“But Jake, if I understand it, the fate of reality—of all pregnant women everywhere and everywhen—is going to be decided in this bar in the next couple of hours. And you’re the CO. And if I bring her down to Smithtown General you will come along—”
“Fuck it, let Callahan handle it,” I said. “He’s better qualified for the job anyway.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” he said. “But it’s your job.”
“Dammit, so is Zoey!”
“That’s right. So the time has come for you to decide whether you’re a moral husband, or an ethical human. Look at it this way: I know you want to get your wife off the battlefield—but how much are you protecting her if you let Armageddon come because you weren’t on the battlefield when the smoke rose?”
I must have looked haunted.
“Let me get more data while you’re thinking it over, okay? Look on the bright side: maybe I’ll find something so horrible we’ll have to put her in a car, and then all you’ll have to decide is where you’re going to be…”
So we went back out to the bedroom…and I started to feel better nearly at once.
Our bed—our big beloved king-size bed—was gone. In its place was a natal bed more sophisticated than any I had ever seen, with Zoey comfortably arranged thereon. It folded at at least four places. It had padded handgrips, and raised contoured stirrups for her feet. It tilted down to let gravity help her. I saw that it could be opened out into the shape of an inverted Y. It seemed to have built-in monitors for both fetal and maternal heart, as well as other functions I did not grok, displayed on a screen above the patient’s head and out of her line-of-sight. The only part she could follow was the fetal heart monitor, which had an audio hookup. As we came in, Mike Callahan was just affixing a wireless sensor on Zoey’s belly: it looked like the littlest round Band-Aid, but as he placed it on her, another column of data appeared on the display. He glanced at it, nodded, closed his eyes briefly, and a contemporary crash cart materialized in a near corner, right where our TV and VCR used to be. I wanted to kiss him.
Lub-dup, lub-dup, said our baby’s heart.
“Hi, hon,” Zoey said cheerily. “Neat workbench, huh?”
“Excuse me,” I said, and kissed Callahan. “Thanks, Mike.”
“You may always leave the little things to me,” he said. “Doctor, this isn’t the best rig there is, but—well, pardon me, but it’s the best one you could understand well enough to use it without a manual and a help menu. And that crash-cart was the emergency spare down at Smithtown General until just a second ago.”
“I recognize it,” Doc Webster agreed. “Nice work, Mike. Okay, Zoey, your first decision: who is privileged to be present while I examine you?”
“Only the people in this building,” she said. “You know, just family.”
He nodded, and waddled over to her bedside, where Callahan had thoughtfully left his medical bag, opened wide; a chair appeared for him and he sank into it gratefully.
Less than a minute later he stripped off his glove and grinned hugely. “Young lady,” he said, “you are go for separation. I say again, you are go.”
“Copy that,” she said, grinning back. And then she paled, and acquired a look of comical astonishment and consternation, and then she screamed “—i—” very loud. If you took the word “birth” and dropped the “b” and the “rth,” that’s the syllable.
I had never heard Zoey scream before. I didn’t like it much. It was suddenly necessary to be doing something constructive. I looked at my watch. How long had it been since the last contraction? I had failed to note the time, then. Okay, note the duration of this one. Damn, the watch has stopped. Isn’t that typical, isn’t that fucking typical? You carry the damn thing around like a prisoner’s cuff for years on end, feeding it batteries and buying it new straps every few years, and the first time you actually need the sonofabitching thing, it won’t even give you the time of—oh. No, it’s still working: the little two just turned into a three. How can she scream that long without running out of air? Maybe didgeridu players learn their chops by studying women in labor. What an aboriginal idea. E above high C, that sounds like. With a demiquaver. Maybe a semihemidemiquaver. I didn’t think Zoey could reach that note. Well, she’s screaming for two, now. Having trouble hitting that high note in concert? Birth a baby on stage, and just wait for those reviews. God damn it, the watch has stopped again—no, there it goes now: three into a four. Shit, what was the time when I started counting? What the hell is the difference, I don’t have a pen anyway. Something constructive, something constructive, your lady is in pain and it’s time for you to do something useful, Jake.
