Second Chance

by Chet Williamson

  But when Paul Scavullo told him that Kathy had been killed in a car accident in the summer of 1973, he didn't feel like smiling at all.

  He offered the man belated sympathy and hung up, knowing now, far beyond any suspicion.

  Keith was alive. Kathy Scavullo had seen him, and Woody felt certain he had caused her death, unwilling to leave a witness behind, especially one who had seen him in college, who suspected that Keith Aarons was not dead after all. No, Keith could not afford to be alive, and Pan could not afford to take any risk.

  So another innocent had to die.

  Jesus, it was all true, wasn't it? What had started as a bitter fancy had become a terrifying reality.

  Keith Aarons, alive and well and vicious. And he owed his life—and how many hundreds owed their deaths?—to Woody Robinson, the dark Orpheus who piped demons up from hell with the nostalgia of Doors records, Day-Glo posters, and Panamanian grass.

  Woody didn't sleep that night. He called the airport, made return reservations for early the next morning, and sat looking out at the brightly lit Pittsburgh night, trying to decide what to do with his new, cruel knowledge.

  Tell the police or the FBI? That would be interesting, wouldn't it?

  Well, you see, I happen to know who Pan is. That's right—the guy you've been looking for for twenty years. His name's Keith Aarons, and he was my roommate. Everybody thought he died in an explosion, but it was some other guy.

  How do I know? Well I just got curious after all these years, and did a little investigating. A regular Hardy Boy, aren't I?

  Pretty lame.

  Okay then. I'll tell you the truth. We had a little party, and brought my wife and Keith Aarons and another friend back from the dead. See, in the world where I first came from, there isn't any Pan, so since my wife and the other guy aren't Pan, it has to be Keith, see?

  Yeah. Sure. And who would believe the truth, even though it was so simple. "The fact is," said Woody aloud to himself, "that there are two different worlds. And in the one where Keith Aarons is still alive, Pan exists."

  It was that simple, and, even though he said it over and over again, that impossible to believe.

  It became no more possible when morning came.

  ~*~

  Exhausted, he fell asleep on the plane somewhere over Indiana, and did not awake until they entered California air space. He dreamed about his music and about Tracy, and actually awoke humming, though not from nonchalance. His mouth tasted bitter, and he asked the stewardess for some juice. It washed the taste from his mouth, but not from his mind.

  He would have to tell her. In this life, she had shared his every secret, helped with every decision. She would have to help with this one too. But what he was afraid of was that she would see it as her burden, not his. Her guilt. Still, he knew he had to tell her, if for no other reason than to ask her what they should do.

  For something had to be done. His friend, a boy with whom he had lived, eaten innumerable pizzas, downed countless beers, had become a merciless mass killer to whom no target was sacred. Men, women, children, guilty and innocent alike were cut down without a trace of conscience, by a boy with whom he had traded secrets and fears, shared joys and sorrows.

  Woody had seen the traces of violence in Keith, the angry persona of the rebel railing against the establishment, the beating of the Pershing Rifles officer, and finally the bombing of the ROTC building. But that could be seen as a political statement that had tragically gotten out of hand. If it had gone as originally planned, no lives would have been lost, no one would have been injured. And even though the beating he had given the ROTC jock was brutal, there had been no permanent damage.

  So what, in the space of three years, had turned his friend into a killer?

  And how could the killer be stopped?

  And even if he was, that did nothing to erase the twenty years of violence Keith had caused.

  Jesus, talk about guilt, Woody thought as the plane landed. His car was in the parking lot, and he drove home quickly, anxious to feel the presence of his wife and children, reluctant to think about what their presence had cost the world.

  When Tracy ran to meet him at the door of their home, he grasped her as if twenty years had separated them. His children seemed puzzled by his strong and lengthy embraces, and Peter groaned and extricated himself from his father's arms. "Yo, Dad, don't have a cow," he said, and Woody laughed and ruffled his hair.

