by Farris, John
The grapefruit-sized iridescent ornament attracted the eye of a great bald eagle floating high above the station. They were rare in these haunts; this one was old and forgetful. Faulty reckoning had brought him again to what had been acres of piney roost and good hunting ground. The eagle circled lower, alighting on the cupola of the station. Closer inspection satisfied him that here was nothing good to eat. The streets looked remarkably free of the usual edible debris that attracted the small birds and rodents which the eagle fed on when black duck was scarce on the northern estuary.
He took wing again and flew over a blue taxicab, marking it in passing with a chalky dropping. He flew low past department store, pharmacy, bank and cinema, seeing nothing but his own stylish reflection in the window glass. But it was getting almost too dark to see much of anything, and still there was not a light showing anywhere in town. The eagle soared, over the silent municipal generating plant, the firehouse and the consolidated school, where the school bus was waiting with opened doors. Then he was out of Bradbury, out beyond the railroad tracks and the ten-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire.
The eagle sensed, before he saw, the fleet of helicopters flying in low from the west, and he gained altitude immediately, heading back to the uninhabited inlets where he made his home. Men lived for years along the Chesapeake without having a glimpse of him or his kind. Few of the bald eagles were born here anymore; the tons of pesticides and other inorganic phosphates washed into the west bay by Agnes in '72 had made their nesting situation all the more critical. Too many flawed eggs were laid. Young were born deformed, unable to survive more than a few days.
The lead helicopter flew in over the barbed wire at an altitude of one hundred feet. The helicopter had plush accommodations for a dozen passengers, but only five men besides the crew were aboard. Two of the men were responsible for the design and construction of Bradbury, Maryland, a job which had been accomplished in almost exactly a year's time.
Two other men were bodyguards for the fifth passenger, a one-armed man named Childermass, who stared out the window by his leather chair as four helicopters, big and booming, made a slow circuit above the town. There were rollercoaster lines on his forehead. One gray eye was larger than the other, and his mouth was the size of a buttonhole. His backswept blondish hair looked as stiff as the crest of a furious kingfisher. Altogether it was a strange, disordered face, round and desolate as the moon.
He was watched closely by the designer and the builder. When the helicopter had gone around once Childermass sat back in the seat and groped the stump of his left arm. After eight months it refused to heal properly, and minor surgery was again required. The arm had been blown off on a rainy night in Washington after a carefully conceived plan had gone awry. Its absence caused him frequent pain, but not as much pain as the memory of the humiliation he'd suffered.
"Well," he said, holding out his hand, "let's see how clever you boys are."
A machine like a desk-top digital calculator was passed to Childermass; he placed it in his lap, picked out a code with two fingers and looked out the window again. It was almost fully dark now. For ten seconds nothing happened, but in a concrete bunker below Bradbury an idling computer came to life and began to issue commands. Wheels turned slowly at the generating station, then accelerated to a blur.
All over Bradbury the lights came on. The Christmas tree in the square was suddenly gorgeous; it could be seen for miles across the flatlands of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Four traffic lights turned red to green and back to red again. Television sets in the window of the appliance store flickered with cabled images. In the cinema a 16millimeter projector began to show Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
The four thirty-seven commuter train left the station on time and began its mile and a half circuit inside the barbed wire, with two other scheduled stops before it arrived back at the station on the square. The school bus closed its doors and proceeded east until it reached a grade crossing, pausing there while the train went by at twenty miles an hour. The blue taxi drove to the bank, the laundromat and then to the firehouse, passing the town police car and a delivery truck, which were also making driverless programmed circuits of Bradbury, Maryland. Christmas music filled the air, but anyone standing in the streets below would have had a difficult time hearing it because of the reverberating racket from the four helicopters circling overhead.
In the lead helicopter the two men who had worn themselves to a frazzle during the past year broke out the champagne and whooped it up. Childermass smiled a tight, elliptical smile.
"It's the biggest toy train set a boy ever had," he said.
Not being movie buffs, they were polite but puzzled. Childermass didn't bother to explain.
