Always Leave ’Em Dying

by Richard S. Prather

  Lyn was frowning. "Shell, Thursday night I went along with you; it was logical enough, and still is. But it doesn't look like this is going to be just a little affair for a handful of Trammelites. And not by the light of the moon, either. They must be pretty sure of themselves."

  "Yeah. That's what stumps me, too. I think I can figure the whole works except how they'll find a guy that even with makeup and falsies and whatnot would look enough like Trammel. Except for that, it's just a large-scale con game. And if they pull the caper off tomorrow, the Guardians won't have any trouble explaining why the All-High doesn't go down among the congregation for a while, which he won't. Hell, maybe he's weak; being dead a few days does things to a man. They've got a hundred angles they can use. For one thing, they've got those recordings of Trammel's own voice, his speeches and sermons and get-hot licks."

  Lyn said, "It certainly looks like they're going to give it a try."

  "They've got to or go out of business. Nobody'll get close to Mr. Fake Trammel for a while, anyway. After enough time the crowds will accept him as the Trammel they've always had, even if he grows another head. And here's a thought: He could grow a beard. No matter what this Joe Smith actually looks like, he'll just be Trammel with a beard. Hell, there's a thousand tricks they can pull—just so nobody gets a good look at him tomorrow."

  "They probably won't, you know."

  "True, but I'll bet they'd shout, 'Trammel is risen!' and fall down in faints and fits if John L. Lewis popped out of a hole tomorrow. Except for one thing. I still don't see how the Guardians can find anybody who resembles Trammel enough, when they've only got three, maybe four days to hunt around. Not in just . . . in— Well, I'll be goddamned."

  All of a sudden, I knew the answer to every single thing that had been nagging and puzzling me since Trammel had been killed. "What," I said, "are we talking about? Those Guardian eggs didn't have just three days to look for a new Trammel. They had a month, half a year. They had all the time they wanted. Why, hell, they murdered the bastard."

  Lyn said, "What?"

  "You heard me right. I don't know why—maybe the Guardians wanted the gravy, or the glory, or maybe Trammel was just too damned stinking to live—but they knocked their boy off. And they did it when they were ready. So that's how come they're still going ahead with it even now that it's spread all over."

  For the first time I felt really satisfied about all the factors surrounding Trammel's death: the apparent coincidence of his being killed while all eyes were on him; the way he'd died, in that awful explosion. The only answer was that the others, his murderers, had planned it to look like an accident; they'd wanted thousands to see it happen, wanted all the Trammelites, the more the better, to see that torn, ripped body, know without reservation or doubt that Arthur Trammel was irrevocably, messily dead. Then, when the "new" leader they'd chosen for their new front man, after maybe a year's search or more, arose or climbed from his coffin, and the Trammelites accepted him, then a true miracle would have occurred. I had to hand it to them.

  And they damn near had it made, I thought. Actually, the only critical part would be the resurrection itself. That was the soft spot—and I'd be right there poking it.

  "Something else," I said to Lyn. "Since the Guardians swung into this deal so fast, they must have been ready for a long time, waiting for the psychological moment. And would there ever have been a better moment than Wednesday night? Sunday I'd threatened Trammel, then gone crazy; Sunday night and Monday I was knocking people off like flies, and Monday night I attacked Trammel himself, tried to kill him. At least, that's what everybody believed—what the Guardians wanted them to believe. If Trammel got killed and murder was suspected, the only name that would pop into people's minds would be that of the guy who'd already tried once to kill him: Me. There wasn't any tent meeting Tuesday night—and remember, they wanted the Trammelites to see his death—so they took their first chance: the very next night, Wednesday." I thought a minute. "And who did the Guardians accuse? Me, the made-to-order patsy."

  We'd got the paper but hadn't yet had time to read it. It was open on Lyn's lap and she looked at it a minute, then said, "The way you talk, you could almost make me believe the Prophet's going to fly this afternoon."

  I started to laugh, then said, "The who?"

