“Weren’t you listening, Lloyd? Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Yes, you did. Now maybe we ought to quit bothering Maisie with our talk and get back to work.”
“I like a man that enjoys his job,” Cauthron said, slapping Railroad on the shoulder again. “I’d have to be suicidal to make a good worker like you leave. Do I look suicidal, Lloyd?”
“No, you don’t look suicidal, Mr. Cauthron.”
“I see Pleasure all the time going down the block to pick at the trash by the Sweet Spot,” Mrs. Graves told him as they sat on the front porch swing that evening. “That cat could get hurt if you let it out so much. That is a busy street.”
Foster had gone to a ball game, and Louise Parker was visiting her sister in Chattanooga, so they were alone. It was the opportunity Railroad had been waiting for.
“I don’t want to keep her a prisoner,” he said. The chain of the swing creaked as they rocked slowly back and forth. He could smell her lilac perfume. The curve of her thigh beneath her print dress caught the light from the front room coming through the window.
“You’re a man who has spent much time alone, aren’t you,” she said. “So mysterious.”
He had his hand in his pocket, the ring in his fingers. He hesitated. A couple walking down the sidewalk nodded at them. He couldn’t do it out here, where the world might see. “Mrs. Graves, would you come up to my room? I have something I need to show you.”
She did not hesitate. “I hope there’s nothing wrong.”
“No, ma’m. Just something I’d like to rearrange.”
He opened the door for her and followed her up the stairs. The clock in the hall ticked loudly. He opened the door to his room and ushered her in, closed the door behind them. When she turned to face him he fell to his knees.
He held up the ring in both hands, his offering. “Miz Graves, I want you to marry me.”
She looked at him kindly, her expression calm. The silence stretched. She reached out; he thought she was going to take the ring, but instead she touched his wrist. “I can’t marry you, Mr. Bailey.”
“Why not?”
“Why, I hardly know you.”
Railroad felt dizzy. “You could some time.”
“Oh, Mr. Bailey. Lloyd. You don’t understand—I’ll never marry again. It’s not you.”
Not him. It was never him, had never been him. His knees hurt from the hardwood floor. He looked at the ring, lowered his hands, clasped it in his fist. Mrs. Graves moved her hand from his wrist to his shoulder, squeezed it. A knife of pain ran down his arm. Without standing, he punched her in the stomach.
She gasped and fell back onto the bed. He was on her in a second, one hand over her mouth while he ripped her dress open from the neck. She struggled, and he pulled the pistol out from behind his back and held it to her head. She lay still.
“Don’t you stop me, now,” he muttered. He tugged his pants down and did what he wanted.
She hardly made a sound. How ladylike of her to keep so silent.
Much later, lying on the bed, eyes dreamily focused on the light fixture in the center of the ceiling, it came to him what had bothered him about the grandmother. She had ignored the fact that she was going to die. “She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life,” he’d told Bobby Lee. And that was true. But then, for that last moment, she became a good woman. The reason was that, once Railroad convinced her she was going to die, she could forget about it. In the end, when she reached out to him, there was no thought in her mind about death, about the fact that he had killed her son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren and was soon going to kill her. All she wanted was to comfort him. She didn’t even care if he couldn’t be comforted. She was living in that exact instant, with no memory of the past or regard for the future, out of the instinct of her soul and nothing else.
Like the cat. Pleasure lived that way all the time. The cat didn’t know about Jesus’ sacrifice, about angels and devils. That cat looked at him and saw what was there.
He raised himself on his elbows. Mrs. Graves lay very still beside him, her blond hair spread across the pineapple quilt. He felt her neck for a pulse.
It was dark night now: the whine of insects in the oaks outside the window, the rush of traffic on the cross street, drifted in on the hot air.
Quietly, Railroad slipped out into the hall and down to Foster’s room. He put his ear to the door and heard no sound. He came back to his own room, wrapped Mrs. Graves in the quilt and, as silently as he could, dragged her into his closet. He closed the door.
