by Dean Koontz
With welding gear provided by Tom and with some assistance from Twyla, Bailey repaired the underset hinges of the iron manhole cover that had been blown off by the blue surge that rushed out of the lava pipe.
Because she was a novelist with a vivid imagination, Sparkle sat on the floor of the vault with Mickey Dime, explaining in what order and for what psychopathic reasons he murdered Senator Blandon, Logan Spangler, Sally Hollander, and the Cupp sisters. For a cold-blooded professional killer, he was surprisingly sweet, almost like a child, and was fascinated to be reminded of how he had shot all those people and then dropped their wrapped bodies down the lava pipe. As sweet as he seemed, she nevertheless kept a gun on him the entire time. He had, of course, actually killed Jerry Dime and Vernon Klick, and she talked with him about them as well, and about how he had shot Dr. Kirby Ignis.
“My mother liked Dr. Ignis,” Mickey Dime said.
“You mention her so often. You must have really loved her.”
“I did. I do. I love her so much that I wanted to kill Ignis a long time ago.”
“Is that so?”
“Because she liked him. I didn’t like her liking other men.”
“Yes, well, of course.”
“She liked Senator Blandon, too.”
“Did she really?”
“I wanted to kill him from the moment I caught them kissing.”
“You might want to mention that to the police.”
“I’ve always wanted to know who my father was.”
“It’s sad not to have a father,” Sparkle said.
“He’s my father, whoever he is, so he must have had sex with my mother at least once, and I’d love to kill him for that.”
“Understandable,” Sparkle said.
“Do you think they’ll let me take her lingerie to the sanatorium with me?”
“They very well might. What could be the harm in it?”
There was nothing to be done with the ruined chesterfield in the Cupp apartment. Who could say what had happened to it? Perhaps Mickey Dime tore the upholstery apart in his murderous frenzy. Even in a homicidal fury, however, he wouldn’t have had the strength to mangle their heavy ornamental fireplace screen; consequently, Silas and Padmini pried it out of the firebox and conveyed it to the storage room in the basement.
Through all of this, Winny kept silent company with Iris, who said no more to him for the rest of the evening.
The bodies of Jerry Dime and Vernon Klick were wrapped and waiting where Mickey had left them earlier, before the transition to the future. With them and the corpse of Kirby Ignis, with Dime’s confession and plea of insanity, the authorities would have all they needed and would not be likely to mount an expensive and dangerous exploration of the perhaps bottomless lava pipe. And even if they did, they would find nothing.
After finishing dinner at Topper’s, when Mac and Shelly Reeves walked back to the Pendleton through the chilly rain, police vehicles clogged the street in front of the building.
In the lobby, behind the reception counter, Padmini Bahrati greeted them with the terrible news of the murder spree. There was a moment of confusion when they thought Fielding Udell must have taken one last long step into paranoia, but they weren’t surprised that it was Mickey Dime. Who would have been?
His mother always said he should not trust men in uniform. But they were very nice to him. Of course, the ones questioning him were plainclothes detectives. When his throat began to feel dry from so much talking, they got him some nice herbal tea with a lovely lemony fragrance. And when he complained that his hands felt dry, they were able to locate a bottle of hand cream, which he enjoyed very much. They insisted he had to have an attorney, too, but the man was such a buttinski that Mickey had to keep telling him to shut up. They were not just interested in the killings at the Pendleton but also wanted to know about the other murders Mickey had committed, and it was rather fun reliving his career. After all, though they were on the other side from him, and though they were sane while he was not, they had for a while been in the same business, the business of homicide. Everyone loves sharing war stories.
Having gotten by on too little sleep for too many days, Fielding Udell woke well after dawn, rested as he had not been in a long time. Curiously, he had fallen asleep on the floor in a corner of his office. He woke in the fetal position, drooling like a baby.
Either everything had been a dream or the Ruling Elite had been able to repair their Spin Machine. His apartment was as it ought to be, all his files in order, his computer ready for the workday.
