Dead Lines

by Greg Bear

  Peter got up and put on his slippers. If Sandaji was correct, seeing himself that way meant he would die soon. “Big whoop,” he murmured as he walked on tingling legs to get a shower.

  He had never thought he would ever appear so old and gray, but as he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, he confirmed the resemblance. The scratches on his throat had crusted over. He looked like a bottom-feeder, a freeway bum holding up a cardboard sign.

  Stepping into the shower stall and turning on the hot-water tap, he said, in a tired but reasonable voice, “This shit has got to stop.”

  CHAPTER 47

  PETER LISTENED TO the radio in the bathroom as he dried off. He had not taken a newspaper for years. The news announcer droned on about a Malibu estate going up in flames, two mansions destroyed, the ruins still too hot to investigate. Reclusive movie producer and real-estate magnate Joseph Adrian Benoliel and his wife, Michelle, were both missing.

  The announcer persisted through the bad news of the day. Major telephone companies were experiencing serious outages. Phone and even cellular service had been interrupted for tens of millions of customers across wide areas of the country. No cause had yet been established.

  As Peter buttoned his shirt and walked into the living room, he peered down at the Enzenbacher chessboard. Somebody had responded to his move. A knight—a private detective in an overcoat—had been advanced to threaten his pawn.

  Peter gazed out the front window at the jasmine. The sky was going gray. He saw someone cross the porch. The Soleri bell tinkled and the door lock turned.

  He finished buttoning his shirt and zipped up his pants, ready for whatever.

  Lindsey pushed the door wide. “Good,” she said. “You’re back. The phones aren’t working. Mom’s half-crazy, she thinks you’re dead. Did you know that?”

  Peter shook his head and went to hug his daughter. “What did you tell her?”

  “I didn’t. I just knew it was time to come over.” She looked around the living room, biting her lip. “This morning, she showed up again. She looked different. Really thin and weak. Did you do something?” Lindsey’s expression lit up, dangerous youth. “Did you burn down Salammbo?”

  “No,” Peter said, and mussed her hair with one hand. She accepted his touch with a look of adolescent tolerance.

  “So why is she still here?”

  “She stayed to protect us.”

  “Against what?”

  Peter suddenly hugged Lindsey and shook his head, rubbing his chin against her crown. She did not resist. He could feel her silky hair get caught up in his beard. “No,” he murmured. “I did not burn Salammbo.”

  “But you did something.”

  “Yes,” Peter said.

  “And Daniella doesn’t need to protect us now?”

  Peter looked through the long window. Thought of the key from the bell, white with dust, and the open door. It’s been too long. “Maybe not.”

  “She needs to go away,” Lindsey said. “I need for her to go away. We all do. Can we do that for her? Let her go?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so,” Peter said. “I took your advice.” He pulled away, dragging a wisp of hair over her face. She blew it back. “How did you get here?”

  “Rode the bus. Mom’s too much of a wreck to drive.”

  “The bus? In LA? You’re a brave girl.”

  PETER LAID THE sweater on the bed where Daniella had first reappeared. Lindsey sat on her own bed and folded and unfolded her hands in her lap.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked him as he sat beside her.

  “At Salammbo,” Peter said.

  “Who killed her?”

  “Michelle,” Peter said. Explaining was too complicated. Lindsey’s eyes widened.

  “Mom never did like her. Is Michelle dead now?”

  “Close enough,” Peter said.

  “Is that blood?”

  “It’s blood,” Peter said.

  “Daniella’s blood?”

  “I think so.”

  “That was her best sweater,” Lindsey said, sudden and unavoidable tears welling in her eyes. Peter saw how much she cared under all the brittle armor. “You gave it to her for our birthday.”

  “I remember,” Peter said.

  Lindsey jammed her lips together and wiped her eyes. “What do we do?”

  “You tell me,” Peter said.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “You’re her sister, her twin. You’re closer to her than I am. I think they’re attracted to form and memory. DNA and what we remember. Relatives are part of the memory. Especially for a twin. You’re the closest thing left on Earth to what she was.”

