by Tim Powers
“Sorry to hold everybody up,” I said. “We rummies need our crutch.”
“Sit down, Saul,” said Bill quietly. His pipe lay across his bony knees, and his little-girl fingers were busy stuffing it with black tobacco. “Marc went out back to drag everybody in.”
I didn’t sit down – for one thing, I found myself vaguely disturbed to see discolored teeth and red, wrinkle-bordered eyes in what should have been the face of an eight-year-old girl – but crossed to Marc’s place instead. His creamy green drink was still cold, so I fished the thermometer tube from my pocket and, leaning over to hide the action, snapped it in half and shook the glittering drops of mercury into the drink.
Oddly, I felt only a tired depression as I moved away, and not the sorrow I’d have expected – but perhaps the empathy circuits in all of us were fused and blown out centuries ago, and we don’t notice it because we so seldom care to call upon those circuits. The knowledge that my child had been killed two months ago, at any rate, grieved me only a little more than would news of the cancellation of some concert I’d been looking forward to.
For I’d figured it out, of course; the pieces were all there, and it had been Marc’s involuntary, worried glance, after that song, that put them all together for me. Rafe, Marc’s closest friend in the clan, had shot himself two months ago in an apartment on Lombard Street; and Marc, Amelia had said, was also living in an apartment on that street – the same one, I was certain. Obviously they’d been living together, in accord with Marc’s new clan ethics. I wondered with a shudder whether Rafe had been jealous when Marc came down for the street fair.
Probably Marc had intended to keep my unborn child as a hostage … but then Rafe must have got sick or injured or something, and decided to ditch his middle-aged body … and was Marc going to let his old buddy take his chances with whatever fetus randomness might provide, when there was a healthy one so ready to hand?
And so Marc had taken Rafe’s hand – and the gun too, I think, judging from the report that Rafe shot himself twice – and held on until the ruined body was quite still and he could be sure his friend’s soul was safely lodged in the month-old fetus that had been my child’s.
Standing there by the piano that night, I was certain of all this. At my leisure, since, I have occasionally had sick moments of doubt, and have had to fetch the Laphroaig bottle to dull my ears to any “sobbing in the night.”
Marc led in those who’d been out back, many of them still gnawing bones and complaining about being taken from their dinner.
“Shut up now, damn it,” Marc told them. “The meeting’s going to be a short one this time, you’ll be back to your food in ten minutes. Saul and Sam have just got a few ideas to propose.”
He nodded to the simulacrum, which stood up, smiled and cleared its throat convincingly. “Siblings,” it said, “we all – ”
I palmed my little gun and stood up. “Excuse me, Sam,” I said, “I’d like to begin, if you don’t mind.”
“Sit down, Saul,” Marc said through clenched teeth.
“No,” I said, pointing the gun at him, “you sit down. Don’t let your damned drink get warm. I want to open the meeting.”
The rest of the clan began showing some interest, hoping for some diverting violence. Marc pursed his lips, then shrugged and sat down, not relishing the idea of losing his current body while it was still so young and usefully good-looking. I smiled inwardly to see him snatch up his glass and down the remainder of his drink at one gulp, and apparently not even notice, under the thick crème de menthe and cream, whatever taste mercury has.
For all I knew, the mercury might just pass through him, as inertly harmless in that form as a wad of bubble gum, but I hoped not – I wanted to throw acid on the wiring of his mind, sand in the clockwork of his psyche, so that, though he might be reborn again and again until the sun goes out, every incarnation would be lived in a different home for the retarded. I hoped – still hope – the mercury could do the job, and with any luck get Rafe too.
“Siblings,” I said, “I haven’t been around for the last three meetings, but I gather there have been new trends afoot, fostered mainly by him,” I jabbed the gun toward Marc, “and him,” toward the simulacrum. “Quiet, don’t interrupt me. For more than a century Sam Hain tried to civilize us, and now these two are eroding his efforts, throwing us back to the cruel, greedy old days of pretending to be gods to the ephemerals … when actually we’re a sort of immortal tapeworm in humanity’s guts. What’s that, Bill? No, I’m not drunk – sit down, Marc, or I swear I’ll blow that beautiful face out through the back of your head – no, I’m not drunk, Bill, why? Oh, you’re saying if these two are wrecking Sam Hain’s teaching, then who do I think the guy with the white beard is? I’ll show you.”
