Expiration Date

by Tim Powers

  Oaks thought about that now. In that surprisingly shared memory the boy Edison had been … twelve? Fifteen? God, that would have to have been in the early 1860s, during the Civil War! Oaks had been an adult … a hundred and thirty years ago!

  How old am I? wondered Oaks bewilderedly. How long have I been at this?

  Well, I was no more successful with damnable Edison in 1929 than I was on that train during the Civil War.

  Or in the truck yesterday.

  As soon as he had recovered from the loss of Houdini’s ghost, Oaks had made his way to Edison’s home in East Orange, New Jersey; and then down the coast to the “Seminole Lodge” on the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers, Florida, where Edison and his wife spent the winters.

  Edison had been eighty years old then. He had retired from the Edison Phonograph Company only weeks earlier, leaving it in the hands of his son Charles, and was planning to devote his remaining years to the development of a hybrid of domestic goldenrod weeds that would yield latex for rubber, to break the monopoly of the British Malayan rubber forests.

  The old man might as well have been made of rubber, for all the dent Oaks had been able to put in him during the next couple of years.

  Edison had invented motion pictures, and voice-recording, and telephones, largely for their value as psychic masks, and with a transformer and an induction coil and a lightning rod with some child’s toy hung on it he could have ghosts flashing past as rapidly as the steel ducks in the Pike shooting gallery, confounding any efforts to draw a bead on the real spirit of Edison behind all the decoys.

  But Oaks had managed to sneak carbon tetrachloride into the old man’s coffee in the summer of 1929, and as the kidneys began to fail and the doctors speculated about diabetes, the psychic defenses had weakened too; like the van der Waals force that lets an atom’s nucleus have a faint magnetic effect when its surrounding neutralizing electrons are grossly low in energy, the old man’s exhaustion was letting his real self gleam through the cloud of distracting spectral bit-players and simulations.

  Oaks had begun to move in—but Edison’s friend Henry Ford had moved more quickly. As an exhibit in his Ford Museum, in Dearborn Michigan, he had built a precise duplicate of Edison’s old Menlo Park laboratory. It couldn’t even be dismissed as a replica, for he had used actual boards and old dynamos and even dirt from the original. And Edison visited the place, and was emotionally moved by it, thus grievously fragmenting his psychic locus.

  Ford had arranged a gala “Golden Jubilee of Light” to be celebrated on the 21st of October at the Dearborn museum. Oaks had met Edison—along with Ford and President Hoover!—at a railway station near Detroit, and in Edison’s honor the whole party had transferred to a restored, Civil War-vintage wood-burning locomotive.

  In the instant when Oaks was poised to kill Edison and inhale the man’s ghost—and then escape somehow—a period-costumed trainboy had walked down the aisle of the railway car, carrying a basket of traveler’s items for sale. Edison, sensing Oaks’s momentarily imminent attack, snatched the basket from the boy—and then the eighty-two-year-old inventor tottered a few steps down the aisle, weakly calling, “Candy, apples, sandwiches, newspapers!”

  And so the image in Oaks’s psychic sights was fragmented in the instant of his striking; there were suddenly two Edisons in the car, or else perhaps two boys and no Edison at all. Oaks managed to keep from uselessly, blindly firing the gun in his pocket, but he was unable to restrain his long-prepared psychic inhalation.

  Edison had been ready for him, too. He must have set up this replay of the remembered train scenario as a trap. The old man smashed a doctored apple against a wooden seat back and shoved the split fruit into Oaks’s face, and Oaks helplessly inhaled the confined, spoiled ghost that had been put into it.

  Oaks had been … jammed up.

  Not yet sure what had happened to him, knowing only that he had failed to get Edison, Oaks had stumbled off the antique train at Dearborn and disappeared into the crowd.

  And he had discovered that he couldn’t eat ghosts anymore—and that he needed to. The Bony Express had begun to assail his identity inside his head, and he could feel himself fragmenting as their power increased and his own declined.

