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by J. A. Henderson

  He winked.

  “That’s why I need you.”

  “Justin, the only chips I ever dealt with came wrapped in newspaper.” R.D. shook his head. “I’m no electronic whiz kid and you’ve got no chance of getting any cash out of me. I’m not exactly rolling in it.”

  “That’s not the kind of help I want.”

  “Why don’t you take this thing to Daler?” R.D. suggested. “Get back in touch with the people we knew. Fuck sakes man, with what you’ve got you’d make a fortune. It’s a medical breakthrough. You’d be set.”

  The psychologist’s eyes widened at the prospect. He hadn’t lied. He really was broke.

  “Justin… We could be famous again.”

  The eager lustre fled the scientist’s face so rapidly that R.D. flinched. His partner’s expression had turned to stone, but the psychologist got the horrible feeling this hastily thrown up blankness was a façade. That behind it a boiling rage was being held in check.

  “I take it you don’t favour that particular course of action.” He swallowed nervously.

  Justin seemed to relax. His expression took on a wily hue.

  “Uh uh,” he said, defiantly. “I aint gonna go near Daler or any other corporation like it. We worked for that outfit ourselves, R.D., we know how they operate. They’d lock me up and turn me into an experiment. I’d disappear for real.”

  He waggled his eyebrows.

  “Kinda easy to arrange when nobody can recall me anyway.”

  R.D. was forced to agree.

  “You and I did it, Scotty.” Justin added more fuel to his line of thinking. “We had no idea if the cocktail was right for Clancy. We still gave it to her, huh?

  “She was hardly in a position to object.”

  “Exactly,” Justin pointed out. “I am.”

  The subject was closed. His manner softened and he wagged a finger at R.D.

  “See here, Scotty. This is my idea. We’ll fix this thing ourselves. Who better, eh? It’ll be just like the old days.”

  Schoolboy enthusiasm ventured onto his unlined face and he seemed, for a moment, the man he used to be. “Hear me out, at least. You can do that, huh?”

  He settled himself on top of a ruined television, dislodging a swarm of bolts that rattled angrily across the floor. Echoes hopped round the metal flesh of his ravaged chamber.

  “I remember there was a Vietnamese girl you were friends with, huh? She was a student. The one studying physics or electronics at U.T.”

  R.D. was caught off guard by this new blast from the past.

  “Maggie Wood?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Aye… well…” the psychologist stammered. “We were just pals. Honest.”

  “Yeah, Maggie Wood. That was her name.” Justin clicked his wedding ring against the cracked TV screen. “I remember you tellin me how she was a genius. First in her year. Class valedictorian. You said she was a good in her field as I was in mine.”

  He chuckled at the memory.

  “I hope to God you weren’t exaggerating, cause I want you to ask her to build it.”

  “Justin!” R.D. gasped. “I haven’t seen the girl for years.”

  “I know you and women. She won’t have forgotten.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” the psychologist blanched. “Anyway, she’d never believe a story like this.”

  Justin’s eyes twinkled.

  “You’re a therapist now, Scotty. You can convince her about anything.”

  R.D. pursed his lips. The whole thing was insane. Crazy mad crazy. But it was such a long time since he’d done anything crazy. His life had become flat and grey. He drank and worked and drank some more, keeping himself afloat with alcohol and self-pity.

  Here was a chance to be somebody again. Even to see Maggie Wood. That might be fun too. If she’d forgiven him. It was another Adventure. That’s what it was. An Adventure unwrapped and laid out before him. And God, he needed one.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll talk to Maggie as soon as I get back.”

  “Can you find her?”

  “I’m sure I can dig her up. Still got her mum’s number in my wee black book.”

  “Yeah! The chickionary!”

  The scientist smiled broadly, twisting his wedding band round and round a bony finger. R.D. waited for his partner to outline their next move, but Justin continued to gaze at the ferric landscape. At last the psychologist understood.

  “You want me to leave now, don’t you?”

  “There’ll be time for chewin the fat later, Scotty. Like I say, I’m an Inductor. I’m doing it right now.”

