. For her.”
Though I understood, I said nothing. A similar notion had come to my own thoughts, more than once. The iron links of obligation, which we so often believe cruelly bind us, are the same by which we are restrained from the Abyss – once broken, we are lost.
“Why did she not inform me of her desire?” My interrogating the other man twisted into my own laceration. “She must have been in agonies of suspense about your search for the child, all the while concealing her distress from me. Granted, I would likely have been of no use in determining what had happened to him – I have no skill or experience in such endeavours – but at least I might have helped bear the burden of waiting to hear of his fate.”
“Sure – but what if I hadn’t been able to locate the kid? Then what?” Scape’s voice sank to a low pitch. “Or what if I found out that what happened to him wasn’t anything good? And that’s what I had to tell her? What would your life together have been after that? Haunted, that’s what, the two of you remorseful for the rest of your lives about what’d become of this son, that she’d abandoned and that you’d never even known. It’s why she didn’t say anything about it – she wanted to spare you that.”
Once more, I was reduced to silence; within myself, I had to admit that he was correct about that. Whatever Miss McThane’s flaws of character might have been – certainly no worse than mine – none of them were driven by a deficit of loving kindness; if I had ever done anything for the poor woman, it had been no more than to allow that to become evident. How cruel of Fate to have presented her with the deathbed choice between sparing the feelings of one who had loved her as best he could, and burdening him with the mission of seeking out the child he had never known.
“Very well–” I forced myself to speak again. “If Miss McThane wished me to be kept in darkness before, as she awaited word from you about the search for our son, and then chose enlightenment for me – so be it. I accept her decision, and the consequences it has for me; how can I do otherwise? So proceed; you must have further information for me. You wrote to her – I have seen the letter – that you had found him. But I see no child with you now – where is he? Some secure place, I hope.”
“Well, that’s kind of the problem, isn’t it?” Scape once more mused upon the pebble between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s one thing to find somebody – I mean, find where they are – and another to actually lay your hands on them.”
“So I take it you do not actually have the boy. However successful your search for him might have been, he is in some situation from which you have been unable to extract him. Even if his mother were still alive, you could not have returned the child to her; the most you could have done would be to torture her mind further with the knowledge that he lives, but is never to be seen by her again.”
“Jeez, Dower; give me a break. It’s a work in progress, all right? Yeah, I don’t have the kid – but that doesn’t mean I can’t get him. I mean, that we can’t.”
“We? I believe I can now discern your purpose at inveigling yourself into my confidences, first by disguising yourself as the Brown Leather Man I remembered more charitably than I did you, and now by making this labourious confession to me. You wish to somehow rescue this child from some dire predicament, the nature of which you have not yet described to me – that he is in such comes as no surprise; orphans, or those presumed to be, have a hard row to hoe in this world, and are of
ten cruelly exploited. The fact that this is your aim speaks well of you – but I would appreciate some explanation of what you expect from me in this regard.”
“Fine; if you’d give me half a moment, I’d be able to do that, wouldn’t I?” The deeply scarred face of Scape was still able to assume an irritable expression. “Here’s the deal. Don’t blame me that I don’t have the kid, this son of yours; his whereabouts were a lot harder to track down than I thought they’d be when I promised Miss McThane that I’d find him. It took a lot of doing, which was why there were so many letters going back and forth between the two of us; I didn’t want her to think I’d given up on the search. Problem, though, when I did find where this kid of yours is, I almost wished I hadn’t found out.”
“Why so?”
“Because, Dower – where he is, and the people who’ve got him, don’t exactly add up to a piece of cake. You know all the bad types you’ve run into before, including these More Loving Embrace guys who want to kill you? They’re nothing. Seriously, compared to what we’re going to have to deal with to get hold of your son, your life up till now has been nothing but fun.”
“I will be the judge of that.” His words provoked a deal of skepticism on my part. “Who exactly are these people, of whom you stand in such dread?”
“A secretive organization–”
“Oh, dear God. Another?” I shook my head in dismay. “Surely you jest – or worse, you are in deadly earnest. Why should I disbelieve you? There seem to be so many forming these shadowy cabals and conspiracies, it would seem likely that they would have difficulty in finding any unaffiliated persons to recruit to their ranks.”
“Laugh all you want, pal, but it’s the truth. These Elohim people are nothing to take lightly–”