I raised my arm and pulled the trigger, and the barrel clouted my cheek as the gun slammed back in recoil. My ears were ringing from the unmuffled report and the gunpowder smoke had my eyes watering, and I couldn’t see the simulacrum at all.
Then I saw it. It was on its hands and knees in the middle of the rug, and all of its head from the nose upward had been taken out as if by a giant ice-cream scoop. Bits of wire and tubing and color-coded plastic were scattered across the floor, and two little jets of red liquid – artificial blood meant to lend verisimilitude in case of a cut in the cheek – fountained out onto the rug from opposite sides of the head.
The eyes, three-quarters exposed now, clicked rapidly up and down and back and forth in frantic unsynchronized scanning, and the mouth opened: “I’m hurt,” the thing quacked, as the automatic damage circuits overrode anything Archie might be trying to do. “I’m hurt. I’m hurt. I’m hurt. I’m – ”
I gave it a hard kick in the throat that shattered its voice mechanism and knocked it to the floor. “The real Sam Hain is upstairs,” I said quietly, prodding my bruised cheek. “He was being maintained unconscious on a life-support system – and probably would have been forever if I hadn’t shot him fifteen minutes ago.” Marc stood up. “Give my regards to Rafe when he’s born, in six months,” I said. After a moment Marc sat down again. I faced the crowd. “Leave the clan,” I told them, tossing my gun away. “Take all your money out of DIRE stocks. Stop coming to these horrible meetings and supporting the maniac ravings of people like Marcus and Rafe. Go incognito underground – any of you can afford to live well anywhere, even without your allowances.”
No one said anything, so I strode around them to the entry hall and found my helmet. “And when you die this time,” I called back as I opened the door, “take the death you’ve had coming for so long! Let go! The Legion has members enough.”
I left the door slightly ajar and trudged down the dark path toward my bike. It started up at the first kick, and the cool night air was so restoring that I snapped my helmet to the sissy bar and let the wind’s fingers brush my hair back as the bike and I coursed down the curling road toward the winking lights of Whittier. The headwind found the bullet holes in my jacket and cooled my damp shirt, and by the time I stopped at the traffic signal on Whittier Boulevard my anger had dissipated like smoke from an open-windowed room.
And so I’ve decided to let go, this time. It occurs to me that we’ve all been like children repeating eighth grade over and over again, and finally coming to believe that there’s nothing beyond it. And when a century goes by and I haven’t shown up, they’ll say, What could have made him do it? Not realizing the real question is, What stopped preventing him?
Pat Moore
“IS IT OKAY if you’re one of the ten people I send the letter to,” said the voice on the telephone, “or is that redundant? I don’t want to screw this up. ‘Ear repair’ sounds horrible.”
Moore exhaled smoke and put out his Marlboro in the half inch of cold coffee in his cup. “No, Rick, don’t send it to me. In fact, you’re screwed – it says you have to have ten friends.”
He picked up the copy he had got in the mail yesterday, spread the single sheet out flat on the
kitchen table and weighted two corners with the dusty salt and pepper shakers. It had clearly been photocopied from a photocopy, and originally composed on a typewriter.
This has been sent to you for good luck. The original is in San Fransisco. You must send it on to ten friend’s, who, you think need good luck, within 24 hrs of recieving it.
“I could use some luck,” Rick went on. “Can you loan me a couple of thousand? My wife’s in the hospital and we’ve got no insurance.”
Moore paused for a moment before going on with the old joke; then, “Sure,” he said, “so we won’t see you at the lowball game tomorrow?”
“Oh, I’ve got money for that.” Rick might have caught Moore’s hesitation, for he went on quickly without waiting for a dutiful laugh: “Mark ‘n’ Howard mentioned the chain letter this morning on the radio. You’re famous.”
