by Jack Womack
"Contenting them's one thing," Malloy said. "Controlling, another. The former better serves all in time. Just as well, likely. If Americans had longer attention spans, who knows the follies they could have wrought."
We rounded the corner, coming to Hazlitt's. John's light was out; it was the sort of evening he should find it pleasant to roam, I thought. "Thank you-" I told Malloy.
"Think nothing of it-"
"For everything, I mean," I said; smoke rising from the park, and from the nearby streets, rawed my nostrils. "Dealing with Leverett. Awaying me, if for the evening. You've been very kind to me."
"I gathered that's something you're unused to," he told me. The square trees shivered in the warm wind; the sky reddened in the south, over Shaftesbury, reminding me of New York years before, when the eastern sky bled each night as Long Island underwent its ongoing siege.
"Sometimes," I said. "Lately, yes. Thank you, Malloy."
"When I'm asked your whereabouts tomorrow, I'll verify that you're being physicked. I'll occupy your husband after you arrive, if Leverett doesn't," he said. "Call Doctor Harrison and see him in the morning, he'll do you right."
"I will."
An explosion blocks distant so deafened that I thought that it had blasted overhead; tightening my grip on Malloy's arm, I trembled even after the noise decayed. Malloy's pizzalit grin relaxed me, and I let loose of him, stepping away so that he wouldn't perceive that I didn't want him to go. "You ever want to relocate, I can place you here," he said, turning; his coat winged away behind him as he aimed south. "Tallyho, Isabel. Tomorrow."
All had quieted by morningside. After waking up, calling to appoint the doctor, and certifying with the desk that John had already gone out, I left the hotel, thinking of Malloy, walking through a brown haze gauzing the streets; its look and ozone-laced scent were uncomfortably reminiscent of the other world's atmosphere. Workers hosed cinders and soot from the sidewalks, gutted cars were being towed out of trafficflow's midst; damaged buildings were undergoing repair, and men in forest-green coveralls clipped charred fronds from the palms. The cosmetic regooding underwayed with such perfunctory calm that had I not witnessed, I could never have pictured the past evening's events.
London's similarities to old New York evidenced all the more, however much its citizens would have denied it; was the similarity divergence between American Dryco and European Dryco so great as it appeared? Dryco made its employees part of itself against their will or knowledge, if need be: Malloy had been with the company long enough to become it, yet displayed a level of one-person corporate care I'd known only with Judy; in regooded New York, how had we worsened ourselves, bettering? Recalling Malloy's aplomb in hazard's face, reminded of the calm so unnatural as to be natural of those in the restaurant with us the evening before as the man afire burst in, I remembered my own childhood numbness when confronted with such horror; thought of my overt desire never to see what it was that John did. At what point, for what reason, had I regained a hatred for violence I never believed I possessed? Did regooding make Dryco, as it made me, as it made John, only less adaptable to the world's ways as they remained, whatever our efforts?
Doctor Harrison's office was in his residence, an eighteenth-century row house in Bloomsbury, two streets east of Tottenham Court Road. When I called he responded as Malloy predicted, agreeing at once to see me; when I showed at his door he allowed me entry sans word save but a brief greeting. His examination was so gentle as to seem pediatric: he questioned, I answered; with simple tools he checked my rates; for the first time in years I slid off an exam table without feeling as if I'd been assaulted by robot bikers. The doctor's face was neither dispassionate nor emotive; nonetheless I could tell when he encountered something that troubled him.
"Give me a few minutes," he said, concluding. "The garden's out back. If you can bear the sounds of nature so early, wait there. I'll try not to be long."
His garden was no wider than a few meters, and surrounded by brick walls overgrown with ivy below the razorwire; reclining on a wicker chaise shaded by lime trees, I watched bees hovering over blue hydrangeas and red geraniums, and listened to sounds of siren and jet. After fifteen minutes or so Doctor Harrison emerged, bearing two cups of tea; handing one to me, he seated himself close by on a patio stool and underwayed further interrogation.
"Dryco had you on Melaway?" I nodded. "Why?"
