Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51

by Humans (v1. 1)

  Philpott sighed. “I know that. But what am I to do? It frightens me, naturally, and it saddens me, just when I’ve-” He glanced toward the storage bottle with its invisible S-drop. His triumph; too late?

  Suddenly he realized he shouldn’t draw their attention to it. “That’s why I hope,” he said, more loudly, looking at the armed man, “I can convince you to give this up. So far, I believe you’ve harmed no one. Two of your partners here are in desperate need of hospitalization, and—“ The thin black woman on the floor roused herself, from what had seemed like a drugged sleep, to say, “No hospital help me. Nothing help me. I’m dead meat.”

  Philpott pushed forward, concentrating on the armed man.

  “If you’re willing, I could try to negotiate your surrender, terms, lawyers—“

  The armed man pointed the gun at Philpott, but not as a threat. It was as though he were pointing a finger. He said, “I’m not going back. I already promised myself that.”

  The exotic woman wrapped her arms around herself. She looked cold, and utterly bitter. “It’s no good,” she said. “Nothing ever works. They always win. You can’t fight them. It’s their world.”

  “I’m not going back,” the armed man repeated.

  Philpott wasn’t sure exactly what he meant—back to a madhouse?—but he could see that this was no bluff or braggadocio. He said, “I’m sure we could negotiate some sort of press conference as part of the surrender. You could get your story out, we could at least make sure of that much.”

  The exotic woman said, “That’s what they told Li Kwan.”

  “That’s what I’m remembering, too,” the armed man said. He looked meaner, colder. He’s made a decision, Philpott realized, and I’m not going to like it.

  The Russian suddenly said, “Is that the experiment you were talking about on television?”

  He saw me look that way, Philpott thought. The Russian was pointing direcdy at the storage bottle on the table on the other side of the room. Philpott’s mouth was very dry, his palms wet. He said, “We’re still trying to find the particle.”

  “Are you?” The Russian kept peering at the storage bottle. “Then what is the camera looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why is that light bulb on?”

  Philpott had no immediate answer, which was wrong. The hesitation gave the game away, even though Chang tried to salvage the situation by blurting out, “We were testing it when you came in.”

  “You weren’t.”

  The armed man said, “Grigor? What’s up?”

  The Russian looked at him, and pointed a bony finger toward the storage bottle. “That’s the thing they were talking about on television. Him, and the other scientist. The thing that, if it fell down, either nothing would happen or the world would come to an end. The whole world .”

  The armed man smiled for the first time, a faint smile but an honest one. He said to Philpott, “You’re the guy says it’s safe.” All at once, Philpott understood the dangerous depths they were in. The back of his neck felt cold, as though some wind from eternity were blowing on him. Choosing his words with great care, he said, “I say I believe it is safe. No one yet knows. Dr. Delantero, some others, they might possibly be correct, after all. Nothing is proved yet. I would be, of course, extremely cautious with the material until we had tested it a thousand different ways. I would bring Dr. Delantero himself here to—”

  The Russian said, “We could test the theory for you, Doctor.” To the armed man, he said, “We just go knock that table over.”

  Philpott could hardly breathe. He hadn’t known it was possible to be this afraid. In a choked hoarse voice he said, “Man, why would you do that?”

  The Russian’s eyes were sunk into his head, as though his brain looked directly out from the center of his skull. He said, “I’m leaving very soon, Doctor. I don’t mind the idea of taking everybody with me. I like that idea. The best joke I ever thought of.” He turned that fleshless head. “Pami? Should we bring them all with us when we go?”

  “Yes!” You wouldn’t have guessed the woman could speak so forcefully, or that she could rise up so powerfully, onto one knee, one foot on the floor, before she had to reach out and clutch at the other woman’s leg for support.

  The Russian shrugged. “And we know how Kwan votes.” They couldn’t all feel that way. But the exotic woman, holding to the black woman’s wrist with one hand, took the armed man’s free hand with her other and said, “There’s nothing for us here, nothing anywhere. We can’t win. Why should it be their world?”