The luck is now sent to you – you will recieve Good Luck within three days of recieving this, provided you send it on. Do not send money, since luck has no price.
On a Wednesday dawn five months ago now, Moore had poured a tumbler of Popov Vodka at this table, after sitting most of the night in the emergency room at – what had been the name of the hospital in San Mateo? Not St. Lazarus, for sure – and then he had carefully lit a Virginia Slims from the orphaned pack on the counter and laid the smoldering cigarette in an ashtray beside the glass. When the untouched cigarette had burned down to the filter and gone out, he had carried the full glass and the ashtray to the back door and set them in the trash can, and then washed his hands in the kitchen sink, wondering if the little ritual had been a sufficient goodbye. Later he had thrown out the bottle of vodka and the pack of Virginia Slims too.
A young man in Florida got the letter, it was very faded, and he resovled to type it again, but he forgot. He had many troubles, including expensive ear repair. But then he typed ten copy’s and mailed them, and he got a better job.
“Where you playing today?” Rick asked.
“The Garden City in San Jose, probably,” Moore said, “the six-and-twelve-dollar Hold ’Em. I was just about to leave when you called.”
“For sure? I could meet you there. I was going to play at the Bay on Bering, but if we were going to meet there you’d have to shave – ”
“And find a clean shirt, I know. But I’ll see you at Larry’s game tomorrow, and we shouldn’t play at the same table anyway. Go to the Bay.”
“Naw, I wanted to ask you about something. So you’ll be at the Garden City. You take the 280, right?”
Pat Moore put off mailing the letter and died, but later found it again and passed it on, and received threescore and ten.
“Right.”
“If that crapped-out Dodge of yours can get up to freeway speed.”
“It’ll still be cranking along when your Saturn is a planter somewhere.”
“Great, so I’ll see you there,” Rick said. “Hey,” he added with forced joviality, “you’re famous!”
Do not ignore this letter
ST LAZARUS
“Type up ten copies with your name in it, you can be famous too,” Moore said, standing up and crumpling the letter. “Send one to Mark ‘n’ Howard. See you.”
He hung up the phone and fetched his car keys from the cluttered table by the front door. The chilly sea breeze outside was a reproach after the musty staleness of the apartment, and he was glad he’d brought his denim jacket.
He combed his hair in the rearview mirror while the Dodge’s old slant-six engine idled in the carport, and he wondered if he would see the day when his brown hair might turn gray. He was still thirty years short of threescore and ten, and he wasn’t envying the Pat Moore in the chain letter.
The first half hour of the drive down the 280 was quiet, with a Gershwin >CD playing the Concerto in F and the pines and green meadows of the Fish and Game Refuge wheeling past on his left under the gray sky, while the pastel houses of Hillsborough and Redwood City marched across the eastern hills. The car smelled familiarly of Marlboros and Doublemint gum and engine exhaust.
Just over those hills, on the 101 overlooking the bay, Trish had driven her Ford Granada over an unrailed embankment at midnight, after a St. Patrick’s Day party at Bay Meadows. Moore was objectively sure he would drive on the 101 some day, but not yet.
Traffic was light on the 280 this morning, and in his rearview mirror he saw the little white car surging from side to side in the lanes as it passed other vehicles. Like most modern cars, it looked to Moore like an oversized computer mouse. He clicked up his turn signal lever and drifted over the lane-divider bumps into the right lane.
The white car – he could see the blue Chevy cross on its hood now – swooped up in the lane Moore had just left, but instead of rocketing on past him, it slowed, pacing Moore’s old Dodge at sixty miles an hour.
Moore glanced to his left, wondering if he knew the driver of the Chevy – but it was a lean-faced stranger in sunglasses, looking straight at him. In the moment before Moore recognized the thing as a shotgun viewed muzzle-on, he thought the man was holding up a microphone; but instantly another person in the white car had blocked the driver – Moore glimpsed only a purple shirt and long dark hair – and then with squealing tires the car veered sharply away to the left.
