Reprisal

by F. Paul Wilson

  "But why why would you want to put up with that?"

  "Because I love you."

  Lisl felt her heart swell within her. It was the first time he had said it. She threw her arms around him and hugged him to her.

  "Do you mean that?"

  "Of course. Can't you tell?"

  "I don't know what I can tell. I'm so mixed up now."

  "We're going to have to fix that. We're going to have to find a way to cleanse you of all that anger."

  "How?"

  "I don't know just yet. But I'll think of something. You can count on that."

  THE BOY at ten years

  December 8,1978

  Two patrol cars and an ambulance in her driveway. Carol dashed toward the kaleidoscope of red and blue flashing against the front of the house.

  More than a house. A three-story mansion. The former pride and joy of an oil company executive, with a pool, lighted tennis courts, even an elevator from the wine cellar to the third floor. They'd bought the place last summer. In the five years since he'd begun managing the inheritance, Jimmy had increased their net worth to twenty-five million dollars. He no longer felt the need to remain in the Arkansas boondocks, so they'd moved here to the outskirts of Houston.

  "What happened?" Carol cried, grabbing the arm of the first policeman she saw.

  "You the mother?" he said.

  "Oh, my God! Jimmy! What's happened to Jimmy!"

  Shock ran through the fear coiling within her. Jimmy was so self-contained, so self-sufficient, she couldn't imagine anything happening to him. He seemed almost indestructible.

  "That's some boy you've got there," the cop said. "He's fine. But his grandfather" He shook his head sadly.

  "Jonah? What happened?"

  "We're not sure. He was in the elevator shaft. Why, we don't know. But whatever the reason, he was trapped in there when the car came down."

  "Oh, God!"

  She pushed past the policeman and ran toward the open front door. She stopped when the ambulance attendants appeared, pulling-pushing their wheeled stretcher. A black body bag was strapped atop it. Blood oozed from one of the zippered sides.

  Carol pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. She'd had her differences with Jonah, and many times had wished he'd pack up and move out on his own. But this!

  She slipped past the stretcher and into the house. Something had been going on between Jonah and Jimmy lately. Jonah's previous deference and almost slavish devotion had undergone a strange transformation during the past year or so. His attitude had become challenging, verging on threatening.

  "Jimmy!"

  She spotted his short, slight figure, dwarfed by the pair of policemen flanking him. Her impulse was to run to him and gather him in her arms but she knew he'd only push her away. Affection was repugnant to him.

  "Hello, Mother," he said softly.

  "Some boy you've got here," one of the cops said, tousling the boy's dark hair. Only Carol saw the glare Jimmy leveled at him. "Kept his cool and called us as soon as he saw what happened. Too bad we couldn't get here in time."

  "Yes," Jimmy said with a slow shake of his head. "He must have been in such terrible agony for so long. If only I'd found him sooner."

  His eyes reflected none of the sadness in his voice.

  "What happened, Jimmy?" Carol said when the police and the ambulance were gone.

  "Jonah had an accident," Jimmy said blandly.

  " Why did he have an accident?

  "He made a mistake."

  "It wasn't like Jonah to make mistakes."

  "He made a serious one. He was supposed to be here to guard me. But he started believing he could be me."

  As a numbing frost gathered in Carol's marrow, Jimmy turned and walked away.

  DECEMBER

  SEVEN

  Lisl had just finished addressing the last invitation to her Christmas party when the phone rang.

  "How's my favorite Prime?" Rafe said.

  Warmth flowed through her at the sound of his voice.

  "Pretty good. Glad to be just about done with these invitations."

  "Feel like doing some Christmas shopping?"

  Lisl thought about that. December had barely begun. She had a small list of people to buy for and usually she waited until the last minute. Purposely. She'd found that the trials and tribulations of last-minute shoppingthe crowded malls, the clogged parking lots, anxiety over the very real possibility that all the good gifts would be goneadded a certain zest to the Christmas holidays.