For a couple of days while she cooled out from the high fevers and slept almost constantly, Gillian was aware in her wakeful moments that everyone who came near her wore hospital gowns, caps and masks, and those who touched her did so with gloved hands. Even her mother and father appeared in masks—although she couldn't be certain she'd actually seen them; her eyes wouldn't focus part of the time and she seemed to be gazing at all the faces through an annoying thickness of polyethylene.
Oxygen tent. It was also difficult to hear; voices were obscured by the soft aspiration of oxygen into the bulky tent and by a persistent vibrato ringing in her ears, like the sound of gut string on a mountain fiddle when it's bowed a certain way; it was loud but not unmusical.
Probably the trappings and the obvious seriousness of the whole business should have upset her; she was in a hospital, and there were indignities to be endured, swabbings and needles and rectal thermometers and the rest, but she was apathetic. Trying to figure out what had happened to her was tiring. Better to sleep.
Without any transition she was aware of, Gillian found herself weak but fully conscious in another room, in semidarkness relieved by a fan of lamplight on the ceiling in one corner. Her vision was perfectly clear and the oxygen tent had been replaced by a nasal cannula. She felt throbbing pain in her right hand and turned her head on the banked pillows. Her arm was taped to a board, and the back of the hand was swollen where the intravenous needle had been inserted into a vein. There were pretty heaps of flowers on a window ledge. Beneath the windows a small Christmas tree stood on a table, surrounded by ribbony presents.
Gillian cleared her throat.
"Mer Christmas," she whispered, to no one in particular.
A nurse with all-pro shoulders and severe-looking eyeglasses approached the bed. Little blue and white name bar on one starchy breast: Mrs. D. Ombres. Just behind her was Gillian's grandmother Min, who spent most of her time in Palm Springs. She was sun-darkened, gnarled and well oiled, like an ambulatory piece of fine furniture.
Gillian was pleased and astonished to see Min.
"Hi," she said, and made a face. Could that rusty croaking thing be her voice? Talking was an exotic skill she would have to master all over again.
The nurse began to take her pulse. Grandmother Min came around to the right side of the bed.
"Well, hello. How do you feel?"
"Sort of . . . dull, and . . . dreamy, I guess." Gillian licked dry lips. Min held the pitcher of water so Gillian could drink through a bent glass straw. When she had had her fill she asked what time it was.
Min looked at the tiny face of a watch sunk in a grotto of diamonds. "Twenty past nine."
"No. I mean—" Gillian looked at the little perky Christmas tree, and at a wall of holiday cards beyond.
"Oh. Well, it's the twenty-seventh of December, Gillian. The year's almost gone."
"It is? When did I—how long've—"
"They carted you off to the hospital on the twenty-first. So it's been a week."
Mrs. Ombres smiled and let go of Gillian's wrist.
"Right back," she said.
"Carted me off—?"
"How much do you remember?" Min asked, putting down her Dashiell Hammett omnibus and sitting on the edge of the bed. Gillian wince
d.
"Sorry. Hand sore?"
"Uh-huh. Well . . . I think . . . Larue was over for the night. I remember we went shopping, and saw a movie. I don't know what movie. Then I remember . . . doctors. Nurses. Everybody wearing masks like . . . they were afraid to breathe on me. My head . . . burning up. How sick am I?"
"You were very sick, luv, from some sort of scary tropical bug they thought, so as a precaution you were put in isolation for four days. Then they decided it was flu. One of the new monster strains. Not much of it in the U.S. so far, thank God. But only one case in a thousand hits as hard as you were hit."
"How long have you been here, Grandmother?"
"When Katharine called I flew in right away. We've all taken turns sitting up with you since you got out of isolation. And of course you've had your nurses twenty-four hours a day. That big husky one is Mrs. Ombres. I suppose she went after the plug-in thermometer, it's about that time, but your temperature's been close to normal for the past twenty-four hours."
"It's . . . a real shame about her car."
"How's that? I'm just getting deafer and deafer in this ear."
"Her car . . . all smashed up. Not an accident. What kind of kid . . . would use a hammer on a brand-new car? Why does he hate her so much?"