As I replied I cautioned, estimating it impossible to explain in fewer than a hundred sentences, even if I could tell. "A business trip essentialled in an area thick with bigots. My supervisors demanded that I be colorbled for the duration, to lessen potential situations."
"And they had you on it for two months?" I nodded.
"Thereabout," I said. "And early on I was given that accelerant as well-"
He shook his head; entered something in his filer. "That's unimportant. A number of agents speed up Melaway's effects without counteracting. You stopped before the tumor was detected?"
"I'd noticed symptoms that I believed were connected," I said. "The headaches, joint pain. Nausea, though that could have been morning sickness-"
"It was," Doctor Harrison said. "Nausea's the least of it. I hate to have to tell you you've been fortunate, thus far. You've read nothing of the original Brixton studies, I'm sure-"
"Heard of them," I said, brushing away a bee buzzing too close to my face. "Why fortunate?"
"Two-thirds of the Brixton participants were dead within a week after treatment began," he said. "The others died within two months."
"I never knew-"
"They wouldn't have told you, certainly. Outside of private medical circles it's not widely known about here." He sipped his tea, appearing to enjoy its flavor, which tasted to me as if it had been partially derived from fish. "Allergic reactions killed some within minutes after ingestion. The majority developed pneumonia after the first three days of treatment which led, inevitably, into body-wide staph infection and general sepsis. Those who survived the initial week proceeded to develop malignancies as treatment continued, predominantly fulminating myelomas, or gliomas such as you suffered. Nonetheless, as the last participants went to their graves with rosy, if tumorous, skin, the project was considered a success though the people, sadly, were failures. An imbecilic theory unjustly applied, I thought, as did most of my colleagues save the ones in National Health who were involved."
"Why was it developed?"
"As I answer, please keep in mind that Europe is not so enlightened as America as regards some matters," Doctor Harrison said. "Melaway was developed as a way to alleviate the race problem. Changing attitudes proved impossible, and social engineering's a lost art. The demand was made to find a way to change bodies. It's inexcusable for Dryco to have given it to you, for any reason. Unsurprising, all the same."
"They knew I might have died the first time they plied me with it?"
He nodded. "They had to. Supposedly adjustments have since been made in the formula to lessen the most serious initial effects, and I would think they at least tested you beforehand to judge whether you were allergic or not. Fact remains, Melaway is perhaps the most effective carcinogen ever developed."
"What'll happen to me, longterm?"
"It's likely that tumor regrowth will occur, in the same area as before."
"I'll be cancered again?"
"Everyone is, eventually, whether they were dosed with Melaway or not," he said. "This can be treated again so long as it's detected early enough. Then, of course, the pattern repeats itself. Those participants in the study who lived long enough to be stricken with cancer were killed, in most cases, not by the first appearance, but by the third, fifth or even sixth once they metastasized. There's nothing showing in the fluoroscope as of this morning, so I'd estimate that the growth rate has been slowed. I'd not guess that this is an indefinite remission."
"They knew I'd be cancered beforehand?" I asked again. He nodded.
"Without question," he said. "Your problem is, of course,
location. Each time these particular tumors regrow, they supplant to some degree the healthy tissue surrounding. The immune system goes, it all falls apart. I doubt I need to elaborate."
He clasped his hands before him, leaning forward, seeming to watch bees buzz around his flowers. Hearing a plane overhead I glanced up; saw skywriting above, white cirrusian letters wording against the morning blue: COME TO ST PAULS TONIGHT DO GOOD FEEL REAL. "What happens once I haven't any brain left?" I asked him.
"The law of diminishing returns should be taken under consideration some time before that point. Elements experience halflife, there's no reason why people should," Doctor Harrison said. "But whatever the instigative agent, the treatment remains the same. So long as the regrowth remains encapsulate, and is found before it has a chance to spread, it can be removed again. Up to a point. Death's inevitable, afterward-"
"It is in any event, wouldn't you say?"
Doctor Harrison smiled; it startled, seeing a medici express emotion. "In any event. Until then, your life is up to you as it's always been."
