Ten of us, all women, walked through the streets with Naomi; but when we came to the open double doors of the hall, I alone continued with her on my arm. The great room was already three-quarters full. I guessed maybe a thousand people were there – this was a major event for the Blessed Order. As Naomi and I went down the long aisle I saw Elder Walker and a group of Council members waiting at the end. Behind them, on the dais in a massive ceremonial chair, sat the wasted form of the Blessed Jasper.
The wedding ceremony within the Order was lengthy, and as long as I had lived in Bryceville the Patriarch had played a central part in it. As I left Naomi with the group before the dais, turned, and made my way to my place on the bench, I wondered. How could a living skeleton, blind and deaf, perform any function at all, still less deliver the customary invocation and blessing?
I should have known better. The Council had faced the problem of a failing Patriarch for a long time. As I sat down and leaned far forward as though in prayer, I heard a familiar voice. “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today . . .”
I jerked my head up. That was the Patriarch’s voice, firm and clear. But the mouth of the frail figure on the platform was not moving. I glanced around and saw others behaving as if the situation was perfectly normal. Suddenly I realized what was happening. The Order, sneering at the world outside Bryceville, decrying modern machinery, suspicious of innovation, still found its own uses for technology. Someone, years ago, had foreseen the present situation and recorded the Blessed Jasper in a wedding ceremony.
I leaned down, reached underneath, and savagely turned the valve. As I straightened up I heard the hiss of escaping gas. After a few seconds my neighbours on the bench, three women, turned in my direction. They were catching a faintly acrid smell, but the continuing ceremony masked the sound. They stared at me for a moment, saw nothing, and returned their attention to the wedding service.
The next five minutes were agonizing. I felt sure that the smell of the spreading gas would overwhelm that of disinfectant and rosewater, and someone would investigate and expose what I had done. If that didn’t happen, the alternative was almost worse: In another hour, Naomi would be married to Cyrus Walker. And there was a final possibility, one I almost dared not think about. I hoped that I understood the interaction of the chemical now spreading through the air with the drugs delivered in the past year to the Order, but in the last few desperate days there had been no time to calibrate dosage or explore other possible effects. Suppose that I killed everyone in the meeting hall? It was small consolation to know that I, sitting right above the cylinder, would be the first to go.
I waited, gradually becoming convinced that I had made a gross mistake and nothing was going to happen. The voice of the Patriarch seemed to go on forever. Then one of the Council members standing right at Naomi’s side raised a hand to his head, half-turned, and dropped to the ground without a sound.
The men nearby bent to help him, but before they could do more than lift his head their attention was diverted to the raised dais. The Patriarch, who up to this point in the proceedings had neither moved nor spoken, uttered a hoarse, strangled moan. His skinny figure lurched to its feet, stood swaying and rigid for a moment, then fell forward head first. The crack of his bald head on the hard floor of the hall was loud enough to sound through the still-continuing invocation.
A wail of horror and disbelief rang through the hall. Council members moved to the Blessed Jasper, while dozens of other people started forward. Before they could do anything to help, another man was toppling to the floor. Then another, I saw Elder Walker, swaying on his feet, grab at Naomi’s arm for support. Then he crumpled and fell. I leaned forward, thinking to close the valve, but it was too late. The women on my bench were screaming and they forced their way past, making it impossible for me to bend over. I stood up and turned around. The room was pandemonium. Some people pushed forward to help, others were heading toward the doors. And, everywhere close by, men were falling. The front of the hall was littered with their silent bodies. Other men right beside them remained standing. They stared around, bewildered and afraid.
I hoped and prayed that I was seeing unconsciousness, and no worse. I had killed the Blessed Jasper, I knew that – the three-foot fall from the dais to an impact with the hard floor would have cracked the skull of a man far less frail.
Naomi was kneeling at Elder Walker’s side, crying hysterically. I pushed my way through, grabbed an arm, and tried to lift her. “We have to get out of here!” I shouted.
