Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  Her head popped back up and she grasped the wheel. “I’ll steer. You just keep your foot off that brake until I tell you.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror; once or twice a red dot swept across the back of the car but didn’t stop or linger. Our pursuers were falling even farther behind.

  “I don’t like it,” she muttered.

  “You don’t like it? They put holes in my windscreens! Never mind the cost, I don’t know if I can get replacements for a 1950 Mercury Club Coupé!”

  “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about your whole ‘physics as morality’ premise.”

  I shook my head. “You really aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

  She smiled and I glimpsed the ghost of a fang in a faint reflection of starlight. “You haven’t finished explaining how the physics of the universe abrogates human desire.”

  I sighed. “If there is a connection between physical law and human need, it’s simply this: in every kingdom, seen and unseen, the principles are the same. You don’t get something for nothing, everything affects something, and every action has a consequence.”

  “My daddy used to say there’s a price tag on everything and there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” she said, snuggling against me and steering around something sizeable in the darkness. “The universe bites.”

  “Why?” I asked. “It only means that everything has value. Consequences can be good as well as bad. Price tags can show you where the bargains are shelved and the treasures are buried. What you choose produces an effect, a result. On you. On someone else. On a place, a thing, or a pattern of existence.”

  “Now you’re going to segue into the morality of physics,” she said dryly.

  “It’s not about being right,” I said. “When it comes to the laws of physics, it’s only a matter of what is. Right or wrong have nothing to do with it. The law of gravity doesn’t care if you’re a good person or a bad person. Saint or sinner, you walk off the edge of a five-hundred-foot cliff and the law of gravity is going to slap a summons on your ass, court’s in session, and sentencing phase is coming up in ten seconds.”

  “Turn off ahead,” she announced. “Take your foot off the gas but don’t touch the brake unless I say so.”

  I peered through the darkness ahead of us and glimpsed a gray ribbon bleeding out of the purple blackness. “Asphalt?”

  “Very good! You just may be less human than you think.”

  Now there was a comforting thought.

  Deirdre spun the wheel and, as we left the dirt ruts behind and bumped onto smooth blacktop, I goosed the accelerator. Dim light from distant pole lamps beside barns and fuel pumps illumed the road turning the ribbon of gray to dirty silver. I could almost make out the oil stains and crushed moths now.

  “What about miracles?” she asked as I took the steering wheel back into my grasp. She stayed, snuggled against me.

  I shrugged. “Show me one that negates a physical law without serving a higher one, like Bernoulli’s principle, and we’ll talk. Otherwise, statistics suggest the saints tend to die younger and uglier than the wicked of this world.”

  “So, invoke the laws of physics and God has no place in the universe?”

  “Quid pro quo or ipso facto?” I countered. Another pair of headlights popped up in my rearview mirror. “That the universe runs like a complex and self-perpetuating machine hardly precludes an intelligence behind the design. The self-winding watch winds itself—but someone designed it, crafted the parts, and assembled it before sending it off to its own self-contained existence.” The headlights were too far back to be sure, but I was betting it wasn’t the Chevy Nova. I turned our headlights back on. Driving with them off would just call more attention to us now.

  “So you do believe in God,” she said. The note of challenge in her voice was more wistful than accusatory.

  “I did. Once upon a time. Now the idea only seems to make me angry.”

  She laid a cool hand on my thigh. “Nietzsche said ‘we are all apes of a cold god’.”

  I hunched my shoulders. “Which is worse: an empty universe where life is but a short distraction from the long nothingness that comes before and after? Or a Supreme Intelligence that is indifferent and unresponsive to suffering and injustice? Don’t ask me that question: I’m already damned so, for me, it doesn’t really matter.”

  She squeezed my leg. “So what does matter?”

  “People. Loyalty. Truth. Love.”

  “Love,” she repeated.

  “The real deal. Not the pantomimes of hormones, hungers, and egos. By the way, it was Marx, not Nietzsche.”

