She should remove that wattle, he thought, looking at her drooping chin with disgust.
“It’s about Magda,” she began. The flap of skin seemed to act as a resonator, giving her words unusual depth and timbre.
“Yes?”
“An operation makes no sense. Why use the knife, if the knife will change nothing? The tumor is secondary, and there are other metastases. Surgery would only hasten the spread of it. Most likely the primary tumor was removed on the prison ship.”
“My wife spoke of no operation on the ship.”
“A note in her file says there was a procedure. She might have thought it was cosmetic.”
“Nott, you must do everything possible to save her. She must live.”
“There are times when a doctor can do no more than the next person. The truth is your wife can be saved now only by a miracle.”
“Then that miracle must happen.” Gavein stared at her so hard that Dr. Nott lost her composure: Was it possible that his eyes alone could kill?
“I too wish for such a miracle,” she said, holding up her hands. “But miracles do not happen very often. Meanwhile the bleeding will be more frequent. Had they found the primary tumor earlier on the ship, she would have had a chance of recovery, maybe thirty percent. It’s zero now.”
He realized he was clawing at his skin. He stopped.
“How much time does she have?” he said with effort.
“Two weeks, maybe three.”
Silence.
“There must be a way. It can’t end like this. Otherwise what is the point?”
“Consider, Dave,” said Dr. Nott, her eyes on him like a bird of prey, “you yourself are a phenomenon outside percentages, like a miracle, sowing death on every side. Perhaps you can also prolong life. They may be two aspects of the same thing. You need to understand your powers better. The solution may lie there.”
“One of Medved’s people told you to say that?”
“Medved himself.”
Their talk was interrupted by the police bringing in groceries, newspapers, sundries for Lorraine: Medved keeping his part of the bargain. Gavein offered to pay—he had plenty of money—but everything was compliments of the government of Davabel.
When the ambulance and cars left, Gavein sat on the sofa and reached for Nest of Worlds.
Not to seek an answer; he simply needed to take his mind off a reality that was crushing him.
70
He opened the book beyond the place he had stopped yesterday.
* * *
Spig Bolya opened another can and poured. He waited stoically for his wife’s tongue lashing: on the upholstery of the armchair was a beer stain, and it smelled.
On the TV they were showing an Amido, the latest model. The splendid car roared blissfully across an unpaved expanse, clean and shiny despite the dirt that sprayed from its wheels. The resonant voice of the announcer told of an excellent new financing plan: no money down, no interest for the first three months.
This Amido Civic might be nice, was the thought that stirred in Spig’s lethargic brain. The Sitta Vekand they now had smoked too much, and the trunk was too small. They were tired of it, though they were still paying for it. The Amido was a smaller car but cheaper, so the payments would be easier.
Spig’s wife, Suzi, was preparing a late dinner. Curvy sections of her showed in the kitchen doorway. She was short and, like her husband, compactly built. She had the face of a well-fed rodent, her eyes like black coral buttons and her cheeks puffy. The couple resembled each other so much, people thought they were related. When agitated, Suzi spoke rapidly and in a high voice.
The imminence of the tongue lashing gave the beer a metallic taste. He felt as if there were metal lodged in him, between his stomach and his liver.
The damned cans were made to spill . . . He looked at the carelessly printed label: silvery aluminum showed through the crumpled colors. In anger he crushed the thin metal, but not so much that more beer spilled, and he didn’t want to cut himself.
Also, he would have to start paying some of their bills at the store.
Their stay in Mougarrie was coming to an end; they would be moving to Tolz soon. First Spig, then Suzi in a couple of days. A lot of business had to be taken care of because of the move—mainly all the stuff bought on credit. Spig’s situation was typical: everyone bought on credit, since there was so blasted little cash. The longer you stayed in Mougarrie, the more the banks trusted you, so you could negotiate better loans. Spig and Suzi had lived here fifteen years now, so they were really solid citizens. They had purchased a lot of things and lived on a fairly decent level compared to other people.
Spig got an idea for avoiding a scene. Especially since the culinary banging in the kitchen indicated that his wife was having a few problems of her own.
He called his upstairs neighbor. The beer, jostled by the sudden movement of reaching for the phone, spilled maliciously on a pant cuff. The rainbow bubbles subsided into an oval stain. He groaned.
Gary Wialic drove a big rig, drove those moving to Tolz. Spig invited him down for a beer. He didn’t really care for the man—he didn’t really care for anybody—but Suzi would like hearing about Gary’s recent trip and that would make it easier for her to take in stride not only the beer on the upholstery but also the beer on Spig’s pant leg. The evening was short (both came home from work late), but Suzi never minded making time for a little socializing.
71
Gary took a can of Lone Sail. This can, when he opened it, tricked him too; he sucked on the wet cuff of his sleeve. But his green flannel shirt, having black checks, was the kind that made a beer stain unnoticeable. Since the last time it was washed, a considerable amount of beer had got into it. Gary, just returning from a run, hadn’t even changed. He was in dark-gray coveralls with suspenders and a sewn badge that read Emigrant Transport Line.