"I guess you must have heard us talking about it. The young man is someone she's been trying to help, out of the goodness of her heart. What a stunt he pulled! She's just all broken up about it."
Gillian already knew that, although she wasn't quite sure how she knew all about Mrs. Ombres's new car, or the confused, resentful boy she'd taken into her home. But while silently counting Gillian's pulse the nurse had communicated her unhappiness, the betrayal of a trust that hurt worse than damage to the car . . . Gillian abruptly found herself thinking of something else.
"Who died?" she asked.
"Could you speak a little louder, Gillian?"
"You . . . went to a funeral. Just before you left the desert."
Min nodded. "An old and dear friend. But how did you know about Lucille?"
"I heard . . . the music just now. Smelled the flowers. And . . . I can see her. Wearing silk. Isn't it? Peach-colored silk."
Min withdrew her hand from Gillian's cheek, smiling so big her gums showed.
"Yes. She . . . I don't remember talking to anyone about the—"
"You don't have to tell me," Gillian said, a bit irritably. "I could see. Cancer?"
"Yes. Who would have thought Big C would ever catch up to Lucille? God, she was tough! And so vigorous. Tennis in her seventies. We used to joke about it all the time, while friends dropped like flies around us. 'Not me,' Lucille said. 'Cancer wouldn't dare.' "
Gillian smiled slightly and closed her eyes. Mrs. Ombres came back with the IVAC. Min got up from the side of the bed.
"I'll just call Avery and Katharine and tell them you're doing so well."
Mrs. Ombres pulled the privacy curtains around Gillian. Min looked at the telephone, but that whole corner of the room was suddenly misty. Instead of phoning right away she went into the bathroom to freshen up. Looking at herself in the mirror was a shock. Her left eye was filling up with blood; it was as red as a tomato. She'd had laser surgery twice to correct this weakness of the minute blood vessels of the sclera, the last time four months ago.
Couldn't anybody do anything right anymore? Min didn't recall ever hemorrhaging this badly. It wasn't immediately dangerous, but the eye was unsightly and she hated wearing shades indoors. She lowered her head, not wanting to look any more. Her hands trembled as she washed them.
East of the Long Island village of Beach Meadows, Hester Moore took the cove road. It was four o'clock in the morning. In the headlights of the rented Maverick wet snow fell like parachutes. There hadn't been a car behind her since she left 27A more than ten minutes ago; nevertheless when she reached the cedar-screened entrance to the Nally place she dutifully made a sharp left off the cove road, dimmed her lights, eased up to the shuttered summer house and turned around, then killed the parking lights and the engine and settled down to wait out the third of the designated ten-minute surveillance breaks.
This close to Peter the wait was supremely frustrating; Hester had a high-tension headache from all the driving, and her fear, not of being followed but of what she must do when she got to Peter's hideaway, had her close to tears. She knew she was going to make a stupid hysterical fool of herself. Why couldn't she just drive on and get it over with?
The Nally house was elevated above the road. From where she waited Hester could make out the few scattered lights of Beach Meadows, and a good portion of the cove road. If anyone should be coming after her, she'd see the headlights almost as soon as the car left the village. But she was absolutely certain she had not been followed, at least not from the airport eastward. She'd lost hours carrying out Peter's precise, perhaps fanatical instructions. Getting off the plane at the last possible instant while her skis went on to Denver surely would have been enough to confuse even her most diligent pursuers.
Hester passed the slow minutes by briskly hitting the underside of her chin with the backs of her fingers, an exercise designed to massage away the little frog's belly there. Her only physical shortcoming practically, except for a few tiny acne scars which were easily concealed. Hester's hair was pitch-dark and she could wear it in a dozen flattering ways; she had kind of buttony trusting dark eyes and expressive red red lips that could be sneaky-funny or poutingly salacious depending on her mood.
For now her lips were cold and compressed. It was very cold in the little car with the engine shut off. But Peter said They had gear sensitive enough to pick up the sound of an idling automobile engine from a mile away. Even if the car was concealed They could detect the heat from its engine at a range of several hundred yards with something called a thermal-imaging device. He should know about such things; but sometimes he deliberately tried to scare her just so she'd be more careful.