At the window, he saw that the courtyard had been restored. The plants were not otherworldly anymore, and the fountains worked. Had it been a glimpse of the truth or a dream? Time would tell. Anything could happen at any time in this world of perpetual instability.
After a shower, he ordered his lunch and dinner delivered from two different restaurants. His lunch was moo goo gai pan, and when he ate it at his desk, he could neither see nor smell, nor taste, anything about it that suggested it was Soylent Green.
As the day progressed, his guilt grew. He had awakened with the conviction that he should donate 90 percent of his three-hundred-million-dollar inheritance to Dr. Kirby Ignis, for that good man’s most important work. It was the One thing he could do to make amends for being born to wealth that he had not earned. It was the One possibility that he had for redemption, yet he procrastinated. By four o’clock in the afternoon, he was so tormented by this strange new bout of guilt that he left his apartment and reluctantly set out for Apartment 2-F. In the hallway, he encountered his neighbor, Shelly Reeves, and was greatly relieved to hear that Mickey Dime had killed Ignis during the night.
He returned to his apartment and poured a fresh glass of his homemade cola.
Oak View Sanatorium proved to be delightful.
The meals were tasty, and everything was pre-cut into bite-size pieces, which saved time at dinner. A spoon worked well in place of a fork because all the dishes had sides against which Mickey could scoop the food.
He could not have hoped for a more cozy room. His armchair was wonderfully comfortable, his bed a dream. They changed the linens every day, just like in a fine hotel.
His private bath featured a polished-steel panel instead of a mirror because mirrors could be broken, the pieces used as weapons. The door to the shower stall was safety glass, which if shattered would dissolve into a gummy mass of tiny fragments useless to either an amateur or a professional killer.
Care had been taken throughout his room and bath to be sure that all nails and screws in the walls, the floors, and the furniture had been countersunk and capped with glued-in plugs to make them inaccessible.
Anyway, Mickey had no intention of harming anyone. Even if he had not been on antipsychotic drugs, he would have behaved himself. He had been happy and content since he had acknowledged his insanity. All the tension had gone out of him, all the worry.
The court had barred him from using the money he earned as a hired killer. Likewise, he could not benefit from the portion of his mother’s estate that had been left to dead Jerry, his brother. But Renata had left only 15 percent to Jerry, 85 percent to Mickey, and she had been richer than anyone imagined.
Charlie Criswell, Renata’s attorney and Mickey’s court-appointed conservator, visited once a month to make sure his ward was receiving good care. Mickey liked Charlie. Charlie was diligent and kind; he was also gay; he had never felt romantically attracted to Renata.
One warm day in the early spring, another man visited Mickey Dime while he was sitting on the veranda and watching squirrels caper across the lawn, in the shadows of the enormous oaks. At all times, Mickey wore a transponder on one ankle, so that he could be tracked by satellite if he escaped. When sitting on the porch, he also wore a vest of Kevlar straps securing him to the back of his wheelchair. The wheels of the chair were locked. Only staff members had keys to unlock them. All of these precautions made Mickey feel not like a prisoner but instead safe, sa
fe from himself. The burly male nurse, supervising the veranda from a stool near the front steps, provided a chair for the visitor, placing it close to Mickey but out of arm’s reach.
The visitor was tall, lanky, with sharply arched eyebrows as bushy as caterpillars predicting a bitter winter. His hands were pale, his fingers unnaturally long. He said he was Dr. Von Norquist, and Mickey had no reason to doubt him.
A month earlier, Mickey had sent a note to Norquist, by way of Charlie Criswell: Your vision of a transhuman civilization with a greatly reduced and sustainable population will be realized beyond your wildest dreams. You will change the world more than any man in history. I have seen it, as did Kirby Ignis.
Norquist said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“Yes, you do,” Mickey said.
The scientist’s eyes were the color of ripe plums, but there wasn’t anything sweet about his intense stare. “You killed Kirby.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Mickey shrugged. “I’m insane.”