  Desperately reasoning that what Edison had done, Edison could undo, he had tried to get an audience with the great man—after all, he hadn’t done anything obviously overt on the train, and he had actually worked for a while at Edison’s Kinetoscope studio in the Bronx in the early nineteen-teens, to make pocket money and calculate countermasking techniques, while keeping up his pursuit of Houdini—but Ford and Charles Edison had kept him away, and kept Edison secluded and effectively masked.

  And so Oaks had returned to Los Angeles in despair, to commit suicide while he “still had a sui to cide,” as he had grimly told himself.

  The method he chose was sentimental. He went to his stash box, a rented locker in a South Alameda warehouse in those days, and selected a choice smoke he’d been saving—and then he drew it into a hypodermic needle and injected the five cc’s of potent air into the big vein inside his right elbow.

  He expected the air bubble to cause an embolism and stop his heart.

  Instead, the ghost he had injected, perceiving itself to be in a host that was about to fragment into death, spontaneously combusted in idiot terror.

  The detonation had blown most of the flesh off of the bones of Oaks’s arm, and the doctors at Central Receiving Hospital on Sixth Street had amputated the limb at the shoulder.

  Oaks had been put in the charity ward, with drunks and bar-fight casualties, and when he woke up after the surgery it wasn’t long before one of his ward-mates expired of an infected knife wound.

  And Oaks caught the ghost; ate it, assumed it, got a life. The explosion had cost him his arm, but it had also unblocked his psychic windpipe.

  He could do that again, any time; bottle one of the palindrome-confounded ghosts, bum a needle somewhere, and then shoot the lively ghost into his … leg, this time? Right arm? And then be missing two limbs. And what was to prevent the ghost from being propelled the short distance to his heart before it blew up?

  Oaks was twitching with the urge to try once more to inhale a ghost. Maybe it would work now—now that the sun was up, now that he’d remembered all these things, now that his goddamn teeth ached so fiercely from being clenched that he couldn’t see why they didn’t crumble to rotten sand between his jawbones, which seemed intent on crashing through one another—maybe that’s why he was clamping them shut, because otherwise they’d stretch apart just as forcefully, swing all the way around and bite his head off—

  No. He had proved that it didn’t work anymore, he couldn’t ingest ghosts the way he was right now. He would shoot one into a vein if he had to, before the Bony Express could crash in through the walls of his identity and make a shattered crack-webbed crazed imbecile of him …

  But first he would see if Edison couldn’t undo what Edison could do. At least Edison was a ghost now, without the resources he’d had as a living person; and he didn’t have Henry Ford protecting him anymore.

  Just some kid. Some bleeding kid.

  Oaks sighed, flinching at the multitude of outraged and impatient voices that shook his breath. His trembling left hand wobbled to the compass-pommel of his knife, and brushed the bulk of the revolver under his untucked shirt. Three more shots in it. One for himself, if everything worked out as badly as it could and even a ghost injected right into a vein didn’t unjam him.

  But I found the kid once, he thought dully. I can find him again. And I can make Edison tell me how to get unjammed.

  And then I can eat him at last.

  Oaks reached his hand into the pocket of his baggy camouflage pants and dug out his money. He had a five and three ones and about three dollars in change. Enough for bus fare south, and a can of bean soup.

  Better make it two cans, he thought. Tomorrow’s Halloween. This might be a demanding twenty-four hours, and a
lready I feel like shit.

  CHAPTER 35

  “There’s nothing like eating hay when you’re faint,” he remarked to her, as he munched away.

  “I should think throwing cold water over you would be better,” Alice suggested: “—or some sal-volatile.”

  “I didn’t say there was nothing better,” the King replied. “I said there was nothing like it.”

  —Lewis Carroll,

  Through the Looking-Glass

  “RUBBERS,” SAID NEAL OBSTADT, using a pencil to push a tightly latex-sleeved vial across his desk. The roof of his penthouse office was folded back again, but the breeze out of the blue sky was chilly, and a couple of infrared space heaters had been rolled in and now glowed like giant open-walled toasters in the corners. “Why do they pack ’em in rubbers?”

  The vial was empty. All ten of the ghosts Sherman Oaks had paid as his November tithe had been compressed and sealed inside glass cartridges, along with some nitrous oxide for flavor, but Obstadt had kept one of the vials to roll around on his desk.