  But this wouldn't be just shopping. This would be a day with Rafe. They were together almost every night. But daytime together was rare. He had his studies to keep him busy, and she had her classes and her Palo Alto paper.

  "Sure. When?"

  "I'll pick you up in half an hour."

  "I'll be ready."

  As she stamped the invitations, Lisl double-checked to make sure she'd addressed one to everybody on her listshe hadand then she thought of Will. He wasn't on the list because he'd be a waste of an invitation, but dammit, she wanted him at her party. So why let him get off easy by not inviting him? Quickly she addressed one last envelope, added a personal note to Will, and shoved the stack into her purse. Then she hurried to get dressed.

  She thought of the Thanksgiving she and Rafe had spent together.

  For the first time in her life, Lisl hadn't shared the traditional turkey dinner with her folks. She had Rafe to thank for that. One result of her combative encounters with Rafe was a deeper insight into her childhood. She was beginning to understand her parents better, to see them in a new light. And she didn't like what she saw. As a result, it had been only mildly traumatic to call her folks and make up an excuse why she wouldn't be there this year. They'd been very understanding. She'd almost wished they'd been less so.

  Rafe confessed that he'd had little experience with Thanksgiving Day. His Spanish father and French mother had never celebrated the holiday. But since he considered himself a full-blooded American, he now wanted to join in the tradition. So Lisl had baked a breast of turkey with all the usual trimmings. They'd drunk two bottles of Riesling during the course of the evening and wound up in another bout of traumatic lovemaking.

  Their time together had become a bit strange. Rafe would start out gentle and loving, then begin to probe her past. He knew all the weak points in her armor, all the most sensitive areas of her psyche. He'd probe and poke until he provoked her to violence. And then they'd make love. She'd be left feeling exhausted and ashamed for physically lashing out at him. But he encouraged the violence, seemed to want it, and she had to admit that afterward she felt somehow cleansed .

  A strange relationship, but one she did not want to quit. Rafe said he loved her and Lisl believed him. Even amid all her nagging insecurities, despite the tiny insistent voice that kept whispering, Watch out, he's going to hurt you , she sensed his deep interest in her. She needed that. Slowly, steadily, Rafe was filling an emptiness within her, a void she only vaguely had been aware of before now. His mind challenged her, his heart warmed her, and his body pleasured her. And now that she was beginning to feel complete, she couldn't bear the thought of facing mat emptiness again.

  "Where are we going?" Lisl said as she slipped into the passenger seat of Rafe's Maserati.

  "Downtown," he said, leaning over and kissing her on the lips. He was wearing gray wool slacks and a pale blue shirt under a cranberry cashmere sweater; black leather driving gloves, as tight s a second skin, completed the picture. "I thought we'd try the new Nordstrom's."

  "Sounds good to me."

  Downtown was festooned with Christmas decorationsanimated Santa mannequins in the windows, giant plastic candy canes on the corners, tinselly arches over the streets of the shopping district, all under a bright sunny sky and temperatures in the balmy mid-sixties.

  "Pretty garish," Rafe said.

  "And it gets more garish every year. But that's the shopkeepers' doing. That's not what Christmas is abou
t."

  "Oh? And just what is Christmas all about?"

  Lisl laughed. "I can buy the fact that your family didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but Christmas?"

  "Of course we celebrated Christmas. But I want to hear what you think it's all about."

  "It's about all the good things in lifegiving, receiving, sharing, friends gathering, good fellowship, brotherhood"

  "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men," Rafe said. "And so on and so forth."

  Something in his voice made Lisl pause. "You're not some sort of Scrooge, are you?"

  As they pulled to a stop at a light on Conway Street, Rafe turned toward her.

  "You don't really believe all that brotherhood of man stuff, do you?"

  "Of course. We're all on this planet together. Brotherhood is the only way we'll all come out of it in one piece."

  Rafe shook his head and stared ahead.