  It wasn't until after lunch, when the two of them were alone, that Tracy asked him about his trip to Pennsylvania. They were on the deck overlooking the Pacific, sitting side by side, holding glasses of iced tea.

  "All right," she said softly, her hand in his, her eyes, hidden by sunglasses, turned toward the sea. "Tell me. Is Keith alive?"

  "Yes," he said, looking at the profile of her face. Her fingers made no reaction. "But it's worse than that. Much worse."

  "I know," she said. "He's Pan, isn't he? The terrorist." Woody didn't answer right away, and she went on. "When we first talked about it months ago, about Pan not being in . . . in your other life, I started thinking about it then. Thinking about what if Keith had come back after all." She sighed and looked at him, and he saw his own face in the reflection of her lenses. "You're sure."

  "I'm sure." And he told her about his memory of the door closing in the apartment, about Ben Wallace's disappearance at the time of the bombing, about Kathy Scavullo's identification and subsequent death, and about the quotation from Steppenwolf. "It's all circumstantial," he said, knowing that the rationalization sounded absurd, "but when you add the major factor . . ."

  "That Pan exists in one life and not the other. I know." She took a long drink from her iced tea. "I know."

  He squeezed her hand. "Honey. . .”

  "I was too happy, Woody. You know what they say—when you're too happy, look out, because that's just when God's all set to dump on you." When she laughed, there was no humor in it. "But how can I be happy now? How can I be happy when hundreds of people are dead because I'm happy? Because you have to be alive to be happy, and because I'm alive—and Keith's alive—those other people . . . oh God . . ."

  The last word shuddered away, and the wet glass slipped from between her fingers, landed and broke on the wooden boards of the deck. She did not move as the pale liquid poured between the boards and ran onto the sand below.

  They sat for a long time in silence, until Woody saw tears glide from beneath the frame of Tracy's sunglasses. "I shouldn't have told you," he said. "And it's only a theory anyway."

  "It's not. It's true. It's like I told you that night, the night you brought me back? Like Orpheus."

  "I know," he said. "I've thought about that."

  "You should've looked back, Woody. Looked back and left me there."

  "I couldn't. And we didn't know what it would mean . . ." He left it unfinished.

  "If you had, if you knew then what you know now, would you have left me behind, left things the way they were?"

  "I went back," he said slowly, "to find you. Not for real, but in my heart. My soul. That was why I had the party in the first place. I didn't know what would happen, I just hoped something would, and it did, and because of it you're here, and Peter and Louisa are here—"

  "That's three lives, Woody," she said. "Three against hundreds."

  "It's not your fault! Not your guilt, if there's any guilt to be borne—it's mine! And who's to say it's wrong? It's the way things are!"

  "Pan isn't wrong? All the bombings and the murders and the terror aren't wrong?"

  "Look, look," he went on, as if enough words, no matter how illogical, could turn things around, make everything all right again. "What if it was meant to happen like this? If Pan or Keith is important to the way things are, to the environment, if these things he's doing will be for the good in the long run, make people see that—"

  "Christ, Woody . . ."

  "—see that what we're doing to the earth is wrong?" he continued, grasping at flutterin
g, unformed thoughts. "Yes, it's hard, it's cruel, but it's the way things are, so what if it's meant to be? Or what if Peter or Louisa are the key? If it's necessary for the world that they exist, and if Pan is the price we pay for that? If because of the deaths of thousands, millions are saved, if—"

  "Shut up!" She jerked off her sunglasses, and her eyes looked huge and furious. "Listen to yourself! It's stupid! And it doesn't work, Woody! You think Peter's going to become a scientist who will . . . will make dirt edible? Or Louisa will find a way to use seawater to run engines? Forget it, Woody, it won't happen! And as far as Pan being a source for good, if there's one thing I've learned in all the extra years I've had, it's that evil means don't justify the ends, and goddam it, you know that too."

