I’m the mom I’m the mom I’m the mom.
I am the mom, she thought. Me.
She did a lot of thinking on the way home. Once there, she threw open the door to the master bedroom. Aidan had on his shirt, and the bed was gone.
“At last. I have been waiting,” he said.
She crooked her finger. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Six months later, and the dark days were over. It was spring.
The calendars were up. The bins were in the hall. Andy was putting away the groceries, including the items Sarah had requested for her dinner preparation. As indicated on her calendar—ballerinas—it was her turn.
“Hey, are you ready?” Kevin asked Sarah, as he strode into the room in his new track shorts and a freshly laundered T-shirt. It had been Andy’s turn to fold and put away. Kevin was clean-shaven, and he had lost forty pounds. Deb had promised Ellen she would have the bright green Camporee invitations finished by this evening at seven.
“Yes. Hold on,” she told him.
While Kevin jogged in place, she went to the master bedroom and rapped lightly on the door. It was their code, giving Aidan permission to exist.
She opened the door and there he was, lying beneath the canopy of Indian silk, naked from the waist up. His eyes beamed with joy at the sight of her.
“My beauty, my joy,” he whispered. “How I need—”
She glanced down at the paltry pile of invitations beside his elbow. The scissors in his hand caught the light. “You should get the sheikh to help you,” she told him.
He sighed unhappily. “But my beloved, I need—”
“I need those invitations. Pronto.” She blew him a kiss as he huffed and picked up the scissors.
Smiling, she shut the door, and retraced her steps back down the hall. Stopping at Sarah’s door, she gave it a soft rap.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Mom,” Sarah said, “do I have to make dinner and the dishes?”
“Yes,” Deb replied. “You forgot to clean the cat box. That’s the punishment.”
“It’s not fair!”
“I know.” Deb smiled to herself.
“But then why do I have to do it?”
Deb couldn’t wait to say it. She loved saying it.
“Because I’m the mom.”
And Deb set sail for her walk.
“Books fall open, you fall in,” or so the saying goes. But sometimes books fall out into our world, and take us to a place we’ve never been before . . . a dimension where imagination trumps reality every time . . . the Twilight Zone.
EARTHFALL
John Farris
For millennia men have looked to the sky for signs and portents of Earth’s destruction—will the end come in a fiery collision with a comet or asteroid that will leave only barren debris in what once was Earth’s path around the sun? Or is it possible that, all along, men have looked in the wrong direction for their doomsday, which quietly, almost undetectably, already has begun?
Lenny (for Lenora) Vespasian, just twenty-two and with enough money to buy Portugal, had been a gilded filly flawless in form but with the heavy-lidded sated eyes and languor in her limbs of a burnt-out post-deb, stale cake for brains and the vocabulary of a stevedore. Right now, at eleven twenty on the bright cloudless morning of August 13, she was just a stiff, having expired in the night while her current lover, the crackhead rocker Bobby Benedict, lay deep in noddy land beside her on Lenny’s Dux bed.
The Suffolk County police weren’t calling it murder yet, but one of the crime scene investigators had opened a week’s worth of neglected e-mail on Lenny’s laptop and come across the ominous message YOU’RE NEXT.
That detective was waiting on the lawn of the 24,000-square-foot brick house that faced the glistening sea near Amagansett, shading his eyes (even though he wore tinted glasses) as a helicopter circled to land near the tennis courts. The passengers were a top-rank FBI agent and one Pierre Saint-Philèmon, a heavyweight from Interpol in Brussels. They comprised the two-man spearhead of an international task force. Two more helicopters were on the western horizon, approaching the estate.
The special agent in charge of the FBI’s team introduced himself. Nobis. No first name. A tall graying man, fit as a triathlete, with bronze skin and triangular sapphire eyes that made the sky look dingy.
“Bud Podokarski,” the detective said. He was sweating and nervous, awed that one phone call of his had rung loud bells in D.C.
“Big damn house,” Nobis commented as they approached from the west lawn the bedroom wing where Lenny Vespasian lay forlornly nude and stone dead.
