Very Bad Deaths

by Spider Robinson

  Only utter immobility would do. If I allowed any muscles I owned to so much as twitch, then some would surely move on my face, despite my best efforts, and that would be enough to tip Allen, and he would turn his head and look out the big window down at the far end of the room. That would not be good. If he were to do that, he would see the same thing I did.

  About a hundred meters from the house, barely visible by the faint glow of one of the little green toadstool lamps that line my driveway and every other driveway on Heron Island: Zudie. Leaning out from behind a big Douglas fir, waving to me.

  2.

  That changed everything.

  But how, exactly?

  —No time! No time! Allen had said “Go on,” whole seconds ago—

  I launched into the story.

  I told it as simply and straightforwardly and truthfully—and as slowly—as I could, so that while I told it I would have some attention to spare for clandestine thought. The point of entry I’d hesitated over picked itself: the first moment in time at which things had started to go wrong for Allen…a moment which there was no way I could possibly know about. I described to him the brush with death he’d had in his airplane, the week before, over Coveney Island, start to finish. From his point of view.

  His eyes kept widening so much at what I was saying, he failed to watch me closely. As I spoke, beneath the surface I timeshared, and he missed it.

  It didn’t matter how Zudie had figured out I was in trouble, or even if he had. He knew now: he was here, and he hadn’t knocked. And wouldn’t: coming within a hundred meters of the house had been all the warning he’d needed, if he’d needed any.

  He couldn’t come any closer. In fact, it must be unimaginable hell for him to be even this close to a mind like Allen’s. It had to be as far away as he could get, and still read me.

  If Zudie knew I was in trouble, Nika would know I was in trouble. Soon, if not already. Zudie had a cell phone, and her number.

  How fast could she get here? And how would she come? Alone and unofficially—or with backup and warrants and a trained hostage negotiator to soothe Allen into the crosshairs? But either way, how soon?

  The fastest possible would be to phone ahead to the Heron Island RCMP detachment, and persuade Constable McKenzie to get out of bed and come check things out. I hoped she wouldn’t do that. Killing that sweet old man couldn’t possibly take Allen more than five or ten minutes—and then he’d know the heat was on, would probably know everything useful McKenzie had known in fact, and would take me somewhere else to work on me at his leisure without interruption.

  I snuck a glance at the clock display on the face of the living room VCR, and tried to work out the timing.

  Say Zudie had motored straight home after we parted, and five minutes later saw something on the tape to clue him that all hell was about to break loose. Say he instantly phoned Nika and shared whatever his news was. If she had bolted right out the door, and had good luck with traffic, she might have been able to catch the last ferry to Heron Island.

  If that were so, and the skipper made his very best time, and she were the first car off the boat, and she duplicated my record best time from Bug Cove up through the hills to my place…my best guess was that if all those conditions were obtained, I might possibly hope to hear the distant sound of her approaching car in as little as another forty minutes.

  If she had missed the last ferry, and if she had then managed to line up a fast charter ride of some kind instantly, she could conceivably arrive in as little as half an hour. If so, she’d be afoot, probably with minimal firepower and no backup.

  Whether she’d caught the ferry or not, if she had phoned ahead to the West Van cops and told them some story that would get them on the ferry in force, then probably what I would hear in forty minutes would be approaching sirens and voices trying to be soothing over bullhorns. The expression “death by cop” doesn’t always refer to suicide. I hoped she’d been smarter than that. Allen would be a lot better off if they found him standing over my warm corpse than he would be if I lived to tell what I knew about him.

  Think it through, Russell! Assume Nika is not going to arrive in time to help—because if she is, you’ve got no problems. In that case, Zudie tells her exactly what’s going on in here, just how quickly Allen could open your throat or otherwise end you, and she creeps up to the window, shoots him through the head, and yells “Freeze!” Cut to commercial. Think about what if you’re not that lucky.

  And hurry up, you’re nearly to the end of your prologue.

  I need Nika. Without her I’m screwed. I have to stall like crazy.

  But he isn’t going to let me get away with stalling for another minute, much less forty—

  Without Nika, Zudie is my only asset. And my responsibility. At all costs I need to tell Allen as little as possible about Zudie, and most but not all of what I do say about him should be lies.

  But Allen’s built-in bullshit detector is dismayingly good—

  True. But he’s never met a liar like me before.

  Out of time!

  I had used up every scrap I could remember of what Zudie had told me, run out of things to recount about what had gone on inside Allen’s head, during those moments he’d thought would be his last. I’m pretty sure what convinced him I wasn’t pulling some sort of carny mentalist con on him was the specific details I knew about what he’d planned to do to his family of four in Point Grey. They weren’t the kinds of things I could ever in a million years have thought up myself, and maybe that showed on my face, distracted as I was. But now I was fresh out of things to say, out of digressions too, had no way to forestall him from asking the bloody obvious question. So he asked it.

  “How do you know all this?”

  Careful, now. “Think back. As you were going down, remember off to your left, toward the sunset, some kind of small boat?”

  “Yeah.” No he didn’t. But now he thought he did. “So?”

  “The guy on it was a telepath.”