“You killed those elderly sisters, a security guard, that helpless blind man.…”
“That’s correct.”
“And dropped their bodies down a lava pipe, for God’s sake.”
“I guess I did. I’m not as clear about that. It’s what I intended to do, so I guess I did it.”
“Why?”
“Insane,” Mickey said, and smiled affably.
The scientist stared at him for a long time. Finally he said, “You don’t seem insane to me.”
“Well, I am. Totally. I’m okay with it.”
After another silence, Norquist said, “How did you know I’m concerned about the need for ‘a greatly reduced and sustainable population’? I’ve never shared those thoughts so explicitly with anyone, not even with Kirby.”
In a low voice that sometimes sounded like that of Kirby Ignis and sometimes like that of Witness, at other times like other people he didn’t know but that Norquist apparently did, Mickey began by recounting the waking dream that he’d experienced in Kirby Ignis’s kitchen. The Pogrom. The destruction of the cities. The swift rise of the One. The resultant, profoundly simple ecology of that world of craggy black trees, luminous grass, and a single consciousness. His words were not his own. He repeated the more eloquent narrative of the One.
Riveted by these revelations, and reacting visibly to each new voice, Norquist leaned forward in his chair, seeming loath to miss a word. When Mickey paused, the scientist said, “How do you do that—such perfect mimicry?”
“The One contains the memories of billions of people and can speak as they spoke. I guess it conveyed that ability to me. Or I’m just insane. But for what it’s worth, I have a further message for you.”
“What message?”
It was a long one, but Mickey delivered it without hesitation, without a mispronunciation, concluding with these words: “ ‘I am plant, animal, machine. I am posthuman and the condition of humanity is not my condition. I am free.’ ”
Exhausted, Mickey slumped back in his wheelchair. Listening to himself, he had been amazed at just how insane he had become. It was kind of spooky.
For a while, he and Norquist watched the squirrels on the lawn.
Spangles of sunshine twinkled through the branches of the oaks.
From his distant station near the porch steps, the male nurse frowned at them, perhaps puzzled about what a reputable man like Dr. Norquist would have to discuss at such length with a crazy person.
Mickey wondered what was on the menu for dinner. He was hungry enough to need two spoons.
Then he remembered an additional message he needed to convey. “One more thing. There’s a man named Fielding Udell who lives in the Pendleton. If you pay him a visit and ask him to help finance your research, he will be compelled to invest nearly three hundred million in the institute.”
“How do you know this?”
Mickey’s little smile was reproving.
“Right,” said Norquist. “You’re insane.”
During the next silence, Mickey realized that Dr. Norquist was not watching the squirrels. He was staring at an SUV parked along the shoulder of the county road, far out at the entrance of the Oak View driveway.
“I parked on another road a mile west of here,” Dr. Norquist said, “and walked overland, approached this place from the back.”
That statement resonated with Mickey, reminding him of the days when he had carefully planned his murders.
Norquist said, “Lately I’ve had the feeling I’m being watched.”
“Maybe you’re paranoid. You should get diagnosed.”
“Whoever it is, he’s damn careful. I never get a glimpse … but I feel him out there.”
“That SUV?” Mickey asked.
“Maybe. It’s never the same vehicle.”
“Who do you think he is?”
“I thought maybe you’d have an idea.”
“Well, it’s not my mother.”
“I never imagined it was.”
“She’s dead,” Mickey said. “But even after she died, I sometimes had the feeling she was watching me.”
“From where?” Norquist asked scornfully. “From Heaven?”
“From somewhere,” Mickey said.
Far out on the shoulder of the highway, a man got out of the SUV. He was hardly more than a shadow, too far away to be identified.
In the westering sun, something glimmered on the man’s face. Mickey thought it might be the lenses of a pair of binoculars.