  “We’re not identical. She used to argue with me,” Lindsey said, forlorn. “Maybe she’s still mad.”

  “I don’t think so. Tell me what we should do.”

  “Well, she comes to me when I’ve been dreaming about her or thinking about her, or sometimes when Mom is crying.”

  “Did your mother ever see her?”

  “Only once, I think. She said she thought she might be going crazy.”

  “So . . .”

  Lindsey shut her eyes and reached for Peter’s hand. “What we do is, I guess, we think about her.”

  They thought and tried to remember.

  The room was dark and still.

  PETER FIXED THEM a supper of canned soup. They ate in silence. Lindsey watched him carefully, plucking at the chapped skin of her lower lip. After dinner, they did the dishes together and sat on the couch in the living room. Lindsey nodded off and he held her head in his lap, studying the chess set on the coffee table, wondering if this was good, involving Lindsey when touching ghosts might be so dangerous.

  But it was the right thing, he knew that.

  There was a greater place and a greater reality, and in that realm, there were duties and responsibilities known now only to those few who could imagine a time when there had been no electric lights and no candles, no weapons against the dark. When the dead had to be reminded that their time of duty was finished.

  Dust wafted up between the coffee table and the window.

  Lindsey twitched in her doze and whimpered. Peter stroked her silky hair and watched the dust. Tiny motes waltzed with slow dignity in the glow cast by the porch light through the broad front window.

  It took an hour, but even now there was dust enough in the old house.

  “Look,” Peter said.

  Lindsey opened her eyes.

  Daniella stood on the other side of the coffee table. In the darkness of the living room, the golden glow in her midriff was obvious, the rest of her less so.

  Lindsey sat up, sleepy and somber.

  “She’s so sad,” she said.

  Daniella looked over them, a swirl of purposeful dust around a fading hint of sunset.

  Lindsey reached out first.

  The figure saw or felt the extended fingers. Shifted slightly, as if drawn.

  Peter took Lindsey’s other hand, and together, they offered Daniella their touch. Daniella did not seem to notice for a moment, then, with a jerk, a bad edit, the whirlpool of dust that was her hand connected with Lindsey’s. Another jerk and she touched Peter’s.

  That made a circle.

  This time it did not hurt or shock them senseless, but Peter felt the shadows gathering in the corners and in the hall, the eels and scavengers he had seen before, and for a sharp moment he wanted to stop. He knew what this small ritual meant.

  Liberation required sacrifice.

  The end of grief and remembrance was freedom.

  This was the last, truly the last of any communication with his daughter, in this world, and for all he knew, in any other.

  Daniella glanced in Peter’s general direction. He felt her vibrancy in his fingers, a tiny electric thrill. Felt the moments they had shared, like faded photos, old tapes. Already she seemed to move her attention elsewhere, as if considering a difficult task. The dust—flakes of skin, fibers of clothing
that she had worn—started to sift from her like thin snow, no longer needed and becoming secret once again.

  Peter’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Good-bye,” Lindsey said. “We love you.”

  The sunset glow spread and intensified. For a stunning moment, the living room turned bright as day. Peter saw the bones in his hand, the ghost of his own skeleton and the X-ray haze of the flesh around it.

  Deliverance.

  Release.

  What is it? So beautiful, so powerful. Where does it go? Beyond life, after death, another mystery. Do the mysteries never stop?

  Mystery is pain. Why can’t I go with her?

  Who is she now?

  What remained of Daniella was ragged, hollow, sad, without direction. Frayed from its added time, beyond its time, it tried to fasten to them with a desperate and final twitch of old instincts, the last earthly link of Daniella Carey Russell to her father, to her sister, to all of her memories, to the physical world.

  Defenseless.

  The shadows whirled and plunged as they had since the beginning of life, in the endless dark.

  They fed. Cleansed.

  Going now: all the summers they had had together, the days at the Santa Monica Pier, getting apple pie and cider in Julian, taking the trams across the California countryside at Wild Animal Park and smelling hot lions lounging in the sun . . .