I harmonized with her. G sharp below middle C.
Even in her extremity, she half-opened one eye to squint at me. Somehow she could tell that for once in my life I wasn’t trying to be funny, and nodded approval. We sang out the contraction together.
“Jake,” she said quietly when the storm had passed, “would you mind very much if I didn’t have this baby after all?”
“Very much,” I said.
“Selfish bastard. It’s been perfectly fine right where it is, for months. Oh, all right. Jam around me, next time. Blues riffs.”
“Got you covered,” I said, and checked my watch. The four was now a thirty-four. “End of contraction at seventeen minutes, thirty-four seconds past the hour, Sam.”
“Thank you, Jake,” he said. “But you needn’t trouble yourself.” He pointed, and sure enough, the display had added a column charting time, duration and magnitude of contractions.
“Uh…what about our discussion?”
He opened his mouth to reply, and Zoey cut him off. “Jacob Stonebender, if you think I’m going to have a baby and move at the same time, you better do a cold reboot. Besides, I’m not doing this without you, and you’ve got a war to fight here.”
I started to argue. “But I—”
“Don’t call me ‘Butt-Eye,’” she snapped. “This is a partnership. Our agreement is very clear. I birth the babies. You kill the space monsters. You tend to your knitting and I’ll tend to mine. You can sing with me until it gets busy, but that’s as far as I’ll go. Now shut up and soldier.”
The Doc started a pro forma protest; she cut him off, too. “Sam, would they let me have this bed down at the hospital?”
He subsided.
“That good, is it?” I asked.
“It massaged my back while I was in contraction,” she said. “If you get killed in the firefight I’m gonna propose to it.”
“Ah, but can it harmonize?”
“Zoey?” Callahan said.
“Yes, Mike?”
He waved his hand, and a B-B appeared in mid-air just above it. He took away his hand, and the B-B stayed there. “This little widget isn’t doing anything now—but if I tell it to, it’ll become a camera. Self-powered, self-directing, silent, uses available light. It could be the eyes of your grandchildren. Do you want me to turn it on?”
She looked thoughtful. “Hey, Eddie,” she called.
Fast Eddie appeared in the doorway. “Yo, Zo.”
“What’s everybody doing out there?”
He didn’t need to turn around and check. “Wond’rin how de hell youse’re doin’ in here.”
She nodded. “Mike, can you feed that thing to the TV out in the bar? As well as the VCR?”
“Easy as falling off a wagon.”
“Do it.”
He glanced at the floating B-B, and it left its invisible dock and sailed to a position of advantage just above the Doc’s head. I never noticed it again after that. From outside I heard excited chatter as people gathered around the TV set.
“Anybody else you’d like present, Zoey?” the Doc asked.
She thought for a second. “Yeah. Send Mary in.”
I blinked, and said “…” very softly.
Callahan nodded, and went to fetch his daughter.
The Doc was still going down his preflight checklist. “Are you s
till sure you don’t want drugs?”
She thought about that one for a second, too. “No,” she said finally, “but so far I’m still determined.”
“In that case,” he said, “take these outside, Jacob.” And he handed me four white cylinders, three inches long and over a quarter of an inch thick, with twisted ends.
Historic moment. The first time in my life I ever hesitated to accept one of those. “…,” I said, a little louder than the last time.
“As your physician,” the Doc said, “I diagnose stress, and prescribe delta-niner tetrahydrocannabinol. Take them with friends, and repeat every two hours.” A cheer came from outside. “Don’t come back in here until you’re done.”
“Oh, well,” I said. “If I must.” I could already tell by the smell that it was not generic medicine. The Doc has friends in British Columbia.
“You’ve got a group-mind to build,” he said. “And not much time.”
