But he enjoyed too much the intricate mechanics of killing her, enjoyed her trembles and the faint scent of her sweat and the coolness of the skin to which he would soon attach electrodes.
He surveyed this tangled technical realm of his and saw that it was well sealed against the rages of Brother Pierce.
It had taken a trip all the way to Altoona to find locks for the lab doors that were both secure and cheap.
Somehow George had installed them, reading the sketchy instructions, going by trial and error. His fingers were thoroughly mutilated but the tumblers worked smoothly and the steel protective plates were tight against the doors. He had put bolts on the windows and had bought a fifty-dollar motion detector at Radio Shack. It sat in the middle of the now empty animal room, ready to give warning if anybody should come that way. He had tried to buy a closed-circuit TV camera for the hall outside the lab, but he couldn’t afford the four hundred dollars.
“This is just wonderful,” Clark said. He was staring at a piece of interoffice correspondence. “Really very nice.”
Bonnie was eating boysenberry yogurt; George had been staring at the coils that surrounded the outline of her body that they had chalked on the lab table. “What?” she asked.
Her eyes, so green, so full of fire, regarded Clark calmly. George himself was shaking, not with excitement or desire, but with the thought of just how risky this was going to be for her.
“It’s a very politely worded requisition for our lab space. ‘In view of the impending completion of your grant-related activities there,’ it says. You’ll never guess what they’re going to put in here.”
“A bar?”
“Fruit flies. They’re going to use it as a fruit fly hatchery for Biology One.”
“I wish I had a Bio One assistantship. No offense, George, but it’s a secure job.” Even Bonnie’s voice was calm.
“I don’t know,” Clark said, “the work’s too predictable. Boring as hell, raising generation after generation of fruit flies.”
“Some people,” Bonnie said around a spoonful of yogurt, “are better than others at fruit flies.” She laughed, high and sharp, betraying a first sign of nervousness. “Your trouble is you’re not committed to your work. I don’t think you care. Take me, I’m the opposite. I’m dying to keep my job.”
George looked at her. There was panic in there behind the brittle humor. He did not relish the prospect of her getting balky. What would he do if she tried to back out?
“I think we’d be best off if you went in with as calm an attitude as possible. I’d like to see you in alpha before we put you under.”
“In alpha! You think I can lie there meditating while you kill me? Look, if you want to talk about it, let’s be completely frank with one another. Shall we?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’ll drop my act and tell you the truth. Yeah, you guessed it. I am scared to death! Absolutely.”
She laughed again, this time without even the pretense of mirth. ” ‘S funny, scared to death. But what if—” She stopped. The silence thickened rapidly. She stared down at her yogurt container. On the other side of the room Clark muttered numbers and worked with calipers, positioning the coils so that the fields they created would touch without overlapping.
“Are you afraid we can’t bring you back? I just want you to think of the principles involved. You know you’ll be returning. The physics is basic, so is the biology. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
“Oh, George, you really don’t understand, do you? Not at all’”
“Understand what? Tell me what you’re driving at, then I’ll see if I understand.”
“George, what if something is out there?”
He restrained himself from laughing with relief. He had been afraid that he was going to have to cope with real death panic. But this sort of fear wasn’t that bad. “Come on, now, you’re a scientist and a witch. You know what’s out there.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think you understand. I’ve enjoyed the witch rituals and all, but I was baptized a Catholic. They brand your soul at birth.”
“Oh, Bonnie, come on. That’s absurd. Belief is relative. Death will be exactly what you expect it to be.”
“I just keep thinking, what if there really is a hell? And then I think, what if I fall in and I can’t get out? I know it’s stupid, it’s highly unsophisticated, but there it is.”
“That’s what’s scaring you?”
“That’s it. I don’t think I can help expecting some kind of Catholic hell. Or worse, a Catholic heaven, which is a form of hell where the good are brainwashed into wanting to sing at all times.”
“You know what it’s going to be like? Shall I tell you?”
“I wish you could.”
“My dear, beautiful Bonnie.” He caressed her cheek. It was so warm, so soft—he kissed it. “I would never do anything I thought might hurt you in any way.”
He imagined her hanging from the ceiling, himself at her feet, and she comes down from her garrote transformed into a virgin of retribution and takes him at last to the black chamber.
The chamber in his basement.
No! Don’t think of that. Not now.
“You’re going to kill me, and I’m going to find out I’m still a Catholic after it’s too late. The Devil—”
“You know where that legend came from! The Homed God isn’t a devil any more than the Mother Goddess is a virgin. The King of the Netherworld and the Queen of Heaven are the oldest of seasonal deities.”
“I’m being sacrificed for a lark. So you can find out what it’s like.”
When he spoke, it was as if the words were formed by an outer mechanism, a device that had been made to seem human: “Oh, that’s low,” said the outer George Walker. “That’s a low blow. Let’s get our priorities in order here. I think that’s what we haven’t done. First, we are performing this experiment for a reason, and it’s an important one. The craft needs it. Constance needs it, and we all love her, don’t we?