  “I’m not going back, that’s all I know.” The armed man showed that chilling smile to Philpott again. “It’s a crapshoot, right? Fifty-fifty. Either nothing happens, and we’ll figure out what to do next, or our troubles are over. Even money, right?”

  “Please,” Philpott whispered. “Please don’t.”

  “Fuck you,” the armed man said, “and the horse you rode in on.” He freed his hand from the woman’s, and walked toward the storage bottle.

  Please. But Philpott couldn’t even speak any more. What have I done?

  The armed man approached the table. He reached out for the storage bottle, and the phone rang.

  Everybody stopped. The armed man looked over his shoulder at the Russian. The phone rang a second time. “The last phone call in history,” the armed man said. “Should we answer it?”

  “I will,” Cindy said, stumbling in her hurry as she ran to the desk where the phone sat. They all watched her pick up the receiver. “Yes?” A little pause, and she looked around. “Is somebody here named Frank?”

  The armed man frowned, thunderously. “Who knows my name? What’s going on? Who is it?”

  Cindy held the phone out to him. “She says her name is Mary Ann Kelleny.”

  Ananayel

  I just couldn’t. When the moment came, when the time came, I couldn’t. I saw my future, the high far calm reaches of my future, the long ages of emptiness, the occasional Call, the endless time remembering, and I could not. I could not obey.

  It is not only Susan. It is the whole existence of which she is a part, the existence that makes it possible for two humans to be so selflessly bound together, to elevate their mutual caring so far beyond their petty selves, for each of them to attain such an intensity of altruism toward one other person that all of eternity does exist in the space of one shared thought.

  He should have sent someone with more experience of the humans, someone who had already grown as bored with them as He. I tried to remain aloof, but I could not. What at first seemed to me human squalor has become human vibrancy. The cumbersomeness I first thought of as pathetically comic, I now see as endearing; and with what ingenuity they struggle to overcome their physical helplessness. And the violence of their emotions, once repugnant to me, is now elixir to my pallid soul.

  Pallid no more. We all have free will, but we all must be prepared to take the consequences when we exercise it. I know what my consequence shall be: ejection. Like Lucifer before me—but at a much more frivolous level of rebellion—I shall be cast out. But not to join that greatest of dissenters in his dark sphere. No; the punishment for my defection will be suited to my crime. Do I love the humans so much? Then I will become one of them.

  But first, I must save them.

  43

  Frank took the phone from the little blonde girl as though it was hot. Two seconds ago, he’d been ready to risk everything on one throw of the dice—if he got snuffed, that was okay; and if he was still around after he dumped over the professor’s experiment he’d probably be so happy to be alive he might even stand the joint for one more tour—and now he was scared. Now he was scared; not before.

  Into the phone, cautiously, as though the damn thing might bite him, he said, “Who’s this?”

  “Hello, Frank. Not doing too well, huh?”

  It was her voice, all right, he remembered it clearly, and it evoked the picture of her the first time he’d ever seen her, g
etting out of her car after the blowout, standing there shaking with after-the-event jitters. The lady Nebraska lawyer, maybe thirty-five, tall and slender, with straight brown hair. The one that put the five-million-dollar-job idea in his head in the first place.

  He said, “How in Christ’s name did you know I was here?”

  “Frank,” she said, “I blame myself. When I said all that to you about the one big job, I didn’t expect you to do anything like this”

  “Am I blown?” he demanded. “Do they have a make on me out there?” Not that it really mattered any more; he just wanted to know.

  Surprisingly, she said, “No. I’m the only one who knows it’s you, Frank, and I want to—“

  “How?”

  “Oh, come on, Frank, what difference does it make? I know you people must be about ready to give up in there—“

  Frank looked over at the experiment on the table, and grinned a little. “You could say that.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “Will you trust me, Frank?”