  Then she said, more quietly, "You're not stupid. I didn't marry a stupid man." She took his hand and looked into his eyes with infinite love and endless sorrow. "And I don't love one now . . .”

  Then she broke. Her face quivered, sobs shook her, tears rolled from her eyes, and she fell into his arms crying as though she would never stop.

  Chapter 27

  August 31, 1993:

  I had it. It was there in my hand, and I couldn't take it.

  Pure, deadly, apocalyptic germs, the virus itself in a small, sealed, glass tube, ready to be released into the ventilation system of the oriental's cell. And it was my job, mine and Magruder's, and Magruder would never have known. I could have pulled a switch so easily, taken another tube, installed the fake in the system and pocketed the real one, taking it out, driving to Houston, and releasing it into the ventilating system of the airport terminal, sending it on its fatal journey around the world.

  But I didn't. I couldn't. I trembled every second I held it, and sweated so that I thought it might slip from my fingers. I think I finally realized what it was that I was planning to do.

  It's a difficult thing to bring yourself to destroy billions of people.

  Up until now, I've been selective. There has always been a connection between those I killed and those who defile the earth. Even the children, tragic as that was, didn't die in vain. The attendance at visitors' centers of oil companies and nuclear plants fell off considerably after that sad occurrence. The fewer people who went there, the fewer people there were who would be exposed to and believe the lies. So something was accomplished after all.

  Still, after fifteen years, I can't forget the children. Sometimes I dream about them. But then I awake and I know that by now they would be grown up, driving cars, working for the same companies that I've killed to cripple. The problem is with the society itself, a society unwilling to change the way it's governed, unwilling to make the sacrifices that need to be made to keep the earth alive and healthy.

  All right then. If they will not, I'll make the sacrifices for them. If I can.

  But killing faceless people, guilty people is one thing. Killing all the people I've ever known, people I loved and who loved me, is something else. It is ruthless, and it is cruel, and although I know it must be done, I still have doubts about my ability to do it, to actually spread so much death to the world I've sought to save. I can rationalize it by telling myself it's nothing more than destroying disease causing microbes on an organism in order to save that organism's life, but these microbes are human—my mother, still living in Colver, my friends from college, people I've met who are also struggling to save the earth in their own, less potent ways.

  The responsibility that rests on me is so great. At least I have a week of rest to think about it all, to try and become something beyond humanity, and above mercy.

  ~*~

  September 1, 1993:

  Woody Robinson knows who I am. He knows I am alive, and I believe he knows I am Pan.

  Filled with nostalgia, as well as eternal gratitude, for my old friends yesterday, this morning I sat down at the computer to find out more about their lives. Out of curiosity, I wondered if they kept in touch beyond the party at which they "resurrected" me, so I began to check phone records, listing the long distance numbers they recently called, and then cross referencing them to names.

  Wallace and Scavullo were two of the names on Woody's list. Wallace, the father of Ben Wallace, who died in my place. Scavullo, the father of the girl I killed, so that she could never identify me again.

  He called them from Iselin and from Pittsburgh. And why would Woody Robinson have been in Iselin and Pittsburgh calling those two people? Because he was looking for me. And those calls prove that he found me.

  Not physically, but he found that I was still alive, and that I am the one they call Pan.

  I have no idea how he did it, how he gathered those disparate cigarette ends of clues and came up with the truth, but I am certain he did, and his knowledge creates a complication I can ill afford. At the very least, he could report my identity to the authorities, who could get a college vintage photograph of me and computer enhance it to show what I might look like today, and plaster it on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Even in Bone, people read newspapers.

  I can do two things. The first is to run. But if this grim scenario of mine were to take place, where could I run to? I have only one goal left, and that must not be compromised nor endangered. So I will not run.

  I probably don't have to. These things take time. If Woody goes to the authorities, they certainly won't believe him immediately, particularly if he tells them the truth about the party. But they might eventually.

  Even if they don't believe his story, his knowledge poses another problem impossible to ignore. He and his friends—my friends—somehow brought me to the present in which I live.