Mayhap that truth accounted for my equanimity; possibly I'd been around my husband for so long that his acceptance of endtime became mine, or at least strengthened what I already took as given. I was surprised then, and now, how easy it was to believe that I could work within a set deadline, and accomplish my intentions as desired before that day arrived. The life of others, by then, concerned me most. "What about my baby?" I asked. "How does Melaway affect it?"
"None of the Brixton subjects were pregnant, so we've no precedent," he said. "Nothing untoward's immediately discernible. It's remarkable that your baby hasn't yet-well. That there appear to be no abnormalities of any sort, thus far. If no undetectable presences are within the fetus as yet, then-"
He stopped; sipped his tea, and appeared set to move on to a different subject. "Then what?" I asked. "Doctor-"
"I'd be speculating," he said. "That wouldn't be right."
"Please speculate," I said. "I'm used to it."
"There're no facts backing me. It's an idle thought, passed through my mind. Nothing more."
"Present it as such, then-"
"The idea occurs to me that Melaway could affect a fetus in a different or even converse manner than it does an adult. But there's no reason to believe that this is so."
"But it's possible?"
He frowned; then smiled. "It's not impossible. But it's nothing to put faith in. Live your life while you have it, that's all that matters."
"One other thing, doctor," I said, standing, readying to leave; wishing I'd never have to return to the clinic in New York again. "You kept referring to they. Who instigated and funded the Brixton study?"
"Why, Dryco, of course," he said. "The English office. Who else?"
At sunset, we left for St. Paul's. Malloy, Leverett and I sat with E in our car's rear compartment, surrounding him so that if his nerve wavered, he couldn't leap out; John positioned himself alongside the driver, forwarding his stare. When I arrived at Dryco that afternoon Malloy was present, attending to late-arising problems involving security; Leverett and E sessioned hourslong, going over subtleties of gesture and stance. John was elsewhere, and didn't appear until a short time predeparture; I kept my distance, and he didn't approach. His bag's tie flagged his pocket, and I wondered if he'd been adding to his collection since we arrived.
"What's up, over there?" Leverett asked Malloy, nodding toward a rally at the base of Nelson's Column; dozens of men supported on the shoulders of others graffitied its base as onlookers chanted.
"Rite of exhibitionism, it appears," Malloy said, eyeing the scene through our car's tinted glass. "Lundy nationals, or some such, troubling enough to be arrested without being shot. Poor Nels's seen enough in his time, I'd say if you asked, not that he's able to look any longer." Gazeraising, I saw that the statue atop was headless. "Some of my more exuberant countryfolk decapped the admiral a year ago. Can't say what their intent was. Drunk, probably, and left in charge of the blasting caps."
We airlifted, passing St. Martin's and rounding Trafalgar Square; with a sudden lurch we cruised east along the Strand. Throughout the day the streets had been postered; at sightlevel, every building and bus shelter, each treetrunk and kiosk and newstand was papered with sun-yellow broadsheets worded with the Dryco-approved phrase, You'll See Him. Thousands of nondescripts shuffled east along the sidewalks beneath neon, plasmalight and windswayed coconut palms.
"Mediakill's necessary?" I asked.
"We still call it a blitz here," said Malloy, roaching his cigarette, swiping ashes off his long coat. "Nothing more effective where there're walkers. Not even the Beeb spits word so effusively."
"Not that Elvii are generally allowed media access," Leverett said, interrupting as ever. Our cab swerved past and overheaded three tripledeckers edging east, their levels crammed topfull with pilgrims. "Production values never up to standard. We'll change that."
"The Elvies are borderlined when it comes to dissemination," Malloy continued. "And again, many of the believers forswear worldly goods, save for their diskers. Cathode charms leave them unperturbed."
"Posters have their purpose, Isabel, as I told," Leverett said, his smile something more than fulsome. "You've not done this long as I have, otherwise there'd have been no questioning."
"What are those?" I asked. Two islands emerged from the traffic's river ahead of us, separated by no more than a hundred meters. Stranded on each isle were what appeared to be topiaried giraffes, twenty times lifesize; the nearest one's broken neck dangled over the cars and buses alongsiding, held placed by a netting of cables.