  “Not Nietzsche?”

  “Marx,” I affirmed, “Karl not Groucho.”

  “I get them mixed up all the time—Karl and Groucho.”

  I nodded. “I have the same problem with the Lennon boys. Which one wrote ‘Give Peace A Chance,’ Vladimir or John?”

  She picked up the handgun again. “Those headlights are still getting closer.”

  “I’m not going that fast.”

  “Then go faster. And finish your point.”

  “Which point?”

  “Your definition of morality in an amoral universe.”

  “I don’t think I’m talking about morality, really,” I said, pressing down on the accelerator. “I’m just talking about what works and what doesn’t according to the laws of the universe.”

  “Faster.”

  “Driving or talking?”

  “Both.”

  The headlights in the rearview mirror dropped back and held for the moment. “We know that the universe is a series of physical kingdoms, each interactive and structured to be ruled under a set of laws. Some of these kingdoms are invisible. Some, as yet, unmeasureable. The fact that we cannot yet quantify or measure them makes them no less real than the atom was before it was quantified by John Dalton.”

  “Of the infamous Dalton Gang?”

  “So why not kingdoms both natural and supernatural?” I asked, refusing to be baited. “Physical and metaphysical? Is there spiritual existence beyond the electro-chemical processes of the human brain? Perhaps we are merely waiting for another Madame Curie to open new windows into those yet unseen and unquantified realities?”

  “The kingdoms of the soul,” she murmured.

  “Why not? We are physical beings and, as such, are subject to the laws of physics. Walk off a cliff, plunge to our deaths. Place our hand in the flame, our flesh is burned and we feel pain. Why wouldn’t there be laws and consequences of a spiritual nature?” I noticed the headlights in the mirror were slowly closing the distance between us. “Where’s the spare magazine?”

  “Must have fallen on the floor.” Deirdre leaned down and groped under the seat. “So,” she pondered, “the laws of physics in commandment form might be: ‘Thou shalt not walk off of five-hundred-foot cliffs.’ And: ‘Blessed is he who does not place his hand into the flame’.” She came back up with the spare magazine of silver-treated Glasers, which she tucked into her cleavage for safekeeping and ready access.

  “Works for me.” I tilted the rearview mirror to try to get a better look at the vehicle behind us.

  She snorted. “Eventually, of course, religions would arise to teach us that God hates people who walk off of cliffs and delights in chastising those who wickedly play with fire.”

  I grinned. It felt like a death rictus so I lost it immediately. “But a loving and compassionate God would have nothing to do with that. He might say, ‘I love you and don’t want you to come to harm so I give you these commandments as warnings. It’s not judgment or punishment. This is the way that the universe works and it is the laws of gravity and thermodynamics that must be obeyed. If you attempt to defy an immutable law, there’s gonna be some hurtin’ goin’ on’.”

  “So you’re suggesting the vengeful and wrathful God of the Old Testament is a bad rap,” Deirdre said, twisting back around for a better look at the car behind us. “Warn against the consequences of
head-butting immutable law and the messenger gets the blame.”

  I nodded. “Especially if the laws invoke the commandments of the heart.”

  “It still sounds very Calvinistic to me.”

  “What would you prefer, something very Calvin and Hobbsistic?” I sighed. “Some people will always look for loopholes whether it’s theology, biology, or relativity. ‘Why doesn’t God make the universe harmless,’ they’ll carp. ‘Make fire cold, negate the pull of gravity?’ They wouldn’t have to figure out how to cook their food or warm their homes as they go flying off the surface of the planet, flung into the void by the law of centrifugal force. They’d lobby to have every law negated or rescinded until the universe was devoid of structure, without form and void—entropy and nihilism because somebody always chafes when they notice boundaries.”

  “The problem with all that,” she said, raising her voice as she pulled down on the metal flap that used to be part of the car’s roof, “is the interpretation of the unseen and immeasurable has to be arbitrary. No one’s quantified the rules—excuse me, laws—of the spiritual kingdoms in measurable, even provable form. In the meantime you get people who nail other people to crosses or wear them around their necks as they burn witches and launch crusades!”