“And wide open,” the Interpol investigator said as he looked around. “Although the family must employ security.”
“Twenty-four hours, two-man patrols, Dobermans,” Podokarski replied.
“They saw and heard nothing unusual, of course.”
Podokarski shook his head. They paused at the edge of the wide tri-level terrace outside the late Lenny’s suite, which was easily accessible through French doors. The terraces were paved with flagstones. There was a hedge-bordered path to Lenny’s private swimming pool.
At the pool a boy and a girl, prepubescent, were lounging in swimsuits beneath an umbrella, looking at them. The boy was playing with what looked like a Matchbox car.
“Who are the kids?” Nobis asked.
“They belong to the caretaker and his wife. Apparently Miss Vespasian let them use her pool whenever they want.”
Podokarski mopped the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Hot, hot, hot. Nobis wore a dark suit with his white shirt and tie, but even with the sun full on his face, he wasn’t sweating. Nor did he blink as he looked at the kids. Podokarski wondered what it would be like to be interrogated by this guy.
“Want to have a look at the body before we have it removed for autopsy?”
“What I’m looking for,” Nobis said, “won’t be visible to the naked eye. And you won’t be taking Miss Vespasian anywhere. She’s going back to Washington with us.”
The other helicopter descended on the lawn a hundred yards away and blew in their direction the fine sand from the beach that had collected at the roots of the close-cut Bermuda grass. Nobis looked at the sand sifting lightly over the terraces and abruptly left the others, walking down the path to the pool.
The kids studied him warily. The boy picked up the car he’d been rolling across the glass tabletop where they sat and spun the toy wheels idly with a finger. The car the boy had in his hands wasn’t much larger than a good-sized cockroach. Dark and sleek-looking, tapered cowling, a racing model with NASCAR wheels. Four sets of exquisitely crafted tires.
“Good morning,” Nobis said pleasantly. “Could I talk to you?”
The girl said, “What happened to Lenny? Did she OD?”
“We don’t know yet. Did you ever see her using drugs?”
The girl had a thin face and a thinner mouth. She kept it closed. The boy snorted.
“I seen her do lots of things,” he said wisely.
“Shut up, Rog,” the girl said, taking an openhanded swipe at his head and missing as he grinned. She looked down and sniffed sorrowfully. “Lenny was always nice to us. Show some respect.”
Rog wouldn’t shut up. “Maybe she killed herself,” he said helpfully. “ ’Cause I heard her say she couldn’t stand the idea of going to jail.”
“You are so naive,” the girl said. “What she did was an accident, dummy. And Lenny was really truly sorry anybody got hurt.”
“What happened?” Nobis said to Rog, although he already knew what they were talking about.
Rog shrugged and spun several wheels of the car.
“DUI. Her second DUI. This time she drove up on a sidewalk in the village and nailed some people waiting to get into Sea Fare. Nobody got killed, but I think one’s still in a coma.” He shrugged again. “Yeah, her lawyers probably had it fixed already. Not that it matters now, does it, Chrissy?”
“Shu
t up—and this time I mean it,” his sister said, making small fists.
“Mind telling me where you got that flam car?” Nobis asked the boy.
“Lenny gave it to me ’bout a week ago. I thought I lost it, but I found it again this morning.”
“Where?”
Rog pointed to the terrace. “It was just sitting there outside the doors to her bedroom. So I went up and got it.” He folded his lower lip between his teeth. “Doors were open, like always. I didn’t know she was dead then. I mean, I didn’t look inside.”
Chrissy said, “Lenny always likes to sleep with the doors open. She says air-conditioning dries out her skin. She has . . . beautiful skin.” A look of pain crossed the girl’s face. “I mean . . . I can’t think of her being, like, dead.” She trickled tears.
Nobis took out his ID folder.
“Rog, I have to ask you for that car. It could be part of an ongoing investigation.”
Rog made a face, but he seemed impressed by Nobis’s tone of quiet urgency. And anyway you didn’t say no to the FBI. He put the shiny black speedster on the table and heaved a sigh.