Railroad heard purring, and saw Pleasure sitting on the table, watching. “God damn you. God damn you to hell,” he said to the cat, but before he could grab it the calico had darted out the window.
He figured it out. The idea of marrying Mrs. Graves had been only a stage in the subtle revenge being taken on him by the dead grandmother, through the cat. The wishes Pleasure had granted were the bait, the nightmare had been a warning. But he hadn’t listened.
He rubbed his sore shoulder. The old lady’s gesture, like a mustard-seed, had grown to be a great crow-filled tree in Railroad’s heart.
A good trick the devil had played on him. Now, no matter how he reformed himself, he could not get rid of what he had done.
It was hot and still, not a breath of air, as if the world were being smothered in a fever blanket. A milk-white sky. The kitchen of the Sweet Spot was hot as the furnace of Hell; beneath his shirt Railroad’s sweat ran down to slick the warm pistol slid into his belt. Railroad was fixing a stack of buttermilk pancakes when the detective walked in.
The detective sauntered over to the counter and sat down on one of the stools. Maisie was not there; she was probably in the ladies’ room. The detective took a look around, then plucked a menu from behind the napkin holder in front of him and started reading. On the radio Hank Williams was singing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
Quietly, Railroad untied his apron and slipped out of the back door. In the alley near the trash barrels he looked out over the lot. He was about to hop the chain-link fence when he saw Cauthron’s car stopped at the light on the corner.
Railroad pulled out his pistol, crouched behind a barrel, and aimed at the space in the lot where Cauthron usually parked. He felt something bump against his leg.
It was Pleasure. “Don’t you cross me now,” Railroad whispered, pushing the animal away.
The cat came back, put its front paws up on his thigh, purring.
“Damn you! You owe me, you little demon!”he hissed. He let the gun drop, looked down at the cat.
Pleasure looked up at him. “Miaow?”
“What do you want! You want me to stop, do you? Then make it go away. Make it so I never killed nobody.”
Nothing happened. It was just an animal. In a rage, he dropped the gun and seized the cat in both hands. It twisted in his grasp, hissing.
“You know what it’s like to hurt in your heart?” Railroad tore open his shirt and pressed Pleasure against his chest. “Feel it! Feel it beating there!” Pleasure squirmed and clawed, hatching his chest with a web of scratches. “You owe me! You owe me!”Railroad was shouting now. “Make it go away!”
Pleasure finally twisted out of his grasp. The cat fell, rolled, and scurried away, running right under Cauthron’s car as it pulled into the lot. With a little bump, the car’s left front tire ran over it.
Cauthron jerked the car to a halt. Pleasure howled, still alive, writhing, trying to drag itself away on its front paws. The cat’s back was broken. Railroad looked at the fence, looked back.
He ran over to Pleasure and knelt down. Cauthron got out of the car. Railroad tried to pick up the cat, but it hissed and bit him. Its sides fluttered with rapid breathing. Its eyes clouded. It rested its head on the gravel.
Railroad had trouble breathing. He looked up from his crouch to see that Maisie and some customers had come out of the diner. Among them was the dete
ctive.
“I didn’t mean to do that, Lloyd,” Cauthron said. “It just ran out in front of me.” He paused a moment. “Jesus Christ, Lloyd, what happened to your chest?”
Railroad picked up the cat in his bloody hands. “Nobody ever gets away with nothing,” he said. “I’m ready to go now.”
“Go where?”
“Back to prison.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Me and Hiram and Bobby Lee killed all those folks in the woods and took their car. This was their cat.”
“What people?”
“Bailey Boy and his mother and his wife and his kids and his baby.”
The detective pushed back his hat and scratched his head. “You all best come in here and we’ll talk this thing over.”