  “You’re right.”

  “I am?”

  “And wrong,” I added as the metal flap gave way with a distressed groan. The wind poured down into the car, swirling Deirdre’s hair into a twisting, flamelike dance and forcing us to raise our voices again. “The fiction of the fools and the foul doesn’t make what’s True any less true.”

  She tossed the flap into the backseat.

  “They just obscure the path to discovering what really works and what doesn’t,” I elaborated. “The fact that I’m pissed at the universe doesn’t change its actual nature. If there is no God—or if there is and He doesn’t bloody care—it ultimately makes no difference whether I rebel or suck up or divert myself with ritual and poetry: the laws of the universe, seen and unseen, will have their way. So, for me, my own brand of religion is all about figuring out which rules are the real laws. And which are merely the diversions and obfuscations of misled or purposely evil people.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “But we’re still left stumbling around in the dark. Who can measure love? Is fear merely a biochemical reaction? Where does desire come from? Why do two men respond to the same oppression with such different thoughts and emotions?”

  I shrugged. “The fact that I do not know doesn’t equate that I can not know. The laws governing our unseen selves are consistent: without companionship we are lonely, without hope we come to despair, without love we wither. The degree and the timetable may vary from person to person, but we are so alike in our needs—even if we are unalike in our expression of those needs and the forms we desire to put upon them.”

  Deirdre unfastened her seat belt and turned, thrusting her head and shoulders through the open roof to look back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Objects in mirror are closer than they actually appear,” she announced over the rush of night air. She ducked back in and refastened her seat belt. “Black Suburban. Are we done?”

  I noticed that she did not put the Glock back down.

  “Just one more point,” I said, “since you wanted to pursue this topic. If I kiss your lips, you would take it as a sign of affection. If I were to kiss you and then betray you, you would feel the betrayal that much deeper—either because the kiss was false, or the kiss was true but I betrayed you anyway. Our bodies, our nerve endings, our pleasure centers—what we do with them defines our relationships and our intent.”

  The Suburban made its move. It accelerated until it swerved around to pull alongside, matching my speed. The tinted glass windows remained closed, keeping its occupants anonymous.

  “When I lie with Lupé,” I continued, refusing to gawk, “when we make love and our bodies are joined, we are one. One flesh. It is our covenant. It is our pledge that though we are often individuals, yet we have a union between us that makes us more than the sum of our separate selves. That physical joining helps define our oneness in our unseen and unmeasureable aspects. We say to one another in the most primordial and fundamental language: I am One with you. Together, we are complete. And that act is more than the cement of our oneness, it is transformative: it becomes more than a symbol, it becomes The Truth.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “As long as neither of us betrays that Truth.”

  The dark window parallel to mine lowered and I could see Stefan Pagelovitch’s face limned by the pale glimmer of the dashboard lights.

  I lowered my window. “Your timing is lousy: Deirdre and I are talking about sex.”

  )A mistake, my dear Christopher,( came his telepathic response. )You should be discussing death; you are on your way to embrace it.(

  Jeez, and here I thought we’d just spent the last twenty minutes running away from it, I sent back.

  “What?” he called aloud.

  “So what’s your advice?” I yelled back.

  “Come back with me to Seattle! Tonight!”

  “Other than that?”

  “Other than that I cannot help you!”

  “I am weakened by every recruit to my banner. Is not a man better than a town?”

  “What?”

  “Emerson. Ralph Waldo, not Lake and Palmer.” I raised my window and accelerated. The Suburban dropped back and fell in behind us.

  Deirdre just looked at me.