  Picking out a kitten from a squirming, furry litter at the house of Helen’s old friend Paulette, in Sherman Oaks, and the expression on Daniella’s face when the kitten peed on her . . .

  Peter reading The Hobbit to the girls before bed . . .

  Smelling his daughter’s hair as she slept in his lap at age five on a trip to Phoenix to visit their grandmother . . .

  Eating ice cream with her sister for the first time at a Baskin-Robbins and getting a surprised look, and then crying, at the cold on her new teeth.

  Bringing homework from school and working so hard to get it done on time.

  Leaving to walk to the corner market and buy a smoothie.

  Asking why boys were different.

  Memory is tenacious.

  Peter held Lindsey and covered her eyes. But he watched. He had to. It was his way of saying his own final good-bye, I love you, thank you. Of paying respect to a brave young woman who had stayed behind for so long—too long—to protect her father and her family.

  * * *

  QUIET.

  Stillness.

  The room had not changed.

  Peter heard the Soleri bell jingle softly and sadly on the porch. Lindsey pulled away his hands, looked aside, and said, “Wow.”

  It was over.

  There would never be explanation enough or understanding.

  Lindsey cried and then Peter released her and they cried together.

  CHAPTER 48

  LINDSEY WASHED HER face and looked presentable by the time Helen knocked, or rather slammed her fist on the door. Helen was pale and would not say much to either of them, but she glared at Peter. Lindsey stood to one side, a smaller, slimmer model of her mother, but with his eyes and his own mother’s hair, soft and straight.

  Helen looked between them and sensed the weary peace they shared. Her eyebrows drew together and she stared directly at Peter. She took a deep breath. “I’ve been calling and calling, but the whole world’s going to hell. I don’t know what’s happening, and then Lindsey disappears. I’ve been frantic.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lindsey said.

  “What is going on here? What the hell have you two been doing?”

  “She’ll tell you,” Peter said. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  Helen noticed the marks on Peter’s neck. “My God,” she said. “Did you get those at Salammbo? I knew it. I should have been here. Lindsey, you should have—”

  “We’re fine,” Lindsey said. “It’s over, Mom.”

  “Not quite,” Peter said. “I’m going away for a few days. When I come back, I’ll answer any questions. But right now I need some quiet. I’m not feeling very well.” His stomach was churning and he thought he might throw up. “Okay?”

  Helen looked so sad and lost that Peter reached out with both hands and squeezed her, hard. She was shivering like a frightened colt, and she folded into his arms with surprising ease and no resistance. Even more surprising was how good she felt to him, slight and warm and trembling. Alive.

  “You’re both cutting me out, and I don’t deserve it,” she wept into his shoulder. “I want to help. I should have been here, but nobody told me. Please don’t cut me out.”

  Peter held her back and searched her face, appreciating the reversal but not reveling in it. He knew too much about human frailty. “None of us deserved this,” he said. “Least of all you.”

  “Can we all try harder? Really?” Helen asked.

  Peter nodded, then let her go and gave Lindsey one last hug.

  The parting was slow and a little awkward, as there was much healing to do, and so little time. Not enough time for all the years. It was midnight. Lindsey waved to him as she followed Helen across the porch and down the drive. She waved with the assurance of youth, that the bad part was over and she would see her father again soon and things were starting to look up. Not even sending on the soul of her sister and watching the awful aftermath could dim that vital spark of optimism.

  Peter smiled and waved back.

  HE SAT IN the kitchen and drank a glass of iced tea. The wind chimes on the back porch were quiet. The air was still and warm.

  At one in the morning, he started to pack a small suitcase. He went to the garage and checked the oil level on the Porsche. He would need to stop for gas.

  Coming back to the bedroom to pick up his suitcase, he saw someone lying asleep in his bed. The figure turned over, pulling back covers from a bearded, grizzled face, revealing small, amused eyes, puffy with sleep, and a gap between his front teeth. Peter could see the pillow through the man’s head.

  The man put on an expression of irritated boredom. “You guys really like the foot of the bed, don’t you?” he asked. “You really like watching us. Why?”

  Peter knocked over the suitcase behind his feet and swiveled to recover his balance.