Second, we will be giving mankind a new tool. A person killed in this way and cryogenicaily frozen could last indefinitely. What’s more we’ll revolutionize surgery, make ultra-long space voyages more practical.”
“Don’t patronize me! I’m scared, that’s all. I don’t know what I’m facing.”
Clark came over. “I hate to interrupt this charming conversation, but our electronics are ready.”
Bonnie stood up as if she had been sitting on a tack. Then she slumped, Clark caught her from behind.
“I know it’s stupid but I’m so scared I can’t move!”
George saw the tears brimming in her eyes. He had to act quickly. That was the merciful thing to do—and also, she might be on the point of changing her mind. “Hey, now, take it easy.” He sat her back down on her stool, “Clark, do you think you could bring in that swivel chair from the other room?”
When Clark opened the door to the animal room, the motion detector started warbling. After a moment he cut it off and came back with the chair.
“Better restart the detector. Don’t give them any chances at all.”
“Okay.”
As Clark went back, George moved Bonnie to the more comfortable chair. He stroked her hair.
“Because I’m a woman you think you can cuddle away all my fears.” Her voice was ugly and low. “Get me my cigarettes.” She drew herself away from him.
“The no-smoking rule—”
“Get me my cigarettes!”
He got them from her purse, held them out to her. When she took one, he lit it for her. She smoked in silence for a time, Clark came back and stood over them with his arms folded, his expression dark and analytical. The only sound in the lab was the intimate noise of Bonnie’s smoking, the crinkle of the burning tobacco, the blowing sound when she expelled the smoke.
“When I was a little girl, I went to Our Lady of Grace School right here in Maywell. It’s a lovely old school, run by the Sisters of Mercy. Sister Saint Stephen, Sis
ter Saint Martin, Sister Saint Agnes. And Mother Star of the Sea.” She laughed. “Good old Mother Star of the Sea. I’m glad she’s safely dead.
Sometimes I still have nightmares about her.” Goose bumps appeared on Bonnie’s arms. “Oh, God, she’s waiting for me. I can feel it, she is! Mother, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Mother.”
George listened to her exploring her private fears. He thought she might be an angel, this lovely girl, an angel come to torment him with her innocence. If she had risen up and taken him and jammed him in the coils, he would have let her.
“The thing is, it’s so easy for a Catholic to go to hell. I’ve got so many mortal sins. Hundreds.”
“You’re a witch. You’re in a coven.”
“Listen, a Catholic can go through a whole life, be all sorts of things. But when it comes time to die, the first thing that crosses your mind is ‘Dear God, where did I put my rosary?’ ”
“Sin is a relative thing, Bonnie. No church can tell you whether or not you’ve sinned. You have to believe it. That is one of the most freeing things I’ve learned from Connie.”
“You haven’t learned it quite right. What she teaches is that the conscience never lies. I’ve sinned, George, by the lights of church and craft alike. What if some devil captures me and never lets me come back?”
George didn’t like the drift of this. “Ready,” he snapped.
Bonnie took a long drag on her cigarette. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve done. Poor Mother Star of the Sea. I’m still guilty as hell about her. I guess I always will be.”
“What happened?” Clark asked. George could have choked him.
She snorted. “Baby boy, I’ve done things you would not believe. Things that would blow even your wiccan mind away.”
George laughed, trying hard to lighten this conversation. Casting about in his mind, he thought he had come across a way to reassure her and regain control of the situation. “Bonnie, do yourself a favor and forget Catholic sins. How about the real sins against humanity? I mean, like murder. Have you ever murdered anybody?”
Clark shifted on his feet. “Let her talk about her sins. It could be important.”
“Clark, please be quiet! Bonnie?”
“It depends entirely on your definition of abortion. If you say it’s murder, I’m six times guilty.”
That was a bad move, Georgie boy. Still, he kept fighting. “You’re as innocent as any other accidental mother! Abortion isn’t a crime, is it? An aborted fetus is simply somebody who didn’t happen.”
“Mother Star of the Sea always taught that hell is very, very small, because the souls in it are so turned away from God, so concentrated on themselves, that they’ve literally gotten tiny.” She looked at her cigarette. “The whole of hell could be hidden in one corner of a little coal was the metaphor she used.”
He had to pull her back to their shared hopes or he was going to lose her. “This is science, Bonnie. Our morality is that of science and craft.”
For the longest time she kept looking at the glowing end of the cigarette. “I think I see it,” she said. “Hell has come for me. It’s hiding in my cigarette.”
“I told you not to smoke. Now let’s get going.”
“It’s waiting for me.”
In a desperate effort to distract her, George took her cheeks in his hands, turned her face to him, and kissed her full on the mouth. He probed against her teeth with his tongue. She resisted, then she opened her mouth to him. He concentrated on the pleasure of the contact. No matter the circumstances, a kiss is a kiss.
“Bonnie, I love you. I love you too much to let anything happen to you. Let me tell you—”
“George, with all respect this isn’t going to work. I don’t think—”
“Hush! Don’t say another word. It can work and it will. You know in your heart just what will happen when I turn off your electrical functioning. You are going to go to sleep. Black sleep. Emptiness. Nothing.