“Can I get it back, d’you think?”
“Do my best,” Nobis said. “And thanks for your cooperation.”
In Lenny Vespasian’s luxe bedroom, Nobis showed the little car to his team. Saint-Philèmon’s only comment was a raised eyebrow. Nobis put the toy into an evidence bag and handed it to one of the Bureau’s evidence response techies who had taken over the crime scene investigation.
“Turn a chopper around and get this to Ludecke and Hopkins at DARPA right now.”
The Interpol inspector said, “You will want to see what has been found in the recreation room.”
Nobis glanced at the bed where Lenny, a pale sack of blood, was being zipped into a body bag for transporting. The techies handling her wore surgical masks, and it was a special kind of body bag. Nobis heard Lenny’s superstar boyfriend blubbering and moaning in another part of the four-room suite. He followed Saint-Philèmon.
Two other members of the FBI’s ER team were measuring and photographing a spill of what Nobis assumed was cocaine on the marble floor. He kneeled for a closer look and saw little tire tracks from four sets of wheels through the white powder.
“Playing with their little toy while they were getting high?” the inspector mused.
“Miss Vespasian gave the car to the caretaker’s kid. I don’t think she knew it was here last night. And not conscious while it was on the move.” Nobis looked at the bedroom, turned to a techie. “Microscopic particles of coke would have rubbed off the tires as it rolled along. I want to know if the car went straight to her bed.”
“The bedroom’s carpeted,” the techie said. “Cashmere, but still tough going for a toy car with wheels less than a millimeter in diameter. Unless something was pushing it along.”
“Something, or someone, was,” Nobis said. “As for the obstacle of a carpet—I’ve seen one of these roach chariots roll up a vertical wall and across a ceiling upside down. The big question is, when they get where they’re going, how do they kill? And why?”
“Two questions,” Saint-Philèmon said with a slightly haunted smile. “Two deeply perplexing questions, mon ami.”
“And to answer them I think we had better be both lucky and quick. So far eight people with no apparent connection to one another have died after being informed You’re next.”
“No apparent connection,” the inspector said. “Yet all of the victims seemed to have had a notable deficiency in moral values, and all enjoyed a certain level of notoriety that unfortunately has been enhanced by the mystery surrounding their deaths. Is there a plan? Who or what are we looking for?”
Nobis rarely smiled. He did so now.
“Another god gone mad.”
Dinner at the Wrixtons’ showplace home, a mid-nineteenth-century Victorian in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, ends, as do all of their intimate and socially-significant gatherings, at a few minutes past eleven. Wry Wrixton and his coltish third wife Julia, half his age, are fitness fanatics who arise early and play hard at their health club. Tough daily schedules demand of them at least six hours of sound sleep nightly in their third-floor bedroom, overlooking a walled garden and an additional wall of backyard oaks and red maples to further ensure their privacy.
August in Washington is usually hot enough to boil sap out of the African tribal wood carvings Julia collects, but even with the central-air thermostats set at sixty-eight degrees, Julia still likes to sleep with one window partly open near her bed, to enjoy the sweet midnight breath from the garden below.
Private security on the perimeter of their property and inside the house has been doubled following the latest, cryptic (death?) threat that appeared three days ago in Wry’s personal e-mail. Just a precaution, Wry tells his wife, while he must be in Washington at the wrong season and for the most part under the radar, conducting secret confabs at the Pentagon.
He’s in his pj’s and using his ultrasonic toothbrush, eyeing himself for flaws in the old barbershop mirror mounted behind his-and-hers sinks. Shave and a haircut, four bits. Wry moves armaments and ammunition around the world for hefty fees to legitimate governments—and also to less visible tribal and religious troublemakers. He has, at sixty, the shrewd mien, the pitchman’s polished baritone, the eerie essence and urbane lech of a wholesaler of death.
Julia comes into the bathroom looking perplexed, something in her hand.
“Wry, where did this come from?”