  The covers were empty. The loop had closed. His time would be short.

  He did not need Sandaji to tell him that.

  * * *

  SOMETHING IN HIS own weather had changed, and as he drove out of the Glendale hills, out of Los Angeles, over the Grapevine, in the early-morning darkness, he saw the world differently.

  The Porsche moved with remarkable speed. At times he was hardly even aware he was driving. Exhaustion had filled him with a gray, dusty calm, his emotions on hold, most of his thoughts on hold. But he could not stop. Peter had miles to go and one last thing to do before he could ever sleep again.

  Little fish bring sharks. But in the vastness above and around him, sharks could be just the beginning.

  CROSSING THE DRY Central Valley farmlands just before dawn, the windows down, the smell of grass and wind and dust in his nose, he looked up at the starlit sky, down at the rhythmically fleeing stripes of the center divider on the straight black highway. To the east, heat lightning flickered over round hills. The flashes, silent and steady, turned a somber red. The entire sky looked inflamed, swollen.

  Storm-sized shadows crossed the stars and dropped dark appendages to the flat valley floor. The shadows marched over the land, then straddled the freeway, cumbrous but determined. Peter zoomed under them, glancing left to see one of the huge limbs touch down and twist like an ethereal tornado.

  He drove on with shoulders hunched. Due north, over the Bay Area, the stars had been blocked completely.

  Who could ever know what they wanted, what they hungered for? The altered currents of life and death had dredged up ages of nutrients, upwellings from unknown abysses, rich pickings for these strange, gigantic feeders. More would follow. Visitors not seen in hundreds if not thousands of years would return. The Fou
r Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Dark gods.

  Earth’s age-old defenses were down. And he hoped he knew what had to be done.

  “This shit has got to stop,” Peter said, and brought his squinted eyes down once more to track the freeway.

  Too late. His jaw throbbed. Pain shot up his arm. His hands went numb and his fingers spasmed. His chest felt as if it would split wide open. The wheel slipped and spun. The old Porsche skidded sidewise, tumbled, bounced along the asphalt, then ploughed the dirt shoulder and leaped a guardrail.

  Peter flew through the air like a comet, trailing splashes of brilliant life.

  * * *

  SOME TIME LATER, standing by the side of the road, confused, he hitched a ride in a battered, colorless pickup. The ashen old fossil behind the wheel smiled. “Pity about your car. Porsche 356C, right?”

  Peter nodded, the wind still knocked out of him.

  “She’s a beauty. And from behind, she looks like booty.”

  Children giggled, standing in the truck bed and peering in the rear window. Peter had lost his glasses and could not see his benefactor clearly.

  “Hope you brought some of that ol’ Smoky Joe,” the old man said. “Helps you see what you should know. Long tough trip. Hard on the butt. Smoky Joe, twist, blend, or cut.”

  Light played through the cab of the pickup, wisps and flares of silver. The old man’s words and the light made Peter flinch. The children in back watched him curiously, with great sympathy.

  CHAPTER 49

  THE SKY AND the earth were gray shot through with tiny rainbows.

  Peter stood before the gate to San Andreas, surprised to have made it this far. He did not watch the pickup pull away. It had been a nice gesture, the ride, but he could not remember liking that old gray man.

  The guard would not look at him or take his name and said nothing, staring nervously at the broad parking lot. Talk around the world had been interrupted. Business was bad. Communication was difficult. Peter could understand. People passing through these gates could be grumpy.

  Everyone on edge.

  Almost like the bad old days.

  Inside the prison, guards lingered everywhere. Perhaps there had been threats from unhappy customers or investors, and that was why there were so many guards, with so many different uniforms. Caps with bills, no caps. Nightsticks, cans of Mace, tasers, cattle prods, rifles, riot guns, shotguns. Gloves, no gloves. Tall boots. Steel-toed boots. Shiny black shoes. They were walking, sitting, standing silently. They watched Peter with eternal suspicion but did not try to stop him. Most were middle-aged and male. The average working life of a prison guard ended before he was fifty, Peter had read somewhere; stress.