  “The guys in the lab say they don’t,” said Canov impatiently. “They say it must be some kind of special gift wrap. Listen, I’ve got two urgent things. You said to monitor deLarava’s calls. She—”

  Obstadt looked up sharply. “She’s said something? What?”

  “No, nothing that seems to be important. She’s talked to that Webb guy in Venice, but he still hasn’t sensed the ghost she’s apparently got cornered there, the one that drove all those sea creatures onto the beach Wednesday morning. Mainly she’s busy setting up for her shoot on the Queen Mary tomorrow. But we—”

  “Gift wrap,” Obstadt interrupted. “Gift wrap. Is it sarcasm? Disrespect? I’ve snorted nine of ’em already, and they’ve been primo, every one. A diorama of Los Angeles citizens. No complaints about the merchandise, and I’m a connoisseur. Still, rubbers. What do you think? Does he mean Go fuck yourself? Go fuck yourself safely?”

  “She has a telephone line we weren’t aware of. Her listed office lines, and the phones in her stateroom on the Queen Mary—” Canov paused to peer nervously down at Obstadt, but Obstadt was staring at him with no expression. “She got another,” Canov blurted. “JKL-KOOT, that’s the number—”

  “On those billboards. The famous Parganas kid.” Obstadt tried to think. “I’m like a cat,” he said absently, “I’ve got nine lives.” Nine of them he had snorted up, since yesterday afternoon! No wonder he couldn’t think—he was awash in other people’s memories, and the Los Angeles he pictured outside didn’t have freeways yet, and Truman or Eisenhower or somebody was president. “The Parganas kid! Are the cops still buying that Edison driver’s hijack story?”

  “It looks like it. He’s been let go, after questioning, anyway.”

  “Why does Loretta want that kid? Why did Paco Rivera want him, why really?” He waved his hand. “I know, his name was Sherman Oaks. A joke. We assumed it was Oaks that murdered the kid’s parents, and that he wanted to kill the kid because he could identify him; but … they both got away, right? Yesterday? Oaks and the Parganas kid?”

  “Not together.”

  “And Loretta wants the kid, too?”

  After a pause, Canov shrugged. “Yes.”

  Obstadt stuck his pencil into the opened vial and lifted it up. “The big smoke that hit town Monday night …” he said thoughtfully, whirling the vial around the pencil shaft. “Oaks would have been … terribly … aware of that. How old is the kid?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Not puberty yet, probably.” He was nodding. “The kid has got to have the big ghost. Either he’s carrying it, or he’s inhaled it and it’s grafted onto him, not assimilated. That’s why Loretta wants him, and why Sherman Oaks wanted him. Oaks can’t have got the ghost yet, or not as of yesterday afternoon, anyway, or the kid would be dead, not running around.”

  Obstadt looked up from the spinning, condom-sheathed vial, and smiled at Canov. “Your guys caught the kid yesterday! Took him away from that yuppie couple, the dead Fussels! And you gave the kid to Sherman Oaks!” Obstadt was speaking in a wondering tone, still smiling, his eyes wide. “And if you had done what I told you, monitored fucking all of Loretta’s phone lines, I’d have the kid, I’d have the big ghost, which is probably goddamn Einstein or somebody, do you realize that?” Obstadt was still smiling, but it was all teeth, and he was panting and his face was red.

  Almost a whisper: “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Good.” Obstadt knew that Canov must be aching to say, But you got a thousand and ten smokes! How big can this one be in comparison? You weren’t there, Obstadt thought, Canov my boy—you weren’t there Monday night, you weren’t aware, anyway, when that wave swept across L.A. and every streetlight dimmed in obeisance, every car radio whirled off into lunatic frequencies, and every congealed-ghost street bum fell down hollering.

  “There’s another thing,” said Canov in a strangled tone. “You told me to check out any kids deLarava might have. No, she doesn’t seem to have any—but she’s looking for this Peter Sullivan, and she’s got a description of the van he’s driving, and the license number. He used to work for her, along with a twin sister of his named Elizabeth who everybody called Sukie, who killed herself in Delaware Monday night.”

