Jody was a survivor. And I was lonely. I had thought we could give each other something that would help. But I wasn't sure any more. I wondered if I had a choice after all. And I was scared.
Jody leaned against me and shared the warmth of my heavy wind-breaker. The wind across the heaped boulders of the mountainside was chill, with the sun barely down. Jody pressed her head under my chin. I felt the crisp hair against my jaw. She rested quietly for a minute, then turned her face up toward mine.
“Remember the first time?”
“Here?”
She nodded. “A Sunday like this, only not so cold. I'd just gotten in from that Hayes Theatre assignment in Seattle when you phoned. I hadn't even unpacked. Then you called and got me up here for a picnic.” She smiled. In the new shadows her teeth were very white. “What a god-awful time.”
That picnic. A summer and about fourteen hundred miles had separated us while she set up PR holograms of Hamlet and I haunted Denver phone booths.
Then here on the mountainside we'd fought bitterly. We had hurt each other with words, Jody had begun to cry, and I'd held her. We kissed and barbed words stopped. Through her tears, Jody whis pered that she loved me, and I told her how much I loved her. That was the last time either of us said those words. Funny how you use a word so glibly when you don't really understand it, then switch to euphemisms when you do.
“You're very far away.”
“It's nothing.” I fished for easy words. “The usual,” I said. “My future with Ma Bell, going back to school, moving to Seattle to try writing for the network.” Everything but—Liar! sneered something inside. Why didn't you include damaged chromosomes in the list, and leukemia and paranoia and frigidity and …? Shut up!
“Poor Paul,” Jody said. “Hemmed in. Doesn't know which way to turn. For Christmas I think I'll get you a lifesize ’gram from Hamlet. I know a guy at the Hayes who can get me one.”
“Hamlet, right. That's me.” I lightly kissed her forehead. “There, I feel better. You ought to be a therapist.”
Jody looked at me strangely and there was a quick silence I couldn't fill.
She smiled then and said, “All right, I'm a therapist. Be a good patient and eat. The thermos won't keep the coffee hot all night.”
She reached into the canvas knapsack I'd packed up the mountain and took out the thermos and some foil parcels. “Soybeef,” she said, pointing to the sandwiches. “The salt's in with the hardboiled eggs. There's cake for dessert.”
Filling my stomach was easier than stripping my soul, so I ate. But the taste in my mouth when I thought about Jody fixing meals all the rest of our lives. Food for two, three times a day, seven days a week, an average of thirty days a … Always unvarying. Always food for two. God, I wanted children! I concentrated on chewing.
After the meal, we drank beer and watched the city below as five million Denverites turned on their lights. I knew I was getting too high too fast when I confused pulling the tabs off self-cooling beer cans with plucking petals from daisies.
She loves me.
Funny how melodrama crops up in real life. My life. Like when I met her.
It was about a year before, when I'd just gotten a job with Moun tain Bell as a SMART—that's their clever acronym for Service Maintenance and Repair Trainee. In a city the size of Denver there are more than half a million public pay phones, of which at least a third are out of order at any given time; vandals mostly, sometimes me chanical failure. Someone has to go out and spotcheck the phones, then fix the ones that are broken. That was my job. Simple.
I'd gone into a bad area, Five Points, where service was estimated to be 80 percent blanked out. I should have been smart enough to take a partner along, or maybe to wear blackface. But I was a lot younger then. I ended up on a bright Tuesday afternoon, sprawled in my own blood on the sidewalk in front of a grocery store after a Chicago gang had kicked the hell out of me.
After about an hour somebody called an ambulance. Jody. On the phone I'd just repaired before I got stomped. She'd wandered by with a field crew on some documentary assignment, snapping hol ograms of the poverty conditions.
She loves me not.
I remembered what we'd quarreled about in September. Back in early August a friend of Jody's and mine had come back from Seattle. He was an audio engineer who'd worked freelance with the Hayes Theatre. He'd seen Jody.