“No!” She would not move. “Cyrus is hurt. I have to look after him.”
“It’s too risky. If we don’t leave, the same thing will happen to us.”
I don’t know if she heard me, but others certainly did. I heard screams and cries of “Let me out!” The press toward the main exit began in earnest. Men and women forced each other out of the way and trampled the bodies on the floor. Again I tried to lift Naomi, but she would not move from Elder Walker’s side.
I stayed with her, waiting for the crush to subside. Then, when no one was near, I did what I hated to do. The jab of the needle to the nape of her neck was not painful – barely enough to make her look up at me in surprise.
I waited for 10 seconds, then said, “Naomi, we must leave now. Come along.”
She rose to her feet with a bemused expression on her face and allowed me to lead her away from Elder Walker. When we came to the bench where I had been sitting I made a quick detour and picked up the knapsack and cylinder.
At the double doors I paused and glanced back into the hall. I had no time for an accurate count, but I estimated that 50 people remained, all near the front, all unconscious, and all men. In front of me, hundreds had turned again and were standing, unsure if it would be safe to go back in. It had begun to pour, mingling warm raindrops with tears. No one spoke to us or tried to interfere as I led Naomi away along the street.
She said nothing for a hundred yards, and then, “Where are we going?”
“Home, first. Then to where we’ll be safe.”
She glanced back towards the meeting hall but did not answer. I could feel her arm trembling, and I tucked it into mine. “We’ll be all right, love. We’ll be fine.”
She stared at me vacantly. “Where is Cyrus?”
“He is fine, too. He wants me to look after you.”
“And the Blessed Jasper?”
I dared not answer that. I believed that the Patriarch was dead, and I had killed him. I told myself it was not my fault. The old man ought to have been allowed to die in peace.
We had reached Mother’s house. I expected her to be there, until I saw that the wheelchair was missing. I hadn’t seen her in the hall, but she had almost certainly been there for the wedding. I hoped that she was safe. In any case, I could not take the time to find out.
“Naomi, pack some clothes, and anything else you think you need.”
“For how long?”
For ever. I would not ever dare to return to Bryceville, and I wanted Naomi to stay away.
“For a week.” In that much time I would be able to explain everything to her.
“Are you taking me to where you live, in St George?”
That had been my own first thought, until I recalled how members of the Blessed Order had known exactly how to get into my computer. We would not be safe there. We would not be safe anywhere, but I could not tell that to Naomi.
“Not St George,” I said. “We are going farther away than that. You’ll get to fly in an airplane.”
“Oh.” Her face showed some life for the first time since the man at her side had fallen silently to the floor, but then she frowned. My poor, sweet Naomi. Today had to be a far worse nightmare for her than for me. “An airplane?”
“Drink this,” I said.
She swallowed the little cup of red liquid I handed her, and after a few seconds her face cleared. “An airplane. I’ve always wanted to go on one. But isn’t it wrong?”
“Not when it�
�s really necessary. The Blessed Order says, in certain cases things like airplanes can be used.” I glanced at my watch. Amazingly, it was not yet midday. “Are you ready to go?”
“Just about.” She smiled. “Will you really take me on an airplane?”
“I will. I promise.”
Three-quarters of an hour later we were at the arroyo. The rain had made the ground slippery but there had been no flood. The car started easily. I headed north. Four hours later we were at the Salt Lake City airport. By seven o’clock we were taking off, and Naomi was staring out of the window. She seemed blissfully content – too content.
I, in the seat next to her, worried about dosages, gripped the armrests of my seat and tried not to think about where I was.
I, too, had never been on an airplane.
Where to go?
Although my research work had carried me electronically to hundreds of people on every continent except Antarctica, I knew no one. I had no close friends, no knowledge of how or where two people without much money could hide from possible pursuers.