  "Man, oh, man, did they ever do a brainwashing number on you."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Brotherhood. It's a myth. A lie. 'No man is an island'the Big Lie."

  Lisl had a 'sinking feeling.

  "You don't really mean that," she said, but deep within she sensed that he did.

  "Look around you, Lisl. Do you see any real brotherhood? I see only islands."

  The Maserati was moving again. Lisl watched the people on the crowded sidewalks as they flowed by. She liked what she saw.

  "I see people walking and talking together, smiling, laughing, hunting for gifts for their friends and loved ones. Christmastime draws people together. That's what it's all about."

  "What about the children starving in Africa?"

  "Oh, come on now!" Lisl said with a laugh. For a moment he reminded her of Will. "You're not going to drag out that hoary old cliche, are you? My mother used to pull that on me to make me finish my brussels sprouts."

  Rafe didn't return her smile.

  "I'm not your mother, Lisl, and I'm not giving you a line to make you finish your greens. I'm talking about a real country. I'm talking about real people, really dying."

  Lisl felt her own smile fade. "Come on, Rafe"

  He pulled into a municipal lot just as someone was backing out of a space.

  "He must have known I was coming," Rafe said. He pulled into the slot and turned to Lisl again. "What about the continuing genocide in Laos? What about the daily brutalization of the female half of the populace in any fundamentalist Moslem country?"

  "Rafe, you're talking about the other side of the world".

  "I didn't think brotherhood was limited by distance."

  "It's not. But you simply don't dwell on those things day in and day out. They're so far away. And the numbers are so staggering they don't seem real. Like it's not happening to real people."

  "Exactly. You've never seen them, never visited their lands, and what happens to them does not affect your life." He gently poked her shoulder with his index finger. "That puts you on an island, Lisl. A big island, maybe, but still an island."

  "I don't accept that. I feel for them."

  "Only when someone reminds youand even then only briefly." He gripped her hand. "I'm not putting you down, Lisl. I'm the same way. And we're no different from anyone else. We all need a certain amount of insulation from what our fellow humans do to each other."

  Lisl stared out the window. He was right, dammit.

  "Let's go shopping," she said.

  They locked up the car and headed for the new Nordstrom's. Rafe put his arm around her shoulder.

  "Okay now," he said. "Let's move closer to home. Look around you at these houses, these apartment buildings. They look peaceful, but we know from statistics that there's a certain amount of violence and brutality going on behind those walls. Wives being beaten, children being sodomized."

  "But I can't feel anything for statistics."

  "What about that three-month-old in the paper this morning?

  Scalded to death by his mother yesterday. I believe his name was Freddy Clayton. He's more than a statistic. Think how that child felt as the person he depended on for everything forced him down into that steaming water and held him there. Think of his agony as"

  "Enough, Rafe! Please! I can't! I think I'd go mad if I even tried."

  His smile was slow. "The water around your little island just got wider and deeper."

  Lisl was suddenly depressed.

  "Why are you doing this to me?"

  "I'm only trying to open your eyes to the truth. There's nothing wrong with being an island. Especially if you're a Prime. We Primes can be self-sufficient on our islands, but the rest of them can't be. Thus the 'No man is an island' lie. We are the wellspring of human progress. They need us to get by. What's wrong is to allow yourself to be deceived into believing you need them ."

  "But I like the idea of brotherhood. There's no deception in that."

  "Of course there is. You've been culturally conditioned to believe in it. The leeches, the consumers, they want everyoneespecially us Primesto swallow the brotherhood of man myth. It makes it so much easier for them to suck off our juices. Why should they bother stealing from us if we're gullible enough to let them convince us to give of ourselves willingly in the name of brotherhood?"

  Lisl stared at Rafe. "Are you listening to yourself? Do you realize how you sound?"

  He signed and lowered his eyes to the sidewalk as they approached Nordstrom's.

  "I can imagine: paranoid. But Lisl, I'm not crazy. And I'm not saying we're the victims of an overt plot. It's not that simple. I think it's more of a subconscious thing that has developed down the centuries. It's persistent and pervasive for a very simple reason: It works. It keeps us producing so they can milk us."

