Harbinger

by Jack Skillingstead

  “How’s the world look to you now?” I asked.

  He grunted. “They couldn’t do the transplant. Your corneas degraded too rapidly.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It was an anomaly.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “We’ll try again, as soon as your regenerations are complete.”

  I swallowed sticky spit.

  “There’s a concern that some regenerated organs are not adaptable to transplant.”

  “So maybe one set of eyes is all you get out of me.”

  He grunted again. “We’ll beat the problem.”

  “Will we?”

  “Inevitably, yes.”

  I pictured him slouched in the wicker chair, staring possessively at me with my own eyes—my original pair, which they’d taken almost ten years ago. None of my harvested organs lasted as long as they would have had they been left in my own body.

  So it was horrible all right, but I’d stayed with the program. My dad’s heart had failed. In many ways Langley Ulin had assumed the role of surrogate father, and I had no intention of letting him down and letting him die. That didn’t mean I loved him like a father; far from it. Freud no doubt would have relished my cockeyed contradictions.

  It was dark under the thick gauze wrap, and a part of my mind clawed at the darkness, like something primitive and trapped. In a day or so the itch-tingle of regeneration would be driving me mad. Then, gradually, light would reenter my world, seeping in around the edges at first. In a few week’s time I would be able to see in a blurry approximation of normal vision. A week after that I’d have regained full ocular function. At which point—Ulin had just proposed—my corneas would again be harvested.

  “I wish I had my dog,” I said.

  “Your dog?”

  “Jeepers, my dog.”

  “Don’t you worry about that dog. My people take fine care of him, fine care.”

  I turned my head on the pillow, detecting a misfire.

  “Jeepers wasn’t ever lost, was he?”

  “Jeepers creepers where’d you get them peepers!” Ulin said. “Remember that one?”

  “Not really.”

  “Before your time.”

  “What about my dad?”

  “What about him?” Ulin sounded distracted.

  “What was your deal with him?”

  “That’s old news, ancient history.”

  “So I’m a history buff.”

  “You know something, Ellis?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve never felt better in my life, and I’m eighty-two years old. I’ve got you to thank for that.”

  “You’re welcome as hell.”

  He stood up, the wicker chair crackling. His feet shuffled to my bedside. He smelled like something kept in a closet and brought out once a year for Christmas or Hanukkah. His fingers trembled over my eye bandages, touched them lightly. I flinched away.

  “They’re always blue,” he said.

  “I guess they would be.”

  “The clearest blue . . .”

  “I hate it when you hover,” I said.

  He laughed dryly. The fucking Crypt Keeper. Suddenly I felt terrible loneliness.

  “I miss my dog.”

  “That poor animal is dead,” Ulin said.

  *

  After a day of depressive torpor I felt capable enough to do my own puttering. As soon as I woke up I suggested the nurse find something else to do with her day. She respectfully declined my suggestion and told me breakfast was ready.

  “Thanks. I can find my way to the kitchen by myself. I can also find my way to the bathroom by myself, and since that about covers the necessities, you might as well go home or someplace.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t just leave you alone,” she said.

  “Yes you could. In fact, I insist that you do. Good-bye.”

  “But—”

  “I hope I won’t have to get rude again. It’s really not in my nature and it gives me a stomach ache. But I’m cranky as hell, and you wouldn’t want me to get a stomach ache.”

  When she was gone I listened to the empty house for a while, no friendly scrabble of dog claws on the floor. That wasn’t fun, so I groped my way to the kitchen, following my nose, which was following the smell of fried eggs and coffee. Wobbly with suppressed grief, I sat down and pulled the plate to me and wound up dumping breakfast in my lap. It was a hot breakfast. I bolted up, knocking my chair back and shouting something nasty.

  “Oops,” somebody said behind me, and I froze.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Jill.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. How do you like my mess?” I was irritated that she hadn’t bothered to knock, but I kept it to myself.

  “It’s spectacular. Want some help?”

  “Yeah.”

  I sat on the other side of the table drinking coffee while Jill cleaned up the eggs and toast and whatever else had been on the plate.

  “I fired my nurse,” I said.

  “I know. I bumped into her.”

  “A lot of bumping goes on around here, doesn’t it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Sorry about the mess. I could probably clean it up myself.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Insert uncomfortable silence.

  “Um, want some coffee?” I said.

  “You know I pass your house every day on my way to the clinic. I’m not spying on you. As far as I know, no one is spying on you.”

  “I’m the paranoid type.”

  “I don’t know about that, but you’re certainly the suspicious type. And—and not very nice. Sometimes.”

  I heard her scraping breakfast into the trash then the sharp clatter of plate and utensils in the sink.

  Sheepishly, I said, “I guess I can be kind of abrasive.”

  “I’ll go,” she said. “I know you love to be alone. Even those times I slept with you I could tell you wanted me to leave after it was over. After we made love. Maybe I should have left, to make you happy.”