I had been too desperate to do anything but run until we flew out of Salt Lake City. Only when we landed at Philadelphia at six o’clock in the morning did I call Walter Cottingham. I reached his answering machine, and left him a despairing message with the number of the phone where I was standing.
I went back to sit down. What were Naomi and I going to do? She had slept through most of our long red-eye flight with its two connections, exhausted by her nightmare morning and with a mixture of drugs still in her system. She drowsed on a seat near me. Now, somehow, I had to get us to a place where we could shower and eat, and she could recuperate.
While I was still wondering, the telephone rang and I jumped to answer it, almost knocking down a woman struggling with two big suitcases.
“Walter?” I said. The woman was glaring at me, and I gave her a conciliatory smile.
“It’s me. I’m home. Just sleeping. Do you know what time it is? Where are you?” He listened, then said, “Stay right there. I’m on my way. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of this.”
I collapsed back onto my seat. For the first time in 24 hours I was able to close my eyes and relax a little bit.
He arrived an hour later, when I was beginning to worry that he wasn’t coming.
“Traffic,” he said. “You look tired out. How are you, witch-woman?”
He caught Naomi’s puzzled expression. “It’s nothing bad. Just a name I gave your mother because our researchers say what she does is magic.”
I had told Naomi nothing about Walter, except that he was a friend. She was staring as I introduced them, and I tried to see him through her eyes. The black mustache was long gone, together with the bow tie. I noticed for the first time a few grey hairs. In the past eight years he had been through a marriage and a “friendly” divorce, and he had two children who lived mainly with their mother.
“Did anyone from Bryceville call you?” I asked.
“Not since last week.” He had picked up our two cases and was leading us to the airport parking lot. “Were they supposed to?”
“No.” I was tempted to tell him everything at once, but I was afraid that if I did he would say he couldn’t help and we had to go back. “There was a lot of trouble in Bryceville yesterday. People falling-down sick. Naomi and I had to get out before we caught it, too.”
He turned and gave me an owlish look, but he kept on walking. When we reached the car he said only, “I think we ought to go to my place first and not to the office. Because when Raoul Caprice and the others find out you’re in town they’ll kill to meet you.”
The 40-minutes drive to the western suburbs of Philadelphia was done mainly in silence, Naomi in the back and me on the edge of my seat next to Walter Cottingham. We pulled up at an old wooden house with big shade trees in the front yard, bordered by a hedge with sweet-smelling white flowers that I had never seen in Bryceville or St George.
Before we went inside Walter apologized for the mess. He carried the cases up a flight of stairs running from the dark little entrance hall, to a bedroom luxuriously furnished by the standards of the Blessed Order. Naomi stared wide-eyed at the telephone, the television on the dresser, the window air conditioner, and the bathroom with its variable-pressure shower head. I could see that the drugs were working their way out of her system, and I steeled myself for a barrage of questions when they did.
“Make yourself at home,” Walter said to her. “I’ll bet you could use a shower, right? Come down when you’re all done and we’ll have breakfast. I’ve not had a thing to eat yet this morning.”
I could tell from the way he spoke that I was not included in the invitation to shower. I followed him back downstairs and through a dining room into a sunny enclosed porch lined with cushioned benches and with a solid butcher-block table in the middle.
He pulled out a chair, motioned to me to sit opposite him, and said, “All right, Rachel. What the hell is all this?”
I faced the devil’s own choice: be honest, and admit to my participation with the Blessed Order in an eight-year deception of Tilden, Inc., or try to invent a set of lies plausible and consistent enough to satisfy Walter’s sceptical mind.
I heard the sound of running water upstairs, and thought of Naomi. Her safety came first. Walter had to know what had happened in Bryceville – including everything that I had done.
“It will take a little while,” I said. “May I have a cup of tea – caffeine-free if you have it.”