“Man, talk about wild!” my friend said. “She must've got covered by everything with pants from Oregon to Vancouver.” He looked at my face. “Uh, you have something going with her?”
She loves me.
“What's so hard to understand?” Jody had said. “Didn't you ever meet a survivor before? Didn't you ever think about survivors? What it's like to see death so plainly all around?” Her voice was low and very intense. “And what about feeling you ought never to have babies, and not wanting even to come close to taking the chance?” Her voice became dull and passionless. “Then there was Seattle, Paul, and there's the paradox. The only real defense against death is not to feel. But I want to feel sometimes and that's why—” She broke off and began to cry. “Paul, that's why there were so many of them. But they couldn't—I can't make it. Not with anyone.” Confused, I held her.
“I want you.”
And it didn't matter which of us had said that first.
She loves me not.
“Why don't you ever say what you think?”
“It's easy,” I said, a little bitter. “Try being a lonely stoic all your life. It gets to be habit after a while.”
“You think I don't know?” She rolled over, turned to the wall. “I'm trying to get through.” Her voice was muffled by the blankets.
“Yeah. Me too.”
She sat up suddenly, the sheets falling away from her. “Listen! I told you it would be like this. You can have me. But you have to accept what I am.”
“I will.”
Neither of us said anything more until morning.
She loves me.
Another night she woke up screaming. I stroked her hair and kissed her face lightly.
“Another one?”
She nodded.
“Bad?”
“Yes.”
“You want to talk about it?”
There was hesitation, then a slow nod.
“I was in front of a mirror in some incredibly baroque old bed room,” she said. “I was vomiting blood and my hair was coming out and falling down on my shoulders. It wound around my throat and I couldn't breathe. I opened my mouth and there was blood running from my gums. And my skin—it was completely covered with black and red pustules. They—” She paused and closed her eyes. “They were strangely beautiful.” She whimpered. “The worst—” She clung to me tightly. “Oh, God! The worst part was that I was pregnant.”
She roughly pushed herself away and wouldn't let me try to com fort her. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. Finally, childlike, she took my hand. She held my fingers very tight all the rest of the night.
She loves me not.
But she did, I thought. She does. In her own way, just as you love her. It's never going to be the way you imagined it as a kid. But you love her. Ask her. Ask her now.
“What's going on?” Jody asked, craning her neck to look directly below our ledge. Far down we saw a pair of headlights, a car sliding around the hairpin turns in the foothills road. The whine of a racing turbine rasped our ears.
“I don't know. Some clown in a hurry to park with his girl.”
The car approached the crest of a hill and for an instant the headlights shone directly at us, dazzling our eyes. Jody jerked back and screamed. “The sun! So bright! God, Pittsburgh—” Her strength seemed to drain; I lowered her gently to the ledge and sat down beside her. The rock was rough and cold as the day's heat left. I couldn't see Jody's face, except as a blur in the darkness. There was light from the city and a little from the stars, but the moon hadn't risen.
“Please kiss me.”
I k
issed her and used the forbidden words. “I love you.”
I touched her breast; she shivered against me and whispered something I couldn't quite understand. A while later my hand touched the waist of her jeans and she drew away.
“Paul, no.”
“Why not?” The beer and my emotional jag pulsed in the back of my skull. I ached.
“You know.”
I knew. For a while she didn't say anything more, nor did I. We felt tension build its barrier. Then she relaxed and put her cheek against mine. Somehow we both laughed and the tension eased.
Ask her. And I knew I couldn't delay longer. “Damn it,” I said, “I still love you. And I know what I'm getting into.” He paused to breathe. “After Christmas I'm taking off for Seattle. I want you to marry me there.”
I felt her muscles tense. Jody pulled away from me and got to her feet. She walked to the end of the ledge and looked out beyond the city. She turned to face me and her hands were clenched.
“I don't know,” she said. “At the end of summer I'd have said ’no’ immediately. Now—”
I sat silent.