“Uh, look,” Zoey said, “I don’t want to be fanatic about this…”
The next contraction hit as I was holding it to her lips for a shallow sip. Her teeth slammed shut, removing the tip of the joint and two layers of epidermis from my thumb. This time the syllable was the “a” you’d get if you dropped the “f” and “rt.” The note hunted at first, but within a couple of seconds found E again—Zoey has perfect pitch—this time in the middle register, with a Johnny Winter rasp to it. I jammed around it as she had requested, trying to become Billy Branch’s harmonica. A couple of bars in, Mary joined in, droning the dominant to give me a better foundation, and now Zoey had two hands to mangle. The whole thing lasted three breaths for me and Zoey, two for Mary; I let it resolve into an E major.
“Take that out of here, Jake,” Mary said then, and I said “…” quite loudly, and did as I was told.
A delegation awaited me, beaming like so many MIG radars. (You can cook a rabbit on the runway with a MIG radar.) Many hands slapped me on the back or tousled my hair; somebody pinched my ass.
“Have a cigar,” I said. “My fiancée is having a baby.” The digit was taken from me; I lit another and started it off in the opposite direction.
“You guys are gonna make it legal?” Long-Drink asked in surprise. There were murmurs of joy.
I nodded, and said in that peculiar croak you use when you want to talk without exhaling, “Waited just long enough to spare the child the shame of legitimacy.”
“When?” Merry Moore honked in the same manner.
“Figured New Year’s,” I wheezed, and exhaled. “I don’t want to be one of those guys who gets in trouble for forgetting his anniversary.”
“Sound,” Willard said, and his wife Maureen kicked him in the shin.
Congratulations were offered all around, and toasts were made and glasses destroyed. There was a growing buzz of pleasure as the news was passed around the room. Merriment became general.
In our circle, Ev, one of our resident smoke-ring artists, took a deep drag, pursed her lips, and carefully blew a baby. Pot is one of her favorite media, and she outdid herself. It was beautiful, perfectly formed, naked but sexless; its expression changed realistically as it shimmered there just below eye-level. It looked like it would assay out to about nine pounds if it had been flesh. As we admired it, it thrashed its arms and lazily rolled over.
I couldn’t help it. I took a bite out of its bum.
Ev smiled, and the rest of the cannibals moved in.
Tasty baby.
***
I wandered over toward the TV, where a small crowd was passing one of their own, and watched Mary rubbing Zoey’s shoulders and talking.
“What happened to the sound?” I asked.
“Zoey turned it off,” Merry Moore explained.
“Oh.” I wondered if Solace was getting audio, and storing a record, and whether she’d let me audit it some day. That was a conversation I’d have given a lot to hear. Neither woman looked particularly happy.
Then all of a sudden they did. They hugged each other, and I relaxed. Merry and others made happy “oooh” sounds. Onscreen, stepped into frame and gave me a discreet thumbs-up sign. My carcass had been successfully carved. In the immortal words of William Dunn (where are you, Bill?), it was as though a great express-train had been lifted from my testicles.
I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned around and found myself staring at the third button from the top of Mickey Finn’s shirt. I panned up to his face, and found him working his mouth in a vain attempt to milk words from it. Finally he gave up and threw his arms around me.
Interesting, being hugged by someone much taller.
“Finn,” I said as we disengaged, “that’s the most human thing you’ve ever done, that I recall.”
He smiled that pained smile of his. “Thank you, Jake.”
“Thank you, brother. That was a compliment, was it?”
He nodded vigorously. “I must be human, for as long as Mary lives—and she has no plans to die. The better I do so, the happier she will be.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But keep in mind that she married who you are.”
He nodded again. “Yes—but I can give her better than that. I should never have allowed her to follow me into combat with her heart so conflicted. I should have known.”
“Mick,” I said, “there ain’t no easy way to learn anything important. You’ll know better next time. Cut yourself some slack. She should have known, too.”