  “I wouldn’t say I love being alone, exactly.”

  A hesitation vibe in the air. “Do you want me to stay? I could call in.”

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “Ellis, just tell me what you want.”

  “I want you to stay. I want you to sit and have a cup of coffee with me. And I want to apologize.”

  “I’d love a cup of coffee, and you absolutely don’t have to apologize.”

  “I apologize anyway, for being a shit.”

  “I need sugar for my coffee. Lots of sugar.”

  “Aren’t you sweet enough already?”

  “Don’t,” she said. “I already know you’re good at charming insincerities.”

  Ouch.

  So I got me a new nurse slash housekeeper until my eyes grew back. No, strike that. I got me a friend. The whole thing still felt weirdly scripted, but I was tired of my own suspicious mind and wanted to rest and make some decisions. To that end, I allowed the situation go all domestic. Jill came by every morning before I was out of bed, made breakfast, checked my eyes, got me comfortably arranged, then trotted off to the clinic. She returned at lunch and again in the evening. The resting part was fairly easy, but decisions didn’t come readily. Maybe I needed to define my choices. Jill helped me out in that department, too. One day she said:

  “Would you like to go for a drive up the coast?”

  “You mean leave the village?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can we do that?”

  “Why not? It’s Saturday and it’s beautiful out. We can go to Seaside. It’s about forty miles. Feel up to it?”

  This was the second week of my regeneration process. I’d discarded my Man With The X-Ray Eyes bandages and the world presented itself to me in soft cotton candy blurs of color and gray scale, painful if the light got too bright.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  October and unseason
ably warm. The windows rolled down and the wind in my face, crisp and clean flowing behind the lenses of my very dark glasses. Eagles on the radio, cranked. Hotel California.

  “How’s it feel to get out?” Jill said.

  “Scary.”

  We ate clam chowder on the pier. I dumped two packets of oyster crackers in my bowl and stirred them around with my plastic spoon. She hadn’t commented on my “scary” remark but it hung between us just begging for elaboration.

  “You know, this is my first time outside the village in ten years.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  “Not usually, but in this particular instance, yeah.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “Amazing plus other less appealing descriptors.”

  “Wow,” Jill said. “I mean, I got the impression you didn’t even like it there so much.”

  I slipped my glasses off and squinted at the blurry world then replaced them.

  “I guess it has its virtues. It’s confining but feels safe. Also, I signed a contract. Strictly speaking this little jaunt is illegal.”

  “Safe from what?” Jill asked.

  “I dunno. The big bad world?”

  “It’s big, all right. But I don’t think it’s so bad. It can be a pretty nice place, really. Don’t you like it here today?”

  “I do. For one thing the chowder’s great. Not to mention the company.”

  She placed her hand over mine and squeezed briefly.

  “Would you categorize my last remark as a charming insincerity?” I asked.

  “I don’t think you meant it that way, but yes. I’m sorry. Don’t be hurt. You want me to be honest, don’t you?”

  “Not really.” I smiled to show her it was a joke, though it wasn’t.

  “I think your charm switches on automatically in certain situations,” Jill said.

  “You mean like during a clam chowder interlude?”

  “Maybe.”

  I raised my glasses, but her face was a pink balloon framed in yellow soft-focus curls.

  Back home I invited her to stay the night but she declined, which stung.

  “I really want you to,” I said.

  She laughed. “I know. But I’m not ready for that again.”

  “It isn’t auto pilot stuff,” I said. “I promise.”

  “I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Unless you’re mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you.”

  She kissed my cheek and gave me a soft, brief hug. I spent the night with myself and a recorded book. For Whom The Bell Tolls.

  Pretty good but not Hem’s best. To make it short, the damn bell tolls for thee and thee and thee.

  But not for me.

  The next day my eyesight was marginally improved. When Jill showed up I’d already made breakfast for both of us.

  “They want you to come down to the clinic this morning,” she said, accepting the cup of French roast I handed her.

  “What if I don’t go?”

  She shrugged.

  “What would happen?” I said.

  “Mr. Paranoid. Nothing would happen. You’re not a prisoner. You’re not Number Seven.”

  “Six.”

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “I’m an employee with full benefits.”

  She sipped her coffee. “So don’t go,” Jill said. She grinned. “What do you want to do instead?”

  “Can we go for another drive?”

  “Sure. Where to?”

  “I don’t care. Anyplace outside the village.”

  Anyplace turned out to be Portland, a three hour drive. We had dinner in a Chinese restaurant. I got around okay. My eyesight had steadily improved but was still poor. The DMV would have declared me legally blind, but what do they know? In the restaurant I removed my dark glasses. The place was crowded, the whole city was crowded by Blue Heron standards.

  “You look kind of nervous,” Jill said.

  “Yeah.”

  “So . . .?”