  His reaction astonished and dismayed me. I had confidently expected that statement to generate at least five minutes of wasted air, digressionary and circular argument, at the end of which he would finally concede the point only after the third time I’d asked him, All right then, wiseguy, how do I know all this stuff if I didn’t get it from a mind reader? I had forgotten that computer nerds read science fiction. Telepathy doesn’t boggle their minds at all.

  Instead, the bastard said, “I knew it. Nothing else made sense. What’s his name?”

  Shit. Don’t give this guy hot serves; his return is murder.

  Rather than hesitate even a microsecond, I just said the first words that came into my head. “How the hell should I know?”

  It was only after the words left my mouth that I realized I’d accidentally said something smart.

  Because he was nodding, as though that made sense. And by God, it did. The lie wrote itself.

  “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me. The last thing a telepath would want to do is let anybody find out who he is—especially a newsman. If you let the cat out of the bag, he gets to spend the last few days of his life as a free man trying to outrun the NSA, CIA, FBI, CSIS, RCMP, and for all I know the KGB.”

  I nodded, careful not to overdo it. “Yeah, that’s what I figured was going on.”

  “My God. A genuine telepath. Oh, how splendid.”

  “I told you you were going to like it,” I said grimly.

  “Oh yes. Oh my, yes.”

  “I’d actually rather the NSA had him.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “How did he ever manage to convince you he wasn’t just a lunatic—over the phone?”

  Tell as much of the truth as possible. “The same way I just did. He told me things about myself he couldn’t possibly have known any other way.”

  The eyebrow lowered. “Yes, I see. So you bought his story.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t have much choice.”

  He was frowning. “Then I don’
t understand.”

  “What? Why a telepath took the risk?”

  “No. Why you didn’t simply pass his information on to your police contacts, and set a task force onto me. What the hell were you doing poking a camcorder out your own car window? Are you really the sort of egotistical moron who wants a scoop?”

  I had snorted at the term police contacts. Scoop made me grimace. “You’ve made the same mistake he did. You’re both civilians. To you a columnist and a newsman must seem like the same thing.”

  “They’re not?”

  “Not even close. Au contraire. Just backwards.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Newsmen dig up facts, confirm them, and sell them to you. No, excuse me, the second step has been dropped in recent years. But even so, they are at least supposed to sell facts. Not me. Any alleged facts in one of my columns, I got ’em secondhand at best. What I sell is opinions.”

  “Ah.”

  “Furthermore, international and national opinions, rarely local ones. Remember, I work for The Globe and Mail—Toronto, not Vancouver. When you do that, you don’t build up a network of local police contacts. Or any other servants of the public. The only ones who know your name are the ones that are pissed off by one or more of your opinions.”

  He was nodding. “Yes, I see. So you and your girlfriend decided to try and gather enough evidence to bring to the police without having to mention mind readers. Noble of you. What’s her name?”

  I just looked at him.

  “Let me explain how this works,” he said patiently. “If you tell me her name and how to find her, when I leave you I will go and kill her at once. If you do not tell me her name and how to find her, I will be forced to waste as much as an hour and a half to learn that information. If that happens I will be so angry, I will not kill her at once. So far the longest I’ve been able to keep anyone dying was twenty-two days. But I learn more each time. I’m shooting for a whole lunar month, and you know, your girlfriend looked strong.”

  Zudie, I understand how you could find touching this mind naked unendurable. Just listening to the noises it makes here outside the skull is nauseating.

  “How do I know you’ll keep your word?” I temporized.

  He shrugged. “How do I know you’ll tell me the truth?”

  I hesitated as long as I could, hamming it up as much as I dared. This was supposed to be a devastating decision: necessary or not, I was giving up someone I cared about to certain death. I was wishing I’d studied acting long enough to get to the class about crying on cue…when I startled myself by bursting genuinely into tears. I must be under stress or something.

  Run with it: I looked him square in the face and said, “Her name is Wilma McCarthy. She’s a physiotherapist. She lives in Kits, a block up from the beach; the address is in my book and you have that.”

  Damn. Halfway through the spiel I knew he wasn’t buying it. Zudie, run. Back off a hundred meters, and come back slow. I’m going to have to take one for the team—

  I don’t know if he had enough warning. Allen held up a paper clip. He unfolded it into a straight line with a short folded handle, like a pot smoker improvising a pipe cleaner. Then he held my right hand flat against the arm of the chair with his free hand, put the tip of the paper clip beneath my thumbnail, and rammed it up under the nail, nearly halfway to the quick.

  Scientists now speak of something called a hypernova, that makes ordinary supernovae look like flashbulbs. Anything you ever want to know about one, just come ask me.

  When I could form coherent thoughts again, his face was in front of mine. His eyes glistened moistly. His nostrils were wide with suppressed excitement.

  “A paper clip,” he said softly, and puckered his lips into that hideous little smirk again. “Imagine what I can do with a pair of pliers.”

  It still hurt like crazy. But…this will sound stupid. I tried as hard as I could not to mind the pain. Not to be upset by it. Because if I didn’t find some way to reduce my own torment, Zudie would not be able to get back close enough to be of use again. It may be the most twisted backass reason for bravery I ever heard of.