Winny continued reading too many books and avoiding manly musical instruments. He spent some time with Iris nearly every day. It wasn’t a boy-girl thing and never could be. They were friends. They never talked about the world of the One, in part because she didn’t talk much and because he didn’t know what to say. Besides, if he did eventually know what to say about that experience, he couldn’t tell anyone without ending up in a nuthouse like Mickey Dime. There was Mr. Hawks to think about, as well. He had killed Mr. Ignis, and if the true story were known, he might go to jail. Killing Mr. Ignis had been the hardest kind of right thing to do, and Mr. Hawks was the hero that Winny could never be. One night Winny dreamed of the Cupp sisters. His grandfather Winston, who died in the coal-cracker explosion when Winny was a toddler, was in the dream, too, and all he remembered of it was that it felt good, like it always felt when he visited his grandma Trahern on the farm that his mom had bought for her. But it was a strange dream, too, because a couple of times he woke from it, and the Cupp sisters were sitting on the edge of his bed, not any bed in a dream but his own real bed, sitting there smiling at him. He swore he could feel one of them smooth the hair back from his forehead the way his mother sometimes did, and he felt the other one kiss him on the cheek, not the way you feel things in dreams but as real as anything. One of them said, “Brave boy,” and whether they were really there or only in a dream, Winny didn’t know what to say to them. After that, however, he felt the sisters were all right. They weren’t stuck in 2049 inside some tree or fungus or anything. They were somewhere better than either the present or the future. One day Iris got a socializing dog from an organization that provided assistance dogs to people with severe disabilities, and what a difference it made. If Iris had ever been happy before, you couldn’t see that she was, but you could see how happy she was with that golden retriever. They said she could rename the dog if she wanted, and for a while Winny hoped that she would name it Winny, but of course that would have caused a lot of confusion. She named him Bambi, and Winny didn’t have any hurt feelings. One day his mom showed him a newspaper story about this scientist who died when for some reason he drove his car over a cliff. His name was Norquist, and he’d worked with Dr. Ignis. Not long after that, his mom and Mr. Hawks were engaged to be married. Boy, the songs she started writing then were really something. She always wrote great stuff, but these were better than great. Old Farrel Barnett remarried, too, some girl named LuLu with big hair, and about four m
onths later she hurried out two babies, twin boys. His mom had a subscription to Variety, and one day Winny saw an ad congratulating his dad on another hit, and it was a new publicity photo, though Winny never did get sent a signed copy. His new dad took Winny just about everywhere, to museums and amusement parks, to movies, you name it, the guy could wear you out taking you so many places. He called him Mr. Hawks at first, and then Bailey because they said that was all right. But one day he realized he was calling him Dad, that he’d been doing that for a while without thinking about it, and that was all right, too. He had two dads, and he loved them both—or wanted to—and that was neat in a way, having two, though old Farrel Barnett was dad with a small d, and Bailey Hawks was Dad with a capital. They got a dog of their own, a golden retriever he named Merle, after a dog in a book he read. And not long after that, there was talk of a baby sister. Life was just one thing after another. Sometimes there were baby sisters, and sometimes there were monsters, sleepovers with friends and stomach flu, student of the year at Mrs. Grace Lyman School and a bowling ball dropped on your foot. The way Winny saw it, the best thing and the worst thing were the same thing: nothing lasted forever, unless maybe he always would have skinny arms. So whatever came your way, you had to make the best of it, grin and bear it, smile through the storm. And the funny thing was, if you made the best of it, if you smiled through every storm, the bad things were never as terrible as you expected them to be, and the good things were better than anything you ever could have wished for yourself. He even began to think that the day would come when he would know what to say to anyone, any darn time, any place. Because what he came to see was that of the uncountable wonderful things in the world, the best of all were people, every one of them a new world and fascinating. That’s why he had always read so many books: to meet new people in stories back in the day when he was not good at meeting real ones. He kept waiting for nightmares about what he had seen in 2049, but they never came. There were even good memories from that journey. The best were his mother standing there with the gun, looking tough and facing down the Pogromite, and Iris for the first time looking directly into his eyes, saying that she was scared, and then trusting him with her life. Really and truly, in 2049 or here in the present, it didn’t get better than that.