“We'd better go,” she said after a while, her voice calm and even. “It's very late.”
We climbed down from the rocks then, with the November chill a well of silence between us.
SALVAGE
Orson Scott Card
THE ROAD BEGAN to climb steeply right from the ferry, so the truck couldn't build up any speed. Deaver just kept shifting down, wincing as he listened to the grinding of the gears. Sounded like the transmission was chewing itself to gravel. He'd been nursing it all the way across Nevada, and if the Wendover ferry hadn't carried him these last miles over the Mormon Sea, he would have had a nice long hike. Lucky. It was a good sign. Things were going to go Deaver's way for a while.
The mechanic frowned at him when he rattled in to the loading dock. “You been ridin the clutch, boy?”
Deaver got down from the cab. “Clutch? What's a clutch?”
The mechanic didn't smile. “Couldn't you hear the transmission was shot?”
“I had mechanics all the way across Nevada askin’ to fix it for me, but I told ’em I was savin’ it for you.”
The mechanic looked at him like he was crazy. “There ain't no mechanics in Nevada.”
If you wasn't dumb as your thumb, thought Deaver, you'd know I was joking. These old Mormons were so straight they couldn't sit down, some of them. But Deaver didn't say anything. Just smiled.
“This truck's gonna stay here a few days,” said the mechanic.
Fine with me, thought Deaver. I got plans. “How many days you figure?”
“Take three for now, I'll sign you off.”
“My name's Deaver Teague.”
“Tell the foreman, he'll write it up.” The mechanic lifted the hood to begin the routine checks while the dockboys loaded off the old washing machines and frigerators and other stuff Deaver had picked up on this trip. Deaver took his mileage reading to the window and the foreman paid him off.
Seven dollars for five days of driving and loading, sleeping in the cab and eating whatever the farmers could spare. It was better than a lot of people lived on, but there wasn't any future in it. Salvage wouldn't go on forever. Someday he'd pick up the last broken-down dishwasher left from the old days, and then he'd be out if a job.
Well, Deaver Teague wasn't going to wait around for that. He knew where the gold was, he'd been planning how to get it for weeks, and if Lehi had got the diving equipment like he promised then tomorrow morning they'd do a little freelance salvage work. If they were lucky they'd come home rich.
Deaver's legs were stiff but he loosened them up pretty quick and broke into an easy, loping run down the corridors of the Salvage Center. He took a flight of stairs two or three steps at a time, bounded down a hall, and when he reached a sign that read SMALL COMPUTER SALVAGE, he pushed off the doorframe and rebounded into the room. “Hey Lehi!” he said. “Hey, it's quittin’ time!”
Lehi McKay paid no attention. He was sitting in front of a TV screen, jerking at black box he held on his lap.
“You do that and you'll go blind,” said Deaver.
“Shut up, carpface,” Lehi never took his eyes off the screen. He jabbed at a button on the black box and twisted on the stick that jutted up from it. A colored blob on the screen blew up and split into four smaller blobs.
“I got three days off while they do the transmission on the truck,” said Deaver. “So tomorrow's the temple expedition.”
Lehi got the last blob off the screen. More blobs appeared.
“That's real fun,” said Deaver, “like sweepin’ the street and then they bring along a mother troop of horses.”
“It's an Atari. From the sixties or seventies or something. Eighties. Old. Can't do much with the pieces, it's only eight-bit stuff. All these years in somebody's attic in Logan, and the sucker still runs.”
“Old guys probably didn't even know they had it.”
“Probably.”
Deaver watched the game. Same thing over and over again. “How much a thing like this use to cost?”
“A lot. Maybe fifteen, twenty bucks.”
“Makes you want to barf. And here sits Lehi McKay, toodling his noodle like the old guys used to. All it ever got them was a sore noodle, Lehi. And slag for brains?”
“Drown it. I'm trying to concentrate.”
The game finally ended. Lehi set the black box up on the workbench, turned off the machine, and stood up.