They went into the diner. Railroad would not let them take Pleasure from him until they gave him a cardboard box to put the body in. Maisie brought him a towel to wipe his hands, and Railroad told the detective, whose name was Vernon Shaw, all about the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and the hearselike Hudson, and the family they’d murdered in the backwoods. Mostly he talked about the grandmother and the cat. Shaw sat there and listened soberly. At the end he folded up his notebook and said, “That’s quite a story, Mr. Bailey. But we caught the people who did that killing, and it ain’t you.”
“What do you mean? I know what I done.”
“Another thing, you don’t think I’d know if there was some murderer loose from the penitentiary? There isn’t anyone escaped.”
“What were you doing in here last week, asking questions?”
“I was having myself some pancakes and coffee.”
“I didn’t make this up.”
“So you say. But seems to me, Mr. Bailey, you been standing over a hot stove too long.”
Railroad didn’t say anything. He felt as if his heart were about to break.
Mr. Cauthron told him he might just as well take the morning off and get some rest. He would man the griddle himself. Railroad got unsteadily to his feet, took the box containing Pleasure’s body, and tucked it under his arm. He walked out of the diner.
He went back to the boarding house. He climbed the steps. Mr. Foster was in the front room reading the newspaper. “Morning, Bailey,” he said. “What you got there?”
“My cat got killed.”
“No! Sorry to hear that.”
“You seen Miz Graves this morning?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
Railroad climbed the stairs, walked slowly down the hall to his room. He entered. Dust motes danced in the sunlight coming through the window. The ocean rowboat was no darker than it had been the day before. He set the dead cat down next to the Bible on the table. The pineapple quilt was no longer on the bed; now it was the rose. He reached into his pocket and felt the engagement ring.
The closet door was closed. He went to it, put his hand on the doorknob. He turned it and opened the door.
DAVID BRIN
Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His Campbell Award winning novel The Postman was adapted as a feature film and starred Kevin Costner in 1997. David Brin's nonfiction book The Transparent Society won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association and the McGannon Communication Award.
The Giving Plague, by David Brin
You think you’re going to get me, don’t you? Well, you’ve got another think coming, ‘cause I’m ready for you.
That’s why there’s a forged card in my wallet saying my blood group is AB Negative, and a MedicAlert tag warning that I’m allergic to penicillin, aspirin, and phenylalanine. Another one states that I’m a practicing, devout Christian Scientist. All these tricks ought to slow you down when the time comes, as it’s sure to, sometime soon.
Even if it makes the difference between living and dying, there’s just no way I’ll let anyone stick a transfusion needle into my arm. Never. Not with the blood supply in the state it’s in.
And anyway, I’ve got antibodies. So you just stay the hell away from me, ALAS. I won’t be your patsy. I won’t be your vector.
I know your weaknesses, you see. You’re a fragile, if subtle devil. Unlike TARP, you can’t bear exposure to air or heat or cold or acid or alkali. Blood-to-blood, that’s your only route. And what need had you of any other? You thought you’d evolved the perfect technique, didn’t you?
What was it Leslie Adgeson called you? “The perfect master? The paragon of viruses?”
I remember long ago when HIV, the AIDS virus, had everyone so impressed with its subtlety and effectiveness of design. But compared with you, HIV is just a crude butcher, isn’t it? A maniac with a chainsaw, a blunderer that kills its hosts and relies for transmission on habits humans can, with some effort, get under control. Oh, old HIV had its tricks, but compared with you? An amateur!
Rhinoviruses and Flu are clever, too. They’re profligate, and they mutate rapidly. Long ago they learnt how to make their hosts drip and wheeze and sneeze, so the victims spread the misery in all directions. Flu viruses are also a lot smarter than AIDS ’cause they don’t generally kill their hosts, just make ’em miserable while they hack and spray and inflict fresh infections on their neighbors.
Oh, Les Adgeson was always accusing me of anthropomorphizing our subjects. Whenever he came into my part of the lab, and found me cursing some damned intransigent leucophage in rich, Tex-Mex invective, he’d react predictably. I can just picture him now, raising one eyebrow, commenting dryly in his Winchester accent.