  “What about that?” R.D. followed his friend’s gaze. “Thought this thing stopped it?”

  “It worked for a while, but it’s finally fused and given up the ghost,” Justin said sadly. “The more time you spend around me the more screwed up your mind is gonna get.”

  “Hey, that’s usually my line.” R.D. laughed at his own pun. Justin joined in. Merriment rang briefly through the metal graveyard. The researcher wiped his glasses, shoulders shaking.

  “You kill me Scotty. Nothin bothers you, huh?”

  “Only my receding hairline.”

  “You’ll come back out here and let me know how you got on?”

  “Why don’t I just call you?” R.D. stopped in mid-sentence. “Hey, there’s a thought. You can communicate by phone or email, can’t you? Your pheromones surely can’t get down a telephone line!”

  “I know. That’s how I used to conduct all my business.”

  “Why not now? Your phone get cut off?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Justin motioned upwards and R.D. followed the movement with his eyes. The telephone dangled from the ceiling like a decaying crab, another victim in the chrome and plastic tomb.

  “Don’t you have a mobile?”

  “Got no reception in this backwater. No internet neither.” The scientist’s eyes glistened. “I don’t get outta here…”

  R.D. felt an indigestible lump in his throat. They were partners again.

  They were friends again.

  “Hey! You’re talking to the Scottish branch of the Seventh Cavalry. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to rescue your arse.”

  Justin grinned weakly. “They were massacred, if memory serves.”

  “Don’t nit-pick. I’ll get going.” R.D. glanced at his watch. “I better be off before it gets dark. Tell Clancy I’ll see her next time I’m up, eh?”

  “I’ll do that,” Justin said. “And R.D.?”

  “What?”

  “You have to impress on Maggie that this stays between us, huh? I can’t stress how important it is that nobody else finds out what we’re up to. Nobody.”

  He looked nervously around.

  “I will NOT be turned into a human guinea pig by Daler.”

  -43-

  There were three small driveways bursting from the shadow of Justin’s wooden mansion but only one led to the main road and R.D. had already forgotten which it was. Scooting down the wrong path he emerged, not onto the highway, but at the Moores’ boathouse.

  The building was a squat and faded ramshackle rectangle, painted yellow, the puffed water washed wood pockmarked with ten penny nails. A scrubby jetty on the far side tiptoed nervously away, only to be cut short by a patch of weed clogged water.

  On the landward side of the boathouse a high wire fence circled the building, halting briefly to allow the insertion of a chained gate. The lock on the gate wasn’t weather-beaten and the wire of the fence free of any flecks of rust.

  This construction was fairly new.

  Small wonder. The area looked like it was landscaped specifically to attract alligators. R.D. got out of his car and walked to the barrier. The lattice of wires criss-crossing the gate was thick and too tight for a foothold. He laced his fingers into it and shook gently. It was locked.

  “Halloo,” he cried softly. “It’s the ghost of Christmas past.”

  No answer.

  He n
oted, with a jolt, that candy striped bars adorned the windows. A familiar but macabre touch, it gave an illusion that the structure was built of mouldy cake.

  “Jesus Clancy. I lived in better accommodation than this when I was a student,” he muttered to empty air. “Why couldn’t you just book into a motel?”

  The answer, of course, stretched on all four sides. Apart from the main house there wasn’t another building for twenty miles.

  The sheer isolation suddenly struck R.D. He noticed that thick forest was within galumphing distance in several places should any passing Bigfoot fancy him as a snack. Looking up he saw the top of the fence supported a thick strand of barbed wire and he didn’t much fancy standing in Creepy Central pressed against a barrier he couldn’t climb. Icy pinpricks tingled the back of his neck.

  Something was watching him. He was sure of it. An alligator, he’d bet. Or one of those crocodiles that managed to live for 40 years without getting shot, captured or eaten - getting bigger and bigger by living on stray city therapists. R.D. wished he hadn’t seen Lake Placid so many times.