His freckled face was gray and creased, and there were bags under his eyes, because he had gone without sleep for almost twenty-four hours. He accepted the Bolyas’ invitation for the sole reason that there was no more beer in his refrigerator and the store was closed.
Suzi divided the fries up into three cardboard containers and added a spoonful of hot sauce to each.
“How was your run?” asked Spig in his too-high voice.
“The usual. Twenty days, round trip. Good work, pays well.”
“Get any black fog?”
“We always do. But this time it was only for a few hours. A few hours, that is, on the road.”
“What does it look like?” Suzi asked. At the corners of her mouth were sticky brown drops of sauce. On her first journey (from Tahian to Mougarrie) she had been too afraid to look out the window even once.
“Sort of like an ink blot. When it’s to the side, it doesn’t bother me. But when it gets on the route, then you have to drive straight into the damn thing and keep an eye on the dials so the truck won’t leave the road.”
“Doesn’t it happen that a truck or a whole caravan is lost?” Suzi ate with her mouth open, particularly when she was interested in something. It wasn’t pretty. The thought of moving filled her with anxiety, even though there had been no trouble on her previous moves.
“It happens.” Gary took a swallow of beer. He spoke slowly, for effect. “When a greenhorn is driving, there can be an accident. The fear is strong the first time you enter a blot. Some never get used to it, even after years. Daphne wakes me up every time that crap shows.”
Daphne Casali was Gary’s relief driver. They had been working together now for two years. Before that she was in journalism but without success.
“With me, there’s no fear,” Gary went on. “I never once lost my way. Seven years behind the wheel.”
“It’s good we know you,” Suzi said, spilling a little beer. “We’ll use your company when we go to Tolz, and we’ll ask for you.” Wit
hout thinking, she wiped at the beer that had got on the upholstery.
“No problem. On the back is the phone number. But make your reservation early, because they can run out of slots.” Gary handed her an Emigrant card. He always had a few in his pocket. The way he saw it, he had earned a can of beer from the Bolyas and another from the company.
72
Usually the rig was parked at Daphne’s house. Emboldened by his new acquaintance with the Bolyas, Gary drove it instead to his place. The truck stood in a small, private lot behind the building. Its high metal trailer gleamed with chrome and white paint. Two exhaust pipes—of nickel, symmetrical—pointed proudly at the sky, reaching far above the cabin and even above the metal screen that controlled the flow of air. When connected with its trailer, the truck took on the majesty of a monster of the road. Without the trailer, it looked incomplete, a piece of a more important whole.
Gary lay on the asphalt, making a repair under the truck, while Daphne carefully cleaned the chrome around the powerful headlights. The company required that drivers keep up on maintenance. A truck in poor condition could lose its license and, before that, customers. A change of Land was an important event, taking place only every fifteen years and two hundred days. People who moved into their new life wanted to go in a vehicle that was, if not luxurious, at least well cared for; they didn’t want mud and scratches on it.
With his thin hand Gary groped for a tool he had left in a certain spot. Daphne, without a word, placed the wrench in his seeking palm. When she spoke, she talked quickly and with gesturing. She leaned forward when she walked, keeping her hips back because they were bigger than she liked. Gary sometimes thought that, beneath the surface, she was insane, but that might have been only because her white lashes and pale eyes gave her a demented look. In the two years they worked together she had given no indication of madness; on the contrary, she was oppressively normal.
A car horn played a few bars of a stupid tune, and a brand-new red Amido rode into the little square. Gary sat up on the pavement, wiping his grease-covered hands on a rag. Daphne was now washing the hood of the truck with soap. A little trickle of sudsy water made its way to where Gary sat. He jumped up, feeling the wet on his rear.
“Watch what you’re doing, you dumb broad!”
“Get up and work a little instead of sitting on your ass,” she fired back.
From the Amido stepped a sweaty, red-faced, but happy Spig. Without a word he opened all the little doors, the hood, and the trunk. The car now resembled a red hen preparing to sit on her eggs.
Spig stuck his head in the trunk, then examined the engine. He moved from one foot to the other, glancing in Gary’s direction, in Daphne’s.
“Have pity on the jerk,” she said, throwing Gary her soap-filled rag. “Praise it.”
Gary went up to Spig. “Nice car,” he said. “Mm, it’s red inside too.” Personally he thought that Amidos were garbage.
“I got a great deal on it,” Spig said, stumbling in his speech, as if the joy made it hard for him to think. “The financing is perfect. I start making payments only in Tolz. They gave me a good trade-in for the Sitta too.”
“You paid for most of the Sitta?”
“Three-quarters.”
Daphne nodded and gave Spig and his new car an impatient look. She would have been taller than him if she stood up straight. “That should hold him, Gary,” she muttered. “We have to finish.”
“What are you doing?” Spig asked but didn’t wait for an answer.
73
The voice of Ra Mahleiné reached him through the dream world.
Dinner was ready. He sat down to the reheated TV-dinner pasta, as in the good old days, when he was waiting for his wife to arrive, when he didn’t know that he would find her ill, incurably ill, and when the epidemic of correlated deaths had not yet broken out. The food was the same except without the bits of cardboard that caught between his teeth. At the beginning of his stay in Davabel, life had seemed full of discomfort and tedium, and the meals were awful. Looking back, he saw that those days had held the lovely hope of happiness, a hope that now was gone.