“The virus cannot hear you, Forry. It isn’t sentient, nor even alive, strictly speaking. It’s little more than a packet of genes in a protein case, after all.”
“Yeah, Les,” I’d answer. “But selfish genes! Given half a chance, they’ll take over a human cell, force it to make armies of new viruses, then burst it apart as they escape to attack other cells. They may not think. All that behavior may have evolved by blind chance. But doesn’t it all feel as if it was planned? As if the nasty little things wereguided, somehow, by somebody out to make us miserable . . . ? Out to make us die?”
“Oh, come now, Forry,” he would smile at my New World ingenuousness. “You wouldn’t be in this field if you didn’t find phages beautiful, in their own way.”
Good old, smug, sanctimonious Les. He never did figure out that viruses fascinated me for quite another reason. In their rapacious insatiability I saw a simple, distilled purity of ambition that exceeded even my own. The fact that it was mindless did little to ease my mind. I’ve always imagined we humans over-rated brains, anyway.
We’d first met when Les visited Austin on sabbatical, some years before. He’d had the Boy Genius rep even then, and naturally I played up to him. He invited me to join him back in Oxford, so there I was, having regular amiable arguments over the meaning of disease while the English rain dripped desultorily on the rhododendrons outside.
Les Adgeson. Him with his artsy friends and his pretensions at philosophy—Les was all the time talking about the elegance and beauty of our nasty little subjects. But he didn’t fool me. I knew he was just as crazy Nobel-mad as the rest of us. Just as obsessed with the chase, searching for that piece of the Life Puzzle, that bit leading to more grants, more lab space, more techs, more prestige . . . leading to money, status, and, maybe eventually, Stockholm.
He claimed not to be interested in such things. But he was a smoothy, all right. How else, in the midst of the Thatcher massacre of British science, did his lab keep expanding? And yet, he kept up the pretense.
“Viruses have their good side,” Les kept saying. “Sure, they often kill, in the beginning. All new pathogens start that way. But eventually, one of two things happens. Either humanity evolves defenses to eliminate the threat or . . .”
Oh, he loved those dramatic pauses.
“Or?” I’d prompt him, as required.
&nbs
p; “Or we come to an accommodation, a compromise . . . even an alliance.”
That’s what Les always talked about. Symbiosis. He loved to quote Margulis and Thomas, and even Lovelock, for pity’s sake! His respect even for vicious, sneaky brutes like the HIV was downright scary.
“See how it actually incorporates itself right into the DNA of its victims?” he would muse. “Then it waits, until the victim is later attacked by some other disease pathogen. Then the host’s T-Cells prepare to replicate, to drive off the invader, only now some cells’ chemical machinery is taken over by the new DNA, and instead of two new T-Cells, a plethora of new AIDS viruses results.”
“So?” I answered. “Except that it’s a retrovirus, that’s the way nearly all viruses work.”
“Yes, but think ahead, Forry. Imagine what’s going to happen when, inevitably, the AIDS virus infects someone whose genetic makeup makes him invulnerable!”
“What, you mean his antibody reactions are fast enough to stop it? Or his T-Cells repel invasion?”
Oh, Les used to sound so damn patronizing when he got excited.
“No, no, think!” he urged. “I mean invulnerable after infection. After the viral genes have incorporated into his chromosomes. Only in this individual, certain other genesprevent the new DNA from triggering viral synthesis. No new viruses are made. No cellular disruption. The person is invulnerable. But now he has all this new DNA . . .”
“In just a few cells—”
“Yes. But suppose one of these is a sex cell. Then suppose he fathers a child with that gamete. Now every one of that child’s cells may contain both the trait of invulnerabilityand the new viral genes! Think about it, Forry. You now have a new type of human being! One who cannot be killed by AIDS. And yet he has all the AIDS genes, can make all those strange, marvelous proteins . . . Oh, most of them will be unexpressed or useless, of course. But now this child’s genome, and his descendants’, contains morevariety . . .”
Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two Page 153