  "Some cultist. The paper says he's going to fly at three o'clock today." She pointed to the item and leaned against my shoulder while we read it together.

  There wasn't much, but it was a kick. One "Prophet Lovable," Chief Arbiter for the Lovables of the Sun Kingdom, whatever the hell that was, had announced his imminent departure from earth. Prophet Lovable was going to fly back to the sun. "The sun from whence I came," he was quoted as saying.

  The interesting part to me was that Lovable had denounced Arthur Trammel as a fraud, since he, Lovable, was the only man who could come back from the grave. As a matter of fact, he was now in his seventeenth reincarnation. And Lovable stated that he would take off from the very spot at which the impostor would fail to arise.

  I said, "Looks like this Lovable cat has gone off the deep end, what with all the excitement. Three o'clock, too—exactly twenty-four hours before the Guardians' operation. The town's cults must be anxious to get in on the act."

  Lyn and I were quiet for a while. Finally, she slid over onto my lap, put her arms around my neck, and said with her lips close to my ear, "Shell, if the Trammelites believe they've got their leader back, they'll never say anything against him. Not to you or me or anybody. And if the Guardians get away with it tomorrow—"

  I interrupted, not even considering what effect my words would have on Lyn. I knew very well how that caper could mess me up, but also what I was going to do about it, and for the moment, I forgot I'd meant to keep the idea to myself. I didn't want anybody else to know, because I didn't want anybody else around me when and if I got my arms and legs torn off.

  So I blurted it out, just as if I'd already told Lyn about it. "You forget, sweetheart, that no matter how good their facsimile, they'll still have to deck him out with grease paint and doodads to make him reasonable. And you also forget they aren't going to get away with it, since if they try, tomorrow at three o'clock I shall be right there in the thick of things, yanking off falsies or whatever, and raising all kinds of hell."

  She didn't quite faint.

  She jumped up, shouting things like "You idiot!" and "You suicidal, illogical lunatic!" It went on for a long time. By the time it was over, she knew what I meant to do, had accepted my flat declaration that I was going to do it, and had, through her vehemence, her anger, and even her tears, wrung one concession from me. She made me agree that she could go with me clear up to the final moment, with the understood provision that she'd not be near me at the climax.

  At two o'clock I said, "Well, since I've got to gander the lay of the land today, we might as well watch the Prophet fly."

  "Let's go."

  "Who knows, honey? It might be fun. And what are we worried about? Nothing happens till tomorrow, and maybe the whole shebang will peter out before then."

  "Maybe," she said. "I'll get my car."

  I was on a hill again, with binoculars Lyn had picked up in a pawnshop. This time Lyn was beside me. We were sprawled on the ground far from the spot the Guardians had chosen, and well above it, and through the glasses I could see where tomorrow's resurrection was to be held. The physical props were already in place.

  From where Lyn and I lay, the earth sloped downward to a level, bare plain that extended on for another half mile and ended at the base of the cliff where I'd plinked at tin cans. The cliff's smooth face was toward us, jutting up out of the level ground and sometimes rising as much as a hundred feet above it. But from our left and right, its upper edge slanted down in a shallow V, so that its lowest point was only about thirty feet above the cliff's base on the plain below. That lowest spot, the bottom of the V, had been chosen for tomorrow's resurrection.

  Beyond that chosen spot, hills ros
e even higher and formed a kind of amphitheater, or bowl, chopped in two at the cliff's edge. From here, it looked like the curved half of a huge funnel arcing away from us. The Guardians had picked a perfect place.

  The funnel-like bowl was at least twice the size of the L.A. Coliseum, which holds a hundred thousand people, so there would be plenty of room up on those hills beyond the cliff for bug-eyed spectators tomorrow, and they'd all have an unobstructed view.

  I swung the glasses left, to the state highway half a mile away, then back. A dirt road ran toward us from the highway, parallel to the cliff and a couple of hundred yards this side of it, then stretched away on our right into the little town of Hollis, which wasn't visible from here. The only other things that marred the level surface of the plain were Hollis's square, concrete reservoir, light glancing from the water in it, and an old abandoned quarry a mile farther to its right.