Moore gripped the hard green plastic of his steering wheel and looked straight ahead; he was braced for the sound of the Chevy hitting the center-divider fence, and so he didn’t jump when he heard the crash – even though the seat rocked under him and someone was now sitting in the car with him, on the passenger side against the door. For one unthinking moment he assumed someone had been thrown from the Chevrolet and had landed in his car.
He focused on the lane ahead and on holding the Dodge Dart steady between the white lines. Nobody could have come through the roof, or the windows; or the doors. Must have been hiding in the back seat all this time, he thought, and only now jumped over into the front. What timing. He was panting shallowly, and his ribs tingled, and he made himself take a deep breath and let it out.
He looked to his right. A dark-haired woman in a purple dress was grinning at him. Her hair hung in a neat pageboy cut, and she wasn’t panting.
“I’m your guardian angel,” she said. “And guess what my name is.”
Moore carefully lifted his foot from the accelerator – he didn’t trust himself with the brake yet – and steered the Dodge onto the dirt shoulder. When the car had slowed to the point where he could hear gravel popping under the tires, he pressed the brake; the abrupt stop rocked him forward, though the woman beside him didn’t shift on the old green upholstery.
“And guess what my name is,” she said again.
The sweat rolling down his chest under his shirt was a sharp tang in his nostrils. “Hmm,” he said, to test his voice; then he said, “You can get out of the car now.”
In the front pocket of his jeans was a roll of hundred-dollar bills, but his left hand was only inches away from the .38 revolver tucked into the open seam at the side of the seat. But both the woman’s hands were visible on her lap, and empty.
She didn’t move.
The engine was still running, shaking the car, and he could smell the hot exhaust fumes seeping up through the floor. He sighed, then reluctantly reached forward and switched off the ignition.
“I shouldn’t be talking to you,” the woman said in the sudden silence. “She told me not to. But I just now saved your life. So don’t tell me to get out of the car.”
It had been a purple shirt or something, and dark hair. But this was obviously not the person he’d glimpsed in the Chevy. A team, twins?
“What’s your name?” he asked absently. A van whipped past on the left, and the car rocked on its shock absorbers.
“Pat Moore, same as yours,” she said with evident satisfaction. He noticed that every time he glanced at her she looked away from something else to meet his eyes, as if whenever he wasn’t watching her she was studying the interior of the car, or his shirt, or the
freeway lanes.
“Did you – get threescore and ten?” he asked. Something more like a nervous tic than a smile was twitching his lips. “When you sent out the letter?”
“That wasn’t me, that was her. And she hasn’t got it yet. And she won’t, either, if her students kill all the available Pat Moores. You’re in trouble every which way, but I like you.”
“Listen, when did you get into my car?”
“About ten seconds ago. What if he had backup, another car following him? You should get moving again.”
Moore called up the instant’s glimpse he had got of the thing in front of the driver’s hand – the ring had definitely been the muzzle of a shotgun, twelve-gauge, probably a pistol-grip. And he seized on her remark about a backup car because the thought was manageable and complete. He clanked the gearshift into park, and the Dodge started at the first twist of the key, and he levered it into drive and gunned along the shoulder in a cloud of dust until he had got up enough speed to swing into the right lane between two yellow Stater Brothers trucks.
He concentrated on working his way over to the fast lane, and then when he had got there, his engine roaring, he just watched the rearview mirror and the oncoming exit signs until he found a chance to make a sharp right across all the lanes and straight into the exit lane that swept toward the southbound 85. A couple of cars behind him honked.
He was going too fast for the curving interchange lane, his tires chirruping on the pavement, and he wrestled with the wheel and stroked the brake.
“Who’s getting off behind us?” he asked sharply.
“I can’t see,” she said.
He darted a glance at the rearview mirror, and was pleased to see only a slow-moving old station wagon, far back.
“A station wagon,” she said, though she still hadn’t turned around. Maybe she had looked in the passenger-side door mirror.