Gone.”
“George, how do you know that? You can’t!”
“But I do! And so do you. And so does every human being. We live a little time and then we die and that is the end. Why do you think we’re so afraid of death? Because in our heart of hearts we all know it’s the end. No more George, no more Bonnie. Over. Done. That’s what scares us, not some medieval mumbo jumbo about hell.”
“So I’ll just be—like—asleep? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Exactly.”
She stubbed out her cigarette. “I don’t believe you.” A flicker of smile crossed her face. She drew George close to her, pressed her lips against his ear. “You be sure and bring me back, because if you do I am going to take you to my room and take off your clothes and love you senseless.”
“I’ll get a heart attack!”
“That’s me general idea, you old fart! I just want to make sure you don’t give up on me. I want total motivation.”
Here was the old Bonnie again, sexy and tough and humorous. Her words had really steamed him up.
Getting into her would be quite an experience. Quite remarkable.
He hoped it would actually happen. As time went on and he became more and more a beggar to the altar of womanhood, he had learned to control such hopes. But Lord, not even as a twenty-five-year-old Lothario had he ever received such a hot proposition. Not even from Kate, and he had married her.
Married her because she was soft and hard at the same time.
He wanted someone to twist the guilt out of his bowels even as they caressed him. As well as a woman, he wanted a judge.
Bonnie touched the chalked outline of her own body. “That lab bench is cold.”
“Think of how famous you’ll be. You’ll be on the cover of magazines. Personal appearances. TV. Lecture tours. For a while you’ll probably be the most famous person in the world.”
“Maybe I’ll even get to meet a few people where I’m going. Bring back the rest of Answered Prayers from Truman Capote.”
“Funny girl.” He glanced at Clark, gave him a quick nod that said let’s go.
Clark responded instantly. “I’m ready to wire you up, dear.” Bonnie was wearing jeans and an MSC sweatshirt. She pulled off the shirt without even a trace of embarrassment. She wore no bra, and her breasts were as succulent as the pears of autumn, Clark hardly seemed to notice, making George wonder for a moment if they might not be old lovers. But they weren’t, of course. They simply belonged to the unfortunate new generation, which took bodies for granted. Sex for them wasn’t dirty, poor suckers.
George helped her onto the lab bench. “It’s really cold in here,” she said. “Put a towel over me after you’re finished, okay, Clark?”
“Yeah.” He greased her ankles and wrists and attached electrodes, then taped others down on her chest, forehead, and neck. George wished he was the one doing it, especially that blushing chest. “You’re right, lemme see here.” Clark went over to the array of monitoring instruments. “Is the tape rolling, George?”
“No.”
“It’s set up,” Bonnie said. “I didn’t turn it on. All you have to do is press the ‘play’ and ‘record’ switches on the front of the machine.”
George found the buttons on the videotape recorder. When he pushed them down, the machine whirred.
He could see the tape inside begin to spin. “It’s running.”
“Right,” Clark replied. “Here I go. This is life signs monitoring for Bonnie Haver. I have the following metabolic signs. Heart rate 77, blood pressure 120 systolic, 70 diastolic. The subject weighed at the beginning of the experiment 128 pounds. She is a blond Caucasian female, eyes green, distinguishing marks a crescent-shaped scar on the left breast below the nipple. She is twenty-three years, four months, and eight days old.”
Clark was an efficient man. George nodded to him from his own station before the instrument bank. He ran the quicktest on the coils, sending a brief jolt of current through it to test connections.
“Oh!
I felt that!”
“Just the test burst. What did you feel?”
“Like I fell right through the table.”
“Good. That means it’s working.” George began to adjust power to the coils, making certain that there would be uniform voltages at all points around her body. He did not know quite what would happen if some part of it was not correctly nulled. What, for example, would be the implication of a dead heart and a living brain? He certainly did not intend to perform that experiment on a human subject.
Clark continued. “I am now going to read out the electrical status of the subject. Microvoltage loads are well within the normal range. Brain readings are as follows: alpha, .003 microvolts; beta, .014 microvolts; delta, .003 microvolts; lambda, .060 microvolts; theta, .0014 microvolts. Oscillation rate is nineteen. The brain is in deltoid activity level. All indications are normal, and suggest a resting person, somewhat tense.
That completes this statement of the subject’s current physical condition.”
Now it was George’s turn. “Thank you, Mr. Jeffers. The condition of the null-electric apparatus is as follows: the coils are all at uniform resting voltage of .00012 microvolts, equal to the ambient charge of the atmosphere present in the laboratory, as measured by the Forest-Hayiard atmospheric voltmeter, calibrated to standard zero September 19, 1985, in this same setting. Since calibration no variances have occurred and no adjustments have been made. Thus I conclude that the instrument is accurate and the null-electric field is completely inactive at this time. A brief operational test confirmed by instrumentation and by subject perception that the field can be activated. That completes my statement of the condition of the instrumentation.” He paused a moment. “I think, at this point, we might have the privilege of hearing from the subject.”
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