  But it worked. Kind of, anyway. Feeling that much pain was appalling; the idea of inflicting it on someone else, just because I couldn’t get hold of myself, was offensive to me. Somehow I was able to recapture from deep memory some of the perspective that comes with a large shot of morphine: the feeling that the pain, while still there, is of far less importance.

  “H-h-h-h-h-c-h-h—” I said, swallowed blood, and tried again. Must have bitten my tongue. “How did you know I was lying?”

  “Russell, Russell. Think it through. People lie to me a lot. But in the end I always find out what the truth is, so then I know for sure what the lies were. After awhile it becomes instinctive.”

  I sighed.

  “There must be a real Wilma, if I was supposed to find her address in your book,” he mused. “Who is she?”

  “A former landlady,” I admitted. “First female name I thought of I could spare.”

  He liked that. A lot. For the first time I got a smile that showed lots of teeth. It was clear why he didn’t smile that way often. “You know,” he said, “I think I’m going to take her out. The idea appeals to me. I like it when people die for ridiculous reasons.”

  Shit. I would never have imagined I could possibly end up wanting to apologize to Mrs. McCarthy for anything. But even she didn’t deserve Allen. I wasn’t positive the late Pol Pot would have, or Idi Amin.

  His smile vanished. “So now you have that on your conscience, and we’re barely started. Why don’t you tell me your girlfriend’s real name and address, before this gets ugly?”

  While all this was going on, deep below the surface a kernel of my mind was busy plotting, stealing time between processor cycles if you like mind/computer analogies.

  Once I answered his question, and possibly one or two brief follow-ups, we were basically done. At that point he had no further interest in me as a source of information, and could and would proceed directly to the torturing me to death part.

  But in the best of all possible worlds, Nika had to still be at least…

  Unexpected happy side-effect of having my hands restrained palm up: I could sneak a look at my watch without being caught at it.

  …at least fifteen or twenty minutes away.

  Shit. How could I stall for five minutes, much less twenty?

  Only one thought came to me. Suppose Zudie threw a rock through the living room window, and ran like hell?

  Could Zudie outrun a homicidal psychopath, for five minutes?

  Well, let’s think about that. It was by now pitch dark out there. Zudie and Allen were both big guys, both overweight, both out of shape, both extremely smart, both known to have lived in the woods long enough to presumably know how to move through them in the dark with some confidence. How were the two men different?

  Zudie would know exactly where Allen was in the dark at all times, and could not be fooled.

  Zudie would have worse than the hounds of Hell at his heels to motivate him as he ran; the closer Allen got, the more of a goad he became.

  Both useful advantages.

  On the other side of the scale, like a ton of lead, was the cold knowledge that chases through a forest were from time immemorial usually decided by superior ferocity, savagery, and combat experience. I was certain Zudie had never so much as punched another kid in the nose; it would have hurt too much. Zudie was a sensitive lamb, Allen was a tiger’s worst nightmare. And unlike an animal predator, Allen would never decide this particular hunk of protein was a bad bargain energy-wise, and break off the chase.

  Also—shit!—Allen would have my Maglite to help him pierce the darkness.

  Wait! There was at least one other powerful advantage Zudie would have, that I was overlooking.

  Allen was not only in the dark, he was on totally unfamiliar turf. The Maglite would show him only things he’d never seen before. As I thought bac
k over it, I decided he must have entered my house almost immediately after the sound of his car had frightened Fraidy the Cat—there was a good chance he knew nothing about the way the land lay around here, not which way downhill was, or where the sudden unexpected drop-offs were, or where territory that looked passable would suddenly turn out to be Thorn City, or where and how wide the stream was, or anything.

  Whereas Zudie knew everything I knew about the property after having lived there for years.

  Would that be enough to keep him alive for ten minutes in the dark with the genuine no-shit boogeyman?

  I tried to plan him a route; to work out a path which would continually lead Allen into jams that Zudie would see coming, without ever involving a long straight stretch without cover, where a Maglite beam might pick him out.

  I just couldn’t do it. It was too much mental gymnastics for me to pull off while carrying on a convincing conversation on the surface. I kept losing my place while I was thinking of things to say to Allen.

  I had to settle for just thinking about my land, all of it, picturing it in as much detail as I could manage, doing so a piece at a time and praying he could reassemble them into a three-dimensional whole—and then use it to plan out a useful course. Good spots to break a leg. Good spots to hide. Spots where only Zudie would know it was safe to run flat-out. Spots where only he’d know it was not.

  I’m sorry to have to admit I wasted a fair amount of time at first, thinking of potential weapons I had lying around the place, and trying to think of places where Zudie might be able to set up an ambush, and surprise Allen with an axe across the back of the neck or the like. Stupid, stupid. Long before Allen reached the ambush point, he’d hear Zudie screaming. Then he’d take Zudie’s axe away and make him quieter.

  When I finally realized that, I switched all my thought from ways to fight, to ways to run. In my mind, I left my home in each of the four compass directions, and continued each until that course had brought me to someplace where Zudie would find other people. Then I did the same with northwest, southwest, and so on.