  Why should he? On the other hand, why should he not? She’d treated him decentiy back in Nebraska, when he changed the tire for her, even tried to give him three hundred dollars to keep him from a life of crime. And if she was really the only one on the outside who knew a guy named Frank Hillfen was among the hijackers, then maybe she was trustworthy as far as he was concerned.

  But, still. Why should she be reliable? What was in it for her? Frank said, “That depends. You want me to walk out there and give myself up?”

  “No! That’s the last thing I want you to do, Frank. Well; the next to the last thing.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “I want you to convince Maria Elena to go on living, that’s the first thing.”

  Frank was astonished all over again. “You know about her? How?”

  “Frank,” she said, sounding hurried and impatient, “I’m not going to answer any of those questions, so just stop asking them. I want you to convince her to live, Frank. Then you can leave Grigor in charge—“

  “Leave?”

  “The others are going to die anyway,” she said, brisk and callous. “You and Maria Elena can live.”

  “In jail,” he said bitterly.

  “No. Listen to me, Frank. If you go outside and pass around the right cooling tower on the outside—not between the towers— you’re going to see a radio mast on a mountain way ahead of you. If you walk straight toward that, when you come to the perimeter fence you’ll find a small hole at the base of it, dug by animals.”

  “The fence is wired. They’ll know when we go through.”

  “The switches are in the control section,” she said. “Grigor can turn off the rear security area twenty minutes after you leave, then turn it back on ten minutes later. You’ll have plenty of time to get through. Then you keep walking straight, and when you get to the county road there’ll be a car parked there. No keys in it, but you can jump-start a car, can’t you, Frank?”

  “I don’t get this,” Frank said. His mind was swimming; this was James Bond time. How did she know all this stuff, if nobody else knew any of it? The only thing certain was that she wouldn’t answer that question.

  “I’m trying to make it up to you, Frank,” Mary Ann Kelleny was saying, “for steering you wrong in the first place. Now, listen. If you can convince Maria Elena to come with you, then when you get clear away you’ll find out that something happened two days ago that will see to it you never have to work again. You did like retirement, didn’t you, Frank?”

  Frank couldn’t help it; his mouth twisted with sardonic disbelief: “Another five-mil hit?”

  “Oh, you don’t need that much, Frank,” she said, as though they were just kidding around here together. “You do want to retire, don’t you? With Maria Elena.”

  Frank looked over again at the funny-looking glass jug on the table; the professor’s experiment. There’s something truly weird going on here, he thought. Truly weird. His voice barely audible, he said, “You know a lot of stuff, don’t you, Ms. Kelleny? You know what’s happening here.”

  “Some,” she said.

  “And that thing’s loaded, isn’t it? It really is loaded.”

  There was a little silence. Then, “Don’t bump into anything, Frank,” Mary Ann Kelleny said. “On your way out.” And she hung up.

  44

  The half of the telephone conversation that Grigor could hear made no sense. All he knew was, the exertion of the last hour had worn him down to only the smallest spark of self. But at the same time, this delay was taking from his resolve.

  The idea of ending it with everybody else; how’s that for the ultimate joke? No longer would I be an object of pity, of study, of embarrassment, of condescension. We’re all in the same boat together, and the boat’s at the bottom of the ocean. Yes, that was a good way to think of it: the ultimate joke on the human race.

  But the phone call, the delay, the incomprehensibility of what Frank was saying, all served to confuse the issue in Grigor’s mind. He found himself remembering Boris Boris, that aggressive comic bear, the only other man in the world who was entided, the man who had appreciated and nurtured Grigor’s small talent, given him something to think about beyond his own imminent end. What would Boris Boris think of Grigor Basmyonov’s last joke?

  “Not funny, Grigor. You owe me some good jokes, or what the hell are you doing in my office?”

  The doctors at the Bone Disease Research Clinic in Moscow; the doctors at the hospital just a few miles from here. Is this the way to setde their bills?

  That’s the problem with getting rid of everybody: there’s nobody left.