“You got everything ready to go underwater tomorrow?” asked Deaver.
“That was a good game. Having fun must've took up a lot of their time in the old days. Mom says the kids used to not even be able to get jobs till they was six teen. It was the law.”
“Don't you wish,” said Deaver.
“It's true.”
“You don't know your tongue from dung, Lehi. You don't know your heart from a fart.”
“You want to get us both kicked out of here, talkin’ like that?”
“I don't have to follow school rules now, I graduated sixth grade, I'm nineteen years old, I been on my own for five years.” He pulled his seven dollars out of his pocket, waved them once, stuffed them back in carelessly. “I do OK, and I talk like I want to talk. Think I'm afraid of the bishop?”
“Bishop don't scare me. I don't even go to church except to make Mom happy. It's a bunch of bunny turds.”
Lehi laughed, but Deaver could see that he was a little scared to talk like that. Sixteen years old, thought Deaver. He's big and he's smart but he's such a little kid. He don't understand how it's like to be a man. “Rain's comin.”
“Rain's always comin. What the hell do you think filled up the lake?” Lehi smirked as he unplugged everything on the workbench.
“I meant Lorraine Wilson.”
“I know what you meant. She's got her boat?”
“And she's got a mean set of fenders.” Deaver cupped his hands. “Just need a little polishing.”
“Why do you always talk dirty? Ever since you started driving salvage, Deaver, you got a gutter mouth. Besides, she's built like a sack.”
“She's near fifty, what do you expect?” It occurred to Deaver that Lehi seemed to be stalling. Which probably meant he botched up again as usual. “Can you get the diving stuff?”
“I already got it. You thought I'd screw up.” Lehi smirked again.
“You? Screw up? You can be trusted with anything.” Deaver started for the door. He could hear Lehi behind him, still shutting a few things off. They got to use a lot of electricity in here. Of course they had to, because they needed computers all the time, and salvage was the only way to get them. But when Deaver saw all that electricity getting used up at once, to him it looked like his own future. All the machines he could ever want, new ones, and all the power they needed. Clothes that nobody else ever wore, his own horse and wagon or even a car. Maybe he'd be the guy who started making cars again. He didn't need stupid blob-smashing g
ames from the past. “That stuff's dead and gone, duck lips, dead and gone.”
“What're you talking about?” asked Lehi.
“Dead and gone. All your computer things.”
It was enough to set Lehi off, as it always did. Deaver grinned and felt wicked and strong as Lehi babbled along behind him. About how we use the computers more than they ever did in the old days, the computers kept everything going, on and on and on, it was cute. Deaver liked him; the boy was so intense. Like everything as the end of the world. Deaver knew better. The world was dead, it had already ended, so none of it mattered, you could sink all this stuff in the lake.
They came out of the Center and walked along the retaining wall. Far below them was the harbor, a little circle of water in the bottom of a bowl, with Bingham City perched on the lip. They used to have an open-pit copper mine here, but when the water rose they cut a channel to it and now they had a nice harbor on Oquirrh Island in the middle of the Mormon Sea, where the factories could stink up the whole sky and no neighbors ever complained about it.
A lot of other people joined them on the steep dirt road that led down to the harbor. Nobody lived right in Bingham City itself, because it was just a working place, day and night. Shifts in, shifts out. Lehi was a shift boy, lived with his family across the Jordan Strait on Point-of-the-Mountain, which was as rotten a place to live as anybody ever devised, rode the ferry in every day at five in the morning and rode it back every afternoon at four. He was supposed to go to school after that for a couple of hours but Deaver thought that was stupid, he told Lehi that all the time, told him again now. School is too much time and too little of everything, waste of time.
“I gotta go to school,” said Lehi.
“Tell me two plus two, you haven't got two plus two yet?”
“You finished, didn't you?”
“Nobody needs anything after fourth grade.” He shoved Lehi a little. Usually Lehi shoved back, but this time no.
The End Of The World Page 22