  The coffin wasn't yet in place, and though I couldn't be sure a coffin would be used, it was a reasonable assumption. Near the base of that V on the cliff's edge, a twenty-foot-square area was roped off like a boxing ring and in its exact center was a wooden platform, its top a yard or so above the ground. It was just about the right length and width to hold a coffin.

  We were several miles from the Trammelite grounds, but if it seemed odd to me that he wasn't going to arise from the spot where he'd died, it apparently wasn't odd to many other people out here. And that was the first shock—the people.

  Through the glasses I could see that already there were more than a thousand men and women gathered over there. Some bedrolls were in evidence, ten or a dozen tents; smoke rose from a wood fire where four women were cooking something.

  I handed the glasses to Lyn. "Take a look."

  We were alone, all the people being up on the cliff at the center of activity. It was just as well. I still wore my black ensemble, and hadn't made any attempt to disguise my appearance, not only because there was little I could change enough without surgery, but because I'd figured with luck we wouldn't run into anyone. We hadn't. There'd been no real complications to overcome getting here this time; but I still didn't know how I was going to make it tomorrow, clear up to that roped-off area, among thousands of men and women.

  Lyn said, "I didn't imagine there'd be this many people. You'd think they were giving away something free down there."

  "They are. Part of the crowd is undoubtedly composed of Lovables, but I'll bet most of them are just making sure of good seats for tomorrow. What time is it?"

  She was on her stomach, and squirmed a bit to look at her watch. "Ten of three." She peered through the glasses again. "That white-gowned chap with the beard must be Lovable."

  She handed me the glasses and I found the egg. "He doesn't look very lovable. He doesn't even look likable."

  He didn't. I had expected a guy about six feet or so, husky, and with masses of flowing hair. No good reason, just a half-formed idea of what he'd look like, maybe inspired by the positive appearance of his words in the day's paper.

  But Lovable, judging by the size of people near him, was barely five feet tall, and pudgy. He was wearing a white robe that reached to the ground and he sported a foot-long gray beard.

  "Queer-looking bug," I said. "You know, if he flies, I'm going to feel very creepy about all this."

  She laughed, then frowned at me. "Don't talk like that. People don't fly."

  "Oh, yeah? You've just been sheltered. People fly all the time." I grinned at her. "You just have to be sure you can do it, that's all. The first inch is the hardest, but after that there's nothing to it."

  She made a face at me. "You said you had to . . . what was it? Case the no-man's-land and plan your getaway route. So case."

  I said, "Yep," and used the binoculars some more. Our program was settled—and it was our program; there was no longer any argument about it. Lyn would drive me here tomorrow, let me out, then try to park the car somewhere nearby. "So you can run to it," she had told me, "just in case you still have legs on."

  "Well, honey," I said, "this is not the most desirable arrangement I have ever seen. As for parking, there would be nothing to it if we were arriving in a helicopter; but there ain't no roads up in them hills. And no place to hide."

  She took the glasses again. In a moment she said, "I could hide the car behind the reservoir thing. Nobody could see me from up above it, there on the cliff."

  "True." It was forty or fifty yards from the spot where all the people were gathered, and right up against the cliff's base. "There is just one small difficulty," I said. "That's a dandy hiding place for you, only I need to be up on top of the cliff, so I can pull off noses. I'd better confess, I really don't know how to fly, and—"

  "He's flapping his wings!" she shouted. "I mean his arms. He's going to fly—jump!"

  "Don't get hysterical!" I shouted.

  Lyn slid the left eyepiece to her right eye, leaving room for me to scoot in and stick my left eye before the remaining lens. With a little squirming, we got settled so that both of us could see what was going on.

  Lovable had earlier been addressing about twenty people, who were in white robes similar to his own, waving his arms about, and wobbling his head like a bell clapper. Right now he was still waving his arms, but he stood on the edge of the cliff, facing us, with his back to the assembled Lovables of the Sun Kingdom.