  “She did? Now, why—”

  “Listen! The Sullivan twins were orphans, their father was a movie producer named Arthur Patrick Sullivan, okay? He drowned in Venice in 1959. Now Sullivan the Elder was the godfather of this Nicky Bradshaw character—”

  “Who Loretta’s also looking for, right. Spooky, in that old TV show.”

  “And … and Sullivan the Elder had just got married to a starlet named Kelley Keith. He drowned, while she was on the beach watching, and then she took a lot of his money and disappeared.”

  “In ’59,” said Obstadt thoughtfully. “He drowned at Venice, and now Loretta’s … after the son, and the godson, and a big-time ghost that apparently came out of the sea … in Venice.”

  “And she was obviously after the daughter too, but she killed herself. Clearly you follow my thinking.”

  “Okay!” Obstadt opened his desk drawer and took out the glass cartridge that contained the last of Sherman Oaks’s tithe ghosts. The lab boys had painted a blue band around it to distinguish it from the others—the vial its smoke had come in had been tucked into a different kind of condom: Trojan, while the others were all Ramses. How do the lab boys know? he wondered. Nobody should be an expert at recognizing different kinds of rubbers.

  Trojan—it reminded Obstadt of something, but Canov was speaking again.

  “Loretta deLarava is almost certainly Kelley Keith,” he was saying, “and she seems to be unwilling to have that fact known.”

  “Maybe she’s got crimes still outstanding,” mused Obstadt aloud, “hell, maybe she killed the old movie producer! Any number of possibilities. Whatever it is, we can use it to crowbar her, and she would be a useful employee. Meanwhile! Tomorrow is Halloween. Get all your men out—find the Parganas kid, and this Peter Sullivan, and Oaks, and bring ’em all to me. Alive, if that’s easily convenient, but their fresh ghosts in glass jars would be fine. Better, in a lot of ways.”

  “But the Sullivan guy is masked, deLarava said so; he ditched one of her top sniffers outside of Miceli’s yesterday. And the big ghost and the kid can mask each other, and Sherman Oaks is nothing but a walking mask—he’s got no name or birth date, and the ghosts inside him probably have more personality definition than he does. We’d never catch their ghosts in vials, they’d be everywhere, like a flashlight beam through a kaleidoscope.”

  “I don’t care,” said Obstadt, opening another drawer and lifting out the thermoslike inhaler. “I want Oaks out of the picture, by which I mean dead. He’s not just a dealer, he’s fallen into the product and become a junkie, a heavy smoker, a rival. And I want deLarava working for me, severely subservient to me.” He laid the glass cartridge into the slot at the top of the inhaler. “Do you know why water
in a bucket hollows out and climbs the walls and gets shallower when you spin the bucket real fast?”

  Canov blinked. “Uh, centrifugal force.”

  “No. Because there’s other stuff around, for it to be spinning in relation to; the room, the city, the world. If the bucket of water was the only thing in the universe, if it was the universe, the water would be still, and you couldn’t tell if it was spinning or not. Spinning compared to what? The question wouldn’t have any meaning.”

  “Okay,” said Canov in a cautious tone.

  “So—” So I’m tired of being hollowed out, thought Obstadt, and of climbing the walls, and of getting shallow. I’m tired of not being the only person in the universe. “So I need to contain them, don’t I? As long as they’re existing at all. deLarava I can contain by just owning her.”

  “She’s doing her shoot aboard the Queen Mary tomorrow,” Canov reminded him, “the Halloween thing, about ghosts on the ship. Anything about that?”

  “Ummm …wait, on that. I don’t think there’s anything much on the Queen Mary right now. Let’s see how you do at finding these people before sundown tonight, hm?”

  “Okay.” Canov visibly shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and he scratched his beard. “I’m sorry about not finding the other phone line sooner—we—”

  “Get out of my sight,” said Obstadt gently, with a smile.

  After Canov had tottered out the door, Obstadt leaned back in his chair and looked up into the cold blue vault of the sky, wishing that the tiny crucifix of a jet would creep across it, just to break up the monotony of it.

  Then he sighed and twisted the valve on the inhaler. He heard the hiss as the pressure from the punctured cartridge filled the inside of the cylinder, and then he lifted the tube to his lips.