During dinner Ra Mahleiné turned pale from a stab of pain; a cold sweat covered her forehead. It hurt her where it usually did. She had to take three pills to make the stabbing stop. Lorraine cleaned up and did the dishes. On the television news they gave the latest statistics: there were not that many recent deaths, but all were connected with David Death.
Ra Mahleiné’s pain returned.
“Read . . . ,” she groaned, twisting in the bed. “Read that book.”
“I’ll give you some pills first.”
“No pills. Just start reading again.”
Is she delirious? he wondered. She had no fever. He looked at her carefully. Why did she insist that he read?
He wasted no time, turning to the page where he had left off.
74
Gary Wialic invited himself to the Bolyas, and Daphne came too. Spig’s displeasure lessened when he saw that his guests had brought a couple of six-packs with them.
“We bought a new refrigerator, a new pressure cooker, two bicycles, and a small bar cabinet,” Suzi told them. “It turns out that we get a preferential line of credit because we’re moving soon. Our bank considers us its best customers.”
“Because we owe so damn much.”
“On these new purchases we’ll make payments only once we get to Tolz,” Suzi explained cheerfully. “So now it’s like having them for free.”
Gary drank down his first beer in a few gulps and reached for the next. Daphne did the same. Her hands trembled; she was ashen. Suzi fell silent, seeing that only Spig was listening.
“Today, it was . . . ,” Gary said in a hoarse voice and shook his head. “I didn’t think we’d make it.”
“Not today. You forget about the time shift. It was earlier,” Daphne said, correcting him.
Suzi sat up. She sensed something unusual.
“What happened?” Spig asked.
Gary put down his empty beer can. “The black fog.”
“Like nothing before,” said Daphne. “It was so strange. Those blots everywhere . . . across the road. They say time passes differently inside them. One of the trucks in front of us fell into a hole. With its load. We saw its trailer going up, straight up, as the fog surrounded it . . . By the time we got there, the hole had closed up.”
“Holes in the road? But that doesn’t happen. They would have told us on television.”
“Daphne exaggerates. A hole can’t close up that fast. The driver ahead of us simply lost his bearings in the fog and left the road.”
“Once, on television, two experts argued over whether time in a black fog speeds up or slows down,” Suzi said.
“Which is it?” Daphne asked.
“I don’t recall.” Suzi didn’t have a head for things said by experts.
75
Again the medical van came and the ambulance. Dr. Nott examined Ra Mahleiné and promised there would be an operation if the patient’s condition remained stable. Gavein didn’t believe her.
He looked at the blinking lights of the retreating ambulance. Why still use the siren, he wondered, if there is no more traffic?
At breakfast they sat around a picnic table set up in front of the house. The day was warm, and there was no wind. Spring had come to stay in Central Davabel.
Ra Mahleiné suddenly began acting strange. “Get back to that book, the one with the beads on the cover!” she shouted.
He still had on the plate before him a piece of spongy bread; crackers with three slices of ham, salted in the Davabel way; a half-synthetic cottage cheese made of powdered milk; a hard-boiled egg; and a generous blob of ketchup. Breakfast in Davabel was made up of such oddments, much as the main meal of the day was always pasta and pizza.
“In a minute. Let me fini
sh eating first,” he said coaxingly, wanting to draw the full brunt of her wrath. Perhaps feeling, irrationally, that if she still had the strength to scold, there was hope.
“You eat so slowly,” she said, building up steam. “I’ll get the stabbing again below my belly. When you’re in that book, nothing happens to me. I can read for hours, take a nap, watch TV, and nothing.” She was spelling it out, finally. “When you’re eating or talking . . . or when we talk together, that’s when the pain comes, the Red Claw that grabs me between my legs.” The Red Claw was her latest euphemism. For two days now that was how she spoke of her disease. “You tell him too, Lorraine. When he reads, isn’t it peaceful for us? We can gossip for hours, knit, lie in the sun.”
Lorraine didn’t look well. She had always had a fair complexion, but now her pallor revealed new blemishes on her face and chest. Short and small, she could hardly be seen at the table. She blinked. Although her lashes were red, she carefully blackened them.
“It’s true, Dave,” she said. “Magda doesn’t feel the pain, doesn’t faint, while you’re reading.”
Ra Mahleiné’s complaining might have had its nonsensical charm. But when a third party repeated her argument, the absurdity ceased to be amusing.
He did not dignify what Lorraine said with a response. Instead, he swallowed the last bites of his meal.
The only wife in the world, he thought dourly, who prefers to have her husband read rather than listen to her. All right, then, she’ll get what she wants.
Without another word he went to his armchair and opened Nest of Worlds.
76
The day of the move came quickly. Despite his promise to Gary, Spig called several other moving companies as well. It turned out that Emigrant indeed offered the best terms.
The Bolyas sold nothing, since the purchase agreements they had signed clearly stated that if the object was disowned by the buyer, or if the buyer attempted to return it, it became the property of the seller and the sum of the installment payments made by the buyer could not be recovered.
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