  “If I were to lie down with you and join my flesh to yours,” I continued, “I would be saying to you that we are one. I am one with Deirdre, and she with me. We are complete together. And if it wasn’t a lie between us, it would diminish my bond with Lupé because our oneness would no longer be unique. It would be the start of a lie between her and me. The Lie.” The entrance to the BioWeb facilities was coming up on our right and I decelerated and turned in. “If it was a ‘lie’ between us then my relationship with Lupé is still diminished but you and I have also lied to one another.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I can’t truly be One with her,” I said, cutting her off, “if I’m not exclusive.” The guard at the gate came out and checked the invitations that I held out my window. He looked at the bullet holes in the fore and aft windscreens and the makeshift moon roof. I was preparing to use the old Jedi mind trick when he waved us on through.

  “Love,” I said, maneuvering around a phalanx of expensive automobiles with real sunroofs and unventilated windshields, “requires an act of trust. True love is that greatest act of faith. When we lie to one another in the pantomime of love, we do violence to our secret selves and damage one another.”

  I parked so that we were near the entrance but facing the road in case we had to leave in a hurry. “And when we have lied, or been lied to, often enough—our capacity for love, to give or receive, is harmed beyond words.”

  “So, if you were to lie with me,” she said with a forced dimple, “you would have to lie with me.”

  “By Jove,” I murmured, “I think she’s got it.”

  “I think we should have stopped when you said you didn’t desire me.”

  I tried to match her smile but felt the weight of my words pulling at the corners of my mouth. “Ah,” I said as we opened our doors, “but that would have been ‘to lie with you,’ as well.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The walk from the parking lot to BioWeb’s main entrance was too short to solve the mystery of the Chevy Nova encounter.

  While our pursuit had been decidedly unfriendly and our pursuers certainly willing to do violence to my passenger, their seeming reluctance to shoot the driver took on the appearance of solicitousness for my well-being.

  Assuming they even knew who was driving.

  Pagelovitch was intrigued by our account—what little he was able to glean from our telepathic musings, that is. I didn’t, however, sense that he was about to go running back to co
nfront our backside besiegers. More likely, he hoped our little outing would convince me to hop in the back of his Suburban and make the return trip to Seattle. There I would be untroubled by the necessities of survival and could enjoy the peace and prosperity than came with being the prize specimen in his preternatural petting zoo.

  Which moved him to the top of the list of likely sponsors for our troublesome troupe of tailgaters.

  And, as I held the door for Deirdre, who had done a remarkable job with her tiny hairbrush for a second time, I didn’t have sufficient time to think about my previous visit to BioWeb’s Black Fortress, or even a chance to focus on whether or not tonight’s air was charged with a similarly dark presence.

  There was, however, just enough time to snatch the spare ammo magazine out of Deirdre’s marvelous décolletage and slip it into my pocket as we stepped into the entrance hall where another “guard” waited.

  The guardian of the gates wore a black sheath dress that did nothing to enhance her lack of a figure. She was a tall, thin stick of a woman, in her late forties but eerily reminiscent of grade school hall monitors. “Mr. Haim, you’re late!” she scolded as she checked our tickets.

  I forced a smile. “Considering the theme, being the ‘late’ Mr. Haim seems somehow appropriate, don’t you think?”

  Her frown, slightly exaggerated by the tip of an ivory fang, indicated she didn’t. I did a double take, saw it was fake. A portfolio and a set of plastic teeth encased in shrink-wrap were thrust into my grasp. A second set was proffered to Deirdre.

  “I don’t need the teeth,” she said.

  “You brought your own?”

  My companion nodded, pulling back her crimson lips to display her “natural” incisors.

  “Marvelous,” the hostess enthused. “Some people really know how to get into the spirit of things!” She directed us toward the double doors, then froze in mid-gesture. Frown lines appeared around her Egyptian-mascaraed eyes as she took in my gray slacks and blazer over a maroon shirt. “You’re not wearing black. Didn’t anyone tell you that this is a theme event?”

  I shrugged. “I forgot.” Warbled eight bars of Bob Hope’s signature tune using the words: “Fangs for the memories . . .”