"St. Mary-le-Strand and St. Clement Danes," said Malloy. "Impossible to enter due to the unending vehicular flow. Preserved by Historical Accuracy, as ever." Each church was fenced round by crumpled steel walls; however protected from collision they might have been at streetlevel, their spires evidenced as fair sport for wayward cabs shooting past. "Terrible accident, that was," Malloy said, nodding toward the downdipped steeple. "The blood. Awful, just awful." Vines so well as cables helped position the damage; their leafy coils greened each church from foundation to cross, smothering the stone beneath. "The foliage was sold to the Historical Accuracy Council as impatiens," Malloy added. "Proved later to be a kudzu hybrid. That accounts for the AfterLondon look."
"What's minded, Elvis?" Leverett asked, slapping what he took to be E's leg. What part of E was where was not immediately discernible; he was wrapped head to foot in an allcovering cloak which he drew tight around himself.
"Lemme be," he answered. "Where are we?"
"Nearly there," said Malloy. "Look there, will you, at the splendor of mighty Albion." The last-century boxes formerly surrounding St. Paul's had been taken down years before; so isolated, the cathedral appeared ten times larger than it truly was. Its stone was illuminated from without; whitebright spots directed onto the dome impressed its look as that of a new moon rising from the city's black sea. From Ludgate Hill to the portico steps searchlights were rowed in doubts lines, their shafts heaven-aimed, forming skyceil- inged walls between which the congregation assembled. "Positively Blakean. Shills of mine are responsible for their using the searchlights this time out, mind you. They're generally a bit more understated, left to their own."
Through the roof I saw naught but blanketing clouds; gripped Malloy's arm as our car grounded with a bump, leaving Fleet Street. "What sort of environad's intended, Leverett?" I asked.
"One that'll work," he said, chewing at his mouthcorner as if he hungered overmuch to wait for dinner afterward. John glanced back toward us, resteering his glance after he caught my look. The driver guided our car into a secured area south of the cathedral; a column of bobbies allowed us to pass, and we stopped at the side of a dry fountain. Our parked viewpoint showed the throng shadowed, appearing as a bed of ivy visibly acrawl.
"That's impassable, Leverett," I said, examining the crowd. Malloy's estimates underestimated; no less than a hundred tho
usand gathered to cry for their King. "How's the church to be reached?"
"I've arranged for two representatives of ours to meet us at the edge of the group and guide us through," said Malloy, unbuckling as he prepped to disembark. "Not guide so much as hack a path across, more like."
"They lead us to the building," said Leverett, "then we come around front behind the speakers, arriving, so long as our timing holds, at precisely the key moment. Ready, driver. Unseal us, please."
The locks slid into their housings; we opened the doors and got out, shading our eyes with our hands as we looked toward the searchlit cathedral. "What'll blind their security to our presence?" I asked.
"They have none," Leverett said, laughing as he and Malloy extracted E from the car, tucking his wrap around him in order to keep him incognitoed. "In any event all'll be preoccupied, guaranteed. Elvis, time now. This is something you should hear."
As we stood there beneath the cathedral's snowbright mountain, eyeing its dome aglowing night into day, glancing leftward into the approach's Nuremberg light, we heard the crowd voicing song, singing the assembly's prelude. "Love Me Tender," acapellaed by a hundred thousand, stunned as I'd never imagined it could; through their massed chorusing the King's followers let drop their bodies, guised or not, and took on an ethereality that, at last, equaled their beliefs to those of any religion. Within the throng were a number of Interpreters, appearing as nightsky stars against black heaven; closer in, I could distinguish younger participants who'd bedecked themselves in Sun style, simulating the look of E so well as he simulated the look of Elvis. Most of those present appeared, even after prolonged examination, no different than any citizens of London or New York.
"Understandable now, Elvis?" Leverett asked as they sang their final chorus. E pulled his cloak around his face, and stepped closer to me. I put my arm around him, holding his garment tight; reached into my bag, and felt my compact there. Removing my look from the crowd I found myself staring directly into John's, who eyed us as if he'd at last found the conclusive evidence he'd long sought.