  No wonder the boathouse was well fortified. Clancy must be alone there every evening, in Hillbilly Central, of all places. R.D. wouldn’t have spent one night in the building without a Gatling Gun.

  Whirling round he hurried back to the car, aware that it was bringing him closer to the trees. Southern Comfort, Deliverance. He’d seen those movies too. Who knew what banjo playing toothless wonders might be roaming the area?

  Reaching the car, he ducked inside and locked the doors. He gunned the engine, crunched the gears and rattled the BMW back up the leafy tunnel. After a mile he burst onto the main road and headed west with no intention of stopping until the first tangible vestments of civilisation appeared.

  A Wendy’s would do, or even a Burger King.

  -44-

  The day after his meeting with Justin, R.D. phoned up Maggie’s mum and got her daughter’s number by pretending to be a former physics tutor. As it turned out his old flame seemed pleased, in a friendly sort of way, to hear his voice. Ah well, he obviously hadn’t broken her heart.

  “It was a long time ago, R.D.,” she laughed down the line, and they agreed to meet for a drink.

  Springfield’s bar, their old haunt, hadn’t changed much. They even got their favourite table. Both raced through the usual chitchat, asking how things were and marvelling at how well the other looked, statements uttered before either had time to properly take stock. They covered what they’d been doing over the last few years, hinted at new skeletons in closets and touched on events that could be expanded on if they got used to each other again.

  Then, with the formalities out of the way, they could really begin to talk. The acid test.

  All day he had wondered how best to convince Maggie about his East Texas encounter without getting an eyeful of Mace. It wasn’t going to be much of a reunion if she thought he’d gone off his rocker.

  “Listen, toots.” He took a huge gulp of Monferrato. “This is going to sound pretty wild but I want you to hear me out…”

  He described to Maggie his meeting with Justin Moore as fully as he could remember under the circumstances. His old partner had been right. The smaller details of his visit to East Texas were already gone. Still, R.D. thought he had given a fair interpretation of events.

  Incredibly, the young physicist had little trouble accepting the bizarre story. Even R.D.’s description of Inductance and its effects didn’t faze her.

  “It actually fits with some current theories,” she explained, secure in the knowledge that science would always banish the baffling bugbears of existence. “Weak pheromone activity in humans is widely accepted now. Quite possibly there’s hormonal junk in our genetic makeup that this Cocktail released. It’s new research, so you most likely wouldn’t have heard of it.”

  R.D. nibbled a bread stick, hoping the professional dig was in jest. As a friendly protest he snapped the stick in half, made fangs out of the jagged ends and smirked at his pretty dinner companion.

  “Physics, chemistry, biology – they’re vast unexplored continents,” Maggie continued, choosing the path of least resistance. “The truth is out there waiting to be mapped, exploited and cultivated - but most of us scientists are still hanging around on the East Coast.”

  “That’s a mighty eloquent sermon fur a computer boffin, little lady,” R.D. mouthed through soggy canines. Maggie sighed and he quickly pulled them out and placed them next to his soup. He’d better get serious. His dinner companion worked for the government now, helping to wire a space exploration probe. She might be a little busy for wild goose chasing.

  “Suppose you were willing to help,” he queried. “Could you take time out from your work on that satellite, what’s it called… the Michael Jackson 5?”

  “The Schumaker-Levy 17 and I’m well ahead of schedule. Nice to see you’re as attentive as ever.”

  She was lost in thought for a moment.

  “Did Justin give you any notes?”

  “No. Probably because he’s utterly paranoid about keeping this secret. I can’t blame him either. As far as I know, Daler destroyed all the Cocktail data to make sure Justin’s research couldn’t be started up again. But the patent still belongs to them. If they knew what it could really do, they’d hunt the poor bastard to the ends of the earth. If he couldn’t make them more, they’d probably harvest his blood.”

  “Did he at least say which frequency the electromagnetic field should be set at?”

  “He might have.” R.D. pondered that. “I… don’t really recall.”

  “Considering the circumstances, I’ll forgive you this time.”