  So might it not be possible for them to return me to the past?

  That is the chance I cannot take. For that creates the possibility of my never having existed beyond 1969. My death then means the death of the earth. And it is a possibility. No one except my mother knew me better than they did, and no one would have a better chance of tracking me down.

  I have to do something. Tomorrow I return to Goncourt. Perhaps I shall find an answer there.

  ~*~

  Al Freeman leaned over Keith Aarons's table and stared down at the agar plates as though he could see the teeming bacterial colonies with his naked eye. "How's it going, Pete?"

  Keith nodded. "Same old thing. You give me the recipe, I try and mix it, and let you cook it. Gettin' any desserts?"

  "We may be on to something with that gene we isolated earlier this week, but we want to make a few more tests before we try it out on her."

  "How much time?"

  "Three, four days maybe. Then we'll see. It's happened like this before, though. Looks great theoretically, but when we infect subjects, kills them deader than dirt. We'll hope for the best."

  Bob Hastings came over and sat in the chair next to Keith. "Good to see you're finally takin' a break, Pete. Lookin' down so long I thought you had a crick in your neck."

  Freeman smiled. "Don't you knock this boy for being a good worker. It'll be no fault of his if we don't succeed with this project." He turned to Keith. "You've been doing a helluva job. Probably the fastest cook we have."

  Keith grinned. "Not that much difference between genes 'n beans."

  Freeman laughed. "So what are you up to in your week off?"

  "Goin' out into the fresh air. Backpackin' up in Sam Houston—just some grub, a sleepin' bag, and a few books."

  "You going along?" Freeman asked Hastings.

  "No way, Jose. He ain't invited." Keith chuckled. "After two weeks cooped up with this ugly bastard, I wanta get as far away as I can from him. Nup, just clean air and deer and bunnies."

  "And what's your woman say about that?" asked Hastings.

  "Sally?" Keith said, frowning. "Hell, she understands."

  "Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," Hastings said with a barely recognizable John Wayne drawl. "Don't worry, though. I'll keep the women folk company."

  “Just bet you'll try," Keith said, slipping a do
se of venom in his words.

  Bob Hastings had been coming on to Sally more and more. On their week off, which had ended two weeks ago when the current shift began, Sally told Keith that one night at Red's when Keith went to a movie, Hastings seriously asked her to come home with him. When she laughed it off, he waited until Mae took her break, then followed Sally into the kitchen, pressed up against her, and tried to make her kiss him. He had his hand under her skirt when Red came in to see where the hell Sally was, and told the two of them to quit fucking around, and gave Hastings a shove.

  "I thanked him later," Sally told Keith. "Red knew what the problem was. Bob had too goddam much to drink or I don't think he woulda tried nothin'. But he tries it again and so help me I'll knee him in the balls."

  "That's my girl," Keith said. "Want me to say somethin' to him? Tell him to keep the hell away from you?"

  "Nah. You two gotta work together. It ain't worth the hassle. You know you're the one." And she had kissed him hard.

  He knew all right. He liked Sally. She was honest and open and friendly and as uninhibited in bed as any woman he ever knew. Joey, her little boy, was in second grade, and a nice kid, as spunky as his mother, but not at all mean with the meanness a lot of poor kids had. His mother had taught him right from wrong, good from bad, and punished him when he needed it, without hitting. There were even times when Keith saw the appeal in being a real, living person, married to a wife you loved and who loved you, bringing up kids, doing work you liked.

  But then he remembered what he had to do, remembered that Sally and Joey would have to die with all the others, and the sweet thoughts went away, the reality of the lab and what went on there returned.

  Keith glanced up at the wall clock and saw that it was nearly two in the afternoon. The shift ended at four, and with both Hastings and Freeman in the lab, now would be a good time to take what he needed.

  "Well, boys," he said, standing, "time to drain the vein and release the grease."

  "Jesus, Pete," said Hastings, "you are one piss elegant sonovabitch."