  "There you go again."

  He held up his hands. "Okay. Maybe I'm crazy. But then again, maybe I'm not. One thing I'm sure of is that you and I aren't like them. I want my island to fuse with your island. I want an unbreakable bond between us. Look at these people, Lisl. Your so-called brothers. Is there one of them you can count on? Really count on? No. But you can count on me. No matter what, no matter where, no matter when, you can count on me."

  Lisl looked at Rafe and saw the intensity in his eyes. She believed him. And that lifted her spirits. Suddenly she felt like shopping again.

  They wandered the crowded aisles, finally stopping at the jewelry counter. The three saleswomen were busy with other customers. Lisl squinted at a wide twenty-inch, eighteen-karat gold necklace out of reach behind the counter. The herringbone pattern appealed to her.

  "You like that?" Rafe said.

  "It's beautiful."

  He reached one of his long arms across and plucked it off its peg. He undid the clasp.

  "Here. Try it on."

  He reclasped it around her neck, then guided her to the mirror. The gold gleamed as it hung between her breasts, all but obscuring the slim chain and the cowrie.

  "I love it."

  "Shiny metal makes you happy, does it? Well then, let's get you some more."

  He reached again and picked out a pair of gold earrings with onyx centers. Lisl pulled off the little studs she had worn today and allowed him to fasten the new ones onto her earlobes.

  "Perfect," he said. "And now the final touch."

  A moment later he was slipping an eighteen-karat gold filigree bracelet over her right wrist.

  "There!" he said. "The picture is complete." He gripped her elbow and gently propelled her away from the jewelry department. "Let's go."

  "Where are we?"

  "Out."

  "But we haven't paid."

  "We don't have to. We're Primes."

  "Oh, God, Rafe!"

  Lisl tried to turn back toward the counter but Rafe had a firm grip on her arm.

  "Trust me on this, Lisl," he said in her ear. "Follow my lead. I'm the only one you can really trust."

  She held her breath and let him guide her toward the exit, sure that at any minute the store detectives would leap upon them and
escort them to a back office where they'd be grilled and then arrested. But no one stopped them.

  Until the exit. A uniformed doorman stepped in front of them at the glass door that led to the street; his gloved hand gripped the handle.

  "Find everything you need?" he said with a smile.

  Lisl felt her knees begin to wobble. Shoplifting ! And with what this jewelry was worth, she'd be charged with grand larceny instead of petty theft. She saw her reputation, her whole academic career heading for the sewer.

  "Just looking today," Rafe said.

  "Fine!" said the doorman and pulled open the door. "Come back anytime."

  "We'll be sure to do that," Rafe said as he guided Lisl ahead of him.

  Relief flooded through her as they joined the pedestrians outside and walked up Conway Street. When they were half a block from the store, Lisl snatched her arm away from him.

  "Are you insane ?" she said, keeping her voice low with an effort. She was furious. She wanted to run away, break it off, never see him again.

  Rafe's expression was one of shock, but the hint of a smile played about his lips.

  "What's wrong? I thought you liked gold jewelry."

  "I do! But I don't steal things!"

  "That wasn't stealing. That was merely getting your due."

  "I have money! I can afford to buy my jewelry!"

  "So can I. I could buy out that whole department in there and cover you with gold. But that's not the point. That's not why I did it."

  "Then what is the point?"

  "That there's Us , and there's Them . We don't have to answer to them. They deserve anything we do to them, they owe us anything we take from them. They've been dumping on you all your life. It's high time you got something back."

  "But I don't want anything from anybody unless I earn it."

  His smile was sad. "Don't you see? You have earned it. Just by being a Prime. We carry them on our backs. It's our minds, our dreams, our ambitions that fuel the machinery of progress and give them direction. Without us they'd still be boiling tubers over dung fires outside their miserable little huts."