While the water was boiling, I began. The bit about the first impotence drugs was easy. Walter was actually ahead of me. He interrupted to say, “We were partly responsible for that. Our people sensed a possible gold mine of patentable medications when they read your first reports. I’d say we steered you in that direction; but you were soon far beyond anything we expected.”
“And I’m sure you didn’t expect what came next.” I told him of Elder Walker’s request – more like a command – to develop the next generation of drugs and test them on members of the Blessed Order. Walter whistled and said, “Bad news. Unapproved testing, on human subjects. Did it actually happen?”
“Yes. And there’s worse.”
I talked again, for a long time, and for a long time afterwards he was silent. Finally he said, “Let me make sure I have this right. Recently you developed a new drug, one whose short-term effect is increased virility and sexual performance, but whose effect if taken over a period of months is the total and permanent destruction of all male sexual desire. That’s what you meant by a ‘phallicide agent’.”
“Yes. It wasn’t that difficult.”
“You can say that. I think our researchers would say it was damn-nigh impossible. And in the past week you went even further. You produced an airborne molecule that is absorbed rapidly through the skin, crosses the blood-brain barrier, and interacts with the previous drug to cause temporary insensibility.”
“Yes. I hope it’s temporary. Will you call Bryceville?”
“I will. How many people are affected?”
I remembered the men falling, and the floor of the meeting hall strewn with bodies. “Only males who had been taking impotence drugs and were near enough to the gas cylinder when I opened the valve. Maybe” – I hesitated – “maybe 50. But it could be as high as 75.”
“Jesus Christ. You think you killed 75 people?”
“No!” I thought of the Blessed Jasper. “I do think I might have killed one.”
“But you’re not sure about the others? My God, Rachel, you stay here. It’s still the crack of dawn out there, but I’m going to make a quick call this minute.”
As he vanished I was left alone, my skull throbbing. I had been trying to save Naomi, that had been my whole reason for everything I had done. But if I had killed people, who would save me?
The door opened again. I looked up, thinking that Walter had some question before he made the call. Standing in the doorway was Naomi, fully dressed. Her damp hair
was pushed back from her face and she was ghost-pale.
She stumbled forward and stood leaning against the table. “You did it,” she said huskily. “It wasn’t some kind of disease, like you told me. It was you, wasn’t it, you and your drugs from hell? You killed the Blessed Jasper.”
“Naomi, I didn’t mean –”
“And you hurt Cyrus and the others.” Tears were trickling down her bloodless cheeks. “We were going to be married, it would have been wonderful, the best day ever. I was so happy. You stopped it. And you made it so Cyrus and me can never have babies. I was really looking forward to having his babies.” Her voice rose. “I hate you – you’ve ruined my whole life.”
She stood up, blundered to the door, and pushed through it. I stood up to follow, but ran into Walter on the threshold.
“She knows,” I said. “She heard us. She says she hates me. I have to go after her.”
Naomi was out of the house, out of the yard. I saw her walking, head down, along the street.
“No. Let me do it. If she hates you right now, maybe she’ll listen to me.” At the front door he paused. “One dead – the Blessed Jasper. Everyone else is all right. No one there has any idea what really happened. Cyrus Walker told me that it was the Hand of Almighty God, reaching down to raise the Patriarch from earthly life to everlasting glory in Heaven.”
“What did he say about me and Naomi?”
“Not a word. Things are so confused in Bryceville, he probably thinks you’re still at your mother’s house.”
Walter smiled at me and was gone. I expected that he would return in a few minutes and I stood at the door waiting. After a quarter of an hour there was no sign of either him or Naomi, and I went back to sit wearily at the table.
I was really looking forward to having his babies . . . I hate you –you’ve ruined my whole life. How could she possibly feel that way?
After an hour I moved from the table to lie down on one of the padded benches on the porch. I fell asleep there, and woke from disturbing dreams when I heard the front door open. I straightened up and looked at my watch. Mid afternoon. At least seven hours had passed. Walter came in, and he was alone.
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