He puts down his toothbrush with another overly wide grin of self-approval (he’s always had marvelous teeth), and turns for a better look at the object.
“Toy car.”
“I know, but—”
“You mean the four sets of wheels? Don’t think I’ve ever seen one like—where did you find it, sweetheart?”
Now Julia is looking at herself in the kitschy old mirror. Even at the end of a long day, aswirl in frothy, clingy night clothes, she illumines Cecil Beaton’s famous dictum: The Truly Fashionable Are Beyond Fashion.
“Oh . . .” Julia reties her hair with a velvet ribbon so it is well off her shoulders and the back of her neck for sleeping. “It was there on the sill when I went to raise the windows by my side of the bed. Probably belongs to Myra’s little boy. He follows her around the house while she does the vacuuming.”
“Great workmanship,” Wry observes, picking up the little car Julia has left on the marble sink. He gives the four sets of wheels a spin, sets the car down again, and instantly it’s in motion, rolling straight and true to the edge of the sink, where it stops as if sensing an abyss before it.
“You know, I used to collect those when I was a kid,” Wry says fondly. “Matchbox cars, they’re called. Can’t remember now what I did with all of them.”
Special Agent Nobis and Pierre Saint-Philèmon were on hand for Wry Wrixton’s autopsy, as they had been for all of the autopsies, some postburial, of the nine victims. The findings of the pathologist remained consistent and as puzzling as ever.
“In each case,” Nobis explained to a packed house in the largest conference room available at FBI headquarters the afternoon following Wrixton’s funeral, “certain proteins concentrated in the heart valves of the victims were ingested by agents widespread in nature, found in—among other taxonomic species—the Venus flytrap and the venom of the Japanese hornet. In each case the delivery system was contained in one of these hobby cars.”
He picked up one of the eight identical black racers from a table beside him. The components of the ninth car (some so small a strong magnifying glass was required to see them) were arranged in orderly fashion a little distance away. While Nobis spoke, another of the components, somewhat like a near-microscopic Swiss Army knife with dozens of tools, was robotically rebuilding the ninth car.
“The metal is a nickel-titanium alloy called nitinol,” Nobis continued. “Motive power is contained in nickel hydride batteries, each the size of a grain of sand
.” He gave the wheels of the car he was holding a spin and put it upside down on a leg of the table. The car descended and, with a version of eight-wheel drive, smoothly made the transition from table leg to floor. It then made a right turn and stopped half an inch from the FBI agent’s right foot. Nobis returned the little car to the table.
“The wheels are coated with a substance similar to the adhesive found on the hairs that sprout at the ends of a gecko’s toes. It provides sticking power that nevertheless doesn’t impede smooth forward or reverse motion.”
There was dead silence in the room until the director of Carnegie-Mellon University’s Autonomous Mobile Robotics Lab spoke up.
“Where in God’s name did the technology come from? We can’t do this!”
The Pentagon’s rep, bristling with gold stars, said darkly, “And who’s funding it? Not us.”
Other representatives of world governments or R and D divisions of biobusinesses who were present via satellite looked puzzled; or they shook their heads emphatically.
“Tant pis,” Pierre Saint-Philèmon said softly. “It gets worse. Or better, perhaps, depending on one’s scientific viewpoint.”
From Prague a Nobel laureate in integrative biology asked, “Do you have an explanation of how the bacteria confine their destruction to the heart valves? Can the bacteria distinguish one protein from another? As we all know, there are millions of different proteins in the human body, thus far uncatalogued.”
The chief pathologist for the FBI took over.
“No, we can’t answer that. But examination of each victim’s tissues by electron microscope reveals an infinitesimally small borehole through the sternum and into the heart wall.” A computer graphic on another large LCD screen illustrated his remarks. “The secondary delivery vehicle, which we believe is off-loaded from one of the toy cars—a nanobiomimetic ‘creature,’ for want of a better word—completes the drilling process into the heart wall, then disperses bacteria that immediately set to work, um, replicating themselves.”
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 6