  “It’s just my Chinese restaurant look.”

  “I see.”

  “Okay—I am nervous. I feel truant. Two days in a row.”

  She giggled. “Do you want me to write you a note to get back into the village?”

  “I think my mother has to do that.”

  “Right.”

  “Jill, you’d be honest with me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Honest about what?”

  “About us. About why you want to spend so much time with me.”

  “Oh, brother. Don’t go there, please don’t. I thought you were getting over that.”

  “I’m trying to get over a lot of things. Let me ask you something. If I stood up right now and walked out of this place without telling you where I was going, what would you do?”

  “Probably call an ambulance?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you can hardly see and you’d wind up getting yourself run over by a truck.”

  I laughed. “Good answer.” I pushed my chair back and stood up, dropping my napkin on the table.

  “Hey—”

  “Relax, I’m just going to the men’s room.”

  “Do you want me to—?

  “No, I can find it all right.”

  I negotiated my way between the tables. Things were pretty blurry. Each table had a little red lantern with a candle. To me they were like a fuzzy, pulsing star field. I put my dark glasses back on and asked a guy in a white coat which way to the restrooms. He steered me in the right direction. At the end of the corridor there was a green blur above a crash-bar door. EXIT. On impulse I walked to it, shoved the bar, and found myself outside in the cold night of Portland.

  I picked my way around to the sidewalk. Traffic zoomed by. Towers of light all around, city cacophony. I took my glasses off and rubbed my eyes, blinked, rubbed them some more. Squinting, I could just make out the façade of the restaurant. The Jade Dragon. I moved down the sidewalk until I encountered a bus-stop shelter. I sat on the bench and waited, but not for a bus.

  The minutes passed, maybe twenty of them. A vehicle pulled up in front of me, the door opened, and a man climbed out. I tensed, but it wasn’t a UI goon come to round me up. The man sat on the bench next to me, the car drove away, and moments later a bus arrived. The man stepped into it but I declined to board.

  After a while I stood up and wandered down the street, feeling lost. And then I was lost. Finally I asked a passerby to steer me towards The Jade Dragon. By the time I got there more than two hours had elapsed since I ducked out the back. Jill was gone, and I was alone, except for my deflated paranoia. Fear by any other name. I was my own goon, a depressing realization.

  “Ellis!” It was Jillian, waving from her car. I got in and we drove away from there.

  “I was so scared,” she said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  I made all the appropriate noises of apology and contrition and tried to keep the self-contempt at a minimum. It was a long drive back to Blue Heron.

  *

  “I want to renegotiate my contract.”

  “I see,” Langely Ulin said.

  We were alone in the kitchen of my cottage. My dark glasses lay on the Formica tabletop. So did a fresh ten year contract, virtually identical to the last one, and a Lacrosse pen. My eyes wouldn’t stop watering, but that was okay; it was a good sign.

  “You’re unhappy with the current arrangement?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ve mistreated you in some way?”

  I wiped my Niagara eyes. “No.”

  “What new terms do you propose?”

  “Simple. The truth. From your lips.”

  “The truth regarding what?”

  “My father.”

  “You already know all that.”

  “I don’t think so. My dad and I didn’t have the greatest relationship, but it’s never made sense that he would essentially sell
me to you. I know he felt guilty about it, but why did he do it in the first place?”

  Ulin sighed. “Back then I had my feelers out, my people watching everywhere for medical anomalies. Of course I funded—and continue to fund—life prolongation and rejuvenation research around the world. But my feelers have always been out. I believed in the possibility of you or someone like you appearing one day. Call it intuition, or a dream, if you like. Those Seattle doctors didn’t know what they were dealing with, but my people recognized a green flag when they saw one. Preternaturally accelerated healing, and even the hint of organ regeneration. Fantastic.”

  Ulin coughed into his hand and picked up his red can of Coke, sipped, and put the can back down.

  “Well,” he continued, “you were a minor, so we needed your father’s help. We required your exclusive cooperation. We couldn’t afford to let the world find out about you.”

  “Yeah, I understand your motives,” I said.

  “Your father was a principled man,” Ulin said. “But everyone can be moved. His lever, ironically, was surgery. Heart valve replacement. Congenital defect discovered later in life. He had no medical insurance, and besides: most insurance companies wouldn’t have covered the procedure, not in 1974. Back then such a procedure was considered experimental.”

  “You promised him a valve replacement for signing me over to you.”

  “Roughly, yes.”

  “That’s fairly slimy.”

  “A matter of business negotiation.”

  “He didn’t last long. What did you give him, a lemon?”

  “He never underwent the surgery.”

  “Why not?”

  “He refused it after you ran away. He spent the final months of his life searching for you. I believe he intended to tell you everything and hope you would agree to cooperate of your own free will. If not he was prepared to accept the consequences and die. Some of this is conjecture. But the picture is clear enough, don’t you think?”