He looked thoughtful.
“Look,” I said, “did you ever read Tom Robbins’ jitterbug perfume? Do you know what he says Einstein’s last words were?”
“No.”
“‘Lighten up.’”
He flinched slightly, frowned, and then suddenly grinned broadly. I had never seen Finn grin. “Yes, Jake.”
Zoey’s battle-cry came suddenly from both the TV speakers and the next room. Triophonic sound? This time it was E below high C, and the syllable was “o.” Conversation broke off all around the room in sympathy.
The syllable was all the clue I needed. I threw back my head and copied her note an octave lower.
People didn’t get it until Fast Eddie jumped in on the same note. Then five or six people realized we were building an “OM,” and hopped aboard.
Do you know what an “OM” is? Were you lucky enough to be a hippie? It’s…it’s…well, it’s an “OM,” that’s all. You just sing that syllable, for as long as you can stretch it out, over and over, with as many people as possible, all holding the same note.
Sure it’s simple; so is fucking. Try it some time.
It helps to be all in a circle, but it isn’t essential. Strangely, I’ve never met anyone so tone deaf they couldn’t find the note everyone else was using, sooner or later—and it actually makes it better if one or two people hunt a little, adds a weird little resonance. No matter how strong the voices are, there are always other little resonance effects as different people run out of air and gulp more. The chant becomes a living, pulsing, vibrating, changing yet unchanging thing. A way of growing closer. A way of making time stop. If the word “spiritual” is a null signal for you, get a bunch of other atheists together and try an “OM.” It’s okay if you intend to sneer at it; you won’t.
Pretty soon everybody had figured it out, even Acayib and Buck. It didn’t require a lot in the way of wit: an “OM” is kind of a no-brainer. In fact, I think I just accidentally said something profound. One of the things an “OM” can do, if it works, is to turn your brain off, so your mind can get a little work done for a change. I welcomed the opportunity joyously, and put my diaphragm into it. The sound grew, swelled, deepened, throbbed—
—and something began to happen.
***
At first I thought it was just harmonics, as one voice or another wavered a few cycles per second off true in one direction or another. Then I thought maybe the Coffee Machine had somehow gone prematurely into its overnight rinse-cycle, because the strange new component of the sound had a treble-y, machine-like
quality to it. Then I began to wonder if I were hyperventilating from too many tokes and too much chanting, because it began to move. You remember how back in the Sixties there was a brief period in which every single band in the universe came up with the idea of having a feedback-whoop oscillate rapidly between the left and right channels, like a sonic pingpong ball? This was like that, heard on headphones.
Then I realized it was more than just sound—
—and recognized it.
Inside the sound—and please don’t ask me what I mean by that—was…uh…something else, a spherical…uh…thing, like my metaphorical pingpong ball, but even less substantial than a metaphor. It ricocheted back and forth inside my skull, wrapped in sound, and it came to me that I could, if I tried, affect its motion…and that if I could get it to come to a stop in the center of my head, something wonderful would happen.
All around me, the actual sounds of the “OM” shivered slightly as the same thing happened to everyone else.
Is it possible to lock eyes with a whole room full of people at once? Because I swear, I did. We all locked eyes together, several of us joined hands, and the note steadied and locked on again, and we began to concentrate on capturing our little intercranial pingpong balls. Buck and Acayib both looked terrified, but they were dead game.
Easy. Easy. Don’t break it. A little more…a little more…not quite: a frog-hair off-center; let it go and try again. Catch the rhythm. Pick your moment. Now—got it!
The “OM” exploded.
One moment it was a single note; the next it was a chord. No, it was the chord. The one I’d heard twice before, and never really expected to hear again. No, by God, I was wrong again: we were in the key of E this time, so it was the complement to that chord, yin to its yang.
Memory came thundering back like a tidal wave, and wrenched me loose from space and time.
Callahan's Place 07 - Callahan's Legacy (v5.0) Page 18