  He made a strange sight, standing there waving his arms up and down. The white-robed people stood in a semicircle behind him. There was some kind of movement among them, but it took me a couple of seconds to discover they were slowly clapping their hands together. I'd have given much to hear them, because they almost surely were chanting some weird thing that would have been interesting.

  "He doesn't seem to be going anywhere," Lyn said, and for some reason she was whispering.

  I whispered back, "He's not even trying yet. See, they're clapping their hands in time to something. Maybe they're waiting for a sign. Maybe the sun has to split open. Ah, it's in time to his arms."

  "I see," she whispered.

  It was true. Every time Lovable's arms went up and then came down, all those people clapped. Suddenly they started clapping faster and faster, and Lovable was waving like a fiend up there.

  "He's gonna go," Lyn whispered excitedly, "he's gonna go."

  There was now a veritable frenzy of motion, of waving and clapping—and all of a sudden all those white-robed people who had been clapping threw their arms up in the air and waggled them. They must have let out a fearful yell at the same moment, because it floated clear up to where we were. It was obviously the end of their chant.

  "Here he goes," I said. "Watch him, now. Here he . . ."

  Lovable, poor old Lovable, dropped his arms to his sides and looked back over his shoulders. The others slowly stopped waggling their arms.

  Lyn said, "Isn't he? Do you think he's going to back out?"

  "He can't back out. No more than our friends can tomorrow. He's got to fly." I got him in the exact center of my lens and said, "Damn you, fly!"

  It was as though he heard me. Truly, it was as though he heard me. He swung his head around, eyes front, then raised his eyes heavenward. And then Lovable swept his arms down in a lovely graceful motion and took off for the sun.

  He did not, however, get there. He actually went in the opposite direction, down, and broke both his legs.

  Chapter Twenty

  That night, tension started building in me. I was pacing the floor when Lyn grabbed my hand and yanked me down beside her on the couch. Then she crawled up on my lap like a kitten, in that favorite pose of hers—and mine—with her arms around my neck and her lips close to my ear.

  "Shell," she said softly, "isn't there another way? Do you have to go out there tomorrow to do it yourself? And all by yourself?"

  "Yeah, sweetie, and don't talk like an idiot. I shouldn't have to explain why to you. You know what crowds are like, even better than I do. So you know what that one tomorrow will be like."
<
br />   "I know. Darn it, I know. But how can you do anything alone?"

  "I told you, Lyn, no matter if they had ten years to look for the guy they use, if he's to look remotely like Trammel they'll have to gook him up with plenty of makeup, maybe fake eyebrows, a false nose, some porcelain teeth. Well, right about three o'clock I shall pluck off the character's nose, or whatever is handy. And that should get a real rise out of the recently risen Trammel."

  "Shell, we haven't talked about this part yet, the part after you unmask him. Assuming you can get close enough actually to do it just the way you hope to. You just told me I know crowd psychology better than you—and I do. A lot better."

  "So? Don't give me any speech. I make the speeches."

  "Shell, listen to me," she said seriously. "Even if it goes perfectly and all of a sudden those people do realize they've been tricked, you can't know their anger won't be directed at you. Not at the fraud, but at the man who exposed the fraud. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened. They might turn on you. I know what I'm talking about, Shell."

  "Oh, nuts! Why don't you yak about something constructive and shut off this it's-impossible chatter? Why in the name of . . ."

  She leaned back a little, but her face was still somber. As my words trailed off, she pursed her lips in a kiss.

  "I'm sorry, Lyn," I said. "You know I didn't mean anything. I'm wound up like an eight-day clock."

  "I know. Get it off your chest."

  "It's off. But, hell, you understand I can't do anything else. You know where I wind up if they pull it off. I've got to do it, and right in front of their eyes, too. If I don't, they'll never believe it didn't happen, and you know it. Those characters are experts in rationalization, baby. It has to be right, complete, with no loopholes they can wish their way out of."