  What a group we are, he thought. Not one of us has any close living relative, nor anyone who deeply loves us. (A ruefiil thought of Susan crossed his mind.) And then we had this perfect meeting with the scientist, the coldly rational man who explained to us our own futility and shameful inadequacy, so that even we could see it.

  A momentum was there, a readiness to do it, to risk the destruction of everything simply because we ourselves had already been destroyed. And who could blame us afterward? (Another joke.)

  The phone call has broken that momentum. I am not the man I was three minutes ago. My revulsion from the human race does not include revulsion from certain humans. Boris Boris. Susan.

  I don’t think I can go through with it.

  But what about Frank? Grigor watched him, trying to make sense of the phone call, and when it finished and Frank hung up the receiver and turned around, Grigor saw from his face that he too had changed. But in what direction?

  Frank looked at the scientist. “It isn’t fifty-fifty,” he said.

  The scientist’s face was softer, more pliable, than when they’d first invaded his domain. His emotions now were more readily decoded there. And at this moment, Grigor saw, the scientist was torn, wasn’t sure what to do. He strongly wanted to defend his beliefs, but not if doing so would lead to violence or destruction. And he’d lost some of his earlier assurance in his own theories. He stammered a litde, under Frank’s steady look, and then said, ‘Whatever the odds, I beg you not to do it.”

  So it really is the end of the world, Grigor thought, looking again at that botde in the bright light. That’s what’s in there. It contains nothing that we can see, but it’s a nothing that could make nothing of us all.

  Frank was saying, “Maria, why don’t we live to fight another day?”

  Maria Elena responded with a haughty, angry look, stepping away from him, putting her hand on the crouched Pami’s shoulder. “You want to live? In this world?”

  “It’s the only one we’ve got.”

  “We don’t have it! They have it!”

  “Maria,” Frank said, “I think we just got a chance to pull ourselves out of this.”

  Grigor, pressing his palms onto his thighs to give himself the strength to speak, said, “I don’t have a chance, you know. Neither does Pami.”

  Frank turned to him. His
eyes looked very sure. He said, “Grigor, I could die twenty times, it wouldn’t change what’s gonna happen to you. You know that.”

  Grigor’s eyes half closed as he considered, as he tried to find his place in this. He said, “But I am better testimony if I am here, in this plant. Alive or dead. There’s no point in my making an escape.”

  “You’re right about that,” Frank agreed. “But staying behind, you could help Maria and me get clear.”

  Maria Elena said, “Frank? You’ve really changed your mind?” He reached out for her hand, but she wouldn’t let him have it yet. Fie said, “That thing over there, that’s not suicide, that’s killing everything forever, ending the whole story. Maria? You don’t want to kill everybody!”

  “BUT I DO!”

  The voice was Pami’s, a terrible amplified crow-squawk. She lunged forward, away from Maria Elena’s hand. She couldn’t walk, but she could scramble on all fours, as quick as a crippled cat, scutding toward the experiment on the table.

  The Chinese kid, the lab assistant, launched himself at her, grabbing her arm and shoulder, pulling her back. Her head snapped around, teeth flashing.

  Grigor stretched out a useless hand: “She has AIDS!”

  The Chinese boy recoiled from that snarling, biting mouth. Pami lunged again for the table, but this time she’d pushed her body too far. Her torso arched, her bones jutted out against her clothes, and her mouth stretched wide as she curved impossibly backward. She managed one short scream, blocked by a gush of blood, and dropped to the floor, a thrown-away rag. A red halo of corrupt blood circled her head.

  X

  HAAA HA HA HA HA!

  HA HAAAAAAAAAA! Oh, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Come into my arms! Come into my arms! Come into my arms! I have saved you, my darlings, come into my arms, let us dance!

  How we’ll dance.

  45

  They walked through the parkland, silent at first, separate at first, just happening to walk more or less together in the same direction. They went for five minutes up the long gradual slope, past ornamental shrubs, specimen trees, small neat groves. A slight breeze rusded through leaves and pine needles above their heads. Birdsong established territory, called like to like, praised insects and worms.