Hester punched up the display on her pulsar watch: nine minutes gone, and she decided that was enough. She started the Maverick, which had been reserved and was ready for her only a few minutes after she left the Denver plane. There'd been no time for the rental car to pick up a hitchhiking bug, and she'd driven on and off the Long Island Expressway several times to foul up hypothetical tag-teams. That part had been exciting; she loved fast tricky driving, although she would have preferred her own little MG for the abrupt screeching exits from the outer-most lanes of traffic. There had been some close ones on the L.I.E. tonight, but the fun of it had long faded, it all seemed so futile and hopeless and paranoid now, and what was she going to say to Peter?
Three miles down the cove road the Maverick's headlights lit up the weaving dune fence and she cut the lights before heading up the rutted road to the house. Snow came at her thick and wild from the north when she got out of the car; clutching her shoulder bag against her ribs, Hester put her head down and ran to the porch.
The house which she had borrowed from Connie Sepoy was a stout old-timer with little personality on the outside. Inside Connie's architect husband had gutted and simplified until it was basically one large mitered room, lofty as a church, with dramatic clerestory windows, sleeping balconies and playpens and conversation pits and a big dining deck around an island kitchen. Only a few massive pieces of furniture. The house was well insulated against the storm outside, the porch entrance acting as an airlock. Hester was very quiet going in. A gas-log fire on the main floor burned at the minimum. She stood getting accustomed to the textures of the dark. She made out Peter sprawled asleep on his stomach on one of the balconies, went gingerly up a flight of free-standing stairs. She was half-undressed before she reached the bed. By then her eyes had fully adjusted to the night shapes of the house. Peter's head looked surprisingly dark against the pillow; the Grecian Formula for Men she'd bought him was working already. Hester slipped out of her pants and in a panicky excitement clutched at her breasts, bringing up the nipples. Her eyes were brimming wi
th tears. She moved closer and bent to touch his sleeping head.
To her horror she felt the scalp shift uneasily to one side beneath her fingers, felt the dead coldness of skull underneath, realizing at the same instant that she had not seen him breathe at all beneath the blanket.
With a cry more chilling than a scream she backed away from the bed, and stepped on a bony bare foot behind her.
"Hester!"
She turned with her arms raised protectively, saw the steep ridges and angles of his face brought out by the distant blue light of the gas fire; she looked back at the bed, at the artifact of wig and round beach stone and rag-doll limbs. For one blind moment as he groped to reassure her, Hester almost swung at him. But then she snorted and choked and exploded in tears, and was dead weight in his hands.
"Hester, I'm sorry—I can't take chances, ever."
"You can trust me! Don't you know that by now? I only wanted to get in with you, make love to you, make it all right somehow! Oh God—"
"I was checking behind you," Peter whispered. "Everything looks okay."
Peter got rid of the things in the bed and eased her down, and went down with her, but Hester had lost all sense of her physical self.
"I know how tough this has been for you, Hester—"
"You don't know . . . anything! Listen—" But all Hester could do was sob, brokenheartedly, for a while. Then, slowly, she became accustomed to and was gratified by the tender long tracing of his fingertips from the small of her warming back deeply down between her legs where eventually she melted, just melted, like a pat of butter on a hot day. . . .
There was light outside. Maybe she'd dozed. Hester rolled over and looked at Peter lying on his back. His eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply. She stared at him, entranced. Only a little more than two months ago they'd met in a crowded restaurant on the East Side. Peter had asked to share her table. Hester was half way through her own meal. She looked him over warily, but he was presentable; just a little shabby, like an unemployed intellectual. She liked his eyes. She had a night school class in accounting to get to, and she really was in no mood for conversation. But that was a funny thing about Peter. Once you started talking to him, even if you had a brush-off in mind, you couldn't stop talking. His eyes invited confidences, he seemed more accessible and sympathetic than any psychiatrist. He could turn a statue into a monologist. Even before she finished eating Hester had decided to cut her class. And before the evening was over she'd talked herself into a crush on him. A crush that was the real thing now, deadly real . . . Hester didn't know she was crying until she saw her tears fall on his sleeping face.