  The rest of the evening passed without tension, the conversation light and pleasant. R.D. drove Maggie home at a steady 70 miles an hour, peering intently through the windshield to counter the effect of several vodkas. The woman sat rigid, knuckles white on the dashboard.

  “Why do you drive so fast?” she inquired tactlessly. “Y’know. After what happened to your son.”

  “To prove I can,” R.D. replied solemnly.

  Maggie finally agreed to help. Her government job paid the rent but wasn’t much more than glorified piecework and this Inductance thing sounded like fun, though not much of a challenge. All she had to do was knock up a device that generated an electric field and she insisted that would be a piece of cake. After all, she had a lab at her disposal. She figured on getting it done in no more than a few days.

  “What wonderful times we do live in,” slurred R.D., whizzing along the flat floodlit highway. “Nature is our Play-Doh.”

  Maggie now lived in one of the few high rise buildings in Austin - five grubby granite fingers on the outskirts of town that clung grimly to their denuded hill.

  “This place must have a great view in the daytime,” R.D. hinted, as they entered the lobby. A bristle lipped security guard contemplated the intruders briefly, before deciding the well-dressed stranger must be Maggie’s father. His shiny cap peak dipped, reflecting austere institutionalised lighting, as he went back to his National Inquirer.

  “You got one of the Village People guarding your house,” R.D. whispered. “I wondered what happened to them after they split.”

  Maggie lived in an airy apartment on the 6th floor. She opened a bottle of wine while the psychologist snooped around. After a couple of glasses and some easy conversation he kissed her. She didn’t stop him.

  His hands already knew the way after that.

  Later, as they lay in bed, he rewound pleasant memories. The black turtleneck Maggie always wore, despite the heat. The smell of her dark red hair. He remembered her favourite phrase

  Don’t be silly. She used to say it to him all the time.

  What do you think? We’ll go out tonight. To the opera or maybe the theatre?

  Don’t be silly R.D. You’d hate that. Let’s just head for the bar.

  He remembered meeting Maggie Wood for the first time at Clancy’s party and how she had laid
her hand on his arm too many times for social convention. When Anne-Louise left him and he got out of hospital, he had called her, looking for solace. So she invited him round.

  He remembered sitting in Maggie’s student flat and spotting her boyfriend passing the window on his way to her front door. She had grabbed R.D. and kissed him fiercely before letting in the unsuspecting boy and introducing them.

  He remembered the audacity of that first kiss as clearly as if it were yesterday.

  But, though it was only yesterday, his memory of being with Justin was far more elusive.

  -45-

  The Venetian blinds were a trap, holding night hostage inside the room, though flaking follicles of light caught in the slats and hinted that dawn was breaking outside.

  R.D. liked Venetian blinds. They were weak barriers, the thin plastic strips yielding easily to the sun. He hated to wake up in darkness for it made his night terrors too omnipresent.

  The muffled composition of the room was comfortably anonymous, its secret shapes edgeless and wrapped in soft skinned silence. R.D. slid over and kissed the hot doughy flesh of Maggie Wood’s bare back.

  His head was pounding. His knees ached, probably the result of his blood having to struggle through clogged arteries all night. A hangover rustled wickedly behind his eyes and the inside of his mouth felt like a possum’s butt. With the depressing physical check out of the way, R.D. sank straight into the second phase of his cockcrow hell. Last night he had smoked too much again. Drank too much, as usual. Fear, guilt and shame tugged at his sleepy mind in equal measure. Yet another night of giving in to the empty side of existence. Making himself look older and shabbier. Shortening his life.

  And, once again, he had dreamed of the Longhorn bull. It pawed the corners of his mind to shreds with cloven hooves, screaming into his face with a sound like twisting metal. Soulless eyes rolled in the shaggy black head and the horns dipped and pierced R.D.’s heart, forcing a torrent of blood into the air.

  Feeling the familiar stab of panic, he reached out and dug a frightened hand into Maggie’s sweaty shoulder. Obligingly she let out a moan of semi-conscious contentment and pushed her rump against him. The movement grounded his current of fear and jump-started his heart again.